579 réponses à ce sujet

[Sheepie Crusher]

Stop using the formula of talking to them two or three times and then sex

[Wulfram]

Stop using the formula of talking to them two or three times and then sex

 

Sex first, then talk to them?

[tanzensehen]

Yeah, it's not really a trope but the main female leads in Bioware games are almost always straight and it usually they are not the "girly/feminine" one. The only exceptions were Isabela and Dawn Star.

 

I wanted also to say that Isabela had the Tragic Backstory, Fix Me arc and Save Me From Angry Things bit, I think that those were well written. She shares her part of her backstory without mentioning it all the time, she decides on her own what to do about her feelings and she has to be "saved" only because the Arishok refuses to duel her.

I know, it's just a difference in writing, but It made it all more enjoyable for me. 

 

 

 

To me, the difference is fairly notable in that Sebastian's far less of an angst anvil than the others, and he seems to hold together relatively well without Hawke, whereas the others are far more needy. While this could be at least partly explained by the time constraints of DA2's release, it still seems like their overall stories and how they're tied into the plot were shaped around at least some subtle bias.

 

 

I'd say that of all the companions, Sebastian is the one who needs Hawke the most. Yes, the four LI have a lot of angst, but they also manage a lot on their own - no matter your relationship with them, Isabela finds the relic in Act 2 and Fenris puts himself together in Act 3, Merrill and Anders keep doing what they are doing no matter what Hawke does.

 

Sebastian instead goes with whatever Hawke thinks he should go, even at the ending. 

 

While I agree that the LIs in DA2 had a lot of angst, they were also better at managing without the PC having to fix all their problems, unlike DA:O or ME - but this is more about companions than LIs.

[daveliam]

Stop using the formula of talking to them two or three times and then sex

 

I think that DA2 had way more conversations with the characters before fade-to-black sex, right?  I remember a bunch of conversations with Anders before he slept with Hawke.  Or, I might be misremembering it.

[Kalamah]

I'd say that of all the companions, Sebastian is the one who needs Hawke the most. Yes, the four LI have a lot of angst, but they also manage a lot on their own - no matter your relationship with them, Isabela finds the relic in Act 2 and Fenris puts himself together in Act 3, Merrill and Anders keep doing what they are doing no matter what Hawke does.

 

Sebastian instead goes with whatever Hawke thinks he should go, even at the ending. 

 

While I agree that the LIs in DA2 had a lot of angst, they were also better at managing without the PC having to fix all their problems, unlike DA:O or ME - but this is more about companions than LIs.

I admittedly did my best to ignore Sebastian on all my PTs, so I kind of left him to his own devices and that's coloring my impression a bit.  Still, I can see what you mean even though I'd quibble that it's not so much his dependence on Hawke as it is the fact he needs a good kick in the *** to actually decide anything... rather like Alistair. 

 

Edit: to avoid a double post, I think someone else mentioned this, but the similarities with the hetero dudes is definitely a thing I've noticed. Even Maric was the type to need a swift kick in the behind from others to make decisions. While Sebastian is definitely somewhat less of a wishy-washy type who prefers following to having responsibilities, there's a definite trend of the hetero dudes being the noble knight type who need guidance (a.k.a. a kick in the rear) to do things at crucial points. I mean, it's occasionally amusing, at least to me, but it's also a bit annoying.

[AlanC9]

I think that DA2 had way more conversations with the characters before fade-to-black sex, right?  I remember a bunch of conversations with Anders before he slept with Hawke.  Or, I might be misremembering it.

DA:O could have many conversations as well, depending on how fast the player burned out the camp conversation options. (Not a big fan of making the player control pacing, myself).

This was something of an issue in the ME series, though. For instance, in ME2 you have one or two initial convos, a pre-LM and a post-LM convo, and then the romance option unlocks. (Possibly less of an issue in ME3 depending in how the player perceives conversations) OTOH, the ME designs were about pacing the convos in order to postpone, er, consummation until the endgame, which wasn't a goal for the DA games. (BG2 did it ME-style, except for Vicky IIRC.)

[In Exile]

I think "Academic" still works the best.  Brainy/nerdy types can still be applied to a lot of things.  But yeah, a scholar that is very interested in learning/researching/understanding.

