54 réponses à ce sujet

[The Dead Milkman]

Like all Warhammer fans you're an idiot who misses everything.

Warhammer didn't invent Dark Fantasy, they didn't even do it well.

DA:O is filled with bigotry. When a society is different from yours, I don't know why you would expect it's prejudices to be the same as yours.

[Chrysoula]

 I want to point out that if elves and humans can procreate, they're technically the same species.

The fact that they look different just makes them easier to identify when they get ideas and start acting uppity.

Claiming that applying bigotry and other social mistreatment to them 'doesn't count' because they're 'not human' is kind of horrifying, because that excuse has been used throughout real life history to justify abuses to those who look or act differently. Not human. Not us. It is always easier to objectify them. And it is the first step down a sad road that has been trod many, many times before.

I certainly have no problem identifying with the 'non-human' races, myself. I think the best benefit of a 'dark' fantasy is probably to help people get a little better at understanding those with different perspectives and motivations than their own. After all, that's where the darkness and personal conflicts come from.

[Well]

Alocormin wrote...

Umm, this is a PC game?  Yeah, I know, I'm stupid

Wow I thought the same thing.It is a fantasy game at that so why would it have anything to do with the real world?
I have newspapers for that.Oh wait alot of fantasy in that...

[Drasanil]

The Dead Milkman wrote...
Like all Warhammer fans you're an idiot who misses everything.

Given that you are an American I would be tempted to point out the inherent irony that comes with you leveling such an accusation, but that would be a generalisation and generalisations are bad.

Any ways, back on topic...

Chrysoula wrote...

I want to point out that if elves and humans can procreate, they're technically the same species.

The fact that they look different just makes them easier to identify when they get ideas and start acting uppity.

True on both counts, no argument here.

Claiming that applying bigotry and other social mistreatment to them 'doesn't count' because they're 'not human' is kind of horrifying, because that excuse has been used throughout real life history to justify abuses to those who look or act differently. Not human. Not us. It is always easier to objectify them. And it is the first step down a sad road that has been trod many, many times before.

Horrifying because it's true, and that's were it kind of falls flat. Most fantasy fans already have strong preconceived images of what are 'elves' and what are 'dwarves' most of the time those images include "not like me/not human"
which lessens the impact of their possible mistreatment and discrimination. You don't need to be actively thinking it either, it works perfectly well on a subconscious level all on it's own, we are prewired to be able to empathise more readily with people who we can identify with, and it's a lot more likely you'd identify with a human than an elf or dwarf.

Yes on an intellectual level their mistreatment is bad, but on an emotional level it simply doesn't have the same impact, if Bioware did a really good job with making the origins feel different from one another that could change how ever. 

Modifié par Drasanil, 02 novembre 2009 - 03:52 .

[Suhiira]

Drasanil wrote...

Now I do understand the reasoning behind this, Bioware wants to avoid offending people and loosing sales, and they want to allow you to play the character you see fit. To be frank I agree with them, you should be able to play the character you want, the way you want it and make the choices you want, one of the biggest draws of an RPG is of course choice.

How ever, this is where I think Bioware went a bit too far, they gave us all the choice we wanted when designing and playing our characters but made a setting designed to smoothly accomidate such choices with out much fuss, in essence it doesn't seem to make a whit of difference what choice you make, it will all be treated the same. A female noble will be treated the same way as a male one, a gay dwarf with a things for elves will receive no more trouble than the average human family next door etc... etc..

Part of what makes a setting 'dark' for me especially when it appears to be a quasi-medival one, is that there will be ignorance, superstition, bigotry, sexism, exploitation, religious persecution and that your character will have to deal with it and/or even exploit it to further his/her own ends. This is where Dragon Age seems to fall short in the 'dark' category, every one seems to be equal with in the set parameters and with exception of some token discrimination against a non-human subgroup everything seems to go.

As you said, if they had a "realistic" level of bigotry, prejudice, and ignorance in the game it would severely limit player choice.  Chances are any origin BUT noble male warrior would be nearly unplayable because it would be nearly impossible to interact with the social circles and other races and convince them to work together against the blight.  And even Mr. Noble Warrior would have significant problems.

This is one of those places where the "fantasy" element of an RPG has to take priority over "realism".  Because if it didn't you'd wind up with a game where you have a only preset character you play (Planescape: Torment, The Witcher, Mass Effect).  While there's nothing wrong with such games, half the fun for many when playing a RPG is taking someone "outside the box" and working to overcome the issues they have and becoming the "hero".

While I suppose it would be possibe for game designers to make a game where all the social political etc. issues were included you'd run into problems in that A) 3/4ths the game would be dealing with this sort of thing    Anyone that DIDN'T play a socially disadvantaged character would miss out on most of the games content  C) 99% of players have no clue what dark/mid-ages society was like and would scream bloody murder when their female or non-human character was burned at the stake as a heritic for dareing to challenge the commonly accepted social norms.