Well, I have my doubts about this. Regarding sexuality, I like when characters have a set sexuality, which is more realistic even if it limits the number of romance options. This can also help to develop some characters, as in certain contexts, sexual orientation can influence in upbringings and personalities.
However, I can’t say that this is the best option for every game. For example, I prefer games with few RO (three or four) and dedicate more time to develop those in more depth rather than including a wide variety of romantic options (although there are writers that manage to do both things and they deserve my admiration), in a case where you have few romance options, limiting them due to MC’s gender seems kind of contraproducing.
So I guess that it depends on the game and whatever and author thinks that will work best for their story. I like, however, when romances might mention some differences depending on the MC’s gender.
As for personalities, I think that limiting the game due to the personality of character is a more natural way of writing romance, since well… there are just some personalities that might be incompatible and it’s hard to know if this is the case until you dedicate some time to develop the dynamics and relationships between the two characters.
While he may be a terrible example he is at least cute and funny, something Anders very much wasn’t in DA2. Also Anders is a terrible representation as well because he basically hides his bi-ness from femHawke since he only mentions Karl as anything more then a friend and mentor to male Hawke. Add to that the fact that he was very much implied to be almost as crazy about women in Awakening as Zevran.
Honestly in awakening it was Nate who came across as the bisexual one. In general all Bioware’s bi males heavily prefer the opposite sex often to the point to exclusively mentioning their opposite sex attractions and past girlfriends ad nauseam to the male mc.
In DA2 I preferred Fenris, who is mostly a sexual blank-slate due to his circumstances.
Well with the help of some mods, yeah. Bioware’s standard hair and outfits for him aren’t all that fabulous. Fortunately mods can give him some hair and clothes that better match his personality and how he’s described by other npc’s in-game.
Exactly. I was so surprised when one of my friends told me Karl was Ander’s boyfriend. I only play female characters and I was deprived of that information in all my playthroughs.
That was one of the most ridiculous things Bioware has done imo. Why would you go to such trouble to hide that from femHawke is beyond me.
Also, Zevran is the best and I love him to eternity. But I get what you guys were saying about his comments. He only mentions women in his past and only through some probing did I learn he likes men too. I got a really odd feeling when he told my warden he “preferred” woman, even playing as a female warden it kinda felt… wrong. Why would they put that in? Do they think that’s what women want to hear?
I understand your concerns, seeing how it can be frustrating as a gay guy to only be able to encounter male ROs that only will be with you if you push them hard enough, as if being with a man feels less legitimate and something only included to appeal to gay players.
However, I can’t help but think that this kind of statements might come across as (unintentionally) biphobic, since I’ve seen in real life how bisexual people are judged over their personal preferences and past relationships, as if they couldn’t commit to the particular gender of the person they are with.
Sure bi guys who are more attracted to women are out there and it’s certainly a real-life situation, however when it is the only situation and the only sort of bi guy we get to encounter game after game after game it tends to get grating and wear on the nerves. They also invariably encounter one or two of those past girlfriends, some even help in quests or are vital to said quests. Would it really hurt them so much to give us an encounter with a bi guy’s ex-boyfriend once in a while.
Of course I get why they don’t do that since if they did the straight female gamers do not basically get to ignore that male ro’s bi-ness and to date Bioware has always crafted or at least edited the writing carefully to enable just that.
It is also a testament to the rapid developments in the Western World at least (the rest isn’t that great yet and even in the “free” West there are plenty of lingering and residual issues) that while this sort of stuff may have been edgy and forward thinking back in 1997 or even 2004, it is starting to fall behind the times now.
Asabi person, I got to agree with @idontlikeusernames here Bioware has a problem with their bi-representation. All their bi people tend to be overly sexual, off dubious moral and interested in women. (Yes, this count the female bi ro too. Only Josephine managed to dogde all three of those marks and she only does so because she is not a companion.)
I agree that DA2 was the best. (The unfortunate business with Anders aside.) Simply because that by all four being bi it meant that da2 dogded biowares typical stereotyping of their love interest.
