David Gaider wrote...
Ah. Well, if you put it that way-- yes, they are indeed all rogues. But they're also very different personalities. The fact that they are all rogue class (or similar? Jade Empire didn't have rogues) doesn't strike me as particularly relevant, but I guess I can sort of see what you're saying.
Still, characters can be broken down into archetypes very easily. You just need to reduce a character (or a plot) enough and suddenly you're going to see commonalities between them. If you do that, essentially we write the same characters all the time (there's a chart someone did recently, and while you really have to stretch to make some of those categories fit it does more or less apply). Thing is, I'm not sure what that gets you. To me, Zevran is more "flamboyant assassin" and that distinguishes him from any other character I've done more than the fact that he also happens to wear light armor and use rogue skills.
Oh believe me, I understand that. I'm aware you guys didn't mean anything by it (to the extent that the writers on the various games were even aware of what the others were doing.) and this was in fact my argument to Collider when I pointed out the Mass Effect characters who were originally intended to be romanceable by either gender and subsequently scrapped. (Not that your team had anything to do with ME's characters.)
To understand why "rogues" especially might be objectionable, you have to understand a bit of gay culture. What do rogue characters have in common? Well, they are all good at hiding and lying - wearing a mask to confuse observers and redirect suspicion. Even Leliana - perhaps the most morally upright character in Dragon Age next to Wynne - is very well practiced at deception and trickery.
This is unfortunately a practice that just about
every gay man and woman, regardless of background, is all too familiar with. As a culture, it's the largest internal pressure we face; just getting our own to stand up and be counted is such a sheer obstacle in itself, and one that
has to be surmounted to even begin taking on the external ones like social intolerance and legal policy. It's the whole reason why we have Pride parades around the world, and the reason why "coming out" is such a big deal. In other words, we're faced with this issue - this tendency toward subterfuge - every day in the real world. That's why it would be so nice to have courageous and
straightforward gay/bi individuals in our games. A bisexual Sten or Morrigan would have been a breath of fresh air - both characters will look you in the eye and say "this is who I am and this is what I like; there's nothing wrong with me, so find a way to deal with it." And I can almost guarantee every gay member of your fanbase would love that.
There's also the much smaller unfortunate implication that being gay makes you less of a fighter; e.g. Zevran needs to backstab to win because he can't parry properly with his limp wrists in a face-to-face fight. Rogue appears to be a "safe" character class for gay NPCs because all the "real men" like Sten and Oghren are still straight. This one doesn't bother me nearly as much, because my gay Warden is more than capable of wielding a Claymore and wading into the thick of battle in his Dragonhide full plate; I'm just including it for posterity's sake as one of the points I've seen raised on gay gaming forums and threads similar to this one.
David Gaider wrote...
And I know this is meaningless to you guys, but we don't really look at characters from one BioWare game to the next. I write characters based on what characters I've done previously, and what new ones I want to try. If a character I make has some commonalities with, say, a Mass Effect character or a Jade Empire character it doesn't mean much to me because I didn't work on those games. If anything you can be certain we'll try some new things in DA2 simply because it's the same writing team, and thus the writers will be interested in trying new stuff. That's simply how it is.
This is totally new insight for me, and why I enjoy having "face-time" with the Dev team so much.
it's hard for me to look at a Bioware game and think "independent writing teams working under a common brand" as opposed to "One company, one creative vision."
The problem is that I am not alone in that perception. Every article I've read about Mass Effect's lack of homosexuality, for example, mentions Dragon Age too: the
Gamecritics article, the
IGN Interview, and
various blogs, for instance. Your teams are perceived as one entity, whether that was your intention or not; that is the blessing and curse of a unified brand.
Why does that perception matter to Dragon Age? I can almost guarantee that if Hawke does not have any m/m romances in DA2, Mass Effect's similar lack will be correlated in the blogosphere and the whole ascribed to some new direction in Bioware or even EA leadership. Bioware's reputation as a company will be called into question even though you are, as I now understand it, independent development teams with common branding.
Mr. Gaider, again let me say that yours is by far the most progressive voice I've heard out of Bioware, and for that I thank you immensely. Just the fact that you say your team
might try something different gives me so much hope and excitement for DA2. I will absolutely be there at launch day.
David Gaider wrote...
I only get that way when people whine about how flamboyant Zevran was, or complain about how he wasn't the "right type of gay". That makes me want to dress him up in sparkly armor, talk with an extravagant lisp and be even more kick-ass than he was before. But I am simply perverse that way.
Maker's Breath, anything but that!
*Takes off shoe and reaches for ketchup.*
Modifié par Optimystic_X, 16 septembre 2010 - 03:33 .
Ce sujet est fermé
Retour en haut
