So I was recently dusting off the classic Rome Total War, and Medieval 2 Total War...and I found out your characters can have traits that make them homosexual...but being homosexual in-the game gives you horrible penalties. And it's manifested in other awful ways. In Med 2, there's different "levels" (as if being gay is a fucking level in real life) that gives carious penalties to your character Princess can have it too...and like being gay for generals it gives a bunch of horrible negative effects. In Rome 1, the only "gay" traits are either having a transwoman is a partner (which is one of the worst traits in the game too have, and it's portrayed in a super stereotypical fashion) And a sex slave boy, implying all gay people are pedophiles and freaks, because these are the only ones. It's extremely blatant, and i'm glad the series has moved away from this stuff, but it's still horrible.
I dont think there's nothing wrong, considering how homophobic some cultures in the past was. but, those descriptions are indeed horrible and there should be a disclaimer how while those things were the norm in some places back then, it doesn't fly in today's modern age.
I get the descriptions based on the time periods that the Midevial game is taking place in. But its actually fucked up that they get debuffs for being gay. It's pretty crazy that something like that got approved
That was literally covered in the second line of my post. If they couldnt find a way to cover how badly gay people were treated back then they shouldnt have done it at all. Yeah sorry, i poorly explained my stance on that. Was including roman society in the some cultures sentence. Should have been more clear.
As it represents society in earlies times when homosexual people had it worse I think its accurate. HAving your people know about it would defnitely affect your standing and your authority on your people as society was much harsher about it.
Considering it's a video game there's a shitton of historical inaccuracies for the sake of gameplay. Quite odd that they'd choose THIS as a thing to be "historically accurate" on.
So this only give penalties? Is this something the player can choose or is some kind of trait given to the character with no player input?
That is seriously troubling. I have only played the Shogun series, had no idea something like this existed.
Rome 1 is infamously historically inaccurate too (there's hundreds of mods to fix that fact). The Roman Ninjas, Pink Parthians, and Tomb King Egyptians should be proof of that.
Game systems carry both intended and unintended messages, just like themes, tropes, and characterization do in traditional media. That is to say that this isn't just about "historical accuracy" or whether or not it's trying to be faithful to how shitty the time period was, it's about how this can negatively affect how people in the LGBTQ community and how the dearth of positive portrayals (especially for the time and especially for gaming as a medium) can make shitty ones like this all the more harmful, considering we live in the real world and not in a hypothetical vacuum.
All for being historically accurate etc but this is taking the fucking piss. Who thought this was alright?
The traits and the descriptions are fucked up. Defending them under the guise of "it's historically accurate" is beyond fucked up.
Man that really is extreme. Yikes. Really hope they aren't pulling this hateful garbage in newer entries. I've played some of the newer historical titles but not enough to really speak to their contents. Edit: Thanks Chromie.
Positive depictions of homosexuality in video gaming are very recent. The culture, on both the developer and consumer sides, was overwhelmingly homophobic even in the 2000s.
Well, that's normal for the general, you could have homosexual relations in ancient rome as long as the partner was a slave or a prostitute. As for the pederasty, well, that's a greek fantasy the romans had, so it was there (but i wouldn't have described that in a game... it doesn't add anything). Having these negative perks for being gay is absolutely stupid, when you were in relationship with a same-sex slave you remained completely in the canons of roman society... even more, you would be seen as a sophisticated person, culturally advanced. There should be bonuses.
well the situation is more complex than that, Roman society was indeed really different from ours in that regard and while homosexuality was technically accepted in their society it was still quite different than heterosexuality, and it still contained some elements that we would consider homophobic by today's standard, wikipedia explains it a lot better than i could ever do: "Roman men were free to enjoy sex with other males without a perceived loss of masculinity or social status, as long as they took the dominant or penetrative role. Acceptable male partners were slaves, prostitutes, and entertainers, whose lifestyle placed them in the nebulous social realm of infamia, excluded from the normal protections accorded a citizen even if they were technically free. Although Roman men in general seem to have preferred youths between the ages of 12 and 20 as sexual partners, freeborn male minors were strictly off limits, and professional prostitutes and entertainers might be considerably older." so TECHNICALLY those descriptions and penalties, as crazy as it sounds, could be viewed as somewhat historically accurate in a way, especially if read from the perspective of the romans of the time. BUT as others have pointed out this is far from an historically accurate game and to be honest even if the game was aiming for absolute historical accuracy this would still be a REALLY ugly mechanic to put in the game, it would just be a weird and unnecessary thing to focus on if you were looking for historical accuracy.
The Warhammer sub series has no references to homosexuality at all (barring some stuff with the Dark Elves), and I don't think the later titles have any negative references to it, so it seems just the older titles.
