No Real Gay Characters in Bioware?

[Worr Monger]

Hopefully we don't end up debating whether Bioware needs to include a wheel-chair bound character to satisfy that community...

That would be awesome! Wheel-chair based attacks! Handicapped parking tag ranged attacks.

I'd totally play that character.

NO!! Don't encourage them!

C'mon, admit it. It would be fun!

Only if they filled a place like Kirkwall with ramps..

...Or if they didn't, the main quest could be to start a movement to install ramps in all corners of Thedas.. including the Deep Roads. Could be fighting darkspawn to defend the workers... then you stumble across an Old God before the darkspawn do...

...Ok now I'm starting to like this.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

My problem with Bioware is that they seem to make the most likable characters unromancable with the exception of maybe Alastair. No Jokermance while they give you people like Kaiden and Jacob who have the personality of a cheese bap. Damn them. Also Varric :< It makes me a sad panda.

 

[ArkanaXII]

Has there ever been a male/female character that will ONLY sleep with a player-character of the same sex in a Bioware game? What are your thoughts on this? Should the gay community be upset about this since it seems to imply that sexuality is completely a choice? What are your thoughts, fellow Escapists?

I'd say that there have been quite a lot of gay characters in Bioware games.

It just depends on your playthrough.

Not to completely repeat Yahtzee's Extra Punction: Death in Videogames spiel, but considering the fact that choices in Bioware games often influence NPCs' reactions and personalities, a lot of these characters can (in any timeline) be gay or straight. There are some (like Leliana from DA:O) who will refer to previous encounters in dialogue, but any character who is relatively private about their sex life can be either gay or straight on any respective playthrough.

Romance Anders as a female PC -> Anders is straight.
Romance Anders as a male PC -> Anders is gay.

In the second case, Anders will ONLY sleep with a same-sex PC as there is NO female PC in that playthrough.

In line with this, for all those people who were offended that same-sex NPCs were hitting on their PCs, for the most part YOU must initiate this dialogue. Just because the little heart is floating on the dialogue wheel doesn't mean that a romance will occur, or that a character necessarily swings a certain way. Just that the option exists.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

Well... as a straight woman I really don't like Asari for some reason and Rebecca Kelly Chambers creeps me out in a sort of village of the damned way.

So due to Jacob being a cheese bap and a complete lack of interest from me in alien love my Shep is celibate bless her.

 

[Wondermint13]

I think.. We're making another deal out of nothing..
From my memory.. When I played DA Origins, I remember two males getting freaky, two females getting freaky and a male and female getting freaky. If that isnt enough to please somebody of every sexual standing then I dont know what more there is. So lets not try to include 'Bioware' and 'No Gay' in the same title please because it really isnt the serious and outraged debate that you think it is..

EDIT: forgot to add two males and one female.. seeing as there are probably more people like me out there..

Hopefully we don't end up debating whether Bioware needs to include a wheel-chair bound character to satisfy that community...

Dont forget more black guys and fat chicks.. We dont want to piss them off too!
Honestly..

 

[Worr Monger]

Hopefully we don't end up debating whether Bioware needs to include a wheel-chair bound character to satisfy that community...

Dont forget more black guys and fat chicks.. We dont want to piss them off too!
Honestly..

Well they had a few fat guys in DAO... or maybe just the one... I forget. Would be funny if they took consideration to everyone but still had a "No Fat Chicks" policy.

And ME2 has Jacob... so the black guy thing is covered.. unless someone considers him not "black guy enough"?? Which I can see happening...

You can make your warden black... And I'm assuming you can make Hawke black.. right? But if you do.. are your family members still white? Curious...

 

[Wondermint13]

Hopefully we don't end up debating whether Bioware needs to include a wheel-chair bound character to satisfy that community...

Dont forget more black guys and fat chicks.. We dont want to piss them off too!
Honestly..

Well they had a few fat guys in DAO... or maybe just the one... I forget. Would be funny if they took consideration to everyone but still had a "No Fat Chicks" policy.

And ME2 has Jacob... so the black guy thing is covered.. unless someone considers him not "black guy enough"?? Which I can see happening...

You can make your warden black... And I'm assuming you can make Hawke black.. right? But if you do.. are your family members still white? Curious...

..Curious. Custom options are our gaming saviour but I was thinking more along the lines of the NPCs.

Jacob was pretty black but considering how many galaxys you can get too in that game.. the black/white ratio is awfully one sided.
I also wonder how many female Krogans, Salrians and Turians out there Mass Effect managed to piss off too..

 

[Caiti Voltaire]

I agree that people read way too much into it.

BioWare doesn't have many (if any) flat-out gay characters simply because they don't. Their games and characters simply don't revolve around a pro-gay platform. They have no need to have completely gay major characters.

