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Post by zeowik on Mar 21, 2017 0:59:35 GMT
CASE. FUCKING. CLOSED: Fucking amazingly, this is (by proxy) the first time a BioWare person has commented on this dumpster fire. Jaal is not bi. Everyone go home and play some Dragon Age. So there we have it. Official confirmation from someone that can't say who they are. So.. do they have any idea how much stress, confusion, anger, and hurt they have caused with this debacle? I really, really hope someone can get an answer about the "bi Jaal" code found in the files. I really want to know the story behind that.
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Post by zeowik on Mar 21, 2017 0:52:19 GMT
I think Cathleen Rootsaert (spelling?) but thought she didn't have twitter Yeah, seems like she doesn't. So I can't who confirmed Jaal being bi, but it was someone from the official (is it how you call these acc in English?) twitter of someone. And this person apologized. Saying official would imply it was someone from Bioware or EA. If you wanted to say an official Twitter of something else you'd say for example (say it's IGN): IGN's twitter IGN's official twitter The official twitter of IGN Of course context matters too. If the conversation was about IGN, saying the official twitter would mean IGN. From your quote here it looks like you mean someone from Bioware or EA said it. I hope that helps?
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Post by zeowik on Mar 21, 2017 0:46:57 GMT
As a trans guy i can confirm the way the handled the trans npc was terrible I can't see many trans men or women finding this to be a positive representation or inclusion. No one does that? Its different but... one time I got introduced as my siater's "gay brother". It pissed me off so much I introduced my "straight Pisces father" and "straight Taurus" mother. I'm closeted still, with no plans to change that any time soon (since it would amount to an "oh by the way I'm gay" pointless thing). Well over a decade ago I came out to someone who seemed to be hinting she wanted to go out with me because I didn't want to hurt her feelings. She casually brought up I'm gay in front of a nephew and niece this holiday just assuming I must be out at this point. I mean there was no malice but it's like ARGGGGH. I absolutely flipped out ridiculously but they were just like "we won't tell anyone and you're still our uncle." They assumed I was asexual.
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Post by zeowik on Mar 21, 2017 0:42:27 GMT
Just don't give his writer grief over this debacle. There's no way she could have known so many other devs would string everyone along for months about him.
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Post by zeowik on Mar 21, 2017 0:39:34 GMT
I was about to post stuff about this: (in spoilers because some HZD stuff too)
Compare and contrast:
My God seriously it's like they are ticking check boxes to make EVERYONE angry.
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Post by zeowik on Mar 21, 2017 0:31:47 GMT
It's by far the worst part of the early access to me. By far. I keep saying it because it's the perfect example I think: It's like when DVDs first came out and companies were obsessed with overly long flashy animations for each menu selection just because they could do it.
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Post by zeowik on Mar 21, 2017 0:29:17 GMT
I think a version of this topic exists for every single entry of every prominent series?
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Post by zeowik on Mar 21, 2017 0:27:00 GMT
This guy is a reviewer: I kind of don't understand why would he do this when he's a part of the lgbt community too. I mean everyone can see that people are VERY dissapointed and VERY sad because of this Saying things like it's just a game or deal with it won't change the fact that it's really hurting people, even f it's true. His comments read like a laundry list of ways to troll anti-gay people freaking out about the SJW boogeyman.
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Post by zeowik on Mar 21, 2017 0:24:00 GMT
I'm really happy he's such a loved character. If in the end he's 100% straight I just wish they'd have told us ages ago so I wouldn't have lingering disappointment and could just appreciate him as a friend of Ryder.
I really hate the pendulum of hope/despair that has consumed me. For a brief moment I was like "what if they added in the bi stuff at the last moment and most reviewers didn't see it!" I wish they'd just lay it to rest already with an official answer.
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Post by zeowik on Mar 21, 2017 0:18:56 GMT
Let's also not pretend that some of the lesbian content is not created to be enjoyed by straight men also. Well as long as we're on the subject of not pretending, let's not pretend that straight male gamers don't constitute the vast majority of ME players. That is irrelevant on the topic of the points laid out in this topic because it's a laundry list of issues not a slight nitpick.
