Regarding Dragon Age
ScotGaymer
Member Posts: 526
Okay a post in another thread has inspired me to begin this topic.
Having had a twitter "conversation" regarding this very subject with both Mike Laidlaw and David Gaider I feel comfortable enough to "weigh in" on the subject with a degree of certainty.
People seem to have this erroneous idea that the Companions/Love Interests in Dragon Age 2 are "all bisexual" - and I find it supremely irritating because it is patently and fundamentally wrong. And I know this from my conversations with Mr's Laidlaw and Gaider on twitter.
People say that having all the companions "bisexual" is "unrealistic".
People say that having all the companions "bisexual" is lazy.
People say things like "OMG! Everyone is Gay/Bi! Its wrong/unrealistic/lazy/sick/blabblahblah!"
And people say they dont buy the "excuses" that the companions are not bisexual but instead "player sexual".
Let me begin by refuting this with a few small facts.
One:-
Not everyone is bisexual or gay in DA2. There are less people in DA2 that are gay/bisexual than in DA1.
Outside of the companions there is only the 2 bisexual "whores", and the one trans "whore" in The Rose, and the Seneschal; thats it.
In DAO there was 8 bisexual "whores", Wade, Herren, Zevran, Leliana, and some others also.
Two:-
Of the companions 5 are unrepentantly heterosexual. Aveline, Sebastian, Varric, Carver, and Bethany. All four indicate an interest in the opposite sex at varying points in the game.
And before you deny Aveline, she doesn't express an interest in Hawke or that she might have considered it. She only asks if Hawke considered it, to be sure.
Granted only one of those is a love interest.
Three:-
Of the 5 LI companions; only one is actually ALWAYS "bisexual". Isabela.
Sebastian is heterosexual as previously mentioned.
Anders is heterosexual when playing as FemHawke.
And Fenris and Merril are both "player sexual". They express no interest in anyone except the player. Ever.
So one out of a possible 9 Companions is actually truly bisexual in every way, without qualification.
Four:-
Also overlooked is the fact that it isn't that unrealistic for a number of people with "alternative sexualities" to seek each other out, congregate together, and become friends. Even in a more accepting universe such as Dragon Age.
Because these people would seek fellowship with others the same as anyone else. So supposing all the LIs WERE "bisexual" (which they aren't) it STILL wouldn't be unrealistic.
Five:-
The "all-bi" option (now established as erroneous) was not because the writers and devs were lazy; but because they made a concious choice to be as inclusive as they could be given the restraints they had in terms of time, money, and resources.
Simply put, they wanted to have several romance options for gay folk, for bi folk, and for str8 folk but simply didn't have the resources to make it possible. Keeping that wish in mind they decided to opt for a simpler, less resource costly way of giving people choice.
Choice is NEVER a bad thing people. Diversity, and inclusiveness is NEVER wrong.
Now addressing the fludic sexuality explanation. It is NOT an excuse that can be dismissed, it is the actual facts of the situation.
And how do I know that?
Because of one very very important fact about Dragon Age that people forget, or choose to ignore, ALL THE DAMN TIME and its ruddy frustrating.
And that fact is as follows:-
There is no canon in Dragon Age.
None. At. All.
In your Dragon Age Universe; Alistair was executed, Anora was crowned Queen of Ferelden, and Loghain was remembered as the man who fought and died to protect the realm from the Blight. In your universe Anders is perfectly heterosexual, Fenris has no interest in anyone sexually, Merril is a moron from mars, and Hawke has a chaste and loving relationship with Sebastian.
In my Dragon Age Universe; Alistair and Anora ruled jointly, my DalishMale!WarriorWarden romanced his darling Zevran, talked Alistair into doing Morrigan as part of the ritual, and then chopped off the Archdemons head. The Champion of Kirkwall Man!MageHawke fell hopelessly in love with firmly bisexual Anders, told a jealous Fenris to go stuff himself (later killing said Fenris), adored his little moron from mars Merill, considered Isabela his BFF, and took great delight in smashing Meredith into pieces the psycho bitch that she was.
Both universes exist. Both universes are correct. Why? Because there is no canon!
There. I'm done. Rant over!
*faints*
Having had a twitter "conversation" regarding this very subject with both Mike Laidlaw and David Gaider I feel comfortable enough to "weigh in" on the subject with a degree of certainty.
People seem to have this erroneous idea that the Companions/Love Interests in Dragon Age 2 are "all bisexual" - and I find it supremely irritating because it is patently and fundamentally wrong. And I know this from my conversations with Mr's Laidlaw and Gaider on twitter.
People say that having all the companions "bisexual" is "unrealistic".
People say that having all the companions "bisexual" is lazy.
