CatmanStu said:
I have been playing Dragon Age again recently and when it got to the god awful 'climax' of my ongoing attempt to chat up Zevran, I forced myself to watch the event to try and work out what was wrong. It worked. Without the heterosexual distraction of anatomical inaccuracy as a scapegoat (although that is definitely one of the problems) I could see clearly what was jarring the experience. The game had taken away my ability to dictate my characters personality.
The main aspect of an RPG is the ability to mould your characters personality through play style; you can choose to be a pacifist or a vicious killer, a diplomat or a bully; so why take that choice away during romance? If, say, you finally get Leliana into bed, have the option to be gentle and romantic or aggressive and vigorous and have her react differently to each. Morrigan, being a control freak, could react more favourably to being dominated than being the one in control. Alistair could be the opposite.
I would also put forward that if you are a brutal killer with a thousand innocent corpses to your name, you are probably not going to snuggle up for a nice romantic cuddle (although, not being a mindless killer myself, I could be wrong).
So, does anybody feel this could be the way to make sex feel like a tangible part of the experience, has anybody got a better idea of how to make it work, or is sex always destined to be something that is tacked on for 'shock value'?
For the pedantic out there: I am aware that sex in all it's wondrous and ridiculous forms has the capacity to be both tender and aggressive at the same time, but I think that programmers are far away from being able to create a simulation of a realistic sexual encounter.
I think the issue is more a matter of the industry not having the guts to do it right, rather than any lack of capability or abillity. The simple truth is that the gaming industry is currently too chicken to push the "M" rating the same way Hollywood has pushed the "R" rating. I think we've all seen decent sex scenes in movies at one time or another, and I'm not just talking about porno, I mean in some movies the "payoff" in a movie is made to work well, which is why we keep seeing it done, and why people point out that "sex sells". Right now the industry thinks it's meaningful when they even have a sex scene involved without even considering the quality, simply because they are so scared of censors and even groups like the ESRB.
I mean your right, but it's a situation where the attitudes in the gaming industry have to change, the people involved have to grow a pair, and the gaming industry has to be willing to fight for it's rights much the way that Hollywood has had to over the years. Right now, all of the gaming companies pretty much want someone else to do it, rather than being the ones to lead that crusade themselves. The money it would cost to fight the nessicary battles is probably a pretty big factor.
That's my take on the situation at least. As things stand now we have regular games, and we have porn games, with little in between. There was a time when movies were pretty much the same way, but with time and a bit of guts it did change.
I also think part of the problem does indeed lie with us end users, because people, at least in the US where the biggest market is, have been raised in a fashion where they aren't comfortable with sexuality, and nobody wants to deal with a perceived stigma that comes from you know... liking sex in their entertainment, or more specifically admitting that to other people. There also seems to be a perception that speaking out against sexual expression and entertainment somehow makes them more mature, or somehow more appealing to the opposite sex as odd as that sounds.
I'll also say that I don't think everything needs a love interest or sex scenes though. In some material it's a positive addition, in others it's hardly nessicary or needed. I'm one of those people who for all talk about sex, and even some rather extreme perversion in the media, will also at the same time point out that I don't think there needs to be a love interest in every story, and that I think a lot of material suffers from adding it in. A good example of this would be "Batman", where for whatever reason pretty much every Batman movie done, including the Nolan ones, has felt the need to give Batman a rather strong/direct romantic interest as a key element of the story. I personally never felt that worked for the character as the isolation of being Batman was a big part of it. As Bruce Wayne he's supposed to have a lot of transient/casual relationships with bimbos and socialites (which he also uses as an excuse to cover some of his viginante activities) but nothing serious enough to come to the forefront, because he keeps himself very isolated from human attachments, there only being a VERY few people that he really trusts or are close to. Incidently the lack of any strong romantic interests is one of the things that makes his occasional back and forth with Catwoman or perhaps more importantly Talia Al Ghul such big deals when they occur, which is infrequent at best. With the women that do show up in his life (Batgirl, The Huntress, The Spoiler) he keeps them pretty much at a distance, heck he keeps even the people he's closest to at a certain distance. The love interests were there because of the whole sex/romance sells aspect of things, but also to humanize Batman, and truthfully I think that was the LAST thing they needed to do, since the guy is supposed to be very abnormal, which is part of the whole point. While the Nolan movies and the earlier series with guys like Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, and George Clooney all had their advantages and disadvantages I think even the best ones have failed to truely capture the essence of the character, and this is a big part of why above and beyond any choice of actor, and until the guys writing and producing the movies learn this, I don't think we'll ever see a truely definitive version of Batman in the movies. A lot of what I say here can be applied to other things where they decided to tack on sex and romance and it actually became a detriment to the movie. It's very much a balancing act to determine when and where it works and adds something to the overall production.
