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1w ago

"Breaks my immersion"

273 comments

I dunno, man.
Playing as a guy forces you to constantly stare at a dude the entire time. That's seems pretty gay. 💅
- You joke but when I was playing AC odyssey, I did switch to a girl after an hour because I was tired of looking up a dudes skirt whenever I went swimming.
  
  Speak for yourself, Alexios was hot!
- FELLAS! IS IT GAY TO PLAY AS A MAN?! I MEAN, YOU'RE LITERALLY CHOOSING TO LOOK A DUDE THE WHOLE TIME!
- Men 👉👈 🥺

CDPR: we added a beard option for the insecure whiners, but it unlocks dwarves hitting on you.
- That's exactly what I'm into tho.
  
  I'm into watching you get hard while playing that!
- Awesome!

I really wish the people who say shit like this would realize how pathetic it makes them sound. I have never once felt my masculinity was being threatened because the player character in video game was female.
- Agreed. In games with a gender option, I just pick the one with the better VA.
  
  Jennifer Hale did such a great job in Mass Effect.
  
  When given the option, I pick female/woman presenting. When given the option, I pick black or poc. When given the option, I give them a killer outfit so they can slay all day.
  As a straight white Jewish man, I like to imagine that I'm the quintessential oppressed citizen ready to take everything down with all I have. Anytime I kill a bad guy, a good guy, some random bystander, whatever, I tell them to shut the fuck up cuz I'm taking this all down.
  At least, that's how I justify it to myself. Maybe I just like strong black women and killing literally everyone.
- I’ve never felt my masculinity challenged by anything. Because I am a man and whatever I or anyone else does will not make that different. What a bunch of weak, soft, clowns people complaining that women exist in video games or the “transvestigators” are.
- No one has said anything about their masculinity being threatened.

Not interested in...
Metroid.
Perfect Dark.
Mirror's Edge.
Parasite Eve.
Portal.
Half of Resident Evil.
All of these pivotal, classic games have great female protagonists, and came out before Obama got elected... probably before this person was even born?
Maybe somebody could try the 'return to tradition' approach with this fool.
- cough cough Tomb Raider cough cough
- Even The Witcher itself. You might not play as a woman, but seriously, the women are definitely the shining stars of the series.
  
  If you wanted to include earlier games with great, compelling woman characters who you don't singly/primarily play as, the list would be even longer.
  Tons of em from party based RPGs alone.
  
  You play as Ciri in Witcher 3
- As a kid, who doesn't get a little warped by Samus Aran being female? Maybe it was just my experience growing up in the christocultist world, but I was in denial about Samus at ~7-8 years old with my only familiarity being passive and Smash Bros.
  Now I see anyone that has a similar outlook as being ~7-8 years old in their cognitive development and KAFS
- "their face when they realize that samus is a girl"

I bet these dudes have no problem playing Tomb Raider.
And they were real pissed at the end of Metroid.
- Guess he didn't play Horizon either? Fucking dumb ass. I don't ever remember thinking or feeling that I was the main character in the last Witcher. I for one look forward to playing this character.
  
  I do remember them noticing Aloy had peach fuzz and immediately jumped to the conclusion that any woman not waxing her face in the roboapocalypse must be trans...
- I'm assuming they retroactively lost their immersion in Metroid.
- Dudes like that aren't smart/patient enough to beat Metroid

I'm not interested in playing as a vampire. I am a human. Breaks my immersion. I think there should be two options. One for vampyr and one for human.
Seriously though, this pathetic misogynist is a joyless snowflake.
- He was clearly not interested in playing at all, since he doesn't even know you play as Ciri in Witcher 3 as well.

When given the choice, I always play as a female character. I'm already a man 24/7, why continue that in games I play to escape reality?
- A polarizing question. Me, I always play a version of myself. More muscular, perhaps, or more adventurous. But still a middle-aged dude who is trying to do good. I never feel the urge to play a woman or a villain or anything else totally different from my IRL character.
  And I guess that's just how it is, right? We each make our own fun in the games we play.
  So the dude in the xitter post is just going to have to sit this one out. I'm sure there will be lots of male centric stories to play in the future, as there always have been.
  Meanwhile, I hope everyone who likes playing from a female POV has an absolute blast with The Witcher 4.
  
