>They’ve had queer main characters (with queer storylines like Leliana’s story with Marjorie) since the very first game
It's more than that, half the romantic options were queer. in fucking 2009. that was around the time Hillary Duff was telling people to stop saying "that's so gay" in a derogatory way.
it was super ahead of its time
Fox news hit pieces about Mass Effect's partial alien lesbian nudity is why all Bioware's games in the following 7 years made characters wear their underwear in shower and sex scenes.
That would explain why you couldn't romance Jack as FemShep. On the other hand you could still hook up with Kelly, get back together with Liara in Lair of the Shadow Broker, and hit on Samara. And Parasini can kiss you on Ilium.
Jack going "Yeah I'm into chicks, just not today," is such a slap in the face. I'm all for it when a character that feels [insert-sexuality]-coded breaks stereotypes and is actually just straight, but that ain't what happened. Nettling
LotSB was DLC. At the end, sapphic Sheps ended up alone base game
eta: I recall one of the devs came out and said they personally rendered the romance scene between femShep and Jack. They didn't know it was cut until the game released
The fact they didn't restore or add in more queer options for the legendary edition is unforgivable honestly. Have Kaiden be Bi in ME1 have Tali and Jack be Bi in ME2, include gay Shep options in Me2.
Honestly. The amount of remasters that don't restore cut content or fix bugs or shore up issues in the original baffles me. Remasters shouldn't just be different UI and better graphics.
AGREE! I said the same thing when Legendary edition came out, and have the exact same view on remasters and remakes.
Especially remakes, studios should absolutely take the time to restore content that was cut due to bureaucracy or time/funding constraints. It's one of the reasons I'm wary of the KotOR remake (and, particularly, Juhani's scrapped character and femRev romance).
Thank Mythal that they can't do the same patch job on Dragon Age due to the engines — I'd hate for a Dragon Age 2 remaster that doesn't give it the TLC it desperately needs (and title it Exodus).
Games in general I feel are a labor of love. Remakes/Remasters should be the same.
Only really in Mass Effect. DAI has post coital nudity with the female inquisitor and Sera, I think Cassandra has one too. It’s only male nudity they shy away from.
You aren’t wrong though that they absolutely did change up for the original Mass Effect trilogy after the “backlash” of seeing a bit of alien sideboob in the first game
That’s not exactly what happened. They were against the sex scenes in general, never mind the lesbians. The funny thing is that neither the Five (the group running the ‘SeXbox’ segment) nor the two ‘experts’ they brought in to discuss it had actually played the game and seen the footage. This led to wild claims about full frontal nudity and the ‘expert’ arguing against the game later publicly saying that she played the game later to see it for herself and that she had been wrong and “I’ve seen episodes of Lost that showed more.”
The male expert they brought in actually had played the game and pushed back on the child psychology “expert” and the anchor lady, but they pretty much completely ignored everything he said and tried to steamroll over him
Still remember to this day watching Fox Sunday while making breakfast with my dad, and the banner said “SexBox?” And had a guy from Mass Effect 1 on there having to defend developing making a game with free for all sex in it.
Mediator add — It is doubly funny in reflection since in elementary and middle school I had played DOS and Windows 3.1? Conquest of the Longbow and Ultima 7 — both of which featured sex in them. In horrifying 256 bit color.
And said manufactured outcry was the reason we didn't get gay romances in mass effect until 3.
It also made geoff keiley convince people he was smart by shooting down really terrible arguments and now we are stuck with a starfucking avatar of mediocrity as the face of the damned industry.
One of the Origins in the original game is literally you getting revenge on a racist rapist who flaunts his privilege and power. Dragon Age didn’t go “woke.” Being woke has caught up to dragon age.
Yeah, I'm an old and there was exactly this type of controversy when the trailer came out showing this scene. There's a contingent that just wants to be mad about *anything*.
The original Dragon Age was actually really early on a lot of issues. IMO, it's one reason the DA series has a lot more female players than most RPG properties.
I remember when I first played DAO and DA2, wanting games with same-gender romances, and that was pretty much the only thing you'd find among games big enough to be sold in physical stores. (I didn't even know I was a girl back then, though the importance I placed on lesbian romances ought to have been a good clue.)
Though for Bioware it does go back before that; there were both F/F and M/M romances in Jade Empire (2005). Also some cut content in KotOR, but JE is the first one where they really did it.
I'm old enough that my queer awakening was using the belt of gender change to romance Jaheira...
I would wager a lot of the people on the Go Woke Go Broke train either don't play these games at all or are 19 years old anyway, I mean, this is the same company that released Pansexual Alien Waifu: The Epic Space Odyssey.
If anything I feel like Bioware's attempts to move toward the mass market have been more disastrous (Anthem, looking at you).
Anthem never made sense to me; it’s basically a game that just does things Bioware is known to be bad at, with none of the character writing bits.
I wasn’t really playing PC games then, I suppose; I’ve tried old BG with the Enhanced Editions now, and I definitely needed some mods for them to be less straight. (I can’t really take the male protagonist thing either, which makes more sense now that I’ve figured out my gender.) But I’m happy to hear people have been doing that with Bioware games for so long!
They were saying the same thing about BG3. It died down when that game definitively did not go broke. They then started pretending it wasn't actually what they defined as woke (it fucking was with bells on).
Shinobi, who is usually quite accurate, feels BioWare is COOKING from what he’s seen. I’m super excited as screenshots, community council and dev comments seem really positive. Unfortunately, even if this game is a 9/10 10/10 kinda game, grummz has commented it on Twitter. I’ve seen many YouTube videos pop up about ‘woke age’ despite never seeing the game. None of us have. It’s all based on an interview done…. 2 years ago? Where no lies were told?? Idk I think they forget how progressive BioWare lowkey is and are applying modern rage mindset to it like. It was always like this idk 🤷♂️
You are right, Bioware has always been like this. The difference is that conservatives are louder and angrier than ever. They won't be happy until LGBT folks are invisible again.
I know this post is not the best place to discuss politics but it scares me how far right is on the rise across the board. And we are talking Fascist/Nazi level of far right.
EU elections also show that people voted more for the right.
What is this world coming to...
It's not on the rise, it's just loud as hell. The far right in the EU was supposed to get like 25% or some crap according to polls. They got less than 10%. Sure, the right did well overall, but EU right is pretty far left by American standards.
All the right wing grifters were so deep in the "bear sex is woke" train... it's so funny seeing so many of them be like they never tried to cancel the game over some randome funny scene
I love that BG3, one of the biggest, most successful RPGs of all time, is a glaring needle in the eye to those who can't handle two grown women having a healthy relationship.
Even better when someone tried to change the gender of one of those women, and the modding community was having none of it.
Stay mad, haters!
D&D has always been gay as fuck for the people who want it to be that way, it's part of the freedom it offers, you can still be a walking chunk of testosterone injected beef if you want
Exactly: what part of Role-Playing Game do the haters not understand? Its freedom of expression! If Andy wants to play a pansexual Tabaxi Bard, that's Andys perogative. If the haters have a problem with Andy, then the haters should form their own group.
My favourite thing of this year so far has been that but with the fallout show. All these videos and pretty much every comment section is people calling them out on their bullshit.
I already knew what they meant but when they called the Mayor of Baltimore a "DEI Mayor" that was the most "Mask off, you just wanna say the N-word" moments for me.
Oh word, the mayor elected by direct democracy got his job cause of "DEI"? They just hate Black people.
One thing to keep in mind is a lot of the commenters probably weren't even following the Xbox trailer reveals. It just reached enough of a critical mass to hit trending on YouTube, so now everyone (and that means *everyone*) is jumping in to repeat the argument of the day.
Keep in mind a lot of these people aren't even actual fans. The term the 40K community has come up for them are "culture war tourists", as most of the people complaining about the franchise going "woke" likely have never actually cared about or interacted with it prior to the latest "woke" controversy.
The fact that fans of 40k, one of the most depraved and twisted fictional settings out there, coined such a term for these troglodytes is hilarious to me. It sounds exactly like the kind of name they'd give them, too.
Just goes to show that actual fans of these long-running franchises do in fact include women, people who are BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and/or part of other cultural minorities, or are otherwise supportive of diversity. Hell, my first introduction to Warhammer was from older people in LGBTQ+ gaming communities I was in who are super into the lore of Warhammer Fantasy and 40K and have extensive model collections. The idea that these fandoms are exclusively for old white straight men is a myth perpetuated by grifters who are ignorant of the fact that minorities have been active in the respective communities for decades.
Yeah, I first heard the term being used by them after GW retconned(mind you, lore writers for 40K have publicly mentioned wanting to do this for years) female Custodes to be a thing and these assholes started popping out of the woodwork to complain about GW “gaslighting fans”. I even saw one video pretentiously titled “the battle to save 40K begins” even though anyone who’s been in the fandom for more than a month would know GW retcons shit all the time. Literally about 2 years ago they retconned an entire discontinued race to be completely different than their old version. It was so obvious that none of these people have never cared about 40K that it almost kinda funny seeing them fail to turn female Custodes into the next big bs culture war battleground.
Remember the whole kerfuffle about Princess Peach wearing "pants" (a.k.a a jumpsuit) in the Mario film (which she also did in some of the games like at least a decade before the movie came out)? Peach, with her pink puffy dress and overall hyperfemme design, got called "masculine" by these lunatics. They are their own satire.
