JE did it so well, you talk to Skye, you shut him down, boom you're done with him and on to Silk Fox. I don't know how many times I had to reject Doc, it was certainly more than once, and obviously you couldn't then move on to Kira, as you should be able to. I don't play male characters so I don't know how it works, but it seems like female characters tend to get the worst LIs in certain Bioware games lately, like in ME2 where you literally can't even have a conversation with that one guy, whose name I can't remember right now, because literally everything is flirting, and your own character flirts back even if you don't want them to. Ironicly, in ME3 if anybody actually liked that and had romanced him in ME2, they found he had left them for somebody else, and they were left all alone. Obviously I didn't have that problem, but for anybody who would actually romance that guy, they still ended up screwed anyway, literally everybody lost with having that character around. Im guessing there are no such problems that any players of male characters have. Thats just all the more reason to treat everybody equally and fairly, its sickening to constantly be hit on by doc, and I don't even remember whether there was a 'neutral' response or not, but I didn't want one, I wanted to be as negative as possible, to somehow get the guy to leave my female JK alone. Its only fair that there be an equal number of females constantly hitting on my character, I think its safe to say that if that happened, and for whatever reason a particular female character wasn't to my liking, I definitely would want to let them down as gently as possible, so I'd put a higher priority on 'neutral' or 'letting them down gently' options for the female characters who hit on you, because generally speaking they arent going to be as incredibly annoying in their flirting comments as folks like Doc, and thus would be more deserving of being let down easy. But ultimately we have to actually 'have' flirt options with those characters before we can decide whether or not we want to go for it, or let them down easily, or shoot them down harshly. Thats the point, give us the same options as everybody else, and I'm sure we'll be plenty satisfied with the ways we can turn down anybody we'd actually want to turn down.

Its funny, as someone whose characters literally ONLY gets hit on by people she isn't going to be interested in, I like the really forceful/insulting ways you can turn them down, and have no need or desire for anything neutral. In regard to an earlier comment about Leliana and DAO in general, yes she was very awesome, and even with the mod that let female Wardens romance Morrigan I still almost always picked Leliana. Leliana is as good an example as any that limits are pointless, because from all the evidence I've ever seen Leliana is clearly a lesbian, yet she can be romanced by a male Warden. And thats all fine and good, because if somebody wants to romance Leliana they should be able to. The same would be true of Morrigan, she should've been romancable by everyone also despite the fact that she seemed more on the straight side (though she all but confirmed having slept with women before, when she talked about how she had to sleep with Templars from time to time, and as we all know thats not a male-only group) . Obviously DA2 did away with those annoying limitations, and that made the game that much better (which, as it turned out, was especially important because there weren't many actual improvements in DA2 overall) . It doesn't really matter what a character's starting sexual preferences are, you can make them like Leliana where they seem to be Lesbian, Isabella where they clearly go both ways, Morrigan who seems more straight, or Merrill who doesn't really seem to be predefined in any way, so long as you've got the same option to romance them that the male players do, all is good. As for the more general comments about breaks in the storyline and it getting boring, try some of the 'warzones', the PvP mini-games which are generally really fun and help you level up in the process. I don't know which class you're playing, so if you've got nothing but ugly and annoying teammates there's really not a whole lot you can do about that except be patient, when I played as a smuggler I leveled up a fair bit with the robot, even though it was clearly inferior, because I didnt want that annoying dude who constantly hits on you, whatever his name was, around. On my SI, obviously your first character is a monster, who was much more tolerable because he'd rather kill you than hit on you (and of course doesn't do either) . In both cases though, patience leads to eventually ending up with an attractive female teammate who is fun to have around. Same on my JK, only you get her even earlier still, you get a fairly entertaining little robot as your first teammate, then the attractive female. Some classes you get your female teammate first, like the SW class that I sadly haven't done yet (I tried it, but just a few levels worth, back when I was trying out the various classes, I never got far enough to have a teammate), I definitely plan to though. The bottom line is that obviously they should've been LIs for both male and female characters, you are completely right that the romances make the game so much more fun, and when there's a romance RIGHT THERE and they won't let you play it simply because you're playing a gender they dont approve of, it makes it a lot more annoying than if there never had been any romances in the game at all, like in every other MMO I've ever played. The romances were a unique, and awesome, selling point for this game, and then to not let you play ANY of them unless you play as a male character (or prefer dudes) is wrong beyond belief. Hopefully they mean it when they say they plan to fix things and make things right, its certainly possible that all our efforts have genuinely caused them to change their mind and finally give us the romances that are already there and would be SO simple to let us enjoy too. But my suggestion to you is have patience, you'll get a female teammate sooner or later whatever class you're playing as (I think the other Jedi class, not the Knight but the other one, has the longest wait, I havent played that one but I'm just basing that on what Ive read), and at that point you can give her 'courting' gifts, eventually you'll get a 'dancing' ability where you can dance together, and by using little things like that you can imagine that you're in a romance with them, even though you don't get the actual romance conversations because you're the 'wrong' gender according to whoever it was that decided to design it that way. Its hardly an ideal solution, but it really is better than nothing, so I'd advise patience, enjoy the little things we do have, and enjoy the main storyline, all of the main storylines I've seen so far have been pretty daggone good (I've played the SI and JK storylines all the way through, the SI one is quite simply epic, the JK one is really good too but the ending is kind've of a letdown, sort of a combination of 'that wasnt supposed to happen' and blandness) . Enjoy the 'warzones', level up until you get your female character (some classes even get more than one), enjoy the story, its a really fun game, what you're actually allowed to play of it anyway. It does have its boring parts, but you're pretty much at the worst of it right now, once you get past 'chapter one' things tend to start really picking up, it seems to me. You get the cooler abilities, the battles seem a bit easier, you still level up quickly, maybe even more quickly thanks to those newer abilities, and again once you get your female teammate, all will seem right with the world. Hang in there, because once you get to level 50 not only do you get to do all sorts of really cool and fun things like that Gree event happening right now, but once you have a second character, you can have them get 'married' in your legacy, and then any subsequent characters can be their children, or siblings, or just more characters to get married, however you want to do it. It definitely gets more fun as the game goes along, and hopefully they'll eventually make good on their promise to give us the romances that we want and should've had all along, and then things will be AWESOME .

