The Character Romance thread (Official)

Yeah, with the two routes thing it mainly becomes a question of how much effort and resources should be put into each route. Things like respect the choice and have the things like emails and character reactions be different depending on which route you took. As we've discussed before, having different flirts would be great too. One kind of flirt would be the more sexual flirts while the other would be the more innocent, nonsexual flirt. With them having done something like this a few times in MEA, I hope that is something that they continue in future games. And then of course giving both routes the same number of scenes. 
Being able to delay the sex scene and have comments like that would be interesting, but I can see how that could be an issue depending on how the game is laid out. 

Hard to say why Jo Berry is happy about it since this is the first romance she has written. All I know is that she said she and Tal Peleg(the guy who animated the scenes) are really pleased with how both scenes turned out and that the romance can be enjoyed by asexuals and demisexuals. 

Yes, I'm happy. Thank you.
See, going back helped.

There is definitely a benefit though to having it be an approved canon over just headcanon. It just feels better, especially when others of that team talked about how thwey aren't sure they are going to go that far with representation yet, seeing what they have now(optional/ambiguous romances) as good enough for the moment. I can't really recall Cullen's romance specifically, but I know that most Bioware romances don't work for it due to how they are written. Not only because of sex scenes, but other things like the flirts both from the protagonist and the LI and the reaction from them goes against it, where due to the ambiguous romances being ambiguous in all things makes it easier. 

There's also the whole...Miranda being literally a test tube baby, it's like Gil's writer ignored pre-existing lore just bring Jill in and the baby. It just makes zero sense when you think of the setting as a whole.

Why isn't the issue brought up if you romance Jaal, or Vetra? Scott/Sara getting into a relationship with either of them will make Jill's job harder, won't it?

Gil? Gil is great, but his romance is too short and half of it focuses on Jill! You see small sparks of what could have been a great character and romance only to be cut short.

That would be the shortest story arc ever.

Scott: Yeah that sounds great. Id love kids.
Cora: OMG I WILL TEACH THEM HOW TO ASARI COMMANDO
*roll credits*

Ah, that's good to know, thanks. Well, I like Peebee's story a lot more than Gil's, I haven't played SW:TOR yet, though. It would interest me whether this is one of these systematic problems with a writer, or whether Gil's Jill storyline was his big missstep. I mean, Jane Austen may have written Pride & Prejudice and Emma, but she's also responsible for Mansfield Park. Shakespeare wrote Hamlet, but he also committed Two Gentlemen of Verona. Not saying Bioware writers are quite on that general level of quality or have to be, but pretty much all the greatest writers have produced at least one or two things that are more controversially discussed even among fans (or, in more severe cases, are more or less generally agreed to suck). It doesn't necessarily mean the writer doesn't have talent.

Maybe the problem was also a mismatch of character and writer in this case, like he got a draft for the character and didn't quite know where to go with it. Maybe he got an editorial mandate (for example: implement baby story) he found difficult to write around. I don't feel comfortable digging into the personal life of essentially a private person, so I don't know or really want to know if he himself is homosexual or bisexual, but personally I think the problems in the Gil romance are so blatant that you only need to be a competent writer of any sort to see some of them. If you are really (really) naive you may not see how problematic the whole reproduction angle is, but any professional writer should at least notice that the emotional core of the romance (here the question of whether to form a family) should not be driven forward by a third person who is not part of that romance, especially if the romance is so short. After all, it stands to reason a Gilmancer wants to see and hear about Gil, not Jill. Hard to tell without knowing more of his work or the internal decisions at Bioware.

(And of course, a lot of blame falls on the editors as well, since video game writing is a shared process.)

Oh my god, I need a comic like this, bioware please.

Has it been long enough for them to implement major fixes to the m/m situation?

Then again, controversy started right around release, so... maybe.

Probably would depend on the extent of the fixes they intend. Optimistically, it'd be great. Realistically... I'm guessing it's just going to be further tweaks, but HOPEFULLY will at least contain word of when they plan on fixing things further. 

The Sith Warrior storyline in TOR is pretty good, IIRC. It starts off a little meh, but as the power plays build up, it gets really good in Act 2 and 3 of the original storyline. And yeah, every writer is gonna have hits and misses. I think so far, Patrick Weekes is the only BioWare writer where I've consistently loved everything he's written.

Well, in marketing, companies who have their hands both in demand creation and demand fulfillment are usually considered to be the masters of the game. ME:A team showed us all a) male homosexual romances are in the game, and good, developed romance arcs (with squadmates) are in ME:A. They've just not put them together... yet, but in this 14.99 $ DLC, ladies and gentlemen...

Bioware, the late stage capitalist experiment.

Well I personally love peebee's writing. Gil though and the baby batter woman hmmm, not so good.

Yeah, I'm probably just paranoid, but I mean, can you blame me after the way they've handled everything so far?? Man, I'm just so ready for this to be done. o_o

If they plan on continuing Ryder's story in the sequel, they can't.

Because of the baby.