Fallout: New Vegas - Sexuality Explained @ The Border House

aries100 · July 4, 2011

In an editorial at The Border House, Ms. Haitch explains how sexuality works in Fallout: New Vegas. Here's the lengthy intro:

“Why hasn’t some lucky man scooped this bachelor off his feet?”
In the post-apocalyptic world of Fallout 3, sex is serious business – so serious, in fact, that it’s generally mentioned in the most euphemistic fashion possible, and you could get burned.

(I may be unreasonably bitter on that one. How was I to know that when I “rented a room” I would lie on a bed with a waitress and then get up again?) Unlike the first two entries in the Fallout series, in which a PC could flirt with and marry same-sex partners, it’s mostly straight as an arrow. Play a female character and you can have the “room rental” scene with the waitress, but there is no opportunity to flirt with the women of the wasteland. A perk gives access to damage bonuses against and special conversation options with the opposite sex, but there is no same-sex equivalent. So you may imagine my delight when, trundling around the wasteland of New Vegas killing wolves and stealing beer bottles, I discovered a new perk: “Confirmed Bachelor”.

Cue much speculation from my partner and me. Did that mean…? Well, the picture DID have a man looking deviously at another man in bed… But maybe the game makers just meant the damage bonus thing… Wait! There were gay conversation options! There were female gay conversation options! You could have gay AND straight conversation options! That’s right: in New Vegas you can choose to be gay or bisexual. And you get combat bonuses for doing so.

More information.

borcanu · July 4, 2011

wtf -_- spam. i don't see relevance. vague and corrupted information

Acleacius · July 5, 2011

He must be a console gamer, since he seems shocked you can give yourself any Perk.

GhanBuriGhan · July 5, 2011

Firstly, it's a she. Secondly I think its a nice article, written from a peronal perspective. Don't see a problem, and no corrupted information.

Alrik Fassbauer · July 5, 2011

After reading this article, I begin to want the times of "good, old asexual games" back again … *sigh*
I'd never thought I'd write this … Which says imho quite a lot into what the gaming business is evolving …

Speraking of "Gaming loses its Innocence" … I guess that at one day even the most stupid platformer or/and Jump & Run game will include/have some sort of references to sexuality …

Which makes me shudder.

So, games are no more innocent games for kids and for people who just want to have fun … No, as time goes by, games more and more lose their Innocence and become more and more really mature … No more "simple fun" anymore …

But that development has already begun over a decade ago …

ToddMcF2002 · July 5, 2011

Why does anyone care about this stuff? Take all the romance and sex crap out. If you feel a need for this nonsense go play 2nd Life or something.

xSamhainx · July 5, 2011

oh get w/ the times, will you. Nothing says "immersion" like being blown by a transexual dwarf

Drithius · July 5, 2011

ToddMcF2002 said:
Why does anyone care about this stuff? Take all the romance and sex crap out. If you feel a need for this nonsense go play 2nd Life or something.

I somewhat feel the same way, but consider that relationships (whether sexual or not) between game characters have been around for a long time; ie., Link & Zelda. As a gay or lesbian person, it must be awkward to go into games and find your roleplaying continuously challenged in that manner.

Now, I couldn't care less about sex in games. It's puerile and a waste of resources on the developers' part. But I *do* like the way in which Obsidian implemented perks to fashion different gaming experiences for different people. Both the confirmed bachelor and wild wasteland perks merit more discussion in how useful they were as a game mechanic.

GhanBuriGhan · July 5, 2011

Well, I would say with sexuality being one of the most powerful drivers of human behavior, it would be a really bad idea for any potentially narrative driven genre (which CRPGs undobtedly are) to exclude sexual themes from the get-go. That by no mean means that all games need to have sex or need to emphasize it. It also doesn't imply that most games so far have not done a horrid job in incorporating sexual themse in an interesting and mature way. But I find your offhand reactions in this thread very strange, to be honest, especially considering that obsidian is really one of the few developers who actually have done interesting things on the topic.

lostforever · July 5, 2011

I also find that view that you should not have sex in games bit odd given that some people view games as art these days.

