537 réponses à ce sujet

[Roxlimn]

Schwapp:



You're quite mistaken. It's absolutely possible for two people who are otherwise very pale in terms of skin color to have offspring who CAN produce enough melanin to look like Wesley Snipes. The converse is also true. The fact that you think this is scientifically valid is the kind of trash that underlies racism.



Race is NOT a valid point of consideration for grouping people. It never has been. The entire concept is scientifically implausible and untrue. Genetic penetration and expression is very, very highly variable. In the case of skin color, it's also orders of magnitude more complex than simple Mendelian genetics, especially if both parents happen to have diverse genetic backgrounds.



These things can be observed in areas of the world where significant assimilation of diverse groups of people occur.

[Shinji Ex]

yea there is only white people weird. this game could have use more diversity to the population last time I checked I was not playing a JRPG

[ForumFightingMan]

jaime1337 wrote...

It's a nice acknowledgment that not everyone playing these games is white.

Thats absurd.  How does playing a game as a black person acknowledge that black people play the game?  I played the game with a white elf, but I'm a brown human; there is no correlation.

I do agree that it would be nice if your parents were the same color.

yeah it would be really nice in any future titles to have (in stories that include the character's family, particularly humans) the families skin color and basic facial structure (or maybe just the skin color thing, though the latter isnt too hard to do for any family member that is the same sex as your character). would be the same as yours, otherwise its just wierd.

[ForumFightingMan]

VentraleStar wrote...

aren't the quanri the black people

as I understand it the qunari are the dragon age equivilent of night elves

[sdlessar2]

"Go on. Be a Tiger." - Accenture

[Gecon]

The OP is silly.

An old noble family that rules a white country cant suddenly be black. How the heck would that be possible ? Even if the founder was black - that house would have to import each and every spouse from a black land to stay black. Therefore any visible black traits would have been washed away in the course of the centuries.

You can also make an old person in the CC and that wont fit into any origin at all. Bioware simply gave you the freedom to create a person that wont fit into the context. If you want to look that way, so be it.

And the Qunari are the Qunari. They are definitely not elves. According to the sacred ashes trailer, they are black humans.

Modifié par Gecon, 23 décembre 2009 - 06:57 .

[Memset]

Modifié par luca_centurio, 23 décembre 2009 - 07:48 .

[Killian Kalthorne]

You know, reading the first post in this thread reminded me of that quaint little movie called "Blazing Saddles."

[OneBadAssMother]

Pseudo310 wrote...

lawsie100 wrote...

you forgot 'his mother was a tramp'

Ah, yes. The Qunari milkman.

[Kamitto]

lawsie100 wrote...

yeah this is earth. That is fereldan. See the difference? No? Look harder. We have many black people on this earth. They dont. Its a fantasy. Fantasy. Fan-tasy world.

I'm not even about to read this whole long-ass thread, but I found this line funny.

Much like the Jetsons and the Flintstones, it must really be a white person's fantasy to have a world where there are not people of color.

Sheesh.

[purplesunset]

Godheval wrote...
...

Oooh, you (and me, I suppose) are going to get attacked for  some serious thread necromancy.

The most ironic thing about this thread is that even though I'm black myself, and am sympathetic to the issues brought up, I spent 90 % of this thread DEFENDING  Bioware against baseless accusations of racism and offering more reasonable explanations as to why they made the choices they made. My defense was all in vain though, because it turns out that Bioware didn't even pay much attention to the thread.

Modifié par purplesunset, 23 janvier 2010 - 10:06 .

[Yozaro]

The only similarity between Ferelden and Earth (during medieval times) is the technology level. Oh, and English too, obviously.

Can't remember Lord of the Rings having Asians. Is that bad? No, it's just a fantasy world. Are there black people in Ferelden? No. Is that bad? No, it's just a made-up fantasy world. What if they did have, would that be bad? No, it's still a fantasy world.

