I really need to personally ban myself from looking or posting in these topics because I just don't wanna fuel the fire or facepalm whenever something dumb is said.

Not knowing the show or character. I assume she has gender issues and wants to be a man in reality because she does not feel like a woman nor does it help in her style of life. If that is the case that is the last thing people want in their GTA game. It is way to heavy for a GTA game. GTA will always be satirical of the american way it has no place for such characters in my opinion. I would rather chose the one woman from Saints row (forgot the name)

Well maybe a "glass half full" way to look at this is that people are telling the developers "I want to play a female lead in a GTA game, and will probably give you money if you do".

If Rockstar ended up doing that, maybe they wouldn't be bowing to social pressure so much as meeting an existing demand, right? It doesn't sound so bad when you think of it that way.

I think it's time for that containment board to be made

One of the best female characters in any work of fiction I've seen is Hermione from Harry Potter. She was emotional, a tad sensitive, pushy and a know-it-all. She is a very girly character. However not one time reading the book did I ever think she was weak or incapable of dealing with all the stuff around her. Western Video games have not had a character like her. FemShep is not a good female character because she is just a palette swap for the male version. Neither are the Saints Row female versions. If GTA were to make a female protagonist it shouldn't just me a re-skinned male doing all that crazy stuff. Maybe Rockstar knows this better than anyone and they don't feel comfortable making a female that they won't do any justice to.

Again, you're making stuff up. They pulled the scene from the press DEMO because again they were reacting to the fact that that scene made no sense without proper context and are reviewing if they should in fact remove it entirely or simply add more context for the scene prior to it.

http://www.joystiq.com/2013/09/05/hotline-miami-2-sexual-assault-scene-under-revision/

http://www.polygon.com/2013/9/5/4697352/hotline-miami-2-sexual-assault-scene-may-be-cut

That's a better way of looking at it and I'd prefer it. But after things like Sony's PS4 reveal being knocked for not having any females on the stage, I can't help read all these things as people being angry and looking to shame whoever they're criticizing.

A female lead in GTA could work, if she's written properly. Making her something akin to a female Tommy Vercetti wouldn't work, but making her a believably ruthless adult woman willing to get her hands dirty is perfectly doable, so long as the writers are up to the task. But I don't think that such a protagonist should be insisted upon. The creators should be free to create the sorts of characters they prefer to work with from game to game.

Having never played the DLC for GTA4, I think I remember the stories taking place in the same area, but with different protagonists. So how about Rockstar compromises here? Put out a DLC campaign like the Ballad of Gay Tony or The Lost and Damned with a female protagonist? The people get their wish, Rockstar gets experience writing a female character without taking the risk of basing a whole game around it, everybody wins. And if people are really uncomfortable with the idea of a woman beating the shit out of people, you could change up the mechanics a little bit and make her a con-artist or something.

That's not really compromise. That's still asking for a female protagonist where one wouldn't necessarily fit. With the limited number of female characters in GTAV with any substance, you're basically asking them to create a new one from scratch, when the GTAIV DLC relied on characters that were already established.

@shinjin977 said:

If she doesn't get too coked up or hung over to do it, sure.

Does it have to be all or nothing, I don't see why it would be impossible to have one of the characters be women, yes even a less than pretty one, though I guess it is hard to expect more from the gaming industry, than what we get from Hollywood.

In any case women play GTA too, somehow they make do. Why wouldn't men be able to too, are we really all that superficial.

Of course in the end it is up to Rockstar to show us that they are talented enough to create great female characters too.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/09/05/hotline-miami-devs-reconsidering-sexual-assault-scene/

They are saying that the y thought it was cool but because of people acting all upset about it they consider to change it. I call something like that censorship. It would have never happened in movies.

It gets the critics off their backs and gives a chance to challenge themselves on a small scale. Yeah, it wouldn't be easy, but how can you improve if you never challenge yourself? I'm just saying they have an opportunity here.

They should go back to the dude from 3, Morgan Gordon Freeman.

If Rockstar wants to do it in the next GTA, then sure.

Do people complain that Martin Scorsese films star mostly men?

Scorcese made Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. Rockstar made a table tennis game. One of these things will buy you a lot of credibility on the gender front, and one will not.

@kevin_cogneto: It's a bad comparison(no offense). I can't see how the gender of the character is integral to the experience of playing a GTA game.