Yes they were. Maybe you're thinking about Greece. The Romans only tolerated it if you were a top. Which is homophobic as fuck.
Pretty abhorrent stuff. That said the games are from 2006 and 2004. Hopefully CA isn't still putting that kind of shit in their games these days.
This is about as historically accurate as an apple pie with potatoes and tomato sauce to the face in the roman era. "Fruitcake" and "queen" are rather new terms for this particular thing. Also....Arse??? Probably a single employee with ...issues. YIkes. This has not been the case in the games I played. It's actually the other way round - earlier text adventures and RPGs were fairly positive, even, and the negative shit only poured in with the FPS culture shift, when marketing got aggressively macho and anti-women as well (Romero is going to make you your bitch / not for girls campaigns etc). It's less an overall culture thing, and more specific push in a specific era that tried to hypermasculinize everything.
Er, no? I'd like to see some evidence of this cus this really screwed up if true - I remember being able to make same sex couples in The Sims 1, I could be wrong but I really can't remember this.
That's.... something, to say the least. I heard of penalties liek this before, but that's taking it to the extreme. That's somewhat revisionist. Despite the stereotypes about them and the Greeks, both societies were quite homophobic. We have a sanitised view of Greco-Roman attitudes towards homosexuality only due to them being relatively tolerant to gay people in comparison to the Abrahamic religions and their predecessors in the Levant, otherwise being gay was still looked down upon. As MikeNeko says, it was only socially acceptable if you were basically sexually taking advantage of your slave or paying a prostitute, and - if you were performing anal sex - you had to be the penetrating partner. Being known as a bottom in Roman times as a man would lessen your social status to that of a woman, who had basically no rights in Rome (did I mention they were also extremely misogynistic, even by their contemporaries' standards?)
Different time. For example, compare braveheart’s depiction of a supposedly gay character as a wimp to today’s standards. I guess this sounds like an excuse, but I suppose it is shocking how fast we white from there to here (in a good way). If the modern games have stuff like this that’s way more of an issue.
I am surprised the Arse attribute made it through all the layers of testing. Fascinating. How many states of Arse are there?
Sure, but that shit in the games does not remotely represent a period-accurate conceptualization of homosexuality or trans identity or anything else. It's the conceptualization of a modern middle school edgelord. I can only hope they've grown up a bit since those games. I'm surprised I haven't seen any stink about this stuff before.
I mean, that shit probably shouldn't have been in the game, regardless of if it was period appropriate.
Seems to be me a dev was trying to push a homophobic agenda. I hope it dosen't represent a modern CA, which it seemingly dosen't.
It's simplified and abstracted, but it seems to be represent (for what it matters in a military strategy game!) the period-accurate conceptualization of homosexuality. The common soldiers would respect their general less, as rumors and general mockery would rampart in the army, therefore, a command/authority penalty. Like, imagine for a moment if a general in the XX century, in let's say WW2, would be openly gay. What you think it would happen within their soldiers, as people were pretty homophobic just a few decades ago.
Men having sex with men is not synonymous with contemporary homosexuality. Macho Roman culture would definitely be incredibly homophobic by modern standards.
Not even close to the same thing. CK2 is all about playing as a lineage rather than a single character, so anything that inhibits making heirs is naturally a hindrance. Being gay is just one of many things that affect fertility. Outside of making gay couples pop out kids just as easily as straight couples, there is really no way around being gay being a hindrance, given the game's premise. Total War went out of its way to code being queer as a specific penalty, even editorializing in the various levels of "shame" and using homophobic language. TW is a whole other level and shows clear intentionality
It's Total War Rome, not Total War American Civil War. These are beyond shameful on top of being anachronistic.
Wow. Just wow. Ew. In the interest of contributing to the discussion more than disgust: In the case of Medieval 2, it really does feel like it's trying to go for authenticity in how your underlings would treat you knowing you're going against Church norms... even if it's inauthentic and Medieval times had plenty of same-sex love among the upper class with little repercussion to their rule. Total War has been known to listen to pop culture's idea of "authenticity" for a while. I could give plenty of examples from Shogun 2, which supposedly had Japanese history consultants working on it. Not surprised by older titles missing important facts. That being said, fuck, fuck, fuck those descriptions. The last two are especially cruel and uncalled for. I'm sure the womanizing traits aren't written as being as shameful even if they give similar debuffs. And there's no excuse for the Rome bullshit. What the fuck is this transphobic idiocy? I really hope whoever wrote that has either gotten educated on their hatefulness or no longer works at Creative Assembly.
Omg finally someone on a gaming forum uses the word 'revisionist' correctly! Now I just need to find someone who understands the proper definition of 'reactionary' and I'll be happy. Also great post.
