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[Yggdrasil]

Dragon Age: Origins is perhaps my all time favorite video game.  It is the only game I have ever played a second time to conclusion.  One of the reasons I adore it is that, for the first time, I could play my character as a gay man.  That inclusiveness meant so much to me.

In that same vein, I would love for Dragon Age 3 to have a broader racial spectrum in its characters and NPC's.  Color-blind casting means that there is no reason or justification for a multicutural cast.  Race would be incidental, just as sexuality has been in the previous Dragon Age games.

I know this can be a charged topic, and stirring anything up couldn't be further from my intent.  I am simply and humbly asking Bioware to continue in its proud traditions of inclusiveness and thinking outside the box and to present us with a game in which everyone can find themselves.

[David Gaider]

Two things to bring up here:

1) As pointed out above, there have been characters of color throughout both games.

2) If there's not many, that's largely because the only nation in Thedas where people have darker skin is Rivain-- which is neither overly populous nor possessed of people that are especially well-traveled. There are without a doubt humans of different skin colors in other lands, but these are places that people in Thedas are only vaguely aware of so there's little contact. Perhaps one believes we shouldn't have a fantasy setting that is largely caucasian, but the world is already created and thus short of ret-conning entire cultures to look differently than they've already been presented we need to follow the rules as we've established them.

Neither of these things mean there can't and shouldn't be more characters of color. We just need to do it in a way that makes sense for the setting-- so it depends on where you go, as opposed to making sure every crowd of people you encounter is split up into pre-set percentages of skin color no matter where you are. Nobody's asking for that, however, and it's completely fair to ask for more visible representation of groups that already exist in the setting, and certainly something for us developers to keep in mind (without, I hope, resorting to tokenism -- which is also a bad approach). And I'd say that, yes, we are committed to doing just that.

Modifié par David Gaider, 10 mai 2012 - 02:55 .

[David Gaider]

MichaelStJohn90068 wrote...
1) Almost all of the people of color you see in the games are swarthy or Mediterranean.  An African-American woman would not see herself in Isabella, just because the character doesn't have Northern European coloring.  I also don't know of any Asian characters in the games.

We haven't had very dark skin tones because the Eclipse engine doesn't render them well. Once you try anything much darker than Isabela, the skin renders as very blotchy and unpleasant-looking. Ideally this is something we can fix.

As for Asian characters, we don't have them because they're not present as a culture in Thedas. My thought is that there are cultures outside of Thedas with intermittent contact, hence their presence is possible in limited circumstances, but it's not something you'll see much of.

So don't take my comment of "people of color already exist" to mean they're numerous or cover a very broad spectrum. Neither of those things are true. It's also not true, however, to say that no characters of color exist.

2) If the game already has people of color as you say, then why would including more of them be problematic?  You already ret-conned the way dwaves, elves and qunari looked between DA:O and DA2, so how would ret-conning a multi-ethnic Thedas threaten the integrity of the world you've created?  I doubt many players would even notice as most of us are used to seeing other ethnicities in our daily lives.

I already said that the cultures are established, and that other than a ret-con we have to work within the framework we started with. Whether we wish to do a ret-con is a different question, and I'd only be wary of the reasons for doing so. The setting was never intended to be a patchwork representation of ethnicities, but an analogue to medieval Europe. Yes, some people say they're very tired of euro-centric fantasy settings but that's what it is.

I saw your response to the straight gamer who complained about same-sex romances as a passionate defense of inclusiveness and the rights of the under-represented, but I frankly feel that your response to my suggestion validates the status quo and those who feel inclusiveness would ruin their enjoyment of the games.  Now I'm wondering if I can consider myself a fan of the games I loved so much.

I said that we intend to work on it, and include as much as makes sense in our current framework. If any response short of ret-conning the setting is seen as being insensitive... then I don't really know what to say. It really seems like I can't give a response that you would find positive enough, so I apologize and will simply back off.

[John Epler]

I think we are sufficiently outside the original scope of the thread that we are done here.