Yeah, mentally he's kind of a child, so BioWare said, "ewww, no."
Of course, they said that dwarf romance was kind of akin to pedophilia too, but then the confirmation of 2 race specific romances is as good as a confirmation of varric romance
It should also be mentioned that for a VERY LONG TIME our female dwarves in DAI looked like Gollum because they were the last ones to get the proper character art treatment.
Ouch. Even minus the sensationalism, his attitude seems pretty awful on this topic. I wish he was willing to actually explain himself instead of sniping at people.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
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AssuranIs swinging on the SpiralRegistered Userregular
Did you go down a few posts where he does explain it:
That is so. Fantasy dwarves are not real-life dwarfs.
Also? I was joking, as I believe I even mentioned in that thread. Those comments were after people took something I'd said earlier out of context to mean "David Gaider thinks dwarf sex is gross" ...when what I'd said was that we'd reviewed the sex scenes in DAO with a "worst case scenario", and the Alistair scene was done with a dwarf made to look like a young girl (with pigtails and such) and that had left me a little traumatized. I clarified that as well, but nobody paid any attention to that clarification either, so I've pretty much given up on trying to assure people that I don't hate dwarf romances.
So, yup. Dwarves are gross. Eww. Feel free to quote that out of context and spread it around.
Yeah, mentally he's kind of a child, so BioWare said, "ewww, no."
Of course, they said that dwarf romance was kind of akin to pedophilia too, but then the confirmation of 2 race specific romances is as good as a confirmation of varric romance
It should also be mentioned that for a VERY LONG TIME our female dwarves in DAI looked like Gollum because they were the last ones to get the proper character art treatment.
Thanks, I spent hours trying to find it, but tumblr was giving me a migrane
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Dr. ChaosPost nuclear nuisanceRegistered Userregular
Yeah, mentally he's kind of a child, so BioWare said, "ewww, no."
Of course, they said that dwarf romance was kind of akin to pedophilia too, but then the confirmation of 2 race specific romances is as good as a confirmation of varric romance
It should also be mentioned that for a VERY LONG TIME our female dwarves in DAI looked like Gollum because they were the last ones to get the proper character art treatment.
Ouch. Even minus the sensationalism, his attitude seems pretty awful on this topic. I wish he was willing to actually explain himself instead of sniping at people.
Did you go down a few posts where he does explain it:
That is so. Fantasy dwarves are not real-life dwarfs.
Also? I was joking, as I believe I even mentioned in that thread. Those comments were after people took something I'd said earlier out of context to mean "David Gaider thinks dwarf sex is gross" ...when what I'd said was that we'd reviewed the sex scenes in DAO with a "worst case scenario", and the Alistair scene was done with a dwarf made to look like a young girl (with pigtails and such) and that had left me a little traumatized. I clarified that as well, but nobody paid any attention to that clarification either, so I've pretty much given up on trying to assure people that I don't hate dwarf romances.
So, yup. Dwarves are gross. Eww. Feel free to quote that out of context and spread it around.
See, if the totality of his explanation was everything after the "Also" then yeah, sure ok. No big. It was a dumb joke and it went too far.
The problem is that he starts with "Fantasy dwarves are not real-life dwarfs." So his excuse is that fantasy dwarves are not little people. And that is a bad excuse.
You only have to change fantasy dwarves to something else to see how uncomfortable he's being.
Example: "Asari aren't women! They're a fantasy monogendered race! So when I say that of course we wrote the Asari to be worse at fighting the Reapers than any other species, just like you'd expect, that's not a reflection on real women!"
Mythical races and sci fi aliens come from somewhere. If you make their physical characteristics match a type of people that exist in the real world, and then talk about how ugly and gross they are physically, then yeah you're making a comment about the type of people they're made to look like. This seems really obvious?
Cambiata on
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
The core of this problem is really the mythos of dwarves in fantasy as a whole. It's almost certainly based upon myths which themselves were based upon the real-life condition, and that leaves plenty of room for discomfort. The fact that it also shares names with a term considered to be... rude is, well, a pretty bad situation for fantasy.
I'm not sure I'd dump much fault on Mr. Gaider in this particular circumstance (especially as one particular user in that thread appears to be dedicated to performing some trolling, based on the other threads that were rapid-fire started and locked as well). However, for new fantasy moving forward, it may be time to move on from "dwarves" as a fantasy staple. It's fine to have races of people that are smaller than humans, but perhaps a name change and cultural reimagining would do fantasy some good. I don't really understand why fantasy reuses the same Tolkien races again and again anyway; science fiction tends to be much more imaginative with its alien race creations.
