Games with lesbian content?

[JoeGlory]

Guild Wars 2 has two fairly prominent lesbian relationships between NPCs.

One of those relationships is kind of tragic, since one of the women basically fell to the dark side and now she keeps trying to get her ex to join her in being evil. They are both sentient plants who just happen to look like women, though, so it might not really count.

The other one, between two humans, is still in its budding stages and is very cute. They'd better not kill either of them off...

Neither of those relationships are fanservicey, since they treat them like any other romance but with two women instead of a woman and a man. The most they ever show them doing is holding hands. (And it is so cute.)

I was going to come on in here touting the horn of GW2, but you beat me to it

There are also some others. Like Iowen and the other Sylvari who are part of the mirror of Orr storyline and a couple NPC's IIRC. There is also some gay NPC's as well IIRC.

Point of the matter is, it happens enough and with prominent enough characters where I am very well able to believe that Gay and Lesbian relationships happen and are seen as perfectly ok in Tyria. It is subtle, but there and very much alive.

(And yes, Marjory and Kasmeer are so cute together. Although I dont quite think they've moved past the "we're friends" stage yet. Because they kind of just had a traumatic experience....multiple traumatic experiences and is fully believable to be just consoling each other as friends.)

 

[Sheo_Dagana]

Loathe as I am to mention Final Fantasy XIII, there's a lot of conjecture about Fang and Vanille's relationship to one another. Fang definitely seems to be in love with Vanille, at any rate.

In Star Ocean: The Second Story, the female lead Rena can end up with the sorceress character Celine if you follow a very specific set of private actions.

 

[Alcaste]

Baldur's Gate 2 Enhanced Edition has

Spoiler

Hexxat

- Everything else has likely been said already. As mentioned, a lot of stuff is generally head-canon, and I don't know about you but that sort of thing at least works for me haha.

 

[Jumjummju]

Well, the only game I can think of is Embric of Wulfhammer's Castle. Essentially, it's a shoujo-ai yuri (for the non-japanophiles out there, lesbian) game made in RPGmaker that has absolutely minimal gameplay aside from choosing which girl you'll go with, making it more of an interactive story.

But it's a damn good one, I'll say. It's half hilarious parody of D&D, half well-written romance, and half mystery. And about 1/8 fanservice. (In other words, it's 13/8 of a game, apparently. I'M SO GOOD AT MATH)

So, while the game has quite a few NSFW scenes, it's generally not all the game is about. It's essentially like an eroge, just instead of a visual-novel its just an RPGmaker game. A very good yuri RPGmaker game.

 

[Draken Steel]

Magical diary, and from what ive seen almost everything from hanako games or winter wolves.

 

[Dragonlayer]

I never played Fear Effect 2 but the advertising for the game was at least very suggestive of a lesbian relationship between two of the main characters, albeit in a very exploitative way.

Oh man, I remember that in Official Playstation Magazine adverts: double-page spreads of the two women straddling and back-rubbing one another and relaxing after a hard day's work of killing ninjas and security guards with some good old fashioned lesbian sex. Ah, for the archaic days when games could be promoted purely on juvenile sex appeal.... oh wait.

 

[Dragonlayer]

There's always Skyrim. Of course calling the marriages in that game "relationships" is a bit of an oxymoron, but I did appreciate that you were essentially allowed to construct the romances entirely in your head(my lady vampire lord and Lydia had such a lovely courtship).

As far as I'm concerned the relationships in that game are a joke. I once accidentally agreed to get married to a random guy I had just met over a misinterpretation of his wording. He said he was interested in me, asked if I was interested in him, and I said yes because I wanted to know who he was, suddenly he was telling me to arrange our wedding. I didn't even realize my character was gay until then.

To use an old meme, it's still a better love story than Twilight.

OT: The only one I can think of that hasn't been mentioned is Depression Quest. It's more of an interactive story than a game, though it was green-lit on Steam.

I love the ease of getting yourself into long-term commitment in that game: "Hey, I found your family heirloom for you, can I get some gold now or something?" "I WANT TO SPEND THE REST OF MY LIFE WITH YOU!" "Oooookay...."

