Fun Stuff > CLIKC
Dragon Age 2: Fuckin' Bitches, Stabbin' Dragons
KvP:
--- Quote from: David Gaider ------ Icy Magebane wrote... Dude... come on... that poster's not even out of line in saying that. Isn't it enough that every companion is bisexual? That the Blooming Rose is like 90% male prostitutes? That the gay romances seem to be far deeper experiences than the straight ones (meaning, one of the two choices for a male PC is a promiscuous woman who tries to get with Zevran right in front of you... thanks)? Do we really need scantily clad or even naked male demons on top of all that?
Now look, I have no problem with homosexuals, but honestly, let's not go crazy here... there's a such thing as too much. This isn't even about equality anymore... DA2 is totally biased towards homosexuality in terms of quality romantic experiences. Now you're just piling on the pain... almost punishing people for being straight. ---
Uh-huh.
Ignoring the fact that I wasn't actually serious about the male desire demon, let me point out that the game is in no way biased towards homosexuality. I hate constantly bringing up the word privilege, but when it applies so well it's hard not to use. Someone else getting more does not equate to you getting less, simply because you're accustomed to having it all to yourself. I get that not everyone digs the romance options-- really that's always going to be the case-- but you needn't feel so threatened you see an agenda behind it.
Because, yes, God forbid there be a scantily-clad, sexualized male demon existing as a counterpart to the scantily-clad, sexualized female demon. I mean, objectifying men as well as women? Whoa! Let's not get crazy or anything. There might be someone out there who finds that attractive-- and by that I mean a man, because what straight women want is irrelevant-- and that would be gay.
Sorry, but I'm not sure the argument you're making is the one you think it is.
--- The Sum of all Evil wrote...
Yes, it is. By making homosexuality (almost) as prevalent as heterosexuality you in fact bias it (the setting) towards homosexuality. Which, of course, is your decision. Just as it is anyome's decision to buy the game or not. ---
The setting is not biased towards homosexuality.
The game has more options for players who wish access to homosexual content, at their option. That does not mean it's everywhere in the world-- unless perhaps you're seeing it in many more places than it actually exists, I can't really account for your perceptions. Regardless, having something equally prevalent (as you yourself imply) does not make it biased by definition.
As for someone deciding to buy the game or not-- if that's an implied threat, by all means it is indeed correct that everyone is free to base their purchasing on whatever criteria they like. Even if that's the existence of content they aren't interested in or don't wish to use. Maybe it makes you feel uncomfortable? I imagine there's a lot of content in a mature-rated game like ours that could make someone feel uncomfortable, and quite frankly we don't install toggles for any of it.
Insofar as purchasing goes, however, I can easily imagine there being just as much economic value in providing content for a small but underserviced market as there is in providing content for a large but overserviced one... but that would be a bit logical leap to make no matter which way you look at it, as I'm certain the reasons people buy games is usually not so focused on a single issue.
--- End quote ---
satsugaikaze:
The way these guys carry on with their complaints they seem a little bit butthurt :mrgreen: over the very idea that there's an equal homosexual presence at all.
Thanks for making David Gaider look good, fellas!
JD:
Whoa what I think I missed out on the scantily clad male demon.
KvP:
IGN provides a trainwreck defense in response to a trainwreck criticism:
--- Quote ---Tom Bissell, journalist and author of Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter, described Dragon Age: Origins as "boner-killing." I didn't play the game but I know what he meant. It seemed to have been assembled like an encyclopedia, an arrangement of attributes, stats, skills, factions, proclivities, and magical fancy. A design that comprehensive and obscure can still prickle my fur, but there's something about high fantasy that sends my game phallus into the hammock. I don't mind delayed gratification, but it takes more than an old man in a robe talking about dwarves and mystic jewelry to keep me interested. So then, I really didn't want to play Dragon Age 2.
... I kept wondering when I would unlock the quest where the lurking Satanic threat to the world would finally be revealed. There's no comet coming into orbit? There's no steroid Satan trying to reanimate himself? No shriveled king building a super weapon? No, no, and no. Instead the game is a sprawl of co-equals, various races with their own self-centered interests. Dwarves want money and a return to the glory of their older days, elves mistrust the petty corruptions of human city life, mages don't like the militaristic templars, and the templars think the mages are all closet jihadists. Then there are these strange things called Qunari, which actually are steroid Satan types. They're not exactly demonic, rather they just have horns and red skin and operate on a plane of reason without room for emotion or passion.
During moments like these Dragon Age 2 is at its best, not as a fantasy game but as a dilemma simulator. The most powerful moments are small envelopes of time when someone offered me a choice of whom to betray, knowing that both sides had reason to be saved or punished. It's a game about me, in that way, and not at all about dwarves, elves, or bejeweled old men in robes.
As finely charted as its dialogue and story decisions are, Dragon Age 2 has a dull underbelly in its combat. BioWare is stingily holding onto a vision of combat taken from the dark days of PC game design, when a phrase like "damage per second" could be taken seriously. In the days of Baldur's Gate you watched your characters from above, delighting as they drained numbers from enemies in minutely varied ways. The crucial metric was time, and so combat proficiency became a kind of SAT test for wizards. You'd have to balance the hit points you could extract from enemies each second against the amount of stamina or mana you had, how much damage your characters could take, and how long you could postpone total depletion with healing items.
The great innovation in Dragon Age 2 is that you're no longer looking down on your characters but are now tethered to them with an over-the-shoulder camera angle. Which is to say BioWare has made a superficial change to presentation as a way of covering for the fact that the system is still the same basic design as it was all those years ago. As a number balancing game it's satisfying in the same way that Sudoku is, but it really shouldn't have a place in a story game about moral equivalencies. It's got an opaque but machine-like efficiency that contradicts the theme of moral grayness.
There is a basic conflict between an action-based combat game and a group tactics game. You can freeze the action at any point, bringing up a radial menu that can be used to quaff potions, attack, cast buffs, or issue movement commands. While the game is paused you can switch back and forth between all four of your characters to give them specific commands. Have Anders heal, have Varrick launch his area-wide attack, have Merrill use Despell, and then start everything moving again. This about as sexy as negotiating a mid-coital position change. You put your leg over here, twist on your side ninety degrees, put your hand up here, now let me wiggle my hips over just so. It's like fighting about architecture, though with at least enough kink to include a dwarf.
A braver design choice would have been to excise combat all together, or at least cut ties with a ten year-old mouse and keyboard model built for a chess-style abstraction of humans in conflict. There are moments when Dragon Age 2 is so off-putting I have no idea of why I'm playing it. The hour spent fighting a high dragon again and again, wondering why my little friends in the TV don't get out of the way when a fireball's coming their way can feel like such a thorough waste, time spent feeding bits of my life and energy into a cold and unresponsive machine.
These are, indeed, boner-killing moments, and they're no less prevalent in Dragon Age 2 than they were in Origins. But they're grating and pained precisely because they were preceded by something subtle and personal, something reactive to my own uncertainties about right, wrong, loyalty, duty, love, and sacrifice. Nothing deflates the promise of those moments more than a mechanical whack-em-up gone off the rails. Yet few games are as good at sweet talking their way back into my pants. When it works I love the careful attention to my own mixed moral feelings, and when it doesn't all I see is the awkward stupidity of dwarves, blood magic, and all the other crap I had thought was a turn-on just a few minutes earlier.
--- End quote ---
Tom Bissell claimed he was addicted to video games and cocaine, in that order.
KvP:
Man there is nothing about that article that isn't wrong.
--- Quote --- I didn't play the game
--- End quote ---
Ladies and gentlemen, IGN.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version