I cannot defend BioWare regarding SJW stuff anymore. That's it.

Jan 27, 2018 2:17:52 GMT @carefull said:

That's completely correct. TW3 did not eliminate a female protagonist. It added one compared to TW1/2, as well as corrected some silliness like those cards in the first one.

And was better received than the prequels, and sold more.

See how it did not ruin it to have a playable female hero as well as a male?

It didn't really have a playable female lead, it had a few relatively short missions you play as a different character which exists in the same universe at the same time. Meaning another predefined character.

In any case, it wasn't a significant portion of the game. There was no need to add reactivity and tailor everything along the entire game for two characters.

As for those cards, I find the outrage absolutely hilarious. They couldn't make good sex scenes at the time, but wanted to include a tantalizing aspect into the game, so they went with some sexy art on cards. Big deal.

Jan 27, 2018 6:32:26 GMT alanc9 said:

But Shepard is a character with specific features and a specific past. Ryder too

That leaves abilities. I suppose there might be some variance because some PCs are biotic while others are not, but that would be quite limited. It's more of a problem for Dragon Age, which has been known to spectacularly botch this.

Not really, I'd say it's more than that.

Again, the higher the potential variance in who and what the protagonist is, the more vague many things need to be in order to avoid the dissonance of referring to a character as something or someone they are not. And with DA you have the choice of race too, which complicates matters even further, because there are some rather substantial differences between the races, both physically and from other aspects.
There was SOME acknowledgement in DA:I for example in regards to the race of the PC, but it was fairly light, when things arguably should have made a large difference.