426 réponses à ce sujet

[Gealunn]

I hope not! To me games feel much more fantasy(-ish?) while playing a dwarf or an elf.
Surely to be able to choose a non-human main character needs a story to fit with (like in DA:O) and apparently we are not going to have such a story in DA:I. But I sure hope that at some point we're going to get that choice again - without having to play a multiplayer game.

[Sable Rhapsody]

Qistina wrote...
That is what we/I want to see when replaying, different thing, different perspective, different view, different everything

I doubt you'll ever get "different everything."  Apart from the Origin stories and some nuances in the sidequests and plot areas that directly dealt with dwarves, elves, etc., DA:O's plot was pretty much the same no matter what race you played.  The only instance in which the PC's race made a direct impact on the potential outcome of a major plot choice was at the Landsmeet.

Here's the thing, though: would you have liked the option to pick your race and background nearly as much if the game was completely unresponsive to your choice?  Or if the choice of race made no sense in the game?  The plot of DA2, as others have pointed out, would've made no sense with an elvish (especially Dalish) family.  With some serious stretching, you could maybe make it work for a dwarf family.  But it just flows better with a human family.

Or do you think that every plot should accomodate multiple racial backgrounds, maybe?

Modifié par Sable Rhapsody, 25 juin 2013 - 09:36 .

[Ageless Face]

I doubt it, I'm sure that eventually we'll have the option to pick a race again after the fans will start protesting. And I'll join it, No hell am I going to keep watching elves from afar and remember the good old days when I could have been a proud green Dalish.

Of course there are other reasons. The story will demand/allow it, BioWare will want to know how Qunari are welcomed as PC, They themselves get bored with only watching a human butt on the screen, Reaching a land where there is a sign "no humans allowed", etc.

[Ieldra]

Here's my take on things:

I played characters of all origins in DAO, and my characters felt different throughout the game because of that. Regardless of the fact that most of the time, only insigificant differences resulted from my characters' origin during the game, they still felt different and unique. I think, however, that race as such was not a big factor, but the origin story itself. The race did nothing more than to justify a specific cultural background, and it's that cultural background that made my characters feel different. I love my dwarf noble because I like the dwarven culture, I like Orzammar and I like her origin story, not because she's a dwarf as such.

So what would really make DAI's protagonist feel like I have a significant choice in shaping them is playable backgrounds, or at least backgrounds I feel as involved in as in DAO's origins, which may be possible with a questionnaire-type prologue about your character. If different races are plausible for the story we're playing, *and* if they facilitate interesting backgrounds which wouldn't be plausible for a human (as it was in DAO), then I think it should be possible to play a non-human race. If not, I'm perfectly fine with playing a human.

There might be players who think that Bioware should make it plausible for protagonists of different races to exist, and there is some merit to that. After all, Thedas is specifically made different in some aspects from the period of real world history it took inspiration from in order to make it more plausible to have female protagonists. Regardless, not all stories can accommodate characters of different races, and I would not want Bioware to limit itself in the kinds of stories they can tell just because they want to accommodate all races. At the same time, I would not want Bioware to make a story that doesn't accommodate gender choice. The distinction may appear arbitrary but I think gender is a more significant choice from the player perspective than race.

DAO had a story where every race and gender could fit and gave us six playable backgrounds. DA2 didn't even give us a choice about backgrounds. I do not need DAO's extreme in all stories, but neither would I ever be content with a DA2-like setup in all games from now on. I would like to see stories told at any possible point on the line between these extremes.

So am I content with DAI's "human only" setup? We will see. I cannot know before I know the story. However, I would be severely disappointed if the available backgrounds didn't result in characters which feel different throughout the story, as DAO's did.

Modifié par Ieldra2, 25 juin 2013 - 10:47 .

