The reason prostitution was even tolerated during the middle ages was that sexually deprived people would use their services instead of
assaulting someone.
A brothel is more for the protection of prostitutes, like a guild.
You are right. Which is why it's hard to notice when the series is being dark. Usually you get so drowned in the lighter and humorous side of things that you forget that the world you're playing in is pretty harsh. That's why I love Witcher's presentation on the darker things. In this world, it shows the darker side of men, the racism and what it looks like when it's set to extreme. They present it to you in terms of hints or dialogue.
Dragon Age is much more subtle. It's relying on the "Oh since we're set in the medieval times, I'm sure these things happen even if I don't see it" kind of mentality. It's fine when it comes to certain things, but sometimes I just want something to bring me back to reality and the problems that come with it.
It's not a matter of which series is "darker". It's just a matter of which series is more obvious about it. A big red arrow with "This is dark stuff right here" notice is sometimes needed in Dragon Age.
You see personally for me it's the other way round. That kind of signposting leeches the impact away for me. If I come to a slow realisation that you know, despite the fact everyone is getting on with life there is nonetheless a pretty horrific set of circumstances at play, it' more effective. If the story saves the obvious drama for one or two big set pieces fine, if it's shouting 'Look! Bad stuff!' every other page it's a bit wearing. Your mileage may of course vary.
Fair enough. But I didn't see it as something that was forced. Usually when these bad things show up it was because it only make sense with what's happening. If elves are being abused and second class citizens, it only makes sense for at least one *sshole to keep an elven girl as a slave. Or if there's a war and one town loses, pillaging and riots are something you'd expect. And yeah, of course it is a bit weird to have these kinds of topics come up from out of nowhere.
But again, you're right. It depends on the person.
Edited for typos
Guest_EntropicAngel_*
Jesus, alright, Dragon Age is the darker one. My bad. Are we good?
And concerning my previous post regarding the whole "it's more supernatural here than on that game" I just meant the plot. Witcher was about civil war and neutrality while Witcher 2 was about regicide and war. The whole magical aspect revolves around a central storyline that is not inherently "fantasy". Except maybe the whole Wild Hunt bit.
How about neither is the "darker one?" Why do we need to rate them? Let's leave it at that.
I would argue the same--that the storylines of DA have not been inherently fantasy either. DA:O was the Blight (as well as civil war). While one could argue that it's fantasy, I would say that at it's core it's not about the "fantasy" or the darkspawn, or any horror elements, but simply about a war. That's not fantasy at all.
And DA ][ was the story of Hawke. Act 1 wasn't fantasy--Hawke goes on expedition for artifacts, which he/she sells and becomes rich. Act 2, the Qunari decide to take over. Act 3, mages and Templars--you have a point with the mages, though the themes are simply individualism versus community, which isn't fantasy.
I'm saying let's not build this "the Witcher does everything that Dragon Age doesn't" claim because it's silly, a little petty, and can easily be argued.
You see personally for me it's the other way round. That kind of signposting leeches the impact away for me. If I come to a slow realisation that you know, despite the fact everyone is getting on with life there is nonetheless a pretty horrific set of circumstances at play, it' more effective. If the story saves the obvious drama for one or two big set pieces fine, if it's shouting 'Look! Bad stuff!' every other page it's a bit wearing. Your mileage may of course vary.
For what it's worth, I'm kind of the same--all the children singing these absurdly dark songs in these absurdly carefree singsong voices in TW1 didn't make me think, "wow this is a serious world," it made me think, "wow you're trying waaay too hard, CDPR."
Edit: And for what it's worth, I felt the same with the orphanage in the Elven Alienage in DA:O. That quest had some dark parts, but the kid saying "One, two, Maric's run through" felt cheesy.
How about neither is the "darker one?" Why do we need to rate them? Let's leave it at that.
Alright man, sure. But I did state on my previous post that it's not a matter of which one is darker, but it's a matter on which one is more obvious about it.
Edit #2: Wait nevermind, I didn't actually say that (fail). Or maybe I edited it out i don't know. Maybe I thought I said it. I may have said it but couldn't find it. Anyway, that's what I was trying to say. I wasn't saying Witcher was one-upping Dragon Age.
Amusingly enough, subtlety is a function of adults, and "big red arrows" are the function of child's stories.
As a counter to this I would say showing is better than telling in some instances. Its one thing to hear about something bad happening but its another to actually witness it. I'm not saying we should see graphic depictions of sexual assault, but seeing most of the worst effects of a city being brutally sacked wouldn't be bad. Those have happen in Dragon Age but the worst we usually see is some people getting killed but that is ignored in favor of more fights.
Dragon Age and the Witcher series are basically around the same levels of darkness honestly. The Witcher is occasionally seen as more 'mature' because they show ****** and some brutal scenes. Sometimes it works while other times it just seems like its just being titillating.
Fair enough.But I didn't see it as something that was forced. Usually when these bad things show up it was because it only make sense with what's happening. If elves are being abused and second class citizens, it only makes sense for at least one *sshole to keep an elven girl as a slave. Or if there's a war and one town loses, pillaging and riots are something you'd expect. And yeah, of course it is a bit weird to have these kinds of topics come up from out of nowhere.