  I usually play a female. I've always considered my character as a companion, a waifu, if you will.
- Plus, you get to stare at a hot female ass for most of whatever you're playing. Playing females is the straightest choice imho.
- My favorite games of all time tend to be party-based, like Syndicate, the Wasteland games, the original two Fallout games, Baldur's Gate games, etc.
  So I guess when given the choice, I always play... um...
- Same. I play a mix of both male and female characters and name them Jux most of the time as an unpronounceable non-binary name.
- Senua's Sacrifice it's not even a choice.
- For some reason this comment got me excited for the last of us 2

I remember when this totally broke my immersion back in the 1990s...

Didn't they understand that I wanted to raid tombs as a MALE?!
- those boobs are killing me 💀 like helium balloons yearning to fly away
  
  Oh, they weren't like that in the game. They were more like majestic pyramids.
  
  And they took 9 days to render. Times were tough back then.
- I'd love to see where these people draw the line between "big booba character hot" and "ew girls" when it comes to video game characters.
  
  I'm guessing the line is drawn at about a B-cup.

TURNABOUT IS FAIR PLAY MOTHERFUCKER!
As a cis-femme gamer I am SO SICK of playing as grizzled, middle-aged cis-men in every goddamn game with a set story.
Games where you can pick the gender of the protagonist don't count. Whether you play as Man-Shep or Fem-Shep, Mass Effect is exactly the same and the gender choice is exclusively cosmetic. There are very few games with female protagonists that actually commit to the protagonist being a woman and delving into what that entails.
Just in this first trailer, Ciri is trying to save a young woman from being used as a maiden sacrifice and that is a much more emotionally complex situation for her as a young woman herself. I will be pre-ordering Witcher 4 the second it is available because I want more studios to make games with women as the main playable characters so that I can have immersion in my games too.
- Getting called a bitch as masc V in cyberpunk :(
  Getting called a bitch as femme V in cyberpunk >:|
- Not to mention that in Witcher 3 there were already plenty of Ciri "flashback" missions.
  I kinda wonder if they'll be doing the same in reverse and she'll be saving Geralt's ass this time around as the main plot
- While I agree with the rest. I think we have learned enough about the current state of game release and if we should preorder.
  
  I haven't pre-ordered a game since Halo: ODST when I was getting a physical copy from GameStop. I am very aware of the problems with pre-ordering, and I still want to pre-order Witcher 4 because I want to send the message that they did not make a mistake by making Ciri the main/playable character.
- Mmm but any game that provides a different storyline based on gender is opening themselves up to no end of criticism. There's just no way they'll ever win that one.
  
  Honestly it's free publicity. Like I know they don't like courting controversy traditionally but hbomberguy's video on Woke Brands explains how they've figured out that triggering these people can be really good for sales.

I usually feel so immersed when playing white haired super-ripped giants with magic powers. It's as if they were a second me, except for the hair, size, muscles, facial traits, strength and magic powers.
- Don't forget his magic dong
- But he says Fuck a lot, so my immersion remains intact
  
  But he fucks a lot, immersion ruined

I am man. I once played Tomb Raider and now my tits are huge!
- and now my tits are triangular
- "You can't shoot straight, you big-titted bitch."
  
  I actually liked that part tho. I can't even think of any games since the first couple of Tomb Raiders that allow you to shoot two things on opposite sides of a room at the same time with the way she akimbos.
  
  Gun boob mod says otherwise

Have these people even played Witcher 3? Because there you play as Ciri too sometimes. Her moveset was really fucking cool actually
- Also this is one of the games where you play a character that has personality already, self insertion isn't intended.
  Geralt of Rivia, Lara Croft, B.J. Blazkowicz, Faith Connors, Alan Wake, Max Caulfield, Joel Miller, Ellie Williams, and probably Doomguy those are all roles that you play.
  In contrast you have games like Skyrim, Elden Ring, Terraria, Cyberpunk 2077, Far Cry, Valheim and most classic MMORPGs, where you have a playable character that you can form to your own design.
  That's just fundamentally a difference in design. Complaning that you can't self insert in a game of the first category doesn't make sense.
  
  yeah the person in the OP should practice self inserting by fucking themselves
  
  Not to mention every TV show, movie, play, opera, musical, novel and comic book
  
  Ah jes blowjob blazkowicz. The nostalgia i feel.
  
