Hello again!Once again, it's been an age between posts (welcome to the world of blogging), but in my defence, I have been setting up a home business. Also, I'm just really lazy and/or forgetful.
Because I've had such a dry spell, I figured I'd start back with a game series I particularly love (but still moan about quite a lot): "Fable". "Fable", when it was first released, was one of the first games to really explore the depths of in-game AI and the troubling matter of cause and effect in the gaming universe. Additionally, to my recollection (and incorrect it may well be - I am open to corrections on this), it was also one of the first that allowed quite a high degree of detailed customisation, in terms of costume, hair, weapons, etc.
The first game in the "Fable" series, although highly customisable, didn't actually allow the player to choose a female character. Hero, the character's default name was always a young boy, and as he grew into a man, you could define his character as finely as you liked. Clothes, hair styles, even tattoos were readily available to buy in game and apply. In addition to the conscious aesthetic choices provided throughout the game, your actions also affected ultimately how your character looked. You start off with a "normal" looking guy - sort of thin, short, mousy hair. Dependent on whether your actions were regarded as good or evil also contributed to the way your character looked. It worked on a sort of sliding scale, i.e. +100 was totally Good, and -100 was totally Evil. +100 meant you got gradually blonder, blue marks appeared all over your body and you got a literal halo. -100 meant you got gradually darker, more frowny, reddish marks appeared all over your body and you ended up having two horns coming out of your head. So, in theory, the more evil you are the more likely you are to develop hideous malformed growths on your face.
Enter "Fable 2" - the second instalment in the series introduced the added option of...wait for it....LADY HERO (whom I shall hereby refer to as "Shero"). Once again, the choice of a female protagonist did not in anyway affect the main aspects of the gameplay - she wouldn't stop to complain about breaking a nail, or have to rush off to the kitchen in between quests, or anything, which is nice. In fact, the gender choice was purely aesthetic, which continues through to "Fable 3" (but not the most recent release for the Kinect, "Fable: The Journey").
Non-Player characters, frequently voiced with West Country accents and some delightfully, deliberately ridiculous script (much to my continued amusement), both male and female can, and will, fall in love with your character, regardless of gender. Although the NPC's sexual orientation does affect his/her choice towards your S/Hero. By and large though, playing as Shero is the most efficient way to get the majority of the games male population to trail you around and proposition you incessantly. Yes, you can have sex in-game. On top of that, you also have the choice of whether the act is protected or unprotected, the latter of which usually ends up with you catching something nasty. (The act itself is visually censored, but there is a wealth of amusing sound effects - as can be heard here, never mind the fact that he's got a chicken hat on).
There are some who theorise that the constant sexual propositioning of Shero in-game is creator Chris Molyneux's idea of a subtle social commentary, which if true, is both very clever, and very subtle. I'm not quite sure I agree, because your character can get hit on by both men AND women, and also, by the end of the game, literally EVERY SINGLE NPC WANTS TO GET IN YOUR PANTS.
Now, I have maintained throughout this post so far that gender is an aesthetic choice - now here is my gripe. In honesty it is really just an extension of the gripe from my earlier post, I admit it, but I don't care. Also I'll go into a bit more detail.
Being a woman, I do like things that women typically like (nice hair, makeup, shoes...lots of shoes), in addition to liking things that, stereotypically, are still more of a man's domain (sci-fi, gaming, firetrucks). So, when I played as Shero, I did want a character who looked feminine. Whilst this is possible earlier in teh game, as you gradually level up your skills, Shero looks less and less like a lady and more like a gargantuan, bodybuilding golem. Her stature grows, as do her muscles. On the one hand, it is genuinely brilliant that as a female, Shero is not restricted to dainty, small proportioned musclelessness. On the other, it somehow ends up defying the otherwise limitless customisation in the game. I want to be able to choose how muscly she gets or how tall she gets.
Whilst researching why she got so huge, I discovered it was apparently down to a combination of levelling up the "Strength" attribute and the "Will" attribute (in layperson's terms: Melee and Magic abilities). So basically, in levelling up throughout the game (in order to progress and ultimately win, you forfeit some level of your customisation, and end up with a combination of something like this:
I suppose the idea behind it is that you can choose not to level up certain attributes in order to control the way your character looks, thereby announcing to all and sundry that you essentially value style over substance, like some kind of shallow moron. But my argument is that if you are pushing on the customisation front, then there shouldn't be essentially unavoidable gameplay choices to make that interfere with the customising you have already done.
On the one hand, the level playing field between Hero and Shero is laudable - in theory it could go some way to encourage the ideology of women in stereotypically male roles as utterly equal and unbound by societal constraints. On the other, could it not be said that it blindly overlooks the potential needs/demands of the customising gamer?
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