Role Playing Gay

Dragon Age:Inquisition is an upcoming role-playing game from BioWare and the latest addition to the Dragon Age franchise. Although I enjoyed the first installment of the series, Dragon Age:Origins, I was sorely disappointed with the second, Dragon Age 2. As a result, I'm on the fence on this one until I'm convinced that they put more effort into it this time.

Anyway, I thought I'd write about something that bugged me about the latest announcement regarding DA:I. They announced a "fully gay" (whatever that means) character named Dorian who will be a romance option for a male player character.

Now let me set something straight here (no pun intended). I don't have a problem with homosexuality. I have nothing against homosexuals in real life so how much more in fiction?

The homosexual trait of the character doesn't bug me. What bugs me is the unusual fixation on the sexuality of the character instead of his importance in the overall story of the game and its fictional universe.

I guess I'm just worried that making such a big deal about the character's sexuality would overshadow everything else about him. I do understand however, the reason why BioWare is hyping up Dorian's homosexuality. BioWare is known for its progressive stance on sexuality in their RPGs and they seem to think that having a gay character going mainstream is some kind of crowning achievement. They can think what they like; I fail to see how it's a major leap for the genre as a whole, but I digress.

If you want a gay character done right, I'd like to give you an example from another game called Fallout: New Vegas.

Arcade Gannon was a member of the Followers of the Apocalypse, a faction in the game's story. As a character, he was intelligent and an idealist at heart, who believed things in the wasteland could be better. He was one of the truly good characters in the game who took his duty, as a Follower, to help people of the wasteland seriously. His sarcasm and wit, while funny, clearly appeared to be a defense mechanism against harsh reality and didn't quite suit him. 

His background is grounded firmly in the game's universe. He expressed anger that one of the game's antagonists and his polar opposite, Caesar, used the knowledge he had  as a former member of the Followers to create an army bent on enslaving people instead of using it for good. Overall, he was a person stuck in a rut. He really wanted to help but wasn't sure how. The player character can convince him to don his family power armor and take the fight to the enemy or to have faith in the Followers and stay with them, to keep doing what he was doing. He was a well-written character with great dialogue. He had hopes, aspirations and a goal which the player could help him achieve. He fits well into the lore of the game and provides the player with insight on the Followers of the Apocalypse and how people like them perceive the world of Fallout. He was also gay.

Yup, Arcade was gay. He mentions it in passing in one of his character lines when you talk to him. His homosexuality wasn't made a big deal. The elements of his character: hopes, ideals, goals etc. were made more important and that's how it should be done. Homosexuality is just a trait. Other than sexual preference, it tells us absolutely nothing about the character; how he sees the world, how he sees the player's actions or how his mind works.

So back to Dorian. I'm just a little concerned that BioWare has put the gay before the rest of the character. I'm afraid that the character will just be known as "the gay one". If you search for Dorian on Google, all the hits scream out "fully gay character" or "homosexual" as if that's all there is to him. That's not a reassuring sign.

Of course, I trust BioWare to be better than that. After all, the character of Dorian has a lot of promise. For one, he's a Tevinter Mage. It would be very interesting indeed to hear from a character coming from the Tevinter Imperium. That mage-dominated society is mysterious. The character's writer, David Gaider, reveals that he comes from a society where mages strive to be perfect and he didn't quite fit that mold. His views on magic coming from a mage-dominated nation would be interesting as well, given that the rest of the world views mages with a healthy degree of suspicion.

I want his character to be more of the paragraph above and less like the Google hits.