Equal representation in Metro Exodus? (Strong female characters and a lack of female mooks)

[Rawnrawn]

I'm curious as I haven't seen any discussion like this. But during my experience with this game I felt bit taken out of the world with this and I fear this may be subject to....Well, our worlds political climate.

Major spoilers ahead!!

When you stumble upon the different societies in this game they all have one thing in common: Your ally among them is always a woman.

What kind of characters are they? Well, the first one you meet is a nurse and a mother.
She wants a way out of the cult but needs help and travelling a post apocalyptic wasteland with a kid is no easy feat. So she enlists the help of our crew at the Aurora,
Good character, very relatable and has flaws.

The issue comes when you get to the other societies. The Yamantau bunker is home to cannibals, however they're all male. Every single one of the people you kill defending yourself from becoming their next meal is male.....How are they going to survive more than one generation?

In the Volga where slavery and the hardship of living out in the desert is reality most are governed by a single man, the Baron.

The Baron controls all the slave trade across the Volga, his oppossition? A single woman freedom fighter named Guil. This woman is such a badass that she's been actively fighting the Barons ENTIRE ARMY for god knows how long before we arrived. By the end of the level she also SOMEHOW managed to infiltrate the Barons palace and came shortly to join Artyom and at the top of the tower, Damir followed after.

The only representation of women in the Volga are the sex workers, all beautiful women with perfect bodies and pretty faces. All the slave men are...Not so good looking. Why?

Then when we get to the forest we got Olga, the woman who saved us. She's part of a tribe where half are "pirates". Sadist buggers who torture people before executing them and the other half are "pioneers" hunter gatherers living off the woods.

She's the only woman we see belonging to this faction and guess what. She's the strongest fighter of them all! She whooped the ass of the pirate leader, despite her combat prowess though she hasn't lost her morality and still visits the grave of their long dead teacher. Basically, she's just OP

What really bothers me with these societies is that, these are the only female fighters we see. If female soldiers are a reality, why don't we meet them as enemies too? In a post apocalyptic survival scenario you'd be stupid not to arm everyone. For the Volga am I led to believe that the only women are sex workers? No female raiders? No females in physical labour?

Not a single woman in the cannibal bunker ready to pounce at us with a melee weapon

And the children of the forest particularly, Olga mentions other women a couple of times yet we never see these other women. The only other tribals we meet are men, that we have to defend ourselves against.

I can't help but feel like being pandered to when I see unbelievably powerful female characters with absolutely no flaws and yet have no female mooks for us to knock out or kill in self defence. It's not a believable narrative and it breaks my immersion of the world.

[FilthyAnimal]

So you basically upset for not being able to kill women as enemies and dont see them as a salves in a hard labour???
LMAO what a hell is wrong with you people?

[Rawnrawn]

Originally posted by FilthyAnimal:

So you basically upset for not being able to kill women as enemies and dont see them as a salves in a hard labour???
LMAO what a hell is wrong with you people?

Yes, if you're going to represent them as heroines, you should also represent them as potential enemies. You know, as humans.

You're forced to kill dozens of men in the Yamantau bunker, there's even an achievement to kill a hundred of them. Why is it ok to desensitize killing other men like this but it's somehow less moral to put women in the same situation to be shot by our protagonist? Are you suggesting that the lives of men are worth less than women?

Like I stated, it doesn't make any sense why there aren't any enemy women among the Yamantau bunker cannibals and Children of the Forest.

Is it really so wrong to want some equality?

[Deep Silver]

In the world of Metro, the world has regressed somewhat with the loss of comfort and progress, and women are generally confined to sex-work, caregiver or labor roles (i.e. mushroom picking, stallholders). The men are sent to do the "military" work generally. Outside of a few rebels - Guil, Olga, Anna (who is a Spartan because she was brought up by her father alone after her mother's death), you don't see women allowed into those positions - if the humans are to survive, why would they put women at risk with the dangerous stuff? In the books Anna is a mushroom picker for example. in the Taiga you can hear women and children screaming and crying if you get into a lethal fight with the pirates, they are hiding. We are 20+ years post war by the time of Exodus, a lot of the younger women would not have ever known any other way. Take the setting into account too.

Yamantau is a different case, as it was a bunker intended for the government, and the bombs dropped before they actually got there - so the people trapped there were the construction workers - primarily men. If there were women, then they likely perished before we got there. Lets be honest the cannibals aren't that smart, riddled with illnesses both physical and mental, borne from being cannibals and likely surviving off of rotten meat, and Dr Death was running a sick regieme with very little care for who lives or dies, who knows what he may have done with any women who may have been there. Anna is probably the first woman they have seen in a long time.

