156 réponses à ce sujet

[Sartoz]

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Hm..

The English Empire dumped their unwanted in Australia.

 

However, when it comes to species survival, I doubt the ARKON planners searched for colonists with disabilities.

 

[Laughing_Man]

I really feel like people with disabilities have gotten the short end of the stick recently.

 

...
 

So what you wind up getting atm when you bring it up is disgust, exasperation, a sort of boggled amusement and/or outright rejection.

 

Personally, I detest any kind of "representation" for its own sake in video games.

The game should make sense, and characters should feel like they belong in the world and not just stuck there as a wink towards RL politics.

 

If some of those well made characters happens to be XYZ, great.

 

But if it makes no sense for certain conditions / disabilities / whatever to exist at this point due to advanced medical technology (example),

then the lore shouldn't be made to bend backwards just to insert a contrivance that will allow "representation".

 

Video games are not there to be hijacked by any emerging political trend, they are entertainment, that's how they are being sold to consumers.

There are plenty of other ways to preach.

 

p.s. I should probably say that I have nothing but sympathy towards people with disabilities, I'm just tired of seeing those "representation" issues

rising all the time, everyone wants their piece of the cake, and rarely they care about what it does the shape and quality of the final product

as long as their personal agenda was taken care of.

[AlanC9]

Besides issues of medical technology, at some point you just have to say that something isn't worth spending dev time on.

[Fredward]

Personally, I detest any kind of "representation" for its own sake in video games.

The game should make sense, and characters should feel like they belong in the world and not just stuck there as a wink towards RL politics.

 

Yes, that's not a particularly novel PoV. "For it's own sake" also remains an opaque boundary to me.

 

If some of those well made characters happens to be XYZ, great.

 

We are in agreement, it does no one any favors for a character to be solely defined by any single aspect.

 

But if it makes no sense for certain conditions / disabilities / whatever to exist at this point due to advanced medical technology (example),

then the lore shouldn't be made to bend backwards just to insert a contrivance that will allow "representation".

 

It's good that this is just an example because Mass Effect is definitely not at that level of universal technological development.

 

Video games are not there to be hijacked by any emerging political trend, they are entertainment, that's how they are being sold to consumers.

 

As the part of the public discourse it's as open to political interpretation as anything else. Also, who is it being hijacked from and why does that person own this car?

[Laughing_Man]

A. Yes, that's not a particularly novel PoV. "For it's own sake" also remains an opaque boundary to me.

 

B. It's good that this is just an example because Mass Effect is definitely not at that level of universal technological development.

 

C. As the part of the public discourse it's as open to political interpretation as anything else. Also, who is it being hijacked from and why does that person own this car?

 

A. The explanation for what is the opposite from "For it's own sake", is in the second line.

From my experience with "representation characters", many of them tend to be about as subtle as a hammer to the face with their agenda.

 

B. Mass Effect is definitely on an advanced level of technology that allows massive genetic manipulation, advanced cybernetics, and well... resurrection.

This level of technology should make most disabilities a non-issue assuming the person has access to medical care.

 

C. Video games are first and foremost an entertainment form, using them to preach about political agendas is annoying.

I don't need preaching in my entertainment, sorry, that's not what it's there for.

And the same freedom that allows you to push your political agenda into my entertainment, allows me to push back, or not buy games I see as preachy.

 

Simple really.

 

 

Again, all that said, assuming characters are first and foremost interesting and deep on their own right and are not there as a walking-talking blog post, I won't have a problem with them. After all, I don't really have a problem with people different than me in real life, as long as they don't have a problem with me.

[raulraul12345678]

I usually dont want to write long ideas as I prefer to plant just a short seed ideas and let the others complete them with constuctive  outcomes, but since Khrystyn asked me I can write few more specific ideas about what I intended with ''disabilities''.

