Getting ready to exit The Last of Us: Part II, we decided to help you better develop your tolerance and offer a brief excursion into the history of LGBT games.
The origins
After the appearance Pong non-traditional heroes almost immediately became part of the gaming universes. And although it is believed that the first gay character was the negative heroine of a text adventure MoonmistIt can hardly be considered a real manifesto. Especially the year before she got an adventure in France Le crime du parking with gays, lesbians, and transgenders as villains.
In 1988, a couple of years after the release of Moonmist, the Japanese distinguished themselves. Birdo, dinosaur from Super Mario Bros. 2, became the first transgender game character. “He thinks he is a girl and prefers to be called Birdetta”, – it appeared in the Japanese manual. For the western release, all transgender links have been removed.
The character is still present in games from Nintendolike Mario party and crossover with Sega Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games without any reminder of the raspberry reptile’s unconventional orientation, so the players don’t even guess who they loved.
The first graphic adventures, like Circuit’s Edge in 1989 or Dracula unleashed in 1993, modestly offered transgender people and gay librarians as secondary characters.
Released in 1989 on Poppies Caper in the castro considered the first LGBT-focused game. In the story, the lesbian detective Tracker McDyke was looking for her friend and drag queen Tessi la Femme. The project was distributed free of charge, but the creator later insured himself, cut out all references to non-traditional subjects and re-released his brainchild called Murder on main streetunder which it became better known.
Project slogan – Finally … a computer game for the rest of us! It’s not just a game – it’s a Gayme!
In 1992, the world saw Gayblade for Windows and Mac, a fantasy role-playing adventure where you, as a gay, lesbian or drag queen, using tear gas, condoms and sharp nails, must save Empress Nelda by fighting against the Nazis and intolerant white men. Even then, the young Neil Drackmann had excellent ground for inspiration.
Especially since the game was actively noisy in the specialized and not very media of that time – articles were preserved in The Village Voice, USA Today and the German weekly Der Spiegel.
The console mainstream at that time also did not lag behind. SEGA with fights Streets of Rage 3 in 1994, she rolled out the traditional (greetings from “Blue Oyster”) look at gays with a purple cap and black body. It was such a bright boss named Ash who was cut from the American release of the game. And now the heroes from “Jojo”Draw on children’s diaries and school notebooks around the world.
But the gay developers were not discouraged, and in 1995 a space adventure came out The orion conspiracy for Windows and MS-DOS. Detective Delvin McCormack searched for the murderers of his son Denny until he found himself at the station, where he discovered that the offspring was gay and had a boyfriend, Steve, who was then killed in the most cruel way. Since the hero was the last to see Steve, all suspicions fall on him. After the escape, Delvin, obsessed with revenge for his son and his love, sought those responsible for these crimes.
In 1998, the cult came out Fallout 2, where there were not only gays, lesbians and paid love, but also the first gay wedding in the history of games. Such freedom was explained by the fact that one of the creators of the project, the main screenwriter Tim Kane, was already an open gay then.
“We have expanded the boundaries. And not only due to cruelty. We wanted to create a game with a lot of social elements, so we added gay weddings to the game“
Five years later, Kane tried to repeat the trick in The temple of elemental evilbut a community of lovers “Dungeons and Dragons”Did not understand the humor. However, after these games, the snowball tolerance only began to gain volume and speed.
Used in 1998 as a paper ad, a hint of a lesbian relationship between Hanoi and the Rhine in the series Fear effect never received confirmation. Although the creators claimed that the relations of the girls are gradually developing, and Khan is bisexual, with the failure of the third part in this story, you can put a bullet in it.
Country of the rainbow sun
The greatest contribution to the rainbow sunrise was made by the Japanese. The country’s traditional dressing and gender identity games had an impact on major releases, including Final Fantasy VII (1997, PS1) c your favorite scene with Cloud in the shower with sweaty jiggles and further trying on a purple dress.
Or crossdressing Zelda, who dressed like a guy in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998, Nintendo 64).
True, in both cases, the characters were victims of circumstances, which was explained by the plot.
In 1998 in Star Ocean: The Second Story for PS1 it was possible to start novels with persons of the same gender.
In 1999 in Persona 2: Innocent Sin one of the main characters of Jun Kurosu was an open homosexual who boasted of makeup in front of the girls, used flowers as a weapon and was in love with the main character. It was possible to have a relationship with him, which was considered a canonical decision, as was later explained by project designer Kazuma Kaneko.
A year later came out Resident Evil Code: Veronicawhere the antagonist Alfred Ashford changed clothes in his sister’s clothes while she was in a deep freeze.
Roughly the same dressing up trick was repeated in Resident Evil: Dead Aim three years later. With the help of a virus, the villain Morpheus Duval turned into a female version of himself with a chiseled figure and long and very sharp heels.
In 2001, a genius Hideo Kojima released Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty for PS2, where the bisexual and immortal boss Vamp (who returned to MGS4) opened the way to a gay romance between Colonel Volgin and Major Ivan Raikov in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. In the last game, Snake even got a crotch massage, and 2004 was outside.
In 2007 in Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift for Nintendo DS, for the first time in the entire series of Final Fantasy games, the transgender character Night Dancer was introduced, who was a man by birth.
In 2008 in Persona 4 One of the main characters of Kanji Tatsumi reveals his secret homoerotic passion. True, his attraction to one of the characters in a black cap ends with a heterosexual relationship, because that person is, though androgynous, but still a girl.