I would love the chance to romance Ashara also. I don't know what it is about her, but she's just awesome. It'd be nice if you could get her on the team even earlier, but better late than never...just like adding her as an LI .

The one thing that I liked the best about the whole 'turning Doc down' thing, is the way it GAINS you points with Kira. The jealousy thing is such a nice touch, especially since my character is female and thus not actually allowed to romance her, its really about the only way Kira is allowed to show her romantic interest in my female JK. That type of thing, comments regarding one character having effect on another, is something there should be more of, its really cool. Going way WAY back to the days of JE, you could toy with Silk Fox by pretending you were interested in Sky, and of course in NWN2 how Neeshka was always so jealous of the elf-girl (even if your character was female, which obviously was the key point of the coolness) . The whole jealousy thing, thats definitely something they should keep, and expand on in the future. Its a lot of fun, and it really shows your character that they care .

I don't even understand the criticism from way back then, about DA2. I mean, if somebody (Anders in the case of DA2) is hitting on you and you don't like them, and you turn them down, why do you even care if they give you negative points toward them? Obviously DA2 and SWTOR are different games, but when I was playing as my JK I hated my female JK being repeatedly hit on by 'doc', and I enjoyed it when my responses earned me negative points from him, it meant my responses were having the intended effect. Just like I always liked it when my negative responses to his comments got me positive points from Kira, it meant she was jealous of him and was happy my JK was turning him down, she was keeping my JK all to herself . I like the positive/negative system the way it is, it works really well. We just need to be able to actually enjoy the romances that we want to enjoy, and all is good.

