Brothels

More often than not, I think this is how things end up happening. I remember the devs talking about Vivienne, how she was supposed to be this fair skinned, long haired, blonde model type, then one artist came in with a concept of her being a curvy black woman with short hair and a sassy pose and it clicked for everyone and they said "yep, that is Vivienne". Or how Gaider, in his inexperience of dealing with voice actors at the time, told Claudia Black that he imagined Helena Bonham Carter when writing Morrigan and she gave him sass about it but ultimately Morrigan came into her own through Claudia's voice and delivery.

I think what Gaider may have meant by more appealing was in the sense of personality and character arc, rather than appearance. Writing an optional romance route, in a game with different branches, there are some limitations the writing team might run into. There's something very cool about writing a doomed love story or one that is very toxic but you just can't break away from because of the drama, however, that sort of narrative needs to be adapted to "appeal" to a wider range of people for a more branching story. This might lean too much into focus testing territory but, if there are branching paths, some extremes might need to get trimmed. For example, I love Gale in BG3 and how sweet his romance is but personally I wouldn't be mad if he wasn't romanceable and his arc was more about him healing from Mystra's influence on him before he was ready to be in another romantic entanglement with someone else.

I don't disagree with Gaider that making every companion romanceable can be a tradeoff regarding the kinds of stories you can tell. I just think he's underestimating just how varied players' tastes can be, whether we're talking looks or personality. But at the same time, both sides of his argument (love interests MUST be appealing by whatever metric and there are stories you cannot tell with a love interest) contribute to how risk averse romance writing in games is because devs are too afraid of challenging the player.

I’m afraid I was unclear in my intent. I do not desire protagonists “who are morally upstanding and admirable in every possible way”. I would prefer we depart from the banal, immature deviance where I can almost hear the thirteen year old boys sniggering in the background (hee, hee Beer and Boobies). I want moral testing that’s more Breaking Bad than Porky’s. More Iago and less Proteus. That’s why I used the characters I did: there’s absolutely no depth or significance there. Bioware teased the idea some in Inquisition with allowing your Inquisitor to declare the Inquisition for personal power, overriding Orleasian justice for Ranier, and the reaction of Cassandra when your approval with her drops below the bottom threshold. I’m also not talking about the Protag taking over the world or necessarily having a Big Evil Scheme. Each of our known group affiliations comes with a possible range of temptations that, with some subtility and proper in game recognition, could offer much better chances to depict a flawed hero or even a nasty piece of work. Lords of Fortune could have all sorts of monetary inducements. Shadow Dragons just beg to be zealots on the opposite side of the coin from the Ventori. The Crows have whole closets full of skeletons. The Mourn Watch would love to relieve them of those. Veil Jumpers could be seduced by the power of the Evanuris. The Inquisition is still trying to prove to everyone they were Right all along. The Wardens…the Wardens hear the Darkspawn all the time even when it isn’t The Calling. None of these has to be fatal to the big mission nor necessarily even surrendered to once by a Player who wants to be that paragon of virtue. Having those kinds of temptations there though makes for a much more fitting dark fantasy or even better game than adding a bunch of taverns, brothels, and casinos that really adds no depth to the setting, characters, or game. There’s a Titanic-sized boatload of H games for that. Thanks for the opportunity to clarify.

I haven't said that. I only said that a part of gamers in my experience don't want that.
They want Isabela and not a nuance. I think Neve is a nuance of Isabela, but they call her ugly.
So as you saying Da:TV haven't hot character you speak against your nuance of hot.
Because with your definition DA:TV has hot companions.

As a woman, I really have nothing against women characters who are dressed for fanservice (even if I have to suspend my disbelief that Morrigan would wear those clothes when she has grown up in the wilderness). I love Tifa Lockhart from FF7, Morrigan, Aribeth from Neverwinter Nights. What matters is that they are complex and have personalities and agency, rather than just being eye candy (even though I enjoy their looks too). All a lady character needs to be relatable to me is for her to feel somewhat like a real person.

As for the male characters, it's funny that you mention Bull and Solas because they aren't conventionally attractive at all (whereas most of the female characters men go crazy over are conventionally attractive, with the maybe-exception of Tali). Like yeah Bull is shirtless but he's also bald, horned, has only one eye, etc. If Taash was bald and one-eyed the complaining would be so much worse than it already is. The reason women like those characters is because of their personality and role in the story. Solas is often called ugly but he's an incredibly popular character (amongst some of us) because he's a complicated puzzle to solve and his romance is more like a story from mythology than real life.

Exactly. How physically attractive a character is has nothing to do how well or not they are written or how believable their personality is. Hot people can be nerdy and super interesting. Anything. So might as well provide eye candy along a charming personality if you ask me. OR a not charming personality if that fits with whatever is going on with them. Of course if a character's arc is that they have a disfigurement that's fine.

Yeah personally Bull was very unappealing to me, both his run over by a truck face, his sex kink and also not his personality. I thought he was popular with both women and gay men but I don't actually know tbh.
Solas is not physically all that attractive maybe but the god thing does it for many women, I think.
Overall the male romance options for women weren't that great either but Cullen is a pretty boy. And none of the female options were that conventionally hot is still my point. *sweaty brow face*

To me vanilla Astarion is plenty hot and his looks were the ONLY reason I wanted to romance him tbh. His personality was all kinds of red flag horrible, but didn't matter since the Gale bug ruined everything. The most appealing DAI romance option for me was Dorian but couldn't romance him as a woman. BG3 lets me romance the very gay coded companion so that was awesome in theory. Haven't done his romance yet, sadly. Dorian flirting with female inky was amazing but also maddening, hahaha. The only not batshit crazy mage in all of Thedas, dammit! So I liked Dorian's personality a lot and he wasn't bad looking either. Always meant to romance him with a male inky but never got round to it. Same with Cass, my two fav companions and my girl couldn't have either of them and had to content with Mr Grumpy Pants, ugh. Should have picked Cullen but he was ironically TOO pretty somehow. Wrong kind of pretty, not sure. I don't like blonde guys, I think that was it, lol.

Well, five minutes into BG3 Karlach stole my heart so I was really conflicted between love the personality and love the face/body. Of the guys I was not into Gale at all nor Wyll. Personality wise Halsin seemed the nicest low drama I would maybe date in realm life because I'm a tree hugger myself. His looks were NOT to my liking though. Too burly and his will fick anyone or even do a threesome was not appealing either. So yeah, it's complicated, lol. *g*

Hey, I like the party girls. Sounds like you don't 

Bioware has surprisingly few of those. Isabela, Leliana, maybe Ashley if you push it... And I think that's it.

No game has yet to offer a halfway decent romance for me since Fenris. It's been 13 fucking years. That's why I can pretty nonchalantly say that they should just remove the romances, put the budget in more important things. Make the companions hot big tit mommies and hunky bare-chested dudes with big bulges, and put brothels in every street corner. Have all the companions have romances with each other while we focus on more important things. That's the way to go.