Female protagonist

[MissAuburn]

Mod note: Posts 1 through 8 split from http://gtaforums.com/topic/848784-will-rockstar-return-to-a-single-protagonist/

 

Female protagonist discussion

 

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No, and there will be a woman finally.

[Fuzzknuckles]

No, and there will be a woman finally.

I honestly hope so. GTA has become a victim of its own masculinity and could do with a fresh angle. A female character, or even three female characters, could be exactly what the series needs to freshen itself up.

[XenoxX]

 

No, and there will be a woman finally.

I honestly hope so. GTA has become a victim of its own masculinity and could do with a fresh angle. A female character, or even three female characters, could be exactly what the series needs to freshen itself up.

 

After what Feminists did to GTA V at Target, I doubt R* will fullfill what they want, more likely that they are going to provoke them intentionally like in GTA V with radio stations etc.

[TheHumanIsland]

I don't know why some people can't understand why a woman protagonist really wouldn't work in GTA unless she was one of multiple protagonists who has a very different role to play than any of the male protagonists.

 

A woman would have to be a totally different type of gameplay entirely and would only work with multiple protagonists because of that. More than likely, it could only be done as a DLC with different gameplay or rarely, like the Chop missions in GTA V.

 

Any woman who would be used like any of the male portages ever were or would be, might as well be a man, and I don't think people really think it through all the way when they wish a girl could be a gta protagonist... the female online characters, for example, that is very unbelievable every time I see them, and it's just fun for that mode and that's the only reason it really flies. On the story? It could only work as a portion or as a separate character.

 

You have to really think it through and you'll understand why there has yet to be female protagonist.

Edited April 3, 2016 by TheHumanIsland

[Brian Grey]

the only way I could see a female Protagonist is another Catalina (GTA 3 Antagonist) but alot more loyal to close friends instead of shooting Claude when she felt he was no longer useful to her

[Fuzzknuckles]

But there's such a wealth of female criminals and even crime bosses for inspiration. Why should women be excluded or relegated to secondary characters?

 

Personally I think it's long overdue.

 

I've been saying for a while now that a three protagonist selection I'd like to see would be a dirty cop, a small time car thief and a hooker with ambitions of building something of her own.

 

That way we'd have two completely new archetypes and a good old back to basics low level crim like we had before V tried to give us hardened career heist men that fell flat.

[Raavi]

 

 

Any woman who would be used like any of the male portages ever were or would be, might as well be a man,

 

Because..? In your whole plea you fail to provide any real argument as to why a female protagonist shouldn't be a thing in the next GTA. In fact the only semblance of a thought-through argument comes down to "female criminal masterminds are unbelievable", without as much as an attempt at explaining why this is the case according to you. If you are somehow under the impression women can't be strong enough characters, I'd implore you to watch movies the likes of Kill Bill, G.I. jane, The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo, The Matrix, Columbiana - just to name a few.

 

Needless to say, I would like to see a female protagonist, be that as part of a group of multiple protagonist or as a single protagonist. A strong female protagonist would allow them to explore a completely different narrative perspective, which would be more than a little refreshing.

[PhillBellic]

 

Any woman who would be used like any of the male portages ever were or would be, might as well be a man,

 

Because..? In your whole plea you fail to provide any real argument as to why a female protagonist shouldn't be a thing in the next GTA. In fact the only semblance of a thought-through argument comes down to "female criminal masterminds are unbelievable", without as much as an attempt at explaining why this is the case according to you. If you are somehow under the impression women can't be strong enough characters, I'd implore you to watch movies the likes of Kill Bill, G.I. jane, The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo, The Matrix, Columbiana - just to name a few.

 

Needless to say, I would like to see a female protagonist. A strong female protagonist would allow them to explore a completely different narrative perspective, which would be more than a little refreshing.

 

Also, DREDD (the 2012) Version). That Movie had many strong female Roles, one was a Central Protagonist of the Film.