But again, you're right. It depends on the person.
I'd love to come in here and be all 'Brothels, who cares' and all that, high road, 'nudity is dumb, its pixel' and all that. But you know what? Screw that, truth time - im a perv and I totally would be cool with Brothels all over the place. Bring on the whores! My Quizzy is gonna be a naughty boy.
-edit-
...and girl, depending on playthrough (mostly dudes though)
I'd love to come in here and be all 'Brothels, who cares' and all that, high road, 'nudity is dumb, its pixel' and all that. But you know what? Screw that, truth time - im a perv and I totally would be cool with Brothels all over the place. Bring on the whores! My Quizzy is gonna be a naughty boy.
-edit-
...and girl, depending on playthrough (mostly dudes though)
Ahaha I love this post. You know I kinda share the same feeling whenever I see a romance and sex post. Arguing things about nudity and immaturity is just a lot of hard work 
Now that someone came out and outright said this, I say bring on the whores!
Ahaha I love this post. You know I kinda share the same feeling whenever I see a romance and sex post. Arguing things about nudity and immaturity is just a lot of hard work
Now that someone came out and outright said this, I say bring on the whores!
I'd love to come in here and be all 'Brothels, who cares' and all that, high road, 'nudity is dumb, its pixel' and all that. But you know what? Screw that, truth time - im a perv and I totally would be cool with Brothels all over the place. Bring on the whores! My Quizzy is gonna be a naughty boy.
-edit-
...and girl, depending on playthrough (mostly dudes though)
My first warden was a nympho, he slept with that elf girl and killed her later because he had the hots for lady forest.
Not wishing to divert the thread too far away from the boobs conversation,
but I was quite struck by what I found to be an intelligent analysis of the trope:
"Women as Background Decoration" by Anita Sarkeesian.
I found Anita's assessment to be a little unforgiving in places but
generally she made important points that should give any
(particularly male) gamer pause for thought and for that reason I have linked it here.
I think BioWare on the whole handle this matter a lot more intelligently than most.
As long as men and women are used as background decoration... i don't see a problem. Dragon age brothels are very diverse...
Heh yeah, my girly Warden four-wayed it when we ran into Isabella. I mean why wouldn't I do that? Made for some hilarious DA2 Zevran run ins, lemmy tell ya.
As long as men and women are used as background decoration... i don't see a problem. Dragon age brothels are very diverse...
Emphasis added but I agree, I always liked and would like to see more of the fact that DA brothels have always included male and female sex workers. Of course, I'd like to see a more equal ratio but to quote Kaylee from Firefly "Look, they got boy whores. Isn't that thoughtful?"
Someone was asking about "gratuitous?" It basically means unnecessary. In this case, nudity at a whorehouse would be gratuitous if it was only there as an option for your cheap amusement and had nothing to do with the story in any way. In other words, if you simply could go to the brothel as many times as you wanted and get a random nude girly scene for a piece of gold, it would be gratuitous, not necessary. If they cut if from the game, you could still enjoy the full range of ending options without it.
If we went to the brothel on a quest and it involved having to earn our way into the good graces of one of the girls, and one of the ways to do that was to seduce her and we thereby got a nudity scene as part of achieving our ends, then the nudity is not gratuitous. It was necessary to the completion of the quest and for all we know, it will have an impact on the final outcome of the game.
For the record, I am not against nudity so long as it is not gratuitous. I have no use for gratuitous nudity whose only existence is for fan service. Gratuitous nudity is not a mark of maturity in my opinion while the former kind can well done and have a strong impact in a story whatever purpose it is used for.
Calling the brothel a "whorehouse" is just a little bit tasteless.
If there is a woman on the streets offering me her services I will ask her if she needs money for a meal and a warm bed for the night.
Guest_EntropicAngel_*
As a counter to this I would say showing is better than telling in some instances. Its one thing to hear about something bad happening but its another to actually witness it. I'm not saying we should see graphic depictions of sexual assault, but seeing most of the worst effects of a city being brutally sacked wouldn't be bad. Those have happen in Dragon Age but the worst we usually see is some people getting killed but that is ignored in favor of more fights.
Dragon Age and the Witcher series are basically around the same levels of darkness honestly. The Witcher is occasionally seen as more 'mature' because they show ****** and some brutal scenes. Sometimes it works while other times it just seems like its just being titillating.
To counter your counter, I would say that "telling" does not mean subtlety, nor does showing mean "not subtlety." I would say you're falsely equating my position to be that showing is NOT subtle, and telling IS subtle.
Please don't take this the wrong way, I'm not trying to be a jerk, just arguing the point. I agree with your last paragraph. I fount the end of Act 1 in TW2, with the elven mother, to bring me some revulsion, which I suppose makes it successful. I thought they did a tremendous job with the end of of Roche's path in Act 2, when he...well, when you let him do what he wants to do. I felt there was serious gravity there. But it isn't always that way, sometimes it comes off tedious.
