Dragon Age - Sex and the Single Dragon Age Hero
 

Demien Linn over at Bitmob has an article reviewing the relationship aspect of the game, including the same-sex option. Pics might be NSFW depending on where you work. Heavy spoilers throughout, so don't read if you prefer a little mystery to your romance.
More information.

David Gaider must really get a kick out of writing homosexual relationships.

In any case, I'm not going to buy this game. I don't consider being flirted or stalked by fags as entertainment in the slightest sense.

That was a little unnecessarily hostile.

Being pursued by homosexual men isn't my cup of tea either but since it's Bioware I'm sure it's a pretty ignorable part of the game that you have to "pursue" to even view that content. Remember how many conversations and how much flirting you had to do with Ashley to get her to open up to you in Mass Effect?

I highly doubt Bioware is going to thrust ( *cough*) the homosexual relationship stuff in your face. Likely they just added a character that if you keep talking to you can eventually flirt with to open it up that dialog tree. Skip that dialog option once and I doubt you'll ever see it again.

I think the lack of romance of any kind is just a sign of … writers, developers, whatever, don't seeing the need for relationships.

To make it short, the lack of relationships in RPGs make them rather lok like an immature boy's dream: Adventures, but no need to be troubled by girls. "Bah ! Kisses !!!"

Personally, I'd say/guess, the more romances a game includes, the more mature it is, because only people of a certain span of ages feel attracted by the possibilities of having a "real" relationship - especially in a game, playing a role "as if".

Plus, romances in a game are more women.oriented, I guess (just a broad guess, nothing more), assuming that a game like Gothic 1 is the dream of any boy/man never really wanting to bother with women at all.

I guess that a game like Gothic 1, only with the sexes swapped in their roles there, would completely fail at male gamers, at least at the majority. I don't believe that the majority of male gamers could stand a society like in Gothic 1 only vice versa where EVERYTHING is being ruled by women - and men are the absolute minority …

I hope that's not the sole reason you aren't buying the game. You don't have to pursue any of the romances in the game, whether they be hetero- or homosexual.

Oh hey, you get to be a top!

Bioware keeps pandering to its freakish forum population. I can see it already, Dragon Age 2: The Yiffing.

Can my character be passive (translation: bottom)?

I´m definitely playing this as a dwarven berserker.

Methinks the homophobe doth protest too much…

And yes, as others have mentioned, the romances are optional. Don't like somebody, don't talk to 'em. It's like the people who complained about the gay Sky romance in Jade Empire. You had to HUNT for that romance. Anybody who ACCIDENTALLY ran into the gay Sky romance probably ACCIDENTALLY finds himself at truck stops late at night wearing assless chaps as well.

Why did you have to HUNT for that romance to be able to trigger it? Was bioware afraid of making it (too) accessible to the average player? I've read that you had to be very insulting to the female party members to get romantic attention from Sky.

I have no information on having to be insulting to anybody. But yes, the goal was to have it be there for people who looked for it, but incredibly unlikely for anyone to stumble over by accident. Given that most games don't have gay romances at all, for reasons like our cultured and intelligent Surlent up there, making it there but not shoved in your face was our attempt at walking a middle ground. (Caveat: I was not a writer on Jade. I arrived at BioWare afterward, so anything I say is secondhand at best.)

The complaint I heard about this specific romance is that you had to be an ass to females for Sky to notice your butt hence people hardy ever triggered his gay romance unless they knew about it, but never mind.

So we have another bio-writer here? :) Nice, we'd have 2 bio-writers if Gaider didn't run away after PJ's review of his book. He's touchy about his writing I guess.

Don't you think it would be.. nicer if Alistar was the gay romance instead of Zevran?

Not to be the undersexed forty-teen-year-old, but I say that if they're going to include this "relationship" component, then they ought to throw the covers back and just put it all out there. I mean, it isn't graphic enough to be "mature", and isn't significant enough to make it worthwhile (it seems to me). We're not here to see a Lifetime movie, after all. ;)

:lol: Along with a few visits to a proctologist after ACCIDENTALLY just tripping and falling onto it, I don't know how it happened.

Its a bit stereotypical still (clingy females and polygamous gays) but better than nothing I guess. Its good to see and bodes well for SWTOR. Glad to see finally games too step into 21st century and leave those Founding Father moralism behind. Games should not be ruled by bigotism. Good good.

I'm just glad Risen is out and is awesome.

FYI: Surlent has received a warning for his post.

By hyping terrible softcore sex scenes? I don't see anything progressive about that nor have I ever seen bigoted romances in any game I've played so far.

From what I've seen from past romances in games and from the trailers for this game, the ultimate goal of romance is to have sex which is a rather immature view of relationships.

