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I did, gave up three times now, never quite understood what was going till I watched a full play of it and one of the players was explaining to the other one what was going on. Only reason I think I know what the story's about, but I still don't get it

Sure, you're a puppet to fate, but then you can become Lord of Fire or of Darkness? Why are you going after Gwyn and killing everything around you to get to him for this Old One? What's with this tiny contained land holding all this **** together?
I don't think any of that, I'm just like 'Alright, go around beat **** up, then heal at shrine, go out again, this time pushing a bit further and looking for a shrine, defeat bosses, explore for equipment'. Oh and 'YOU DIED' appears on my screen, shredding my enjoyment and increasing my insanity rapidly. It's not like I'm thinking 'I am on ye olde adventure, seeking thy souls of many demons who I must slay, now I must go to the Scaleless one and defeat it, for I am the knight that shall save this world!'. It's a set dressing story.

Criminality as resistance? Next you'll be telling me you live in a compound somewhere in Idaho in order to overthrow the government because it's your land. Then again I wouldn't put it past you.
I'm not sure the creative team behind the games are appreciative of this right you claim as a consumer or the 'responsibility' behind it. I'd be pissed if someone pirated something I'd worked years on because they thought it was their right. It's the publishers who come up with this ****, to protect their investments. Management always interferes with creativity.

Also you never answered me about the bucket question. I'm curious.

Ok, I accept it's a real story in the most basic sense, but then I have to say it's a bad story. Dialogue gets the job done but is clichéd, there are no clear paths as to what you are doing. where you are going or why for a great deal of the time.
Like I said, there are stories in the world, but they're not told, their discovered and constructed by the player. Throwing an ancient magical castle, a corrupted king, a horde of demons that inhabit it and a few item descriptions that connect the lot isn't telling a story to the player. That's lore at best, it's setting the scene for the narrative, giving context to the world you're in. Except the scripted narrative never feeds off of it, like you said it's minimal, so the construct of the player is the aim, it's feeding the player their own story instead of one created by the developers.
I mean, I can't even find a credit for any writer to the game, which means the likelihood the dev and the heads of the departments came together to create the world and its story, is high. As such, I can't see this as a storytelling game because it lacks anything more than the basics. It's an action fantasy RPG game primarily and little more. But it doesn't need a good story, the fact it has a fairly 'bad' story is what helps it, adds to the players disregard of it if they want, placing their story above the simple one constructed, placing their achievements and growth. The open world that reveals itself to you, shows you enemies to defeat, names to cross off lists, weapons to upgrade and armour to wear, that's what people remember from Dark Souls more than anything, their time with it in its world. I don't see that as a bad thing? I've shat on Dark Souls, I admit, I don't like it, but I know it's a good game in many respects, design, enemies, environment, atmosphere, sound, and more. It's not perfect though, the story is one such matter in that it lacks, but it does so for a reason, makes it better than the alternative.

Claws are out tonight, eh?

Also, drop in the bucket? What's that then?

Source for sale figures?

Instead of supporting those habits by buying them, your supporting them by pirating the goods, thereby giving reason and justification for DRM instead of reasons against it. Counter productive.

Counter productive much?

I might agree if you're saying female specific biological things, such as describing child birth or lactating or something, if you wanted accuracy which may be more sympathetic to some readers, but everything else is fair game. If we're talking specifically about fiction, of course, because they generally don't need to be accurately written, just well written.

Indie scene's a mixed bag too from what I've seen. I mean if you ever got a chance to look in the indie marketplace on Xbox Live, the women in there were most all sexed up, to strip for you or to be scantly dressed with glossed and massive boobs. What happens when you let teens with coding ability post their gaming fantasies.

In terms of successful writers, in the UK at least, I think it's a slightly majority of men. Most of our modern writers who are famous are women, actually, they've won many of the Booker prizes and other 'prestigious' awards in the last few years.

I've talked to a few non pricks on there, sure.

Nintendo are some old fuddy duddies.
If their account system was better i'd buy soem of these games, but knowing. I could lose them if something happened is worrisome.

If you cut out licensed games based on movies, TV series and such, games where you can choose to play as a man or woman and 2D games (where it's even hard to tell if you're playing as either a man or woman half the time, I mean Ms Pac Man? Really, that's a woman in gaming to people, are they effing mental? It's a yellow circle with lipstick and a bow! that's like saying Koopa Troopas are men!) I'd be surprised if they got a list of over thirty games there. They also missed a sizeable amount of women, some of which were included on the static image...
But I've said this before. Inclusion doesn't mean anything like it did twenty years ago. Today, we're arguing for good female representation, not just any representation at all.

