Why Bowdaar?!

Aric shows his gear, Bowdar does not. companions who don't display gear have only Customizations as a way to change their appearance.

Because as of now he's the only Wookiee companion. Anyone who knows anything about Star Wars loved their wookiees. Whether that means hugging them or hunting them. Or both, if you're a trandoshan.

Honestly? Chewbacca was fine, but neither one out of three Wookies in the Bio games were all that interesting. Yeah, he's sweet enough. 1000 kills, then missions running... oh, well.

Don't remeber who asked about which game you could change character appearance in? Every bio SP game had an Override folder which could be easily used in the BG, IWD and NWN-NWN2 series. Not JE, I suppose. Heck, I even managed to replace the Nameless One with Fall from Grace avatar and re-wrote and replayed the whole starting area with a female PC in that game. It was not the animations, it was re-write that killed my Nameless Lady

I have modded BG1, BG2, IWD2 and NWN2 in early 2000's. I am just coming back to gaming after a few year's hiatus. I've played KOTOR2 with RC in one breath, and SWTOR is my first ever MMO.

No, Rona is Riggs' cousin, and can be related through marriage.

Who says any other race can't use implants? I am Okay with Mako saying she has a bunch of tech implanted into her with a different species. Those who are not... keep her as she is. Problems? The officers, as you said, exception happens, it's again a player's choice. Heck, if we can have a Zabrack as a Sith Warrior, we can have Malavai as a Chiss.

I would never worry about either Kalyio and Vette. But look! Even the quintessential Rattataki's species, Ventress, the very first one (!) was retconned to a half-Zab. Why not by a willing individual player? If you can come up with a justification in your headcanon and can play it and it makes your game better... change Vette into anything, 'tis not a skin off my nose! Even though I would keep both just the way they are with one of many pretty custom overlays they have.

Adoptions work for parents or half-breeds, and Kira's background is perfect for a PB Sith. Exception happen in the military, and I can live without it being mentioned. I don't think Killik's are choosy about what species they chose to Join. But I actually would leave Vector on Custom Overlays if they can add one with shiny black eyes, not the dead dull eyes.

I am only talking about near-human companions., not the special species, monster companions. As for Nadia... I am very happy to count her among that group - but if a player can resolve it... GREAT!

Tharan, his name is Tharan. Sorry, this misspelling is a bit annoying. That's 3 female romantic interests right there.

Three goals:
-companion cloning elimination
-so the designer in Houston does not have to decide what's handsome to me
-to add species variety to female player romances at a fraction of a cost it takes to produce new romances

You may not get it, but it would have meant so much to me if Riggs was a Twilek... because my Smuggler is, and Numen Brock disappeared into the thin air.

@DarthObvious - so you are not against, just explaining why it's not going to happen. Well, I want it more than the hood. I gave up on my Lekku. And it will cost less and is more feasible than opening female companions' romances to the female PC. Because you know, it is easier to lock out BT change for companions (seem to be the only technical problem) than to do extra voicing. I don't think SGRs retcons are likely to happen. Customization... well, one can really, really, really wish upon the star.

Plus, with a female romance it is a bit of a different problem for me. I am fine with romancing Kalyio BUT I also would love Iresso to be a Mirialian or Malavai - a Chiss, or Torian as a Zabrack. On the first run through. Heck, if Doc was a Torguta, I would be playing a Knight right now!

And Aric, for the sake of all that is holy, Aric!

I mean, when you look at Aric, when you look at a boring cast of female romances, them working on Bowdaar's overlay, or adding horrid mustache on an otherwise perfectly handsome Doc does feel... sad. Just sad. Why among 8 classes I can't romance one handsome male alien?! Sure, in the ideal world it would be Zenith (aww... that voice, that passion, that personality, that ideal match for the F!Con....) or Bao-Dur's like character but I would take a reasonable substitute. Like Iresso as a Miri (or a Torguta if we up the stakes).

Those are Mods, not built in game functionality like you're asking for. Explain to me how someone playing a Bioware game on their Xbox/Playstation alters their companions appearance?

SWTOR doesn't support mods. If it did you wouldn't need Bioware to build what you're asking for.

That's not really a shock.

Omg.

The above is a perfect example of what I was talking about earlier in that you do not know what you're talking about. You just assume things and pass your opinion(s) off as fact.

SGR don't require the amount of work you think they do. People have been able to mod them into to prior Bioware games. It's not difficult, it's simply a checkbox getting X companion to recognize you as a different gender. The part that does take a bit of work is the player voice, as there is none for certain romance combinations, but what modders have done is cut apart existing lines of dialogue and used them to fill in what's not there and it sounds perfectly fine. You wouldn't know any better unless someone told you.

