1323 réponses à ce sujet

[Dobyk]

This is a joke, surely.

 

What part of ASOIAF am I supposed to think is drawn from "real European History"? The Undead monsters? The decades-long winters? Or the absurd prevalence of slaughter and rape? The level of violence in the series is impossible for the "real-life" period on which the setting is supposedly based. Not only would people never have put up with it, it's simply not sustainable. If people had behaved like that in Medieval Europe, the continent would now be a blighted wasteland, incapable of sustaining life. No, GRR Martin deliberately crafted a fantasy setting that would allow his characters to behave so putridly, because that was the kind of story he wanted to write. It has nothing to do with realism.

 

Which characters am I supposed to be "relating" to? The brutal, rapacious, incestuous tyrants? Or the faceless dirt-farmers that get trampled under their horses? No, I don't find the characters of ASOIAF to be relatable.

 

Actually, that's exactly what it means.

 

Realism: the quality or fact of representing a person or thing in a way that is accurate and true to life.

 

Realistic: representing things in a way that is accurate and true to life.

 

 

 

Maybe that's what you need to make an experience "meaningful and relatable". But not every player is you. I don't are what you find meaningful or relatable. I don't need it, and I don't want it.

 

What I need to make my experience meaningful is the freedom and options to create my own character and craft my own story that were given to straight people, but denied to me by literally every single Bioware game prior to DA2, not to mention every other game throughout the entirety of history.

 

And who says I want a meaningful and relatable experience at all? What do vague buzzwords like that even mean? 

 

 

Oh, you feel? That's your argument? Feelings?

 

Well I feel that resticiting romances is just satisfying the snobs and bigots that can't stand the thought of sharing their pixel dolls with the icky gay people.

 

And you know what? I'm willing to bet money that my feelings are a more accurate reflection of "realism" and the "human experience".

 

 

I'm not the slightest bit interested in how they are going to develop. My previous interest in the feature at all is effectively null and void.

 

On ASOIF: Of course he crafter it deliberately, it's a frickin' work of fiction   With that said, there are pleeenty of real-world inspiration: The Hundred Years' War, the War of the Roses, the Albigensian Crusade, Cercei Lannister was heavily influenced by Margaret of Anjou, Ned Stark by Richard, 3rd Duke of York. He acknowledges he draws heavily on British history. Zombies and dragons perhaps not, but incest, murder, violence, machinations? Yes, these are not particularly overexaggerated. It may seem so, but there have been some real crazy people in history, ambitious ones as well.

On buzzwords: I don't know, I thought everyone knew what "meaningul" and "relatable" meant. I personally take my meanings from Longman Dictionary. If these don't matter to you, then you have different expectations for gaming experience than me, which is fair enough.

On snobs, bigots and pixel dolls: That's not an argument postulated by me at all. I don't share this opinion at all. Don't put words in my mouth that do not belong there.

On feeling: If freedom is so important to you so that you want a bisexual approach, then I can understand why you would be pissed. Some people do want more freedom and variety and less "restrictions". But that only reveals that people have different expectations and preferences to begin with.

Just to make it clear - my opinion is only informed primarily of my own experience in life and what I perceive to be commonplace. It is not right, nor do I claim it is right, although I defend it because that is genuinely how I perceive things. I do exaggerated a bit with my examples, but I think I got my point across   Anyway, I think we, as gamers, just have different expectations and preferences for the upcoming game, and different opinions. That's fine, but I don't want to be on the verge of arguing with people over that.

[Wulfram]

Stupid question: Is there a possibility to have 4 female, 4 male LI?

 

Well, Mass Effect 3 had 9/10 romances depending on if you count Allers, so it's not impossible.  But it would require a lot of resources, or (even more) shallow romances

[Ianamus]

This makes me very happy.

 

I have a good feeling that we will finally get an openly gay companion, and I couldn't be more pleased!

[TurretSyndrome]

So much frustration I see here. It's funny how players want characters to be varied and respond to the PC's actions differently, but when it comes to romances, that somehow needs to be overwritten because of what the player wants. The characters are made the way they are made because they are supposed to be believable in all aspects of their personality. Characters are not restrictive just in romances when you consider this, they are restrictive in all their reactions to the PC's actions, something people often forget. So to demand that the developers ignore that system and make romances an exception, to me, is very selfish and damaging to the overall quality of the game. 

 

I am glad Bioware decided against this, they may not be appreciated by everyone for this but I certainly do for preserving integrity of the characters. Playersexuality should never have been done in DA 2, it is not for the player to determine what the characters are supposed to be. Instead they should work to give players of all preferences equal number of romances, but I know even that is not going to satisfy some people here.

