9243 réponses à ce sujet

[MrGone]

Let's see if I found these scissors everyone seems to have

earthbornFemShep wrote...
*snip*

I'm going to have to disagree with you there.  If I'm a maleShep and date Jack, but my femShep can date her too, I assume she's bisexual--especially with her back story.  No matter their preference for Shepard, their backstory doesn't change.

Comepletely agree - In the Case of Jack. Her backstory indicates interest in both sexes. Absolutely no problem there. But if it's Miranda, who we know had a relationship with Jacob?

No.  The NPC's orientation doesn't change.  Your perception of his orientation is up to you; whether it be correct or not.  Most people assume that everyone around them are heterosexual; that doesn't mean they are.  People assume I'm heterosexual all the time; I'm not.  Just because they don't see me in a relationship with another woman doesn't mean I'm any less gay. 

Here's the fundamental difference:

Unless you're passing the Turing Test, you are a person and not an AI. Miranda, Garrus, Jack, Anders, Tali, Fenris, Varric, et al are AIs/a bunch of flowchart bubbles in a chronology of events on a DVD that's read by your 360 or PC or PS3. They have no real choice in the matter.

But in attempting to craft realistic characters Bioware has learned that giving these characters viewpoints that don't always agree with what the player character (who is more or less an avatar for the person at the controls) decides to do can lend them the credence of realism. It's why the Friendship/Rivalry system seems better than Paragon/Renegade, as it's more about personal agreement rather than internal measure.

But here's something unrealistic: everyone "agreeing" to be seduced by you. Really?

Further, there are several characters who sexualities hadn't been defined in ME1: Joker, Chakwas, Hackett, Garrus, Tali, Emily Wong, Gianna Parasini, etc.   In ME2, Garrus and Tali were revealed as heterosexual and would 'make an exception' to date outside their species.  There are still characters that have no defined orientation:  everyone mentioned in the ME1 list (except Tali/Garrus), Zaeed, Kal'Reegar, Bailey (he said he had a son and screwed up a marraige, but doesn't mention a wife or husband, to my recollection), Gavorn, Mordin (although Salarians don't have sex drives, so sexual orientations are moot), etc.

You can assume they are all heterosexual, but you are not necessarily correct.  The characters haven't made their orientations known.

Don't care about these characters as pertains to this issue. I'm not sure why you would bring this up actually. When it comes to this issue, the only relevant characters should be the potential LI's and the protagonist. Whoever is decided to BE a potential LI is up for contention I suppose but that's it.

No!  Okay, this is WAY off.  Isabela is NEVER straight and neither is Fenris.  Pay close attention to their backstories and banter.  Isabela hits on Bianca in one conversation and Bethany (indirectly) in another.  She talks about the splendors of sex with women.  During Fenris's Act 3 mission, Danarius incinuates that he and Fenris had a sexual relationship.  Regardless of if Isabela and Fenris hook up or not, it doesn't mean they are straight.  Both are clearly bisexual no matter how the player interacts with them.

First off, having Isabella hit on Bianca, a crossbow, is obviously meant in jest and I  . . . just, huh?

And actually, I know she's bi, I think that's a typo on my part, sorry.

As for Fenris, I missed any indication during that mission that he and Danarius were involved physically. Also, that's f'ed up. Fenris WAS HIS SLAVE. That could also mean that Danarius enjoyed raping Fenris against his will, not necessarily a stable relationship made by consenting adults. Why would you even bring that up?

[graciegrace]

Pwener2313 wrote...

graciegrace wrote...

I feel the same way about straight romances actually :3

Wow, that one is going into the psychology book.

Well I'm not straight, so I don't wanna role play straight.  That's all I meant, and I was being mostly joking.

[Maugrim]

Here the list of characters who sexuality has been clearly  and explicitly defined in the Mass Effect Games*:

































That's all of them!

Now some have more evidence one way or the other but certain people in this thread would be wise to consult this list.  Their ignorance of how sexuality works is no excuse for making fraudulent claims.

*I'm not gonna tackle media outside of the game.

Modifié par makenzieshepard, 19 avril 2011 - 07:29 .

[Ryzaki]

pfft. Jack was totally rejecting FemShep.

Tali only has the hots for male Shepard (Garrus only has the hots for female Shepard)

And everyone else is totally defined. Kaidan will only be with femshepard. No matter how many puppy eyes male Shepard gives him.

[ElitePinecone]

Ryzaki wrote...

pfft. Jack was totally rejecting FemShep.

Tali only has the hots for male Shepard (Garrus only has the hots for female Shepard)

And everyone else is totally defined. Kaidan will only be with femshepard. No matter how many puppy eyes male Shepard gives him.

I see what you did there.

More seriously, I was thinking more today about future ventures in the series and how they relate to LI diversity.