 

I wonder if the word "intellectual" might not be better, per this definition:

 

"a person who places a high value on or pursues things of interest to the intellect or the more complex forms and fields of knowledge, as aesthetic or philosophical matters, especially on an abstract and general level"

[PsychoBlonde]

 

Note: I'd prefer this to not be a general "what I would like to see improved with romances" but the focus to be "You often/always use the same pattern to depict this particular romance type."

 

I'd like to see a lessening of the "Nasty-minded shrew" and the "sweet, naive idealist" who have been the omnipresent females in pretty much every Bioware game, ever.  Let's have a look:

 

Baldur's Gate 2 (the first game with romances): Jaheira (shrew), Aerie (naive idealist), Nalia (naive idealist)

Neverwinter Nights, Hordes of the Underdark: Aribeth (shrew), Nathyrra (naive idealist)

Kotor: Bastila (shrew).  Mission is the Official Naive Idealist in that game and not a romance option, while Juhani (who cannot be romanced by a male character) has very little personality.  But Bastila sure makes up for that by being some kind of Platonic Shrew Ideal.  Yeesh.

Jade Empire: Sun Lian (shrew), Dawn Star (naive Idealist)

Mass Effect: Ashley (shrew, although certainly much less of one than Bastila), Liara (naive idealist)

Dragon Age Origins: Morrigan (shrew), Leliana (naive idealist).

Mass Effect 2:  I haven't played this one, although I've watched a Let's Play video of it.  Technically you could say that both Miranda and Jack are Shrew archetypes.

DA2: This one gets a little credit because the nominal "shrew" (Aveline) isn't really a romance option for the player, although you DO get to WATCH her have a romance with ANOTHER character.  You still have the naive idealist (Merrill).  Izzy is actually an import of one of the male archetypes I'll discuss in a minute.

Mass Effect 3: Just has the existing romances from the other 2 games, so Shrew and Naive Idealist are present.

 

For men, the breakdown tends to be (ASSUMING THERE ARE TWO, in some of the earlier games you had ONE) "stiff, grumpy guy who doesn't trust you, doesn't want to talk to you, has some Unfortunate Past that you can get out of him" and (if there is a second option) "party animal".  Let's see:

 

Baldur's Gate 2: Anomen (stiff).  There's still a Party Animal present (Haer'Dalis) who will potentially romance another companion.

Neverwinter Nights: Valen (stiff)

KotOR: Carth Onasi (stiff)

Jade Empire: Sky (party animal--WITH the tragic past)

Mass Effect: Kaiden (stiff)

Dragon Age Origins: Alistair is actually the first guy who doesn't fully qualify as a stiff right off the bat (although he can get pretty huffy with you later in the game depending on what you do, so he qualifies more as a trope inversion than as an off-trope example).  There's a stiff in the party (Sten), and Zevran's a Party Animal with (kind of) a tragic past.

Mass Effect 2:  Jacob is kind of a stiff.  I'm not as familiar with ME2 and 3.

DA2: Fenris (stiff) and Anders (former party animal, now also stiff).  The ACTUAL party animal trope example in DA2 is Izzy, but you can romance her on a female character so she still counts for the archetype list available to female PC's.

ME3: as above.

 

So, yeah, the romances tend to be pretty cookie-cutter.  I'm not complaining--I LIKE stiffs--, but it does get a little tedious after a while.  If I had to guess, I'd suspect the romance breakdown for DAI is going to look like this:

 

Guys:

Cullen (stiff)

Iron Bull (party animal)

Dorian (party animal)

(guessing) Blackwall (Stiff)  If it's not him it's going to be Varric who seems to have migrated from Party Animal toward Stiff.

 

Ladies:

Sera (naive idealist)

Vivienne (shrew) (just guessing on this one)

Josephine (probably a mix of idealist and shrew traits with a dash of party animal thrown in)

Cassandra (shrew)

 

If you're observant it's usually possible to peg the romance options before they even get revealed just based on their personality traits.  If a woman seems shrewish or idealistic, she's going to be a romance option.  If a man is either a stiff or a party animal, he's likely to be a romance option-provided he isn't one of the more nonsexy races.  You guys do get some credit so far with DAI because we've got at least one confirmed "not a human or elf" male thus far.  It certainly seems you've at least gotten the point that it's okay for MALES not to be GQ cover guys.  Females are still REQUIRED to be Hot Chicks, though.  Heck, you won't even MAKE a second female dwarf companion.