That said, some of dao’s problem stem from the fact that dao is old. Same sex relationship was still controversial at the time.
This is a difficult topic to address since it depends on the reader’s and the author’s personal preferences. I lean more towards “limited” romances myself as I feel they are more realistic or at least give those characters more agency. I might be disappointed that character X was straight and had no interest in smooching my female MC but I’ll respect their autonomy. I adore Morrigan and Cassandra but I can’t help feeling like they’d be less themselves if they were player-sexual. I might be the odd masochist that likes lucid flashes of reality in my escapism but like the OP mentioned, it wouldn’t really break my immersion to have my MC be rejected. They could be rejected because of their anatomic situation, personality, or timing.
On the other side I absolutely understand the desire to have all RO’s be player-sexual just for the sake of having fun and experiencing their stories, I may just be biased against it because the other situations I’ve experienced with that caveat felt very shallow to me. It often feels like the RO is following my MC like a lamb within their own microcosm, like, it doesn’t matter what my MC does or says as long as they whisper the right, sweet-nothings to the RO in question. Maybe the issue isn’t the romance itself but how it interacts with the story as a whole. Hopefully this makes sense, my point is floating on the tip of my tongue (or fingers) but I don’t know if I’m articulating it correctly.
I am just slightly concerned with the amount of people who seem to be equating a character’s sexuality/gender-preference with “genitalia” or “anatomy”. There’s a lot more to sexuality than that.
To add on to what I was saying earlier, though, I feel like a lot of what it comes down to for me is quantity vs. depth/responsiveness of choices. It’s entirely possible to strike a balance and have ROs who are interested in the player regardless of gender, who still feel like real people. It’s less possible to have a RO who is always interested in the player no matter what the player does or who they are. As you expand the RO in breadth, you lose depth. A romance that feels very genuine and responsive and unique, when it’s written for two characters who have particular personalities, will feel more hollow if it’s expanded to be available to everyone. Having a RO who’s interested in the player because the player has shown to be outspoken opens up other possibilities; that RO may be surprised and disappointed, frustrated or concerned if later the player makes timid choices.
You might say that’s possible for characters who know each other even without being ROs, and that’s because it totally is, but writing a romance is just as much about the actual relationship between the two people (which exists within friendships as well) as it is about anything else. And for it to feel authentic, it needs to be constrained in some aspect.
To put it more concisely: If the player can choose to do absolutely anything at any time, it’s much harder as an author to make those choices stick or feel meaningful or truly responsive. Constraining choice even in a minor way allows the responses to those choices to be more fleshed out and meaningful. This is true with ROs as much as it is for any other kind of story choice.
I was thinking more about his personality. I know a lot of people find sexually asertive characters disgusting. Me? I can’t help but love them. But, yeah, I know what you mean about his clothes (the hair is meh).
So much face palm. It was 10 years ago, so I’ll chalk it up to that.
Preach. I understand this was in response to a post, but I want to expand this point a little bit here: I consider it to be bi sexual representation (not even “good” bisexual representation, just representation) when person A says they are into more than one gender. I don’t need her to mention a female lover everytime she talks about an ex boyfriend. I don’t need them to be fifty/fifty about it because that’s not how bisexuality works. You have lovers, not percentages
So what if a girl speaks about the gazillion guys she was with? If she says “And that one girl at the bus station” that’s enough for me. I know it is minimal, I know I should expect a lot more from the media (it’s 2017!), but I don’t know, I really don’t care how many boyfriends or girlfriends you had or hadn’t, just give me that throw away line, that’s all it takes to make me happy. To say This is bisexual representation.
This is quite relevant to the edits to Unnatural as with adding an option to be nonbinary I had to consider how to handle the romance options. My decision to accomplish this was to offer the player a choice when selecting to be nonbinary that says they are nonbinary but the teacher has sit them with boys/girls and then from there if they chose the teacher made them sit with boys then any ro who is attracted to men straight or gay is available likewise if they choose to be sit by the girls then anyone who likes girls can be romanced.
Now whether this is the right way I don’t know. (I really need to get a few nonbinary members of the forums to get into the beta test of the edits.)