Also the Asari are pretty problematic in design as well. They're a clear homage to 60s Trek, which sounds great in theory, but that means dragging 60s baggage into the present where it isn't really needed.
Triptycho: A card-and-dice tabletop indie RPG currently in development and playtesting
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
To maybe put it in maybe more explainable context, it's the difference between being a Star Trek fan who says "sex with Klingons would be gross!" versus "sex with Ligonians would be gross!" Because klingons are at least made to be somewhat different than any type of human being, while Ligonians are basically just black people in costumes. See what I mean?
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
Also the Asari are pretty problematic in design as well. They're a clear homage to 60s Trek, which sounds great in theory, but that means dragging 60s baggage into the present where it isn't really needed.
...Are you calling the Asari fat?
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
Also the Asari are pretty problematic in design as well. They're a clear homage to 60s Trek, which sounds great in theory, but that means dragging 60s baggage into the present where it isn't really needed.
Well yeah, that's why I used them as an example.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
To maybe put it in maybe more explainable context, it's the difference between being a Star Trek fan who says "sex with Klingons would be gross!" versus "sex with Ligonians would be gross!" Because klingons are at least made to be somewhat different than any type of human being, while Ligonians are basically just black people in costumes. See what I mean?
But...he's not saying it's gross?
(Also I think there's a more valid case for distinction between medical and mythic dwarfs that have uncertain provenance and millenia of history than obvious, shallow burner races like the asari.)
He said that they "reviewed the sex scenes in DAO with a "worst case scenario", and the Alistair scene was done with a dwarf made to look like a young girl (with pigtails and such) and that had left [him] a little traumatized."
I'm not seeing the problem. I think it's pretty reasonable to be "a little traumatized" by such a thing.
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
To maybe put it in maybe more explainable context, it's the difference between being a Star Trek fan who says "sex with Klingons would be gross!" versus "sex with Ligonians would be gross!" Because klingons are at least made to be somewhat different than any type of human being, while Ligonians are basically just black people in costumes. See what I mean?
But...he's not saying it's gross?
Then why say this: "That is so. Fantasy dwarves are not real-life dwarfs."? There's no reason at all to say that, except as an excuse to say something disparaging about them.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
He said that they "reviewed the sex scenes in DAO with a "worst case scenario", and the Alistair scene was done with a dwarf made to look like a young girl (with pigtails and such) and that had left [him] a little traumatized."
I'm not seeing the problem. I think it's pretty reasonable to be "a little traumatized" by such a thing.
Well again, everything after "Also" in his statement is fine and basically should have stood for his entire statment. All reasonable and nothing wrong with it.
But he felt the need to preface his statement by the incomprehensible, "Fantasy dwarves are not real-life dwarfs." (IE "Well they aren't a real minority, I can say what I want about them lol") All he had to do was leave that statement off. Having it in shows that he doesn't quite get it?
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
Then why say this: "That is so. Fantasy dwarves are not real-life dwarfs."? There's no reason at all to say that, except as an excuse to say something disparaging about them.
An excuse to say something disparaging by immediately clarifying that he's not saying anything disparaging about either real dwarfs or fantasy dwarves?
He said that they "reviewed the sex scenes in DAO with a "worst case scenario", and the Alistair scene was done with a dwarf made to look like a young girl (with pigtails and such) and that had left [him] a little traumatized."
I'm not seeing the problem. I think it's pretty reasonable to be "a little traumatized" by such a thing.
All the love scenes in DAO should have left him a "little traumatized".
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BassguyGhost Ride the DragonRegistered Userregular
There's a 55 minute (audio only) interview with Gaider on YouTube. I ripped the audio, and I'm making my way through it currently.
There seem to be two separate issues. He said that fantasy-dwarves are ugly, but not people who look like fantasy-dwarves; whatever, I'm shrugging.
The second thing he said was that ingame-models during development looked like fourteen years old girls. Not even tolkien-dwarves in general. Which is quite removed from what I heard before.
If he had actually said 'they're gross because of things they share with a real minority group that gets a lot of shit' then yeah, I'd be with you. But that's not what I saw? If it's what you saw, than I apologize on his behalf, because that's not something we want to be saying at all.
