Guild Wars 2

4) TENGU!! – King of snowball fight! (I stubbornly believe it so)

5) Dwarves – a bit of sun is good for body, even if it is made of stone.

6) Ogres – beastmasters make awesome rangers

Assuming that Anet would introduce another playable race, what would you like it to be?

1) Harpies – Who wouldn’t want to fly?

2) Centaurs – Because 4 legged is awesome!

3) Skritt – Always works in teams of 3 (when you make 1 character, you get 3!). Strength and intelligent in numbers!

Dark you’re stepping into very dangerous territory. To a lot of people being gay or being a woman is just part of everyday life. The only reason it stands out to you, is presumably because you’re a straight male. What you see as things that are being included when they don’t need to be, is actually just a game finally starting to better represent what society is actually like.

Or would you rather that everyone played a male character and that women NPC’s were silent and everyone was repressed?

DarksunG.9537:

No story needs to be diverse for any reason other than to be a good story. When something is shoehorned in it stands out. GW1 story was better & it didn’t care if it were diverse or not. It seems more like these are added so people can fantasize.

Homosexual relationships are part of everyday life. They are not ‘fantasies’. Having two in a video game compared to 99.9% of straight binary-gender relationships in games, movies, on TV, in books, is not overkill. That you feel it is just goes to show uncommon it is for homosexuality to get any representation in video games.

For a game that ’didn’t care’ about diversity, GW1 didn’t do half so badly. It had plenty of solid female characters and dared to set a campaign in a nation full of non-white people. Did that not count just because you didn’t notice? Diversity isn’t ‘shoe-horned’ in. Good stories simply show diverse experiences, especially when they span an entire world.

Rym.1469:

I mean more balance with sex (stop with throwing feminism and homosexual things into everything)

I stopped reading here.

Even if the rest of your post is legit, not sure why you think that has anything to do with characters and themes that are based in sexual equality and diverse representation.

Rym.1469:

PEGI 12 of Guild Wars 2 allows for something more than unicorns, rainbow, fairies and poor Scarlet plot and character. We deserve something more about our next Living Story/Personal Story companions. The main concern about them shouldn’t be if they’re sexy pixel lesbians or not. The concern should be:
Did I make a good choice? Was it the best way? What can I expect from that guy? He’s a murderer, but he wants to help. What are the consequences?

I’d be right with you and would love to see some of Witchers morally gray choices that are difficult to make and almost always end up haunting you later in the game, or at least some of Planescape Torment’s originality.
However, I don’t think bringing up homosexuality is a childish thing, like you implied several times. In fact I find open approach to the subject somewhat refreshing (sexy lesbians or any other means notwithstanding).

That being said, allot of the bad guys are for the most part just regular B rated villains all neatly packed with cheesy dialogue™, dramatic expositions™ and evil laughter™.. The game user base might be in their 20’s and 30’s, and the game was marketed mostly to that kind of crowd but unfortunately, story wise, for the most part it feels more like something you’d see on Saturday morning cartoons.

Lastly, not to end it all on grim note, I do believe that ANet writers are at least trying to bring up some maturity to their characters in LS releases (for example Canach is a step in that direction, being more then your regular one dimensional hero/villain and Scarlet might be as well, if what ANet and magazines who had access to story are to be believed, EDIT: forgot about “Destiny’s Edge 2”, any one of those guys have more character value then entire original DE put together).

I don’t understand the point of this post O_o.
The game’s content maturity level is in a really good place, not everyone needs senseless violence to enjoy a video game – in fact I would hope that most people don’t.

Chokolata.1870:

The gay relationship between Faolain and Caithe is the same as between a cabbage and a potato.

No, that one is just plain wrong. I mean, a potato? Seriously? No higher standards? At least go for a turnip.

NinjaChris.9340:

Mortifact.3102:

I guess one of my major points is that it seems statistically unlikely that we’d have another major lesbian relationship. Obviously this is not real life so a decision was made to have them be lesbians, and I question why lesbians AGAIN when we haven’t really had a gay relationship (besides that very minor one in the Sylvari PS).

Considering how little open gay relationships there are in sword&sorcery settings, it’s statistically unlikely to have even one homosexual relationship in the limelight.
Also, it’s not about calculating how represented every part of society has to be for a game to be acceptable, it’s about creating a good story. And when the writers are not convinced they can write certain characteristics well enough that it’s neither satisfying for them nor for the players, they shouldn’t.

To be fair that is because a large amount of high fantasy is written by straight white male authors with a straight white male audience in mind. Lesbian relationships are a lot less controversial than gay relationships. Also I don’t get how it could be about the writers writing it convincingly. A gay relationship is identical to a hetero relationship, the only difference is that both people are of the same gender. Unless you want to argue that stereotypes are an accurate and necessary part of portrayal >.> which they most certainly are not.