Hope this helps to clear up some of your questions!

[Pvt Tommy]

Originally posted by Rawnrawn:

Originally posted by FilthyAnimal:

So you basically upset for not being able to kill women as enemies and dont see them as a salves in a hard labour???
LMAO what a hell is wrong with you people?

Yes, if you're going to represent them as heroines, you should also represent them as potential enemies. You know, as humans.

You're forced to kill dozens of men in the Yamantau bunker, there's even an achievement to kill a hundred of them. Why is it ok to desensitize killing other men like this but it's somehow less moral to put women in the same situation to be shot by our protagonist? Are you suggesting that the lives of men are worth less than women?

Like I stated, it doesn't make any sense why there aren't any enemy women among the Yamantau bunker cannibals and Children of the Forest.

Is it really so wrong to want some equality?

I don't want to kill women.

[AmesNFire]

Originally posted by Rawnrawn:

Are you suggesting that the lives of men are worth less than women?

I consider the lives of cannibals to be less than any normal human, yes.
Why does that bother you?

[Rawnrawn]

Thank you so much for the reply Deep Silver! It does clear up a lot of the thoughts that I had. It is true that it doesn't take place particularly long after society as we know it has collapsed and in that context it does make sense that MOST women wouldn't be allowed in combat roles. However the few that are and that we come across are exceptionally gifted at it!

On another note, I'm not sure why some replies in this thread are being removed, I'm not the one doing that. Is it because of swear words that they automatically get filtered out automatically or something?

[Deep Silver]

Originally posted by Rawnrawn:

Thank you so much for the reply Deep Silver! It does clear up a lot of the thoughts that I had. It is true that it doesn't take place particularly long after society as we know it has collapsed and in that context it does make sense that MOST women wouldn't be allowed in combat roles. However the few that are and that we come across are exceptionally gifted at it!

On another note, I'm not sure why some replies in this thread are being removed, I'm not the one doing that. Is it because of swear words that they automatically get filtered out automatically or something?

some of them have been exceptionally inflammatory and sexist so we have removed them

Just wanted to clear up that there is an in-world lore reason that spans outside of the games so not everyone is aware.

[Sparhawk122]

I think they were going the hot waifu route which I don't mind.

[dumbinfp]

Originally posted by Swatii:

I don't want to kill women.

Why not? Do you think there aren't women who would kill you without a second thought? Don't you think women are worth the same amount of force if they are threatening your life as men are?

[Rawnrawn]

Originally posted by dumbinfp:

Originally posted by Swatii:

I don't want to kill women.

Why not? Do you think there aren't women who would kill you without a second thought? Don't you think women are worth the same amount of force if they are threatening your life as men are?

I feel this way, don't be sexist. Those female soldiers are worth the same amount of respect as males but they're also worth the same amount of bullets shelled into them :P

So if you're gonna have strong, capable allied female fighters in any media, also represent them as enemies with absolutely no redeemable qualities for you to kill en masse too.

While the Metro series does a good job of humanising enemies, miles better than any other modern shooter I've ever come across out there. However on a couple occassions there are times where evil goons act evil just for the sake of evil and I feel like....No human being would ever do this, it's cartoonishly villanous.

[Pvt Tommy]

Originally posted by Rawnrawn:

Originally posted by dumbinfp:

Why not? Do you think there aren't women who would kill you without a second thought? Don't you think women are worth the same amount of force if they are threatening your life as men are?

I feel this way, don't be sexist. Those female soldiers are worth the same amount of respect as males but they're also worth the same amount of bullets shelled into them :P

So if you're gonna have strong, capable allied female fighters in any media, also represent them as enemies with absolutely no redeemable qualities for you to kill en masse too.

While the Metro series does a good job of humanising enemies, miles better than any other modern shooter I've ever come across out there. However on a couple occassions there are times where evil goons act evil just for the sake of evil and I feel like....No human being would ever do this, it's cartoonishly villanous.

I am not being sexist. I just personally don't like killing women unlike you, you crazy serial killer.

[TurfWormVer2terter]

Originally posted by AmesNFire:

Originally posted by Rawnrawn:

Are you suggesting that the lives of men are worth less than women?

I consider the lives of cannibals to be less than any normal human, yes.
Why does that bother you?

As a cannibal I am deeply offended by this; respect other people's culture you bigot