no yeah i would 100% pay to romance Elara and Jaesa on a female toon. I mean I don't know if I'd say that's a GOOD idea, but, uh, if that's the only way to do it... I'm in.

I gotta hope, right? I'm honestly kind of surprised that this isn't how it is already - voice actor concerns, maybe? I'd put it down to Theron, Lana, and Koth's VAs being more available, but the fact you can re-initiate a romance with them hangs a question mark over that.

Going on from what I've said earlier, I have to emphasise the bizarreness of being able to flirt with Satele Shan and Empress Acina while not being able to do so with characters our characters are much closer to. SWTOR, post-vanilla, has been really good at always giving me an option that feels in-character for whoever I'm roleplaying given the setting concepts - right up until I ran into Vette and didn't get a flirt option. Since I got that popup letting me flirt with Kaliyo back in Anarchy In Paradise I've been desperately holding out hope for more companions to have that, but with Vette and Aric having gone past without one coming up, it seems like this has been forgotten. I'm loathe to use emotional language here, but the idea of not having that option honestly scares me. I've become so invested in these characters at this point that the idea of being locked out of even EXPRESSING romantic attraction feels uncharacteristically regressive. While I was sad about Cassandra in DA:I, for example, not being interested in me - at least I was able to ask her out, act as MY character would. Is Jaesa going to be interested in my Sith Warrior? Probably not, for much the same reasons as she wouldn't be interested in a relationship with a male one. But I want to be able to play that out. Ultimately I've become much more invested in the idea of these formerly gender-locked romances becoming available than perhaps I should be, but... When I first played SWTOR, when it launched, I had a few characters which I played to the end of Chapter 1 or 2. A bounty hunter, an inquisitor, and an imperial agent. All three had only one romance option at the time - and so, in the interest of seeing the story, I chose to initiate a romance with that partner. A few years later, I returned to the game, beginning to play those characters again. I had realised, in that time, that I was only romantically attracted to women. I was, ingame, unable to break off those relationships, which varied from frustrating (Andronikos Revel talking about sharing his bunk with a Sith, even after I'd repeatedly stated my disinterest) to horrifying (Vector Hyllz initiates the implied sex scene without any option to refuse from the player - perhaps in-character given his recruitment mission is entirely about the lack of consent, nonetheless horrifying). My Inquisitor would go on to romance Lana, and that felt like a natural match - but my companions have always been, and will continue to be, one of the main reasons I play Bioware games. You are incredible writers and voice actors, and you have done an amazing job at bringing these characters to life. And as a result, I've been unwilling to start Knights of the Fallen Empire on any other characters - losing them would take away much of the reason I play the game, after all. This is why I ask for more companions to be romancible, regardless of player class or gender - for replay value, for reasons to go through that story arc again, for the chance to do what we could not originally, for the chance to tell a story that WASN'T an option at first. Please, Bioware. Do what you couldn't at launch, because of technology, because of LucasArt's constraints, because of the political climate. Make love free.

IIRC it was actually LucasArts. The thing is that at this point, where we're able to flirt with Satele Shan and Empress Acina, it being entirely impossible to do so with Aric Jorgan and Vette stands out - and not in a good way. Still, we're here now in more enlightened times - so I'm still holding out hope that my trooper can finally tell her bubbly statistician second-in-command how she earnestly feels.

Rather broad generalization there, but it doesn't really apply here anyway, because male models and VAs are entirely distinct from the female models and VAs, and they're already recorded, so the bigger issue is arguably that the EXISTING models and voices aren't androgynous, unless you wanna play as a really poorly passing trans character or someone with a major hormone disorder.

If I wanted to roleplay a hetero romance, I'd just shack up with Jorgan. Besides, I've already got a Trooper at level 50 who's finished chapter 3 - having to do it over while playing a character who I don't identify with as much would just be frustrating. If we could have a Kaiden-in-ME3 situation, then that'd be ideal. Still, DA2 and ME3 are the only Bioware games where there's been more than one WLW romance option that was actually enjoyable for me - not having any choice is just frustrating. (DA:I has Sera, but she's just so overwhelmingly uncomfortable. Even if she's not shouting at you about DARING to have a positive opinion of your own culture, she's fetishizing you to the point that I'm certain she'd let slurs she found in smut magazines slip out during bed.)

In Knights of the Fallen Empire, Kaliyo became a flirtable option for female characters; while most (if not all) other reintroduced companions did not have that as an option. As a lesbian SWTOR player, I'd absolutely love to have more options for my characters - romancing Lana every time will fall a bit flat - and giving my Trooper the ability to romance Elara Dorne would personally make me immensely happy. Similarly, I imagine a lot of people would enjoy the ability to initiate a romance with Malavai Quinn when that was not originally an option. In all honesty, it was more than a little heartbreaking when Elara promised to act as a tutor to the children that my character would never feasibly have due to pining after her. Mostly it just feels ODD to be able to flirt with Satele Shan, but not with my long-time companion who my character is immensely close to.

Bizarrely enough, that's the part I am less concerned about. The race unlocks are just awkward if it's not account-wide. Like I said, if you want to unlock everything on one server, you have to use up every character slot.

But none of them are hybrids (Except the pureblood but that's, y'know, ancestral), and I'm pretty sure it's impossible to have a chiss and a twi'lek mate. EDIT: Thanks, Annedromeda. Sorry about this. Just thinking about it. There are 8 races with unlockable classes. If you wanted to unlock all of them - every combination - on a server, not only would you use up every single server slot and have to delete someone for the Chiss Smuggler, but you've already played every single class!

Looking at the legacy features, and - reasonably enough - they're restricted to server. However, the one I've been looking forward to the most is the new unlockable races. Will I be able to create a Chiss Jedi on another server, or do I need to delete one of my characters? Also, I'm honestly a little worried, because explaining how my Chiss, my Sith Pureblood, and my Twi'lek are all related...