You say that art should have internal consistency and then just jump over the whole "elves are hated but can still survive" point by suggesting I should misuse drugs, and then continue to say that another group couldn't survive if they were hated. It seems to me like you don't really understand what people are saying either. Perhaps you haven't been taught non-bipolar measures. No one suggested Dethmold should be a hero. It almost seems like you're trying to form a straw man.

Did I misunderstand your medical suggestion? Were you trying to say that Risperidone is required to see the world clearly like you do?

Adzeth: Your post 119 was extremely disjointed and almost totally irrelevant to the post to which it purportedly replied. It looked like a textbook sample of schizophrenic speech. Don't post things that look symptomatic of schizophrenia and I won't recommend anti-schizophrenics.

Yes, elves are hated but still survive. The reason for this isn't hard to grasp: they make up considerably more than a low-single-digit percentage of the population. Here in reality - I assume, for the sake of argument, that you have a better grasp on reality than you've hitherto demonstrated - if gays made up 20-50% of the population of the land, and had gay cities, gay military strongholds, and gay armies with fabulously elite gay special forces feared far and wide for the merciless ass kickings and tortures they routinely dispensed on their anti-gay enemies, people living near said gays would be a lot more tolerant of homosexuality, even if they really didn't want to be. In The Witcher, elves are in something of that position.

Soooo.... What exactly is significance of this thread, posted on GOG discussion boards, never to be seen by any of the writers?
Could we not attack each other around here please? I'm not exactly talking to you alone, you're just the most open about it right now.

Fenixp, I get the impression that you don't think this thread should have ever seen the light of day. At any rate, I will gladly send you a PM explaining to you what significance I see in this thread if you would sincerely like me too. I am not interested in inviting any extra ridicule in the thread itself, however, if I get specific. There are some very nasty customers at this forum and I really don't want this thread to be derailed any further than it has been. I will reply to other posts later as currently I am using my iPod.

And this is where we start dabbling in entitlement. It's not your story. It's not your game. They don't need to balance anything, unless they want be insipid little sycophants like the folks at Bioware.

In my experience the real world is fine with nice people.

I guess for me, the point is that they didn't do what you have suggested. They could have (in addition to Dethmold) made a nice gay character who was killed by jerks for whatever reason, but they didn't. Why not? There could be any number of reasons, I'm not going to speculate but I am happy to be involved in the discussion.

The discourteous and rude personal attacks (not to mention drug pushing) make me fairly disinterested in responding to you, so please stop doing that. It makes no logical sense for you to make your words a complete displeasure to read if you really are hoping to make a point with the people you are discoursing with. I think that instead you just want to insult and ridicule people that you disagree with and take great pleasure in doing so.

That being said, I will briefly respond to what you have said so far, but if you continue to resort to personal attacks, I am through discoursing with you. I have a question that I would like to ask you, but at this time, adding anything else to a dialogue with you is rather an unpleasant prospect, as things stand.

Anyway, as htown has already pointed out, there are numerous ways that they could implement some balance that would make sense in The Witcher game world. They simply have chosen not to. Until her end, Margot survived just fine without having vast magical powers at her fingertips. Some have said that Triss once engaged in lesbian affairs (that Geralt seems perfectly fine with), yet she seems to have done fairly well for quite a long time. They could quite easily include a male sorcerer who is gay who isn't a douche.

As for your comment about me wanting every gay person portrayed in every single video game to be a universe saving stud muffin, I never expressed any such desire and you know that.

And that stuff about me thinking you are a "disciple of Fred Phelps" is nonsense. I have no idea what your religious beliefs are or what your personal opinion is of gay people, nor do I really care.

It is?

You aren't the first person to ever accuse a gay person of having a false sense of "entitlement" whenever they have expressed displeasure over something like this. You won't be the last. Its simply untrue however, and rather unkind of you to say.

I never said it was "my story", nor did I say that they "need" to balance anything or that I felt "entitled" to anything. I have only expressed what I would like to see in the game series and what my opinions were about some of the content that does appear in the series. Am I the only one of their customers to have ever done that?

By your strong words about BioWare, it really seems as though positive portrayals of male homosexuality in video games bothers you quite a lot. I don't see why this means you have to be hostile to those who have opinions that are not in line with your own, however (I find unkind, false accusations to be acts of hostility).

Lol, come on Zephyr lighten up. I'm not attacking you or gay people in general. You're barking up the wrong tree here: a Polish developer known for uncompromising content with an emphasis on the underbelly of medieval society and female sexuality. I mean, you mention Margot...seriously? That was fan service - out of the blue she's mackin' with the she elf. It made me roll my eyes. Dethmold and Phillipa are far more convincing characters. Their sexuality takes a back seat, even though it's brazenly presented in both cases. And Dethmold's demise has nothing to do with anti-gay sentiments. It has everything to do with a loose cannon named Roche.

Zephyr: I don't know why they didn't do what htown suggested. There's a near-infinite number of possible reasons - and the very least plausible of them all is that the game has an anti-gay agenda. Thus, the answer to the title question is a simple unequivocal 'no'.

