Dragon Age Inquisition Romances

So.... according to bioware, the majority of females that live in this world are either bisexual or gay.

up until now i have not really cared about bioware putting gay/bisexual romance options into their games (they always have had maybe 2), but DAI is getting a bit out of hand. there is only a single female out of the entire major cast that is "straight". this wreaks of marketing ploy and an attempt at political correctness.

lets look at the options:

if you are male, the only romance option that you have that isnt either gay or bisexual, is Cassandra. all other females in the game that you can flirt with or romance are gay or bisexual, and often go out of their way in conversations to make you understand that they are. Josephine is your only other non-gay romance choice, and it comes up SEVERAL times that she has had regular flings with Leliana, minus their "small clothes".

if you are female, your choices are far greater. you have the choice of cullen, blackwall, or solas. all other men in the game that you can either flirt with or romance are gay or bisexual.

if they want to put some gay characters in, or bisexual character in, then fine go nuts. but making about 80% of the flirt/romance options in the game, of either sex, gay or bisexual goes beyond giving players "choice" and starts to get into the realm of pandering. sexuality is a core feature of humanity, and you cant just make all your characters bisexual if you are trying to actually make them -characters-.... that just isnt how it works.

in their own world building, they have established this... taken from the Dragon Age Wiki:

"Same-sex relations are generally considered strange in Ferelden, but Fereldans do not consider it immoral, and place no particular stigma upon it. Orlesians regard homosexuality as a mere quirk of character"

the majority of the cast of DAI is still indeed Ferelden. there are only 4 characters that are not. this would seem to indicate that the opposite is actually true, and that homosexuality/bisexuality is not strange, but wide spread (infact, the vast majority) and completely accepted.

some might say that "it doesnt matter".... but it really does. bioware tries to write and create believable worlds with believable characters, and to me, that is one of the most important aspects of an RPG. having these kinds of conversations all the time just does not reflect how society actually is. the fact of the matter is, most people are -not- bisexual. also, most people are -not- gay. saying this does not mean i think that gays/bisexuals should have no choices. i am simply saying that the way that the characters have been designed in DAI seems more like pandering to those communities than character design.

i am starting to reconsider my choice to always just buy bioware games because i have faith in them. their drop in writing quality and "character design" choices lately have really tarnished things for me.

blah blah blah you are a biggot, whatever, i know it is coming. im not, but you can think whatever you want. im simply just more interested in intelligent character design in my RPGs rather than pandering like seems to be happening in bioware games lately.

So don't play any of the romances.

they are all likely bi in order to let the player make any combination they want. Simple as that

DA2 had all romances as bisexual, so Inquisition is an improvement with characters that will refuse if you are a different race or gender.

If the romances were true to life, then there would be no gay romance options at all. But they have chosen to do certain romances. I do believe that most of the writers are actually not heterosexual, which might explain the unbalanced situation. There is no question that EA is pro LGBT, but I'm not sure that type of thing is a huge boost in sales one way or another. I think you have many that dislike it and refuse to support their products.

I believe the simple answer is that the writers just want to express their own views and experiences in sexuality, and there is no hidden agenda nor did they set out to make it unfair.

Quite frankly, the writers created these characters, so they can set whatever sexuality they desire.

i supposed that is true, and i support devs making the games they want to make rather than what they think the public wants.... but i think that is precisely the problem. i feel like they are making practically all of their characters bisexual just because they want to pander to that community, and not because they are trying to build characters that they really feel should be bisexual.

as to the comment made by @wis3boi i get that from a game design perspective it might just be easier to make everyone bi.... but that usually isnt how bioware operates. considering how important sexuality is to most people's identity, it doesnt make sense to just arbitrarily make all character bisexual. typically bioware has a reason for why their characters are a certain way. having them be bisexual for gameplay purposes seems like a betrayal of their normal process and just marketing, so that they can say "hey look at us, we are so PC". especially when you take into considering all of the marketing and articles that have been pushed out to gaming sites about Dorian being their first "all gay" character, and their comments on the romances and the part they play in the story.

and in DA2 Sebastian was straight only. also, varric and aveline can only be flirted with by opposite sex i believe. but you are right, the other 4 romance options are all bisexual. the real difference was, if you were same sex and you just never "went there" with your conversation choices, the characters would never "go there" either. in Dragon Age Inquisition, the characters regularly talk about their bisexual tendencies during flavor conversations.

to me it is starting to borderline on dragon age being positioned as "that series for LGBT folks." that certainly seems to be how it is being treated. if i hadnt already invested hundreds of hours into playing the other games i wouldnt be upset. I have, however, and it bothers me to think that if it gets much worse i may have to just step away from the series. Im fine with a company positioning a game or even series as being for the LGBT crowd. there should be games for everyone to enjoy. just dont do a switch like this after having already established an audience....