JemyM · July 5, 2011

In the adventuregame "The Longest Journey" by the Norweigan studio Funcom the person you rent your apartment from is a lesbian. The fact that she is, is not sexualised at all. She simply is.

In Nordic countries sex is often perceived as the most natural thing in the world. References to sex appear casually all the time, people have sex in movies, in television shows, people talk about sex and write about sex like they were talking about or writing about the weather.

So it's also why the whole topic about if sex should be in a game or not is weird to me. Why shouldn't it? A fiction which is completely void of sex where sex should be, is an artificial construct.

The same applies to "foul language", drugs and all sorts of things which is perfectly natural in the real world, yet removed from some fiction. Why? It causes the fiction to feel unnatural to me.

ToddMcF2002 · July 5, 2011

Because it is a waste for development resources when core game play mechanics, art assets or just simple bugs could use attention.

JemyM · July 5, 2011

ToddMcF2002 said:
Because it is a waste for development resources when core game play mechanics, art assets or just simple bugs could use attention.

Making a believeable world for a RPG is an essential use of development resources.

Ovenall · July 5, 2011

JemyM said:
Making a believeable world for a RPG is an essential use of development resources.

Agreed.

I'm all for having sex in games as it is as much a part of the human experience as fantasy, magic, war, violence, death, fear, etc.

I hope this doesn't sound prudish, but I would prefer not to see it acted out. If it could be done convincingly and erotically I'd be fine with it, but I have never, ever seen a decent love or sex scene in a game. It always comes across as bad puppet theater and is embarrassing to watch.

Maybe some day the technology will allow for better sex in games, but bad awkward puppet-sex is best left out.

And how is murdering people with swords and caving heads in with maces somehow "innocent"? Sex is a whole lot more innocent to me than bashing in people's brains. Hell, in many games you can murder innocent people for no reason at all.

ToddMcF2002 · July 5, 2011

good grief

Thrasher · July 5, 2011

I agree with Todd on this one. I don't want a fucking sex / relationship simulator. I want gameplay. Screw the immershuhn crap, if it causes gameplay to suffer. There, I said it. BTW, Alpha Centauri was fabulously fun gameplay, and there were no sex scenes with alien mindworms.

darkling · July 5, 2011

I love watching people rant about hating sex in games completely 100% (*but only in threads discussing inclusion of gay/lesbian themes) but then they'll defend the misogynistic sleaze in The Witcher like it's some sort of fantastic high art.

Thrasher · July 5, 2011

I love it when people make incorrect assumptions, and start calling people names because they threaten their cyber sex addiction.

Ovenall · July 5, 2011

The single stupidest part of the Witcher (1... I haven't played W2) was the tacked on sex.

Geralt is portrayed as this weird, semi-human outsider. Almost an alien. But suddenly there's buxom redheads throwing themselves at him and he's a human horn dog. The rest of the story was so great, but they threw in these sex scenarios that felt completely shoe-horned in. Like the writers and developers were busy creating a great game with an imaginative fantasy world and dark characters, and the marketing department kept barging in demanding a quota of sex scenes so they can hit the 14 year old boy demographic sweet spot.

Again, I'm pro-sex in games where it makes sense. But the Witcher had it shamelessly tacked on as a marketing ploy. Maybe it worked and helped raise awareness, as you always hear the sex and nudity mentioned when the Witcher comes up. But it was stupid in my opinion and brought the game down.

GhanBuriGhan · July 5, 2011

Mysterious, muscular stranger passing through, conveniently sterile, and immune to disease... Made sense enough for me.

Btw, I thought the "intro" scenes with Triss were among the most well done scenes in Crpgs to date, in both games.

Fallout: New Vegas - Sexuality Explained @ The Border House

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