Bethesda is destroying the gay legacy of Fallout

Atomic Cowboy said:
The fact that this game pissed off the GLBT/Social Justice crowd, and this twerp in particular, is about the only positive thing you can say about it. Less than 1% of the population is gay; stop demanding that the other 99% bend over to make you feel welcome.
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Giving freedom for players to make their character whatever they want isn't "bending over" to make people "feel welcome", it's just creating more possibilities in how the narrative is presented in a simple way. Personally attacking that person is just shortsighted and so is arguing that the so-called "Social Justice" crowd is doing anything that harms you in this case.
 
Atomic Cowboy said:
The fact that this game pissed off the GLBT/Social Justice crowd, and this twerp in particular, is about the only positive thing you can say about it. Less than 1% of the population is gay; stop demanding that the other 99% bend over to make you feel welcome.
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You're one of those types that goes around posting things like "I wish the gays would stop shoving their agenda down my throat" and "The gays keep trying to make me swallow their big, long, hard list of demands" aren't you?

The ability to role play a character in any way you see fit is what role-playing games are (or were) about. This can apply to sexuality as to anything. But you already knew that.

Unless you think Zevran in Dragon Age is giving you funny feelings and slowly forcing you to become gay?
 
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Trannigan said:
You can be gay. Try actually playing this game.
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You can be bisexual, not gay.

But you already knew that.

In any case, this is just one more example of why having a voiced protagonist with a longer backstory is bad for Bethesda games because their uniqueness was in giving us a blank slate to build our own character, something that most other games do not allow us to do.

I wouldn't be surprised to learn Elder Scrolls VI has only one race to choose from and it comes with its own backstory because "previous games did not allow Bethesda to tell the story they wanted to tell" as I believe Todd Howard put it when explaining the reasoning behind the voiced protagonist with a longer backstory.
 
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Irwin John Finster said:
You can be bisexual, not gay.
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It was sort of weird when Dragon Age 2 made all of Hawke's (non-DLC) romanceable companions bisexual, but on closer examination it's really not all that weird that someone happens to have four bisexual friends. Fallout 4 is the first roleplaying game I can think of that dictates anything about the player character's sexual orientation, which is really weird. Really the only reason to start your game in a heterosexual marriage is so you can fridge the spouse and produce a kid that gets kidnapped. That, separate from the issue of sexual orientation, is pretty cliche and tired to begin with.

The whole intro to Fallout 4 is just a bad idea in every way. I guess the character creator is good, but the rest of it is not.
 
Trannigan said:
It fits with the 50s-esque setting IMO. Before the war it was probably a social taboo.
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Sure, but you could have gotten around this by just having the protagonist be single before the war (or just not comment on who the protagonist was before the war at all.) You could have had a cold open where you just wake up from cryogenic storage and that would have been fine. It's not like "find Shaun" was really all that compelling for most players anyway.
 
Trannigan said:
It fits with the 50s-esque setting IMO. Before the war it was probably a social taboo.
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And the game prevents you from being a character with this "social taboo." Thus, it is more limiting than previous games, which was the whole point of this thread which you have conveniently neglected.
 
Well it's not like gay people have never married somebody of the opposite sex before and had a kid, right?

Of course I don't know how they treat that relationship after you get thawed, but it's not like somebody in that situation would automatically end up not caring about them just because.
 
LiveOnTheEdge said:
Well it's not like gay people have never married somebody of the opposite sex before and had a kid, right?

Of course I don't know how they treat that relationship after you get thawed, but it's not like somebody in that situation would automatically end up not caring about them just because.
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I think though that this requires a really counter-textual reading of the game. If Bethesda were interested in enabling "you're gay, but you instead chose to marry someone of the opposite sex since that was expected of you" as a roleplaying choice, they should have included context for that roleplaying choice in dialogue options. Like, you would be extra careful to make sure that's an option, if you cared.
 
I'm just saying that people could still easily RP as gay and not bisexual if they wanted to, and have a somewhat real excuse for the spouse and kid.

And yeah, it's obviously something that Bethesda didn't account for, but people RP stuff all the time that devs don't account for or make easy.
 
Well of course you could roleplay that away but it just shows how shallow the game is. Might as well roleplay the that your spouse is the same sex and you adopted the child. If this is what you pay money for, to make everything up yourself due to the developer's shortcomings then what's the point?
 
