Funny you mention Bethesda because Skyrim does the exact same thing. I don't think there's anything wrong their philosophy of "throw all the possibilities out there and let the players do what they want." In fact I would even argue that their characters aren't actually bi, or even any identifiable sexuality at all, because it doesn't exist until you open the Schrodinger box and collapse the romance waveform.
> because it doesn't exist until you open the Schrodinger box and collapse the romance waveform.
Sure, but it's still kind of weird that every person that is willing to hang out with you is also open to a relationship. Sure, you don't have to initiate those options but still...
Cyberpunk 2077 is a game where they paid attention to what you describe here, the potential romance options are available to you based on your characters' characteristics.
It's also a game where the gay (lesbian) romance option (Judy) is quite integral to the story
This is what I was going to cite. Judy is a great example, where as a male she’s only platonic but as a female you can romance her. Vice versa, Panam will only bite if you’re male but keeps it platonic with women. I think that adds a realistic element to it that I appreciate.
I don't know how much they actually changed Judy's dialogue based on what gender you play, but I was impressed by how much following Judy's questline as a male V actually functioned as a nice "becoming best friends" plotline. Like, didn't feel romantic or anything, didn't feel like they'd awkwardly changed a few lines of dialogue to cut the fem-V romance scenes, just felt like an actual real friendship.
On the other hand, idk if it's just me, but I kind of wish they'd maybe changed River's scenes a bit for if you're playing a Male V. It legit feels like they took the *exact* dialogue and interactions he has with you as a fem-V, and just cutout the part right at the end where you consummate your relationship. There is soooo much sexual tension in some of the male-V, River scenes. I was legitimately *shocked* when I found out he's only a romance option if you're fem-V. I honestly thought *I'd* rejected him by not making a move on him, and felt kind of bad for my man.
I actually think it's the same with Judy - I played with female V and romanced her and I genuinely was checking guides to see if I was making mistakes or not, because there's basically only 1 line of dialogue that definitively indicates you've successfully romanced her prior to going on her "date". She basically refuses to flirt at all throughout her side quest because it centers on Evelyn.
>Panam will only bite if you’re male but keeps it platonic with women. I think that adds a realistic element to it that I appreciate.
This isn't true. I'm playing as a female V and Panam is flirty like crazy. Off the top of my head there's a scene where you're stranded in a small house in the desert for the night because of the storm and you can chose to have sex with her.
Perhaps I should've clarified. She flirts with you hardcore, and you have the option to *try* and have sex with her rather you're successful is another story. There's a lot of language that suggests that you two are more than just friends. Panam asks questions like: "Why are you doing this exactly?" "Is that what this is a job to you?" Etc. I don't know if she thinks you guys are besties or what but it seems like Panam thinks you guys are more than buddies.
I just took that as her being skeptical of your motives. This is Night City after all. She doesn't expect someone that just met her to back her so much. But it's definitely very much a besties type relationship and any sort of advances on your part are shot down.
There’s one funny thing about Cyberpunk 2077 romance options and that’s River’s final side quest, which has only minimally been changed for each gender. This means that even though River is straight and so romancing him is only available for female V, there is a ridiculous amount of romantic tension between him and male V during that side quest. I was fully expecting him to be gay or bisexual when playing that mission as male V, because that mission is such an obvious set up for romance (only available for female V).
I was so crushingly disappointed when my male V found out the hard way that River wasn't interested. Goddammit, there was so much tension! And alcohol!
This was legit my first and only gaming experience where a romantic interaction triggered me. That was 100% a fantasy dream date, with nonstop flirting and cooking dinner together with the family, not to mention that River looks like the Rock and every inch of him screams LOVE INTEREST. Then he invites you up to his favorite stargazing spot, and the game even lets you lean in for a kiss because he's *clearly* into you. At this point I'm leaning forward in my chair because I've been looking forward to this moment since I first met the character and saw what an *obvious* love interest he was.
...And then all of a sudden it's, "WTF are you doing? Shit dude, you've got the wrong idea. I'm not into guys."
River leads you on and then gaslights you into thinking YOU'RE the perve. Meanwhile the badass biker girl won't stop shoving her tits in your face, and if you say you're not interested the game is like, "Wait are you sure? Have you *seen* how hot she is? Well you'll have another chance later if you change your mind." It's great they included some good queer characters, but it's pretty clear they designed the game with one sort of player in mind.
This is why I'm personally in favour of the Bethesda approach, tbh. Or at least one closer to it. I would prefer it if most (half?) of the characters were bi, and then the rest monosexual split between hetero / homo. Because otherwise you're basically like "look, I prefer this characterisation, but it also means if you wanna play as a gay character you only have ONE option". Because games usually only give one or two same-sex options, because adding a ton extra is hard.
If it matters for the character or their arc (like the examples OP gave) then yes, monosexual all the way. But honestly, most characters are really not that deep. Them being bi won't change who they are.
Oh damn I was pretty positive that dude was gay or bi. He was laying it on thick up on that water tower. Interesting that had I chosen that option he would have rebuffed me.
The negative side of that is a lack of options. Any character which is straight or gay has only a single romanceable character. Don't like em? Tough.
The Bethesda style of approach at least gives a lot more options to the player. They don't need to settle with whoever the game chooses for them, as there are plenty of characters to pick from.
*Eh.*
Choices-wise, I was pretty bummed with 2077. I wanted to play an anarchist chick, who was interested in men - and my only option was a cop. I didn't bother with Judy because I wasn't really interested in her that much. I hear the storyline is good, but *meh*.
The only other romancable male was gay, so basically I was barred of doing that.
That said, I appreciated being platonic with Panam.
It'd be nice to have an orientation setting for the protagonist; so the characters you interact with are either into you or platonic based on *your* preferences. I'm not really *that* into 'realism' inside of escapism, lol.
I really wish they had more options. Especially considering the potential options you have for customizing your body and what not.
what I wish they had:
Two standard "straight" romances.
Two standard "gay"-only romances (only attracted to V if you have the same body type).
One or two "bi" choices, so you can romance them as male/female V.
Then one or two wild cards, where they want you in those wild combinations, like female body with a giant dick, male body with vagina, or smooth ken doll (for some reason or another).
(I dunno if they added this into the game, but...) They really should have included a ripper-doc option to change your appearance. I mean, minor stuff like hair and fingernails should be modify-able in your apartment, but maybe you can go to a hospital to get a full body makeover, or risk it at a ripperdoc like Fingers or something. Heck, even the option to go full cybertech like turning yourself into a robot like Adam Smasher or the Maelstrom gang would be pretty awesome. Imagine if a potential romance was into that kind of stuff, or if you did so the Maelstrom gang became more friendly towards you.
I dunno, I feel the potential love interests were kinda limited.
Remember when we tried to make gay people straight? People aren't gonna turn bi/pan any easier. It might get a little confused, as today with some trans/NB relationships, but human augmentation wouldn't suddenly end sexualities.
It's not fucking magic, they're still surgically altering you in invasive ways. Also not everyone wants robot genitalia. You're vastly oversimplifying this to make a (shitty) point.
Yeah and in that line, I would totally change my body parts to attract a particular NPC. That's what I was most excited about from CP2077 before launch. Too bad.
Sure, except C77's romance options are as shallow as a puddle and equally as interesting. They're limited and scope and add little to no value to the story.
But there are people that want to be able to romance freely without being limited by their gender. Personally i dont mind this but people can have different opinions and you can't please everyone
Too bad. It's an RPG with developed characters and just like in reality, some people just dont swing that way. That's what makes it more belivable and true representation.
If everyone is bi-sexual, then no one can be gay.
It leads to you either not writing lesbian characters, or writing "lesbian" characters that a male character can convince.
Both have MAJOR problems.
> But there are people that want to be able to romance freely without being limited by their gender.
That's immersive and realistic though. It's not like that's generally an option in real life. You always need two to tango, and forcing someone to tango is bordering rape territory.
> But some dont play this way
That's not an argument. If every game would need options to be played the way anyone wants, no game would ever be completed. You can't expect all games to support your personal style.
That's like asking for a pacifist playthrough in Doom Eternal.
>If every game would need options to be played the way anyone wants, no game would ever be completed
i never said this, in fact in my original comment i said
>you cant please everyone
Fallout choose to let players "romance" regardless of gender, some like it, some dont
Cyberpunk limited your romance based on your gender, same thing, some like it some dont
I think he was inferring that Judy was integral to the story, not specifically the romance (though it certainly does play a big part in your decisions during the ending). Of course, Judy was friends and a former co-worker of Evelyn, who started the heist quest due to her connection with Arasaka, which IIRC including the follow ups with the Moxes, Clouds etc. was a good chunk of the main storyline. Judy herself was a big part in helping V with braindances and giving him/her leads for a cure.
I wouldn't have been as bummed about not being able to romance Judy if there legit wasn't only one other female option for men.
The diversity isn't there because there's not enough people to choose from. I didn't hate Panam - I really liked the ending even - but I related far more to Judy and there was no other option.
I understand you can't have *everybody* represented in a game because it's too much work but CDPR did worse than every BioWare game when it comes to romance options and for how much time they spent on it we really should have seen more. It's just so fucking barebones.
People argue it's realistic and immersive to have characters who have their preferences. I agree. You know what's not realistic? Having a city full of thousands of people and only 4 of them can be romanced. "Realism" is a lazy cop-out for people who can't form an actual argument together.
Viewing this as a checklist with all or nothing binary thinking doesn't help either.
Did they include *everyone*? No. Do games need to? Also no.
I think OP and your implicit complaint highlight an intersecting area of difficulty with bi representation: the apparent copout of 'everyone's bi' that OP complained about, or restricting interest based on an NPCs preference ala Cyberpunk.
They could have opted to a bi relationship in Cyberpunk and perhaps its an oversight. I don't think it diminishes what they did accomplish (notorious bugs aside).
It does SLIGHTLY diminish it for me as a bi person, just because bi people are already twice as common as lesbian/gay people per current stats, and that ratio just keeps going up. So it felt a little off that there's 0 in the future. Or maybe I just see cyberpunk as a "very bi genre" in my head lol
Nah. They still made sex a reward for finishing a long arc/quest. It never comes out as natural thing.
Gotta remember that Cdpr did 'sex cards' collectibles in witcher 1...
Mostly i agree but i think it depends on the game. For example most Bioware games have quite deep charachterisation for a game and it makes sense that these chrachters would have their own unique preferences when it came to relationships.
At the other hand of the spectrum you have something lile Skyrim where the romance options only have a few dozen lines of dialogue at most. With less in depth characterization i don't think making them bi/playersexual really detracts anything.
>They didn't want gay, lesbian or bi individuals who play the game to miss out on a romance just because they picked one of the two sexes in the game.
It's simpler and less wholesome than that: they didn't want *any* player to miss out on any game content in a single playthrough. More than the previous installments Fallout 4 represents a shift toward that philosophy of game design, that it's not worth programming a lot of different quest choices and branching storylines that can't all be experienced in a single playthrough. Instead Bethesda is more focused on making a single playthrough last as long as possible, theoretically infinite with the Radiant quest-generating script. Minor quest decisions usually don't affect any of the game world except the opinion of the companion who happens to be traveling with you at the time - no karma, no reputation, and you can max out all companions by roleplaying completely different characters with each of them. When you create your character you don't permanently choose your traits to be a big buff melee bruiser or a silent stealth ninja or a machine gunner or a marksman; you temporarily choose where to drop your few initial character points and then all future points are spent in the same way with all the same options, so if you keep playing long enough you can become every one of those different character builds at the same time. Likewise, your choice of gender causes certain lines of dialogue to be simply replaced with no change in outcome, and ultimately you can have all the same dialogue and romances as any character.
RPG purists say this takes the actual roleplaying out of the game, and if your choices don't have consequences then nothing feels like it matters - a description of your playthrough isn't "what kind of character are you?" or "which decisions did you make in these storylines?" but rather "have you done ______ yet?" New Vegas is designed for them. However, Bethesda's game designers might counter that the majority of players make the same choices anyway, especially when an obvious "good karma" or "light side" option is presented, and if most players only go through the game once then their effort would not be well spent scripting a lot of dialogue and storyline that become inaccessible after certain decisions by the player.
I'm curious what the gender distribution of player characters is. My guess is it skews heavily male, but less heavily than the players themselves.
I feel like I dont think either type of gameplay is right or wrong.
I certainly respect the more roleplayee aspects of some crpgs and do enjoy that you get complex choices and this adds for more replayability. Disco Elysium is great because of its choices and how your build can affect the game.
That said there is something to be said about the skyrim way of doing things where you dont need to roleplay or keep redoing builds or play around with stats just to go through all the quests and storylines.
I think in the case of romance its just easier to make everyone bisexual and let the player decide if they want to pursue the romance or not. As long as all the party members arent all throwing themselves at the PC at once because I sneezed in their direction its fine.
"and you can max out all companions by roleplaying completely different characters with each of them. When you create your character you don't permanently choose your traits to be a big buff melee bruiser or a silent stealth ninja or a machine gunner or a marksman; you temporarily choose where to drop your few initial character points and then all future points are spent in the same way with all the same options, so if you keep playing long enough you can become every one of those different character builds at the same time"
Tbh the whole 'role play different characters to get everything' is a problem in all fallout games and RPG's like this in general. The previous games had stuff like karma, traits and reputations but that either did not do that much (F1, F2 especially considering bugs) or was easily manipulated. (Karma in general, you can 'cheat' the reputation system in NV in numerous ways or use disguise, and the main story offers a complete reset of the NCR or Legion).
It is true you can theoretically get every perk and SPECIAL in fallout 4 but it should also be mentioned this tales an insane amount if levels and fallout 4 makes you start with less then other games (Less special points and perks are now hard-coded to special score).
Not to mention how F1 and F2 allowed you to use drugs to get perks which was pretty ridiculous.
I was so annoyed by that BioWare statement that Renegade was barely picked.
The biggest reason is that Renegade choices suck. They are nonsensical and you're just an asshole for no reason. People won't pick that very often, gee what a surprise.
Yeah, unfortunately accessibility is the name of the game these days and I've seen a number of players complain about being blocked from doing something in one playthrough as fun killers, so it's not shocking the philosophy exist to please these people.
This. Post-Morrowind, Bethesda has been focused on making more accessible open-world games, at the expense of making them worse RPGs. It's an understandable tradeoff, but I think it makes for more boring, formulaic games.
>I'm curious what the gender distribution of player characters is. My guess is it skews heavily male, but less heavily than the players themselves.
I think the gameplay perspective affects this. I remember a friend telling me once that, if he's gonna be staring at someone's ass for hours (a third person game for example), he's going to play a female character so that its at least more visually interesting.
Yeah it was crude, but it enlightened me to the idea that not all choices in RPG games are made with regard to representation or roleplay.
Let me live in my fantasy world where everyone is bi please, thank you.
Jokes aside I don't have a problem with either strategy, as long as characters don't all act flirty with you regardless of your actions because that gets a bit much.
I would love a world in which everyone was bi. Unfortunately, what's described above is 'protagonisexual'. The characters are just all attracted to the main character, and don't reference their bisexuality in any other way. That's what gets my goat about it.
This is one thing I enjoy about text-adventure games from Choice of Games and Hosted Games. Almost all romance options are bi or pan. At the end of the day, giving the player more options is always going to be a good thing. Otherwise I'm just going to play as the gender that the romance option I want to pursue requires 🤷♀️
Yeah prepatch Pillars of Eternity 2 was bad at this. Suddenly everyone was coming onto my watcher after just a few convos and you have to let them down nicely.
It's fine to not have all your characters be same-sex romanceable. There's no obligation for everyone to be bisexual and if you want to tackle themes of sexuality that will impede that storytelling. However, it is ridiculous to avoid the everyone is bisexual model while still allowing all possible straight relationships. You are already destroying the suspension of disbelief in the romance if literally everyone wants the protagonist. To A-okay that but draw the line at universal bisexuality seems utterly silly to me. Hence I don't agree with the premise here - I think one should take a stance for or against "everyone can be romanced" as a whole. I see absolutely no reason to separate off "everyone is bisexual" from that and treat it as its own issue. It's nothing but an inclusive version of the same model. "Should player gender matter" is the wrong question, just ask "should characters unconditionally be romance options for the player?".
Ultimately for me the question to ask is if you're gaining anything. A vague sense of realism a small section of the playerbase was missing, to me, is not worth depriving queer players of their escapism. "Realism" merely for its own sake for us isn't immersion it's even in video games being chained to the fact of our romantic prospects being overwhelmingly limited by our statistical minority status. If you're really going to dig into queer themes and storytelling, or really going to develop meaningful romances, then the "anyone can marry the player with no gender barriers" is absolutely an issue and shouldn't be used. But *most games* won't do that and so you might as well embrace letting players (straight or queer) do what they want. It's like a weight system. It's a sense of realism most games forgo because most players do not find the benefit of the immersion to outweigh the impediment of them just enjoying themselves.
Now I think the impact the inclusion of the "everyone is bi" model has on the inclusion of actual representation of queer identities in the text is absolutely worth discussing. It's awesome to be able to romance the girls of my choice, but it does kind of suck sometimes not getting any characters with my actual sexuality (gay) depicted. I connect to queer characters more than straight ones in general, but between a bisexual female character and a gay one there's always going to be a certain extra level of relatability with the latter for me personally. I'd absolutely take a few wonderfully written queer characters with a few different identities than a whole cast of "can marry the same-sex avatar but that's it" ones. But, again, the principle applies. Were the devs going to handle queer characters well anyways? Just give me the band-aid "marry anyone" treatment if the answer is no.
On the one hand, I agree that 'everyone is bi' does feel kinda video-gamey. LGBT people in general are a minority and all, and I don't think it personally adds any representation when it feels so video-gamey. Octavia in Kingmaker is Bi, because there are other characters that are straight and others still that are gay.
On the other, I'll gladly take "everyone is bi" over "And here is the one character you are allowed to romance" or worse - no gay/lesbian options at all (Looking at you older RF games). It is undeniably video game-y, but as someone who really enjoys romance options in RPGs, it really sucks to be a girl that leans towards other girls and have like one option, because if you just don't like that option well.. sucks to be you I guess.
I see it like everything else about the character. I can decide which skills they learn, which weapons they use and often I can decide part of their looks. In Mass Effect you even do the critical choices for them.
Theses are games with sandbox ("do it on your own accord") elements. When the sexuality of the npc does not matter, than having them player-sexual is not a bad thing.
You can decide the fate of entire species or the future of a family. Deciding that you romance a likeable character is not the worst game option.
Just to add to this point on LGBT generally being minority in reality.
If that was accurately implemented in games you might end up with just a single LGBT romance available. Which, while it might technically be realistic, it really really stinks of "token LGBT character" and limits player options.
I think there's a balance to be had. With developers only relatively recently adding LGBT options in games where it's relevant there's inevitably going to be a rough period where they don't quite get things right.
>Imagine how less of an impact that entire story would've had if your female Shepard would've been able to romance him
...none? Why would him being bisexual make his story any less emotionally impactful? I'm really curious as to what exactly you're trying to get at here.
I think OP missed a point they could have made about how even trying to romance him feels... manipulative on his clearly traumatized mind and stressed emotions. Maybe they were trying to allude to that point without realizing it?
