258 réponses à ce sujet

[Tirigon]

City6 wrote...


I'm perfectly aware of what socialism is, and I can guarentee you it has absolutly nothng to do with bisexual characters in video games.

I'd recommend opening a book, rather than watching a particular news network.

I wish you were perfectly aware that Iamnohater is simply a troll, and a bad one at that.

[City6]

Tirigon wrote...

City6 wrote...


I'm perfectly aware of what socialism is, and I can guarentee you it has absolutly nothng to do with bisexual characters in video games.

I'd recommend opening a book, rather than watching a particular news network.

I wish you were perfectly aware that Iamnohater is simply a troll, and a bad one at that.

But the moustache is so trustworthy.

[Iamnotahater]

Tirigon wrote...

City6 wrote...


I'm perfectly aware of what socialism is, and I can guarentee you it has absolutly nothng to do with bisexual characters in video games.

I'd recommend opening a book, rather than watching a particular news network.

I wish you were perfectly aware that Iamnohater is simply a troll, and a bad one at that.

What is a good troll? One that eats children instead of trolls forums?

How does one become perfectly aware? What if she is just aware of the fact you are moron and are bringing nothing to the discussion is that enough?

BTW I'm not a troil. I created this handle before this thread was created and once again it wasn't created by me.
My handle also has nothing to do with GTBL and as far as I was concerned I was done with the subject it's the "trolls" that keep drawing me in by not letting the thread die and keep bumping it.

Modifié par Iamnotahater, 24 mars 2011 - 04:17 .

[didymos1120]

Tirigon wrote...

nijnij wrote...

Good point, lol.......

Enh.  Not really.  "This thread" image macros are just as trite as "Oh Noes!  My game has TEH GHEY!" threads.  They're just basically harmless, and far less obnoxious, what with the lack of homophobic paranoia and whatnot.

[-leadintea-]

City6 wrote...

Thunderbringer wrote...

^ Where's option 4? Do it the same as Origins?

So it's ethically fine for gay players to have a romance that also is open to straight players, but not the other way around?

I'm not talking about whether something is "ethical" or not, I'm talking about whether I can be immersed and actually take the character seriously in an intimate situation. If you want to bring morality into this, how does it look like, "ethically", when a character's sexuality is easily changed depending on something like the gender of the PC whereas many homosexuals know, painfully I might add for some, that changing sexuality is NOT as fluid as that? If anything, "ethically" speaking, this is much worse than a fairness issue since the whole act of not being able to change sexuality is pretty much the counterargument of homosexuals being the way they are and this game goes entirely against that. It's like someone telling me that I can be heterosexual if the right girl comes along even though I know that's an imposibility.

But like I said, I don't care about how ethical it is for heterosexuals to have 1 more romance than homosexuals; it really doesn't matter, especially since heteros still get 1 more romance than we do. What I hate the most about this whole thing is how unrealistic it is. I can't really appreciate these characters romantically as I could the ones in Origins because their sexuality is determined by something so stupid as the gender of the PC, rather than by their background. Honestly though, I'm not even mad about this decision. When it gets down to it, there is so much more to the characters than their sexuality, yet due to the unrealistic way it was implemented, I can't take the characters seriously as romances.

[DarthSliver]

I will say I enjoyed the Romance options, even the most unlikely one Mage Hawke and Fenris. The game was overall fun, but the Romances themselves made it much more enjoyable and you forgot about the copy and pasted dungeons in the moment of achieving your Romance. So I am saying I really found them to be a great distraction in the game and a good distraction too.
Most healthy part of the game.

[Tirigon]

Iamnotahater wrote...

What is a good troll? One that eats children instead of trolls forums?

One that is funny instead of insulting and annoying.

The children eating certainly helps, though.
Even though they mustn´t be too young. Virgins aged 18-25 taste best, imo. Sadly they´re a bit rare nowadays.
Well-trained soldiers are fine too, however, if a bit hard to chew. But the fight that is necessary before the feast is always fun, and helps you not getting too lazy.

