Do you think BioWare regrets introducing romance into their titles?

revelationeffect : The Dialog Wheel in both games - Inquisition and Andromeda - had less meaning to PC, okay. In comparison Andromeda did a little bit more. In Inquisition it has no impact on the Inquisitor. It changes nothing. He does not win any extra in any situation or has a less probability in a persuasion or similar. How I said, there is not any character development for the Inquisitor unless in Trespasser where your Dialog Tone Choices has no matter to is freak out in any way.
Andromeda in contrast has this rookie leader. Nobody wants to talk with him before leaving for the first time the Nexus. In the first Briefing it shows up he has no respect from the others and no clue to handle it. This is shaping with the on going Story. And the Dialog Tone Choices at least changing the Codex entry from Ryder and his journey. The Inquisitor got is Green Mark on his hand, the Inqusition enhance the opinion about that he is the choosen one from Andraste and everyone is fine with it. However, Templers and Mages split themself from the chantry but both only wants to talk with the Inquisitor after the Inquisiton talked with the Chantry. Because? Throughout the game the Inquisitor has any trouble related to his role. There are only some Dialog Choices for the player to choose but they are meaningless in the whole. Ryder does not need a relationship for a little character progression. Inquisitor does.
Andromeda does it a little bit like DA2. In DA2 your Dialog Choices had meaning to the Progression of Hawke. His whole behavior depending on that mass of the choice from the player, he gets better way to solve the Quest or loses it. If Bioware had 5 years for Dragon Age Exodus, Dragon Age 2 would be a good, very modern RPG. In this case Dragon Age 2 could be played without a romance to have a progression in this game. That is one reason why DA2 is the better Dragon Age than Inquisition.

I'm not so sure. Other studios are catching up, but it's taken a long time and I think there is a strong argument to be made that Bioware paved the way.

I don't care enough to research whether all of those are AAA, or not, but I'll agree that's fair. However, the scant looking I did showed that all of those games are isometric, and some (all?) are turn-based. In stating my own preference, I guess I should have been more specific in that I prefer a real-time, 3D non-iso game. Greedfall is apart from all those others in that regard.


(I do want to be clear that I'm not shilling for Greedfall, hyping it, or offering endless comparisons as people did with Witcher. I have no interest in playing the game. I've mentioned it because it fits into that category.)

Dragons Dogma comes to mind as well. Also, Kingdoms of Amalur had an extremely bare bones romance in a dlc. Lol. Not sure I’d count that.

Ah, well it seems to me that we're talking about two entirely different things here, then. I'm talking about the ability to develop a character through roleplay in ways that are not explicitly set out by the plot of the game, whereas you seem fixated on how the character is treated by the main plot itself irrespective of roleplay. Personally the former is much more important to me anyway, but honestly I would argue Ryder and the Inquisitor have very similar arcs in that regard, anyway, and it sounds more like you have a bias against Inquisition tbh: Ryder starts out as the rookie no one thinks much of, gains a fair amount of respect by the mid-game and confirms it by the end-game; the Inquisitor starts out as a suspect who is only allowed participation by necessity, gains some grudging respect over the course of the early parts of the game, cements themselves as thoroughly trusted within the organization by mid-game, and then confirms themselves as a significant power in Thedas by the end-game. (As for the points you pick out, the Inquisitor is not immediately accepted and many are furious with them/dubious of them, and it takes some time for even the leadership of the Inquisition to thoroughly trust them, and the mages and templars do not talk to the Inquisitor because they went to the Chantry, the Templars don't want to talk at all and the mages clearly just reached out because Val Royeaux was a convenient neutral ground and they wanted help getting out of the shit they'd gotten themselves into with the Venatori).

