Dragon Age: Inquisition Pre-Release Thread

[Rivmusique]

lol if you are a straight man and getting mad at who you can't romance in a video game

 

[PhantasmaNL]

Ok, not a lot of choice for the straight man. And who designed these female toons? What was there directive? Make them as ugly and unappealing as possible? Anyway i see a MFF threesome is still an option within the offered configuration of genders and orientations. Will probably be included in the day one DLC pack i guess.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Females ofcourse, we have more retards trying to hit on us.

Then it is a good thing that I'll create a dwarven male

 

[Stainless Veteran]

Here's a multimedia representation:

Spoiler

The phrase "war on straight men" is echoing through the BSN like a battle cry.

I can't be sure of which gender has the worst luck...

This SHAMEFUR DISPRAY actually reminds me of some self-published erotica novels, with poser porn on the cover.

Spoiler

What I really want to know is how did they manage to achieve such... quality, while using Frostbite 3.

 

[Bubbles]

OKAY aro-spectrum ace person here to talk about aro and/or ace viv stuff i've been seeing around

Two words: Please don’t.

To my fellow white people, who are not aro and/or ace, do NOT do this.

You guys NEVER do aro or ace headcanons for characters you care about. Look at Varric. How many of you gave him aro/ace headcanons either time they announced he was unromancable? How many of you instead went ‘oh I’m ignoring that he’s dating my hawke/inquisitor anyway?’.

The only time I see even a token aro or ace headcanon by people who aren’t is ALWAYS for characters that are considered unappealing, ala Wynne. It’s almost a joke at this point how this happens in so many fandoms. Aro and/or ace headcanons are given to the old characters, the unappealing ones.

Giving them to attractive characters is often proclaimed a ‘waste’ and people get hate for it: check out the whole incident where people just JOKED about Blackwall being ace, whereas before people started liking Solas, there wasn’t a peep against ace solas headcanons.

So you guys jumping up to say that about Vivienne is incredibly suspicious and not cool. The only time you do this stuff for a young and attractive unromanceable is when they’re a black woman?

Even though she ended up non-romanceable, the ace Vivienne ‘rumors’ came even after the devs declared there were no ace characters in the game definitely came from a place of racism in the fandom, the old ‘black women don’t need no man, black women are too ‘cool’ for romance ala Sleepy Hollow, etc.’ as a way to keep black women out of romance or to prevent characters being attracted to them.

Added to the fact that most of non-aces/aro people I see saying this DON’T EVEN KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ARO AND ACE.

To people who do not know: Aromantic is a romantic identity that means you aren’t into romance. Asexuality is a sexual identity that means you don’t experience attraction.

They are combine-able, but not interchangeable. Do not use one to mean the other. You mistaking them because you couldn’t even google the difference or think they’re the same thing only makes it even more obvious you’re using our identities as a tool to get characters you don’t want out of the way, and to use it as an excuse that you’re adding more ‘diversity’.

tl;dr Do not give aro and/ace headcanons to characters you do not want so you seem ‘progressive’. Do not use our romantic and/or sexual identity to use for the sake of perpetuating racism. Do no use us as a tool, then reject us all the time otherwise.

let me get this out right now

if i see anyone jumping at vivienne fans for being upset about this, telling them to get over it, or to stop being sore losers, they’ll regret it.

no matter who you are and who you wanted to be a romance, you can’t disagree that it’s really messed up that two white men won over a black woman, that s/s options are once again shafted.

do not call this a ‘win for women’ either because i’ve seen people say that when hoping it was blackwall.

 

[nikolokolus]

Holy shit.

 

[dryan]

Why does black chick need to be headcanon'ed into asexuality just because the player character can't romance her? Aveline in DA2 wasn't asexual and still she wasn't one of the romance options for the player. It's not like this is something new in Bioware novels.

 

[Goat Vomit]

This keeps weirding me out so much. How did Bioware go from making slightly dank and neckbeardy but pretty damn charming dnd games to this? Where do they find their audience? Are people not aware of otome games or something? I miss when losers' wish fulfilment was about being able to stomp powerful beasts, accumulate coin and having rad adventures and not about emulating incredibly trashy romance fanfics.

Females ofcourse, we have more retards trying to hit on us.

Including a militant lesbian who seems pretty rapey.

 

[Whisky]

"MY WAIFU WON'T LOVE ME! SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

 

[Valestein]

I'm very disappointed that KKKullen won't fuck Goat women or midgets. Pre-order cancelled.

 

[meanwhileInPoland]

snip

I dont even....

Please release already this fucking game so we can bitch about gameplay idiocies and bury this romances shit

 

[Night Goat]

How did Bioware go from making slightly dank and neckbeardy but pretty damn charming dnd games to this?

They foolishly made a deal with EA, who drove all the talent away like they always do.

Where do they find their audience?

These are the people who didn't jump ship after Dragon Age 2.

 

[Morality Games]

I'm still not sure if this Leliana "not romanceable" thing is some kind of feint. I'm sure they at least talked about it. It seems like the sort of thing the DA:I developers would think of as clever, romancing your romance (they did it with Isabella, sort of).

This keeps weirding me out so much. How did Bioware go from making slightly dank and neckbeardy but pretty damn charming dnd games to this? Where do they find their audience? Are people not aware of otome games or something? I miss when losers' wish fulfilment was about being able to stomp powerful beasts, accumulate coin and having rad adventures and not about emulating incredibly trashy romance fanfics.

