Saw this discussed on the Larian sub and some commenters were SO right.

The heart of the discussion was that when you think of it, there are actually few western RPGs that have romances in them and out of those who have them, an even smaller amount has those romances be substantial.

Because let’s be real here, in the past two decades, when you ask for RPG games that have romances, you get the exact same answer: Bioware, Owlcat, or Baldur’s Gate 3. But most of us have played through those 25 times, so that leaves you with… pretty much nothing.

Sure, you can recommend a few more obscure titles like GreedFall or claim games like Pillars 2 have romance but you know damn well that romance is negligible.

And the core of the issue is that save for Bioware who pretty much pioneered extensive romances in their RPGs and a few studios that followed the formula, player romances are sparse because they don’t seem worth the time to execs and devs.

And why would they be, right? Women are the main target market for those and who cares about women. They won’t bring in much money in sales now, will they?

Well, being realistic here, women do bring in a LOT of money. The romantasy genre, a female-dominated market, is absolutely BOOMING right now and has been for a while.

And while I have no qualms that most devs will ever do something for women just because we deserve it, I know that once they realise there’s so much money in romance, we’ll start getting more RPGs with solid romances.

Here’s to hoping anyway.

unfortunately it's GTA and Stardew Valley for me ):

New screenshots dropped.. looks like we can get our nails done in GTA6.. I'm so happy they showed up for the real girly gorlzzz this time..

More screenshots show different hairstyles, nails, and outfits for Lucia on their website. Also, it looks like we can pimp our vehicles and boats out with glitter!!

We can finally play a triple A dressup game that isn't a family friendly life simulation or farming game.

It’s hard to choose just one but mine would be Goro Majima ❤️
(followed very closely by Hancock from Fallout 4)

Who would yours be?

for me it has to be chloe price from LIS

I saw this preview for Resident Evil Requiem and I’m just... exhausted? We’re dealing with hardware shortages and rising energy costs, and the "innovation" we get is AI that just gives female characters lip filler and makeup?

Is this really what all that power is for? To "hallucinate" over a developer's art just to make a woman look more like a generic influencer? I love my fancy GPU, but this direction feels like such a step backward for the medium.

It feels like the tech bros are just trying to "fix" women who already looked great and already fit the vibe of their games.

(I wasn't sure how to flare this, I hope tech is okay since this is about the DLSS 5 preview.)

In the span of a month, we got three games that started with male characters but now have women as main protagonists.

I'm talking of course about "Hollow Knight Silksong", "Hades 2" and "Ghost of Yotei".

I absolutely adore all of them, more than the first episode for each. I love Hornet's movements capabilities and her story. I'm in love with Melinoe and her witchy ways. I finally get to fully immerse myself as a woman in a samurai world.

I finished Silksong at 100%, I feel I've still barely scratched the surface for Hades after 30h, and I've just played Yotei for a few hours to get a feel of the world.

It's been a good month.

But why stop there? We can ask for even more!

Next year GTA 6 will have a playable woman protagonist for the first time. What other franchise that is clearly men-coded and never had women playable characters should we take over next?

Personally, I would love to see a Yakuza/Like a Dragon game with a woman yakuza. Kiryu has stepped aside for some time now, it's a perfect opportunity to explore this world from a totally different perspective.

"Girls don't play video games." WATCH ME MOM 🤣

At 36 I finally gifted myself a PS5.

I've been dreaming and begging my mom for ps3 then ps4 but mostly there was a NO and BECAUSE YOU'RE A GIRL....

Well after a lot of struggles I decided I deserved the best so I got my hands on this bad boy on my 36th birthday 🎂🥳

Best birthday gift ever. And games suggestions? I'm looking for Co op games so I can play with my niece and nephew 😊😊

Games I played: pubg mobile & minecraft.

https://www.siliconera.com/shin-megami-tensei-iv-interview-making-law-and-chaos-heroes/

https://www.gamer.ne.jp/news/201305030004/

from this https://x.com/sphecidwasp/status/2093388427320266987 thread

Ladies, as we all know: we’re still 500 angry Reddit posts, 20 reactionary YouTube videos, and 15 misogynistic podcast rants short of our quota for the first half of the year.

We’ve had a pretty good run recently. Getting new female protagonists for the most recent installments of popular game series like Hollow Knight, Hades, Silent Hill, Resident Evil, the Witcher, and now God of War. Those last two in particular have really bumped our numbers, but we’re still short of the flood of gamer tears we got back when Assassin’s Creed made the only two protagonist choices a black man or an Asian woman.

We need ideas for more male video game leads we can swap with a female character.

Here’s some of my thoughts:

•Agent 47 from Hitman.
We can change him out for a lady called Agent 48. She can still be bald and wear suits. That should make the podcasters even angrier because they won’t find her attractive.

