922 réponses à ce sujet

[PrinceLionheart]

Zanallen wrote...

As a straight male who only plays male characters with female love interests, I have absolutely no opinion on this matter.

My stance as well. I'm kind of in the I don't care camp. For the sake of options, go for it though I won't be using it personally.

[Ponendus]

I am actually fine with either way here. I see the value of the 'all bi' option because it provides an awful lot of choice and that is usually a good thing in a roleplaying game.

However, having exclusively straight, gay, bi, transgender and whatever else can have its benefits from a roleplaying perspective too. I mentioned this in another thread to do with the 'unrequited love' factor. It can make for an interesting experience. I've personally done this in a play through of the Mass Effect games, the characters sexual orientation preventing me from experiencing the romance, it does effect the choices you make about that character, it is fun to draw some 'hope' in the little things they say etc.

Of course, not everyone roleplays like that, so that is entirely selfish for my style. So overall I would say the 'all bi' option is the easiest way to please everyone, so I think BioWare should probably stick to that.

I am so proud of BioWare for the way they are embracing same-sex and opposite-sex romances in their games. I wish some of that openness and enthusiasm for a wide, happy community would rub off on some other developers too!

[Andraste_Reborn]

In a game where the protagonist can kill dragons and shoot fireballs, I vastly prefer choice and equality in romance options to realism. (And who says Hawke knowing four bisexuals is unrealistic, anyway? I know more bisexuals than that!)

I hope BioWare maintain this system going forward.

[staindgrey]

Fidget6 wrote...

staindgrey wrote...

 If it makes sense and adds to the game, do it. I'll give some examples of how not to do it:

1) If it doesn't make sense for the character. For an example, Ashley in ME1 was very classic Christian, and it's safe to assume that 200 years from now there will still be a large number of Christians who believe homosexuality to be wrong. Ashley gives this impression throughout the game, and only flirts with BroShep, never FemShep. Suddenly making her bi for no reason in ME3 would arguably betray her character.

Considering most Christians today have no problem with homosexuality, that's a pretty weak argument, and one that's assuming a LOT about her character based on her religion. Also, was it ever stated what her religion even was? From what I can recall, she said she believes in God, so I guess from that you automatically assume she's Christian?

staindgrey wrote...

I also expect that LI to give signs that he/she is bi regardless of us romancing him/her, so that it doesn't come off as a straight guy going gay for just my PC. Once again, it feels as though it's betraying the character.

So just because someone doesn't constantly announce what they're attracted to all the time, it would come off as unrealistic that they could be attracted to their same gender? 

First, I think you misunderstand what I meant by Christians and their views on homosexuality. While the vocal gay bashers are the minority, it's still the overall consensus that it's "wrong" in the sense that they won't involve themselves in homosexual relationships. It's not that they have a "problem" with it, but if you think "most Christians today" have no issue whatsoever with homosexuality, you're delusional. Christianity is the only reason homosexuality is even a hot topic, and it's very likely it will continue to be a hot topic for years to come. While Ashley doesn't go around bashing gays or anything, there's no indication at any point that she might even be gay in the slightest.

Which brings me to the other point you brought up: no. You're assuming an extreme. If I'm bisexual, then that'll obviously come out in subtle ways, such as mild flirting with both sexes, getting flustered by attractive persons of both sexes, etc. Being unphased by, say, men at all ever then suddenly falling head over heels for the PC (while not impossible, of course) is just lousy writing. There's no leading into it, and it feels lazily incorporated.

Think of the way that Ashley/Kaiden flirted with BroShep/FemShep in ME1 before you ever really initiate a romance. Now think about how they didn't do that with the same sex Shep. At all. It's fairly clear that they aren't interested in homosexual relations with Shepard, so how would they suddenly be gay in ME3? Again, in life it's plausible, but it's not the way a story and character works. There needs to be lead-in or it comes off as lazy and purely fanservice. We have the internet for fanservice; leave it be.

[Gibb_Shepard]

jlb524 wrote...

Rawgrim wrote...

Every love interest in a game being bisexual, is unrealistic. Its not homophobic to want some realism in a game.

