Statement in favor of Ashley/FemShep-romance and DA2-like romance-system incoming.
If you are not interested, skip it.
When I first played ME, I played as FemShep and I played without knowing many details about the game. But i
defintely saw romantic sparks between her and Ashley before I even realized that romance was actually a possibility
in that game and I was a little frustrated that my FemShep couldn't even bring up her feelings towards Ash, when
she could do so with Liara, because for me Ash was the most interesting character from the start.
I got over it.
Until Bioware announced that they would include 'real' (as opposed to monogendered Asari and 'light'-romance Kelly) s/s romantic relationships in the final part of the Mass Effect trilogy.
At first I thought, they probably won't change the existing romance options and that I'd actually prefer it that way, but I eventually came to a different conclusion.
The questions that let me there, were:
1. How much does sexual orientation influence a person's character?
2. Can a person's character change?
3. What importance has the romantic sub-plot in the overall story of Mass Effect and how much does the sexual orientation of the characters influence it and what actually is the form of the story?
1. IMO, it doesn't very much.
The personality of the persons I am attracted to, says far more about me, than what sex/gender they are.
Shepards personality can range from a goody two shoes paragon to a raving lunatic renegade.
Personally, I have more problems believing Ashley could fall for a self-involved a-hole, than that she could fall for a woman, but yet it is possible.
2. Yes. Character is not set in stone. There are studies on this. Look it up!
The fact that a character's apparent sexual orientation is changing throughout a story can make for an interesting
development. Nothing needs to be suddenly and without explanation.
3. The romances in Mass Effect are a minor sub-plot. Its purpose is to connect the player emotionally deeper to
the game and its characters. It has no effect on the outcome of the story. You probably can defeat the Reapers
without having romanced anyone.
Shouldn't it therefore be possible for the player to choose the romance combination that actually grants him the deepest possible emotional connection?
I quite like the Gaider-approach on this, though the actual implementation in DA2 is debatable, but this is not the place to discuss this.
If this were indeed a piece of literature with only one way to tell the story and not a game with literary quality and mulitple ways to tell its story, I would agree that I wouldn't want every character suddenly turning bisexual, but this isn't necessarily the case.
The game is a sequence of possibilities that become concrete with the player advancing in the story, making one specific choice the reality for that particular playthrough and therefore negating all other alternatives. That means if you romance Ashley as a ManShep, her potentially being bi or "suddenly lesbian" won't or at least shouldn't be an
issue.
What annoys me, is when people are saying that changing the apparent sexuality of someone, though it has been argued that this wouldn't actually be the case, would somehow break continuity, when in fact they refuse to see how this happens in real life
and when they consider the way they see a character the only legitimate one.
And it annoys me even more when people belittle our motives for asking for this kind of relationship as mere whim or a creepy obsession with 'two chicks gettin' in on!', when all we want to do is to establish a special emotional
connection between the character we care about the most and our version of Shepard.
In the end it is up to the Devs how they are going to do it and I'll be fine either way, but I want at least to
play my FemShep the way I see her and be able to tell Ashley how she feels and risking to be actually turned down
and not just ignored.
tl;dr:
Modifié par elektrego, 27 juin 2011 - 08:42 .
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