 

[God's Clown]

In a way sort of Persona 3 Portable between FeMC and Mitsuru Kirijo. It doesn't really come out and say it, but it is sort of implied.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

Actually, (assuming I understand what people mean when they say "fan service", which seems to refer to bits of a fiction that sexually objectify characters. Why it's called "fan service" is beyond me.) I thought Game of Thrones WAS a little fanservice-y at times. Really just the lesbian scenes with Dany. (In the books, not the show)

Game of Thrones is either Fanservice or outright Author Appeal when it comes to the sexual content at times. Dany is especially grating because it seems she can't go a chapter without either getting naked, revealing her brests/nipslipping in public, thinking of steamy sex with some man, having her maids pleasure her or end up in some other situation that is laced with sexualization. It is especially grating since Martin describes these scenes in great detail and they don't provide anything to the story at large, they don't reveal character, they don't tell us anything about the world or advance the storyline. They feel like they are literally just there so Martin could have some wank material.

 

[Tanis]

THE LONGEST JOURNEY!

A LOT of lesbian going on there.

 

[Senor Koquonfaes]

Gay marriage is so common in Borderlands 2 that even the caricaturish arsehole villain doesn't seem to mind.

 

[Therumancer]

I can only think of one scene in Witcher 2 that's outright lesbomancy, although you're right about it being total fan service. I'm still not even sure what the point of that scene was other than as a setup for using the word lesbomancy.

Lesbomancy.

I wouldn't say fan service. Rather, it's a part of her character. Phillipa was a very open lesbian in the books as well, and made no attempt to hide it. In fact, it was quite the contrary. Being a sorceress, it also makes a certain kind of sense as to why she's playing the dominant role (they're rather bitchy by nature, even Triss).

So yeah, not exactly fan service in my mind since it wasn't added to get kids rockers off but because it was one of her defining traits as a character.

it is a trait of her character but the way its presented is very fanservicy.

Well see, here is the problem. If you present lesbians in the context of heroic fantasy there is no way it's not going to be like that. Your basically going to be dealing with characters who represent something close to a physical ideal, and if they are doing anything overtly sexual it can be called "fan service". Indeed it rapidly becomes a no win scenario because if you start making the lesbians not-particularly good looking you open the door to be yelled at for not making them as good looking as the straight women and perpetuating negative stereotypes that way by selectively ignoring genere tropes when it comes to them. If you decide to ignore the sexual stuff and simply go with innuendo or a few comments acknowledging the relationship, then it will be under attack for not receiving enough attention, especially if the game involves heterosexual couples that go beyond that.

As I mentioned in another post, this is one of the big reasons you see less done with lesbians for the most part than you do with gay men in a lot of media (though I won't say video games in particular). Since regular men are generally attracted to women making out, you can claim fan service, but they tend to be repelled by images of guys doing the same thing, so it works better as a political statement and as an attention getter, and can generally be defended as not being directed at the general audience for entertainment value and thus more "on topic" when it comes to gay rights so to speak.

Overall, I imagine lesbianism will remain a touchy subject in the media simply because it's more accepted from an entertainment standpoint, and harder to make an attention-getting political statement with. Any time it comes up in heroic fantasy like video games, your always going to have someone ready to scream "fan service" or imply it somehow doesn't count because straight guys are going to enjoy the scenery as much as gay women.

 

[Zetatrain]

Not sure if normal is the word I would use to describe straight relations in video games....

I know I just posted, but this. So much this.

I still don't understand how people can have that kind of relationship with a character in a videogame. Everything about it seems phony. If other character have the relationship, its fine, but the player has little agency at all in any of these supposed relationships in videogames. Hell, there's a great article here on The Escapist that was done a few years back that explained my feelings about them rather well:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/criticalintel/10056-Desperate-Housewives-of-Skyrim

Edit:

I think there are lesbians in the Metal Gear franchise. Boss has a female lover who I think shows up in MGS IV (never played it, have no friends or PS3).

Err, I think you might be thinking of Strangelove from MGS: Peace Walker for the PSP. While it is true that she was in love with The Boss, the Boss never noticed her feelings for her. Also, there is a scene near the end with Strangelove and Dr. Emmerich (Otacon's father) that implies she might be bi-sexual.

Other than that I can't think of any lesbian characters in the MGS franchise (though I never did play ACID).

 

[Therumancer]

There's always Skyrim. Of course calling the marriages in that game "relationships" is a bit of an oxymoron, but I did appreciate that you were essentially allowed to construct the romances entirely in your head(my lady vampire lord and Lydia had such a lovely courtship).

As far as I'm concerned the relationships in that game are a joke. I once accidentally agreed to get married to a random guy I had just met over a misinterpretation of his wording. He said he was interested in me, asked if I was interested in him, and I said yes because I wanted to know who he was, suddenly he was telling me to arrange our wedding. I didn't even realize my character was gay until then.

To use an old meme, it's still a better love story than Twilight.

