I wonder how differently the game would have been received if the gay content was tied to an orientation selection at the character creation screen. Adding in content that has strong real world views tied to it will always cause controversy. Many gamers play games to escape the real world for a couple hours, so they will be opposed to real world topics creeping into that escape. That is especially true when it comes to a subject like homosexuality, since so many would feel muzzled about it in the real world. Any mention of their views on the subject are met with harassment or arguments, as if they are not allowed to have an opinion of their own. Then when they encounter it in a game, they are not even given an opportunity to express their real views. They are forced to choose from one of the options that a writer decided to give them, none of which would be how they really feel. When that happens, they lash out at people who support the game, at the company that made the game, or at the game itself. Hence hating on ME3. I understand BioWare's desire to include ingame romance options for all of it's fans, but how they're going about that sucks. All they're succeeding in doing is alienating one portion of their fanbase rather than another. There are ways they could avoid alienating anyone, like the method I mentioned at the start of this comment.
@liam72 I'd have to disagree. Someone who eats until they are so heavy they can't even stand up due to weighing so much has chosen to get to that point. They would have seen it in a mirror, been told by their doctor, and experienced trouble moving around before they ever got there. Since these exact same people can lose the weight and become mobile again (of which there have been numerous instances), it was a choice for them to allow themselves to get to that point. The same would go for abusers (I was referring to physical abuse, like spousal abuse). There are techniques for controlling anger, therapy to find the roots of anger, etc. For that person to not to restrain themself or seek help, and instead go on abusing others, that is a choice to do so. As I said in my other comment, I wasn't wading into the choice/not choice debate. My mention of those negative choices was only to show that plenty of people make choices that carry negative social repercussions, so the argument that no one would choose something because it would make them an outsider isn't accurate.
@Lamachina You hit the nail on the head. And it appears BioWare is making the exact same mistake with the "everyone is bi" thing again this time. With how negative of a reaction that generated last time, I wouldn't have thought they'd do that again. A simple way to avoid it would be to just add an orientation selection at character creation.
@Derpalon While I'm not going to debate the choice/not choice argument (I've already weighed in on that with my earlier comment in which I quoted a famous gay individual stating she chose her gay relationship), your reasoning would only work if people only ever made choices that are beneficial to themselves... something that absolutely is not the case. If people never made choices that carried negative social repercussions, we wouldn't have people who eat to the point of being so heavy they are unable to stand. Or people who dress in ways that make them outcasts. Or people who self-harm. Or people who stay with an abuser. Or people who behave as abusers themselves. Or people who experiment with drugs. Or people who drop out of high school, etc etc etc. The premise that something cannot be a choice because no one would choose to put themselves in a bad situation simply does not line up with human behaviour.
@wizardboyus If you're familiar with Cynthia Nixon (from 'Sex and the City'), she claims that she is in her gay relationship by choice. She made a lot of people angry by saying that, but she insists it was her choice. To quote her: It is premature to state that it is the way people are born, because science hasn't substantiated that claim. It has found evidence that indicates that there are more factors than conscious choice playing a role, but that is quite different from something inborn.
Ultimately I think the Narrative settings BioWare has added into the game will have a greater impact on interactive storytelling than ME3's homosexual relationships, considering we've already seen such relationships in the first 2 games (though not male-male), and in other game franchises (like The Sims). The Narrative settings are something new, and if activated, put interactive storytelling at a higher importance than the gameplay. That has the potential to be far more revolutionary than homosexual relationships, because if it catches on, developers would need to create stories that would be capable of standing on their own. @dakkafex If you're familiar with Cynthia Nixon (of 'Sex and the City' fame), she claims that she did choose to be gay She's angered a lot of people by saying that, but she insists that for her it was a choice. She isn't saying that it's a choice for everyone, and neither am I, but if she is to be believed than it isn't necessarily a situation of "either you are or you aren't".
Hepler does have valid point. There have been numerous games that I've gotten sick of halfway through, but drudged through the remaining gameplay just to finish the story. For those games I would certainly have used some kind of fast forward option to just see the story. However, the danger lies in how over-simplifying games by adding in a function that could be used not to advance the narrative, but to instead bypass challenging sequences. To use Ninja Gaiden as an example, I died repeatedly in one specific battle. When I finally beat it, it was a "YES! TAKE THAT!" moment, as if I told the game screw you. It was very satisfying. But there would be some players who would have bypassed that had the option been available. That would have defeated the whole point of the game's difficulty. That being said, I never actually finished Ninja Gaiden. Not because it became too hard, but because I got bored of it. So it would be a real catch-22. On one hand it would most definitely be abused to eliminate any challenge, but on the other hand it would be beneficial when the player simply loses interest in the gameplay but not the story. She didn't say anything worth people getting so angry over though. It seems as though the internet is becoming less a place to share ideas, and more a place for people to use their anonymity to vent their frustrations on strangers. There is no way these people would have been so abusive to her in person.
Moviegoers who reveal too much about a movie’s plot in a review on their blogs, or gamers who upload gameplay walkthroughs containing “spoilers” would also fall under the bill’s reach. It would essentially give corporations the power to determine what the public can say about the content the corporation produces, by providing them with the legal tools to shut down access to any website that discusses their content without written permission.
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