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Post by zeowik on Mar 21, 2017 0:15:59 GMT
I understand, but I believe dataminers found 30% less romance dialogue for crewmates, and also I don't think they have missions that are as fleshed out as companion missions? And flings, while a new concept, are pretty clearly going to have less content. Also most of my points still stand, even if Gil turns out to be the best romance in the history of Bioware. If you play as a gay man you can't get an achievement, the sex scenes are muted unlike others, gay men have had the least options 4 games in a row. Well you should remember that datamining can contain incomplete and sometimes incorrect data. I agree that the fling is going to have less NPC content, but why should it necessarily have less romance content? In fact, Reyes has far more flirt dialogue than most of the Tempest NPCs. His scenes also have several romance variations. I do agree that the achievement is somewhat problematic, but why must it be attained through only one orientation? I distinctly remember that most of BioWare's previous games required you to romance everyone at least once. This is actually a more loose requirement. It seems a little nitpicky to me. Are you only going to play gay protagonists? It's a combination of things. They strung people along with false hope for months rather than just shutting it down, all while hyping Jaal outrageously while playing all "we can't say more" as they at the same time described why he's so wonderful and broke their "we aren't saying until launch" statement with several straight romance reveals. The laundry list of typical "don't scare the straight dudes" bullet points just adds to it. Focus on female nudity, only straight and lesbian sex scenes, lesbians being more permissible to be in the spotlight. I'm not saying that's intentional but it looks terrible and combined with everything else was a horrible way to treat players they strung along so long.
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Post by zeowik on Mar 21, 2017 0:08:10 GMT
Haven't seen this before, but one of the first reviewers to claim Jaal is bi turned out to be misinterpreting things. Maybe this happened here too? Has to be, this is the '' two human silhouettes standing next to each other '' trigger thing that the reviewer claimed. It can't be anything else. But I guess the '' special connection '' you share is so strong that some people think he is bi, lol. It's outright confirmed that icon means friendship, unless that was your point.
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Post by zeowik on Mar 21, 2017 0:05:40 GMT
I think I understand now. His romance is locked with RNG. You have 5% chance for him to be bi.
Why?? I don't know who this person is but how could they possibly be right in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary? It screams trolling to me. If they aren't, this is such a mess. I don't want to get false hope again.
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Post by zeowik on Mar 20, 2017 23:48:20 GMT
You know if they didn't string us along for months rather than just letting us down ages ago I'd be a little excited to see the Peebee and Jaal interactions since they sound adorable. Instead, especially due to the remnants of bi Jaal code, I'm just bitter.
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Post by zeowik on Mar 20, 2017 23:44:24 GMT
That summed things up more neatly than I could, though it doesn't touch on the "has to make sense" debacle and the implications that somehow a character not being straight has to be a core part of who they are rather than just simply how they swing.
Edit: And seriously, what is with the bi Jaal code and when did they switch course? Also I wonder if they have been ordered not to talk about this on Twitter.
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Post by zeowik on Mar 20, 2017 23:31:56 GMT
No bi Jaal mod for me, I passed through enough angst with my Warden and the inevitable US, and bi Cullen mod. So no more. No more headcanon for me. I haven't played Skyrim and I heard that you can marry lizard men, the nearest thing to an alien in my books so... It's in my to do list Just a heads up TES is more about world building than plot or characterization. I love the series but realize you have to write your own stories in your head. Most of the love interests are blank slates for the romance who will marry you after doing a quest or two for them, and you have to imagine how the romance plays out. Even the ones with more personality have less than the 'flings' of the ME universe. I'm not bashing TES. I just don't want you going in not realizing TES takes the "role playing" aspect to the extreme of the player filling in the blanks. Also, with mods (at least for PC) you can romance Khajiit (cat people) too. It's curious you can't in the vanilla game, it's probably either due to time constraints making the game or due to running out of space on the Xbox 360, which at the time reserved a huge chunk of the DVD for Microsoft OS stuff and couldn't require HDD installs since not all Xbox 360 models had one.
