225 réponses à ce sujet

[magicalpoop]

I've realized Dragon Age Inquisition has done a great job at depicting realistic and balanced gender roles - there are actually a lot of powerful females in DAI. A friend pointed some of this out but she definitely enjoyed this RPG the most to date.

1) Divine Justinia is a female (Yes I know Tevinter Divine is a male but that is a minor detail)

2) The Left and Right hands are females

3) Women are not super sexualized - Cassandra/Vivienne/Sera are realistic and powerful depictions of women from a wide range of backgrounds in DAI.

4) The sex in this was toned down definitely and less "Male fan service" (i.e. DAO sex scenes versus DAI)

5) 2 of the 3 Inquisitor advisors are females, though I suppose in a somewhat "traditional" female role: Head Spy Leliana (M from Bond), and Josephine as your political advisor with Cullen being the army general.

6) I've only played the game once with a Cassandra romance, but it was better both in depth and un-stereotypical than DAO/DA2 male-female relationships in my opinion. Cassandra's character has a lot of depth, like a Sigourney weaver (for the younger kids, the lady in ALIEN who is arguably the first "real" Heroine). Cass loves her DAI Twilight literature, but I think the "guilty pleasure" makes her character more tangible/realistic. I thought Isabela from DA2 was a bit cliche and really 1D.

Anyways - did anyone get the same impression? I think there was a definite attempt at moving away from these stereotypes. They did so in DA:O but it's even more apparent in DAI.
i'm thoroughly impressed by Bioware, even as a Male, seeing characters like Cass is really refreshing. Also the fact that there's no extreme Lineage-esque female armor (imagine strippers "trying" to dress up as Fantasy characters) is good too - I really couldn't take an order of Seekers/Templars serious if they looked like they were employed at Varric's harem.



P.S.
I will have to admit, I do miss scantidly dressed desire demons possessing templars - I was hoping I could strike deals with them in this one. Would've been awesome if you could strike deals with demons and allow them to possess your Inquisitor-Law sentences. I don't mind the super sexed up females, just as long as it's done tastefully.

[magicalpoop]

DA:O sex scenes were male fan service?? well thats err good to know, gimme a minute

 

Compared to DAI? I think so. I youtubed some of the other romance options in DAI and yah there's ****** shown in DAI but it's very much done more tastefully/a lot of off camera/fade to black sequences. I dunno man, remove the leather bras in DAO and I think you can see the difference.

(OK rewatching DAO scene for reference - ok they're not fan service that's for sure - but they're god awful now that I've rewatched them)

[Joseph Warrick]

What I like is normalization. Scenes you see on TV normally played by an all male cast, maybe a token female sometimes. Like the confrontation with Calpernia, or the interrogation at the beginning. Many scenes in the game can be all female and it plays out with no fuss.

 

I prefer scenes where the sexes don't matter at all over something like the little girl-power-let's-show-the-men conversation in ME3 between Shepard and Eve. Imho the former makes the latter obsolete.

[TeraBat]

One thing I really liked - random female guard captains. Even for NPCs, there is no default presumed gender - because that person in the face-and-gender-obscuring armor might just start talking with a very feminine voice. 

 

(I also really appreciated Cass' taste in terrible romance literature from a very different angle. Cass has effectively been made Tranquil and then cured. Even after curing, it makes an absurd amount of sense that her emotional responses are going to be off. Which is precisely why she has such a hard time writing and it's why she likes the sort of books with very over-the-top and obvious emotional cues)

[Maverick827]

Most of the NPCs you kill are still men, though.  Hopefully that's something that can be tackled in the future when people stop thinking it's okay when men die.

[PorcelynDoll]

Compared to DAI? I think so. I youtubed some of the other romance options in DAI and yah there's ****** shown in DAI but it's very much done more tastefully/a lot of off camera/fade to black sequences. I dunno man, remove the leather bras in DAO and I think you can see the difference.

(OK rewatching DAO scene for reference - ok they're not fan service that's for sure - but they're god awful now that I've rewatched them)

I really liked Alistair's. It was sweet and close. I never knew what the heck was going on with Zevran though lol

[Fardreamer]

Bioware went a little crazy with all the women in leadership in this game I think.

 

Leader of the Wardens, Leader of Orlais, Leader of the elven rebellion, Leader of the Chantry, Leader of the mage rebellion, and 3 out 4 founds of the Inquisition are all women.

 

The only men we see in leadership roles are Cullen and Gaspard.