It actually could be one of those 'marketplace' things, because one thing that struck me as particularly odd, is that you can literally change the race/color of your teammate, and nobody gets upset. I mean, for example, I like Mako being asian, I don't change her, but while I have no problem with somebody else using the 'customization' to change her to a different race, you'd think 'somebody' would be complaining about that being racist or something. But they don't, and that's good. Because its all about customizing your teammate any way you like, even if it isn't exactly 'politicly correct' to do so. So if you can use the customize option to change someone's color/race, there is absolutely no logic whatsoever why you couldn't use the customize option to allow players to change their teammate's romantic preference. And that's yet another way in which everybody wins. Your mako likes your male character, my mako likes my female character, she's not straight, she's not a lesbian, she's not bi, or anything else you can think of, she's just mako, she's whatever you want her to be. That has always been the point behind the way teammates were designed, to be very customizable, so you can truly make them your own unique teammate. This would just be one more form of customization, and quite frankly it would be a lot less controversial, theoretically anyway, than changing somebody's skin color/race. If people ever decided to take that seriously, they could get REALLY REALLY mad over something like that, race is a way more sensetive issue than two women in a romantic relationship, but happily they don't get upset about it, because its not done in any negative way, its just designed to let you customize your teammates in any way you want, and thats always a good thing. I think customization options generally have a price (though you get one for free at the beginning) so I'd say yes, the romance customization 'should' be a free option, but I wouldn't even mind if they charged for it, the same way they do for the other customization options (it isn't real money, or 'cartel money', its just regular pretend, in-game money, no big deal), however they wanted to do it would be fine with me. It really is amazing how many different ways there are to implement this, and yet we've waited well over a year for them to pick one and do it. Hopefully they'll finally pick one soon and get it done.

Its actually kind've funny, in an ironic sort of way, how all the stereotypes and generalizing done by anyone playing the game is done 'because' of the way things have been handled. My mind keeps going back to Skyrim, because its part of a series that I always enjoyed, it was never one of my favorites but the games were reasonably fun, and when I played the most recent version I had no idea that they had romances at all (none of the previous ones did), much less that my female character could marry a female NPC. Thats because it wasn't a big deal, you could romance anybody you wanted, it made things easier for the programmers and more fun for the players, it was a win-win for everybody. The fact that they took the exact opposite approach in SWTOR is the reason why people are complaining way more about way less now. In Skyrim, literally every romancable NPC's sexual preference was whatever you wanted it to be. Nobody complained, because everybody had things their own way. Here, all the NPC's were set to straight-only, and now suddenly they're adding a certain number (higher or lower than 2 we dont even know) who aren't straight-only, and it generates controversy. There would've been no controversy if it had been done Skyrim/DA style all along, people would've realized that everybody was getting exactly what they wanted, and it wouldnt have been a big deal. If they finally came out and announced 'We're going to give everyone what they want, we're going the Skyirim/DA2 route from here on in' and let us romance all the characters that everybody else can already romance, there'd be a day or two where a few people would complain, then it'd be back to business as usual, that would be the end of it. Instead they're dragging this whole thing out, little by little, pretty much manufacturing and then maximizing the controversy, all while giving us about as little as they possibly can, for no logical reason whatsoever. It's long past time that they finally did the right, and logical, thing and brought the romances up to the Skyrim/DA standards, its easy enough to do, and everybody wins.

