These crazed 'feminists' apparently won't buy the game if their female hero isn't everywhere. Ugh.

"Some more women would be nice, and might encourage more female players to take notice of the game."

"OMG you won't even buy the game if there aren't women on the cover? You want to get rid of men? You really hate men?"

"Of course I'll by a game from a company that I like so much that I signed up for their forums. I just don't think it has to be men every single time. I'd like acknowledgement of one of the game's core appealing features."

"Crazy sexist feminist!"

Sera was admittedly not my favorite for a long time, but the more I thought about her, the more important she became in my mind.

She's the only companion who's low class--truly low class, not a former noble or a wealthy but down-to-earth merchant. And her very existence is a direct opposition to Solas and his ideals. She represents everything he hates about what has become of the elves--cut off from their past, integrated with human society. But she doesn't want the world that he wants. She's fine being who she is. And he's too blind to see that she is one of his people, with or without her connection to the past. She is what he should be working to save, not what he should be trying to destroy. And the great irony is how he's now talking about the Inquisition being doomed to corruption when that is exactly what she told him when he tried to make her turn the Red Jennies into a more formal organization. This young, naive city elf told off an old god and she had the right idea all along. 

I'm really glad that Trespasser did her character justice. That character growth was exactly what she needed to take her from a potentially great character to an actually great one.

Making Sheploo the iconic face for Shepard  argueably worked in the series favour, it was a very good decision marketing wise to establish a consistent face for the series' protganist without invalidating custom creations.

I find the N7 logo and stripe way more iconic than Sheploo's face. It's all about the armor, for me, and I would love if Andromeda continued along the vein of the image above, with the protagonists hidden beneath helmets. On the other hand, I do agree that having a default face for both genders can be a good route to go. I really like the way that DA2's Hawke had a similar look for both genders, and I wish they'd bothered to use both in their marketing. 

You do presume to speak for a rather large group of people, don't you? Saying that women gamers deliberately seek out games that give them gender options is vague and meaningless to the point of being a non sequitur, on top of being an assertion that cannot be proven. 

 

"Female players do deliberately seek out games that will give them that option."

 

Okay then, what about the female players who simply don't care and want to play a well designed game? Or do they not count because they don't fit the narrative?

 

Your post also has little or nothing at all to do with the post you responded to.

I'm going off of what I hear from other female gamers as well as actual academic studies: "Only 39 percent of high-school aged boys surveyed preferred to play as male characters, while 60 percent of high-school aged girls preferred to play as female characters." Why is there such a distinct split between teenage boys and girls surveyed? Probably because teenage boys don't have to think about it. Girls just have fewer options, so it becomes a greater priority to them.

Of course there are female gamers that don't care at all. And of course most female gamers want the game to be good, first and foremost. I am just saying that for many, it is a factor. One of many factors, but still a factor. I literally just said in the post that most female gamers can and do play male characters; why are you trying to claim that I'm suggesting EVERY woman will ONLY play women?

Is a statement made in the context of marketing, not of the game itself. Nobody said anything about a woman playing the game and not having the option to play as a woman. He said that a woman who loses interest in a game because of said inability is sexist. And she would be. In no rational human being's head would a gender-locked protagonist be a negative when it's something that is not and never will be a core defining gameplay feature. Being male is not a character flaw.

I am explaining why that makes the marketing of games important when it comes to gender. Because games that do allow for gender options often fail to advertise that fact. If you go to the DA2 website, for instance, you will find that you have to actively dig through the FAQ to find any mention of gender options. So, on top of games like ME and DA being advertised only with a male face, they often don't even make it easy to find out whether or not there is a female version available.

And I just told you why it's not sexist to take a greater interest in games that allow you to play as female, when that option is not often offered. Like I said, I have no doubt that plenty of female gamers would be interested in what looks like a good game regardless, but the novelty of getting to play their own gender would increase that interest.

If women weren't interested because they couldn't play as a woman in the game, then those women are sexist. 

Nah, the vast majority of female gamers can and do play male characters. You have to, if you don't want to be limited in your options.

But since far fewer games do offer female protagonists as an option, female players do deliberately seek out games that will give them that option. When you're usually forced to play as another gender, it's not sexist to desire the option to play as your gender where you can find it.

