The Character Romance thread (Official)

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Me hoping for some more sneaky leaky romance info soon

Actually he does become sexually attracted to a female Shepard, once the idea is planted. Before she approaches him with the idea, he never considered a relationship with a human, which is why he comes across as a bit hesitant at first. He does get on board pretty quickly once he's made to consider it though, and his attraction to Shepard is clear in ME3, especially in the Citadel DLC. We talked a bit about primary vs. secondary attraction in a different thread in reference to demisexuality, so I think that's what's at play here. It's a bit like how you might not find someone attractive or your type when you first meet them, but then it happens later when you get to know them better.

That said, it doesn't mean you're going to feel that sort of attraction to someone of a gender outside your orientation preference. As a straight woman, I've never been interested in a female LI in a game the same way as a male one, no matter how alien they might be. Where I have come to find a male character attractive based on personality, even if they aren't someone I'd be attracted to in real life. Case in point: Garrus. I think turians are really cool looking. But I wouldn't be physically attracted to one in real life because they're too far away from resembling humans for me. But I did come to find Garrus attractive because of his voice and personality and relationship to my character. I would totally be open to another male turian romance. I have zero interest, however, in a female turian romance, because I'm not into women in real life. Javik's an even better example. I totally would have gone for him were he a romance because I like his character and thought it would make for a cool love story, despite objectively finding him rather ugly. I doubt I would feel that way were he female.

Also, gender preference doesn't necessarily go away in the absence of sexual attraction either. Even asexual people will describe themselves as hetero- or bi-romantic. Not being interested in sex doesn't make their orientation suddenly moot. Now, I'm all for having bi/pan alien romances in games so more players are happy, but the argument that a straight Garrus wouldn't care about gender if he's already making the leap in romancing a human is one that doesn't really make sense to me.

Call this a small petty complaint, but as someone playing as a straight male who does not usually go for alien booty, having Cora as the only female human option feels like we got a bit shafted. I like cora's design, and I wouldn't want the devs to change her. I just feel that she's almost milf status compared to a younger Scott Ryder. At least she looks like Claire Underwood! If we played as Alec then game on, Cora! Hoping that we get a different option in the game for Scotty

Sounds similar to myself, I'm autochorissexual within the asexual spectrum.

As for the gender thing, it's very much about sex when Garrus and Shep first hook up and just because the other participant is not the same species does not mean he would enjoy sex regardless of the way they do it... He seems very much a straight dude who enjoys "straight sex".

For those who don't like Cora we might get some non squad human romances.
(And a straight white male shouldn't be getting shafted if you know what I mean   )

Just one human option for straight males happened in ME1 though as well in DA2. So if the LI count is low it might happen and I don't see it as being shafted at all (though people are free to be disappointed if LI isn't what they wanted, shafted to me implies something being unfair which it wouldn't be). Still, I doubt that will be case cause devs have been somewhat vocal that the game will have many romances and they will be different. So probably there will be multiple human options for straight male characters too.

I'm sure that there will be more than one human woman for a straight Scott. We just don't know of any other human women at all outside of Jien, Foster, Sloane, and your sister. If we got more information about Jien, Foster, & Sloane, we might be able to speculate. But we've gotten almost nothing from them so far. Even if none of them are LI's, I'm sure that there will be another human female somewhere for straight Scott.

"There are no decent galactic dating services. If you want to have a shot at romance, you have to talk to people"

Soon™

Don't forget the male SW also gets Vette as an option.

I'll just leave these here:

I left out ME2, because I couldn't find a graphic for it, but here's the breakdown:
Straight MShep: Tali, Miranda, Jack, Kelly, Liara (if you have the Shadow Broker DLC it does get acknowledged), Samara/Morinth (mini-romance, but still an option).
Straight FShep: Jacob, Garrus, Thane
Gay MShep: ...
Lesbian FShep: Kelly, Liara (see above), Samara or Morinth (see above)

Anyway,  I'm not trying to feed into some tit-for-tat pissing contest here, but... it's hard not to see a disparity, and why it often does get pointed out that a straight male Shepard wins here in the sheer quantity of options he gets, be they more established romances or more fling-y ones. And why I tend to scratch my head at the notion that Mass Effect did this great job by giving all these varied options semi-equally across the board. Because they really kinda... didn't. And I understand that even with this plethora of choices, some people just aren't going to get what they want even then. But the chances certainly improve when there's more to pick from. I'm optimistic that for Andromeda we'll see a push for more balance in this regard. That's all we're asking for. Not for straight males to get 'punished' as they seem to sometimes think. 

Also, people call out DAI as the one example where straight females got more. Yes, this is true, and I can't say I'm sorry I got to benefit from that. But remember that Cullen and Solas (the generally more popular ones) got added later only because of added development time. Otherwise we would've gotten Iron Bull and Blackwall - which is arguably an even more unconventional, potentially unsatisfying choice, than Cass and Josie. For me, I would have zero interest in Blackwall, and Iron Bull would've been the 'I guess this is okay, at least he's fun' choice. And there's the fact that in Dragon Age and Mass Effect, your chances for a happy ending with your romance of choice rises quite a bit if you choose to romance a woman, rather than a man.