Also Tobias has a really good point. If all that was said is “love story” then that doesn’t mean they are in a relationship. Kasmeer undoubtedly has feelings for Majory, that is RIDICULOUSLY obvious from her dialogue. But all signs point to Majory being clueless to this, so it’s entirely possible that it is a one sided love story.

I think ANet’s motives were pretty pure with Kasmeer & Marjory, I must say…

…But I also think it would have been harder for them to get away with a male homosexual relationship being in the spotlight at all. It’s not ANet at fault there, it’s the maturity & openness of the audience.

This isn’t a mark against gamers, by the way, it holds true for most of society. There’d be accusations of “only doing it to be politically correct” or “i’m not interested in this! why should I be?!” if it was a male couple. It’s much more common when male homosexuality is shown in films and tv shows, too.

I dont see them as being a couple. I see them as two girlfriends talking suggestively. I have several straight female friends who act lesbian when they’re together, but its just an act.

I’m also pretty sure that is was said that sylvari do have genitals, but they’re not used for reproductive purposes. They have them, and they use them for the deed, but they can’t produce children from it, not yet at least. They sylvari themselves are around 25-years-old, and there’s new information coming out about them every often. Maybe down the line we will find out if they can indeed reproduce, and how it’s possible.

That being said, I’d like to say that I don’t care about the fact that Kas and Jory are in a romantic relationship with one another. For the sake of diversity, however, I will say that I wouldn’t mind seeing another heterosexual relationship take stage, or maybe (and this is a bit of wishful thinking) a relationship between two men. Right now the only relationship, or romantic debacle, we’re seeing are the ones between Kas and Jory, and Caithe and Faolain respectively. We have Logan and Jenna’s “relationship,” but that’s been written into a state of “Overly Attached Male Friend.”
Bottom line is that Logan and Jenna’s relationship hasn’t been clearly defined by the writers. We see hints of maybe there being more, but it’s been more of a case of Logan’s feelings for Jenna interfering with certain aspects of their jobs. We have not seen a clear confession from Jenna, we don’t even know how she truly feels for Logan. We just see a guy who’d do anything for a woman that he loves, but then get blindsided by said woman because he’s being pushy. That’s it.
I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with this, I’m just saying that if we’re going to compare actual relationships in this game, Kassmer and Marjory’s relationship is the only one we actually have. Everyone else has either been in a relationship in the past, or we don’t know what their deal is.
Like I said, I have no real issue with this, but it wouldn’t hurt to throw in some more diverse couples into the fray, even if they aren’t taking center stage. (Note: I’d love to see whatever happened between Snarl and Galina, there was defiantly some tension between those two!)

Mortifact.3102:

I guess one of my major points is that it seems statistically unlikely that we’d have another major lesbian relationship. Obviously this is not real life so a decision was made to have them be lesbians, and I question why lesbians AGAIN when we haven’t really had a gay relationship (besides that very minor one in the Sylvari PS).

Considering how little open gay relationships there are in sword&sorcery settings, it’s statistically unlikely to have even one homosexual relationship in the limelight.
Also, it’s not about calculating how represented every part of society has to be for a game to be acceptable, it’s about creating a good story. And when the writers are not convinced they can write certain characteristics well enough that it’s neither satisfying for them nor for the players, they shouldn’t.

Wait-they are lesbians?
i was pretty sure that they were just good friends,which who tagged along well together teasing one another, while being on a case, while Majory wish for Kasmeer to go back home, and she rufeses since she knows majory, wishing to stop her from doing anything foolish.

Exactly what lordkrall said.
We live in a very heterosexually oriented world and it is never an issue/noticed when heterosexual relationships are made prevalent because we simply expect it.
GW2 is hardly saturated in homosexuality and honestly it’s really really refreshing to have a game reflect an even slightly more even representation of the world and the diverse relationships that can be found within it.

The fact that you yourself are gay is hardly relevant (I am too!), but I do think it provides a good example as to exactly WHY this is a good thing. GW2 is managing to NOT marginalise homosexual relationships and as such it does make them a little bit more noticeable – but that is something to embrace not chastise. When people STOP noticing either homosexual or heterosexual relationships in game THEN we have gotten somewhere good. Until then, keep up the amazing work Anet – Majory and Kas have a very interesting dynamic going and I’m curious to see where the story leads.

The relationship between Logan and Jennah is kind of a unique one, since they are in the public eye a LOT. So they subdue their interactions, as far as we’ve seen.

I haven’t gotten any feeling that the two lesbian relationships that you mention are done for the sake of being ‘hot.’ I think it’s actually refreshing and nice that Kas/Jory are a little more open about their flirting; it makes them feel a little more real.

We’ve also seen other hetero relationships in the books. And I remember at least a few occasions of playful flirting there.