The Sea Runs Restless Firesong quest is a little...

MiyaGrace

Potential spoilers for The Sea Runs Restless quest below:




Anyone else find the quest The Sea Runs Restless in the new Firesong DLC a little bit... off the mark? Creepy, in a bad way? It's written to be humorous, involving numerous... amorous encounters (which granted happen off-screen). That's not what bothers me - what bothers me is that everyone in the quest line, including a major recurring character, are under the influence of a relic that is altering their state of mind specifically to push them towards these encounters, effectively against their will. That means none of the encounters described in the quest are truly consensual. There's even a scene towards the end of the quest (in audio dialog) where even under the influence of the relic, a character tries to say "no" to someone's advances and is ignored. Rather than being funny as it seems to have been intended, I found the quest to be very off-putting and inappropriate. Just, you know, creepy, yeah? [snip]

[edited for bashing]

Soarora

THANK YOU!!! I'm so disturbed by that quest and mentioned it in the PTS feedback thread. I think I could laugh it off if the totem wasn't involved but I'm getting very uncomfortable and angry about how much sexual content is in this season, let alone suspicious or morally incorrect sexual content.

Necrotech_Master

even after you finish this quest, and during the epilogue you can talk to those 2 again

the one guy is still pining after the unseen "neri" character even though the relic is gone by that point

so not entirely sure how affected he was by that relic to begin with

Dojohoda

Trash like this quest makes me regret ever spending a dime on ESO. Then I did the Razum-dar quest and this statement made by Razum-dar seems weird.

FluffyBird

Dojohoda wrote: »

Trash like this quest makes me regret ever spending a dime on ESO. Then I did the Razum-dar quest and this statement made by Razum-dar seems weird.

Ohhh, Smolder Scrolls team hard at work, I see

Necrotech_Master

Dojohoda wrote: »

Trash like this quest makes me regret ever spending a dime on ESO. Then I did the Razum-dar quest and this statement made by Razum-dar seems weird.

i agree that comment seemed a little out of character for him lol

Treselegant

While I didn't find it creepy - I did find it embarrassingly awful. The writing was really bad fan work level which was appropriate as the whole thing seemed similiar to a particular fanfiction trope:

known as: sex pollen.

The fact that the player character stands around stoically unaffected but unable to comment on the situation beyond asking- "so what do we do next?" every few minutes just added a real sense of surrealism which had me laughing more than the dialogue itself.

Recently, every time the game tries to be 'mature' we seem to end up with dialogue sounding like an uncomfortable 14 year old making a 'naughty joke'. The characters dont flirt like normal people and the jokes are just...'oo er misses' like the characters of a 1960s British comedy.

I don't mind bawdy humour when it's used properly but High Isle and Firesong in particular has some really off putting examples of how not to do it.

netch_a_sketch

Personally I found it absolutely hilarious, especially since it's not even as risque and questionable as some existing Elder Scrolls lore. The writing wasn't great which is what made it even funnier imo. I don't think it was a quest you were supposed to take seriously and I doubt ZOS will continue making similar quests.

But I can completely understand how it would make people uncomfortable, especially since it does nothing to prepare you for it and is incredibly in your face (even I thought it was a bit much at times).

As for the remark made by Razum-dar, I don't think that's out of character at all. He's spoken about women in the same way before.

Soarora

netch_a_sketch wrote: »

As for the remark made by Razum-dar, I don't think that's out of character at all. He's spoken about women in the same way before.

The thing about Razum-dar is that people weren’t happy when he spoke about women in

Elsweyr

like that either. It’s like a slap in the face one way and then randomly making him m-spec (after YEARS) and talk like that about men is a slap in the face the other way.
I’m not m-spec myself but I’ve chatted with some people who are and the representation in this season seems a bit questionable given the 2 m-spec main quest npcs are highly sexual… which is a stereotype…
But I know some people liked it.

The representation in general for this season seems questionable (or even insulting), honestly. But again, I only have a small sample size of opinions.

Going back to the quest with that in mind, I do find it insulting that there’s so much sexual content to the point of discomfort given the context of representation as an a-spec person. Feels like a big “boo you” from ZOS.

rauyran

Dojohoda wrote: »

Trash like this quest makes me regret ever spending a dime on ESO. Then I did the Razum-dar quest and this statement made by Razum-dar seems weird.

I don't have a problem with sexual innuendo, but this seems very off. Why is he talking about boys, youngsters in other words? The dialogue would have worked just as well without the word "boy".

Dojohoda

rauyran wrote: »

Dojohoda wrote: »

Trash like this quest makes me regret ever spending a dime on ESO. Then I did the Razum-dar quest and this statement made by Razum-dar seems weird.