I don't deny that Bioware games are starting to be those that the LGBT fanbase can get behind in full force (bad pun). I do agree that is not particularly a good thing to have hanging over the writers heads. While they might well write characters with unbalanced sexuality, the desire might be further increased with external pressure.

I didn't really feel like Inquisition was forcing an agenda towards me when I played through it, it has a relatively broad spectrum and you can respond in a manner of ways and even flirt with different characters. Maybe they need to back off the romance stuff until they can actually put a romance in the game that is more than a few cut scenes.

I'm not against LGBT community but yes there are times in my playthrough where I was just sympathizing with Dorian, I got the romance option pop up. I obviously didn't click it and it happened with Iron bull as well. WTF Bioware? I just want this "political correctness" bs gone out of games.

I would like a survey done just to see how many gamers from LGBT community specifically played Dragon Age series.

this is what i am talking about in DAI.... in DA2 this didnt happen. you had to really "go there" to get these options to pop up. in DAI, its practically forced down your throat.

I know what you mean. In DA:I even if you have a perfectly normal conversation you still get that romance option shoved in your face. It obviously doesn't hurt me in any sense while playing the game but the romancing option can be a bit discrete.

There were a lot of promotional videos and devs talking about including the LGBT options in game. It was fine but not like this! There was some actress talking about how she wants to be part of the game which embraces "political correctness" into one of their games - NOT like this.

If we have a normal conversation about your family and I suddenly say my sexual preference to your face. How would that feel? LMAO.

some of the conversations are seriously like:

my character: "ah man that was a hell of a fight. look at all the blood!"

same sex NPC: "yeah! i heard you like killing and im a proud gay man. Wanna ****?"

*romance option appears*

me IRL: "wait....what?"

obviously that is a bit exaggerated but not by much. the romance option pops up at the most idiotic and unrelated times, and the dialogue is always pretty sleezy IMO.

its over the top, in your face in this game. it really goes out of its way. like i was saying, the lower quality writing and character development coming from bioware lately has really made me re-evaluate them and decide that i will no longer be buying their games just off their name alone.

if they wanna become the "LGBT" devs... that is fine. there is a market there im sure. but it just means i will no longer be buying their games.

lol

as always, such a useful contribution from you

You can thank all those bloody sjw for that.

i doubt even the LGBT community likes social justice warriors... they are annoying to most people

Romance options are the last thing I would use to judge if the world is believable or not.

That is completely untrue. DA2 was a lot more forceful with romance options. The characters in DA 2 were definitely a lot more upfront about their sexuality. In fact, one of the characters in DA2 would lose your approval if you denied him as a romance. I personally thought that was stupid. The characters in DA:I don't ever try to make a move on you without warning. The romance options are there, but it's not like they try to hide them. It's very easy to not select them if you don't want to romance a specific character. I don't see the big deal here. Everything about this thread just sounds like petty bickering.

Does it really matter? The ratio of straight to LGBT?

But yes, Pushing romances on players is annoying and one reason I have learned to stay the hell away from BioWare games. How about, from now on, it is the player that initiates romances, not the NPC through dialogue options placed on the side.

Because everyone knows gay people don't exist...

So the story is ruined if an NPC hits on the player? Why?

-Byshop

Way to completely miss my point, statistically there is a slim chance of a character being gay if it was based on real life demographics. There are only 9 companions after all.

You didn't make your point, you just said there would be no gay romance option and offered no explanation as to why. As to your point, it doesn't even make sense. If one out of one hundred people are gay, you don't have to know one hundred people to meet one gay one. Besides that, it's a fantasy world with dragons and magic. How likely it is in this world is up to the writers of this world.

-Byshop

Which is exactly what I went on to say in my post that you decided to omit for some reason.

