I was very happy and hopeful to hear that some of the most recent returning original companions got same-gender romance options. But at the same time it also felt a bit like a slap in the face for those of us playing gay/bi characters interested in original companions who had already returned before.

 

When I was starting the Malavai Quinn reunion story, I was expecting there to finally be romance options for my Sith Warrior. They have been practically flirting since the beginning of time, and we've had a lot of same-gender romances post-vanilla, so it was indeed a let-down to not get actual flirt options then.

 

Obviously it's a bit late to change that now, but, could we pleeeeease get new same-gender romance dialogue cutscenes for (some of) the already returned companions? It could be something similar to the Arcann romance cutscene, or to the dialogues we used to get on our starship. It'd only be for character-classes who originally had these companions of course.

 

(Just please let Malavai Quinn and my Sith warrior express their attraction for eachother <3 )

I completely agree. I always wanted my Male Inquisitor to end up with Andronikos or my Female to end up with Ashara. Or My male smuggler and Corso, or Warrior with Malavi like you. As a Bisexual Male myself, I wished the romanceable companions could be romanced by either gender at the start. I know some players would say that's forcing the LGBTQ+ "agenda" down their throat (if you don't want to romance the character just don't select the flirt option as I do with all the Hetero options in every game ever?) But that way everyone can be included without it being a huge hassle.

I completely agree. I always wanted my Male Inquisitor to end up with Andronikos or my Female to end up with Ashara. Or My male smuggler and Corso, or Warrior with Malavi like you. As a Bisexual Male myself, I wished the romanceable companions could be romanced by either gender at the start. I know some players would say that's forcing the LGBTQ+ "agenda" down their throat (if you don't want to romance the character just don't select the flirt option as I do with all the Hetero options in every game ever?) But that way everyone can be included without it being a huge hassle.

 

I don't know if it's shoving anything down anyone's throats, but it's not giving the characters any of their own personality.

 

Kaliyo for instance, not being F/F gets to give you the "No thanks. Just not my thing." line. Can't get good character lines like that with, whoever you flirt with automatically loves you back.

 

Now, maybe they should've done some as romances from the beginning. I'm not saying give every class the option, but it'd be great to see a few of the classes get some BI companions retroactively put into vanilla.

 

It'd even get people to roll up another, I'm sure.

Qyzen literally screams romance. Lizards need loving too

You do realise that not everyone is gay/bi, right? Plus they've made all comps, that came back this update bi, which is not only weird, but it's just strange that after years of travelling through the galaxy together, they find love for you after you've been missing for... 6 years I believe? I'm a bi guy myself with one bi male char and one lesbian, and although I wanted that bi char to be with Torian, I more than likely won't romance him if it'll become an option somewhere in the future, as it would be really bland. Let some comps stay straight, it brings more colour to theirs personallity :3

Plus they've made all comps, that came back this update bi, which is not only weird, but it's just strange that after years of travelling through the galaxy together, they find love for you after you've been missing for... 6 years I believe?

AFAIK, Doc is still straight.

And Nadia and Jaesa, were pretty much discovering everything about love and sexuality in the vanilla game, so i don't find it that strange that they could've found out after our character disapeared that they actually felt more than friendship or wanted more than a mentor-mentee kind of relationship with them.

 

I'd have no problem if Scourge is bi if he really becomes romanceable, as the only thing we know is that he loved someone at some point before becoming immortal, but we're never told if his lover was male or female.

Too late, my smuggler done waiting for Risha and proposed to Lana.

with the patch working smooth and no major bugs, i'm absolutly sure thats the number one priority for the devs right now.

 

 

 

 

/s

 

 

/e: seeing the patch notes for hotfixes next tuesday. it might actualy be, tho...

Edited December 15, 2018 by mrphstar

Let some comps stay straight, it brings more colour to theirs personallity

Agreed, with the caveat that if BW want to add some romances to new characters that are M/M and F/F only that would also bring some colour.

Edited December 15, 2018 by Estelindis

Let some comps stay straight, it brings more colour to theirs personallity :3

 

One, no one would be happy with which companions Bioware chose to keep straight. I.e., i'd love to be able to romance Corso on my male smuggler.

