Elephant in the Room

While I dislike the use of "fix" in this context since Sera's appearance is not bugged in any way but you can find mods that change her canon appearance to be more of the conventional beauty kind.


Personally, I rather like Sera's canonical character design since it fits her character and background. She's not the type to care about appearance and how much fine hairdressing common folk have available is limited so her hair looking like she cut it herself makes a lot of sense. 

If the rage of males "threatened" by so-called "ugly" women (where "ugly" is construed as anything deviating from supermodel standards) is enough to sink a popular video game franchise, I'm not sure catering to their tantrum is the best solution to the problem. It doesn't work so well with toddlers--yielding too often to such entitled aggression means your kid will be a piece of shit as an adult.
Maybe we should instead just let video games die. Then maybe people will have more time to read some books and get a bit smarter.

Sera was executed well. On my first play through I didn't understand the intent of the writing behind her character. I hate to admit this, but at first I took for mentally-challenged or something. I avoided her so I missed out on a lot of stuff about her. On my second playthrough, I tried Sera again and worked more conversations by seeking her out in Haven and in Skyhold. I then saw the brilliance in the writing and her voice actress. Sera is an acquired taste, but once you get her, you really appreciate her and her banter. She's the epitome of veiled cunning. She's a complex character even for a non-romantic interest.

But think about why Wonder Women, a feminist icon, is so beautiful. That isn't an accident. Even Rey is very pretty. We, men and women, love to both identify with beautiful heroes, and fantasize about romancing them.

My point: Bioware ignored this biological fact in DAI, which primed men to hate everything Bioware, which helped fuel the hate train for MEA

The comment on the first page of this thread where I express my affection for Cassandra is one of my most heavily "liked" comments ever.

What's up with all these people ignoring their "biological imperatives"?!?

Honestly, this is why more people don't bother voicing their opinions anymore. Arguing that certain standards for beauty exist in the world is stupid because every already knows it's true.

There's always one weirdo with an ugly fetish... usually due to lack of self-esteem. (Before this offends someone, it's mostly a sarcastic comment)

I'll take the bait.

Background - I am a straight female and I like to play the Bioware romance arcs (it is embarrassing, but I do enjoy them). I usually play either as a female with the male love-interest OR is as the male with a female love interest (though I did roll M/M once in DAI because I adored Dorian and wanted to see what happened in a romance with him). I also like the LI's to be attractive folks, because I like pretty things (yes..it is shallow...but it is honest). I also loved TW3 and thought Triss and Yen were beautiful pixelated gals.

HOWEVER...I think you are really blowing smoke, OP.

Cassandra was hot and had a sexy accent. In my opinion, she was as hawt (and confident and capable) as Triss and Yen. She had a classic romance arc where you got to be the one guy (ie, the "special" guy) that can break thru her tough exterior to find the sweet romantic gal underneath. That's about as ego-stroking as a Bioware romance arc can be. She also had great boobies. I mean...what the hell more do ya want? Seems like male fantasy through and through to me.

Sera was not for you. She was the F/F choice. Are you gonna start complaining about Cullen too (who was also for the ladies)? Cause he lacked boobies for you?

Sheesh. I mean, come on.

That's fair enough.  The point I was sarcastically hinting at is that the OP seems to want to draw broad, universal conclusions about the tastes of men in general from factors that are to a significant extant simply a matter of personal taste.  It could be that he and his friends found Cassandra (or other characters) to be completely unattractive, but this is certainly not the case for everybody.

And given the rather large set of issues surrounding the development and release of MEA, I find it rather unparsimonious to conclude that its reception was heavily impacted by how some people felt about the attractiveness of certain characters in the previous installment of a completely separate series.    

In short, this entire thread simply feels like a political agenda looking for an excuse to express itself.  Of course, that begs the (excellent) question of why I'm participating in it!  I don't know. 

Even taking this at face value, isn't this argument properly directed at EA than Bioware? Forcing artistic compromises because too many fans are stupid and have bad taste is a job for the suits with the marketing research department, rather than the creative team. That's what that level of the structure is for.