GLR July-August 2023

characters are mechanically bisex ual: they become attracted to the player character, regardless of gen der, as long as the player takes the right actions. Dragon Age II and BioWare’s other roleplaying series, Mass Effect , are two such examples. In these games, party members will disclose their bisexuality only if they are currently romancing a same-gender party member, and this conversation will last for only one or two dialog lines. Other mainstream titles like Skyrim , smaller titles like Divinity: Original Sin II , and indie titles like Stardew Valley all use playersexual romances. The problem here, however, is that most of the characters in these games will not acknowledge their

A scene from Dragon Age: Inquisition .

own bisexuality. Playersexuality allows people who want same gender romances to have them, but people who want to keep same-gender romances out of their gameplay never have to see them. This is just one way that developers privilege a straight, male-centric style of gameplay. In “I’m a Gaymer in Search of Romantic Queer Characters,” Sam Whitaker writes about the presence of a romanceable all-female alien race in Mass Effect , along with the absence of an all-male race. He argues that this gives straight male characters—those who are assumed to re semble most of the gaming market—more options within the game than their female or gay counterparts. In fantasy and sci ence fiction universes, there’s the potential for more expansive gameplay that allows for multiple forms of expression. Instead, video game developers show the limitations of their worldview when they adopt such brazen double standards, thereby prior itizing one form of sexual orientation or gender identity over others. Over the years, players have challenged these playersexual mechanics, arguing that this ability to press sexuality onto in game characters diminishes the importance of sexual orienta tion in all of our lives. To its credit, BioWare took these criticisms to heart when it developed Dragon Age: Inquisition in 2014, the third game in the series. According to the media watchdog GLAAD , Inquisition gave the series its first exclusively gay character, Dorian Pavus. One of the major selling points for Dorian was his back story: while he doesn’t live in an ex plicitly anti-gay society, Dorian is still expected to marry a woman so he can continue his family’s noble bloodline, limit ing his sexual interactions with men to mere dalliances with no room for serious commitment. This narrative solidifies Do rian’s sexuality as an important part of his character, making him unique to the DragonAge universe while representing the kinds of family struggles that many queer people experience. In my own play-through of Dragon Age: Inquisition , I cre ated a male character and explored Dorian as a romance option to see how deep the characterization and romantic plotline would go. Sadly, Dorian did not appear until the middle of the second act, after all the other romantic options had already been intro duced and assimilated into my character’s party. When Dorian fi

nally appeared, I viewed him as a straight person’s concept of a gay man—in a word, debonair. Sporting a quasi-pompadour haircut, a handlebar mustache, and a soul patch, he didn’t ap pear outwardly flamboyant but spoke with a haughty and flirta tious tone, complaining about getting his hands dirty while remarking on how much he liked viewing my male character’s backside. Moreover, his outfit—multiple rings plus a mage’s robe with a bare left shoulder, teasing the toned figure under neath—suggested to me a material and moral decadence, a so cial status often coded with a queer subtext. I should note here that David Gaider, the creator and writer of Dorian, is himself a gay man. The love that Gaider put into this character really shows. Even if Dorian’s wit, irreverence, and pretentiousness often make players roll their eyes, his per sonality hides a bitter and compelling sensitivity under all that irresistible charm. Gaider left the company in 2016, and I have no doubt that in his seventeen-year role as lead writer for the Dragon Age series, he strove to create stories and characters that truly resonate with people of all sexual and romantic ori entations. Yet even according to his own Tumblr post titled “On the Gay Thing,” he admitted that the heteronormative cli mate surrounding video game development and consumption made him second-guess—or even overlook—the possibility of same-sex romance. In fact, it was at the insistence of his straight colleagues that Gaider began writing these character romances. The result is a reflection of our own society: queer people existing in a heteronormative, masculinized universe that may not always contain bigotry but nevertheless confines the uni verse of possible lived experiences to a traditional narrative structure. As in most games, the main storyline of Inquisition enforces this worldview through “tropes”: recognizable pat terns that exist through different media iterations. In Inquisi tion , the one-true-hero trope places the player character at the center of the universe. The player is the undisputed Inquisitor, the one-and-only person who can save the world from the de monic horde—and everyone, including the Inquisitor, must ul timately accept this fact. A story like this fails at being aspirational, because it is unachievable for most people at the

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