Same gender relationships clarifications?

So....What's the news, are we looking for 1.4 to be the gay patch or what?

They haven't told us a damn thing.

1.4 is probably the safest "bet" right now, if the leaks still hold up towards it being a companion-centric patch. I wouldn't outright expect it, but seeing as it takes about two or three months between each patch and SGRA were promised this year, I'd say its reasonable to not dismiss it without a specific announcement of delay, as this will likely be the last patch until 2013 unless they work like clockwork to advance their schedule.

And there's no official word on when 1.4 comes out, right?

Well, server mergers are apparently happening "late this summer" - given that many people have stated that they cannot transfer their characters to destination servers because they already have characters there, it might be reasonable to assume that before the mergers Bioware will consider adding additional character slots. Character slots are a fairly big thing, so would be lumped into a larger patch.

So... circa September, maybe.

Ideally, when it is done.

And that is another point that was raised at the Guild Summit - that the delay over SGRAs is due, in large part, to the desire of the Dev Team to handle the material right - to make each arc its own story consistent with the companion and the rest of the story material.

Companion stories tie into the main storyline, and other companion's stories, in a complicated manner, and I can see it taking significant writer time to do that. To my thinking, this would tend to support that SGRAs will be added for existing companion characters. Writing material for new companions alongside the rest would in many respects be simpler. Then again, in the latter case, we'd not see anything until new companions are rolled out, and I imagine those eager to pursue a SGRA with HK-51 are few.

If HK-51 had a chassis like SCORPIO's I get a feeling the numbers would go up ^.~

Thank you. That's the most encouraging thing I've read here in a long time. It really is way, way too easy to get frustrated with the wait and lack of news, and not consider all the likely reasons behind the wait and lack of news. I've really enjoyed the OGRs, especially some of the variety - going from romancing Akaavi to Dorne to Kaliyo, now that's some whiplash - and I'm really looking forward to seeing how things go with the SGRs.

What's really going to be interesting is seeing how romances change depending on the gender of the PC. How do y'all think they might play out differently?

"Declaration: Master, I cannot aim correctly with these protuberances on my chassis!"

Hopefully it will be subtle and believable... As opposed to them all being "I've never been attracted to a person of the same gender as me before, until you!"

Ideally I'd like to see some bisexual and some exclusively homosexual companions... Sadly, I think they'll take the all bisexual route.

(If they make some exclusively homosexual, there will invariably be some players who will whine and cry that they're not available to their opposite sex PC - cf Samantha Traynor from ME3. Oddly enough, I haven't seen any girls whining over Steve Cortez....)

(By the way, some people might point out the hypocrisy of the above statement - don't we LGB people whine and cry about heterosexual characters we'd like our same sex attracted PCs to be involved with? Well, yes we do. This is a double standard, but one of those double standards that are necessary (at this point in history anyway, I long for the day when it is no longer needed) - heterosexual characters are a dime a dozen, but LGB characters are few and far between (far far far under-represented when compared to RL). That is as far as I'm going to go, lest this post get deleted for dealing with RL stuff.)

I think that could be quite believable if it fits someone's backstory and they only do it for one character. If it's written well.

With respect, Zandilar, I wonder if this is more pessimism than anything that's making you say this.

Personally I don't think this'll be the case. The primary thing that was touted at the Summit (and I believe it was true) is that they're approaching SGRAs from a position of 'good writing'. Now that's as subjective as all hell but I don't think that the team that refuses to go the hero-sexual route is going to go het-and-bi-but-not-gay route. Those two things don't fit.

I will confess two things: Firstly, that I haven't seen complaining of this nature. Secondly, that I avoid reviews, fan-rants and forums dedicated to the feedback of games like ME3 specifically so that I don't see whining of this kind.

I disagree. I think that depends on the person. I don't consider it to be whining when I say I'd like my JK to end up dating Kira, and that I was greatly disappointed to find out this wasn't possible. The reason I don't think it's whining is because currently we have no alternatives to making such statements. I don't begrudge heterosexual NPCs, not at all. Morrigan won't get it on with female Wardens and I'm fine with that. But in DAO - and DA2 - there are alternatives. There are NPCs who will dig the PC. In SWTOR there's not.

If there were it would be a totally different matter. I don't see this situation as being hypocritical in the least because we have, as pro-SGRA players, been backed into a corner and told "NO."

To be clear I don't think that was BW:A's intention. But that's still what happened. So now we can only match our foiled expectations that a Bioware game would be LGBT-friendly to the companions that are currently in the game.