So is every LI ignoring race, class, morality and jumping in bed with the PC regardlesss.

So, because there are unrealistic elements in the game, we should allow more? 

Anyway, leave it to a ******-hetero-bi topic to gain the amount of pages in 10 hours that many threads don't have in a month.

[HiroVoid]

As long as it's written-well and has bearings on conversations outside of it simply being an option, I'm fine with it. I don't like it when both are just cookie-cutters for each other and then if said bi person only hits on characters of the opposite sex in all other dialogue and conversations they have.

[HiroVoid]

Gibb_Shepard wrote...

jlb524 wrote...

Rawgrim wrote...

Every love interest in a game being bisexual, is unrealistic. Its not homophobic to want some realism in a game.

So is every LI ignoring race, class, morality and jumping in bed with the PC regardlesss.

So, because there are unrealistic elements in the game, we should allow more? 

Anyway, leave it to a ******-hetero-bi topic to gain the amount of pages in 10 hours that many threads don't have in a month.

I agree with the second post.  LI's should note on a character's race.  class shouldn't matter until they can actually make different pc builds for the npcs to note on like a warrior being more built than a mage.  And morality's something I've been wanting to have be noted for a while by many different characters including the love interest.  The only time I can remember off the top of my head was one of the Jedi masters noticing your dark side in KOTOR 2....and that was Obsidian.

[HiroVoid]

whykikyouwhy wrote...
Second...it's a bit insulting to tell someone to "return to [their] sim date game" as that diminshes their experience playing what is, in fact, an RPG. The romances in DA2 are optional, have always been optional. Romance is not a core element of the game but a a nice addition.

While I wouldn't call any of the games a dating sim, the romances are actually a pretty core element now even if they are optional.  A lot of time has to go into spending the resources and dialogue for each romancable character.  Heck, in ME2, you couldn't even get half a character's dialogue with romancing them(Probably one of my most hated features of ME2).


Edit:.....Yeah.  Sorry for the triple post.  It's a lot easier to quote without editing.

Modifié par HiroVoid, 30 décembre 2011 - 06:07 .

[Nejeli]

My two cents - I like the way DA2 did it, and I hope the team sticks with that format. I don't want to have to base my gender on who I want to romance in a given playthrough, because gender is often such a non-issue otherwise. If they wanted to go back to exclusive romances, I'd rather they based it on race, alignment, etc.

And for everyone going 'well, exclusivity increases replay value, you can just make...' no, it doesn't, not for everyone. Having just one love interest that I didn't even like in BG2 didn't make me turn around and create a male character to romance anyone else, I just kept creating female characters that never got a romance. Not being able to romance Miranda, Jack, or Tali hasn't made me make a male Shepard, even though it meant I didn't have access to most of their character development. Not being able to romance Alistair hasn't made me make a female Warden. All it's done is cut those options off from me.

[staindgrey]

Here's one thing I want to note for everybody in this thread, and on the internet as well:

Stop belittling people's opinions regarding romance in videogames. I hate the "sim dating game" insult people use. Just because it's a romance doesn't make it any less meaningful in a role-playing game based on a character narrative. It's no different than watching a movie or TV show and hoping that the obvious perfect-for-each-other couple gets together by the end, or reading a novel and getting that warm fuzzy feeling when the main character finally realizes his affection for another character. Personal interaction is an instinctive and impulsive desire, and games can be an outlet for all types of interaction, from civil discourse to alpha male fights for dominance to passionate romance. Get off your high horse.

[Note: Not directed at any post or poster in particular, but to the sentiment of romance discussions being worthless, yada yada. It bugs me.]

[PinkShoes]

Nah i dont mind. BI FOR ALL! *waves flag*

[FedericoV]

staindgrey wrote...

Here's one thing I want to note for everybody in this thread, and on the internet as well:

Stop belittling people's opinions regarding romance in videogames. I hate the "sim dating game" insult people use.

[Note: Not directed at any post or poster in particular, but to the sentiment of romance discussions being worthless, yada yada. It bugs me.]