BUT, I do agree that if your character is black, your family in the game should be black. Though hair color is different. Just because my character has black hair, doesn't mean my family member couldn't have blonde hair. I don't recall the existence of hair dyes being denied in the story ("people in medieval ages didn't use hair dyes that much"... so what? this is not the medieval ages, this is a fantasy world).

Somebody said (not on this forum IIRC) that it's racism to not have black and asian people in the game. How is that racism? If a company makes a game about samurais, would they have to have at least one white and one black guy in the game, or otherwise the developers would be racists? DA:O is not a history book about medieval Europe. Even if there were black people in Europe during that time, it doesn't mean they were in Ferelden.

PS: And no, I do not have anything against having black people in Dragon Age.

[KariTR]

Well if you had read the whole thread purple, you would have known that this topic was discussed in depth on the old forums and the devs contributed to that discussion. It certainly isnt a case of no one at Bioware paying attention.



I will admit that when my black flatmate, who began playing the game a couple of days after me, was creating his black human noble I swear I heard Alistair say "Awkward." However he never commented on the fact his PCs parents are white and I was certainly not going to point out an imagined injustice when he appeared to be perfectly happy with the situation. On further consideration I decided it was not much different from my hero being tanned with flaming red hair.



On subsequent playthroughs I have customised my HN characters to resemble the Couslands more closely. Dark hair, dark eyes and a square jaw wouldnt be my first choice but the reality is physical resemblance can play an important part when it comes to connecting to characters we meet in game. It would be terribly arrogant of me to think that everyone, of whatever colour, would attach the same importance to physical features (my flatmate certainly doesnt), but likewise it is naive to dismiss it out hard as being unimportant.

[Kamitto]

Yozaro wrote...

Somebody said (not on this forum IIRC) that it's racism to not have black and asian people in the game. How is that racism? If a company makes a game about samurais, would they have to have at least one white and one black guy in the game, or otherwise the developers would be racists? DA:O is not a history book about medieval Europe. Even if there were black people in Europe during that time, it doesn't mean they were in Ferelden.

Well that's certainly not my argument.  Exclusion is not necessarily racist, although it is likely due to the narrow world views, personal experience, and/or ethnocentrism of the developers.  While these do not equate to racism, there is certainly a correlation.

But no, I am not saying that Bioware was under any obligation to include people of color in Dragon Age.  It just would have been nice.  I mean, really, is it ONLY people of color who think that fantasy worlds just plain LOOK better with a wide range of different characters?  It's what I love about the Suikoden series most of all...

I credit BIoware for being more inclusive than most developers, in terms of the character narratives, if not for the range of physical appearances.  But, as I said in another thread, it would've been nice to SEE something different, too.

[MagiST]

The solution is to roll a mage. No parents in the equation.

[MagiST]

you know what... ima bout to roll a black mage

[Coldcall01]

Actually my current human noble warriror is very tanned and could be considered "black". Sorry but the whiteys look too pale and ugly in my opinion so i rather have some colour :-)



But I'm dealing with the internal conflict of having an obviously white family by pretending i am like a Redguard adoptee from Morrowind province :-)

[MagiST]

purplesunset wrote...

Godheval wrote...
...

Oooh, you (and me, I suppose) are going to get attacked for  some serious thread necromancy.

The most ironic thing about this thread is that even though I'm black myself, and am sympathetic to the issues brought up, I spent 90 % of this thread DEFENDING  Bioware against baseless accusations of racism and offering more reasonable explanations as to why they made the choices they made. My defense was all in vain though, because it turns out that Bioware didn't even pay much attention to the thread.

Look, Tolkien fantasy includes only the British Ise as its scope of culture and stereotypes.  Dwarves are kinda like Scotts, Elves like Welsh, and so on.  DA:O sorta includes a bit more of western europe but mostly non whites... if not all.  Peter Jackson is no more racist than Bioware... they just play out the contents of the fantasy that they are given.  Un-original?  More than likely.

Bioware like many companies avoid these  issues on the forums.  Because they can be quoted,  and this is still a very heavy issue in our society.   The individuals on top let their press team handle these things and not without templars watching them.