As far as actual RP goes, I would say it's pretty much objectively undeniable that the player is given more latitude in Inquisition. There are up to 6 emotional options pretty frequently in major dialogues, and while there are some hard limiters on how the Inquisitor can behave, they are less restrictive than those put on Ryder, who at most can make a few pragmatic choices throughout the course of the game, and is otherwise limited to stiffly professional or emotional/goofy. Not to mention that the Inquisitor has many more things to express an opinion on, e.g. mages vs templars, the Herald of Andraste question, elven revelations, etc, all of which can have very different effect depending on the Inquisitor's race/class. As well, the Inquisitor can actually choose not to recruit companions/can kick companions out and have a seriously antagonistic relationship with them, while Ryder can't even kick Peebee out when she launches them into a volcano with no warning. Ryder is mostly limited to agreeing/disagreeing with companions and the question of how much to trust the exiles, alongside the several pragmatic decisions Ryder can make. Both of them are extremely bland and neutral outside of major conversations for the most part, although Andromeda has slightly better side quests by and large. Neither one of them is a perfect protagonist by any means, both of them have issues with latitude of choice and a tendency to lapse into blandness, but it seems odd to talk shit about the Inquisitor while praising Ryder.

Dragon's Dogma, Divinity 2: Dragonknight Saga, and Dark Souls games come to mind off the top of my head.  None are a in depth as Bioware though.  First two are underrated games IMHO.

That's pretty much the whole point of the post. I want a romance that adds depth to the character and allows me to add to my own character's roleplay. If we're just going to throw out RPGs with romances, we may as well include Skyrim's ridiculous "I'm wearing a necklace, let's get married!" romances.

I would imagine not seeing as Dragon’s Dogma arbitrarily pairs your character with the character they have the highest approval with towards the end of the game, which can lead to bizarre outcomes like the merchant you used the most or the court jester spontaneously becoming your LI.

There’s really only a few studios that have done anything approaching what Bioware does with the romance content: certain Obsidian games, Divinity Original Sin 2, Pathfinder: Kingmaker and Greedfall are all that come to mind that have both fleshed-out romance content and a significantly customizable player character.

What they probably regret is allowing their fanbase to dictate to them how those romances are implemented into the game as well as the number of options. Their mistake was not continuing with the player-sexuality approach they utilized in DA2...but they caved to a whiny minority. It's a roleplaying game, fucking roleplay a given companion's orientation. They also need not expend resources on graphic cutscenes to reward the culmination of romance efforts...particularly when it comes at the expense of the main story. Personally I'd much rather have a great story with solid dialogue options than a whole bunch of romance choices.

That's just not true with regard to "player-sexuality." David Gaider always said the he would prefer set sexualities given the resources. DA2 did not have the resources for that and the all-bi approach was done out of fairness. DAI did have the resources.

I'd like to point out that BioWare isn't exactly the first sh to put romance options in their games: many japanese games had it even before. But surely BioWare was the first to actually care about it in a more inclusive way, and (at least tryng) to give each option some kind of depth.

From my point of view, I know I value a lot the romance part of BioWare games: is quite easy to find some romantic content in videogames...if you are a straight guy. I think most guys who would be so cool about BioWare ditching the romances is just because the rest of the videogame market already cater to them.

I know very few games that let me play as a straight woman, let alone a non widowed-by-the-end-of-prologue one, and I can count on one hand the lesbian/gay/bi protagonists. The thing is, I like playng as a woman hero who find love during her adventures. Is still rare enought in videogames to be almost a novelty to me.
So, if BioWare ditch it, as small as it may seem for many, I would loose a very fun part of the game that I enjoy, and BioWare would be just another dev in a sea of all-samey devs to me. I would probably still put a Bio game with no romance options in my wishlist, but surely not buyng day1 or full price.

In answer to the OP, I'd say "no, they don't regret them at all". They started introducing romances back with Baldurs Gate 2 and the main moan then was that female PC only had one option compared with the three for male PC (the second option for the female PC allegedly having been cut). If they felt that it took too much development time and created too much controversy, why continue to include romances in subsequent games and widen their appeal to as many players as possible by making them have every sexual orientation? Sometimes they have not been handled well but on the whole they have learned from previous mistakes and fixed them.

I would say that it is something now that is expected of Bioware single player games and what they are known for; it may even be what did attract some people to their games, so why would they regret something that is almost synonymous with Bioware in people's minds? It has certainly ensured their games are talked about; in other words good publicity for their product (even when the comments have been negative).