258 réponses à ce sujet

[Ryzaki]

ishmaeltheforsaken wrote...

Ryzaki wrote...

For the love of christ.

All characters aren't bisexual.

I believe about 6 are. And only 4 of them aren't ****s.

Stop your misinformation smear campaign.

THEY'RE ALL BI.

Wat. 

Yeah all the LI's are bi everyone else isn't though. 

An I love how making more work for oneself = lazy. 

Really lazy to give yourself extra work. 

Modifié par Ryzaki, 23 mars 2011 - 08:00 .

[BeljoraDien]

If my sarcasm is still not apparent, then allow me to state clearly: I'm being sarcastic.

highcastle wrote...

read Kinsey. Read Winterson. Read Woolfe. 

Yeah, we all took anthro 101. Personally, I don't agree with those conclusions, but I'm not opposed to them as a matter of principle. Either way, having characters change their sexuality (whether clearly defined or more of a sliding scale) is, in fact, unrealistic.

I realize the change in sexuality can only be detected using metagame knowledge, but turning a blind eye to such knowledge takes a purposeful ignorance. Games that provide choice are best when there are static aspects. For example, if the first time you play a game, you make certain choices, and it rains on Friday... it would make the most sense that on all subsequent playthroughs where you make dramatically different choices, it still ends up raining on Friday.

I'm thinking mostly along the lines of Visual Novels... I've played games where the entire setting practically changes based on what 'route' you went, while I've played others where the only direct changes are as a result of your choices. I found the latter to be particularly ingenius, leaving me in moments of awe as I realize what my new choices have spawned. So, as a matter of principle, and a matter of detail, I would have to side with those who say to leave stuff you have no in-game control over the same on every playthrough.

On the other hand, it is a very low priority as DA2 needs a serious overhaul on so many aspects... and that, even should they get the game back to DA:O quality in every aspect, DA:O didn't handle romance very well either... so why waste time trying to fix something that they can't seem to get right even at their pinnacle?

With that said, I'm really just biding time in this thread 'til it's inevitably locked and lost forever. I just want to have some fun with something that really doesn't matter that much.

[the_one_54321]

Liking or disliking the writing is not role playing. Metagaming is not involved. You are outside of the game and your enjoyment of the narrative is outside the game.

[rubydog1]

BlameBot wrote...

Um, you start the game fighting off hordes of Darkspawn for your life, and kill a giant troll that just smashed in your brothers puny face. An oversized spider isn't that big a deal in the scheme, really. 

In a fantasy setting, it's not. That it's randomly dropped on me could be forgiven. That I don't react with surprise can be chalked up to my warrior Hawke's unswerving confidence with a blade. That I don't have blood splattered all over me ten minutes later can be chalked up to lots and lots of Shout Wipes. Varric keeps them in his coat pockets, along with 20 health potions, 20 stamina draughts, 20 lyrium potions, a large selection of jewelry, a spare set of armor or two, some unused weapons, all of our party cash, and a bunch of garbage he picked up off some dead bodies.

But if one of his the blokes in the party starts to fancy me and my giant phallus weapon that is almost as long as I am tall, well, sir, that's where I draw my line in the believability sand!

[Iamnotahater]

ishmaeltheforsaken wrote...

CaptainIsabela wrote...

I am surprised this topic is back up for discussion..ho hum..

Well, the OP's doing a decent job of actually having a legitimate issue, instead of just being a homophobic troll.

It's not homphobic or homophobia. It's about uncessary uncomfortable situations detracting away from an end-users gaming experience and the laziness surrounding reusing romantic dialog for both genders and making everyone bi.

I also think it presents them as weak and unable to make up their mind. At least Merill projects that personality already it doesn't really fit with Anders. Who seems extremely decisive when it comes to blood magic and mages.

Modifié par Iamnotahater, 23 mars 2011 - 08:10 .

[the_one_54321]

Ryzaki wrote...
An I love how making more work for oneself = lazy. 

