BioWare Explains Why There's No Homosexuality in Mass Effect 2

[ElArabDeMagnifico]

You can definitely do lesbian things with Kelly, but I don't know of any gay things with MaleShep.

Still, in a game with cross-species intercourse, maybe complaining about lack of homosexual relationships seems pretty redundant once you blur the line between "sex" and "bestiality".

 

[Sevre]

"We still view it as... if you're picturing a PG-13 action movie," he said.

Anyone else find it ironic that this game has an ESRB rating of M and a PEGI of 18+?

 

[Woodsey]

"There seems to some subtext there that no one is saying, namely that the inclusion of actual homosexual relationships might hurt sales,"

But:

a) They had no problems with that with Dragon Age

b) Really? Couldn't you then say that about there being a black character (let's face it, racism and homophobia generally seem to go in hand)?

Yes but Dragon Age was marketed as soaked in gore, very dark and bleak, while Mass Effect 2 was space adventure for all the family. So why not make the love options a little more mature for Dragon Age too.

"For all the family" ?

Are you kidding me? You can technically exterminate an entire race of beings (those spider things), force someone to commit suicide and punch female reporters in the face. And get a lap dance (albeit not a very good one).

Anyway, how is a gay relationship any different to a straight one in terms of family friendliness?

"We still view it as... if you're picturing a PG-13 action movie," he said.

Anyone else find it ironic that this game has an ESRB rating of M and a PEGI of 18+?

To be fair, they did wildly overrate it. The BBFC gave it a 12 - which is why I'm pissed off that we're eventually going to only have PEGI instead of the BBFC.

 

[Trebort]

I wanted a gay relationship....

I did not even get sex in this playthrough, just my female shepard wishing Kaiden was with her, drooling at his photo in her loft before storming off to kill the collectors. What a let down.

 

[kibayasu]

I distinctly remember Bioware claiming that they never actually had a homosexual relationship in the original Mass Effect simply because the Asari are mono-gendered *cough* bullshit *cough*.

No kidding. "Asari have all the parts that you would expect on a normal female but they aren't female at all, noooooo." Right.

But in the end, I don't care at all. The ME's would be just fine without any romace at all (although hurray for Garrus and Tali!) so this is a complete non-issue to me.


That FemShep/Ashley thing is interesting though as that's obviously fully recorded dialogue. I wonder if BioWare saw the whole "sex controversy" thing coming and cut out the most risque part.

 

[Snotnarok]

This argument seems a bit flimsy considering in the first game the argument in the case against Fox claiming Mass Effect to be just porn for kids was

"It's optional and takes a long time to build up the relationship"

Your vision of Shepard doesn't exactly fit in with my character who's in with Liara which I had going from the first one. Why couldn't this be an OPTION much like it was in the first one.

 

[Sjakie]

Long story short, it's all in the positioning. Simply put, homosexual relations usually involve a position that, while perfectly normal for homosexual couples, is a little too graphic for general audiences. Take from that, what you will.

This is relevant, presumably, only in the case of them actually showing the characters having sex. I don't know if they do in ME 2. I seem to remember that in ME, the sex was only heavily implied i.e. we saw them stroking each other with their clothes off, but I wasn't actually treated to my male Shepard manfully thrusting away. Unless what it actually means is that homosexual relationships are still not "PG-13", even when the sex is not actually shown.

I would also like to point out to the entire thread, as a heterosexual male, that if the option had been given for my manShepard to give Kaidan Alenko a good seeing to it would have been taken without hesitation. Something about the way those two looked at each other . . .

This is a very good point. The "sexscenes" in ME2 hardly even warrant the name, but okay, lets call em that. Since hetro-sex is apparantly considered 'normal PG-13' and Gay-sex is still not if we interpret the answer correctly. So much for equality!
This is a very strange answer since Dragon Age did have a Gay romance option. Both games are stamped 18+ for the Netherlands. Is this different in other countries? As an Adult i hardly care about ESRB-ratings.
I wonder if Bioware negotiated with EA about this stuff? If they did/had to do it, then EA is even more evil and stupid then i thought before. Controversy helps selling games, even if it is for the wrong reasons: the more kids come into contact with different viewpoints, the more they will see this as normal behavior as they should!

 

[MinishArcticFox]

Well to be homosexual there needs to be another character and none of the party members really seem to have that in their personality but I'm not sure why they didn't allow you to carry over your lesbianism unless you recruit Morinth. I think this is more sales related than anything

 

[Logan Westbrook]

There seems to some subtext there that no one is saying, namely that the inclusion of actual homosexual relationships might hurt sales, but that is a very different issue and one that will take more than one science-fiction videogame to tackle.

If no-one is saying it, then how do you prove its existence? That's supposition.

At the risk of sounding glib, when something gets said out loud, it stops being 'subtext' and just becomes 'text'.

 

[TheMadDoctorsCat]

Hmmmm interesting. Personally this leaves me wondering two things:

1) What OTHER games could you apply this question to?
2) What games would probably be improved by the inclusion of homosexual relationships, but weren't because of "political" reasons?

Personally I want to know why there weren't any homosexual relationships in Pac-Man. I mean, the guy is a walking ecstasy symbol who gobbles fruits and takes "power pills" in order to be able to swallow ghosts whole. There's necrophilia, drug use and homosexual innuendo right there. Why didn't the developers have the courage of their convictions to go the whole hog?

 

[Treblaine]

Wait... they used a "PG-13" justification?

HOW IS GAY SEX LESS "PG-13" THAN STRAIGHT SEX!!!!

That is fucking bullshit, the same crap that Microsoft used to pull on gay gamers since revealing their sexual orientation to be the "wrong" way was somehow "explicit"?!?!? Shameless homophobic double standard.

