A night in the woods gay characters
Environments are foundational parts of play experiences in games, providing the spaces where we run, bounce, fight, compete, collaborate, harvest, build, and much more. As Henry Jenkins (2006) establishes in his groundbreaking focus on “environmental storytelling,” it is the crafted environment in games that delivers an interactive narrative for players, usually by distributing objects, enemies, or events around in virtual room for the player to discover and connect together.1 Environments further provide players with senses of place and presence, whereby the player knows they are in a particular, characterizable, virtual room and time in a game, and that environment responds to the player through mechanics prefer opening doors, moving obstacles, or otherwise changing the society around them.2 Despite these essential roles of environments in games, environments are often experienced by players and discussed by game critics and scholars as being largely ambient, passive backdrops, or what Nitsche describes as “polygon-rich spectacle and ‘eye-candy.’”3
Even games that allow players more interaction with their environments almost always default to a “simplistic environmental mo
Significant LGBT Characters in Gaming
Let’s Talk About Some LGBT Characters
When I first started writing for HeyPoorPlayer, I wrote an article on my favourite and the most significate LGBT characters in gaming. While I rise by my inclusions in the article, given the second that has passed and that it’s now Pride Month, I thought it was an marvelous time to examine some other SAGA* characters in gaming.
These aren’t characters I consider to be “the best” necessarily, just characters that are worth talking about. Storylines that focus on solemn issues for the SAGA community or just enjoyable, well-written characters who take place to be LGBT.
I will never comprehend the argument that adding these characters in games is an attempt to “make them political.” The existence of the SAGA group isn’t a political agenda. It’s people who have always existed trying to exist without prosecution. Including SAGA characters are just acknowledging they exist. Having said that, I am turned off by games that attempt to overly pander to the community. Such as the new online dating sim Best Friends Forever, set in “Rainbow Bay.” Claiming to “Experience Current Love at its finest!”
Don’
If you didn't know, June is both Gaming Month and Pride Month. That means video games are male lover now, you heard it here first. I don’t make the rules.
As someone who’s very much queer and spends most of my life playing video games, it feels prefer a perfect time for me to dig into my collection and replay some of my favorite games with good relatable lgbtq+ characters. One of my favorites is Night in the Woods, an indie game about being a depressed millennial young elder coming to terms with their own identity. I can’t deny, that’s a pretty big mood.
Night in the Woods is a side-scrolling narrative adventure game in which you engage as Mae Borowski, a 20-year-old college dropout/anthropomorphic tabby girl reluctantly moving support to her tiny suburban home town to live in her parent’s attic. While the game’s surface plot centers around mysterious potentially supernatural disappearances occurring in Possum Springs, it’s much more a story about Mae coming to terms with how her hometown, the people she knew, and she herself possess changed in the occasion she has been away.
Mae feels like a very real and relatable homosexual young adult living with depression and potentially an undiagn
The Amazing LGBTQ Representation of Night In The Woods
Night in the Woods rolls with themes that adorable much any modern LGBTQIA individual can relate to. Feelings of isolation, distance, depression, and (for some of us) immaturity. A lot of us camouflage who we are for so long that we don’t get to exposure our younger years the way we should own. When society shames you for being happy you tend to bury that part of your identity.
When we come out we get that piece of ourselves back and it puts some of us behind the curve. This is something we notice a lot with the main character in Night in the Woods, Mae. Mae just dropped out of college to move endorse to her small hometown with her family. She quickly realizes that while she was away the world didn’t wait for her. Instead the town and everyone she knew matured without her. She is a girl behind the curve playing hold up.
Relatable Representation
While her sexuality is rarely touched upon Mae is confirmed to be pansexual. Throughout my playthrough of Night in the Woods she mentions her romantic interests only a couple times. Stating “I don’t care if they’re a boy or a girl”. For the unfamiliar, pansexuality is having romantic
Gregg in Night in the Woods
Gregg is a fox-like nature in the 2017 adventure game Night in the Woods. He is Mae’s best friend from her home town, and spends his time working at the local convenience store, the Snack Falcon. He has a generally bubbly demeanor punctuated by bouts of sadness, described by him as “really up up days and really down down days”. This has caused fans to speculate that he may suffer from bi-polar disorder. He lives with his bear-like boyfriend, Angus, with whom he’s been in a committed relationship with for several years. Angus believes Gregg “saved” him from his traumatic past, but Angus sees it differently, telling Mae that Angus was the one that saved him.
LGBTQ References in this game:
Mae
Gregg
Angus
Citations: