What are your expectations of Romances and differences in sexualities in Mass Effect: Andromeda? - R

I think BioWare has definitely become more inclusive, and it's an improvement when it comes to gathering a bigger audience and making all sorts of players feel they can invest and personally relate to their player characters. There's still work to be done in terms of making better representation of a mutual gay or any non-straight romance. Sometimes it's well done and sometimes not. I personally don't think they've ever come close to doing that in a way that beats the best of their romances, which would probably be in either KOTOR, DA2 or DA:O from the games I have played.

The thing is, as of late, the games themselves have gotten more open, not just to inclusivity, but in scope and size, and unfortunately there's been kind of a tradeoff where starting with DA:I and then ME:A next they seem to be abandoning the more linear style of branching narrative into open-world esque games and the tradeoff is that plot is looser tied to the activities you can do and so is romance and companion developments. In ME3 the only gay male character was a minor non-companion who fell under the trappings of tokenism. He was there to talk about things related to his love-life and you were there to win his heart as he grieved for his dead husband. That was not very well done in my opinion. In DA2 every character is bisexual, or as someone coined the term: Player-sexual, so that's like an ultimate form of player-pandering where nobody get to feel specifically represented which caused complaints. In DA:I they decided to feature a more even number of sexualities so two straight romances for men and two more for women, one strictly lesbian, one strictly gay, two bisexuals. At this point BioWare is starting to pour many resources into this specific content without saving it like in DA2 by making all scenes available for all players. In an already plot-light game, DA:I at times feels like it's all about these disjointed character one-offs and romances and there's no much room to play around with for each represented group of people.

Personally I think weight has gone too much over to just romances, and I admit as a straight guy I am not personally interested in the gay romances other than a quick look on Youtube after a playthrough. But at the expense of better story development and the excessive need to make the player character identify with the player, to the point where there's almost no real character left in there at this point. I think defining the player's sexuality can be done in a more plot-focused game, but they should try to be less "equal for everyone" and more daring with making specific companions have specific roles and perhaps a touching romantic subplot along the way.

I think representation is good, but it might be good to strike a better balance between giving the player things to identify with and making a good piece of entertainment. I think the latter should come first, always, but with these increasingly open-ended games and narrative features that exist to make me comfortable as a player, it's too much and even hurts the setting and world at times. They retconned or spun certain elements of the lore in DA:I so it feels contradictory to the lore of DA:O, and just to justify certain themes about sexuality, or rather, the inclusion of a transgender character, Krem. Transsexuals should feel invited to play games too, but outright bending a pre-existing piece of lore to make it seem like they're a natural part of the universe which was previously a very slavic, dark fantasy lore, is a cop out, and as writers, developers and entertainers, I think there's a better path to go somewhere without disrespecting certain parts of the audience.