@Anska: Well, my fault. To take a man, it looks more like a prank, than sexual violence toward women ;-) Then there won't be such a big outcry. Smart move, hahaha. Yes, poor Gale, poor homosexual men. But also the resolution was so bad that you couldn't see much other than the scared face.
And if you put in the middle-aged, white guy it becomes "palatable" - it's sad. I also wish they would have just stuck to cute promo - besides the whole issue discussed for the kisses in-game.
Originally Posted by Gray Ghost
Tav is just a generic entity meant to provide generic feedback to the numerous unique and complex characters that populate the world. And the generic response to that situation is fear and discomfort.
I have thought about this in regards to player dialogue more often, because I feel that Astarion's romance is one of the "worst offenders" in this regard. The player dialogue in his story gets more and more neutral as the story progresses with occasional dips into moralising. This makes it more suitable to a wider variety of players but it also takes away from the emotional connectivity with the story because one's own character has less personality and is less involved. They did another approach with Karlach and Gale's romances. Karlach herself is written as a hormonal teen and the player character in her romance seems to overall have the same juvenile eagerness, which - I assume - works well if your PC is younger but creates a horrible disconnect, if you have an older, more sophisticated PC (for me it feels like taking advantage of the kid my character is supposed to babysit). With Gale, who has a lot of comedy and wit in his text, the dialogue is written much more like a script of two people engaging in friendly banter. I really enjoy this because it creates a wonderful story in which both characters feel important - but it does also impose a lot of personality on the PC.
With the kiss animations there's this layer of repeatable action. Even if Tav is scared the first time around, the animation becomes weird in repetition because the emotions portrayed are static, while the story around the isolated animation moves on.