In the title I raise 2 points, the first is about bodies that have different proportions compared to the perfect body figures seen in the previous games. I'd like to see maybe longer legs, or shorter arms, or different weights, longest or shorter necks, so to give a personality to those characters....

 

For the second point, ''disabilities'' . I think it could be what I call ''a source of new opportunities''....

After all, fighting vs a stronger enemy, like the heroes of ME series do, is like having a disability, a sort of limit that push our humanity against the odds...so it is an interesting parallel I want to draw....weaker vs stronger...

I was mentioning the opportunity that the concept of disability could bring...here few practical examples:

 

During a fight the sight of the protagonist could be damaged, this means that for a certain number of mission he/she could see just partially, maybe with a darker tone of colours...or maybe just with a red tones of colours....but if it happens to a teammate, he/she could loses the ability to aim properly maybe temporary or for good...and if is for good how can this unlucky character be still useful? Maybe the complete lost of sight can bring new unexpected abilities, like stongest melee combat.

 

Losing an arm during a firefight could bring the opportunity to implant different kinds of bionic arms.

 

What about a dumb character....he/she won't say anything.....the Others have to interpret according to his/her body Language...or what about a character that cannot see, listen and talk....how fascinating could it be, a character that lives inside his own word, But big limits can bring new strengths...like the ability to invent new powerful weapons....

 

What about if  the main protagonist is not able to stay in the sun?...a sort of extreme intollerance to sunlight...

 

As I said disabilities or limits as you want to call them can bring a wide array of opportunity....

 

Ps I would like to answer to anyone replies constuctively  to my ideas but I have a limit ammount of time so I will limit myself to click the like button...none for the others.

[SKAR]

As long as the protagonist is built and the ladies are nice I don't care.

[heinoMK2]

I think it would be more interesting to have characters with not standard-perfect body type, and even charachters with disabilities, and why not, (since it is not possible for our teammates to die) at least to make the injuries much more marked and drammatic, like the lost of a limb, or permanent blindness and such...that would mitigate the artificial feeling of ''my teamates cannot die''.

The fights have to bring a sort of heaviness to the gameplay, consequences, this is very important in my opinion.

Also  perfect bodies are somewhat not very interesting, a character with phisical flaws is more interesting and memorable...this can also pushed to psycological flaws....that could be much more interesting and realistic.

What do you think?

I disagree about perfect bodies not being interesting - because there are hardly any human females with "perfect" bodies in ME series("perfect" being subjective, eh...). I personally would love ME:A being about european and east asian looking people with perfect bodies and sharp minds exploring a new galaxy - it would be glorious. I also wouldn't want any cripples or psychopaths on "my" ship just for some weird diversity reason. Also no psychos in general please, I often dislike the GoT episodes featuring Ramsey for extended periods of screen time, for example.

 

Now when it comes to people who sustained injuries, temporary or permanent - well, why not, it seems just logical to see some in the game. I especially would like to see medical personell actually getting some work on the ship, treating people after some heavy fighting and doing some checkups after some planetary exploration.

 

Different body shapes - why not, but no "American sized" humans, please.

[o Ventus]

Legitimate question: is there any reason a non-combatant NPC with a disability could/should not be in the game? A politician or a scientist or something?

 

Better question: is there any reason why they should? Because I can actually think of several reasons why they shouldn't, the most prominent being advances in medicine and medical technology that are in ME. They've advanced to the point where cancer is not much of an issue, so why would a disability be a problem? The only disabled NPC of note is Joker, whose disability doesn't make much sense in the setting anyway. If someone has a faulty leg and can't walk or whatever, then they can get a prosthetic or a synthetic limb, we know these things exist in ME (they exist NOW, let alone ~170 years into the future).

[En Es Ef Dubyu]

For the female npcs something less:

 

 

 

and more hourglass:

 

 

 

or go full on steatopygia 

 

My preference for femRyder:

 

Spoiler

 

No more twig arms or lanky bodies.