People say things like "OMG! Everyone is Gay/Bi! Its wrong/unrealistic/lazy/sick/blabblahblah!"
And people say they dont buy the "excuses" that the companions are not bisexual but instead "player sexual".
Let me begin by refuting this with a few small facts.
One:-
Not everyone is bisexual or gay in DA2. There are less people in DA2 that are gay/bisexual than in DA1.
Outside of the companions there is only the 2 bisexual "whores", and the one trans "whore" in The Rose, and the Seneschal; thats it.
In DAO there was 8 bisexual "whores", Wade, Herren, Zevran, Leliana, and some others also.
Two:-
Of the companions 5 are unrepentantly heterosexual. Aveline, Sebastian, Varric, Carver, and Bethany. All four indicate an interest in the opposite sex at varying points in the game.
And before you deny Aveline, she doesn't express an interest in Hawke or that she might have considered it. She only asks if Hawke considered it, to be sure.
Granted only one of those is a love interest.
Three:-
Of the 5 LI companions; only one is actually ALWAYS "bisexual". Isabela.
Sebastian is heterosexual as previously mentioned.
Anders is heterosexual when playing as FemHawke.
And Fenris and Merril are both "player sexual". They express no interest in anyone except the player. Ever.
So one out of a possible 9 Companions is actually truly bisexual in every way, without qualification.
Four:-
Also overlooked is the fact that it isn't that unrealistic for a number of people with "alternative sexualities" to seek each other out, congregate together, and become friends. Even in a more accepting universe such as Dragon Age.
Because these people would seek fellowship with others the same as anyone else. So supposing all the LIs WERE "bisexual" (which they aren't) it STILL wouldn't be unrealistic.
Five:-
The "all-bi" option (now established as erroneous) was not because the writers and devs were lazy; but because they made a concious choice to be as inclusive as they could be given the restraints they had in terms of time, money, and resources.
Simply put, they wanted to have several romance options for gay folk, for bi folk, and for str8 folk but simply didn't have the resources to make it possible. Keeping that wish in mind they decided to opt for a simpler, less resource costly way of giving people choice.
Choice is NEVER a bad thing people. Diversity, and inclusiveness is NEVER wrong.
Now addressing the fludic sexuality explanation. It is NOT an excuse that can be dismissed, it is the actual facts of the situation.
And how do I know that?
Because of one very very important fact about Dragon Age that people forget, or choose to ignore, ALL THE DAMN TIME and its ruddy frustrating.
And that fact is as follows:-
There is no canon in Dragon Age.
None. At. All.
In your Dragon Age Universe; Alistair was executed, Anora was crowned Queen of Ferelden, and Loghain was remembered as the man who fought and died to protect the realm from the Blight. In your universe Anders is perfectly heterosexual, Fenris has no interest in anyone sexually, Merril is a moron from mars, and Hawke has a chaste and loving relationship with Sebastian.
In my Dragon Age Universe; Alistair and Anora ruled jointly, my DalishMale!WarriorWarden romanced his darling Zevran, talked Alistair into doing Morrigan as part of the ritual, and then chopped off the Archdemons head. The Champion of Kirkwall Man!MageHawke fell hopelessly in love with firmly bisexual Anders, told a jealous Fenris to go stuff himself (later killing said Fenris), adored his little moron from mars Merill, considered Isabela his BFF, and took great delight in smashing Meredith into pieces the psycho bitch that she was.
Both universes exist. Both universes are correct. Why? Because there is no canon!
There. I'm done. Rant over!
*faints*
4
Comments
Especially in light of how much BW ballsed up ME3 lol.
It was a massive dissapointment yes. But it was a good game :P
And? Your point is caller?
As I said it was inspired by a comment someone else made in another thread, and its comments like it that I see made ALL the time. And are just plain wrong.
And its irritating.
If you wanna hate DA2, sure go ahead and hate it. But at least criticise it for the things that are actually wrong with it. Actual flaws.
Not the things that aren't wrong.
Criticism is fine, as long as its accurate and founded.
As for percentages and whatnot, I don't care. However, I think it was handled poorly in DA2 (compared to DA1). I understand why many characters were written (NPC's) with options, as they want to please the largest consumer base, but I'm a rarity in that it has to make sense to me for a character to have a specific preference or whatnot. If that isn't there, I find the character unbelievable and the entire thing slightly annoying.
I'm just amused of this thread.
I don't mind bitching and complaining. Like Reed there, he didn't like it because he would have rather had a few gay, a few bi, and a few str8 LIs. And thats just fine. Valid reasons to dislike it.
Disliking something, and complaining about that thing is fine.
Just do it right!
lol.
Let's talk about tomatoes instead. Better story, better gameplay.
