That's very true - bigotry exists against pretty much every community on earth. In the Witcher open sexuality was well established so the lack of bigotry against "un-conventional" sexuality seems to make sense, but I never really got the same open impression from DA.
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This might sound to blunt but I think everyone interesting in game characters having sex should really quit the game, close the computer and just do it with their partner (or find a partner in the real life).
From 'no-sex talks' period we ended in talking too much of it - TV abuses it, activists are abusing it, political correctness gives birth to monsters and breastfeeding also ended up in the sexual picture. Looks like the world got insane for carring to much about what goes on in each bedroom but I believe we need this excess to find the middle way.
In gaming industry it's quite impossible to provide gender and sexual-orientation equality and a well-written character should not need to emphasize his/her sexual orientation through explicit content to justify the story.
My 50 cents.
From 'no-sex talks' period we ended in talking too much of it - TV abuses it, activists are abusing it, political correctness gives birth to monsters and breastfeeding also ended up in the sexual picture. Looks like the world got insane for carring to much about what goes on in each bedroom but I believe we need this excess to find the middle way.
In gaming industry it's quite impossible to provide gender and sexual-orientation equality and a well-written character should not need to emphasize his/her sexual orientation through explicit content to justify the story.
My 50 cents.
I'm not sure I get what you're arguing for, here. The last game featured two prominent homosexual characters whose sexual orientation was significant to their character, and were despised and ridiculed for it.
And the books too! Clearly neither CDPR or Andrzej Sapkowski care for that trope too much either... wait... what were you arguing for?
Equal opportunity bigotry. Your claim was that the nonhumans had been set up as if they, and the humans' hatred for them, were a mere plot device. It is not so. There are enough acts of oppression based on fear of those who are different in the two games so far, that someone could write a series of books about them. Oh, wait, somebody has.
If you want modern enlightened treatment of homosexuals, you're in the wrong game for it, by seven hundred years or more. This game is all about holding evil, whether it be monsters, black magic, abuse of power, or bigotry, up to the light, letting you see it for what it is, and letting you decide how to fight against it.
No, I said that WOULD be the case if that was the only conflict. I'm not asking anything or arguing against anyone. You're making shit up.
In real life, if you're a man who love women only or a woman who love men only, are you going to say one day "hey, let's try a man" ? No, especially not after 90 years of living. So Geralt neither.
This is, IMO, an issue of player choice/preference vs. developer vision. It does not do any game anything less than a disservice for the developer to circumvent their vision of how their story plays out. But there is much value when a developer allows the player to choose options in this interactive medium that are based on how the player personally feels (such as the case of love interests).
I'm never a fan of the public attempting to shame the developer into supporting wider arrays of choices, if the developer simply feels that this isn't the story they want to tell. You risk the chance of forming a disconnect between the game and the player, but you hold onto the integrity of the story and characters you're trying to "tell". As humans, we make very personal connections especially around topics like love, politics and religion. These are hot button topics, and though we'd love to see a game that caters exactly to our personal beliefs, and allows us a wide array of options that reflect many different views, I personally do not hold anything against the developer, but would instead simply urge that the developer simply not force choices on the user.
The game is rated as mature, but even that entails a wide scope of subjects.
I'm never a fan of the public attempting to shame the developer into supporting wider arrays of choices, if the developer simply feels that this isn't the story they want to tell. You risk the chance of forming a disconnect between the game and the player, but you hold onto the integrity of the story and characters you're trying to "tell". As humans, we make very personal connections especially around topics like love, politics and religion. These are hot button topics, and though we'd love to see a game that caters exactly to our personal beliefs, and allows us a wide array of options that reflect many different views, I personally do not hold anything against the developer, but would instead simply urge that the developer simply not force choices on the user.
The game is rated as mature, but even that entails a wide scope of subjects.
Just because the game has only shown Geralt with women does not mean that it shouldn't be possible for him to have relationships with men in the future. I know many people who have spent decades with a person or a couple of people of one gender but then ended up with someone of a different gender.
The whole "realism" argument is false because apart from it being set in a fantasy world, Witcher is set in a period that resembles the dark ages. Homosexuality was only really repressed under puritan ideas of the church much later. Dragon Age:Origins handled this well in so far as it acknowledged that royalty had to be a "heterosexual pairing" for the sake of inheritance etc. But that a lot of those rulers had partners on the side including homosexual partners. The ancient greek rulers were renown for their "servant boys..." and for witches and all other "deviants" of society sexuality was entirely fluid.
And this brings me to my next point, like it or not CD Project's main competitor is Bioware in terms of massive RPG's with detailed story. Mass Effect 3 opened up to equal relationship and guess what, after 2 games without it having Shepard have the ability to have relations with a male did not make the character any less manly or appear out of character. And they are also going to have homosexual love interests in DA:I.
Also for all the discussion about Geralt being "set," Witcher 2 allowed for a lot more choices than either Dragon Age: Origins or Mass Effect, so it seems there is a large spectrum on Geralt's personal and moral decisions, so why exclude this one which would clearly make people feel much more connected to "their" Geralt?
