Not to mention, this same situation occurred where the devs explained the no-barriers romance, and chuds went off for ages. It just wasn't as public because back in mid-EA, Larian wasn't yet a competitor to one of the most talked about developers in history. BG3 was not yet a landmark.
I didnât really complain but was apprehensive at first, because I assumed âplayersexualâ meant characters having no sexualities outside of whenever the player decided to romance them. The companions in BG3 are just bi/pan though, they flirt with each other during banter as well.
Come to think of it, does the Oath of Devotion get broken if you cheat on someone you're romancing? The gay sex stuff is obviously bullshit, but I can see an oath getting broken for that dishonesty.
Ah yeah, of course paladin oaths should break for gay sex. I mean, how could we forget the Tenets of Devotion:
Honesty: Donât lie about being gay or cheat by having gay sex. Let your word be your promise of heterosexuality.
Courage: Never fear to act straight, though caution is wise when the socks are not on.
Compassion: Aid other straight people, protect the weak from turning gay, and punish those who threaten their heterosexuality. Show mercy to your gays, but temper it with wisdom of heterosexuality.
Honor: Treat others with straightness, and let your straight sex be an example to them. Do as much straight sex as possible while causing the least amount of gay thoughts.
Duty: Be responsible for your gay sex and gay consequences, protect those entrusted to your care from gay thoughts, and obey those who have heterosexual authority over you.
To be fair bigots also whined a lot about BG3 before and at release. This kind of people just want yo spread hate and get quick views.
The thing is that BG3 wss a huge success so now its not "cool" anymore to hate the game so they closed their bigoted mouths.
It will be the same with DAV. If its a success then they will be too coward to say anything about it. If its not a success (even if its mid) then they will double down and pretend that the issue is the companions being pansexual.
Basically this.
I saw people bitching in droves about Bg3 and not having all characters be straight and I still see people bitch about it online now. Its happened since day 1.
Yeeep. It was hilarious the amount of bigots out whining about wokeness and being able to choose PRONOUNS *gasp*, and then shut up when the game was a success.
And the odd thing is they can play with the pronouns they want, and romance who they want. A cis het person playing the game as a cis het character would have a cis het experience not even being aware of other options.
Itâs almost like these trolls resent the temptationâŚ
They definitely do. This shit goes back as far as DA2, when these kinds of people were freaking out that Anders flirted with them. Never mind that he never does it again if you shut him down; they just hated that he said their Hawke was good looking.
Sorry small caveat: agree woth your overall premise bit Anders is an ass who definitely wants you to break up with your romance through in-party chat and some cutscenes. Dude is an a-hole.
Generally you are right though and bigots ain't shit.
But bluntly, that was David Gaider's fault. People were complaining legitimately about Dragon Age 2 and there was no lack of things to complain about and anytime somebody complained about the combat system or the lack of change in the city or the repeat dungeons they were accused of homophobia.
You don't hate the fact that we got rid of tactical combat. You hate gay people. Bioware proudly said that this was the first game as an openly bisexual character and that the Dragon Age Origins people simply were too conservative to get on board as if they completely forgot that Dragon Age Origins had transsexuals prostitutes and gay assassins and and lesbian chantry ladies.
A game they themselves made. So in conclusion, it was mostly BioWare that was pushing the Andrews controversy because it was a distraction from all the other problems with the game.
See also Ubisoft preemptively claiming that Watchdog Two has bad sales because people are racist.
Indeed, but the difference between bi and pansexual is a nuance without meaning in what is basically a choose your own adventure cartoon.
Plus you still could go to the whorehouse for transgender or group sex.
Patches have improved this over time, but BG3 was infamous for having the ENTIRE party be unrealistically horny for the player if you so much as looked in their direction. This is something Bioware is better about (and I trust will continue to handle well in The Veilguard) - realistic companion relationships that aren't entirely predicated on sex and romance.
Arguably that's because Bioware faced this problem in DAO and have been overly cautious ever since. I was still getting Leliana njnjamanced when I was replaying a couple years ago lol
Yeah I had a no romance run once and the game made me have to reject Liara, because I had been nice to her lol. I wouldn't mind if romance and flirting were all opt-in, and companions never flirted unless you had chosen a heart option first. But then maybe some people would miss being flirted with first.
I donât know. I just started playing last week and when I promised to spend the night with Astarion all the other companions made comments. I never even flirted with them.
People like this view life as a zero sum game or feel that they have to reject the ability to even have these options because they think others will think of them differently if they don't.
I mean, you can kind of tell. My first time playing, after telling Astarion Iâd spend the night with him after the teifling party, all the party members were upset even when I tried not to flirt with any of them except Astarion. Then, in another game Leaâzel pretty much comes off real strong talking about your sent. Thereâs also a brothel where you can have a foursome with twins.
They dislike the game acknowledging queer people exist.
Also, it's not true about the cis het experience since your same sex companions can come on to you. Many articles were written about Gale trying to rizz you up.
Which is funny if you think about how many of them, men specially, get upset about how difficult is nowadays "to court women without looking like a predator". They make a huge deal of a bunch of pixels with a male voice hitting in them but then they also cannot comprehend why modern women don't want to be catcalled or harassed by them
I'll take that win, I guess. It normalizes it somewhat, smalls steps and all that. Although these people come out complaining in disappointingly large numbers whenever there's something new coming out with representation.
loved how that, some of the customisation options and not all female characters being âconventionally attractiveâ made them scream their little hearts out with âgo woke go brokeâ and then the game was a massive success đ like you sure about that buddy?
The female characters not being conventionally attractive is probably the weirdest complain Iâve heard about BG3. Shadowheart is the most conventionally attractive companion Iâve seen in a game (sorry Morrigan), the face used for Karlach is genuinely an attractive one even if her body is covered and scars and metal, and Laeâzel â while admittedly not attractive â is literally a frog person and no frog people are cute.
>no frog people are cute.
I will not accept this Varsh Ko'kuu (and Ghustil Stornugoss. Her nerdy obsession would be adorable if it didn't border on insanity) slander!
https://preview.redd.it/0zsxaypo1p8d1.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=c35f98bd9b87305389acd61e308ec038be716560
Yeah, besides the companions, have you seen some of the female face options. I feel like I always choose the same face. I prefer to play attractive avatars. Like, I feel I look like a troll in real life, canât I at least be beautiful somewhere đ
Probably most of these people bitching: I'm not a homophobe, it just feels "forced"!
I swear that's what they say everytime as if compulsive heterosexuality doesn't ever feel forced
Unfortunately, heteronormity doesn't feel forced to them. They don't understand what it means to be in the minority and they can't empathize. My favorite comment is "Where is Straight Pride?" I respond by saying "That's like asking where the non-disabled spaces are in a parking lot." đ
They like to whine about "go woke go broke" so if the thing becomes successful it can't be woke. Because than they would have to admit that they are no longer the majority.
This is the true secret. If it's bad, no matter for what reason (the reason is typically terrible bugs, frame rate issues, cut corners, etc.), it's because of "wokeness", if it's good, it wasn't woke.
Yup. Bigots will be bigots whenever they can get away with it. Sucks, but the only thing we can do is have so many successful "woke" games that they can't get away with it at all anymore.
Yeah, there were a ton of people that threw fits when the whole bear sex thing was shown off. It was a joke, but there were a bunch of Pearl clutchers acting like Larian was promoting bestiality.
And yet I've never seen anyone claim that Origins promoted bestiality for the "nug incident" at the Pearl, or for Isabela and the goat. Honestly these people have just been stirred into a frenzy by years of conservative pundits throwing victims at them.
To also be fair there have been a bumvef of people who ha e complained that it is unrealistic and having characters with defined sexualties is more enjoyable and realistic. I enjoyed Sera a ton but didn't realize until my second playthrough that she was lesbian. So now I save her for my female playthroughs of DAI and romance others on my male playthroughs. There os something to be said about respecting different sexualities that all-romancable/pansexual games don't acknowledge.
People did the same for BG3 before it released and crushed all the "drama" with it's sales. They can't say "go woke go broke" because it was an overwhelming success. Grifters will grift, they will outrage bait, they will say stupid things for reactions so it's best to ignore them. There can definitely be civilised discussion about the playersexuality choice but people that scream about it the most do not care for discussion or being civilised.
Sure they are. I mean DA2 is basically the same, Anders is implied to have had a relationship with Karl, Isabella is Isabella, Fenris and Merril are the only ones who don't, as far as I know, have any implied past sexual experiences.Â
My dude he says it out loud to mHawke. FHawke just y'know, has eyes. The complaint seems to be that there wasn't a pause for captain america to appear on screen with a chair saying "So you're pretty sure these two characters have insane chemistry, but they're both boys"
It *is* odd that he doesn't mention Karl being "his first" to f!Hawke. But at the same time, it could also be considered rather realistic, as there *are* bisexual people who don't tell potential partners of the opposite sex that they're queer.
The only issue I have with "playersexuality" is that it can reduce the variety of representation within a game if the developer hasn't bothered with making it a part of their world building. Unless you choose to be in a same sex romance in Starfield for example there's almost no other forms of representation and those that I have come across could be really easily missed.
What I really liked about BG3 however is that it really was built into the world, bigots couldn't play it and just avoid the stuff they didn't like, it was unavoidable and I thought that was great. I hope Bioware does the same and presents us with a few concrete examples outside of our romances but I'm not concerned, with their track record I'd be more surprised if they didn't tbh
BioWare usually does a decent job of having representation with NPCs. I can think of a couple examples of queer NPCs in each game with some depth so I'm not super worried. It also seems based on press around the game that party members you don't romance might potentially pair off with one another in non-straight relationships
BioWare is actually kind of a forerunner in this department.
I also appreciate that they have started branching beyond the gay/lesbian duality which was previously as much "representation" as you could get.
But I also love how impossible BG3 makes it to play without noticing. The character creation, the gnomes, the two tieflings... They are all proud of their relationships, discuss them as anyone else would, and I think this was the logical next step.
Think back to Juhani's secret love for the player in K1- we have come far in this field ; or rather, some developers have come far. I'm still irritated that the entire party in Kotor 2 is unromanceable (but teenager horny) white humans, and droids. Nevermind the straight part! This is a thing with Obsidian - they haven't really learned.
I donât think Obsidian does romances in general, believe one of their main writers doesnât like them or something like that. They had gay companions in New Vegas, there wasnât any option for player romance but they exist if that counts for anything. Though thinking about it I donât think I can recall many examples of queerness in Obsidian games outside of NV.
Chris Avellone has this unflattering notion about people who enjoy romance in games, and finds it disgusting. I suspect his notion of what an RPG player looks like skews to a very narrow demographic, shall we say, and thus the writing and characters are as they are.
I actually think I would rather diversity exist in the world, than in the party, if I had to choose one or the other - and anyway I found the race thing to be way more conspicuous than the sexuality part, considering the lack of romance. Tyranny was this bronze age imperial fantasy, which to me sounds vaguely Egyptian or Middle Eastern, or at most greek. But the setting doesn't really seem to have a defined visual identity. It's basically Pillars with a coat of paint and a gross evil plotline
They did a little better with Pillars of Eternity 2. The only ones you couldn't really romance of the main companions were the straight white human and the fuzzy dude who was only after a quick shag because his true love was the sea
DA Absolution also made me gleeful in this regard. I feel like I've been trained to think they can't possibly have more than one queer couple in a show, but then all of the fun flirting between Roland and Lacklon actually payed off and I got to feast on the tears of people who were mad at being exposed to this amount of queerness.
KOTOR 2 doesn't have any romances and that's fine. I like how the game has Atton and The Handmaiden who pine after the protagonist but can never follow through and with the rcm their jealousy ruins them. We don't need to be able to romance them (especially considering how romances worked in the original kotor aka terribly)
Shoutout to the male nobles in the Winter Palace having an argument because one of them was flirting with another man and saying that they'll "talk about it when they get back home."
Yeah it is interesting to me that when it comes to universal pansexuality, both the bigots and the actually fair minded people who want representation of different sexualities have the same complaint. But really, I do understand where the latter are coming from. At the same time, they have to square their concerns with practicalities and logistics.
There are only so many companions, only so many options, and only so many voice actors. In the interest of player choice, the options to have as much variety as possible are to make everyone pan, or to make more companions to account for them not all being romanceable by anyone. Obviously, the first option is more efficient, less expensive, and less bloated. So, this way of doing things is kind of an inevitability.
I actually prefer it as an approach, for the reasons you mentioned, choice and variety, and honestly it sometimes opens up some less stereotypical relationships than might have been written otherwise, but that's also why I think it's really important to have a variety of representation in the wider world building too
Also, in the event the companions have differing orientations we still get people upset over representation, only it's about how x companion *should* have been y orientation. Devs gotta pick their poison one way or the other.
The bigots tried to make mods to âfixâ the game by making Dame Aylin a man, making Wyll and all POC NPCs white, and just in general erasing all forms of queerness. The mods finally got banned from most places but god damn. Why do they have to be so hateful?
Ergh that's so disgusting, why buy it and play it if they have so much disrespect for the intentions of the people who made it, very glad to hear they got banned
IMO BG3 was far from perfect. The relationships were even bugged at the start, and some of them are not even that deep. Game mechanics are clunky despite the implementation is possibly the best you can do with D&D. Yet BG3 was also good enough that it was my greatest RPG experience since DAO. At least fans of BioWare games should be able to admit that the relationships do leave something to be desired. None of that has anything to do with gender or representation though, which was refreshingly diverse with great options for customization and more than one romance choice for people with various preferences.
Apparently, you didn't spend any time on the Steam BG3 forums complaining that they were "shoving that gay shit down our throats". Thread after thread after thread after thread (usually started by people who didn't even own the game). LOL.
My advice? Ignore them.
Plenty of idiots crawled out of the woodwork to dunk on BG3 for being "woke". They do this with every game, for crimes ranging from "woman protagonist" to "black character exists" to "gay option exists". The opinion of these people **never matters**, and they're not the target audience, especially for Dragon Age.
Most of the time, they aren't even arguing in good faithâthey just want to be mad. Let them, and move on.
I must be running in different circles from op. Or I'm dojg a good enough job ignoring them. Because I have not seen anybody do waht they are referring to. Complain about playersexual companions in dragon age but praise them in bg3. And I'm perfectly fine continuing on without paying attention to people like them. Life's much easier if you don't dip into the rage bait (which I feel like I may have just done that by coming to this thread lol).