Well, Dragon Age: Origins was written with mostly Baldur's Gate 2 in mind, but for consoles. Then Lord of the Rings made Fantasy mainstream, then Harry Potter created the mass market teen fantasy adventure, THEN in 2008 Twilight pushed this new genre to unimagined levels of decline. A year later we got Dragon Age II. It showed lurking beneath the veneer of civilized humanity there was an untapped psychic force of overwhelming power hungering to precariously experience romance written to 14-18 year old sensibilities in fantasy-adventure settings. This hunger can't be bartered with. Pleading and reasoning do no good either. It will only rest once it destroys all incline. Our only recourse is to destroy it by a thousand tiny KickStarters.

Basically, Twilight showed the rest of the world what the Japanese entertainment industry discovered decades ago with their Shonen genre, that you can make a gigantic 60-80% market share out of teenagers repressed by real life coming into their hormones.

 

[kris]

Here's a multimedia representation:

The phrase "war on straight men" is echoing through the BSN like a battle cry.

Well, this is interesting from a perspective of economics and customers. I would directly say that someone that doesn't pander to their main audience are shooting themselves in the foot.

More than 50% of their audience is straight men, I would say it is much higher than that. Yet they advertiise about gameplay that holds no interest for what is more than half their customers. Not only that, they actually have more gameplay for minor parts of their customer base than the main one. (although I guess some straight men will play a female) Had I been a CEO or stock owner I would have complained. Because I want my employees to put in what brings the most money and that is the things the majority of customers crave. Is that romance? Probably not, but I am pretty sure they gained much more customers by having a Bastila Shan on the cover and hinted as a romance interest than they would ever gain from Mr. Moustasche in the same vein.

Can a feature bring in 1% more customers? Good, but don't ever let that go out or disenfranchise the 80% core audience. (figures pulled out my ass)

 

[Morality Games]

Here's a multimedia representation:

The phrase "war on straight men" is echoing through the BSN like a battle cry.

ITS K. We still have three months to release. We can make Leliana a full party member and retcon her into a straight woman. Then we can bump Vivienne into a straight woman. Bisexual demographic will be pissed at the lack of representation and the loss of their flagship character (Leliana), so we can retcon Cullen and Solas into any-race bisexuals. The militant "Elf Only" females will be pissed at the loss of Solas, but some demographic has to get screwed if we're going to make things work.

On a more serious note, I guess they thought that Cassandra was so much raging hotness that straight men couldn't possibly think of romancing another character.

 

[Night Goat]

Cassandra's the manwoman, right? I don't know why they thought anyone would want to look at her; the decision to make her a romance option is even more baffling.

 

[Grinch]

Cassandra's the manwoman, right? I don't know why they thought anyone would want to look at her; the decision to make her a romance option is even more baffling.

I got banned from the Bioware forums a couple days ago for voicing that opinion.

 

[Bubbles]

Cassandra's the manwoman, right? I don't know why they thought anyone would want to look at her; the decision to make her a romance option is even more baffling.

Yeah, straight male characters get either Cassandra or the hot ethnic bi adviser chick who never leaves your ship stronghold.

 

[Volourn]

"It's pretty clear at this point that they don't really care about the core rpg audience,"

Why should they? The so called 'core rpg audience' are likely to buy any game remotely rpgish anyways. You don't have to actively sell them it.

 

[meanwhileInPoland]

Cassandra's the manwoman, right? I don't know why they thought anyone would want to look at her; the decision to make her a romance option is even more baffling.

i like my women athletic and fit as fuck

 

[Stainless Veteran]

Eh, it's not that they made female only options any better. I mean, yeah, Cassandra looks more manly than half of the cast, especially with added mustache (only thing that softens her model right now are plucked eyebrows).

But female options, on the other hand, are this beautiful and sophisticated maiden:

bloke who looks like a hobo who stole plate armor,

this paragon of bovine beauty, who, in addition, would fuck anything with a hole,

and, like Caim said, count Orlok, keeping Nosferatu romance real.

tl;dr Bioware cannot in 3D modelling and char design.

 

[Night Goat]

i like my women athletic and fit as fuck

There's nothing wrong with that, but women can be fit and athletic without having a man's face. Even as a man, Cassandra would be unattractive.

 

[pippin]

I'm still not sure if this Leliana "not romanceable" thing is some kind of feint. I'm sure they at least talked about it. It seems like the sort of thing the DA:I developers would think of as clever, romancing your romance (they did it with Isabella, sort of).

This keeps weirding me out so much. How did Bioware go from making slightly dank and neckbeardy but pretty damn charming dnd games to this? Where do they find their audience? Are people not aware of otome games or something? I miss when losers' wish fulfilment was about being able to stomp powerful beasts, accumulate coin and having rad adventures and not about emulating incredibly trashy romance fanfics.

Well, Dragon Age: Origins was written with mostly Baldur's Gate 2 in mind, but for consoles. Then Lord of the Rings made Fantasy mainstream, then Harry Potter created the mass market teen fantasy adventure, THEN in 2008 Twilight pushed this new genre to unimagined levels of decline. A year later we got Dragon Age II. It showed lurking beneath the veneer of civilized humanity there was an untapped psychic force of overwhelming power hungering to precariously experience romance written to 14-18 year old sensibilities in fantasy-adventure settings. This hunger can't be bartered with. Pleading and reasoning do no good either. It will only rest once it destroys all incline. Our only recourse is to destroy it by a thousand tiny KickStarters.

Basically, Twilight showed the rest of the world what the Japanese entertainment industry discovered decades ago with their Shonen genre, that you can make a gigantic 60-80% market share out of teenagers repressed by real life coming into their hormones.

But Dragon Age's storyline seems to be a run of the mill Game of Thrones fanfic, even with those pseudo erotic scenes that only virgin nerds find arousing.

 

[tuluse]

ITT: we complain about romance options in a Bioware game

 

[Bubbles]

this paragon of bovine beauty, who, in addition, would fuck anything with a hole,

bbut... Freddie Prinze Jr.