Really lazy to give yourself extra work.

You're making a false assumption.
To create more options they should create more characters instead of making less characters more variable. Making less characters more variable is less work than writing more characters.

[Funker Shepard]

Bathead wrote...

I really don't see why this is even a big deal at all. Seems like a non-issue to me.

I guess complaining about the recycled levels was only enough material for a week. Now that we're on the second, they have to start pulling up this totally random stuff.

Or, this is the best solution to the insane amount of whines that we had before over how discriminating it was that only people of gender x could romance party member y (don't even get me started on Baldur's Gate and the racial limitations to romances!).

Personally, i think this is the wrong approach to it. All your characters exist in parallel universes, where the NPCs are attracted to your character SPECIFICALLY. Regardless of the gender. In fact, even being a straight male, I've always liked the thought that the people who've loved me would've loved me even if I'd been a dark-haired girl with a blood smear on my nose.

[City6]

Iamnotahater wrote...

ishmaeltheforsaken wrote...

CaptainIsabela wrote...

I am surprised this topic is back up for discussion..ho hum..

Well, the OP's doing a decent job of actually having a legitimate issue, instead of just being a homophobic troll.

It's not homphobic or homophobia. It's about uncessary uncomfortable situations detracting away from an end-users gaming experience and the laziness surrounding reusing romantic dialog for both genders and making everyone bi.

I also think it presents them as weak and unable to make up their mind. At least Merill projects that personality already it doesn't really fit with Anders. Who seems extremely decisive when it comes to blood magic and mages.

You think bisexuals are "weak who can't make up their mind"?

I think we've found the issue here, and it's nothing to do with Dragon Age.

[Chewin]

Funny. There's a similiar thread over at the Mass Effect forum discussing bisexual companions.

Modifié par Chewin3, 23 mars 2011 - 08:07 .

[mesmerizedish]

Iamnotahater wrote...

It's not homphobic or homophobia. It's about uncessary uncomfortable situations detracting away from an end-users gaming experience and the laziness surrounding reusing romantic dialog for both genders and making everyone bi.

I also think it presents them as weak and unable to make up their mind. At least Merill projects that personality already it doesn't really fit with Anders. Who seems extremely decisive when it comes to blood magic and mages.

As I said, the OP is not being homophobic. You, however, are toeing the line. Don't force this thread to get locked too.

[Ryzaki]

the_one_54321 wrote...

Ryzaki wrote...
An I love how making more work for oneself = lazy. 

Really lazy to give yourself extra work.

You're making a false assumption.
To create more options they should create more characters instead of making less characters more variable. Making less characters more variable is less work than writing more characters.

No. 

If all the LIs weren't bi we wouldn't necessarily have more companions. We might still have the same 4 companions with only 2 of them being bi. That would've been less work. As it is the devs did more work. 

As for variable. I think adding the bi options made the four options more varied in their dealings with an heterosexual relationship vs a homosexual one. 

Modifié par Ryzaki, 23 mars 2011 - 08:10 .

[the_one_54321]

Funker Shepard wrote...
I guess complaining about the recycled levels was only enough material for a week. Now that we're on the second, they have to start pulling up this totally random stuff.

Or, this is the best solution to the insane amount of whines that we had before over how discriminating it was that only people of gender x could romance party member y (don't even get me started on Baldur's Gate and the racial limitations to romances!).

Or instead, maybe BioWare can actually go through some rigorous level designing and character writing? Maybe that would be better than "we reused this dungeoun 5 times and instead of writing more characters we just made all four LIs bisexual."

[City6]

the_one_54321 wrote...

highcastle wrote...
How is it a bad job? I've thus far played through Anders and Fenris' romances with a male character. Next on the docket it Isabela with a female character, but I'm not there yet, so I can only speak to what I've experienced firsthand.