So true. I have been with one person (I am ace as well, I don’t just go out and find people to be with). Doesn’t make me any less bi, though.
But again you can sort of map bioware sexualities:
Moderate, moralising, important to the plot and properly human. And all in all good leaning. Straight. (The ‘knight’ in white amour.)
Of dubious moral, sexually aggressive and a skilled liar: Bi. Properly also has a death ex girlfriend somewhere, if not be prepared to kill said ex.
Gay male: The ME and DA team is pretty different because the ME team has always been homophobic (seriously, MEA might be bad, but original ME was a catastrophe. They were on camera saying that Shephard couldn’t be gay. Liara was totally not a woman, you know). DA has one fleshed out same sex character so it is harder to pin down.
Lesbian: If you are from the DA-verse and a lesbian you are or are in danger of a toxic relationship.
Which sort of lead me back into another reason why I prefer open RO. When people say that set sexuality are more realistic. eight times out of ten what I hear is: This person just doesn’t make sense as gay. In other words they think that gay and bi is a personality trait. By making the RO’s open writers are forced to look beyond that stereotype.
We all do it. (Even I) because we all have out stereotypes. Which is why I think it is often better to just force the characters on equal ground to start with.
…that can be problematic. (It is quite realistic, but problematic). If a character identifies as gay or straight and is with and non binary person they are essentially saying they do not acknowledge the non binary identity.
The character would have to identify as bi because they are interested in more than one gender.
That’s very fair. Like I mention before, through my experience it’s felt as if the only way that RO’s can establish their autonomy, at least in terms of reasons not to shack up with the MC is sexuality. Perhaps if they were written to better respond to the MC’s actions or the world in general it would be different?
I don’t want to derail the thread but I do have some thoughts on this, you might want to post in the trans discussion thread to get some more opinions on it
The RO saying no to shacking up with the MC because of sexuality does not establish autonomity. It establish sexuality and if that is the only limit the RO has to saying no to shacking up with the MC it just highlight the arbitariness of the situation.
It is kind of like saying: Everything goes. Expect your gender.
Or at least the Bioware and Microsoft executives in charge of the Mass Effect projects have always been homophobic, the first game at least seemed to have a less homophobic team since the Kaidan/MShep and Ashley/FemShep romances are in there and mostly complete, so the best guess is that the team tried to sneak them in but got stopped when it became time for the animated scenes, which are the most budget intensive components cause the writing and most of the voice-acting is there.
I am not inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt here, but will admit that since they share some writers with the DA team there has to be some overlap. The DA-teams mistakes I attribute more to their accidential stereotyping (we all do it. I do too.) and mistake which comes from ignorance.
This feels a little uncomfortable to me. Very much like a, “OK, you’re ‘non-binary’, but which (binary) gender are you REALLY?” kind of option, which I’m sure is not what you intend.
With non-binary player characters this is just something that needs to be considered with regards to your characters’ sexualities. If you’re not writing them as being player-sexual, or bi, then honestly it’s a case by case basis? Maybe you have a character who’s only attracted to people on the masculine side of the spectrum, including masculine-of-center non-binary characters, who describes himself as “gay”, but you have to avoid the trap of making that just invalidate the nb character’s identity, or just treating them as a “man” for all intents and purposes. I get that that’s “more complicated” because being non-binary isn’t just One Identity, but if you’re set on having the choice mean something, and specifically mean something wrt romance, it is something you have to think about.
The “easier” option there is obviously to include more explicitly bi (or pan) characters. Or more non-binary characters, for that matter.
I second the suggestion to taking that to the trans thread, though.
Sure this is all subjective, though I try not to judge ordinary employees who could after all lose their jobs if they are perceived to complain too much since they’re “not a team player” then as compared to the often grossly overpaid executives.
Quick aside, but it wasn’t actually sneaked in. There were concerns that the engine wouldn’t allow them to implement the romances unless they recorded it for a male Shepard and a female Shepard. Once they figured out a way around that, they tossed the same-sex romances. This same team tried to say Ashley couldn’t be bi because she was religious and it didn’t fit her character.