A lot of people use that joke where CRPG are a relevant argument. Why? The problem is not the use of romance in itself (even if I agree with Obsidian's MC Avelone who generally hates them and consider them a waste of development time and resources). The problem is the use of romances in Bioware's games. They have arrived to a point where romances are mandatory and where NPC interaction and romances are basically the same thing in their games. You cannot interact with a LI without having to romance or near-romance them (every time I speak with Fenris in his crib the discussion became ridiculous because of that romantic soundtrack in the background).

Imho, romances should be used if they help to tell the tale the writers have in mind. They should not be forced in the game and absorb any kind of meaningfull interaction with the NPCs. Or more sadly they should not be used to market people preferences in RL. Duke Nukem use of sexuality is clearly sad and everyone has joked about it... Bioware use of it is not that better for a lot of people since it's still just a wider marketing tool that attract players for the wrong reason. The result is not healthy imho as was showed by the post where a lot of players asked to romance their sister just because she had big ****** and was cute.

Mind I'm not advocating anything, but you should not be surprised if many gamers dismiss Bioware's model of interaction with NPC as date sims. Because there's some truth in that joke sadly.

Modifié par FedericoV, 30 décembre 2011 - 03:16 .

[esper]

For me the romances are imporant in the way that it helps create a whole story and a whole person. My Hawke simply wouldn't be the same if it wasn't for her blinding devotion to Anders which in in my opion makes them both more radical as they keep confirming each other in the fact that they are right.
Similery my warden developed from a more timid and a bit confused circle mage to a more ruthless personality with a morbid sense of humor as she took they grey wardens motto of whatever necessary to heart and used it as a excuse for the fact that Zevran was an assassin and she had no problem with that.
I have always believed we changes slightly in the way we interact with different people and who we falls in love with will have some effect on who we are as we get to know a another person more intimately, and in the limited world of gaming, and games will always be limited to a certain number of dialogs, the romances are important because they for me add a lot, not to the npc or the companion but to who my pc are.

[FedericoV]

jlb524 wrote...
Look, I would agree if the work of fiction we were discussing was a novel or a movie.  These type of games don't work like that as they give some literary freedoms to the player so they can make their own story....that's why I play games like this. 

Yep, CRPGs are interactive media and they should allow players to have significant choices with visible consequences. That's not what they are doing turning every LI in to a potential bisexual. They are simply saving resources while trying to market our RL sexual preferences. And that's wrong, imho.

If the BW stories were linear and identical with every playthrough for every player then it would be a different story (hahaha, pun).

... at least DA2 is different... having said that: romances in DA2 play the same no matter of your sex. The differences are really cosmetic (gay, etero, bisexual: the variation are minimal). So, if the aim was to allow more roleplaying and replayibility, they have failed pretty badly even in that repart.

FedericoV wrote... 

What did he do in Awakening that was interesting?  He felt like an Alistair rip-off to me (but you like Alistair so I guess that's okay XD)

He was a funny and light hearted comical relief with some more serious spin. It was fun to have him in the party and to listen to his jokes. In DA2 he is a whiny and over-dramatic charachter that seems taken out from Twilight.

Modifié par FedericoV, 30 décembre 2011 - 11:13 .

[Wulfram]

I'd say the romances were a lot more important in BG2 than DA2. More romance specific dialogues, and a less non-romance dialogue.

[LarryDavid]

Silfren wrote...
No kidding.  A lot of women, both straight and gay, hate it when guys presume to hit on them, bu I've never in my life heard any woman say, "I got nothing against straight men but I hate it when they hit on me."  There's a reason why it's only ever men who say "I'm all for gay rights but I don't want any gays hitting on me," and it is precisely because yes, those men are homophobes, whether they admit it or not.

It's rather like saying "I don't hate X , but..."  That but right there tends to negate whatever get-out-of-homophobia free cliche you were trying to use.

Using your logic, saying "I love my wife-to-be BUT I don't like it when she forgets to clean my shoes from time to time" means that I don't really love her.

Well, I couldn't care less about people's sxual orientation AND (<- how about that) I hated the fact that every LI in DAII was BI.