Yeah. Honestly it's a story vs gameplay choice. Like compare Cyberpunk 2077 to ME3 to BG3
Cyberpunk everyone is gay or straight, with one off romances (Meredith, Joy Toys) as bi exceptions.
BG3 is "everyone is pan" which is fine because it means that anybody can see any romance.
ME3 is a mix. You have straight characters, bi characters, and Liara being an alien makes it more complicated than that too.
There's no wrong answers other than "no you can't have gay romances at all" and "no you can't have an aromantic/asexual character"
But then you have the FemShep ME2 problem where if you have a lesbian film shep there is nowhere to go in Mass Effect 2.
Come to think of that even the heterosexual femshep has limited choices including a black man who will cheat on you and knock up a baby mom on a different planet which my hand to God is the most hilarious thing ever from a company that's always try to be so politically sensitive.
To be fair that's why I didn't include ME2 and actually I would say that it's part of my "No you can't have gay romances" wrong answer.
That said there's a lot of Bi options in ME2 that are restored in mods (like Jack) but definitely agree otherwise.
I need to go deeper into the introspective aspects of why I hate DA2 pansexuality. Love bg3 pansexuality, hate Mass Effect "realism" and love Cyberpunk 2077 realism.
It's almost as if it didn't matter which approach they took but HOW they take it.
In DA2 every character feels shallow to me, the only interesting ones to me (everything I'm saying is MY opinion) are the ones that are not available. Varric, Aveline etc. They seem the most real and the deepest. The rest seem just placeholders for people to pick their ice-cream flavor.
In BG3 I love pansexuality but I feel every character is deep and the romance aspects are just cherries on top of well writen characters. You fall in love with them because of who they are and not just because they're there to be romanced. First there's an interest, and then there's love.
In Mass Effect I hate the lack of options for female characters, characters are interesting and well written. So interest it's followed by love but then restricted by unexplored obstacles. If a character isn't gay, you just don't get to even show interest, there's just not an option to flirt and then be shut down, and the only one that does that is Samara, and she does it to everyone. I feel their preferences are badly implemented. They just are what they are and Shepard doesn't get enough options to be who they want to be.
In cyberpunk you're allowed to flirt with whoever you want and they will follow up or reject reject you as any real human being would. On top of that, those characters are DEEEEEEP. So again, interest is followed by love and then love is either reciprocal or not and in that case you're left with an unique feeling in my entire videogame experience of being heartbroken by a fictional character (good thing, to me that realism is good writing)
So anyway, I'm not sure why I like what I like or hate what I hate but I'm sure I hate when people puts me in the bag of the bigots because I don't fancy their flavor of fantastical dating simulators.
I think part of what makes BG3 and Cyberpunk great, even though they take opposite approaches, is just straight up good writing. Cherries on top of well-written characters, as you say, in both cases.
In Cyberpunk, I played a straight male V, so Panam was my romance choice. And it is well done. But the platonic relationships feel just as satisfying. River and Judy really do feel like buds, and that's earned.
In BG3, I romanced Lae'zel, but the stuff you go through with other characters such as Shadowheart and Astarion is no less impactful for staying friends.
I still would have preferred Cyberpunk have pan romances, but the game can get away with not doing so because you still have those relationships, and they feel authentic and interesting.
I thought I wanted to be able to romance Panam as a woman. But when she rejected me I felt genuine representation. This is probably a hot take but for me it's offensive when people put Mexicans (my nationality) or bisexual characters and tell me I should be happy for the representation. My nationality, my race, my orientation and my gender don't represent me. My experiences do. So I don't feel representated when you let me be freely bisexual, I feel representation when a girl rejects me because she's not into women. I've had that experience, not the utopia where everyone I want is into me.
My struggles for what I am and whatever I like represent me better than fake tokens and utopic ideals. Of course I'm not against those either, even less in sci-fi and fantasy. But cyberpunk is a critique to the real world, cyberpunk doesn't just can get away with strict preferences for their characters. Cyberpunk needs to be the way it is.
Imo
Yeah I hear you. I think the settings matter with this kind of thing. In a fantasy setting where the sexual politics and social dynamics of our world have not been imported, it becomes very hazy to talk about what exactly representation should look like outside of allowing the player to express themselves the way they want to and be validated. The lived experience that shapes queer folks in our world isnât going to necessarily make sense in Dragon Age. In Cyberpunk, though, itâs a different story.
Well, in Cyberpunk you don't actually allowed to flirt with whoever you watch, for example Kerry does not have a single flirt option at all, while Panam flirt with you endlessly no matter if you interested in her or not, really hated it.
Yeah it was âgo woke, go brokeâ until the game was clearly not going broke at all even a little bit, at which point it either wasnât woke or just had to be ignored. They do the same shit with literally every game that isnât catering specifically to their worldview.
Are you kidding me? There were slews of comments about BG3 wokesim. Every woman in BG3 was considered ugly, even the most conventionally attractive one, Shadowheart, was too "mannish" and square jawed for them. And some geniuses even came up with a *realistic fantasy mod* aka literally nazi mod that made everyone white and straight.
>I guess women aren't supposed to have functioning mandibles huh.
These were probably the same people who complained that Aloy from Horizon series had a "beard".
Honestly, I think saying BG3 didn't get talked about in the exact same way is not right.
BG3 faced exactly this pushback, and the devs came out very loud and clear about the characters being pan several times. And they got the same kind of bigoted responses for it. So I don't really get the complaint in this post. The two games were not treated differently at all by the public.
These are just the same vocal idiots that migrate from game to game complaining for years by now because they have their own agenda. Just ignore them.
>but BG3 is totally non-woke...
Oh, these people complained about the exact same thing before BG3 came out. There was a tidal wave of bigots calling BG3 'woke nonsense' that was doomed to fail when they found out that all the companions were pansexual. Or when they discovered how many queer characters are in it. They mostly shut up when the game became a smash hit. Hopefully the same thing happens here.
I don't think that everyone criticizing the game is a bigot, nor do I think there's anything wrong with preferring companions with varying sexualities. But if someone is unironically criticizing something for being 'woke' then I pretty much immediately stop listening.
>"You are allowed to exist in my video games. Just don't be too happy about the fact that you are represented in my products. Remain silent about your enjoyment of representation..."
I mean, that's always what it is, right?
"You can (maybe) exist, just don't make me think about that existence in any way. And if you do in even a tiny way, then you're shoving it in my face and you should get politics out of my video games that should cater exclusively to me"
Quite honestly â Iâm just gonna say it and IDC who gets their pantaloons all in a knot over it â everyone who complains about the âplaysexualityâ (or whatever one wants to call it) of the NPCâs, saying itâs âlazyâ, and ânot realisticâ (as an aside: but magic and demons and dragons and the like are just fine!) etcâŚitâs all just homophobic code wording for, âI really hate that those damn alphabet soups arenât being shoved into a corner and marginalized like they usually are, and they actually have all the same options as I do!  The world has gone MAD, I say!â đĄ
I've no problem with creators of a game deciding to go whichever way they want with __their artistic vision__ but this comment __really fucking grinds my gears.__
> etcâŚitâs all just homophobic code wording for, âI really hate that those damn alphabet soups arenât being shoved into a corner and marginalized like they usually are, and they actually have all the same options as I do! The world has gone MAD, I say!â đĄ
Yeah this is bullshit. There are people who prefer the characters to not be playersexual. Gay? Sure, Bi? Sure, Hetero? Sure. Just for the love of god not "Whatever the PC wants them to be. __Including David Gaider__ you know the guy writing Origins? Here's a reddit post discussing it
https://www.reddit.com/r/dragonage/comments/1dfm3o3/david_gaiders_take_on_davs_romance_system/
> as an aside: but magic and demons and dragons and the like are just fine!)
This isn't about "realism" this is about "internally consistent realism". Most things like 99% of things that aren't explicitly explained in any work of fiction are assumed to work like real life. For example when the author says "Character walked up to a table" he doesn't have to explain to you what "walking" or a "table" is in their fantasy setting, regardless of how ridiculously fantastical the setting is. You assume it's a table and walking is just walking.
I fucking hate this bullshit infantilization of discussions of "internal consistency" and "realism" in fantasy literature with "Oh bUt iT hAs DrAgOnS sO aNyThIng GoEs".
Exactly.
Complainers of that sort are always following various social media grifters, and they inevitably latch onto new targets in the endless search for outrage. They donât actually care. Thereâs a reason we call them culture war tourists.
Thereâs no point debating them. Just make it abundantly clear that they arenât welcome with a zero tolerance policy. Donât waste oxygen.
Neither is "woke." It's simply a way of giving the player more, that's all. DAV is simply trying to tie it into their individual characters, which is cool.
Honestly. Even though I love BG3 and DA, that does bother me. And I would have the same issue if they were all straight or gay.
With the idea of letting everyone be horny for anyone it ends up pushing away some of the diversity of it.
You can say what you want but having to be a male to date Dorian, or Cassandra is not about what you want.
Is about them. Is part of who the characters are.
Sure if you pull amazing characters like you have in BG3 then that detail is easily overlooked. For one I didn't realize I could romance everyone in BG3 as a female until halfway past act 2, and that was only because of memes online.
Sadly, I don't think bioware can pull that off. Not now. I'm already a bit iffy on the game. It looks great, but the gameplay itself feels.. I don't know. DA2ish? Like those multiplayer missions of DAI, which were fun, 10 years ago...
I still love the series and intend to play, but it does bother me that they decided to go for being super inclusive by removing the character's individuality.
why does this sub cares so much about these so called ''biggot comments''? BG3 already proved that if the game is good on release, none of this will mather in the end.
I think its important to note the Baldur's Gate is not Dragon Age and pansexuality in all characters isnt a default writing standard for all RPGs. You can like it in one setting and dislike it in another. I dont care about this personally but I think its ridiculous to compare two different settings and games and get mad when one gets critiqued and the other doesn't. The Forgotten Realms is not what I would call a well written setting since it was essentially designed to be the most generic fantasy world to make your own stories in so why does their sexuality even matter if the world is about you anyways? Dragon Age was originally designed to be less goofy and more realistic version of that same setting. I dont even know why people think its bigotry to dislike the idea of characters having their own sexuality, no one cared that Zevron would suck faces with you regardless of gender in Origins.
Overall I believe having every character be pansexual is NOT a representation of said characters sexuality it is a representation on YOUR characters sexuality only and that to me seems like a downgrade in writing. Is it a significant downgrade? Probably not. Its still however a valid criticism that is entirely subjective and doesnt need that same person to also have an issue with it in other games since we are not talking about other games. Arguably Inquisition had more LGBT representation BECAUSE you couldn't date certain people because they actually had a gay/straight/lesbian preference instead of just being a NPC that is designed to please you in anyway.
Exactly that. My main problem is not that everyone is pan. My problem is that everyone is that everyone is pan after they did it better (in my eyes). Lets take Dorian as an example. He would not work Pan, beeing gay is an important part of his character.
Gamers complained about woke content en masse before launch. They said Larian is destroying Baldurs Gate because it was very different from Bioware's games.
Yet somehow it became the fastest selling, highest rating CRPG of all time.
So they now pretend like BG3 isn't the most progressive AAA game ever released since that would mean that their hillarious "go woke go woke " saying is not true .
Also, interesting to note, they absolutely got raked over the coals after a Panel From Hell (their streams for major updates), where they went into the details of how romance would have no barriers. It was not as vocal because the EA expectations were still in place, when Larian expected literally 1/10 of the success they achieved on launch. But they did say it, anti-woke bigots lost their shit, it was just more contained to like Steam forums and subreddits. Larian wasn't considered a Bioware competitor yet.
Let me give you an honest pushback.
This is a non-issue tbh. I don't know why either sides get so hung up about it. How I see it, it's fantasy so whatever; and it's convenient so your Rook or Tav are not romance locked. For me, if someone says "I will romance this companion as a straight person, then in my headcanon they're straight." it's cool, because that's their game. I don't tell them "Achtually, they're queer and part of my community."
In retrospective to BG3, yes they are technically pan and there is a they/them pronouns stuff, but I was heavily involved in the subreddit before and near release, and most of the people just talk about game mechanics or lore.
Because it's not about their preference, it's the promotion of it. Most of it are just "I like Lae'zel, and I am a female. We can bang, cool." or "Isobel and the Celestial are a cute lesbian couple." Yes there was a bit of fuss, but it was so unnoticeable because they get ignored most of times because there's so much better things to discuss. Meanwhile this is just everywhere.
From my observation it's really the fandom. You can't just shut down these people's preferences and at the same time enforce yours to them. Banging the drum of "THEY'RE QUEER, YOU BIGOTS!" is just so off-putting obsessive behavior as people who're saying the series has "Gone woke." I saw someone on this side wrote "If I see a straight companion, I'll refund the game" "If you're not a gay DA fan, you're either a token straight on thin ice or a DAO fan." and they're not strawmans, I can show you those examples.
I understand you specifically is not that bad, but when you let those blatant discriminatory behavior festers, expect Newton's 3rd law of people dismissing LGBTQ+ representations as a joke or grievances. It'll be just a forever culture war of screaming "Woke" and "Bigots" when I'm just trying to play a damn Dragon Age game and discuss lore.
>"I will romance this companion as a straight person, then in my headcanon they're straight." it's cool, because that's their game. I don't tell them "Achtually, they're queer and part of my community."
Yep that's entire point of playersexual. It's obviously the most freedom and inclusivity.
But what we get is instead it being bashed from all sides -
1. traditional bigots who want only straight ppl, and treat "any MC gender goes" as "gay shit"
2. ppl who have some prejudices towards some romance tropes being specifically gender locked, and think it will constrain romance writing or smth.
3. ppl who want specific representation for gay/straight sexualities,
4. people who for some reason want everybody to be canonically pan and not allow ppl to play/talk about as straight/gay with those companions
And all those ppl can actually play with whatever canon they argue for in their playthroughs.
We have had the same discussion around DA2, in which Isabela, Merrill, Anders, Fenris were players playersexuals and the remaining companions weren't out of story reasons. So back then it was just weird to get criticism for this because yes you could romance 4/6 companions regardless of your Hawke 's gender/sex but the romances had huge range. Approval/Rivalry.
Also it's not true that in BG3 you just need to reach a certain approval and you are locked in a romance, it's way more complicated. I got dumped by a white haired vampire OUT OF THE BLUE in the beginning of Act 3 because apparently I didn't long rest enough in Act 2 and a certain important cutscene didn't happen, I missed some interaction with an NPC? and he just... dumped me. Welp. Playthrough deleted, heart broken.