[TheHumanIsland]

 

Any woman who would be used like any of the male portages ever were or would be, might as well be a man,

 

Because..? In your whole plea you fail to provide any real argument as to why a female protagonist shouldn't be a thing in the next GTA. In fact the only semblance of a thought-through argument comes down to "female criminal masterminds are unbelievable", without as much as an attempt at explaining why this is the case according to you. If you are under the impression women can't be strong enough characters, I'd implore you to watch movies the likes of Kill Bill, G.I. jane, The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo, The Matrix, Columbiana - just to name a few.

 

Needless to say, I would like to see a female protagonist, be that as part of a group of multiple protagonist or as a single protagonist. A strong female protagonist would allow them to explore a completely different narrative perspective, which would be more than a little refreshing.

 

 

Although I don't know of Columbiana (recommended to watch?), every other movie you named is not a film like you expect GTA to draw from.

 

Firstly, GTA draws from movies. This is also supported in V when michael explains to lester that he doesn't like shooters because they are all the same and that he's more of a movie guy, a reflection of the Rockstar Games way.

 

You have like one movie where women fit GTA, and that movie is "Set It Off", which was a wholly unbelievable movie (though it was decent flick at the time, it was unbelievable as hell, and I think it was even based on a real story ironically). Maybe there are more.

 

Well, look at The Wire, with the girl in that, Snoop, she is a lesbian who acts like a man, though (in as un-offensive manner of speaking as possible).

 

Next guy brings up dredd. This would be an entirely different game.

 

If you made GTA: Kill Bill, it wouldn't be GTA.

 

If you made Trinity a GTA character, it wouldn't be GTA...

 

Like I said, if you actually think about what you are saying, you will see that it does not work FOR GTA - for other games, yea.

 

What was the one female role in GTA when it came to missions? A hacker. Were there any Female gunmen choices? Driver choices? No.

 

You don't see it in real life or in the movies that GTA universe is based around, so why would you want a contrived and forced "female protagonist" in GTA?

 

With multiple protagonists, it can be done. She could do completely different things from the men characters.

 

She could be used to draw characters out to the other protagonists, and all of them together could take them out. She could be used for spying, you know, the things women really do in the criminal world.

 

You have to think more about it - YES women can be great protagonists, but for GTA to be believable, it would be totally different mission structures and gameplay for the female character. I'm all for it in that regard.

 

But if you say "CJ could be a girl and the game would still be good", you'd be missing the reality of what GTA is.

 

Same for Tommy, Claude, Niko, Frank, Mike, Trevor, Huang, Tony, Victor - if any of those would be a girl, the exact same games, would not be as good as they were, because they would be totally alien to anyone who really looked at it objectively.

 

A different gameplay, yes, a female can work.

 

And I wouldn't be surprised if in VI there is a female character - it would be cool as hell and be an opportunity to introduce NEW gameplay mechanics and mission structures, because it's a girl and girls do different things in the criminal world than the men - especially in films, as much as in reality - films, which are where GTA draws its inspiration, and where it gets its credibility from.

 

Dredd? GI Jane? Where do those even begin to fit into a GTA narrative? They really don't.

 

A gta game comes from many many movies inspirations - the girl who hacks in V is "the net" with sandra bullock... I know it's a sh*t movie, but watch it again and you'll see that was based on her character. You can't make a "whole" GTA game based on "Set It Off" and you'd be kinda hard pressed to name many more movies that fit the GTA narrative and style with women protagonists - if you do name them, they probably really don't fit, like the Dredd and Matrix references. Ironically, GTA III was originally a Matrix type game, and the color schemes remain in what it eventually became.

 

You wouldn't ever see the girl coke dealer from GTA IV as a protagonist, that's why she sends Niko to do that stuff, because she simply doesn't.

Edited April 3, 2016 by TheHumanIsland

[Carbonox]

 

 

Any woman who would be used like any of the male portages ever were or would be, might as well be a man,

 

Because..? In your whole plea you fail to provide any real argument as to why a female protagonist shouldn't be a thing in the next GTA. In fact the only semblance of a thought-through argument comes down to "female criminal masterminds are unbelievable", without as much as an attempt at explaining why this is the case according to you. If you are under the impression women can't be strong enough characters, I'd implore you to watch movies the likes of Kill Bill, G.I. jane, The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo, The Matrix, Columbiana - just to name a few.