They aren't trying to say "see, being gay is a choice!" They're just trying to give options to the player, and by making characters that swing either way (especially when its all of them in DA2) allows the player to develop and grow their own characters and relationships in the way the player wants.

In DA:O it drove me nuts that I'd have to play as a male character to romance Morrigan (not accounting for mods of course). Playing as a male character breaks the role-playing immersion for me.

In DA2, I can romance who I have the best connection with, whether that happens to be a straight relationship or a homosexual one. It allows me to build my character my way instead of being pigeon-holed (whether to play as a gender I don't want to be to romance a character, or to build a homosexual character who only has one choice for romance).

To me that's not really true character development though, that's pandering. We may sit and rage and gripe about a person who doesn't follow our orientation, but honestly? A lot of people don't. Let me tell you, if I got my knickers in a twist IRL about every girl I crushed on that was straight, I'd probably be perma-pissed.

 

[Jaded Scribe]

I agree that people read way too much into it.

BioWare doesn't have many (if any) flat-out gay characters simply because they don't. Their games and characters simply don't revolve around a pro-gay platform. They have no need to have completely gay major characters.

They aren't trying to say "see, being gay is a choice!" They're just trying to give options to the player, and by making characters that swing either way (especially when its all of them in DA2) allows the player to develop and grow their own characters and relationships in the way the player wants.

In DA:O it drove me nuts that I'd have to play as a male character to romance Morrigan (not accounting for mods of course). Playing as a male character breaks the role-playing immersion for me.

In DA2, I can romance who I have the best connection with, whether that happens to be a straight relationship or a homosexual one. It allows me to build my character my way instead of being pigeon-holed (whether to play as a gender I don't want to be to romance a character, or to build a homosexual character who only has one choice for romance).

To me that's not really true character development though, that's pandering. We may sit and rage and gripe about a person who doesn't follow our orientation, but honestly? A lot of people don't. Let me tell you, if I got my knickers in a twist IRL about every girl I crushed on that was straight, I'd probably be perma-pissed.

Why does the character's sexual orientation matter that much in their character development? I don't think every character's sexuality needs to matter that much. After all, gay or straight, they still do the same things. They still interact in much the same way. In the BioWare worlds, homosexuality carries little to no stigma, so their sexuality wouldn't affect how they were treated by others.

I think BioWare's characters are perfectly deep and well-developed without getting into social commentary on homosexuality. Their games don't need it, and it would feel tacked on. I have no issue with homosexuality, but it gets tiring when most games that feature a homosexual character turn around and focus on it in some kind of social commentary. I'd like to be able to just "Ok, so and so is gay. Good for them."

And in games like Dragon Age 2, I see their sexuality defined more by who the player is playing as (i.e. If going after Fenris, and the player is a woman, he's straight. If playing as a male, he's gay), and I like that.

I think, particularly in America, we put too much emphasis on sexuality and how we feel it defines people. It's refreshing to see a world where the focus isn't on a character's sexuality, but their personality.

 

[Prince Regent]

Juhani (the catwoman) in Kotor I was pretty gay. You had some different dialogue as female, it just wasn't a full romance option. (but honestly none of the romance options in Kotor where full romance options)

Just checked it wookieepedia agrees.

 

[Caiti Voltaire]

Why does the character's sexual orientation matter that much in their character development? I don't think every character's sexuality needs to matter that much. After all, gay or straight, they still do the same things. They still interact in much the same way. In the BioWare worlds, homosexuality carries little to no stigma, so their sexuality wouldn't affect how they were treated by others.

It's a part of who they are. I'm a woman. I am caucasian. I'm about as close to a flaming lesbian as you can get without involving matches. I am 25. I live in Canada, having emigrated with my family as a child from Scotland. I deal with several medical conditions. These are all parts of who I am. Other people can take them or leave them, but it is what it is, and that is me.

The characters seem blatantly shoehorned to fit into any situation, this is why it bothers me. I guess the change I would make is have them with their preconceived notion of sexuality, and then have that change with a character against that notion romancing them, as the plot develops.

The romances seem very shallow in DA, both of them, DA:O and DA 2. They seem like quests, where if you do certain things for the characters, you get a PG-13 sex scene as a reward.

SPOILERS FOLLOW

Spoiler

I prefer the handling in KOTOR, where the romance with Basitila wasn't a blatant part of the story, it was not integral, but if you DO pursue that romance, it has a very pivitol effect and focus in the story. Whereas the romances in DA are side stories. They're done entirely for the hell of it. They are, in short, faffing about. In DA 2 only the romance with Anders seems plot-relevant, seeing as you have to go through things with the elf lass and her tribe regardless of the romance and Isabella screws you over anyways even if you do sleep with her.

I suppose I have the same problem as Yahtzee in this regard: it all seems so ancilliary and shallow.

