Identity Override within Video Games

Or how my custom woman character became a man in the sequel.

I’ve become increasingly aware of an annoying trend within video games that I think needs addressing. I’ve come to coin this phenomenon Identity Override. This Identity Override is the tendency of your custom character from one game to be overridden with a generic white guy in the sequel. For us women or nonbinary this overriding of our characters is more than just a slight annoyance. It’s a sign that we’re not welcome within the stories we love. This isn’t something that only happens in bad games, some of the best games of all time do this. Most of my favourite games even do it. Let me give you a few examples.

Fallout 1 is an absolute masterpiece. It’s an old game, but its character creator is still amazing. It allows you to build almost any type of character you want. On top of the varied personalities and skillsets you can design here you can also make your character either male or female. I love this. Each playthrough feels unique even after 27 years. The problems start when you move from Fallout 1 to its sequel. In Fallout 2 you can create your own character again and it’s great. But when you get into the opening village you will find characters that talk about the protagonist from the first game. All of them refer to the character you played as during the first game as a man, using he/him pronouns for him. Later in the game you arrive at the city of Shady Sands. This was a location you could also visit in the first game and because of that the characters from this town remember your previous character. In fact, they have a statue of them. You guessed it, this statue is of a man and all the people in Shady Sands that remember your previous character refer to them as a man. It's clear that the canon of the Fallout world considers the protagonist of the first game to be a man. Your created character is only valid into the sequel if you choose to make a man. This means that when creating a character in the first game there is a definitively correct choice. If you made a woman then you created the wrong character, and it will be ignored by all the games set after the first one.

The Vault Dweller's Statue within Shady Sands from Fallout 2

Baldur’s Gate is another game series that does this Identity Override. During Baldur’s Gate 1 you’re able to create your own character like in Fallout 1. This character creator is heavily based on the character sheets from the TTRPG Advanced Dungeons and Dragons second edition. What this means is that you’re able to create a character from a wide selection of fantasy races, skin tones, and of course either male or female. Baldur’s Gate 2 impressively let you take your character data from the first game and import it into the second one. This means that you’re able to continue as the same character in the sequel. After Baldur’s Gate 2 your playable character would appear again in one of the DnD 5E Tabletop adventures called ‘Murder in Baldur’s Gate’. Here you learn that regardless of what character you created the protagonist of Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2 was a white human man called Abdel Adrian. This would be confirmed in Baldur’s Gate 3. Once again, the later games in a series go on to prove that there is indeed a correct choice when creating a character. Furthermore, that correct choice is a man.

It's not just western games that partake in this Identity Override either. During Pokémon Fire Red and/or Leaf Green you can choose to play as either a boy or a girl. You then set out on an adventure to explore the Kanto region. Along the way you defeat the Elite Four and become the Pokémon Champion and overthrow the criminal organisation, Team Rocket. The follow-up to Fire Red and Leaf Green, Pokémon Soul Silver and Heart Gold, featured an amazing post-game adventure. After you defeated the Elite Four and shut down the remnants of Team Rocket you could return to Kanto, the region from the first game. If you were able to defeat all the gym leaders in Kanto, then you could challenge the main character from the first game. This turned out to be a boy called Red. The choice to play as a boy or a girl during Fire Red or Leaf Green is made, retroactively, pointless because you’re told that the character is a boy.

The battle in Soul Silver/Heart Gold between the player character and Red

I could go into depth for a lot more games that all override the player character’s identity with that of a man but if I did this article would become a novel. Just to prove my point I will give a few more quick-fire examples. Fable 2 lets you play as a man or a woman but regardless of your choice Fable 3 will refer to the character as the “Old Hero King” making them male. The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion lets you create your character including gender but then during The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim you meet your previous character who has since become the Daedric Prince of Madness and is a man. Despite being able to create your character in Divine Divinity when we get to Divinity 2 and Divinity: Original Sin 2 we learn that the canon character is a white human man called Lucian. This list goes on and on. So many games, mostly RPGs but it’s not exclusive to them, allow you to choose to play as a woman in one game but then override that decision in the games that follow. 

This isn’t the only type of Identity Override that happens in video games though. Another type is when the game will allow you to choose your gender or create your own character but then will use a man for all the marketing.  Mass Effect let you play as a custom human character. The games were great with carrying this character from one game to the next meaning that your character was always the same race, gender, and background. However, only the male default character was ever shown in trailers, box art, and posters.  It’s clear that the canon Shepard, intended by EA, was a white man. This defaulting to the male character in promotional material is very common in the video game industry. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey lets you choose between either a man or a woman to play as, yet the box art and promotional material only shows the man. We see this in all the modern FromSoftware games including the Dark Souls trilogy, Demon Souls, Elden Ring, Bloodborne, as well as the Fallout and Elder Scrolls games from Bethesda, Obsidian’s Outer Worlds did it, and so on and so on. Almost any game that lets you choose your gender will show a man as the player character in the trailers, posters, box art, and any other promotional material. This once again overrides the identity of the players character to male.