Probably the single most common argument in this thread against s/s for Shepard in ME3 is the 'continuity' viewpoint; tied in with a whole lot of side semantics about asari and whether crewmembers can be bisexual when they previously weren't available for romance. Whatever the virtues of the argument, and I don't think it has many, it seems to come up a lot. 

A new game without Shepard as the protagonist would have none of these difficulties, and could conceivably feature cameos by characters we've seen in the ME series. Just something to ponder, seeing the strong likelihood of the ME intellectual property being developed further.  

[JediMB]

Ryzaki wrote...

Though the amount of butthurt the day there's a only gay LI.

Glorious

Well, we had Juhani in KotOR.

My first BioWare romance, right after I ran away from Carth.

MrGone wrote...

1) Statistically speaking, what are the
odds that ALL of the available characters a protagonist encounters are
bisexual? Especially since bisexuality is not a requisite to how they
encounter them (they encounter them do to other unrelated reasons).

In my DA2 playthrough, both the Hero of Ferelden and the Champion of Kirkwall are lesbian. What do you suppose the odds of that are? Does this perhaps mean that homosexual women are somehow more likely to excel in being go**amn heroes?

That's just my playthrough, though. And in that singular playthrough I have no way to determine any companion's sexuality besides Isabela's. Is Merrill gay or bi? I don't know; all I know is she likes "me". Is Anders straight or bi? Don't know that either. What is Fenris' sexual preference? No clue. Aveline seems to be into men, and Varric has Bianca.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is... the sexualities of the people I'm not interested in romancing in a given playthrough are irrelevant to me during that particular playthrough, and can easily be ignored. I can suspend my disbelief by... compartmentalizing my playthroughs? I guess? I suppose that might not be something everyone can do, though...

MrGone wrote...


Tangent: Another problem as I see it, is that  from a
gameplay sense, you have to initiate the relationship every time. None
of the LI's ever pursue you, the player, which again seems a statistical
improbablity. At the very least it's a missed opportunity to mix up the
system, and also easily implemented from a design sense (By creating a
location where you know the player will go, their homebase/captain's
quarters, you can have an LI confront you there).

This is why I enjoyed Anders approaching me in DA2. Execution could have been better, of course, but at least it added a bit of variety. Romance conversations completely initiated by the other party would be great in a future game as well, similar to how your LI meets you in your estate in DA2... but earlier on in the relationship.

MrGone wrote...

But here's something unrealistic: everyone "agreeing" to be seduced by you. Really?

I actually get into this issue in a post I've been preparing for the DA2 criticism thread. I'd like to see the player's assumed personality and other issues play into if companions are actually interested. It's related to a proposed two-dimensional expansion on the currently one-dimensional Friendship-Rivalry system.

I'll make sure to link to it here in FftL once I've posted it.

[Russalka]

JediMB wrote...

Well, we had Juhani in KotOR.

My first BioWare romance, right after I ran away from Carth.

Shh, you know lesbians do not count.

She probably was not even a real woman, only looks female!

Modifié par Russalka, 19 avril 2011 - 06:41 .

[AngelicMachinery]

Russalka wrote...
She probably was not even a real woman, only looks female!

This argument REALLY made me RAGE when I heard it...

[Ryzaki]

Russalka wrote...

JediMB wrote...

Well, we had Juhani in KotOR.

My first BioWare romance, right after I ran away from Carth.

Shh, you know lesbians do not count.

She probably was not even a real woman, only looks female!

 

I didn't count her because her romance was ridculously broken in my game. (Frankly I never did find that one line of romance to be on par with Carth and Bastila's). 

[JediMB]

It was quite the shame that a great deal of Juhani's dialogue was cut out of the game, despite that all the files were in place.

Looked around a bit for a restoration mod, but the only one that didn't also change a bunch of other things had been taken down for plagiarism.

And I suppose I lucked out, getting the romance right on my first playthrough, without even knowing it as there. Haven't managed to trigger it in subsequent playthroughs, from what I can recall.

Modifié par JediMB, 19 avril 2011 - 09:10 .

[ElitePinecone]

I've (belatedly) just got my hands on a copy of the Game Informer article, and without spoiling anything I am less confident about the longevity of one character (and availability for romance) than I was previously.

Sanders is described as a character with little knowledge of galactic politics or the complex workings of the Mass Effect universe; his role is (apparently, from the article) to act as an excuse to teach new players about these topics and 'catch them up' on the situation in the galaxy. He doesn't strike me as a particularly long-lasting character, unfortunately, though it's too premature to discount anything at this point.

Relatedly, Kaidan looked swoon-worthy in the screenshot.

Modifié par ElitePinecone, 20 avril 2011 - 07:21 .