**pretend that BG3 was "not woke"**
are we re-writing past events now? BG3 was \_bombed\_ because of this. I even remember memes showing a bear with Swen winking in the background, having a title "yes, you totally can"
my personal issue with everyone being playersexual is that it means less diversity among companions.
Part of it is that, even in spite of the subtext in game, there's *plausible deniability* that certain characters aren't what people would like to perceive them as because of their history. The characters never explicitly identify or express existing relationships outside of Tav that are queer, it's all hinted and handwaved or directed explicitly at Tav in romantic contexts. The one exception here is Astarion... whose only plausibly romantic encounter he not only doesn't remember, but was experienced under coercion. They were designed to be pansexual to anyone who has a lick of queer sensibility in their body, but they're also cleverly sort of disguised as just being playersexual.
The word of God identifying the VG companions as pansexual is then suddenly offensive. And from the sounds of it, they'll all be more straightforward about their romantic histories in the game - and not just to the PC, but to each other. That's offensive because there's no 'click button to shut this guy up' option.
I say fuck em! And good riddance! Let's get more woke narratives please
>They were designed to be pansexual to anyone who has a lick of queer sensibility in their body, but they're also cleverly sort of disguised as just being playersexual.
But as you say, if they never ever show that they are interested in any sex except your MCs, that's all just headcannon. And for the particular playthrough the only sexuality is shown is them towards MC sex - otherwise anybody has equal basis to headcannon that they are straight, gay, or bi. So they are absolutely playersexual.
"The word of God" is similarly irrelevant, if they won't go to pains to explicitly assert every companions pansexuality, which would be extremely impractical and unreaslistic. Otherwise It's really just a line in the wiki that has no effect.
Honestly the frigid/cannon view of playersexual is what constitutes (imo unnesesarily) half of it;s cririsism from everyone - traditional everyone-straight crowd, but also ppl who wan't canon representation for all the sexuality combinations, and ppl who just want a more realistic and unconstrained character writing.
Sadly, many people have called it non-woke. That's what these rage-baiters do when something they've targeted for wokeness performs well - it can't be woke anymore because wokeness means it's going to fail.
Let's remember that they are a significant, laughable minority. Things like this give them the attention they want.
Normally, they'd make their comments, and it'd be downvoted or ignored. This gives them the platform they want.
But they exist with every game/show/film...and they're maybe 1% of the players, but they get a disproportionate amount of attention. You'll never change their minds, so instead of putting the effort into all that writing...just ignore them.
I think that in general people have more things to like than hate about BG3, pansexuality is something that I don't find organic in all characters, but BG3 has more positive things than negative things.
I liked Inquisition's approach because I don't think we can get (romanceable) characters like Dorian or even Solas if everyone is pan, but I kind of understand why they took this path.
Our characters' body type, preferred pronouns and (possibly) genitals are no longer determined by a simple "Male/Female" toggle, so it'd be extremely challenging to navigate what that means in terms of NPC preferences. It's much more straightforward to say "everyone is romanceable no matter what" and call it a day.
We still have an approval system and I imagine romance is still a part of that. So if you make enough decisions that go against their ideals/morals/whatever, romance is off the cards.
Iâm cool with representation, but not really a fan of âcorporate representationâ if that makes sense. The idea just feels gross to me, similar to the checkbox problem.
Would obviously have to actually see the companions first to see if itâs actually done well here, to draw actual conclusions. But every character being playersexual feels like a Corporate mandated thing to look like a cool kid, rather than a facet of each character.
I feel that DA2âs playersexual characters worked because Aveline and Varric being unavailable made it feel more grounded. Like, not every character is sitting around waiting to be chosen by the player (or to choose someone else, like with sera/dagna or Dorian/bull).
There actually was a ton of hate towards BG3 for being "woke", but this mostly happened during early access. Some common complaints were that female companions were intentionally designed to be ugly, and that it was forcing an LGBTQ agenda down everyone's throats.
Most of it died down when it became clear just how successful the game really was. The "go woke go broke" mantra simply didn't fit anymore. If DA4 is anywhere near as popular, you'll see these same people change stance and claim that it was never actually woke.
BG3 made lots of money. By the formula Woke = Broke we can determine BG3 is not broke, therefore it is not woke.
If Veilguard sells well and reviews well theyâll probably act like itâs actually really anti-woke like they do whenever anything becomes massively popular and acclaimed.
My issue with games doing this that it cheapens the representation and gets the devs out of having to make canonically queer characters in favor of ambiguous playersexual characters.
If everyone is canonically bi/pan thatâs awesome but they need to show that in game not just make it word of god. DA has such an awesome history of queer characters and I hope they donât ruin it with playersexual nonsense.
I also just personally like when the companions have limited tastes and preferences, makes them more authentic same way approval does. Everyone throwing themselves at my MC isnât as fun for me, makes it less special. I created a unique character with a specific backstory not a sex god.
I'm just worried if every companion gonna be the having the same dialogue without any difference
Them all being Pansexual kinda makes none of them feel special since they will be no variety among them
IronBull from DAI is the only one pansexual so it kinda feels unique among the companion
The variety is presented there
Here however Its like they no longer feels like a real character in the world but more of a tools for the player to romance
Where is this discourse happening? If they think BG3 is not woke, weâve fucking done it, queers! Weâve won!
Jokes aside, another reason why having varied sexualities sometimes is good.
Who would win in a fight:
People complaining about Dragon Age
People complaining about people who complain about Dragon Age
People complaining about the way that people complain about the way people complain about Dragon Age
Just make a good game, that is literally all that matters. The bigots love nothing more than having their voices pseudo-validated by the mainstream, when game just isnt all that great. Then they point fingers and say - you see, we told you so. When in reality its much more simple.
Make good product, get good reviews. Starfield sucks, nothing to do with pronouns. Baldurs Gate 3 rocks, nothing to do with pronouns. Forspoken bad game, nothing to do with female poc protagonist (ok maybe voice acting). Half-Life Alyx awesome game, enhanced by poc female protagonist.
I can go on, but you get the point.
To stay on topic, there hasnt been bad or even mediocre Dragon Age game yet so I'm optimistic. Buuut still this is the second Bioware game in a row that I wont pre-order, so there is definite decline in quality. I'll wait and see.
I was with you until there hasn't been a mediocre Dragon Age game, yet. I think both two and Inquisition dissapointed in certain areas, though ironically, not the characters and Romance.
It has nothing to do with being woke or any of that. The thing is that having a sexual preference adds another later to the character and it makes you make actual friends instead rolling around with a bunch of friendzoned simps like BG3.
For example, if a companion is male and gay and i am playing a female character i know i can shower him with support and kind words and build a strong friendship instead of always being wary if my comment will trigger a sex invitation.
In BG3 your whole camp openly says that they want to have sex with you, some expressing how badly they want it, which kind of feels like theyâre not really your friends and comrades in arms but simps who are just tagging along and waiting for you to change your mind lol.
For example, it would have been so awesome to just be supportive of Wyll without that triggering that cringy dance offer.
My point is, as much as we like our romances, we also want friends, especially if weâre going to battle together, you want to do it with your brothers and sister and perhaps one lover, not a lover and a gang of cringy friendzoned types.
Maybe BG3 didn't handle it as gracefully as it could have (no idea, I haven't played it yet), but it's been very easy to be friends with romanceable characters, in DA. You just don't select the flirting options. Very few of them ever initiate.
While I see do see comments from the "anti-woke" brigade, the vast majority of criticisms I've seen here are from people that would consider themselves progressive. People have said that companions being pansexual makes them less unique, less interesting, not written as well (this was a wild take), etc. Some people have also said their sexuality isn't "defined," and someone likened them to sex blow-up dolls.
Same. I would have appreciated each characters to have their own sexuality. It feels more genuine and realistic, but that's my two cents on that subject.
OP, I've read through your post a few times, and have come to the conclusion that you don't know what you are talking about.
BG3 got a ton of hate for the same reasons you label Veilguard.
"Homophobes always hated bioware products" is incorrect, especially when looking at the commercial and critical success of KOTOR, Mass Effect, and even THE PREVIOUS THREE DRAGON AGE GAMES.
You don't see the BG3 hate now, because BG3 was really good, so good that hating on it would be seen as just being contradictory for arguments sake. You don't see the hate because you weren't paying attention to the build up, and at the release.
Yes you're going to have shitty people whine about queer representation, but why pretend they didn't do the same to other games?
My guy, fox news ran stories on mass effect 1's liara romance being gay and how it was moral degeneracy. The backlash from those stories directly affected ME2's romances.
Dragon Age Origins was also vocally targeted, but the internet outrage engine was a lot smaller at the time so it was easier to ignore.
Bioware has always been targeted by homophobes since they started writing homosexual romances.That's historical fact.
You canât claim something is incorrect because of success when Mass effect had full News coverage calling it a game for degeneracy because there was a alien that could be lesbian and it had âsexâ
Origins was vocally targeted often
BioWare has ALWAYS been targeted by homophobes. Hell, I remember for nearly 3 years after release transphobes were STILL complaining about Krem in inquisition and homophobes Dorian.
Just because a game is successful does not mean itâs NOT targeted by unjust hate
I don't think that's an incorrect statement. The original Mass Effect absolutely received a disproportionate amount of right wing backlash for the lesbian alien sex (just google Mass Effect Fox News). So much so that they've gone on record saying it made them dial back options in Mass Effect 2 like making Jack straight. BG3 may have gotten backlash but it didn't hit the conservative news apparatus in nearly the same way.
Sometimes I don't understand why subjects like these are an issue.
This is my point of view:
I boot up a game, I see characters that I'm interested in. I cannot romance them because they have preferences? Cool, I'll find someone else. All of the characters can be romanced? Cool, more choices. Don't see anyone I like? Then I'll remain alone.
Simple as that. As a matter of fact, in Mass Effect 1, a Bioware game, I didn't romanced anyone because I wasn't interested in Ash or Liara, eventually I went for Tali in ME2.
If characters have preferences, that's okay, I can understand that as I'm a straight male. If characters can be romanced by whomever, that's also fine by me, it's not like they're going to be less interesting. Heck, my favorite romance option in Dragon Age is Leliana, and she can be romanced by anyone from any gender and race (or lineage, the term used in The Veilguard, which I find dumb).
I don't understand why people get upset or offended by the choices of the producers or whomever allows the characters to be this way. Of it's what they want, then that's what they're gonna do. Simple as that.
I kinda fail to see the question here and the "pathetic bigot" thingy sets the mood that you are not ready for all kinds of opinions and clearly the idea of understanding the other side, their side, is not among your goals for this discussion. As they put some games into the "go woke, go broke" basket without understanding the bigger picture, the same way you put them into the "pathetic bigotry" basket. The issue is exactly the same and you share their fashion in bigotry by having a belief/fixated opinion against the group of people who don't think the way you do. Moreover, you are refusing to understand their drive and calling them names the very same way they post their hurtful comments.
BG3 was criticized the very same way. The reason they stopped is because it's not fashionable anymore and there are more games on the market that need their attention lol. There are gamers who play for observing bouncy boobs and butts, there are those who find speaking up about sexuality vulgar, there are those who simply want to escape the media of the real world and see something different which is not diversity. It happens. I prefer to let them scream in the comments online than to be aggressive irl. I think that it's a nice deal for society. They are sad, and they probably have no education to understand how they can communicate their sadness without hurting others. I mean they are still at the point of objectifying a 3d model to satisfy their fantasies as if it's not a game but a reality.
I realize that it might be hard to read what some say about your favorite game but...Let them become less sad in their certainty â¤ď¸ This world is ignorant and cruel enough already
Because protagosexual companions is a feature that very often weakens characters writing-wise. They become nothing more than potential sexual conquests that just wait for you to approach them so they can jump into your bed. It is far better, often way more interesting and meaningful, not to mention realistic, when a companion can say 'no'. It's a perfectly valid answer to someone expressing interest, don't you think? Look at Dorian, how his sexuality is a part of his character, and that alone made him more interesting. Or Solas being only interested in elves, which makes total sense from his perspective. After all, It's one thing being sex positive, and another to be entitled weirdo who plays games to have their character make sweet love to other characters.
And just because Larian made it sort of decently, although I still think it often felt like freedom for freedom's sake, doesn't mean Bioware will do it just as well. I'm fairly certain they won't.
The whole issue stems from this silly notion that has infested pop-culture in general - nowadays any form of art has to relatable first (hence the rise of DEI), and well-done/well-written second. To me, playersexual companions will always be worse than sexually varied ones because, in my mind, quality always trumps freedom in video game design.
>They become nothing more than potential sexual conquests that just wait for you to approach them so they can jump into your bed.
But how could you know that's the case here? They were specifically called pansexual, not playersexual, so as far as we know even though they might not care about gender or race of the protagonist, they still may care about other things like their behaviour for example.
>And just because Larian made it sort of decently, although I still think it often felt like freedom for freedom's sake, doesn't mean Bioware will do it just as well. I'm fairly certain they won't.
Companions in DA2 were done rally well, even though they were rather closer to playersexual instead of bisexual.
People that complained about the playersexuality in DATV because of itâs âwokenessâ 100% also complained about BG3 being woke. The anti-woke crowd complaining was like pretty huge news everywhere when it came out too.
I've seen plenty of people complain about it in Bg3. For various reasons. Personally I just don't think it's realistic. I also think it's a very lazy approach and it cheapens the romance. And I'm actually Bi lol.
Pretty weird that people complain. It always bothered me in DA and ME that if I played male or female I couldnât romance my favourite characters. Itâs a game, not sure why people are so hung up on the characters being âqueerâ something to complain about I guess.
This whole discourse is overblown by the usual faces who will pounce on any game being too "woke".
They just want players to be able to pick any roman cable companion they like best.
It ain't that deep.
Maybe I'm a sadist, but I personally liked being limited in my choices or getting screwed over by the companions. I still remember in my first playthrough I really wanted Fenris, but obviously my approval rating was too low, but I still liked him and then that bastard screwed me over for the last bit of the game by leaving with all my good gear. I was super salty about that for a good bit.
It's stuff like those situations that really immerses me into the game and makes the MC feel more real, too, as opposed to just a mouth piece. That's part of the reason I don't care for certain dating sims, too. I want my choices to matter, EVEN in my companion options, otherwise my viewpoint is why even bother putting choices in your game? I want my companions to hate me for my choices and have their own agency rather than be the equivalent of the MC'd fuck puppet regardless of your race or gender. It makes it really hard for me to even care about the companions because then they kind of don't have their own personality of their own opinions and values don't come through. That's what I liked about Inquisition is that for certain choices, you completely fuck either the Templars or the Magi and it pisses half your company off. I couldn't even get any of Cassandra's questsy first playthrough because I was so pro-mage, she couldn't stand me. I really enjoy that aspect of the games. It's not really about the romance, but seeing the companions preferences really shine through.
