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

[ibldedibble]

I think I'm currently at 3 male and 2 female characters in FO4. The main reason I've played a female character is the Black Widow perk, since there seems to be more male than female enemies in the game.

 

In FO1 I usually play male characters.

In FO2 I play female characters named Buffy (just because you get some bonus equipment early on in the game with that combo).

In FO3 and FO:NV I play characters of either gender.

In FO4 I play characters of either gender.

 

If someone makes a mod to allow a third gender, I'd probably give that a go as well. Just to try it all out.

 

 

Edit: corrected the perk name, I meant Black Widow, not Lady Killer. Thanks @star-mystyk for the reminder. :)

(I also need to find a mod that lets me have both Black Widow and Lady Killer for a 'third gender' playthrough.)

Edited March 31, 2017 by ibldedibble

[StarMystyk]

There's a mod that allows male players to use the Black Widow perk. It also changes one, maybe more, of the Live & Love magazines as well. I use that mod for my male character seeing as there seem to be more male enemies than female.

Since my last post I've done a couple more playthroughs and all male.

I might start another female later, just for something different.

[Fkemman11]

Well I still play female for some obvious reasons and I like her snark as others have said. My mission now is to tell everyone in the CW to go *edit* themselves. :happy:

[TKayFire]

I always play women when I have the choice. Always.

 

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.

 

Interesting, but also not an accurate description of the average woman. Not even an average man is going to pick up a gun to shoot people without due cause and even less will actually know how to shoot one. The point is not that the wife couldn't be a total badass, the point is they portrait her as the opposite in the game making it a prerequisite to roleplay her different from what the game presents her as. That is just annoying and poorly implemented. You don't have to defend women. It is fact that almost any woman would choose a secure and safe life and not train herself to defend herself. to your "thousands know martial arts and know how to shoot a gun" there's millions that don't. Men and women are different and it's just stupid to image they are not. The result is that they are judged differently and that is not even wrong. The game doesn't give you any indication that the woman is trained. It does however indicate that the man is trained. All Bethesda had to do was insert a small dialogue in pre-war Sanctuary where the man jokingly tells her that she was always a better shot than him. That is ALL. That is not much to ask for. If it was the other way around I would make the same argument.

 

Funny thing is that almost everyone would likely be shot dead by the first raider they come across. The only reason the gamer shoots anyone before they start shooting them is because the "enemy" is listed as "Raider" and has a red hp-bar. That s#*! don't exist in reality. Anyone not trained as a black ops or navy seal walking into Concord is DEAD MEAT.

[Moraelin]

Interesting, but also not an accurate description of the average woman. Not even an average man is going to pick up a gun to shoot people without due cause and even less will actually know how to shoot one.

I think I already agreed that the average person of both genders wouldn't really be nearly as bad ass as the PC. In fact, as you say, they'd be toast. So, yeah, no need to argue that bit. We're already in agreement.

 

The point is not that the wife couldn't be a total badass, the point is they portrait her as the opposite in the game making it a prerequisite to roleplay her different from what the game presents her as. That is just annoying and poorly implemented. You don't have to defend women. It is fact that almost any woman would choose a secure and safe life and not train herself to defend herself. to your "thousands know martial arts and know how to shoot a gun" there's millions that don't. Men and women are different and it's just stupid to image they are not. The result is that they are judged differently and that is not even wrong. The game doesn't give you any indication that the woman is trained. It does however indicate that the man is trained. All Bethesda had to do was insert a small dialogue in pre-war Sanctuary where the man jokingly tells her that she was always a better shot than him. That is ALL. That is not much to ask for. If it was the other way around I would make the same argument.

 

Actually my point is that we don't actually have that kind of information. You don't actually know if Nate wasn't some logistics guy who never saw much combat or training, nor if Nora wasn't some gun lover who spent her weekends at the shooting range while the hubby is away.

 

What we know is that nate was in the 108'th Infantry Regiment, and (as per the Fraternal Outpost note) got some kind of medal, but we don't really know what kind of action he saw there, what that medal was for, or really even what his actual role was. He could have been a combat medic, or a truck driver, or a military reporter attached to the regiment, or really whatever. We don't really know either if he actually was some kind of commando trooper, nor that he wasn't.

