Nothing wrong with trying to sell more games, but that can also be detrimental to game development. Case in point Dragon Age: Snoozequisition. They tried to please everyone and in the end it only resulted in the most expensive boring RPG of all time. As long as Bethesda doesn't resort to that mentality they can put out as many girl power videos as they like.

Hmmm, I wonder if the UI and animations don't change to Vault Girl if you play a female. We've only seen the UI on a male character.

Thats not what a strawman argument is, a strawman is where i change your argument and then attack the newly defined argument. for example "So you want NO men in videogame trailers!?".

What i did was express i did not feel it is a big gender issue, or a gender issue at all, and give an example of what i think is a gender issue.

You claim Fallout holds a female fanbase of 4million, but that doesnt mean there are 4 million people who are concerned with this. I'll bet most of those women fall in the same mindset as the male fans in that they do not care. A gameplay trailer is about the gameplay, look at the cool crafting, look at that power armor, and awww we get a dog. Not about the six of the character they happend to show this gameplay with.

No one would've cared if it was all done with the female protagonist, so to promote this as a gender issue of all things is a gross exegeration.

Again, we'd all love to see more footage from the female protagonists pov. But Bethesda descided to present a little story with their reveal trailer and in it they focussed on the male protagonist. We saw a bit of the female protagonist in this, and hopefully we'll see more in future updates.

But if we don't that's not a "big issue". I'll just see it for myself when i play the female protagonist.

And if i had to choose between seeing the exact same gameplay we've already seen but with a female character or seeing brand new gameplay elements but again with a male character, i'd rather see the brand new gameplay elements. Because the six of the character doesn't really concern me.

How do we know that all the stuff we've seen didn't feature a mannish woman? Hmm?

I've wondered that. too.

I think they are deliberately downplaying her, because trailers and presentations don't happen by accident. They are pitched, written, edited, edited, edited, edited, over and over again until what is considered to be the best version comes out. Now, I'm not saying that they have a nefarious or sixist agenda in putting the male character center stage, but it is still a deliberate decision on their part. And also a bad one, because Delaney's performance so far is so bored that I can't imagine his readings are the better of the two.

As far as the front man thing goes, that's part of the reason I like Fallout 4's cover art. It's just a power armor helmet. Gender neutral, empty, waiting to be filled by the character you create. Good image.

To me, the problem is the disregard for the fact that two people are essentially playing the same part. It's not an example of Schrodigner's player character, as both characters exist in the game, but they are both the playable character and the solo star of the game. It just comes off as discourteous to the actress who is starring in their first game with a voiced protagonist that she gets maybe a dozen lines in the presentation and that's the only time she's been advertised. And considering this isn't like movies or tv shows where a man and a woman are co-leads sharing screen time, but a case where you're only going to be hanging out with one of them and that one is going to be the star of your play through, I think Taylor deserves to get better treatment in the ad campaign than she has.

To me, Taylor and Delaney are both the star (again, the singular is important) of the game, so they should be both be getting some love from the marketing team. Sometimes they should share the spotlight, and other times they should have it all to themselves. I think it's weird that they talked about how interesting it was that the actors approached the same lines differently and so the performances play out differently depending on who you're playing as, but didn't even bother to show a clip highlighting the contrast. Surely they could have found one in the first 20 minutes of being in the Wasteland. I'm sure there are variations in the talk with Codsworth at least.

For the fans...

http://grindone.deviantart.com/art/Fallout-4-War-Never-Changes-Wallpaper-538026979

I would love to see some female SS game footage. I don't care if it is a re-hash of what they've already shown from the male SS's POV. It ould just be nice to see how she moves, sounds and so forth. I tend to play female characters, and so does my wife. And if there is a difference in the story between the genders, I'll play both. And yes, in the end, marketing to the female demographic as well as the male is just good business sense.

That still looks like the male SS.

Agreed I'd like to see that too.

Thought the same thing.

A male main marketing character seems more fitting for Fallout 4.

On the other hand, yes, I would like to hear the female protag in a gameplay video aswell. If I'm paying for it already I'd like to see/hear the whole package, even tho there is not much possibility I'll play as a chick.

When it comes to marketing such as this action video, stick with a dude.

Really? You thought Dragon Age: Inquisition was bad? I thought DA:2 was so awful I never even finished it, but I sank well over 100 hours into DA:Inquistion.