-THAT- is untrue. the romance options literally pop up when the conversation doesnt even have anything to do with romance. in DA2, you had to take the conversation there before you started getting romance responses.

in DAI, the moment you try to express any sort of concern or say something nice to another character, BOOM, *romance option*

It was like that in DA2. You didn't have to work for them like you are implying. One moment you would be having a normal conversation and then a romance option would appear.

You are free to ignore the option if you want. It's actually better design to always have the option there. If you grow attached to a character later in the story, you can romance them later without missing the opportunity. This is smart considering that DA:I is a bigger came compared to the previous entries. It's not like Bioware is trying to trick you into romance, so why is it such a big deal? They put it off to the opposite side so you don't accidently hit it with the regular dialogue.

I really don't get what the big deal is. You aren't forced to do the romances, so why worry about them?

the big deal is it seems like pandering rather than actual character design.... bioware is known for the later, and not the former.... and character design is one of the most important aspects of a good RPG. its a mark on Bioware's integrity as a developer, and a good reason for people to not just buy their games on face value.

Give me an example of where it sacrifices character design. Because Dragon Age: Inquisition is the best Dragon Age yet IMO, and I'm not seeing any compromises in the designs of the characters.

making the vast majority of characters bisexual? are you kidding? you cant just make a character bisexual on a whim. sexuality is a large part of human identity. when you are trying to make believable characters.... having everyone just be bisexual for gameplay purposes just breaks the believability of it all.

yes, the gameplay is fun.... but in an RPG, story and characters are 50% of the experience..... some might say even greater. if you dont have believable characters, it is a problem.

How is that a sacrifice? What does it matter if they're bisexual or straight if you don't choose the romance option for them? I don't care what you find believable. That's not the point here. You are claiming that character design is affected by Bioware's practices. Nothing about the characters change if you don't select the romance option. So if you aren't bisexual, WHAT DOES IT MATTER? You aren't being forced to play a bisexual character, nor a gay character. In fact, the characters don't act any differently than they did before if you don't choose the romance option.

This is extremely trivial, even for your standards.

yes, it does matter if they are bisexual or straight, even if you dont choose the romance options for that character.... because whether you choose it or not, they are still that sexuality. AND, the characters regularly bring up their bisexual tendencies in flavor conversations even when you do NOT choose romance options. as i said, i can particularly cite atleast 3 separate conversations with leliana and josephine where they elaborate on their *flings* minus their "small clothes".

so yes, it DOES matter. it is part of that character's identity. you saying it doesnt matter, means you dont care about story. if you are one of those "gameplay is king" types of people, that is fine. however, a lot of bioware fans find story atleast as important as gameplay, if not more so. i certainly play their games more for the story than anything else about the game. knowing a character's sexuality affects your perception of that character. If i am a straight man, i am -probably- naturally going to gravitate toward straight women. if i am a bisexual man, i will probably gravitate towards straight or bisexual women and bisexual or gay men. it is basic human psychology. we like to be with people that are similar to us... and that extends to RPGs where you are playing a character.

So there is no sacrifice. Got it. No, it doesn't matter because it doesn't affect the game you are playing. The only way it would affect the game is if you are a bigot.

yes, it does affect the game im playing, because i play the game for story, and the characters are part of the story.

and you dont have to be a bigot to not want to get with someone that is bisexual. you are such an idiot. go scamper back to your SJW friends.

And the fact that some characters are bisexual, gay or straight has no bearing on the story. The only time it has any bearing is when/if you pick a romance option. So if you pick a romance option with a straight character, the sexual proclivities of the other characters are meaningless.

I never said that. You are a bigot, however, if the reason that this bothers you so much is because these characters are gay, bisexual, straight or transgendered. Before you call someone an idiot you should really make sure you understand exactly what that person is saying.

Honestly the only problem I have with this (same goes for DA2) is the game throws at me far more flirting with the same sex than it ever does with the opposite sex..

I didn't buy it because I knew it would be shit. This is not a problem for me.

This... there is no further debate, this is all about what the player wants... not what image of "Story" you have in your head.

./facepalm I thought I wouldn't bother but here I am reading this...

FANTASY universe.... if they want to make it a coincidence that most of your companions do not bide by REAL WORLD STATISTICS and are infact capable of loving both sexes for the right person then wtf is the problem seriously? this is nitpicking at its finest.