[Darth Krytie]

I don't disagree with Maria Caliban's points (that I've seen made in the last few pages, that is, I haven't read any previous ones) anyway. I've been for the playersexual approach for efficiency reasons, and I've been against it for representation reasons.  If BioWare can afford to be less efficient, then I see less need for playersexual characters. That's basically my take on the tradeoff.

 

FWIW my suggestion that plausible/possible is a useful distinction was meant as a general statement, but I can see how that might confuse people as to where I stood.

 

Any problems I've had with losing the all-bi romance option (I despise the term playersexual and debate it anyhow as the sexuality is more ambiguous than changing) would be solved potentially if the romances balance out, giving people options as per how we theorized earlier in this thread. But moreso if it turns out to be well done. I'd sure love a canonically, cannot be debated, cannot be argued over gay character or two in the Dragon Age world, especially one that does not meet a tragic canonical end. And a romance that doesn't end in Chantry bombing or separation after three years or any kind of permanent misery or what have you.

[Rayndorn]

I'm... on the fence about this news. I've expressed my preference for player-sexuality in other posts, so I'm concerned I'm going to be in another Alistair situation - vastly preferring the character I can't romance over the one I can (Zevran, in that age-old case).

 

To be honest, I feel anxious about the thought of not being able to romance the character I want to - though, that's reflective of real life, I guess. And yet, I'm somewhat excited about learning who is a M/M romance option - provided that they aren't all  bisexual romances. (Don't get me wrong - I've enjoyed romancing bisexual characters as different genders greatly, as it offers a lot of insight on the character him/herself. I'd just like exclusive M/M romances.)

I really did enjoy romancing Steve in ME3, however - he was all mine, ladies! *Evil cackle*

[Mockingword]

This makes me very happy.

 

I have a good feeling that we will finally get an openly gay companion, and I couldn't be more pleased!

They were already openly attracted to males. Why do they need to be "gay"? Which they won't be, because the word "gay" doesn't even appear to even exist in Thedas.

 

DA2's "ambiguous" romantic interests already represented everyone who feels same-sex attraction of any kind. "Gays" included.

 

If it's so important to have characters that are attracted to men and only men, Bioware could have put some in their lengthy roster of non-romanceable NPCs.

[InvincibleHero]

People are missing the obvious the characteriztion of each romance can quite possbly be much deeper and more satisfying and less cookie cutter. I hope that is the case. Instead the focus is I want them all or one specific person. They are all available to anyone of any gender you just might have to make a man or woman to experience it within the game. The only one choosing to lock yourself from the content is you not Bioware.

[Kidd]

I feel let down. It's hardly a deal-breaker or anything, and the trailer yesterday was bloody awesome, but this piece of news is quite a huge bummer.

My problem is not so much that I'll "need to play PCs of both genders" (I already do, although admittedly I have less men), but to me the playersexual feature was more than that. It was an assurance that no matter what gender your character may belong to, no matter what sexual orientation, they'd still get an equal experience. If a PC's arc would fit better with a specific LI's path, that would be available. This not only allows the story to be crafted along (especially for first-time playthroughs) the player's tastes, it also happens to feel incredibly inclusive.

To show my fears for Inquisition, here's a hypothetical case of a first-time Origins playthrough; imagine a player rolling up a female mage. This mage may sympathise with Jowan in her origin story and generally disapprove of the Circle system. Rejoice! Grey Wardenship means being let out of the literal cage.

So who does she romance to fit with her personal plot line of mage freedom that will run in tandem to the greater world plot line of saving the world? The ex-templar who has yet to fully shake off his old ways or the person who religiously supports the very faith that keeps the Circle in existence? Nope. How about the assassin who doesn't talk on the matter at all? Might work, but ultimately his plotline will be a very separate thing. Morrigan? Now that's a different take on the same path. A character that mirrors the protagonist yet still brings a ton of conflict and contrast with her. Perfec- Oh, nope she's not available.

The answer isn't as easy as googling a list of LIs before starting the game either, since you don't know the characters as people at that point. Not to mention you may not even know there is something to google if you're not a returning fan and thus have a hampered first-time experience. This isn't Harrowmont being revealed to be a mean dude at the end of the game, it's the removal of a possible plot line - very different from the ordinary choice & consequence we tend to talk about.

I recognise part of this disappointment I feel may come from me being pansexual myself. I honestly don't know how big a part that plays into how I feel but I realise my own orientation was the way of the game in DA2. Some feeling of having something being taken away would be natural, I believe.

Finally, how many LIs are we getting? Unless we're up to 6 LIs, some orientation type is biting the bullet.

[Wulfram]

They were already openly attracted to males. Why do they need to be "gay"? Which they won't be, because the word "gay" doesn't even appear to even exist in Thedas.

 

"poetess" exists as a Thedosian equivalent of "lesbian", or at least it did in DA:O, so why wouldn't a similar equivalent of "gay"?