 

Two, if you want a companion to remain straight... don't flirt. Done!

Edited December 15, 2018 by xordevoreaux

Agreed, with the caveat that if BW want to add some romances to new characters that are M/M and F/F only that would also bring some colour.

 

Completely new-to-us characters? Absolutely would be fine with me. But returning companions that were previously not romanceable I think should be open to all. A good example would be Scourge. I think I would want to crawl in a hole and die if they brought Scourge back for m/m only...because I've been shipping him with my female Knight from Day 1...and I know I'm definitely not the only one.

Edited December 15, 2018 by Dracofish

Completely new-to-us characters? Absolutely would be fine with me. But returning companions that were previously not romanceable I think should be open to all. A good example would be Scourge. I think I would want to crawl in a hole and die if they brought Scourge back for m/m only...because I've been shipping him with my female Knight from Day 1...and I know I'm definitely not the only one.

Yes, that's not what I meant. When I spoke of new companions instead of others, I was thinking of companions who already returned and didn't have same-gender added then (and to whom I don't think there's any special need to have SGR added in the future), not the few remaining returns.

Edited December 16, 2018 by Estelindis

One, no one would be happy with which companions Bioware chose to keep straight. I.e., i'd love to be able to romance Corso on my male smuggler.

 

Two, if you want a companion to remain straight... don't flirt. Done!

 

I agree with this. Giving everyone the choice would be best. That's what it is about when we get to make decisions, we create our character's story and personal environment. We get to decide whether Jaesa is dark or light, based on who our character is, we decide who the romanceable companions fall in love with, their personalities do play off our characters, so why not also in romance.

 

(and to whom I don't think there's any special need to have SGR added in the future)

That's in disregard to everyone who has been playing from the start, who has witnessed christian family groups protesting against SGRs in SWTOR and devs caving in, despite Bioware's reputation, who have been hoping for a change that is coming now and have felt their character connect on a personality basis to their original companions.

 

I kind of made my peace with it, but I do understand why some people still hope and wish, and with things moving the direction they are, I can feel their disappointment of "so close, yet so far".

Completely new-to-us characters? Absolutely would be fine with me. But returning companions that were previously not romanceable I think should be open to all. A good example would be Scourge. I think I would want to crawl in a hole and die if they brought Scourge back for m/m only...because I've been shipping him with my female Knight from Day 1...and I know I'm definitely not the only one.

 

That would completely contradict Scourge's backstory if they made him M/M only. In the Revan book, he found Darth Nyriss initially attractive and beautiful from the statues outside of her hideout on Dromund Kaas. But he was taken back by her appearance when she met him in person as she was wrinkled and looked like a "hag".

So he definitely has attraction to females.

I am a heavy supporter of Malavai Quinn becoming a same-gender romance option for a male Sith Warrior! It's the primary reason why I made a female SW (also because female warriors are fierce), so that I could romance Quinn. I also would love if Scourge became an option for same-gender romance, but I'd already be heavily satisfied with a Scourge romance in the first place. I've been dying to romance him!

 

I also would love for Torian Cadera to be a same-gender romance option, but I'd want his potential romance to extend beyond Bounty Hunter. If we already can get him on all our times he might as well be romanceable on all classes.

 

That would completely contradict Scourge's backstory if they made him M/M only. In the Revan book, he found Darth Nyriss initially attractive and beautiful from the statues outside of her hideout on Dromund Kaas. But he was taken back by her appearance when she met him in person as she was wrinkled and looked like a "hag".

So he definitely has attraction to females.

 

Not to ruin your way of thinking, but as a gay man myself I am not blinded to women, it's not as if I suddenly see them as blurry images I can also tell when a woman is really beautiful and attractive in an objective sense, but just not attractive to me personally.

