Shadowcat on 27/3/2011 at 13:46

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There was a veil?

Jason Moyer on 27/3/2011 at 15:44

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Hot chicks getting it on is not offensive, dude. It's only bad when there are penii and poopholes and stuff.

june gloom on 27/3/2011 at 18:53

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Oh, just by the way, Awful Person has (http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/304/index/6661775&lf=8) replied to Gaider's post. (Scroll down to where it says EDIT)

It's even douchier than the original post, and makes Ladron look positively progressive.

DDL on 27/3/2011 at 19:21

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I always just assumed everyone in thedas had decided to cope with the constant OMG GRIMDARK nature of the world by just fucking everything they could find, whenever possible.

"O NOES MY FAMILY! *sob* C'mere, dog.."

demagogue on 28/3/2011 at 01:55

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Well I'd want to separate specific influences of game devs and general things going on in the culture and what's in the air. The general thing I was thinking about in the above posts on Japanese culture and media (not just jRPGs, but a lot of games, anime, tv, manga, fashion, music, etc, in Japan...) can be captured by the term herbivore culture, which can cover everything from men's effeminate fashion to the popularity of cosplay, crossdressing, and dickgirls on the otaku end. I'll get back to it in a second.

On the specific influence, though, I don't know where Dragon Age got its direct inspiration from and am admittedly pulling assumptions out of my ass there. It very well could have had nothing to do with jRPGs or Japanese games. But to me it's familiar as the basic template of Japanese dating-sims, which is also the template that jRPGs and anime fall back on, where you have a circle of characters and they write a path to be romantic with all of them if you want to swing that way (or throw in a few lines to suggest a slash-fiction tangent). And if a game is going to have romantic encounters, I'd imagine they'd play other games that did it, which are dominated by the influence of Japanese dating sims, and they'd run into that template.

But this begs the question why the androgyny and gender bending things got mainstreamed into Japanese games and anime to begin with. So for that, there's this article on herbivore culture, or an entire generation of effeminate guys: (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/japans-generation-xx-1704155.html) Generation XX. How that culture is feeding back into the West is another story, but my new theory here is that it just came in through the dating sim template.

Anyway you're right it's an artistic trend too, sometimes just gender bending (like the protag in Metroid ending up female), and the protagonists are usually still straight, if effeminate (Final Fantasy), and a lot of times the trope is the other guy has a secret crush on the protagonist that isn't reciprocated (Haruhi, Last Exile). But even when you can have sex with them, in the dating sim line that still doesn't mean it's that "gay" either (Fate, Brave Soul). Before we get back to Dragon Age, in the dating sim and anime line it's more about androgyny and bisexuality, guys that look like girls (or better yet dickgirls), that are still largely targeting straight guys that wanted to play a game with sex in it ... under the herbivore or otaku culture, guys that don't want to go out drinking with their friends or spend a lot of money, or bother with a real girlfriend so stay home to play a video game with sex in it, with girls with big boobs, animal looking girls, and girls with penises or guys that might pass as girls, and think, well, why the fuck not; I've fapped to crazier than this and vanilla girls won't cut it anymore. (Edit: Also I don't know that effeminacy is the most attractive to gay guys either if you were specifically targeting them. It's not buff guys you at least think of from the stereotypes. But I don't know what's attractive to gay guys, not being one, so can't really say this is evidence. I'm sure it's for gay guys also, but the fact that straight guys can lean in that direction in private is how it make sense from a marketing perspective I think.)

But if you read the article on herbivore culture above, especially the way that the marketing experts talk when designing products targeting that demographic (which is also the big gamer demographic, 20-35 males, straight and gay; also girls can get into it which is another big pool), you can see how guy encounters got pulled into the dating sim template, which then some jRPGs and anime caught on to. So my theory is when these devs started looking into ways to do romantic encounters in games, they started playing some dating sims or jRPGs like Brave Soul that did it, and it was more commonplace to have guy encounters too, so they ran with it. I don't think they were reading as much into it as the Japanese devs probably were. The J-devs probably knew exactly who their target audience was and knew they were targeting straight herbivore guys that would rather spend money on a sex game full of big-boobed girls and girl-looking guys than on a real girlfriend, then getting gay guys and girls in the deal. I could imagine Western devs just thinking it's the democratic or affirmative-action thing to do throw a bone to gay encounters too, and it worked out okay for Japanese games so why not.

Again, I'll admit I don't know any specific line of influence though. I'm familiar with herbivore culture in Japan because it's everywhere these days, but as for a line to Dragon Age, I don't know. Just a guess.

Edit: Sorry the response ended up so long...