[optimates0193]

nijnij wrote...

optimates0193 wrote...

nijnij wrote...

optimates0193 wrote...
The cynic in me says at worse Bioware did this in an attempt to drum up controversy to get free press, ala ME 1.

I think you're seeing more than there is to it, they just know from the boards that romances were a huge part of Dragon Age Origins' appeal and they're doing a bit of fanservice. The fact that people complain about an option that is available for others is quite selfish and immature to me.

I understand where you and city are coming from and I can appreciate your points and why you feel this way. That said, I don't agree. In my first post in this thread, I explained my reasoning. You can see the full thing (it's at the end of page 2 I think) but basically, it comes down to fact that the way it's setup kills the suspension of disbelief (at least for myself) and that ultimately, it weakens the characters and makes it impossible, or at least, far more difficult for the writers to make them relatable and believable.

Now, the above is purely subjective. I don't think we're going to convince each other any time soon, because we value different things in games. Neither is right or wrong, we can just state our positions and hope Bioware agrees with our points.

But yeah, when it comes to some sort of meta argument that people are upset because others have the choice to have a gay relationship, that is stupid and you won't find me arguing that. Same thing with we need to protect the children. If you as a parent don't want your kid to see that sort of content, don't censor the content, control your kid. But really, I don't think that the large majority of people who are against this feel that way. I think these options just feel very gamey and only serve to ruin the immersion and make the player realize exactly what they're doing, playing a game. Immersion and being able to suspend your disbelief is important and this serves to have the opposite effect.

I think the gay romances are just as well implemented as the straight ones : they're not "given", you need friendship/rivalry to start them, and they're coherent with the characters' personalities : for example Anders is an apostate mage not afraid to live in the open, leave his manifesto everywhere and resort to terrorism, for him to wait to be courted instead of hitting on Hawke would be off-character IMO. The fact that they change his backstory (> Karl) if you play male shows that they didn't want the option to sound cheap and actually made an effort.

Besides, when you think about it, a hottie like Isabela falling for your character isn't particularly realistic, yet it's there because that's part of the fun of games and fiction in general, and I can understand that gay people would feel a bit disappointed if they didn't get to romance their favorite companions as well, I'd certainly feel that way. And nothing is known of Fenris' sexuality until the player decides to come onto him themself, meaning the characters aren't all bisexual : Anders is either explicitly gay or explicitly heterosexual (according to the gender you picked), Fenris is supposedly asexual until you choose to romance him, I think the only canonically bisexual character is Isabela.

So the only instance of those orientations being off-character/suspension of disbelief being broken is in a parallel playthrough, meaning it's not relevant. What's the point of replaying at all if you want the same story ? Why have three classes and multiple choices ? Would you say that Bethany/Carver surviving is off-character because canonically they're supposed to die in the prologue ? The fact is those changes are not relevant because they happen in a parallel universe, and they actually matched the backstories (> Karl) with those changes in order to make them feel real. So I'm all for it.

I posted the following drawing in an older thread about the same thing because the posters weren't being as open to discussion as you seem, so don't take it as anything more than cheap humour, but I think it will illustrate the rest of my point more eloquently ^^...

A lot of what you stated is subjective of course, which is probably why there's so much disagreement on this issue. I think it's perfectly realistic that anyone Hawke travels with might find him attractive. After all, he's the Champion. And it's perfectly normal for people of matching sexual orientations who are working together in small groups to develop an attraction.

