DAAANtheMAAAN said:[
I will agree to disagree. I can't change your views on pro/anti-gay issues, nor will I attempt to. You're entitled to them, however much I disagree. So I'll end this argument after I get this post out of the way, just want to speak my piece first.
Now, I've been researching the hell out of the gay companions in The Old Republic. While not actually playing the game, I've been looking up every page I can get my digital hands on to get more info on it.
What I do know is that TOR, like the other recent Bioware games, is a fully voiced game. Every character, especially companions, have voiced dialogue and their stances change depending on the actions of the player. To keep this in check, Bioware simply can't "patch in the gayness", it has to wait for content expansions. Expansion packs and DLC that give the game more areas and fully voiced characters will THEN include potentially homosexual characters. It's not a throwaway, Bioware is showing that they understand that in an MMO, the options available to a player are paramount.
On top of that, I highly doubt that you'll even notice that you have a homosexual character in your party until you get further along in their dialogue options. I mean, even gays want to flirt before they start porking it, you know? It would be like any other relationship through the Bioware games, where they'll usually show their interest after you do. Even if you do accidentally stumble across the romantic dialogue, you can typically nip the character's interest in the bud fairly easily thereafter if you aren't interested.
Not so much a perv as a bit hypocritical. If you're taking the anti-gay stance, it doesn't help your cause if you're cool with lesbians, even if only in a fetishistic way.Therumancer said:Now don't get me wrong, as a straight guy who really likes girls, I might actually have some fun playing around with a lesbian romance option. I'm a perv I guess. That said I still don't like the idea of these characters being tossed into the game and me being told that has to be there. Especially seeing as I'm sure there are plenty of girls playing the game who don't want another girl who digs them permanantly berthed on their ship without really having a choice in the matter, especially if they don't want to gimp themselves.
Now, another bit on the gameplay, as far as I've read, and I'm sure the actual players of the game will confirm or correct me here, you can only have 6 companions at any given time. One droid, and five people you encounter throughout the game. Again, these come and go based on your advancement through the game, so I don't think all of them are permanently assigned to your ship. Once they have what they need from you, they'll either stick around to help you out or go about their own business. The relationship options aren't available for every character, and it's not being shoved down your throat.
Now, to flex my nerd muscles here, it was the Star Wars Holiday Special. It was the wookiee holiday, "Life Day", not Christmas. ... It still sucked, though.Therumancer said:Political pandering is a bad thing. If the Christian group protesting was to instead demand that they insert a vocally Christian character into the game to be properly represented, and pointed out that since they did it with Ashley in Mass Effect that it's bigoted if they don't write a character this time, I doubt many people on the leftward side of the spectrum cheering for a minority group would exactly favor it, and come up with 30 gajillion reasons why not despite the existance of a Star Wars Christmas Celebration Special (lol). Just as there are arguements to be made by heterosexuals, many of whom might not care what anyone else does in their bedrooms, not wanting to have to endure something that grossing them out, there would be atheist liberals screaming that they don't want to have someone else's religious beliefs mentioned even if it wasn't harped on constantly.
This is all a matter of understanding the source content. There's no place for a Christian character in Star Wars or Dragon Age because Christianity doesn't exist within them. It worked in Mass Effect because while the advancement of humanity had made Christians a minority in a then rather secular culture, it made the Ashley more endearing for holding to her beliefs, even if I did disagree with them.
To extend that point, the Star Wars universe, like Mass Effect, takes place in an entire galaxy. Dozens, if not hundreds of colonized and civilized worlds just as many unique sentient races exist within this galaxy. The universe what would seem to be a technological and cultural apex, and the thought of there not being at least a handful of homosexuals among them is a silly prospect.
No argument here. Again, I disagree, but it's not my place to change a view like that.Therumancer said:I'll also respond in brief to something else I'm not going to argue right now. The entire argument that people should be "over" the issue of homosexuality only has resonance to those who are pro-gay. It's a big issue because there are a LOT of people on the other side as well, and even if the left wing tries to present them all as religious fantatics, they isn't the case even if those with faith based objections are among the most vocal.
I'll admit, after reading a lot of posts and articles over the issue, Bioware's 180 on the issue is rather distressing, but I believe it's because they underestimated what their players wanted. Game studios don't do a turn around like this towards a political group or a protest, they change because they hear the voices of their players, their legitimate customers. The players are all that matter here. Political groups that rally against these things are likely never to even consider playing the game. Had they heeded to the controversy from political groups, the sex scenes in Mass Effect would've been deleted the day after their mention on Fox News.Therumancer said:Stuff like this protest, and demands that games pretty much HAVE to include such content, well that is bringing it out and waving it in your face. It's been turning into yet another example of tyranny by a minority, largely fueled by politics, and the simple understanding that they can push for more and more while they have inertia. Social movements, of any sort, largely disband when they achieve what they set out to accomoplish, but continue to push until something stops them. I think this is one of the areas where they hit a wall. I think there shouldn't be any gay or lesbian characters in ToR, simply because of the way it was demanded and presented as a right, along with accusations that not providing it amounted to bigotry. Your not a bigot if you don't create something that represents everyone every time you make something.