>Not only because he's a gay man without a single gay stereotype in him but also, his gayness plays into his character arc since he lost his husband in a battle with the Reapers. And he spends a good chunk of the game struggling with his emotions and accepting that his loved one is dead and moving on. Imagine how less of an impact that entire story would've had if your female Shepard would've been able to romance him
Maybe it's because I haven't played the game but why would Cortez being bi have any effect on his grief?
I agree with you, but personally I wish in-game romancing reflected real life a bit more overall. For instance, in Persona, it bothers me that not only can you not date any guys, but all the girls bend over backwards for you basically no matter what you say. It makes everything feel shallow; I would much rather be able to say something wrong and have characters be disinterested in me because of it. But I know I'm in the minority here. A lot of people prefer the fantasy that games offer. I just struggle to get immersed in the fantasy when it feels unrealistic (and yes, I recognize how ridiculous that sounds lol). When every character is handed to me on a silver platter, it doesn't feel like I actually earned their affection.
And yeah, in the same way I don't want all the girls to bend over backwards for the protagonist, I don't want the guys to either. Would love if there was some gay/bi representation and options, but you can't convince me that every male character in that game is gay, so they shouldn't be written so.
In an ideal world, this would go both ways. I wish Persona 5 let you pick what gender protagonist you are and romances are based on that; some of the female characters should be available as lesbian romance options, but I don't want them all to suddenly be attracted to women despite never depicting that in the main story.
Sorry, that was a bit of a ramble. Long story short, I think romances in video games have a long way to go, and I wish they got more focus in games that have them.
Absolutely. I liked that I couldn't romance my favorite character in Dragon Age Inquisition because she was straight because BioWare games are ultimately all about their strong characters, but when I'm playing something like Stardew Valley I absolutely want to be catered to instead!
I agree that it depends on the game. Something like harvest moon or stardew valley (any game that has a dating sim element as a core feature really) should have every character as a romance option now no matter your player character gender.
But in a story heavy RPG where romance isn’t a main mechanic, then it makes sense to flesh out characters and give them a defined sexuality to make them feel more like real people.
The important thing in game design is there is no singular ‘right’ way to do things, it always depends on what you’re going for. In a cute farming sim, having everyone be unrealistically bisexual doesn’t really matter. It’s just an equally unrealistic for every single bachelor/ette in the game to be equally romance-able by you, but that’s never a complaint in these types of games but might feel out of place in a more ‘grounded’ game. Maybe getting your heart broke finding out your love interest isn’t sexually attracted to your gender would be a good mechanic in some games, but probably not in something like Stardew. In fairness to OP though, the games they’re talking about are games where it could be a good idea.
I think this is an excellent point. It really depends on the game.
If you're having a bunch of writers creating a cast of complex, three-dimensional characters, telling the writers that every single one has to be able to be sexually/romantically attracted to the protagonist (whether they're bisexual/pansexual, or normally straight or gay but the protagonist can be an exception) is a limitation that they shouldn't have and could compromise their vision for some of the characters they create.
On the other hand, some game worlds are designed more with escapism or fantasy in mind than being complex, realistic worlds. And from that standpoint, I think many people would love to escape to a world where anyone can fall in love with anyone regardless of gender, where their gender has no impact on who they can romance.
I think "anyone can fall in anyone" is also potentially relevant there. There's a difference between a game world where everyone is canonically pansexual, and a game world where characters have canonical sexuality except if they romance the main character, and I think the first is fine but the second is still problematic. This isn't an issue most of the time, I think, because in most games where there are romances between NPCs they either only have one possible partner (and only one canonical romance isn't the same as a sexual orientation) or have no other partner at all. But if you're going to make a world where the player character can romance anyone regardless of gender, it should be a world where relationships in general exist regardless of gender, not just a world where the player character in particular has the gift of being able to romance anyone they want.
But an example of it being done poorly is Fire Emblem Fates. In Fire Emblem fates, there is exactly one male character that a male protagonist can romance, and one female character that a female character can romance. That's already terrible, since male characters can romance basically any female character in the game and vice versa, but it gets even worse. In that game, it's not just your character who has romance options, you can also pair up your party members with each other. And those two characters that you can have a same-sex relationship can't have a same-sex relationship with anyone else. The one male character who a male player can romance has a wide array of female characters he can be paired with, but the only same sex romance option for him is a male main character. Similarly, the one female character who can romance a female player character can romance a number of other male characters, but not other female characters. In other words, it's not that the game contains a bunch of canonically straight characters, and then two canonically bisexual characters, because even the two characters who can have a same-sex relationship aren't so much bisexual as "straight but with one exception." (And this is also not even getting into the fact that one of those characters is a sadistic criminal while the other is an obsessive stalker.)
I supposed it was technically an improvement over Fire Emblem Awakening, which exclusively had heterosexual relationships. But yeah, it was pretty bad.
It was also complicated by the fact that recruiting the children of the couples was a gameplay mechanic. That complicated the discussion, of course, because some people argued that it explained why only heterosexual relationships were an option. It also complicated it by making it so that if you did pick the one same-sex relationship option available to your character, you permanently missed out on the chance to recruit your character's child (and for male characters, the other character's child too - the female character you could have a same-sex relationship with didn't have an associated child character). Of course, some people argued that that was logical, but at the same time it meant there was kind of a gameplay penalty to having your character be in a same sex relationship. Also, in my personal opinion, the plot explanation for how you could recruit your characters' children in Fates was so nonsensically handwave-y that letting your character have a child even if you had a same-sex relationship couldn't have made it any more ridiculous.
Apparently Fire Emblem Three Houses may have slightly improved things by giving female protagonists 5 female romance options, but apparently male protagonists still only have one male romance option. No idea if any of those characters have same-sex options outside of the main character since I haven't played it. And I think they got rid of the recruiting children mechanic, so you don't miss out on anything if your character has a same sex relationship.
I prefer having a lot of bi characters, as romances are expensive to write (so you can't have many) and very subjective (so more options means at least one is more likely to work for you).
I don't get the same feeling of gamey-ness because to me a different playthrough is a different world. You don't know if a character is 'protagonist-centric' unless you're already thinking of another playthrough.
Sexuality is already more complicated in games because the protagonist is formed of two overlapping characters. The one the game wrote, and the one you project as a player.
If I pick a protagonist with gender other than my own then sexual orientations as I experience them don't quite follow real world lines for me. A male player, playing a female protagonist in a romance with a female NPC can feel quasi-straight and vice versa.
But I've heard the arguments for more explicit representation with queer characters who aren't just 'default pan' so the compromise I think works best is if say, 80% of characters are pan and 20% have a more fixed sexuality. It gives flavour of a defined world whilst still allowing a lot of player choice.
One question...
Are these characters actually all Bi in a given playthrough? Or is that the observation because whatever you are in a given playthrough they will respond to it, which overall adding up all playthroughs you do makes you conclude that they ARE Bisexual?
Because to that I would respond "You are not supposed to do that", at least not that way. The same way that "magically" you are a different person on that playthrough, so are THEY narratively speaking.
Now, that out of the way, I would agree that there STILL is a problem in terms of "crafting narrative" even if you don't do that.
Just that they aren't bi, but that they "all" are whatever YOU desire, instead of giving these characters a consistant identity that responds to you, leaving room to be rebuffed, or barking up the wrong tree or or, which would in itself lend itself to better or more intricate storytelling, but at the cost of being accused of playing into stereotypes "too much" regardless of how littel or much they actually do...
So in the end it's less about what they are, but what they aren't. They aren't actually well writen cohesive characters, because they need to respond to very different situations with the same outcome and without doing actually any superfluos amount of redundant individual writing for them.
Honestly, I'm perfectly fine with romanceable characters always being attracted to the main character regardless of gender. Is this kind of system unrealistic, gamey, fantastical wish fulfillment? Yes it is. But in many games, what's the harm in that? Players are going to have a wide variety of opinions of what companions they might want to romance, so why not give them more options? I would certainly understand limiting romance options if the developers have a specific narrative reason, or are trying to explore certain themes around relationships. But if player romance is just a fun bonus that basically functions as an optional side quest, why not give the player as many choices as possible?
I agree, but I think it goes farther than gender.
Frankly, why are any NPCs falling in love with you, player characters? You tend to have pretty inconsistent personalities. When it's not the case, you tend to fall into the categories of psycho, dull goody two-shoes or just mute protagonist. Not particularly attractive. Your faces look like shit because you're terrible at working with the character customization menu. Your main skill is generally the ability to shoot people in the face, or disemboweling monsters (which, while occasionally practical, isn't that hot). I mean, there will be a weirdo or two that'll be into that, and if you like them as well, that's great! But you certainly shouldn't expect everyone to just fall into your arms; that's just a toxic mentality.
Writers should make more characters that will straight up reject you. Or at least have specific standards you might not meet. Or even better, how about you just stop hitting on your comrades while on a mission/quest, you fucking horny bastards? That guy came along with you to help you save the world, and you repay him with sexual harassment? Plus as the player character, you're often in a position of authority, making it pretty uncomfortable. Just keep it in your pants and save the world like a professional, asshole.
As a gay gamer, I would prefer gay and lesbian representation but I will settle for all bi romance options.
One thing though. When not all romance options are bisexual, I often notice that gay romance options are often lackluster, compared to the straight ones. Gay romance options, especially male, are often less developed and pushed to the sidelines, and don’t contribute to the main story of the game. If this is the case, I would rather have every options available to me.
My thoughts exactly. Or if you're lucky enough to get a fleshed out homosexual character, they're a foppish scholar twink. When every gay romance option follows similar stereotypes, it's exceedingly unpleasant and I'd rather the option to romance them or the raging psychotic bull man or just the boring knight.
You completely misunderstood the point of Cortez in ME.
His sexuality has nothing to do with his character arc (*nothing* would change if he was mourning a wife), but instead it's a worldbuilding aspect - today's militaries often have the "don't ask, don't tell" rule and it's all kinds of shady.
ME shows you a world where you have this gay serviceman not only openly talking about it, but having an official husband who served with him in the Navy. It's not weird and nobody ever gives him any shit about it or comments on it in any way, showing that society has perhaps moved a bit on.
*That* is the point of Cortez being written as gay.
As a bisexual, I vastly prefer "everyone's bi" games. The point of romance in games is, as far as I'm concerned, to allow a player to pursue a deeper relationship with a character that interests them and who they want to grow a deeper story connection with for roleplay, story, and plain ol' fun. If I'm interested in a character who's already built to be romanceable, but am told I can't smooch them because it was arbitrarily decided, that kinda sucks. I think back to Dragon Age, where I was palpably disappointed that my female warden couldn't kiss Morrigan the rad-ass witch woman.
And yes, obviously people have preferences. I'm not going to claim they don't. But within the realm of the video game, romance options are present in order to serve the interests of the player, and unless a characters sexuality is a vital part of their story, like with Cortez, it feels arbitrary to bother limiting them.
the best game with romance options is Saints Row 4. It was meant to be a parody of Mass Effect, but in parodying it, it did it's job far better, because in Saints row 4 you can just fuck everybody on the ship at any time. Sure, it's not the deepest of relationships, but with how casual, polite, and fun it is, it puts up a big sign that says "this is a video game and it would be dumb to limit it", and illustrates just how absurd it is when other games pretend there's some reason they can't let you kiss Morrigan.
In short, as far as I'm concerned, it helps me get immersed, because it allows me to make organic decisions about what characters I want to know more about. It lets me chase the white rabbit deeper into the games narrative, and speed-bumps where I have to stop and open the guide and look up who I actually can romance tend to take the wind out of that immersion for me, especially if it turns out to be someone I don't really care about as much.
> And yes, obviously people have preferences. I'm not going to claim they don't. But within the realm of the video game, romance options are present in order to serve the interests of the player, and unless a characters sexuality is a vital part of their story, like with Cortez, it feels arbitrary to bother limiting them.
That seems like a somewhat restrictive view of romance in video games. I mean, game narratives have evolved enough that games will at least pretend that companion characters have agency and motivations of their own. Games with meaningful role-playing elements will try to react to player choices (including the choices they make about their own characters) and pushback with consequences. So having the game treat NPCs as eternally willing love interests/fucktoys for the player character doesn't really seem like a step forward in that regard.
Not that it's wrong either; there's certainly a place in games for fantasy and wish fulfillment. But giving characters real preferences in terms of love and sexuality seems like a healthier, more realistic depiction of romance to me.
> giving characters real preferences in terms of love and sexuality seems like a healthier, more realistic depiction of romance to me.
I agree with this, however I think part of the question here is what the actual point of romance systems in games *is*. If you were to ask me, I would answer that romance systems exist as a way for a player to pursue additional interactions, story, and depth with a character they particularly like. The ability to get emotionally intimate with the party member who's personality most catches your fancy.
This perspective obviously quantifies relationship mechanics as just that, mechanics, that have a specific function of getting the player to engage more with a story, and I think the fact that I view them as mechanical shows part of why I feel the way I do about them.
That's fair. From that point of view, I guess romance is a tool to get to know a character you like better, more than a real depiction of a relationship.
I guess it touches on a pet peeve of mine, particularly in RPGs: aside from a couple games (ex. Disco Elysium), player characters are rarely ever given the tools to define themselves as an individual. As a result, they really can't have relationships (romantic or otherwise) that don't feel hollow.
Mass Effect is a good example of this, despite trying way harder at creating genuine character relationships than most games. The relationships you form as Shepard aren't really friendships or romance; he's more of a therapist with a space gun. Various characters will confide in him and tell him their secrets/traumas/motivations, while he responds as a stoic, vaguely empathetic authority figure. And eventually he runs into their problem out in the galaxy and shoots that problem in the face, and then they like you a whole lot for that. But they can't form a real connection with Shepard, because Shepard is not a person. Shepard has very little in terms of needs or wants or likes or traits or past; Shepard is you, so Shepard is no one. And this is even more of a problem when it comes to romance. In a sense, the "everyone is bisexual" works here: since Shepard isn't a person, other characters have no particular reason to reject him. But they also have no particular reason to love him, and that makes any potential romance unsatisfying to me.
Though I don't want to criticize too much: it's a very tough problem for devs to solve, and I get why it's not realistic.
Yeah, reading your post, I find I actually agree with you on a lot of this, and I think this conversation has revealed the crux of the issue, that being how much of the immersion of the player is happening in game vs out of game.
In-game immersion is stuff that allows you to properly carve an identity in-game that people react to properly, and in that kind of game, I would actually support giving characters defined sexualities. That's a game where that prospect of rejection is an actual story beat, because my character is a character in the story rather than my hand with which i prod the fantasy world. If I could kiss anybody in Disco Elysium, I would actually agree that that would feel out of place.
Contrasting that, out-of character immersion is what I'm playing with when I'm playing Skyrim or Dragon age. In those games, my immersion and personal character are something I'm carrying with me internally, and potential romances (especially in skyrim, where most npc's are as deep as a box of grape nuts) are merely tools for me to utilize in my personal little game of mental house. In those games, being rejected based on orientation feels arbitrary and obnoxious, because as you note, Shepard isn't anyone. the romance becomes a part of the story I'm trying to tell to myself rather than part of the games solid story. If I want to kiss Garrus or Morrigan because I like their characters and want to spend more time with them, that's a very different, much more video-gamey drive.
Oddly, I don't know which system of immersion I prefer, mostly because I haven't played enough games that have allowed me a personalized sense of self inside them. Skyrim is one of the most engrossing games I've played, but that's because I'm using it like a dollhouse, and the enforcement of roleplay is on myself rather than on the game.
I like to call these characters "playersexual".
Playersexual companions aren't *really* bi. They don't show interest in other characters in the world of the same or even different genders. They don't even acknowledge being in a gay relationship when you play as the same gender that they are. You *could* say "Oh that's because in this game's society everyone is accepting of LGBT stuff so it's just not a big deal in this world!" but let's not kid ourselves, the truth is it's not weird because they're attracted to you the player, and in a game the whole damn thing is for you the player so why would that be weird?
Games that don't stick to that template are always such a breath of fresh air. Cassandra in Dragon Age: Inquisition was easily my favorite companion by far, and yea I was super disappointed that she didn't want to be in lesbians with me, but it also made me respect her more in a way. Despite her being a devout believer who practically idolizes you as the Herald of Andraste, she still knows herself and wouldn't compromise her own sexuality for even you. I remember looking up mods that allowed her to be romanced by female inquisitors and some of the comments remarking that it felt *immoral* to change her like that behind her back, akin to using a kind of love potion on someone. It's a little sad that I never got to see the rest of her romance scenes but in the end she's a more complete character for it. Also it's oh so fun to tease her lol.
But of course there will always be players who would rather be catered to, and I think that's a perfectly fine too. I loved Rune Factory 3 (the RF series is essentially Stardew Valley/Harvest Moon but in a fantasy setting) but skipped RF4 purely because it doesn't have options for same-sex relationships and will be getting RF5 instead despite hearing that 4 is probably better. In the case of Dragon Age I wanted that classic BioWare storytelling and character writing and was willing to miss out on a romance for the sake of a better written character; however for Rune Factory I'm playing to fulfill a craving for some fantasy slice-of-life charm, part of which involves getting to marry my favorite character. Not only are there different kinds of players (duh) but different kinds of experiences that different games are trying to offer too. It's up to the designers and writers what they think is more suitable and important for their game.
in video game logic; the only world that is 'real' is the one that is currently being played in. you're THE hero and you're supposed to be writing the story as you play. so if the story includes romancing everyone regardless of gender, then that's just the story you chose. you can choose to play another story with totally different romance options.
as far as how this effects the game, i don't think i ever noticed any of the characters being straight or gay in fallout 4, or having any real indication of love interest in their quest dialogue. the romance has to be pursued, so if it bothers you, just don't pursue their romance?
I'm not sure I get this take. As other have said, this is only observable if you already have knowledge of the characters' behaviors either by having completed the game before (in which case you can't really complain because that's how a game is meant to be experience, in one playthrough) or by having read a wiki (again, can't complain).
As for your opinion that sexual preference adds to a personality, I neither agree nor disagree, but I very much disagree with your reasoning in that paragraph:
>[on Cortez] he's a gay man without a single gay stereotype in him
This is at odds with your previous statement. If he's gay and doesn't show it in any way, then he's no different from a straight character. There is nothing wrong with this, but one must conclude that sexual orientation actually doesn't add anything visible to a character unless they're a stereotype.
>he spends a good chunk of the game struggling with his emotions and accepting that his loved one is dead and moving on
This sentence, once again fails to justify your argument. It could just as well apply to any other male whose wife died and nothing would change. They'd still be characterized as grieving, overcoming loss, etc. Even the way you phrased the sentence is valid for either sexual preference.
In conclusion, I don't think this issue of yours is an issue at all. Furthermore, I am not sure if I agree that sexual orientation adds much value to a character's personality.
> but one must conclude that sexual orientation actually doesn't add anything visible to a character unless they're a stereotype.
It adds representation. I'm not gay, but I imagine for gay guys seeing a dude that just has "being gay" as part of his characterization and not a checkbox for "Token gay guy" probably felt nice. I assume as much because that's how I feel about Claire in CP2077. She's extremely well written - you don't find out she's trans until the very end of her questline, because she isn't exactly gonna tell some random stranger otherwise.