 

Needless to say, I would like to see a female protagonist, be that as part of a group of multiple protagonist or as a single protagonist. A strong female protagonist would allow them to explore a completely different narrative perspective, which would be more than a little refreshing.

 

What was the one female role in GTA when it came to missions? A hacker. Were there any Female gunmen choices? Driver choices? No.

Except there kinda was a female driver...

[TheHumanIsland]

Who was the female driver? Taliana?

 

Even if that exists, it's a driver, not a gunner, and doesn't nullify the other 95% of the post that was a voided for one technicality of a person who drives a car (and doesn't jack them, shoot guns)

 

But yea, who is this driver? Because the only female heist members I know of are the hacker and the girl from sandy shores who was saved from a crash. She was unbelievable and contrived, too.

 

Plus, one very important thing remains (along with all the points in the 95% rest of that post): She was a heist member, not a playable main protagonist and she would not have worked in any GTA protagonist's place, in any GTA game. She could never be *believable* as CJ, Claude, Tommy, Mike, Frank, Trevor, etc - but they could pretty much for the most part all be believable in place of each other.

Edited April 3, 2016 by TheHumanIsland

[Megumi]

I want to see a female police officer character. Intelligent, sarcastic (maybe a bit like Niko in that way), but also very dangerous. The police force is insanely corrupt. For a while she's almost working as a double-agent, until she's figured out by another cop, then she has to retreat into the criminal underworld and thus begins the core part of the game. That, or just protagoni-ze Karen Daniels and continue her mysterious life.

[Carbonox]

Who was the female driver? Taliana?

Yes, and I only responded to your post to correct the mistake, hence the shortening of the quote.

[TheHumanIsland]

I want to see a female police officer character. Intelligent, sarcastic (maybe a bit like Niko in that way), but also very dangerous. The police force is insanely corrupt. For a while she's almost working as a double-agent, until she's figured out by another cop, then she has to retreat into the criminal underworld and thus begins the core part of the game. That, or just protagoni-ze Karen Daniels and continue her mysterious life.

 

 

A character already established in the game universe like that would certainly work. I wouldn't like playing as a person who would ever in their life wear a badge, though.

[Kirsty]

I think it's certainly time now. We've had several games of one protagonist and now they've shown they can pull off multiple protagonists in one. Sure there are improvements that could be made on top of V to increase the depth of the characters and our connection to them as players, but I think if multiple protagonists are now part of the package going forward in GTA then one of them has to be female. Or if they reverted to a single protagonist, then a female protag DLC should be considered for sure. I mean, what could be the excuse to exclude at this point? It almost feels as though it would be boring to get another threesome of males in a new game. I think it would prove more popular than they realise, and it'd be fresh territory in such a hugely popular open world game like this.

 

I think some of the critics of this idea seem to imagine a female protagonist would just basically be like dancer from Vanilla Unicorn with no skills pointing a gun. All tits and no brains basically, but that's not how it could go down if you're fronting a GTA game. If Rockstar wrote her correctly, with a strong personality and enough depth to lead a story, but staying true to GTA as a concept, we'd all grow to love her like the rest of the leading men of the series.

[XenoxX]

I think it's certainly time now. We've had several games of one protagonist and now they've shown they can pull off multiple protagonists in one. Sure there are improvements that could be made on top of V to increase the depth of the characters and our connection to them as players, but I think if multiple protagonists are now part of the package going forward in GTA then one of them has to be female. Or if they reverted to a single protagonist, then a female protag DLC should be considered for sure. I mean, what could be the excuse to exclude at this point? It almost feels as though it would be boring to get another threesome of males in a new game. I think it would prove more popular than they realise, and it'd be fresh territory in such a hugely popular open world game like this.