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Post by zeowik on Mar 20, 2017 23:07:03 GMT
So, I'm talking to someone who was equally invested in Jaal. Here's a real kicker, IF it's true: It's not that Scott gets rejected if you try and flirt with Jaal. Apparently the flirt option doesn't even appear in the first place. Scott can't even TRY to flirt with him.What the heck happened to being able to be shut down quickly, if that's simply not true with Jaal??
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Post by zeowik on Mar 20, 2017 22:49:42 GMT
If a developer or developers actually read this I'm sorry for being so long-winded but I want to articulate the way I feel in a way to make it clear to communicate my thoughts on the matter. I give you my thanks if you really read this whole post (the spoiler section being the most long-winded). You should be able to easily pause cutscenes. Other than that, there should be some sort of way to skip them too, even if it's a little hidden so people don't do it by mistake. I restarted a few times playing with the character creator and that was a tad tedious having to watch the intro. I liked it the first couple times. After that it was like "why can't I skip this" because you really can't fully see how your character looks in action in the creator itself. The exploration as in flying around and scanning planets is astoundingly tedious. I liken the interface used to fly from planet to planet to early DVD menus, with overly long animations that detract more than add to anything. I am very sorry if someone is reading this that had a hand in it, but I am surprised that made it through QA without someone saying how bad it is. I miss tactical pause/squadmate commands a ton. It doesn't put a spotlight on the work on AI; it just makes it feel like a feature was ripped out that used to be there for me. Checkpoint only save systems are a gaming trend I'm sick of, and they were brought in here. This is a big one. I know it's been said to death but if developers are actually going to read this topic I have to say it, and I appreciate it if it is read: The whole romance debacle. If you're actually reading it please do, because I want to articulate why this has been such a complete disaster for some of us. And I'll stress I was one of the people that vowed to be calm.
The romance aspects are hyped with tons of joking and "all the bang" and jokes about the nudity etc.
Next, Jaal is revealed, and hyped up like crazy by virtually every dev.
Several straight romances are highlighted. Despite this developers say they can't say anything about the romances at all, brushing off almost all questions about same sex romance.
The teasing about Jaal incessantly continues pretty much every single week. When asked, the "wait and see" response comes as to who can romance him. While this happens hype skyrockets because despite the "we don't want to spoil" claim more and more details about why he's an awesome character are revealed.
The early access period starts. Data mining shows data checks showing both Sara and Scott allowed in Jaal romance dialog options. Some of us breathed a huge sigh of relief. No data mining isn't going to be accurate and stuff may be left in but this gives false hope, which is still allowed to be strung along. Even worse are implications if he was at one point planned to be bi. By Saturday it became clear people couldn't find audio, which was alarming.
So finally we get to where we are now, where the very worst situation for m/m romances seems to be real. I'm not dismissing Gil off hand. It's not fair to people who worked on him, but the way it was handled looks really, really bad and here is why:
First let's discuss the unfortunate "if it makes sense" comment about making the characters. Sexual orientation is an aspect of what someone is, not who. It can be an important aspect of how some identify themselves but in the end all it defines is who one finds attractive. "If it makes sense" is unfortunate because it can be interpreted to mean "it doesn't make sense if the character is a ladykiller," or "it doesn't make sense if the character is too masculine (unless they are super dominant to match another stereotype)." There are certain character archetypes that ALWAYS seem to have to be straight, so combined with that "if it makes sense" becomes a lightning rod of disgust even if that's not at all what was meant by it. There's a couple page sarcastic string of posts in the Jaal thread about this, with a bunch of LGBT people sarcastically saying how it's impossible they are LGB or T because they act too normal or too straight. So to boil down to it, it doesn't have to be highlighted as some key aspect of a character. It just has to be. Take Judy's neighbors in Zootopia (who are in fact a gay married couple). They don't highlight this. The characters just are, and the fact they are gay does not define their characters. On the same token Clawhauser's orientation is left completely ambiguous. His character is a mass of stereotypes both met and subverted, and not saying which way he swings I think is a brilliant statement on that front because there are in fact flamboyant straight guys. He may or may not be straight. In the end it doesn't matter because that doesn't define who he is! So to sum up this paragraph: if "if it makes sense" really does refer to stereotypes like "ladykillers just have to be straight" and all the other unfortunate implications about dominance and other nonsense, that's well.. unfortunate. If that's not what was meant, it unfortunately gave the wrong impression (big time).