The whole "realism" argument is false because apart from it being set in a fantasy world, Witcher is set in a period that resembles the dark ages. Homosexuality was only really repressed under puritan ideas of the church much later. Dragon Age:Origins handled this well in so far as it acknowledged that royalty had to be a "heterosexual pairing" for the sake of inheritance etc. But that a lot of those rulers had partners on the side including homosexual partners. The ancient greek rulers were renown for their "servant boys..." and for witches and all other "deviants" of society sexuality was entirely fluid.
And this brings me to my next point, like it or not CD Project's main competitor is Bioware in terms of massive RPG's with detailed story. Mass Effect 3 opened up to equal relationship and guess what, after 2 games without it having Shepard have the ability to have relations with a male did not make the character any less manly or appear out of character. And they are also going to have homosexual love interests in DA:I.
Also for all the discussion about Geralt being "set," Witcher 2 allowed for a lot more choices than either Dragon Age: Origins or Mass Effect, so it seems there is a large spectrum on Geralt's personal and moral decisions, so why exclude this one which would clearly make people feel much more connected to "their" Geralt?
Cyberpunk 2077 will be the game that CDPR makes that will give that kind of flexibility in character preferences.
I think that Geralt suddenly becoming gay would be in direct conflict with the developers' vision in a game known to have "Searching for his lost love, Yennefer" as a major part of the story. That means that a long-term gay love affair is pretty much out of the question, and making such a drastic change to an established character just for a quick encounter that he has during his travels doesn't really seem to make any kind of sense.
I'm capable of becoming connected to Geralt despite being a straight female. I wouldn't dream of asking the developers to give him a sex-change just because of my own sexual preferences. Role-play means the ability to play a role, not to turn a character into yourself. The comparisons with Bioware really don't hold water here. Geralt is a known character from a series of books, with a history.
I think that Geralt suddenly becoming gay would be in direct conflict with the developers' vision in a game known to have "Searching for his lost love, Yennefer" as a major part of the story. That means that a long-term gay love affair is pretty much out of the question, and making such a drastic change to an established character just for a quick encounter that he has during his travels doesn't really seem to make any kind of sense.
I'm capable of becoming connected to Geralt despite being a straight female. I wouldn't dream of asking the developers to give him a sex-change just because of my own sexual preferences. Role-play means the ability to play a role, not to turn a character into yourself. The comparisons with Bioware really don't hold water here. Geralt is a known character from a series of books, with a history.
Because you know, in the end, it is not really "their" Geralt. It's not even CDPR's Geralt. It's Sapkowski's Geralt first and he's been like that throughout the course of 9 books now. And CDPR shows something called RESPECT for the original artist's work, not changing major traits of main character at a whim of "teh internetz". That's Bioware's domain, it shows in their "we asked the fans how they want the game to be" statements and I hope it stays that way.
So, it's not really about realism, but staying true to the piece of art that the Witcher games wouldn't even exist without in the first place.
Well, if you can't sufficiently connect with heterosexual protagonist, Bioware will be a better choice.
Listen, what's up with all this homo-mess concerning established characters? Would it make any sense for James Bond, for example, to get tired of fucking babes, and decide to fuck dudes instead? Or for Jamie Lannister to decide to ditch Cersei and start fucking ser Loras Tyrell?
I think these crazy suggestions come from people who simply did not read the books, and did not know what these characters are. For them they are just names in a up-coming AAA RPG, and thus they feel compelled to ask for pretty drastic character changes.
In general, let's keep our fucking preferences to ourselves. shivasi is right, people who require any fucking because without it they can't connect, should just go, connect and fuck in RL.
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So let me get this straight, whether Geralt sides with the Scoia'tael or the Blue Stripes, (i.e. his overall social political outlook) is less crucial to who he is than whether he has sex with men or women or both? The games allows for some pretty major departures from the source material... (which is great, it wouldn't be much of a Western RPG series if that wasn't the case) so for you to raise sexual acts as one of the only set character traits over who he kills, lets live etc. shows a strange elevation of that aspect above all others. Why is it so important to the character that they only have sex with females?
And to anser Viv Azardas as well... would it make sense for James Bond to fuck dudes? Probably not, but then when you play James Bond games there is generally only one ending and the character can only act as James Bond would... if the James Bond franchise was to create an RPG where suddenly Bond could defect and join the Soviets, I would expect a much looser affiliation to the "authentic bond"
First of all, Geralt did not convert into scoia'tael ideas because Saskia is fighting not for the elves. Geralt chooses one path or another because it seems both of them will bring him closer to finding Letho, nothing else. The rest is just a matter of situation he finds himself in, not any political affiliation. In the books Geralt fights and kills nilfgaardians, temerians, redanian, aederians, and other folks whenever they are on his way, as well as lots of scoia'tael. He does what he finds expedient and leading to his goal, but he is not fighting for any ideology.
Second, let's not confuse apples with oranges. People can change their views on lots of matters based on good reasons, be that political affiliation, religious conviction, and such. People do not change their sexual preferences based on reasons. You can't convince any heterosexual guy or girl to change their orientation by giving them any reasons. If people could get it up any time they come up with good reasons for doing it, and for anyone, we sure wouldn't need Viagra sold on every damn corner.
