Celebrating Pride Month: Discussing Romances in Dragon Age 4 and Player Sexual Options vs. Character Sexual Options
Posted: Sun Jun 09, 2024 1:05 am
So, according to the recent interview for Dragon Age: The Veilguard players will have the option to romance any of our 7 companions in the game regardless of what gender we choose to play as just like in Dragon Age II and Baldur's Gate 3 instead of locking off characters depending on our gender.
I personally have mixed feelings about this because I feel that a character can be enhanced by having them be gay, straight or bi and sticking to that path. The best example I can think of is Dorian in Dragon Age: Inquisition where his sexuality is tied into his character arc in such a way that making him player sexual would have, to be blunt, hurt his character.
Dorian is gay and has no interest in women and this is the reason for him leaving his family and likely why he ended up working for Alexius who clearly became something of a father figure to him. Making Dorian's sexuality dependent on what gender you choose to play as would have undercut this part of his character.
To make Dorian PS instead of gay means his entire backstory would have to be changed unless we do get this scene but ONLY if we romance him as a man. Something similar happened with Anders in DA2, where if you play as a male Hawke you learn that the Mage we were trying to save in his first companion quest was Anders' lover but if you play as a female Hawke then that guy is just his friend with no real hint that the two were ever in a relationship.
This is the problem that often plagues PS romances, their written in such a way that often undercuts their characters because their sexuality isn't part of their character where it really should be. This is something I feel DAI did very well the sexuality or sexual identity of a character is tied to who they are. You can't just remove that without undercutting the character.
But then again, there are times when I just want to romance a character I like and dislike how that character is locked off because of my gender.
As mentioned before I'm a trans woman and I tend to play as women if given the option in a game and, well, I'll just let this book cover explain it for me-
However, this has led me with few to no real options for many of the RPGs I play. In DAI, for example, I can really only romance Sera and Josephine but I cannot romance Cassandra. This in really bugs me because you can flirt with her for about half of the game until she tells you she's not interested in women.
The same thing can happen with Dorian as you can flirt with him for most of the game but in that case it makes sense as Dorian has a rather flirty personality so it's just how he tends to interact with people. It's a game for him, one that I am more then willing to play. He knows nothing is going to come of it I know nothing is going to come of it, we're honestly just joking around with each other.
But with Cassandra it feels more like the developers are teasing us because Cassandra doesn't act like this at any other point in the game. In fact when she goes to tell me she's not interested she almost seems to have been made uncomfortable by the flirting and more or less says as such. If it was making her uncomfortable then why did she approve of me flirting with her FOR HALF THE GAME?!?!
And on a related topic a long while back I talked about how BioWare was forced to cut romance options in the first two Mass Effect games. Originally, with the exception of Garrus, any romance option for character could be romance by Shepard regardless if we played as male for female Shepard. However, this was cut when news articles found out and threatened EA (who were onboard with the idea I might add) to get the game banned if it included any Same sex romances in the base game.
The character's I WANT to romance in Mass Effect are Tali, Miranda and Jack. There are hints that Tali has feelings for Shepard in both ME2 and ME3 while Jack states that she has had sex with women before only for the former to go nowhere despite all the hints and the latter says she's not into women despite stating that she's slept with both men and women. And Miranda doesn't even get that with all hints of her bisexuality erased from the game completely. You want to romance any of these characters you need to included it on mods which cannot be included on PlayStations which is what I use.
And despite the fact that fans have been able to recover most or all of this cut dialogue BioWare for the Remasters of the game didn't... because the files were lost and could not be restored despite AGAIN fans being able to do so in both the original release of the games AND the Remasters.
Thus we comeback to DA2 and with it The Veilguard. I've romanced both Merrill and Isabela, both are options for Hawke regardless of ones gender and I love both of them. And with the upcoming DAV I've wanted to romance the female Qunari that we've seen in the Concept art ever since that behind the scenes video was released back in 2020 -
Part of that is because I kinda, sorta, ABSOLUTELY want to reenact this iconic meme-
And I was worried that she would be locked off if I played as a woman like I always do. Knowing that she's not locked off but that I can romance her along with my other women companions: I'll be honest makes me excited because I can love who I want to instead of being angry that the one I want the most is the one I'm apparently not allowed for often stupid reasons.
But I'm not going to ignore the obvious problems with making characters player sexual which I've already gone over but at the same time I can't help but smile at the idea of being able to express my love for someone and not worry about getting turned down or not being able to even flirt with them.
