The Jennifer Hepler discussion is taking a turn for the worse

[Bara_no_Hime]

It seems to me, that if we as people who play videogames find ourselves desiring a method to skip the gameplay, there is a deeper issue than the importance of the story. It is the lack of entertainment in the gameplay. If you want to skip the parts of the game that you experience via interaction, then it seems to me that the interaction part of the game is not being utilized to its full potential.

There shouldn't be a clear disconnect between story and action. This isn't cinemax porn with plot-time breaks so you can grab a snack, this is a videogame whose story and gameplay should feed off eachother. Story points should be unfolding during the combat, and be based on how you handle situations. How come you can't take prisoners and gain a reputation for being merciful, unlocking options to have enemies surrender to you? Or be ruthless and kill them all, making it so that some enemies will flee from you?

You've obviously never played Xenosaga 2. Great story, shit combat. If I could play a "skip combat" version, I would. Instead I'm stuck watching the pre-rendered cinematics (but not the in-game cut scenes, which aren't available) on YouTube.

In Xenosaga 3 (which had MUCH better combat) they had an option after you'd beaten the game where you could put the game on "movie mode" and the game would literally just play all the cut-scenes (both in-game and pre-rendered) for you as a giant DVD movie. It was... well fucking awesome.

Of course, the opposite is also true. Some games have a shit story but are really fun to play. Skyrim, for example. I find the story dull and forgettable - but it's just so much fun to go exploring and dragon fighting and so forth that I don't care. Saint's Row 2/3 is another example - the story is awful, but the gameplay is awesome. In both, I often skip over dialogue to get to the fun gameplay.

Why can't I skip over combat in games with shit combat to get to the cool story? It's a double standard.

And there's nothing wrong with giving people the OPTION to do so. If you don't want to use the option, no one's making you. It isn't going to make the games worse - cause for some people, the gameplay is the only thing that counts. However, for others, only the story counts, and the gameplay is a pointless waste of time.

 

[Navvan]

Sheperd never had the option to casually shoot Anderson because his character wouldn't do that. If in the 3rd game you can choose to shoot him out of hand the playerbase would be all wtfbbq up in BWs face, it just wouldn't make sense.

First there are Homosexual options for female Shepards. Secondly its about canon: It is canon that Shepard is a well respected Alliance Commander who does his/her best to protect Humanity. It is an unavoidable part of the games to have Shepard act like that in some form. Casually murdering allies just doesn't fit with that. There is no unavoidable (canon) part that deals with his/her sexuality.

However there is a strict Female-Female lesbian romance option: Kelly Chambers.

Uh you can romance her as a male. I've done it before.
If you meant that as an example, than it can be more attributed to Kelly than to shepard. She mentions being pansexual, and a lot of the actual "romance" is implied.

As for the other point, it isn't much of one. Not having the option before to flirt with male characters does not mean Shephard wasn't gay or bi. For example there are major characters that you aren't able to flirt with. Does that mean Shephard was not or will not be at a later date? No, as precedent dictates with Tali ME1 -> Tali ME2. Garrus ME1 -> Garrus ME2.

It could very much mean he isn't gay. The problem is, is that since Shepard is a PC very little about him is set in stone. Using the lack of Homosexual options in previous games however, it can be easily assumed that he is straight because it would be out of Shepard's range of thought. (I.E. he would never have thought to flirt with the guy because he isn't gay)

I'm opposed to the homosexual shepard purely based on how god-awful the Anders romance was in DA2: It's being written by the same person. It also had no prior context. It's a recipe for disaster.

By strictly female-female relationship I meant unambiguously a lesbian option (for a lesbian character) that wasn't technically with a genderless. This is a precedent homosexual option regardless of Kelly's orientation.

Saying he would never have thought to flirt with the guy because he isn't gay is an assumption. It could very well be the case, and for the majority of players who don't have a homosexual Shepard is indeed the case. However maybe he wasn't into the guy, maybe he knew the guy wasn't into him are other valid assumptions that explain the situation just as well along with countless other variations. You can't just chose one assumption and ignore the others because it suits your argument. Like you said, because Shepard is a PC very little is set in stone. That includes his sexuality. I completely understand the not wanting another Anders romance and being worried/against it because it has the same writer. However there is no canon (game) that a homosexual Sheppard would be violating.

