Yuqi wrote...
We know that Casey said 'not lesbian cause monogendered' for the pourpose of damage control. Because Liara is not 'human' she technically is not a 'lesbian', so by all acounts Caesy is 'technically' right.
At least you have Liara as an option, the straight females get screwed over pretty bad. It's almost like there intent was to make femshep canonically gay.
I want you to keep in mind that I'm a straight, white male gamer. I'm not a million pounds, middle aged, balding or living in my parents basement or anything, but I'm fairly stereotypical demographically.
For the most part I'd have to say that these games are designed for heterosexual males. Many of which actually make up the bulk of FemShep players. Most of these are science fiction nerds and go for Liara for some hot girl on girl action and to fulfil that Orion slave girl sort of fetish most of them seem to have. Straight males and their various
deviant fetishes are the only ones who are getting any kind of satisfcation out of the romanctic subplots and sex scenes. Straight female players, gay males and lesbians are all getting the short end of the stick here. This should be plainly evident to all.
BioWare may have the best intentions here, but resources even for them are limited as is time. Especially with their new EA overlords pulling the strings. They will pander to their largest group of customers, straight, white males. Think about it. Even black men and minorities are really screwed here. Almost all the women are white, the one who isn't is for lesbians. There are two black guys and two hispanics in the game. Admiral Anderson, who is just a character who happens to be black is the only good one. Jacob is upitty and useless. While not so bad in the second game he falls into the stereotype almost too well in ME3. He's basically self-absorbed, a cheater and he's knocking up women. He's not a very good friend here as he won't come with Shepard to accomplish the greater good, he just stands in the hospital staring at the wall. For as well as Anderson is handled Jacob is handled badly enough to strip away any accomplishment BioWare might have made.
Straight girls playing FemSheps basically have the option to go for Kaiden. Anything else is pretty futile and worthless. Thane dies, Jacob cheats on her and won't get back with her. What else do you have? Oh, there is Garrus I suppose. But you may run into the problem of not finding him very attractive due to being so alien. Lesbian's have the afore mentioned Liara and Traynor relationships and I think the OP summarized these well enough. I don't need to go there other than to say, for the most part I agree.
Gay males playing ManSheps have Steve Cortez and Kaiden. I don't know how the whole thing works for Kaiden but everyone says it's "off". Steve's may be handled fairly well, but I doubt it's handled as well as some of the hetero options male Shepards have.
For ManShep, we've got the most options by FAR. Liara is still the best relationship choice in my opinion for a number of reasons, but we still have Ashley and Tali which are handled fairly well for the most part. For ManShep Allers and Kelly feel pretty much like useless flings just as they do for the women. So I'd have to agree there. That's not even counting the ME2 options which are pretty much bad for everyone aside from Tali and Garrus. Within ME2 itself we still had Liara, Miranda, Jack, and Tali. All these had merrit on their own. Samara's relationship could have gone somewhere but she flatly refuses Shepard for no real given reason. I've got my theory on that, but that's another topic for another thread. Getting back to the race part of the equation, ManShep can be any color you want and no one reacts to that. Possibly due to a purpose decision on the designers part but most likely a programing omission. It's something that wasn't needed and basically they eliminated the race issue by making it not an issue. Win-win for BioWare. The problem with this approach is that while I think ignoring Shepard's ethnicity is great, they don't bother to create options that a player of a given ethnicity might like.
I'm a straight while male who prefers white females in real life. Not exclusively,
(I admittedly have a thing for Asian girls) but it's a general preference. But there are no attractive or romancable Asian women, black women or hispanic women in the game. Of course Traynor is not a white chick, but again she's locked out for ManShep. Now this may be an oversight or it may be a conscious design choice. Regardless, the fact remains that many black male players may not be happy with the fact that there are no black women in the game. Basically you've got white women and alien women. Neither of which may be your thing. See the problem?
Now the fact of the matter is, even in a game this large and this diverse in terms of variables, you can't include enough content to please everyone. So BioWare being a company out to make money has to make some choices. So they'll again pander to their largest audience. The straight white, science fiction geek who is either going to want some white human knock out or the exotic alien girl. To that end we basically got that in abundance, even with some variable personality types. Jack-Emotional and tatooed, Ashley - Needy and sensitive, Miranda - strong and independant, Liara - compassionate, giving, and exotic / alien. I could go on and on. On the upside, the Mass Effect universe does take sexual preferences and things like ethnic background within a given species a total non-issue. Whether on purpose, by omission or a mixture of both this is commendable and I think people of all backgrounds, orientations etc. can appreciate this. So they did throw everyone a bone in a sense.
The fact is, right or wrong some design choices in a game boil down to return on investment and making money. Controversy is only good if you can profit by it and your choices need to please the widest audience possible. I don't think they didn't include anyone's particular tastes due to being largely insensitive or forgetful, but due to running a business the smart way. If there is one thing EA and BioWare know how to do it's make money.
Modifié par Dead_Meat357, 17 avril 2012 - 07:53 .
Retour en haut
