So, Do you play FO4 as a male or female?

[Moraelin]

The point though is:

 

1. You don't know what kind of training the wife had. Even in our more peaceful world, there are thousands of people of both genders who are rather fond of guns and shoot a lot. Especially in the USA, but even here, my brother who never was in the army is actually better at shooting a pistol than I am. I never got more than a mediocre grouping with a 9mm on account of never managing recoil all that well -- our training was not really about pistols -- while he shoots a Casull revolver like he's Alucard. Thousands of women do HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts) training, and could kick my ass with a sword. Thousands, especially asians, have extensive training with a naginata. Hell, you know for example what sport is really popular with women in Iran for example: Ninjitsu. I guess they already wear the mask anyway :wink:

 

But anyway, we don't know. Maybe she was just a housewife, or maybe she was a cop or guard while doing evening classes to become a lawyer. Maybe she had a tour being some clerical officer in the army, and got at least basic training out of it. Hell, maybe she was a soviet spy and was a KGB major. We don't know. You can imagine any frikken backstory you want about her. And it's kinda weird that, out of all that space of possibilities that was left open, some people absolutely can't imagine anything that doesn't boil down to fragile woman who totally couldn't use a gun. WTH?

 

2. Your character in all Fallout games is anything BUT normal. In fact, in FO4, regardless of gender, you have some abilities that only Coursers have, and some that even Coursers don't. I used to joke about being a prototype Gen 4 courser before there even was a FH to float the idea of your maybe being a synth. We're talking a one in a million kind of individual. Whatever you think about men, women, household robots, or tentacled aliens from Andromeda, we're not talking about the average one here.

 

Or to put it otherwise, the AVERAGE person in FO4 is not the kind that singlehandedly clears a building of raiders like you do right at the start in Concord. The average person who just lost everything including a son, is more like Marcy and Jun upstairs. They don't even have a gun, even when under assault by raiders. Hell, even people with military experience like Minutemen or even BOS get their asses kicked so hard in that kinda situation, they have their butt hole between their shoulder blades. There were at least 4 minutemen in Lexington and they got their asses kicked by the same ghouls you have no trouble ploughing through alone.

 

So why is it that unbelievable that even a one in a million kind of character could learn fast there?

 

3. Especially since male characters in other games never caused this kind of uproar, even when they had clearly even less time and oportunity to have any kind of training. Nobody seemed to mind that your character in Fallout 3 (and for that matter Fallout 1) was a 19 year old who had literally NO weapons training except with a BB gun, no actual combat experience, and who had no survival skills or knowledge of the outside world. Hell, one of the choices in FO1 was even pretty much retarded.

 

Hell, in NV, you're someone who got a 9mm lobotomy and forgot literally EVERY single skill or knowledge they ever had. Not only you are crap with a gun or with anything else, you don't even remember where the town where you took your courier contract is. Much less remember some kind of military tactics.

 

But nah, that's apparently ok. It's only when one of the choices is a woman, that suddenly it somehow matters.

 

Meh.

[Fkemman11]

Bah. Who cares about all that. I'm just glad they didn't put any mutated sharks in the water. They scare the hell outa me!! o_O

 

I mean at this point, it is just beatin' a dead horse- as my grandpa used to say. We have pretty much agreed that it makes no difference whether its male or female in dangerous situations. It might have even been a silly topic to begin with. There are plenty of subjects to talk about. :nuke:

[snapper69]

Well, you started it, as they say.

[darkmage64]

My character identifies as an attack helicopter.

[charwo]

You know what would be kinda cool? Having a thing after the main quest where you can download yourself into Synth body, not unlike Curie. So if you happen to want to play a repressed transsexual who's now lost everything that ever bound them to their assigned gender, you change that Make a synth body in the character screen just like the beginning, and also change the voice. Maybe only once like the Sink Autodoc's personality profile.

I'd have no use for it, but it would be a fun option to have.

[PoorlyAged]

Terse answer: YES.