All I've really been trying to convey is that while I'm not saying your political views are wrong, your view on the content is.
To put this in analogy, lets say that you hate fish (hypothetically). You go to a restaurant and overhear the table next to you asking a waiter why they don't have fish on the menu. A few days later, you find that fish has been added to the menu, and you're upset. The fish purely an optional dish, but you insist that it be removed because YOU don't like it, other customers be damned.
The whole point is that it isn't what you or I think, (...especially since neither of us have played the game...) it's about what they players want. TOR is a game that will continue to have updates and content expansions for at least a couple of years, and while it won't be immediately, homosexual relationships will be added. What we have to do is to simply have the grace to move beyond it and let it go, because in the end it's not about whether or not WE like the fish. As long as at least one person enjoys it, it'll stay on the menu.
And with that, I'll be happy to leave the rest to "agree to disagree".
Alright to finish this up I'll say this much.
I have played quite a bit of TOR, and the basic plan is to create new characters or modify old ones and then add the changes into the game, with most evidence towards the creation of new characters. Technically any addition or change would count as a "content update" which is just a semantic term for any time they add something new to the game. Whether they hire new actors, or have additional dialogue recorded "in character" for existing characters, or whatever else, the bottom line when all is said and done that every player playing ToR has to have homosexuals on their ship and vocally interested in their character. How it's inserted, and what the quality is, is kind of irrelevent to that entire situation. If your grossed out by the idea, but don't nessicarly oppose it in any militant form, tough crap, you pretty much HAVE to deal with it for the sake of a tiny group of people who actually want it.
When it comes to political pressure it's important to understand that while the nation is polarized right now, the left wing controls most of the media despite left wingers wanting to deny this. Simply put threats or campaigning from conservative groups don't amount to much despite their points of view accounting for roughtly 50% of the population don't matter that much because they can't actually do much to hurt distribution or generate bad press. Really, one of the reasons why you see so much religious garbage coming from the right wing even if it's a small percentage within it is that religious groups are one of the few right wing elements that maintain enough media power to be heard. Churches that run their own radio stations, TV studios, and/or have long standing contracts with networks to broadcast before a lot of these issues ever started. A religious leader can get a point of view heard on a wider scale (even if mild compared to liberal media control) than someone within the right wing who isn't acting from that position.
The basic point is that if gays threaten a company with support from the left wing media, right or wrong, they can generate a LOT of bad press, and tons of people will hear how bigoted the company is even if it's not true with little opposition. If some religious group like the one that started this thread does... well, they aren't going to reach all that many people overall, they are barely even in a position to have their objections heard to begin with. That's why you see Bioware caving to liberally driven gay demands, as opposed to the one, fairly powerless sector of the opposition that can make itself heard on the matter to any extent.
Not to mention that when you get down to it the conservatives that being heard here are the kinds of radicals who would probably want Bioware out of business on general principle, if they did anything but create interactive bible games or whatever. The gay rights movement might be just as wrong here, but once pandered to they aren't going to keep pushing to knock them out of business.
The more reasonable, non-religiously driven, right wing majority like me, well we aren't a factor because we don't have the media power to be heard an any large scale, we pretty much write message boards like this to make our noise, and sadly few of us bother to come into hotbeds of opposition like I do to express their viewpoints as opposed to engaging in a lot of back patting in friendlier enviroments.
As far as the gay/lesbian thing goes, I won't get into it in detail, but as I mentioned it's more pervy than hypocritical. I just haven't gone into a full run down on homosexuality and what I think of it in general. In short I do not define "homosexuals" as all being the same thing, men and women are differant, and gays and lesbians are differant. One of the problems with dealing with the "gay rights movement", compiling statistics, and setting fair policies is specifically that people lump it all together as opposed to dealing with gays and lesbians as two entirely differant issues, with two very differant outlooks, subcultures, and behavior patterns, that are rarely allied for anything other than political power. Gays and Lesbians don't exactly group up together "in the wild" like they do during rallies and shows of political unity. To make one point, when is the last time you've seen, or even really heard of a lesbian stalking and molesting a young girl, or a mother raping her daughter, or whatever else. It HAS happened, but not very often in reality. Now how many times have you seen or heard about it with men? You do a quick search you'll find tons of stuff about gay child molesters and predators but very little about lesbians. Likewise accross the spectrum women are more likely to kill their offspring/dependants when they go off the deep end, than sexually molest them over a period of time. As I said, there are exceptions, but that's one big pattern. Working casino security for a pretty long time I literally chased scores of creepy guys away from the little boys in the arcade, I did not have a single incident of finding a woman trying to lure little girls away or anything. It's not a point many people on the leftward side of things like to hear, but think about it sometime. You do a job like I did and you'll see the differances first hand as well in who you have to step in to deal with. Basically, chances are if I thought Lesbians represented a threat, I wouldn't be pervy towards the idea, especially seing as by their nature girls who like girls want nothing to do with me.
At any rate that should cover just about everything, we're pretty much done, and this will be my past post in the thread.