Hence my mixed feelings. I like how a character's sexuality is tied to their character as shown in DAI but at the same time my options for how I like to romance characters have been limited as crap in most BioWare games. I want to romance Cassandra and I can flirt with her only for the game to say "No she's not an option and she's in fact put off by you flirting with her".
I personally have mixed feelings about this because I feel that a character can be enhanced by having them be gay, straight or bi and sticking to that path. The best example I can think of is Dorian in Dragon Age: Inquisition where his sexuality is tied into his character arc in such a way that making him player sexual would have, to be blunt, hurt his character.
Dorian is gay and has no interest in women and this is the reason for him leaving his family and likely why he ended up working for Alexius who clearly became something of a father figure to him. Making Dorian's sexuality dependent on what gender you choose to play as would have undercut this part of his character.
To make Dorian PS instead of gay means his entire backstory would have to be changed unless we do get this scene but ONLY if we romance him as a man. Something similar happened with Anders in DA2, where if you play as a male Hawke you learn that the Mage we were trying to save in his first companion quest was Anders' lover but if you play as a female Hawke then that guy is just his friend with no real hint that the two were ever in a relationship.
This is the problem that often plagues PS romances, their written in such a way that often undercuts their characters because their sexuality isn't part of their character where it really should be. This is something I feel DAI did very well the sexuality or sexual identity of a character is tied to who they are. You can't just remove that without undercutting the character.
But then again, there are times when I just want to romance a character I like and dislike how that character is locked off because of my gender.
As mentioned before I'm a trans woman and I tend to play as women if given the option in a game and, well, I'll just let this book cover explain it for me-
However, this has led me with few to no real options for many of the RPGs I play. In DAI, for example, I can really only romance Sera and Josephine but I cannot romance Cassandra. This in really bugs me because you can flirt with her for about half of the game until she tells you she's not interested in women.
The same thing can happen with Dorian as you can flirt with him for most of the game but in that case it makes sense as Dorian has a rather flirty personality so it's just how he tends to interact with people. It's a game for him, one that I am more then willing to play. He knows nothing is going to come of it I know nothing is going to come of it, we're honestly just joking around with each other.
But with Cassandra it feels more like the developers are teasing us because Cassandra doesn't act like this at any other point in the game. In fact when she goes to tell me she's not interested she almost seems to have been made uncomfortable by the flirting and more or less says as such. If it was making her uncomfortable then why did she approve of me flirting with her FOR HALF THE GAME?!?!
And on a related topic a long while back I talked about how BioWare was forced to cut romance options in the first two Mass Effect games. Originally, with the exception of Garrus, any romance option for character could be romance by Shepard regardless if we played as male for female Shepard. However, this was cut when news articles found out and threatened EA (who were onboard with the idea I might add) to get the game banned if it included any Same sex romances in the base game.
The character's I WANT to romance in Mass Effect are Tali, Miranda and Jack. There are hints that Tali has feelings for Shepard in both ME2 and ME3 while Jack states that she has had sex with women before only for the former to go nowhere despite all the hints and the latter says she's not into women despite stating that she's slept with both men and women. And Miranda doesn't even get that with all hints of her bisexuality erased from the game completely. You want to romance any of these characters you need to included it on mods which cannot be included on PlayStations which is what I use.
And despite the fact that fans have been able to recover most or all of this cut dialogue BioWare for the Remasters of the game didn't... because the files were lost and could not be restored despite AGAIN fans being able to do so in both the original release of the games AND the Remasters.
Thus we comeback to DA2 and with it The Veilguard. I've romanced both Merrill and Isabela, both are options for Hawke regardless of ones gender and I love both of them. And with the upcoming DAV I've wanted to romance the female Qunari that we've seen in the Concept art ever since that behind the scenes video was released back in 2020 -
Part of that is because I kinda, sorta, ABSOLUTELY want to reenact this iconic meme-
And I was worried that she would be locked off if I played as a woman like I always do. Knowing that she's not locked off but that I can romance her along with my other women companions: I'll be honest makes me excited because I can love who I want to instead of being angry that the one I want the most is the one I'm apparently not allowed for often stupid reasons.
But I'm not going to ignore the obvious problems with making characters player sexual which I've already gone over but at the same time I can't help but smile at the idea of being able to express my love for someone and not worry about getting turned down or not being able to even flirt with them.
Hence my mixed feelings. I like how a character's sexuality is tied to their character as shown in DAI but at the same time my options for how I like to romance characters have been limited as crap in most BioWare games. I want to romance Cassandra and I can flirt with her only for the game to say "No she's not an option and she's in fact put off by you flirting with her".
