Dragon Age 2 Lead Writer Blasts Homophobic Fan

[Vect]

I have no problem with the whole Bisexuality thing, though I find the fact that all the characters just happen to be bisexual and can be romanced by any players to mostly be Pandering to the fangirls who think that a true RPG experience means being able to hump every living thing on the Maker's Brown Earth (which of course just ends up with Fable, where you get a person to fall in love with you through a few rounds of pattycake and doing a jig) who still complain about how "X cannot be romanced, bawww".

Still, as long as it can be pulled off with decent writing, I've no problems with the romances themselves. Just the actual reasoning behind those romances.

 

[hutchy27]

Homophobia is a virus. The sooner it becomes extinct, the better. For everyone.

At first I first you said Homosexuality. -__-

 

[someonehairy-ish]

The guy is just asking for a way to stop men hitting on him in-game and possibly another romantic option. I haven't played DA2 but I hear that the only options are a nerdy chick or a 'strong woman' which doesn't actually mean anything. Those are two fairly limiting options so I'd say he's justified in asking for it, even if it does show he's massively underestimating how much time goes into making a new character.

All in all, no need to bash him so harshly. Playing the game might change my view on this but the situation seemed clear enough from his post.

Props to the developer for defending his stance though.

 

[ImmortalDrifter]

Two things:

One: To all the people who are complaining about Anders "Why isn't there a way to say no and get friendship points." Give me an example of a 'letting them down gently' line that actually works IRL, and doesn't make the person feel rejected and pissed at you.

Two: Who honestly gets so invested in their e-sex options for a videogame that they feel the need to complain about it on a forum?

1: It's the fact that you have to go through it with him. With all other companions romance dialogue is a side option, with Anders you have to go through it. I would much prefer to not get involved at all than try to "let him down easy". (Don't want to be a dick either)

2: Who is so invested in complaining that he needs to go to a complaint forum to complain about other people complaining? lol

1. Do you also complain about Isabella? As I recall, she flirts with you during the first conversation you have.

2. Not complaining, merely observing.

1. She does flirt with you yes, but its completely scripted and nothing ever comes of it. You don't reply to her with a flirtatious answer. You just say, I'll watch your back; It's the response not conversation.

2. I was mostly joking

 

[someonehairy-ish]

Is it maybe because you have inner conflicts on your sexuality?

I'll put this bluntly.

If a straight guy says that men hitting on him weirds him out, it is NOT because he's secretly harboring gay fantasies and it forces him to realise them. There is probably no weird psychology behind it.
He just doesn't want another guy's junk rammed up his anus.

Please stop using this incredibly stupid retort now. This goes for everyone, not you specifically.

 

[Ellen of Kitten]

I certainly appreciated my sexual inclinations being catered to in Origins. I very much appreciate it. I haven't played DA2 yet, but I imagine that there is plenty of options for the straight male (plenty as in, at least 2).

 

[IamGamer41]

I find it funny how people call this guy a homophobe just because of his opinion.Of course Bioware has to stay politically correct in all this and its great that they give this options for everyone to enjoy.However it could have been presented better in the DA2.Its seem its always the homosexuals that get the knee jerk reactions to post like this.Sure I may disagree with your lifestyle but I don't hate you for it.Its your choice and I can respect that as long as you respect my choice to be straight.

Did you read the posts?

Dave Gaider's first post was amazing, and I'm going to expand one of the points therein. Namely, the one about privilege.

As non-heterosexuals (or women, or asexuals, or anyone else who isn't a completely normative straight white male) we have no choice but to be okay with your heterosexuality. Society is predicated on the assumption that everyone is hetero by default, and you are constantly catered to in almost everything, not least within the games industry. If we genuinely weren't okay with your heterosexuality we wouldn't be able to play games, heck, we wouldn't be able to walk outside.

The guy is being heterocentric, if not outright homophobic, in that he clearly considers (unconsciously, to be fair) that to be an entirely normal state of affairs that us fags should just be used to by now. His complaint is not that he has not been catered to, but that he should be the target audience and should be catered to more than anyone else because of it.

It's just standard heterosexual self-entitlement really. A lot of you (by no means all, thankfully, as this thread is demonstrating) are so wrapped up in your privilege that you consider a bias to be fair, and any move towards inclusion to be threatening or unfair on you.

And it's okay, I disagree with your lifestyle too.

