Anyone else ridiculously happy that ME A will be a Ryder family affair?

No one is asking to change aspects of NPCs though. Not in this debate. Just the protagonist.

To be honest, I didn't open the link you posted and forgot I had even discussed this before, let alone with you. I'm sorry. However, "I understand your point but you won't understand mine" is generally how most people, on all sides of a debate, tend to feel Perhaps I feel like I do understand you? Perhaps I feel like you don't really understand me, because then you'd obviously agree? But anyway, I do understand that you're talking about different personalities in theory, but my points remain the same because in practice, which gender you choose to play as does make the difference.

Well, sure, you can say I "missed out" on playing a male character even without them having a different personality/being a different character, but that's subjective. I don't feel that I have. As it happens, I'm not a fan of any of Maleshep's romance options and as you say, that's the only main difference. It's up to me whether I missed out on things and how worth it it is to remedy that. I tend to play RPGs as women because I relate to them better and because of variety; I've played tons of games as guys. And I don't play as many playthroughs as some here, and when I do I tend to replay characters I like, so I also just don't have time for that. I don't have a rule against playing as a guy or anything, it's just because of the above. If I really feel like I'm missing out on something, I could change that. But why would I wish for something to miss out on? That's just counterproductive. I'd much rather play as who I want and not miss out, naturally

For the record, I actually would rather all of the romances be bisexual/biromantic/pansexual etc. so no one misses out on anything. So I'm not being inconsistent about not wanting to get shafted out of content based on gender. So you can say that "only I'm responsible for not experiencing the game to its fullest", but I honestly don't have time to get everything out of it and I don't want to to begin with  Further, a player who wants to get "the most" out of the game will still run into difficulties if you had your way. They couldn't play the game as a male while experiencing female Ryder's background, say. And that wouldn't be on them, because it's just impossible.

But all of that is really academic because you're assuming the fact that I usually play females is the core of my reasoning. It is not. I simply don't want to have those kinds of divergences based on gender on principle. Even if I loved the hypothetical female's path and hated the male's anyway, I would still argue how I am now. And I would argue on behalf of the people who were shafted out of a better story because of who they wanted to play.

And to answer your point about twins/clones, Heimdall already put into words what I was struggling to get across: That there will be a Player!Ryder and a Sibling!Ryder, not a Male!Ryder and Female!Ryder, which renders that discussion moot. In fact, it renders most of this whole discussion moot, because that's really what I was trying to say this whole time. That the difference between the characters should be whether they are the protagonist or not, not which gender they are.

But since I apparently like wasting time having circular discussions (and that's only a jab at myself), I'll add that you won't need to worry about them having different personalities. Even if you play your Ryder as close to their sibling's personality as possible, it still won't be identical.
I'll counter all of that at once by repeating that as far as we know, there won't be two protagonists, it will just so happen that whichever is an NPC has the opposite gender to the protagonist. So it will be kind of like DA2 in that sense, still, except that instead of class deciding if you get Bethany or Carver, your gender does. Now, it's still arbitrary (what if we wanted to have Ryder brothers or Ryder sisters, since they're doing the voice-work for both anyway?*), but I can live with that because I can still roleplay my character.

Since they haven't confirmed that there will be two protagonists in the sense you took it, it's not false advertising.

*After writing that sentence, I can already imagine people will get straight to work making a mod that let's you have a sibling the same sex as the protagonist. They'll share voices, though  And you could make them look the same. Wait, that wouldn't be weird after all, they could be twins!


No, we won't, but I'd like as much control as is reasonable and feasible. And being locked into/out of certain personality traits based on gender is regression in my view, which is unacceptable in all forms. That's not an assumption given the system you've described, it's a feature, to you. And me "limiting" or not "limiting" myself has no bearing on this, because as I said before, using your idea, you'll be locked out of potential stories even if you play both genders.


Yes we will. I was seriously considering simply saying that and moving on, but because of a combination of stubbornness and a feeling of obligation to at least respond to you, here we are

Ah, but the things you'd never do are not the same as someone else's, which is another reason we need options. Preset personality traits do not negate roleplay, no, but they're not conducive to it. At least, not the definition I've stated that I use; the kind that's in Bioware games. Which is the attempt at the most reasonable amount of freedom possible.

What, how am I imposing a limitation? My stance the whole time has been that the only thing choosing gender should change is itself, that it should have no bearing on any other decisions, options, or gameplay. That's the opposite of limitation.
This is the problem with "objective" things. No matter how solid you think it is, someone will still say it's subjective I assure you I didn't use that term lightly. I just can't see an advantage to not giving one character an option compared to giving all characters that option. So I said it's an objective upgrade. You think the advantage is the branching path, but why not offer that branching path to both genders? That's why it's a downgrade. Well, to be fair, we don't really have many indications about anything regarding ME:A yet, so we're all just shooting in the dark for the most part


That's good, and don't worry, I haven't taken anything personally either. Ha, well obviously that's what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object: They argue in circles!


Why bother? To give the protagonist a sibling, that's why. A single character wouldn't have sufficed for that. Yeah, I think we will be playing an alternate version of the same character, which I like.

This is exactly the kind of thing I'm most afraid of. Them having different individual perspectives on their mother's absence limits roleplay. These are the kinds of moments where we would need a great deal of options, not fewer. It makes no sense to arbitrarily establish (the state of) a relationship in an RPG.