[ColloquialAnachron]

  What I enjoy most about the gender roles in this fantasy setting is that gender is in many ways realistically flattened.  Take Dorian and Josephine.  These two could have been ridiculously stereotyped, but were written with believable, and in Dorian's case really sad-heartwarming depth.  I truly enjoy that I dislike Krem because I find him utterly dull and "typical" for a second-in-command type.  What's that?  He's transgender?  And?  I understand that I'm supposed to probably be shocked or more interested in Krem because of his gender, but I think it is also a sign of either good or bad writing (you decide!) that I can find him to be a fairly boring otherwise - though obviously Jennifer Hale does excellent work, no criticism to her.

 

  That's what I think it boils down to for me, that DA:I makes gender effectively a "Yes....and?" factor, as I've always thought it should be treated that way.  Sure Cassandra likes some tawdry literature, Leliana loves shoes, and Varric has a weird pseudo-sexual-romantic personification thing going on with his crossbow, but those are all character-quirks and not their defining feature.  I think where Mass Effect might have *gasp* really failed was in the hyper-sexual physical presentation of a few characters (Vega, Lawson, Taylor), which detracted or at least distracted from the characters themselves.  In Dragon Age, there are physically ugly characters, that's wonderful.

 

   I'm not arguing Dragon Age has been perfect in this regard, but I do think that rather than "strong female characters" or "good homosexual characters," Dragon Age hits much closer to the mark of simply having really good characters - which you can unpack as you like.  Except for you Krem, you're so boring if Carth Onasi complained about you I'd actually be interested to hear him out for once.

[TeraBat]

Bioware went a little crazy with all the women in leadership in this game I think.

 

Leader of the Wardens, Leader of Orlais, Leader of the elven rebellion, Leader of the Chantry, Leader of the mage rebellion, and 3 out 4 founds of the Inquisition are all women.

 

The only men we see in leadership roles are Cullen and Gaspard.

 

Alexius appears to be a Venatori leader before you displace him, Samson and Lucius are leaders before their bad decision catch up to them, the Warden-Commander you find with Hawke is male, Iron Bull is a mercenary captain. 

 

Besides, after 20+ years of dude heavy games... I think the ladies get one which is weighed towards us. 

[DaemionMoadrin]

 

  What I enjoy most about the gender roles in this fantasy setting is that gender is in many ways realistically flattened.  Take Dorian and Josephine.  These two could have been ridiculously stereotyped, but were written with believable, and in Dorian's case really sad-heartwarming depth.  I truly enjoy that I dislike Krem because I find him utterly dull and "typical" for a second-in-command type.  What's that?  He's transgender?  And?  I understand that I'm supposed to probably be shocked or more interested in Krem because of his gender, but I think it is also a sign of either good or bad writing (you decide!) that I can find him to be a fairly boring otherwise - though obviously Jennifer Hale does excellent work, no criticism to her.

 

  That's what I think it boils down to for me, that DA:I makes gender effectively a "Yes....and?" factor, as I've always thought it should be treated that way.  Sure Cassandra likes some tawdry literature, Leliana loves shoes, and Varric has a weird pseudo-sexual-romantic personification thing going on with his crossbow, but those are all character-quirks and not their defining feature.  I think where Mass Effect might have *gasp* really failed was in the hyper-sexual physical presentation of a few characters (Vega, Lawson, Taylor), which detracted or at least distracted from the characters themselves.  In Dragon Age, there are physically ugly characters, that's wonderful.

 

   I'm not arguing Dragon Age has been perfect in this regard, but I do think that rather than "strong female characters" or "good homosexual characters," Dragon Age hits much closer to the mark of simply having really good characters - which you can unpack as you like.  Except for you Krem, you're so boring if Carth Onasi complained about you I'd actually be interested to hear him out for once.

 

 

Haha, 100% agree. Especially the part about Krem. Never talked to him in Skyhold, except once to the war table mission.

I like characters who aren't defined by their gender or sexuality. Makes them more real.

[Direwolf0294]

I was disappointed with how they handled female companions. There doesn't need to be complete balance, but having only 3 out of 9 companions be female was a pretty big disparity, not to mention two of those companions were completely unlikeable (Sera and Viv), so it sort of felt like you only had 1 female companion in the game. Also, I don't believe female qunari exist in the game except if you play as one. That's pretty poor, imo.

