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Let’s Talk About Bi...oware

Now I’m not going to tell full-faced lies and say I don’t indulge in the game series from one of the most hated, and justifiably so, publishers of all time. Mass Effect and Dragon Age were my gateway games into the land of virtual and tabletop RPG’s if you don’t count Legend of Zelda (which I don’t).

But even my intense love for these game series, I won’t sit here, cover my eyes and say “Bioware did nothing wrong!”. It could be argued that EA are the one’s more to blame, and I’ll be the one pointing that finger, but Bioware themselves aren’t faultless...but that isn’t to say they didn’t give us some good rep. So let’s give credit where it’s due and pick apart some examples of that.

Dragon Age: Inquisition

The third game in the titular series offers the most diverse rep within your circle of companions, some who stuck with me more than others.

Dorian Pavus proved to be one of the more ground-breaking characters--an openly gay mag from the land of Tevinter which isn’t a fan of that label. (Kenneth Shepherd wrote quite an interesting piece you can read here). His sexuality is a huge part of his character, and a point of conflict between him and his father.

But he is written in a way so he has so much more to offer. Charming, witty, intelligent and suave as Gomez Addams (even sporting a ‘stache that’s just as awesome). Having not had the chance to play through Dorian’s romance, I can’t comment much on the route, though I did notice it had gained a lot of popularity. The only downside is this mod. It pained me to even google that. To add insult to injury, it advertised as a “bi” mod which is bad enough to start with, but it locks out male inquisitor’s from romancing Dorian when it’s installed. Just say it’s a straight mod, Karen, you coward. If that’e not enough, there’s also a bi Sera mod too, you know, the lesbian archer

The BioWare fandom has quite the reputation online, and it’s these kinds of people that are the cause. Even now as I’m writing the article, I’m fully expecting angry pterodactyl screeching in the reply section or ask box (I’m gonna take this op to politely ask people to remain cordial even if you disagree. My button will be hovering over the block and delete button with vigilance)

Some of the screeching, granted, is justified. Trespasser being exclusive to the current gen consoles, and containing plot-vital information was a dick move. And with EA pushing the envelope on their new IP game Anthem panic is spreading that Mass Effect might have the plug pulled on it.

And this is the perfect segway to talk about their other famous RPG series--Mass Effect!

Mass Effect

Mass Effect doesn’t seem to have as much controversy surrounding it, or maybe I’m just been lucky with the lack of ME discourse on my dash. There is still something to be said about the series though. One of most notable being the sexualised asari (just because this is a queer rep blog doesn’t mean misogyny gets a free pass from us). The asari are coded as a ‘monogendered’ alien race, able to conceieve children regardless of the race or gender of their partner. Want to know what this monogendered species looks like?

Yup, unfortunately they have fallen into the sci-fi trope of “green skinned space babe”, only difference being their skin violet/blue. The asari are highly-sexualised in the game, most working as dancers in seedy clubs

And a lot of NPC’s have some opretty creepy things to say about the asari. Even Shep has some less than savoury things to say, such as in The Shadow Broker DLC

When I was playing the DLC for myself, I hadn’t romanced Liara, so the comment came off as even creepier. BioWare unfortunately has this annoying tactic of seeming to code Liara as the ‘canon’ romance. One line in particular sticks with me. When asked why Liara chose to hand Shepard over to Cerberus she said “I couldn’t let you go”. Romanced, this sounds fine, sweet even maybe. When not romanced, it seems to show signs of possessiveness, as though claiming ownership over someone she has no right to. I’d be very much interested to hear what Kaidan, my LI, would have to say about this.

Speaking of LI’s, that was something I found very lacking with the original Mass Effect. You had three choice: Ashley William, Kaidan Alenko, and Liara. Bioware wrongly assumed none of their player-base would want to get down and dirty with the likes of Garrus, a mistake rectified in later installments. What’s even worse is that both Ashley and Kaidan were coded as straight. If you’re a gay man, too bad I guess. It wasn’t until ME3 came out that Kaidan was made bisexual, but sadly Ashley remained straight. At the very least, BioWare can be given kudos for later adding more choices, and widening their range of LGBT characters.

In ME3, we were given bi Kaidan, gay Steve Cortez, gay Samantha Traynor, bi Diana Allers and bi Liara, equaling out the amount of queer and het romance, thus offering more equality than other games. This shows growth, and proves to other companies that having LGBT characters doesn’t detract from a games success. Mass Effect’s original trilogy proved very popular. Even though Andromeda tanked, it had nothing to do with the representation. Granted, Andromeda was attacked for some representation, such as only one canonically gay male love interest. This goes to show, though representation has made leaps and bounds in progress, there is still room for improvement, and I hope games don’t stop producing games with queer romances.

So who was your favourite romances? Who do you wish you could have romanced? How do you feel about BioWare’s representation?

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