 

I think some of the critics of this idea seem to imagine a female protagonist would just basically be like dancer from Vanilla Unicorn with no skills pointing a gun. All tits and no brains basically, but that's not how it could go down if you're fronting a GTA game. If Rockstar wrote her correctly, with a strong personality and enough depth to lead a story, but staying true to GTA as a concept, we'd all grow to love her like the rest of the leading men of the series.

But that would require R* to be able to write proper female protagonists, eventhough they have proven that they absolutely are incapable of that in the past, see Catalina(GTA III and SA) and Karin Daniels(GTA IV was OKish written but in V her personality went all random.).

[Yan2295]

Anyone remember that fake image that was rumored to be GTA 4 with a female protagonist (it also came back with GTAV, but was killed pretty fast)?

 

 

Yeah, good old times. Maybe it will actually happen with the next GTA, why not.

[Kirsty]

But that would require R* to be able to write proper female protagonists, eventhough they have proven that they absolutely are incapable of that in the past, see Catalina(GTA III and SA) and Karin Daniels(GTA IV was OKish written but in V her personality went all random.).

Certainly they would have to go back to the drawing board and put a lot of effort to produce such a character. None of those characters were actually leading as such, so I don't think we should base the next potential protagonist on those too much, though they are good examples of female characters from the universe obviously.

 

Female actresses have said this in the past about leading ladies of film, I think it might have been Sandra Bullock whose character in Gravity was written for a man but they cast her instead or something a long those lines. Maybe R* should just write the story without a gender in a similar fashion, and then just make the gender female when it comes to fleshing out the character in the physical form. I'm sure they are capable of it, they just shouldn't use their own characters from the past as a foundation.

[Rhoda]

It's evident that female protagonists can be done well in other media, though I'll use video games for the sake of arguments. Despite their reputation and how women have been portrayed in previous instalments, R* have what it takes to develop an identifiable, strong, female lead character. The reason why we've seen such negative portrayal of women from previous Grand Theft Auto games is that their strength has always been in satire. No, it isn't right, but it's unfortunately a product of the times. We see strippers being misrepresented and female entertainers put through uncomfortable situations just to get noticed. It unfortunately still happens in society and R* use these tropes as a comedy device to say "look, this is how ridiculous it all is" rather than "this is what we believe".

[GTA_dog]

I'd like a modern Bonnie and Clyde story, two protagonists, a male and a female. T'would balance out all the extra testosterone left by behind by Trevor.

 

Maybe make it 2 player online/system link (optional) so you can have a friend play one character, while you're on the other (L1 to kiss).

 

OP, lazy post is lazy. DetailsPL0X.

Edited April 3, 2016 by YngDady

[Pink Pineapple]

FBI data

Males comprised 89.0% of those arrested for robbery

Males comprised 85.0% of those arrested for burglary

Males comprised 83.0% of those arrested for arson

Males comprised 81.5% of those arrested for motor-vehicle theft

Males comprised 81.7% of those arrested for stolen property

Males comprised 81.7% of those arrested for vandalism

Males comprised 77.8% of those arrested for aggravated assault

A male protagonist is a better fit for a game like GTA. If there are multiple protagonists, I wouldn't mind one female character for a certain role. For a one protagonist game, I think they should stick with male characters.

Having a female protagonist wouldn't feel right in certain situations. How would something like hand to hand combat work with a female protagonist? It wouldn't be very believable to have a woman who can beat up a bunch of men.

[Rhoda]

Having a female protagonist wouldn't feel right in certain situations. How would something like hand to hand combat work with a female protagonist? It wouldn't be very believable to have a woman who can beat up a bunch of men.

 

Rhonda Rousey would like a word with you.

 

Statistics like that are all fine, but they're not quite 100%. At its widest margin in any given crime, there's a good 20% that a woman is capable of all of these things. With the amount of male criminals we've seen in GTA, don't you think there's room for a woman? Look at Catalina. Look at Maria. Look at Asuka. They were all strong female characters to some degree, and this was in the first 3D era game.

[Journey_95]

I'm fine with a female protagonist if we get multiple protags again.