[Xilizhra]

Here's the thing, though: would you have liked the option to pick your race and background nearly as much if the game was completely unresponsive to your choice? Or if the choice of race made no sense in the game? The plot of DA2, as others have pointed out, would've made no sense with an elvish (especially Dalish) family. With some serious stretching, you could maybe make it work for a dwarf family. But it just flows better with a human family.

Or do you think that every plot should accomodate multiple racial backgrounds, maybe?

Actually, Faerunner came up with a plot that would have fit an elven family nigh-perfectly, it'd just have to have some details changed. But they could have done it. I respect DA2 for being an experiment... but ultimately, yes, I believe that every plot should accommodate multiple racial backgrounds.

[Ieldra]

Xilizhra wrote...

Here's the thing, though: would you have liked the option to pick your race and background nearly as much if the game was completely unresponsive to your choice? Or if the choice of race made no sense in the game? The plot of DA2, as others have pointed out, would've made no sense with an elvish (especially Dalish) family. With some serious stretching, you could maybe make it work for a dwarf family. But it just flows better with a human family.

Or do you think that every plot should accomodate multiple racial backgrounds, maybe?

Actually, Faerunner came up with a plot that would have fit an elven family nigh-perfectly, it'd just have to have some details changed. But they could have done it. I respect DA2 for being an experiment... but ultimately, yes, I believe that every plot should accommodate multiple racial backgrounds.

LOL. Nice commentary on my post preceding yours, where I coincidentally expressed the opposite opinion.

[Rawgrim]

Chaos Lord Malek wrote...

I am surprise Bioware put up with this ****. Instead of focusing on what's really matter they trying to cattle to every possible minority there is.

Kudos to them for trying, shame on them for wasting their talents on it.

In Witcher, there are no africans, indians, or asians. In Witcher 2 the only gay character is one of the most foul and wicked pieces of **** i ever seen in computer game, and gets brutally murdered by Roche. In Witcher there are no stupid romances, but there is hardcore sex. And i never heard people complain about it.

Here, with Bioware, if they make non-white enemy or boss from some minority, or if they show Liara's blue ass - everyone and their mother starts complaining about oppression, bad image of race, xenophoby, sexism,etc... And i am not even mentioning people worrying, about having some wired fantasy romance, or not having too big breasts on female characters (seriously how dumb is that???), or the best lines ever "I want race selection or not buying it!", "I want it to be EPIC!", "I want this and that..."

The best thing Bioware could do, is pack everything, went to Arctic for 3 years, and be cut from their fans, from ESRB, from Fox News and the whole world. And then after 3 years they would come back with finished product, free of all this bull**** that the fans and media who are never satisfied put on them.

The Witcher games are based on a series of books. All complaints about the setting and the characters goes to the author of the books.

[Rawgrim]

LobselVith8 wrote...

Jedi Master of Orion wrote...

LobselVith8 wrote...

The implication is that this is what Varric has said. If Varric has been telling a story about a white Hawke for years, to the point where he expects that Cassandra has heard this tale, I don't see why I need to explain why I find it so problematic. If Hawke is ethnically Antivan or Rivaini, then it's a sufficient enough reason why we shouldn't have started off with a default white protagonist. Incorporating the default white protagonist into the storyline gave it uncomfortable implications, and I think it should be avoided in the future.

Frankly, I really don't understand why I need to explain why starting off as a white protagonist is so jarring if the player isn't going to create a white Champion of Kirkwall.

It reminds me of how little thought was put into players making a brown or black Warden since his family was always default white.

Why assume that he has been telling the story of a white Hawke for years? Are the only stories about the Champion from Varric? The defining aspect of default Hawke is that he is default. The fact that he is white is incidental. He looks like what most Fereldens look like. It's the image that average people who have heard about the Champion, but know almost nothing of him or her might have in their head.

It's incidental to you, but it isn't to me. That's the point. Why does my non-white character need to be whitewashed in the telling of the Champion of Kirkwall? Whether it's Varric or the world at large, why does Hawke need to be depicted as white when he is supposed to be out character? You're basically telling me that everyone thinks my non-white Hawke was white, and that only adds to my frustration with this.