[ZipZap2000]

Synthetic eyes wouldn't help much if there was something wrong with your occiptal lobe. Then again they got Shepard's brain to work after they floated around vacuum for a bit. Then again that was exorbitantly expensive. And there's always gonna be poor families or colonists that simply don't have access to gene therapy/screening.



Anyway, speaking to the OPs topic here: I really feel like people with disabilities have gotten the short end of the stick recently. There was (and is) feminism, which gave them voice and infinitely better representation. There was (and is) groups and There was and is the LGBT movement which is doing the same thing for people of different sexual orientations. I don't know if the anti 'PC' group has been growing per se, but the rise of Trump and his rhetoric make me think they're not exactly quiescent.

So what you wind up getting atm when you bring it up is disgust, exasperation, a sort of boggled amusement and/or outright rejection. There's this sense of the person suggesting it cannot POSSIBLY be serious, that the very topic is a joke. Now I haven't been around long enough to really know whether that was around at the beginning of feminism but I know I've seen it when someone suggests men should be able to marry each other and have a family or a transgender person use the correct bathroom. It's treated as ludicrous cuz no one wants to spend time thinking about it.

And what bothers me the most about it is the fact that I get the impression that this dismissive attitude occasionally comes from the groups that have and often still are exposed to the same kind of treatment. That's kinda shitty.

Q: Should we have women in our games fulfilling an array of roles as wide as men?
A: Uh, obviously?

Q: Should we have people of different races in our game?
A: Duh bruh.

Q: Should we have different sexualities?
A: Yeah, sure.

Q: Should we have people with disabilities in some (not necessarily combat) capacity?
A: Okay now you're just being silly.

I don't get it.

I'm with this guy.

The only thing that would have made Shepard more badass was crutches and an iron lung.

[Monk]

I usually dont want to write long ideas as I prefer to plant just a short seed ideas and let the others complete them with constuctive  outcomes, but since Khrystyn asked me I can write few more specific ideas about what I intended with ''disabilities''.

In the title I raise 2 points, the first is about bodies that have different proportions compared to the perfect body figures seen in the previous games. I'd like to see maybe longer legs, or shorter arms, or different weights, longest or shorter necks, so to give a personality to those characters....

 

For the second point, ''disabilities'' . I think it could be what I call ''a source of new opportunities''....

After all, fighting vs a stronger enemy, like the heroes of ME series do, is like having a disability, a sort of limit that push our humanity against the odds...so it is an interesting parallel I want to draw....weaker vs stronger...

I was mentioning the opportunity that the concept of disability could bring...here few practical examples:

 

During a fight the sight of the protagonist could be damaged, this means that for a certain number of mission he/she could see just partially, maybe with a darker tone of colours...or maybe just with a red tones of colours....but if it happens to a teammate, he/she could loses the ability to aim properly maybe temporary or for good...and if is for good how can this unlucky character be still useful? Maybe the complete lost of sight can bring new unexpected abilities, like stongest melee combat.

 

Losing an arm during a firefight could bring the opportunity to implant different kinds of bionic arms.

 

What about a dumb character....he/she won't say anything.....the Others have to interpret according to his/her body Language...or what about a character that cannot see, listen and talk....how fascinating could it be, a character that lives inside his own word, But big limits can bring new strengths...like the ability to invent new powerful weapons....

 

What about if  the main protagonist is not able to stay in the sun?...a sort of extreme intollerance to sunlight...

 

As I said disabilities or limits as you want to call them can bring a wide array of opportunity....

 

Ps I would like to answer to anyone replies constuctively  to my ideas but I have a limit ammount of time so I will limit myself to click the like button...none for the others.

 

I think a vast majority of the OP's request could be fixed by providing a Saints Row/Sims level of character creation. You don't know what happened to them, per se, but it's possible that if they have silver skin, they probably had a terrible skin condition or something. Synthetic limbs, quadriplegic. Have a large tattoo covering the whole of one side, terrible burn or have a large strawberry birthmark.

