Is This The Best Trans Character In The History Of Video Games?
We’ve already written plenty about how Bioware’s new game, Dragon Age: Inquisition, is super-queer-friendly. It has the first exclusively gay party member, multiple gay and bi romance options, and lots of graphic (but tasteful) gay sex to enjoy.
But did you also know it has a trans character, and that’s he’s voiced by Jennifer Hale, who played the lesbian-if-you-want-her-to-be Shepard character in Mass Effect? (Spoilers below!)
Take a look at how Dragon Age handles a character who presents as male, but then later opens up about having been born female:
“Let me know if you need help binding,” Krem teases one character with big pecs.
What follows is a brief conversation about trans issues and gender identity, without ever using those words. It’s sort of an opportunity for straight games to ask a transman what it’s like to be trans, without the risk of offending a real person.
About transmen, Bull says, “they are real men, just like you or me.”
And if you slip up and call him a woman, Bull corrects you: “he’s now a woman. … Krem’s a good man.”
The game was already pretty friendly to gender fluidity, since it lets you create female characters with an Adam’s apple and beard, or male characters with makeup. As IO9 pointed out, it would be nice if your character had an opportunity to explicitly declare their trans status as well, but oh well. Maybe that’ll come in Dragon Age 4.
Krem’s voice actor, Jennifer Hale, is already a heroine where queer games are concerned. Here she is voicing Shepard in a lesbian sex scene in Bioware’s Mass Effect:
matt baume