[Dobyk]

 

Because it isn't "everyone the player encounters."  It's the exceptionally small subset of people that are even willing to have a romance with you.  Which already bends the realm of any sort of believability if taken in a literal, world defining sort of way.

 

Makes sense, Allan. When you put it this way I can understand the counter-arguments to the whole realism thing much better. But a couple of people on the forum did raise the idea about "character agency" and "identity", and these two do make quite a bit of sense. I, personally, am ready to sacrifice some of my own player agency and control over the game just to see some really well fleshed out characters, even if they reject my romantic feelings for them. Alistair rejected my romantic feelings as a Human noble, but nevertheless I appreciated his uniqueness and depth of character. I did eventually got to cuddle with him, as an elven maid, though In that regard, I think there are a lot of awesome and in-depth things you guys can achieve, even though there are some restrictions

[javeart]

The good thing about arriving so late to the party it's that everything I wanted to say it's already been said, so it saves me the pain of trying to express myself in english 

 

About the tone of a lot of answers in this thread

I'll never understand why some people seem so excited at the prospect of Bioware punishing others by taking away content from them, whether it's because of their choice of sexual preference or their choice of player race.

 

About the "realism argument"

Ugh. Seriously, ugh. Just ugh. I don't even know if I have words to describe how disappointed I am. Every time the word 'realism' is used, I want to just throw up a little in my mouth. Because it is only ever used in this context. That's it. And I'm pretty sure it's going to be weighted heavily towards the straight male character. Of that, I have no doubt.

 

Honestly. If there's only one option for a lesbian Inquisitor I may cry.

 

 

About the "replayability argument"

I will be honest, I have never understood this argument, not at all. So far every Bioware romance has been monogamous, so every romance requires a new game to be experienced in full. Thus the four romances in DA2 required four separate playthroughs, no matter what you chose. Also, I don't quite understand what the class has to do with anything, but whatever. Besides, where exactly does this idea come that player should be pushed to play different playthroughs with characters they don't necessarily enjoy in order to get a small piece of content they wish? Exactly how is that against replayabilty, as even in your example if the player plays the game through with the same kind of character several times, it assumed that something in that playthrough gave them so much enjoyment that they repeated it. And so the game had replayability.

 

 

[javeart]

About the "fleshing out characters argument"

GEE, GREAT. Because when I romance someone the first thing I want to hear about is them going on and on about their past spouses and crushes??  

 

 

And why is dangerous

I would like stereotypes to not have been a factor when deciding who the LI's were. Especially the male LIs.

 

Do the elves really have to be the bisexual ones?

 

Do the bisexual characters have to be promiscuous?

 

Do the muscular, tough guys have to be straight?

 

Etc.

 

And because of the plain homophobia that can be sensed in some people

I hope they at least have one gay/bi guy in there that will hit on male inquisitor. Just to ****** certain people off.

 

 

And this simply because it's never said enough

No. No, and no.  There is no such thing as reverse sexism.  First of all, let’s establish a working definition of sexism: Just like how racism = power + prejudice based on skin color, sexism = power + prejudice based on gender. Therefore, a person who does not exist with the necessary institutionalized power and privilege of belonging to a dominant in-group, cannot be racist, sexist, ableist, etc.  Women can certainly be prejudiced or discriminatory against men (which is not acceptable either) but they cannot be sexist or “reverse sexist” simply because they lack the institutional power to systematize their prejudice against men. Women have been and still are a disenfranchised group in society.  Like other marginalized groups (people of color, the queer community, differently-abled people, etc.) we’ve had to fight for inclusion within society’s heterosexual, white, upper class, male-centric, oppressive institutions.  And in fighting for inclusion we are vilified as troublemakers and rabble-rousers.  How dare we try to subvert the norm, right?

 

[Sonvega]

how sobering :/ now I`m losing interest in the game, hype`s gone

yesterday I preordered the deluxe edition for 80€ now I`ll cancel it, 111 US dollar is too expensive

I`ll wait for a price drop

[InvincibleHero]

Are you really giving up player agency though? It is an empheral thing you have no agency, but what they give you. I hope the choice they made leads to more diversity in the game and a unique quality to each romance. As for identity well it goes outside the game when people try to create a new one for a character they control in a game. they can in limited sense but never as much as many other want to do. Some get so bent out of shape for not being able to make the game adapt to their head canon.

[wright1978]

I don't disagree with Maria Caliban's points (that I've seen made in the last few pages, that is, I haven't read any previous ones) anyway. I've been for the playersexual approach for efficiency reasons, and I've been against it for representation reasons.  If BioWare can afford to be less efficient, then I see less need for playersexual characters. That's basically my take on the tradeoff.

 

FWIW my suggestion that plausible/possible is a useful distinction was meant as a general statement, but I can see how that might confuse people as to where I stood.