For the third time in this thread I'm going to mention that Anders' "coming out" if you will is one of the more intelligent and "postmodern" views on sexuality. He says roughly, "I fall in love with a whole person. Is it wrong if they happen to be the same as you?" This could come straight out of Orlando where he falls in love with Sascha without knowing her gender, then thinking she's a male, then realizing she's female. Gender has nothing to do with his attraction. He's attracted to her as a person first.

This is completely valid. It's also not a stance many people take, particularly in popular media. To see something like this come up in a video game was surprising, to say the least. To me, Anders comes across as "queer" in the sense he's not completely heterosexual. But I also wouldn't call him bisexual since gender doesn't seem to factor into his views on sexual attraction at all. Isabela, on the other hand, is a more traditionally bisexual character. She's definitely interested in men and women for what their genders offer (consider her "men are good for one thing, women are good for six" line).

There is still sexual diversity in this game. The ways each character expresses their sexuality are different and unique to them. With Merrill and Fenris, their views are a little harder to target since they don't mention much about their preferences, but they're still different from each other and from Anders and Isabela.

Once more, if you're uncomfortable with this content, don't flirt with someone of the same gender. Only Isabela and Anders will flirt with you first (and the latter only if you take a specific dialogue choice). Fenris and Merrill never make their preferences known unless you flirt first, so you could concievably go through the whole game pretending their straight or even asexual.

Interesting dialog with Anders there. So lets say then that Anders and Isabela are the more believable of the characters. Still, I didn't feel anything gay from in Awakenings.

I'm not at all uncomfortable with the characters not being heterosexual. I've been hit on by gay men in real life plenty of times, and though it was a little rough needing to tell them I've flattered but straight every time, it was definitely more flattering than uncomfortable.

But this is where it's done poorly: everyone you can romance is bisexual? Really? All four of them? 

I know that this makes the folks who want to option to romance any of the available characters happy. But not me. It says "lazy" to me.

Anders did not seem entirey straight-and-narrow at all in Awakenings.

I remember thinking for most of the game "Ah ha! This is the answer to all the complaints that Alistair's bromance wouldn't blossom into love in DA:O", and I was honestly surprised he never out-and-out hit on me.

I guess if you weren't listening for it, you missed it.

[the_one_54321]

Ryzaki wrote...
If all the LIs weren't bi we wouldn't necessarily have more companions. We might still have the same 4 companions with only 2 of them being bi. That would've been less worker.

That's a possibility. But I've been saying that they should have written more characters instead.

[BlameBot]

{delete me.]

Modifié par BlameBot, 23 mars 2011 - 08:13 .

[City6]

ishmaeltheforsaken wrote...

Iamnotahater wrote...

It's not homphobic or homophobia. It's about uncessary uncomfortable situations detracting away from an end-users gaming experience and the laziness surrounding reusing romantic dialog for both genders and making everyone bi.

I also think it presents them as weak and unable to make up their mind. At least Merill projects that personality already it doesn't really fit with Anders. Who seems extremely decisive when it comes to blood magic and mages.

As I said, the OP is not being homophobic. You, however, are toeing the line. Don't force this thread to get locked too.

The OP doesn't seem homophobic, but he is pretty classically heterosexist (ie "Anders didn't announce he wasn't straight, therefore Anders is straight")

[highcastle]

optimates0193 wrote...

I'm going to disagree with you strongly on your points. First off, while you may be correct that sexuality and attraction extend beyond simple gender, what you're ignoring is the effects of culture and a society's values. While everyone may be bisexual to some degree (a notion which I don't necessarily agree with) that doesn't mean that everyone would act on it or even consider it for that matter. We're just as shaped by our culture and environment and many societies simply don't encourage this, at least openly. Considering the fact that you're dealing with what is obviously a society based on medeival times which includes a strong, dogmatic church, it seems unlikely the game world would support it either.

