Games Where Gender Make a Difference?

Ragemage

Ragemage

Wept for Zion
Games where you can play as both a male and a female have been a staple in RPGs for many years now, but in many RPGs that allow this choice, the difference between sexes is very minimal and plays out pretty much the same. Many would applaud this as it shows how equal the 2 sexes are, and I would agree, but unfortunately that's not how it works in real life. So therefore I was curious as to what RPGs or games in general give you different scenario based off what gender your character is? I'm not talking about dialogue changes, but actual changes to quests. Some I can think of off the top of my head are:

-Using the Black Widow perk in both Fallout 3 and New Vegas. Prominent example would be, if you use the perk as a woman on Mr. Burke, you can convince him not only to leave Megaton instead of blowing it up, but also date him. He'll send you love letters from time to time, it's honestly kinda funny. Another example would be using the Black Widow perk on Benny in New Vegas, which allows you to have sex with him and kill him in his sleep if you wish in order to secure the platinum chip earlier than normal.

-In Morrowind there are 2 prominent instances where being a female gives you an advantage. The first would be with one of the first NPCs you encounter. A bandit named Nels Llendo will accost you for 50 gold in order for you to pass by. If you refuse, he attacks. However, if you're female, you can give him a kiss instead and pass for free. The other instance would be if you play in House Telvanni. Mistress Dratha hates men so much she had them all banned from her city, and unfortunately you have to do missions for her in order to complete the House Telvanni questline. If you're a male, you have to get her disposition up to 80 just to talk to her, and then on top of that, you have to grovel at her feet in order for her to accept you. If you're a woman your disposition with her is automatically high and she'll be very friendly with you.

-In Fallout New Vegas, if you're a woman then you won't be able to fight in the Legion's arena, which is an easy source of Legion fame early on once you join them.

Those are 3 big ones I can think of. Can you guys name more? This sort of thing really interests me.
 
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In Fallout 2, if you were a *special* woman with low endurance, Myron could sedate and rape you.
In Fallout 3, you could convince that guy that lived next to the nuka-cola lady to attack the nuka-cola factory in return for a threesome.
 
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Well, there are the classic NPCs with a relative gender to yours; the Pokemon games, Dark Souls 3 and some other JRPG's i can't recall now.
 
Arnust said:
Well, there are the classic NPCs with a relative gender to yours; the Pokemon games, Dark Souls 3 and some other JRPG's i can't recall now.
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What do you mean? Are you talking about, like in Pokemon for instance, where if you pick a male trainer as your character then your rival will be female, whereas if you pick a female trainer your rival will be male?
 
Ragemage said:
What do you mean? Are you talking about, like in Pokemon for instance, where if you pick a male trainer as your character then your rival will be female, whereas if you pick a female trainer your rival will be male?
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Yeah, and depending on the game if you choose the male/female character, the opposite will become an NPC with its own personality, as i recall. Not so sure about your "companions".
 
Izak said:
In Fallout 2, if you were a *special* woman with low endurance, Myron could sedate and rape you.
In Fallout 3, you could convince that guy that lived next to the nuka-cola lady to attack the nuka-cola factory in return for a threesome.
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I already mentioned the Black Widow perk but I did definitely not know that first one. Yeesh, that's harsh. I'm surprised they were allowed to get away with that. Sure as Hell wouldn't nowadays. Ah, the glory days of gaming when even Nintendo had tons of fucked up shit in their games, like Majora's Mask, and still got an E rating because during the 90s the ESRB was asleep.
 
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Harvest Moon, where if you play as a female character you can't upgrade your tools, and as soon as you get married, you will automatically have children. Also, in the same game, when you give birth to a child as a female character, it's automatically Game Over, and you have to retire from farming, whereas Male Characters can continue playing afterwards. It got some serious shit for that.
 
In Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader, if you’re female, then it’s possible Shakespeare will try to woo you and give
you a magic ring.
 
Izak said:
I wouldn't be surprised if the ESRB never knew about the rape, you needed a low Intelligence, Low Endurance character after all, I doubt they made one of those when they tested the game.
Here's a video where it happens.
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That's pretty creepy to be fair.
I really need to get back into playing Fallout 2
 
Yeah gender rarely makes a difference in video games sadly except for it lightly being mentioned and crappy romance options
 
Gender used to have an effect in D&D, reducing strength for female characters depending on race.
 
Arcanum of Steamworks and Magick Obscura.

In character creation, human females have lower strength, but higher constitution, and females have access to a few supplementary background like debutante and top model.

They do have a few more dialogue option, and way to solve quest.

My most fun game was with an half-elf debutante, her backstory was that she was the illegitimate daughter of some big Tarantian railroad and farm investor. She of course received a good education in history, music, poetry, history and a bit of magic, and how to behave in high society. She was on board of the Zephyr with her mother after an holiday trip to Caladon and on her way back to Tarant until the unfortunate accident caused the crash of the zeppelin and the death of her mother.
 
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Hassknecht said:
Gender used to have an effect in D&D, reducing strength for female characters depending on race.
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Yeah I remember there being a fuzz about that in Oblivion, because men in the game had higher strength and women had higher personality to start with. I wish more games would lay emphasis on that, when I play as a woman I want to play according to the strengths of weaknesses of women, I don't want to be a guy with tits
 
Semi joke answer Super Mario bros 2 , Princess can jump/hover/glide and Luigi for example can't jump for shit.

In my D&D (3.5) Drow campaign you better believe gender made a difference Drow Houses are Matriarchal and our Loth-touched House was run by several powerful Drow sisters etc.
 
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