If you'd like to get away from these tropes, I'd say:

 

Remember that a dude can be a serious guy without having some sort of Tragic Past.  Nor does serious necessarily have to mean "I don't wanna talk about it" (or, in some cases, "I cannot talk about anything else").

Also remember that a dude can be friendly and outgoing without feeling the need to party hard and flirt with anything that has two legs and breasts.

 

Remember that a woman who is serious doesn't necessarily feel the need to be hyper-critical of everything and everyone she doesn't agree with.  In fact, it's been my experience that the more serious a woman is about whatever it is she's doing, the MORE likely she is to be relaxed and easy-going about people's personal deficiencies.  Confident women are CONFIDENT.  They don't NEED to put anyone down.  They just don't take anybody's ****, either.

You could stand to tone down the cutesy aspects in some of your female characters, too.  Women older than, say, 18, are more likely to *appreciate* cute than to actually *be* cute.  We're not all looking for a daddy.  Not even most of us--and those who are tend to get their illusions shattered pretty quickly.  That could actually be a cool avenue to explore.  What if the "naive idealist" is actually grasping, manipulative, and lazy?  What if the "shrew" is actually easy-going and calm?  It'd be a lot better than just repeating the same stuff over and over.

And why can't we have a Stiff who is, say, a hard drinker?  Drunks aren't always fun-loving life-of-the-party types.  Nor does excess in one realm necessarily translate to excess in other realms.  Stiff is almost an unavoidable archetype, though.  The "gruff-first-impression-followed-by-discovery-that-he's-not-such-a-bad-guy-after-all-and-he-loves-fuzzy-animals" trope is SO EFFING COMMON that it could almost be described as the Pure Quill of Romance because most romances targeted at females are aimed at introducing conflict so that the guy has the opportunity to Agonize over the relationship.  And nothing introduces conflict right off the bat like a bad first impression.  Well, that, and there has to be room for the conflict to be resolved, so if it were a REAL conflict over something FUNDAMENTAL to the guy's personality, there would be no romance.  So the conflict has to be over a lie or a misunderstanding or an error of some kind.

 

[AlanC9]

Edit: to avoid a double post, I think someone else mentioned this, but the similarities with the hetero dudes is definitely a thing I've noticed. Even Maric was the type to need a swift kick in the behind from others to make decisions. While Sebastian is definitely somewhat less of a wishy-washy type who prefers following to having responsibilities, there's a definite trend of the hetero dudes being the noble knight type who need guidance (a.k.a. a kick in the rear) to do things at crucial points. I mean, it's occasionally amusing, at least to me, but it's also a bit annoying.

I've always figured this was a side-effect of preventing the noble knight from being the natural party leader instead of the PC.

[Maria Caliban]

Sex first, then talk to them?

Please stop spoiling Iron Bull's recruitment quest.

[leaguer of one]

Does Merrill flirt back? It doesn't have to be requited. Merrill is bisexual regardless.

Merrill also state her attraction to qunari men.

[CareBear1023]

Everyone is sort of a trope.  People come up with these things because they are a way of conveying personality types.  Its Myers Briggs, Keirsey, etc.

 

I'd bring this up but women still have to look conventionally attractive in Dragon Age games, whereas the men can have horns, scars, missing eyes, be bald, etc.

 

Josephine conventionally attractive femme

Malificent/Vivienne--awesomely severely attractive

Sera--manic pixie girl cute

Leliana

Cassandra

[Felya87]

one thing I noticed, a recurring thing in females LI is that not only have way less "ex lover", but usually those ex aren't very good persons (marjolaine, for example, or Isabela husband. the only exception may be Jack, but she talk about abusive relationship too, and the woman from BG2), while the male LIs (straight or Bi or ethero) have always a very good person that they miss.

 

just a thing I noticed.

 

others things that I think can be made better (but it was surely already said) are a little more attention from the LI towards the PC. I remember in DAO I felt a little sad about the fact that my female CE couldn't tell Alistair about her marriage and what happen to her in the Alienage. It was a traumatic event, it would have been good to see the LI reaction to that past. (and in the Alienage the "you where married? you never told me!" Alistair dear, I wanted. It was the game that didn't let me =_= and I was quite deluded there wasn't the "we'll talk about it alter" either)

and it was a little sad in Fort Drakon too. Alistair was quite cold, and almost didin't ask the PC is she was ok. quite a little even for a simple friend. let's not talk about someone that should be his lover.

 

overall, in DAO there was this bad sensation that the only one really interest in the relationship was the PC.