Honestly, we have a group of people (not just elves, but specifically the city elves and servants) who have been historically crapped on by every single other race and class in the world, and suddenly a literal god walks out of the Fade and offers to lead them? Of course they're following Solas. I doubt they know what he actually plans to do or why. I'm certain he is manipulating them and their belief in him just as he manipulated the Inquisition. But who can really blame them for following him?

In DA2, everywhere you turned, there were blood mages and abominations, but that didn't make mages any less obviously oppressed. What I take from this isn't "the racists were right" but in fact, "if you heap prejudice against someone long enough, don't be surprised if they start fighting back." 

Which planet do you BSNers live in? SJW planet it seems, because in real world a lot of people would rather die than losing a limb and/or becoming ugly or deformed. Having a healthy and beautiful body is usually a big deal for humans. House (tv series) choose to life in pain instead of losing his leg. Not everyone is deep, some people are as shallow as it gets, plus life is not a big deal for everybody, some people in Mass Effect universe would rather die having sex with a Succubus Asari than living their boring lives...

In the real world, amputees and "ugly or deformed" people can and do live full and happy lives as they are. You're being awfully dramatic about this.

So why not have a male trailer that has a Black male, and another for an Asian male, and another for a Hispanic male. Then do it over again for the female gender.

 

I mean how deep in this are we going to go so that we please everyone and not make it feel like some groups are being excluded? 

 

I mean, if you are a female who refuses to buy a game cause it didn't feature a female trailer, then what does that say about you? 

 

Going back to my original point, what if there are business/marketing reasons as to why the EA marketing department decides to use the male as the main marketing visual? What if there are numbers that shows that males make up the majority of their buyer base and that they want to ensure that they keep their interest? This happens all the time in business marketing and not just in videogames. Like my examples about the pick up truck commercials. Do women buy and drive pickup trucks? Of course they do! But men make up the larger market so thus you see mainly men driving the trucks in the commercials along with a grizzly male voice over, it is meant to "speak to them".....their larger demographic.

 

Trailers are made to attract people but they are also made to attract their target market and I would not be surprised if EA had internal numbers that shows that their majority consumer is male, and thus they market to them.

 

I am a progressive person myself but that does not mean that I have to be politically correct and irrational. 

Chevy made the above commercial when women represented only 11% of the pickup truck market, because they wanted to target a previously-ignored demographic.

When women make up the largest growing demographic of gamers, particularly when Bioware games tend to appeal to a large portion of female gamers, it's silly to ignore them entirely. No, I do not have any illusions about the business decisions that go into the marketing of their games. I took business and marketing in school. But there is also sound business practice in expanding into demographics you previously did not target. 

Sure it is. The purpose of marketing is to generate hype for a product, sell pre-orders, and garner enough interest in the product to turn a profit. Anything else is secondary.

Well yes, but anybody hardcore enough to have already decided to purchase the game isn't the target audience for that marketing. Likewise, anybody familiar enough with Bioware games to know they always offer character customization isn't necessarily being targeted, either. 

If you now you are going to buy the game anyways, why does it matter which gender is marketed more?

Because the purpose of marketing isn't for the existing player base. 

People wouldn't have to look very hard to find that information. If they only go by a random trailer and did no further research, then I'd say its their fault. Happened to me. I saw a trailer for the first ME and didn't care too look into it. Only after Dragon Age Origins did I see what I've been missing and kicked myself for not doing further research. It taught me to look closer at games in the future before making a judgment call.

If people have to go digging, then the marketing hasn't done its job. The purpose of marketing is to get the message out there. 

Also reminder that Mass Effect and DA2 didn't say anywhere on the game cover or most marketing materials that choosing your gender was an option. 

I loved how Trespasser ended.

For me, the original Inquisition ending was rather unsettling. The Inquisition was too powerful, too likely to follow in the footsteps of the previous Inquisition, too much like the exact systems that it originally dismantled. It also carried the assumption that your Inquisitor actually wanted to carry on leading this enormous, shady organization. Maybe some Inquisitors, sure, but for a game that you could very much play as someone who doesn't want to be there and never signed up for this ****, it certainly locked you into one path and one path only. 

