Estelindis wrote...
ElitePinecone wrote...
I don't think an option to declare the protagonist's sexuality at character creation would ever be implemented, given the potential for negative backlash.
What kind of negative backlash do you mean?
Reading your post above: yes, picking a 'heterosexual' drop-down option at character creation is ostensibly similar to picking the character's gender, or species, or origin, or class, or assiging them attribute points that then unlock behaviours and conversations in-game. Functionally, a sexuality choice would work in much the same way as any of those other things.
But nobody much out in the real world cares if you make your character with INT of 18 and they unlock a conversation because they're so smart. Equally, the fact that Shepards of different backgrounds get different quests doesn't cause any problems. We might have some issues with the way gender affects romance (insofar as it locks out some characters seemingly arbitrarily), but it's not a big deal in the realm of PR and public perceptions.
A sexuality choice would be a huge deal. Indulging for a moment the idea that Bioware actually did it: an option to choose the player character's orientation, and have that affect gameplay in terms of romance options, would confirm every ludicrously ignorant and hyperbolic belief from a certain segment of the (largely American) media and public opinion: all the ranting about 'virtual orgasmic fantasies' that were falsely peddled around the time of the first Mass Effect would return tenfold.
You'd have people enraged that their children could make 'a gay character', screaming and wailing from some fans about the option even being in there at all (a character creation option is far more noticable than a love interest, particularly when almost everybody who buys a game starts it, but only about half of those who bought ME2 ever finished it) and bitterness from people among the LGBTIQ (I don't know if there are more letters) community who feel their particular categorisation of sexuality was ignored or downplayed. How do you fit seven or eight categories of sexuality into the model? How is it coded? How do all those labels affect who can romance who? Isn't it just easier to let the character act reasonably freely, and the player can roleplay the assumed sexual label of their choice?
Sexuality is a hot-button issue in the media and politics, I don't blame Bioware for trying to hose it down after the clusterfrak that was the conservative blogosphere's response to Mass Effect. Simply put: fairly or not, any attempt to give the player explicit control over labelling their player character's sexuality would cause immense public relations headaches for Bioware and EA, in my opinion, and thus it's not something I think they'd ever consider doing.
To get just a taste of what the reaction might look like, here's a blog (and a parent's email) about SWTOR's decision to eventually introduce some form of s/s relationships:
http://bighollywood....-relationships/ Basically, a child can play a Han Solo-type character and your Companion, Chewie, will ask if you would like to engage in a homosexual relationship.
There is an actual option you are forced to choose about how to answer every time one of these “Companions” ask you if you’re interested in having a “gay relationship”. There has also been discussion that random NPCs will also be capable of asking players to consider engaging in a homosexual relationship.It's easier to avoid the maelstrom. If it's this bad when players can't even create explicitly gay characters, I feel it'd be ten times worse if they could. The ability to actual concretely identify the PC as gay from character creation is pretty much unpredecented, and for good reason.
Retour en haut