There are many games that won't give you the liberty of skin tone, all because it didn't fit in their world.  Yeah, you are asian or black in a world where you aren't suppose to exist.  Remember that half the time.... the Japanese don't even exist in their own RPG's... all white guys with blonde spikey hair.  And then there's a black guy, but no asian except for some random vendor or npc (FFantasy 1 -> FFantasy infinity).

[errant_knight]

Pseudo310 wrote...

lawsie100 wrote...

yeah this is earth. That is fereldan. See the difference? No? Look harder. We have many black people on this earth. They dont. Its a fantasy. Fantasy. Fan-tasy world.

Yeah, I know most white people's fantasy world is one without black people in it.

But you guys get that I'm not complaining about the lack of black people in Ferelden, right? That's a non-issue. I'm saying that it's silly to make a black character who has a white family. Especially since there's no other black people in Ferelden, he or she had to come from somewhere. So I'm giving Bioware some feedback on that. Having multiple character models for the family wouldn't be the hard I bet.

The problem with that would be the pre-rendered cut scenes. They'd have to make each scene with a family member in a variety of skin tones as well as adding some kind of check that runs to compare your chosen skin tone to theirs. It's doable, but would use resources that they probably thought would be better spent on the story. There's only so much rendering time and so much employee time available.

While I empathize with your desire to see yourself reflected more in the game, and I've heard the same complaint made about science fiction/fantasy books, it is based very closely on medieval europe. Not only are these Fereldan nobles white, they're blue-white. As a person of Irish extraction, I know all about that. Sunburn city! Except Alistair. I guess he spends more time in the sun.

There is a black race that we haven't seen yet, the Rivaini (Duncan's mother was one), that I believe will be coming into play at some point.

In the expansion, you will have the opportunity to create an Orlesian warden, and there will be no reason that person can't be black.

Heh, long story short, while I sympathize with your complaint, I can also see why Bioware made the choices they did. In a perfect world, all games would be bigger, computers would be faster, and developers would have more time and money.

Modifié par errant_knight, 23 janvier 2010 - 08:07 .

[Abriael_CG]

Gotta love the sense of entitlement of some players to have a FANTASY game revolve around their real life ethnicity, just as much as the need of some to give games a political label to try and further their XXXX POWER!!! (replace the XXXX with any kind of proud minority, be it religious, sexual or racial) agendas.

It's funny how people raved about the lack of chance for male sheperd to bang kaidan Alenko in Mass Effect, or about the lack of black Imperial humans in Warhammer Online (where the Empire is an highly characterized germanic country, and the geographical equivalent of Africa is a wasteland plagued by undead adn lizardmen that would kill any living being on sight, regardless of his color).

It's actually pretty simple. The world of a fantasy game doesn't revolve around you. Writers shouldn't make concessions to their visions to introduce black, yellow, green, gay, lesbian, bi-curious, taoist, muslim, christian, or whatever group you happen to belong to.
Writers make an effort to create a coherent world, and in a coherent world like Thedas is, and more particularly, in Ferelden, nobility is a matter of blood, and given that the bloodlines come from tribes of celtic-like heritage, there simply is no black noble. Hell, as far as I know we don't even know precisely where the Rivani happen to live in Thedas, for sure they don't dwell in Ferelden, and even more for sure, they don't dwell between the Fereldan nobility.

Demanding the vision of the writers to be changed and made less coherent just because you want your character to look like you is quite egotic, not to mention pretty childish. It's that simple.

Modifié par Abriael_CG, 23 janvier 2010 - 08:23 .

[BroBear Berbil]

MagiST wrote...

purplesunset wrote...

Godheval wrote...
...

Oooh, you (and me, I suppose) are going to get attacked for  some serious thread necromancy.

The most ironic thing about this thread is that even though I'm black myself, and am sympathetic to the issues brought up, I spent 90 % of this thread DEFENDING  Bioware against baseless accusations of racism and offering more reasonable explanations as to why they made the choices they made. My defense was all in vain though, because it turns out that Bioware didn't even pay much attention to the thread.