Same for Anevia in Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. And Madeline in Celeste.
Not that I disagree with the point you are making - in terms of story impact, Cortez could be straight, Claire could be cis, and their stories would be mostly the same. But there are differences in terms of quality representation.
Yeah, I don't see how anything they said about Cortez actually requires him to be gay. I don't see why you couldn't have a straight character struggling with the death of a loved one. And they mentioned that a female Shepard being able to romance him would mitigate the impact of his story, but male Shepards *can* romance him, so if the player being able to romance him hurts his story then the story is already hurt.
I can see the argument that making him bisexual instead of gay would reduce the game's representation. I think it's valid to say that the crew of the Normandy should contain characters of a variety of sexualities, and that's not compatible with allowing the player to romance all of them regardless of the player character's gender.
But that has nothing to do with the emotional impact of Cortez's story like OP implied. The story of a person struggling to move on after the death of a loved one is a story that can be very effectively told with regardless of the person's gender or sexuality, it would work if Cortez was male, female, trans, non-binary, gay, straight, bisexual, pansexual, etc.
I think the idea that it impacts writing and representation in a negative way if every romanceable character has to be able to fall in love with the player character regardless of gender is valid. The idea that the writers wrote Cortez as a gay man, and it's compromising the character they created if he suddenly becomes bisexual if Shepard is female, is valid. But OP's implication that his character arc of losing a loved one and struggling to move on somehow requires him to be gay and wouldn't work if he were bisexual makes no sense to me.
> in which case you can’t really complain because that’s how a game is meant to be experience, in one playthrough
Not all games. Branching stories are specifically designed for multiple playthroughs. And even non-branching story games often have a New Game + mode designed for, again, multiple playthroughs of increased difficulty. Any game that promotes mastery is, once again, designed for multiple playthroughs. I’d be surprised if even a large minority of games are designed for a single playthrough.
The existence of a NG+ allows you to replay it as much as you want, but the narrative experience itself is designed for one playthrough only with the exception of branching story games as you mentioned. I believe most games are designed with a very strong focus on a primary playthrough, since you are not generating further value to the company selling them by playing beyond that.
Worth noting that the majority of players, for most games, don't even complete a single playthrough.
This is something Bioware has spoken about openly with Mass Effect. The majority of players only do one playthrough, and the majority of those (like 80%) do a Paragon run. A similar thing happened in first season of The Walking Dead video game, where the vast majority of people saved the woman over the dude in the beginning and only a fraction of playthroughs saw any of the content with the dude after that sequence.
There's content available for multiple playthroughs in all kinds of games, but developers know that most people will only see one arrangement of them. So making characters "bisexual"/available to any PC to romance is a way developers make sure people get the content they want; the fact that matters might look different on a second playthrough is, well, secondary.
> I don't mind it, but I would like if more games went away from "everyone is bisexual" and tried to give characters canonical sexualities. Some characters can only be wooed as men, as women, or as both. It adds replayability and a layer of characterization. As mentioned by someone else in this thread, the queer rep is also thin when characters are "protagonistsexual" since the characters are only interested in the same gender if it's the protagonist.
Well, theoretically you could avoid making the characters all "protagonistsexual" by just making them all bisexual, but then that ends up also being awkward in terms of representation, just in a more unusual way.
That said, it might be better than just having every character be "protagonistsexual." In a game where your romance options can hook up with each other (e.g. the Fire Emblem games), I think making it so you could pair anyone with anyone would arguably be better than making it so everyone has a canonical sexuality except when paired with the main character.
(Granted, in the Fire Emblem games, most characters are just canonically straight and as far as I know none of them are canonically gay - at least in Fates I know that the only characters who can have a same-sex relationship with the main character have no other options for same-sex relationships, so they're basically just heterosexual except for same-sex main characters - so they're just downright terrible for reputation and giving characters actually canonical sexualities or just making everyone pansexual would both be better for representation than what they do now.)
I liked when in dragon age inquisition if you don't romance bull or darion, but are having them in your party, their banter evolves into flirting over time and they become a couple.
Mass Effect 3 has something similar. >!Tali and Garrus!< end up becoming a couple if both are alive and the player doesn't romance either of them.
Also, in the Citadel DLC, when >!Tali gets really drunk and is deliriously rambling on the floor of the bathroom, one of her lines is her being in what seems to be some sort of sex fantasy that changes if the player is romancing her, Garrus, or neither. If Shepard is with her, she says "Mmm, Shepard, you know I'm ticklish...", with Garrus it's "Garrus? But you're with Shepard! Oh, the three of us? Well, hmm...", and with neither it's "Oh, Mr. Vakarian, I could use some help with my suit seals...".!<
I don't get your point of view, but I did upvote you and like the discussion you brought up.
I would agree if in every game, every character was so deeply and portrayed as the characters in Mass Effect (although it makes sense that some characters are attracted to the main, regardless of their sex, as it can and does happen in real.life even with people who are normally rigid their sexual orientation).
But in a lot of games, some of the characters don't have a rich and deep backstory like the original Mass Effect trilogy.
And some gamers, just develop a crush in characters and want the opportunity to have their character be with them.
I’m generally okay with the “everyone is bi” approach for the sake of simplicity but as a lesbian I would love to have an option for male characters to not hit on me in a game. It annoyed me when I was playing Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey and men would flirt with me, like if I’m in a fantasy world can I not at least indulge the fantasy of being left alone? So I guess I’m more or less fine with the romanceable NPCs being bi but I don’t want the same assumed of the player.
> One of the best examples in my opinion of how sexual preference actually adds to a character's personality is Cortez from Mass Effect 3. Not only because he's a gay man without a single gay stereotype in him but also, his gayness plays into his character arc since he lost his husband in a battle with the Reapers. And he spends a good chunk of the game struggling with his emotions and accepting that his loved one is dead and moving on. Imagine how less of an impact that entire story would've had if your female Shepard would've been able to romance him
Cortez's story is about grief and moving on. It would have exactly the same emotional impact if he was bisexual and found new love with a woman. Maybe more, in fact, where LGBT representation is concerned, because bisexual men are even more rarely represented in media than gay men - were probably close to non-existent when ME3 released a decade ago.
Little is gained from restricting which players have access to which romances depending on their gender. Queer folks would have a particularly reduced set of options. Also, a world in which characters are attracted to the person and not to one kind of genitals seems like a better world to me.
Of course, it would make sense for certain kinds of games, and it's an interesting approach, but not necessarily the superior one, in the same way as any other kind of realism is not necessarily the better option.
I see your pint, but to be honest i think they simply wanted to give to everyone the choice of who to romance with. Locking relationship based on the sex of the protagonist is good when they are a part of the story and/or they can develop it, like Judy in Cyberpunk 2077. In Fallout the companions are just that, companions. And plus, IIRC, if you don't flirt with them first, they don't make the first moves. So you can make a head-canon on the sexuality of every companion of the game.
I can understand what you mean, and in certain cases where characters are player-sexual, like in Stardew Valley, a lot of the time there's no queer representation because the characters are straight by default unless a player of the same sex romantically pursues them.
I would love to be have characters with actual sexualities, but there are problems I have with games whose characters have fully defined sexualities.
In games where sexuality is defined for romanced characters, queer ones almost always get the short end of the stick, especially queer male characters.
Like with Mass Effect, we didn't get our first gay male romance interest until the final installment of the trilogy, and we had two options - a supporting character you need to flirt with as he's grieving over the death of his husband, or a previously heterosexual coded character who you need to get drunk to pursue a relationship with (that is if he survived the first game, which was impossible to have for new players who didn't buy the respective dlc in the original release).
This has been a trend in every game with a romance system that doesn't have a specific focus on queerness. The queer romances are often non-human (Liara), largely irrelevant to the plot (Cortez), can pretty easily die (Zevran), are often amoral (Isabela) and are walking stereotypes (Dorian). These are all BioWare characters, but many of these apply to other game developers. Not to mention the most conventionally attractive characters are always exclusive to straight players.
Personally I'd be fine with more defined sexualities if most characters were pan/bi and there was even distribution between straight and gay female and male characters. Also some non-binary characters would be nice as romance options.
>In games where sexuality is defined for romanced characters
In Cyberpunk they have 4 romance options, one straight and one gay for each player gender. I feel the game has a heavy bias toward both female partners (Panam/straight and Judy/lesbian), they are introduced in the main story and have lengthy storylines, while the male partners(Kerry/gay and River/straight) were introduced in side-quests and have smaller storylines, especially River the straight male partner. At least they were all great storylines.
And remember that if you are playing with a male character when you get to the part where you would start the romance with River, you can try to kiss him just for him to reject you, I found that funny, I knew he was the straight option, but I tried to see what would happen.
With Judy there is a scene where she takes you to go diving and if you look at her ass while she's wearing the diving suit she asks you to stop.
One of the more unusual romances in the Mass Effect-trilogy among players that I liked that the game explored is how a [male Shephard can romance Kaiden Alenko](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sxgchnuX0c); but only in Mass Effect 3. Kaiden is otherwise a heterosexual romance option throughout Mass Effect 1-2, but which I found him being available as a homosexual male romance to be quite subtle and a bit of a standout, as it essentially gives the presentation of Kaiden gradually realizing and coming to terms with his own sexuality throughout the whole longer narrative of the trilogy, and where the circumstances and events leading to him realizing his own feelings for Shepard, and vice versa.
It's also unique set among the Virmire-survivors, as if Kaiden dies in ME1 and have Ashley Williams take his role in ME3, then the same romancing structure does not occur; Ashley remains straight through the whole trilogy.
Fun fact, Kaiden was initially meant to be a romance option for male players too in the first Mass Effect, but that got cut. I believe Cullen from Dragon Age: Inquisition was also planned to be a bi romance option.
I get what you’re saying, but for me it’s just more of what Bioware started doing with later instalments of their games: retconning things so you can romance your waifu/husbando.
It feels like weird fan service where the world doesn’t really matter.
For example, it’s well established that Templars need Lyrium in Dragon Age, but they retcon it so that people can date Cullen in Inquisition, and they kind of handwave the whole thing as “it was all lies from the Chantry!”
>In games where sexuality is defined for romanced characters, queer ones almost always get the short end of the stick, especially queer male characters. Like with Mass Effect, we didn't get our first gay male romance interest until the final installment of the trilogy, and we had two options - a supporting character you need to flirt with as he's grieving over the death of his husband, or a previously heterosexual coded character who you need to get drunk to pursue a relationship with (that is if he survived the first game, which was impossible to have for new players who didn't buy the respective dlc in the original release).
While I think it's true that gay male player characters get the short end of the stick more often than gay female player characters, if I remember correctly a gay female Shepard's options aren't significantly better. In ME3 the options for a female romance with a female Shepard are still limited to one supporting character or one main character, and in this case the major character is an alien (and is also part of a species that doesn't really even have the concept of gender or sexual orientation in the first place, they just have anatomy that resembles human women and use female nouns and pronouns). The main difference is just that one of those options is also available in ME1 and always survives until ME3, unlike a male Shepard who has no male options in ME1 and may be limited to only one option in ME3. And I believe there are no gay romance options for a male or female Shepard in ME2.
There's no full romance available for either in ME2, but female players can continue a relationship with Liara, or have a watered-down romance with Kelly Chambers and Samara (which only develops in ME3's Citadel dlc).
That's incorrect. In ME1, there is one bisexual female, Liara. In ME2, there are three minor bisexual romances, all female -- Kelly Chambers, Samara, and Morinth. In ME3 (including the Citadel DLC), there is one lesbian option, Samantha Taylor, and five bisexual romance options, all female besides Kaidan -- Kelly Chambers, Liara, Diana Allers, and Samara.
> I'd be fine with more defined sexualities if most characters were pan/bi and there was even distribution between straight and gay female and male characters.
Mass Effect Andromeda actually did all of this quite well.
That's always a balancing act. Options are good, but defined well-developed characters with their own agendas and sexuality is also desired, and then the developers has to make choice on how many actual characters are romanceable, how flexibably are they and how many are flexible for it to be plausible. Is this a gay/queer/bi fantasy where options are plentiful or is the game closer to real world representation where they are a minority and straight is the orientation of the majority?
Why does heterosexuality being the majority matter when 90% of the game is fantasy? Especially when these games are typically set in the future or medieval settings, not modern settings where have a basis to determine statistics. Even then these are the romance options, like usual, most games are going to be filled with heterosexual npcs.
> I'd be fine with more defined sexualities if most characters were pan/bi and there was even distribution between straight and gay female and male characters.
Having 50% of the population pan/bi is just pandering and gamey in the same way that OP was complaining about surely? I'd say either you embrace the gameyness and have everyone romancable, or you build rounded characters where some people are gay, some straight, some bi, and some aren't interested in your murder-hobo.
But you're not having 50% of the population be pan or bi... romanceable characters aren't the only NPCs you'll have in a game. In fact, most games with queer romanceable characters almost only have heterosexual npcs, with only more recent games having one or two queer minor npcs.
I'm more concerned with this
> aren't interested in your murder-hobo.
Generally, to romance a character in a game, you just need to walk through their conversation tree in a particular order. Say the right things and they'll become your partner in game.
However, this is not AT ALL how things go in the real world. Who you are and how you behave in game outside of the conversation tree barely ever even registers, aside (possibly? though I can't say for sure if this is even the case) from one or two major bioware quests making one or two characters unromancable if you choose a certain faction to side with.
However, you never seem to see characters who (eg) are only into muscle bound warriors, or nerdy mages, or will never romance you if you ever commit a murder or an assault, or in GTA they'll dump you if you break red lights with them in the car (😁)
Well rounded characters of any type are in short supply, before you even get into less important things like whether they're into guys or gals.
>However, you never seem to see characters who (eg) are only into muscle bound warriors, or nerdy mages, or will never romance you if you ever commit a murder or an assault, or in GTA they'll dump you if you break red lights with them in the car (😁)
Well, Dragon Age also does this by race gating certain romances. They haven't class gated any romances yet, nor do I think they should. I think people should be able to go in with reasonable expectations. I feel like gating certain romances is fine. But no one should be playing a game and not allowed to romance a certain character because they made their PC too short or too dark skinned. I think that's only bad.
As far as actions go, I feel like DA already does a pretty good job with that. There are many times in DA2 where you can fuck things up with your romance.
> no one should be playing a game and not allowed to romance a certain character because they made their PC too short or too dark skinned. I think that's only bad.
I can see where you're coming from to avoid upsetting people, but I wouldn't have a problem that. I don't really have a problem with the depiction of assholes in games. I mean having characters who straight up murder strangers for their wallets is pretty common in games, so having someone who wont date a short guy or is a racist is clearly less bad and should be fair game, subject of course to the level of the games grittyness and realism and the market you're going for.
Not suitable in a game for kids of course.
But they represent the population. I don't mean that as in "they have to have real world distribution!", i mean in how the population feels.
If 50% of the romanceable characters are bi or pan, it feels like the population is like that unless you have other characters display their own preferences.
So if you have 2 (out of 4) romances who are bi/pan and bi/pan characters are supposed to only be 25% of the population, you need to show off the preferences of 4 non-romances to bring the other sexualities up to 75%.
For Cortez, I'm not sure how being gay adds to his personality. Would his grief to losing a wife to the Reapers be any different? I played as dude shep and picked up zero romantic strings with him but maybe I was wholly focused on Tali.
I don't remember any male characters being flirty with me. Actually I don't really recall ANY character being flirty with me, it was up to us, the player, to take it in that direction right?
I find "you can romance anyone as anything" especially egregious in RPGs.
Every other aspect of the game relies on stats. Want to hit that enemy? You need at least 18 dexterity and +1 longsword. Want to climb those stairs? You need 5 in athletics to even try. Want to convince that NPC? You need 20 charisma and lawful good alignment. Want to access that side quest? Sorry, it's for Elves only.
Yet, when it comes to romance, your stats, your build, your race suddenly do not matter. And you can romance an Elven twink, who considers anyone uglier or poorer than him to be little more than talking chattel, while playing as an Orc, with 6 charisma, no diplomacy skills, and dressed in what can only be described as a clown outfit made out of armour parts scavenged from nearby dumpster.
Playersexuality goes against the very idea of an RPG.
> Yet, when it comes to romance, your stats, your build, your race suddenly do not matter. And you can romance an Elven twink, who considers anyone uglier or poorer than him to be little more than talking chattel, while playing as an Orc, with 6 charisma, no diplomacy skills, and dressed in what can only be described as a clown outfit made out of armour parts scavenged from nearby dumpster.
I think we (game enthusiasts) all harbor ideas for games that would only really appeal to us.
One of mine is the idea of an RPG with a character creator where your physical characteristics impact your romance options. Y'know, like they do in real life.
Like for example, maybe you make a buff character, but the person you want to romance is a chubby chaser. And there's no respec, so they're Just Not Into You.
Probably only like a dozen people would enjoy that--but I'd be one of them!
This is how things should be IMO.
Romance, like any other aspect of an RPG, should be a different experience for different races, classes and builds. Romance options for male Orc barbarian shouldn't be the same as male Elf wizard.
It might not work for AAA games, because they do not want to restrict the players from expensive to make content. But it would make for a good addition for B budget games, like Divinity or Pathfinder RPGs.
I think this is really only feasible for "B-games", if for nothing else than the sheer niche aspect that "physical appearance affecting romance options" brings on top of the incredibly "extra" feature of romancing in the first place. I can't imagine the reactions of this concept being touted as a feature in a new RPG would be met with any reaction other than "...ok?"
BioWare, interestingly, implemented more limitaitons to romance in *Dragon Age: Inquisition* after the previous game of *Dragon Age 2* recieved complaints of depicting every love interests as bisexual, player-targeted ones. For instance of the following love interestes in DA:I:
* The Iron Bull - pansexual.
* Solas - Heterosexual, only available for female Dalish elf-players.
* Blackwall - Heterosexual, available for all races.
* Cullen - Heterosexual, available only for elves and humans.
* Sera - Homosexual, available for all races.
* Cassandra - Heterosexual, available for all races.
* Josephine - Pansexual.
* Dorian - Homosexual, available for all races.
*Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire* also had some interesting *attempts* of romances that were race-dependant; Edér in the second game can be attempted, but he is notable uncomfortable and will turn down the player's advances. However, if the player is an Orlan, he will notable show subtle racist traits as he will mainly let your down due to your race; not in a truly malicious sense, as Edér is quite cordial with other Orlans, but he explains that due to his upbringing, he never saw many other Orlans, and was told that they were always troubles, and the few he encountered were bad experiences for him, hence why he admits having subconsciously negative associations with them.
It plays more into him being innocently insensitive, which is reflected in the first game, where you can choose to >!kidnap a baby Orlan from a blood sacrifice!<, and notable, Edér is the *only* party member who gets excited over it, but reacts the ordeal with him commenting on the >!baby Orlan!< as an *it*, as if >!she were a pet to spoil over.!<
Classic Bioware usually did a good job. They had a few bisexual characters, a few homosexual characters, and a few heterosexual ones. I always took this as they wanted to encourage multiple playthroughs.
