171 réponses à ce sujet

[purplesunset]

Ok, what's bothering me is that people are not taking this thread seriously, or they are completely misconstruing the OP's words.

It's even more unfortunate when you consider that there was a long thread with David Gaider and other devs, where we talked about this issue when the game was still  in development.



--------   It has NOTHING to do with racism or anything. No one is accusing  Bioware of being racist, so please don't de-rail the thread with your overly simplistic and incorrect assessments  ----------

From what I saw in the Character Creator, it *DOES* take a lot of work to create a black character. Not just the hair and facial features, but the skin tones are all off. I had to mess with my computer's gamma settings, and do a lot of tweaking before I could come up with a realistic looking black skin complexion. I'm not exactly sure what went wrong with the color palette here.



There are some other awkward things such as having siblings and parents that look nothing like you. I feel that there are ways this could have been avoided with much effort on Bioware's part (a simple reference to an adoption or something).



Again, please don't de-rail the thread. We're not idiots screaming "racism !" or conspiracy theories involving Bioware developers with white hoods (besides Chris Priestly can't wear a hood, because his devil horns wouldn't fit {smilie}).

The larger issue is that black and other non-white rpg'ers have dealt with these awkward things in the past, but seeing as how there were threads about it while the game was still in development, it's a bit of a disappointment. And please don't try the "there were no black people in medieval europe" line. Last time I checked, there also weren't any elves or darkspawn traipsing through the cobblestone thoroughfares.

[Magonian]

Should of asked the President to join the DA QA team, he would have fixed that problem like he's fixing everything else in the country...to his socialized liking!

[purplesunset]

*I meant to say "without much effort"

The forum still seems to be wonky so I can't edit my post.

[Malvicus]

The OP should have more patience with the character creator. You can definitely make some decent Black characters.

[RetrOldSchool]

The parent-issue is a shame, in Fallout 3 I was impressed that my PC's father also was black (though you gotta admitt that his features were more white though, so they just changed the skin tone so it matched the PC). But it did give you extra immersion.
However in the city elf origin it doesn't matter, since ***very minor spoiler***
..since your mother is dead,
***end minor spoiler***
ie she could've been very black, I mean blacker-than-Wesley-Snipes-black and since the "blackest" skin tone isn't that kind of black, the child, the PC, could have that skin tone with a white father.

My cousin wife is like that, her dad is actually 1/4 black but looks white and her mother is black and her skin tone is almost exactly the same as the darkest in DA:O

[kab]

I thought this was an RPG not The Sims, why would the character look like you? I suppose I should complain that there aren't enough white people in Samurai Warrior.

[Dangerousplaces]

I think they made it a little trickier since your family is still going to be all white. It seems to me it would have been a simple tweaking of skin color to match yours would have solved that.

[Xeranx]

Trigonous wrote...

Or we could view it as an issue of the races that actually exist in the game world. God forbid that a game world is created without high-melanin content!

But that's usually the problem isn't it? That many game worlds don't feature those with "high-melanin content".  Lately we've been given the option to have a protagonist of color, but everyone knows that the real hero of the game/story is anything but a person of color.  It's kind of like what women had to deal with knowing that the hero of the story was 80%+ male (though I believe it's higher).  And like we always do (women and people of color alike) we deal with it, but even then it does start to get to you.  

Believe me this is not something I've compained about to friends or anyone really, but it has slowly begun to bother me and I wish it didn't.

[Kemor]

Soooo, are you the kind of guy who reads 15th century poetry or books (or costume movies Oo) and go: geesh, no black people, what a crappy racist book!



Perspective and context...please...

[wolliegator]

There are darkskined people in the game, there from Ravain. Duncan who is awesome is of Ravaini descent.

[Rogue310]

Kyuju wrote...

Bioware games in the past always have black and east-Asian characters, Really if anyone has a right to complain it's south-Asians.

I'm good. My character looks nothing like me, but quite a lot like Don Draper. And I'm OK with that, since I don't demand that Indians be included in the "Northern Europe" of the game world. As I recall, in our history, we tended to stay where it was warm and fertile, like smart people

[johnnyjsj]

Well typically the game designers usually hope for people with fantasy to create a persona very different from their own. It would be hard for me to make a character with a fauxhawk, very pale that has just turned 18. The last thing I'm thinking about is how my character looks when i can play in one of the most detailed and lively worlds ever created in gaming followed by without a doubt the best scripts and storyline bioware has ever written.

[johnnyjsj]

 Well typically the game designers usually hope for people with fantasy to create a persona very different from their own. It would be hard for me to make a character with a fauxhawk, very pale that has just turned 18. The last thing I'm thinking about is how my character looks when i can play in one of the most detailed and lively worlds ever created in gaming, followed by without a doubt the best scripts and storyline bioware has ever written.

[Dam Wookie]

This question will keep coming up as it should do. Encouraging submissive conformist behaviour or discouraging the questioning of situations such as this is in itself a form of social racism. Some of you really need to look at yourselves.



There was more variation than white in medieval Europe.



Dark elves are indeed sometimes depicted as blue but sometimes not. However the name alone "dark" elves and linking them with evil is enough for it to be a good point.



The face generator is a bit c$£p though for making characters look like specific people. Couldn't make my character look like a slightly overweight middle aged computer geek to save my life.

[KieranAldy]

It isn't racist. I agree with Trigonous. I think that it was based around that era and area, so should have the same race of people.

[Reikon]

I know one of the presets in the Human Male character was entirely of African descent on my screen. Wider nose, dark skin, short cropped black hair, rounded forehead. maybe it neded some work to actually look like you, but that was not the developers fault, you could spend the time to define your character instead of jumping into the game.



I downloaded the character creator and premade my character, that looks nothing like me BTW , its a fantasy game not real life. This game if fully mod-able, once the toolset is released, make one .

[Chaoswitcher]

just let this thread die, all know you can make a black guy or woman.

[gohan661]

Blind Ninja wrote...

Wow, first role playing game where I can't make my character look at least SOMEWHAT simliar to me...

well, that's very, very fair.

Its quite hard but still possible it took me ages with character creater to come up with a picture of myself (albeit with grey hair)
dont give up! persiverance

[gohan661]

Teemu733 wrote...

 You can make black characters, but of course the creator does favor Caucasian features.

In this day and age thats a shocking point

[Leonhartx]

Hes right....



but why he cares.... I don't know.....

[some thing]

lol dark elves are 'evil' representation of real world blacks in games lol. I dont know any graphite grey and midnight purple skinned, 6 inch pointy eared, flowing 3 foot long pure white haired blacks in the real world...anyone else? Oh wait that Storm chick from X-Men is close, kinda, sorta, oh wait she aint real. lol



This game has no responsibility to represent any real world ethnic and/or racial heritage.



IT IS A FANTASY GAME WITH DRAGONS AND ELVES AND DWARVES OH MY!!!

[gohan661]

You can its hard!

[Theziva]

Darnit, I am an asian in a wheelchair. Why won't they let me play me?



oh, because its a fantasy game set in a fantasy world, not earth. Cool.

[Staylost]

You suck at character design.

[agustusx]

The strangest thing is that there are people that actually think that trying to make a black character is wrong for one reason or another. There's nothing wrong with someone making a fantasy character with darker skin...regardless of how you justify they shouldn't exist.



But yes, this is a problem you can find many games, there are few that do a good job with the whole multicultural character design. Probably a lack of interest from the artist. Such a shame