 

 

Mental disabilities, on the other hand, are kinda already covered. Shepard was highly intelligent so could have been a highly-functional autistic or Asp(erger's). You had your character do _every_ single quest and/or picked up _everything_, they could have OCD (CDO if you wanna be "accurate"). Was a raging Renegade… psycho! Remember, psycho doesn't mean they kill, it means they're incapable of having f*cks to give so they do what they like without regards to others feels.

 

Beyond these more functional disabilities, only NPCs could have them due to the work involved (ME factoid: there was a "idiot savant" for a scientist in ME1 on Eden Prime).

[o Ventus]

 

I think a vast majority of the OP's request could be fixed by providing a Saints Row/Sims level of character creation. You don't know what happened to them, per se, but it's possible that if they have silver skin, they probably had a terrible skin condition or something. Synthetic limbs, quadriplegic. Have a large tattoo covering the whole of one side, terrible burn or have a large strawberry birthmark.

 

 

Mental disabilities, on the other hand, are kinda already covered. Shepard was highly intelligent so could have been a highly-functional autistic or Asp(erger's). You had your character do _every_ single quest and/or picked up _everything_, they could have OCD (CDO if you wanna be "accurate"). Was a raging Renegade… psycho! Remember, psycho doesn't mean they kill, it means they're incapable of having f*cks to give so they do what they like without regards to others feels.

 

Beyond these more functional disabilities, only NPCs could have them due to the work involved (ME factoid: there was a "idiot savant" for a scientist in ME1 on Eden Prime).

 

 

And Gillian Grayson and David Archer were both autistic (although Gillian somehow "got over" her autism in one of the books, which is absolutely stupid).

[9TailsFox]

And Gillian Grayson and David Archer were both autistic (although Gillian somehow "got over" her autism in one of the books, which is absolutely stupid).

There is nothing medi gel can't fix.

[SKAR]

For the female npcs something less:



and more hourglass:





or go full on steatopygia

My preference for femRyder:

Spoiler

No more twig arms or lanky bodies.

exactly. Amen to that.

[MrBSN2017]

Yeah! I'm sick of aesthetic people making me feel insecure.

I want a fat hairy protagonist.

[ZipZap2000]

I want a fat hairy protagonist.

Euphemisms.

[KaiserShep]

I want a fat hairy protagonist.

 

 

 

Red Six, standing by.

[Fredward]

Better question: is there any reason why they should? Because I can actually think of several reasons why they shouldn't, the most prominent being advances in medicine and medical technology that are in ME. They've advanced to the point where cancer is not much of an issue, so why would a disability be a problem? The only disabled NPC of note is Joker, whose disability doesn't make much sense in the setting anyway. If someone has a faulty leg and can't walk or whatever, then they can get a prosthetic or a synthetic limb, we know these things exist in ME (they exist NOW, let alone ~170 years into the future).

 

And yet all those medical advances can't cure Joker's brittle bones. Samantha is plagued by something as banal as allergies cuz she grew up in a place that did not have the necessary medical facilities to do away with them. And someone else mentioned bringing Shepard back to life again, that was insanely expensive, it's not indicative of commonly available medical care.

 

Not to mention the new setting is in an entirely new galaxy, it's entirely possible for there to be micro-organisms that can cause something analogous to a disability that can't (yet) be treated simply because no one knows how it works.

 

Yah know. Bioware supports inclusivity, I mean this is pretty hard to argue at this point, no? In 2010 19% of the US population reported that they had some level of disability, with more than half of those reporting that their disability was severe. Bioware includes sexualities beyond straight, the percentage of which hovers somewhere around the amount of people with serious disabilities, and people have, mostly, accepted this. Yet ask for representation of people with disabilities and well... this thread.

[Han Shot First]

 

I don't get it.

 

Being gay or female isn't a physical handicap. Those aren't really comparable to physical disabilities as they wouldn't (or at least...shouldn't) prevent someone from being a soldier or an astronaut. Being a quadriplegic however...