  Eh, I would say Doomguy is pretty self-insert... Maybe somewhere in the middle.
- Of course not. I am rather confident that at least some of these people are doing it as a false flag. Trying to discredit critics of genuine bad character and game design.
- Actually thats the only thing i am bummed about. The 'blink' moves she had were so fun. Other than that, seems like the hard choices are back!

It's gay to play male characters bc you're staring at a dude all day. True hetero males play female characters because it is most hetero to look at attractive women.
- That...is actually why I often choose women, tho. I mean not to be "hetero", I'll just take a woman's ass over a dude's.
  
  So you're still being hetero, just in practice, not virtue signaling
- Indeed, the classic Egorapor defence. They'll be an attractive woman in every cutscene too
- Technically, you're always seeing you own nose, so you're always staring a man. The least gay thing for a man is to become a woman. But then looking at other women would be gay so you have to look at other men. As a man I safe myself some trouble and skip the first step and just look at beautiful sexy men all day, because I'm not gay.
  
  You have gone too far into hetero and swung back around to gay. Your only hope now is to become so gay you swing the polarity back.

The fact that Geralt has a penis is not enough to make me forget that he is not me. Throughout the series, you're constantly learning stuff about a character that isn't you, that you aren't writing. I doubt they have examined their feelings.
- The thing that always got rid of immersion for me as I ride my noble steed across the countryside to defeat mythical monsters from a mythology not my own was (1) geralt sounds too much like Gerald (2) his magic is trash/boring and (3) his crossbow is weak af. Never had a lot of difficulties with whether he had a dick or not.
- They probably project themselves over the character and feel like they're really the one getting the rewards.
  
  You ARE playing the game after all
  
  I knew someone who was utterly baffled that when I watched batman zip around in his batmobile, I never once thought "what if I was batman, tho..? 😲" as if I had some kind of film-watching disability.
  So yeah, I believe it.
- Imagine trying to claim that you should be able to freely self-insert onto a character that had an entire game about losing their memory and rediscovering who they are lmao.

"I'm not a marble so I can't enjoy Marble Madness."
- "I'm not a terrorist so I can't play Counter Strike."
  
  "I don't have classified documents, I can't play Warthunder."
- Now I really want to play Marble Madness. But it's not the same without the giant trackball. ☹️

Almost self-aware
- You could almost say...more representation is a good thing?

Fucking outrage tourists, man, this one is barely even trying

If you're "immersion" can be broken by playing as someone who's not a carbon copy of yourself, you may be lacking some brain matter.
Edit: If you think I'm joking, Mirror Neurons are the part of the brain that manages empathy and "learning by example".

You have to be wildly insecure to even care about such things.
I’m a guy. I don’t mind playing as a woman at all. I’ve played the Tomb Raider games, I enjoyed Horizon, I played a female V in Cyberpunk, FemShep in Mass Effect etc etc.
Games are a way to experience something that’s not you or your story. And that’s perfectly fine.
Heck, if we took that stuff seriously, I shouldn’t play Mario because I’m not an Italian plumber. Or I couldn’t enjoy Euro Truck Simulator since I don’t drive a truck.

I'm not interested in playing as a Witcher. I am a regular human. Breaks my immersion. I think there should be two options. One for witchers and one for regular humans.
- Well, Ciri used to be that option, but it looks like she's somehow become a witcher now...

Ah, yes. If she looks like a sex doll, she's saving the industry. If she looks like a normal person, the game is unplayable.
Imagine if women did this. "I'm not a middle aged father, I won't be playing The Last of Us. It just breaks my immersion, should have made Tess the main character. Also, you can see by the design of his nose bridge that they're making him less attractive on purpose. How can I play this game if he isn't a double cheeked up Adonis!?"
- To be fair, Ciri is hot af, so your first point doesn't even really fit... The whole thing is just a major self-report.
  