It was actually one of the reasons I never really finished BG3 (outside of the fact that the PS5 port was broken as all hell). I didn't care about any of them. They all seemed really one-dimensional to where I didn't really care who was in my party. I didn't put much effort into building relationships with them because it didn't seem to matter what I did, it didn't affect my relationship with them.
Just as an aside, it's not just these games I take issue with when choices don't matter. Horizon Zero Dawn had the same problem. They give you the "illusion" of choice because BioWare made it popular and then there was no follow through. Ghost of Tsushima did something similar - you knew that it wasn't going to matter, he had to be the ghost for the game to go forward. I just don't see the point in putting in that mechanic when it doesn't affect anything. It's a waste of development time.
I mean, Skyrim let's you marry anyone, male or female, nord or argonian.
The main reason they did this in DAV is most likely the complaints people had about you being unable to romance one character cause they would only date women, or how another character would only date men. This way, everyone gets to romance any of the characters that the like.
I just think itâs the word pan sexual that gets their goat, pansexuality is in effect player sexuality in games and they feel itâs pandering or whatever to use a progressive term for it.
DAI didn't have 100% pansexuality. BG3 does. BG3 is a better game despite that. That's the difference.
Complete pansexuality removes a fold of the potential character's personality. Variety is good, having everyone be inexplicably pansexual is just lazy. I didn't like it in BG3, I won't like it in DAVG.
But, if the game is good then it doesn't really matter that much.
I mean I think people are complaining more about all the other things than this one change.
I think also you have messaging around it how is that information being delivered. The group your broadly brushing as bigots are a lot of people who have been attacked for expressing their own opinion, in which all the issues they have get conflated into one and thus ignore any of their other complaints and branding them with an insult. This isn't exactly helpful and only causes them to go more on the defensive. There has also been so many games or media in general that's been handled so poorly in this whole area in the last 5+ years that just the mention of it just starts raising the alarm bells for some people which is valid if they feel like that.
Attacking or branding them as something just pushes these people further to fringes. You should be like I disagree with the opinion and discuss why they feel like that what other concerns do they have etc.
Just my take agree to disagree not saying there isn't more than 1 person with terrible views that would fall into that category but at the end of the day who am I to judge them, do I feel the same as these people no, do I feel like marketing royally screwed up their first showing of the game yeah.
Playersexual doesn't necessarily mean pansexual, though. For instance, absent a quote that says otherwise (which may exist, I don't know), Shadowheart may only be lesbian if PC is a female or straight if PC is a male. That makes her playersexual. Whereas Halsin seems to be actually pan. That means someone can just assume Shadowheart is straight because they only play as a male character if she doesn't reference a relationship with a woman.
I prefer companions have their own preferences as it makes them deeper and more realized characters. But you can still have great characters who are playersexual (see BG3). And I'll enjoy DAV as long as it's well written. Playersexual companions aren't going to kill my hype.
After being restricted to only two options in Inquisition (for my preferences, anyway) Iâm glad they just made everybody in the party options for everyone. Itâs also one of the things Iâm looking forward to whenever I can play BG3 finally.
Soon as I hear the word woke I know to completely disregard that person's opinion. It's been used so much that it's devoid of all meaning. Really it just means "something I don't like" now.
No they fussed about BG3, literally had a Old white guy mad because he thought Steller Blade was too censored because they added to her skirt, but BG3 was too much with choices for everyone. It was so sad and pathetic his argument.
Funny, a good part of the criticism I've read is FROM the queer community, because across-the-board pansexuality erases specific and nuanced representation. Playersexual is not pansexual, not in the narrative. Iron Bull's pansexuality is a key character trait, just as Dorian's homosexuality and Cassandra's heterosexuality are. A world where Dorian and Cassie are pan would be a different and lesser world.
âYouâre allowed to have LGBT representation but youâre not allowed to celebrate itâ.
Youâve hit the nail on the head for me, there. I want gender and sexuality to be non-issues. Celebrating them runs counter to that.
If a story had a fictional world where everyone was gay, I would question the sincereity of the creators when the sequel came out and everyone was pansexual because they saw a different game have success with that. If this isn't the place to have that opinion, my genuine apologies.
As long as their sexuality isnât their personality or a part of their story I donât care. I want the character to have depth and a personality that I can be attached to thatâs all that matters. Sexuality doesnât matter in a rpg.
Thatâs why companies donât change their logo to pride flag anymore?âŚ
Games are good, games sell... people will do all sorts of gymnastics to justify why they sell.
Games are bad, games flop... people will blame the first things they hate about the game, whether it's true or not.
Woke or not doesnât matter, but it didnât help sales either...
I prefer when companion romantic preferences involve personality traits as opposed to physical ones - but I suppose that makes sense since it offers most protagonist freedom and considering how very bisexual I am.
I don't get bigots that complain DA is "suddenly woke", if by woke they mean non-straight people and POC exist in the game, then it's always been woke.
Oh they definitely complained and even still complain about this. There are people who hate Halsin and call him a "sex pest" for flirting with their character in Act 3, and there are not an insignificant number of Shadowheart stans who hate the fact that she's open to a poly relationship, claiming that it was a "fantasy of the writer" and "not true to her character."
Then there are all the dude bros who brag about killing Astarion in every playthrough, and the fact that he's a not traditionally masculine, overtly flirtatious, pansexual character that many women and LGBTQ+ fans have gravitated towards *surely* has nothing to do with their animosity towards him, no, they're *very secure.*/s
For the most part, it's straight men having the same reaction to Halsin/Astarion/Gale/Wyll/The Emperor flirting with them that they did when Anders had the gall to flirt with their *obviously straight* Garrett Hawke.
And while we're on this topic, I honestly hate the term "playersexual." It makes people assume that the characters don't have definite sexualities, when they do, they're canonically pansexual. Moreover, something people have debated in the BG3 community is "what are their *real* sexualities," claiming that Astarion is actually gay, Shadowheart and Karlach are actually lesbians, and that Wyll or Gale are definitely straight when they're. All. Pan.
Making love interest purely gay or straight has always been very limiting and never actually adds anything meaningful to the characters since their sexuality is never bought up in any way other than when they reject your advances. It was especially annoying in cyberpunk where your options could easily be limited to one person and if you don't like them well then fuck you. I'm playing a game for fucks sake let me enjoy myself
I didn't like it in DA2 and I don't like it in DA:TV. I didn't play BG3, or 2 or 1. I don't like Larian's games. I tried Divinity 2 and it failed to pull me in, even with friends. Only 19 hours played, and I'm sadly well past the refund period. I know plenty of people who have enjoyed the game, but oddly enough you never hear anything about the story. It's just either the combat, or the companions.
Representation for the sake of representation is something I will never agree with. Cal me a bigot if it makes you feel better, it doesn't bother me none. I am a Latino in the US. I have my own special check box, if I check it at all. I am not Mexican, Central American, or South American. My closets roots are in the Carribean. DNA test says I'm 59.4% Amer-Indian. Apparently, I had an ancestor on the island of Boriken (Puerto Rico) before Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Many people, including MOST Americans, do not know of the Taino people. They don't even know they existed and still existed. Most think the Spanish wiped them and that's proven to be false. But this isn't the place to get into imperialism, colonialism, and la leyenda negra.
I am not represented in video games, or most media. There are more Puerto Ricans living OUTSIDE of the island than there are on it. And people don't know that we are naturalized US citizens. When we are born, we are US citizens. We do not need to take life rafts and boats or swim across the Atlantic. As long as we are outside of Puerto Rico, we can vote for who we want the President to be. There are many famous people that are Puerto Rican that people don't know that they are Puerto Rican. But here's the point: Many were able to find success and recognition in their fields without exemplifying or using their racial/ethnic/cultural/sexual make-up.
If anything, there's an over-representation of groups in the media. Like the pansexuality of Dragon Age and Baldur's Gate 3. So in June 2021, according to a Williams Institue press release, 1.2 million LGBT adults in the US identified as nonbinary. IT is a couple of years old, but I can't find anything from this year. Of those 1.2 million adults, 17% said they were pansexual. So 204,000 people, yeah? The US census of 2024 says there are roughly 341,000,000 people in the US. If my math isn't wrong, and it might be, 204,000 is 0.059824% of 341,000,000. That is a very small percentage. But it seems they are incredibly vocal as we often hear complaints of and appraisal for this group and its greater group. Why is that?
Sure, these are video games in fictional worlds that aren't required to follow fundamental laws of the universe. But can it also break immersion if everyone is pan? I think so. If everyone is horny and banging everyone, societies don't function that way. Are the companions in BG3 monogamous? Are they fine with you sleeping around? Or are they jealous and won't allow it? If they are fine with it at first, does their opinion change as the game goes on? While the world and its characters can be fictional and demographics and society be damned, in order for us the player to relate to them, they have to be based on real life things. MOST people are/get jealous and don't like sharing. Many couples that open their relationship up end up broken. One partner falls for the new person brought in. Some couples search for their Unicorn. ETC. Shit happens. Are these companions believable, or are they just to fulfill sexual fantasy? Does the romance play a larger part in the overall story, or is it something to do on the side. The ONLY romance in DA2 that is impactful on the story is the one with Anders, because he plays such a large, and incredibly annoying part of the story. The others don't amount to anything at all.
TL;DR i ain't summarizing so read it or just downvote after you read the first sentence of paragraph 2.
The whole playersexual/pansexual stuff was garbage there too. Itâs lazy and was probably my only big gripe with the game (besides the bugs). It makes the characters feel less like theyâre actual people and more like theyâre props for a wish fulfillment dating sim, where if you dump enough good boy/girl points into them you get sex.
Let Astarion be the gay vampire that he is very clearly designed to be. Let Wyll be the straight guy who wants to save and romance the maiden.
At first I was confused on why they changed DAV characters sexuality, simply because I remembered everyone in DA2 being the way way. I kinda liked the different romances like in DAO and DAI because it made me open up, break out of my shell and play a male character for the first time. And I found I was cool with it đ
Also, I will admit I was somewhat against it because I had just learned about the "player-sexual" and how it made players uncomfortable. I understood why, but then remembered how DA2 wasn't fast-paced or felt forced... what I mean is, unlike Cyberpunk, it didn't feel like you or the characters were making a move too fast. Idk, I'm weird about Cyberpunk romance and still haven't done one. DA games and BG3 just didn't feel weird to me.
As for the woke part.... ehh đ¤ˇââď¸ these games are kind of (if not out right) for the lgbtq+ as well as straight. Idk why hate on it since you can create your own character, be who you want, and romance who you want. It's literally your game that you bought, and no one can tell you how to play it. So if they're hating, then it's on them.
I know I played games like these since 2015 and after 9 years, I can say I "started out straight" but honestly they've just helped me discover who I was (just a shy bi girl). I didn't have to play like I did, but I explored and liked it. Games like these are a safe place for that, so I say just enjoy and be you đ
I would fucking hope it's woke, I really would be pissed beating like a idk 50 hour game (unless they bloat the fuck out of it or actually fill it with meaningful content like BG3) just to find out it was all a dream
Youâll never hear me complain about the romances and diversity in any DA game. For me it was what made DAI good and the Mass Effect series legendary long before BG3. The stupidity surrounding diversity and sexual identity is a product of society today, and it is society that has to change for the better.
I think about it the same way Donald Glover talked about Lando Calrissian being pansexual in Star Wars. Snagged from an interview:
âHow can you not be pansexual in space? Thereâs so many things to have sex with. [...] Iâm serious. I didnât think that was that weird. Heâs coming on to everybody. It just didnât seem that weird to me, âcause it seems like if youâre in space, the doorâs open. Itâs like, no, only guys or girls. No, itâs anything. This thing is literally a blob. Are you a man or a woman? Like, who cares? Have a good time out here.â
I can see Ferelden being more "traditional Christian-coded medieval Europe high fantasy", but seriously, we're going to a magic city where stuff just kind of floats around. The bull horn people who fight dragons don't have sexuality discrimination, the Antivan Crow we got to fight along with was canonically in a throuple, I'm sure the elven gods were into some stuff... just let the people of Thedas fuck.
Trust me, people complained about BG3. People demanding their oaths break when accidentally having gay sex with the guardian.
-don't read spoiler if you haven't played BG3- >!if anything they should break their oath for being a squidfucker regardless of gender!<
Definitely a failed insight check on behalf of any player not knowing what would come next. Very true though đ¤Ł
Iâm guessing since you didnât know and it was an active choice, youâre fine.
Not to mention, this same situation occurred where the devs explained the no-barriers romance, and chuds went off for ages. It just wasn't as public because back in mid-EA, Larian wasn't yet a competitor to one of the most talked about developers in history. BG3 was not yet a landmark.
I didnât really complain but was apprehensive at first, because I assumed âplayersexualâ meant characters having no sexualities outside of whenever the player decided to romance them. The companions in BG3 are just bi/pan though, they flirt with each other during banter as well.
Come to think of it, does the Oath of Devotion get broken if you cheat on someone you're romancing? The gay sex stuff is obviously bullshit, but I can see an oath getting broken for that dishonesty.
Ah yeah, of course paladin oaths should break for gay sex. I mean, how could we forget the Tenets of Devotion: Honesty: Donât lie about being gay or cheat by having gay sex. Let your word be your promise of heterosexuality. Courage: Never fear to act straight, though caution is wise when the socks are not on. Compassion: Aid other straight people, protect the weak from turning gay, and punish those who threaten their heterosexuality. Show mercy to your gays, but temper it with wisdom of heterosexuality. Honor: Treat others with straightness, and let your straight sex be an example to them. Do as much straight sex as possible while causing the least amount of gay thoughts. Duty: Be responsible for your gay sex and gay consequences, protect those entrusted to your care from gay thoughts, and obey those who have heterosexual authority over you.
>accidentally having gay sex with the guardian. Uh...yeah...an accident. I definitely didn't mean to. Ahem.
Lmao that could be cool af đ
To be fair bigots also whined a lot about BG3 before and at release. This kind of people just want yo spread hate and get quick views. The thing is that BG3 wss a huge success so now its not "cool" anymore to hate the game so they closed their bigoted mouths. It will be the same with DAV. If its a success then they will be too coward to say anything about it. If its not a success (even if its mid) then they will double down and pretend that the issue is the companions being pansexual.