That's why we're here . We see other, extremely popular games doing it, we see there's no reason for this game not to, and we want it in this game too. Also, the fact that this is the first Bioware game AND the first KOTOR game (the 2nd one wasnt made by Bioware, but they used the same basic romance system) to not feature any lesbian LIs at all is completely inexcusable. Its an extremely popular option, thats why its been in every KOTOR game up until this one, and in so many other more modern games, there's nothing controversial about it at all. Ultimately there are so many different ways to introduce this into the game that it should've happened well over a year ago. They can just turn off all the gender-checks that disable the romances and flirts, that's the simplest solution, the one they should've done over a year ago. They could introduce a new race (they seem to like doing that from time to time) that looks and sounds female (like the all-female race in the ME series) and let players choose between male and female at the character creation screen, which would effect nothing about the character's appearance or voice, only who they could or couldn't romance/flirt with. That would actually be the coolest way of doing it, because I mean, who wouldn't want an Asari-like race in the game? The bottom line is theres lots of really good ways to make everybody happy, hopefully they'll pick the best one and implement it ASAP. I'd also like to make a more general, overall point about the game, and the storylines. I've only played 2 all the way through, the SI and JK, so I can't comment on all the storylines (although of those two, I found the SI more interesting, so much fascinating stuff happening, the JK storyline was cool too of course, but seemed a bit too straightforward, not as much uniqueness as the SI one, and also the ending was more satisfying for the SI one but I wont discuss that due to possible spoilers), but the overall point is, the story IS the game. Just as the original KOTOR was a traditional RPG that played like an action RPG, this is an MMO that plays like a traditional RPG. The story is the reason we play. I'm sure there's a fair number of people who only care about the MMO elements, the PvP stuff and such, and I do really enjoy the mini-games, the 'warzones' as they call them, but ultimately we play for the story. Throughout the game, whichever class you play, you're constantly given choices that effect things in your own personal world. Whether or not you save lives, bring about peace, or kill people and bring about war, etc. and in none of those storylines are your choices limited in any way whatsoever by your gender. Obviously the romances should be no different. They're part of the overall storyline, and they should be part of it in any way you want them to be. If you dont want to romance anybody thats fine, but if you do and you want her to be a prominent part of your storyline, that should be an option as well. I wouldn't be playing this game at all, I never would have, were it not for the fact that it was Bioware, which meant great stories, and it was also SUPPOSED to mean romances that I was actually allowed to play, rather than read about other people enjoying them while I wasn't allowed to. My request would be make the romances like the entire rest of the game, gender-irrelevant, and give us more stories as well. We get 3 chapters for each character, its time for chapter 4, and then beyond. The storyline is the cake, the romance is the icing on the cake. I want some icing on my cake, and I also want more cake . Two specific things I'd like to happen at some point in the future, I'd like the chance to become the Emperor for my SI character (possibly the other dark-side classes also, not sure if they would be equally appropriate or not as I haven't played their storylines all the way through yet), and the chance to romance Satele Shan for my JK (I imagine all my light-side characters would like that option, that seems like a pretty easy call even having not played their storylines all the way through yet) . Did I mention that Satele should be romancable by all? I think that would be implied .

The good news is there's almost no 'rewriting' involved, pretty much the only thing you have to do is change a few pronouns here and there, its not like they're going to change 'i love you' to 'i love you, but you're a girl so I'm gonna need some more gifts before we make our relationship official', or anything like that. Having played countless mods over the years, I know for a fact that the romances work just fine regardless of your character's gender, so long as there's no gender check in the way of your getting to play them. Probably the changes they talked about needing to deal with in regard to the different species will take more time and effort than the changes needed to deal with the different genders. So its certainly something they can do all at once, and super quick, if they're telling the truth about being inclined to do so, which I certainly hope they are. Ive read that other thread, and while the ideas aren't 'bad' per se, they're just overwhelmingly more complex and time consuming than is necessary, there's no way they're ever going to go to all that trouble to change the whole way the romance system works, nor quite frankly should they. The romance system works just fine right now, it doesn't need changing, aside from the whole gender check thing. If they did it like Skyrim and had no gender check preventions we'd have 10 really good romances to choose from instead of 0, that sounds like a pretty awesome system to me. To try to create an entirely new system, housing on various planets for various new and old LIs, etc. just to solve a problem that can be solved by vastly, VASTLY simpler means, its just pointless to even discuss something like that as a serious suggestion. For those that enjoy doing so, that's great and keep having fun doing it, but the best solution is the simplest, let us play the romances that are already in the game. Don't radically change them, don't limit us to one or two, etc. just let us play what we want to play, the same way they do it in Skyrim, DA2, DD, etc etc etc there's nothing remotely complicated about that. Suggestions that are incredibly complicated aren't suggestions any of us really need to make, let's just keep it simple, so we can all get what we want, everybody wins.