 

Verbose answer: I am a male and I play both. If for no other reason than to see the differences in the character build and growth path. But with Fallout 4 there seemed to be no differences so the female character just wound up being better looking versions of the male character.

[Moraelin]

Honestly I was still talking about the Dragon age environment and other games set in ancient times more than a quasi-modern post apocalyptic wasteland-where anyone who could pick up a weapon would be expected to defend themselves with it.

Just to shed some historical information on that too, basically it boils down to: the Earth is a big place, and some 2000 to 5000 years of recorded history (depending on where in Europe or Asia you are) are a long time. So, as you can expect, things varied a lot across space and time.

 

Medieval Xianity was certainly dead set on what women can't do, that much is clear. But Xianity itself was pretty much a conservative reactionary reaction to the gradual liberalization of life in the Roman empire, which included a lot of change in the status and rights of women. Originally women in Rome didn't even have a first name: daughters were literally just numbered. But by classical time we see for example St Paul railing against women teaching or having authority over men. All that relatively liberal society must have been quite a shock for a backwards middle-eastern bunch of illiterate herders.

 

You can think of it as being good or bad that someone put the proper fear of God in the Romans, and gave them some inflexible commandments, and stop those devious women from acting like they have rights. And I'm not here to argue that this time. But basically I'm saying that what you see in Xian Medieval Europe was not how things always were. It was a return in force of the conservative religious to put everyone in their place.

 

Now Romans even before that time were still fairly conservative by modern standards, and didn't have women as frontline troops, but they did have a lot of professional women gladiators. Who incidentally fought with their tits out, because, hey, we're guys. The sword isn't what we're paying to look at :wink:

 

So even there, in a pinch you'd still be able to find some woman who can fight.

 

Other places weren't as conservative, though. Sparta is one example that was as egalitarian (for citizens) as any TES game. ALL free citizens had to go through the same brutal training as heavy infantry, and ALL had to prove that they can murder as a rite of passage. That included the women. Now generally the women weren't the first choice of who to send to a war, but we have documented instances where women fought in a siege. E.g., queen Arachidamia pulled the stunt of actually entering the Spartan senate (equivalent) in battle gear and with sword in hand, and DEMAND that she and the other women fight against Pyrrhus when he besieged Sparta. The wish was granted.

 

They were not the only place.

 

Even as late as the middle ages, the Norse (kinda the real life Skyrim;)) had shieldmaidens, and they're even attested by hostile Xian testimonies. Most notably, at the battle of Bravellir (probably the most senseless and pointless waste of human life in recorded history,) they had a whole company of 300 shieldmaidens. At least one of them is recorded in two sources as having defeated one of the male champions of the other side, and gravely wounding another.

 

Meanwhile in Japan, they had heroes like Tomoe Gozen who fought with a naginata and led armies in the Genpei War. By the Edo era, although most of the fighting was done by male ashigaru anyway, ALL samurai women were expected to have a naginata and know how to use it. In fact, they were expected to be able to defend themselves and their home with it, if needed.

 

Etc.

 

What I'm saying is that although societies like Sparta were not very common, they did exist. There isn't anything unrealistic about a game society being modelled after one of those, instead of after the Xian European dark ages.

[bmt12]

You know what would be kinda cool? Having a thing after the main quest where you can download yourself into Synth body, not unlike Curie. So if you happen to want to play a repressed transsexual who's now lost everything that ever bound them to their assigned gender, you change that Make a synth body in the character screen just like the beginning, and also change the voice. Maybe only once like the Sink Autodoc's personality profile.

 

I'd have no use for it, but it would be a fun option to have.

That would be interesting, like the plastic surgery option but with the complete character editor.

 

Not that it would have much use as in the endgame all the other main quest lines are closed off to you, and I don't really see a way they could allow you access to it earlier in the game as volunteering to become a synth isn't going to help you with any faction except the railroad.

[ScuffedOni]

I play as a male character even though male characters have no mods for them at all.

[sinlessorrow]

Female....Because 90% of the mods on this website are designed for female PC's.