So that alone I'd brush off. But now that we are so close to release and more information is known it gets worse. Let's one by one tick off a series of typical unfortunate ways gay guys are marginalized (or straight guys are catered to most): 1.) The only male/male romances are off the squad. Of those, only one is a fully developed romance path from the looks of it. The unfortunate implication is this falls in line with the "lesbians are more acceptable because some straight guys find them hot and/or don't find them as gross as guys into guys."
2.) Of the sex scenes that are known, every single one of them focuses more on naked females. There is no male/male sex scene, the unfortunate implication that could be taken from that is that it's to not tick off straight guys weirded out by it, even if they don't have to see it.
3.) It's not confirmed but it may be possible Scott has no found sex scene noises. If that's true lump that into the growing mountain showing an extreme straight guy focus, the unfortunate implication being that straight guys aren't interested being reminded of the guy in the scene.
4.) Male nudity is played for laughs. That on its own isn't bad. It's the fact that it's a common trope for this to be exclusively the case, which unfortunately it seems like it may largely be in this game.
It's like a checklist of stereotypical ways straight men are emphasized while marginalizing everything else. Combined with the complete silence during the marketing, a paranoid reaction may be that marketing demanded the marginalization of males in the romantic/sexual content thinking it's too risky to weird out the majority straight male audience. I am absolutely not making an accusation that it must be the case, but when everything is taken together as a whole it looks extremely bad. Other than there not being male/male romance at all, pretty much the very worst case feared scenario has happened, right on down to the fade to black sex scene.
And this wouldn't be half as bad if people were not stringed along with that constant teasing the whole time leading up to release. All of that disappointment could have been put to rest, rather than having people hold out hope for months.
If Jaal really isn't straight or some of that laundry list is wrong I'd love to be wrong. If you read this thank you, and at the least I hope it's a little more understandable why all these things have added up to make some of us gay players feel terrible.
Edit: In addition, if the fact Gil's gay is seriously lampshaded add that to the list of unintentionally offensive aspects to the "it has to make sense" statement. No, a guy liking a guy absolutely does not have to be some core part of their character!
Overall I've had a good time and I look forward to playing the game, but boy has the uncertainty and ultimate disappointment in that spoiler been a huge mood killer.
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Post by zeowik on Mar 20, 2017 22:16:35 GMT
So, I've been looking for romance scenes on Youtube because I love making myself upset, and so far, based on the incomplete list of them that I have seen, here are my observations about how explicit and/or detailed they are.
I'm going to rank these in T&A terms (Tits & Ass).
Scott/Cora - Cora has very prominent A and mild T, Scott has A.
Scott/Peebee - Peebee has A and prominent T, Scott has very mild A.
Sara/Peebee - Same scene as above, Peebee has A and prominent T, Sara has T and very mild A.
Scott/Gil - Fade to black with a very brief shirtless shot that doesn't even go below the chest.
Thanks for that.
As far as how much detail and work went into each scene, I felt that the Cora and Peebee scenes lasted longer than I expected, were fairly well choreographed, and included a surprising amount of thrusting and grinding. The Gil scene, of course, was brief kissing and then fade to black.
Again, thanks for that.
The other scenes I haven't found online yet, so there could be something for m/m Ryders somewhere, but I'm not exactly holding my breath. .
I hate jumping on conspiracy theory bandwagons but when EVERY SINGLE ASPECT OF THE DESIGN is made to shut male/male off to the side while specifically focusing on the female body in every single sex scene I call freaking foul. What did marketing fear the bigoted raging mass of "SJW are out to get us" and demand this nonsense? If it was just one or a couple things I'd not be so upset, but EVERY single factor that could possibly snub gay men is in play. Every. Single. One. other than there just not being m/m romance at all.