In DA3 no, in ME4 not exactly, but still pretty bad. Thats just a guess in both cases, based on the previous games in each series, but the DA series started good and improved to great, the ME series started decent (1 out of 2 female teammates romancable, like DAO) and finished terrible (0 out of 3 female teammates romancable in ME2 and 1 out of 5 in ME3, but with one female NPC romancable in ME2 and two in ME3 for what thats worth) . Ultimately it comes down to the guy making the decisions in the DA series wants to give us as much as possible, the ME guy wants to give us as little as possible, like the SWTOR guy. The level of pressure on each guy in the ME and SWTOR games dictated exactly how much he gave us, they'd give us zero if they could, but they can't. The DA fellow, whose name is David Gaider for those who don't know, has stated quite clearly that those at the highest levels of Bioware don't care what he or any of his equals in the other game series' do with the romances, they can do them the way he did them in DAO, in DA2, or just the way they did it in SWTOR, they don't care one bit (Im sure he would add that they do care when the decisions result in extreme public backlash, like the ME2 and SWTOR ones, seems like a reasonable guess). But the general point is each game has a head guy, and that one guy has all the power when it comes to who is, and who isn't, allowed to enjoy the romances. I remember back when the ME2 controversy came out (the first Bioware game in modern history that had no SGRA whatsoever, other than one NPC which they tried to pretend wasn't even a romance, it shocked everybody at the time), virtually everyone that worked on the game favored the DA style approach, and thats how it was going to be in the game, then the head guy swooped in at the last minute and made them disable all our romances, every last one of them, with the dreaded gender check, thats why there was plenty of evidence of the romances still on the disc, bits and pieces here and there. The Devs made it as clear as they could, without losing their jobs, that they disagreed with the guy's decision and fought to keep the romances in, but ultimately the one guy had all the power and he abused it to our tremendous disadvantage. The DA guy will always give us plenty, that will never be a problem, he's made that perfectly clear. The ME and SWTOR guys will always give us as little as public pressure, or lack thereof, allows them to, they've made that perfectly clear as well. Thats who they are as people, thats what they believe in. Thats why we can't let up, if we let up thats when it ends, we've gotten all we're gonna get at that point, other than in the DA series which will always be good. Its ironic and sad, if the romance decisions were made as a team, by the folks working on each game, we'd be happy with the results in all of them. Most of Bioware is on our side, including most of the people working on each game, but ultimately the decisons of which romances do or dont get gender-checked away are made by one person, the guy at the top of each game. Nobody else's opinion carries any weight at all, except when the pressure gets so huge that somebody higher up orders them to do something to put an end to it. If the head of the ME or SWTOR series changes, we'll likely get romances-o-plenty in that given series. Until then, we're only going to get what they feel is absolutely required to avoid bad press, that's why what we're doing by constantly asking for fair and equal treatment is so important. But DA3 will be awesome either way, that's a given.

I too am someone who generally dislikes MMOs, I think thats a large part of the appeal of SWTOR, it is an MMO that plays like a single player RPG. Kind've like how the original KOTOR, WAY back in the day, was a traditional RPG that played like an action RPG. You appeal to a much wider range of people that way, and its still super fun. Clearly SWTOR has those MMO elements, the group quests, the PvP, stuff like that, and they are likely as much or more fun than any other MMO as well, but the primary draw for me, and probably a majority of players, is the storyline. Obviously that includes the romances, which is why there are 20 of them in the game, and while I've never heard a number on the total number of flirts its probably well over a thousand, and that might be an understatement. The fact that we aren't allowed to enjoy ANY of them is simply mind-boggling, and its why most players are upset. That, and the fact that its so easy to turn off the gender checks and solve the issue, but they pretend its 'unexpectedly hard', so hard that its taken them well over a year and theres still no end in sight to the waiting. As someone who is, unfortunately, an expert on this topic due to years and years of experience using mods to enjoy romances that are gender-checked away, there is literally never a romance that needs to be rewritten or changed in any meaningful way whatosever because the main character is really a female. Whether its the Bastilla and Female Revan, Morrigan and Female Warden, FemShep and Ashley, Jack, Miranda, Tali, I've literally played them all, and many more. The only one that is at all annoying is the Morrigan one, because of the unusual number of male pronouns in that one, but even that one is awesome (particularly if you have the Morrigan DLC, and get the happy ending, with Morrigan and the Female Warden going through the mirror to raise their child and have their happily ever after) . And the reason that one of the very first mods that came out for DAO was the mod that let you romance Morrigan as a female Warden is, in addition to the fact that it was one of the most wanted, it was also because it was one of the easiest to do. It is just SOOOO easy to get rid of that gender check and let everybody enjoy the romance, it isn't 'unexpectedly hard', it doesn't take years, it took about 2 days for a modder, a guy who isn't even a professional getting paid to do it, to put the Morrigan one out there, and it might not've taken him that long to actually do it, it might've just taken him that long to do it, figure out where to upload it, etc. Thats the key point behind all of this, how easy it is to do if they would just do it, instead of pretending its hard and making excuses while doing nothing. Of course it would be much harder if they wanted to write the romance storylines completely differently depending on which gender you were, but that is not only completely unnecessary, quite frankly its downright absurd. The romance is the romance, gender doesnt really play a role, once you'd played enough of these romances via mods you realize that isn't even slightly an issue. Of course it would be nice if they threw in a line about your character's gender at some point, that's always nice in any storyline in the game, and certainly it would be particularly appropriate for the romance storylines, but that's something they could add in later if they wanted to, thats not an excuse to give us absolutely nothing for well over a year. They could make the romances available right now, and if they want to add gender-specific aspects to them down the line that'd be great, and they'd obviously be able to do that as well, whenever they liked. So hopefully they'll finally do that soon.

