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[Neon Rising Winter]

There are very few people saying sexuality is the only thing that defines a person. More often people are saying they find it a bit jarring for all characters to appear to be bisexual, and they'd like a mix of heterosexual, homosexual and bisexual characters. Not to mention characters that differentiate based on other criteria such as race, attitude, behaviour.

That doesn't seem a problematic opinion. Ideal world there'd be lots of specific options and still some degree of choice for everyone, but obviously resource issues affect that. To me the discussion is about the varying degrees to which people want a choice of romance options, versus wanting romance options who have more specific opinions on who 'their type' is.

[HolyAvenger]

Plaintiff wrote...


I think homosexuals had more than enough rejection-based "immersion" in ME1 and 2, don't you?

 

I'm advocating for both SS-exclusive and hetero-exclusive romance paths/characters. Please don't try and imply that I'm somehow being unfair. More options for all, but exclusive options for some makes for a more interesting game experience. 

[Maria Caliban]

HeriocGreyWarden wrote...

 It is so wierd that in DA2 Merill and Fenris showed no real indication that their sexuality is bisexual if they did not romance Hawke.

Fenris will hook up with Isabela. Merill is socially awkward and obsessed with a mirror.

It is so weird that Merill only has a sexual interest in female hawke and no other female charather in the enitre game.

Maybe Hawke is just that awesome.

Alistar, Bastila, Kaiden, Tali, [paladin dude], Liara, and Silk Fox also only show sexual interest in the PC.

There are a number of players who like the idea of their PC being the love interest's One and Only True Love. When a love interest talks about their sexual history or shows interest in an NPC, there is a group of players who take exception to this.

Modifié par Maria Caliban, 20 mars 2013 - 04:32 .

[HolyAvenger]

BeatoSama wrote...

@HolyAvenger

You can flirt with them and they reject you. Doesn't that count as rejection?

 

I guess we're flirting the edge there, depending on interpretation. I honestly never felt like they were "proper" romance options in my playthrough so that didn't really come across as a rejection in the interaction. 

I really like Aveline btw, would have romanced her in a heartbeat=]

[Maria Caliban]

How could you have a proper romance with a character that rejects the PC?

Modifié par Maria Caliban, 20 mars 2013 - 04:33 .

[nightscrawl]

krul2k wrote...

yeah now that i want, potential LI rejecting the pc because well they dont agree with your choices/actions etc, for me thats more of a problem than the LI being interested no matter the gender but you dont here peeps complaining about that

I actually would like this. I think that there should be some aspects of the PC that are deal breakers for the LI. The only one I know of in DA2 is making a deal with the demon in the fade, after which Anders will end the romance. I like it because it really gives the feeling that the LI is their own person, not just existing at the whim of the PC. Similarly, while not involving the romance aspect, Fenris will leave if you don't help him with Hadriana.

[Plaintiff]

hhh89 wrote...

Plaintiff wrote...



I think homosexuals had more than enough rejection-based "immersion" in ME1 and 2, don't you?

Male homosexuals. Female homosexuals had Liara and Kelly.
Though I didn't recall that there were dialogue options to express romantice feelings for male NPC with maleshep (unless this is what you meant with rejection-based immersion).

That's basically what I was getting at, yes. The game as a whole rejects male homosexuality by failing to even acknowledge its existence.

Which is absurd, given that this is a universe where interspecies relationships are common (or in the case of the asari, actively encouraged).

In ME3, every single crew member aboard the Normandy talks about wanting to grind gears with EDI's hot new robot body. Including Kaidan, who is apparently not at all fazed by the fact that EDI is wearing the face of the woman who recently put him in hospital. But when he expresses a sexual interest in male Shepard, that's unbelievable. 

[HolyAvenger]

Maria Caliban wrote...

How could you have a proper romance with a character that rejects the PC?