I find it disappointing.

Hawke is from Lothering. People are white in Ferelden. Simple as that.

[Ieldra]

While I think the games should accommodate choice as much as is plausible, I also think world consistency trumps choice and - yeah, call me heretic if you want - also trumps political correctness. If we played a qunari, we shouldn't be able to play a female warrior. If we played a Rivaini, it should be impossible to turn the character white, and if we're going to play a member of an organization that recruits only humans, then we shouldn't be able to play anything but a human. Background and plot absolutely should restrict player choice in these matters.

Having said that, it is desirable in general to have plots that accommodate more choices, but this should not be a primary factor for selecting plots in every story.

Modifié par Ieldra2, 25 juin 2013 - 11:10 .

[Xilizhra]

Ieldra2 wrote...

Xilizhra wrote...

Here's the thing, though: would you have liked the option to pick your race and background nearly as much if the game was completely unresponsive to your choice? Or if the choice of race made no sense in the game? The plot of DA2, as others have pointed out, would've made no sense with an elvish (especially Dalish) family. With some serious stretching, you could maybe make it work for a dwarf family. But it just flows better with a human family.

Or do you think that every plot should accomodate multiple racial backgrounds, maybe?

Actually, Faerunner came up with a plot that would have fit an elven family nigh-perfectly, it'd just have to have some details changed. But they could have done it. I respect DA2 for being an experiment... but ultimately, yes, I believe that every plot should accommodate multiple racial backgrounds.

LOL. Nice commentary on my post preceding yours, where I coincidentally expressed the opposite opinion.

It can work otherwise, but I find it highly disappointing, mostly because only having a human protagonist seems to imply that you have to have a certain amount of preexisting prestige that wouldn't happen if you weren't human... and I like breaking the mold as a nonhuman, and definitely like the option being there.

[Nightdragon8]

Xilizhra wrote...

Ieldra2 wrote...

Xilizhra wrote...

Here's the thing, though: would you have liked the option to pick your race and background nearly as much if the game was completely unresponsive to your choice? Or if the choice of race made no sense in the game? The plot of DA2, as others have pointed out, would've made no sense with an elvish (especially Dalish) family. With some serious stretching, you could maybe make it work for a dwarf family. But it just flows better with a human family.

Or do you think that every plot should accomodate multiple racial backgrounds, maybe?

Actually, Faerunner came up with a plot that would have fit an elven family nigh-perfectly, it'd just have to have some details changed. But they could have done it. I respect DA2 for being an experiment... but ultimately, yes, I believe that every plot should accommodate multiple racial backgrounds.

LOL. Nice commentary on my post preceding yours, where I coincidentally expressed the opposite opinion.

It can work otherwise, but I find it highly disappointing, mostly because only having a human protagonist seems to imply that you have to have a certain amount of preexisting prestige that wouldn't happen if you weren't human... and I like breaking the mold as a nonhuman, and definitely like the option being there.

Thats pretty much how the world of Theadas is set up, at least thats how it seems in Fereldan, considering the highest place a female Elf could ever obtain is the servant of a Queen or a sevant of lady of a house.

And considering that they where treated pretty much as slaves.

maybe BW didn't feel like getting into the news agian over racism and how it is protradied in videos games.

also .... when the hell did this turn into a "not enough colored people" thread....

[Sable Rhapsody]

Ieldra2 wrote...
Having said that, it is desirable in general to have plots that accommodate more choices, but this should not be a primary factor for selecting plots in every story.

I'd say choice accomodation is more important in an RPG than in other kinds of game, but generally speaking I agree.  And just because one set of choices (race) is eliminated doesn't mean that there aren't other kinds of choices for the game.  KOTOR did just fine with a human-only protagonist in a setting that features dozens of races.