I agree with what I believe was the sentiment behind the earlier post, which is that it's disgusting to have to play a male character to romance the female character of your choice. Thats true, it is. I can't bring myself to do it either, I couldn't even get as far as even beginning to try, so the earlier poster at least did better than me. Its not an insult about men in general, its that this is an RPG where you're allowed to play as a male or female character, and as such if you want to play as a female character you shouldn't be penalized in any way, especially in such an extremely important way. It's funny, I've played two characters to level 50 now and I don't even know what a 'chiss' is, I'm sure Ive met some and simply forgotten them, but it gave me an interesting and humorous idea for how to solve this whole thing. Not that it's complicated or anything, they could fix it super easily through any number of means, but this is yet another one. Suppose they created a race like the Asari from Mass Effect, who look and sound female, but like how that hilariously dumb fellow tried to say they 'werent female' even though they're explicitly stated as female in the game itself, you could take this race and let them be played as either male or female. Either way you get someone who looks and sounds female, but essentially by choosing the gender you'd be choosing which gender you want to romance. Obviously its much, much simpler to just get rid of the gender checks on the existing romances, but this is just yet another way to solve the issue on top of all the other obvious ones. Also, it would be pretty cool to have an all-female race similar to the Asari in SWTOR, you can never go wrong by adding an all-female race, whatever game you're talking about really .

It doesn't really matter if they fix things one patch at a time or all at once, I don't care if they fix the companion romances one or two classes per week, or all at once, so long as they do it. Same with the flirt options, I don't care if they do it one or two planets at a time, or all at once, that's all irrelevant, the point is simply that we want them to do it. I doubt that even if they did it all in one patch it would make the patch all that big, since really all they're doing is removing the gender checks for the romances and flirts and adding in a bit of VA, hard to imagine that making the patch all that insanely big, but even if it did who cares, we've waited way over a year, waiting a couple weeks for the patch to come in parts wouldn't be a big deal. As for the whole 'politics' thing, everybody's got an agenda, including the trolls. There isn't anybody who doesn't. The original decision to not allow us to have any romances was due to an agenda. The reason they haven't fixed it yet and given us what Skyrim, DA2, etc etc gives us is due to an agenda. Yes, some of the articles written also have an agenda in the other direction, but one part of them I agree with is the criticism, because its been way over a year and they still havent fixed this even though its super easy to do, so while we'd all love to believe they're telling the truth when they say they're still planning on doing it, the fact is they've brazenly lied about how 'unexpectedly hard' it was to do, when all it takes is disabling the gender checks, changing the occasional pronoun, and adding in the main character's voice, there's nothing unexpectedly hard about that. Now, just because one guy is a liar doesn't mean everybody that works for the game is one too, of course not, most are on our side, but it does mean you have to go on the assumption that they're not going to give us anything at all unless absolutely forced to by bad press, because that's the way its been so far, just lie or stay silent and give us nothing until the bad press gets so bad they had to do 'something', and by something they gave us about as little as humanly possible. I have an agenda also. My agenda is fun. That is the agenda that Skyrim, DD, Fallout NV, etc. had. They weren't about being pro or anti SGR for political or any other kind of agenda reason, other than the fun agenda. What they did was because it made the game more fun. When people can play any romance they want, thats WAY WAY more fun than when they cant. Its also easier for the game designers to make it that way, which gives them more time to make the game better in other ways also. Games are supposed to be about fun, not taking fun away to promote an agenda. Thats what we want, we want the same romances and flirt options as everybody else, because its a lot more fun. And the fact that it would be SO easy for them to make that happen is what is the most frustrating part of the whole thing. That they've gone to such trouble, and told so many lies, etc. just to keep us from enjoying the same romances as everybody else, instead of just making the romance storylines the same as every other storyline in the game, its just crazy. In any other storyline in the game, you can play it regardless of gender. You might get your gender mentioned, you probably won't but you might, but either way you're allowed to play it, and enjoy it no matter what your gender is. To make the romance storylines unplayable is beyond stupid, it was done because of an agenda, and that agenda obviously isn't a pro-fun agenda. All we ask is that they make their agenda what it should have been all along, a pro-fun agenda. We know that most of the devs agree with us. Its the same as it was in the Mass Effect series, they aren't the ones making the decisions, but most folks at Bioware are on our side, even those in the SWTOR team. If/when the head dude decides its not worth all the bad press to keep us from enjoying the game the same as everybody else, we'll get the romances we want and everybody will be happy. They don't even have to make an official announcement, they can just slip it into their regularly scheduled patches that fix other various things that either add to the game or need fixing in the game, I don't care exactly how they do it, I just want to enjoy the game the same as everybody else. Thats it. Hopefully that will be sooner rather than later.