All demographics of players will play this game from different sexual perspectives.... all of them will "Fancy" certain characters and naturally want to romance the ones they choose... not the ones that are more likely to fit into a lesbian/gay stereotype and marketed as "the one for them".

The lack of forced 1-way sexuality on companions does the game from a role-playing perspective more justice for the player than any poxy "believable character(in a fantasy realm LOL)" nitpick you can come up with.

The sexuality of a character is important to the story? Unless their sexuality has a huge impact on the story their sexuality is meaningless.

Furthermore, the high amount of bisexual characters is a silly point, just because something is statistically unlikely doesn't mean it cannot happen. The Big Bang was an extremely unlikely event, yet it happened. The probability of an individual obtaining positive genes that will help them survive and pass on these favorable genes to the next generation, also unlikely. The fact that we humans in our current state, ended up as we are, also extremely unlikely. The fact that you were born to humans and not say a fruit flies, also extremely unlikely. Dont write stuff off because they are improbable. As a matter of fact, the improbable are more extraordinary, and the extraordinary makes for interesting storytelling.

The fact is, the straight to LGBT ratio is statistically possible and doesnt make the story less believable.

I never said the story is ruined.

so you are saying that everyone in dragon age should just be gay... because it would make for more interesting story telling? because everyone being gay is highly improbable and therefore more extraordinary and therefore more interesting?

uh... huh. because everything being the same is more interesting than everything being different. right.

dear god... your arguments get more asinine by the minute. what else should i expect from you, airshocker.... really. you have the unique ability to completely overlook the entire point of a thread, formulate your own reality, and then make it sound like everyone else is an idiot because they dont see it the same way as you.

first of all, you dont even understand what the term bigot means. you are not a bigot if something bothers you, or you dont agree with something. intolerance =/= not agreeing with something. it is much bigger than that. only you and your SJW friends take that hard of a line with it. you are just trying to be an asshole for the sake of being an asshole... and i think we all perfectly understand that you are...indeed... an ASSHOLE at this point. no need to prove it to us.

second, the topic of the thread was not that they are bisexual/gay. it was that the vast majority of the cast is bisexual/gay, and that results in the impression that the writers are trying to pander to that community and make their game look "PC"... rather than writing characters in a way that is actually believable and not marketing related. also, that the game basically forces you to confront that these characters are indeed bisexual by regularly having them speak about their bisexual encounters.... rather than just having them romance able by either sex for gameplay purposes for the sake of choice.

please, pull your head out.... its tiring having to argue with you.

No. But I am saying that they dont have to follow the ordinary when it comes to sexuality. The DA:I characters are extraordinary from the rest of their universe in other ways.

All I am saying is, they can have whatever sexuality they want. To be honest, giving a shit about their sexuality implies immaturity and insecurity on your part.

The fact that you have resorted to name calling (SJW), shows that you have lost the debate and thread.

You really do just like to post a lot of bullshit, don't you? Congrats, you got me to read your post of nonsense.

First off, I'm not calling you a bigot. I'm giving an example of bigotry. So I'm not sure where you're getting this SJW nonsense from, other than your seeming incapability to read and understand basic english.

I've already explained to you why it doesn't matter what the characters sexualities are. I'm not going to repeat myself just because you don't want to read.

@cyloninside: >playing anything from Bioware or EA

I can't believe people actually care enough to argue over the romance options in a Bioware game, but at least for me, the novelty of these in-game "romances" (gay, straight, or otherwise) wore thin a long time ago.

I second this. I'll also add that I can't believe people gave BioWare slack because they didn't have gay characters in the past. Who freaking cares? Let them create whatever they want to create.

They are only bi if you're the same sex as them and you romance them. It's called player choice. If you don't like it, only romance characters of the opposite sex, problem solved...

I don't care for romance in RPGs at all, straight or otherwise.

Yeah, let BioWare create what they want to create. Afterall, they have the right to. That said, not that I see why anyone would bother with romance options in BioWare games, they are almost always terrible being on the same level as twilight. The last time I bothered with a romance in a BioWare game was Mass Effect, and that was only to see how bad the actual romances were.

Not that it bothers me, it is clear that I am waaay to distant from BioWare's target audience.

I will say here that if you already know that BioWare's writers have a crap-ton of libertarian agenda which you don't like and still played the game anyway, you deserve the scorn coming your way for complaining about how the story shoe-horns you into scenarios involving sexual orientations.