I'm growing increasingly amused by the meta parallels between the Pathfinder and Dragon Age franchises:
Both were first released in 2009.
Both lean into the trends of fantasy at the time (themselves very much shaped by the A Song of Ice and Fire series, among others) to introduce their settings as Dark Fantasy™ with a Serious™ gray-and-brown aesthetic, full of edgy™ moral ambiguity and real-world evils like racism and slavery, shaped by long-fallen human empires and the looming threat of a rampaging mindless horde of unspeakable evil resisted by a knightly order.
Also, they're both pretty transparently positioning themselves as rivals to Dungeons & Dragons (slash D&D-based CRPGS like Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights) and thus try to appeal to the ""hardcore"" gamer/fantasy nerd crowd by being crunchy and combat-focused with esoteric and frankly obtuse mechanics.
But then! As part of their attempts to be edgy (and in reflection of the hot-button political issues of the time), both settings throw a handful of queer relationships into their early installments.
This garners both games a queer fanbase, which is small compared to the expected (and present) straight white cis guy fantasy audience, but also a lot more passionate and loyal. After all, straight white men have never lacked for choice or representation in fantasy and will always have another game to move on to, while queer audiences (especially at the time) have far fewer choices and thus latch much more strongly onto what they get.
And then Bioware and Paizo, both staffed with a few queer individuals themselves, decided that was cool and started giving that audience more and more attention in later installments, as well as providing an increased focus on character building over pure combat and introducing more and more (real-world) racial and gender diversity. Over time a desire to serve this growing audience leads to their attempts to address and remove some of the worst edgy bullshit from the setting, specifically downplaying slavery in favor of abolitionist movements and removing most if not all sexual assault plot points.
(And yeah, their attempts at diversity weren't always great, but they tried when and where other companies wouldn't so for all the justified and not-so-justified critiques they catch on that front, it's something.)
All of which resulted in their more recent installments being far more diverse, colorful, and openly queer, with lighter and more accessible mechanics focused more on storytelling and player character customization than on strict combat. Which some fans of the earlier installments get really pissy about, even though the later installments are frankly much more recognizable and unique to their franchise than the first few rounds.
Also, both settings include magical 'elf gate' teleportation portals scattered throughout the world by ancient elves. Said elves in both settings also divorced the concept from Tolkien's Edda-inspired fae-but-also-sort've-angels interpretation to make elves smaller, scrappier and more otherworldly.
Also also, both games have a sci-fi sister series using similar mechanics that can be accurately described as "X in Space with Laser Guns (and also floating jellyfish aliens)," though of course in Bioware's case the sci-fi game came first so it's more accurate to call Dragon Age "fantasy Mass Effect." Still funny though.