Yeah efficiency in terms of choice and depth of content has been the main reason why i've been for playersexual approach. If there's suddenly been an influx of new resource over DA2 then i wouldn't be particularly inflamed by the notion of these restrictions being added. Sadly i see little evidence of this so i fear it'll mean less companion romance choice per orientation coupled with less content per LI, neither of which are acceptable trade offs to me.

[Mockingword]

"poetess" exists as a Thedosian equivalent of "lesbian", or at least it did in DA:O, so why wouldn't a similar equivalent of "gay"?

If you're referring to them with words that only exist in Thedas, then that's still not representation.

 

And it doesn't refute my point. Characters can represent homosexuality without being "gay".

[Ianamus]

They were already openly attracted to males. Why do they need to be "gay"? Which they won't be, because the word "gay" doesn't even appear to even exist in Thedas.

 

DA2's "ambiguous" romantic interests already represented everyone who feels same-sex attraction of any kind. "Gays" included.

 

If it's so important to have characters that are attracted to men and only men, Bioware could have put some in their lengthy roster of non-romanceable NPCs.

 

Representation. If a series with a large number of characters has only straight characters I tend to hold that against it. Same if it had only gay characters, or only bisexual characters. 

 

Yes Thedas doesn't need to follow real life demographics, but by that logic it does not need to include non-straight characters or non-white characters at all. But Bioware chose to include those real-life demographics in the game. 

 

Therefore, as we have many characters in Dragon Age who are attracted only to the opposite gender or both genders, it is time they also included characters solely attracted to the same gender. 

 

Yes, this could be done through NPC's but why not companions? There are the most important characters after all, and having a non-white or non-straight companion character has a far larger impact and leaves more of an impression of equality than a minor NPC. 

[InvincibleHero]

Sorry if off topic, but tried to quote someone and failed hit the quote toggle. Some help please. Also if anyone could tell me how to get my registered game icons back I would appreciate it. They changes seem to give us more power but it is confusing from the old simple boards.

[upsettingshorts]

Are you really giving up player agency though? It is an empheral thing you have no agency, but what they give you. I hope the choice they made leads to more diversity in the game and a unique quality to each romance. As for identity well it goes outside the game when people try to create a new one for a character they control in a game. they can in limited sense but never as much as many other want to do. Some get so bent out of shape for not being able to make the game adapt to their head canon.

 

Sure you are. There is absolutely a tradeoff. Take Kidd's post. They want to be able to romance the character that fits the narrative and chosen sexuality of their protagonist (player agency), and gave an example of a female mage who disliked the Circle being a good fit with Morrigan in DAO.

 

Now it could be argued that it's possible that no such narrative-appropriate characters would necessarily be available, but the characters' sexuality can still prove to be a barrier to the player getting what they want out of the game. I don't think there's any question of that.

[Mockingword]

If their sexuality is unknowable, instead of as I assert simply conditional, then they represent no-one.

On the contrary, they represent everyone who loves, wants to love, or has ever loved.

 

As opposed to only the heterosexuals who fit those categories.

[upsettingshorts]

On the contrary, they represent everyone who loves, wants to love, or has ever loved.

 

And ya know what, I bet when we live in a world in which all things are equal, that sentiment will carry real weight.

[Mockingword]

Representation. If a series with a large number of characters has only straight characters I tend to hold that against it. Same if it had only gay characters, or only bisexual characters. 

 

Yes Thedas doesn't need to follow real life demographics, but by that logic it does not need to include non-straight characters or non-white characters at all. But Bioware chose to include those real-life demographics in the game. 

 

Therefore, as we have many characters in Dragon Age who are attracted only to the opposite gender or both genders, it is time they also included characters solely attracted to the same gender. 

 

Yes, this could be done through NPC's but why not companions? There are the most important characters after all, and having a non-white or non-straight companion character has a far larger impact and leaves more of an impression of equality than a minor NPC. 

Since you don't know the sexuality of any of the characters, you can't know if it has "only" anything.

 

And Thedas doesn't represent any real-life demographics, because there is no real-life demographic of people who live in Thedas.

 

I'm perfectly fine with having characters who are only same-sex attracted. But potential romance partners should be open to everybody.

[Ianamus]

Since you don't know the sexuality of any of the characters, you can't know if it has "only" anything.

 

Not true. Oghren was very clearly heterosexual, despite never saying it outright.

 

 

 

And Thedas doesn't represent any real-life demographics, because there is no real-life demographic of people who live in Thedas.

 

 

So a child in Thedas is not an example of a child? Vivienne is not an example of a non-white person? The characters in Thedas represent people in real life just as much as fictional characters in any other setting. 

[Nonoru]

More power to Bioware if they manage to make it more realistic.There are enough companions to cover everybody's preferences anyway.