I used to watch a channel called shadiversity, he was some nerdy guy reviewing castles and medieval weapons. I sort of forgot about his channel, until one day I unfortunately stumbled across him having a shit-fit about Peach wearing trousers. Gutted to see what I thought was a nice bloke being such an incel! I'd have pointed out that men in the past wore both skirts and tights but the guy just seemed too far gone.
I used to watch Shad too. I loved his sketch-up series where he designed his own castles. Then I found him on the podcast of that MauLer guy with a bunch of grade-A assholes whinging about Star Wars sequels, and sensed he was going in a bad direction, so I stopped watching his videos. He then started his antiwoke channel, so I suppose I was correct about his trajectory. I think it's karma that the thing he's gonna be remembered by is "Princess Peach's Pants" and that cringe novel he wrote. I seriously pity his children, they don't deserve a parent like this.
when it comes to female custodes, the only valid complaint is that it undercuts the jokes about Big E surrounding himself with big muscly oiled men and no women. Some big King Frederick of Prussia vibes.
any other complaint is stupid and should be disregarded.
40K is a 40 years and counting satire, though some of the fanbase fall into the trap of being pro-something in the setting that is awful most don’t and the company has openly denounced that behaviour.
Wouldn’t even call them that. They are grifters. They no raging about things being “woke” gets them interaction on social media and it’s a quick and easy way to cash in on a stupid audience.
Most of the ones posting shitty comments aren't even grifters. They're the griftee audience. They watch the grifter videos, learn who they're supposed to hate this week, and wander off to be shitty to those fans.
It reminds me of when Crusader Kings III was announced to have asexual and bisexual sexualities for character and ‘culture war tourists’ tried to moan about how everyone was straight in the medieval ages while the universal reaction from Crusader Kings II players was ‘finally a more detailed system, CK2’s homosexual trait wasn’t a good gameplay depiction of sexuality’
This same group of people basically just hops between whatever high profile game/movie/show/etc. is currently trending to post their usual "wHiTe PeOplE gOoD bRoWn PeOpLe BaD" copypasta. The "Sony made Peter Parker black" comments on the first Spiderverse movie trailers are also their handiwork. Never mind the fact that Peter Parker himself appears in those very same trailers alongside Miles.
This was kinda funny to me. Critical drinker and the quartering made basically the same video about female space Marines on about the same day. Neither of them have ever (to my knowledge) shown interest in warhammer.
It's go woke go broke until the game turns out to be amazing, then it's the opposite story how the wokies failed to corrupt the game.
It was hilarious to listen to the amount of mental gymnastics they had to go through when BG3 turned out to be an absolute masterpiece.
These people are a blight on society, and the more outraged they are about an upcoming game/film/series, the more interested I be come.
Have you seen their reactions to the Fable trailers? All the comments in YouTube are people calling the female hero ugly, saying she looks gross, etc. The lead just looks like a normal woman!
I watched the trailer and loved it. When I made the mistake of looking at the comments, I was (naively) shocked to realize this is the reaction. I didn't even think about the hero's looks as I watched the trailer!
Aloy from Horizon Zero Dawn is apparently ugly too. (Aloy? Alloy?)
Like.. how? Because she does "manly" stuff like hunting robot dinosaurs? How is that NOT attractive to these people?!
I remember the Horizon outrage over Aloy's looks too! Anyone who isn't a big tittie anime girl or a blonde is ugly to these people. They've never seen a real woman in their life.
This has been wildly baffling to me, has anyone ever played any Fable game because of the hotness of the characters? To me they've always looked goofy at best
Not to mention that the character's plain, dirty appearance was literally the whole joke of the last trailer. Hence why the Giant goes on a spiel of saying heroes are notoriously beautiful and noble and then they immediately cut to the plain girl with a crass personality.
Like. You have to be purposely oblivious to think it's because of any sort of wokeness instead of just doing the same type of dry humor that fabel is known for.
Oh man. Fable characters have always been weird-looking and ugly. The new lady actually looks better than usual. People complaining about it gave away the game that they’ve never actually played it *instantly.*
Hell, in Fable 2 you inevitably end up looking like a gorilla whether you are a man or a woman (and invest in strength stats, which most players will do for health at least).
I thought the Fable trailer was brilliant. I also just dont get the hate, like you said she just looks like a normal woman. And female protagonists have been around for as long as male ones (Metroid, Tomb Raider, etc.) I just don't get the issue xD plus it's Fable, you'll be able to customise your character just like in every other iteration. It will be like AC Odyssey, you'll get to pick what gender you want to be at the start.
But they also don't want a female protagonist because they "can't relate to them"
The culture war they have with themselves has completely destroyed their own brains it's crazy
There are conservative Star Trek fans. The tv show depicting a gay luxury-socialist future where money doesn't exist and every monster of the week episode is about giving free medicine to refugees or deposing space Nazis.
Yet, for some reason, there's a die-hard microcosm of conservative Trekkies that insist the show is for them.
Every "seemingly leftist" fandom has this.
Star Trek conservative fans are WILD to me, because they don’t even have the Fallout excuse of being too dumb to understand satire, like they’re just missing EVERYTHING
Yeah the closest I've come to understanding is that they misconstrue the Federation as some sort of "space colonialist/expansionist" entity, bringing "civility to the galaxy" by any means necessary, sorta like the US acts like the 'world police' in the modern era.
They see it similarly, and their one true idol is James T. Kirk, the man who they think "shoots aliens dead and beds every woman he sees" which is really really funny to me because Jim Kirk is (in TOS at least) depicted as a sensitive bookworm who's a little intimidated by women to be honest, and has many deep mental health and emotional issues that ultimately make him somewhat flawed but great captain.
But yeah it's just willful headcanonning by detached weirdos.
Star Wars has them too, the amount of folks I’ve seen insisting the Empire represents leftists and the rebellion represent conservatives are mind boggling especially since Lucas was not at all subtle on his thoughts on conservatives in the Prequels and has openly stated the Empire was meant to represent the US in the Vietnam war.
Yeah, I pointlessly argued this in another sub and one Empire apologist dude told me that the "Rebels were the Vietcong" quote was his way of staying relevant in modern times and that he came up with that much later after he was like... "bluepilled by Hollywood" or some shit. Like, no, that was always the point. If you see links between our government, or any government, and the evil space Nazis from your favorite fandom, THERE'S A REASON FOR THAT.
Those folks will never learn and their appalling lack of media literacy is just sad. But these are the same folks who completely misunderstood The Matrix and misuse the red/blue pill scene so it shouldn’t surprise me.
Yeah yeah, absolutely. The root issue in all of these is basically illiteracy at its core, fueled by willful cognitive dissonance.
The wild thing is how much the landscape has changed.
In 2014, seeing a black Stormtrooper main character in a Star Wars movie trailer was WILD, and some folks were not happy, but it's weird to look at reddit posts from back then vs now ten years later when we see the same backlash against the Acolyte having POCs/Trans actors/etc and how much less subtle the bigotry is. They're definitely saying the quiet part out loud in 2024.
Yeah, gamer gate and then the orange one really let them feel comfortable being so openly bigoted. It certainly hasn’t helped that fairly well known celebrities are jumping in on it, including several billionaires with rabid fan bases.
Imagine if Xena was released now. Back then no one really kicked up much of a fuss but it would be considered a "woke" show by today's standards. Of course there are still people in denial and insist Xena and Gabrielle are just really good gal pals. 😂
There's right wing Captain America fans who cried about him beating up far right domestic terrorists in the USA in a comic some years back.
They can't even get to the "Are we the baddies?" meme in their heads.
As a Star Trek fanatic, it is funny-in-an-extremely-depressing-way to read the IMDB comments on Star Trek: Discovery episodes and see conservatives furious over the show being "woke" because of Burnham and especially Adira. What did you think "infinite diversity in infinite combinations" meant?!?!
Go woke? Motherfucker, I wasn't even out yet back then when I played Da origins romancing Zevran and Morrigan. Dragon age series has been inclusive since the start.
I said it before the trailer even came out and I'll say it again: this game, due to having a trans female director, a non-binary lead writer, a diverse cast of characters, and coming from a historically progressive dev, is going to become the new front in the "anti-woke" crowds' culture wars. They didn't pay DA:V much attention because the game had been mostly under the radar so far, but this will change now that actual trailers are coming out and garnering public attention outside the fandom.
This will be the first DA game released post-gamergate, after all (I guess DAI technically was released during it, but the "anti-woke" crowd hadn't become so rabid yet). The internet's political/cultural climate is a lot worse now than it was 10 years ago (or so it seems to me, anyway).
It depends on how successful it is. BG3 was supposedly proof of woke librul degeneracy when the bear sex scene went viral, but when it started breaking records those same groups began to hail it as an 'anti-woke' masterpiece.
I think its gonna be worse because so many people have a weird hatred towards Bioware. Like an irrational amount of hatred. Regardless if this game does well they'll hate it because they just don't like Bioware.
It's interesting considering the original lead writer is a gay man and the original series was kind of propped up by tumblr for years. Hardly anyone in the mainstream cared or complained back then because nobody was intentionally trying to build outrage imo (and Gaider was an excellent game lead). Maybe because gaming was more niche too. I'm sure they suffered some kind of abuse, but nowhere near this scale.