Personally, I don't think romances should be in games at all, at least no attempt at "serious" relationships. Games are too short and can never accurately portray a budding romance.

The only way I could see a romance in a game is if it were already established and the characters were built around it. That would be something… Zoltar the Destroyer and his wife Barbara.

Why would you warn Surlent? He just stated an opinion. Unless you warned all of the gay approvers too. That would be okay, I guess. I mean if you're going to warn everyone who is heterosexual and dislikes homosexuality, you'll be warning half the male population of this website. To me, calling someone a homophobe is as demeaning as calling someone a faggot. Since you allowed homophobe then faggot/fags should be allowed as well. You can't pick which group to be intolerant to. Please let me know if RPGWatch is going to take a stance against people who dislike homosexuals, because I would have to leave too.

All that said, I really don't see a problem with having a gay character in the game, as long as he isn't hotly pursuing heterosexuals. Bioware wouldn't make such a character (unless as a caraciture) because the game would never be accepted by a publisher.

One last observation- the word homophobe is really silly. Heterosexual males do not fear "phobia" gays. I'm guessing the word was made up by someone who is homosexual so that they could feel superior. Homonauseated would be closer :)

You don't have to be insulting to the female party members. It is just that if you are playing as a male PC the romance with the woman (or women as it is possible to share some personal time together with both at the same time) will take precedence.

You'll be missed. :(

To me it seems like Zevran's making very obvious advances. Go go EA!

It's just a word. It means several things such as: irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexuality or homosexuals.
We could dissect many words and come to the conclusion that they don't make much sense, but they have a specific meaning nonetheless to which many people are oblivious and interpret the word wrongly/literally.

The way I see it there's romance in games, there's sex in games and then there's fap material in games.
Usually wrpgs try to have a little bit of everything and fail at it.

Romance in a game requires you to actually "care" about a character, it doesn't really happen much, some 3D Final Fantasy games manage to do it and they're enormous games where your relationship with the other character is central to the plot and is developed over hours of conversations, cutscenes etc and even then they only seem to work for a mostly teenage audience.
Bioware games provide you with a roster of teammates with about equal worth to the storyline and multiple swappable romance possibilities, romance "add-on" modules basically.
It's not romance if your character decides to bone another one after a half dozen-flirty dialog choices distributed over the main campaign, it's just a cheap way to please the fanfiction-writing freaks who think a cashier likes them if she says hi.

Sex in games, or the way sex is portrayed as part of the gameworld/setting fares slightly better in rpgs but most of the time, like Bio's games, it's only the ubiquitous town brothel where nothing really happens and people don't use sex to get ahead in life, you don't see people cheating on their partners, bending backwards in order to get laid, coercing others into having sex with them, rape etc . I find it funny how sometimes you have the choice during a quest to pay someone a large amount of money to get what you want or if your cha etc is high enough you can say a flirty line and they'll forego the large amount of money in exchange for that flirty line, seems unrealistic and like the devs are just afraid of letting the player use sex to get what he/she wants. Other games like bloodlines and witcher do this better.

Then there's fap material, sex sells, yes I like porn, however bikini armor , DDD polygonal cleavage on nearly-static soul-less characters don't sell to anyone past their puberty.

Having it displayed on the game cover is a frigging insult.

Don't have the balls for nudity(witcher, and even that was weak) nor sexual depictions nor scenarios(bloodlines) but still want the game to have some sex appeal? Then at least invest in some quality models and animation.

The closest thing to sexy Mass Effect ever got was the alien ass-dancer in the stripclub, there was nothing sexy in any of the sex scenes, which again felt like swappable add-on modules(it does come down to pick dialog line A to screw human, B to screw alien) to please the bioware forum freaks and to generate extra sales thank to puritan retarded media.

The modular/add-on nature of bio romances is what allows it to have same-sex "romances" there's no real difference between them, just swap char A for char B, in fact you would never even suspect the characters were homosexual unless you pursued the obvious dialog options. I wonder if even the animations in DA's sex scenes are the same.

The annoying thing is they actually haven't done a single gay character who you can romance. It's always a "bisexual" (gay if you're of the same sex and straight if you're not). In case you're wondering, Zevran is also "bi".
**** off biowhore, you and your sexuality-switchable characters.


Note to self: *never ever take for granted anything you read on the bio-boards about bio-games*

People are not punished for likes or dislikes, but for actions. And words are actions too. If theoretical person X dislikes say Black people, it is his right to dislike Blacks, but it is not his right to say "game X has a relationship between a Black man and a White woman, so I won't buy it", because that would be racist. Same with gay people. You may dislike gay people, that is your right, but saying "game X contains gay chars and because of that I don't buy it" is racist just the same.