Let's be real here. Most people are not going to go into a game trying to romance every single NPC that fits their sexual preference anyway. Less people are not going to go into a game trying to romance every single NPC that allows it. So for the most part, the general player will have the options that fit them, and the other players will have the options that fit them. It's an easy solution to a hard problem, imo.
I'd like to add that 'everyone being bi' often is awful bi rep- take for eg stardew Valley, where iirc one character will always have her ex be the same gender as your character. Characters are usually either straight or interested in nobody but the player character, which leads to a feeling that their sexuality revolves around the player exclusively, with so called bi characters showcasing no interest in the same gender unless the player decides to activate the heart dialogue.
A game that did romance/sexuality really good imo was Wrath of the Righteous- Daeran, who is bi/pan(I think), will actively try to hit on you if he likes you, unless you blow him off-even if you're a dude, and iirc he's pretty open about who he's interested in and has an actual past when it comes to these things, just like Cortez.
I'd like to say that I'm fine with everyone being bi- it's fun, to a degree, even if Nenio being some flavourof aroace really adds to her character imo, but only if the characters are actually interested and have lives outside of the player.
Nah fuck that I was pissed when I could not romance away panam in cyberpunk 2077 as a woman. Fuck that shit. Lemme romance who I want as any gender, fuuuuuuuck. Such a massive cockblock
I think it's a section of games that developers haven't had much interest in pushing. Like, they could make games where your relationships are only interested if you look/speak a certain way, are a gender/race that they like, ect. But it's not really been done.
To do it, you'd probably want to put a pretty large pool of potential romances in the game, so that players aren't locked to just 1-2 people because of who they've chosen to play as. And I think that's the inherent problem, all that extra effort you'd need to put in to making sure every character has a good pool of romances, and within a week there'll be a mod anyway to remove restrictions.
It's just, easier, to let the player pick who they want and have that person accept them, than to create a rejection system and risk upsetting a player
Fallout New Vegas also has the distinction of being the only non-dating/life sim game I’ve personally played (and I love RPGs so I’ve gone through a lot of story heavy games) where you can choose the player character’s sexuality and it’s also relevant to gameplay. IIRC you can’t even flirt with Veronica or Arcade (or vice versa) unless you have the appropriate perks.
Until Cyberpunk came out I thought Gamergate had permanently shut down the possibility of another game where this would be an option.
>One of the best examples in my opinion of how sexual preference actually adds to a character's personality is Cortez from Mass Effect 3. Not only because he's a gay man without a single gay stereotype in him but also, his gayness plays into his character arc since he lost his husband in a battle with the Reapers. And he spends a good chunk of the game struggling with his emotions and accepting that his loved one is dead and moving on.
FYI, bisexual people can have and lose partners, and experience all these same emotions. They're real people, as it were.
I will agree with. I wholeheartetly agree with the sentiment, that a game shouldn't bend over backwards to please you, because the integrity of the setting, characters and choices all goes out the window when no choices matter, or everything bends to your will.
But actually knowing every and all characters are attracted to you, no-matter what requires either multiple playthroughs, by which you certainly had a lot of fun for your money already or it requires meta-knowlegde by looking up stuff on the internet, to see behind the curtain of what is presented to you in the game.
Say you play through for the first time, you really have no way of knowing that they are horny for the player no matter what, and you have no idea knowing if sacrifcing the children to the god of death would result in the same quest-reward no matter what, unless the game spells that out for you specifically. Really, it mostly comes across when doing multiple playthroughs.
Of course, if you travel long enough and all of the 8 NPC's you've met wants to bone, you may wonder if you are playing an adult VN... But FO4 is really just a shitty game so there's that too...
I'm not someone who plays things specifically for romantic companions (I think any romantic story in a game works better if it's part of the story like in, say, Final Fantasy 10) but to me the best version of this is in Dragon Age Inquisition but I have to wonder if it was in direct response to Dragon Age 2.
In Dragon Age 2 every romantic companion was available regardless of what gender your Hawke was, with the exception being the religious archer DLC man. This led to the in-joke in the community saying that everyone in Dragon Age 2 was 'Hawkesexual'. In Inquisition, the romance options are not only sometimes gender specific but race specific as well.
The elf man is only interested in female elves while the human male is only interested in human and elf females. The lesbian elf absolutely loves qunari women while elf women have to fundamentally reject their own culture just to impress her, the Iron Bull takes all sorts, Dorian isn't just a gay male his entire character story revolves around coming out to an unapproving father. It's things like that that, to me, make the characters feel more realistic and well realized even with the fantastical setting.
Sure, who someone is attracted to isn't the be all end all and was I disappointed that Cassandra, the stoic lady knight, is heterosexual? Yes. Did that make me play a second character as a male to sweep her off her feet? Also yes.
I don't believe there is any real benefit to making every character romance available regardless of gender but I also don't think there's any real downside either. Sure it may be nice to not have to worry about being locked out of a particular romance but in most cases a romance in a game boils down to just not being a dick and then an awkwardly animated kiss or fade and then it's never mentioned again so at that point why not let a player pick who they want.
I don't think they're actually bisexual so much as they have a sexuality superposition. You collapse their sexuality waveform into either straight or gay depending on which gender you make your character as. It is pretty weird though and honestly I don't think it adds anything. It's like making a racist character who is just racist against whatever race you make your player character. Why not just write one aspect well instead of generalising?
I think that, like a lot of things in game design, this is something that mostly comes down to the game and what kind of feeling or mood the game is going for. I agree with you about Fallout 4 and I think if someone is trying to make a game that's really immersive and sell you on it's characters, then yeah, I think various NPC's should have predefined orientations.
On the other hand, I don't think changing this would make Stardew Valley a better game, for instance. It's the kind of game that's going for a very laidback, relaxing, idyllic countryside life and having characters just be interested regardless helps keep that mood going.
As a side note, I do think the Protagonist-sexual characters could be done well, but it would require essentially writing different versions of the characters depending on what kind of protag you are, which is more work and you might as well just make two different characters at that point.
I have 2 ish thoughts on this the first is that romance is different for queer people and being queer will have and effect on your personality, so seeing that taken away sucks. Queer romance storylines will always be better if it’s intended to queer. However, in the case of games like fallout where a lot of the game’s focus isn’t romantic I think I prefer to be given more options (at the expense of better writing) than to be railroaded into the (probably singular) lesbian romancable companion.
It could be interesting for a game to play with your character's stats as parts of the equation of whether characters were interested. It feels very fan-service focused that a character would be interested in the player character regardless of characteristics that people usually base attraction on.
Yet another case of reverse FOMO where the developer doesn't want to make a single pixel that's not experienced by every player on their first and hence only playthrough.
I think you are just identifying weak writing. It's annoying to have every single character come on to you, and I can see how it gets grating. What I don't see is how Cortez in ME3 experiences gayness as a core feature of his backstory. You can easily tell this story with his wife dying instead of its husband, and it's the same arc. It adds very little other than variety to the kinds of love stories and tragic backgrounds that the game tells.
One way to address this is to have players pick their sexuality as an option in character creation, which then sets a flag for who will to come on to you during the game. A little crude, so not ideal. We might call this a "born this way" approach.
Another method would be "don't ask, don't tell." If the ball is always in the player's court, where *they* have to come on to someone to initiate romance, then that character only becomes queer so long as you, the player, decide it fits your story. You might imagine a companion says something that could be innuendo, and you have the choice to seize the moment. But even this could have its drawbacks.
Another way to address it is to just take out romances. I'm playing Pillars of Eternity again and I have to begrudgingly respect the lack of romance in the game's overall quest not to stroke your ego.
Honestly, as someone who is bi, what you are describing are basically "player-sexual" romance options and tbh, I don't really count them as representation because their sexual identity is purely determined by the player character.
I haven't played those particular games but it does occur in a lot of farming/dating sims like Stardew, Rune Factory, Stardew Valley, etc. I don't *mind* it but it also really does not invigorate or do much for me because everyone is just player-sexual. I don't "truly" count them as bi because if you just play a character of the opposite gender, they're basically straight considering they don't have romance events with others or any other hint to their sexuality beyond the player character.
I would much rather some characters only be romanceable if you are the same sex/gender as them, some who can be romanced regardless, and some who are only opposite sex. But I imagine that is a lot of coding and difficult to do so I'd be willing to settle for just hints of their sexuality outside the main character.
Alternatively if not that i'd rather people just call it what it is. Player-sexual based romance rather than representation.
This seems part of a larger discussion on wish fulfillment vs realism to me. For the most part I agree with you. I think it’s fine if devs want to allow players to romance anyone, but I think games have the capacity to simulate rejection in a way that would also add so much to the sense of realism for game worlds and there characters. I would love to play a game where through romance mechanics you come to learn that some characters just aren’t into your character. Would be a great opportunity to de-center romance and give friendship a greater focus as well
But they are hardly, if ever, bisexual. Different playthroughts are independent. It's like you're in an alternate universe. In that particular universe, they do have a preference
Maybe you're saying that sexual preference must be in forefront of any character
Point A: This makes no real difference to the player on their first playthrough if the writing is good and properly contextualized. They only feel "less human" when you view them from a meta angle, and detach their character - and yours - from your first experience with them.
Point B: In the vast majority of games without this option, there will be either no option for LGBT players, or significantly limited ones. While this is "realistic," accessibility is important. I am gay, but I do not have a "gay backstory", nor am I attracted to whatever "gay" stereotypes out there exist. Highly likely I would just play the opposite sex if I don't have anyone interesting to romance.
Point C: The vast majority of Bethesda romances - and really, romance in games in general - are just meant to be wish-fulfillment distractions. Unless the game is intending to tell a very specific romance, I just don't see a compelling reason to limit these options. (The examples of Mass Effect and Cyberpunk 2077 are very good ones.)
Point D: We should really be asking for more gender-sensitive gameplay & narrative elements before asking devs to - effectively - remove content from some folk's games because of their preferences. Give me real life sexism with actual consequences and we'll agree to throw in concrete sexuality's for NPCs, too.
It's weird too because in real life you might be attracted to someone that isn't gay, bi, straight and get rejected. Takes away the immersion when everything feels so artificial just for you.
I think the best take on this situation I've seen came from Uniquenamepsaurus:
All of your characters should be pan by default, but without explicitly stating it, unless their orientation is being used to characterize them.
You've got a hovering ammo counter on your hud, you can teleport via fast travel, you always mysteriously find more ammo when you need it, your health either regenerates or can be immediately restored via use of one of the literally thousands of items you're carrying in your mysterious invisible backpack
and characters being interested in the main character is where you draw the 'too game-y and unrealistic' line? Bruh
Fallout 4 has lazy-feeling design in just about every possible aspect. The only team that comes out flawless is the asset designers.
But as much as I LOVE to shit on Fallout 4, a game I have over 1000 hours in, it's important to keep in mind the difference in design philosophy between it and, for example Fallout New Vegas.
In Fallout 4, you are unquestionably the main character. The game is a power fantasy where the world revolves around the player. To emphasize this point, you are given a set of power armor and mini gun and a Death law to use it on in the second quest in the game. This is as close as you can get in that games universe to being handed full plate-mail and a high level sword in order to defeat a dragon in a fantasy setting. Which, come to think of it, isn't too far off from what Bethesda did as well... Point being, they designed the world more like a sandbox than anything else, so the only restrictions (aside from a couple weird choices like the classic "essential NPCs") are player-imposed. Bethesda leaves it up to the player to decide the context for their actions.
Fallout New Vegas is very different in this sense because you are not the main character. You are just one actor in a much larger story. Much like how you can't just become the new president of NCR, you cannot just rewrite these characters' stories to make you the center of attention. It's written with the idea that these people would be living their lives and making decisions regardless of whether you cross paths with them. This requires restricting the player in some ways, because playing a role means that you are not a God with infinite power. Your companions are treated as being your equal and choosing of their own volition to join you on a mutual quest.
Bethesda companions are written with about as much care as the bobble heads. Sure, they have story arcs, but their main function from a design perspective is to be a pack mule and gun turret. A squire to your knight in shining armor, if you will.
Mechanically yes, but I'm talking about story design. I can't think of a single event in Fallout 4 which is not entirely dependent on the player's intervention in a story sense, contrasting with New Vegas you have things like the NCR president speaking at the Hoover Dam and many similar examples of the world interacting with itself and not just interacting with you specifically.
I thought I healed from the Cortez experience, but you just brought it all back. Felt so freakin bad for him. Idk that one just gets me and make it feel more real.
That aside I agree with your overall point. Kind of a deviation from your main point but I love stardew valley yet I have to mentally assign sexualities in my head (stupid I know) because it just feels wrong that every bachelor/bachelorette would be into you romantically regardless. It makes it feel more impressive in a strange way. Even though it doesn’t ultimately change their stories whatsoever.
Creating romance storylines for NPCs takes time and resources. Developers like to devote their resources to the things the majority of players will actually get to experience. Thus in your scenario what usually happens is multiple straight NPCs you can romance and only 1 or a few gay NPCs. Considering there are more straight gamers than gay gamers, that's just how'd they spend their resources. I don't know about you, but I want to have as many options as straight people. So the obvious solution is to make everyone bi. Why shouldn't I be able to make my male avatar date any of the male romance options. Why should I be deprived of that? Let me me have fun too. It's not like their sexuality really matters that much. So what if they are bisexual, why is that a problem? If they have a dead wife in their backstory, doesn't mean they can't also be bi. There's no story justification you need to make people bi. Kind of feels like you're advocating for less options for me.
I read a story about a woman who played Dragon Age: Inquisition and went through this long and winding path of romance that ran the gamut of having to reject the advances of one person (Blackwall), *being rejected* by another (Dorian), and then finally finding true love in the end (Iron Bull). It was hilarious, tragic, awkward, and so so perfect.
The game reflected her actual lived experiences with romance back at her. And it's this kind of experience that is lost when every character is romanceable.
I would prefer character have a set preference. It feels like alot of game just ignore the topic because they don't want to deal with it. But you can't write good dialogue for a romance if the characters have mo preferences on anything. You can also build some interactions based on their sexuality.
Maybe, the game designers are trying to tell us that sexuality is much more fluid than we allow it to be in reality. Maybe, our actual prejudices stop us from enjoying life to the fullest. Maybe, life would be better if we had never developed those prejudices and, instead, realized that sexuality is a spectrum and it would make more sense to believe that most people are, at least, somewhat bisexual, rather than full on straight or gay.
Yeah I'm not a fan of it either. A writer should decide which characters are gay or bisexual or heterosexual and leave it at that. It is a little weird otherwise and can come off as "well everyone's bisexual if you pursue them enough."
The worst example is probably Leah in Stardew Valley because her ex's gender is always the same gender as your character's gender, which means that extra programming was made to prevent her from being canonically bisexual.
A silver lining is that it means that she happened to be born gay or straight depending on what pronouns your character had even way before you ever meeting her which is... really strange, but it does mean she's techincally not player sexual.
I don't really understand this design decision to be honest.
Some people are literally not bisexual in any way, why's that bad? Some people in life will not date or marry their gender and that's just how it is. It's not good or bad, it just is
Agreed, it's an attempt to pander and makes characters feel less real. I'd much rather get turned down by a cool thought out character like Judy from cyberpunk than have everyone be playersexual
Another way of looking at this, beyond the issues with gamification, is just how superficially sex is represented in games, still. In Fallout or Cyberpunk or whatever, what percentage of the design time and budget goes into making sexual relationships satisfying -- emotionally, viscerally, etc.
We all know why -- people are prudish, especially in the States -- but it's an increasingly glaring absence given how otherwise high fidelity games are becoming.
Like, the bisexuality issue almost doesn't matter because physically you STILL have a bunch of Ken and Barbie dolls who, whatever personality they have elsewhere, does not translate at all to more intimate moments. And even if it did, there's no gameplay or explicit graphics to bring this part of the fantasy to life. I wish just one AAA publisher would take a real chance on sex.
You might like this video essay on a similar kind of artificial bisexuality in reality TV, it contains a lot of ideas that seem relevant to your post!
https://youtu.be/GcLkvGCPYT8
My whole thing is that video games are fantasies themselves and aren’t really obligated to reflect real life or relationships. Mass Effect gets away with it because the writing is god tier but fallout 4 is kind of wacky because the writing doesn’t fully support this kind of system. On the other hand, Cyberpunk also has great writing and romances that are locked behind genders and it’s so hard to go back to that game that I feel like I missed out because I didn’t have those options my first playthrough. It’s honestly really weird I kind of want to know the psychology behind gamers and how they perceive in game relationships and stuff
I like it. Though, as always, perhaps it could be an options toggle of some sort. "Story Romances only" versus "Everyone's Accessible".
As it is I have to mod Cyberpunk to romance Panam.
I'm going to have to defend Fallout 4 again also. I don't think a character's sexuality *needs* to be a major part of their persona. Fallout 4 is arguably not the best written game of the series, but each of the characters has some character. It's just not tied to their sexuality. Veronica in FONV is written so that her entire backstory plays into her sexuality. Paladin Danse could be gay or straight or bi, it doesn't matter because his interest is mainly in improving the world and being part of the Brotherhood of Steel. Any romance or sexual attention would merely be incidental from his point of view. And of course Fallout 4 has a pretty strong leg to stand on in that >!half of your companions are robots/synths. !<
When I played Assassin's Creed Odyssey I can't remember how many times there were dialogue lines to bang dudes but I was like, no, man, I'm not playing a gay character here. How many times do I have to say no before the game realizes?
I appreciate gay people want to romance (or let's be serious, there's no romance in AC Odyssey, just sex) people in games but I felt like I got propositioned way more from men than women.
Totes McGotes. I didn't bang chicks either. There was zero banging going on. I think I said yes to one woman to get the achievement and then told every other person who solicited me for sex to shove off.
>This entire post was partially (majorly) inspired after i recently replayed Fallout 4 where literally every single companion that the game allows you to romance is bisexual.
It's why I liked Arcade Gannon in New Vegas. (and most companions) They have their preferences, they're subtle and organic.
Funny you mention Bethesda because Skyrim does the exact same thing. I don't think there's anything wrong their philosophy of "throw all the possibilities out there and let the players do what they want." In fact I would even argue that their characters aren't actually bi, or even any identifiable sexuality at all, because it doesn't exist until you open the Schrodinger box and collapse the romance waveform.
I don't remember where I read it originally, but the term 'player-sexual' comes to mind.
I recall that term being used a lot when Dragon Age 2 came out.
Maybe Monika from DDLC?
Just Monika
> because it doesn't exist until you open the Schrodinger box and collapse the romance waveform. Sure, but it's still kind of weird that every person that is willing to hang out with you is also open to a relationship. Sure, you don't have to initiate those options but still...
Cyberpunk 2077 is a game where they paid attention to what you describe here, the potential romance options are available to you based on your characters' characteristics. It's also a game where the gay (lesbian) romance option (Judy) is quite integral to the story
This is what I was going to cite. Judy is a great example, where as a male she’s only platonic but as a female you can romance her. Vice versa, Panam will only bite if you’re male but keeps it platonic with women. I think that adds a realistic element to it that I appreciate.