[catabuca]

Well, thinking about it more rationally, it would make more sense from a cost point of view to just have all of ME1 and ME2's LIs as romance options in ME3, and open them up to being romanced by players who didn't romance them in earlier games as well. The work to add an extra path for their romances would be less overall, presumably, than creating whole new characters from scratch.

But then, there is a requirement I would imagine for at least a couple of new squaddies in 3, if for no other reason than so many of the others can potentially be dead. But really, how many people will be importing a Shepard who has no crew left? Perhaps some will, but more of a 'what if' scenario, than it being because everyone genuinely died during their main playthrough.

Gah. We're exactly at that point where we know just a tiny little, but not enough to have any real, informed ideas about what might be in the game. We're stuck in the horrible limbo of utter uninformed, wild and rampant speculation.

[JediMB]

We're likely to stay in that limbo for a while, as well. Maybe all the way up to release, depending on what the PR people consider spoilers.

[Siansonea]

Frankly, I'm not holding my breath that the Mass Effect dev team is going to get all 21st Century on us and provide same-sex human LIs for our Shepards. I'm hopeful, of course, but not terribly optimistic. Obviously something about it is a problem for the higher-ups, and it could be personal or it could be financial. We don't know and we never will know.

Someone mentioned above that Shepard is an "avatar for the player" in the game, and I want to address that. For some players, that's true. They play Shepard as themselves in the game, or rather a fantasy version of themselves. That's fine, that's one play style. But others like myself play Shepard as a distinct third person who has a whole set of traits that we don't personally share with the character. I have six Shepards, three males, and three females, and they are all very different. One of my boys is a complete do-gooder Boy Scout type, another is a ladies man, and another is an intellectual bisexual. One of my girls is a paranoid psychopath who only trusts MORINTH of all people, another is a bookish type, and another is a non-nonsense adventurous type who loves aliens (especially Liara). My point is, we need to get away from this idea that providing same-sex romance options is somehow a concession for homosexual and bisexual players ONLY. Anyone can explore these options for their Shepard if they're available.

[Maugrim]

Siansonea II wrote...

My point is, we need to get away from this idea that providing same-sex romance options is somehow a concession for homosexual and bisexual players ONLY. Anyone can explore these options for their Shepard if they're available.

THIS.  So much I swear.  You can't swing a dead cat without hitting a straight woman playing a gay male Warden/Hawke/Shepard  and the straight  male videogamer with the lesbian PC is a well documented beast.  Plus people who 'jump ship' when you have awesome and interesting characters.  Like Yahtzee going gay for Anders and I've seen several woman on these forums who said their supposed to be straight PC's ended up with Isabela.  And beyond the stereotypes there are just the people like Siansonea who actually roleplay.

[jlb524]

I agree...I know quite a significant portion of straight people that play s/s romances. At the end of the day, BW will just look at their metrics on how many play s/s content, not giving a damn what is the actual sexual orientation of these people playing them. Even if it's a smaller percentage than those that play the straight romances, it still is a significant enough number to justify the conclusion of s/s content (this is the case with DA at least).

With ME, it seems that the majority play Paragon while a much smaller percentage play Renegade. Still, the percentage of Renegade players is significant enough to include it (most polls put it around 20% that prefer Renegade). To be honest, it would probably save a lot more dev time cutting out Renegade choices instead of cutting out s/s content from pre-existing LIs. However, they add the choice to play Renegade to provide roleplaying flexibility and to give the player more options (and to increase replayability of the game)...the same could be said for s/s content.

@makenzie

That Gaider quote in your sig is epic...where's that from?

Modifié par jlb524, 20 avril 2011 - 05:14 .

[Maugrim]

jlb524 wrote...

@makenzie

That Gaider quote in your sig is epic...where's that from?

Totally agree with you that it shoudn't really matter one bit whehther or not straight play

It's from this thread.

[Temper_Graniteskul]

Siansonea II said...

My point is, we need to get away from this idea that providing same-sex romance options is somehow a concession for homosexual and bisexual players ONLY. Anyone can explore these options for their Shepard if they're available.

I think that's something that tends to get lost when discussing the s/s LI inclusion issue from the stance of game reflection of personal preference. And with good reason, I think. From a personal standpoint, I'd rather BioWare included s/s LIs out of a sense that GLBT players should be able to see themselves - to the extent that they wish to do so - in their Shepard. It shouldn't have to be based on a cost-effectiveness standpoint, or on the idea that enough straight men and women enjoy playing through s/s LIs so they should be included even though there aren't enough gay players to 'justify' it. The issue - a lack of s/s LIs, and a complete absence of m/m LIs, in ME - is valid on its own merits; it shouldn't need more.