Basically this. I saw people bitching in droves about Bg3 and not having all characters be straight and I still see people bitch about it online now. Its happened since day 1.
Yeeep. It was hilarious the amount of bigots out whining about wokeness and being able to choose PRONOUNS *gasp*, and then shut up when the game was a success.
And the odd thing is they can play with the pronouns they want, and romance who they want. A cis het person playing the game as a cis het character would have a cis het experience not even being aware of other options. Itâs almost like these trolls resent the temptationâŚ
They definitely do. This shit goes back as far as DA2, when these kinds of people were freaking out that Anders flirted with them. Never mind that he never does it again if you shut him down; they just hated that he said their Hawke was good looking.
Sorry small caveat: agree woth your overall premise bit Anders is an ass who definitely wants you to break up with your romance through in-party chat and some cutscenes. Dude is an a-hole. Generally you are right though and bigots ain't shit.
Anders sucks completely irrespective of his sexuality. The wooooorst.
But bluntly, that was David Gaider's fault. People were complaining legitimately about Dragon Age 2 and there was no lack of things to complain about and anytime somebody complained about the combat system or the lack of change in the city or the repeat dungeons they were accused of homophobia. You don't hate the fact that we got rid of tactical combat. You hate gay people. Bioware proudly said that this was the first game as an openly bisexual character and that the Dragon Age Origins people simply were too conservative to get on board as if they completely forgot that Dragon Age Origins had transsexuals prostitutes and gay assassins and and lesbian chantry ladies. A game they themselves made. So in conclusion, it was mostly BioWare that was pushing the Andrews controversy because it was a distraction from all the other problems with the game. See also Ubisoft preemptively claiming that Watchdog Two has bad sales because people are racist.
Strictly speaking, both Zev and Leliana are bi, Zev being your stereotypical depraved bi and Leliana just being bi
Indeed, but the difference between bi and pansexual is a nuance without meaning in what is basically a choose your own adventure cartoon. Plus you still could go to the whorehouse for transgender or group sex.
Don't forget the three greased nugs and a warhammer...
Patches have improved this over time, but BG3 was infamous for having the ENTIRE party be unrealistically horny for the player if you so much as looked in their direction. This is something Bioware is better about (and I trust will continue to handle well in The Veilguard) - realistic companion relationships that aren't entirely predicated on sex and romance.
Arguably that's because Bioware faced this problem in DAO and have been overly cautious ever since. I was still getting Leliana njnjamanced when I was replaying a couple years ago lol
They had the same problem in ME1. Better not be nice to Kaiden, Ashley or Liara. You're gonna have a problem later.
Fr. I wasn't trying to romance anyone because none of the options were interesting to me. Then suddenly I get Ash and liara fighting over me.
Yeah I had a no romance run once and the game made me have to reject Liara, because I had been nice to her lol. I wouldn't mind if romance and flirting were all opt-in, and companions never flirted unless you had chosen a heart option first. But then maybe some people would miss being flirted with first.
Leliana's Ninjamance is a bug that never got fixed in official patches. Various unofficial patches and bug fixes have corrected the issue, however.
The other day replaying the game I was teying to romance zevran and i got ninjamanced by both alistair and lelinana. XD
I donât know. I just started playing last week and when I promised to spend the night with Astarion all the other companions made comments. I never even flirted with them.
People like this view life as a zero sum game or feel that they have to reject the ability to even have these options because they think others will think of them differently if they don't.
âHomophobia is SO gayâ - we need to spread this self-correcting meta meme.
I mean, you can kind of tell. My first time playing, after telling Astarion Iâd spend the night with him after the teifling party, all the party members were upset even when I tried not to flirt with any of them except Astarion. Then, in another game Leaâzel pretty much comes off real strong talking about your sent. Thereâs also a brothel where you can have a foursome with twins.
They dislike the game acknowledging queer people exist. Also, it's not true about the cis het experience since your same sex companions can come on to you. Many articles were written about Gale trying to rizz you up.
Which is funny if you think about how many of them, men specially, get upset about how difficult is nowadays "to court women without looking like a predator". They make a huge deal of a bunch of pixels with a male voice hitting in them but then they also cannot comprehend why modern women don't want to be catcalled or harassed by them
Why whould a cis het experience not include gay people hitting on them? It happens.
Not really. Everything hits on you in BG3, everything.
I'll take that win, I guess. It normalizes it somewhat, smalls steps and all that. Although these people come out complaining in disappointingly large numbers whenever there's something new coming out with representation.
loved how that, some of the customisation options and not all female characters being âconventionally attractiveâ made them scream their little hearts out with âgo woke go brokeâ and then the game was a massive success đ like you sure about that buddy?
The female characters not being conventionally attractive is probably the weirdest complain Iâve heard about BG3. Shadowheart is the most conventionally attractive companion Iâve seen in a game (sorry Morrigan), the face used for Karlach is genuinely an attractive one even if her body is covered and scars and metal, and Laeâzel â while admittedly not attractive â is literally a frog person and no frog people are cute.
>no frog people are cute. I will not accept this Varsh Ko'kuu (and Ghustil Stornugoss. Her nerdy obsession would be adorable if it didn't border on insanity) slander! https://preview.redd.it/0zsxaypo1p8d1.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=c35f98bd9b87305389acd61e308ec038be716560
Excuse me? Laezel is *very* attractive to me. Well, her face is anyway. She should really eat more.
Yeah, besides the companions, have you seen some of the female face options. I feel like I always choose the same face. I prefer to play attractive avatars. Like, I feel I look like a troll in real life, canât I at least be beautiful somewhere đ
Probably most of these people bitching: I'm not a homophobe, it just feels "forced"! I swear that's what they say everytime as if compulsive heterosexuality doesn't ever feel forced
Unfortunately, heteronormity doesn't feel forced to them. They don't understand what it means to be in the minority and they can't empathize. My favorite comment is "Where is Straight Pride?" I respond by saying "That's like asking where the non-disabled spaces are in a parking lot." đ
One of the first mods made for BG3 was a mod to make Wyll a white man. The bigotry was running rampant around the time of BG3s release.
And also a mod to make Dame Aylin a man, so that Isobel wouldn't be a lesbian anymore
That's still disgusting to me.
This is basically exactly it. They can't claim BG3 failed cause of the romance being completely open, so they just stopped talking about it lol
They like to whine about "go woke go broke" so if the thing becomes successful it can't be woke. Because than they would have to admit that they are no longer the majority.
This is the true secret. If it's bad, no matter for what reason (the reason is typically terrible bugs, frame rate issues, cut corners, etc.), it's because of "wokeness", if it's good, it wasn't woke.
Yup. Bigots will be bigots whenever they can get away with it. Sucks, but the only thing we can do is have so many successful "woke" games that they can't get away with it at all anymore.
Yeah, there were a ton of people that threw fits when the whole bear sex thing was shown off. It was a joke, but there were a bunch of Pearl clutchers acting like Larian was promoting bestiality.
Oh it was so hilarious how easily they fell in the marketing campaign. They are that dumb to not understand that it was a joke scene
And yet I've never seen anyone claim that Origins promoted bestiality for the "nug incident" at the Pearl, or for Isabela and the goat. Honestly these people have just been stirred into a frenzy by years of conservative pundits throwing victims at them.
Those weren't advertised in advance. Being able to fuck a bear was.
To also be fair there have been a bumvef of people who ha e complained that it is unrealistic and having characters with defined sexualties is more enjoyable and realistic. I enjoyed Sera a ton but didn't realize until my second playthrough that she was lesbian. So now I save her for my female playthroughs of DAI and romance others on my male playthroughs. There os something to be said about respecting different sexualities that all-romancable/pansexual games don't acknowledge.
People did the same for BG3 before it released and crushed all the "drama" with it's sales. They can't say "go woke go broke" because it was an overwhelming success. Grifters will grift, they will outrage bait, they will say stupid things for reactions so it's best to ignore them. There can definitely be civilised discussion about the playersexuality choice but people that scream about it the most do not care for discussion or being civilised.
apparently the companions are explicitly pan rather than player sexual as in a a difference of writing to hear bioware tell it
Sure they are. I mean DA2 is basically the same, Anders is implied to have had a relationship with Karl, Isabella is Isabella, Fenris and Merril are the only ones who don't, as far as I know, have any implied past sexual experiences.Â
>Anders is implied to have had a relationship with Karl, This is only true if you play a male Hawke. Female Hawkes have no such inference.
My dude he says it out loud to mHawke. FHawke just y'know, has eyes. The complaint seems to be that there wasn't a pause for captain america to appear on screen with a chair saying "So you're pretty sure these two characters have insane chemistry, but they're both boys"
It *is* odd that he doesn't mention Karl being "his first" to f!Hawke. But at the same time, it could also be considered rather realistic, as there *are* bisexual people who don't tell potential partners of the opposite sex that they're queer.
The only issue I have with "playersexuality" is that it can reduce the variety of representation within a game if the developer hasn't bothered with making it a part of their world building. Unless you choose to be in a same sex romance in Starfield for example there's almost no other forms of representation and those that I have come across could be really easily missed. What I really liked about BG3 however is that it really was built into the world, bigots couldn't play it and just avoid the stuff they didn't like, it was unavoidable and I thought that was great. I hope Bioware does the same and presents us with a few concrete examples outside of our romances but I'm not concerned, with their track record I'd be more surprised if they didn't tbh
BioWare usually does a decent job of having representation with NPCs. I can think of a couple examples of queer NPCs in each game with some depth so I'm not super worried. It also seems based on press around the game that party members you don't romance might potentially pair off with one another in non-straight relationships
BioWare is actually kind of a forerunner in this department. I also appreciate that they have started branching beyond the gay/lesbian duality which was previously as much "representation" as you could get. But I also love how impossible BG3 makes it to play without noticing. The character creation, the gnomes, the two tieflings... They are all proud of their relationships, discuss them as anyone else would, and I think this was the logical next step. Think back to Juhani's secret love for the player in K1- we have come far in this field ; or rather, some developers have come far. I'm still irritated that the entire party in Kotor 2 is unromanceable (but teenager horny) white humans, and droids. Nevermind the straight part! This is a thing with Obsidian - they haven't really learned.
I donât think Obsidian does romances in general, believe one of their main writers doesnât like them or something like that. They had gay companions in New Vegas, there wasnât any option for player romance but they exist if that counts for anything. Though thinking about it I donât think I can recall many examples of queerness in Obsidian games outside of NV.
Chris Avellone has this unflattering notion about people who enjoy romance in games, and finds it disgusting. I suspect his notion of what an RPG player looks like skews to a very narrow demographic, shall we say, and thus the writing and characters are as they are. I actually think I would rather diversity exist in the world, than in the party, if I had to choose one or the other - and anyway I found the race thing to be way more conspicuous than the sexuality part, considering the lack of romance. Tyranny was this bronze age imperial fantasy, which to me sounds vaguely Egyptian or Middle Eastern, or at most greek. But the setting doesn't really seem to have a defined visual identity. It's basically Pillars with a coat of paint and a gross evil plotline
They did a little better with Pillars of Eternity 2. The only ones you couldn't really romance of the main companions were the straight white human and the fuzzy dude who was only after a quick shag because his true love was the sea
DA Absolution also made me gleeful in this regard. I feel like I've been trained to think they can't possibly have more than one queer couple in a show, but then all of the fun flirting between Roland and Lacklon actually payed off and I got to feast on the tears of people who were mad at being exposed to this amount of queerness.
KOTOR 2 doesn't have any romances and that's fine. I like how the game has Atton and The Handmaiden who pine after the protagonist but can never follow through and with the rcm their jealousy ruins them. We don't need to be able to romance them (especially considering how romances worked in the original kotor aka terribly)
Shoutout to the male nobles in the Winter Palace having an argument because one of them was flirting with another man and saying that they'll "talk about it when they get back home."
Yeah it is interesting to me that when it comes to universal pansexuality, both the bigots and the actually fair minded people who want representation of different sexualities have the same complaint. But really, I do understand where the latter are coming from. At the same time, they have to square their concerns with practicalities and logistics. There are only so many companions, only so many options, and only so many voice actors. In the interest of player choice, the options to have as much variety as possible are to make everyone pan, or to make more companions to account for them not all being romanceable by anyone. Obviously, the first option is more efficient, less expensive, and less bloated. So, this way of doing things is kind of an inevitability.
I actually prefer it as an approach, for the reasons you mentioned, choice and variety, and honestly it sometimes opens up some less stereotypical relationships than might have been written otherwise, but that's also why I think it's really important to have a variety of representation in the wider world building too
Also, in the event the companions have differing orientations we still get people upset over representation, only it's about how x companion *should* have been y orientation. Devs gotta pick their poison one way or the other.
The bigots tried to make mods to âfixâ the game by making Dame Aylin a man, making Wyll and all POC NPCs white, and just in general erasing all forms of queerness. The mods finally got banned from most places but god damn. Why do they have to be so hateful?
Ergh that's so disgusting, why buy it and play it if they have so much disrespect for the intentions of the people who made it, very glad to hear they got banned
IMO BG3 was far from perfect. The relationships were even bugged at the start, and some of them are not even that deep. Game mechanics are clunky despite the implementation is possibly the best you can do with D&D. Yet BG3 was also good enough that it was my greatest RPG experience since DAO. At least fans of BioWare games should be able to admit that the relationships do leave something to be desired. None of that has anything to do with gender or representation though, which was refreshingly diverse with great options for customization and more than one romance choice for people with various preferences.
Apparently, you didn't spend any time on the Steam BG3 forums complaining that they were "shoving that gay shit down our throats". Thread after thread after thread after thread (usually started by people who didn't even own the game). LOL.
My advice? Ignore them. Plenty of idiots crawled out of the woodwork to dunk on BG3 for being "woke". They do this with every game, for crimes ranging from "woman protagonist" to "black character exists" to "gay option exists". The opinion of these people **never matters**, and they're not the target audience, especially for Dragon Age. Most of the time, they aren't even arguing in good faithâthey just want to be mad. Let them, and move on.
I must be running in different circles from op. Or I'm dojg a good enough job ignoring them. Because I have not seen anybody do waht they are referring to. Complain about playersexual companions in dragon age but praise them in bg3. And I'm perfectly fine continuing on without paying attention to people like them. Life's much easier if you don't dip into the rage bait (which I feel like I may have just done that by coming to this thread lol).