I know Dave, and he'll say some stuff that's kind of assholish but that's the kind of thing I wouldn't expect from him. The preface is, I think, distinguishing between 'people who have dwarfism vs. Tolkien'ish dwarves share a name and that's it'. Which again, I can totally understand if you take issue with it, just that I don't think it's intended in that case.
WATCH THIS SPACE.
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
Ironically I think he probably felt he had to make the distinction specifically to avoid this exact conversation wherein people accuse him of hating people with actual dwarfism.
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Dr. ChaosPost nuclear nuisanceRegistered Userregular
I'm surprised the DA2 elf romances didn't gross him out.
Dwarves actually look very much like regular human beings, the redesigned elves looked very alien and skeletal.
I'm surprised the DA2 elf romances didn't gross him out.
Dwarves actually look very much like regular human beings, the redesigned elves looked very alien and skeletal.
Thank the maker they look normal again in DA:I ... I wanted to hit Merrill with a bat on more than one occasion, but then her laughably dumb naivete made me change my mind each time; like a puppy who pisses on your favorite rug but then looks at you with innocent little eyes and you can't be mad anymore.
Looking at Sera and Solas made me go "Okay, thank God, they listened to their fans."
That was the only part of the da2 art direction i actually liked. I thought they did a great job using the uncanny valley to emphasize the 'othering' and to make people aware of their own (fantastic) racism
All arguing aside, it shouldn't be possible to make a dwarf female in DA1 that looks like a little girl. If it is possible, then the problem lies in their character creator leaning too heavily on "people need to be able to make hawt chicks" and not enforcing the squatness and robustness that should clearly prevent any confusion of a female fantasy dwarf from a human child.
They're dwarves, not kender or even halfings or hobbits. They don't and shouldn't look like kids. They should look like dwarves.
Dr. ChaosPost nuclear nuisanceRegistered Userregular
edited July 2014
Don't get me wrong, I actually prefer the elves in 2. They look more unique.
I just don't think they fit the typical image of elven beauty. Which is good, I think. Regular elves that are just humans with pointy ears that commune with nature is kind of boring.
Don't get me wrong, I actually prefer the elves in 2. They look more unique.
I just don't think they fit the typical image of elven beauty. Which is good, I think. Regular elves that are just humans with pointy ears that commune with nature is kind of boring.
I was okay with it, but I did feel like it "froze" their faces slightly, making them a bit less expressive and removing the nose as an element to differentiate between them.
I'm trying really hard to not say that they all looked alike to me, and they didn't really, but there did seem to be a smaller facial variety for elves than for the other races. I can see why they went back on the design, in any case.
Antlerless elves are considered special among their people and are usually give special roles in elven society, such as being sent to Ferelden, the only nation in Thedas where helms are made without convenient antler-holes.
We're talking about horns here, I think. Antlers fall off and regrow annually.
Personally I'm not bothered by appearance continuity changes. The people who complained about the redesigned Qunari and TNG era Klingons are really foreign to me.
Like, you're upset because this thing you like looks way more awesome now?
We're talking about horns here, I think. Antlers fall off and regrow annually.
Personally I'm not bothered by appearance continuity changes. The people who complained about the redesigned Qunari and TNG era Klingons are really foreign to me.
Like, you're upset because this thing you like looks way more awesome now?
I don't get it.
I challenge you to tell me what wasn't awesome about Puerto Ricans in Gold Lamé.
Well, I can't say I care for the changes to the qunari.
But I also can't say I care at all. Given what I know about how BioWare has done things, I just presume that at some point they cut corners or decided to be all George Lucas about it and fix what wasn't really broken. So, meh. I can rationalise it any way I want or just acknowledge that they made a change in graphic design and move on.
Don't get me wrong, I actually prefer the elves in 2. They look more unique.
I just don't think they fit the typical image of elven beauty. Which is good, I think. Regular elves that are just humans with pointy ears that commune with nature is kind of boring.
They looked like they were taken quite literally straight out of a comic book with a very specific art-style in mind. Alone that wouldn't be bad but it was implemented in a way that was really awkward. I get that they were trying to differentiate elves and humans; which they had a lot of trouble doing in Origins minus height and ears, but there was still the fact that the shape of their face and the rest of their body made them look almost completely alien.
