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Rookersh posted:The only thing to add about Bioware romances is that you can compare them nearly 1:1 with Bethesda romances in terms of quality of writing ( and Bethesda are not great writers ). Hell, I'd argue Bethesda romances have so far ended up being handled with more tact because they progress at a slightly more natural pace and the end of them is usually just admitting you are in a relationship now, rather then a bad fade to black. Also they reference you are a thing in both personal conversations and through chatter around the world. I disagree with pretty much all of this but subjeciivity and personal opinion so I just want to focus on a couple things. Specifically, since your position is that the best and "fan favorite" characters can't be romanced, and you are kind enough to give examples, how many people would say they liked someone such as Velanna over Alistair? Far as I can tell, Al is pretty much the most popular companion in the entire series and he's easily the most fleshed out Origins companion with a romance that is integral to the plot. You are not in any way subverting or halting his character by romancing him. (also if we're putting forward the position non-romanceable companions are the best, how can you not mention Sten?) As for LGBT characters existing to be your gently caress buddy, it was revolutionary to have them be prominent at all once upon a time. Now that is simmering down, they've been doing better about just having them exist. Inquisition features a fairly prominent lesbian relationship (Celene/Briala) that has absolutely nothing to do with you. There's also Krem, a notable side character who is trans and, again, has nothing at all to do with you. Whatever else anyone can say about BW games, I have never bought the idea that their giving ample screentime to, and positive representation of, LGBTQ people, somehow translates to them hurting LGBTQ representation. NikkolasKing fucked around with this message at 00:11 on Jun 1, 2017 |
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Jun 1, 2017 00:08
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NikkolasKing posted:how many people would say they liked someone such as Velanna over Alistair? Me, for one! Velanna was great, Alistair barely had a personality beyond sheltered child and forced the PC to pull the strings for what should have been his decisions about what he wanted in life. Still preferable to Morrigan, though.
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Jun 1, 2017 00:15
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Cythereal posted:Me, for one! Velanna was great, Alistair barely had a personality beyond sheltered child and forced the PC to pull the strings for what should have been his decisions about what he wanted in life. He does have a position on what he wants to do in life. He wants to be a Grey Warden and be nice. That's why I don't Harden him and I don't make him King. Those are abuses of PC Power to warp his character.
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Jun 1, 2017 00:19
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NikkolasKing posted:He does have a position on what he wants to do in life. He wants to be a Grey Warden and be nice. That's why I don't Harden him and I don't make him King. Those are abuses of PC Power to warp his character. I harden him and make him marry Anora so he can be a figurehead king in peace while Anora gets poo poo done and letting Loghain earn some redemption by killing the archdemon, thereby consolidating and muting Ferelden's political instability at the low, low price of one whiny brat's happiness and self-respect.
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Jun 1, 2017 00:25
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I don't know about you, but I'd call that a bargain.
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Jun 1, 2017 00:27
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RE: romances I think people are forgetting how (apparently) limited bioware's resources are for partitioning its efforts across different kinds of content. Making Garrus romanceable also ending up giving him a paucity of other dialogues as the old calibrations joke goes, like a little less than half his total writing in ME2 was gated behind the decision to gently caress a cricketman. Truly one of bioware's soundest decisions was refocusing the closest thing you had to a space bro whose growth as a leader you were supposed to observe and influence across the trilogy so that these aspects of his development were now backseat to other stuff and ultimately come off all the more half-baked for it. If Garrus wasn't a returning character with otherwise very solid writing he'd have been a much weaker character than other ME2 squadmates like Moridin, Grunt, Zaeed, Kasumi, Legion, etc whose content & characterization is 100% available to all players regardless of gender, orientation, taste etc. Miranda, Jason, Jack and Thane were also romanceables in me2 but, perhaps unsurprisingly, the reaction to these characters was a little more mixed ... maybe gating certain kinds of character development & growth behind romances isn't the way to go, at least if the idea is to create persons whose exteriors may be disagreeable but also may not match their more sympathetic interior. Come to think of it I'm sure Tali, Liara and the ME1 humans were also hurt by the splitting of their content but that was largely mitigated by having more appearances across the trilogy. Either way, I normally wouldn't care what kinds of content bioware includes in their games and sure romances can be a sort of light fun yeah but it often seems to be an either/or situation in that room for romances comes at the expense of other stuff. Often but not always, da2 at least realized alternate friendship/rivalry paths alongside romances so you weren't stuck with calibrations when you got halfway through someone's arc - Varric & Aveline were still the fan favorites but I think that's for other reasons. Maybe the reason I felt like most of ME:A's cast was bland outside of Drack was because too much of their stuff was put on a path I didn't take? Generic American posted:I mean without Bioware and other companies pushing that as a feature, can you imagine how rare LGBT representation would be in games? you can have lgbt characters in your game without tying them to romances dude, most people liked how krem was handled in DA:I and he was not a romance option
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Jun 1, 2017 00:29
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Garrus wasn't a very interesting character until the second game imo
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Jun 1, 2017 00:36
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Wasn't your dropship pilot in ME3 gay and also not romanceable? I think I remember something like that. ...wait why do you even have a dropship pilot in the first place don't you have EDI to handle that?
