The Character Romance thread (Official)

Sooo 1-2 days for BW left to make some statement on m/m patch?

I'm still waiting for a perfect romance that makes me go yelling at my playable character sicked of jealousy because I'm not him. Modded Alistair was perfect but he's not an official m/m romance, so I'm fucked anyways  Every romance I did were close but not perfect. Kaidan is the closest thing to a perfect m/m romance, his romance arc with Shepard in ME3 it's just "perfect", it would have been perfect if the romance wasn't a copy/paste of the female version and the cut content because you know it's sacrilege watching two men holding their hands, that never happens irl amirite Bioware? Well, that and the cut content in ME1. Beyond that, Kaidan is perfect. 

Also, I have soooo many types for men and romances that I'm very easy to please but yet I didn't have my perfect romance. Waiting for a KISA like Alistair or Cullen, I've always been jealous of the Disney princesses, why those bitches (I love them btw ) always get the man of my dreams? Prince-like characters Bioware, give us one already!! a classical human KISA that give us flowers and read us poetry, a man who kiss you gently every hour of the day and wreck you in bed by midnight. Why they didn't give us yet this archetype it's beyond me.

I'm not going anywhere without mentioning werewolves, like I said my taste in men (as long they are hunky) is a big hand fan of different types. I'm a sucker for monsters and misunderstood creatures, and not gonna lie I'm a furry perv, a werewolf romance it would be the holy grail for me, a man with a curse being his lover and support against that kind of adversity, is it the curse something bad? you wanna to cure him? can he control that? a sea of grey morality, it would be precious, and the good drama, damn gimme now. A beauty and the Beast kind of romance it's one of my favorite things in the world, I thought I was going to live that with Jaal, but we all know how that ended. Iron Bull was close but not enough.


The improvements statement was on April 4th isn't it? so five more days Joey 

Legit, I almost wrote Alistair or Cullen, but they aren't TECHNICALLY LGBT romances - despite the fact that I will go to my grave that Alistair is bi and that cutting Cullen's bi romance was a crime.

I suppose it's too much to hope that DA4 will have one M/M option be a KISA and the other be a werewolf searching for a cure or something, but you want to know what my ideal options there would be... There you go. Like... One's a story we never get, the other's a queercoded but not exclusively queer story... That'd be PERFECT. Plus werewolves are part of the lore, yet woefully unexplored... This is a win all around here! HIRE ME, BIOWARE!

#GayWerewolfKISA4LI2kWheneverTheFuckDA4ComesOutSoonHopefully

To be honest I haven't played a lot of LGBT+ romances in video games, just because most where you don't get to choose the character you play as end up being straight (eg. Uncharted) and then when you can choose your own PC I tend to want to self-insert a little so I end up playing as a girl romancing guys...although I don't like playing as a guy romancing girls as much as I would like to play a girl if I wanted to romance a girl (this is why I haven't romanced Tali yet even though she is my other favorite character after Garrus, I wanted to romance her as FemShep). Then when I am playing as a forced male character with a choice of LIs it ends up all being girls (Persona 5) when all I want is for him to romance one of the boys in that game :|. I also haven't played a whole lot of games, I'm sort of a "born again gamer" where I had a HUGE dry stretch and only got into gaming again at all a few years ago with Bioshock Infinite (no romance) then dove right into Mass Effect/Bioware games which makes up most of my gaming experience at this point. 

tl;dr since that kind of went off topic, I haven't played too many LGBT+ romances because of reasons but while I haven't FINISHED Life is Strange (I know, I know but I get distracted easily lol) yet it'd have to be the aforementioned Pricefield because I have heard a lot about that and I am looking forward to it...from what I can tell at the point in LIS I am at, they are very sweet together. I also think Tracer and her lady are cute, but I don't know if Overwatch ships count...even if it is canon...just because you only see them together in a few panels so you don't get much of a "deep romance" out of it.

That's a good write up from Gaider, and sheesh, I wish so much that both the powers and the playerbase did not kick back against the DA2 approach, because yeah, by 2010 they had 12,years of wrestling with the fans struggling with "but I want to play such and such PC, AND romance this character". I can't say I like the DAI, MEA or MET approach better than the DA2 that was their only title that refrained from assuming anything about me and my gaming and simply generously gave me all available options.

From what he said:
And I think the important part is the bold because sadly they have not been equal, with the only exception being DA2. So for me DA2 approach is still better than the current ME:A approach. 

YES FUCKING YES

This is my very personal opinion. I'm always torn about set sexualities and DA2 approach, because I DO care about representation, but I value more my experience as real gay person than representation. I'll try to explain myself but no promises xD bulltshit aside about all LIs are bi is not realistic, yadayada this approach is the best they can do to distribute equal options between demographics. I was very satisfied about DAI approach to be honest, even though straight women got two extra options, the result was quite fair and I don't even like Dorian as LI (love his character though), but when you got this trainwreck that MEA was I'm taking DA2 approach anyday, what good do it to me having representation in random npcs when I can't be a proper gay protagonist enjoying the same amount of content that other demographics enjoy? two angaran dudes getting married but I'm deprived of having a romance with the most important angara in the game? gay turians? 

Look I read a loooooooot about how m!Shep/Kaidan or m!Hawke/Anders were a great support to many young gay men and how for some of them literally saved their lives to know that representation means nothing when you cant self-insert in the protagonist and being gay.

Also, there're solutions to this that Bioware didn't bother to try. 

1- Make bi the plot-relevant characters. Alistair/Morrigan, Solas/Cass, Kaidan/Ashely in ME1, Miranda/Garrus in ME2. With lesser characters being hetero/homosexuals.
2- Make all LIs bisexual with non-romanceables characters being hetero/homosexuals.
3- 2 bi/2 hetero/2 gay.

to me, the best approach it's the first one, even If I would prefer Cullen over Solas.

Ah I get what you mean. Given unlimited resource and aiming for equality, various sexuality approach should work the best.

Though I am still quite bummed that they chose to spend an extra year on adding two f/m options, rather than two bi options, one male and one female.

I prefer that all plot-relevent and romancable characters are bi too. You can still have great representation by having plot-relevent but non-romancable characters of various other sexualities. 

Exactly, that is one of the mistakes that Bioware keep doing over and over again, the only time that we got a plot-relevant character was Anders, and that's it. I'm sure Dorian is going to be important in DA4 but he wont be a LI again. Also, now that I think about it, the 2 bi/2 hetero/2 gay approach is quite dangerous because they tend to do these plot-relevant characters straight.

BIOWARE PUT YOUR SHIT TOGETHER WE WANT KISAs and werewolves PLOT-RELEVANT CHARACTERS!!!

I am aware of that, hence I said I wish they did not make this choice. I find that representation argument has been addressed above by actually having characters that show, don't tell the world's diversity in an interesting way and as for replayability, I replay more willingly when I can create a protagonist to play the game, not a protagonist to romance NPC X. MEA is better for me personally than DAI, because thanks goodness there is Reyes, but DAI is hard to create a character for.