 

Otherwise I think they did a good job, though I do agree they maybe went a little overboard with women in leadership position, and I hope they're really careful with that going forward. I'd hate to see Dragon Age turn into The Wheel of Time, which was just a horrible series when it came to gender.

[DaemionMoadrin]

I was disappointed with how they handled female companions. There doesn't need to be complete balance, but having only 3 out of 9 companions be female was a pretty big disparity, not to mention two of those companions were completely unlikeable (Sera and Viv), so it sort of felt like you only had 1 female companion in the game. Also, I don't believe female qunari exist in the game except if you play as one. That's pretty poor, imo.

 

Otherwise I think they did a good job, though I do agree they maybe went a little overboard with women in leadership position, and I hope they're really careful with that going forward. I'd hate to see Dragon Age turn into The Wheel of Time, which was just a horrible series when it came to gender.

 

Yes, Robert Jordan clearly had some beef with women... which makes it even more surprising that his wife was his editor. I seriously hated the ending of the series. More so than the ME3 ending.

 

There should be at least one female qunari somewhere on the battlements in Skyhold. I am sure I saw her.

 

I would have liked more female companions myself but eh, it doesn't matter much. I got barely along with Cassandra (cruel thing to say about my lover, I know) and couldn't stand the other two. I think the only companions I actually liked are Varric and Solas.

[Nefla]

Bioware went a little crazy with all the women in leadership in this game I think.

 

Leader of the Wardens, Leader of Orlais, Leader of the elven rebellion, Leader of the Chantry, Leader of the mage rebellion, and 3 out 4 founds of the Inquisition are all women.

 

The only men we see in leadership roles are Cullen and Gaspard.

And Corypheus and Erimond, and Lord Seeker Lucius and Ser Barris and Alexuis, and Stroud/Alistair/Loghain, etc...

[magicalpoop]

And Corypheus and Erimond, and Lord Seeker Lucius and Ser Barris and Alexuis, and Stroud/Alistair/Loghain, etc...

Basically this, when you incorporate the "entire" world of Dragon Age, it's pretty balanced for male/female power roles. I agree with others (grew up in a liberal city in Canada) - gender for me was always "uhh and??..." - never really saw gender.

 

Though as a racial minority, I do understand the importance of females raising the flag. Which is what I was trying to dig at in my post - I think Bioware's balanced it out in the world. Though in the stand alone game, I do think there was some intention on going a bit female heavy (which I didn't notice or care until my friend pointed it out tbh). But this actually is for the better, it added a lot of depth to all of the characters. Morrigan was awesome as a character in DA:O but FFS - I really needed a mute button on Leliana being a 1D religion-bot. But maybe that strong contrast made both characters better.

Though I imagine DA4 will take place in Tevinter from the clues, and the chantry there is male focused.

[Maniccc]

This is hilarious.  In the real world, in a medieval setting, there would be almost zero women soldiers, leaders, etc.  But for some reason the overabundance of female leaders and soldiers is a realistic portrayal of women in a medieval setting?  Uh-huh, OK.

 

It doesn't bother me, I could care less one way or the other.  It's a game with a mediocre on-a-good-day story.  But don't try saying that the female portrayal in this game is realistic, because it is not even close.  Bioware is becoming a huge PC progressive platform, but I don't care about that, either.  All I care about is this:  am I enjoying their games?

 

But the funniest part of the OP was the assumption that sex scenes are for guys, that women don't enjoy them or something....  Women watch that stuff, too.

[TeraBat]

Yes, Robert Jordan clearly had some beef with women... which makes it even more surprising that his wife was his editor. I seriously hated the ending of the series. More so than the ME3 ending.

 

 

In all fairness, it was Brandon Sanderson who finished that series. But Sanderson has some severe issues with gender himself (he can disguise most of his issues by writing one Strong Female Character per book, but after you look past that character, there's some pretty nasty assumptions he's got going on).

[Drasanil]

 

I've realized Dragon Age Inquisition has done a great job at depicting realistic and balanced gender roles - there are actually a lot of powerful females in DAI. 

 

Of course you run into the problem that 'a lot of powerful females' [easily overshadowing males both in respect to their numbers and/or the power they wield] is completely unrealistic in and of itself given most of human history/civilisation. Especially in a loosely medieval setting where such would hardly be the expected norm   

 

That's not even factoring in Bioware consistently going out of their way to portray women as the better or default option. Anora as the experienced professional who ran Cailan's kingdom for him versus Alistair's [and Cailan's] idealism and lack of experience [interest]. Celene the nice reasonable peaceful pragmatist versus Gaspard the evil warmongering usurper. Even bad guy wise, Calpernia the noble ex-slave who wants to make her homeland a better place compared to Samson the druggy who just wants to go out in a blaze of glory before he overdoses. 