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Jun 1, 2017 00:37
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NikkolasKing posted:I disagree with pretty much all of this but subjeciivity and personal opinion so I just want to focus on a couple things. Specifically, since your position is that the best and "fan favorite" characters can't be romanced, and you are kind enough to give examples, how many people would say they liked someone such as Velanna over Alistair? Far as I can tell, Al is pretty much the most popular companion in the entire series and he's easily the most fleshed out Origins companion with a romance that is integral to the plot. You are not in any way subverting or halting his character by romancing him. As I already said, Alistair exists as one of the few worthwhile romance options solely because he has significantly more writing then anybody else. This is due to his position as a major plot character, the core companion character, and the lead writers pet character. This helps his romance not overtake who he is as a person, because massive chunks of the game and core plot are built around him. Unlike say Thane where his romance is roughly 60-70% of his character ( and the other 30% is "son" ), Alistair has so much else going on for him that his romance only really takes around 10-20% of his total writing. Characters like Alistair are rare in Bioware games though. That's the problem. But also compare them to characters who also have romances. Morrigan if you don't romance her barely speaks to you. Zevran stays pretty tightlipped about himself. Ashley and Kaiden give you very cursory glances into their struggles but never really open up. Thane just sits in your ship and has a problem with his son mysteriously. Jacob just does weights and barely exists. Miranda is built as this core integral character to the plot, but if you aren't willing to go through with the romance she barely exists outside of the occasional popup to tell you whats going on. That's the standard for Bioware. A crew of people that only become interesting and fleshed out if you find them physically attractive/initially interesting enough to start flirting with them. As hard counter mentioned, Garrus got loving gutted in 2 because of it. I'm not going to argue the representation point because everyone is different. I also directly point out in my post that the DA:I team actually handled these issues better then Bioware normally does, and specifically mentioned Crem and Dorion. I also agree Celene/Briala are great. But as someone that identifies as LGBTQ everything Mass Effect has done has felt forced and awful. Gil feels almost offensively bad. Traynor and Cortez felt like they existed as characters solely to be romance options, and both feel bit in really bad ways. It's especially egregious because both have no real need/personal connection that should drive them to romance Shepard, yet they do because "ah they are lesbian/gay, and Shepard is lesbian/gay so they should gently caress yes???" which in my mind is bad representation. Why couldn't we just get a gay pilot that isn't romanceable by Shepard at all, because they've got other poo poo going on/still pine for their husband. Why can't we have a lesbian coordinator that just doesn't find Shepard attractive. We have dozens of hetero people we meet on the regular who have zero interest in boning the PC, but if you meet a LGBT character 99.9% of the time they are boneable because Bioware needs to get their pander on. It's a bad representation in my mind, and feels super skeevy. Like we can only have one gay per game, and that gay needs to be fuckable. I'd much rather NOT have LGBT romances, and instead just have additional LGBT characters to flesh out the world.
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Jun 1, 2017 00:38
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Kavak posted:I don't know about you, but I'd call that a bargain. If Alistair won't stand up for himself (and characters in Dragon Age do - it's something I appreciate about that series as opposed to Commander Shepard and her adoring drones), then he will be used by the people in Ferelden capable of actually getting poo poo done. We have a whole DLC about seeing what happens when Alistair is put in the hero's job. He's a shy, demure nonentity who almost never does anything of his own hook and spends the plot getting manipulated and pushed around by the Warden and Arl Eamon. I think he's a fundamentally decent character mishandled by the plot. I think the plot of Origins really expects the player to like and care about Alistair, and the plot gets very strange if the player and PC don't like him. It's something Inquisition, for all the game's other flaws, improves on: there are special scenes and reactions if the PC is at loggerheads with Cassandra and Solas, and the game justifies why the PC would continue to work with them in such an event. Internet Kraken posted:Wasn't your dropship pilot in ME3 gay and also not romanceable? I think I remember something like that. He absolutely was romanceable. Cortez and Traynor were added to finally add same-sex romance options to the series beyond Liara.