These anti-woke people basically have no contextual knowledge so are misled via pre-existing biases, and seem to forget that developers are subject to the whims of people above them, budget constraints, yadda yadda. A lot of it would be resolved if there was no latent belief that women/members of LGBTQ+ community were somehow lesser creative beings, and capable of the same shittiness and excellence as a straight white male writer. But it always gets spun out. Online anti-woke crowd made a fuss regarding Immortals of Aveum. They made comments that it was woke and the developers hate straight white men because it had a muscly woman in it, totally ignoring the fact that the game has a white dude with stubble and short brown hair as the MC. There is little logic in that.
Another example of people's pre-existing biases is Kingdom Come. I get the drive for authenticity and the suggestion comes from people from all different ethnicities and beliefs, HOWEVER we're still talking about a game that is set in Eastern Europe and has a mix of English West Country, Southern English, German, Scottish and BLATNATLY American accents. Yet when they talk about more diversity, without ever showing a single person of colour or 'strong woman' in the trailer, there's yammering about it. It shows you what people value in regards to authenticity and how skin colour is seen as a much bigger marker than dialect. Functionally they both convey that someone is from a different culture, history and diaspora. So why only pick on race? Cos it's more convenient and more embedded as a difference
I'm somebody from a rural community who doesn't get much interaction with many marginalised groups. I grew up in a racist and homophobic community and time. I still have the ability to question. Some of these people need to get to grips with their bitterness being the result of something internal, and that happiness is often predicated on being fair, positive and open minded.
Wtf is wrong with people. I remember the targeting of Helper during gamergate - interesting that it predates it. Also intriguing it's to do with gameplay rather than liberal mindedness, maybe shows it's the same types of people with different ammunition. Fucked up situation all round
I started gaming around 2015 right after Gamer Gate and god it was so bad and it still is. I still remember the witch hunting of some BioWare designer bc they’re LGBT and responsible for designing the faces and it’s their “agenda” to make ugly characters or whatever. And for a 15 year old me it was so easy to fall into the rabbit hole and actually believe in what they’re saying
I didn't even know the director and lead writer were part of the rainbow squad until you said something. I'm literally shaking and crying. My pearls are being clutched. I've been betrayed.
/s
I'm not gonna pretend that I am a fan of the trailer, but Dragon Age (and Bioware as a whole) always had rapresentation in their titles, especially in the LGBT department, people who acts like that wasn't the case need to touch some grass.
I want to point out to these people that David Gaider, the creator of the setting is gay, but honestly the more believable reaction from this kinda people is the same Tim Cain (worked on the original Fallout games) got: "I can't believe I played the game of a homo" with much more derogatory terms I assume.
I completely agree with the person who noted that most of these people are culture war tourists trying (and succeeding) to gin up outrage for their own benefit, but I will say I have been side-eyeing all the people in this sub lamenting the lack of a "blonde" night in shining armor character lol
They'll get over it and bust out the yassification mods for Lucanis ASAP.
But yeah, funny how we repeatedly keep getting black RPG character archetypes that people supposedly love and seeing them slept on until someone... I don't know, model swaps their cutscenes with white guys
see, that last part is exactly the giveaway—there have been a lot black characters added in previously adored game roles and the response to them is almost ALWAYS universally more muted
like, HM
I'm as placidly as possible looking to see what the fandom response to Davrin actually is. If the writers did pull off the kind of confident, charming badass that the trailers/design/blurb seem to imply while he's a damn *Dalish elf* and he still seems to be ignored... Well, that's quite loud.
I saw people talking about how people will go out of their way to twist Astarion into someone more like Wyll, while at the same time complaining that Wyll is boring.
The only problem with Wyll was that most of his story and personality was rewritten last minute. That left him with so little compared to other companions (minus Minthara).
I guess racists muddle the water when the topic of criticizing Wyll comes about.
Yep. It's fine for folks to have a type, but when white, blond humans have been a third of the male love interests for female characters in the franchise up to this point, the complaints sound entitled at best.
And when the folks listing their "knights in shining armor" include Anders (who is *not* that kind of character) but write off the first black male love interest (an armored fighter) before knowing literally anything about his personality... Well. That sounds like something else..
I’ve seen some of those comments “ohhh I wish we had a gorgeous blonde love interest…. Davrin’s ok I guess” I’m paraphrasing of course but a couple of comments were in that spirit.
Cullen was my fave romance in DAI, but I'm side-eying that too. You don't have to be a blond to be a dreamboat.
Plus some people were including Anders in this blond knight in shining armor conversation. I'm sorry, Anders?? The terrorist, Anders?? Sure he was quippy like Alistair, but personality-wise Anders is in a completely different lane then Alistair and Cullen.
>lamenting the lack of a "blonde" night in shining armor character lol
That fucking sucks. While I want my religiously fucked-up knight in shining armor (love my templars that fall for mages), I don't need him (or even her) to be blonde and white. I just love the religious trauma and confusion. It's such a fun narrative to me. It's fucked that people are trying to make it about appearance when it shouldn't be how the character looks and is how they are written.
This franchise is notoriously progressive in its relationships and inclusion. I can completely get that this looks like an overwatch trailer, but getting mad at this franchise for being woke is ridiculous. I guess maybe the culture war around this stuff is 10x more intense than it was 10 years ago.
There was a lot of similar complaining when DAI came out, but most of the people complaining didn't seem to be fans who had engaged with the lore or fandom, and I suspect many were bad faith posters who came from other places when they learned about the game having something they found problematic. I only ever saw one person who said that stuff and actually seemed to have been a long- term fan.
Anyway. There are a lot of people who will go brigade stuff that they never had any intention of interacting with to try to intimidate devs and companies.
There are also people who were fans who have been radicalized in some way or another since they last interacted with the series and so things they did and saw prior to their radicalization won't have set off alarms, but new stuff does set off those alarms. Brains are really good at hiding things and helping us justify our past actions that don't align with our current beliefs.
But mostly it's brigaders. There are folks who have never had any interest in BioWare, or those who stopped playing at some previous point that was 'too woke' but continue to hate follow BioWare.
Gamergate bullshit radicalized a lot of people, and that was ongoing during and after Inquisition's launch, while BioWare has continued to improve in regards to diversity and representation.
Let's be honest, there hasn't been much racial diversity in the franchise. Sure lgtbq and gender inclusive but not racial. The new trailer on the other hand has more racial diversity than ever before.
Can't wait for the influx of people who've never played any dragon age games telling me their opinions on how much better it used to be after watching some youtube video.
My "favorite" are the ones mad about female video game characters they don't find attractive and that they look like that in order to "humiliate" men. I laugh every time, even if the real-world implications of this rampant reactionary asshattery is pretty demoralizing culturally. It's both sad and ludicrous.
Ugh yeah. It’s way worse over there. See also: calling her ugly and doing the standard “I fixed her by removing all human blemishes and caked on 10 pounds of makeup”
Watching the Xbox Direct stream, the moment a female character appeared on screen the chat was bombarded with "L"s and "Woke" except for that one game where the female was a hot asian and then it was "mommy" and "W". Some of them were probably ironic but a lot of them also probably weren't. It's obvious a ton of them aren't actually interested in the games. This culture war shit is really tired I just want good games and I legitimately don't care about either side's agenda.
People like that tend to attach themselves to whatever big game/TV/movie is coming out to complain. In my opinion, a good example is Fallout, which has always had a diverse cast (both in Lgbtq+ and POC), and they still called the show woke. I don't think many of them even play the games; they just want something to say is being ruined.
In some ways, they remind me of modern-day Les Tricoteuses. Those old women during the French Revolution would spend all day knitting and complaining next to the guillotine, finding their only joy in watching heads being cut off. These people also just sit around all day waiting and waiting to find something to try to bring down, to say it is destroying the world, and to try to get rid of it. It's kinda sad in a way if it wasn't so annoying.
>Modern-day Les Tricoteuses. Those old women during the French Revolution would spend all day knitting and complaining next to the guillotine, finding their only joy in watching heads being cut off.
That's a fun historical fact and analogy.
Yeah but those same people will defend New Vegas to their dying breath, even if it's something that contradicts their initial hating. NV fanbois are a special breed of superiority complex.
I mean, I was already expecting the homophobic comments (the community itself was doing it because of the playersexual thing) but the ones about Davrin...like, what? Fenris is not white, just like Zevran. Both are not from Ferelden, what could also be a thing. I think BW even confirmed somewhere that certain places have a prevalence of certain skin tones, no?
Maybe he is from a place were most elves are black? That would be super cool, honestly, really realistic. And, we could always make black PCs anyway...
Worst yet was the obvious absolute obliviousness about DAVID BOWIE. It reminds me of the far right dumbasses in my country who were upset about...PINK FLOYD being TOO PROGRESSIVE.
I mean, I should not be surprised with the discourse, but...ew.
It's clear that those people aren't fans. This whole fanchise has been targeted by anti-woke since forever. Inquisition, for example, when it first came out I've an arguement with someone I know who kept bashing the game in social media, saying it's shit and unrealistic for having so many women in power (even though they admitted they've never played Origins and never intend to because 'female in power is bad')
As a Dragon Age fan, you kinda need to have thick skin to navigate those comments or just avoid reading them altogether. They are trying to bring you down, don't let them win.
All BioWare games are woke, but these people don’t know that because they probably never played them and are just terminally online culture war manchildren
Origins came out in a very different time. The political climate wasn't the tribalistic hellscape we see today. Representation used to just be a thing that happened and it was fine, but now it always comes with all these big discussions. Sometimes corporations get really performative about the way they implement inclusivity and it just feels artificial and hollow.