 

It might have been entirely possible Scourge commented on Nyriss' beauty in an objective analysing sense. Heck, it's evident to me that for example Angelina Jolie or Emma Watson are incredibly beautiful and attractive women, but alas, personally I'd go for Brad Pitt or Daniel Radcliff

Edited December 15, 2018 by Ylliarus

One, no one would be happy with which companions Bioware chose to keep straight. I.e., i'd love to be able to romance Corso on my male smuggler.

 

Two, if you want a companion to remain straight... don't flirt. Done!

 

Exactly. From my observations, all post-Makeb companions/NPCs have had flirt options for both, and I've always thought that is a good system. This just lets us the player make up our own story about how these NPCs are. I don't see why that is a problem. Customisation is a big facet of this game, both wrt the character and the story -- which I think is great!

 

I was think of companions who already returned and didn't have same-gender added then (and to whom I don't think there's any special need to have SGR added in the future),

That's your opinion. A lot of players have different opinions. As KyaniteD wrote, we get to decide where our personal story goes with regards to many things, like who lives and dies, so why should companions' sexual orientation be an exception?

I don't know if it's shoving anything down anyone's throats, but it's not giving the characters any of their own personality.

Well, I won't say make all companions have bi flirt options, as I haven't played all the stories, or as both genders, and some I can't remember enough, so I can't speak for all. Maybe some companions have previous dialogues where they explicitly state that they are most certainly hetero, but I'm pretty sure the sexual orientation of most companions is not explicitly stated in the story.

 

Conversely one could say that making all the vanilla comps hetero doesn't give them as much personality either. One could also say that companions having different romance stories with male and female PCs, in that they would react differently to hetero versus gay romances, would only add to their personality. For example Quinn could warm up to the female warrior relatively quickly, but the idea of being with another man might have taken him years.

 

Now, maybe they should've done some as romances from the beginning. I'm not saying give every class the option, but it'd be great to see a few of the classes get some BI companions retroactively put into vanilla.

 

It'd even get people to roll up another, I'm sure.

This would not be fair to existing "main" characters though. Sure, I would level a copy of my warrior to see this, but I'd feel like my "real" one had missed out. I agree it should've been done, but what's done is done ^^, so let's focus on the future.

 

I am a heavy supporter of Malavai Quinn becoming a same-gender romance option for a male Sith Warrior! It's the primary reason why I made a female SW (also because female warriors are fierce), so that I could romance Quinn.

I did the same, back in vanilla. When my main warrior had reached lvl 30 and I still had no flirt options with Quinn, I became... sceptical. I don't enjoy playing female characters as much though, and haven't played her since vanilla.

Considering that, outside of a few cut scenes and some influence gains, Romances have no real impact on game play. It exists primarily to flesh out you character's personal history. There are a few of us left that still enjoy the story aspects of the game. Sure some of us are passionate about "Don the Knight should be straight/bi/gay/ a droid lover" But for everyone that is passionate for, there is somebody passionate against. I'd suspect the numbers about balance.

For the bulk of the players I know they are there for the mayhem anyway. They might actually watch a cut scene now and then, but more than likely if they are it's playing so they can grab a coffee before going back to cutting/slicing a path across the instance. They by and large don't care about any romances. It doesn't give them any boost.

When the companions each had a specific role you could make a case for romances having some story impact. You might want to leave your love safely on the ship or conversely take them with you on missions. But even then it was the gearing that mattered, not the influence. Now pretty much everyone I know only has to decide melee or ranged and which chatter is least annoying. In all of this, it has no game impact. There are no combat boosts, no dialogues when you fight.. I might have some head canon comments playing, but nothing else.

 

I don't see the big deal on romancing pretty much anyone you want. The player is the only person that knows you are even in a romance. Perhaps, and I mean perhaps, if Lana said something like "The force is with us love" or Tharan quipped something about "I can't wait for the debriefing." it might make a difference or offend some other players, but they don't. So at the end of the day, if you want some hot HK lovin, why would I even care?

devs caving in, despite Bioware's reputation

The differing approaches to companions' sexuality across the Dragon Age series should show that Bioware writers have far more reasons to not make all companions "playersexual" than simply caving in to lobby groups. My personal favorite has been the Dragon Age: Inquisition approach, with companions having a variety of preferences, even if that means some romances are completely cut off from my characters. That's how I'd like to see things in SWTOR too.