Really, the term bisexual isn't a correct one to apply in this game and I'll admit I've been using it in error . The reality, I feel, is far worse in that these characters don't have a sexual identity at all. They simply match whatever Hawke is. If Hawke is male, 2 of the 4 male companions are now gay and 2 of the 3 female companions are straight. If Hawke is female, those 2 male companions are now straight and the 2 female companions are now gay. (NOTE: Isabela is probalby the one character you can consider truly bisexual)

Now think about that from a writer's perspective. A person's sexual identiy goes a long way in defining that person. It's not the sole thing of course, but it's a large part of it. This affects how the characters are written, and I feel it affects it in a negative way. A writer can't craft a compelling and realistic persona when that character essentially has no sexual identity. They're basically just a vehicle at that point to deliver a weak romance plot that conveys no emotional attachment to the player. The story as a whole is weaker for it.

The drawing you posted is just not accurate whatsoever. To throw your hands up and say, "But there's dragons!" when someone complains about immersion is a cheap way out of discussion. I'd ask you to read this link:
http://en.wikipedia....on_of_disbelief

Suspension of disbelief is important in any creative media. It's what allows us to look past the fact that Aragorn just slaughtered 15 Uruk-Hai single handledly instead of being killed horribly and remain engaged in the experience. A world has rules that are set by its creator, and as long as the action takes place within those rules, the player will remain engaged. At the same time, the player is going to introduce their own rules; we draw from our culture and society to help make sense of certain things.

So in a fantasy world where magic exists, dragons aren't going to break my immersion. The laws of the game state they do exist. Not only that, but they match my conception of what a dragon is based on mythology and what popular culture has ingrained in me. The laws the creator of the world set aren't absolute though. If Dragon Age's dragons looked like a porcupine instead, that would break my suspension of disbelief, because everything I know about dragons from other aspects of my culture tell me that's not correct.

The same goes for the lack of sexual identity of the characters. Essentially, the creator of this world has set a rule that 43% of the population is homosexual or bisexual (This is based on the percentage of companions that are either gay or bisexual, which is 3 out of 7 with a male Hawke). For many individuals, this completely flys in the face of what their experience is and as a result, breaks their immersion. I can definitely understand why someone who is homosexual or lives in a homosexual community might disagree with me, because in their experience, that may actually be correct and so it doesn't jar them out of the game.

It's not something that can simply be ignored either. Some of the characters are extremely aggressive and difficult to avoid and when that flirt option comes up with others who are a bit more subdued, it's essentially the game screaming at you that, "Hey, you can so make a move on this person!" It makes the player aware of exactly what that person's orientation is, and as I explained above, that's enough to destroy the immersion for some people. I know I was scratching my head, thinking, "What the hell? Is everyone guy in my group except Varric homosexual? That seems odd."

This doesn't mean that homosexual relationships don't have a place in the story. Look at David Gaider's Book, "The Calling." Two of the Warden's, it's revealed, are actually gay lovers. And you know what? It added a lot of depth to those characters and it made it all the more heartbreaking when certain scenes unfold (I don't want to include any spoilers). I really have no issue with it, I just feel that if Bioware wants to include it, they should write a character that's actually gay, not just one that fits whatever genitalia Hawke happens to have.

Really, I don't think Bioware was trying to be progressive. I think their design philosophy calls for making everything accessible to everyone, and this is one of the results of that. No matter what, there are going to be some players that like it and some that don't. I believe it was actually David Gaider that stated once, "You can try. You can try to please everyone. But what probably is going
to happen is you're not going to do each aspect well. What you're going
to wind up doing is disappointing everybody."

Are some players going to be disappointed one way or another? Yes. And that's up to Bioware to decide ultimately as to who it will be. But with how they've approached this, I feel like they're trying to please everyone by sacrificing the depth of the characters, and so in the end, disappointing most.

[Sharn01]

For all we know the characters where Bi, and there is nothing wrong with that, it could even be a very defining thing for the characters.  The problem is that, even though the npc interaction that was there was very good, there was very little of it.  We never get to just talk to the companions or learn anything about them unless it happened to come up in the 10 or so minute of conversation that took place between them over the course of each 3 year period.  These characters could very well be complete, being bisexual could have just been an against the odds coincidence, lucky for Hawke, but we will never know, because while Hawke learned a whole lot about these people, the players learned next to nothing.