Great post. In general, it sounds to me as though Bioware is fully committed to a particularly strong level of audience capture - by far the most vocal and consistent group of supporters are the sort of social-discourse-obsessed fanfic writers who will carry water for any depiction so long as it's sufficiently insulting or baffling to someone lacking the proper interesting-identity bona fides. And the deeper the dependency grows, the less nuance or even moderation is tolerated. Once you aim to appeal to the most confrontational and biased player base, it's hard to create well-rounded characters, develop believable relationships, or tell a good story, which is supposed to be the goal of these character-driven RPGs in the first place.
And as I've said before, I think one of the issues is the fact that big-budget RPGs pull double duty in the West to take the place of dating sims, with more and more focus spent on who can be romanced, and how 'satisfying' that romance is for the players and fanfic community. So when Taash, for example, throws out whatever initial character traits they had to be open to a romance with the player whatever their gender expression happens to be, it's probably less a specific instance of bad writing and more a standing order that all companions have to be DtF any player character, otherwise someone's going to feel left out and that's a bigger threat to the audience than the loss of character development that prevents them from wanting to knock boots with their avatar. At least Taash appears to be extremely consistent in their intolerance of necromancy!
While I'd happily read your inevitable tirade about Solas when it drops, I'd like to suggest a more dedicated look at media use of the monstrous-feminine, if only as an excuse to discuss further how good SHODAN is.
Thanks for reading! I very much agree with the first part, and it's well-said - wish you could quote and restack parts of comments on here. It does just seem like Bioware completely lost touch with why people even like RPGs in the first place, i.e. to experience an adventure in another world where your choices feel meaningful. Games like BG3 and KCD2 are showing what amazing things you can do with this medium with current technology, meanwhile the best innovation Bioware's got is the ability to change your pronouns at any time (which doesn't even work half the time, because it's glitchy AF; my sister had to restart because she was getting misgendered after messing around with the character creator, which is the most ironic thing I have ever heard of).
Re. Bioware's tendency to dating sim-ification, it's something they have kind of flip-flopped back and forth on - in Origins, characters had specific orientations, DA2 made everyone bi, then Inquisition went the other way again, which was actually quite good in that characters felt more like real people with specific, immutable traits, and it also informed characterisation in quite important ways. E.g., Dorian was a much better and more nuanced depiction of a gay character who grew up in a homophobic environment and had ongoing issues with his family, and Cassandra's masculine-presenting exterior was contradicted by the clarification that she is in fact a straight woman who loves romantic fiction and wants to be courted in terms of traditional 'wooing' if she is to be courted at all, making her an interesting nonconforming woman who had both 'masculine' and 'feminine' traits. Some other studios still favour this approach, notably Owlcat, and I feel it makes for more realistic characters who don't just feel like objects for the player to fantasise about.
A monstrous-feminine post could definitely be an interesting possibility! It's kind of a difficult topic insofar as, while these tropes are incredibly common in all kinds of media, it's hard to distinguish when they are being used to misogynistic effect, and when they are merely aesthetic. I'd classify SHODAN as the latter, on the basis that I love this villain, and also because the game isn't trying to tell me what gender is, and what men and women can and cannot be. Idk if I'll actually write about Solas any time soon, as I say I'd need to replay Inquisition for that, and it's a very dated game, not to mention very unsatisfying in the context of Veilguard.
Great post. In general, it sounds to me as though Bioware is fully committed to a particularly strong level of audience capture - by far the most vocal and consistent group of supporters are the sort of social-discourse-obsessed fanfic writers who will carry water for any depiction so long as it's sufficiently insulting or baffling to someone lacking the proper interesting-identity bona fides. And the deeper the dependency grows, the less nuance or even moderation is tolerated. Once you aim to appeal to the most confrontational and biased player base, it's hard to create well-rounded characters, develop believable relationships, or tell a good story, which is supposed to be the goal of these character-driven RPGs in the first place.
And as I've said before, I think one of the issues is the fact that big-budget RPGs pull double duty in the West to take the place of dating sims, with more and more focus spent on who can be romanced, and how 'satisfying' that romance is for the players and fanfic community. So when Taash, for example, throws out whatever initial character traits they had to be open to a romance with the player whatever their gender expression happens to be, it's probably less a specific instance of bad writing and more a standing order that all companions have to be DtF any player character, otherwise someone's going to feel left out and that's a bigger threat to the audience than the loss of character development that prevents them from wanting to knock boots with their avatar. At least Taash appears to be extremely consistent in their intolerance of necromancy!
While I'd happily read your inevitable tirade about Solas when it drops, I'd like to suggest a more dedicated look at media use of the monstrous-feminine, if only as an excuse to discuss further how good SHODAN is.
Thanks for reading! I very much agree with the first part, and it's well-said - wish you could quote and restack parts of comments on here. It does just seem like Bioware completely lost touch with why people even like RPGs in the first place, i.e. to experience an adventure in another world where your choices feel meaningful. Games like BG3 and KCD2 are showing what amazing things you can do with this medium with current technology, meanwhile the best innovation Bioware's got is the ability to change your pronouns at any time (which doesn't even work half the time, because it's glitchy AF; my sister had to restart because she was getting misgendered after messing around with the character creator, which is the most ironic thing I have ever heard of).
Re. Bioware's tendency to dating sim-ification, it's something they have kind of flip-flopped back and forth on - in Origins, characters had specific orientations, DA2 made everyone bi, then Inquisition went the other way again, which was actually quite good in that characters felt more like real people with specific, immutable traits, and it also informed characterisation in quite important ways. E.g., Dorian was a much better and more nuanced depiction of a gay character who grew up in a homophobic environment and had ongoing issues with his family, and Cassandra's masculine-presenting exterior was contradicted by the clarification that she is in fact a straight woman who loves romantic fiction and wants to be courted in terms of traditional 'wooing' if she is to be courted at all, making her an interesting nonconforming woman who had both 'masculine' and 'feminine' traits. Some other studios still favour this approach, notably Owlcat, and I feel it makes for more realistic characters who don't just feel like objects for the player to fantasise about.
A monstrous-feminine post could definitely be an interesting possibility! It's kind of a difficult topic insofar as, while these tropes are incredibly common in all kinds of media, it's hard to distinguish when they are being used to misogynistic effect, and when they are merely aesthetic. I'd classify SHODAN as the latter, on the basis that I love this villain, and also because the game isn't trying to tell me what gender is, and what men and women can and cannot be. Idk if I'll actually write about Solas any time soon, as I say I'd need to replay Inquisition for that, and it's a very dated game, not to mention very unsatisfying in the context of Veilguard.