Does anyone remember significant backlash for Arcade and Veronica?

I don't recall it being the case, but generally speaking, these kinds of outcries occur prior or at launch, which considering how their sexualities aren't exactly a big deal meant that people didn't find out for quite some time and by then nobody really cared.

I'm sure there're a few people who genuinely complain about characters' sexualities out of prejudice but usually, it's an issue about it being their only character trait. Veronica and Arcade were done rather nicely and Arcade in particular colours it with shades of his personality; he was secretive enough about it that I hadn't even realized he was gay until my second playthrough.

As for transsexuals, it's probably the same; it's more about making it just one facet of their identity rather than their entire identity. Kleo or whatever the robot is called in Goodneighbour was a shaky step in the right direction, in that she doesn't immediately blurt it out the moment you speak to her like I would have expected of Bethesda (not that I remember, anyway); I can also accept her reaction to being asked "what are you?" as being natural, so I'm content with her character overall. I'm not entirely confident that Bethesda didn't just package a minor character in some remote corner of the game as a transexual just to appease the LGBT crowd without displeasing their main demographic, but I'll let it slide for now.

Incidentally, "What are you?" is the most stupid question I've ever heard come out of my character. "I dunno Jess, looks to me like a mole rat on stilts. It's a robot, what the fuck did you think it was?"
 
Last edited:
I think the biggest reason why there wasn't any real backlash is because FNV didn't push it in players faces and make them deal with it.

In FNV you could stumble upon it, but at no time did the npcs just straight up tell you there orientation. They eluded to it through personal history which made it organic rather than: (here is some text now deal with it) method.

So this allowed players to completely ignore their "attributes" and play the game the way they wanted to.

Now if they went the other direction and pigeon holed the encounter straight into the plot and made it a necessity then there would be backlash because no one cares about some non existent npc and their sexual orientation.

New Vegas did it right, fairly organic npc's and a decent story that allowed the player to explore.
 
Arcade and veronica aren't the only gay characters in nv

Jimmy
Christine
Whoever asked for a ghoul prostitute

Just off the top if my head
 
There's characters with sexuality in Fallout 4? Good joke. From the godlike isometric point of view, the only sexuality is determinated from player's character, companions always was and will be just dolls.
And FNV really had homosexual characters, unlike the incident in OP or DA2. DA2 for example is ridden with faggots, not gays. Bid deal and big difference. It's just unpolite to throw such personal things in a face of stranger. A player who actually put an eye on a certain game is same that stranger too. Same with sexual deviations, no one asked for this.
 
Last edited:
I still think that New Vegas has too many gay characters- I mean, it's like every third important NPC drops a hint at being gay. And if I remember right, that's a thing that was coming up back in the release days occasionally.

That being said, generally this whole "issue" has been handled better in New Vegas than any other game I've played. Like people in here already wrote- the game is not shoveling it into your face all the time, which is a thing that e.g. Bioware loves to do. They are like "Quick! The player talked to this NPC for mere 2 minutes already! Let him finally say how much he is into his own sex!"
 
Lexx said:
I still think that New Vegas has too many gay characters- I mean, it's like every third important NPC drops a hint at being gay.
Click to expand...

Sorry, but that's bullshit. There's Arcade, Veronica and Christine, Cass, Major Knight, Corporal Betsy, Ignacio Rivas, the doctor in Forlorn Hope, the receptionist in Gomorrah, the guy you can kill as replacement meat in Beyond the Beef, and the prostitutes, of which only Jimmy and Joana imply homosexual tendencies.
And this is an inflated list considering these homosexual tendencies are implied and may just suggest a liking for any kind of sex without seeing it as their sexual "preference", Cass being a clear example of this.

So if you remove them, you end up with Veronica, Christine, Arcade, Betsy, Jimmy and Major Knight. Which is about right in my experience. 6-10 people out of a cast of well-over 300.
 
Brivoo said:
Major Knight's gay? How'd you find that out?
Click to expand...

Confirmed bachelor, same as any other situation with a gay character. You can flirt with him, but he says that behaviour is frowned upon by the other soldiers. Not sure if he meant the entire army or just the guys in the outpost.
 
I think the main thing about Arcade and Veronica is that their non-heterosexuality is very subtle and almost hidden without talking to them a lot/having certain perks. For example, if you don't have the Confirmed Bachelor perk, your only real hint at Arcade being gay is when you convince him to tell you about his past, which takes like 3 tries, in which case he utters the line "Now why hasn't some strapping young bachelor swiped this doctor off his feet? Because I'm boring."

Same with Veronica really. You wouldn't know she's a lesbian unless you delve into her dialogue and attempt to hit on her, in which case she'll tell you she's not interested and had a girlfriend once, who you can also learn more about. (and even meet in one of the DLCs)

Hell, I'm surprised no one mentions the fact Cass is bisexual. At least, it comes off that way. You can talk to her with Black Widow, Confirmed Bachelor, Lady Killer, and Le Chez Femme, and her reaction will be different every time. Her reaction to the lesbian perk however seems to indicate she's bisexual, as she basically says if she hits the bottle enough she might swing that way too.
 
There was no real backlash out side of very small communities mostly because A: They're treated like actual characters and not walking agents of the writer's agenda and B: Stuff like this is very much accepted in the mainstream. The issue most people had with Fallout 4 wasn't the addition of homo/bisexuality, it was that EVERY character was automatically bisexual and it came across as less of a deliberate attempt to have bisexual characters and more of Bethesda just being lazy and throwing it in because it's less work to just make everyone equally compatible for everyone. They don't even have to bother with "writing" more "dialog" to account for the character's gender.
 
Vergil said:
walking agents of the writer's agenda
Click to expand...

I would argue that gay characters in most video games (like Fallout 4), are less about agenda on the writer's part and more about pandering. Bethesda doesn't give two shits about representation. What it does care about is good press from other pandering morons like Jim Sterling.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top