Someone was asking about "gratuitous?" It basically means unnecessary. In this case, nudity at a whorehouse would be gratuitous if it was only there as an option for your cheap amusement and had nothing to do with the story in any way. In other words, if you simply could go to the brothel as many times as you wanted and get a random nude girly scene for a piece of gold, it would be gratuitous, not necessary. If they cut if from the game, you could still enjoy the full range of ending options without it.
If we went to the brothel on a quest and it involved having to earn our way into the good graces of one of the girls, and one of the ways to do that was to seduce her and we thereby got a nudity scene as part of achieving our ends, then the nudity is not gratuitous. It was necessary to the completion of the quest and for all we know, it will have an impact on the final outcome of the game.
For the record, I am not against nudity so long as it is not gratuitous. I have no use for gratuitous nudity whose only existence is for fan service. Gratuitous nudity is not a mark of maturity in my opinion while the former kind can well done and have a strong impact in a story whatever purpose it is used for.
I said something about gratuitous nudity, I don't know if this was a reply to my post, but no I wasn't asking what it meant. I just said what I said because the phrase "gratuitous nudity" is a bit...weird.
Gratuitous is kinda a relative term. One instance of nudity may make a person think it's a good enough reason to protest at the head office of Bioware, or it could be just something that doesn't bother him/her at all. Based on what you said, nudity in video games will never NOT be gratuitous, since I highly doubt they'll include nudity as an essential part of a quest, and on the romance side, all the romance scenes can just fade to black before any nudity happens. So there really is no place for nudity isn't there?
Bah... I don't know, maybe there is some kind of nudity that won't be classified as "gratuitous" somewhere....in the deep corners of dark space.
Treats you like an adult =/= shows you a lot of naked women.
Showing naked women is a bad thing?
I thought the brothel in Origins served it's purpose, that of some comic relief.
Guest_EntropicAngel_*
I said something about gratuitous nudity, I don't know if this was a reply to my post, but no I wasn't asking what it meant. I just said what I said because the phrase "gratuitous nudity" is a bit...weird.
Gratuitous is kinda a relative term. One instance of nudity may make a person think it's a good enough reason to protest at the head office of Bioware, or it could be just something that doesn't bother him/her at all. Based on what you said, nudity in video games will never NOT be gratuitous, since I highly doubt they'll include nudity as an essential part of a quest, and on the romance side, all the romance scenes can just fade to black before any nudity happens. So there really is no place for nudity isn't there?
Bah... I don't know, maybe there is some kind of nudity that won't be classified as "gratuitous" somewhere....in the deep corners of dark space.
The Adda sex scene in TW1. I don't believe that was gratuitous.
Geralt had to be naked for his monster necklace to be off. And his monster necklace had to be off for him to miss it vibrating.
The Adda sex scene in TW1. I don't believe that was gratuitous.
Geralt had to be naked for his monster necklace to be off. And his monster necklace had to be off for him to miss it vibrating.
There was no nudity besides the cards. And Adda ripped the necklace off of Geralt while they were still wearing clothes. The sex was just implied.
oh great another topic devolving into DA versus Witcher. Stay classy guys
Showing naked women is a bad thing?
I never thought so.
But it is apparently far worse than the violence routinely experienced in video games. I don't have a problem with either one, but let's think realistically... how many gamers are likely to have at least seen some milk factories in their lives? Hell, plenty have a set attached to them. I think a very large percentage of us have seen and hopefully done more than that. Yet I'd wager my last Sovereign or whatever fantasy currency you favor, that very few, if any, gamers will have savagely butchered men, women, and animals with medieval weapons and spells. So devs and the ESRB are not afraid to show us what we've never experienced for ourselves (and hopefully never will), only what we have (or hopefully will).
Did you even go into Howe's fun-in-the-sun basement? While DA is 'lighter' in a sense, you're really going over the top with how much lighter it is. The thing is, BioWare likes its humour so we forget that Fenris would most probably raped by his masters, Lyrium is used to effectively control the Templar Order and Hespith landed into a Lovecraft novel.
Such lollipops and candy canes...
Not wishing to divert the thread too far away from the boobs conversation,
but I was quite struck by what I found to be an intelligent analysis of the trope:
"Women as Background Decoration" by Anita Sarkeesian.
I found Anita's assessment to be a little unforgiving in places but
generally she made important points that should give any
(particularly male) gamer pause for thought and for that reason I have linked it here.
I think BioWare on the whole handle this matter a lot more intelligently than most.
*snip
The problem I have with Anita is that she is dishonest. She's blatantly lied a few times and if she isn't lying she is leaving out context to make things seem worse than they actually are or just being incredibly one sided. I thought her series could have been interesting and there is certainly enough sexism in gaming for her to make it honestly but she isn't doing that.
I can't really take her or anything she says seriously because of this. There are better feminists out there and there are female gamers who actually are gamers. If you wanna change the gaming community get involved in it and make your voice heard. Criticizing it from the outside without a care as to whether or not your criticisms are even accurate is not gonna do much good.
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