What were your thoughts on the romances?

"Realism" doesn't really apply in this regard though. Even if we felt an obligation to strictly adhere to some sort of demographic breakdown having 2 bisexual and 2 gay characters doesn't refute that. The party is too small of a sample and it's entirely possible to "randomly" pick 6 people that fall into 2/2/2. But the party isn't "randomly" picked. Given people don't typically know the sexual preferences of most of the actors in the game it could be entirely possible that those are the only 2 straight/bisexual/gay characters in the entire setting. The realism argument breaks down further when you factor in that these are the only people you can romance in an entire galaxy.

Our default assumptions read into people being straight unless otherwise indicated, however. As such I'm still in favor of having bisexual/gay representation in other ways too. Can be tricky though in some cases for smaller characters (bisexuality isn't readily apparent if a person is monogamous; this is an issue I have heard from a lot of my bisexual friends too, among other things). though.



There's also a chance that it'd just be 2 men/2 women however, for various workload reasons. Varying degrees of cinematic work and possibly additional writing (and assorted other downstream dependencies) need to be considered too. Are you still in favor if it means that say, Sera and Cullen are not romanceable? In this sense there's going to be people happy or not regardless.

I actually was in favor of the "playersexual" after DA2 as well, but this largely changed after PAX 2013 where a panel on LGBT representation had loads of audience interaction. After that I recanted and prefer a more fixed representation. Part of this is because of general squick of "playersexual" leading to all sorts of arguments as to whether or not a character in DA2 was straight/gay/bisexual. It wasn't really representation, which is something that I do value. Other fan feedback included discomfort along the lines of bisexuality being a convenience. A perspective I hadn't considered but again, after talking with friends and fans about it it was something I wasn't as in favor of.

If we were to ever find ourselves only doing 4 romances I'd prefer bisexual romances too but if we're going to do more, I value the explicit representation more and largely based off interactions with the fanbase at cons as well as online.  (Ultimately not my call though so maybe it'll change or bounce around etc).

The point I was making is that bisexuals, gays, transgenders, the LGBT community as a whole, are minorities in the real world. It would be highly unlikely that the main squadmates, that are romances, would be equally distributed among sexual orientations and genders. I'm personally in favor of equal content for everybody. But, when you try to use "realism" as an argument, your position immediately crumbles. The likelihood that you would have such equal diversity in terms of sexual preferences in six randomly selected people for squadmates is incredibly low.

I am well aware of the concerns many bisexual fans have with player-sexual. The term "bisexual erasure" comes to mind. That being said, David Gaider made it abundantly clear that there were no "player-sexual" romances in DAII. The characters that were available to both genders were bisexual and they were written to be that way. Whether people agree or not is irrelevant. The truth of the matter is it was the fan base that coined the phrase "player-sexual." That was never BioWare's intention nor have they ever endorsed it. That being said, I do believe player-sexual romances have more pros than they do have cons.

In a perfect world, I absolutely agree with you and believe that a fixed representation is more respectful and a better way to create compelling characters. However, games have set budgets, set priorities, and limited time in development. It's unrealistic and unfair for us to hold BioWare to such a high standard that they can do equal and quality content for everyone. They have tried and they have had mixed results every single time (with gay males getting the least satisfying content). While some will consider player-sexual to be offensive, this is ultimately a game with the purpose of bringing the maximum joy and choice to the player pursuing a character. I see little issue with going the player-sexual route as long as the characters are written well and in a respectful manner.

SWTOR is a bad example for the simple reason that Kira was the ONLY romance option for the male Jedi Knight story. Unlike in most BioWare games, where you actually have multiple options. Of course it's far easier to incorporate the only option you have into the main plot and really add another layer to the romance (I personally found Kira to be obnoxious).

Truth be told, Jaal is the best romance in this game simply because he's the most relevant to the story. After him would be Peebee in second place and then Cora in third. The rest of the romances are largely forgettable, and the lack of effort in them also shows their lesser roles compared to the others. This is my biggest problem with MEA beyond anything else. The inequality between romances is glaringly obvious, and there's no justifiable reason for it.

Some ME fans just love their blue babes. I've always been indifferent to asari, myself. I'm not really into flower people that have mind sex with you. Regardless, you cannot deny that BioWare dedicated a lot of resources to the Peebee romance, as most of the others pale in comparison.

It's actually rather ironic because there really aren't that many sex scenes in the game. Outside of Jaal, Cora, and Peebee, I think that's it. The rest are "flirty" at best and most just fade to black. The Avela "romance" is really lackluster. I have to say I'm rather disappointed over all with romances, especially since BioWare likes to brag about its "good banging" in its RPGs.

Really? That leaves me wondering if my game was bugged, as I was surprised at how little, and restricted the "Flirting" was, with Pee Bee.