 

About Nora we know that she took evening classes to become a lawyer, but we have NO idea what she did with her life other than that. She could have been a housewife, or a waitress, or a Russian elite spy, or a security guard, or she could have done a clerical tour of duty with the navy and gotten basic training out of it. That kind of career choice has been available in the navy since world war ONE. But we don't know. Maybe she had training or maybe she didn't. We don't have any evidence either way.

 

Beth really left enough room to make up your own back story for either of them, or both. Hell, since FH they even explicitly proposed the possibility that you could be a synth with just some minimal pre-war memories implanted. (And it would sure explain why Shaun has absolutely no emotional attachment and his side-project was seeing how long until you get killed. Not even if, but how long until.)

 

I mean, hell, you could be anything, literally all the way up to prototype gen 4 courser. Humanity redefined indeed.

 

So it seems strange to me when some people are totally unable to imagine anything else than fragile housewife.

 

Funny thing is that almost everyone would likely be shot dead by the first raider they come across. The only reason the gamer shoots anyone before they start shooting them is because the "enemy" is listed as "Raider" and has a red hp-bar. That s*** don't exist in reality. Anyone not trained as a black ops or navy seal walking into Concord is DEAD MEAT.

More or less what I was getting at on pages 1 and 2. So yeah, nice to meet someone else who realizes that.

[Fkemman11]

The fact is that it doesn't really matter what training and what-not either of them had. A person that is not a complete idiot would learn how to use a gun effectively in a short amount of time. They would probably avoid Concord all together as soon as they heard the shooting. Probably the first thing they would understand is to avoid EVERYONE. Now once you find the dog(and not get killed by Molerats) a person might feel a little braver and start to explore. But at no time would someone just wade on into a gunfight like John Wayne and start shooting bad guys. It works that way only in a game. But since its a game that were talking about then I think its fair to agree that anything is possible. Besides anyone in PA with a minigun is a force to be reckoned with. :happy:

[Greslin]

As a man myself, most often I start out with a new Fallout title playing the stock male character. Then gradually as I start modding it, my tendency is to push more and more towards the hardcore survival grind, and somewhere along the line I switch to the female.

 

There's probably a Lara Croft-ish perv factor there somewhere. I can admit that. But in the Bethesda titles, honestly, I've found the male protagonists to be utterly boring characters, ESPECIALLY Nate in FO4. And the story plays much better as a mother obsessed with tracking down her baby, than as a father-son deal. In my opinion. I just think the Nora voice acting and face mocap was better and more emotionally convincing.

 

In my FO4 head canon, the story is Nora's anyway. Suburban lawyer housewife mom, probably still on an extended maternity leave, gets caught suddenly in this apocalyptic clusterfork, has her husband murdered in front of her eyes and her baby stolen, and now she's awakened in this barbaric wasteland full of psychotic murderers, cannibals, jolly green giants and the occasional malfunctioning robot... and still, there's no doubt in her mind. She's off on a quixotic vendetta to get her baby back, no matter the cost. My Nora gradually transforms herself, Sarah Connor-style, into a revenge machine struggling to not lose her own humanity in the process.

 

That there's a pretty compelling story. "Military guy who keeps getting roped into pointless settlement quests" doesn't really do it for me on that same narrative level.

[CiderMuffin]

I always play women when I have the choice. Always.

 

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.

Interesting, but also not an accurate description of the average woman. Not even an average man is going to pick up a gun to shoot people without due cause and even less will actually know how to shoot one. The point is not that the wife couldn't be a total badass, the point is they portrait her as the opposite in the game making it a prerequisite to roleplay her different from what the game presents her as. That is just annoying and poorly implemented. You don't have to defend women. It is fact that almost any woman would choose a secure and safe life and not train herself to defend herself. to your "thousands know martial arts and know how to shoot a gun" there's millions that don't. Men and women are different and it's just stupid to image they are not. The result is that they are judged differently and that is not even wrong. The game doesn't give you any indication that the woman is trained. It does however indicate that the man is trained. All Bethesda had to do was insert a small dialogue in pre-war Sanctuary where the man jokingly tells her that she was always a better shot than him. That is ALL. That is not much to ask for. If it was the other way around I would make the same argument.