Nightdragon8 wrote...
also .... when the hell did this turn into a "not enough colored people" thread.... 

IMO skin color seems to be a non-issue in Thedas, so it should be a non-issue for our PCs and their fellows.  

Modifié par Sable Rhapsody, 25 juin 2013 - 11:47 .

[Chaos Lord Malek]

Rawgrim wrote...

Chaos Lord Malek wrote...

I am surprise Bioware put up with this ****. Instead of focusing on what's really matter they trying to cattle to every possible minority there is.

Kudos to them for trying, shame on them for wasting their talents on it.

In Witcher, there are no africans, indians, or asians. In Witcher 2 the only gay character is one of the most foul and wicked pieces of **** i ever seen in computer game, and gets brutally murdered by Roche. In Witcher there are no stupid romances, but there is hardcore sex. And i never heard people complain about it.

Here, with Bioware, if they make non-white enemy or boss from some minority, or if they show Liara's blue ass - everyone and their mother starts complaining about oppression, bad image of race, xenophoby, sexism,etc... And i am not even mentioning people worrying, about having some wired fantasy romance, or not having too big breasts on female characters (seriously how dumb is that???), or the best lines ever "I want race selection or not buying it!", "I want it to be EPIC!", "I want this and that..."

The best thing Bioware could do, is pack everything, went to Arctic for 3 years, and be cut from their fans, from ESRB, from Fox News and the whole world. And then after 3 years they would come back with finished product, free of all this bull**** that the fans and media who are never satisfied put on them.

The Witcher games are based on a series of books. All complaints about the setting and the characters goes to the author of the books.

LOL, no. Sapkowsky, didn't created Roche, didn't made Deatmold into gay, and didn't even writte any of the witcher games. He was at best consultant and advisor.

[Nerevar-as]

Allan Schumacher wrote...


Not having player races means that we put something else in instead (and unfortunately, it's not like we can make a 1:1 match for which feature that means stays in.

So what did you put instead in DA2? I saw nothing that couldn´t be done with elf or dwarf with only some writing changes. The "story only works with a human PC" excuse doesn´t work, especially in a game where any attempt at verisimilitude died the moment we where in KW with a mage in the party.

[stuboy52]

Oh no this has turned into a sexism/racism thread but for any doubting bioware's attempts to tackle sexism i refer you to exhibit A http://www.gamasutra...ty_in_games.php .

[Andraste_Reborn]

In Witcher, there are no africans, indians, or asians. In Witcher 2 the only gay character is one of the most foul and wicked pieces of **** i ever seen in computer game, and gets brutally murdered by Roche. In Witcher there are no stupid romances, but there is hardcore sex. And i never heard people complain about it.

Maybe that's because all the people who would hate all that stuff are like me, and turned off the game a few hours into the first instalment when the found out about the sex cards? (The terrible combat certainly wasn't doing anything to keep me around.)

I certainly do complain about The Witcher when it comes up in conversation, but most of the time I have better things to do than talking about a game I didn't like and never finished.

[Ziggeh]

Andrastee wrote...
Maybe that's because all the people who would hate all that stuff are like me, and turned off the game a few hours into the first instalment when the found out about the sex cards? 

I laughed so hard at that. It was like a twelve year olds concept of mature, so all the characters swear like dockers and it's full of completely random sex. There's a bit where he's in a cave and a bunch of people are on their way to kill him and some witch and she almost literally says "Well, we got five minutes. Take off your pants."

But this is exaclty right - people complain when things do not meet their expectations. If you're getting pornographic cards for nailing a witch in a cave, you can't really have high expectations about it's sympathetic representations.

[Ziggeh]

Nerevar-as wrote...

So what did you put instead in DA2? I saw nothing that couldn´t be done with elf or dwarf with only some writing changes.