Look, I'll apologize for being snotty to you; I was out of line. It's just that these sort of inquisitions strike me as a sort of McCarthyism; they make me want to grab people and yell at them: don't you know where this leads?! Art, then politics, then religion, if it goes far enough. I'd just as soon it didn't, and as you can see, feel pretty strongly about it.

Yes, I sure do bring her up. Regardless of what you think of her and their motives for putting her in the game, she is still a lesbian, she is still in the game and she is pertinent to this discussion. And it was a she-elf, not a she-dwarf.

You make an interesting point about her being "fan-service" though. I totally agree with you there and always felt that way. I am glad that you admit this yourself. Its ok to put girl on girl action in the game because it titillates and pleases many of the male players of the game. They do not and probably never will have the guts to put a decent male homosexual character in the Witcher games though.

This particular fan would sure like to see a male homosexual in the game that isn't a jerk like Dethmold. He doesn't even have to do any onscreen macking on he-elves (and no, this is not a "demand" or something that I feel that I am "entitled" to). It will never happen though.

Seriously though, I think the original point of this thread has been lost. The point of the OP wasn't even whether or not they should put a nice gay guy in the game. The original question was "is the game anti-gay"? I don't know if I can say that it is, but one thing is certain. It is not pro-gay. At least as far as male homosexuals are concerned. If they DID place a nice gay guy in the game, however, that would certainly answer the question in a definitive manner. Please note that I am not "demanding" that they be pro-gay. i am just making the observation that I don't personally believe that they are pro-gay.

I have probably contributed greatly to the initial point of this thread being lost because I find myself reacting to the homophobes and hostile people that feel the need to post here and this has been causing my feelings about this issue to become stronger and stronger and it makes me feel an even greater desire to respond in this thread. I am not calling you yourself a homophobe either by the way. I honestly don't have the faintest clue what your opinions are about homosexuality other than you don't seem to like male homosexuality to be depicted in a benign way in video games.

I appreciate and accept your apology. Thank you. :)

And religion has already been covered a page or two back. lol

Personally, I wish they had never made Dethmold gay in the first place if he is going to be the only example of male homosexuality to ever appear in this series. I know they should be able to do whatever they want without having their motives dissected or questioned, etc, but the scene did bother me as a gay male and I just wanted to be honest about that fact and I really liked that someone created a thread in which I could. I don't know for sure that I would have been brave enough to do it myself.

This is a thread that could have been filled with trolling, hate, homophobia, etc, etc. There probably was a bit of that stuff somewhere in here but I ain't gonna go through the whole thread looking for it.

Generally speaking, though, I think this thread shows how goggers can have a pretty good debate about controversial topics without being jerks. Heck, there's even been apologies. My faith in humanity is (slighty) restored.

Yay for everyone.

No, I think everything should be discussed. I just don't believe this thread is significant in any manner, especially since I really think that homosexuality/heterosexuality are equal and should be treated as such (as, for example, when a bad character in a videogame happens to be a homosexual, it should not matter to the slightest.) But if you think you have more to add to the topic that you don't want to post around here... Sure, go ahead.

Still waiting on some orgies here .....

Edit:

In light of this topic, Duke Nukem's badass boast "Your face, Your ass, what's the difference?" gets a whole new meaning...

Which part? The one where I ridicule your medieval reality in a fictional setting, or just the general disagreement? If you're in a position to recommend people medicine, my recommendation to you is to actually see and talk to the people you're going to recommend stuff to. Right now, it seems like you're ready to recommend meds to anyone who comes to you and says "P is not P" regardless of their motive.

You can't really jump into conclusions about my grasp on reality when we're discussing fictional themes on a forum about video games. Could you drop that already, there are no ridable horses in The Witcher 2, and that includes high ones.

Why do you bring up reality and then continue with that talk about warring gay societies contributing to tolerance? I'm just going to assume that you meant the game. If you didn't, look up racism. That high percentage in population and having cities, strongholds, and torture hasn't really helped with the tolerance. Religious fights might be of interest to you as well.

To me, it seems like the humans in The Witcher 2 could wipe out the elves if they chose to do so. The dwarves have strongholds, but the only Elven stronghold I remember mentioned in the game was destroyed in the past by humans. The humans are having problems with the guerilla Scoia'tael, but I remember no mention of armies, cities or "fabulously elite elf special forces". This might be a good place to remind you that homosexuality does not come with attributes such as fabulous or effeminate. It's somewhat of a stand-alone attribute. The game doesn't have an ecclesiarchy either, nor agents of one climbing up people's windows. This medieval reality seems to be just okay no matter what it does, as long as there's nothing positive about homosexuality.

I apologize if I seem aggressive, but your messages do not seem all that neutral either. I'm not after the "artistic integrity" of the game either. My point is that if you drop parts A, B, and C from a realistic setting, you can't go and say that D is impossible to drop because it's realistic. You can say that dropping D is a no-go because it's not what was sought for or wanted, but the retaining realism is humbug.

Saying that something isn't bad because it wasn't intended as such is also quite iffy. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and all that.