Game news The controversy surrounding Dragon Age highlights one of the great evils of current video games
Published on 01/11/2024 at 12:00
Share :
With its very recent release, ''Dragon Age: The Veilguard'' appears to be a return to form for Bioware. If the Canadian studio seems to have produced one of its best works in years, some players are expressing virulent criticism against the game which they consider “too political”.
Politics is only when men kiss
Fourth episode of the license, Dragon Age: The Veilguard marks the return of a franchise absent for 10 years. If the expectation was great, and the pressure as well, it would seem that Bioware succeeded in transforming the test since the feedback from the press was very positive, the game reaching a score of 84 on rating aggregator Metacritic. However, even before its official release, the game found itself attacked by part of the public, particularly tackling the inclusion of LGBT themes within the game and its narrative.
Indeed, many players have complained about dialogues in which characters discuss their sexual orientation or even their transsexuality. If the complaints of “wokism” and “politicization of video games” were not long in coming, fans of the license pointed out that Bioware had always been a particularly progressive studio which already represented homosexual or even transsexual characters in its previous games.
No no, nothing has changed
It is good to remember that the Dragon Age have not only been particularly progressive gamesbut also that they made a point of developing the personal stories of their characters. Beyond the fantasy that characterizes them, the episodes of the franchise are, in part, known for giving players the possibility of forming gay romances, and the series of Mass Effect even had a public debate on the subject for its third episode: a fact which led to a small outcry at the time.
So, Dragon Age: The Veilguard is the latest receptacle for these persistent controversies. Even though questions of gender and sexuality only appear during a handful of quests, there have been calls to boycott the game. We find, as usual, accusations of “politicization” and “wokism”. In the video above, we decipher this trend and its effect on current video games.