Trespasser not only gave us a choice between keeping the Inquisition or dismantling it, it gave the Inquisitor what felt like a real conclusion, rather than a vague and open-ended platitude. And yes, it's not a perfect ending. You don't get to keep the all-powerful hand or the all-powerful army. But I will take a complicated yet positive ending over an empty-feeling one-size-fits-all power fantasy ending any day. 

You know, everyone says it doesn't matter what gender the protagonist is in the marketing materials, but the moment DAI had a couple demos with a female Inquisitor, suddenly ten threads popped up asking why Bioware is erasing men forever from their games.

If the story doesn't have a romantic relationship at its core - and it doesn't - any romantic subplot will necessarily be shallow, especially in the first game. Moreover, I think - and this is not intended to insult anyone - these romantic relationships are designed more towards very young gamers, 16 or so. Because who else would buy this superficial nonsense?

 

I'm not saying the stories in themselves are bad, they're not. When I bought ME1, I liked the romance stories. But I have recently replayed through all 3 games because they were available as a cheap package on PS3. And I tried to rekindle my interst in these subplots but there is just too little there to make me, a player who is now 10 years older, bother to sit through the elevator loading screen. (Same goes for the DA:I romances and the other DA game, Origins.)

 

A good indicator of this are the sex scenes. They were cool when I was that much younger. But nowadays I just find it cheap. Shep is of course a sex god and the first time (which isn't actually of much relevance to most relationships that last longer than a month from what I understand) is perfect, like it was in Romeo and Juliet. It's so clicheé. It's like a teenage girl shows you her favourite movie, a rom-com, and afterwards looks at you expectantly. And your face takes on a pained expression as you say something along the lines of "I can understand, why you love that film so much."

 

To get us, the audience of "older" people, involved in a "love" story, the character would need to be deeper than an action RPG can possibly provide. It would take several games to get us emotionally attached enough to actually give two cents about anyone character. Think of the end of ME1. Even Garrus, who by the end of ME3 had really become a bro, was as stiff as the stick that Joker said he had stuck where the sun doesn't shine. Not because he was badly written but because time was too short.

 

And player-LI interaction was also very limited. There was little that could provide bonding. Again, ME3 and especially the Citadel DLC (as well as the party banter in both DA games) alleviated the problem, as you stand on Huerta Memorial with Garrus shooting bottles or just doing SOMETHING with characters you are supposed to care about. And just talking isn't enough.

 

Bottom line: I understand why it needs to be in the game (young audience) but I think BW should also cast a sideways glance on something a little deeper for older players.

I do see what you're saying. Given that romances are an optional side plot, they'll never have the necessary resources to make them a fully-fleshed storyline. And I can pretty much take or leave the sex scenes themselves -- that's why I support not having every romance require a sex scene, because I really don't miss them when they aren't there.

But I wouldn't say that romances are there only for younger players. I know plenty of grown men and women who get excited about locking in their favorite romance options. I think that while the romance content itself may be limited, Bioware really excels at giving enough hints to allow a player to fill in the blanks and feel like there is a fully fleshed out storyline there. Some of my favorite romances had less content than others, but still felt fulfilling because they felt naturally integrated into the wider storyline and there felt like real development from one scene to the next.

It's still not a perfect system, by any means, and I always crave more interactions with my LI, but I don't think it's accurate to say that there's only one kind of player who is interested in them.

What would the actual logistics of inverting them be, though? You've got an army of mages and an army of templars both falling under Corypheus' control. You intervene and take control of one of those armies, thus forcing him to pour all of his resources into the other. 

So if you took control of the mage army... where would the other mages come from to attack you? And where did the templars go? Why would Calpernia be hanging out with templars or Samson with mages? And why would those other mages not show up to attack you if you did it the other way?

I do love both Calpernia and Samson, but getting to see only one or the other is one of the things that increased the replay value, for me. They made the choice far more nuanced and interesting than it felt in DA2. 

Guys? Could someone help me? I don´t know if someone else has this issue but:

 

Leliana is gone :´(. I really would like her to work for me again. I can´t assign her to any operation. It´s been hours and hours and the problem persists... I checked my room just in case she might be riding the Bull to assign a suitable punishment but the place was empty. Then I went to the tavern to see if she was having some drinks with IB but nothing. Searched for her at the room above the tavern but no luck either. I finally checked the whole war table and she is not with any operation, but she appears as busy...