 

That's your opinion. A lot of players have different opinions. As KyaniteD wrote, we get to decide where our personal story goes with regards to many things, like who lives and dies, so why should companions' sexual orientation be an exception?

Yes, of course it's my opinion and I don't expect everyone to agree. But, the way I see it, there are lots of other aspects of companions' personalities that are established and we don't get to decide, so why should sexual orientation be an exception? I don't agree with making all companions "playersexual," no more than I think we should be able to mold our companions to suit us in every other way. There are some aspects of some companions' personalities that I don't especially enjoy, but that doesn't mean I should be able to force the personalities into shapes that are more agreeable to me.

 

Perhaps this may offend some people, and naturally I apologize if it does, but I think the notion of just rewriting all of their sexualities, carte blanche, goes against some of the core principles that LGBTQIA people have worked hard to establish: that orientation is innate rather than learned, and can't just be changed because it might suit some people for it to change. Of course these are fictional characters, who in some sense don't exist outside the writing that created them, and they certainly could've been written differently originally. But they weren't, and now they are established. I think it can be interesting from a storytelling perspective for some of them to undergo character development that makes them look at their sexuality differently and/or show themselves to the world differently. The choice of which companions should be written this way can be an intriguing one - I think it has been so far. But if it's just some template applied wholesale to all companions, out of a sense of obligation rather than because there's an interesting story to be told with this particular companion, then to me it becomes much less thoughtful - and I think that the result you'll get will actually be much less satisfactory. That's why I think the current approach is working well, and if some extra F/F-only and/or M/M-only could be added with new characters as well, that would offset the current imbalance. Perhaps Bioware is unlikely to do that as they'd want to reach as wide an audience as possible with any new romance content, but it does look like it would be appreciated by many players if they did.

 

Edit: After I finished writing this, a particular example came to mind. Let's take a look at a case where, for once, a hetero relationship was dangled in front of players and then denied. Tharan Cedrax can flirt with the female consular and even have a brief fling, but ultimately the most important relationship for Tharan is with Holiday. He chooses Holiday not just over the consular but, in some respects, over his career and prestige as a scientist. This shows just how much she means to even this very egocentric person: here's a case where, rather unusually for him, he'll think of another person far ahead of himself. A lot of people have complained about their consulars being put to one side for this holo-girlfriend. Equally some others have complained that the consular can't steal Holiday away from Tharan. But to me this is part of Tharan and Holiday's characters, and I think forcing them into some other shape is actually losing a part of what makes them themselves. And if we're going to undo central aspects of current characters, wouldn't it be better to create new characters instead? Again, I'm not saying this sort of change or development should never happen, I just don't think it should always happen.

Edited December 16, 2018 by Estelindis

AFAIK, Doc is still straight.

And Nadia and Jaesa, were pretty much discovering everything about love and sexuality in the vanilla game, so i don't find it that strange that they could've found out after our character disapeared that they actually felt more than friendship or wanted more than a mentor-mentee kind of relationship with them.

 

I'd have no problem if Scourge is bi if he really becomes romanceable, as the only thing we know is that he loved someone at some point before becoming immortal, but we're never told if his lover was male or female.

 

Agree with Nadia and Jaesa. Haven't romanced either, but watched their scenes on YT and I bought them being bi or at the very least, into the PC.

 

Also, I feel as if Scourge became M/M only would be awesome!

This would not be fair to existing "main" characters though. Sure, I would level a copy of my warrior to see this, but I'd feel like my "real" one had missed out. I agree it should've been done, but what's done is done ^^, so let's focus on the future.

 

It'd be plenty fair. People can roll a new main if they don't like it.

 

By this idea, I can say it's unfair I couldn't level up my characters in awesome outfits back in the day or some such.

 

I didn't get to level up with a pink crystal before!

 

So on and so on.

 

Don't let current mains hold back future mains.