 

[Pedro The Hutt]

Well hopefully they are going to follow that road in The Old Republic, Bioware did hint that going for a romance arc as a Jedi character could have severe consequences for how the council thinks of you, and as a result, I would hope, the further progress of your story.

 

[SenseOfTumour]

Hopefully we don't end up debating whether Bioware needs to include a wheel-chair bound character to satisfy that community...

That would be awesome! Wheel-chair based attacks! Handicapped parking tag ranged attacks.

I'd totally play that character.

Fuck yeah!

I want my whole party to have various disabilities.

Blind archer.
Wheelchair bound warrior.
Wizard with profound learning difficulties.
Rogue with hyperactivity and tourretes.

Rutger Hauer had that blind swordsman role early on, and Daredevil didn't do so bad
A wheelchair bound warrior, that's just one step away from Robot Wars, and most dungeons don't have stairs, it's ramps all the way

Also, WOW rogues with tourette's would be funny, and I know you shouldn't laugh at disability, but it IS funny sometimes.
*stealth* closer...closer "FUCKSTICKS!" - *Aggroes entire enemy army - "oh nooo!"
(In fact, maybe we should all laugh more at disability, so long as we're not mocking the people, only the symptoms and their effects. There's a few disabled 'stand ups' (not doing the obvious gag there) who deal with it well.)

 

[neppakyo]

Rutger Hauer had that blind swordsman role early on, and Daredevil didn't do so bad
A wheelchair bound warrior, that's just one step away from Robot Wars, and most dungeons don't have stairs, it's ramps all the way

Also, WOW rogues with tourette's would be funny, and I know you shouldn't laugh at disability, but it IS funny sometimes.
*stealth* closer...closer "FUCKSTICKS!" - *Aggroes entire enemy army - "oh nooo!"
(In fact, maybe we should all laugh more at disability, so long as we're not mocking the people, only the symptoms and their effects. There's a few disabled 'stand ups' (not doing the obvious gag there) who deal with it well.)

lol, I say laugh at everything, we're not getting out of this life alive

Add in a dyslexic mage with ADD. He'd cast a heal spell wrong, forget some parts and set the rest of the party on fire and then heal the enemy they're fighting, as the rogue is trying to stealth yelling 'FUCKSTICKS!'

Shit, I think we got a winner of a game here..

Back on topic, @ the 25 year old canadian chick on the previous page. I agree it is shallow, and should take more effort to pork a character, of any sexual alignment.. hmm, more d&d references.. sexual alignment: Chaotic Fabulous! True Hetro. Lawful Homo, kk sorry off track there.. uhh. yeah! ...

 

[JohnnyDelRay]

I just wish the characters in the parties had their own orientation, and be written as such. You just can't have everyone in the party bi-sexual. Gay Anders, fine. Bi Zevran, loved him. Lesbian Merrill perhaps, fine. Hetero Sebastian and Alistair, fine. Bi-EVERYONE? BI-LOSING! (sorry for Sheen reference).

Sorry, it just bugs me that you can flirt with everyone in your party no matter what gender you play, and none will react with a different consequence. It's a little bit toooooooo fantasy for me (although I know you can call lightning from the sky to fight dragons and rock wraiths) but still. But I'm happy to try any relationship path myself, and alternatively play male and female characters, in evil and paragon roles.

 

[bushwhacker2k]

Why is this a big deal? It's not like he's an offensively flamboyant stereotypical gay fellow.

No one listens to homophobes these days, so why is everyone talking about this, I'm genuinely unsure.

It's not complicated, they're just marketing to a wider audience and providing an unusual game-play experience.

 

[Zaik]

I've played a lot of Bioware games. Probably all but the very earliest few. One thing I've always enjoyed about them is the romance options are always pretty varied, and keep things interesting. Recently, you've probably noticed a lot of people jumping on either side of the "fire the writers for gay stereotypes" argument, but I'm why people chose to be mad about that when I can't think of any actual "gay" characters in Bioware games. Sure, there are characters who will sleep with an avatar of the same sex, but they'll also sleep with an avatar of the opposite sex; which makes them bi-sexual according to my understanding. Has there ever been a male/female character that will ONLY sleep with a player-character of the same sex in a Bioware game? What are your thoughts on this? Should the gay community be upset about this since it seems to imply that sexuality is completely a choice? What are your thoughts, fellow Escapists?

If they just want to go back to not being taken seriously ever, yes.

The nutjobs that are e raging over characters playing gay stereotypes are a minority of a minority, not really representative of normal people.

Like a gay PETA. Or something.

 

[Eldarion]

Should the gay community be upset about this since it seems to imply that sexuality is completely a choice? What are your thoughts, fellow Escapists?

I've yet to see conclusive evidence either way on this.