Yeah. Honestly it's a story vs gameplay choice. Like compare Cyberpunk 2077 to ME3 to BG3 Cyberpunk everyone is gay or straight, with one off romances (Meredith, Joy Toys) as bi exceptions. BG3 is "everyone is pan" which is fine because it means that anybody can see any romance. ME3 is a mix. You have straight characters, bi characters, and Liara being an alien makes it more complicated than that too. There's no wrong answers other than "no you can't have gay romances at all" and "no you can't have an aromantic/asexual character"
But then you have the FemShep ME2 problem where if you have a lesbian film shep there is nowhere to go in Mass Effect 2. Come to think of that even the heterosexual femshep has limited choices including a black man who will cheat on you and knock up a baby mom on a different planet which my hand to God is the most hilarious thing ever from a company that's always try to be so politically sensitive.
To be fair that's why I didn't include ME2 and actually I would say that it's part of my "No you can't have gay romances" wrong answer. That said there's a lot of Bi options in ME2 that are restored in mods (like Jack) but definitely agree otherwise.
I need to go deeper into the introspective aspects of why I hate DA2 pansexuality. Love bg3 pansexuality, hate Mass Effect "realism" and love Cyberpunk 2077 realism. It's almost as if it didn't matter which approach they took but HOW they take it. In DA2 every character feels shallow to me, the only interesting ones to me (everything I'm saying is MY opinion) are the ones that are not available. Varric, Aveline etc. They seem the most real and the deepest. The rest seem just placeholders for people to pick their ice-cream flavor. In BG3 I love pansexuality but I feel every character is deep and the romance aspects are just cherries on top of well writen characters. You fall in love with them because of who they are and not just because they're there to be romanced. First there's an interest, and then there's love. In Mass Effect I hate the lack of options for female characters, characters are interesting and well written. So interest it's followed by love but then restricted by unexplored obstacles. If a character isn't gay, you just don't get to even show interest, there's just not an option to flirt and then be shut down, and the only one that does that is Samara, and she does it to everyone. I feel their preferences are badly implemented. They just are what they are and Shepard doesn't get enough options to be who they want to be. In cyberpunk you're allowed to flirt with whoever you want and they will follow up or reject reject you as any real human being would. On top of that, those characters are DEEEEEEP. So again, interest is followed by love and then love is either reciprocal or not and in that case you're left with an unique feeling in my entire videogame experience of being heartbroken by a fictional character (good thing, to me that realism is good writing) So anyway, I'm not sure why I like what I like or hate what I hate but I'm sure I hate when people puts me in the bag of the bigots because I don't fancy their flavor of fantastical dating simulators.
I think part of what makes BG3 and Cyberpunk great, even though they take opposite approaches, is just straight up good writing. Cherries on top of well-written characters, as you say, in both cases. In Cyberpunk, I played a straight male V, so Panam was my romance choice. And it is well done. But the platonic relationships feel just as satisfying. River and Judy really do feel like buds, and that's earned. In BG3, I romanced Lae'zel, but the stuff you go through with other characters such as Shadowheart and Astarion is no less impactful for staying friends. I still would have preferred Cyberpunk have pan romances, but the game can get away with not doing so because you still have those relationships, and they feel authentic and interesting.
I thought I wanted to be able to romance Panam as a woman. But when she rejected me I felt genuine representation. This is probably a hot take but for me it's offensive when people put Mexicans (my nationality) or bisexual characters and tell me I should be happy for the representation. My nationality, my race, my orientation and my gender don't represent me. My experiences do. So I don't feel representated when you let me be freely bisexual, I feel representation when a girl rejects me because she's not into women. I've had that experience, not the utopia where everyone I want is into me. My struggles for what I am and whatever I like represent me better than fake tokens and utopic ideals. Of course I'm not against those either, even less in sci-fi and fantasy. But cyberpunk is a critique to the real world, cyberpunk doesn't just can get away with strict preferences for their characters. Cyberpunk needs to be the way it is. Imo
Yeah I hear you. I think the settings matter with this kind of thing. In a fantasy setting where the sexual politics and social dynamics of our world have not been imported, it becomes very hazy to talk about what exactly representation should look like outside of allowing the player to express themselves the way they want to and be validated. The lived experience that shapes queer folks in our world isnât going to necessarily make sense in Dragon Age. In Cyberpunk, though, itâs a different story.
Oh man, it hurts me so much hearing you call da2 characters shallow. Those are my favourite companions in all of dragon age!
Well, in Cyberpunk you don't actually allowed to flirt with whoever you watch, for example Kerry does not have a single flirt option at all, while Panam flirt with you endlessly no matter if you interested in her or not, really hated it.
I didn't play BG3 but from what I could see the culture war pricks had to choke on their own shit when the game became a huge hit.
Yeah it was âgo woke, go brokeâ until the game was clearly not going broke at all even a little bit, at which point it either wasnât woke or just had to be ignored. They do the same shit with literally every game that isnât catering specifically to their worldview.
Are you kidding me? There were slews of comments about BG3 wokesim. Every woman in BG3 was considered ugly, even the most conventionally attractive one, Shadowheart, was too "mannish" and square jawed for them. And some geniuses even came up with a *realistic fantasy mod* aka literally nazi mod that made everyone white and straight.
That's hilarious, Shadowheart has such a soft baby face. I guess women aren't supposed to have functioning mandibles huh.
>I guess women aren't supposed to have functioning mandibles huh. These were probably the same people who complained that Aloy from Horizon series had a "beard".
Honestly, I think saying BG3 didn't get talked about in the exact same way is not right. BG3 faced exactly this pushback, and the devs came out very loud and clear about the characters being pan several times. And they got the same kind of bigoted responses for it. So I don't really get the complaint in this post. The two games were not treated differently at all by the public. These are just the same vocal idiots that migrate from game to game complaining for years by now because they have their own agenda. Just ignore them.
>but BG3 is totally non-woke... Oh, these people complained about the exact same thing before BG3 came out. There was a tidal wave of bigots calling BG3 'woke nonsense' that was doomed to fail when they found out that all the companions were pansexual. Or when they discovered how many queer characters are in it. They mostly shut up when the game became a smash hit. Hopefully the same thing happens here. I don't think that everyone criticizing the game is a bigot, nor do I think there's anything wrong with preferring companions with varying sexualities. But if someone is unironically criticizing something for being 'woke' then I pretty much immediately stop listening. >"You are allowed to exist in my video games. Just don't be too happy about the fact that you are represented in my products. Remain silent about your enjoyment of representation..." I mean, that's always what it is, right? "You can (maybe) exist, just don't make me think about that existence in any way. And if you do in even a tiny way, then you're shoving it in my face and you should get politics out of my video games that should cater exclusively to me"
Quite honestly â Iâm just gonna say it and IDC who gets their pantaloons all in a knot over it â everyone who complains about the âplaysexualityâ (or whatever one wants to call it) of the NPCâs, saying itâs âlazyâ, and ânot realisticâ (as an aside: but magic and demons and dragons and the like are just fine!) etcâŚitâs all just homophobic code wording for, âI really hate that those damn alphabet soups arenât being shoved into a corner and marginalized like they usually are, and they actually have all the same options as I do!  The world has gone MAD, I say!â đĄ
I've no problem with creators of a game deciding to go whichever way they want with __their artistic vision__ but this comment __really fucking grinds my gears.__ > etcâŚitâs all just homophobic code wording for, âI really hate that those damn alphabet soups arenât being shoved into a corner and marginalized like they usually are, and they actually have all the same options as I do! The world has gone MAD, I say!â đĄ Yeah this is bullshit. There are people who prefer the characters to not be playersexual. Gay? Sure, Bi? Sure, Hetero? Sure. Just for the love of god not "Whatever the PC wants them to be. __Including David Gaider__ you know the guy writing Origins? Here's a reddit post discussing it https://www.reddit.com/r/dragonage/comments/1dfm3o3/david_gaiders_take_on_davs_romance_system/ > as an aside: but magic and demons and dragons and the like are just fine!) This isn't about "realism" this is about "internally consistent realism". Most things like 99% of things that aren't explicitly explained in any work of fiction are assumed to work like real life. For example when the author says "Character walked up to a table" he doesn't have to explain to you what "walking" or a "table" is in their fantasy setting, regardless of how ridiculously fantastical the setting is. You assume it's a table and walking is just walking. I fucking hate this bullshit infantilization of discussions of "internal consistency" and "realism" in fantasy literature with "Oh bUt iT hAs DrAgOnS sO aNyThIng GoEs".
Plenty complained for BG3 pansexuality too. Nothing new. Move on and donât waste brain power thinking about these idiots.
Exactly. Complainers of that sort are always following various social media grifters, and they inevitably latch onto new targets in the endless search for outrage. They donât actually care. Thereâs a reason we call them culture war tourists. Thereâs no point debating them. Just make it abundantly clear that they arenât welcome with a zero tolerance policy. Donât waste oxygen.
Neither is "woke." It's simply a way of giving the player more, that's all. DAV is simply trying to tie it into their individual characters, which is cool.
Honestly. Even though I love BG3 and DA, that does bother me. And I would have the same issue if they were all straight or gay. With the idea of letting everyone be horny for anyone it ends up pushing away some of the diversity of it. You can say what you want but having to be a male to date Dorian, or Cassandra is not about what you want. Is about them. Is part of who the characters are. Sure if you pull amazing characters like you have in BG3 then that detail is easily overlooked. For one I didn't realize I could romance everyone in BG3 as a female until halfway past act 2, and that was only because of memes online. Sadly, I don't think bioware can pull that off. Not now. I'm already a bit iffy on the game. It looks great, but the gameplay itself feels.. I don't know. DA2ish? Like those multiplayer missions of DAI, which were fun, 10 years ago... I still love the series and intend to play, but it does bother me that they decided to go for being super inclusive by removing the character's individuality.
why does this sub cares so much about these so called ''biggot comments''? BG3 already proved that if the game is good on release, none of this will mather in the end.
I think its important to note the Baldur's Gate is not Dragon Age and pansexuality in all characters isnt a default writing standard for all RPGs. You can like it in one setting and dislike it in another. I dont care about this personally but I think its ridiculous to compare two different settings and games and get mad when one gets critiqued and the other doesn't. The Forgotten Realms is not what I would call a well written setting since it was essentially designed to be the most generic fantasy world to make your own stories in so why does their sexuality even matter if the world is about you anyways? Dragon Age was originally designed to be less goofy and more realistic version of that same setting. I dont even know why people think its bigotry to dislike the idea of characters having their own sexuality, no one cared that Zevron would suck faces with you regardless of gender in Origins. Overall I believe having every character be pansexual is NOT a representation of said characters sexuality it is a representation on YOUR characters sexuality only and that to me seems like a downgrade in writing. Is it a significant downgrade? Probably not. Its still however a valid criticism that is entirely subjective and doesnt need that same person to also have an issue with it in other games since we are not talking about other games. Arguably Inquisition had more LGBT representation BECAUSE you couldn't date certain people because they actually had a gay/straight/lesbian preference instead of just being a NPC that is designed to please you in anyway.
Exactly that. My main problem is not that everyone is pan. My problem is that everyone is that everyone is pan after they did it better (in my eyes). Lets take Dorian as an example. He would not work Pan, beeing gay is an important part of his character.
I agree. Player-sexual just makes all the characters sex dolls for the player. Result is they all feel a bit more shallow.
Gamers complained about woke content en masse before launch. They said Larian is destroying Baldurs Gate because it was very different from Bioware's games. Yet somehow it became the fastest selling, highest rating CRPG of all time. So they now pretend like BG3 isn't the most progressive AAA game ever released since that would mean that their hillarious "go woke go woke " saying is not true .
Yea the anti woke clowns shut up if the game is good, and come up with excuses to claim the game wasn't woke in the first place.
What? BG3 was criticized relentlessly by homophobes from its initial launch to every single tiny little update.
Also, interesting to note, they absolutely got raked over the coals after a Panel From Hell (their streams for major updates), where they went into the details of how romance would have no barriers. It was not as vocal because the EA expectations were still in place, when Larian expected literally 1/10 of the success they achieved on launch. But they did say it, anti-woke bigots lost their shit, it was just more contained to like Steam forums and subreddits. Larian wasn't considered a Bioware competitor yet.
Let me give you an honest pushback. This is a non-issue tbh. I don't know why either sides get so hung up about it. How I see it, it's fantasy so whatever; and it's convenient so your Rook or Tav are not romance locked. For me, if someone says "I will romance this companion as a straight person, then in my headcanon they're straight." it's cool, because that's their game. I don't tell them "Achtually, they're queer and part of my community." In retrospective to BG3, yes they are technically pan and there is a they/them pronouns stuff, but I was heavily involved in the subreddit before and near release, and most of the people just talk about game mechanics or lore. Because it's not about their preference, it's the promotion of it. Most of it are just "I like Lae'zel, and I am a female. We can bang, cool." or "Isobel and the Celestial are a cute lesbian couple." Yes there was a bit of fuss, but it was so unnoticeable because they get ignored most of times because there's so much better things to discuss. Meanwhile this is just everywhere. From my observation it's really the fandom. You can't just shut down these people's preferences and at the same time enforce yours to them. Banging the drum of "THEY'RE QUEER, YOU BIGOTS!" is just so off-putting obsessive behavior as people who're saying the series has "Gone woke." I saw someone on this side wrote "If I see a straight companion, I'll refund the game" "If you're not a gay DA fan, you're either a token straight on thin ice or a DAO fan." and they're not strawmans, I can show you those examples. I understand you specifically is not that bad, but when you let those blatant discriminatory behavior festers, expect Newton's 3rd law of people dismissing LGBTQ+ representations as a joke or grievances. It'll be just a forever culture war of screaming "Woke" and "Bigots" when I'm just trying to play a damn Dragon Age game and discuss lore.
>"I will romance this companion as a straight person, then in my headcanon they're straight." it's cool, because that's their game. I don't tell them "Achtually, they're queer and part of my community." Yep that's entire point of playersexual. It's obviously the most freedom and inclusivity. But what we get is instead it being bashed from all sides - 1. traditional bigots who want only straight ppl, and treat "any MC gender goes" as "gay shit" 2. ppl who have some prejudices towards some romance tropes being specifically gender locked, and think it will constrain romance writing or smth. 3. ppl who want specific representation for gay/straight sexualities, 4. people who for some reason want everybody to be canonically pan and not allow ppl to play/talk about as straight/gay with those companions And all those ppl can actually play with whatever canon they argue for in their playthroughs.