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Jun 1, 2017 00:40
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Internet Kraken posted:Wasn't your dropship pilot in ME3 gay and also not romanceable? I think I remember something like that. He was gay and he did have a romance plot where you help him get over his dead gay husband and then slide right in for the rebound, although if you weren't gay you could still help him get over the husband as a friend so they didn't really gate anything off for him
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Jun 1, 2017 00:40
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Dr. Abysmal posted:He was gay and he did have a romance plot where you help him get over his dead gay husband and then slide right in for the rebound, although if you weren't gay you could still help him get over the husband as a friend so they didn't really gate anything off for him The only reason anyone does anything in this galaxy - in the quest for some sweet, sweet poon. (even man poon)
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Jun 1, 2017 00:44
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they're spreading themselves too thin by trying to do the AAA appeal to everyone to maximize profit dealio and they're afraid of taking risks, 'don't like a character? no worries, try hanging out with one of these 19 other ones' a smaller core cast with a tighter focus would probably be a better investment of their budget quality-wise, the problem is that in this market that pretty much guarantees chiseling down everything outside their perceived core-demograph which never ends well for anyone not a straight white guy it would be nice if more bioware style companion-focused games existed so there wasn't as much pressure for one studio to serve all demographics at all times i'm very interested to see how things work out with obsidian on PoE2 and their system that'll 'only lead to romance if it makes sense for that character.' which just speaks of an entirely different approach compared to how bioware's gone about things
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Jun 1, 2017 00:52
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One of the first times you go to talk to Cortez he's listening to his husband's final radio transmission while crying which is the game's way to signal  This guy's gay and he's single!
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Jun 1, 2017 00:53
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AriadneThread posted:they're spreading themselves too thin by trying to do the AAA appeal to everyone to maximize profit dealio and they're afraid of taking risks, 'don't like a character? no worries, try hanging out with one of these 19 other ones' There were only 6 regular squadmates this time around. That's the fewest in number since Mass Effect 1 and they still sucked at it.
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Jun 1, 2017 00:55
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That is one of the things about Bioware. Without Bioware, seeing independent and powerful women, and LGBT people, in games goes from "rare" to "almost nonexistent." The gaming industry is getting ever so slightly better about this as the years go by, like Blizzard adding gay people to their games for the first time in 2016, but there is very little game in town outside Bioware if you want to play a big-budget game as a woman or queer person.
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Jun 1, 2017 00:55
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Bioware's approach to romance is never going to be all that progressive when the end goal remains providing cheap thrills in the form of interspecies nudity and massaging the player's ego.
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Jun 1, 2017 01:01
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fruit on the bottom posted:Garrus wasn't a very interesting character until the second game imo not many characters were really good in me1 in general, it was a brand new setting and everyone was more or less some kind of exposition vehicle covering some aspect of it like Tali re: quarians, though i'd still argue that Wrex came off it the best while the mentoring of Garrus into a paragon/renegade angle was also a good idea that went underdeveloped
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Jun 1, 2017 01:04
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AriadneThread posted:how quickly we forget neverwinter nights 2 and the elf lady who fell in love with your character while stalking you as a child Also in Mask there's romances. They're good since one is repeating your past life and the sort of....struggles that comes with.
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Jun 1, 2017 01:04
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exquisite tea posted:There were only 6 regular squadmates this time around. That's the fewest in number since Mass Effect 1 and they still sucked at it. six squadmates, the engineer guy, science girl, criminal man, i think you also gently caress the museum alien lady? then there's also your asari doctor and babyfrog pilot as non-romancable, non-squad dudes that all got a big chunk of writing resources. so that's 11 there and i felt like they all got about the same level of focus. i'll admit though, i kind of stopped playing like halfway through the game, so my assessment of where all the resources doesn't have the full picture when i'm say 'small cast' i'm thinking like, maybe three or four at most 'core characters' though i will say inquisition's cast was loving massive and it did okay writing-wise even if things got a little thin on the ground
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Jun 1, 2017 01:09
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Cythereal posted:That is one of the things about Bioware. Without Bioware, seeing independent and powerful women, and LGBT people, in games goes from "rare" to "almost nonexistent." The gaming industry is getting ever so slightly better about this as the years go by, like Blizzard adding gay people to their games for the first time in 2016, but there is very little game in town outside Bioware if you want to play a big-budget game as a woman or queer person. Yes hello I want to gently caress a woman while playing as a woman, that is how I know my PC is gay and the npc is also gay. Thank you, Bioware for your amazing representation. Name-only is still better than none. At least in ME3 you know canon femshep is straight because no gay, fit woman would trundle along and run that way.
