pleasawe tell me this LGBTQ shit is photoshop
why the fuck would they even talk about this shit in dragon age context? i mean its fucking medieval in thedas, they cant shapeshift your vagina into big black cock can they? and how many trannies play video games ffs
its not even political correctness, i fucking miss that mage faggot from witcher 2
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Gaider's DA comics made a transwoman character canon. She's likely going to show up as a NPC (but not a party member) in DAI.
Also it doesn't really matter how many of them play games as long as they feel welcomed. I know at least two transwomen who post at the BSN.
Normally ingame logic is vital. Here, however, the ingame logic constructed by the writers, but this particular aspect of it has zero effect on the themes or plot. BUT if we are going to talk ingame logic, I'm sure that shapeshifting genitalia/breasts is a lot simpler than shapeshifting into an entirely different species.
My bigger concern is that which I worry about in all Bioware (and most other game writing) games: is this putting in a character because the writers wanted a diverse cast, or does the character actually tie in to the feel and themes of the game. Note I didn't say 'plot' - it's easy to add trivial plot points that bring in extraneous characters, there are plenty of characters in all media that are vital to the work despite having little direct connection to the plot. Themes and feel mean a lot more - and are woefully underthought in most game writing.
That doesn't mean the character's transexuality has to have thematic relevance - that can be part of the characterisation that lifts it from a 'bottle of themes' to an actual character (though given the obliviousness of even Bioware's most prominent female writers to the fact that she isn't just writing - but PROMOTING DA2 ON THE BASIS OF - the whore/mother/virgin characterisation uber-cliche, I am skeptical that Bioware can actually deliver on characterisation beyond dating-sim wish-fulfillment. But actually irks me with Bioware's attempts at diversity and sex isn't the diversity itself. That's a good thing, all things considered. But there's never any sign in Bioware games that anyone has sat back and thought 'how does this character contribute to the game's themes and feel?' 'Could we tell this same story, with the same themes without this character?' 'Are we trivialising the aim of diversity by inserting theses characters as unnecessary padding.'
Even in a sprawling game like FO1 and Deus Ex, there are very few (if any) characters without thematic significance (same with VtMB) - noit all are info dums of philosoraptory (very few are), but they all build the world, feel and themes in SOME way. None of them are merely padding - characters with no other purpose than to be characters in the game.
The same reasoning applies to what character actions you focus on. You don't focus on the characters brushing their teeth before going to bed, do you? Even though you could probably insert some teeth-brushing related plot. You don't do it because it is utterly unrelated to the games' themes and feel as a whole. 9 times out of 10, when a game introduces sex or romance, the same problem arises. That's why they're exploitational dating sims, not interesting character interaction.
As a guy who was actively bi prior to marriage, I have no problem with including gay, bi or transgender characters. But in Bioware's case, crying 'trans/homophobia' is deliberately disiningenius. The problem is that times and time again, Bioware has inserted characters purely for the sake of diversity, with no thought as to how those characters will fit the theme and feel of their games. The characters become padding - unnecessary and irritating padding, serving only as wish fulfilment for the kind of people who couldn't pick up even a good pulp book, let alone literature - and that's not an educational snobbishness: there's no shortage of easy to read/watch literature.
That trivialises the very diversity Bioware wants to be lauded for. What worse way of using diverse characters than turning them into sex-fetish freakshows that could have been dropped without losing anything of substance. Can you imagine Silent Hill 2 without the guy's wife? Can you imagine KoTOR2 working (on the restoration mod version) without Bao-dur as a foil to the Exile as they are both being brought full circle, to the point where Bao-dur eventually reaches a grim determination that actually what they did the first time WAS necessary, as he rebuilds the device that devastated the planet the first time around (leaving the Exile to fact e the same choice)? As an example of a minor NPC, can you imagine PS:T without Ingriss, the impoverished hive dwellers, the diseased members of the lower ward and the sensates as slaves to their desires...building a theme and setting where everyone - EVERYONE - is trapped in one way or another; just like the TNO when it starts to dawn that he can't just escape out and start again. That like Hamlet (and there's a lot of Hamlet in the TNO's arc), all he can do is move beyond the naivity of thinking that he can achieve some higher justicet - that like when Hamlet responds to Horatio pointing out the obvious (that it's a trap, from which Hamlet will have no chance of escaping), he finally realises that what really matters now isn't being the romantic hero - it's the long-overdue step of finally doing what needs to be done.
There's no reason why this couldn't be done with diverse sexualities. But Bioware has never shown any interest in doing so.