OTOH, I admit, I don't know how much the 'why' matters with what's effectively a business decision. Which is a pity. If it's solely a numbers game, then I'm happy to point out that there are a lot of straight men who play FemShep for various reasons, but who preferentially pick female LIs because that's what they're comfortable with. Similarly, there are straight women who play MShep, but who preferentially pick male LIs - I'm one of them. Then there are the players who roleplay a wide variety of characters with different preferences. Add us all to the GLBT players who don't necessarily cross into that last category, and I think there are definitely numbers to be reckoned with.

[jlb524]

makenzieshepard wrote...

jlb524 wrote...

@makenzie

That Gaider quote in your sig is epic...where's that from?

Totally agree with you that it shoudn't really matter one bit whehther or not straight play

It's from this thread.

Thanks...that's freaking hilarious! 

Temper_Graniteskul wrote...
I think that's something that tends to get lost when discussing the s/s LI inclusion issue from the stance of game reflection of personal preference. And with good reason, I think. From a personal standpoint, I'd rather BioWare included s/s LIs out of a sense that GLBT players should be able to see themselves - to the extent that they wish to do so - in their Shepard. It shouldn't have to be based on a cost-effectiveness standpoint, or on the idea that enough straight men and women enjoy playing through s/s LIs so they should be included even though there aren't enough gay players to 'justify' it. The issue - a lack of s/s LIs, and a complete absence of m/m LIs, in ME - is valid on its own merits; it shouldn't need more.

I would hazard a guess that some of the writers or other employees at BW do care about LGBT players being able to see themselves in their character.  

Still, at the end of the day, the inclusion of any content needs to be justified with the numbers and the $$. 

Modifié par jlb524, 20 avril 2011 - 05:51 .

[ADLegend21]

I wholeheartedly agree about the straight players playing the S/S options. At first my canon femshep was a lesbian for Liara but eventually I made her bisexual so I could try the Male LI's and that's how she's stayed.I'm straight myself, but I have Shepard's of every sexuality.

[Siansonea]

I think that LI and dialog options increase the perception of choice in the game, even if they're options you would never explore. Take Morinth, for example. Even if you never save Morinth, being presented with that option gives you the ability to make a choice to save Samara, to consciously affirm your relationship with her, to deliberately choose the high road, rather than just keep Samara because the game put her on your ship. And punching Khalisah bint Sinan al-Jalani, even if you never do it, knowing you could do it makes your decision not to more meaningful, it makes your Shepard more your own. Even if you never play as a Renegade, or if you never play as FemShep, or never play an Adept, knowing those choices are there makes your own choices feel more like choices. So having same-sex LIs enhances your experience in the game even if you don't choose them, because they give you a wider range to make your selections from. Choosing one from a group of five is more of an actual choice than choosing one of two options. When you have two options, a lot of times it's the one you dislike the least, rather than one you really like.

If choice doesn't matter, why not just have Tali as the only LI, and get rid of FemShep altogether? Or just have MaleHawke and Isabella, dispensing with the other combinations? Why offer choice at all? And why balk at this particular choice?

[ElitePinecone]

jlb524 wrote...
I would hazard a guess that some of the writers or other employees at BW do care about LGBT players being able to see themselves in their character.  

Still, at the end of the day, the inclusion of any content needs to be justified with the numbers and the $$. 

That's a perfectly understandable trade-off - part of the justification Gaider gave for the s/s in DA2 was that the metrics from DAO had shown more players using the s/s options than they had expected. The market was bigger, and they had a fair idea of the number of players that would appreciate it. 

It's also fairly obvious that many at BW are supportive of their diverse fanbase. I've seen some devs post links to articles from gaygamer.net on Twitter and I saw several tweets that were pleased at the repeal of the DADT policy in the United States. It's grossly unfair to paint the company as a whole in a negative light because of a development decision, in my view. One only needs to read the responses of devs on this forum (especially in the DA section) to understand Bioware's positive position, generally. 

That being said, they could only get more awesome if s/s was included  *hint*

[Temper_Graniteskul]

jlb524 wrote...

I would hazard a guess that some of the writers or other employees at BW do care about LGBT players being able to see themselves in their character.  

Still, at the end of the day, the inclusion of any content needs to be justified with the numbers and the $$.

Oh, I know. I mean, s/s content was developed for both ME games, even if it didn't make the final cut, so there's definitely someone(s) in the dev team that cares about the issue/is okay with inclusion. I just wish it was enough to jump that last hurdle into full inclusion, rather than having to resort to the numbers argument.

I mean, how are they supposed to know how many ME players are interested in or enjoy full spectrum s/s content if they only include Liara, and only in the first game?

[catabuca]

Temper_Graniteskul wrote...
.

I mean, how are they supposed to know how many ME players are interested in or enjoy full spectrum s/s content if they only include Liara, and only in the first game?

That right there is an excellent point.

[Ramirez Wolfen]

Wasn't Kaidan originally available for both Shepards?