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Jun 1, 2017 01:10
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Rookersh posted:As I already said, Alistair exists as one of the few worthwhile romance options solely because he has significantly more writing then anybody else. This is due to his position as a major plot character, the core companion character, and the lead writers pet character. This helps his romance not overtake who he is as a person, because massive chunks of the game and core plot are built around him. Unlike say Thane where his romance is roughly 60-70% of his character ( and the other 30% is "son" ), Alistair has so much else going on for him that his romance only really takes around 10-20% of his total writing. I played Femshep and didn't feel like I was missing out on anything with Miranda. (obviously no romance) She still tells you all about herself, her past, her crippling lack of self-esteem... She was my favorite companion in ME2. Morrigan also opens up and tells you everything abouther colorful past with Flemmeth, even if you are a girl Warden. Does this not happen if you play a male Warden/Shep and refuse to romance them? I haven't tried it. I don't disagree about LGBTQ relationships in ME, though. That was always one of my biggest complaints. Like you, I'm part of our delightful little community and arguments of "good representation" can get kind of ugly so thanks for being so cool about that. I just know that, in the swaths of criticism leveled at DA2, one of these criticisms was that Anders will kind of hit on a male PC. Straight gamers got up-in-arms over this. Sort of a prelude to GamerGate madness I guess. But it shows that people aren't "cool" with LGBTQ relationships. If Gaider, a gay guy, wants to try and help, I'm not going to poo poo on him for it.
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Jun 1, 2017 01:31
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Psychotic Weasel posted:The only reason anyone does anything in this galaxy - in the quest for some sweet, sweet poon. (even man poon) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4iBBfEHNaE
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Jun 1, 2017 02:02
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hard counter posted:you can have lgbt characters in your game without tying them to romances dude, most people liked how krem was handled in DA:I and he was not a romance option Okay, point taken; allow me to slightly modify my statement. How rare would it be to have any sort of LGBT character in a leading role? Especially in a AAA action game? Because as great as Krem's inclusion was, there's a world of difference between "hey LGBT people exist" and actually letting them be the heroes in a story.
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Jun 1, 2017 03:24
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It's why I liked Liam's romance for Fem Ryder as much as I did. It was like they went on actual dates and poo poo, and talked like normal people. Though Liam was comically clingy
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Jun 1, 2017 03:55
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A Buff Gay Dude posted:Bioware is extremely bad now, they have just enough good left in them to make a final DA game imho but then they are dead They might have enough left in the skeleton crew to copy and paste existing assets into a DA:4 game yes. But let's not call their potential good by any means. The historical trend is strictly downwards.
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Jun 1, 2017 08:34
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DancingShade posted:They might have enough left in the skeleton crew to copy and paste existing assets into a DA:4 game yes. looking forward to tooling around Thedas in the Nomad
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Jun 1, 2017 08:55
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And this is if/after Bioware survives launching their first IP in almost a decade.
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Jun 1, 2017 09:01
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Weren't Bioware doing some World of Darkness-esque modern horror IP at one point? What happened to that?
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Jun 1, 2017 09:03
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Milky Moor posted:Weren't Bioware doing some World of Darkness-esque modern horror IP at one point? What happened to that? Cancelled after Casey Hudson left.