 

You could "feel" like you were getting into a proper romance, only for it to end. Or they could dump you. I know my first sentence is pretty subjective, but really I can't put it better than that. In ME2 with the conversations with Samara, it really drew me and then broke my heart. In DA2, it was the same mechanic, I guess, but I felt no investment with the characters who rejected me so the rejection felt pretty meaningless. 

At least that was the case with Aveline. I never took the flirt option with Varric  no flirt option existed with Varric, so that makes sense. 

Modifié par HolyAvenger, 20 mars 2013 - 04:41 .

[SgtElias]

BeatoSama wrote...

You can flirt with them and they reject you. Doesn't that count as rejection?

Not that I'm arguing your overall point, but can you really flirt with Varric? In eight playthroughs, I've yet to be able to do this. Maybe I'm just choosing the wrong dialogue options?

HolyAvenger wrote...

I never took the flirt option with Varric. 

I am apparently the only person who hasn't found this. I feel a little derp.

Modifié par SgtElias, 20 mars 2013 - 04:38 .

[Plaintiff]

SgtElias wrote...

BeatoSama wrote...

You can flirt with them and they reject you. Doesn't that count as rejection?

Not that I'm arguing your overall point, but can you really flirt with Varric? In eight playthroughs, I've yet to be able to do this. Maybe I'm just choosing the wrong dialogue options?

Some of the "sarcastic" lines with Varric read as being somewhat flirty (to me). But since they're not designated as such, I'd say they don't count.

[HolyAvenger]

Plaintiff wrote...

hhh89 wrote...

Plaintiff wrote...



I think homosexuals had more than enough rejection-based "immersion" in ME1 and 2, don't you?

Male homosexuals. Female homosexuals had Liara and Kelly.
Though I didn't recall that there were dialogue options to express romantice feelings for male NPC with maleshep (unless this is what you meant with rejection-based immersion).

That's basically what I was getting at, yes. The game as a whole rejects male homosexuality by failing to even acknowledge its existence.

Which is absurd, given that this is a universe where interspecies relationships are common (or in the case of the asari, actively encouraged).

In ME3, every single crew member aboard the Normandy talks about wanting to grind gears with EDI's hot new robot body. Including Kaidan, who is apparently not at all fazed by the fact that EDI is wearing the face of the woman who recently put him in hospital. But when he expresses a sexual interest in male Shepard, that's unbelievable. 

 

I don't think you'll find anyone outside the trolls and homophobes who won't acknowledge that ME 1 and 2 treated male homosexuality really badly. 

I say this as a straight male game, checking my privilege. Heck I deliberately don't choose the lesbian romances (specifically FShep/Liara) as it feels like pandering and I don't want indulge BioWare their pandering (if that makes sense...)

[BeatoSama]

I seem to remember being able to flirt with Varric. Though I guess I remember wrong. I haven't played the game in some time.

[Harle Cerulean]

Plaintiff wrote...

SgtElias wrote...

BeatoSama wrote...

You can flirt with them and they reject you. Doesn't that count as rejection?

Not that I'm arguing your overall point, but can you really flirt with Varric? In eight playthroughs, I've yet to be able to do this. Maybe I'm just choosing the wrong dialogue options?

Some of the "sarcastic" lines with Varric read as being somewhat flirty (to me). But since they're not designated as such, I'd say they don't count.

I believe f!Hawke gets an actual heart-flirt with him, but m!Hawke doesn't.

[HolyAvenger]

SgtElias wrote...

BeatoSama wrote...

You can flirt with them and they reject you. Doesn't that count as rejection?

Not that I'm arguing your overall point, but can you really flirt with Varric? In eight playthroughs, I've yet to be able to do this. Maybe I'm just choosing the wrong dialogue options?

 

AHA! It has been a while since my PT of DA2 so I thought I was simply misremembering...

[hoorayforicecream]

Plaintiff wrote...

SgtElias wrote...

BeatoSama wrote...

You can flirt with them and they reject you. Doesn't that count as rejection?

Not that I'm arguing your overall point, but can you really flirt with Varric? In eight playthroughs, I've yet to be able to do this. Maybe I'm just choosing the wrong dialogue options?