Initially the only response I got to the "Flirting" prompt (which I found a rather unsatisfactory choice, for what I said, and the responses it produced) was the "Flirting? Me..." response.
Which I grew to intensely dislike due to the repeated usage. Never knowing if that would be the only thing she replied to my "Flirting" option, which was a poor choice, for use with different comment/response options.
Initially that repetition was restricted to a few times, and as I progressed her loyalty storyline, the responses changed, but my choice was mostly (Felt like Always) just the Generic "Flirting", which simply discouraged selection, as it implied the same response would be received.

How much of the interaction was due to the Loyalty mission, and how much the romance, I'm unsure. However I went down the Casual sex route, and things progressed, reasonably uintil we got to the cpmpletion of her Loyalty mission, and attached mutual "strings".
All well, and good, I invited Pee Bee to move in to my cabin, which she enthusiastically accepted, and it went really down hill from there.

Except for the "Surprise" sex scene, triggered by the drinks, and much later in the game, I never saw her in my cabin. She remained in her Tinkering room, without the zero G option, of an Escape pod, and I was back to the "Flirting? Me..." response, for the rest of the game.

I've read others complain that's all they get, despite progressing the Loyalty mission, and comments like yours make me wonder if I was hitting a bug.
I've had a few game stopping bugs, including a PeeBee perma death, on Elaaden. Which I've also seen in Angry Joe's VLog Review, that the 3rd guy encountered. So not random, but a side mission bug. Which resulted in cutscenes with just her voice, and apparently can resault in active squad on Tempst issues, of multiple Drex's (Vid said 7).
All the gamestoppers, were easily bypassed, by a restart. Which I did straight after the failed cutscene, not a major problem. So I simply continued playing, which brings up, the fact that You Tubers, tend to drag out the bugs, to provide viewing content, where a player tries to fix it ASAP.

Seeing these comments about Pee Bee's romance being the best, doesn't feel much like what I experienced, which I would have described as extremly limited, mainly due to the returning to the already annoying "Flirting", choice, and response, which I'd had enough of the first time it was used.
So have I missed something, or is that meant to happen?

Really don't care overmuch about the romances, think Bioware waste too much time on them.

yeah, I agree that SWTOR's JK story is one of the worst in terms of romance. Doc, OMG, he certainly comes close to Anoment in terms of just how bad a video-game romance can be. What SWTOR did remarkably well in some stories was the off the ship flirts. Skavak, Numen Brock and Aristocra were about the only female PC romantic encounters that were good and original. Reyes in this game is just a very pale copy of how much fun Skavak was. I'd throw in Hunter as well, but BioWARE saved money on one line of voiced dialogue to turn it into a great romance for a female PC, and instead gave it to the male, so that was uber-mean, I can't credit it as a good love story, lol.

All the other SWTOR romances were formulaic, with the most fun I found there in playing a complete scumbag male that lied to marry the two LIs I hated (like Kalyio or Risha) specifically to get their outraged reactions when leaving them for less objectionable ones. In Risha's case it also messed up her life a big time, and I felt finally vindicated over her continuously one-upping the PC and written with an idea that my boy is going to stand there with his jaw hanging, drool and be in awe of her superior wit, and everything... so it was particularly satisfying. Kalyio was just a more extreme version of Jack, so you are a lying, cheating witch, so how do you like your own medicine?

But such indulgences really do not exemplify the true highs of digital lovelife. It's just amusing.

Though, actually, now I am starting to remember all that, Akaavi was actually true love, rather than just to get back at Risha marriage. yeah, Okay, Akaavi was fab. And, oh, yeah, Elara-Jaxo was a nice touch.

Yeah seriously as bad as Gil is he's not Anomen levels.

Worst then Jacob?? Lol At least Gil is likeable.
I don't know why they keep making lbgt super religious or have daddy issues.

Also can I add my salt? I am very glad they are doing something about the mlm problem but can we just admit f/f has a much more minor but still irritating issue. We got one sex scene out of the available romances and it was obviously meant for Scott. They just plopped Sara there.

How about you pump the brakes on the attitude there son?

I didn't miss your point. I get it, it's easy to do because there was only one. Re-read what is the quote. "Regardless of how much easier it was...doesn't change the fact I think having romances involved in the story is good" 

it's not about how feasible it is. It's a simple comment. I'm not proposing one romance...how you got that from what I saying is hard to see...so I'm guessing you're putting words in my mouth to make some point that has nothing to do with what I was actually saying. I'm thinking you're missing my simple point.

You have a funny way of saying "sorry if I came off a certain way"... You still keep ignoring that I never said it was easy or even do-able. You chose to volunteer additional information (and in a rather know-it-all kind of way) I got it you don't think it can be done. Let's move on.