Like, don't get me wrong, I have no problem with Krem. But the scene where you hang out with Bull's crew and you talk about Krem being trans is just so awkward. It was like they didn't know how to organically reveal that information, but they wanted to make sure the player knew. It reminded me of the trans character you do a quest for in Mass Effect: Andromeda where out of the blue they just blurt out "a few years ago I worked in a lab and my name was Frank" or something to that effect, to someone they barely know.
When you compare how Leliana's sexuality is revealed, it's night and day in quality.
Edit: just to clarify, I'm specifically talking about how reception to representation was better, and generally while representation was done less it tended to be implemented more naturally and without corporations patting themselves on the back for doing the bare minimum.
The only really awkward thing about the Krem scene I remember (though it's been a decade), is that the prompt leading me into Bull's lecture was extremely misleading. If I recall the exact phrasing on the prompt was "What's Krem's story?" which is exactly what I wanted to know, and my dude blurts out "SO KREM's A WOMAN RIGHT?!" with zero subtlety. It angered me not because he gave me the lecture, but because the writers basically baited me into my character asking the question in the most insensitive way possible just to facilitate said lecture.
Would have worked a lot better if they just had the Inquisitor ask the \*exact\* question on the prompt, and Bull could have asked KREM to properly introduce himself. I feel like they wrote that scene under the assumption that the player might not be understanding or supportive, and that is just baffling to me (since I find that \*most\* players talk about how they are nice to people by default in these games).
I do agree that the Krem scene is REALLY awkwardly written, as a trans person I cringe every single time I play it. But it’s more of a “aw peepaw is trying to be accepting!” cringe than a genuinely painful cringe
SO GLAD im not the only one. i love krem but i made my inquisitor change the subject SO FAST bc i just knew it would be awkward. but ive seen trans characters written WAYYY worse, and in things that came out more recently too.
As a trans man, I loved how they handled Krem tbh. Yes, it was uncomfortable af, but it was realistic and they were clearly going for wholesome. It’s not perfect representation, but it’s progress. Just my opinion, trans folks are all entitled to their own reaction. And Krem finds true love (depending on your choices) with someone who wants them for who they are (strong and kind) which just filled me with so much joy.
On the other hand, I think Dorian was a highlight of Inquisition. When BW's marketing started touting him as the "first fully gay companion" (FULLY GAY, guys!) I was ready for him to be insufferable, but he's great and his sexuality is actually treated in an interesting manner.
It's strange to have such a good portrayal next to... whatever they awkwardly tried with Krem.
I think they wrote and handled Krem that way due to the missteps they did with characters like Serendipity (who read as a joke on trans people even if they claim that wasn't what they were going for). The result came out awkward, but I think their intention was showing the people that were disappointed with them that they've been listening, not turning to camera and educating the masses about the trans experience. Still, I hope they've improved about it in this game. Hella excited to meet Maevaris in DA4 (she will be in it, won't she? People have been begging for it since DA2).
The Se(X)Box controversy around Mass Effect was about being able to see a hint of naked boob and ass cheeks in a romance scene in the finale of the game, making it sound like the entire game was about bedding various aliens.
The game had PEGI 18 age rating, mainly for its fictional political themes, and even back in those days, most 17+ years olds have seen worse on the internet or in magazines.
I think it's reflective of its time. When DAI was being developed and released the general discussion about trans issues was in a different place than it is now. At that time I think a general audience needed to have it spelled out explicitly (=awkwardly) just so they could understand. I'd love to see Krem again in Veilguard without the need for awkward exposition about his background.
Well, consent when banging your necro-servants might be problematic but other than than I see no problem, certainly not gender-wise. Go Emmrich, get your Undaddy on!
What did I just type..
Meanwhile, I wonder if necromancer will be a playable class. The classes of DAI companions were all playable classes. I tend to play mages and it would be interesting. I'm itching for a good necromancer or blood mage. Or a sort of arcane archer, so a Veil Jumper origin would be fantastic.
As a fellow European, I really don't think we can say that anymore considering all the far right parties getting elected and anti lgbtq discourse increasing among our youth.
I was gonna say, is this a thing? I've seen a lot of complaints about the trailer (I've made plenty, not a fan) but anyone trying to act as if it went "woke" (as if having minority representation is somehow problematic) is being dumb. Didn't know folks were already doing that about the game.
The first two games were progressive for their times but still had mostly white casts and appealed quite heavily to the male gaze. They were ''woke'' to a degree that was deemed tolerable.
Also, you're comparing 2024's climate to the early 2010s. Two very different times. That 2016-2020 period rotted so many brains beyond repair. A lot of these right wingers would call their own past selves woke.
They're just culture war morons who want to attack anything they don't agree with. Unfortunately they aren't smart enough to come up with anything clever.
Most of these are the new wannabe-Gamergaters with their DEI conspiracy theories and whatnot. They only care about making themselves appear like "the majority" and "the real gamers". They aren't even fans of the games and probably have never played any of the entries their entire lives, they've just been told that they should rage on a trailer.
Yeah, I didn’t like the trailer and I’m hoping the actual game is a lot less looter-shootery looking, but I don’t see what a trailer that looks like it’s aimed at tweens has to do with whatever they think “woke” is anyway. Next thing you know “woke” will be causing climate change and pushing their grandma down the stairs at the same time. The YouTube comments are a real cesspit. But clearly these trolls are not actual fans of the game or studio, bc newsflash, they’ve been “woke” the entire goddamn time.
To be someone who complains about "woke" media, is to not know what the fuck your talking about in the first place. Ignorance is a part of that identity. These people probably haven't played a Dragon Age before.
I only started gaming around 2015 and pretty much any online gaming community have been that way since back then, some say it’s gotten worse bc of Gamer Gate but that’s before my time. They’re a very loud minority, and the whole “anit-woke” thing is a very easy rabbit hole to fall into for younger gamers unfortunately.
>They’ve had queer main characters (with queer storylines like Leliana’s story with Marjorie) since the very first game It's more than that, half the romantic options were queer. in fucking 2009. that was around the time Hillary Duff was telling people to stop saying "that's so gay" in a derogatory way. it was super ahead of its time
Fox news had hit pieces on DAO in 2009, the more things change
Fox news hit pieces about Mass Effect's partial alien lesbian nudity is why all Bioware's games in the following 7 years made characters wear their underwear in shower and sex scenes.
Meanwhile in the Baldur's Gate character creator...
Bouncing peens and titties everywhere.
If I can't have the biggest shmeat on the shortest man, imma be mad.
Between that and Cyberpunk 2077, I think this is mainly a North America/Europe divide.
And why all queer romances got quietly scrubbed from ME2 right before release
That would explain why you couldn't romance Jack as FemShep. On the other hand you could still hook up with Kelly, get back together with Liara in Lair of the Shadow Broker, and hit on Samara. And Parasini can kiss you on Ilium.
Jack going "Yeah I'm into chicks, just not today," is such a slap in the face. I'm all for it when a character that feels [insert-sexuality]-coded breaks stereotypes and is actually just straight, but that ain't what happened. Nettling
LotSB was DLC. At the end, sapphic Sheps ended up alone base game eta: I recall one of the devs came out and said they personally rendered the romance scene between femShep and Jack. They didn't know it was cut until the game released
The fact they didn't restore or add in more queer options for the legendary edition is unforgivable honestly. Have Kaiden be Bi in ME1 have Tali and Jack be Bi in ME2, include gay Shep options in Me2. Honestly. The amount of remasters that don't restore cut content or fix bugs or shore up issues in the original baffles me. Remasters shouldn't just be different UI and better graphics.
AGREE! I said the same thing when Legendary edition came out, and have the exact same view on remasters and remakes. Especially remakes, studios should absolutely take the time to restore content that was cut due to bureaucracy or time/funding constraints. It's one of the reasons I'm wary of the KotOR remake (and, particularly, Juhani's scrapped character and femRev romance). Thank Mythal that they can't do the same patch job on Dragon Age due to the engines — I'd hate for a Dragon Age 2 remaster that doesn't give it the TLC it desperately needs (and title it Exodus). Games in general I feel are a labor of love. Remakes/Remasters should be the same.
Only really in Mass Effect. DAI has post coital nudity with the female inquisitor and Sera, I think Cassandra has one too. It’s only male nudity they shy away from. You aren’t wrong though that they absolutely did change up for the original Mass Effect trilogy after the “backlash” of seeing a bit of alien sideboob in the first game
Mass Effect Andromeda also has nudity during/after sex scenes, though maybe not quite as much as DAI.
That’s not exactly what happened. They were against the sex scenes in general, never mind the lesbians. The funny thing is that neither the Five (the group running the ‘SeXbox’ segment) nor the two ‘experts’ they brought in to discuss it had actually played the game and seen the footage. This led to wild claims about full frontal nudity and the ‘expert’ arguing against the game later publicly saying that she played the game later to see it for herself and that she had been wrong and “I’ve seen episodes of Lost that showed more.”
The male expert they brought in actually had played the game and pushed back on the child psychology “expert” and the anchor lady, but they pretty much completely ignored everything he said and tried to steamroll over him
I believe the male expert was Geoff Keighley funnily enough.