So straight people are self-entitled to something?You are right that heterosexual is standard because thats the majority.Your wrong to think we are entitled just because we make up most of society.Of course things/games/movies are going to have the heterosexuals marketed to first.Not all but most.
There was nothing wrong with how Bioware did other then they where thrown in your face on the first dialog and shouldn't have stared until the 4th year.Would have made more since.Well other then Isabella but she was a whore.

 

[Death-of-Penguins]

Odd Angry Fan throws yet another long winded homophobic rant- David Gaider knocks it out of the park.
Seriously, I love that man, and his smiley face at the end made it for me.

 

[kromify]

lol - i thought the romance options were much better for girls (and gays!) this time. don't you know girls love brooding rebelious anti-heroes!?

Lol, yep... but I don't know many who hold a fascination with ones who look like a cross between Boy George and an elderly style Barbie Doll

Pfft! I is Anders' fangirl! Such a tragic story... *heart flutters!*

 

[GloatingSwine]

Given that sexuality is quite a fundamental component of identity, designing a character with a strong identity requires that the designer decides what their sexual preference is and how that affects their personality and interactions, especially in an RPG which is designed, supposedly, around personal interactions with these characters.

And Dragon Age 2 failed on this point how?
When it mattered, I thought it was conveyed rather well that the four characters available for romance were attracted to both sexes. And that this fact didn't define them, but had caused them both joys and heartbreaks in the past.
I'm just curious; is your issue that you thought the characterisation was poor, or that all the love interests were bisexual?
I've heard a lot of people claim that the latter "cheapens" the romance, whatever that might mean.

The fact that all the potential romance interests are bisexual means that there are inherently less points of difference beween those characters. It makes the party less varied, and is as bad in it's own way as having only straight people.

Quite aside from the verisimilitude issue (which people frequently cite as "realism") that full bisexuality is rare, most people greatly prefer one gender over the other. And whilst you can fall back on the old "but dragginz" argument, remember that fantastical monsters are so far outside of the audience's frame of reference that they can easily be handled by willing suspension of disbelief, but sexuality is something that everyone becomes familiar with, and so things that do not ring true in a fiction will not. The human parts of a story have to be "true", no matter how fantastical the rest of it is, because they are the bits which the audience is familiar with.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

Pfft! I is Anders' fangirl! Such a tragic story... *heart flutters!*

I'd mock you but this is coming from someone who fancies Merril, so... I'm on the same page lol.

I actually missed Fenris completely in my first playthrough. Never even knew he existed as I skipped the Bait and Switch quest, thinking it was crappy busywork for the Smugglers that would make Aveline mad at me.

 

[Pearwood]

They couldnt, oh I dont know, be realistic and have attractions that go unreturned?


What is the fucking problem of saying "no, you cant romance them, tough shit".

That's less fun. I don't need a video game to have unrequited love and Dragon Age is hardly a tear-jerker so stuff like that is out of place.

He just doesn't want another guy's junk rammed up his anus.

I'll put this bluntly. Not all gay men enjoy anal sex, stop using that incredibly stupid retort.

 

[mechanixis]

Ahahaha, are you serious? "It would have been easy to add a 'No Homosexuality' option"?

"And furthermore, I don't like all these colored folk cropping up in these games! Why won't Bioware just implement a simple "No Ethnic Minorities" toggle? BLUH BLUH ACCOMMODATE MY INTOLERANCE!"

 

[joemegson94]

The homophobic guy really needs to sort himself out. He should get a life, remember that it's just a fucking game and not actually real, then go out and find a real girl. Srsly. Is he seriously offended by the fact that there are gay fictional characters in a damn video game?

 

[mechanixis]

The thread itself is very amusing. Basically, the OP argument boils down to "Bioware, why didn't you make me the kind of girlfriend I wanted?" and passing it off as speaking for a silent majority.

Honestly, I think DA2 is completely fair in terms of heterosexual romances. All that's changed is that there's slightly more metrosexuality in the romance-option characters to accommodate homosexual players. While it does sort of break immersion that almost every character you recruit happens to be bisexual (hey, maybe Kirkwall is just super-progressive...), I acknowledge that those misgivings are very easy for me (a Straight Male) to overlook relative to the payoff for the non-Straight Male player.

And I salute Geider for calling out overzealous anti-Trolls. Nowadays people's readiness to throw around accusations of Trollhood borders on McCarthyistic.