 

I'd reroll my main in a second, for instance, if they allowed Consular to melee with a single blade but had to take a new advance class to do it. *Note to Devs: Allow Shadows/Assassins to use single blade PLEASE or make new advance class that can

not sure if said already in the thread. but i read someewhere they planned on ssr with original companions. but omly when it make sense in the story or something on those lines.

Agree with Nadia and Jaesa. Haven't romanced either, but watched their scenes on YT and I bought them being bi or at the very least, into the PC.

 

Also, I feel as if Scourge became M/M only would be awesome!

I haven't done the romance either and just watched on YT, and did not find it hard to believe either, they had a lot of time to think about the PC and their relationship with them after all.

 

That would be bad for players who really shiped him with their female JK though.

I'd really like him to be available to all classes and all genders, i could totaly ship him with my Sorcerer.

 

That being said, i would clearly not oppose some M/M and F/F exclusive romances for both genders on completely new characters. It's a shame Cytharat could be killed off, he could've been an amazing romance.

Edited December 16, 2018 by Goreshaga

the way I see it, there are lots of other aspects of companions' personalities that are established and we don't get to decide, so why should sexual orientation be an exception? I don't agree with making all companions "playersexual," no more than I think we should be able to mold our companions to suit us in every other way. There are some aspects of some companions' personalities that I don't especially enjoy, but that doesn't mean I should be able to force the personalities into shapes that are more agreeable to me.

Well, it would be difficult for the player to establish all aspects of a companion, and it would negate the existence of personalities we may like them for in the first place. Whether a companion is attracted to men and/or women however, is a pretty straightforward -- and impactful -- decision that can easily be left up to the player.

 

I think the notion of just rewriting all of their sexualities, carte blanche, goes against some of the core principles that LGBTQIA people have worked hard to establish: that orientation is innate rather than learned, and can't just be changed because it might suit some people for it to change. Of course these are fictional characters, who in some sense don't exist outside the writing that created them, and they certainly could've been written differently originally. But they weren't, and now they are established.

1: No one here is implying that orientation should be written as something fickle in the stories.

2: The explicit sexuality of most original companions has not been established.

3: Leaving it up to the player would not imply that orientation is not innate. (But even if it somehow would, that would be visible to that player only.)

It's all up to the writing.

 

I think it can be interesting from a storytelling perspective for some of them to undergo character development that makes them look at their sexuality differently and/or show themselves to the world differently. The choice of which companions should be written this way can be an intriguing one - I think it has been so far.

 

But if it's just some template applied wholesale to all companions, out of a sense of obligation rather than because there's an interesting story to be told with this particular companion, then to me it becomes much less thoughtful - and I think that the result you'll get will actually be much less satisfactory.

I agree, to a degree. I want good stories, unique to each companion, fitting their personalities. Giving more of the original companions SGRs does not necessarily mean the stories will be bad. While I have my wishes for companion SGRs, I can understand there are other players who want other comps as SGRs, so I think it would be fair to accommodate as many as possible (where it fits with the story).

 

I can see that it may become a bit unimmersive (for some PCs) when all NPCs always respond positively to the PC's advances, but this is not an issue isolated to SGR per se.

 

Ultimately it is impossible to set canonical decisions about comps' sexuality retroactively without disappointing players, and would in many cases be worse than the current situation of leaving it largely unknown. At least this way players can still head-canon romances even though they do not happen in-game.

Edited December 16, 2018 by Neulwen

 

Also, I feel as if Scourge became M/M only would be awesome!

 

How could this be a good thing? People have been shipping him with characters of all gender persuasions since 2011. This would be devastating to many people. Look at all the fanfiction and fanart out there. Nu-uh. Scourge, if made romancable, should be open to all. Especially since Scourge as a character has never specified anything either way.

 

If they brought completely new-to-us characters on board, however, and wanted to make some of them f/f or m/m only...fine by me. Awesome. But doing that to such a giant player-base who have all been clamoring for romance of an old fan-favorite...that would be a slap across the face to half of them...and that's not right for anybody...

 

Every single fanfiction or piece of fanart developed for Scourge and a female Knight would be turned into hate-fodder.

Edited December 17, 2018 by Dracofish