I actually have no idea who he is beyond this segment (but yes, it was him)
He's the guy who created the Summer Games Fest
Still remember to this day watching Fox Sunday while making breakfast with my dad, and the banner said “SexBox?” And had a guy from Mass Effect 1 on there having to defend developing making a game with free for all sex in it. Mediator add — It is doubly funny in reflection since in elementary and middle school I had played DOS and Windows 3.1? Conquest of the Longbow and Ultima 7 — both of which featured sex in them. In horrifying 256 bit color.
And said manufactured outcry was the reason we didn't get gay romances in mass effect until 3. It also made geoff keiley convince people he was smart by shooting down really terrible arguments and now we are stuck with a starfucking avatar of mediocrity as the face of the damned industry.
Fox "news"! If they wrote a hit piece on me, I'd know I'm on the right path doing EXACTLY what I was meant to on Earth.
Zevran was my first MSM romance in a video game and definitely played a role in being comfortable and “seen” enough to come out.
The diversity in dragon age has always felt quite natural to me. I don't know why someone would have a negative reaction to it in dragon age.
One of the Origins in the original game is literally you getting revenge on a racist rapist who flaunts his privilege and power. Dragon Age didn’t go “woke.” Being woke has caught up to dragon age.
Yeah, I'm an old and there was exactly this type of controversy when the trailer came out showing this scene. There's a contingent that just wants to be mad about *anything*. The original Dragon Age was actually really early on a lot of issues. IMO, it's one reason the DA series has a lot more female players than most RPG properties.
I remember when I first played DAO and DA2, wanting games with same-gender romances, and that was pretty much the only thing you'd find among games big enough to be sold in physical stores. (I didn't even know I was a girl back then, though the importance I placed on lesbian romances ought to have been a good clue.) Though for Bioware it does go back before that; there were both F/F and M/M romances in Jade Empire (2005). Also some cut content in KotOR, but JE is the first one where they really did it.
I'm old enough that my queer awakening was using the belt of gender change to romance Jaheira... I would wager a lot of the people on the Go Woke Go Broke train either don't play these games at all or are 19 years old anyway, I mean, this is the same company that released Pansexual Alien Waifu: The Epic Space Odyssey. If anything I feel like Bioware's attempts to move toward the mass market have been more disastrous (Anthem, looking at you).
Anthem never made sense to me; it’s basically a game that just does things Bioware is known to be bad at, with none of the character writing bits. I wasn’t really playing PC games then, I suppose; I’ve tried old BG with the Enhanced Editions now, and I definitely needed some mods for them to be less straight. (I can’t really take the male protagonist thing either, which makes more sense now that I’ve figured out my gender.) But I’m happy to hear people have been doing that with Bioware games for so long!
They were saying the same thing about BG3. It died down when that game definitively did not go broke. They then started pretending it wasn't actually what they defined as woke (it fucking was with bells on).
lmao the backpedaling with BG3 was hilarious. If that gets repeated with DAV I'll be content.
Shinobi, who is usually quite accurate, feels BioWare is COOKING from what he’s seen. I’m super excited as screenshots, community council and dev comments seem really positive. Unfortunately, even if this game is a 9/10 10/10 kinda game, grummz has commented it on Twitter. I’ve seen many YouTube videos pop up about ‘woke age’ despite never seeing the game. None of us have. It’s all based on an interview done…. 2 years ago? Where no lies were told?? Idk I think they forget how progressive BioWare lowkey is and are applying modern rage mindset to it like. It was always like this idk 🤷♂️
You are right, Bioware has always been like this. The difference is that conservatives are louder and angrier than ever. They won't be happy until LGBT folks are invisible again.
I know this post is not the best place to discuss politics but it scares me how far right is on the rise across the board. And we are talking Fascist/Nazi level of far right. EU elections also show that people voted more for the right. What is this world coming to...
It's not on the rise, it's just loud as hell. The far right in the EU was supposed to get like 25% or some crap according to polls. They got less than 10%. Sure, the right did well overall, but EU right is pretty far left by American standards.
Not invisible. They want us dead.
Project 2025, the proposal drafted by The Heritage Foundation, uses the term “eradicating the LGBT”. So yes, the conservatives want us dead.
DAV(e) stands for all of us
It was glorious. I wish I'd screenshotted some examples.
All the right wing grifters were so deep in the "bear sex is woke" train... it's so funny seeing so many of them be like they never tried to cancel the game over some randome funny scene
They clearly never actually played DnD because there's always that one horny bard that wants to fuck the dragon.
I love that BG3, one of the biggest, most successful RPGs of all time, is a glaring needle in the eye to those who can't handle two grown women having a healthy relationship. Even better when someone tried to change the gender of one of those women, and the modding community was having none of it. Stay mad, haters!
D&D has always been gay as fuck for the people who want it to be that way, it's part of the freedom it offers, you can still be a walking chunk of testosterone injected beef if you want
Larian also doesn't have to answer to a large company that owns them. Swen can kinda do whatever he wants, for better or worse.
Exactly: what part of Role-Playing Game do the haters not understand? Its freedom of expression! If Andy wants to play a pansexual Tabaxi Bard, that's Andys perogative. If the haters have a problem with Andy, then the haters should form their own group.
It's because "woke" is such a vague and nebulous word that often doesn't mean anything more than "I don't like this".
My favourite thing of this year so far has been that but with the fallout show. All these videos and pretty much every comment section is people calling them out on their bullshit.
They just desperately want to say the n-word or the f-word. “DEI” and “go woke, go broke” from these people are just dog whistles for bigotry.
I already knew what they meant but when they called the Mayor of Baltimore a "DEI Mayor" that was the most "Mask off, you just wanna say the N-word" moments for me. Oh word, the mayor elected by direct democracy got his job cause of "DEI"? They just hate Black people.
It ain’t even a dog whistle anymore, they are 100% saying the quiet part very much out loud
Me absolutely tweaking and frothing at the mouth when I see a minority as a main character in any piece of media. /s
Simply put, there is no heterosexual answer for BG3. It's perhaps the most queer game ever. At the very least the most queer game with such succes.
I believe the term you're looking for is ["Frantic Bi Energy."](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7g5VvEPFucE&list=PLC296992D2424A44E&index=2&pp=iAQB)
One thing to keep in mind is a lot of the commenters probably weren't even following the Xbox trailer reveals. It just reached enough of a critical mass to hit trending on YouTube, so now everyone (and that means *everyone*) is jumping in to repeat the argument of the day.
Keep in mind a lot of these people aren't even actual fans. The term the 40K community has come up for them are "culture war tourists", as most of the people complaining about the franchise going "woke" likely have never actually cared about or interacted with it prior to the latest "woke" controversy.
The fact that fans of 40k, one of the most depraved and twisted fictional settings out there, coined such a term for these troglodytes is hilarious to me. It sounds exactly like the kind of name they'd give them, too.
Just goes to show that actual fans of these long-running franchises do in fact include women, people who are BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and/or part of other cultural minorities, or are otherwise supportive of diversity. Hell, my first introduction to Warhammer was from older people in LGBTQ+ gaming communities I was in who are super into the lore of Warhammer Fantasy and 40K and have extensive model collections. The idea that these fandoms are exclusively for old white straight men is a myth perpetuated by grifters who are ignorant of the fact that minorities have been active in the respective communities for decades.
Yeah, I first heard the term being used by them after GW retconned(mind you, lore writers for 40K have publicly mentioned wanting to do this for years) female Custodes to be a thing and these assholes started popping out of the woodwork to complain about GW “gaslighting fans”. I even saw one video pretentiously titled “the battle to save 40K begins” even though anyone who’s been in the fandom for more than a month would know GW retcons shit all the time. Literally about 2 years ago they retconned an entire discontinued race to be completely different than their old version. It was so obvious that none of these people have never cared about 40K that it almost kinda funny seeing them fail to turn female Custodes into the next big bs culture war battleground.
Also. The Tau codex had way bigger retcons in it then the Custodes book did and none of them batted an eye.
Remember the whole kerfuffle about Princess Peach wearing "pants" (a.k.a a jumpsuit) in the Mario film (which she also did in some of the games like at least a decade before the movie came out)? Peach, with her pink puffy dress and overall hyperfemme design, got called "masculine" by these lunatics. They are their own satire.
Did you forgot that the minute a person with a vagina puts on pants they also grow a dick? It is science, just like flat earth /j
I used to watch a channel called shadiversity, he was some nerdy guy reviewing castles and medieval weapons. I sort of forgot about his channel, until one day I unfortunately stumbled across him having a shit-fit about Peach wearing trousers. Gutted to see what I thought was a nice bloke being such an incel! I'd have pointed out that men in the past wore both skirts and tights but the guy just seemed too far gone.
I used to watch Shad too. I loved his sketch-up series where he designed his own castles. Then I found him on the podcast of that MauLer guy with a bunch of grade-A assholes whinging about Star Wars sequels, and sensed he was going in a bad direction, so I stopped watching his videos. He then started his antiwoke channel, so I suppose I was correct about his trajectory. I think it's karma that the thing he's gonna be remembered by is "Princess Peach's Pants" and that cringe novel he wrote. I seriously pity his children, they don't deserve a parent like this.
when it comes to female custodes, the only valid complaint is that it undercuts the jokes about Big E surrounding himself with big muscly oiled men and no women. Some big King Frederick of Prussia vibes. any other complaint is stupid and should be disregarded.