Look, Tolkien fantasy includes only the British Ise as its scope of culture and stereotypes.  Dwarves are kinda like Scotts, Elves like Welsh, and so on.  DA:O sorta includes a bit more of western europe but mostly non whites... if not all.  Peter Jackson is no more racist than Bioware... they just play out the contents of the fantasy that they are given.  Un-original?  More than likely.

If you want to cite Tolkein as an example of a narrow view of the world at least know what you're talking about. Also, BioWare wasn't "given" the fantasy they made it.

I really don't see what the fuss is about. There are plenty of characters through the game that aren't "whiteys" Coldcall01 so eloquently put it. It didn't break any kind of immersion for me because Mother Mallol was Asian or because my parents didn't have facial features that were similar to mine.

It's just a game. Make your characters they way you want to and just play it. Not everything has to be a social statement. I'm half Cuban but I'm not complaining for a Maria and Fernando Cousland with tanned skin to be my parents.

Modifié par OnionXI, 23 janvier 2010 - 08:52 .

[purplesunset]

Abriael_CG wrote...

Gotta love the sense of entitlement of some players to have a FANTASY game revolve around their real life ethnicity, just as much as the need of some to give games a political label to try and further their XXXX POWER!!! (replace the XXXX with any kind of proud minority, be it religious, sexual or racial) agendas.

It's funny how people raved about the lack of chance for male sheperd to bang kaidan Alenko in Mass Effect, or about the lack of black Imperial humans in Warhammer Online (where the Empire is an highly characterized germanic country, and the geographical equivalent of Africa is a wasteland plagued by undead adn lizardmen that would kill any living being on sight, regardless of his color).

It's actually pretty simple. The world of a fantasy game doesn't revolve around you. Writers shouldn't make concessions to their visions to introduce black, yellow, green, gay, lesbian, bi-curious, taoist, muslim, christian, or whatever group you happen to belong to.
Writers make an effort to create a coherent world, and in a coherent world like Thedas is, and more particularly, in Ferelden, nobility is a matter of blood, and given that the bloodlines come from tribes of celtic-like heritage, there simply is no black noble. Hell, as far as I know we don't even know precisely where the Rivani happen to live in Thedas, for sure they don't dwell in Ferelden, and even more for sure, they don't dwell between the Fereldan nobility.

Demanding the vision of the writers to be changed and made less coherent just because you want your character to look like you is quite egotic, not to mention pretty childish. It's that simple.

And this post indicates that you did not even read the thread. You just saw an opportunity to inject *your* political beliefs on an online forum.

Name one specific  instance  in this thread where someone *demanded*  that Bioware tailor the game to their ethnicity? Not even the original poster demanded that Bioware tailor the game to his ethnicity. His point was much more intelligent than that, and I wouldn't misconstrue his words, even though  I disagreed with him. No one demanded anything from Bioware, that was all in your head. 

Furthermore,  this thread has nothing to do with quotas/political correctness/entitlement. The only people who think it is are the ones who didn't bother to read the OP's posts, and instead put words into his mouth.

Sir, what you just did is a classic straw man arguement. You erected an argument that no one (not even the original poster) posited and then proceeded to destroy it.

This pretty much characterizes what happened in  the majority of this thread, and why it was doomed from the first post. Instead of responding to what was actually written,  people respond to the arguement that they construct inside their own heads.

Modifié par purplesunset, 23 janvier 2010 - 09:39 .

[Obadiah]

purplesunset wrote...
Sir, what you just did is a classic straw man arguement. You erected an argument that no one (not even the original poster) posited and then proceeded to destroy it.

Well said. I too played a black character, and was kind of curious about how he came to be. I would not have asked for the game to revolve around his ethnicity. I would have simply suggested, as the original poster did, some kind of palette swap (if not, then full character model swaps) based on skin tone.

That said, since no one ingame commented on my appearance, I just assumed the "adoption" or "infidelity" thing was common enough that it didn't matter.