Why does it matter? She's the entire reason a Cyrodiilic Empire that was run by Uriel Septim could exist in the first place instead of having the entire population of said empire's homeland be the slaves of saidstic Ayleids. Uriel Septim has been the ONLY Emperor that ruled in the existing Elder Scrolls games. So what if he's a male? It's one emperor and there's a fifty percent chance he would be male and a fifty percent chance he would be female. It's no indication of a bias against women in the Elder Scrolls series, it's one emperor... and arguably not the most important one, at that.

True about Health, magicka, and stamina, but you're overlooking the obvious...The arbitrary numbers that were attributes aren't just being simplified into health/magicka/stamina: they're being replaced with the much deeper system of perks.

And if it's anything like Fallout, there will likely be gender and race-specific perks.

Frankly, adding in Perks allows MORE variety (more *real* vareity, not just numerical vareity) than Attributes ever did.

This way, genders and races will be able to have specific abilities and traits that impact the game in a real and readily-apparent way. Better for RP, better for gameplay. All positive things =)

Perks seem like they'll add more to the game than attribuets ever did. I'm looking forward to that, as it'll make the game itself deeper as a result. Nice to see Skyrim moving forward like this.

The history of Tamriel of course. http://www.imperial-library.info/content/third-era, the most recent era. Fact of the matter is, there have been female emperors, and one of them did lead Tamriel into one of its most (if not the most) prosperous time ever experienced. Also, the games have been taking place during the late emperor Uriel's reign. Kind of hard to have multiple emperors when we're playing the years of Uriel's rule, and an extremely brief moment with Martin.

I hope you know that leaders do delegate power to make their workload easier. It would be a giant pain in the ass to personally take all contracts and send people to do those contracts by yourself.

And I think you are cherry picking for something that doesn't really exist in TES. Traven did nothing but piss off most of the mages guild and sent those who left underground. The Grey Fox didn't do anything, but make you do his chores. Ocheeva was the head of the sanctuary, outside of the Black Hand. A nord female is one of the surviving members of the Black Hand and handles all contracts sent to you by the Night Mother. There are more, but I don't want to have to highlight nearly every NPC. And please, don't make me, I already have to highlight enough examples on other subjects, such as Alduin/Akatosh, the dwemer, and creation myths.

I don't think I did. You provided three examples of sixism, and I pointed out that you are wrong. It also doesn't help that you seemed to not have played Morrowind. And you neglect the fact that a female character can rise to the same ranks as a male character in every single game.

I was referring more with the Septim Empire, as it was the most recent. The Reman Empire only had the Reman boys and two potentates.

So we stop hijacking these threads, I wonder if we ought to make a regular "Gender in the Elder Scrolls" thread or something like that in the General Elder Scrolls forum to catch all this sort of conversation. Though there's the chance that could get messy, it'd be better than taking these over, at least, and allow the discussion to be a little more continuous. <_<

Speaking of which, on the actual topic of this thread:

While there might be some slight variation in the average physical ability of men and women, it seems that that's well outdone by the variation between individuals. I'm not sure how important it is to model something so small and so complicated as that average and how it affects individuals when they're coming up with the new system. I certainly wouldn't cry if gender differences in stats went away.

No, hated it in Oblivion...

And I'm not suggesting it was an indication of bias - I merely asked you question, Set. Take a breath and read from my original post:

"Certainly the TES series has been much better at incorporating women into the game than other games that I could name, including many recently released titles. Even if it seems at times that we're just part of the scenery."

I repeat myself for the third time in two days: Bethesda has done a remarkable job of incorporating women into the game. I'm not upset or complaining. It's only men who seem to get upset with even the suggestion that the TES series is anything but perfectly gender-equal. Just don't tell me everything is perfectly equal when I'm quite capable of seeing it's not.

~ Dani ~

Danielle, you argument would be better if you could back it up with facts. What you have presented so far has either been wrong, or a perception a bunch of us cannot see, because you're not backing them up or providing examples.