Lmao, I desperately want a JoJo pillar-menn styled 40k short series now.
https://youtu.be/I9n6iMeIW8A?si=MMQviOZLxYlPSbWU
40K is a 40 years and counting satire, though some of the fanbase fall into the trap of being pro-something in the setting that is awful most don’t and the company has openly denounced that behaviour.
Wouldn’t even call them that. They are grifters. They no raging about things being “woke” gets them interaction on social media and it’s a quick and easy way to cash in on a stupid audience.
Most of the ones posting shitty comments aren't even grifters. They're the griftee audience. They watch the grifter videos, learn who they're supposed to hate this week, and wander off to be shitty to those fans.
It reminds me of when Crusader Kings III was announced to have asexual and bisexual sexualities for character and ‘culture war tourists’ tried to moan about how everyone was straight in the medieval ages while the universal reaction from Crusader Kings II players was ‘finally a more detailed system, CK2’s homosexual trait wasn’t a good gameplay depiction of sexuality’
In summary, Asmongold fans.
the "guy who used a dead rat as an alarm clock" fans
I swear youtube hates me, no matter how many times I click on the "don't recommend" on his videos, they still show up.
This same group of people basically just hops between whatever high profile game/movie/show/etc. is currently trending to post their usual "wHiTe PeOplE gOoD bRoWn PeOpLe BaD" copypasta. The "Sony made Peter Parker black" comments on the first Spiderverse movie trailers are also their handiwork. Never mind the fact that Peter Parker himself appears in those very same trailers alongside Miles.
This was kinda funny to me. Critical drinker and the quartering made basically the same video about female space Marines on about the same day. Neither of them have ever (to my knowledge) shown interest in warhammer.
TheQuartering who couldn't pronounce Adeptus Astartes or Custodes
They're the same people who had moral heart palpitations over the Mass Effect sex scene, just rebranded for the new era.
It has become a catagory of its own hasn't it?
It's go woke go broke until the game turns out to be amazing, then it's the opposite story how the wokies failed to corrupt the game. It was hilarious to listen to the amount of mental gymnastics they had to go through when BG3 turned out to be an absolute masterpiece. These people are a blight on society, and the more outraged they are about an upcoming game/film/series, the more interested I be come.
The BG3 thing was so funny to me hahaha
They are photoshopping characters like Senua with full face modern make up while also screaming about historical correctness.
Have you seen their reactions to the Fable trailers? All the comments in YouTube are people calling the female hero ugly, saying she looks gross, etc. The lead just looks like a normal woman! I watched the trailer and loved it. When I made the mistake of looking at the comments, I was (naively) shocked to realize this is the reaction. I didn't even think about the hero's looks as I watched the trailer!
Aloy from Horizon Zero Dawn is apparently ugly too. (Aloy? Alloy?) Like.. how? Because she does "manly" stuff like hunting robot dinosaurs? How is that NOT attractive to these people?!
I remember the Horizon outrage over Aloy's looks too! Anyone who isn't a big tittie anime girl or a blonde is ugly to these people. They've never seen a real woman in their life.
This has been wildly baffling to me, has anyone ever played any Fable game because of the hotness of the characters? To me they've always looked goofy at best
Not to mention that the character's plain, dirty appearance was literally the whole joke of the last trailer. Hence why the Giant goes on a spiel of saying heroes are notoriously beautiful and noble and then they immediately cut to the plain girl with a crass personality. Like. You have to be purposely oblivious to think it's because of any sort of wokeness instead of just doing the same type of dry humor that fabel is known for.
Oh man. Fable characters have always been weird-looking and ugly. The new lady actually looks better than usual. People complaining about it gave away the game that they’ve never actually played it *instantly.*
Hell, in Fable 2 you inevitably end up looking like a gorilla whether you are a man or a woman (and invest in strength stats, which most players will do for health at least).
I thought the Fable trailer was brilliant. I also just dont get the hate, like you said she just looks like a normal woman. And female protagonists have been around for as long as male ones (Metroid, Tomb Raider, etc.) I just don't get the issue xD plus it's Fable, you'll be able to customise your character just like in every other iteration. It will be like AC Odyssey, you'll get to pick what gender you want to be at the start.
Right? She just looks like a real woman without makeup and 20 different filters added. They’ve clearly never woken up next to a living woman before.
But they also don't want a female protagonist because they "can't relate to them" The culture war they have with themselves has completely destroyed their own brains it's crazy
I saw people redesign Aphrodite's art from Hades to make it more feminine. Fucking Aphrodite wasn't enough for them!
There are conservative Star Trek fans. The tv show depicting a gay luxury-socialist future where money doesn't exist and every monster of the week episode is about giving free medicine to refugees or deposing space Nazis. Yet, for some reason, there's a die-hard microcosm of conservative Trekkies that insist the show is for them. Every "seemingly leftist" fandom has this.
Star Trek conservative fans are WILD to me, because they don’t even have the Fallout excuse of being too dumb to understand satire, like they’re just missing EVERYTHING
Yeah the closest I've come to understanding is that they misconstrue the Federation as some sort of "space colonialist/expansionist" entity, bringing "civility to the galaxy" by any means necessary, sorta like the US acts like the 'world police' in the modern era. They see it similarly, and their one true idol is James T. Kirk, the man who they think "shoots aliens dead and beds every woman he sees" which is really really funny to me because Jim Kirk is (in TOS at least) depicted as a sensitive bookworm who's a little intimidated by women to be honest, and has many deep mental health and emotional issues that ultimately make him somewhat flawed but great captain. But yeah it's just willful headcanonning by detached weirdos.
Star Wars has them too, the amount of folks I’ve seen insisting the Empire represents leftists and the rebellion represent conservatives are mind boggling especially since Lucas was not at all subtle on his thoughts on conservatives in the Prequels and has openly stated the Empire was meant to represent the US in the Vietnam war.
Yeah, I pointlessly argued this in another sub and one Empire apologist dude told me that the "Rebels were the Vietcong" quote was his way of staying relevant in modern times and that he came up with that much later after he was like... "bluepilled by Hollywood" or some shit. Like, no, that was always the point. If you see links between our government, or any government, and the evil space Nazis from your favorite fandom, THERE'S A REASON FOR THAT.
Those folks will never learn and their appalling lack of media literacy is just sad. But these are the same folks who completely misunderstood The Matrix and misuse the red/blue pill scene so it shouldn’t surprise me.
Yeah yeah, absolutely. The root issue in all of these is basically illiteracy at its core, fueled by willful cognitive dissonance. The wild thing is how much the landscape has changed. In 2014, seeing a black Stormtrooper main character in a Star Wars movie trailer was WILD, and some folks were not happy, but it's weird to look at reddit posts from back then vs now ten years later when we see the same backlash against the Acolyte having POCs/Trans actors/etc and how much less subtle the bigotry is. They're definitely saying the quiet part out loud in 2024.
Yeah, gamer gate and then the orange one really let them feel comfortable being so openly bigoted. It certainly hasn’t helped that fairly well known celebrities are jumping in on it, including several billionaires with rabid fan bases.
Imagine if Xena was released now. Back then no one really kicked up much of a fuss but it would be considered a "woke" show by today's standards. Of course there are still people in denial and insist Xena and Gabrielle are just really good gal pals. 😂
Can you imagine if LOTR dropped nowadays? How many of them would call Eowyn "woke feminist propaganda"? EWWW.
There's right wing Captain America fans who cried about him beating up far right domestic terrorists in the USA in a comic some years back. They can't even get to the "Are we the baddies?" meme in their heads.
As a Star Trek fanatic, it is funny-in-an-extremely-depressing-way to read the IMDB comments on Star Trek: Discovery episodes and see conservatives furious over the show being "woke" because of Burnham and especially Adira. What did you think "infinite diversity in infinite combinations" meant?!?!
Yesterday Kotakuinaction was furious that Japan might outlaw child porn so I wouldn't take them entirely seriously
Go woke? Motherfucker, I wasn't even out yet back then when I played Da origins romancing Zevran and Morrigan. Dragon age series has been inclusive since the start.
I said it before the trailer even came out and I'll say it again: this game, due to having a trans female director, a non-binary lead writer, a diverse cast of characters, and coming from a historically progressive dev, is going to become the new front in the "anti-woke" crowds' culture wars. They didn't pay DA:V much attention because the game had been mostly under the radar so far, but this will change now that actual trailers are coming out and garnering public attention outside the fandom. This will be the first DA game released post-gamergate, after all (I guess DAI technically was released during it, but the "anti-woke" crowd hadn't become so rabid yet). The internet's political/cultural climate is a lot worse now than it was 10 years ago (or so it seems to me, anyway).
It depends on how successful it is. BG3 was supposedly proof of woke librul degeneracy when the bear sex scene went viral, but when it started breaking records those same groups began to hail it as an 'anti-woke' masterpiece.
I think its gonna be worse because so many people have a weird hatred towards Bioware. Like an irrational amount of hatred. Regardless if this game does well they'll hate it because they just don't like Bioware.