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Post by zeowik on Mar 20, 2017 21:14:59 GMT
If Scott seriously had no love scene voice acting but Sara does how could they deny this is all about straight men? That is way too many factors all used stereotypically from nudity focused entirely for straight men or for laughs down to yet another ladykiller for which just has to be exclusively straight. Because it "makes sense" in some shallow way I guess??
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Post by zeowik on Mar 20, 2017 21:11:50 GMT
So the worst case is confirmed eh?
What were they thinking with the outright cruel teasing???
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Post by zeowik on Mar 20, 2017 16:27:08 GMT
What could the devs possibly say is it is so obviously designed for straight males with everyone else fade-to-black and mostly if not all out of the squad except Liam for straight Sara. If that is fade-to-black to just... Lol...
I hope I'm wrong.
The male nudity played for laughs thing would be the cherry on top of the cake.
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Post by zeowik on Mar 20, 2017 16:09:05 GMT
Oh good grief still no solid info?
They failed so hard on communication...
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Post by zeowik on Mar 20, 2017 13:30:11 GMT
I find it really weird that people are saying that Cora & PeeBee love scenes with Male Ryder is pornography. I mean, have you actually seen pornography ? Usually, if the pornography in question concerns a man and a woman, typically these actions can be observed (in no particular order): 1) Man sucking woman's breasts. 2) Woman giving the man a blowjob, sometimes accompanied with what you call titty-fucking. 3) Man giving woman a cunnilingus, sometimes accompanied with what you call finger fucking. 4) Man and woman have sex in multiple positions. 5) Man climaxes inside the woman's vagina or inside her mouth or on her face and breasts. That the run-of-the-mill pornography sequence. I have not touched on hardcore pornography or even hentai. I watched the love scenes and they are not pornographic, not even remotely. Sorry to be blunt about it but it is what it is. If anything, you could even make the point that Bioware played the egalitarian card properly in this specific context. For example, with Cora's love scene we get to see Cora's ass, Ryder's ass, Cora's breasts and Ryder's chest. No vagina or penis shown. In my opinion, credit should be given where its due - Bioware stepped up their game and took a leaf out of The Witcher 2. The sex scenes for Cora and PeeBee is mature and tasteful, not pornographic. Also, it is a welcome relief to be rid of underwear and pants in a sex scene. At the same time, I should also point out that Bioware should have given the same treatment to the romace scenes of othet sexualities - Like Gil and Suvi's love scenes. Cheers. Before the internet most was more mild than that. If they seriously pulled the "straight sex and female nudity for titillation and male nudity only for laughs thing though..."
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Post by zeowik on Mar 20, 2017 13:29:12 GMT
I find it really weird that people are saying that Cora & PeeBee love scenes with Male Ryder is pornography. I mean, have you actually seen pornography ? Usually, if the pornography in question concerns a man and a woman, typically these actions can be observed (in no particular order): 1) Man sucking woman's breasts. 2) Woman giving the man a blowjob, sometimes accompanied with what you call titty-fucking. 3) Man giving woman a cunnilingus, sometimes accompanied with what you call finger fucking. 4) Man and woman have sex in multiple positions. 5) Man climaxes inside the woman's vagina or inside her mouth or on her face and breasts. That the run-of-the-mill pornography sequence. I have not touched on hardcore pornography or even hentai. I watched the love scenes and they are not pornographic, not even remotely. Sorry to be blunt about it but it is what it is. If anything, you could even make the point that Bioware played the egalitarian card properly in this specific context. For example, with Cora's love scene we get to see Cora's ass, Ryder's ass, Cora's breasts and Ryder's chest. No vagina or penis shown. In my opinion, credit should be given where its due - Bioware stepped up their game and took a leaf out of The Witcher 2. The sex scenes for Cora and PeeBee is mature and tasteful, not pornographic. Also, it is a welcome relief to be rid of underwear and pants in a sex scene. At the same time, I should also point out that Bioware should have given the same treatment to the romace scenes of othet sexualities - Like Gil and Suvi's love scenes. Cheers. Before the internet most was more mild than that. If they seriously pulled the "straight sex and female nudity for titillation and male nudity only for laughs thing though..."
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