Personally, I'm willing to have a conversation with others despite what my own feelings are one way or another. I relish hearing other points of view. If you aren't even willing to talk about a subject though I guess all I can say is good riddance.
I never mentioned it cos I genuinely don't think it has much of a bearing on the reception the Companions in DA2 got.
At least not from most folks.
Seriously, I've seen people act as if Dragon Age and Mass Effect were front line battles for LGBT issues, when all they really want is for the game to let them play out their slash fiction fantasies. The level of interest these people have in relationships with fictional characters is downright disturbing (insert obligatory reference to the "What Does Tali's Sweat Taste Like?" post from the BSN)
I don't disagree with you about that particular section of the Bioware fan base. As a frequent poster on the BSN, it most certainly exists.
And it is more frightening than you describe. The scariest part of it is the Talimancers. *shudders*
But as I said in my OP, having had several forum and twitter discussions with Mike Laidlaw and David Gaider. I can say, that unless both men (who I believe are both honest and upstanding gentlemen) outright lied to me, that pandering to that section of the fanbase was not the reason for the decision.
As I said, it was made largely for resource allocation reasons. But also coupled with a sincere desire to be as inclusive as possible in their games.
And I really cant criticise that.
And I am really against other people criticising that.
Criticise the decision for the right reasons, not the wrong ones.
Criticise it because you believe Bioware should have had a choice of NPC companions, with a wide array of personalities and sexualities and races available rather than One Size Fits All romances with four of the most dramatic and cliched characters Bioware has ever created.
Criticise it because you think that if resources was such a big problem they should have cut romances out entirely and dedicated the time money and effort to making a better, more fun, and more playable game available to the fanbase. And then maybe released a romance DLC or done romances as part of an expansion later.
Don't fling around baseless, and frankly paranoid, accusations of pandering to a minority section of the fanbase. Because it isn't true.
Romancing in video games was already pretty implausible, DA:O let my dwarf get it on with women twice as tall as him, Mass Effect lets you have relationships with different species, and in every case there is no accounting for whether your character is even attractive.
Drawing the line at gender is just arbitrary.
Personally it ruins my immersion to have all of the love interests be bisexual. It just doesn't feel realistic within the settings of the fantasy world setting of this particular game. Particularly Anders because in DAO I never got any impression that he was bisexual.
As I said @karnor00 - the LIs were not all bisexual. Saying so is just factually wrong.
And even if they were bisexual? As I pointed out previously, it is COMPLETELY realistic to have a group of people of the same or similar sexuality congregate together in the same grouping.
And why wouldn't it be realistic in the setting?
Thedas is not medieval europe.
At the very worst same sex pairings in Thedas are viewed as odd.
The only possibly valid reason for disliking that you have given it is the cost reduction reason. The others are factually wrong, and inaccurate.
You stated that Sebastian and Anders are heterosexual, and yet the fact that they are prepared to romance a male player means, in my opinion, that they are in fact bisexual.
If my best friend unexpectedly told me he was gay then I'd be fine with it. But, even though he is my best friend, I still wouldn't want to have sex with him. That's because I'm heterosexual and not bisexual. If Hawke had been gathering people together for a bisexual rights rally again the Qun then absolutely, it would be perfectly realistic for all of the NPCs to be bisexual.
But (s)he's not. Hawke has gathered together a pretty random bunch of people. To me it stretches credulity too far to believe that they all just happened to be bisexual.
But I will grant you that this is based on my assumptions about Thedas. My assumption is that Thedas is society is pretty similar to Western society in the real world - i.e. the majority of people are heterosexual with a minority (c.10%) being GLBT.
I thought it was quite well done in ME3. Sam Traynor is a lesbian - that wasn't something I saw coming until I got her to my quarters (all I got was chess unfortunately). I thought it was quite realistic for her to turn me down - she wants to sleep with other women. So she won't sleep with me just because I'm the player.
Sorry but you can disagree all you like it doesn't make you any less wrong. All the LIs are NOT bisexual. Its just a factual thing.
You can say that you think dinosaurs didn't exist and its all a giant hoax; but that wouldn't mean you weren't completely factually wrong.
Sorry don't mean to be rude here.
Like I said I wouldn't mind criticisms of the decision to make the LIs the way they are, if it was based on actual flaws. Real factual problems about the game.
Sebastian is NOT willing to romance a male hawke. Ever. He is heterosexual in every universe.
And Anders' sexuality changes depending on the universe. And the gender of your Hawke.
On this particular issue I have to say that Word of God trumps your interpretation.
Also your assumption about "Most people" being heterosexual in the real world, is arguable, and not something that really applies to Thedas.
But to continue with your argument, there is presumably a different in-game universe depending on whether Hawke is a mage, thief or warrior? But by happy coincidence, this choice doesn't affect Anders sexual preferences.