I loved the DAO/DA2 dialogue as well, and yes I always imagined that Bethany and that girl you rescue from the crazy Templar and crazy-Anders in act 2 and help reunite her with Bethany, are in fact a couple. Hard to see that kind of dialogue in SWTOR though, since you only have one companion at a time, not two, but I guess they could have the occasional on-ship little scene or something. There's something really good that hopefully will come out of this whole 'everybody dislikes the way they're doing things' backlash Bioware is getting, and that is that it is making it even MORE obvious what they should've done all along, and should do in the future. It was already mighty obvious, they could've looked at DA2, Skyrim, Fallout NV, DD, etc. but apparently they didn't. There's a reason why Skyrim was unfathomably popular and their romance system wasn't the slightest bit controversial, its because none of the characters are forced to be straight or gay, nobody is anything other than what you want them to be. If you want an all-straight world, you've got one. If you want an all-lesbian world, you've pretty much got one, etc. the idea of taking options away from players instead of giving players options is dumb at best. Everybody should be able to play and enjoy the game their own personal way, and most games nowadays give you that ability. There's no reason to pre-define any NPC's sexuality, all you're doing is taking fun away from people, whether its a few people or a lot of peope, why would you want to take fun away from anybody when its literally easier to give the fun to everybody? If they had just done it like Skyrim or DA2, let the players romance any LI they want, there would be no controversy. People vocally oppose adding SGRs to SWTOR because its seen as pandering to people other than them. Nobody vocally opposed SGRs in the other games, because they were done in a way that gave everybody what they wanted, right from the get go. Everybody had what they wanted, the ability to romance whoever they wanted, and they didn't really care that others had that same option. By doing things horribly, unfathomably wrong right from the get-go, the SWTOR folks stirred up a hornet's nest and are currently getting stung. The sooner they make all the LIs available to everybody the sooner the controversy will be gone. Its easy enough to do, and now they have more incentive than ever to do it.

I haven't played with Jasea yet, and when I had Ashara I was light side so turning her dark side wasn't an issue, but I agree with the option to turn either one light or dark during your romance, as long as my female character has the same opportunity. Options like that are cool, its always fun to have the option to turn characters light or dark side, I wouldn't mind if they expanded those light/dark options to include more romances if those are the only ones, again so long as female characters get that same option. We female characters should have the exact same opportunities the male characters have, we do in every other aspect of the game and there's no reason why romances should be any different. Equal treatment, its not a hard concept, its the point of this thread and its what the vast majority of players want, hopefully it'll become reality sooner rather than later.