You've also made your own assumptions. I never said they were equal. I even criticized a system that, in relation to the topic, distributes stats differently between male and female characters. I did, however, bring up what I think is the greatest example of a powerful and influential female in Tamrielic history... and I was bit appalled how Alessia wasn't mentioned by responding posters. Alessia is one of my favorite Elder Scrolls characters.

It's readily apparent that the lore for TES puts women on an equal playing field as men (as Set has explained), that's hardly debatable when you look at the history of Tamril.

What IS debatable is how good of a job the developers have done in giving women a meaningful presence in the games. Set has pointed out the numerous women in positions of importance/authority, and the fact that there is exactly 0 opposition to this from other characters in the games.

The game does, of course, feel more targeted towards male gamers...because that's traditionally the larger demographic. Of course, that's not to say that it's fair.

What we CAN say, factually, is this: TES games have done an above-average job in representing women in the lore and in the games themselves, without making them all beautiful seductresses without any real substance. Have they done the best job possible? No. Is it likely that they're moving in a better direction? All signs point to yes.

I think you and I agree there Dani.

It's not "perfectly gender equal", but I can't point to a single game which is MORE gender equal.

At the risk of being perceived as a sixist and misogynist, I want to shoot down the idea of making any meaningful distinction between men and women in ES statwise. To be honest, I think any attempt to create realistic stat differences would benefit men over women, not because women don't have any virtues, but rather because the ES universe is male oriented in nature. The gameplay of Elder Scrolls just lends itself to skills or abilities that men do better than women in. Things that come to mind: strength (obviously), speed, endurance, etc. Basically all physical measures the men would do better than women at. The only noticeable exception I can think about is flexibility, but that plays no part in ES whatsoever. Women can't jump higher or perform similar feats better than men can, so giving them a bonus in that manner wouldn't make sense. This, of course, only applies to humans, so whether gender abilities extend to elven or beastlike races is up for grabs. Essentially, the abilities you use most as a player will end up benefitting the men, hence the lack of female soldiers through history. That is obviously a ridiculously simplified example, but the difference in physicality will end up benefitting men over women. Sure, you could give speechcraft/personality bonuses to women, but I don't think it would really offset the disadvantages so long as these skills aren't implemented within the integral game mechanics. I don't see women or men having any distinct advantage when it comes to spellcasting or magicka, so I don't think that is a valid thing to use for differentiation. All in all, I would rather give women the ability to reach the same powers as men in the game, and real world physiology be damned. So long as ES is a game that revolves around fighting and adventuring, I would rather give female players/ RPers the same opportunities as men. If they feel like intentionally crippling their strength, that is their prerogative.


*this is just a really long way for me to say that I like dressing up in women's clothes but want to maintain a strong physique*

Except TES =/= Real Life. It's a world made from a mad dreamer whose mind fractured so much it's nuts, where myth is real, and the ground you walk on is a bunch of gods stuck together.

I read the OP, then chuckled.

I made my point to suggest that unless they feel like breaking away from male/female distinctions altogether in terms of humans, there isn't really a way it could be balanced for gameplay purposes. They could have made females the more muscular, but they didn't. That being said, I left open the possibilities for the beast and elven races because I am not sure how the lore addresses their physiology and related abilities. For example, I just don't think making human females faster would make sense within the TES universe as it has been presented so far.

Except that the humans of TES do not equal the humans in the real world. Also, elves and humans were once the same race, even the khajiit. The only race that's outside the common ancestor is the argonians, due to being made from the Hist. When it comes to stuff like this, it has more to do with culture than anything else.

Wow waita be a hypocrite. That was totally unnecessary, the only way that statement could even hold any water would be if you were in mensa or something which I know you're not because people of high intellect typically don't make statements like that.

On topic: I don't really think it's necessary. I'd rather gender choice be purely role playing based and not have much effect on gameplay.

Yeah females should be weaker, dumber, not able to leave the kitched etc

Of course im being sarcastic, this is probably the worst idea ive seen so far on this forum.

And that - the distribution of stats - really isn't bothering me, as I recognize men and women are biologically different. Nor, as I said in the post that started this, am I accusing Bethesda of anything. I wasn't certain about the issue of female emperors and I put that in the original post.