I'm not ignoring culture or society. If you read the authors I mentioned (particularly Woolfe and to a lesser extent Winterson, who was influenced by Woolfe) they pay particular attention to culture and society. The entire point of Orlando is to show how different time periods affect the same person (the novel, if you don't know, is about a man who lives for about a hundred years, becomes a woman, lives for a few hundred more, and never ages more than thirty or forty or years). We are absolutely shaped by our culture. That's where the term "gender roles" originates. Roles, from a sociological standpoint, are the cultural expectations of our statuses. One status is gender. Thus, gender role.

However, none of this has any bearing on sexual attraction. We're attracted to whoever we're attracted to. What we choose to do with it, how we acknowledge it (if) we acknowledge it, that's culturally and socially influenced. Yet you make the mistake in assuming Thedas is like Earth. It's already been stated by the devs that Thedas has no moral hang-ups on homosexuality.

I'm not going to get all preachy about why homosexuality or "queer" attitudes have faced a hard time in the West. That's an issue for a different board. I will say it's definitely culturally based, and Thedas--influenced by medieval times or not--does not share that culture.

As to your point regarding realism, it's really a simple point to get. All creative media takes advantage of something called suspension of disbelief.  A game has to create a believable world. The creators do this by setting rules. These rules have to make logical sense, and they're going to be influenced by a person's judgement and value. If I'm playing a fantasy game, I expect to see dragons. It's a long standing mythological creature, it's not going to break my suspension of disbelief, because it makes logical sense to be within the game, along with wizards tossing fireballs.

On the other hand, when every character is bisexual, that doesn't make any logical sense. It's gamey, clearly done to make every romance accessible. It doesn't make sense within either world (The real world or the game world) and so all it accomplishes is to distance the player from the game.

We'll have to agree to disagree on this one. First, not every character is queer. You can flirt with Aveline, but she's only interested in Donnic and expresses no interest in females at all. There's also Sebastian, a quasi-romance open only to females. There is some sense of heterosexuality here. It's not gone. And each of the queer characters is queer in a different way, as you would expect of something as dynamic as sexuality.

Perhaps it's the queer-friendly area I live in. Perhaps it's who I choose to associate with. But it's not uncommon at all where I am to have four queer friends. You'll notice (maybe) I use the word queer instead of bisexual. Personally, I like the term more. I think it breaks us out of those binary definitions so many like to insist upon. Secondly, it happens to be more accurate, especially with regards to Anders, who sees sexual attraction as separate from gender.

Realisim is open to interpretation as much as reality is subjective. I percieve DA2's treatment of sexuality as realistic because the characters approach it in distinct ways, each influenced by their past experiences. I suppose if you live in an area where queer culture is largely closeted or if you choose to ignore it, then it comes across as unrealistic. That doesn't make it so. It just means your reality is different from mine.

Wow, that got really post-modern.

[Ryzaki]

the_one_54321 wrote...

Ryzaki wrote...
If all the LIs weren't bi we wouldn't necessarily have more companions. We might still have the same 4 companions with only 2 of them being bi. That would've been less worker.

That's a possibility. But I've been saying that they should have written more characters instead.

I'm fine with the way things are. They don't seem overly unrealistic compared to what occurs aleady in game and everyone has a choice. Those that don't want said choice are free to ignore it. 
*shrugs*

I for the most part ignored sparing Loghain. I didn't get up in arms about how unrealistic the choice was (even when I did think it was silly and contrived). 

[BlameBot]

the_one_54321 wrote...

Ryzaki wrote...
If all the LIs weren't bi we wouldn't necessarily have more companions. We might still have the same 4 companions with only 2 of them being bi. That would've been less worker.

That's a possibility. But I've been saying that they should have written more characters instead.

Or, you know, just written the characters they had better.

[mesmerizedish]

City6 wrote...

The OP doesn't seem homophobic, but he is pretty classically heterosexist (ie "Anders didn't announce he wasn't straight, therefore Anders is straight")

It's just that there's actually a lot of reasonable discourse going on, and as soon as people start crying homophobia without cause, or as soon as people start actually being homophobic, that's all going to end. Mr. Epler doesn't actually enjoy banning people for homophobia, so let's try to cut him a break

[the_one_54321]

City6 wrote...
I guess if you weren't listening for it, you missed it.