 

Lady Leliana if you read this, please come back. Cullen and Josie miss you :I

 

Now seriously, I checked for this issue at support and some moar people have the same problem. But no solutions yet xd. How about you guys?

Weird, I had a glitch where all of my companions (and a lot of my stuff, including my throne) disappeared after beating Coryphyfist, including Leliana, but the three advisers were still there when I went to the war table. It resolved itself when I left Skyhold and came back. I wonder if it's a similar glitch?

A set race works for DAII because it's a much smaller story, and it works for ME because Shepard's humanity is so integral to the story and themes of the game. But a DAO or DAI style game with only human as an option? Wasted potential. I know lots of people prefer playing only humans, but I have a way more fun time getting to play anything but humans.

Aside from story reasons, I like having multiple race options because it allows me to play a protagonist who doesn't fit the usual skinny Hollywood bombshell look. I can play a qunari giant (even if her arms are still scrawny) or a cheeky dwarf. If Bioware ever actually offered a body slider and more options for a human protagonist, I might be more interested in playing a human. But all their human-focused games still only offer one body type each for men and women, anyway. 

And yeah, like others have said, getting to play with different backgrounds is an important part of it, too. If we got humans with different meaningful backgrounds, I could also be into that. 

I already said that Solas could not be 100% sure Felassan wont turn against him or give away his plans/secrets. So he killed Felassan to prevent possible betrayal.

About Briala: in my playthrough she arrived as marquise at Winter palace and was spending time with Celene. So she is certainly not dead

Killing to prevent possible betrayal is really not the same as killing after an actual betrayal. Felassan still did his job by helping remove control of the eluvian from a powerful demon and putting it in the hands of an elf who could have been an asset. This is just classic super villain logic, killing off minions out of retaliation for failure when they could have potentially still been valuable. 

Hmm, so I wonder if this means Briala works for Solas now. 

Everyone is so angry about Solas killing Felassan, but in the game Leliana tried to:1) kill the agent, who betrayed her in Haven (pretty much what Solas did),2) she said she had to sacrifice her agents, who could see cory come at skyhold and 3) tried to kill natalie, who did not even made an attempt to attack
But Leliana is a nice red-head and Solas is ***

I have a hard time seeing those as equivalent, since Felassan wasn't arming an enemy, he was trying to convince Solas to give modern elves a chance to rebuild themselves before he destroyed them. If he'd wanted to, Felassan probably could have gone back to Briala at any time and asked her for the code, since she was willing to give it to him already. He didn't irreparably damage Solas' plans. He delayed them, with the intent of trying to convince him to take a different route, but apparently Solas would rather have him dead for defying him than tell him to go back and fix it.

The only way this reasoning makes sense is if the modern elves are truly Solas' enemy. He clearly sees (or saw) them as such. Felassan did not think they needed to be. I wonder whether Solas would have done the same thing now, since he seems (if you've raised his approval, I think) more willing to see this world as real than he did before.

What I'm curious about is, does Solas say what he actually did to Briala? Is she dead? Or does she serve him now? In my playthrough, she was still fighting against Celene as a rebel, and all Solas said was that he regained control from her.

Spoiler

They shouldn't have to headcanon since a couple other LIs actually got the content. Marriage content should have been available as an option for all LIs.

Guys, please spoil me. I've just started Trespasser with my Bull-mance

 

Spoiler

There's more romance-specific content for Bull than just the sex toy convo, right? With the other characters the first conversation has been the major one in terms of containing romance stuff, but I was a little bit disappointed when the convo with bull pretty much was "I want to be cuffed and clamped". He at least comments on the stuff with your hand later on, right? 

 

Also, what do I have to have done in order for him to not betray me? I saved the Chargers, but I can't recall what I told him in the Tal'Vashoth situation afterwards. I really don't want to play through most of the DLC only to have him skewered, or to finish it and realize that all I got that was unique compared to previous playthroughs was some talk about how to cuff it and clamp it

It's possible that a game set in Tevinter will have a heavier qunari (and possibly even dwarf, given what Dorian says) presence than what we've seen so far... Origins gave us a little taste of everything, DA2 had a human-only protag, and Inquisition had a ton of elf lore. Descent was a nice tease for dwarves, but I do think as we learn more about Thedas-That-Was we'll see the impact on other races.