Almost imperceptibly for everyone showed themselves in all its glory Makoto from Enchanted arms from Fromsoftwareas well as yann and dallas from Valkyria chronicles from Sega. Although the combat saxophone Makoto and his catchphrase (“Toya, baby!”) When dealing with a friend of the protagonist is very difficult to forget.
This was followed by the original Nier from CaviaWho in 2010 proposed sexual hermaphrodite Cain and gay boy Emil, who had feelings for the main character.
Sequel NieR: Automata from Platinum games was already more heterosexual, but there was a place for the line of lesbian androids 6O, 16D and 11B, albeit in very side conversations.
Games are not for everyone
With the development of the mainstream, LGBT games began to be mastered by indie studios and loners, releasing projects for “their own”. The independent developer was particularly successful in this field. Robert Young with The tearoom – a simulator of oral and homosexual sex in a public toilet, sucking popsicle on a stick with men in the background in Succulentwashing in the shower with hairy guys Rinse and repeat and BDSM simulator Hurt me plenty.
In 2015, the adventure saw the light 2064: Read Only Memories with queer characters of all sorts in the cyberpunk setting of the new San Francisco.
Immediately after the release of the game, its creators, open gays, quarreled, and still can not share the money received on Kickstarter.
Dream daddy, made in the format of a visual short story, became the first of the largest Western dating simulators with gay characters. A feature of the project was that the protagonist, gay, was a single father with children. However, for Japan this is no longer news where representatives of this genre have long been on separate shelves in specialized stores.
American LGBTkalipsis
In 2003 Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic from BioWare offered the first purely lesbian character in the franchise “star Wars”- Juhani. Players could enter into a romantic relationship with a lesbian Jedi. In the early version, your male character was able to have an affair with her, but then the developers called it a bug and closed the possibility of a patch. BioWare finally opened the windows of Overton, consistently demonstrating free love and unconventional relationships.
Dragon age and Mass effect offered all the options for interracial and gender love, not forgetting even about exclusively homosexual characters and bestiality. So, in one of the Taedas taverns, you could sleep with a sheep, a huge hammer and even a sunflower …
Emerging gay marriages in Fable and Skyrim already did not cause mass protests.
Developers The sims 3 generally made gay marriage one of the advertising elements of the game.
The French from Ubisoft did not lag behind their American counterparts. Debuted in 2007 Assassin’s creed the merchant and the goal to eliminate Abu al-Nukvod was gay. Before his death, he said: “How can I finance a war in the name of that God who calls me an abomination.”
Three years later in Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood screenwriters supported the historical myth that Leonardo da Vinci He loved to have fun with his young students. In one of the game fragments, da Vinci comments on Ezio’s remark that the master spends too much time with the model, notes: “Women are a little distracting.”
In the series Borderlands there is a lesbian couple from Athena and her cyber girlfriend Springs.
AT Borderlands 2 Little Tina’s non-player character admits that she would like to have an affair with Moxy and Maya.
Addition The Ballad of Gay Tony for Grand theft auto iv demonstrated a gay character as a strong and cruel gangster.
And here we come to The last of us. In the original game this was not mentioned, but in the supplement Left behind there were direct allusions to the homosexuality of Ellie, who once kissed her friend. Then many did not attach any importance to this, explaining everything with a small age of the character, but then Neil Drackmann confirmed in an interview that Ally was a lesbian.
In addition, the main game was the character Bill, who was experiencing the loss of a lover, having fun in the company of a pornographic magazine for gays, while no one sees.
In 2013, she left Gone home, which tells about the return of an American student Caitlin Greenbrier home where no one is. Parents and the younger sister disappeared, and soon the main character realizes that her sister was a lesbian, and her ancestors tried to treat her from orientation.
The next game authors about an abandoned station Tacoma also raised LGBT topics, but now in space.
In 2015 Life is strange offered the general public a story about teenage relationships, where the main character Max Caulfield could kiss her childhood friend Chloe Price. And in the prequel Before the storm you can learn about the lesbian love between Chloe and Rachel Amber, who tragically died in the original.
Around the same time in Dragon Age: Inquisition lesbian Sera, pansexuals Iron Bull and Josephine, as well as gay Dorian, who escaped from his home after his family tried to break his homosexuality and turn him straight, were represented.
A little later, in the story, the player met Cream, the first transgender in the world Dragon Age (the character was born a woman, but felt like a man), the Inquisition Ritz’s lesbian scout, Eldred, Empress Selina from Orlei, Brialu and so on.
Another high-profile game with LGBT characters is Overwatch. In 2016, Blizzard made an official cuming out for Lena “Tracer” Oxton, who turned out to be a lesbian. Her friend was introduced in the comic and caused a flurry of negative feedback from the players. True, then the minority pulled up and created a ton of gay content about the characters, including numerous fanfiction and hot art with the remaining characters.
And finally, in the very near future will be released The Last of Us: Part II, the first such a major game where the main character is an open lesbian and is in a relationship with another female character. But we can handle it, because it is not for nothing that gamers have come such a long way in more than 30 years.
Author: Alexander Loginov (xtr)
Editing: Mikhail Shaginyan (ACE), Denis Korolev (Skyerist)
Read also: “I really miss you” – Amy Hennig shared her thoughts on working on the Uncharted series and told her what she’s most proud of
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