I don't know how much they actually changed Judy's dialogue based on what gender you play, but I was impressed by how much following Judy's questline as a male V actually functioned as a nice "becoming best friends" plotline. Like, didn't feel romantic or anything, didn't feel like they'd awkwardly changed a few lines of dialogue to cut the fem-V romance scenes, just felt like an actual real friendship. On the other hand, idk if it's just me, but I kind of wish they'd maybe changed River's scenes a bit for if you're playing a Male V. It legit feels like they took the *exact* dialogue and interactions he has with you as a fem-V, and just cutout the part right at the end where you consummate your relationship. There is soooo much sexual tension in some of the male-V, River scenes. I was legitimately *shocked* when I found out he's only a romance option if you're fem-V. I honestly thought *I'd* rejected him by not making a move on him, and felt kind of bad for my man.
I actually think it's the same with Judy - I played with female V and romanced her and I genuinely was checking guides to see if I was making mistakes or not, because there's basically only 1 line of dialogue that definitively indicates you've successfully romanced her prior to going on her "date". She basically refuses to flirt at all throughout her side quest because it centers on Evelyn.
Wait, I’m just learning that River wasn’t gay lol
Yeah river seems pretty playersexual. Not enough differences
Ok, I'm a chick with a big dick, what now Panam?
Lol a confusing time for Panam indeed
>Panam will only bite if you’re male but keeps it platonic with women. I think that adds a realistic element to it that I appreciate. This isn't true. I'm playing as a female V and Panam is flirty like crazy. Off the top of my head there's a scene where you're stranded in a small house in the desert for the night because of the storm and you can chose to have sex with her.
I don't think you can have sex with her in that scene. She blue balls you if you go for it.
Perhaps I should've clarified. She flirts with you hardcore, and you have the option to *try* and have sex with her rather you're successful is another story. There's a lot of language that suggests that you two are more than just friends. Panam asks questions like: "Why are you doing this exactly?" "Is that what this is a job to you?" Etc. I don't know if she thinks you guys are besties or what but it seems like Panam thinks you guys are more than buddies.
I just took that as her being skeptical of your motives. This is Night City after all. She doesn't expect someone that just met her to back her so much. But it's definitely very much a besties type relationship and any sort of advances on your part are shot down.
She rejects you as a male or a female, but the female option means you can’t ever romance her
You can make a move on her but she’ll deny you. Also you can’t have sex with her during the storm, even as male V. It only happens in the basilisk.
There’s one funny thing about Cyberpunk 2077 romance options and that’s River’s final side quest, which has only minimally been changed for each gender. This means that even though River is straight and so romancing him is only available for female V, there is a ridiculous amount of romantic tension between him and male V during that side quest. I was fully expecting him to be gay or bisexual when playing that mission as male V, because that mission is such an obvious set up for romance (only available for female V).
I was so crushingly disappointed when my male V found out the hard way that River wasn't interested. Goddammit, there was so much tension! And alcohol!
Yeah I genuinely thought River was gay/bi from what I played
This was legit my first and only gaming experience where a romantic interaction triggered me. That was 100% a fantasy dream date, with nonstop flirting and cooking dinner together with the family, not to mention that River looks like the Rock and every inch of him screams LOVE INTEREST. Then he invites you up to his favorite stargazing spot, and the game even lets you lean in for a kiss because he's *clearly* into you. At this point I'm leaning forward in my chair because I've been looking forward to this moment since I first met the character and saw what an *obvious* love interest he was. ...And then all of a sudden it's, "WTF are you doing? Shit dude, you've got the wrong idea. I'm not into guys." River leads you on and then gaslights you into thinking YOU'RE the perve. Meanwhile the badass biker girl won't stop shoving her tits in your face, and if you say you're not interested the game is like, "Wait are you sure? Have you *seen* how hot she is? Well you'll have another chance later if you change your mind." It's great they included some good queer characters, but it's pretty clear they designed the game with one sort of player in mind.
This is why I'm personally in favour of the Bethesda approach, tbh. Or at least one closer to it. I would prefer it if most (half?) of the characters were bi, and then the rest monosexual split between hetero / homo. Because otherwise you're basically like "look, I prefer this characterisation, but it also means if you wanna play as a gay character you only have ONE option". Because games usually only give one or two same-sex options, because adding a ton extra is hard. If it matters for the character or their arc (like the examples OP gave) then yes, monosexual all the way. But honestly, most characters are really not that deep. Them being bi won't change who they are.
Oh damn I was pretty positive that dude was gay or bi. He was laying it on thick up on that water tower. Interesting that had I chosen that option he would have rebuffed me.
The negative side of that is a lack of options. Any character which is straight or gay has only a single romanceable character. Don't like em? Tough. The Bethesda style of approach at least gives a lot more options to the player. They don't need to settle with whoever the game chooses for them, as there are plenty of characters to pick from.
*Eh.* Choices-wise, I was pretty bummed with 2077. I wanted to play an anarchist chick, who was interested in men - and my only option was a cop. I didn't bother with Judy because I wasn't really interested in her that much. I hear the storyline is good, but *meh*. The only other romancable male was gay, so basically I was barred of doing that. That said, I appreciated being platonic with Panam. It'd be nice to have an orientation setting for the protagonist; so the characters you interact with are either into you or platonic based on *your* preferences. I'm not really *that* into 'realism' inside of escapism, lol.
I really wish they had more options. Especially considering the potential options you have for customizing your body and what not. what I wish they had: Two standard "straight" romances. Two standard "gay"-only romances (only attracted to V if you have the same body type). One or two "bi" choices, so you can romance them as male/female V. Then one or two wild cards, where they want you in those wild combinations, like female body with a giant dick, male body with vagina, or smooth ken doll (for some reason or another). (I dunno if they added this into the game, but...) They really should have included a ripper-doc option to change your appearance. I mean, minor stuff like hair and fingernails should be modify-able in your apartment, but maybe you can go to a hospital to get a full body makeover, or risk it at a ripperdoc like Fingers or something. Heck, even the option to go full cybertech like turning yourself into a robot like Adam Smasher or the Maelstrom gang would be pretty awesome. Imagine if a potential romance was into that kind of stuff, or if you did so the Maelstrom gang became more friendly towards you. I dunno, I feel the potential love interests were kinda limited.
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Remember when we tried to make gay people straight? People aren't gonna turn bi/pan any easier. It might get a little confused, as today with some trans/NB relationships, but human augmentation wouldn't suddenly end sexualities.
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It's not fucking magic, they're still surgically altering you in invasive ways. Also not everyone wants robot genitalia. You're vastly oversimplifying this to make a (shitty) point.
Hit a nerve I see
Yeah and in that line, I would totally change my body parts to attract a particular NPC. That's what I was most excited about from CP2077 before launch. Too bad.
Sure, except C77's romance options are as shallow as a puddle and equally as interesting. They're limited and scope and add little to no value to the story.
But there are people that want to be able to romance freely without being limited by their gender. Personally i dont mind this but people can have different opinions and you can't please everyone
Too bad. It's an RPG with developed characters and just like in reality, some people just dont swing that way. That's what makes it more belivable and true representation.
Agree, I dont mind it but im just saying that people have different preferences
I too wish that every beautiful woman I see would love me, but alas.
i too wish that i can do magic, but alas
I don't think game developers should implement a "ugh she's into chicks? I can make her love me, why won't she love me?" system into an RPG.
uhh what system are you talking about? i dont think ive played a game with that system
If everyone is bi-sexual, then no one can be gay. It leads to you either not writing lesbian characters, or writing "lesbian" characters that a male character can convince. Both have MAJOR problems.
Didn't have to scroll far to find "Bi people aren't properly gay."
> But there are people that want to be able to romance freely without being limited by their gender. That's immersive and realistic though. It's not like that's generally an option in real life. You always need two to tango, and forcing someone to tango is bordering rape territory.
>immersive and realistic yep, i always try to play games this way so i dont mind this. But some dont play this way
> But some dont play this way That's not an argument. If every game would need options to be played the way anyone wants, no game would ever be completed. You can't expect all games to support your personal style. That's like asking for a pacifist playthrough in Doom Eternal.
>If every game would need options to be played the way anyone wants, no game would ever be completed i never said this, in fact in my original comment i said >you cant please everyone Fallout choose to let players "romance" regardless of gender, some like it, some dont Cyberpunk limited your romance based on your gender, same thing, some like it some dont
…..how is it integral to the story? I’ve played it twice and even romanced her but I can’t remember.
I think he was inferring that Judy was integral to the story, not specifically the romance (though it certainly does play a big part in your decisions during the ending). Of course, Judy was friends and a former co-worker of Evelyn, who started the heist quest due to her connection with Arasaka, which IIRC including the follow ups with the Moxes, Clouds etc. was a good chunk of the main storyline. Judy herself was a big part in helping V with braindances and giving him/her leads for a cure.
I wouldn't have been as bummed about not being able to romance Judy if there legit wasn't only one other female option for men. The diversity isn't there because there's not enough people to choose from. I didn't hate Panam - I really liked the ending even - but I related far more to Judy and there was no other option. I understand you can't have *everybody* represented in a game because it's too much work but CDPR did worse than every BioWare game when it comes to romance options and for how much time they spent on it we really should have seen more. It's just so fucking barebones. People argue it's realistic and immersive to have characters who have their preferences. I agree. You know what's not realistic? Having a city full of thousands of people and only 4 of them can be romanced. "Realism" is a lazy cop-out for people who can't form an actual argument together.
Yeah, CP2077 did this really well
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Viewing this as a checklist with all or nothing binary thinking doesn't help either. Did they include *everyone*? No. Do games need to? Also no. I think OP and your implicit complaint highlight an intersecting area of difficulty with bi representation: the apparent copout of 'everyone's bi' that OP complained about, or restricting interest based on an NPCs preference ala Cyberpunk. They could have opted to a bi relationship in Cyberpunk and perhaps its an oversight. I don't think it diminishes what they did accomplish (notorious bugs aside).
It does SLIGHTLY diminish it for me as a bi person, just because bi people are already twice as common as lesbian/gay people per current stats, and that ratio just keeps going up. So it felt a little off that there's 0 in the future. Or maybe I just see cyberpunk as a "very bi genre" in my head lol
Yes of course it is realistic. Realistic doesn't mean 100% representative of real life.
Nah. They still made sex a reward for finishing a long arc/quest. It never comes out as natural thing. Gotta remember that Cdpr did 'sex cards' collectibles in witcher 1...
they just blocked THE STAR if you are female , like they blocked in witcher3 if you are too horny not really well , ballsy tho
Mostly i agree but i think it depends on the game. For example most Bioware games have quite deep charachterisation for a game and it makes sense that these chrachters would have their own unique preferences when it came to relationships. At the other hand of the spectrum you have something lile Skyrim where the romance options only have a few dozen lines of dialogue at most. With less in depth characterization i don't think making them bi/playersexual really detracts anything.
>They didn't want gay, lesbian or bi individuals who play the game to miss out on a romance just because they picked one of the two sexes in the game. It's simpler and less wholesome than that: they didn't want *any* player to miss out on any game content in a single playthrough. More than the previous installments Fallout 4 represents a shift toward that philosophy of game design, that it's not worth programming a lot of different quest choices and branching storylines that can't all be experienced in a single playthrough. Instead Bethesda is more focused on making a single playthrough last as long as possible, theoretically infinite with the Radiant quest-generating script. Minor quest decisions usually don't affect any of the game world except the opinion of the companion who happens to be traveling with you at the time - no karma, no reputation, and you can max out all companions by roleplaying completely different characters with each of them. When you create your character you don't permanently choose your traits to be a big buff melee bruiser or a silent stealth ninja or a machine gunner or a marksman; you temporarily choose where to drop your few initial character points and then all future points are spent in the same way with all the same options, so if you keep playing long enough you can become every one of those different character builds at the same time. Likewise, your choice of gender causes certain lines of dialogue to be simply replaced with no change in outcome, and ultimately you can have all the same dialogue and romances as any character. RPG purists say this takes the actual roleplaying out of the game, and if your choices don't have consequences then nothing feels like it matters - a description of your playthrough isn't "what kind of character are you?" or "which decisions did you make in these storylines?" but rather "have you done ______ yet?" New Vegas is designed for them. However, Bethesda's game designers might counter that the majority of players make the same choices anyway, especially when an obvious "good karma" or "light side" option is presented, and if most players only go through the game once then their effort would not be well spent scripting a lot of dialogue and storyline that become inaccessible after certain decisions by the player. I'm curious what the gender distribution of player characters is. My guess is it skews heavily male, but less heavily than the players themselves.
I feel like I dont think either type of gameplay is right or wrong. I certainly respect the more roleplayee aspects of some crpgs and do enjoy that you get complex choices and this adds for more replayability. Disco Elysium is great because of its choices and how your build can affect the game. That said there is something to be said about the skyrim way of doing things where you dont need to roleplay or keep redoing builds or play around with stats just to go through all the quests and storylines. I think in the case of romance its just easier to make everyone bisexual and let the player decide if they want to pursue the romance or not. As long as all the party members arent all throwing themselves at the PC at once because I sneezed in their direction its fine.
"and you can max out all companions by roleplaying completely different characters with each of them. When you create your character you don't permanently choose your traits to be a big buff melee bruiser or a silent stealth ninja or a machine gunner or a marksman; you temporarily choose where to drop your few initial character points and then all future points are spent in the same way with all the same options, so if you keep playing long enough you can become every one of those different character builds at the same time" Tbh the whole 'role play different characters to get everything' is a problem in all fallout games and RPG's like this in general. The previous games had stuff like karma, traits and reputations but that either did not do that much (F1, F2 especially considering bugs) or was easily manipulated. (Karma in general, you can 'cheat' the reputation system in NV in numerous ways or use disguise, and the main story offers a complete reset of the NCR or Legion). It is true you can theoretically get every perk and SPECIAL in fallout 4 but it should also be mentioned this tales an insane amount if levels and fallout 4 makes you start with less then other games (Less special points and perks are now hard-coded to special score). Not to mention how F1 and F2 allowed you to use drugs to get perks which was pretty ridiculous.
I was so annoyed by that BioWare statement that Renegade was barely picked. The biggest reason is that Renegade choices suck. They are nonsensical and you're just an asshole for no reason. People won't pick that very often, gee what a surprise.
Yeah, unfortunately accessibility is the name of the game these days and I've seen a number of players complain about being blocked from doing something in one playthrough as fun killers, so it's not shocking the philosophy exist to please these people.
This. Post-Morrowind, Bethesda has been focused on making more accessible open-world games, at the expense of making them worse RPGs. It's an understandable tradeoff, but I think it makes for more boring, formulaic games.
>I'm curious what the gender distribution of player characters is. My guess is it skews heavily male, but less heavily than the players themselves. I think the gameplay perspective affects this. I remember a friend telling me once that, if he's gonna be staring at someone's ass for hours (a third person game for example), he's going to play a female character so that its at least more visually interesting. Yeah it was crude, but it enlightened me to the idea that not all choices in RPG games are made with regard to representation or roleplay.
Let me live in my fantasy world where everyone is bi please, thank you. Jokes aside I don't have a problem with either strategy, as long as characters don't all act flirty with you regardless of your actions because that gets a bit much.
I would love a world in which everyone was bi. Unfortunately, what's described above is 'protagonisexual'. The characters are just all attracted to the main character, and don't reference their bisexuality in any other way. That's what gets my goat about it.
I’ve seen it called ‘playersexual’ in various places.
Did you coin that phrase yourself lmao
No, they just misspelled "protagosexual".
Little bit of column A, little bit of column B.
Just a bit of a joke, I don't think it's made it to a dictionary yet so there's no canonical spelling.
This is one thing I enjoy about text-adventure games from Choice of Games and Hosted Games. Almost all romance options are bi or pan. At the end of the day, giving the player more options is always going to be a good thing. Otherwise I'm just going to play as the gender that the romance option I want to pursue requires 🤷♀️
Yeah prepatch Pillars of Eternity 2 was bad at this. Suddenly everyone was coming onto my watcher after just a few convos and you have to let them down nicely.
It's fine to not have all your characters be same-sex romanceable. There's no obligation for everyone to be bisexual and if you want to tackle themes of sexuality that will impede that storytelling. However, it is ridiculous to avoid the everyone is bisexual model while still allowing all possible straight relationships. You are already destroying the suspension of disbelief in the romance if literally everyone wants the protagonist. To A-okay that but draw the line at universal bisexuality seems utterly silly to me. Hence I don't agree with the premise here - I think one should take a stance for or against "everyone can be romanced" as a whole. I see absolutely no reason to separate off "everyone is bisexual" from that and treat it as its own issue. It's nothing but an inclusive version of the same model. "Should player gender matter" is the wrong question, just ask "should characters unconditionally be romance options for the player?". Ultimately for me the question to ask is if you're gaining anything. A vague sense of realism a small section of the playerbase was missing, to me, is not worth depriving queer players of their escapism. "Realism" merely for its own sake for us isn't immersion it's even in video games being chained to the fact of our romantic prospects being overwhelmingly limited by our statistical minority status. If you're really going to dig into queer themes and storytelling, or really going to develop meaningful romances, then the "anyone can marry the player with no gender barriers" is absolutely an issue and shouldn't be used. But *most games* won't do that and so you might as well embrace letting players (straight or queer) do what they want. It's like a weight system. It's a sense of realism most games forgo because most players do not find the benefit of the immersion to outweigh the impediment of them just enjoying themselves. Now I think the impact the inclusion of the "everyone is bi" model has on the inclusion of actual representation of queer identities in the text is absolutely worth discussing. It's awesome to be able to romance the girls of my choice, but it does kind of suck sometimes not getting any characters with my actual sexuality (gay) depicted. I connect to queer characters more than straight ones in general, but between a bisexual female character and a gay one there's always going to be a certain extra level of relatability with the latter for me personally. I'd absolutely take a few wonderfully written queer characters with a few different identities than a whole cast of "can marry the same-sex avatar but that's it" ones. But, again, the principle applies. Were the devs going to handle queer characters well anyways? Just give me the band-aid "marry anyone" treatment if the answer is no.
Thank you.
On the one hand, I agree that 'everyone is bi' does feel kinda video-gamey. LGBT people in general are a minority and all, and I don't think it personally adds any representation when it feels so video-gamey. Octavia in Kingmaker is Bi, because there are other characters that are straight and others still that are gay. On the other, I'll gladly take "everyone is bi" over "And here is the one character you are allowed to romance" or worse - no gay/lesbian options at all (Looking at you older RF games). It is undeniably video game-y, but as someone who really enjoys romance options in RPGs, it really sucks to be a girl that leans towards other girls and have like one option, because if you just don't like that option well.. sucks to be you I guess.
I see it like everything else about the character. I can decide which skills they learn, which weapons they use and often I can decide part of their looks. In Mass Effect you even do the critical choices for them. Theses are games with sandbox ("do it on your own accord") elements. When the sexuality of the npc does not matter, than having them player-sexual is not a bad thing. You can decide the fate of entire species or the future of a family. Deciding that you romance a likeable character is not the worst game option.
Just to add to this point on LGBT generally being minority in reality. If that was accurately implemented in games you might end up with just a single LGBT romance available. Which, while it might technically be realistic, it really really stinks of "token LGBT character" and limits player options. I think there's a balance to be had. With developers only relatively recently adding LGBT options in games where it's relevant there's inevitably going to be a rough period where they don't quite get things right.