Psychologically hate is always a sublimination of fear. Simply said: a person who is 100% at peace with his own sexuality and identity would not hate people of a different sexual orientation whatsoever. So the word homoPHOBIA hits the nail of the head, proverbially speaking. The psychological mechanisms of prejudice and hate are well researched and scientifically elaborated. If you feel the statement of Surlent was normal just think of these alternatives:

"Game X contains a Black dating a White, thus I won't buy it."

"Game X contains a Jewish dating a Christian, thus I won't buy it."

EVERYONE would see clearly such things as offensive as they are.

I very much agree with this snippet.

But - I assume that groups of developers consisting mostly of males don't seem to have developed a way - a kind of language and story-telling pattern - to present this in a game. It's just a blank part of the map of storytelling.

Of course they never needed it so far, because all RPGs were so far mainly about combat.

And the storytelling aspect of combat is overall very good developed, internationally, and in all RPGs, I guess.

… I just don't know … but I have the feeling as if developing groups mainly consisting of males developed storytelling aspects which are innate to males first. Hero Journey, competition, being the hero who makes his way through the world, slays evil, becomes kind - and eventually "rescues the maiden fair" (Genesis, "The Lady Lies"). These are stories a boy would rather like to play, or a man - and these are developed quite good, I guess, over the course of the last few decades, in terms of video games storytelling.

But - I assume that women would focus on other aspects. And storytelling in *these* areas is just not developed.

A becoming hero just normally doesn't have to deal with social networks within his fantasy town. He even doesn't need to, because he is - usually - depicted in games as the lone hero, a "Lone Star" (Spaceballs ;) ), and he usually doesn't need to bother about any social networks in town - and the developers didn't implement them because of that !

Now, future development of storytelling aspects must imho focus more and more on social aspects - and romancing is in my opinion just one of them.

Of course, there'll always be games with the old "lone hero" cliché, because that's one of the oldest and strongest myths … - but at one point there'll be social networks also.

Hmmm, I don't want to drag the thread into a debate but we got the same exact thing from Patrick: Person X-Surlent is a homophobe, direct name-calling vs. David Gaider likes to write about homosexuals, indirect/non name-calling. He then claimed that he personally didn't like fags, which is fine. Does it matter that he used a slang term? Maybe that's the issue some take with his statement. Had Surlent couched it as "David likes to write about homosexuals and I'm not comfortable with buying a game focusing on homosexuals", I guess it would have flown. The bottom line is that Gorath would prefer to censor/warn someone because of an opinion. If the Watch is going down that road, it is a terrible mistake. I agree strongly with the right to nip name-calling and Patrick was a worse offender, though I have no problem with either post to be honest; just the censorship.

If Patrick bothers to read this, I really have no issue with you at all and love to read your insights :) I'm certainly buying Dragon Age-I trust Desslock!

I have the impression as if I was discussing something entirely different … and no-one listens to me … A perfect example of what my dictionary translates as "talking at cross-purposes".

I don't think the Watch is going down any such road. While I wouldn't have issued an official warning, I might have sent a PM asking the person to moderate their language. However, this particular forum has multiple mods since it's an 'open' forum that anyone registered or not may post to. A complaint/report was sent to all the mods and Gorath chose to take action as is his right as a forum mod. The Watch leaves warnings, etc to the discretion of the individual mods with very few absolutes. Personal attack is about the only clear event that will draw an automatic infraction.

Faggot/fag is a degrading term and not general slang which is the problem with his statement. If he was just stating his opinion without using a degrading term there probably wouldn't have been a problem. You should never use a degrading term to describe a person of a different race, gender, or sexual preference. He deserved a warning because of that.

I think I have to weigh in here. I can't let a comment like Surlent's go by without commenting myself.

Should he have been warned? I think so.
How would you feel if you were homosexual and read that comment? Pretty crap I think. I would have been majorly pissed. I guess I am pretty pissed anyway as I am responding. As was said earlier you couldn't say the same thing in a racist context so you can't say it about another subset of humanity either.

Alright, I should probably say something here, because I'm the one that made the call. I'm going to agree with guenthar, and expand on it a little.

I have no problem with someone stating their dislike for a certain race/color/creed. It's their opinion, fine. I only take issue when their dislike is paired with a derogatory or racial slur.

Hmm how to give an example without offending anyone…

"I do not like clowns as entertainment" is a lot different than saying "F-ing honknoses need to stay the hell away from me." One simply states a fact, the other creates an air of hostility.

Admittedly, I've been a lurker a lot longer than a poster on these forums, largely because I like to establish the forum etiquette before I wade in.

The majority of the posters here are civil and intelligent. I'd like to keep it that way.