  I didn't say she wasn't hot, I said she doesn't look like a sex doll. There are posts around where people are already circling this, that, and the third on her face, like they did with Alloy a d whatever her name is from Star Wars. But people always complain when the woman looks normal, even if they're still attractive. Acting like that doesn't happen is being willfully obtuse.
  ~~So... Self report because you assumed normal equals not hot?~~
  Edit: Misunderstood. Was snapping without realizing he was referring to the OP
- Let's be honest, this is most probably a riff on the semi-current push for greater diversity in games. That "could" be boiled down to "I don't see characters with my exact physical identity and want/need this representation", even if it's reducto absurdum.
  
  I don't get why it's an issue period. I'm a black woman, I almost never see myself in a game unless it has a character maker. I have played game, after game, after game with characters that don't look like me and survived. It's very frustrating that just seeing a woman as the main character as immersion breaking when that was never a concern the other way around. I know they may not mean it this way, but it's almost like they can't see women as people to empathize. People played as a cat in Stray, a wolf in Okami, but they can't play as a woman because that's a step too far?

its a story driven game
in the story these games expand on, ciri is the protagonist half the time. and the central story piece most of the time
hell, geralt is just some (badass) dude, ciri is the one filling the chosen one trope
- just some (badass) dude
  And a father to Ciri, that's an important part of the dynamic

Transgender man here - the only game I can think of playing that let me be a transgender man was Dream Daddy. I think the Life is Strange director made a game with a trans guy too? I think the Dragon Age series has a side character. If anyone has any other good ones I’d love to hear about them.
Strangely, I have had no problem playing games with male or female characters. Stories have protagonists who are not like me. That’s why they are interesting.
Like I don’t think there was a game that let you play a black woman until 1992 with The Elder Scrolls: Arena. We can have a white female protagonist in one game in a series.
- Baldur's Gate 3 lets you customize gender, voice, body type, and genitals all independent of each other.
- Cyberpunk 2077 let's you change genitals, but still forces you to be either female or male with no impact on romance
  
  It actually does impact romance, two of the characters will not romance a character where gender and genitals don't "match"
- I'm pretty sure I read that the new Dragon Age gives you an opportunity to make your character explicitly trans. Not just with character creation, but an actual dialogue choice that has an effect on how people refer to you
  Here's an article about it. I haven't played it yet, so I can't really offer any other insight
- Same! If I had to play games where characters were all me I just wouldn't play games lol. I definitely don't mind playing and learning new interesting characters as well

Grow an imagination.
- Impossible. Can't use real magic and fight real monsters without a real penis
- That's a tall order. More like don't play the game if it doesn't appeal to him.

This guy wants to look at a man's ass for 40 hours straight.
Me too, thanks.
- Solid Snakes cheeks be clapping.

Why are we sitting here discussing a troll? That's the most obvious bait I've ever seen.
- doesn't matter if this particular person is a troll. this is literally a political movement now. being a maidenless loser as a political ideology.
  
  No it isn't. Being a manless loser is though. 4b
- Because of all the funni.

What a dumb bastard. I'm a dude and I've always preferred playing female characters. Never once "bRoKe mUh iMmErSiOn"
- Damn you must have some low-T. Have I got an herbal supplement for you. It'll have you out beating women in under a week, guaranteed!
  
  That's gotta be it. Thanks man!

I'm the strongest woman in the world!

I'm not interested in playing as an Astro Bot. I am a human. Breaks my immersion. I think there should be two options. One for robot and one for human.
- I haven't played that game in weeks, yet just reading the title was enough to get the title theme song stuck in my head. So thanks for that lol.
- I am neither a doctor, nor am I Mario! Immersion broken!

I am not interested in playing as a male. As a male, I already go through life as one. I don't have the urge to experience that further. Breaks immersion.

i will always champion for character creators in any game. mass effect proved you could have a heavy "story based" game with two main versions of the single main character + the countless custom personal creations
for example it is an absolute crime star wars outlaws and the jedi ones did not have a custom human character but also not all of the amazing alien races you could of played. such. a. waste.
but also fuck off to those that just go 'boo girl/guy!" etc
- i will always champion for character creators in any game. mass effect proved you could have a heavy “story based” game with two main versions of the single main character + the countless custom personal creations
  That's a fair point. Cyberpunk also did it quite well with the customizable character called V (Vincent/Valerie), I thought.
  On the other hand, I have to say for games like the Witcher, that adapt an existing world, character set and story threads (from a book series in this case), this is probably too hard to do without compromizing the source material. I'd rather get a good adaptation than risk it going wrong.
  And I also understand if smaller studios keep it simple and bring one artistic vision to the game. Like Dontnod with Life is Strange. You could probably make it so Max can be male too, but it's an extra burden and it's a valid choice to go with Max as a fixed person.
- Jedi knight outcast:jedi academy did this well. You could even customize your lightsaber and fighting style.
  Jedi knight outcast 2 is amazing as well, but you play as Kyle katarn