I don't think the UI will change to a Vault Girl if you play as a female. And that doesn't really bother me. I view Vault Boy as his own character, not a representation of the player. He is a corporate mascot for Vault-Tec, like Mickey Mouse is for Disney.

One thing to note here is that is IS a gender issue. An issue based on what is perceived as normal. As in - it's normal for game devs to showcase the male lead, when you can choose your gender for your character. And basically hide away the female lead like her presence will offend people.

So it is about gender, but it's not really deliberate. It's just, how it's always been. Bethesda is guilty of this kind of behavior, and I don't think anyone at Bethesda really thinks about it. They have always done it this way, just like everyone else. And that is part of the problem.

In the end, the question is: who is gonna take the first step to change this and start treating the female lead as someone just as important as the male lead?

I'd like to see the female protagonist in a video for the opposite reason (can't play as a female so Id like to see the female dialogue in a video).

Edit: As for the whole inequality thing or whatever it is, seems trivial to me. It would actually be a bit off-putting if they tried to release videos with every race, gender, sixual orientation, age, hair color, body build, etc. Maybe down the road, but at release it would take away from the focus of the games story/world/etc. not to have a signature protagonist - every video you would be distracted while trying to figure out who the protagonist is. But if they want to make the initial protagonist an elderly bisixual woman with a Mohawk, sounds good to me. A series of videos showing all the different types of characters you could make would be cool also, but they kinda already did that.

We already have a cinematic featuring a cross-dressing wanderer. So it is almost close enough to featuring a female wanderer.

Think this might have something to do with the overwhelming majority of the demographic interested in Fallout (and gaming in general) are male?

You seem to make a couple of really strange assumptions. That Bethesda is trying to hide the female lead, that gamers would be offended at seeing a female lead, and that it's not deliberate.

I don't think Bethesda's is tring to muffle anything under a rug, they are however very protective to not spoil anything and do not want to put in the effort on making all kinds of trailers that detract time from working on the game. Pete Hines said that last part.

Gamers play anything, all the time. Male protagonists, italian plumbers in a catsuit, giant blue hedgehog, antrapomorphic mushroom, a literal line. That anyone could possibly think that that showing a female lead would upset these people is beyond me?

Ow and i believe it is very deliberate how they put the trailer together. It showed a clear intent and even a sort of story, or "thread" that ran through it. It was clearly put together very meticulously.

As i said a few posts back it's common practise to market or showcase products casting someone that is of the same six as the largest demographic buying your product. This is not only true in videogames but even more so in other products, i used yogurt as an example. I cannot remember the last time i saw a commercial for some that didn't feature a woman. You think i'm making this up? I'm not the only one that has noticed! Just hit up google.

So would you say yogurt being marketed predominantly to women and promimently featuring women is also a gender issue? Because to me it just seems like marketing 101.

But as i also said, and im starting to feel like a broken record but ill say it again anyway, female gamers don't care. Mass Effect 3 was touted earlier as an example of how to represent males and females equally in marketing, and as discussed Mass Effect had about a 20% female playerbase.

And yet Skyrim, which only did trailers and gameplay with typical Iron Armor Skyrimdude saw that 30% of it's players were female. Despite doing no "gender equal" marketing whatsoever. Because gamers don't care, not male gamers, not female gamers. Because gamers choose gameplay.

Another surprising revelation from Gearbox from back in 2011, apparently Duke Nukem Forever had a surprisingly high popularity with female gamers. Go figure.

Dishonored 2 is a game with a choice between a male and female lead, and the devs showcased the female in the announcement trailer because they feel she's the more important character.

I have zero interest in the protaganist no matter which six. I want to see more footage of the enemies and monsters and locations.

I'd have thought it would have made a fairly cool advertising twist to have a 10 minute or so gameplay trailer of someone in full power armor, have them wandering the wastes, hip shots with rocket tubes, beating down a deathclaw with a powerfist, maybe kicking one of those raiders that look like they have junkyard armor in the junk, rapid fire combat and explosions, then close the video with the armor coming back to the garage and "she" steps out of it...

Closed for review - there's a number of inappropriate, purposefully inflammatory or overly political posts in here.

Combat montage #2? Yes, please!

Did you forget to lock the thread or is it already cleaned up?

Oops.