Basically I view your argument as a very flimsy justification on the part of the developers to try and provide an in-game explanation for their resource dependent choice to make all romances available to all players.
You can argue that it's fact as much as you like, but I see the facts differently. In my opinion the facts are that everyone plays in the same universe and by that definition all the LIs must be bisexual.
And really you can't argue with that because its down to my interpretation vs yours/the developers. All that says is that the developer has a different view to me. Doesn't mean that I agree with it or regard his opinion as being 'factual'. I still just regard it as an opinion.
By my interpretation most people = more than 50%. I think you would struggle to find any credible evidence to suggest that less than 50% of the population are heterosexual.
However, I would concede that the word most is a fairly ill defined term. Some people would regard most as being 95% or more, in which case I would agree that it doesn't apply.
Perhaps a more exact wording of my original statement would be that, in my interpretation of Thedas, sexual preferences are similar to [my perception of] those of the real world, i.e. c.90% of the population being heterosexual and c.10% being homosexual.
Now you can argue whether my percentages for the real world are accurate or not, but please don't try and argue that they don't apply to my interpretation of Thedas. I'm damn sure I know better than you on this issue - however your interpretation of Thedas may differ.
And the sexuality thing. It IS arguable. And not an arguement I want to have here.
Of course it would depend which Thedas universe we were in
The whole thing about Dragon Age having no canon has always been true, since before DAO was released. They said even then that the game had no "canonical" storyline and to instead think of Dragon Age along the lines of a multiverse.
Where all storylines and all outcomes and all routes happen, simultaneously, in an infinate number of universes. With the Divergence point happening right before DAO when Duncan decides which area of Ferelden to go a-searching for GW talent.
It's rather compelling when you think about it.
So really anything could be true.
With that in mind the only thing we have that can be taken as "factually happened" is the things that happened prior to Duncan's divergence points including the general history of the universe.
And the things that the Devs tell us to be true. Ya know Word of God.
Everything else can be taken as subjective until proven otherwise.
And sorry, but the "player-sexual" explanation doesn't work. Anders is always bisexual, since he talks about liking women in Awakening and implies a history with Isabela in banters, and after you meet him in DA2, you have to help him rescue his male lover. Fenris will romance Isabela if you don't romance either, so he is at least interested in women regardless of your gender. Isabela is clearly bisexual. So only Merill is a blank slate here.
I really need to know this.
It suffered from mass effect 2 syndrome. (Less choices, less roleplaying, less customization, boring story, 1 dimensional characters, and less weapons/armor to find). Sure the combat was better but who really cares when everything else suffered
I can't say that DA2 is a great game, but I will say that it is the closest game to the Baldur's Gate series that Bioware has managed since Baldur's Gate. After Baldur's Gate(or maybe NWN.... I couldn't make myself finish the official campaign of that one), every game Bioware has made has adhered to the Bioware Formula. That is to say "Only you, the [Jedi/Spirit Monk/SPECTRE/Grey Warden] can save the [galaxy/empire/galaxy/world] from the [Sith/Emperor/Reapers/Blight], but first you must find [the Star Map/the Spirit Amulet/{the conduit/a team/allies}/allies] by performing these seemingly unimportant side quests!"
Dragon Age 2, for all it's flaws, is a story about a nobody rising to influence and wealth through strength of arms. If they had taken another year to flesh that game out, it could actually have been a worthy successor to Baldur's Gate, unlike Origins, which was pretty much just a more tactical KOTOR.
At least in Origins your character was your own. They had their own origin story and being a greywarden actually felt bad ass. Origins is the closest bioware ever got to baldur's gate and they ruined it with 2 by taking away everything that made the first one so fun. I ESPECIALLY hated the talent trees. It felt like there might have be 1-2 different setups for each type of character. Really the game had no depth, no creativity, and no passion. I definitely will not buy the third.
@Eldryth
Skyrim is light years beyond DA2. Don't even compare the two
Hawke rises to bugger all in DA2. "Power" implies the ability to change and affect things, which Hawke has none of. You get one major decision - Templars VS. Mages - and even that doesn't really have any consequences. During the whole game Hawke is little more than a hired thug who kills people to advance to the next cutscene. And the combat is so mind-numbingly dull that you could cut it out entirely, make a check box on character creation for "Hawke Personality: Nice/Mean/Obnoxious Twit" and just watch cutscenes for the rest of the game, and that would have been far less of a waste of time than actually playing this drivel.
Seriously, I've heard of gameplay and story segregation...DA2 is gameplay and story apartheid. It's like BioWare just wanted to tell their "brilliant" story and only grudgingly offered up actual gameplay.