 

The Mass Effect series does not portray ordinary people. The main characters are one part Neil Armstrong and one part Audie Murphy. They're in careers that should require a much higher level of physical fitness than the average person. Even relatively minor defects like color blindness or a heart murmur prevent people from military service or a career with NASA in the real world. The writers giving the squadmates rather severe physical disabilities would sort of be the equivalent of writing a novel where the main character is a blind neurosurgeon. 

 

Representation is great, but it never trumps writing believable characters. 

[Fredward]

Being gay or female isn't a physical handicap. Those aren't really comparable to physical disabilities as they wouldn't (or at least...shouldn't) prevent someone from being a soldier or an astronaut. Being a quadriplegic however...

 

The Mass Effect series does not portray ordinary people. The main characters are one part Neil Armstrong and one part Audie Murphy. They're in careers that should require a much higher level of physical fitness than the average person. Even relatively minor defects like color blindness or a heart murmur prevent people from military service or a career with NASA in the real world. The writers giving the squadmates rather severe physical disabilities would sort of be the equivalent of writing a novel where the main character is a blind neurosurgeon. 

 

Representation is great, but it never trumps writing believable characters. 

 

And I don't disagree. Luckily Mass Effect encompasses more than just military personnel.

[Pearl (rip bioware)]

And I don't disagree. Luckily Mass Effect encompasses more than just military personnel.

As random NPCs who you see once, sure.

[Mdizzletr0n]

I think a vast majority of the OP's request could be fixed by providing a Saints Row/Sims level of character creation. You don't know what happened to them, per se, but it's possible that if they have silver skin, they probably had a terrible skin condition or something. Synthetic limbs, quadriplegic. Have a large tattoo covering the whole of one side, terrible burn or have a large strawberry birthmark.
 
 
Mental disabilities, on the other hand, are kinda already covered. Shepard was highly intelligent so could have been a highly-functional autistic or Asp(erger's). You had your character do _every_ single quest and/or picked up _everything_, they could have OCD (CDO if you wanna be "accurate"). Was a raging Renegade… psycho! Remember, psycho doesn't mean they kill, it means they're incapable of having f*cks to give so they do what they like without regards to others feels.
 
Beyond these more functional disabilities, only NPCs could have them due to the work involved (ME factoid: there was a "idiot savant" for a scientist in ME1 on Eden Prime).

Shepard? Intelligent? He was THE dumbest person on the Normandy. If you want to call that a disability....

[sjsharp2011]

And yet all those medical advances can't cure Joker's brittle bones. Samantha is plagued by something as banal as allergies cuz she grew up in a place that did not have the necessary medical facilities to do away with them. And someone else mentioned bringing Shepard back to life again, that was insanely expensive, it's not indicative of commonly available medical care.

 

Not to mention the new setting is in an entirely new galaxy, it's entirely possible for there to be micro-organisms that can cause something analogous to a disability that can't (yet) be treated simply because no one knows how it works.

 

Yah know. Bioware supports inclusivity, I mean this is pretty hard to argue at this point, no? In 2010 19% of the US population reported that they had some level of disability, with more than half of those reporting that their disability was severe. Bioware includes sexualities beyond straight, the percentage of which hovers somewhere around the amount of people with serious disabilities, and people have, mostly, accepted this. Yet ask for representation of people with disabilities and well... this thread.

Yeah I think it's said somewher e that i tcost Cerberus several million credits to put Shep back together so as a conventional treatment I don't think it would happen also a lot of what they did to rebuild Shep was highly experimental. Because even Jacob asid they used cutting edge tech in order to do it.

[sjsharp2011]

Shepard? Intelligent? He was THE dumbest person on the Normandy. If you want to call that a disability....

well if you wan t5to make him/her dumb that's your problem but I like to think my Shep's are smart and know what they're doing.