This is exactly why I can't play any of the metroid games. Also can't play Kirby because I'm not an androgenous pink blob.
- Conversely, Kirby is my favorite series for the same reason.
- At least this Zelda guy seems to be a good fella.
  
  But I'm not a breedable twink.

I think it was Jack on Roster Teeth that said it best...
Everyone made their online character for GTAOnline as basically themselves, except Jack, he made a female character. They all start ripping on him and he hits them with "if I'm gonna be staring at an ass for the next 500 hours, i want it to be a girl's ass." I think Gavin even asked if it was too late to switch.
ETA: girls run faster in GTA, so it's the better choice by any metric.
- Idk, my friend also said he played Cassandra in AC Odyssey because he'd rather stare at a girl's ass than a guy's ass for 50+ hours, but now she flies the ol' blue-pink-white-pink-blue in her living room so idk what to think.
  
  Ya friend got gripped by that "want them -> want to be them" pipeline
  
  Think harder.
- I choose female characters in games all the time, and this is one of the reasons for sure.
  Not online games where you create your avatar though...
  
  I've seen it said that people create three types of characters in online character creation: first is just themselves. We've all done it. Second is a celebrity or character from an IP. Think of all the Shreks, Peter Griffins and Samuel Jackson's that were being shared when baldurs gate 3 came out. Third is an unholy monstrosity that's just every slider at the extremes.
- I play whichever gender has the best looking armour when it comes to custom characters.
  I'm not sure people's arguments about story characters. I don't put down a book because a chapter is about a female character

There are two versions! One of them is this one, which you can play if you're cool or even mildly tolerant. The other one is fucking right off and crying inside your own asshole

This is a weirder thing than guys who always choose the female option because they "don't wanna look at a man's ass"
- I used to say this. Later I realized that I just was more comfortable going through the game as a woman lol
- Spoiler: they do.
  
  My response has always been and will always be: "Why the fuck are you looking at the characters ass instead of the entire rest of the game in front of you?"
- There are really people like that?!
  That's a level of "not gay" I've never imagined before.

Real talk:
Representation matters.
My lady friend doesn’t want to play anything that makes her play as a dude if she can avoid it. She does sometimes but she has a strong preference for games featuring female protagonists. She did enjoy playing as Geralt though
- What the Witcher games do really well is having female protagonists but not necessarily a female playable character. All the Witcher games aren't about Geralt per se, but about Triss, Yenneffer, Shani, Adda, etc. but most importantly Cirilla, she's the pivot point of all the games. Geralt is essentially just a vessel for the player to guide us through a world that is much bigger than him filled with drawn out characters of which most important ones happen to be women.
- It matters so much. As a straight, white, cis male, I'm so glad that kids these days of all backgrounds have representation in media.
  Not only does it make for a much better variety of stories and styles, but it gives kids proper role models and lets them know that there are other people out there like them. The difference in this aspect between now and the 90s is unbelievable, and I really hope we don't backslide too much...

I have a male gaming buddy whose account is named like tim2299. He names his characters Tim, they're always male and if possible, the toon's facial features resemble his real-life looks.
I don't get it.
- Yeah why would someone want to roleplay in an RPG
  
  Isn't the point of role playing playing a role?
  Like, you know, actors do?

Ya know what? Just out of spite IMA play it.

“I am a very heterosexual manly man” These dudes are so transparent
- It's crazy how insecure theses dudes are. Sad.
- Yes... Extremely heterosexual of him to want to stare at a man while he plays, rather than a woman.
  
  Honestly, I don't care what the gender of the character i play is. My own masculinity is not derived from or influenced by the digital character I control

What do you people expect from Twitter?
I know, the post with whopping 11 likes is extremely important and this whole thread is absolutely not just a rage bait.
- Ragebaiters and trolls? On MY internet? No way!