As so many other people have put it having the option doesn't mean anything if you never plan on utilizing it and if it doesn't break canon then there is no real reason not to include it.

 

[Cette]

I wonder if this would go down better if they went back and finished the gay romances in the first one. What with the dialogue being recorded basically just the animations need to be redone and the gender check removed right?

Don't know if it'd be that easy with ME2 but hey you can stay faithful to them so it technically counts right?

Then you sell as DLC or include it in some sort of all three games together pack and the inconsistency is retroactively solved.

Of course if they hadn't pussed out in the first game this discussion wouldn't even need to take place.


That aside I'm not overly impressed with Hepler's handling of both some characters in the games and the public outside of it.

If you're working for a large company and interacting with the public it seems like "don't feed the trolls" should have come up in your training at some point.

 

[Helmholtz Watson]

well you reap what you sow I guess.

So yes, the bile being vomited out against Jennifer Hepler is unwarranted and awful. She is an awesome writer.

What makes her so great?

I have just sent Ms. Hepler a message of support. I hope other Escapists will join me in doing the same. Ms. Hepler does not deserve this - we should show our support for her.

I just sent her a letter to counter your own, about how she she think before she tweets/speaks/types/ect.

 

[Zen Toombs]

-snip- This isn't about homophobia, its about poor writing.

-snip-

...Did you pay any attention to the massive amount of flirting going on between [male]Shep and Kaidan, and [fem]Shep and Ashley [in mass effect 1 & 2]-snip-

Its not a choice. Fatty bioware boom boom already stated that even if you make Shepard straight in this game, she is going to push dialogue that shows Shep will turn gay later.[sup]1[/sup]

I really don't care if Shep is gay or not, but this as a writer and storyteller I'm quite offended by the use of an obvious flip in story for the sake of controversy.[sup]2[/sup]

-snip-Hannibal. -FBI agent goes out of character-[sup]3[/sup]

To those homosexuals who just want to establish their character as resembling themselves regardless of the third act, I see your point. If I'm a fireman, and I want to dress up CJ in San Andreas in fireman's clothes, thats all well and dandy but it doesn't make him a fireman. Its not part of the story. The point is that, regardless of your sexual preference or your personal interest, bad writing is bad writing and good writing is good writing. To say that something is good just because it caters to your sexual preference...well, you must only like movies with gay relationships in them too, or music by gay artists. Its bias of an entirely different nature, but bias still.[sup]4[/sup]

...um, can you cite a source for [sup]1[/sup]? Because in everything I've seen it isn't like that. Also, could you please not be so disrespectful to others? Do you really need to call another human being "Fatty bioware boom boom"? I'm gonna call that childish, because anything else I'd say on the subject would just be passive aggressively implying that anyway.

As for [sup]2[/sup], it isn't a flip. As I said, Shep HAS same-sex flirting, and had same-sex romances available cut by Bioware because they didn't want controversy when the series was still new (and when doing so could kill off the series in its infancy). Now that the game is solidly in place, and DA:O and DA2 have proven that gamers can[footnote]mostly[/footnote] handle same-sex relationships, they are opening up what Bioware had already worked on.

[sup]3[/sup] Yup, as far as I can tell that's terrible writing right there. No questions. However, I don't see the connect between this and Mass Effect.

[sup]4[/sup] This... is a mess. First off, Bioware talks almost constantly about how Shepard is who the players want him/her to be - almost nothing about him is solid other than him being a semi-good person who's a boss that kills mecha-cthulhus for fun. Personality, appearance, backstory, etc. is all up in the air. Sexual preference is included in that whole "personality and backstory" concept, by the way. Bioware finally keeping the homosexual content (that they had already made for ME 1 & 2) in the games because they can withstand the controversy isn't bad writing, it's finally standing up and doing what they've always been trying to do.

Something that's important about Shepard: there is almost NOTHING set in stone about this person. Every Shepard is legitimate and is "canon" for each person. That's how Bioware has set up Shep, and how they've repeatedly said they want him/her to be.

HOWEVER, if you are correct in saying that homosexual content would be forced, that's not okay. But it would be just as bad as heterosexual content being forced, because as I said, almost nothing about Shepard is set in stone.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Oh yes. Lets turn this whole thing into a massive battle for justice in which you either on one side or the other, and one of them is made up exclusively of cunts. What a stupid way to look at this.