That's one solution that doesn't require any new voice acting to be done.

The other solution is to recording the missing dialogue with the class voice actors. The Companions don't really require it. They rarely use gender specific terms and the ones they do can easily be edited out or another gender neutral line of theirs could be used in it's place. Anyways recording new dialogue for the class voice actors is NOT expensive. This is a extremely common misconception.

James Ohlen confirmed at GDC one year that expensive voice acting was a misconception and that Bioware has done so much voice acting in their games that they know how to do it cheaply. What he was referring to was the fact that they have certain actors under contract. This means that the actors are paid a contract fee and not a per session fee and as a result Bioware can bring them in to the studio to record as much as possible. This is why you hear certain actors like Steve Blum, Jennifer Hale, Cam Clarke, etc, across all Bioware's games. They're under contract.

Also they've had the class voice actors back in the studio long after the outcry for SGRs. Courtney Woods confirmed that all the dialogue from the recent Flashpoints is all new stuff. It's not old re-purposed content like a lot of people believed. In other words there's a chance that they've already recorded all the SGR stuff at this point just incase they do decide to go back and make it a feature. They've had the class actors back enough to knock that kind of thing out while they've got them there.

You don't know what is and what isn't more expensive to do. You don't know what's easier or harder to do. You're just assuming all the things you want are easy, simply because you want them.

Even if you could romance whatever male character you wanted to they're still in general not as interesting as the female characters tend to be, and that's across all Bioware games. The stand out characters are almost never the male companions. For instance in the original KOTOR HK-47 was the stand out. In Dragon Age it was Morrigan. In most cases in Bioware games the most interesting male characters aren't ones who are companions. Scourge does stand out among the male comps in this game but his own backstory sort makes a romance impossible.

You assume too much - which is what you suggest I am doing. It is normal, if ironic.

I disagree about your opinions on my preferences. My favorite companion here is Zenith, and nothing, absolutely nothing beats KOTOR2 male companion cast for me EVER. HK-47 never was a big thing for me personally, a two-joke wonder I dropped because he was a bore. Never did his quest in KOTOR2, nor intend to do it here. But I will pay twice the sub fee and run another Con if I could romance Zenith. In fact, I am probably going to play another Con, so I could play with Zenith without worrying about the others' achievements.

As for me not knowing anything, well, honestly, your opinion that making more voicework is easier and cheaper than opening a customization terminal to the companions is no more substantiated than mine. I am wondering if shoul make a drive or flight to Vancouver this Friday to ask, because Bio is not interested in commenting, but Bio generally picks up the threads that ally with their current interests. Female romances are obviously done and we won't get anything more.

But really, any romance is possible. And the less likely it is, the more interesting it will be. It's the possible, predictable romances that are boring. Like Iresso - well written, very real, and sweet. But epic? Stirring? Emotional? Hardly.

I wasn't talking about you. It's not always about just you and what you want.

HK-47 was a big hit with the majority of people who played KOTOR. Morrigan was a hit with the majority of people who played Dragon Age. There's a reason why HK was the first non class companion added and why he got his very own pre-rendered trailer. There's a reason why it was a big deal when Morrigan was revealed in that E3 Dragon Age Inquisition trailer, and why a lot of fans were happy when it was revealed that she would be a party member.

Yeah nice try.

There's factual evidence to back up the fact that voice acting isn't expensive. You said it was expensive, which was a flat out lie.

Also how clueless do you have to be to believe that recording a few lines of dialogue is the harder, more difficult, or more expensive of the two options?

"Hey Nolan, while we've got you here could you say this, this, and this?"

"Uh...okay."

"Line 1"
"Line 2"
"Line 3"

Wow that took all of five whole minutes. Actually not even 5 mintues.

Like I said earlier chances are that they already have SGR dialogue recorded. Whether they actually do anything with those recordings remains to be seen.

What percentage of threads that get made do you believe Bioware actually make a post in?

No they don't.

From Makeb forward nearly all Flirt options have been unisex.

If you're talking about companion characters then the same statement also applies to Male characters as well.

Tell that to Scourge. He can't feel anything.

No, Iresso is fairly boring, even when the romance.

Does this topic really warrant such an... aggressive debate? oô

Peace is a Lie...

You know, the Sith code is kinda funny, since it never actually talks about negative emotions. So... if you're really, really passionate about painting... could you be a Sith Lord Artist?

Well...