BioWare, in their further attempts to bring game stories into the sexual revolution a few years late, will allow male Shepards to be homosexuals in Mass Effect 3, an option that was missing in both Mass Effect 1 and 2. I mean, sure, if you’re a female Shepard, you’ve probably already had sex with two other women in the course of your journey in the Mass Effect universe, but hey, baby steps I suppose.
Anyways, designers seem adamant about whether or not this is an overtly political or social statement and choose to put it in terms of gameplay possibilities. BioWare Co-founder Ray Muzyka says on the issue that “[BioWare is] neutral. It’s the player’s choice. It’s a role-playing game.” Furthermore, he mentions that he is “surprised” that this is such a big deal. I tend to agree.
Hypocrisy of writing a news story (and therefore calling attention to its importance and general “big deal-ness”) aside, I’d say it is a rather big deal in the fact that it shows us just how immature of a medium videogames are in terms of sexuality. Mass Effect is no stranger to annoying “controversy”, what with the Sexbox non-sense a couple years ago, but this really is kind of a big event in the fact that this will be the first big, triple-AAA, blockbuster game that I can really think of that will allow your male character to be a homosexual or be in a homosexual relationship.
Yeah, Dragon Age allowed your male character to be a homosexual, many games have featured gay men as characters (Grand Theft Auto’s rather annoyingly flamboyant examples come to mind), and so on, but Mass Effect 3 is bigger and more intimate than these, and so in that way, this really is a first. Yeah, it kind of calls into question why no one makes this kind of fuss about the countless lesbian relationships in videogames, but I guess that can of worms can be opened another day.
All that aside, Mass Effect 3 comes out on March 6th, 2012 for PC, PS3, and Xbox 360. Enjoy the game however you like, BioWare wouldn’t have it any other way.
So you mention Dragon Age II and Grand Theft Auto (presumably the one with gay Tony) but Mass Effect 3 is on another level? In what terms, exactly?
I hardly think that Mass Effect 3 will have any deeper of a relationship system than Dragon Age II. Also, Dragon Age II was about as big a deal last year as Mass Effect 3 is this year.
In fact, if you compare Google search results of both games, you will see that Dragon Age II is a bigger game. Granted, Mass Effect 3 hasn’t released yet and it will likely increase to at least Dragon Age II’s level when it is.
http://www.google.com/trends/?q=mass+effect+3,+dragon+age+2&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0
I don’t know, I’ve always thought of Dragon Age as a niche series without the same critical success of Mass Effect, but then again, this is just my belief.