Nobody who wants this gimmick has answered that in a plain way, so it’s difficult to take seriously any argument for it as anything other than gratuitous wish-fulfillment.
[...]
All I’m going to get, I know, is emotive language as people who do want it dance around giving, no pun intended, a straight answer
Serious and simple answers have been given, you've just ignored them.
Why should I repeat them again, and again, for someone whose ears are closed? Will you turn around and say "Oh, I see, I guess that does make some sense after all, I can see the justification at least, though I still don't agree, yeah."
Let me ask you instead: what sort of serious answer would you accept? If you consider yourself to be having rational discussion, then there must be a scenario where the answer you're seeking is acceptable to you, and would lead you to revise your position. So, in your mind, what sort of answer would do that? If
No answer would do that, then you are not engaging in rational discussion.
I'll try one more time:
- Roleplaying games are generally about investment and emotional attachment to the characters presented in the course of the story.
- Romance and romance options are a natural part of this, and a common desire in such game spaces - it's not wish-fulfilment any more than playing a video game itself is wish-fulfilment. It's just a natural part of this fictional game space experience, and is highly desired by many.
- For in-game romances to be satisfying, players need to be able to choose to pursue characters that they, or their player character, find desirable
To pursue. (this is a problem in the current game because most of our companions are horrible people that I wouldn't choose to bed in any circumstance... but for the sake of discussion, they are the options we currently have)
- For this to be done to an acceptable level, options need to exist for a broad spectrum of tastes, so that a majority of players who do wish to follow romance paths can find some romance option that suites the character they are playing, or their own tastes, depending on the player.
- Having only a few options, with restricted access, is thereby never satisfying to the audience that is interested in romance as apart of the emotional engagement with their roleplaying game.
- Having a broad spectrum of options that are each housed in individual characters requires a broad spectrum of companion characters to achieve - something that this game currently cannot, and will not, ever achieve. This is a problem faced by many games in the genre. They cannot pitch a broad enough spectrum to be satisfying.
- The alternative is to loosen the restrictions on the characters that you do have, making their personalities persuable by any player character; Rather than having to pitch a witty scholar archetype for males-who-like-males, and one for females-who-like-females, and one for males-who-like-females, and one for females-who-like-males, you now only have to pitch one female and one male option to achieve the same effect. If you're really cutting down the character options available, it means you only have to pitch one witty scholar archetype, and have them be pursuable by any player character who acts in a way they like. It's not a great fix, but it's a resource solution to a resource problem.
Is Larian's writing terrible? Yes, it is!
Is the party night badly handled? You bet it is!
Is the whole thing a right debacle? It certainly is right now!
Is the root of this problem in playerexual characters? No, it's not.
so what makes these characters so ‘sexy’ that anyone would desire them to begin with?
In the current writing, not much. I don't care for most of the companions at all. They're entirely undesirable to me, for the most part.
Even if they were all charismatic and fascinating people, they remain pixels – they remain fake. You can bring in your argument again about the ‘fantasy’ of it all, which is fine, but I merely expressed curiosity as to why people want the feature – yet all I get is cagey defensiveness.
It's a thing called Roleplay - and emotional investment is part of it. Getting attached to characters, and allowing yourself to experience feelings for and about them, is a part of that... so naturally, romance is also often a desired part of that. There's no defensiveness here - your answer as to why people want romance in a game about roleplaying is that romance is a commonly desirable aspect of developing emotional investment in the characters of a story, especially when you are playing an active party in that story as one of them.
If someone at least said, ‘Well, because of life circumstances I can’t date other humans in real life, so this provides an escapist substitute, even if it’s half-assed and not entirely convincing’ then I could buy into it.
You are missing the point entirely. If you snoop around the forum you'll be aware of my own relationship status as I've mentioned where relevant here and there, where it's come up - this is fantasy, and fiction - it's not about real life, or being a surrogate for real life in any way.
Spoilering the rest since it's getting off topic:
Are you male? Have you read anything I said about how straight men tend to react to being ‘propositioned’ by other men? It can invoke quite a reaction, let me tell you.
Let those males deal with their fragile masculinity and sexual insecurity as they see fit - the game should not pander to or accommodate such unhealthy attitudes and behaviours.
My sex is irrelevant - I've made it clear enough already, but the way you talk you don't feel like the sort of person I'd naturally volunteer that information to, one to one.
Are you saying here that an individual getting hurt, offended and reacting in strong and often violently negative ways when someone asks them if they're interested in sex is... okay? That that's right? Because it isn't. Is your sense of masculinity so incredibly fragile and delicate that you have to react viscerally negatively when someone asks if you'd be interested in them?
If a male acts violently or in aggressively negative ways to another male asking if they're interested, one of these people is at fault; one of these people has behaved poorly; one of these people is being unhealthy and should get some assistance growing as a person, and their poor behaviour should not be accommodated - it's not the person asking. There's nothing wrong with asking. You are, in fact, sounding terribly homophobic at this point. It sounds like you played a male character, had Wyll and/or Gale, whom you *Assumed* were straight, suggest to your character that they were interested... and had some kind of visceral negative reaction to the concept of male-male intimacy so bad that you had to talk about it. That's not healthy. Get help.
It doesn’t add up for me, because he never gives that impression – he just ‘flips’ because...because why? What’s the draw here for people who are into this?
Once again: Player makes assumption about character's sexuality; gets offended when it isn't as they expect; blames character for their own assumptions. ((Fault exists between chair and keyboard))
He doesn't flip. He
reveals something about himself that you didn't know before, because before now it
had not come up. Now it
has, and now you
know; gale is bisexual, in this iteration of the world, and is open to male company as well, when the fancy takes him. What is the problem? Is it that he didn't
ACT gay-enough to alert your
gaydar and let you passively judge him and keep him at arm's length? Tough. Life's not actually like that. People's sexualities aren't dependant upon or defined by their external behaviour. Why is it such a problem for you that Gale asked your character if he was interested in some wine and romance? Why does that upset you to the point of vilifying it? That's not healthy.
Interesting also, that you're talking about Wyll and Gale... but not about Shadowheart and Lae'zel, who are just as more or less straight-coded written as those two are... it doesn't bother you that they're both okay with other women and might proposition your female character? Not in the same way it bothers you that Gale and Wyll might proposition your male one, it seems. Why is that?
You talk about negative male reactions to being propositioned, as though that's somehow defensible and should be taken into consideration - it shouldn't, by the way, it's not a healthy reaction and not one that should be catered to, ever - I wonder if you have just as strong reactions about women who are frequently expected to be okay with 'experimenting' with other girls, or kissing other girls, usually for the gratification or enjoyment of male friends, for fun and sport... and they're just
Expected to be okay with that, even if they're known to be straight... That happens quite a lot, but the women involved generally don't act incredibly offended, hurt, affronted, or get violent or angry at the proposition (honestly when it's set as an expectation despite knowledge to the contrary, that
is grounds for getting annoyed, but one who does is usually treated as the problematic person, not the one(s) doing the pressuring and expecting)... So why is okay for males to do so just at the simplest first point of being asked if they're open to it? Why is that something we should consider and be sensitive to? Here's a hint: It's not.
I’m not saying it’s going to erode the social fabric of the human race. But I wouldn’t want my impressionable young kid to be exposed to it, let’s put it that way.
Sorry, but that really does taste like homophobia... you don't want you kid exposed to an environment where it's okay for one male to ask another if they're interested, openly and without shame or fear of reprisal, and that being treated by everyone else as being a normal and acceptable thing that a person may ask, safely and without judgement. Yikes, can't show them that, can we?