For each LI, Bioware should create an n-dimentional space with for instance a good-evil axis, sxuality axis, opinion on a certain topic axis, ... . Each LI has one or several dots in this space which represents their ideal partner. Then, an n-dimensional sphere should be created around each dot and ONLY when the projection of your PC on this space is in such a sphere, it should be possible to persue a romance.

The center and radius of the spheres for a cetrain LI are intertwined with his/her/its(how open minded of me ) personality. And as such, making these spheres as big as possible for each LI hollows out, in my opinion, their personality.

[GodWood]

No, limitations ftw.
I fully support restrictions based on the PC's gender, race, appearance, class (that is economic/social, not combat), morality and so on.

bleetman wrote...
There are bisexuals. Get over it.

Not everyone is a bisexual, get over it?

[whykikyouwhy]

HiroVoid wrote...

whykikyouwhy wrote...
Second...it's a bit insulting to tell someone to "return to [their] sim date game" as that diminshes their experience playing what is, in fact, an RPG. The romances in DA2 are optional, have always been optional. Romance is not a core element of the game but a a nice addition.

While I wouldn't call any of the games a dating sim, the romances are actually a pretty core element now even if they are optional. A lot of time has to go into spending the resources and dialogue for each romancable character. Heck, in ME2, you couldn't even get half a character's dialogue with romancing them(Probably one of my most hated features of ME2).

I feel the need to clarify what was quoted from me.

Romances in DA2 are optional in that they are not imperative to the successful completion of each act and/or the entire game itself. You don't need to romance anyone in order for those objectives to be met. So if you want to charge through the game, handling the main quests and some side quests, and not engage the companions in anything other than idle banter or platonic discourse, you can.

I happen to like the romances and the available options personally. I feel they enhance the story and broaden gameplay, but they are not essential to arriving at that final act in the game.

Nejeli wrote...

My two cents - I like the way DA2 did it, and I hope the team sticks with that format. I don't want to have to base my gender on who I want to romance in a given playthrough, because gender is often such a non-issue otherwise. If they wanted to go back to exclusive romances, I'd rather they based it on race, alignment, etc.

And for everyone going 'well, exclusivity increases replay value, you can just make...' no, it doesn't, not for everyone. Having just one love interest that I didn't even like in BG2 didn't make me turn around and create a male character to romance anyone else, I just kept creating female characters that never got a romance. Not being able to romance Miranda, Jack, or Tali hasn't made me make a male Shepard, even though it meant I didn't have access to most of their character development. Not being able to romance Alistair hasn't made me make a female Warden. All it's done is cut those options off from me.

I agree with this post, especially the bolded bit.

I've seen a lot of comments in this thread about the "all bi-ness" of the companions being akin to hollowing out the experience or cheapning it (my word...I don't recall if that was used exactly, but that sentiment seems to be there). Here's the way I see it - some people may not do multiple playthroughs of the game. Or they will do a few and choose one to be their canon run, or the file to use for importing into DA3. So some may just have one fell swoop at DA2, whereas others will try a couple of different decision paths out and find the one that best suits who they want Hawke to be. So for either scenario, why shouldn't romances be open to all players, no matter what gender a player decides to play?

Romances, and how they develop in-game, are based on the friendship or rivalry paths - they're based on attitude and demeanor. That speaks to the characterizations of the characters themselves. (And yes, things could have probably been more difficult or heated for those romances with very opposiing viewpoints such as pro- and anti-mage.)

The companions don't really discuss their love lives unless they are already engaged in some flirty talk with you (though Isabela is much more open about her exploits, but usually when prompted by another character's questions). If we're looking at realism, isn't that pretty much how flirtation works? We express interest in someone, they may or may not express interest back. We work to get to know them, know more about them, and they respond in kind. Maybe I'm not doing it right, or looking at the real world wrong, but it seems to me that people rarely go around advertising what gender they are looking for - no one walks around with a sign pinned to their shirts saying "I like men" or "I like women" to which we can direct our romance interests accordingly.

At no point does any companion state "I am bi-" or "I am gay" or anything along those lines. Their sexual identity is left for us to interpret based on how they respond to the Hawke that we are playing. And really, I don't see them as responding to Hawke's gender, so much as to who Hawke is, in sum total.