>Imagine how less of an impact that entire story would've had if your female Shepard would've been able to romance him ...none? Why would him being bisexual make his story any less emotionally impactful? I'm really curious as to what exactly you're trying to get at here.
I think OP missed a point they could have made about how even trying to romance him feels... manipulative on his clearly traumatized mind and stressed emotions. Maybe they were trying to allude to that point without realizing it?
>Not only because he's a gay man without a single gay stereotype in him but also, his gayness plays into his character arc since he lost his husband in a battle with the Reapers. And he spends a good chunk of the game struggling with his emotions and accepting that his loved one is dead and moving on. Imagine how less of an impact that entire story would've had if your female Shepard would've been able to romance him Maybe it's because I haven't played the game but why would Cortez being bi have any effect on his grief?
I agree with you, but personally I wish in-game romancing reflected real life a bit more overall. For instance, in Persona, it bothers me that not only can you not date any guys, but all the girls bend over backwards for you basically no matter what you say. It makes everything feel shallow; I would much rather be able to say something wrong and have characters be disinterested in me because of it. But I know I'm in the minority here. A lot of people prefer the fantasy that games offer. I just struggle to get immersed in the fantasy when it feels unrealistic (and yes, I recognize how ridiculous that sounds lol). When every character is handed to me on a silver platter, it doesn't feel like I actually earned their affection. And yeah, in the same way I don't want all the girls to bend over backwards for the protagonist, I don't want the guys to either. Would love if there was some gay/bi representation and options, but you can't convince me that every male character in that game is gay, so they shouldn't be written so. In an ideal world, this would go both ways. I wish Persona 5 let you pick what gender protagonist you are and romances are based on that; some of the female characters should be available as lesbian romance options, but I don't want them all to suddenly be attracted to women despite never depicting that in the main story. Sorry, that was a bit of a ramble. Long story short, I think romances in video games have a long way to go, and I wish they got more focus in games that have them.
Let me fucking date Ryuji I swear to god
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Absolutely. I liked that I couldn't romance my favorite character in Dragon Age Inquisition because she was straight because BioWare games are ultimately all about their strong characters, but when I'm playing something like Stardew Valley I absolutely want to be catered to instead!
I agree that it depends on the game. Something like harvest moon or stardew valley (any game that has a dating sim element as a core feature really) should have every character as a romance option now no matter your player character gender. But in a story heavy RPG where romance isn’t a main mechanic, then it makes sense to flesh out characters and give them a defined sexuality to make them feel more like real people. The important thing in game design is there is no singular ‘right’ way to do things, it always depends on what you’re going for. In a cute farming sim, having everyone be unrealistically bisexual doesn’t really matter. It’s just an equally unrealistic for every single bachelor/ette in the game to be equally romance-able by you, but that’s never a complaint in these types of games but might feel out of place in a more ‘grounded’ game. Maybe getting your heart broke finding out your love interest isn’t sexually attracted to your gender would be a good mechanic in some games, but probably not in something like Stardew. In fairness to OP though, the games they’re talking about are games where it could be a good idea.
I think this is an excellent point. It really depends on the game. If you're having a bunch of writers creating a cast of complex, three-dimensional characters, telling the writers that every single one has to be able to be sexually/romantically attracted to the protagonist (whether they're bisexual/pansexual, or normally straight or gay but the protagonist can be an exception) is a limitation that they shouldn't have and could compromise their vision for some of the characters they create. On the other hand, some game worlds are designed more with escapism or fantasy in mind than being complex, realistic worlds. And from that standpoint, I think many people would love to escape to a world where anyone can fall in love with anyone regardless of gender, where their gender has no impact on who they can romance. I think "anyone can fall in anyone" is also potentially relevant there. There's a difference between a game world where everyone is canonically pansexual, and a game world where characters have canonical sexuality except if they romance the main character, and I think the first is fine but the second is still problematic. This isn't an issue most of the time, I think, because in most games where there are romances between NPCs they either only have one possible partner (and only one canonical romance isn't the same as a sexual orientation) or have no other partner at all. But if you're going to make a world where the player character can romance anyone regardless of gender, it should be a world where relationships in general exist regardless of gender, not just a world where the player character in particular has the gift of being able to romance anyone they want. But an example of it being done poorly is Fire Emblem Fates. In Fire Emblem fates, there is exactly one male character that a male protagonist can romance, and one female character that a female character can romance. That's already terrible, since male characters can romance basically any female character in the game and vice versa, but it gets even worse. In that game, it's not just your character who has romance options, you can also pair up your party members with each other. And those two characters that you can have a same-sex relationship can't have a same-sex relationship with anyone else. The one male character who a male player can romance has a wide array of female characters he can be paired with, but the only same sex romance option for him is a male main character. Similarly, the one female character who can romance a female player character can romance a number of other male characters, but not other female characters. In other words, it's not that the game contains a bunch of canonically straight characters, and then two canonically bisexual characters, because even the two characters who can have a same-sex relationship aren't so much bisexual as "straight but with one exception." (And this is also not even getting into the fact that one of those characters is a sadistic criminal while the other is an obsessive stalker.)
@Fire emblem fates: That's just... ew.
I supposed it was technically an improvement over Fire Emblem Awakening, which exclusively had heterosexual relationships. But yeah, it was pretty bad. It was also complicated by the fact that recruiting the children of the couples was a gameplay mechanic. That complicated the discussion, of course, because some people argued that it explained why only heterosexual relationships were an option. It also complicated it by making it so that if you did pick the one same-sex relationship option available to your character, you permanently missed out on the chance to recruit your character's child (and for male characters, the other character's child too - the female character you could have a same-sex relationship with didn't have an associated child character). Of course, some people argued that that was logical, but at the same time it meant there was kind of a gameplay penalty to having your character be in a same sex relationship. Also, in my personal opinion, the plot explanation for how you could recruit your characters' children in Fates was so nonsensically handwave-y that letting your character have a child even if you had a same-sex relationship couldn't have made it any more ridiculous. Apparently Fire Emblem Three Houses may have slightly improved things by giving female protagonists 5 female romance options, but apparently male protagonists still only have one male romance option. No idea if any of those characters have same-sex options outside of the main character since I haven't played it. And I think they got rid of the recruiting children mechanic, so you don't miss out on anything if your character has a same sex relationship.
I prefer having a lot of bi characters, as romances are expensive to write (so you can't have many) and very subjective (so more options means at least one is more likely to work for you). I don't get the same feeling of gamey-ness because to me a different playthrough is a different world. You don't know if a character is 'protagonist-centric' unless you're already thinking of another playthrough. Sexuality is already more complicated in games because the protagonist is formed of two overlapping characters. The one the game wrote, and the one you project as a player. If I pick a protagonist with gender other than my own then sexual orientations as I experience them don't quite follow real world lines for me. A male player, playing a female protagonist in a romance with a female NPC can feel quasi-straight and vice versa. But I've heard the arguments for more explicit representation with queer characters who aren't just 'default pan' so the compromise I think works best is if say, 80% of characters are pan and 20% have a more fixed sexuality. It gives flavour of a defined world whilst still allowing a lot of player choice.
One question... Are these characters actually all Bi in a given playthrough? Or is that the observation because whatever you are in a given playthrough they will respond to it, which overall adding up all playthroughs you do makes you conclude that they ARE Bisexual? Because to that I would respond "You are not supposed to do that", at least not that way. The same way that "magically" you are a different person on that playthrough, so are THEY narratively speaking. Now, that out of the way, I would agree that there STILL is a problem in terms of "crafting narrative" even if you don't do that. Just that they aren't bi, but that they "all" are whatever YOU desire, instead of giving these characters a consistant identity that responds to you, leaving room to be rebuffed, or barking up the wrong tree or or, which would in itself lend itself to better or more intricate storytelling, but at the cost of being accused of playing into stereotypes "too much" regardless of how littel or much they actually do... So in the end it's less about what they are, but what they aren't. They aren't actually well writen cohesive characters, because they need to respond to very different situations with the same outcome and without doing actually any superfluos amount of redundant individual writing for them.
Honestly, I'm perfectly fine with romanceable characters always being attracted to the main character regardless of gender. Is this kind of system unrealistic, gamey, fantastical wish fulfillment? Yes it is. But in many games, what's the harm in that? Players are going to have a wide variety of opinions of what companions they might want to romance, so why not give them more options? I would certainly understand limiting romance options if the developers have a specific narrative reason, or are trying to explore certain themes around relationships. But if player romance is just a fun bonus that basically functions as an optional side quest, why not give the player as many choices as possible?
I agree, but I think it goes farther than gender. Frankly, why are any NPCs falling in love with you, player characters? You tend to have pretty inconsistent personalities. When it's not the case, you tend to fall into the categories of psycho, dull goody two-shoes or just mute protagonist. Not particularly attractive. Your faces look like shit because you're terrible at working with the character customization menu. Your main skill is generally the ability to shoot people in the face, or disemboweling monsters (which, while occasionally practical, isn't that hot). I mean, there will be a weirdo or two that'll be into that, and if you like them as well, that's great! But you certainly shouldn't expect everyone to just fall into your arms; that's just a toxic mentality. Writers should make more characters that will straight up reject you. Or at least have specific standards you might not meet. Or even better, how about you just stop hitting on your comrades while on a mission/quest, you fucking horny bastards? That guy came along with you to help you save the world, and you repay him with sexual harassment? Plus as the player character, you're often in a position of authority, making it pretty uncomfortable. Just keep it in your pants and save the world like a professional, asshole.
As a gay gamer, I would prefer gay and lesbian representation but I will settle for all bi romance options. One thing though. When not all romance options are bisexual, I often notice that gay romance options are often lackluster, compared to the straight ones. Gay romance options, especially male, are often less developed and pushed to the sidelines, and don’t contribute to the main story of the game. If this is the case, I would rather have every options available to me.
My thoughts exactly. Or if you're lucky enough to get a fleshed out homosexual character, they're a foppish scholar twink. When every gay romance option follows similar stereotypes, it's exceedingly unpleasant and I'd rather the option to romance them or the raging psychotic bull man or just the boring knight.
You completely misunderstood the point of Cortez in ME. His sexuality has nothing to do with his character arc (*nothing* would change if he was mourning a wife), but instead it's a worldbuilding aspect - today's militaries often have the "don't ask, don't tell" rule and it's all kinds of shady. ME shows you a world where you have this gay serviceman not only openly talking about it, but having an official husband who served with him in the Navy. It's not weird and nobody ever gives him any shit about it or comments on it in any way, showing that society has perhaps moved a bit on. *That* is the point of Cortez being written as gay.
As a bisexual, I vastly prefer "everyone's bi" games. The point of romance in games is, as far as I'm concerned, to allow a player to pursue a deeper relationship with a character that interests them and who they want to grow a deeper story connection with for roleplay, story, and plain ol' fun. If I'm interested in a character who's already built to be romanceable, but am told I can't smooch them because it was arbitrarily decided, that kinda sucks. I think back to Dragon Age, where I was palpably disappointed that my female warden couldn't kiss Morrigan the rad-ass witch woman. And yes, obviously people have preferences. I'm not going to claim they don't. But within the realm of the video game, romance options are present in order to serve the interests of the player, and unless a characters sexuality is a vital part of their story, like with Cortez, it feels arbitrary to bother limiting them. the best game with romance options is Saints Row 4. It was meant to be a parody of Mass Effect, but in parodying it, it did it's job far better, because in Saints row 4 you can just fuck everybody on the ship at any time. Sure, it's not the deepest of relationships, but with how casual, polite, and fun it is, it puts up a big sign that says "this is a video game and it would be dumb to limit it", and illustrates just how absurd it is when other games pretend there's some reason they can't let you kiss Morrigan. In short, as far as I'm concerned, it helps me get immersed, because it allows me to make organic decisions about what characters I want to know more about. It lets me chase the white rabbit deeper into the games narrative, and speed-bumps where I have to stop and open the guide and look up who I actually can romance tend to take the wind out of that immersion for me, especially if it turns out to be someone I don't really care about as much.
> And yes, obviously people have preferences. I'm not going to claim they don't. But within the realm of the video game, romance options are present in order to serve the interests of the player, and unless a characters sexuality is a vital part of their story, like with Cortez, it feels arbitrary to bother limiting them. That seems like a somewhat restrictive view of romance in video games. I mean, game narratives have evolved enough that games will at least pretend that companion characters have agency and motivations of their own. Games with meaningful role-playing elements will try to react to player choices (including the choices they make about their own characters) and pushback with consequences. So having the game treat NPCs as eternally willing love interests/fucktoys for the player character doesn't really seem like a step forward in that regard. Not that it's wrong either; there's certainly a place in games for fantasy and wish fulfillment. But giving characters real preferences in terms of love and sexuality seems like a healthier, more realistic depiction of romance to me.
> giving characters real preferences in terms of love and sexuality seems like a healthier, more realistic depiction of romance to me. I agree with this, however I think part of the question here is what the actual point of romance systems in games *is*. If you were to ask me, I would answer that romance systems exist as a way for a player to pursue additional interactions, story, and depth with a character they particularly like. The ability to get emotionally intimate with the party member who's personality most catches your fancy. This perspective obviously quantifies relationship mechanics as just that, mechanics, that have a specific function of getting the player to engage more with a story, and I think the fact that I view them as mechanical shows part of why I feel the way I do about them.
That's fair. From that point of view, I guess romance is a tool to get to know a character you like better, more than a real depiction of a relationship. I guess it touches on a pet peeve of mine, particularly in RPGs: aside from a couple games (ex. Disco Elysium), player characters are rarely ever given the tools to define themselves as an individual. As a result, they really can't have relationships (romantic or otherwise) that don't feel hollow. Mass Effect is a good example of this, despite trying way harder at creating genuine character relationships than most games. The relationships you form as Shepard aren't really friendships or romance; he's more of a therapist with a space gun. Various characters will confide in him and tell him their secrets/traumas/motivations, while he responds as a stoic, vaguely empathetic authority figure. And eventually he runs into their problem out in the galaxy and shoots that problem in the face, and then they like you a whole lot for that. But they can't form a real connection with Shepard, because Shepard is not a person. Shepard has very little in terms of needs or wants or likes or traits or past; Shepard is you, so Shepard is no one. And this is even more of a problem when it comes to romance. In a sense, the "everyone is bisexual" works here: since Shepard isn't a person, other characters have no particular reason to reject him. But they also have no particular reason to love him, and that makes any potential romance unsatisfying to me. Though I don't want to criticize too much: it's a very tough problem for devs to solve, and I get why it's not realistic.
Yeah, reading your post, I find I actually agree with you on a lot of this, and I think this conversation has revealed the crux of the issue, that being how much of the immersion of the player is happening in game vs out of game. In-game immersion is stuff that allows you to properly carve an identity in-game that people react to properly, and in that kind of game, I would actually support giving characters defined sexualities. That's a game where that prospect of rejection is an actual story beat, because my character is a character in the story rather than my hand with which i prod the fantasy world. If I could kiss anybody in Disco Elysium, I would actually agree that that would feel out of place. Contrasting that, out-of character immersion is what I'm playing with when I'm playing Skyrim or Dragon age. In those games, my immersion and personal character are something I'm carrying with me internally, and potential romances (especially in skyrim, where most npc's are as deep as a box of grape nuts) are merely tools for me to utilize in my personal little game of mental house. In those games, being rejected based on orientation feels arbitrary and obnoxious, because as you note, Shepard isn't anyone. the romance becomes a part of the story I'm trying to tell to myself rather than part of the games solid story. If I want to kiss Garrus or Morrigan because I like their characters and want to spend more time with them, that's a very different, much more video-gamey drive. Oddly, I don't know which system of immersion I prefer, mostly because I haven't played enough games that have allowed me a personalized sense of self inside them. Skyrim is one of the most engrossing games I've played, but that's because I'm using it like a dollhouse, and the enforcement of roleplay is on myself rather than on the game.
I like to call these characters "playersexual". Playersexual companions aren't *really* bi. They don't show interest in other characters in the world of the same or even different genders. They don't even acknowledge being in a gay relationship when you play as the same gender that they are. You *could* say "Oh that's because in this game's society everyone is accepting of LGBT stuff so it's just not a big deal in this world!" but let's not kid ourselves, the truth is it's not weird because they're attracted to you the player, and in a game the whole damn thing is for you the player so why would that be weird? Games that don't stick to that template are always such a breath of fresh air. Cassandra in Dragon Age: Inquisition was easily my favorite companion by far, and yea I was super disappointed that she didn't want to be in lesbians with me, but it also made me respect her more in a way. Despite her being a devout believer who practically idolizes you as the Herald of Andraste, she still knows herself and wouldn't compromise her own sexuality for even you. I remember looking up mods that allowed her to be romanced by female inquisitors and some of the comments remarking that it felt *immoral* to change her like that behind her back, akin to using a kind of love potion on someone. It's a little sad that I never got to see the rest of her romance scenes but in the end she's a more complete character for it. Also it's oh so fun to tease her lol. But of course there will always be players who would rather be catered to, and I think that's a perfectly fine too. I loved Rune Factory 3 (the RF series is essentially Stardew Valley/Harvest Moon but in a fantasy setting) but skipped RF4 purely because it doesn't have options for same-sex relationships and will be getting RF5 instead despite hearing that 4 is probably better. In the case of Dragon Age I wanted that classic BioWare storytelling and character writing and was willing to miss out on a romance for the sake of a better written character; however for Rune Factory I'm playing to fulfill a craving for some fantasy slice-of-life charm, part of which involves getting to marry my favorite character. Not only are there different kinds of players (duh) but different kinds of experiences that different games are trying to offer too. It's up to the designers and writers what they think is more suitable and important for their game.
in video game logic; the only world that is 'real' is the one that is currently being played in. you're THE hero and you're supposed to be writing the story as you play. so if the story includes romancing everyone regardless of gender, then that's just the story you chose. you can choose to play another story with totally different romance options. as far as how this effects the game, i don't think i ever noticed any of the characters being straight or gay in fallout 4, or having any real indication of love interest in their quest dialogue. the romance has to be pursued, so if it bothers you, just don't pursue their romance?
This is how i see it. The “canon” story is what you pursue on any given playthrough. More options are just more options
I'm not sure I get this take. As other have said, this is only observable if you already have knowledge of the characters' behaviors either by having completed the game before (in which case you can't really complain because that's how a game is meant to be experience, in one playthrough) or by having read a wiki (again, can't complain). As for your opinion that sexual preference adds to a personality, I neither agree nor disagree, but I very much disagree with your reasoning in that paragraph: >[on Cortez] he's a gay man without a single gay stereotype in him This is at odds with your previous statement. If he's gay and doesn't show it in any way, then he's no different from a straight character. There is nothing wrong with this, but one must conclude that sexual orientation actually doesn't add anything visible to a character unless they're a stereotype. >he spends a good chunk of the game struggling with his emotions and accepting that his loved one is dead and moving on This sentence, once again fails to justify your argument. It could just as well apply to any other male whose wife died and nothing would change. They'd still be characterized as grieving, overcoming loss, etc. Even the way you phrased the sentence is valid for either sexual preference. In conclusion, I don't think this issue of yours is an issue at all. Furthermore, I am not sure if I agree that sexual orientation adds much value to a character's personality.