LiveOnTheEdge said:
I'm just saying that people could still easily RP as gay and not bisexual if they wanted to, and have a somewhat real excuse for the spouse and kid.

And yeah, it's obviously something that Bethesda didn't account for, but people RP stuff all the time that devs don't account for or make easy.
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I understand what you're saying but I believe the major issue isn't just this but the fact that the protagonist in Fallout 4 is still more limited with regards to how you can imagine it being you and not Bethesda's character. That's what made the games special - it was easy to make these characters yours. Fallout 4 is a step in the direction of every other game out there which does not allow you to do this, and is a step away from Bethesda's well-established niche of providing fans with blank slate characters so we could feel that it truly was us saying and doing these things in the game world.
 
Irwin John Finster said:
LiveOnTheEdge said:
I'm just saying that people could still easily RP as gay and not bisexual if they wanted to, and have a somewhat real excuse for the spouse and kid.

And yeah, it's obviously something that Bethesda didn't account for, but people RP stuff all the time that devs don't account for or make easy.
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I understand what you're saying but I believe the major issue isn't just this but the fact that the protagonist in Fallout 4 is still more limited with regards to how you can imagine it being you and not Bethesda's character. That's what made the games special - it was easy to make these characters yours. Fallout 4 is a step in the direction of every other game out there which does not allow you to do this, and is a step away from Bethesda's well-established niche of providing fans with blank slate characters so we could feel that it truly was us saying and doing these things in the game world.
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And I'm not arguing against that, I was just saying that the people saying that the character could only be bisexual and not gay, if somebody wanted to play that way, were not really right in that regard. Of course there's a pretty limited starting point for somebody wanting to play a gay character. But it's still completely possible with a somewhat plausible explanation for the spouse and kid that's not too farfetched.
 
Normally I'd scoff at OP and his video (providing you made this OP), as more gender-politics crap in video games. But, you're absolutely correct. It's just another nail in the coffin for this 'role playing' game.
 
Irwin John Finster said:
Trannigan said:
You can be gay. Try actually playing this game.
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You can be bisexual, not gay.

But you already knew that.

In any case, this is just one more example of why having a voiced protagonist with a longer backstory is bad for Bethesda games because their uniqueness was in giving us a blank slate to build our own character, something that most other games do not allow us to do.

I wouldn't be surprised to learn Elder Scrolls VI has only one race to choose from and it comes with its own backstory because "previous games did not allow Bethesda to tell the story they wanted to tell" as I believe Todd Howard put it when explaining the reasoning behind the voiced protagonist with a longer backstory.
Click to expand...

Is it really bisexual though if your character stops being interested in one gender and is only attracted to the other? Liking both male and female at the same time is bisexual sure, but liking only the gender that's the same as your own is gay.

I'm getting the impression here from yours and others posts in this topic that the only way to be gay is to be solely attracted to the same gender as your own from birth. Which I don't really think is accurate..
 
Stone Cold Robert House said:
Giving freedom for players to make their character whatever they want isn't "bending over" to make people "feel welcome", it's just creating more possibilities in how the narrative is presented in a simple way.
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Any and all issues aside, I disagree with this, and do think this leads to servile and fawning software products ~that being generally bad gaming IMO; that being result of the 'Everyone is a winner!' mentality; that being why bother to play. It's like having your own virtual 'yes man' compliment and agree to everything you do or suggest. :irked:

Games are to accomplish the outcome within (or despite) limitation ~not 'go play in the sandbox, and get a trophy for showing up'.

**In the case of roleplaying, I see it the PC as 'working with what you have'; your character is married ex military ~they would act that way

... 'But I want to play a math prodigy who was ghoulified, and skilled in architecture, and rejected from military conscription, and is allergic to med-X'... That's sounds interesting, but it's not the game's fault for not supporting it; nor their obligation to ensure that PC is supported. Their game defines the PC as married ex military. [IE. the generic all-purpose hero]
 
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Well giving freedom and flexibility to make whatever character they like doesn't necessarily mean "and excel at anything anyway". I mean in Fallout 1 and 2 you could roleplay as a retard if you wanted and the game actually supported that and gave you the proper consequences and reactions for it.
 
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