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Jun 1, 2017 09:06
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quote:I'm not going to argue the representation point because everyone is different. I also directly point out in my post that the DA:I team actually handled these issues better then Bioware normally does, and specifically mentioned Crem and Dorion. I also agree Celene/Briala are great. But as someone that identifies as LGBTQ everything Mass Effect has done has felt forced and awful. Gil feels almost offensively bad. Traynor and Cortez felt like they existed as characters solely to be romance options, and both feel bit in really bad ways. It's especially egregious because both have no real need/personal connection that should drive them to romance Shepard, yet they do because "ah they are lesbian/gay, and Shepard is lesbian/gay so they should gently caress yes???" which in my mind is bad representation. Why couldn't we just get a gay pilot that isn't romanceable by Shepard at all, because they've got other poo poo going on/still pine for their husband. Why can't we have a lesbian coordinator that just doesn't find Shepard attractive. We have dozens of hetero people we meet on the regular who have zero interest in boning the PC, but if you meet a LGBT character 99.9% of the time they are boneable because Bioware needs to get their pander on. It's a bad representation in my mind, and feels super skeevy. Like we can only have one gay per game, and that gay needs to be fuckable. E: This is a good post and as a ciswhite male in a 1st world country, I entirely agree. Alistair is good purely because he has a plot that incorporates you, but does not orientate around you. He feels believable because he's actually resolving a story and you can affect that story, and that's all. In that regard, he's arguably one of Bioware's best characters simply for that reason. People like Liara (gently caress knows why  ) & Thane for similar reasons, they're goes somewhere. (Admittedly the grave for Thane, but you get the idea.)Conversely, all of ME:A's cast literally exist so that Ryder can interact with them, and they can react to Ryder. Jaal comes closest to not, and then falls off the same cliff, and Vectra looks like she might have had potential to, but otherwise don't. You could probably overlay this description 'Has their own storyline that is not ABOUT the player' into a Venn with 'Is a good Bioware NPC' and it'd be a loving circle. Shockeh fucked around with this message at 11:11 on Jun 1, 2017 |
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Jun 1, 2017 11:08
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Milky Moor posted:Weren't Bioware Kavak posted:Cancelled Yes.
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Jun 1, 2017 11:11
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BioWare's main problem for me is they aren't nearly progressive enough.
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Jun 1, 2017 14:42
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I think the "Bioware romances are titillation because they're a sequence of simple interactions, where the NPC is always into the player and is totally compliant, leading up to a sex scene" criticism is very outdated. A lot of romances in Bioware games no longer have sex scenes, and there are several romance characters who don't behave in "wish fulfilment"-y ways but in dramatic ones: Fenris, Josephine, Solas, off the top of my head, all have moments where they have serious doubts about your relationship and want you to leave them alone. Sera tries to force you to renounce your religion if you believe in Elven gods. Blackwall was lying to you about his identity the entire time and you have to put him on trial for war crimes during his romance plot. Anders blows up a church. Like, at this point there are more complicated, dramatic Bioware romances than the Mass Effect 1-style "simple interactions leading up to a sex scene" ones. It was relevant back in 2009 maybe, not so much now.
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Jun 1, 2017 15:35
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beep by grandpa posted:BioWare's main problem for me is they aren't nearly progressive enough. We really are reaching the pinnacle of navel gazing. So um how much is Bioware's new Destiny knockoff going to let everyone down?
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Jun 1, 2017 16:02
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a primate posted:We really are reaching the pinnacle of navel gazing. Probably as much as Destiny let everyone down
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Jun 1, 2017 16:03
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Android Blues posted:I think the "Bioware romances are titillation because they're a sequence of simple interactions, where the NPC is always into the player and is totally compliant, leading up to a sex scene" criticism is very outdated. A lot of romances in Bioware games no longer have sex scenes, and there are several romance characters who don't behave in "wish fulfilment"-y ways but in dramatic ones: Fenris, Josephine, Solas, off the top of my head, all have moments where they have serious doubts about your relationship and want you to leave them alone. Sera tries to force you to renounce your religion if you believe in Elven gods. Blackwall was lying to you about his identity the entire time and you have to put him on trial for war crimes during his romance plot. Anders blows up a church. That's true. Solas even tells you what your facial tattoos really are when you romance him. I don't think you learn that anywhere else. And the whole romance breaks the pattern by him breaking up with you! The Dragon Age people are pretty good with the characters. I liked my squad mates better with each game (though Varric, Aveline and Carver had to compensate for the romaceable four). They are getting better with the relationships as well. Inquisition was a success, and I don't know why the failure of a side studio to produce a good Mass Effect game should mean that the DA studio will suddenly be bad at making more Dragon Age games.
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Jun 1, 2017 16:53
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People over here are complaining about Bioware's dating simulator not having enough flags for a 'believable' romance plot. Bioware is sadly accurate for a lot of their relationships to 'power characters', if you are a superior (Supervisor, Manager, NCO, Officer etc) then someone's going to want to gently caress you solely because you're more powerful than others. It's common in the military, it's a fantasy within itself.
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Jun 1, 2017 17:45
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fruit on the bottom posted:This was a different division of BioWare than the Dragon Age studio to think, they have been keeping all the Good Bioware Employees in stasis since KoTOR 2.
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Jun 1, 2017 17:53
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Chill Nazi Frog posted:to think, they have been keeping all the Good Bioware Employees in stasis since KoTOR 2. Obsidian wrote/developed KOTOR 2.
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Jun 1, 2017 18:00
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