Dwarf would have been a problem because their needed to be a mage in the family. Adoption maybe, but that would get a bit convoluted. Elf I can see, but in either case I suspect that, without significant rewriting they would have been too far removed from their cultures to be an interesting proposition. You wouldn't want to just be a short human.

If it were me personally, I wouldn't have built a story that relied on a human in the first place, but then I don't know where the overall Dragon Age theme is going. Maybe that was the best way to drive the narrative.

[Silfren]

Jedi Master of Orion wrote...

LobselVith8 wrote...

Rawgrim wrote...

LobselVith8 wrote...

I think it's an underlying view for the developers. Varric's story starts off with a white Hawke, which is awkward for some players, especially those of is who never intended to create a white Champion of Kirkwall. The developers never even bothered to consider having The Warden's family members match his (or her) skin tone if the player created a non-white protagonist.

We've also gotten some dismissive responses about the lack of diversity in Thedas when players bring up the subject.

Well Hawke IS from Lothering, after all. People are white in that part of the DA world. 

Not everyone is white. And the player can make Hawke brown or black, so starting him (or her) off as white seems like an odd (and uncomfortable) move, especially when Varric talks about this version of Hawke's story as the one people have heard.

Why? There's no racist element to this. It's default Hawke vs non default Hawke. Ethnic Fereldens are supposedy white anyway. Darker skinned humans are descended from further north in Thedas. If you hear a story about a hero from Ferelden and know almost none of the details, it's not a huge stretch to imagine he's white. Many figures from history have an "iconic" appearance that exists in popular culture that wasn't what they actually looked like.

I wasn't uncomfortable in Kotor 2 when Atton "incorrectly" assumes that Revan was a woman during the early conversations where the player can choose who Revan was.

Actually there IS a racist element to it. It's passive, which makes it harder to see--damn near invisible, really--for those not directly affected by it, rather than overt, but it is most assuredly there.  Any time 'white' is the auto-default, you can pretty much rest assured that there's no small amount of race-based privilege going on.  Especially when people trip over themselves to rationalize it away rather than acknowledging it and, y'know...working to change it.

[Silfren]

Jedi Master of Orion wrote...

LobselVith8 wrote...

Jedi Master of Orion wrote...

Varirc is just telling the story she expected to hear at the beginning. It was a joke. He was recounting the legend, not telling her what Hawke was really like.

Which doesn't change how jarring it is to see a white Hawke if the player is going to create a non-white protagonist. It bothered me; I thought it was completely unnecessary.

But I still don't understand why. Why is is jarring? It's not "real." That Hawke is not the protagonist, it's just a made up story. It isn't supposed to mean anything. It was Bioware's way of using the inaccuracies in the framed narrative to transition from default Hawke to customized Hawke (or not): sort of including the character customization in the story slightly more. And it doesn't last longer than a minute or two because it's not that important.

No.  You're not getting it.  This has NOTHING to do with Varric's story.  This was NOT something Bioware did intentionally in order to showcase Varric's exaggerations or inaccuracies.  This happened because when Bioware wrote this intro, the implications LITERALLY NEVER OCCURRED TO THEM, as tends to be the case in most entertainment media.

This is something that would have been immediately obvious to everyone, including you, if the default Hawke had been shown to be, say, a black character in Varric's intro scenes.

[Jedi Master of Orion]

But it doesn't really affect the game in any meaningful way at all if the game can have a customizable protagonist. White Hawke is gone as soon as you reach the character creation screen. If there is a default character he has to have one race or other. Hawke happens to have the most common one in his country.

And I can't imagine that I would have been bothered if default Hawke had been darker skinned. I almost always customize my Player Characters in any case, if I didn't like how he or she looked then I wouldn't have had to deal with it. Most of the time I never see the character used in markening as "My Hakwe/Shepard/Warden" to begin with.

Modifié par Jedi Master of Orion, 25 juin 2013 - 02:33 .

[Karlone123]

stuboy52 wrote...

