Do you think BioWare regrets introducing romance into their titles?

Jade Empire had two characters that could end upwith a PC of the same sex. And they tried to get one in KotoR but that was mostly stopped by Lucasarts. Bioware has been (I hate this word) inclusive for a lot longer than a lot of internet trolls seem to think.

... Seriously? "To have a gay romance you have to demonstrate low-key misogyny." Lovely.


sigh

This can be what happens when someone wants to write something one way but feel obligated or forced to write it another.  This is one of the problems with 2019+, it seems like when someone wants to make something they have to pull out checklist of what they need to include instead of just making what they want.

What’s really irritating about ME2 is not only did they make those obviously suspect and kinda shitty claims but they also were just talking out of their ass and had actively scrapped same-gender romances for Thane, Tali and Jack. Pretty abundantly clear they care more about their straight playerbase but are more than willing to soak up BioWare’s reputation with the LGBT community anyway. This extended all the way to Andromeda where they did it again with Jaal.

As for why it’s a bit shit to just exclude LGBT options, these games are all marketed in a play how you want to play way, making a big deal out of reactivity and choice, and if they’re going to introduce romances into the mix then they should maintain that same philosophy. Feels pretty shitty to LGBT people when we buy a game that makes a big deal out of choice and coasts off the studio’s reputation for LGBT inclusivity only to find that we were treated as afterthoughts.

Especially in ME2’s case, they could dedicate the resources to make four romances for straight guys and three for straight women but couldn’t be arsed to even make a couple of them bi? It often felt like the ME team wanted to have their cake and eat it too, expecting to coast off of the studio’s rep while only making token efforts towards being inclusive, and it’s a pretty shit look.

It's just an extension of the "ninjamancing" Bioware romances were infamous for.   You have to either be an *sshole to the LIs  or completely igno  ethem or they throw themselves at you.  Been that way since BG2

Lol, sure, THAT'S what's wrong with society today: straighty being forced to include gays in things.

Even the mildest criticism of BioWare's performance in regard to LGBT content will invariably be seen as an "attack" on the studio.

If you withhold your money from BioWare for including multiplayer in their games or for not being isometric or whatever the shit, then you're a champion for SRPGs, but if you withhold your money because they didn't include same-sex romances, you're a big gay bully who wants to bankrupt BioWare and run over the writer's families with the Down With Cis bus. 

It could be some of that - also like Iakus said, with older games there's a lot of "nice/polite dialogue options = romance" or "be a huge dick for no reason = no romance" with no neutral ground. So you end up accidentally romancing the female LIs, meanwhile it takes waaay more effort to end up in a romance with a male LI as a male PC.


This makes me laugh because it reminds me of Sera's romance; if you flirt with her enough to get invited to bed, but then say you're not interested, she calls you a teasy tit and says she thought you meant stuff when you said it.


I don't know about Anders but Zevran is definitely that way. "Does this bother you? Would you be offended if I said I fancied you? As a female PC are you sure you want to hear that I like dudes? If this intimate massage I'm offering you should turn a little gay is that cool??" It's definitely a product of its time. Meanwhile it's suuuper easy to get ninjamanced by Leliana.

Fenris does have that weird line after you sleep with him and he's getting ready to leave, though, where one of the dialogue options leads to...
Hawke: Is it because I'm a man?
Fenris: No, it's not that wtf hawke

If they shipped the next game with zero romances for straight people, I guarantee people would lose their shit. But straight people don't have to worry about being excluded from anything. They're included in everything.

So you'll be fine with it if BioWare's next game only has same-sex romance content.

As a writer myself, there is a big difference between writing something narratively linear without interactivity and writing an RPG. When you’re making a game that relies heavily on choice and character definition it’s bad form to overly rely on railroading. This goes just as much for ancillary content like romances as it does for major moments. It’s nice to provide the player with choice as much as possible, especially if it’s for something not fundamentally essential to the plot. Obviously some compromises have to be made in a computer RPG: one cannot choose to ignore the Blight/the hole in the sky and go play an entirely different game, but players should ideally not be railroaded into setpieces if it requires a lessening of player agency over their character, nor should they be railroaded into being straight/gay, which for that matter is much easier to accomplish reliably.

And that’s without even getting into the significance of representation to the LGBT community, how it is important, and how it is reasonable to have more of a dialogue in a fundamentally interactive medium anyway, which adds another layer to things.