![]() Colleen Perman gave Krem his fantastic face using the character art team’s head-morph system, John Epler nailed his animation and body language, Caroline Livingstone and Jennifer Hale found a great voice for a trans man in a world without access to transitional procedures, and Melanie Fleming made absolutely certain that Krem was gendered appropriately in all languages. Every single department stepped up enthusiastically to make sure that Krem was created with respect. In doing so, we saw how much of our game’s engine was based on set gender assignments, from voice to face to animation set to localization plan for foreign languages. Once we had decided what we wanted to do, we tackled the concept of Krem with other departments to figure out how to do it correctly. Krem’s status as a trans man, rather than being just tacked on, could emphasize Bull’s character by opening up discussions of Qunari gender roles. His conversation could come up naturally, along with discussions of life as a mercenary, and he could serve a vital role in the story as a grounding force who would remind the player that Bull is more than just hired muscle. In addition, Bull’s loyalty is pulled between life under the Qun and a life of freedom, and I needed a character on each side who could represent that pull.Ĭremisius “Krem” Aclassi met both challenges. He’s a mercenary commander, and even if we didn’t have the memory budget to have his entire company around all the time, I needed to be able to remind players that Bull has a history of command. Second, the character had to serve a purpose beyond “being there to be a genderqueer person.” Every character in our game serves a purpose-reinforcing the theme of a plot, character, or area-and we do not have the budget for someone who is just there to tick off a box.Īs we discussed ideas, the possibility came up of Iron Bull’s lieutenant being such a character. A minor character like a shopkeeper would have no reason to explain that she is trans, so either the conversation would never come up or it would come up because her voice was clearly masculine, at which point it would look like a joke to most players, no matter how we tried to write it. First, any conversation about the subject had to come up naturally in-game. ![]() Talking over drinks at the bar later, we hit two major challenges. ![]() When the panel was over, some of us kicked around ideas about what we could do. One of the most repeated requests was for representation of transgender and/or genderqueer characters in a way that did not make them either a monster or a joke. We heard concerns, praise, and a lot of heartfelt discussion about how we present characters from the LGBTQ community. If you’ve already had drinks with the Bull’s Chargers, nothing in here should be spoiled for you.)Ī couple years ago, BioWare did a BioWare Base panel on LGBTQ representation in our games at PAX. (Note: This article contains spoilers for the Iron Bull’s character arc up to his personal plot, but not including it.
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