MetalCraze said:
The Feral Kid said:
Next-gen people can't even get a damn thing straight these days
c what i did thar
Jim Cojones said:
Sex sales bbscure fetishes like zoofilia might help sales alyhough not for a product that aims at selling millions of copies.
There is a difference between fucking a sheep described in a one short sentence which wasn't hyped (and which I missed on my walkthrough) and visualizing (and hyping) fucking a guy in the asshole. Notice any difference?
Uh...because the sheep is fucked up (though amusing in context), while gay sex is fine.
I find Bioware's romances pretty offputting and horribly written - and I tend to LIKE that kind of gay stuff in games
- but if they're going to do it then I'm glad they're doing gay options as well. Especially gay male options with anal sex, and especially considering that so much of their market falls into the 'lol lesbian sex is hawt, but lyke only if they are hot and thin, and don't look like that shaved-head-chick who I called dyke in high-school, but homo men is fucking fail-gusting and shoudn't be in my gaim' category.
My only complaint from what I've seen is the same as with the rest of their romance writing - Gaiderised - horribly cliched writing that resembles no relationship I've ever seen or been in (and as a married guy who has (pre-marriage, obviously) dated both genders, I've seen a fair variety), and the most insulting of tropes where they scream 'blatant-attempt-at-fantasy-fulfillment' (a 12 yr old's fantasy, that is) with utterly unnatural 'saw nice things to me for 3 dialogues, then get shaf option' setup rather than being tied into the natural story progression.
I think Avellone is right - fulfilling the romance in games breaks it, as it is too rushed. It is a case of listening to the players saying 'oh, but I really wanted to get a happy ending there (pun intended)' rather than sitting back and smiling in the knowledge that they wouldn't have been so attached to the characters if things had been resolved like that. If they're going to do cliche, they should look at the cliches that have worked. Han and Leia are a 'romance' from their first argument in Star Wars, and stay the 'romance plot' even though they never get it on until Return of the Jedi (and again, the romance worked best when it was the furthest from the 'say nice things, then shag' Bioware model - c/f the bickering through Empire, finishing with the 'I love you' '[looks hurt] I know') - if Bioware just ripped off that, it would be a massive improvement. Notice all the sick puppies wanting Imoen-romance mods for BG2? Not my thing, but maybe its because she didn't come preloaded with a romance script completely unrelated to the rest of the game, but instead had a relation to the player that was built into the game's plot?
Meh, back to gay sex. I shouldn't expect better, I know, but why do people think that guys who enjoy shagging other guys instead of women would want their guy to look like, well, a woman? If you want to see a game character designed specifically to look attractive to its gay writer, check Clive Barker's Undying - originally they gave him a grizzled-muscled-tank, but he said that was too predictable/boring and instead walked the designers through his idea of sexy.
And yeah, I don't know why I write such long fucking posts about a game that will probably suck. Part of it is sheer amazement that Gaider seems to genuinely committed to being a good writer rather than churning out automated pulp...but he constantly makes errors that aren't just creative failures but obvious and repeated structural errors (I'm including his reliance, and apparent lack of self-awareness, of tropes in that) that he could easily learn to avoid. I actually suspect that by giving him an 'easy entry' into the writing field (where his heart seems to be), his gaming job has actually hamstrung him by getting him published and putting him out as a professional writer, when he still needed more time learning the basics.
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