It's not about getting the critics off their backs. It's about them being able to make games with the characters they want. Creating a female protagonist just to satisfy critics is not the way to go about things.

I'd be interested in the series again if they added, or made being female an alternative. I've never liked any of their male characters though I haven't played 5 yet. But from what I've seen it's just 3 stereotypes that I can't pretend to care about.

Praise to Saint's Row here I guess since you can be male, female or anything in between!

Uh yeah I'd say so actually. And having a woman doesn't equal a better written story.

Oh and the White Knight...it's not us. It's you.

Shouldn't have been pulled to begin with. They have a vision and they shouldn't buckle under media nonsense.

@sargegulp: The Scorcese comparison was a bad one to begin with, I was only taking it to its logical and most preposterous conclusion.

But Oni.

How about you let them do what they wanna do and worry about more important things :)

Rockstar should just make a new Red Dead that takes place in a post apocalyptic setting (the new frontier if you will) and just have a female lead for that.

Boom.

There are female cops in GTA V. They're not nearly as prominent as the guys, but they do exist.

I think a female lead would be really cool, too.

I'm not going to pretend I'm in a position to demand that Rockstar does anything they don't want to do.

@geirr: Not even Tommy Vercetti? (who was voiced by Ray Liotta)

But then it would portray a female in bad light as a criminal. Someone please think of the children

I've said this before:

I think the best way of doing GTA(or a rockstar open world game) with a female protagonist is with two co leads(male/female)as undercover cops or spies. Actually, I think the world of espionage is WAY easier to implement a female protagonist than straight up crime.

Now I haven't completed the game yet so... I don't know the whole story about the character, but even still we have this tough-as-nails FIB lady (who apparently may be Karen from GTAIV) that I think could be a good fit for a DLC story. In fact this could especially be a decent opportunity for Rockstar to attempt to set the game around you playing as a law enforcer -- the kind that's potentially willing to penetrate a guy's ass with a torch, though, of course. You could justify the fact that you can still go around causing wanton murder and getting away with it because she's a high-ranking FIB agent and all that; or they could even go the L.A. Noire route of forcing your weapons to be holstered in free-roam or something. I dunno, it's just an idea, and she definitely stood out to me when I first saw the cutscene.

Also, spoilers and all that.

Maybe that would make GTA interesting again, because 5 isn't really doing it for me. I'll probably finish it still, but it's not blowing me away aside from the technical feats.

This is the problem with blaming an individual situation (GTA V's 3 male protagonists) for a systemic issue (lack of female lead protagonists in video games).

GTA V didn't create this problem and shouldn't arbitrarily be blamed for it. One very visible game is not going to fix this, although I'm sure it would help.

I do find the responses that a woman somehow couldn't be the lead of GTA V for believability reasons to be pretty laughable though.

@atary77: One of the Hausers did mention in an article that they have thought of having a female lead for a looooong time now but they just need a great story before attempting to pull it off and I think that's fair. I'd rather they did have a great story and not just have a certain protagonist (regardless of gender) tacked on just for the sake of it.

Rockstar made Red Dead with one of the best female characters in this industry. They know how to write great female characters.

There is a lot of potential in a female lead in GTA game. Potential for greatness, and potential for utter disaster. If she ever comes about - the GTA series being the seminal series that it is - she is going to be the most scrutinized video game character ever created. That's a lot of pressure to put on your writers.

The opening scene of GTA III sees the player character shot in the chest by a woman, and that game came out a lifetime ago as far as video games are concerned. And as others have said, Bonnie MacFarlane was a fantastically written character. I think it would be easy for Rockstar to write a female protagonist, and I'm sure it will happen when and if they want to.

You can be the female lead in your GTA online game.

Which, ironically, could end up being the actual reason why we might never see a female lead in a GTA game. It's a sad side-effect of making a huge deal out of gender in the first place, and continuously putting female characters under a microscope.

yeah it is already like that. Every female character in video games right now is getting analyzed to death and if there is only one thing wrong with it people will call foul. Also I am pretty sure the same people like the gamespot one or other who are now calling GTAV misogynistic and sexist will also call out a GTA with a female lead for whatever reason. They people are just here to push their agenda´.

Hey, that's not a bad idea. Then the protagonists will have to work their way up in the gang ranks to prove themselves.