The fact that such comments still get any traction is sad. Like come on guys, what an ass, with nothing to add! How is this in my all feed?

I don't mind playing a male but always prefer female. Started with Unreal 99 and smaller female hitboxes then continued in mass effect (if I can choose to watch a spandex gluteus Maximus for 30 Hours, I chose female).... and now it's a habit of playing female and chaotic neutral for first playthroughs.
- Based and gluteus pilled.

If I play RPGs and have the choice of a character, I always pick male and customise him to look like me. Despite never seeing my character when I play in first person mode. It just seens natural to me.
But when I don't get the choice (mainly narrative driven games like adventures), I simply roll with it. It's a game after all, not a second life.
- I just hit random, because nobody gets to choose their appearance, no even our characters.
  
  I do random as well... My favorite character creation randomization has to be From Software's... You can get your character looking real weird very easily by just jamming on x when you hit the randomize option and choose it to be very different each time. They usually end up bright blue or red, with a face that looks like ground beef.
  With character editors like that, I will do my best to make the weirdest looking creature possible which is always fun.

"I can only see women as objects, not as people, so I cant handle playing as one without risking trying to sexualize myself like I sexualize women. "

Big female's paid minions are out in droves in this thread.
- The big ones have menions?
  That's awful news. I like the big ones lol
- Just more male oppression from Big Woman and I'm here for it.

And it's not the competent, powerful and attractive part that breaks your immersion?
Or he is just pissed that he won't be having women in game to romance.
- Oh Ciri will definitely have women to romance.
  
  OP doesn't identify as lesbian.
  
  Another reason he is pissed. He is no god damn lesbian. :)
- They ranted about how ugly she is as well. Even if Jesus came down for a second coming, but more like a remaster of the first one because, you know, the sin, and he tried as hard as his omnipotent ass could, he would fail to save any of them.
  
  Well there's good reason to expect - if you believe any of it - that they'd be on the side of The Beast. Someone went through and found a bunch of references to the antichrist that apparently fit Trump, and these guys are pretty much all his people. Plus like... they obviously suck and don't do anything that Jesus actually talked about. They've exchanged it all for a bunch of culturally traditional signifiers that have next to nothing to do with actually loving your neighbour or whatever.
  Also, the story goes that millions of people join the beast's army and go to war, and they gather, and it's a big build up, then Jesus just goes splat like One Punch Man and it's over. It's honestly written just like that show, like a parody of an epic battle scene.
  There isn't much talk of salvation in that part of the book.
  
  People IRL are ugly enough, why should people in games be?
- He is not pissed he just wanted an option.
  
  Witcher has never been an RPG. It's an action adventure game with a story and defined main character. Like The Last of us, or Red Dead redemption.
  The characters sex forms a core part of the story telling, rather than choosing to gloss over it.

We need more female only games, purely so the chuds will start agreeing with us that every game needs gender select.

Ah fuck, he is right. Time to stop development on Witcher 4 while we go back and add a female main character option in the previous games.

There are two options: play or don't play

“I have no imagination not even enough to save myself from the monotony of my own life and suffering esteem from mediocrity”

I never got around to playing the Witcher; so I have no horse in this race.
La Mulana 1, you play as Lameza (Indiana Jones with a hint of ninja), but in La Mulana 2 you play as his daughter Lumisa.
Narratively, this was brilliant since you had a reason as to WHY you had to navigate death traps to re-gear and learn about the ruins. Might be the same as Witcher 4 if the MC ended the first game with god tier powers/items?
Did the gender swap bother me? Nope, why would it - I'm playing to solve puzzles, experience the unfolding mystery of the ruins, and experience some of the cheapest death traps ever made.
- Might be the same as Witcher 4 if the MC ended the first game with god tier powers/items?
  Well it's complicated, there are multiple endings including at least one recognized as a "bad ending", but in general it's more like Geralt and Ciri, his daughter that has grown up, overcome the mortal dangers together with the important people around them.
  However the god tier powers in the story were the ones Ciri was born with, so the motivation can't really be the same with this move here. It's probably just that it makes sense to tell the next part of Ciri's story directly from her perspective now.

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