If one side's argument is just "buttsecks LOL gross", I see no problem with that.

..If that's not your argument, I don't see why you're offended. But a cursory glance at the internet reveals that it sure as hell seems to be a lot of people's argument.

This just goes to prove my point. There are many games out there that feature homosexuals in one way or another, but no one really discusses that aspect of them, because its just a part of the game.

Games in which protagonists are openly gay or bisexual and this manifests as more than a completely decontextualized choice.

Urmmm... Fear Effect 2?

..and this isn't just cheesecake for the boys.

Still waiting.

Games in which well characterized LGBT characters are given major supporting roles in the plot
The Persona series (though as with all Japanese games its debatable how this is meant to be read).
Every Bioware game of the 21st century.
GTA: The Ballad of Gay Tony

Games with well characterized LGBT characters who are incidental to the plot.
Red Dead Redemption.
Indigo Prophecy.
Fallout: New Vegas
..I suppose I'll give Fable 2 this one as well.

Games in which an effeminate man who is openly revealed to be gay or bisexual serves as a villain (because they are stereotypically perverse, shallow or malicious).
Assassins Creed.
Bioshock.
Fable 2 and 3.
Clive Barker's Jericho (and yes, I know)

I'm pretty confident that, excluding games which were very fringe upon release, which included the odd bit of girl on girl voyeurism or games which were openly derogatory, that's actually a sizeable majority of all the games of the last decade to include LGBT characters.

Where is the golden example you seem to think exists?

I dont think many people picked up The Witcher and expected a serious portrayal of sexual relations, while Bioware markets their games as just that.

And you believed them?

Spoiler

I think we can chalk this one up to experience.

It sold well because it was a good game. I think in truth the number of people who are in it solely for the alien sex is rather small.

Deviantart..

Actually, I only heard about Mass Effect before it came out because of the Fox News scandal. Would I have bought it? Probably, eventually.. but there's a very good case that a large part of its enormous success on release, being an unknown IP, was due to the publicity generated by that event and the subsequent and highly public backlash by the games media in defence of it.

We're talking about a fan community in which people actually classify themselves by which fictional character they had commander Shepherd bone. People vocally and publically complained on the Bioware forums about how the sex scenes in Mass Effect 2 were less graphic than those in Mass Effect 1. But noo... suddenly the sex is taking up too much of the game.

Sorry, I don't accept that argument.

 

[Launcelot111]

If in every parallel universe of Mass Effect (read: every different copy of the game), Shepard could choose to start a relationship with a male or a female, and once this choice is made, Shepard cannot later choose to switch to a relationship with another gender, then within the context of that reality, is Shepard bisexual or is Shepard strictly hetero- or homosexual?

 

[Woodsey]

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[a
href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/115950-BioWare-Supports-Beleaguered-Writer]Ahem.[/a]

'Jennifer is not even a part of the Mass Effect writing team'.




Anyway, as for the gay issue, if your Shepard is straight, they'll remain straight. Because, y'know, you get to choose.

It's pretty difficult to wreck the continuity of a character you get to decide everything for.

 

[Dogstile]

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[a
href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/115950-BioWare-Supports-Beleaguered-Writer]Ahem.[/a]

'Jennifer is not even a part of the Mass Effect writing team'.

Yeeeeeeeep. I actually commented on that story like "oh... crap." Just leaving up the post because hell, i already made the mistake.

 

[Gennadios]

Kaiden's "rejection" speech to my broShep in ME2 sent all sorts red flags soaring skyward, I think it's high time he came out.

Unfortunately, the quality Hepler's writing is about on the level of Yaoi fan fiction. She *is* the cancer that's ruining Bioware.

I'm all for sending socially progressive messages in popular media, but for the love of all that is holy please get someone competent to do it.

 

[CD-R]

Yeah the more I read about this the more I get the feeling this was a standard run of the mill raid by standard run of the mill internet trolls. When people started throwing around the phrase "cancer killing Bioware" that pretty much all but confirmed it for me. Don't feed the trolls.

 

[Woodsey]

snip

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[a
href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/115950-BioWare-Supports-Beleaguered-Writer]Ahem.[/a]

'Jennifer is not even a part of the Mass Effect writing team'.

Yeeeeeeeep. I actually commented on that story like "oh... crap." Just leaving up the post because hell, i already made the mistake.

Ah, yeah, I didn't notice your comment.