 

In DA2 there is less this problem, the relationships where a little less static, but there where others problems.

[Schreckstoff]

Did we ever have a friendship developing into more kind of romance?

I had hoped for that in DA2 as Hawke and Aveline have a great friendship I could well see develop into more if it weren't for Donnic and Aveline's denseness.

[leaguer of one]

Everyone is sort of a trope.  People come up with these things because they are a way of conveying personality types.  Its Myers Briggs, Keirsey, etc.

 

I'd bring this up but women still have to look conventionally attractive in Dragon Age games, whereas the men can have horns, scars, missing eyes, be bald, etc.

 

Josephine conventionally attractive femme

Malificent/Vivienne--awesomely severely attractive

Sera--manic pixie girl cute

Leliana

Cassandra

Wait....We don't know Sera enough to say what troph she is part of.

[leaguer of one]

Did we ever have a friendship developing into more kind of romance?

 

Garrus. That's definitely Garrus' romance.

[syllogi]

It seems to me that you guys at Bioware tend to avoid making women with butch traits lesbians maybe to avoid stereotypes, but of course I cant speak for you. The only women with mannerisms and appearances I might describe as butch have all been straight only (Jack, Ashley now Cass), while all the bi and lesbian options have been way too femme for my tastes (thus I haven't romanced any of them with a woman). Liara I find to be the most egregious example, basically saying she would be the woman in the relationship, while femshep can be described as quite butch. Just once, I would like to be the femme one in the relationship.

 

This is a big thing to me, because my first inklings of same sex attraction were to androgynous and/or "butch" women, even as a child, and I think I internalized the idea that it was a bad!wrong thing to think those women were attractive for a LONG time.  Even when I came out as a lesbian in college, and I was around other women who liked women, I was made to feel like I was weird and outdated for expressing attraction to butch women.  The fact that pretty much all media everywhere is okay with female characters who have masculine traits, but ONLY on the condition that they are super duper straight, is very depressing.

 

I have to admit that I was hoping that this trend was going to be bucked when it came to Cassandra, but at the same time, I'm not at all surprised that it wasn't.

[In Exile]

It's only worse if you think a queer woman being masculine is bad.

The previous f/f characters - Silk Fox, Leliana, Isabela, Merrill, Liara, Kelly, Samara - all feel conventionally feminine to me. The only other women who have as many stereotypical male traits - Aveline and Ashley - are straight.

 

To flip this around, I'd like to see a queer man that's more feminine, at least in appearance if not personality (the closest I ever felt we got to that personality-wise was Alistair, who was decidedly straight). But that's just a YMMV preference. 

[AlanC9]

Mass Effect 2:  I haven't played this one, although I've watched a Let's Play video of it.  Technically you could say that both Miranda and Jack are Shrew archetypes.
Mass Effect 3: Just has the existing romances from the other 2 games, so Shrew and Naive Idealist are present.

Don't forget Traynor; naive idealist, as are ME2 Tali and Kelly. You sure Miranda isn't a stiff?

As for the guys, Thane and Cortez are pretty much stiffs -- Cortez could be the poster-boy for the trope. I'm not sure how Garrus fits in. He actually picks up a tragic backstory after ME1.

[Han Shot First]

The virginal female love interest, often shy and a bit socially awkward, who had never met anyone special enough to share herself with until the protagonist came along. I'm not sure if there is a page for that sort of character on TV Tropes, but if there isn't, there should be. Examples from Bioware games include:

 

Aerie

Dawn Star

Liara

Tali

Merrill 

 

I've never been a fan of this trope in video games, as whether or not it is intended, it sort of comes across as a fetishization of female virginity. These sorts of characters are much more common for female characters than male. With video games it also serves to make the protagonist seem like even more of a special snowflake than he or she already is, and IMO the less there is of that the better. Also it may just be a personal preference, but I like adult characters to have led adult lives before meeting the protagonist. 

[CareBear1023]

Wait....We don't know Sera enough to say what troph she is part of.

I'm speaking of looks, in that the women are all conventionally attractive.  She has a manic pixie girl look, she could be brooding and dour.  i don't know.

[r1ck182]

Well, it's curious about the elves, no elf straight until now. I find it's kind of worse (for me) because I will roll a male elf for the second DA game and still can't romance a elven girl. Maybe on Dragon Age 4...

 

I see some people frustrated because they don't have a dwarf romance too.