I do feel this thread has been derailed a bit, and that it's partially my fault. If you want to talk to me about it, feel free to send me a pm.

It's pretty obvious to me from where I sit that was language of hatred. I would have issued a warning. Can you really not tell the difference, crpgnut?

Although i like the idea of playing a gay female character for obvious reasons i find it a bit silly to carry your love around while killing monsters .
Sex cut scenes are generally boring but if the Devs want to portray human needs for immersion , how about a hero that leaves the battlefield running for the toilet ?

Saying you dislike "faggots" is on par with disliking "niggers". It is generally not accepted to use such terms. RPGWatch is certainly not an exception.

In any case, I feel that romances do have something to add if they are done properly. There are only so many games where I can roleplay "the lone hero" without becoming bored.

Of course, most in-game romances are fairly rubbish (i.e Elanee in NWN2, which seems like it was cut short), but the good ones definetly add to the game in my opinion.

Because that relates to a basic physical need. It simply goes without saying, similar to eating or breathing. Love/sex, on the other hand, is something our entire society has been built around for thousands of years - how many great works of arts were inspired by love? How many deaths/wars have started because someone decided to sleep with another man's wife?

It's not silly at all to say that a hero was thinking of love while killing. In fact, I'd put a pretty penny that many warheroes were able to do what they did because they were fighting for a cause - love, religion, patriotism. For soldiers to be fighting for their wives and children is hardly uncommon.

Of course, this could all result in a debate on whether that's a good or a bad thing - war is never good, and anything leading to war is ultimately a bad thing. However, my point still remains: Heroes fighting for love is not unnatural in any way.

Eating , sleeping and drinking are parts of RPGaming .

Looks like in this game the hero will fight to save the world , i think this is all the motivation he/she needs , adding more doesn't spice up things IMHO .
I generally find romance distracting , even the Witcher's "let's bang another hottie" approach made no sense in several parts of the game ( like the pre-battle quicky with the Elf girl ) .
I also believe that the cut scenes with characters fornicating are adding nothing to gaming experience , again i have nothing against sex and nudity i just think that there are in only for promotional reasons "look we have sex!!!11"
Also i disagree with "what is sexy" ,the dialogue with VeVe in Vampire TM was far sexier (as i remember it) than any cut scene i have seen anywhere , even if sex was only a blink in the monitor.

I don't know how much you like reading history , i have read a lot and in most of the cases people are fighting to fulfil their personal ambitions / needs , maybe the anonymous soldiers think of their family, but heroes? this is a totally other thing .

I pretty much agree on your views about war.

And someone had the nerve to go and call him a homophobe? How unreasonable!

I would like to see a game have a ridiculously hot female party member, a really filthy set of pixels, whose presence in your party unlocked all kinds of sex scenes throughout the game BUT whose stats were rubbish and who kept demanding that you spent all your gold on crap.

Force the player into a bit of a choice.

If you ask me F**king should be top of the list when it comes to RPGaming! Why do you want to save the world if not for F**king?!?! In fact why do people do anything, if not for F**king? Everything people do boils down to F**king or lack of it!

If someone think eating, drinking and sleeping are required in RPG then surly they must also think F**king is required too.

Romance is one way to do F**king in a game. There are other ways but let's not go there!

:)

I honestly think people are making a huge deal of this whole sex thing.

An RPG is suposed to be a game where you have fantasy and a wide array of diferent situations, ranging from personal "e-peen" development, up to social relationships, etc. The whole sex situation is just another step into trying to develop one of the major game strenghts wich is social interaction.

For me, its the same of having the freedom to kill inocents, or to decide wether someone lives or dies, or decide if you have an all "human" party because you hate everything non-human, etc. Its a choice that is present, adding to the quality and depth of the game, nothing more, a choice.

You don't have to watch an homosexual scene, you dont have to watch an hetero scene if you want to portrait the classical "i'm a holy knight devoted to god alone", its a choice. In this kind of game, for the developers, you need to have a HUGE array of choices to apease the most out of the potential customers, and lets face it, sex is a HUGE seller for some people, either we personaly like to watch or even hate it to see it mixed with our classical fantasy macho prototype game.


Lets all respect each other i say. This game was clearly created for you to have a choice over mostly everything, lets not spoil the fun for some people that enjoy that, just because "we" dont like it.

Choice is good. Nothing is quite forced in this game, as it should be. I clap at Bioware and EA to have the guts to touch this kind of subjects tough, even though i dont realy care if the sex is there or not. It will be decided as i please, in the proper place and time, wich is in-game, depending on my mood at the time.

@lostforever:

I feel reminded of the censored Count song from Sesame Street. If you replaced all your "F**k" with "count" it would still make sense … in a way. :)