OT: The only one I can think of that hasn't been mentioned is Depression Quest. It's more of an interactive story than a game, though it was green-lit on Steam.

I love the ease of getting yourself into long-term commitment in that game: "Hey, I found your family heirloom for you, can I get some gold now or something?" "I WANT TO SPEND THE REST OF MY LIFE WITH YOU!" "Oooookay...."

It still has nothing on Fable where you enter a town and have people following you around screaming marriage proposals (from both genders). You can be sit there blacksmithing or whatever and hear a constant array of peasants pining for a ring from you.

From a courtship perspective there isn't really any dialogue the way it works, so your proposal might be literally grabbing some lady off the street, throwing her around while you fart violently in her face (literally), jamming a ring on her finger, and then dragging her off to whatever residence you happen to be using. For added romance, you can lure them outside to the wilderness and conduct your farting/relationship building in front of an evil looking demon door in order to impress it, and then literally bring your bride into your isolated pocket dimension/love nest from which they can never leave... not that they seem to mind...

That said, I suspect a lot of people doing the writing for this relationship stuff are a bunch of trolls out to mess with straight guys for lulz. I've noticed a general tendency for gay male relationships to be particularly easy to accidently trigger, where straight/lesbian options tend to take more effort. People playing rogues in say "Dragon Age: Origins" suddenly finding themselves in the middle of steamy gay sex with Zevran by surprise when they were just being nice to him are kind of legendary on the internet. There is of course the whole Skyrim thing you mentioned (your not the first one) though technically I suppose it's not more difficult, being the result of a poorly designed system that seems to have been thrown in as an afterthoughts just so you can have it. Of course the most infamous example of this comes from the old "Temple Of Elemental Evil" game where one of the guys you can recruit is a pirate dentist who was recruited by the local pirates for being "different" (the implication being he's like a seriel killer or something) but wants to leave and can only join you if you beat the captain, yadda, yadda. At any rate if you do this quest/dialogue the wrong way (or I guess for some the "right" way) you can wind up with the guy basically molesting you in thanks. I was like literally talking to him at one point, and the next I was surprised to find him basically giving my Monk a hummer.... (I dunno he brawled that pirate captain for this guy, and I guess that isolated monastery with all the other brothers had quite an effect on him...) that whole situation was famous for like 5 minutes years ago because a lot of people also hit it. Of course ToEE is mostly remembered for being a broken mess.

 

[chinangel]

I never played Fear Effect 2 but the advertising for the game was at least very suggestive of a lesbian relationship between two of the main characters, albeit in a very exploitative way.

they are lesbians, yes. But you're right: it's exploitative and done in the 'ermagerd lezbiens' kind of way. They are defined by their sexuality, not having their sexuality be a part of their identity.

 

[Therumancer]

In a way sort of Persona 3 Portable between FeMC and Mitsuru Kirijo. It doesn't really come out and say it, but it is sort of implied.

It's hard to tell with a lot of Japanese stuff because of the whole "Yuri" thing and how men are generally encouraged to be tight with their emotions, while girls are expected to be free with hem and unusually expressive, at least in fiction. Proclaiming love for another girl in an anime or something or even having a crush of sorts is not the same thing as being a lesbian, though for someone used to western conventions even in fictional portrayals that can be hard to pick up on. A lot of things that are "yuri" do go into full blown lesbian territory, but in other cases it's just a strong friendship despite the words/terms being used and you might for example see two girls "in love with each other" (as far as they say) spending all of their time chasing guys when it comes to actual romance (or attempts at it).

I have not played a P3 run through with a female main character (I might have to since I do have a PSP version of it) but maybe I will if I can find time in order to see what I think. To be honest I got the impression from what I read that the Female MC could romance any of the availible girls or guys in the game, giving her more options than the male lead. As far as her original characterization I never got the impression Mitsuru was a lesbian herself, though I do believe she had at least one lesbian admirer who made comments like how Mitsuru could run her over anytime and things like that, making it sound like a full blown, if extremely corny, crush. But that was an extremely minor thing, and honestly I never remember seeing Mitsuru doing much to imply preference either way... which I suppose leaves that door well open for her, and it wouldn't be a huge shocker.

Basically if the female MC can actually take Mitsuru as their final "other" in the end of the game, after maxing her social link and getting the relevant attributes, it would be fair to assume Mitsuru does go that way. To be honest though given the ending of the game we never get to see how any of these relationships would have truly developed.