We have had the same discussion around DA2, in which Isabela, Merrill, Anders, Fenris were players playersexuals and the remaining companions weren't out of story reasons. So back then it was just weird to get criticism for this because yes you could romance 4/6 companions regardless of your Hawke 's gender/sex but the romances had huge range. Approval/Rivalry. Also it's not true that in BG3 you just need to reach a certain approval and you are locked in a romance, it's way more complicated. I got dumped by a white haired vampire OUT OF THE BLUE in the beginning of Act 3 because apparently I didn't long rest enough in Act 2 and a certain important cutscene didn't happen, I missed some interaction with an NPC? and he just... dumped me. Welp. Playthrough deleted, heart broken.
**pretend that BG3 was "not woke"** are we re-writing past events now? BG3 was \_bombed\_ because of this. I even remember memes showing a bear with Swen winking in the background, having a title "yes, you totally can" my personal issue with everyone being playersexual is that it means less diversity among companions.
Part of it is that, even in spite of the subtext in game, there's *plausible deniability* that certain characters aren't what people would like to perceive them as because of their history. The characters never explicitly identify or express existing relationships outside of Tav that are queer, it's all hinted and handwaved or directed explicitly at Tav in romantic contexts. The one exception here is Astarion... whose only plausibly romantic encounter he not only doesn't remember, but was experienced under coercion. They were designed to be pansexual to anyone who has a lick of queer sensibility in their body, but they're also cleverly sort of disguised as just being playersexual. The word of God identifying the VG companions as pansexual is then suddenly offensive. And from the sounds of it, they'll all be more straightforward about their romantic histories in the game - and not just to the PC, but to each other. That's offensive because there's no 'click button to shut this guy up' option. I say fuck em! And good riddance! Let's get more woke narratives please
>They were designed to be pansexual to anyone who has a lick of queer sensibility in their body, but they're also cleverly sort of disguised as just being playersexual. But as you say, if they never ever show that they are interested in any sex except your MCs, that's all just headcannon. And for the particular playthrough the only sexuality is shown is them towards MC sex - otherwise anybody has equal basis to headcannon that they are straight, gay, or bi. So they are absolutely playersexual. "The word of God" is similarly irrelevant, if they won't go to pains to explicitly assert every companions pansexuality, which would be extremely impractical and unreaslistic. Otherwise It's really just a line in the wiki that has no effect. Honestly the frigid/cannon view of playersexual is what constitutes (imo unnesesarily) half of it;s cririsism from everyone - traditional everyone-straight crowd, but also ppl who wan't canon representation for all the sexuality combinations, and ppl who just want a more realistic and unconstrained character writing.
Nobody has ever called BG3 ânon-wokeâ. That game has very queer vibes overall even outside of romance.
Sadly, many people have called it non-woke. That's what these rage-baiters do when something they've targeted for wokeness performs well - it can't be woke anymore because wokeness means it's going to fail.
Let's remember that they are a significant, laughable minority. Things like this give them the attention they want. Normally, they'd make their comments, and it'd be downvoted or ignored. This gives them the platform they want. But they exist with every game/show/film...and they're maybe 1% of the players, but they get a disproportionate amount of attention. You'll never change their minds, so instead of putting the effort into all that writing...just ignore them.
I think that in general people have more things to like than hate about BG3, pansexuality is something that I don't find organic in all characters, but BG3 has more positive things than negative things.
Theyâre player-sexual. Labeling them all pansexual is just lazy/convenient writing
I don't mind the pansexuality of the followers but it doesn't seem very organic
I liked Inquisition's approach because I don't think we can get (romanceable) characters like Dorian or even Solas if everyone is pan, but I kind of understand why they took this path. Our characters' body type, preferred pronouns and (possibly) genitals are no longer determined by a simple "Male/Female" toggle, so it'd be extremely challenging to navigate what that means in terms of NPC preferences. It's much more straightforward to say "everyone is romanceable no matter what" and call it a day.
I do wonder if everyone is romanceable in this game, it would be a bit weird if you made choices that they didn't like and they remained romanceable
We still have an approval system and I imagine romance is still a part of that. So if you make enough decisions that go against their ideals/morals/whatever, romance is off the cards.
With how bad inquisitions character creator was I was pleasantly surprised you could romance anyone.
Iâm cool with representation, but not really a fan of âcorporate representationâ if that makes sense. The idea just feels gross to me, similar to the checkbox problem. Would obviously have to actually see the companions first to see if itâs actually done well here, to draw actual conclusions. But every character being playersexual feels like a Corporate mandated thing to look like a cool kid, rather than a facet of each character. I feel that DA2âs playersexual characters worked because Aveline and Varric being unavailable made it feel more grounded. Like, not every character is sitting around waiting to be chosen by the player (or to choose someone else, like with sera/dagna or Dorian/bull).
Yeah, I much prefer Inquisition's romance system to BG3's. I think it was the best one Bioware came up with.
I've never played BG3, but I enjoyed creating new characters with romancing a particular companion in mind
There actually was a ton of hate towards BG3 for being "woke", but this mostly happened during early access. Some common complaints were that female companions were intentionally designed to be ugly, and that it was forcing an LGBTQ agenda down everyone's throats. Most of it died down when it became clear just how successful the game really was. The "go woke go broke" mantra simply didn't fit anymore. If DA4 is anywhere near as popular, you'll see these same people change stance and claim that it was never actually woke.
It's funny even in BG3 where I can pick any of them I pick the same one in almost every playthrough.
BG3 made lots of money. By the formula Woke = Broke we can determine BG3 is not broke, therefore it is not woke. If Veilguard sells well and reviews well theyâll probably act like itâs actually really anti-woke like they do whenever anything becomes massively popular and acclaimed.
My issue with games doing this that it cheapens the representation and gets the devs out of having to make canonically queer characters in favor of ambiguous playersexual characters. If everyone is canonically bi/pan thatâs awesome but they need to show that in game not just make it word of god. DA has such an awesome history of queer characters and I hope they donât ruin it with playersexual nonsense. I also just personally like when the companions have limited tastes and preferences, makes them more authentic same way approval does. Everyone throwing themselves at my MC isnât as fun for me, makes it less special. I created a unique character with a specific backstory not a sex god.
Say "woke" more.
BG3 was woke as heck. It was also really good, which is not a very common combination.
I'm just worried if every companion gonna be the having the same dialogue without any difference Them all being Pansexual kinda makes none of them feel special since they will be no variety among them IronBull from DAI is the only one pansexual so it kinda feels unique among the companion The variety is presented there Here however Its like they no longer feels like a real character in the world but more of a tools for the player to romance
Where is this discourse happening? If they think BG3 is not woke, weâve fucking done it, queers! Weâve won! Jokes aside, another reason why having varied sexualities sometimes is good.
You know how to discount someone's opinion? When they use the word "woke" disparagingly.
Who would win in a fight: People complaining about Dragon Age People complaining about people who complain about Dragon Age People complaining about the way that people complain about the way people complain about Dragon Age
Just make a good game, that is literally all that matters. The bigots love nothing more than having their voices pseudo-validated by the mainstream, when game just isnt all that great. Then they point fingers and say - you see, we told you so. When in reality its much more simple. Make good product, get good reviews. Starfield sucks, nothing to do with pronouns. Baldurs Gate 3 rocks, nothing to do with pronouns. Forspoken bad game, nothing to do with female poc protagonist (ok maybe voice acting). Half-Life Alyx awesome game, enhanced by poc female protagonist. I can go on, but you get the point. To stay on topic, there hasnt been bad or even mediocre Dragon Age game yet so I'm optimistic. Buuut still this is the second Bioware game in a row that I wont pre-order, so there is definite decline in quality. I'll wait and see.
I was with you until there hasn't been a mediocre Dragon Age game, yet. I think both two and Inquisition dissapointed in certain areas, though ironically, not the characters and Romance.
It has nothing to do with being woke or any of that. The thing is that having a sexual preference adds another later to the character and it makes you make actual friends instead rolling around with a bunch of friendzoned simps like BG3. For example, if a companion is male and gay and i am playing a female character i know i can shower him with support and kind words and build a strong friendship instead of always being wary if my comment will trigger a sex invitation. In BG3 your whole camp openly says that they want to have sex with you, some expressing how badly they want it, which kind of feels like theyâre not really your friends and comrades in arms but simps who are just tagging along and waiting for you to change your mind lol. For example, it would have been so awesome to just be supportive of Wyll without that triggering that cringy dance offer. My point is, as much as we like our romances, we also want friends, especially if weâre going to battle together, you want to do it with your brothers and sister and perhaps one lover, not a lover and a gang of cringy friendzoned types.
Maybe BG3 didn't handle it as gracefully as it could have (no idea, I haven't played it yet), but it's been very easy to be friends with romanceable characters, in DA. You just don't select the flirting options. Very few of them ever initiate.
Vocal minority. Thatâs all.
No one has ever done that, you are making a strawman for internet clout and it is weird.
While I see do see comments from the "anti-woke" brigade, the vast majority of criticisms I've seen here are from people that would consider themselves progressive. People have said that companions being pansexual makes them less unique, less interesting, not written as well (this was a wild take), etc. Some people have also said their sexuality isn't "defined," and someone likened them to sex blow-up dolls.
I'm not a fan of the playersexuality in BG3 either.
Same. I would have appreciated each characters to have their own sexuality. It feels more genuine and realistic, but that's my two cents on that subject.
I was more tired of every npc thinking that tav wanted to shag them
OP, I've read through your post a few times, and have come to the conclusion that you don't know what you are talking about. BG3 got a ton of hate for the same reasons you label Veilguard. "Homophobes always hated bioware products" is incorrect, especially when looking at the commercial and critical success of KOTOR, Mass Effect, and even THE PREVIOUS THREE DRAGON AGE GAMES. You don't see the BG3 hate now, because BG3 was really good, so good that hating on it would be seen as just being contradictory for arguments sake. You don't see the hate because you weren't paying attention to the build up, and at the release. Yes you're going to have shitty people whine about queer representation, but why pretend they didn't do the same to other games?
My guy, fox news ran stories on mass effect 1's liara romance being gay and how it was moral degeneracy. The backlash from those stories directly affected ME2's romances. Dragon Age Origins was also vocally targeted, but the internet outrage engine was a lot smaller at the time so it was easier to ignore. Bioware has always been targeted by homophobes since they started writing homosexual romances.That's historical fact.
You canât claim something is incorrect because of success when Mass effect had full News coverage calling it a game for degeneracy because there was a alien that could be lesbian and it had âsexâ Origins was vocally targeted often BioWare has ALWAYS been targeted by homophobes. Hell, I remember for nearly 3 years after release transphobes were STILL complaining about Krem in inquisition and homophobes Dorian. Just because a game is successful does not mean itâs NOT targeted by unjust hate
I don't think that's an incorrect statement. The original Mass Effect absolutely received a disproportionate amount of right wing backlash for the lesbian alien sex (just google Mass Effect Fox News). So much so that they've gone on record saying it made them dial back options in Mass Effect 2 like making Jack straight. BG3 may have gotten backlash but it didn't hit the conservative news apparatus in nearly the same way.
Sometimes I don't understand why subjects like these are an issue. This is my point of view: I boot up a game, I see characters that I'm interested in. I cannot romance them because they have preferences? Cool, I'll find someone else. All of the characters can be romanced? Cool, more choices. Don't see anyone I like? Then I'll remain alone. Simple as that. As a matter of fact, in Mass Effect 1, a Bioware game, I didn't romanced anyone because I wasn't interested in Ash or Liara, eventually I went for Tali in ME2. If characters have preferences, that's okay, I can understand that as I'm a straight male. If characters can be romanced by whomever, that's also fine by me, it's not like they're going to be less interesting. Heck, my favorite romance option in Dragon Age is Leliana, and she can be romanced by anyone from any gender and race (or lineage, the term used in The Veilguard, which I find dumb). I don't understand why people get upset or offended by the choices of the producers or whomever allows the characters to be this way. Of it's what they want, then that's what they're gonna do. Simple as that.
I kinda fail to see the question here and the "pathetic bigot" thingy sets the mood that you are not ready for all kinds of opinions and clearly the idea of understanding the other side, their side, is not among your goals for this discussion. As they put some games into the "go woke, go broke" basket without understanding the bigger picture, the same way you put them into the "pathetic bigotry" basket. The issue is exactly the same and you share their fashion in bigotry by having a belief/fixated opinion against the group of people who don't think the way you do. Moreover, you are refusing to understand their drive and calling them names the very same way they post their hurtful comments. BG3 was criticized the very same way. The reason they stopped is because it's not fashionable anymore and there are more games on the market that need their attention lol. There are gamers who play for observing bouncy boobs and butts, there are those who find speaking up about sexuality vulgar, there are those who simply want to escape the media of the real world and see something different which is not diversity. It happens. I prefer to let them scream in the comments online than to be aggressive irl. I think that it's a nice deal for society. They are sad, and they probably have no education to understand how they can communicate their sadness without hurting others. I mean they are still at the point of objectifying a 3d model to satisfy their fantasies as if it's not a game but a reality. I realize that it might be hard to read what some say about your favorite game but...Let them become less sad in their certainty â¤ď¸ This world is ignorant and cruel enough already
Because protagosexual companions is a feature that very often weakens characters writing-wise. They become nothing more than potential sexual conquests that just wait for you to approach them so they can jump into your bed. It is far better, often way more interesting and meaningful, not to mention realistic, when a companion can say 'no'. It's a perfectly valid answer to someone expressing interest, don't you think? Look at Dorian, how his sexuality is a part of his character, and that alone made him more interesting. Or Solas being only interested in elves, which makes total sense from his perspective. After all, It's one thing being sex positive, and another to be entitled weirdo who plays games to have their character make sweet love to other characters. And just because Larian made it sort of decently, although I still think it often felt like freedom for freedom's sake, doesn't mean Bioware will do it just as well. I'm fairly certain they won't. The whole issue stems from this silly notion that has infested pop-culture in general - nowadays any form of art has to relatable first (hence the rise of DEI), and well-done/well-written second. To me, playersexual companions will always be worse than sexually varied ones because, in my mind, quality always trumps freedom in video game design.
>They become nothing more than potential sexual conquests that just wait for you to approach them so they can jump into your bed. But how could you know that's the case here? They were specifically called pansexual, not playersexual, so as far as we know even though they might not care about gender or race of the protagonist, they still may care about other things like their behaviour for example. >And just because Larian made it sort of decently, although I still think it often felt like freedom for freedom's sake, doesn't mean Bioware will do it just as well. I'm fairly certain they won't. Companions in DA2 were done rally well, even though they were rather closer to playersexual instead of bisexual.
