Up until Krem (whom I... didn't like, mostly because of how artificial the inclusion felt like, and how very "look at this here character, we are inclusive, see? SEE?!" the dialogue with Iron Bull felt even back when I played Inquisition for the first - and only, if you don't count an abandoned run a few years later because I simply got bored with the game - time when still being mostly out of touch with the concept (2014)) I think most if not all of such Bioware characters were there mostly for humorous purposes (there was a female-looking elven courtesan both in DA:O and DA2 who had a surprisingly... masculine voice, if memory serves). Was that meant to be inclusive, or were they just genuinely doing it for the heck of it? Either way, it never came off as something other than a bit of - perhaps somewhat crude - but humour, and I never for a moment thought it to be anything more than that. Same with Mizhena - repeating myself here - whom I've read as a "lady raised as a man by coercive parents" and only learned about the intended idea behind the character a few years later.

They could have just as easily written Krem as a tough mercenary lady, though, and the character would have worked just as well if not better (if they meant to address how apparently sexist and restrictive the Tevinter Imperium is, even though just a game ago they've portrayed the magisters as hedonistic and hardly discriminating with the Fenris questline. DA:I was a trainwreck in world-building terms - and a trainwreck in general, honestly...). Jennifer Hale tried to do her best boyish voice, but you could still hear her usual tone through the effort. Wasn't she also voicing Mizhena, now that I am touching that? Beamdog did get Mark Meer on board for Baeloth (who was about as flat a character as a cardboard sheet, but had his moments), that much I do remember.

I do think it's somewhat unfair to compare character creation options with accessibility features - not having some of the former would reasonably alienate fewer people than how many having the latter will let actually play the game in the first place. It's fluff versus functionality and user experience. I may come off as cruel here, but I don't think that the inability to play an alternate identity character while being able to still play the game is equal to not being able to play the game at all. One enables somebody who would otherwise not be able to experience the game in the first place to experience it and is hardly something that will cause an opinion war (I highly doubt that the needs of disabled people are in any way controversial in nature, although seeing how many would rather - again - make them "seen" or "represented" rather than work on making better conditions for them both in real life and in interactive experiences - also raises questions as to the degree of absurdity the world's come to lately) and does not affect the immersion/world-building aspects (unless you argue that something like an alternate colour pallete or larger fonts defy canon in some way...), while the other is a vanity feature which does not ultimately accomplish the supposed idea behind it and causes a lot of inconsistencies with the writing and the interactions (overbearingly presented in the posts above).

Sure, people would go all "it's just a video game/a fantasy setting with magic, chill / how can you draw the line at one point but not that". I guess obnoxious nerds such as myself to whom games a less of a way of escapism and more of a chance to experience interactive fiction in a cohesive, believable setting while playing around with the rules and tools they present (something that RPGs are supposed to try to be, no?) and who have a hard time projecting the more modern (post-modern, even) concepts onto a fantasy setting are gonna be getting the short end of the stick for a while, until a cultural value crisis hits the West or something. Which kinda sucks, because I loathe JRPGs.

Last edited by Brainer; 04/01/23 01:35 PM.