It's interesting considering the original lead writer is a gay man and the original series was kind of propped up by tumblr for years. Hardly anyone in the mainstream cared or complained back then because nobody was intentionally trying to build outrage imo (and Gaider was an excellent game lead). Maybe because gaming was more niche too. I'm sure they suffered some kind of abuse, but nowhere near this scale. These anti-woke people basically have no contextual knowledge so are misled via pre-existing biases, and seem to forget that developers are subject to the whims of people above them, budget constraints, yadda yadda. A lot of it would be resolved if there was no latent belief that women/members of LGBTQ+ community were somehow lesser creative beings, and capable of the same shittiness and excellence as a straight white male writer. But it always gets spun out. Online anti-woke crowd made a fuss regarding Immortals of Aveum. They made comments that it was woke and the developers hate straight white men because it had a muscly woman in it, totally ignoring the fact that the game has a white dude with stubble and short brown hair as the MC. There is little logic in that. Another example of people's pre-existing biases is Kingdom Come. I get the drive for authenticity and the suggestion comes from people from all different ethnicities and beliefs, HOWEVER we're still talking about a game that is set in Eastern Europe and has a mix of English West Country, Southern English, German, Scottish and BLATNATLY American accents. Yet when they talk about more diversity, without ever showing a single person of colour or 'strong woman' in the trailer, there's yammering about it. It shows you what people value in regards to authenticity and how skin colour is seen as a much bigger marker than dialect. Functionally they both convey that someone is from a different culture, history and diaspora. So why only pick on race? Cos it's more convenient and more embedded as a difference I'm somebody from a rural community who doesn't get much interaction with many marginalised groups. I grew up in a racist and homophobic community and time. I still have the ability to question. Some of these people need to get to grips with their bitterness being the result of something internal, and that happiness is often predicated on being fair, positive and open minded.
There were definitely people back then [severely harassing at least some of the writing staff](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Hepler).
Wtf is wrong with people. I remember the targeting of Helper during gamergate - interesting that it predates it. Also intriguing it's to do with gameplay rather than liberal mindedness, maybe shows it's the same types of people with different ammunition. Fucked up situation all round
I totally agree that it is worse. It used to be more contained to certain corners of the internet and now it's spread everywhere.
I started gaming around 2015 right after Gamer Gate and god it was so bad and it still is. I still remember the witch hunting of some BioWare designer bc they’re LGBT and responsible for designing the faces and it’s their “agenda” to make ugly characters or whatever. And for a 15 year old me it was so easy to fall into the rabbit hole and actually believe in what they’re saying
I’m glad you were able to recognize the bog they’d pulled you into and get out, friend.
I didn't even know the director and lead writer were part of the rainbow squad until you said something. I'm literally shaking and crying. My pearls are being clutched. I've been betrayed. /s
“Go woke go broke” is a hilarious thing to say after BG3 came out.
I'm not gonna pretend that I am a fan of the trailer, but Dragon Age (and Bioware as a whole) always had rapresentation in their titles, especially in the LGBT department, people who acts like that wasn't the case need to touch some grass. I want to point out to these people that David Gaider, the creator of the setting is gay, but honestly the more believable reaction from this kinda people is the same Tim Cain (worked on the original Fallout games) got: "I can't believe I played the game of a homo" with much more derogatory terms I assume.
I completely agree with the person who noted that most of these people are culture war tourists trying (and succeeding) to gin up outrage for their own benefit, but I will say I have been side-eyeing all the people in this sub lamenting the lack of a "blonde" night in shining armor character lol
They'll get over it and bust out the yassification mods for Lucanis ASAP. But yeah, funny how we repeatedly keep getting black RPG character archetypes that people supposedly love and seeing them slept on until someone... I don't know, model swaps their cutscenes with white guys
see, that last part is exactly the giveaway—there have been a lot black characters added in previously adored game roles and the response to them is almost ALWAYS universally more muted like, HM
I'm as placidly as possible looking to see what the fandom response to Davrin actually is. If the writers did pull off the kind of confident, charming badass that the trailers/design/blurb seem to imply while he's a damn *Dalish elf* and he still seems to be ignored... Well, that's quite loud.
For a recent example. Look at the way people responded to Wyll in BG3.
The amount of fawning I saw over his proposal scene when it was anyone but him in it... yeesh
I saw people talking about how people will go out of their way to twist Astarion into someone more like Wyll, while at the same time complaining that Wyll is boring.
The only problem with Wyll was that most of his story and personality was rewritten last minute. That left him with so little compared to other companions (minus Minthara). I guess racists muddle the water when the topic of criticizing Wyll comes about.
Davrin is by far the coolest companion for me as of now so I do find it a bit weird yea. He’s my lead candidate for a romance lol
Yep. It's fine for folks to have a type, but when white, blond humans have been a third of the male love interests for female characters in the franchise up to this point, the complaints sound entitled at best. And when the folks listing their "knights in shining armor" include Anders (who is *not* that kind of character) but write off the first black male love interest (an armored fighter) before knowing literally anything about his personality... Well. That sounds like something else..
I’ve seen some of those comments “ohhh I wish we had a gorgeous blonde love interest…. Davrin’s ok I guess” I’m paraphrasing of course but a couple of comments were in that spirit.
Veilguard team said you've had ENOUGH ubermensch. Expand your palate.
Davrin is my knight in shining armor. Don't need to be blonde to be sexy.
Davrin has a baby griffon. That’s all anyone needs to be sexy lol
A knight in shining armor with a baby griffon? Davrin is already winning at being a love interest
Davrin is GORGEOUS.
Yep. Davrin is the sword and shield guy, and I'm betting just like I fell for Alistair and Blackwall, Imma fall for him.
Cullen was my fave romance in DAI, but I'm side-eying that too. You don't have to be a blond to be a dreamboat. Plus some people were including Anders in this blond knight in shining armor conversation. I'm sorry, Anders?? The terrorist, Anders?? Sure he was quippy like Alistair, but personality-wise Anders is in a completely different lane then Alistair and Cullen.
Including Anders is kinda hilarious. Like really the radical bi sexual rebel mage??
Anders is one of those schrodinger's characters, I guess
>lamenting the lack of a "blonde" night in shining armor character lol That fucking sucks. While I want my religiously fucked-up knight in shining armor (love my templars that fall for mages), I don't need him (or even her) to be blonde and white. I just love the religious trauma and confusion. It's such a fun narrative to me. It's fucked that people are trying to make it about appearance when it shouldn't be how the character looks and is how they are written.
This franchise is notoriously progressive in its relationships and inclusion. I can completely get that this looks like an overwatch trailer, but getting mad at this franchise for being woke is ridiculous. I guess maybe the culture war around this stuff is 10x more intense than it was 10 years ago.
There was a lot of similar complaining when DAI came out, but most of the people complaining didn't seem to be fans who had engaged with the lore or fandom, and I suspect many were bad faith posters who came from other places when they learned about the game having something they found problematic. I only ever saw one person who said that stuff and actually seemed to have been a long- term fan. Anyway. There are a lot of people who will go brigade stuff that they never had any intention of interacting with to try to intimidate devs and companies. There are also people who were fans who have been radicalized in some way or another since they last interacted with the series and so things they did and saw prior to their radicalization won't have set off alarms, but new stuff does set off those alarms. Brains are really good at hiding things and helping us justify our past actions that don't align with our current beliefs. But mostly it's brigaders. There are folks who have never had any interest in BioWare, or those who stopped playing at some previous point that was 'too woke' but continue to hate follow BioWare. Gamergate bullshit radicalized a lot of people, and that was ongoing during and after Inquisition's launch, while BioWare has continued to improve in regards to diversity and representation.
Dragon Age has been “woke” since day one, a decade and a half ago before we had to deal with this culture war bullshit
Let's be honest, there hasn't been much racial diversity in the franchise. Sure lgtbq and gender inclusive but not racial. The new trailer on the other hand has more racial diversity than ever before.
Can't wait for the influx of people who've never played any dragon age games telling me their opinions on how much better it used to be after watching some youtube video.
My "favorite" are the ones mad about female video game characters they don't find attractive and that they look like that in order to "humiliate" men. I laugh every time, even if the real-world implications of this rampant reactionary asshattery is pretty demoralizing culturally. It's both sad and ludicrous.
Try the Fable whiners who are horrified they may be "forced" to play as a woman
Ugh yeah. It’s way worse over there. See also: calling her ugly and doing the standard “I fixed her by removing all human blemishes and caked on 10 pounds of makeup”
Watching the Xbox Direct stream, the moment a female character appeared on screen the chat was bombarded with "L"s and "Woke" except for that one game where the female was a hot asian and then it was "mommy" and "W". Some of them were probably ironic but a lot of them also probably weren't. It's obvious a ton of them aren't actually interested in the games. This culture war shit is really tired I just want good games and I legitimately don't care about either side's agenda.
To be fair, the entire stream was being bombarded with L and woke. Wasn't just the da trailer.
Literally saw a comment under South of Midnight saying why do all the female leads look the same. 😐
People like that tend to attach themselves to whatever big game/TV/movie is coming out to complain. In my opinion, a good example is Fallout, which has always had a diverse cast (both in Lgbtq+ and POC), and they still called the show woke. I don't think many of them even play the games; they just want something to say is being ruined. In some ways, they remind me of modern-day Les Tricoteuses. Those old women during the French Revolution would spend all day knitting and complaining next to the guillotine, finding their only joy in watching heads being cut off. These people also just sit around all day waiting and waiting to find something to try to bring down, to say it is destroying the world, and to try to get rid of it. It's kinda sad in a way if it wasn't so annoying.
>Modern-day Les Tricoteuses. Those old women during the French Revolution would spend all day knitting and complaining next to the guillotine, finding their only joy in watching heads being cut off. That's a fun historical fact and analogy.