Some of the "sarcastic" lines with Varric read as being somewhat flirty (to me). But since they're not designated as such, I'd say they don't count.

There is an option to flirt with Varric (with heart icon) during act 2, just like there is with Aveline (also heart icon).

[Ryzaki]

syllogi wrote...

Ferretinabun wrote...

For what it's worth, I just wanted to add that DA2 DOES have straight companions: Aveline and Sebastian are both straight.

So 'Everyone is bi' is clearly false.

And Varric is Biancasexual.  Funny how with all the cries about realism, nobody seems to have a problem with the deep and abiding love between a dwarf and his crossbow.

*hisses* 

Don't try to ruin my OTP. D: 

[Ryzaki]

Hazegurl wrote...

And doesn't Fenris dump you and leave the party if you don't go after Hadrianna in enough time?

Yep.

[nightscrawl]

HolyAvenger wrote...

Heck I deliberately don't choose the lesbian romances (specifically FShep/Liara) as it feels like pandering and I don't want indulge BioWare their pandering (if that makes sense...)

If you are referring to their telemetry data here, they likely don't know that any given data is linked to a specific person. Or even if they do track accounts with the information, how are they to know that you aren't a real life lesbian picking the option that best reflects your real life preference? They don't know the reasons people pick one thing over another, only that they picked it.

[Iakus]

David Gaider wrote...

Quite frequently on our forums someone will come along with a rant on how they hated how "all the followers in DA2 were bisexual". Sometimes you'll even get someone who counters that by saying, no, they weren't bisexual... the same-gender romance options were gay and the opposite-gender romance options were straight, depending on your player character. Most of the ire seems to center on the fact that Anders not only flirts with you if you pick the nice response options after his plot (how ghastly of him) but that the only way to turn him down is perceived as being harsh... which I don't really think it is, but the bigger crime is evidently that he doesn't like it and you get 10 whole Rivalry points for doing so. This is, as near as I can tell, the equivalent of kicking him in the head (despite the fact that you can get Anders to max Friendship in Act 1 alone about twice over, if you're keen to) and thus inexcusable.

I just want to pont out here that for me at least, it wasn't just that you pick up rivalry points (I've maxed out his friendship even with turning him down, after all) it's because the rivalry you pick up easily matches the rivalry you gain by performing some pretty anti-mage activities. Seriously, does turning him down offend his sensibilities as much as handing Ketojan over to the qunari?  Of course, that could simply be a weakness of the friendship/rivalry system

One, the double standard. I suppose in the future we should just suck up the fact that men hitting on men causes a lot more squick than women hitting on women... because nobody brings up Isabela hitting on female players without being flirted with first, only Anders. And those are the only two romance characters who do it. We talked about it and thought, "Why not? Seems fair." The reactions have sometimes been pretty funny, but overall probably not worth the trouble.

I should point out here that Isabela is A) The only openly bisexual companion in DA2 and a very...vivacious character, whom flirting is pretty much expected (she can be slept with by either a male or female Warden, along with Zevran, Alistair, or Leliana (as well as various combinations) in DAO, if you recall)

Which leads me to my third thing: while I get that some people might not like the discovery that those followers can potentially romance either gender (something you can really only discover on subsequent playthroughs or by reading about it), a lot of the things people post on the subject is... awkward. "It makes the characters inconsistent." Meaning that... bisexuality itself is indicative of inconsistency? Only people who can't make up their minds are bisexual? "It's unrealistic that everyone is bisexual!" Which 'everyone'? Everyone in Thedas? Or are
we talking four people in your party of folks who already exceptional in a large number of ways, two of which have no sexual past or preferences that they even discuss with you? "It just made them seem like they were all sexually available to me!" So... was it having three romance options for any PC gender, just like in Origins, that threw you off? Or does the idea of potentially sleeping with either gender just make them seem inherently wanton to you?