 

[DementedSheep]

I can only think of one scene in Witcher 2 that's outright lesbomancy, although you're right about it being total fan service. I'm still not even sure what the point of that scene was other than as a setup for using the word lesbomancy.

Lesbomancy.

I wouldn't say fan service. Rather, it's a part of her character. Phillipa was a very open lesbian in the books as well, and made no attempt to hide it. In fact, it was quite the contrary. Being a sorceress, it also makes a certain kind of sense as to why she's playing the dominant role (they're rather bitchy by nature, even Triss).

So yeah, not exactly fan service in my mind since it wasn't added to get kids rockers off but because it was one of her defining traits as a character.

it is a trait of her character but the way its presented is very fanservicy.

Well see, here is the problem. If you present lesbians in the context of heroic fantasy there is no way it's not going to be like that. Your basically going to be dealing with characters who represent something close to a physical ideal, and if they are doing anything overtly sexual it can be called "fan service". Indeed it rapidly becomes a no win scenario because if you start making the lesbians not-particularly good looking you open the door to be yelled at for not making them as good looking as the straight women and perpetuating negative stereotypes that way by selectively ignoring genere tropes when it comes to them. If you decide to ignore the sexual stuff and simply go with innuendo or a few comments acknowledging the relationship, then it will be under attack for not receiving enough attention, especially if the game involves heterosexual couples that go beyond that.

As I mentioned in another post, this is one of the big reasons you see less done with lesbians for the most part than you do with gay men in a lot of media (though I won't say video games in particular). Since regular men are generally attracted to women making out, you can claim fan service, but they tend to be repelled by images of guys doing the same thing, so it works better as a political statement and as an attention getter, and can generally be defended as not being directed at the general audience for entertainment value and thus more "on topic" when it comes to gay rights so to speak.

Overall, I imagine lesbianism will remain a touchy subject in the media simply because it's more accepted from an entertainment standpoint, and harder to make an attention-getting political statement with. Any time it comes up in heroic fantasy like video games, your always going to have someone ready to scream "fan service" or imply it somehow doesn't count because straight guys are going to enjoy the scenery as much as gay women.

Well you could show a lesbian character by actually having them act like a couple or show it in dialogue or have intimate moments that aren't emphasizing the sex. Since I'd forgot about it but someone else mentioned it GW2 has a number of homosexual NPCs and you know they are without any sexual content, just as you know many of straight relationships without seeing sexual content.

It's not about whether they were physically attractive or not. I agree that tendency to call any lesbian character fan service (like people calling it that when the possibility of reboot Lara Croft being bi or les was brought up) is a bad one but not what I mean here nor did I say it would only be fan service for men and not lesbian woman. This not a case of two attractive characters who are in a relationship and then fanboys or girls imagining them doing sexy things. First time he goes to see them you get suggestive moaning that then turns out to just be a massage, then you walk in one of them spanking the other who is half naked and gives you a full view of her tits with a shot of Geralt making a dumb smug face and then you get the kissing scene while the dwarves snigger and make a joke about it being lesbomancy. When Geralt meets the girl getting spanked again he has a flashback of her half naked on the bed rather than one of the scenes where she had a shirt so you get to see her tits again and laugh at Geralt having his mind in the gutter. Its not adding depth or forwarding the plot. It is very obviously and unashamedly doing it for comedy and the sexy.

I mentioned it was fanservicy because I wasn't sure whether the op is looking for games exploring the relationship between two woman outside of the actual sex which it doesn't do much of.

 

[Roofstone]

Only series that I think SHOULD have more lesbian/gay relationships in is Fire Emblem. It doesn't make sense that I can't ship Chrom and Lon'qu together.

I myself always wanted Vaike and Chrom, their friendship has certain undertones on occasion.
Oh and maybe Henry and Chrom could've been worth a lark.

I also wouldn't mind a female avatar and panne, that could be cute.

OT: It has been said already, but I gotta say it again. Go for Loren The Amazon Princess.

It is a great little strategy rpg... thing. With gay options for both genders.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

There's always Skyrim. Of course calling the marriages in that game "relationships" is a bit of an oxymoron,

Please don't be offended, but the word you're looking for is "misnomer". An oxymoron is when you put contradicting elements together, like 'deafening silence' or 'burning cold'.

But your point is entirely accurate and fair; the marriage feature in Skyrim was weak. My Dovahkiin married Aela first playthru. The mighty Companion warrior, proud Nord Huntress and werewolf, following in the footsteps of her ancestors left Jorrvaskr to stay in Breezehome where she made me pies and sold metal ingots and common soul gems.