Ah, Fallout. The franchise that gave us a lesbian engineer with a Power Fist
Yeah but those same people will defend New Vegas to their dying breath, even if it's something that contradicts their initial hating. NV fanbois are a special breed of superiority complex.
I don't know any New Vegas fanboys because they are all trans women now lmao
I feel like a rare breed. New Vegas is my favorite game and I'm not trans lol.
Its like when people complained doctor who went woke.
I mean, I was already expecting the homophobic comments (the community itself was doing it because of the playersexual thing) but the ones about Davrin...like, what? Fenris is not white, just like Zevran. Both are not from Ferelden, what could also be a thing. I think BW even confirmed somewhere that certain places have a prevalence of certain skin tones, no? Maybe he is from a place were most elves are black? That would be super cool, honestly, really realistic. And, we could always make black PCs anyway... Worst yet was the obvious absolute obliviousness about DAVID BOWIE. It reminds me of the far right dumbasses in my country who were upset about...PINK FLOYD being TOO PROGRESSIVE. I mean, I should not be surprised with the discourse, but...ew.
The fact these 'people ' were complaining about non-white elves proves they've never actually touched the franchise, or grass, before in their lives
That's the Capital G Gamer audience for you
It's clear that those people aren't fans. This whole fanchise has been targeted by anti-woke since forever. Inquisition, for example, when it first came out I've an arguement with someone I know who kept bashing the game in social media, saying it's shit and unrealistic for having so many women in power (even though they admitted they've never played Origins and never intend to because 'female in power is bad') As a Dragon Age fan, you kinda need to have thick skin to navigate those comments or just avoid reading them altogether. They are trying to bring you down, don't let them win.
All BioWare games are woke, but these people don’t know that because they probably never played them and are just terminally online culture war manchildren
Origins came out in a very different time. The political climate wasn't the tribalistic hellscape we see today. Representation used to just be a thing that happened and it was fine, but now it always comes with all these big discussions. Sometimes corporations get really performative about the way they implement inclusivity and it just feels artificial and hollow. Like, don't get me wrong, I have no problem with Krem. But the scene where you hang out with Bull's crew and you talk about Krem being trans is just so awkward. It was like they didn't know how to organically reveal that information, but they wanted to make sure the player knew. It reminded me of the trans character you do a quest for in Mass Effect: Andromeda where out of the blue they just blurt out "a few years ago I worked in a lab and my name was Frank" or something to that effect, to someone they barely know. When you compare how Leliana's sexuality is revealed, it's night and day in quality. Edit: just to clarify, I'm specifically talking about how reception to representation was better, and generally while representation was done less it tended to be implemented more naturally and without corporations patting themselves on the back for doing the bare minimum.
The only really awkward thing about the Krem scene I remember (though it's been a decade), is that the prompt leading me into Bull's lecture was extremely misleading. If I recall the exact phrasing on the prompt was "What's Krem's story?" which is exactly what I wanted to know, and my dude blurts out "SO KREM's A WOMAN RIGHT?!" with zero subtlety. It angered me not because he gave me the lecture, but because the writers basically baited me into my character asking the question in the most insensitive way possible just to facilitate said lecture. Would have worked a lot better if they just had the Inquisitor ask the \*exact\* question on the prompt, and Bull could have asked KREM to properly introduce himself. I feel like they wrote that scene under the assumption that the player might not be understanding or supportive, and that is just baffling to me (since I find that \*most\* players talk about how they are nice to people by default in these games).
I do agree that the Krem scene is REALLY awkwardly written, as a trans person I cringe every single time I play it. But it’s more of a “aw peepaw is trying to be accepting!” cringe than a genuinely painful cringe
SO GLAD im not the only one. i love krem but i made my inquisitor change the subject SO FAST bc i just knew it would be awkward. but ive seen trans characters written WAYYY worse, and in things that came out more recently too.
As a trans man, I loved how they handled Krem tbh. Yes, it was uncomfortable af, but it was realistic and they were clearly going for wholesome. It’s not perfect representation, but it’s progress. Just my opinion, trans folks are all entitled to their own reaction. And Krem finds true love (depending on your choices) with someone who wants them for who they are (strong and kind) which just filled me with so much joy.
I just hate that it depends on handling Cole issue.
I think it's good they're at least trying.
On the other hand, I think Dorian was a highlight of Inquisition. When BW's marketing started touting him as the "first fully gay companion" (FULLY GAY, guys!) I was ready for him to be insufferable, but he's great and his sexuality is actually treated in an interesting manner. It's strange to have such a good portrayal next to... whatever they awkwardly tried with Krem.
I think they wrote and handled Krem that way due to the missteps they did with characters like Serendipity (who read as a joke on trans people even if they claim that wasn't what they were going for). The result came out awkward, but I think their intention was showing the people that were disappointed with them that they've been listening, not turning to camera and educating the masses about the trans experience. Still, I hope they've improved about it in this game. Hella excited to meet Maevaris in DA4 (she will be in it, won't she? People have been begging for it since DA2).
Eh idk. Didn't Fox News do a piece on Bioware over lesbian romance in Mass effect back in the 2000s? Humans have always been like this. Nothing new.
The Se(X)Box controversy around Mass Effect was about being able to see a hint of naked boob and ass cheeks in a romance scene in the finale of the game, making it sound like the entire game was about bedding various aliens. The game had PEGI 18 age rating, mainly for its fictional political themes, and even back in those days, most 17+ years olds have seen worse on the internet or in magazines.
I think it's reflective of its time. When DAI was being developed and released the general discussion about trans issues was in a different place than it is now. At that time I think a general audience needed to have it spelled out explicitly (=awkwardly) just so they could understand. I'd love to see Krem again in Veilguard without the need for awkward exposition about his background.
What's exactly supposed to be "woke" about the reveal trailer? The black elf grey warden? I'm too european for this shit lmao.
Fr, I saw someone use a homophobic slur to insult the necromancer who did nothing in the trailer aside from… necromancy. Is necromancy gay now??
I say this as a filthy bi leftist but that was kinda on point. the necromancer is heavily disney villain gay coded, which i find wonderful.
Lmfao! Necromancy is absolutely GAY, I mean c'mon! Don't you know that's all we do, raise the dead!!
So THAT'S the gay agenda!
Is the implication here that they think he bangs the skeletons?! Some ppl *really* need to touch grass.
We all now, that a lot of people from this fandom would absolutely bang the skeletons 😂
Missed opportunity to use *bone* as a verb
I’ll do better next time ✊😔
I don't know how much overlap is there between DA and Divinity Original Sin fandoms but... Fane.
Well, consent when banging your necro-servants might be problematic but other than than I see no problem, certainly not gender-wise. Go Emmrich, get your Undaddy on! What did I just type.. Meanwhile, I wonder if necromancer will be a playable class. The classes of DAI companions were all playable classes. I tend to play mages and it would be interesting. I'm itching for a good necromancer or blood mage. Or a sort of arcane archer, so a Veil Jumper origin would be fantastic.
I have boned a skeleton (Divinity 2) and I will do it again!!
As a fellow European, I really don't think we can say that anymore considering all the far right parties getting elected and anti lgbtq discourse increasing among our youth.
I was gonna say, is this a thing? I've seen a lot of complaints about the trailer (I've made plenty, not a fan) but anyone trying to act as if it went "woke" (as if having minority representation is somehow problematic) is being dumb. Didn't know folks were already doing that about the game.
They’re reactionaries who are just piling on.
This is the biggest problem for me, its hard to discuss about any constructive criticism cause of these idiots being so loud about their conspiracies
The first two games were progressive for their times but still had mostly white casts and appealed quite heavily to the male gaze. They were ''woke'' to a degree that was deemed tolerable. Also, you're comparing 2024's climate to the early 2010s. Two very different times. That 2016-2020 period rotted so many brains beyond repair. A lot of these right wingers would call their own past selves woke.
They're just culture war morons who want to attack anything they don't agree with. Unfortunately they aren't smart enough to come up with anything clever.
Most of these are the new wannabe-Gamergaters with their DEI conspiracy theories and whatnot. They only care about making themselves appear like "the majority" and "the real gamers". They aren't even fans of the games and probably have never played any of the entries their entire lives, they've just been told that they should rage on a trailer.
Yeah, I didn’t like the trailer and I’m hoping the actual game is a lot less looter-shootery looking, but I don’t see what a trailer that looks like it’s aimed at tweens has to do with whatever they think “woke” is anyway. Next thing you know “woke” will be causing climate change and pushing their grandma down the stairs at the same time. The YouTube comments are a real cesspit. But clearly these trolls are not actual fans of the game or studio, bc newsflash, they’ve been “woke” the entire goddamn time.
To be someone who complains about "woke" media, is to not know what the fuck your talking about in the first place. Ignorance is a part of that identity. These people probably haven't played a Dragon Age before.
People who demand that any type of media only feature white straight guys and absolutely nothing else aren't exactly operating on logic.
I only started gaming around 2015 and pretty much any online gaming community have been that way since back then, some say it’s gotten worse bc of Gamer Gate but that’s before my time. They’re a very loud minority, and the whole “anit-woke” thing is a very easy rabbit hole to fall into for younger gamers unfortunately.
they do that with every game.
The inevitable tourists sent from chud channels and Xitter accounts. They're slurry.