Take Solas in DA:I for a counter-example of how they changed this. He still has facial features that clearly show he's not human (different eye shape, differently jointed-nose, obvious elven ears), but he's not super stick-figureish, and not super-BUG EYED. That's the part that bugged me the most about DA2's elves. THE EYES. They were way too big. I thought they came straight out of an anime or something when I first saw them (Merrill definitely has the "notice me Hawke-senpai" vibe), and Fenris is... hehe, I think that topic has been done to death, let's not go there.
It's hard because there is a great deal of fantasy-related elven baggage floating around and they were trying to have their own elves without just saying "D&D elves" or "Tolkien elves".
Tolkien elves were basically humans except taller, stronger, and much, much more beautiful (which makes sense because they were quasi-divine).
D&D elves derived from Tolkien elves but without the divinity, instead they just made them older and gave them a buttload of racial arrogance to back it up and then made them shorter than humans instead of taller.
So for DA they decided on short instead of tall, gotta keep the ears because elves, but what to do to differentiate them from the D&D elves they now resemble? Make them a low race and give them animu eyes. It sort of makes sense even if the end result looks awful.
Don't get me wrong, I actually prefer the elves in 2. They look more unique.
I just don't think they fit the typical image of elven beauty. Which is good, I think. Regular elves that are just humans with pointy ears that commune with nature is kind of boring.
They looked like they were taken quite literally straight out of a comic book with a very specific art-style in mind. Alone that wouldn't be bad but it was implemented in a way that was really awkward. I get that they were trying to differentiate elves and humans; which they had a lot of trouble doing in Origins minus height and ears, but there was still the fact that the shape of their face and the rest of their body made them look almost completely alien.
Take Solas in DA:I for a counter-example of how they changed this. He still has facial features that clearly show he's not human (different eye shape, differently jointed-nose, obvious elven ears), but he's not super stick-figureish, and not super-BUG EYED. That's the part that bugged me the most about DA2's elves. THE EYES. They were way too big. I thought they came straight out of an anime or something when I first saw them (Merrill definitely has the "notice me Hawke-senpai" vibe), and Fenris is... hehe, I think that topic has been done to death, let's not go there.
But that storyline is from a narrator who clearly colors the surroundings with his perceptions. As stated in the prologue even. To Varric, that's probably how he sees them.
I, for one, am extremely happy scorpion tails didn't happen. Just thinking about what those degenerates on the nexus site would have done with them... *shudders*
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Ouch. Even minus the sensationalism, his attitude seems pretty awful on this topic. I wish he was willing to actually explain himself instead of sniping at people.
Thanks, I spent hours trying to find it, but tumblr was giving me a migrane
He really should just...stop talking about this.
See, if the totality of his explanation was everything after the "Also" then yeah, sure ok. No big. It was a dumb joke and it went too far.
The problem is that he starts with "Fantasy dwarves are not real-life dwarfs." So his excuse is that fantasy dwarves are not little people. And that is a bad excuse.
You only have to change fantasy dwarves to something else to see how uncomfortable he's being.
Example: "Asari aren't women! They're a fantasy monogendered race! So when I say that of course we wrote the Asari to be worse at fighting the Reapers than any other species, just like you'd expect, that's not a reflection on real women!"
Mythical races and sci fi aliens come from somewhere. If you make their physical characteristics match a type of people that exist in the real world, and then talk about how ugly and gross they are physically, then yeah you're making a comment about the type of people they're made to look like. This seems really obvious?
I'm not sure I'd dump much fault on Mr. Gaider in this particular circumstance (especially as one particular user in that thread appears to be dedicated to performing some trolling, based on the other threads that were rapid-fire started and locked as well). However, for new fantasy moving forward, it may be time to move on from "dwarves" as a fantasy staple. It's fine to have races of people that are smaller than humans, but perhaps a name change and cultural reimagining would do fantasy some good. I don't really understand why fantasy reuses the same Tolkien races again and again anyway; science fiction tends to be much more imaginative with its alien race creations.
Also the Asari are pretty problematic in design as well. They're a clear homage to 60s Trek, which sounds great in theory, but that means dragging 60s baggage into the present where it isn't really needed.
...Are you calling the Asari fat?
Well yeah, that's why I used them as an example.
But...he's not saying it's gross?
(Also I think there's a more valid case for distinction between medical and mythic dwarfs that have uncertain provenance and millenia of history than obvious, shallow burner races like the asari.)
I'm not seeing the problem. I think it's pretty reasonable to be "a little traumatized" by such a thing.