 

[Therumancer]

My opinion falls somewhere in between the two "sides" of this. I tend to agree with the person making the initial complaints, and think that the official Bioware response was both out of touch, and out of line. Politics need to stay out of games.

To put things into perspective, heterosexuals make up the overwhelmingly vast majority of human civilization. The issue I have with a lot of games right now is that they tend to be ridiculously overblown with the homosexuality. I see equal representation as being a percentage of game characters roughly in keeping with real life, NOT that everything has to be 50-50 or all inclusive all the time. There is a middle ground between having no homosexuality at all, and having a situation where everyone is bi-sexual and you can expect to be constantly propositioned by people of both genders constantly.

To be entirely honest, in dealing with most people, their sexual orientation and what they do in the bedroom isn't all that obvious. Yet in a lot of video games you literally can't get away from it.

I think "Origins" did it much better where there WERE a couple of gay romance options, but by and large the majority of people in the game were heterosexual, which is pretty much in keeping with a sense of reality. I'm pretty anti-gay men, but I don't have an issue with seeing a bit of this stuff in fiction, because it IS out there. I think it's a matter of handling it tastefully. Honestly though, Bioware is STILL light years ahead of "Fable". While the constant come ons are annoying, it's not as bad as in fable where you can have like 5 gay men in a crowd following you around begging you to marry them.

To be entirely honest, most people tend to be somewhat wary when it comes to sex. That is why characters like an Isabela stand out. You don't see the kind of come ons that are present in the game unless your dealing with someone who has sent out signals. I honestly think if they want to customize the game for the people playing, they should include "sexual orientation" along with gender. In game terms, while some of the NPCs might be gay or bi, there is no reason why you can't have a character who is obviously heterosexual and those people are going to realize your not interested. Not "violently heterosexual", and no need for outright gay bashing or anything, just a situation where you don't have to deal with
the come ons.

 

[Shikua]

The thread itself is very amusing. Basically, the OP argument boils down to "Bioware, why didn't you make me the kind of girlfriend I wanted?" and passing it off as speaking for a silent majority.

Honestly, I think DA2 is completely fair in terms of heterosexual romances. All that's changed is that there's slightly more metrosexuality in the romance-option characters to accommodate homosexual players. While it does sort of break immersion that almost every character you recruit happens to be bisexual (hey, maybe Kirkwall is just super-progressive...), I acknowledge that those misgivings are very easy for me (a Straight Male) to overlook relative to the payoff for the non-Straight Male player.

And I salute Geider for calling out overzealous anti-Trolls. Nowadays people's readiness to throw around accusations of Trollhood borders on McCarthyistic.

In general, Thedas is pretty sexually progressive.

 

[mxfox408]

Because apparently "straight, male gamers" are not pandered to enough in games?

This guy knows Duke Nukem Forever is coming out this year, right?

As long as they dont make duke gay its fine by me but i cant stand dudes hitting on me in the game wtf is up with that its fucking annoying, and if it wad rl id tell them to go fuck themselfs as i had in the past.

 

[Chronarch]

Really, my only qualm with all the bisexual... nicity? Yes, anyway all the bisexualnicity kind of makes it hard for my male character to develop good friendships with some of the other male characters without them hitting on him. I mean, in Dragon Age Origins I could talk to Alistair for a good amount of time and exhaust every possible dialogue option without any weirdness between the characters arising; even the really personal stuff like his childhood. Even Zevran could be talked to with options that would avoid potentially awkward situations. This made my character and Alistair and Zevran best friends in a way. In Dragon Age II however I tried talking to Anders after helping him with something and he immediately started trying to romance me. There were only three options I could respond with and they would either make him angry and make him gain rivalry, or say that I "roll like that". I don't like the fact that I can't try to effectively create a friendship and learn about the character's history without it spiraling into a romance. Ah well, I suppose that's why the Dragon Age wiki exists and to be fair I've heard that Anders is just easily offended.

 

[Shikua]

, there is no reason why you can't have a character who is obviously heterosexual and those people are going to realize your not interested.

>> can't have a character who is obviously heterosexual
>> character who is obviously heterosexual
>> obviously heterosexual

What? Are you serious right now? Pray tell, what exactly does someone who is "obviously heterosexual" sound and look like? Please elaborate. And if that's true, there must obviously be a way to tell "obviously heterosexuals" apart from "obviously homosexuals" right? This sounds pretty biggotted to me.