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tl;dr version at bottom.
The media really favours straight white men and as has been pointed out about DAI, it's not different. The amount of 'straight white men' that are the main focus in media is kind of sad. There is a general issue but why can't we have more black female leads (Ororo Munroe anyone?) or gay men or if you really want to break the mold, have a trans person as the star. What i'm looking for is some equal representation for all kinds of people.
Take mass effect for example as the straight white male. One of the trailers for Mass Effect 1 had the default male Shepard and at one part of the trailer he does that huge embrace kiss with Ashley. Why not show two women or men doing the same thing for example. Now we look at Dragon Age Origins, DA2 and DAIs trailers. White men who, at least in the case of DA2, are straight (Isabela).
The issues are similar but also vary depending on the group. For women it mainly seems as underrepresentation, there just isn't much of a spotlight on them, which especially for games that have the choice of gender, it makes it comes across as the female characters being an afterthought. I'm not saying that they ARE an afterthought, only that is the impression it gives. I will gives props to Bioware for not using the 'if the main character is a woman then she must make sure everyone knows and be a b*tch about it'. Because that, quite frankly, is rubbish. It it still doesn't excuse the underrepresentation.
Take non-straight characters. If there is a guy on a TV show, he's never just a man who is gay. He is 'the gay guy'. but what does this mean? Well, 9 times out of 10 this character's purpose is to cause drama between people and to make sure they've slept with every other non-straight man (probably some of the straight characters too). Is any of that bad? Possibly, it depends you see. Game of Thrones changed a book character (Olyvar Frey) so he can be gay and cause drams and sleep with people.
Two characters on a British soap opera called Coronation Street recently went through a plot line where the gay guy tricks the "gay guy who likes women" (seriously that's how he's described in the show) into sleeping with him. Effectively cause the BI guy to cheat on his girlfriend for a few months. I'll admit that this is my pet peeve, as a gay man myself and someone who is 21 and still a virgin as i'm waiting for a committed relationship first i'm bothered that according to the media I must be a sex-crazed, deceptive individual who spends my free time working on ways to cause drama for people and find my next sexual conquest. (That's ridiculous, if I did than I wouldn't have time to play my RPGs). But it's not as if it's limited to gay men, it's practically any non-straight character. If you're lesbian than what you really are is all of the above and the desire for all men AND not really gay. If you're bisexual then what you really are is either straight or gay and you haven't decided OR just...'greedy' >_> yeah, uh huh, whatever The sexuality just isn't a part of the character, the sexuality IS the character and a totally stereotyped one at that.
Look at black characters. They are mostly portrayed as thugs and if they play any main role it's always some loud, rude individual who is generally up to no good OR a character that was white and changed to be black instead of being a black character. This seems to apply to any not white, not Caucasian character. This mostly occurs in film adaptation of superhero stories for some reason. This is again a big issue with the media, they portrays groups using narrow stereotypes which people watch and then think that's how all people of that group are like.
I'd just like to see equal representation for all people not one specific group of people. Furthermore, i'd like it to be non-stereotyped representation (using the non-straight and black example). I don't want to make this thread about equal rights because that is a different subject, I only wish to discuss the even and fair representation of all people. There are a lot of different people in this world, be it straight, bi, gay, trans, pan, male or female and everyone deserves to be included without people overlooking their issues just because they are a minority or a woman or a man or black or asian or mexican or every-other-possible-reason-for-someone-to-be-a-pain-in-the-as*. What I am asking Bioware is to careful consider representing all people in marketing, we have enough straight white men as the 'face' of a game or show in marketing. If you can't do this for Inquisition then keep in in mind for future games when thinking about trailers and other such marketing. But please, don't just do stereotypes there is enough of that already and it doesn't need to be added to (and remember that there is no such thing as a good stereotype). I know this was extremely long winded and many people may just want to skip past it but if you did read it all then kudos, you deserve a cookie!
tl;dr - People from all walks of life should get equal and non-stereotyped representation in media regardless of gender, sexuality or ethnicity and Bioware should be on that like hotcakes.
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