Matt Forney
Matt Forney is the editor of Reaxxion and a Chicago-based author, journalist and entrepreneur. He blogs at MattForney.com and is also on Twitter, SoundCloud, YouTube and Patreon. He is the author of Confessions of an Online Hustler and many other books, available here. Matt's work has also been featured at Reaxxion's sister site Return of Kings, Taki's Magazine, Alternative Right, and other sites.
If you’re a fan of BioWare’s RPGs, you know all about the scourge of the company’s “romance plots.” Merely typing that phrase makes me want to snap my laptop in half, but I’ll try and hold it together for the sake of this article. Basically, as an extension of role-playing games’ ability to let you control how the story plays out, virtually all of BioWare’s games allow your character to fall in love with one of the other main characters, with newer games including sex scenes, though they are (fortunately) censored.
In theory, this is a good idea. In practice, BioWare’s slavish fanboys have perverted the games’ romance plots into a substitute for real-world interaction. Even worse, SJWs have hijacked them in order to spread their agenda of normalizing degeneracy.
I’m not some meathead who demands that video games be nothing but explosions and murder. I enjoy a well-written love story every so often, but the operative word is “well-written.” In catering to both SJWs and loveless nerds, not only has BioWare’s writing gotten worse, the games themselves have suffered.
How To Do A Love Story Right
To give you an example of how writers can create a love story that improves the game, I’ll discuss BioWare’s 2003 release Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. While older BioWare games such as Baldur’s Gate II had romance subplots, Knights of the Old Republic was the first of their RPGs to feature full voice acting for all characters (excluding the player), making it more immersive than those titles.
One of the premises of Knights of the Old Republic was that your character shares a Force bond with Bastila Shan, one of the members of your party. If your character is a man, the game’s dialogue guides you down a relationship with Bastila, culminating in the two of you shamefully making out in one of the crew bunks. Because 3D graphics weren’t advanced enough to show two people necking, the screen mercifully faded to black.
This subplot didn’t bother me in the least because it was handled with subtlety and class, as opposed to the Japanese dating sim atmosphere of newer BioWare games. There’s an element of danger and risk in the story: Jedis are forbidden to fall in love, yet it makes sense that two people drawn together through the Force might develop a deeper relationship. Because there’s something real at stake, you actually care about what happens to these two characters. The writing wasn’t high art, but it worked.
More importantly, the love story in Knights of the Old Republic actually has an impact on the central plot. Midway through the game, Bastila is taken captive by the Sith, who subsequently torture her into joining the dark side of the Force. If your character stays with the light side, you have to fight her twice in the final level. If you chose the right dialogue options earlier in the game, you can avoid fighting Bastila a third time by getting her to confess her love for you, making the game slightly easier and also saving you from having to kill her.
What If E.L. James Was An SJW?
Sadly, Knights of the Old Republic was the apogee of BioWare’s romance writing. Every game since then has descended further into the SJW cesspool. The rot began with 2005’s Jade Empire, which was the first game to feature same-sex romance options. The game’s linearity and lack of exploration (Jade Empire is maybe half the length of Knights of the Old Republic, itself shorter than BioWare’s past games) gave us an indication of future disappointments.
Mass Effect and its sequel put a temporary halt to the inclusion of gay propaganda, but doubled down on SJW dysfunction in other ways. The first game let you “romance” one of two party characters: Ashley, a typical Strong, Independent Woman Who Don’t Need No Man™, and Liara, a member of an alien species comprised of magical space lesbians, but who at least had a feminine personality. Mass Effect also brought us the completely unnecessary feature of getting to watch your Commander Shepard bone his chosen waifu just before the final battle.
The sequel amped up the inanity by giving you three choices of fucktoy: the ice queen Miranda, the psychopathic Sinead O’Connor lookalike Jack, and an alien who can’t leave her vacuum-sealed suit without dying of cholera. It also featured some of the most cringe-worthy dialogue ever put into a work of fiction. I had to physically cover my eyes during the sex scenes, it was that painful to watch.
Both Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age: Origins (released around the same time) give me the impression that no one at BioWare has ever had sex without paying for it. Not only does the latter feature an openly bisexual elf who hits on your character (y’know, because homosexuality was real popular in the Middle Ages, the historical period which inspired the fantasy genre), you actually have the option of having sex with your love interest whenever you want. Whole forests have been clear-cut to provide the Kleenex necessary to satisfy horny BioDrones.
The final insult was Mass Effect 3. Say what you will about all their previous love stories, but at least they were optional. Mass Effect 3 introduces an openly gay Normandy crew member who keeps mewling about his dead husband, and part of the game’s plot involves cheering him up, quite possibly with your penis. Beyond the fact that gay male life is less like the game’s Will and Grace in Space and more “Truvada whore,” it completely disrupts the plot. Humanity is being annihilated by an ancient race of superpowered robots, but Sergeant Twinkle Toes over here can’t man up and do his job.
I’ve yet to play either Dragon Age II or Dragon Age: Inquisition, but given that the latter has a transsexual character, I can only assume that it’s more of the same pap. And lest you think that it’s SJW game journalists who are solely driving this, I introduce you to the “Talimancers,” BioDrones who threatened to throw a tantrum if they didn’t get the choice of watching their favorite alien get plowed in Mass Effect 3.
Get A Life
I’m not bashing gamers in general or anyone who enjoys a good plot, but beyond being a vehicle for SJW propaganda, the clamor for more expansive BioWare love stories is driven by an unhealthy impulse. What kind of person wants to make love to a script? Answer: someone with a fundamentally broken conception of human relationships. It’s a poor man’s narcissism, a desire to have a relationship with something that is under your complete control and can’t think for itself.
Furthermore, if the commercial and critical failures of BioWare’s recent games are any indication, the expansiveness of these love stories is inversely correlated with the quality of the games that contain them. Mass Effect 3 sacrificed having a meaningful ending, challenging side quests or memorable missions (half the game’s levels were slightly altered versions of the multiplayer maps) in favor of dork porn. The finest games BioWare created—the Baldur’s Gate series, Neverwinter Nights and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic—either had no love stories or handled them with more subtlety.
If you think you can have a relationship with a character in a video game, you need to get back to reality. Kill your Xbox, go outside and talk to some real girls. Getting teary-eyed because your favorite fictional character can’t get it on with your digital avatar is indicative of serious mental issues. I for one will not be buying any more BioWare games until both the SJW media and the BioDrones grow up.
Read More: The Mindset Of A Social Justice Warrior Gamer