Oh no this has turned into a sexism/racism thread but for any doubting bioware's attempts to tackle sexism i refer you to exhibit A http://www.gamasutra...ty_in_games.php .

That happens 90% of the time. I'll come back to this thread that I made about being strictly Human after a few days, and the fanbase will have turned it into a topic about skin colour and sexism. Don't see why people always have to do this on every topic. Racist/sexist remarks will be everywhere, people thinking they have a good grip on reality when it comes to these types of things in DA where skin colour is irrelevant. There's only a handfull of people who I can engage with who stay on topic.

I do wish they would make their own topic on it instead of talking about it in other people's topics that has nothing to do with skin colour/sexism. But a boy can dream.

[Vilegrim]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Withidread wrote...

Sorry Allan, only companies that make lesser RPG's get to use the "well, you know, these are difficult things to write" line. Bioware's history means you get held to higher standards. 

Fine, hold us to those standards, but at least understand what motivates our decisions.  In this case, it's not because VO was in the game.  So yeah, get on our case for making a game with too aggressive of a schedule for what we wanted to do and so forth.  It's not "these things are difficult to write" it's "We have finite resources to make said game.  WHat's the best place for us to put them?"

It's not like player race was in all of our big games, with KOTOR being probably th biggest game before DAO.  Yes, it's different because in DAO you were given player races so I can concede the feeling that it feels like something was taken away from  you, but we don't make these decisions purely in a vacuum, nor are we clairvoyant to know what decisions will be the right ones.

Not having player races means that we put something else in instead (and unfortunately, it's not like we can make a 1:1 match for which feature that means stays in.

KOTOR was a different case though, it was an established world where the heros where overwhelmingly human
with bit parts and support roles for other species, (less so in the EU, but the films are what most people would have been familiar with) Dragon age was claiming to the spiritual successor to Baldurs Gate (and Origins succeeded in my opinion in living up to that legacy) which had multiple species playing major roles as it's established flavour.  I'm not overly bothered by a human only  main charcter, but I can see why people would be.

Modifié par Vilegrim, 25 juin 2013 - 02:34 .

[Silfren]

Jedi Master of Orion wrote...

But it doesn't really affect the game in any meaningful way at all if the game can have a customizable protagonist. White Hawke is gone as soon as you reach the character creation screen. If there is a default character he has to have one race or other. Hawke happens to have the most common one in his country.

And I can't imagine that I would have been bothered if default Hawke had been darker skinned. I almost always customize my Player Characters in any case, if I didn't like how he or she looked then I wouldn't have had to deal with it. Most of the time I never see the character used in markening as "My Hakwe/Shepard/Warden" to begin with.

No, they don't.  We could have been shown a character in full armor that completely hid their face.  We could have seen a perspective similar to the opening scenes in Skyrim.  If it was necessary to show a default Hawke prior to the chargen screen, there WERE other ways of handling it rather than creating a problematic scene that many PoC players would have received as a slap in the face. 

[Nefla]

DA2 could have worked with any race with human, city elf, or surface dwarf fleeing the blight as refugees. Instead of being "nobles" which was never actually explored anyway they could have gained power through the underworld, becoming rich and influential and untouchable. They still could have defeated the Qunari to protect their home, or that could have BEEN the way they gained respect and influence. Having a mage in the family to try to get you to care about mages was unnecessary and didn't work. If they wanted us to care about mages or Templars they should have written both sides with depth, logic, emotion other than bat**** insane, etc...Saying "oh this story only works with a human protagonist, sorry" doesn't really work because they are the ones choosing to write the story that way, and in DA2 the story was boring, disjointed, and just downright bad. Nothing would have been lost changing that particular story.

As far as the human races thing, I don't see why we had to play the default at all in the intro. Also the two versions were too close to each other. We should have been given the CC before the game starts and the story version of Hawke should have been the one we created and had giant, crazy ornate weapons and armor and been doing things way more powerful and exaggerated.