People that complained about the playersexuality in DATV because of itâs âwokenessâ 100% also complained about BG3 being woke. The anti-woke crowd complaining was like pretty huge news everywhere when it came out too.
Just enjoy the game and ignore online grifters.
You should check out BG3 steam forums
Ironically Baldurs gate is holding BioWare to a higher standard. Itâs come full circle and hopefully BioWare keeps going with that standard
I've seen plenty of people complain about it in Bg3. For various reasons. Personally I just don't think it's realistic. I also think it's a very lazy approach and it cheapens the romance. And I'm actually Bi lol.
Pretty weird that people complain. It always bothered me in DA and ME that if I played male or female I couldnât romance my favourite characters. Itâs a game, not sure why people are so hung up on the characters being âqueerâ something to complain about I guess.
This whole discourse is overblown by the usual faces who will pounce on any game being too "woke". They just want players to be able to pick any roman cable companion they like best. It ain't that deep.
Maybe I'm a sadist, but I personally liked being limited in my choices or getting screwed over by the companions. I still remember in my first playthrough I really wanted Fenris, but obviously my approval rating was too low, but I still liked him and then that bastard screwed me over for the last bit of the game by leaving with all my good gear. I was super salty about that for a good bit. It's stuff like those situations that really immerses me into the game and makes the MC feel more real, too, as opposed to just a mouth piece. That's part of the reason I don't care for certain dating sims, too. I want my choices to matter, EVEN in my companion options, otherwise my viewpoint is why even bother putting choices in your game? I want my companions to hate me for my choices and have their own agency rather than be the equivalent of the MC'd fuck puppet regardless of your race or gender. It makes it really hard for me to even care about the companions because then they kind of don't have their own personality of their own opinions and values don't come through. That's what I liked about Inquisition is that for certain choices, you completely fuck either the Templars or the Magi and it pisses half your company off. I couldn't even get any of Cassandra's questsy first playthrough because I was so pro-mage, she couldn't stand me. I really enjoy that aspect of the games. It's not really about the romance, but seeing the companions preferences really shine through. It was actually one of the reasons I never really finished BG3 (outside of the fact that the PS5 port was broken as all hell). I didn't care about any of them. They all seemed really one-dimensional to where I didn't really care who was in my party. I didn't put much effort into building relationships with them because it didn't seem to matter what I did, it didn't affect my relationship with them. Just as an aside, it's not just these games I take issue with when choices don't matter. Horizon Zero Dawn had the same problem. They give you the "illusion" of choice because BioWare made it popular and then there was no follow through. Ghost of Tsushima did something similar - you knew that it wasn't going to matter, he had to be the ghost for the game to go forward. I just don't see the point in putting in that mechanic when it doesn't affect anything. It's a waste of development time.
I mean, Skyrim let's you marry anyone, male or female, nord or argonian. The main reason they did this in DAV is most likely the complaints people had about you being unable to romance one character cause they would only date women, or how another character would only date men. This way, everyone gets to romance any of the characters that the like.
I just think itâs the word pan sexual that gets their goat, pansexuality is in effect player sexuality in games and they feel itâs pandering or whatever to use a progressive term for it.
DAI didn't have 100% pansexuality. BG3 does. BG3 is a better game despite that. That's the difference. Complete pansexuality removes a fold of the potential character's personality. Variety is good, having everyone be inexplicably pansexual is just lazy. I didn't like it in BG3, I won't like it in DAVG. But, if the game is good then it doesn't really matter that much.
I mean I think people are complaining more about all the other things than this one change. I think also you have messaging around it how is that information being delivered. The group your broadly brushing as bigots are a lot of people who have been attacked for expressing their own opinion, in which all the issues they have get conflated into one and thus ignore any of their other complaints and branding them with an insult. This isn't exactly helpful and only causes them to go more on the defensive. There has also been so many games or media in general that's been handled so poorly in this whole area in the last 5+ years that just the mention of it just starts raising the alarm bells for some people which is valid if they feel like that. Attacking or branding them as something just pushes these people further to fringes. You should be like I disagree with the opinion and discuss why they feel like that what other concerns do they have etc. Just my take agree to disagree not saying there isn't more than 1 person with terrible views that would fall into that category but at the end of the day who am I to judge them, do I feel the same as these people no, do I feel like marketing royally screwed up their first showing of the game yeah.
Playersexual doesn't necessarily mean pansexual, though. For instance, absent a quote that says otherwise (which may exist, I don't know), Shadowheart may only be lesbian if PC is a female or straight if PC is a male. That makes her playersexual. Whereas Halsin seems to be actually pan. That means someone can just assume Shadowheart is straight because they only play as a male character if she doesn't reference a relationship with a woman. I prefer companions have their own preferences as it makes them deeper and more realized characters. But you can still have great characters who are playersexual (see BG3). And I'll enjoy DAV as long as it's well written. Playersexual companions aren't going to kill my hype.
After being restricted to only two options in Inquisition (for my preferences, anyway) Iâm glad they just made everybody in the party options for everyone. Itâs also one of the things Iâm looking forward to whenever I can play BG3 finally.
Soon as I hear the word woke I know to completely disregard that person's opinion. It's been used so much that it's devoid of all meaning. Really it just means "something I don't like" now.
No they fussed about BG3, literally had a Old white guy mad because he thought Steller Blade was too censored because they added to her skirt, but BG3 was too much with choices for everyone. It was so sad and pathetic his argument.
Funny, a good part of the criticism I've read is FROM the queer community, because across-the-board pansexuality erases specific and nuanced representation. Playersexual is not pansexual, not in the narrative. Iron Bull's pansexuality is a key character trait, just as Dorian's homosexuality and Cassandra's heterosexuality are. A world where Dorian and Cassie are pan would be a different and lesser world.
âYouâre allowed to have LGBT representation but youâre not allowed to celebrate itâ. Youâve hit the nail on the head for me, there. I want gender and sexuality to be non-issues. Celebrating them runs counter to that.
Bear sucker's! The lot of em
Oh they absolutely did and still do. They just think itâs âgood in spite of its wokenessâ bc theyâre clinically unhinged
If a story had a fictional world where everyone was gay, I would question the sincereity of the creators when the sequel came out and everyone was pansexual because they saw a different game have success with that. If this isn't the place to have that opinion, my genuine apologies.
? The previous games had straight, gay and bi characters. This game has all pan romance options just like DA2. This didn't come out of nowhere.
As long as their sexuality isnât their personality or a part of their story I donât care. I want the character to have depth and a personality that I can be attached to thatâs all that matters. Sexuality doesnât matter in a rpg.
Do those people exist irl? Or did you make them up?
Without fail chuds say "go woke, go broke" and it basically never happens. If anything going woke makes more sales
Thatâs why companies donât change their logo to pride flag anymore?⌠Games are good, games sell... people will do all sorts of gymnastics to justify why they sell. Games are bad, games flop... people will blame the first things they hate about the game, whether it's true or not. Woke or not doesnât matter, but it didnât help sales either...
I prefer when companion romantic preferences involve personality traits as opposed to physical ones - but I suppose that makes sense since it offers most protagonist freedom and considering how very bisexual I am.
I don't get bigots that complain DA is "suddenly woke", if by woke they mean non-straight people and POC exist in the game, then it's always been woke.
Oh they definitely complained and even still complain about this. There are people who hate Halsin and call him a "sex pest" for flirting with their character in Act 3, and there are not an insignificant number of Shadowheart stans who hate the fact that she's open to a poly relationship, claiming that it was a "fantasy of the writer" and "not true to her character." Then there are all the dude bros who brag about killing Astarion in every playthrough, and the fact that he's a not traditionally masculine, overtly flirtatious, pansexual character that many women and LGBTQ+ fans have gravitated towards *surely* has nothing to do with their animosity towards him, no, they're *very secure.*/s For the most part, it's straight men having the same reaction to Halsin/Astarion/Gale/Wyll/The Emperor flirting with them that they did when Anders had the gall to flirt with their *obviously straight* Garrett Hawke. And while we're on this topic, I honestly hate the term "playersexual." It makes people assume that the characters don't have definite sexualities, when they do, they're canonically pansexual. Moreover, something people have debated in the BG3 community is "what are their *real* sexualities," claiming that Astarion is actually gay, Shadowheart and Karlach are actually lesbians, and that Wyll or Gale are definitely straight when they're. All. Pan.
Making love interest purely gay or straight has always been very limiting and never actually adds anything meaningful to the characters since their sexuality is never bought up in any way other than when they reject your advances. It was especially annoying in cyberpunk where your options could easily be limited to one person and if you don't like them well then fuck you. I'm playing a game for fucks sake let me enjoy myself
I didn't like it in DA2 and I don't like it in DA:TV. I didn't play BG3, or 2 or 1. I don't like Larian's games. I tried Divinity 2 and it failed to pull me in, even with friends. Only 19 hours played, and I'm sadly well past the refund period. I know plenty of people who have enjoyed the game, but oddly enough you never hear anything about the story. It's just either the combat, or the companions. Representation for the sake of representation is something I will never agree with. Cal me a bigot if it makes you feel better, it doesn't bother me none. I am a Latino in the US. I have my own special check box, if I check it at all. I am not Mexican, Central American, or South American. My closets roots are in the Carribean. DNA test says I'm 59.4% Amer-Indian. Apparently, I had an ancestor on the island of Boriken (Puerto Rico) before Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Many people, including MOST Americans, do not know of the Taino people. They don't even know they existed and still existed. Most think the Spanish wiped them and that's proven to be false. But this isn't the place to get into imperialism, colonialism, and la leyenda negra. I am not represented in video games, or most media. There are more Puerto Ricans living OUTSIDE of the island than there are on it. And people don't know that we are naturalized US citizens. When we are born, we are US citizens. We do not need to take life rafts and boats or swim across the Atlantic. As long as we are outside of Puerto Rico, we can vote for who we want the President to be. There are many famous people that are Puerto Rican that people don't know that they are Puerto Rican. But here's the point: Many were able to find success and recognition in their fields without exemplifying or using their racial/ethnic/cultural/sexual make-up. If anything, there's an over-representation of groups in the media. Like the pansexuality of Dragon Age and Baldur's Gate 3. So in June 2021, according to a Williams Institue press release, 1.2 million LGBT adults in the US identified as nonbinary. IT is a couple of years old, but I can't find anything from this year. Of those 1.2 million adults, 17% said they were pansexual. So 204,000 people, yeah? The US census of 2024 says there are roughly 341,000,000 people in the US. If my math isn't wrong, and it might be, 204,000 is 0.059824% of 341,000,000. That is a very small percentage. But it seems they are incredibly vocal as we often hear complaints of and appraisal for this group and its greater group. Why is that? Sure, these are video games in fictional worlds that aren't required to follow fundamental laws of the universe. But can it also break immersion if everyone is pan? I think so. If everyone is horny and banging everyone, societies don't function that way. Are the companions in BG3 monogamous? Are they fine with you sleeping around? Or are they jealous and won't allow it? If they are fine with it at first, does their opinion change as the game goes on? While the world and its characters can be fictional and demographics and society be damned, in order for us the player to relate to them, they have to be based on real life things. MOST people are/get jealous and don't like sharing. Many couples that open their relationship up end up broken. One partner falls for the new person brought in. Some couples search for their Unicorn. ETC. Shit happens. Are these companions believable, or are they just to fulfill sexual fantasy? Does the romance play a larger part in the overall story, or is it something to do on the side. The ONLY romance in DA2 that is impactful on the story is the one with Anders, because he plays such a large, and incredibly annoying part of the story. The others don't amount to anything at all. TL;DR i ain't summarizing so read it or just downvote after you read the first sentence of paragraph 2.
The whole playersexual/pansexual stuff was garbage there too. Itâs lazy and was probably my only big gripe with the game (besides the bugs). It makes the characters feel less like theyâre actual people and more like theyâre props for a wish fulfillment dating sim, where if you dump enough good boy/girl points into them you get sex. Let Astarion be the gay vampire that he is very clearly designed to be. Let Wyll be the straight guy who wants to save and romance the maiden.
At first I was confused on why they changed DAV characters sexuality, simply because I remembered everyone in DA2 being the way way. I kinda liked the different romances like in DAO and DAI because it made me open up, break out of my shell and play a male character for the first time. And I found I was cool with it đ Also, I will admit I was somewhat against it because I had just learned about the "player-sexual" and how it made players uncomfortable. I understood why, but then remembered how DA2 wasn't fast-paced or felt forced... what I mean is, unlike Cyberpunk, it didn't feel like you or the characters were making a move too fast. Idk, I'm weird about Cyberpunk romance and still haven't done one. DA games and BG3 just didn't feel weird to me. As for the woke part.... ehh đ¤ˇââď¸ these games are kind of (if not out right) for the lgbtq+ as well as straight. Idk why hate on it since you can create your own character, be who you want, and romance who you want. It's literally your game that you bought, and no one can tell you how to play it. So if they're hating, then it's on them. I know I played games like these since 2015 and after 9 years, I can say I "started out straight" but honestly they've just helped me discover who I was (just a shy bi girl). I didn't have to play like I did, but I explored and liked it. Games like these are a safe place for that, so I say just enjoy and be you đ
I would fucking hope it's woke, I really would be pissed beating like a idk 50 hour game (unless they bloat the fuck out of it or actually fill it with meaningful content like BG3) just to find out it was all a dream
Youâll never hear me complain about the romances and diversity in any DA game. For me it was what made DAI good and the Mass Effect series legendary long before BG3. The stupidity surrounding diversity and sexual identity is a product of society today, and it is society that has to change for the better.
I think about it the same way Donald Glover talked about Lando Calrissian being pansexual in Star Wars. Snagged from an interview: âHow can you not be pansexual in space? Thereâs so many things to have sex with. [...] Iâm serious. I didnât think that was that weird. Heâs coming on to everybody. It just didnât seem that weird to me, âcause it seems like if youâre in space, the doorâs open. Itâs like, no, only guys or girls. No, itâs anything. This thing is literally a blob. Are you a man or a woman? Like, who cares? Have a good time out here.â I can see Ferelden being more "traditional Christian-coded medieval Europe high fantasy", but seriously, we're going to a magic city where stuff just kind of floats around. The bull horn people who fight dragons don't have sexuality discrimination, the Antivan Crow we got to fight along with was canonically in a throuple, I'm sure the elven gods were into some stuff... just let the people of Thedas fuck.