Some people are adventurous and feel like experimenting through their entire lives, other like me are quite happy with ladies, and don't feel any appeal of naked male bodies. Geralt as a character falls into the second category, and he is quite happy with his sorceresses lady-friends. For him, to start experimenting with guys while looking for Yen and Ciri, who are essentially his family ... well, it wouldn't be an amnesia, but a brain damage.
Second, let's not confuse apples with oranges. People can change their views on lots of matters based on good reasons, be that political affiliation, religious conviction, and such. People do not change their sexual preferences based on reasons. You can't convince any heterosexual guy or girl to change their orientation by giving them any reasons. If people could get it up any time they come up with good reasons for doing it, and for anyone, we sure wouldn't need Viagra sold on every damn corner.
Some people are adventurous and feel like experimenting through their entire lives, other like me are quite happy with ladies, and don't feel any appeal of naked male bodies. Geralt as a character falls into the second category, and he is quite happy with his sorceresses lady-friends. For him, to start experimenting with guys while looking for Yen and Ciri, who are essentially his family ... well, it wouldn't be an amnesia, but a brain damage.
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So according to your reasoning, if I ever get divorced I should think about getting together with men. Because choice. And reason.
And Witcher games are not really Western RPGs - whatever that term means. And I sincerely hope they stay away from it.
It's not about what's "important", and you're not helping your case with these not-so-subtle accusations of homophobia towards everyone who disagrees with you.
To address the actual point you're making under the parts you could've spared everyone with - yes, Geralt can "side with" the Scoia'tael or the Blue Stripes, and yes, that's a departure from the Witcher's Path. Many people have actually pointed out that it's a bit of an issue that the actual Witcher's Path doesn't exist anymore in TW2, and you're forced to side with one faction or the other. However, Geralt doesn't really side with either one of them so much as he just decides to go along with either Iorveth or Roche because it's convenient for him; he has his own motives. He doesn't ever completely side with anyone but himself and his friends.
I do think you're right in that something that isn't entirely consistent with Witcher lore has been made possible in both games for the sake of having story options, i.e. a gameplay feature that CDPR wanted to include. But it's a small tweak that allows them to craft a much more interesting game, in terms of its overall structure, for everyone who plays it. Including homosexual "romance options" would be a major tweak to the character from which the game only benefits in a relatively inconsequential way (the romance subplots are, thankfully, pretty unimportant in these games compared to other choices you make.) Why is it a bigger tweak? Neither one of us has the statistics to back anything up here, but I think someone throwing in his lot with a political cause he doesn't really care about because it serves his own personal motives probably happens a lot more often than people having sex with someone of a gender they thought they weren't interested in - though both do of course happen, and off the top of my head, I can think of at least two people I know who have done the latter.
So in other words, making it possible for Geralt to stray from the purest version of the Witcher's Path (as I understand it) is a smaller change that the games benefit from in a major way, while homosexual romance options would be a more fundamental change to the character that yield very little actual benefit because the "romance options" are an unimportant part of the games. They're not dating sims.
Or to put it another way, no, not every videogame protagonist needs to or should be a stubbly, gruff hetero macho-man, but they also don't all need to be promiscuous bisexuals. And I also don't quite understand why you're barking up this particular tree (you have five posts; did you join here for the sole purpose of demanding homosexual romance options in TW3?) - compared to most other videogame franchises I can think of, the Witcher games make a very clear point of acknowledging the existence of homosexuality and trying to treat it intelligently and in a way that befits their setting (although not always successfully so, in my opinion, but that's an argument for another thread) There are eleventy billion military shooters out there in whose world homosexuality flat-out doesn't exist, and instead you're mad because only some of the NPCs in the Witcher games are gay?
Allowing players to be homosexual or not never made an excellent game, and it's not something which fits with the Witcher Universe. There's no mention of such behaviors in the books nor in previous games. Adding that to the witcher 3 would be against Andrzej Sapkowski's vision, and against CDPR's vision too. Plus, it's not this kind of things that will make the game better. There are some things we know for sure about Geralt : he can't stay watching people suffering without act, he's a man of honor, and those won't change. His beliefs won't change, and his preferences neither. It's part of the essence of the game, we're offered to play Geralt of Rivia, the witcher, the white wolf, who is etherosexual. If you want to play homosexual, don't play the witcher, because Geralt isn't homosexual and the story / universe doesn't speak about it, it's not about sexual preferences. I don't understand why people want to add something that doesn't have anything to do with the books nor games. One of the reasons why CDPR succeeded with the video games is that they portrayed a very similar character than the one described in the books, and decided to make them happen after the book story so they could have freedom and not tell the same story, with a lot of care for matching the universe and general "mood" of the books. It's as if you would like Geralt to kill Dandelion, or betray Yennefer or Ciri, it wouldn't fit with the character at all. It's the very same debate than if you want the witcher to be a woman, as some other games offer to choose gender : Geralt is not a woman, nor a dwarf or elf, he's a man. Don't try to make the witcher games look like others, it's the adventures of Geralt of Rivia not Geraltine of Rivia
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