Definitely not the last part, as Leliana was my favorite LI in the Dragon Age series to date.

Although I do hope you want people to play through your games multiple times, and enjoy the story over and over again [smilie]http://social.bioware.com/images/forum/emoticons/wink.png[/smilie]

"Everyone is bisexual" would be a strange confluence for a group of adventurers.  Though not outside the realm of possibility.  But it's when all of them fixate on the same person as a potential mate that things really get strange.

Which actually makes the Fenris-Isabela thing in Act 3 kinda cool.

[HolyAvenger]

nightscrawl wrote...

HolyAvenger wrote...

Heck I deliberately don't choose the lesbian romances (specifically FShep/Liara) as it feels like pandering and I don't want indulge BioWare their pandering (if that makes sense...)

If you are referring to their telemetry data here, they likely don't know that any given data is linked to a specific person. Or even if they do track accounts with the information, how are they to know that you aren't a real life lesbian picking the option that best reflects your real life preference? They don't know the reasons people pick one thing over another, only that they picked it.

 

No I'm not talking about the telemetry. I do feel that the lesbian option was included when a gay option wasn't because they thought it would be much more appealing to straight male gamers aka pandering. 

So simply as a matter of principle, I don't do that romance with a FShep. 

[DarkSpiral]

Plaintiff wrote...

DarkSpiral wrote...

I personally though that the LIs being available to any player character was a bit cheesy. I realize plenty of people wanted to be able to romance Alistair or Morrigan with same gender Wardens, but I prefer Alistair and Morrigan to be Alistair and Morrigan. Not a version of themselves that actually had no effect whatsoever on their personality or outlook.

And I'm bisexual myself. Just so anyone that wants to claim I'm defaulting to the straight white male POV knows it isn't so.

The very fact that I, essentially, got to decide their sexual orientation for them was an eye-rolling immersion breaker. I much prefer characters that have personalities that are defined outside of my character. Therefore my relationship to them is defined by the itneraction between them and the PC, not entirely by the PC.

So when you hang out with friends whose sexuality isn't rigidly defined, is your immersion broken then? In what way does the lack of a rigidly defined sexuality ruin their personality?

Is that the best you can come up with?  Compare how I react to a video game to how I react to my real lifef riends?  They are nothing remotely the same.

Immersion.  In real life.  That's ridiculous.  Try again.

[InfinitePaths]

David Gaider wrote...

Zevran could be romanced by a man, for instance, even though he admitted that women were his preference. 

In my head cannon,Zevran is straight.But he was raised in a brothel so he got use to romancing ,malesXD

Modifié par HeriocGreyWarden, 20 mars 2013 - 05:11 .

[InfinitePaths]

Ferretinabun wrote...

For what it's worth, I just wanted to add that DA2 DOES have straight companions: Aveline and Sebastian are both straight.

So 'Everyone is bi' is clearly false.

Nobody says everyone is BI,Too bad tough that the game has straight but doesn't have gay charathers

[Pasquale1234]

Ferretinabun wrote...

For what it's worth, I just wanted to add that DA2 DOES have straight companions: Aveline and Sebastian are both straight.

So 'Everyone is bi' is clearly false.

What we know about Aveline is that she was married to Ser Wesley in the beginning and Guardsman Donnic later in the game.

What we don't know about Aveline is whether she has ever or could ever be romantically attracted to a woman.  Thus, any assertion that she is 100% straight is an assumption based on incomplete knowledge.  Of course, we also don't know whether Ser Wesley and Guardsman Donnic were entirely male - only that both of them were presented as male.

I won't talk about Sebastian, as I've never purchased the character... but I will say that it is entirely possible that he feels the need to father an heir combined with a commitment to monogamy.  That in itself does not necessarily mean that he could never be romantically attracted to another man.

My point is that some of us are making an awful lot of assumptions and trying to slap on labels that may not fit.

Mr. Gaider addressed the issue of the perception of sexuality dictating its reality here:  social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/371/index/16328682/8#16334421