Then why say this: "That is so. Fantasy dwarves are not real-life dwarfs."? There's no reason at all to say that, except as an excuse to say something disparaging about them.
Well again, everything after "Also" in his statement is fine and basically should have stood for his entire statment. All reasonable and nothing wrong with it.
But he felt the need to preface his statement by the incomprehensible, "Fantasy dwarves are not real-life dwarfs." (IE "Well they aren't a real minority, I can say what I want about them lol") All he had to do was leave that statement off. Having it in shows that he doesn't quite get it?
An excuse to say something disparaging by immediately clarifying that he's not saying anything disparaging about either real dwarfs or fantasy dwarves?
All the love scenes in DAO should have left him a "little traumatized".
The second thing he said was that ingame-models during development looked like fourteen years old girls. Not even tolkien-dwarves in general. Which is quite removed from what I heard before.
I know Dave, and he'll say some stuff that's kind of assholish but that's the kind of thing I wouldn't expect from him. The preface is, I think, distinguishing between 'people who have dwarfism vs. Tolkien'ish dwarves share a name and that's it'. Which again, I can totally understand if you take issue with it, just that I don't think it's intended in that case.
Dwarves actually look very much like regular human beings, the redesigned elves looked very alien and skeletal.
Thank the maker they look normal again in DA:I ... I wanted to hit Merrill with a bat on more than one occasion, but then her laughably dumb naivete made me change my mind each time; like a puppy who pisses on your favorite rug but then looks at you with innocent little eyes and you can't be mad anymore.
Looking at Sera and Solas made me go "Okay, thank God, they listened to their fans."
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They're dwarves, not kender or even halfings or hobbits. They don't and shouldn't look like kids. They should look like dwarves.
I just don't think they fit the typical image of elven beauty. Which is good, I think. Regular elves that are just humans with pointy ears that commune with nature is kind of boring.
WoW
Dear Satan.....
I was okay with it, but I did feel like it "froze" their faces slightly, making them a bit less expressive and removing the nose as an element to differentiate between them.
I'm trying really hard to not say that they all looked alike to me, and they didn't really, but there did seem to be a smaller facial variety for elves than for the other races. I can see why they went back on the design, in any case.
Personally I'm not bothered by appearance continuity changes. The people who complained about the redesigned Qunari and TNG era Klingons are really foreign to me.
Like, you're upset because this thing you like looks way more awesome now?
I don't get it.
I challenge you to tell me what wasn't awesome about Puerto Ricans in Gold Lamé.
But I also can't say I care at all. Given what I know about how BioWare has done things, I just presume that at some point they cut corners or decided to be all George Lucas about it and fix what wasn't really broken. So, meh. I can rationalise it any way I want or just acknowledge that they made a change in graphic design and move on.
They looked like they were taken quite literally straight out of a comic book with a very specific art-style in mind. Alone that wouldn't be bad but it was implemented in a way that was really awkward. I get that they were trying to differentiate elves and humans; which they had a lot of trouble doing in Origins minus height and ears, but there was still the fact that the shape of their face and the rest of their body made them look almost completely alien.
Take Solas in DA:I for a counter-example of how they changed this. He still has facial features that clearly show he's not human (different eye shape, differently jointed-nose, obvious elven ears), but he's not super stick-figureish, and not super-BUG EYED. That's the part that bugged me the most about DA2's elves. THE EYES. They were way too big. I thought they came straight out of an anime or something when I first saw them (Merrill definitely has the "notice me Hawke-senpai" vibe), and Fenris is... hehe, I think that topic has been done to death, let's not go there.
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Tolkien elves were basically humans except taller, stronger, and much, much more beautiful (which makes sense because they were quasi-divine).
D&D elves derived from Tolkien elves but without the divinity, instead they just made them older and gave them a buttload of racial arrogance to back it up and then made them shorter than humans instead of taller.
So for DA they decided on short instead of tall, gotta keep the ears because elves, but what to do to differentiate them from the D&D elves they now resemble? Make them a low race and give them animu eyes. It sort of makes sense even if the end result looks awful.
But that storyline is from a narrator who clearly colors the surroundings with his perceptions. As stated in the prologue even. To Varric, that's probably how he sees them.
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So
Shit changes.
This is very breaking news.
Steam: BrocksMullet http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197972421669/
Let me guess: it was cut because Sten would be otherwise unable to wear armor?
XBL: GamingFreak5514
PSN: GamingFreak1234
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PSN: GamingFreak1234