Hey you guy want to know really why? Because Mass Fffect is Bioware's dumbed down for the mass market franchise, and red necks don't like homosexuals, even hate hot lesbian sex(!) and in plenty of plenty of European and Middle Eastern countries too homophobia is absolutely endemic.

But I have to blame Microsoft here, this bullshit didn't happen with Dragon Age Origins (by Bioware but MS had no creative control), I think Microsoft leant on the developers and what they are saying now is pure rationalisation of the crap those bigots at Microsoft twisted them into doing.

And who say you had to "just do the same lesbian sex scene" again when you are happy to do straight sex scenes. I'm telling you, 100% post-decision rationalisation, they want that bigot money.

 

[ItsAPaul]

I assume its because Shepard isn't gay. God forbid they make a heterosexual character.

 

[Scobie]

DELETED

 

[maninahat]

Hmmmm interesting. Personally this leaves me wondering two things:

1) What OTHER games could you apply this question to?
2) What games would probably be improved by the inclusion of homosexual relationships, but weren't because of "political" reasons?

Personally I want to know why there weren't any homosexual relationships in Pac-Man. I mean, the guy is a walking ecstasy symbol who gobbles fruits and takes "power pills" in order to be able to swallow ghosts whole. There's necrophilia, drug use and homosexual innuendo right there. Why didn't the developers have the courage of their convictions to go the whole hog?

Well the reason why it is an issue with Mass Effect 2 is that you have a degree of control over the appearance, race, sex, history and behaviour of the character, which is typical in a lot of the more recent RPG games (but uncommon in most other genres). It seems odd to players that the control is limited in terms of the protagonist's sexuality however, especially as other rpgs (Like Fable II or Dragon Age) give players the priviledge of choice.

In the case of the setting, it seems odd that you can create a character who is attracted to aliens, but not a character who is attracted to people of the same sex, despite the latter being far more realistic (both for the player and the in-game characters).

 

[dochmbi]

There's two things being implied here, both of which I take issue with and they both relate to how homosexuality still isn't perceived as a normal form of human sexuality.

"Sometimes, in some of our games, we are going to have a defined character with a more defined view. [...] For some other franchises we've had more defined characters and sort of approaches to things, and they've had a more defined personality and a more defined approach to the way they've proceed through the game and the world."

This seems to say that if Shephard were homosexual, it would somehow not be compatible with his personality and his role in the story, it is stereotyping and implies that a persons sexuality makes them incapable of displaying certain personality traits and acting in certain ways.

"We still view it as... if you're picturing a PG-13 action movie," he said. "That's how we're trying to design it. So that's why the love interest is relatively light."

So homosexuality is a heavy topic and therefore they chose not to include it? That's exactly the problem I see here, it's time to stop treating homosexuality as something weird and treat it as a normal part of human life, and as such a normal part of games that try to depict human life realistically.

 

[jamesworkshop]

snip

Point made but I haven't seen quite as much controversy over Dragon's Age as there was over Mass Effect. Perhaps Mass Effect softened the blow, who knows. Though this makes me wonder why such relationships did not become available in ME2? Granted it's a different game but the crowd that Bioware is catering to would have been pretty much the same.

Easy because it didn't fit with what they intendid ME2 to be whereas Dragon age with multipul races and backgrounds was far more suitable for telling a blank slate user defined story look at the dialogue trees in ME to DA you only pick generic options with the dialogue being whatever the writers wanted it to be whereas DA:O the options are excatly as written and you pick a specific responce.
If it was business reasons then as a new property DA:O had far more to lose compared to the basically gaurentied seller like a sequel to the massive money maker of the orginal, DA:O was built using a custom engine and contained quite a lot more written and spoken dialogue(more voice actors) and thus easily cost far more than ME2 cost to make

 

[balanovich]

Why the hell do we even care whether or not there is homosexuality in a game???????

 

[Shycte]

I think Casey Hudson's answer sounds a lot more reasonable. Video Games, especially in the current generation, have always borrowed heavily from movies, so building a game like "a PG-13 movie" sounds a lot more understandable to me.
[small](it also explains why there's no actual nudity in these games)[/small]

I find Muzyka's answer a little bit puzzling. The Mass Effect series has always had this "build-your-own-adventure" vibe; in theory, Shepard should be the players' concept, not the game designers'.

I tend to agree with this. The culmination of the romance in part 1 was far more...well, physical, than in part 2. Honestly, I can live with fading to black instead of watching characters knock boots in the uncanny valley. But I'd still rather have the option to bed the ladies should I want to.

I mean, seriously, have you seen Miranda's ass?

IT'S GRRRRRRRRRRRREAT!

Seriously tough, I agree with that the scences where more spiritual in the ME2 where it felt more like they needed someone in this world of danger and a suicide mission head up. Don't get me wrong, ME1's sex scence was a masterpiece when it comes to picturing sex in games. It showed a emotional and sensitive picture of it and that is exactly what it is and what is supposed be. But I digress.

But for the homopart, I don't think it has to do with Shepard not swinging that way, but the other characters. BioWare is great at creating characters and I really think we should let them do what they do best instead of saying "You need homo, go homo naougwh!".

It's just ruin everything. Worked with Zevran in DAO because his charachter was like that. Miranda, not so much. But she does have a great ass. So I don't blame anyone for wanting to get under that.

 

[chronobreak]

It's their character, they can do whatever they want with him. If people really think Bioware is "homophobic" or unsympathetic to their gay audience, they need to get a life, or play through Dragon Age. A lot of the same people who would say bad things about this I would be willing to bet would also turn around and say how sick of political correctness they are.

Also, probably not the best idea to throw this out there during MM, especially since BioWare is in the finals.