Yeah, those were the days when if you encountered a bug twenty hours into a game you were effed, restart the whole game? No thanks, I ain't playing all that bull again. Guess that was a waste of money. Or you'd rely on the community patching the whole thing. Actually, nothings changed on the PC in the last 40 years.
Also, who really buys that many DLC, honestly? Uniformed consumers, and they can never tell the difference between good stuff and bad. It's why we're lumbered with the reams and reams of bad DLC content. But when we called them 'expansions' and they came on discs? Oh we loved em, couldn't get enough of them. The Sims fans were overjoyed to add dammed Pets to their game and no mistaking.
I can't remember my point...

I can't agree. No one says people can't write well what it's like to have a child if they've never had one, or complains at JK Rowling for not being able to write a boy's experiences well. Being a good writer means being a good empath, if you can sympathise, see through eyes of another well, then you're halfway there. The rest is about good imagination and putting a bit of yourself into the work. I mean if being a woman meant writing better women, we wouldn't have 50 Shades or Twilight characters of epic flatness or terrible reflections of women.

For Heavy Rain I think it worked though. The system in place worked very much like a point and click game where you observe the environment, explore it, gather clues or just interact with normal items and ask questions of people. Just, it tried to mould it around the Playstation controls, much like the Telltale games.
Also, there are a number of times memory is required in Heavy Rain though, one I remember really well was when Ethan's son had been kidnapped and a few scenes later he was at the police station, being asked what his son was wearing, what time he went missing, stuff like that. I was like 'My son could be dead because I forgot what he was wearing! Damn it, shiit!' it was very much a real situation that happens if people go missing and you report about it, and it made you feel terrible for being a crappy father because of it.
Also, I have no problem with QTEs if used right. They're there to try and make the cinematic experiences that you can't do in game feel interactive and controlled by you. God of War felt like it did them well. It could do with improvements and a more complex system that tests the users reflexes, sure, but if it works i'm not too bothered.

Aoife Wilson, a video game journalist for Official Xbox Magazine, was on a British programme called How Video Games Changed The World. The topic of female characters came up and she talked about Lara Croft and how she loved her when she was young. She didn't notice she was considered sexy or the breasts were big, she loved seeing a woman in a game.
That was a big step back then, inclusion of a female protagonist. That was 18 years ago and I'd like to think we'd be more willing to change things even further now for the better than just accept the current situation. Apparently though, apathy is still rampant in many gamer's eyes, or worse, reverting back to how old games were.

I actually can't wait to see what the aftermath of a confirmed and seriously characterised transgender main character will be like and how gamers will react. Hell, I suppose I should say even just a gay character too, can't even think of any like that.

Dark Souls has a 'plot' made up primarily by the gamer and the community at large. It's basically emergent storytelling. You can tell this by players who have different experiences, one may go to the Bell Gargoyles first or go to Valley of Drakes and Blighttown straight away using the Master Key. The order to get the greater souls is up to you. It's like early Zelda games in a lot of ways. But none of this is storytelling, a narrative for the player.
The thing is it isn't well written, because with Dark Soul's 'story' is that there is none. It's about an undead character ****ing **** up for hours for no greater or clearer reason then being 'the chosen one'. Now the world has depth, it has stories in the background but they're in no way connected to you, the player or your journey. You're experiencing the lore and such of Dark Souls by observation and item description but your not experiencing a real story, it's not Mass Effect, you're not fighting the Reapers or have a goal in mind that's not simply fetch quests. This isn't bad though, Dark Souls was never a narrative led plot, it was a get out jail, explore and fight **** till you kill like a king or god or something and you assume its role. It didn't need to impart a reason for the player to experience the game more than old school fighting stuff. I will say is that it's excellent for a 'Show, don't tell' experience that really immerses you in the world's stories.

Beyond Two Souls has a narrative, it has a story to tell with characters and its plot. It's not a good one, not because it's a bad game but because it's a poor story. The implementation isn't a bad way for a game to tell a story, I mean I loved Heavy Rain and it worked well for what it was aiming for, because it was a cinematic experience to interact with and alter. It didn't need gun battles or explosions to invest into it, you needed a deep narrative, interesting characters with an interactive world and a branching story.