Perhaps.

But here, let me throw the flip side in this for a moment. Keep in mind what follows is satire that is made to illustrate a particular point.

Why aren't there any straight characters? I feel so left out. There is no one there that really fits with what I was hoping to see in a LI. This is almost like discrimination. They only wanted to make the people happy who wanted to see gay relationships and they completely ignored those of us that just wanted a plain straight relationship. Totally unfair. Why couldn't they make just one straight female? That's all I would have needed.

[City6]

Ryzaki wrote...

the_one_54321 wrote...

Ryzaki wrote...
If all the LIs weren't bi we wouldn't necessarily have more companions. We might still have the same 4 companions with only 2 of them being bi. That would've been less worker.

That's a possibility. But I've been saying that they should have written more characters instead.

I'm fine with the way things are. They don't seem overly unrealistic compared to what occurs aleady in game and everyone has a choice. Those that don't want said choice are free to ignore it. 
*shrugs*

I for the most part ignored sparing Loghain. I didn't get up in arms about how unrealistic the choice was (even when I did think it was silly and contrived). 

I remember my main concern was with needing a new tank, rather than any story implications.

[Iamnotahater]

ishmaeltheforsaken wrote...

Iamnotahater wrote...

It's not homphobic or homophobia. It's about uncessary uncomfortable situations detracting away from an end-users gaming experience and the laziness surrounding reusing romantic dialog for both genders and making everyone bi.

I also think it presents them as weak and unable to make up their mind. At least Merill projects that personality already it doesn't really fit with Anders. Who seems extremely decisive when it comes to blood magic and mages.

As I said, the OP is not being homophobic. You, however, are toeing the line. Don't force this thread to get locked too.

Well I'm sorry it does. At least with Isabella it sorts of fits in with her character (filrty - using a colleqouism here), Merill suggests within dialogue a resentment for Isabella and willingness to expolore romantic boundaries.

Anders just doesn't fit. He is obsessive and determined about everything he does (mages, blood magic, templars) and there is no middle ground (ie peace). But he can't doesn't decide whether he likes boys or girls? Sorry doesn't fit.

Modifié par Iamnotahater, 23 mars 2011 - 08:20 .

[highcastle]

BeljoraDien wrote...

If my sarcasm is still not apparent, then allow me to state clearly: I'm being sarcastic.

highcastle wrote...

read Kinsey. Read Winterson. Read Woolfe. 

Yeah, we all took anthro 101. Personally, I don't agree with those conclusions, but I'm not opposed to them as a matter of principle. Either way, having characters change their sexuality (whether clearly defined or more of a sliding scale) is, in fact, unrealistic.

Sexuality is fluid. You may not believe so. You don't have to. Maybe you've never had a moment of being attracted to someone of the same sex. That's fine. And it's hard for many people to consider being attracted to someone without taking into account their sex. Also fine. These are difficult concepts to wrestle with because we in the West (I'm assuming you're in the West here, so apologies if that's false) are generally ingrained with these two binary distinctions. Gay or straight. Male or female. We can't concieve of people who live outside those roles.

That doesn't mean they don't exist, though. And this may be a small portion of the game, but it matters to those of us who identify as queer in some way. I brought up Woolfe and Winterson because they both encompass most of my personal beliefs on the matter. And they're also post-modernists whose ideas don't typically make it into mainstream tv, movies, or games. So it was refreshing to see something straight out of Orlando or A Room of One's Own coming out of Anders' mouth.

You're free to disagree with me. I said in another post, reality is subjective. What you think is realistic may not be what I think is realistic. There's really no blanket term for realism here because we all bring are own presumptions and biases into play. But for me, DA2's exploration of sexuality was one of the more intelligent examples I've seen in modern media and definitely matched my own personal expectations of reality.