I don't have a problem with sexual innuendo, but this seems very off. Why is he talking about boys, youngsters in other words? The dialogue would have worked just as well without the word "boy".

Yes, using the word, boy, is exactly what I found troubling.

doabhi

All this focus on is the NPC this or that, wasn't there some long-running lore or understanding that basically every character you meet is technically pan/bisexual unless explicitly stated otherwise? it's like most other Bethesda games honestly. especially the offline ARPGs where there's a romance system that basically lets you romance any npc as any race or gender (or just gender in Fallouts case)

Veinblood1965

Kappachi wrote: »

MiyaGrace wrote: »

Potential spoilers for The Sea Runs Restless quest below:




Anyone else find the quest The Sea Runs Restless in the new Firesong DLC a little bit... off the mark? Creepy, in a bad way? It's written to be humorous, involving numerous... amorous encounters (which granted happen off-screen). That's not what bothers me - what bothers me is that everyone in the quest line, including a major recurring character, are under the influence of a relic that is altering their state of mind specifically to push them towards these encounters, effectively against their will. That means none of the encounters described in the quest are truly consensual. There's even a scene towards the end of the quest (in audio dialog) where even under the influence of the relic, a character tries to say "no" to someone's advances and is ignored. Rather than being funny as it seems to have been intended, I found the quest to be very off-putting and inappropriate. Just, you know, creepy, yeah? Like, as if the author of the quest line thought these non-consensual encounters would be funny or... like... you know *bleh, can't even say it - so gross*.

[snip]

I tend to agree. It's better than the carebear cartoony characters found in other games (Wow for example).

[edited to remove quote]

StormBlade512

Soarora wrote: »

netch_a_sketch wrote: »

As for the remark made by Razum-dar, I don't think that's out of character at all. He's spoken about women in the same way before.

The thing about Razum-dar is that people weren’t happy when he spoke about women in

Elsweyr

like that either. It’s like a slap in the face one way and then randomly making him m-spec (after YEARS) and talk like that about men is a slap in the face the other way.
I’m not m-spec myself but I’ve chatted with some people who are and the representation in this season seems a bit questionable given the 2 m-spec main quest npcs are highly sexual… which is a stereotype…
But I know some people liked it.

The representation in general for this season seems questionable (or even insulting), honestly. But again, I only have a small sample size of opinions.

Going back to the quest with that in mind, I do find it insulting that there’s so much sexual content to the point of discomfort given the context of representation as an a-spec person. Feels like a big “boo you” from ZOS.

Also bisexual characters being betrayed as horny constantly

Aggrovious

The writing and voice acting in ESO is mostly bad. This new quest was so painful that I skipped the dialogue completely. And what on earth are these Breton nobles wearing? Terrible color scheme. It makes them look like they are about to play paintball.

doabhi

Wow totally forgot i posted on this thread so long ago. there was another point i wanted to bring up, because it's a matter of linguistics than literal interpretation. I understand where the concern comes from with the use of the word 'Boy' however I think it's an important distinction to remember that it's very contextual and does not always mean 'young'

The use of 'boy' can be used to mean male in a general sense and sometimes a male of effeminate/non-masculine nature in a emasculating context, or used in the context to mean lesser than Man/Masculine.

For example: It's the same with 'Girl', we don't call a female spouse a 'womanfriend' or 'ladyfriend' (Outside of casual colloquialisms obviously) but we say Girlfriend, which isn't denoting a young age, same with Boyfriend, we don't say Manfriend, or Gentlmanfriend, or grandpafriend. We say Boyfriend, which again has nothing to do with age.

Calling a man a 'Boy' can be used not to denote age, but to state dominance over. it's not always about their age, rather social status. which given Razum-Dars general 'player' like approach to his libido, it's not really that out of character.

TL;DR I don't think he was saying Boy to mean young person, rather Boy to mean another male less masculine than he considers himself to be. (because he's likely a top, if you know what i mean)

My closing thoughts; I was more surprised he said Boy and not Girl, but as a bisexual myself found it kind of surprising and hilarious. a shock, but not one that has me steaming from the ears with anger. Hey if they want to give Raz a more gender neutral sex life, power to them. There was a subtle clue in Elsweyr to this 'experimental' side of him if you like when you talk to another male khajiit npc further down the path from his family farm, he talks about how upset he is that Raz never comes to visit, yada yada.. it gave me a bit of that bromance vibe, but wasn't enough to go on alone. this kind of cemented it a little though.

ZOS_Icy

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