Options do not cheapen the experience. They enhance it. The character development of the companions is not centered on their gender or the gender of who they are sleeping with. The development goes into other layers - nobility, honor, loyalty, faith, ambition, etc. That's wherein the experience lies - getting to know these companions as friends or foes, or even romantic partners, and being prompted to support them, deny them, and all the while just feel something for them. My ability to feel, to be made to feel by the companions, was not dictated by their gender and how my Hawke related to that aspect of them, but by their beliefs and opinions, by the way they conducted themselves with other people in the party or people in Kirkwall.

Also, while I have commented on realism, at what point and where exactly are we divvying up what, in a game of fiction in a fantasy world, should be realistic and what shouldn't be? Where are the rules for that?

(And I'll state here that it is very likely for Hawke to know 4 people in all of Kirkwall who are bisexual. And just as likely that Hawke might hang out with them on a daily basis. There are probably more folks with the same proclivities in that fine city. That's not unrealistic at all.)

[ladyshamen]

I love having the option to have romances in games. Makes things more fun. I'm not sure why everyone is so hung up on it. People, it's a GAME, not REAL LIFE! I play games to escape RL for a while. This horse is dead, you need to quit beating it now.

[Youknow]

 I don't think so. The thing with sexuality, is that while it doesn't define a character, it is a quirk that shouldn't be seen by every character. Like any personality quirk or trait.

I'll admit it was bold and interesting to try in Dragon Age 2, but I don't think it should be the norm for every game. 

[alex90c]

ladyshamen wrote...

I love having the option to have romances in games. Makes things more fun. I'm not sure why everyone is so hung up on it. People, it's a GAME, not REAL LIFE! I play games to escape RL for a while. This horse is dead, you need to quit beating it now.

People are hung up on it because this a freaking gaming forum, and expecting people to just drop something just because it's a game is absurd - why does something being a game mean that there's no point discussing a certain thing you dislike about it?

[Ryzaki]

Fenris background music wasn't a romance theme it was *his* theme.

And actually DA2 did allow friendship paths. It was a lot better than ME2 where no one wanted to talk to Shep if he wasn't trying to nail them.

[jlb524]

whykikyouwhy wrote...
Options do not cheapen the experience. They enhance it. 

Not if you don't like the extra options added.  Which I think is the issue here.

I don't particularly care for the option to romance any male LI with my female PCs.  I personally wouldn't miss it if they cut back on male romances or cut it out all together and only had female romance options.  However, I know others like it and I'm fine with them adding it in because it's fair even if it takes away from developing female romances and even if I have to potentially deal with getting ninjamanced by Alistair or something like that.

So I think options enhance the experience for the general populace who is made up of all kinds of different people (male/female/gay/bisexual/straight), but specific options might not enhance the game for specific gamers (like, guys that typically play straight male PCs won't benefit from more s/s content...I haven't benefited from them adding in more male LIs over the years since BG2).   

But, y'know, they aren't making the game for just me...thankfully BW realizes that more people than just the 'straight male' play these romances.

GodWood wrote...

bleetman wrote...
There are bisexuals. Get over it.

Not everyone is a bisexual, get over it?

There are trees =/= Everything is a tree.

Modifié par jlb524, 30 décembre 2011 - 09:25 .

[Sylvianus]

Sometimes, what some are trying to suggest is a bit disgusting. I read this thread, and it is more a problem than the OMG " straight male power **** the world ", and OMG I do not want a new anders jumps on me.

Try to leave your prejudices, try to think that maybe people really care about the implementation of such a system. and are not only concerned with what you suggest, or only by a pure selfish desire.

I read this thread, and many post reasonable, the representations made ​​by some of the other side is just ridiculous, so it seems excessive, even if it is civilized.

Yes, there are people who care about the story, immersion, the sacrifice that this system requires to the integrity of the identity of the characters.

This may not be your priorities, maybe you don't ****ing care,  but it is time to understand it's important for others. So try to put aside your little comments about the other side, who is apparently only concerned by itself. Yadda yadda. It's getting old.

Modifié par Sylvianus, 30 décembre 2011 - 09:44 .