It's just a matter of hanging tight in the meantime, which is not easy.

I do hope that you're right. I mean, I was willing to give the lack of Qunari content a pass in the main game since they were added so late, but I don't understand the lack of it in Trespasser. And dwarfs just usually get shafted. It always sort of feels like DA is very human and elf-centered, so I just don't want to get my hopes up that the games will ever focus on anyone else.

I know! You would think that the parents could have taught him/her some Qunlat but then again the Qunari Inquisitor wasn't raised in Qunari lands.

Not to mention that Adaar ran with Tal-Vashoth mercenaries, and Shokrakar, at least, is confirmed to have left the Qun. You'd think they would have spoken a lot of Qunlat, talked a lot about Par Vollen, etc.

Well your Inquisitor is Vashoth or depending on how you played, a Tal-Vashoth, not a part of the Qun, which is a big difference. The concession though is that with Bull along in your party you learn a lot more about the Qun's culture during the investigations of the Qunari infiltrators.

Like I said in the post you quoted, I wanted to have the option for my character to take an interest in Qunari culture. Yes, I know they are Vashoth. But Cadash is a surface dwarf, yet my Cadash was able to translate ancient dwarven texts in Descent. Leliana learned Qunlat in two years, why couldn't Adaar? 

Adaar barely got scraps of bonus dialogue in the main game, and then when there's finally a Qunari-related DLC, Lavellan once again got way more bonus content. It's just disappointing to never get anything extra at all.

Spoiler

Well, Qunari don't ever get married or cohabitate for love, so that would be a helluva first for him now. It was good that he did agree to it at the very least so I can headcanon that we are without "metagaming".

The Qunari assignment of sex roles makes it unsurprising that that we've never seen a racially Qunari female before.  It had to be a Benn-Hassrath and there are distinct advantages to using non-racially Qunari Benn-Hassrath for assignments outside the border

I know that, but I wanted to hear it discussed out loud, not infer it from codexes. The fact that nobody ever talks about it makes it feel like everyone's trying to politely pretend my Inquisitor isn't a very tall cow woman, which is ridiculous.

And I also consider my Inquisitor someone who would be interested in learning more about the world that she came from, just like a Dalish is interested in learning more about ancient elves and a dwarf is interested in learning more about Orzammar. So the fact that she never gets an option to ask anything at all is frustrating. Leliana apparently knows more qunlat than my character now.

Wait, what?

 

Spoiler

After Bull made the initial joke, he continued on to say we could maybe do something after the Council was concluded. He didn't dismiss it entirely.

 

Though I will say that I'm pretty furious that other romances got more content than Bull got.

I think they got too focused on Bull/Dorian content. It has way too much content compared to their romance with Inky,

I can't say I mind that too much, since I actually do love them together, but I am a little sad that Dorian got so many more extra bits of dialogue with him than I did.

Spoiler

Idunno, Iron Bull saying that if the Inquisitor wanted something formal, Iron Bull would do it any way he wanted was pretty powerful. Qunari don't have any kind of hand-fastenings, he doesn't personally feel any need to do so. The fact that he's 100% willing to jump into it and do it if that's what the Inquisitor wants is a very powerful thing for me. ♥

 

I also love all of the affection he offers throughout the DLC. No brushing off your flirting with jokes, he just goes straight for the 'i love yous' and affection and that was really, really great. In two years he's gotten so comfortable in his relationship with the Inquisitor that he holds nothing back. It means a lot. ♥

 

More at the end would have been nice, either a reaction to the betrayal or a final romance scene. But either way, the spirit of the ending really stuck with me. The Inquisitor isn't ready to go down without a fight, and Iron Bull is right there for them.

 

Maybe I'm just easy to please, but I got everything I wanted and more out of DLC. My OT3 head canon has exploded into the sun and the feels will overwhelm me for ages to come!

It's great that you got what you wanted out of the DLC, and the romance. I'm really glad that it worked for some people. I think if I hadn't had my expectations built up by seeing another romance, I wouldn't have felt so let down by it.

I am doing something wrong or Iron Bull has no romantic content in Trepasser? I've tried everything but all I get I one phrase at his party.

Yeah...