But . . . on the issue of female roles in the game . . . why couldn't:

1. One of the Fighters Guild quest giver's been a woman (it's pretty hard not to notice that female head of the guild pretty much does nothing)?
2. One of the Imperial City Guard Captains or Hieronymus Lex been a woman?
3. One of the Blades Grandmasters in either Morrowind or Oblivion been a woman?
4. There have been a woman with a major role in the main quest Oblivion?
5. Traven have been a woman (and whether people like him or not isn't the issue; the issue is one of authority and accomplishment)?
6. Why couldn't Martin have been a woman?

The issue is not that all of these have to be women, but that none of them are.

~ Dani ~

Thanks for the lore reference, I'm really uninformed so its nice when I brush up on the history without needing to put any time in. In regards to our universe vs TES, you are right. However, when they made the decision to mimic a lot of parts of our universe (Muscles indicating strength, physical size indicating strength, etc), it kind of stands to reason that these things should be viewed as they are in our universe. So they could technically just say, "woman are stronger", as it is obviously their game (their universe). That being said, I think it would be a pretty weird reversal at this point.

This. Right here. Very nicely put.

And yes, I can feel this way and still love The Elder Scrolls and Bethesda.

~ Dani ~

Well, why couldn't I have been a woman?

You're not? Seriously? I really didn't notice.

Why couldn't I have been a guy? And then I'd get 5+ on strength.

~ Dani ~

I know I've been arguing on the other side so far in this thread, but here's were I'm going to have to disagree. Daggerfall's story, when it comes to having women not only being there in significant numbers but also being interesting characters and playing significant, independent roles, was pretty much the best I've seen in a mainstream video game. Often it's fairly subtle (the Emperor's courier being a woman, for instance, and a surprisingly interesting character for getting one line and being talked about twice otherwise; certainly, nobody in the game seems to be surprised in any way that a woman could be a particularly powerful Knight of the Dragon), requires some thought (Medora is far from the usual "damsel in distress", and can almost be more of a protagonist of the second part of the story than the player!), or only shows up if you take certain actions (Medora or Nulfaga personally killing the game's main villain if you give them a certain item - especially nice if you give it to Medora due to the above), but it's there. Of course, there's still some uncertain things elsewhere in the game - though I still feel that the game gives an air of the setting having a reasonable feel of gender equality - but purely going by the story? There's a lot of things that I look for that can go wrong, and yet I have absolutely no complaints at all about it from a gender perspective - in all actuality, they started out almost doing the best job possible.

Morrowind's nice, and helped cement my opinion that Bethesda can be trusted with gender, but it's not quite up to that standard, the female characters tend to be a bit more passive. Still, more good than bad, especially when compared with the usual fare in games. The setting gives the feeling that women are allowed to do whatever they feel like, too, and aside from a couple quests that are more vaguely possibly problematic than properly sixist.

Oblivion... not so good. Obviously sixist quests (I already mentioned the Sirens - the old story of women luring men with their wiles is not one with a particularly good history), a lack of significant female characters in the main plot (Tar-Meena does almost nothing and the Countess of Bruma is just there to be shouted down), and just a bit of a feel that women aren't expected to be as active as men. That last part's a bit subtle sometimes, but it's there.

I can't tell if you're joking. Did you really not notice?

That depends on the guy.

Yes, sure they will have different stats in some manner or another but thank god they are fair since Morrowind, in Daggerfall they were heavily in favor of males in most cases.



Omg, your really going to ninja attack Oblivion. Morrowind is just like COD:BO, overrated. Tar-Meena was one of my favorite characters and the Countess of Bruma was a strong independent lady, just like the Countess of Anvil. Then you have to remember Ocheeva, deadly woman. Don't forget Mazoga or Caelia Draconis and Sybylla Draconis (though Sybylla was insane but who cares). Oh and the Argonian and the wood elf women on the black hand. Then of course the greatest example of all....Umbra. There is no sixism here, if anything Oblivion was the least "sixist" of the games even though Morrowind wasn't sixist either (Also, there are many more strong women that can kick alot of the other men in the game in their asses but I don't have room to list them all, these were just the ones that came off the top of my head.)

Sleign, are you feeling okay?