 

And Corypheus and Erimond, and Lord Seeker Lucius and Ser Barris and Alexuis, and Stroud/Alistair/Loghain, etc...

 

The first three are complete arses you're meant to kill/hate. Barris and Alexius are both natural lackeys. Stroud is a barely developed filler. Alistair has a 'better' female alternative [Anora] and Loghain is a deluded [ex-]bad guy [who is possibly redeemable]. Even Cullen and Gaspard are hardly great examples of male leadership given the former is a junky and the latter gets completely outplayed by Celene and Florianne unless you save his bacon.

[Ryzaki]

And Corypheus and Erimond, and Lord Seeker Lucius and Ser Barris and Alexuis, and Stroud/Alistair/Loghain, etc...

 

Yeah one of the main female leaders gets killed off at the beginning of the game, and another is holding the idiot ball so tightly you'd think she was in a competition.

[TeraBat]

 

Of course you run into the problem that 'a lot of powerful females' [easily overshadowing males both in respect to their numbers and/or the power they wield] is completely unrealistic in and of itself given most of human history/civilisation. Especially in a loosely medieval setting where such would hardly be the expected norm

 

Holy nugloving, I got so many high grades in my European History classes in High School and college, and yet I completely missed the part where dragons, mage circles and lost elven civilizations were the expected norms in medieval Europe. 

 

Also, Elizabeth I, Catherine of Aragon, her mother Queen Isabella, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Hildegard of Bingen, Queen Tamar, Saint Teresa, Pope Joan, half the Medici family and a bunch of Viking women would like to have a word or two with you.... 

[Uhh.. Jonah]

Otherwise I think they did a good job, though I do agree they maybe went a little overboard with women in leadership position, and I hope they're really careful with that going forward. I'd hate to see Dragon Age turn into The Wheel of Time, which was just a horrible series when it came to gender.

Can you elaborate on this?? I cannot grasp how this is a problem.

[Chiramu]

Bioware went a little crazy with all the women in leadership in this game I think.

 

Leader of the Wardens, Leader of Orlais, Leader of the elven rebellion, Leader of the Chantry, Leader of the mage rebellion, and 3 out 4 founds of the Inquisition are all women.

 

The only men we see in leadership roles are Cullen and Gaspard.

 

And to top it all off you need to put Anora in charge of Ferelden and both Ferelden and Orlais are ruled by women . Personally though I prefer Gaspard to Celene, Celene couldn't even stop his forces to end the civil war. Gaspard is the better leader.

[Drasanil]

Holy nugloving, I got so many high grades in my European History classes in High School and college, and yet I completely missed the part where dragons, mage circles and lost elven civilizations were the expected norms in medieval Europe. 

 

Why I said loosely medieval, it informs the general tone of the setting, not the specific content.

 

Also, Elizabeth I, Catherine of Aragon, her mother Queen Isabella, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Hildegard of Bingen, Queen Tamar, half the Medici family and a bunch of Viking women would like to have a word or two with you....

 

And for every woman you can name there are easily several more men. It has nothing to do with taking away from those women, in fact that they managed to rise to prominence despite the disadvantages they faced in part marks them out. But to pretend there was somehow this unseen or unacknowledged 50/50 split is ridiculous. Are we all to pretend that Caesar conquered Gaul with Rome's great, and conveniently forgotten, female legions while we're at it? 

[TeraBat]

Why I said loosely medieval, it informs the general tone of the setting, not the specific content.

 

 

And for every woman you can name there are easily several more men. It has nothing to do with taking away from those women, in fact that they managed to rise to prominence despite the disadvantages they faced in part marks them out. But to pretend there was somehow this unseen or unacknowledged 50/50 split is ridiculous. Are we all to pretend that Caesar conquered Gaul with Rome's great, and conveniently forgotten, female legions while we're at it? 

 

So let me get this straight - you're arguing that misogyny is an inherent facet of having a medieval level of technology? That after the wheel but before the printing press & gunpowder, women are just going to culturally get the short end of the advantage stick, just because? And further, that while the Andrastian Chantry, dragons, magic, Grey Wardens, elves, etc., doesn't jar your suspension of disbelief, you can't get on board with people wearing doublets and *not* being awful to women?