The box art for Mass Effect 1, 2, and 3

Another form of the Identity override is a game writing its story around the player as a man. Bethesda’s Fallout games are particularly bad at this one. Fallout 3 does this with the player character following his father out of the vault. The themes of a son following in his father’s footsteps only works if you play as a man. Fallout 4 is even more obvious with this. To start with, you have the background of the player character. If you play as a man, then you’re an ex-soldier. If you play as a woman then you’re a trained lawyer. Every other Fallout game has made a big deal of needing training to use the Power Armour in the game. These suits work like a tank fitted to your body and as such you need to be trained to use them. Fallout 4 does away with this training which makes sense if you play as the man because he was trained during his time in the army. It makes no sense if you are playing as a woman. Why, or how would a lawyer have this training for Power Armour? Even worse, however, is the main story of Fallout 4. During the opening of the game your son is kidnapped while you’re in cryosleep. When you finally meet him, you learn that more years have passed than you first thought and he’s now an adult man. He runs the organisation known as the Institute and is referred to within this Institute as Father. He's known as Father because his DNA was the basis of the modern androids that the Institute produces. The themes here are obvious. Fatherhood. You’re the father of Father, who’s the father of all synthetics. These themes don’t work if you play as a woman. This shows that Bethesda intended your character to be a man. The choice they offered you was false because the themes override the identity of your character.

So now that you understand what Identity Override is, where it happens, and how it happens, let’s talk about why it’s bad. If you’re anything other than a man playing these games, it’s impossible to see yourself in them. The entire point of a character creator is so that you can insert a part of yourself into the character. Even if the character isn’t a stand-in for you entirely, they are still a part of you. I’ve finished Baldur’s Gate III 4 times, and each time was with a different character. Each character was different. Yet all were a part of me because I was the one that created them, by doing so, I unavoidably put a little bit of myself into them. This is why, and more importantly, how, I was able to roleplay as them so effectively and enjoyably. Some players will not create a unique character like I do and will instead just attempt to make themselves, or as close to it as possible, and play as themselves. Both are perfectly valid and enjoyable ways to play through these games. It’s why games with custom characters are so popular. After finishing Baldur’s Gate III for the 3rd time, I decided to go back and playthrough the originals. The thing was, the character I created for these older games felt a lot less personal. Afterall, I know from Baldur’s gate III and Murder in Baldur’s Gate that the canon and therefore correct choice that’s recognised in all the official DnD stories made after BG1&2 is a human Caucasian man called Abdel Adrian. I ended up making an elf woman called Lyre. No one in the world of Faerûn will remember Lyre, they will only remember Abdel, because Abdel is the correct choice. This makes the entire character creator pointless if you care about the over-arching story, lore, and world building of the Forgotten Realms.

Abdel Adrain as shown from the Murder in Baldur's Gate Adventure

Across the entire industry, any player that creates a woman will be routinely ignored in favour of the male ones. This sends the message that women are not welcome within video games. Even if the game is gracious enough to allow the player to choose to play as a woman, that’s not the correct choice. When the sequel rolls around only the men will be remembered. The women will be pushed to the side lines where they can be easily ignored. For all the men playing these games, this is a non-issue, something I doubt they even notice. But subconsciously this reinforces the idea that video games are for men. This isn’t a hobby for women or nonbinary folk. After all their heroes within these games are men. Even the ones that were able to be women, are in fact men in the canon. The Vault Dweller, The Hero of Baldur’s Gate, Commander Shepard, Red, and so on and so on were all men in the canon. Even if you played them as a woman, they will only be remembered by both the characters within the games and the public at large as men. What’s most insidious about this is that most men that play these can be pleased that their favourite games are inclusive by allowing women to play as their own gender. While the more toxic Gamers ™ moan about the fact that you’re even allowed to play as a woman at all. Or, God forbid, you’re allowed to choose your pronouns.

This can be countered, and easily. Just include a custom woman as the one shown off on the box art, trailers, and other promotional guff. You can even show them off alongside the custom man. We tend to see this with MMORPG’s as they will not have a single hero in their narrative. Also include features that allow you to import your character from one game into the sequel. If you can’t do this for any reason, then either don’t mention the previous character or use gender neutral language for them. Instead of Tandy using he/him pronouns to talk about the Vault Dweller have her use they/them ones. This helps keep the gender of the character vague and unknown allowing the player to place their own previous character into the canon. Finally, if you are writing a story for a custom character then avoid themes that connect to gendered concepts such as fatherhood or motherhood. When it comes to writing backgrounds for custom characters either try to keep it vague or include logic that tracks for both the men and women. For example, in Fallout 4, why not just have both characters be ex-soldiers? It’s not like women can’t serve in the army and it would have explained the Power Armour training.

Father from Fallout 4

There is also the racial aspect to this Identity Override, but I didn’t feel like the right person to talk about it. Most of these characters are not just retroactively made into men but also white men. A lot of modern games with custom characters also only have a single voice actor to voice your character and the actor will be white. As I say, I’m not the right person to talk about this but it is worth talking about. It’s just that I’m white and as such would like to avoid talking over, on behalf of, or in place of actual people of colour. 

Thank you very much for reading this article. I know that it was a bit of a long read but it really is something I think is worth talking about. Let’s hope that as more people start playing video games this Identity Override starts to lessen.