 

But I hope we get back to one protag and then it should be male imho. Just restricting it to a female wouldn't be a smart move anyway.

 

Also not looking forward to the feminist bs drama if Rockstar goes the female protag route. If she isn't treated well and not "badass" enough they will go crazy.

Edited April 3, 2016 by Journey_95

[Rhoda]

Also not looking forward to the feminist bs drama if Rockstar goes the female protag route. If she isn't treated well and not "badass" enough they will go crazy.

 

Any publicity is good publicity at this point, it isn't like R* are strangers to backlash.

[GTA_dog]

 

Having a female protagonist wouldn't feel right in certain situations. How would something like hand to hand combat work with a female protagonist? It wouldn't be very believable to have a woman who can beat up a bunch of men.

Rhonda Rousey would like a word with you.

 

Statistics like that are all fine, but they're not quite 100%. At its widest margin in any given crime, there's a good 20% that a woman is capable of all of these things. With the amount of male criminals we've seen in GTA, don't you think there's room for a woman? Look at Catalina. Look at Maria. Look at Asuka. They were all strong female characters to some degree, and this was in the first 3D era game.

Rhonda Rousey is a sellout, why do you think she was in F7 before she even won that fight, but the movie came out after because of production. I can't stand anything about her.

[Rhoda]

I don't know what F7 is. All I know is I'm not going to challenge her to a scrap.

[XenoxX]

I'm fine with a female protagonist if we get multiple protags again.

 

But I hope we get back to one protag and then it should be male imho. Just restricting it to a female wouldn't be a smart move anyway.

 

Also not looking forward to the feminist bs drama if Rockstar goes the female protag route. If she isn't treated well and not "badass" enough they will go crazy.

Feminists allready went crazy over GTA V, they got it off Target stores in Australia, R*s response was that they don't give a f*ck and will continue doing what they do without self censorship.

 

Ironicly a lot of recent R* North devs are Feminists and activists in that regard.

[RedDagger]

Having a female protagonist wouldn't feel right in certain situations. How would something like hand to hand combat work with a female protagonist? It wouldn't be very believable to have a woman who can beat up a bunch of men.

Because as we know people complain about the tomb raider series for that reason

 

nothing we do in GTA is close to realistic, that argument doesn't cut it here.

 

I said this in previous threads on this subject, but in video games and movies a male protagonist is seen as the "default", and especially in video games the protagonist is made by just piling on tropes and the like on top of the default gruff protagonist - which is a pretty boring state of affairs, obviously.

 

There simply isn't a reason to specifically not have a female protagonist, you don't have to do extra work as writer just because your protagonist has a different gender and we already know you can bend the heck out of reality and people don't care.

 

The reason I'm for a woman over a man is that it'll be something different - though it's not gonna be drastically different like some people think, because as it turns out women are humans too and most storylines revolve around humans doing human stuff, like alliances, backstabbing and big explosions, as opposed to gender-specific issues. Of course Generic Kingpin 3 will throw sexist remarks at the protagonist, you can't ignore what people are like in the real world, but apart from stuff like that a story with a female protagonist could fairly easily have the gender switched and the story would be basically the same, it really isn't an issue in that regard.

 

That bit at the end is my main point against naysayers, though. These piles of issues some people seem to think that would appear just by switching the gender doesn't exist.

Edited April 3, 2016 by RedDagger

[TheHumanIsland]

tomb raider isn't gta.

 

Try to wrap you head around any previous Protag having been a female instead of whichever they were, and it easily becomes apparent why there hasn't been one, really

 

And I seem to remember Dan Houser saying they make games for 30 something men and that they are men and they don't want to make a girl because they are men and not women and so it's not up to them to make that game because it wouldn't be genuine, something to that effect, I can't remember.

Edited April 3, 2016 by TheHumanIsland

[RedDagger]

tomb raider isn't gta.

oh damn I hadn't noticed thanks for pointing that out

 

edited to include your original post because you decided to actually add more

Edited April 4, 2016 by RedDagger