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Starfield Voice Actor Expertly Shuts Down Critics Of The Game's Bi Romance
Elias Toufexis has spoken & he’s not suffering any fools.
Another day another fragile conservative is in a huff over the fact that queer people exist — both IRL and in the art we consume. The latest target of their outrage is the new game Starfield (which PRIDE’s own Justin Wood called “incredibly fun with so many twists and turns”) which allows players to both *gasp* choose their pronouns and engage in a little bit of same-sex courting.
The game is a space-faring RPG from Bethesda (Fallout, The Elder Scrolls) that follows a character who is recruited into a group whose job is to track down “artifacts” throughout the galaxy. Along the way, there is plenty of swashbuckling adventure, space battles, and combat. There is also the ability to make friends known as “companions” who can join in your adventure. One of which, Sam Coe is a space cowboy who can become a paramour — and even the player's husband, regardless of the player's gender.
It’s simple (and frankly wholesome) enough but that was still enough to send a player known on social media as The Gaming Christian into a full intergalactic gay panic. “Gross. You can flirt with Sam Coe in Starfield,” he tweeted. “This is fine if you’re a woman, but I always play as myself in a game. This goes against the story as Sam is a straight guy, just like yours truly. So why is the option there for males?”
Naturally, other gamers pointed out that just as The Christian Gamer wrote, it's an option that can either be taken or ignored, it's not required to advance in the game.
Then voice actor Elias Toufexis who voiced Sam Coe in the game dropped into the conversation and shut the whole thing down.
“Actually, I played Sam as bisexual,” wrote Toufexis.
Period.
Toufexis continued in the comment thread, “I chose to play Sam as if the choice of his sexuality was made long ago as opposed to him trying it out for the first time with the player. Which informed how I played him in moments.”
When another Twitter user asked for clarification about what that meant, Toufexis broke it down very simply. “It’s a choice in my acting performance. For example, if Sam is used to being flirted with by another man his line would be said a different way than if he was, say, embarrassed by it a bit. Stuff like that.”
Fans of the game hopped in in support of Toufexis, delighted by how effectively he shut down the nonsense.
Rachel Shatto, Editor in Chief of PRIDE.com, is an SF Bay Area-based writer, podcaster, and former editor of Curve magazine, where she honed her passion for writing about social justice and sex (and their frequent intersection). Her work has appeared on Dread Central, Elite Daily, Tecca, and Joystiq. She's a GALECA member and she podcasts regularly about horror on the Zombie Grrlz Horror Podcast Network. She can’t live without cats, vintage style, video games, drag queens, or the Oxford comma.
Rachel Shatto, Editor in Chief of PRIDE.com, is an SF Bay Area-based writer, podcaster, and former editor of Curve magazine, where she honed her passion for writing about social justice and sex (and their frequent intersection). Her work has appeared on Dread Central, Elite Daily, Tecca, and Joystiq. She's a GALECA member and she podcasts regularly about horror on the Zombie Grrlz Horror Podcast Network. She can’t live without cats, vintage style, video games, drag queens, or the Oxford comma.