A good combo of action and narrative is The Last of Us. You have time to just wander this world a bit but still keep the plot moving and the characters develop at the same time. It was also well paced for it, you had moments where you'd be fighting a new group of enemy every few rooms, and you'd think, 'I can't take anymore, my resources are low I can't handle anymore' and all that tense stuff. then you'd be riding a horse as a conversation between Ellie and Joel happens and your watching the environment unfold, figuring out what's happened. Perfect equality between cinematic storytelling and in depth gameplay.

Slightly womanly, because it shows she's got more emotional range. Most male characters are bubblegum and guns, which range of smugness or not caring.

He seems fairly emotional? I suppose that's partly the point. Saying that, I agree with one of his points completely, the AI, which has not shifted in games for a long time, it's not got more dynamic or intensive, it's basically the same, and quite exploitable in various games. Not saying it needs to be harder, but it needs to be more tense and harder to figure out, plan on the fly and stuff like that.

Apart from the points are alright, but the arguments are fairly 'eh' for me.

Video games are the only mass media that offer people choices. Tabletops are usually great in choice but their story and characters suffer because the choices usually have to be made on the fly. A GM might plan things very well, but like video games they can't address everything the player will do, and when they do have to address it, it usually has no repercussion or effect on the story or characters, it plays out how the GM planned, or how they have to alter it on the fly, but all the unplanned stuff is not good basically. At least from what I've seen of tabletop experiences.

We're remembering very different characters. I remember when she almost gives up on rescuing her orphans when they've been taken, or when she loses Pey'J, and she gets emotional for a time. I saw her as slightly more woman than anything since she cared so much.

The tomboy excuse seems a bit shallow since it was never addressed at all in the game, hell she was never even acknowledged as a woman unless it was Pey'J who called her 'little lady' as a little joke since she in turn called him 'old fart' plenty, endearing affection sort of banter. Saying she was advertised as a tomboy seems misleading since the only evidence of that she was her baggy trousers, everything else was fairly feminine, such as the lipstick and tank top. Also, tomboys aren't easy to put in categories since it's such a vague concept. Technically, a tomboy is any girl doing or being interested in a male perceived activity. Jade would be considered one, but so would Princess Zelda since she dresses up as Sheik/Tera, or Bayonetta because she can fight and uses guns, but there not ever considered tomboys.

Also, you're remembering her tits a lot and not much else.

But why did Roman gamble? He wanted the LA mansion on the hillside, the successful life and the 'big titties'. That was his American Dream of 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness'. The American Dream is selfish greed, it's not the betterment of mankind, it's about making yourself well established and safe through some success, and since the rise of the recent consumerist culture, that's meant money. And there's the darker side to that, which means even criminals can reach it if they're good enough, which Nikko succeeds in doing, though he loses someone he loves thanks to his pursuit it. Roman may or may not succeed his dreams depending on the player.

See it would be an opinion on the games, if all lf them weren't created with the American Dream in mind by the writers, but it's been in all of them in some way since Vice City. The Houser brothers have described them as a satirisations of America and its culture. That's why you can tote a mental arsenal and blow things to the moon, because it's a hyperbolic situation satirising America's gun culture.

I'm not sure if demand for equality in media representation should be considered whining...

You say that but there's been, what, two female characters that got some character development were Farah and Elika? I remember one being a scantly clad swordswoman and another woman who is the enemy? The games have always been the story of the Prince though, so the other characters haven't been that great, honestly. Acceptable for their roles, but only Farah and Elika seemed, fair enough, well rounded
Assassin's Creed as I mentioned in another thread still relies on stereotypes of women, housewives, prostitutes, barmaids, stuff like that.
Clara was terrible. Not a terrible female character, just a terrible character.

The problem with Unity is that it appears like a backward step for Ubi. They've had good female characters, but now say that they've been excluded because its too much work? Their original intention was to include playable women, yet the 'budget' apparently excluded that possibility. It all sounds as if they don't care about it anymore, and people are speaking out against this change.

I never saw her as a guy or girl, she was just a reporter looking to get the scoop on the injustices and lies profligated by the Alpha Section. Whilst also trying to keep her home and orphanage family safe from any more attacks.
What made her seem like a male character to you?