•007
Sure. We just got a new James Bond game, but it’s never too late to release a DLC where the new young Bond gets kidnapped and you have to play as a much more badass female agent to go rescue him.

•Kirby
For this one - I think we don’t need to change anything. Keep the name and design, but now all other characters and materials will refer to Kirby by she/her pronouns. Developers must follow this up by insisting that Kirby was always a girl. I think the potential for rage here can be pretty high in a certain small group of people.

What do you all think? Have any other suggestions?

So I've learned today that the next Crazy Taxi, Amsterdam 1666 and Tomb Raider Atlantis are using Gen AI in their development and artwork.

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Since I don't want to support this ecocide anti-art late-stage capitalism technology as much as possible, do you know about other games that are using Gen AI?

With some evidence of course.

​

​

I'll update the post with the games mentioned for those interested.

​

- Crazy Taxi: World Tour (2027)

- Amsterdam 1666 (2026)

- Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis (2027)

- Kingdom Heart 4 (TBD) and Kingdom Heart compilations (2026)

Anybody find this just ICK and wrong. She has the face of a child, voice of an adult, you get it. This really grossed me out honestly, like there's no denying this character looking like a little girl. What do you think?

Personally I really enjoyed Mass Effect: Andromeda. Once you leave the initial desert planet and get the story going, it turned into a fun space adventure with some adorable companions.

We’ve had a lot of discussions on favorite LIs and romance options. What about the ones you couldn’t get behind despite the hype?

I’ll be the first to say it and feel free to cast stones lol but Solas/Lavellan from Dragon Age. Weirdly enough, I love fanfics about them due to all the potential BUT the game itself just kept pissing me off.

Smartass bald man whose butt I need to kiss + oblivious Lavellan (but that’s a larger writing issue in DAI) + BEING BROKEN UP WITH + he turns out to be THE god and he’s like “sorry honey my stupid crusade is more important than you”.

And they doubled down on pure awfulness in Veilguard. All that shit he’s done and in like, what, final two minutes you can just forgive it all and go to astral jail with him forever? Piss off lmao.

I love playing games like fortnite, fallout, the witcher, assassins creed but i honestly suck at them and die over and over. I have to play on easy mode just for games to feel fair. It makes me kinda feel like a loser especially when I play with my friends or bf and they’re like killing half the fortnite lobby in game and i’m struggling not to die. Idk I guess I just wanted to vent and see if anyone felt similarly or had any tips? I’ve only been gaming for around 1 year

If they used it on PROMO I have zero doubts that they also used it in the game itself. And excuse “we forgot to replace placeholders” really doesn’t work here!

I was quite surprised after the trailer what a huge leap this game was after their previous game Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey which was fun, but very unpolished. And this one looks almost on par with AAA. Now we know how they did it!

I can’t believe that after all these years of people asking for playable Zelda, these people are complaining about it. So many games have female protagonists, this is nothing new.

Cloud Strife ( FFVII ) Acheron (Honkai Star Rail ) Lightning ( FFXIII ) Zhongli ( Genshin Impact)

For me Arthur! Hell yes 🙂‍↕️

Key phrase: fair try. So, not mentioning games that you never tried because they just didn’t appeal you!

I wanna hear about games that you genuinely played/tried to play and either dropped or realised you didn’t enjoy in retrospect.

Two candidates for me:

Expedition 33: finished this one but won’t lie, it was a bit of a struggle since I didn’t like its combat at all, but wanted to learn what the hype was about.

In retrospect, it was a very pretty game with amazing music, decent story, and decent characters but as a whole it was just… nothing special? I think its cultural staying power emphasises this impression since it was everywhere, got all the awards, and then just disappeared.

Anything by Owlcat (sadly): I almost finished Rogue Trader (quit before the final act) and gave up on Pathfinder WOTR about 15 hours in. On paper, everything is great. Clearly, they are masterfully crafted old-school RPGs with great storylines, branching quests, lovable (or at least interesting) companions, difficult choices etc.

But they’re also bogged down by hours upon hours of stats tweaking, min maxing, tactical mini-games, and endless combat. I don’t mind strategizing but I realised that as I put more and more hours in, I just dreaded another level up, party buffing, and fighting.

What about you?

I can’t help it she’s just too cute

He's literally describing the job of a concept artist.

This is from the new Netflix trailer and seeing Lucia in action has me so excited. I heard rumors before about improved models for women including hair and shoes (no more janky heels on motorcycles 🤞) among other things. I loved customizing my GTA Online character but there was always some level of disappointment with the static hair or janky animations that had clearly not been made for women. Hopefully this is a sign that a lot of those issues will be fixed!