[quote=@tex]
Like, it's 2018, not 2001, relax. Girls kissing in vidja games isn't any more surprising than Bethesda shooting themselves in the foot repeatedly.
[/quote]


The reason people are 'surprised' by it is because of different factors namely the current sociopolitical climate dominating an increasingly large portion of the internet when it comes to pop culture and the fact that the video game industry, for all its attempts to catch up to the times, is still very much behind the times and concerned more with market trends. This in turn leads to the expectation that games shown at press conferences are bullshots and trailers so when something as blatant as a major company showcasing a trailer wherein two characters of the same gender are kissing it's seen as a shock by many just because it's unexpected and rather than understanding that the character isn't defined by her sexuality (or even that it's out of nowhere given the first game) it becomes "propaganda" and "forced diversity." This is why you have people upset and starting to try and apply realism ("Why would she be lesbian when women should be focused on REPOPULATION?????") to a fictional apocalyptic video game. 

This is also why people got upset that Gears of War 5's trailer focused on the female character where before it was about four meat slabs cutting up other meat slabs despite the fact that Gears 3 had female characters playable in the campaign. The game industry and the loudest gamers have gotten used to video games just being about shooty mens or stabby mens (with the sometimes shooty girl or stabby girl in your RPGs if they aren't healy girls) that seeing a game [i]starring[/i] a shooty and stabby girl is confusing since those are supposed to be supporting characters. 

Same sex relationships or female led games aren't anything new but they are still very much a niche - which is why devs like BioWare feel the need to pat themselves on the back or why some developers make sure people know that you can be gay in their game because it allows them to put a mark in the checkbox and feel good that they're representing people in the most shallow way possible. Gay people aren't buying games just because a character is or can be gay, and if they are chances are they run a microblog. The people that take to their Twitters and Subreddits and comments about how "FORCED DIVERSITY IS RUINING GAMES" are just looking for a boogeyman and people that slam their dashboards with "YAAAAAAAAAAAAS #GAYGIRLS" or whatever are not exactly helping the cause. No game has been good [i]just because[/i] a character is gay and no game is good [i]just because[/i] the protagonist is female or a person of color or whatever. 

But because of the current climate which sucks, a game with a female lead that isn't Tomb Raider is feminist SJW propaganda and suddenly everyone on the internet is an expert in ancient Greek history and World War 2. There's no secret SJW conspiracy to make video games gay or whatever the fuck. The fact that like five of the games shown at E3 conferences had female protagonists should be evidence enough that the status quo is the same as it ever was. There's always going to be reeeeeing from both perspectives here, be it from the side that goes "HOW COME THERE WEREN'T ANY FEMALE PRESENTERS AT E3?" or the side that thinks a lesbian character is "FORCED DIVERSITY" and the trick is to just fucking ignore it and play the goddamn games you want to play. 

Basically fuck all video games forever.