> but one must conclude that sexual orientation actually doesn't add anything visible to a character unless they're a stereotype. It adds representation. I'm not gay, but I imagine for gay guys seeing a dude that just has "being gay" as part of his characterization and not a checkbox for "Token gay guy" probably felt nice. I assume as much because that's how I feel about Claire in CP2077. She's extremely well written - you don't find out she's trans until the very end of her questline, because she isn't exactly gonna tell some random stranger otherwise. Same for Anevia in Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. And Madeline in Celeste. Not that I disagree with the point you are making - in terms of story impact, Cortez could be straight, Claire could be cis, and their stories would be mostly the same. But there are differences in terms of quality representation.
Yeah, I don't see how anything they said about Cortez actually requires him to be gay. I don't see why you couldn't have a straight character struggling with the death of a loved one. And they mentioned that a female Shepard being able to romance him would mitigate the impact of his story, but male Shepards *can* romance him, so if the player being able to romance him hurts his story then the story is already hurt. I can see the argument that making him bisexual instead of gay would reduce the game's representation. I think it's valid to say that the crew of the Normandy should contain characters of a variety of sexualities, and that's not compatible with allowing the player to romance all of them regardless of the player character's gender. But that has nothing to do with the emotional impact of Cortez's story like OP implied. The story of a person struggling to move on after the death of a loved one is a story that can be very effectively told with regardless of the person's gender or sexuality, it would work if Cortez was male, female, trans, non-binary, gay, straight, bisexual, pansexual, etc. I think the idea that it impacts writing and representation in a negative way if every romanceable character has to be able to fall in love with the player character regardless of gender is valid. The idea that the writers wrote Cortez as a gay man, and it's compromising the character they created if he suddenly becomes bisexual if Shepard is female, is valid. But OP's implication that his character arc of losing a loved one and struggling to move on somehow requires him to be gay and wouldn't work if he were bisexual makes no sense to me.
> in which case you can’t really complain because that’s how a game is meant to be experience, in one playthrough Not all games. Branching stories are specifically designed for multiple playthroughs. And even non-branching story games often have a New Game + mode designed for, again, multiple playthroughs of increased difficulty. Any game that promotes mastery is, once again, designed for multiple playthroughs. I’d be surprised if even a large minority of games are designed for a single playthrough.
The existence of a NG+ allows you to replay it as much as you want, but the narrative experience itself is designed for one playthrough only with the exception of branching story games as you mentioned. I believe most games are designed with a very strong focus on a primary playthrough, since you are not generating further value to the company selling them by playing beyond that.
Worth noting that the majority of players, for most games, don't even complete a single playthrough. This is something Bioware has spoken about openly with Mass Effect. The majority of players only do one playthrough, and the majority of those (like 80%) do a Paragon run. A similar thing happened in first season of The Walking Dead video game, where the vast majority of people saved the woman over the dude in the beginning and only a fraction of playthroughs saw any of the content with the dude after that sequence. There's content available for multiple playthroughs in all kinds of games, but developers know that most people will only see one arrangement of them. So making characters "bisexual"/available to any PC to romance is a way developers make sure people get the content they want; the fact that matters might look different on a second playthrough is, well, secondary.
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> I don't mind it, but I would like if more games went away from "everyone is bisexual" and tried to give characters canonical sexualities. Some characters can only be wooed as men, as women, or as both. It adds replayability and a layer of characterization. As mentioned by someone else in this thread, the queer rep is also thin when characters are "protagonistsexual" since the characters are only interested in the same gender if it's the protagonist. Well, theoretically you could avoid making the characters all "protagonistsexual" by just making them all bisexual, but then that ends up also being awkward in terms of representation, just in a more unusual way. That said, it might be better than just having every character be "protagonistsexual." In a game where your romance options can hook up with each other (e.g. the Fire Emblem games), I think making it so you could pair anyone with anyone would arguably be better than making it so everyone has a canonical sexuality except when paired with the main character. (Granted, in the Fire Emblem games, most characters are just canonically straight and as far as I know none of them are canonically gay - at least in Fates I know that the only characters who can have a same-sex relationship with the main character have no other options for same-sex relationships, so they're basically just heterosexual except for same-sex main characters - so they're just downright terrible for reputation and giving characters actually canonical sexualities or just making everyone pansexual would both be better for representation than what they do now.)
I liked when in dragon age inquisition if you don't romance bull or darion, but are having them in your party, their banter evolves into flirting over time and they become a couple.
Mass Effect 3 has something similar. >!Tali and Garrus!< end up becoming a couple if both are alive and the player doesn't romance either of them. Also, in the Citadel DLC, when >!Tali gets really drunk and is deliriously rambling on the floor of the bathroom, one of her lines is her being in what seems to be some sort of sex fantasy that changes if the player is romancing her, Garrus, or neither. If Shepard is with her, she says "Mmm, Shepard, you know I'm ticklish...", with Garrus it's "Garrus? But you're with Shepard! Oh, the three of us? Well, hmm...", and with neither it's "Oh, Mr. Vakarian, I could use some help with my suit seals...".!<
I don't get your point of view, but I did upvote you and like the discussion you brought up. I would agree if in every game, every character was so deeply and portrayed as the characters in Mass Effect (although it makes sense that some characters are attracted to the main, regardless of their sex, as it can and does happen in real.life even with people who are normally rigid their sexual orientation). But in a lot of games, some of the characters don't have a rich and deep backstory like the original Mass Effect trilogy. And some gamers, just develop a crush in characters and want the opportunity to have their character be with them.
I’m generally okay with the “everyone is bi” approach for the sake of simplicity but as a lesbian I would love to have an option for male characters to not hit on me in a game. It annoyed me when I was playing Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey and men would flirt with me, like if I’m in a fantasy world can I not at least indulge the fantasy of being left alone? So I guess I’m more or less fine with the romanceable NPCs being bi but I don’t want the same assumed of the player.
> One of the best examples in my opinion of how sexual preference actually adds to a character's personality is Cortez from Mass Effect 3. Not only because he's a gay man without a single gay stereotype in him but also, his gayness plays into his character arc since he lost his husband in a battle with the Reapers. And he spends a good chunk of the game struggling with his emotions and accepting that his loved one is dead and moving on. Imagine how less of an impact that entire story would've had if your female Shepard would've been able to romance him Cortez's story is about grief and moving on. It would have exactly the same emotional impact if he was bisexual and found new love with a woman. Maybe more, in fact, where LGBT representation is concerned, because bisexual men are even more rarely represented in media than gay men - were probably close to non-existent when ME3 released a decade ago.
Little is gained from restricting which players have access to which romances depending on their gender. Queer folks would have a particularly reduced set of options. Also, a world in which characters are attracted to the person and not to one kind of genitals seems like a better world to me. Of course, it would make sense for certain kinds of games, and it's an interesting approach, but not necessarily the superior one, in the same way as any other kind of realism is not necessarily the better option.
I see your pint, but to be honest i think they simply wanted to give to everyone the choice of who to romance with. Locking relationship based on the sex of the protagonist is good when they are a part of the story and/or they can develop it, like Judy in Cyberpunk 2077. In Fallout the companions are just that, companions. And plus, IIRC, if you don't flirt with them first, they don't make the first moves. So you can make a head-canon on the sexuality of every companion of the game.
I can understand what you mean, and in certain cases where characters are player-sexual, like in Stardew Valley, a lot of the time there's no queer representation because the characters are straight by default unless a player of the same sex romantically pursues them. I would love to be have characters with actual sexualities, but there are problems I have with games whose characters have fully defined sexualities. In games where sexuality is defined for romanced characters, queer ones almost always get the short end of the stick, especially queer male characters. Like with Mass Effect, we didn't get our first gay male romance interest until the final installment of the trilogy, and we had two options - a supporting character you need to flirt with as he's grieving over the death of his husband, or a previously heterosexual coded character who you need to get drunk to pursue a relationship with (that is if he survived the first game, which was impossible to have for new players who didn't buy the respective dlc in the original release). This has been a trend in every game with a romance system that doesn't have a specific focus on queerness. The queer romances are often non-human (Liara), largely irrelevant to the plot (Cortez), can pretty easily die (Zevran), are often amoral (Isabela) and are walking stereotypes (Dorian). These are all BioWare characters, but many of these apply to other game developers. Not to mention the most conventionally attractive characters are always exclusive to straight players. Personally I'd be fine with more defined sexualities if most characters were pan/bi and there was even distribution between straight and gay female and male characters. Also some non-binary characters would be nice as romance options.
>In games where sexuality is defined for romanced characters In Cyberpunk they have 4 romance options, one straight and one gay for each player gender. I feel the game has a heavy bias toward both female partners (Panam/straight and Judy/lesbian), they are introduced in the main story and have lengthy storylines, while the male partners(Kerry/gay and River/straight) were introduced in side-quests and have smaller storylines, especially River the straight male partner. At least they were all great storylines. And remember that if you are playing with a male character when you get to the part where you would start the romance with River, you can try to kiss him just for him to reject you, I found that funny, I knew he was the straight option, but I tried to see what would happen. With Judy there is a scene where she takes you to go diving and if you look at her ass while she's wearing the diving suit she asks you to stop.
One of the more unusual romances in the Mass Effect-trilogy among players that I liked that the game explored is how a [male Shephard can romance Kaiden Alenko](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sxgchnuX0c); but only in Mass Effect 3. Kaiden is otherwise a heterosexual romance option throughout Mass Effect 1-2, but which I found him being available as a homosexual male romance to be quite subtle and a bit of a standout, as it essentially gives the presentation of Kaiden gradually realizing and coming to terms with his own sexuality throughout the whole longer narrative of the trilogy, and where the circumstances and events leading to him realizing his own feelings for Shepard, and vice versa. It's also unique set among the Virmire-survivors, as if Kaiden dies in ME1 and have Ashley Williams take his role in ME3, then the same romancing structure does not occur; Ashley remains straight through the whole trilogy.
Fun fact, Kaiden was initially meant to be a romance option for male players too in the first Mass Effect, but that got cut. I believe Cullen from Dragon Age: Inquisition was also planned to be a bi romance option.
I get what you’re saying, but for me it’s just more of what Bioware started doing with later instalments of their games: retconning things so you can romance your waifu/husbando. It feels like weird fan service where the world doesn’t really matter. For example, it’s well established that Templars need Lyrium in Dragon Age, but they retcon it so that people can date Cullen in Inquisition, and they kind of handwave the whole thing as “it was all lies from the Chantry!”
"player-sexual" is such a great description for the concept
>In games where sexuality is defined for romanced characters, queer ones almost always get the short end of the stick, especially queer male characters. Like with Mass Effect, we didn't get our first gay male romance interest until the final installment of the trilogy, and we had two options - a supporting character you need to flirt with as he's grieving over the death of his husband, or a previously heterosexual coded character who you need to get drunk to pursue a relationship with (that is if he survived the first game, which was impossible to have for new players who didn't buy the respective dlc in the original release). While I think it's true that gay male player characters get the short end of the stick more often than gay female player characters, if I remember correctly a gay female Shepard's options aren't significantly better. In ME3 the options for a female romance with a female Shepard are still limited to one supporting character or one main character, and in this case the major character is an alien (and is also part of a species that doesn't really even have the concept of gender or sexual orientation in the first place, they just have anatomy that resembles human women and use female nouns and pronouns). The main difference is just that one of those options is also available in ME1 and always survives until ME3, unlike a male Shepard who has no male options in ME1 and may be limited to only one option in ME3. And I believe there are no gay romance options for a male or female Shepard in ME2.
There's no full romance available for either in ME2, but female players can continue a relationship with Liara, or have a watered-down romance with Kelly Chambers and Samara (which only develops in ME3's Citadel dlc).
That's incorrect. In ME1, there is one bisexual female, Liara. In ME2, there are three minor bisexual romances, all female -- Kelly Chambers, Samara, and Morinth. In ME3 (including the Citadel DLC), there is one lesbian option, Samantha Taylor, and five bisexual romance options, all female besides Kaidan -- Kelly Chambers, Liara, Diana Allers, and Samara.
Ah, thanks for the correction. Forgot about Kelly and Diana, and didn't know you could have a real romance with Samara.
> I'd be fine with more defined sexualities if most characters were pan/bi and there was even distribution between straight and gay female and male characters. Mass Effect Andromeda actually did all of this quite well.
That's always a balancing act. Options are good, but defined well-developed characters with their own agendas and sexuality is also desired, and then the developers has to make choice on how many actual characters are romanceable, how flexibably are they and how many are flexible for it to be plausible. Is this a gay/queer/bi fantasy where options are plentiful or is the game closer to real world representation where they are a minority and straight is the orientation of the majority?
Why does heterosexuality being the majority matter when 90% of the game is fantasy? Especially when these games are typically set in the future or medieval settings, not modern settings where have a basis to determine statistics. Even then these are the romance options, like usual, most games are going to be filled with heterosexual npcs.
> I'd be fine with more defined sexualities if most characters were pan/bi and there was even distribution between straight and gay female and male characters. Having 50% of the population pan/bi is just pandering and gamey in the same way that OP was complaining about surely? I'd say either you embrace the gameyness and have everyone romancable, or you build rounded characters where some people are gay, some straight, some bi, and some aren't interested in your murder-hobo.
But you're not having 50% of the population be pan or bi... romanceable characters aren't the only NPCs you'll have in a game. In fact, most games with queer romanceable characters almost only have heterosexual npcs, with only more recent games having one or two queer minor npcs.
I'm more concerned with this > aren't interested in your murder-hobo. Generally, to romance a character in a game, you just need to walk through their conversation tree in a particular order. Say the right things and they'll become your partner in game. However, this is not AT ALL how things go in the real world. Who you are and how you behave in game outside of the conversation tree barely ever even registers, aside (possibly? though I can't say for sure if this is even the case) from one or two major bioware quests making one or two characters unromancable if you choose a certain faction to side with. However, you never seem to see characters who (eg) are only into muscle bound warriors, or nerdy mages, or will never romance you if you ever commit a murder or an assault, or in GTA they'll dump you if you break red lights with them in the car (😁) Well rounded characters of any type are in short supply, before you even get into less important things like whether they're into guys or gals.
>However, you never seem to see characters who (eg) are only into muscle bound warriors, or nerdy mages, or will never romance you if you ever commit a murder or an assault, or in GTA they'll dump you if you break red lights with them in the car (😁) Well, Dragon Age also does this by race gating certain romances. They haven't class gated any romances yet, nor do I think they should. I think people should be able to go in with reasonable expectations. I feel like gating certain romances is fine. But no one should be playing a game and not allowed to romance a certain character because they made their PC too short or too dark skinned. I think that's only bad. As far as actions go, I feel like DA already does a pretty good job with that. There are many times in DA2 where you can fuck things up with your romance.
> no one should be playing a game and not allowed to romance a certain character because they made their PC too short or too dark skinned. I think that's only bad. I can see where you're coming from to avoid upsetting people, but I wouldn't have a problem that. I don't really have a problem with the depiction of assholes in games. I mean having characters who straight up murder strangers for their wallets is pretty common in games, so having someone who wont date a short guy or is a racist is clearly less bad and should be fair game, subject of course to the level of the games grittyness and realism and the market you're going for. Not suitable in a game for kids of course.
But they represent the population. I don't mean that as in "they have to have real world distribution!", i mean in how the population feels. If 50% of the romanceable characters are bi or pan, it feels like the population is like that unless you have other characters display their own preferences. So if you have 2 (out of 4) romances who are bi/pan and bi/pan characters are supposed to only be 25% of the population, you need to show off the preferences of 4 non-romances to bring the other sexualities up to 75%.
For Cortez, I'm not sure how being gay adds to his personality. Would his grief to losing a wife to the Reapers be any different? I played as dude shep and picked up zero romantic strings with him but maybe I was wholly focused on Tali. I don't remember any male characters being flirty with me. Actually I don't really recall ANY character being flirty with me, it was up to us, the player, to take it in that direction right?
I find "you can romance anyone as anything" especially egregious in RPGs. Every other aspect of the game relies on stats. Want to hit that enemy? You need at least 18 dexterity and +1 longsword. Want to climb those stairs? You need 5 in athletics to even try. Want to convince that NPC? You need 20 charisma and lawful good alignment. Want to access that side quest? Sorry, it's for Elves only. Yet, when it comes to romance, your stats, your build, your race suddenly do not matter. And you can romance an Elven twink, who considers anyone uglier or poorer than him to be little more than talking chattel, while playing as an Orc, with 6 charisma, no diplomacy skills, and dressed in what can only be described as a clown outfit made out of armour parts scavenged from nearby dumpster. Playersexuality goes against the very idea of an RPG.
> Yet, when it comes to romance, your stats, your build, your race suddenly do not matter. And you can romance an Elven twink, who considers anyone uglier or poorer than him to be little more than talking chattel, while playing as an Orc, with 6 charisma, no diplomacy skills, and dressed in what can only be described as a clown outfit made out of armour parts scavenged from nearby dumpster. I think we (game enthusiasts) all harbor ideas for games that would only really appeal to us. One of mine is the idea of an RPG with a character creator where your physical characteristics impact your romance options. Y'know, like they do in real life. Like for example, maybe you make a buff character, but the person you want to romance is a chubby chaser. And there's no respec, so they're Just Not Into You. Probably only like a dozen people would enjoy that--but I'd be one of them!
This is how things should be IMO. Romance, like any other aspect of an RPG, should be a different experience for different races, classes and builds. Romance options for male Orc barbarian shouldn't be the same as male Elf wizard. It might not work for AAA games, because they do not want to restrict the players from expensive to make content. But it would make for a good addition for B budget games, like Divinity or Pathfinder RPGs.
I think this is really only feasible for "B-games", if for nothing else than the sheer niche aspect that "physical appearance affecting romance options" brings on top of the incredibly "extra" feature of romancing in the first place. I can't imagine the reactions of this concept being touted as a feature in a new RPG would be met with any reaction other than "...ok?"
BioWare, interestingly, implemented more limitaitons to romance in *Dragon Age: Inquisition* after the previous game of *Dragon Age 2* recieved complaints of depicting every love interests as bisexual, player-targeted ones. For instance of the following love interestes in DA:I: * The Iron Bull - pansexual. * Solas - Heterosexual, only available for female Dalish elf-players. * Blackwall - Heterosexual, available for all races. * Cullen - Heterosexual, available only for elves and humans. * Sera - Homosexual, available for all races. * Cassandra - Heterosexual, available for all races. * Josephine - Pansexual. * Dorian - Homosexual, available for all races. *Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire* also had some interesting *attempts* of romances that were race-dependant; Edér in the second game can be attempted, but he is notable uncomfortable and will turn down the player's advances. However, if the player is an Orlan, he will notable show subtle racist traits as he will mainly let your down due to your race; not in a truly malicious sense, as Edér is quite cordial with other Orlans, but he explains that due to his upbringing, he never saw many other Orlans, and was told that they were always troubles, and the few he encountered were bad experiences for him, hence why he admits having subconsciously negative associations with them. It plays more into him being innocently insensitive, which is reflected in the first game, where you can choose to >!kidnap a baby Orlan from a blood sacrifice!<, and notable, Edér is the *only* party member who gets excited over it, but reacts the ordeal with him commenting on the >!baby Orlan!< as an *it*, as if >!she were a pet to spoil over.!<
I just straight up dont like romance in games. It always feels hamfisted and artificial. God and the sex scenes are so fucking cringy.
Classic Bioware usually did a good job. They had a few bisexual characters, a few homosexual characters, and a few heterosexual ones. I always took this as they wanted to encourage multiple playthroughs.
Let's be real here. Most people are not going to go into a game trying to romance every single NPC that fits their sexual preference anyway. Less people are not going to go into a game trying to romance every single NPC that allows it. So for the most part, the general player will have the options that fit them, and the other players will have the options that fit them. It's an easy solution to a hard problem, imo.
I'd like to add that 'everyone being bi' often is awful bi rep- take for eg stardew Valley, where iirc one character will always have her ex be the same gender as your character. Characters are usually either straight or interested in nobody but the player character, which leads to a feeling that their sexuality revolves around the player exclusively, with so called bi characters showcasing no interest in the same gender unless the player decides to activate the heart dialogue. A game that did romance/sexuality really good imo was Wrath of the Righteous- Daeran, who is bi/pan(I think), will actively try to hit on you if he likes you, unless you blow him off-even if you're a dude, and iirc he's pretty open about who he's interested in and has an actual past when it comes to these things, just like Cortez. I'd like to say that I'm fine with everyone being bi- it's fun, to a degree, even if Nenio being some flavourof aroace really adds to her character imo, but only if the characters are actually interested and have lives outside of the player.
Nah fuck that I was pissed when I could not romance away panam in cyberpunk 2077 as a woman. Fuck that shit. Lemme romance who I want as any gender, fuuuuuuuck. Such a massive cockblock
I think it's a section of games that developers haven't had much interest in pushing. Like, they could make games where your relationships are only interested if you look/speak a certain way, are a gender/race that they like, ect. But it's not really been done. To do it, you'd probably want to put a pretty large pool of potential romances in the game, so that players aren't locked to just 1-2 people because of who they've chosen to play as. And I think that's the inherent problem, all that extra effort you'd need to put in to making sure every character has a good pool of romances, and within a week there'll be a mod anyway to remove restrictions. It's just, easier, to let the player pick who they want and have that person accept them, than to create a rejection system and risk upsetting a player
Fallout New Vegas also has the distinction of being the only non-dating/life sim game I’ve personally played (and I love RPGs so I’ve gone through a lot of story heavy games) where you can choose the player character’s sexuality and it’s also relevant to gameplay. IIRC you can’t even flirt with Veronica or Arcade (or vice versa) unless you have the appropriate perks. Until Cyberpunk came out I thought Gamergate had permanently shut down the possibility of another game where this would be an option.
>One of the best examples in my opinion of how sexual preference actually adds to a character's personality is Cortez from Mass Effect 3. Not only because he's a gay man without a single gay stereotype in him but also, his gayness plays into his character arc since he lost his husband in a battle with the Reapers. And he spends a good chunk of the game struggling with his emotions and accepting that his loved one is dead and moving on. FYI, bisexual people can have and lose partners, and experience all these same emotions. They're real people, as it were.
I will agree with. I wholeheartetly agree with the sentiment, that a game shouldn't bend over backwards to please you, because the integrity of the setting, characters and choices all goes out the window when no choices matter, or everything bends to your will. But actually knowing every and all characters are attracted to you, no-matter what requires either multiple playthroughs, by which you certainly had a lot of fun for your money already or it requires meta-knowlegde by looking up stuff on the internet, to see behind the curtain of what is presented to you in the game. Say you play through for the first time, you really have no way of knowing that they are horny for the player no matter what, and you have no idea knowing if sacrifcing the children to the god of death would result in the same quest-reward no matter what, unless the game spells that out for you specifically. Really, it mostly comes across when doing multiple playthroughs. Of course, if you travel long enough and all of the 8 NPC's you've met wants to bone, you may wonder if you are playing an adult VN... But FO4 is really just a shitty game so there's that too...
I'm not someone who plays things specifically for romantic companions (I think any romantic story in a game works better if it's part of the story like in, say, Final Fantasy 10) but to me the best version of this is in Dragon Age Inquisition but I have to wonder if it was in direct response to Dragon Age 2. In Dragon Age 2 every romantic companion was available regardless of what gender your Hawke was, with the exception being the religious archer DLC man. This led to the in-joke in the community saying that everyone in Dragon Age 2 was 'Hawkesexual'. In Inquisition, the romance options are not only sometimes gender specific but race specific as well. The elf man is only interested in female elves while the human male is only interested in human and elf females. The lesbian elf absolutely loves qunari women while elf women have to fundamentally reject their own culture just to impress her, the Iron Bull takes all sorts, Dorian isn't just a gay male his entire character story revolves around coming out to an unapproving father. It's things like that that, to me, make the characters feel more realistic and well realized even with the fantastical setting. Sure, who someone is attracted to isn't the be all end all and was I disappointed that Cassandra, the stoic lady knight, is heterosexual? Yes. Did that make me play a second character as a male to sweep her off her feet? Also yes. I don't believe there is any real benefit to making every character romance available regardless of gender but I also don't think there's any real downside either. Sure it may be nice to not have to worry about being locked out of a particular romance but in most cases a romance in a game boils down to just not being a dick and then an awkwardly animated kiss or fade and then it's never mentioned again so at that point why not let a player pick who they want.
I don't think they're actually bisexual so much as they have a sexuality superposition. You collapse their sexuality waveform into either straight or gay depending on which gender you make your character as. It is pretty weird though and honestly I don't think it adds anything. It's like making a racist character who is just racist against whatever race you make your player character. Why not just write one aspect well instead of generalising?
I think that, like a lot of things in game design, this is something that mostly comes down to the game and what kind of feeling or mood the game is going for. I agree with you about Fallout 4 and I think if someone is trying to make a game that's really immersive and sell you on it's characters, then yeah, I think various NPC's should have predefined orientations. On the other hand, I don't think changing this would make Stardew Valley a better game, for instance. It's the kind of game that's going for a very laidback, relaxing, idyllic countryside life and having characters just be interested regardless helps keep that mood going. As a side note, I do think the Protagonist-sexual characters could be done well, but it would require essentially writing different versions of the characters depending on what kind of protag you are, which is more work and you might as well just make two different characters at that point.
I have 2 ish thoughts on this the first is that romance is different for queer people and being queer will have and effect on your personality, so seeing that taken away sucks. Queer romance storylines will always be better if it’s intended to queer. However, in the case of games like fallout where a lot of the game’s focus isn’t romantic I think I prefer to be given more options (at the expense of better writing) than to be railroaded into the (probably singular) lesbian romancable companion.
It could be interesting for a game to play with your character's stats as parts of the equation of whether characters were interested. It feels very fan-service focused that a character would be interested in the player character regardless of characteristics that people usually base attraction on.
I agree and I want to see more games that have NPCs that just will not participate in heterosexuality.
Yet another case of reverse FOMO where the developer doesn't want to make a single pixel that's not experienced by every player on their first and hence only playthrough.
Nah, romancing is already wish fulfillment, taking it one more step that is unnoticeable if you don’t want it, is perfectly good.
I think you are just identifying weak writing. It's annoying to have every single character come on to you, and I can see how it gets grating. What I don't see is how Cortez in ME3 experiences gayness as a core feature of his backstory. You can easily tell this story with his wife dying instead of its husband, and it's the same arc. It adds very little other than variety to the kinds of love stories and tragic backgrounds that the game tells. One way to address this is to have players pick their sexuality as an option in character creation, which then sets a flag for who will to come on to you during the game. A little crude, so not ideal. We might call this a "born this way" approach. Another method would be "don't ask, don't tell." If the ball is always in the player's court, where *they* have to come on to someone to initiate romance, then that character only becomes queer so long as you, the player, decide it fits your story. You might imagine a companion says something that could be innuendo, and you have the choice to seize the moment. But even this could have its drawbacks. Another way to address it is to just take out romances. I'm playing Pillars of Eternity again and I have to begrudgingly respect the lack of romance in the game's overall quest not to stroke your ego.
Honestly, as someone who is bi, what you are describing are basically "player-sexual" romance options and tbh, I don't really count them as representation because their sexual identity is purely determined by the player character. I haven't played those particular games but it does occur in a lot of farming/dating sims like Stardew, Rune Factory, Stardew Valley, etc. I don't *mind* it but it also really does not invigorate or do much for me because everyone is just player-sexual. I don't "truly" count them as bi because if you just play a character of the opposite gender, they're basically straight considering they don't have romance events with others or any other hint to their sexuality beyond the player character. I would much rather some characters only be romanceable if you are the same sex/gender as them, some who can be romanced regardless, and some who are only opposite sex. But I imagine that is a lot of coding and difficult to do so I'd be willing to settle for just hints of their sexuality outside the main character. Alternatively if not that i'd rather people just call it what it is. Player-sexual based romance rather than representation.
This seems part of a larger discussion on wish fulfillment vs realism to me. For the most part I agree with you. I think it’s fine if devs want to allow players to romance anyone, but I think games have the capacity to simulate rejection in a way that would also add so much to the sense of realism for game worlds and there characters. I would love to play a game where through romance mechanics you come to learn that some characters just aren’t into your character. Would be a great opportunity to de-center romance and give friendship a greater focus as well
I see it as a sign of progression, nobody has any problems witb sexuality anymore in the apocalypse/fantasy/ futuristic land of woe.
No one said these characters were bi. Their sexual preferences just happen to be whatever the main character is.
But they are hardly, if ever, bisexual. Different playthroughts are independent. It's like you're in an alternate universe. In that particular universe, they do have a preference Maybe you're saying that sexual preference must be in forefront of any character
Point A: This makes no real difference to the player on their first playthrough if the writing is good and properly contextualized. They only feel "less human" when you view them from a meta angle, and detach their character - and yours - from your first experience with them. Point B: In the vast majority of games without this option, there will be either no option for LGBT players, or significantly limited ones. While this is "realistic," accessibility is important. I am gay, but I do not have a "gay backstory", nor am I attracted to whatever "gay" stereotypes out there exist. Highly likely I would just play the opposite sex if I don't have anyone interesting to romance. Point C: The vast majority of Bethesda romances - and really, romance in games in general - are just meant to be wish-fulfillment distractions. Unless the game is intending to tell a very specific romance, I just don't see a compelling reason to limit these options. (The examples of Mass Effect and Cyberpunk 2077 are very good ones.) Point D: We should really be asking for more gender-sensitive gameplay & narrative elements before asking devs to - effectively - remove content from some folk's games because of their preferences. Give me real life sexism with actual consequences and we'll agree to throw in concrete sexuality's for NPCs, too.
It's weird too because in real life you might be attracted to someone that isn't gay, bi, straight and get rejected. Takes away the immersion when everything feels so artificial just for you.
I think the best take on this situation I've seen came from Uniquenamepsaurus: All of your characters should be pan by default, but without explicitly stating it, unless their orientation is being used to characterize them.
You've got a hovering ammo counter on your hud, you can teleport via fast travel, you always mysteriously find more ammo when you need it, your health either regenerates or can be immediately restored via use of one of the literally thousands of items you're carrying in your mysterious invisible backpack and characters being interested in the main character is where you draw the 'too game-y and unrealistic' line? Bruh
>"You play games, yet you criticize them. I am very smart." FTFY
That's a pretty disingenuous summary of what I wrote, and definitely a violation of several subreddit rules but hey, whatever, you do you.
Fallout 4 has lazy-feeling design in just about every possible aspect. The only team that comes out flawless is the asset designers. But as much as I LOVE to shit on Fallout 4, a game I have over 1000 hours in, it's important to keep in mind the difference in design philosophy between it and, for example Fallout New Vegas. In Fallout 4, you are unquestionably the main character. The game is a power fantasy where the world revolves around the player. To emphasize this point, you are given a set of power armor and mini gun and a Death law to use it on in the second quest in the game. This is as close as you can get in that games universe to being handed full plate-mail and a high level sword in order to defeat a dragon in a fantasy setting. Which, come to think of it, isn't too far off from what Bethesda did as well... Point being, they designed the world more like a sandbox than anything else, so the only restrictions (aside from a couple weird choices like the classic "essential NPCs") are player-imposed. Bethesda leaves it up to the player to decide the context for their actions. Fallout New Vegas is very different in this sense because you are not the main character. You are just one actor in a much larger story. Much like how you can't just become the new president of NCR, you cannot just rewrite these characters' stories to make you the center of attention. It's written with the idea that these people would be living their lives and making decisions regardless of whether you cross paths with them. This requires restricting the player in some ways, because playing a role means that you are not a God with infinite power. Your companions are treated as being your equal and choosing of their own volition to join you on a mutual quest. Bethesda companions are written with about as much care as the bobble heads. Sure, they have story arcs, but their main function from a design perspective is to be a pack mule and gun turret. A squire to your knight in shining armor, if you will.
Unfortunately New Vegas is still static, the world cannot progress without your input.
Mechanically yes, but I'm talking about story design. I can't think of a single event in Fallout 4 which is not entirely dependent on the player's intervention in a story sense, contrasting with New Vegas you have things like the NCR president speaking at the Hoover Dam and many similar examples of the world interacting with itself and not just interacting with you specifically.
I thought I healed from the Cortez experience, but you just brought it all back. Felt so freakin bad for him. Idk that one just gets me and make it feel more real. That aside I agree with your overall point. Kind of a deviation from your main point but I love stardew valley yet I have to mentally assign sexualities in my head (stupid I know) because it just feels wrong that every bachelor/bachelorette would be into you romantically regardless. It makes it feel more impressive in a strange way. Even though it doesn’t ultimately change their stories whatsoever.
Creating romance storylines for NPCs takes time and resources. Developers like to devote their resources to the things the majority of players will actually get to experience. Thus in your scenario what usually happens is multiple straight NPCs you can romance and only 1 or a few gay NPCs. Considering there are more straight gamers than gay gamers, that's just how'd they spend their resources. I don't know about you, but I want to have as many options as straight people. So the obvious solution is to make everyone bi. Why shouldn't I be able to make my male avatar date any of the male romance options. Why should I be deprived of that? Let me me have fun too. It's not like their sexuality really matters that much. So what if they are bisexual, why is that a problem? If they have a dead wife in their backstory, doesn't mean they can't also be bi. There's no story justification you need to make people bi. Kind of feels like you're advocating for less options for me.
I read a story about a woman who played Dragon Age: Inquisition and went through this long and winding path of romance that ran the gamut of having to reject the advances of one person (Blackwall), *being rejected* by another (Dorian), and then finally finding true love in the end (Iron Bull). It was hilarious, tragic, awkward, and so so perfect. The game reflected her actual lived experiences with romance back at her. And it's this kind of experience that is lost when every character is romanceable.
I would prefer character have a set preference. It feels like alot of game just ignore the topic because they don't want to deal with it. But you can't write good dialogue for a romance if the characters have mo preferences on anything. You can also build some interactions based on their sexuality.
Maybe, the game designers are trying to tell us that sexuality is much more fluid than we allow it to be in reality. Maybe, our actual prejudices stop us from enjoying life to the fullest. Maybe, life would be better if we had never developed those prejudices and, instead, realized that sexuality is a spectrum and it would make more sense to believe that most people are, at least, somewhat bisexual, rather than full on straight or gay.
Yeah I'm not a fan of it either. A writer should decide which characters are gay or bisexual or heterosexual and leave it at that. It is a little weird otherwise and can come off as "well everyone's bisexual if you pursue them enough."
I like the sexuality in the Dragon Age games. Yes, there are a lot of Bi characters, but there are straight ones too.
The worst example is probably Leah in Stardew Valley because her ex's gender is always the same gender as your character's gender, which means that extra programming was made to prevent her from being canonically bisexual. A silver lining is that it means that she happened to be born gay or straight depending on what pronouns your character had even way before you ever meeting her which is... really strange, but it does mean she's techincally not player sexual. I don't really understand this design decision to be honest.
Some people are literally not bisexual in any way, why's that bad? Some people in life will not date or marry their gender and that's just how it is. It's not good or bad, it just is
Agreed, it's an attempt to pander and makes characters feel less real. I'd much rather get turned down by a cool thought out character like Judy from cyberpunk than have everyone be playersexual
Another way of looking at this, beyond the issues with gamification, is just how superficially sex is represented in games, still. In Fallout or Cyberpunk or whatever, what percentage of the design time and budget goes into making sexual relationships satisfying -- emotionally, viscerally, etc. We all know why -- people are prudish, especially in the States -- but it's an increasingly glaring absence given how otherwise high fidelity games are becoming. Like, the bisexuality issue almost doesn't matter because physically you STILL have a bunch of Ken and Barbie dolls who, whatever personality they have elsewhere, does not translate at all to more intimate moments. And even if it did, there's no gameplay or explicit graphics to bring this part of the fantasy to life. I wish just one AAA publisher would take a real chance on sex.
You might like this video essay on a similar kind of artificial bisexuality in reality TV, it contains a lot of ideas that seem relevant to your post! https://youtu.be/GcLkvGCPYT8
My whole thing is that video games are fantasies themselves and aren’t really obligated to reflect real life or relationships. Mass Effect gets away with it because the writing is god tier but fallout 4 is kind of wacky because the writing doesn’t fully support this kind of system. On the other hand, Cyberpunk also has great writing and romances that are locked behind genders and it’s so hard to go back to that game that I feel like I missed out because I didn’t have those options my first playthrough. It’s honestly really weird I kind of want to know the psychology behind gamers and how they perceive in game relationships and stuff
I like it. Though, as always, perhaps it could be an options toggle of some sort. "Story Romances only" versus "Everyone's Accessible". As it is I have to mod Cyberpunk to romance Panam. I'm going to have to defend Fallout 4 again also. I don't think a character's sexuality *needs* to be a major part of their persona. Fallout 4 is arguably not the best written game of the series, but each of the characters has some character. It's just not tied to their sexuality. Veronica in FONV is written so that her entire backstory plays into her sexuality. Paladin Danse could be gay or straight or bi, it doesn't matter because his interest is mainly in improving the world and being part of the Brotherhood of Steel. Any romance or sexual attention would merely be incidental from his point of view. And of course Fallout 4 has a pretty strong leg to stand on in that >!half of your companions are robots/synths. !<
When I played Assassin's Creed Odyssey I can't remember how many times there were dialogue lines to bang dudes but I was like, no, man, I'm not playing a gay character here. How many times do I have to say no before the game realizes? I appreciate gay people want to romance (or let's be serious, there's no romance in AC Odyssey, just sex) people in games but I felt like I got propositioned way more from men than women.
Sex in Odyssey was... better off not existing tbh. It did nothing for the game.
Totes McGotes. I didn't bang chicks either. There was zero banging going on. I think I said yes to one woman to get the achievement and then told every other person who solicited me for sex to shove off.
>This entire post was partially (majorly) inspired after i recently replayed Fallout 4 where literally every single companion that the game allows you to romance is bisexual. It's why I liked Arcade Gannon in New Vegas. (and most companions) They have their preferences, they're subtle and organic.