 

Funny thing is that almost everyone would likely be shot dead by the first raider they come across. The only reason the gamer shoots anyone before they start shooting them is because the "enemy" is listed as "Raider" and has a red hp-bar. That s*** don't exist in reality. Anyone not trained as a black ops or navy seal walking into Concord is DEAD MEAT.

 

You realize that there are numerous ways to explain why a female Sole Survivor would be a bad-ass right? America has a long history of regular citizens knowing how to use a firearm or weapons as a hobby or lifestyle, a lot of women join self defense classes and then you have the fact that Nora could've gone to college on the G.I. Bill which pays for higher education. There is really no way to say "just because Nora was a lawyer before the war means she must be the opposite of her husband who was a soldier"

 

Also on the comment of "The average woman would want to just have a peaceful life with no conflict" my response to that is, no duh almost everyone on earth wants a conflict-free carefee life.

 

Men and Women aren't as different as you're making them out to be, there are tons of women serving military combat roles in numerous countries throughout the world. Hell, there is even an all kurdish women resistance group in the middle east fighting against Isis. (Source: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-are-afraid-of-girls-kurdish-female-fighters-believe-they-have-an-unexpected-advantage-fighting-a6766776.html)

 

And this isn't really a new thing, throughout history a lot of resistance groups have had a large list of women serving in them.

 

Going "BUT BUT THERE IS NO DIALOGUE OPTION SAYING THE WIFE IS BETTER!" doesn't mean anything, at all. It's all about how you role-play. That's literally the whole point of a role-playing game.

Edited April 2, 2017 by CiderMuffin

[Moraelin]

As I was saying before, there are some 200 or so women known to have fought (and quite well at that; volunteers tend to) as "men" in the Civil War. Only Atom knows how many we don't know about. That's over two centuries before the nukes.

 

So, yeah.

 

Edit: plus, honestly, imagining that someone trained the player character is not even scratching the surface of far one can get with making up a back-story their character, if they want to. In some of my games, Nora is an Underworld kinda vampire, with bright eyes and all. My back story is that she got bitten in the neck by an elder lawyer at the end of college. That is how bar exams work, right? :wink: Explains why she can step on a land mine, get two high powered rifle bullets in the head, and be as good as new if she sleeps for one hour.

 

Some of my other characters in other games were (in my own head) ninjas.

 

One of my NV characters was the daughter of a crashed high-ranking Romulan Tal-Shiar operative (the Tal Shiar is kinda the Romulan DIA, with an even nastier streak,) and got some elite training (and pointy ears) from her mum. Also a lot higher strength and endurance than the average human, because of her Romulan blood. Why not? There was a Star Trek shuttle in Fallout 2.

 

One of my Skyrim characters was an Orion, who got put there by Q for some unknown reason of his (honestly, nobody really understands that guy,) with only her bat'leth as a weapon. Had to retint the skin green and model my own bat'leth just for that.

 

Etc.

 

So yeah, seems strange that some other people seem to have no such imagination.

[montky]

@Moraelin

 

 

indeed there was a downed TOS-style shuttle in FO2,

that sounds quite the narrative there.

half rommie, half mutant?

 

especially, when we consider that,

H Ellison wrote both Fallout stuff, and Star Trek episode arcs...

they're more related in a lot of ways than folks care to admit.

 

hopefully, that will mean a decent Trek game by Bethesda at some point,

which would be awesome.

 

not a lot of folks like FORPG or GURPS though,

so that's why continuity is different with respect to time -

a lot of fallout fans I know locally don't hold FO4 to be canonical.

 

 

 

EDIT:

 

 

dang that's an awesome what-if...

a decent Mad Max styled terminator game,

free-roam and all, wow.

 

you should have a "moraelin's tangent thread", where you just put awesome ideas,

that's, I've lost count of the awesome tangents in this thread alone hehe.

 

 

Edited April 3, 2017 by montky