Schmooples' Den! The DA News Discussion Thread

Nick Knight 🌱 🏳️‍🌈 Davrin's boobs
speaking of which,I know it's too soonTM but take this as future feedback, The Waylanders (her lead writer especially)is doing an awesome job revealing what characters are available to sexual orientations in advance,avoiding queerbaiting (MEA) hope you guys do the same for DA4. again I know is too soon but the romance list should not be considered spoilers once the companions are revealed, this way gamedevs spare queer players from being queerbaited and disappointed in advance

Patrick Weekes @patrickweekes
We spoiled all romance options on DAI, and Cassandra was still criticized as queerbaiting. I don’t believe spoiling all options solves that issue.

Nick Knight 🌱 🏳️‍🌈 Davrin's boobs
at this point the safest bet is to make the first and most-important characters bisexual if Bioware continues to do different sexual orientations (I'd rather go all bi and gay/lesbian rep with non-romanceable companions and everyone is happy but alas)

Patrick Weekes @patrickweekes
I disagree strongly with this. Making everyone bi/pan does simplify things, but it also removes our ability to have someone like Dorian, whose arc was indelibly linked to his sexuality. (At least, it does for folks who aren’t bi/pan.)

Making everyone bi except for some folks who are gay is... unlikely to ever happen. You’re welcome to want it, but complaining that it isn’t happening won’t make it any more likely to happen.

Ultimate, for DAI, we looked at a choice between:

- Any PC can romance any follower, followers will be called PlayerSexual and some folks will feel sexualities were erased

And

- Every PC can romance someone but not everyone, there are straight, bi, and gay options.

The first option is DAII. The second is DAO and ME3. Either choice, we knew, would result in some folks being unhappy for one reason or another.

We went the DAO/ME3 choice because we were more comfortable with folks being angry they couldn’t romance ($Follower) than being angry that the game made gay/lesbian folks not exist.

So be angry. We made that choice. We would make it again.

Also, I wasn’t on MEA, so can’t and won’t speak for decisions made there.

Honestly I would rather have fully functional characters and not sexually fantasized 'toys'. If there is a character that I would've liked to romance and can't...I shrug my shoulders and move on.

Exactly.

Or maybe roll another character to explore a different romance arc and plot choices.

*Edited because the mention of DA2's romance mechanic prompted me to go off on a not-so-related tangent.  lol

I'm glad they are sticking to their guns with this.

Brianne Battye 🦇 @bbattye
It's starting to get spooky around here...

Missed the point, I think. Having some bisexual characters is always fine; if that's how the writers see those characters, that's how they should be. But making all NPCs bisexual so anyone can romance anyone is something quite different.

Per Wikipedia, "queerbaiting" is defined "as a marketing technique for fiction and entertainment in which creators hint at, but then not actually depict, same-sex romance." People felt this was the case with Cassandra because she doesn't present as sufficiently stereotypically feminine. A ludicrous charge, but people made it.

I think the "queerbaiting" was in reference to MEA when the devs were teasing M/M options but refused to reveal any of them (despite revealing several M/F options). Then the game shipped with a huge imbalance of romance options, leading to the whole Jaal fiasco. I don't think the DA team has ever been guilty of this though.

That is almost always the case in such arguments. Do they really care about representation? Very and very unlikely, DA is very lgbt friendly. They more concerned that this particular character was unavailable unless they play as opposite sex.
The oddest wish I heard so far- make all main characters bi. In this case they do treat bisexuality as a solution to satisfy their needs.

shame I usually run the same characters over and over again.

Even if they are player-sexual for the sake of the player, being so doesn't strip them of their characterisation. Merrill doesn't stop being an outcast struggling to reclaim her people's history. Fenris doesn't stop being an escaped slave trying to come to terms with his new-found freedom. Anders doesn't stop being a revolutionary trying to forge a better life for mages. None of this changes if you make one straight, one bi and one gay vs all player-sexual.

And I would argue that it doesn't really encourage replays. There are lots of people who only ever romance Cullen. There are lots of people who only ever play elves. There are lost of people who only ever spec Knight Enchanter. If people want to try new playstyles there are plenty of incentives to do so, but not everyone will want to. I've yet to get beyond the prologue with a male character because I just find it harder to get invested, so I'll likely never experience Cass' or Dorian's romances.

oh I want to to, I intended to make four Inquisitors...only ever made 2 (one man, one woman)

No, but it still does lessen the options for writers in terms of writing characters or their different facets. If all characters basically have the same sexuality that aspect can't be explored in-depth or used as part of the story. That avenue is effectively blocked. So not only no more characters like Dorian, but Sera or Iron Bull, whose sexuality is enough of a notable aspect of themselves that it's part of conversations or banters, jokes and so on.
The fact that not all people will venture beyond their comfort zones doesn't mean that there's not a significant amount of people who do or appreciate having a variety of options. After all, most players also play exclusively humans. Yet players appear to generally prefer a BW game with multiple races options for PCs. It also does seem that players in general prefer games with NPCs with different sexualities, given that BW has years of feedback on that matter from different games.