Bioware has stated that they will release same-gender romance via new companions introduced later, but within a year of release. They also clarified that they will not change existing characters to become same gender romancable, so speculating about romancing existing companions of the same gender as your character would be pointless. We haven't heard anything new on that front, but I would like to speculate on these possible, new companions and, if Bioware is paying attention, express my desire for what types of new companions I would like to see.

Please don't clutter this thread with negative comments about how they will not be doing this for whatever reasons you might want to cite. This should be a thread for creativity and expressing our wants and desires regarding new companions to Bioware.

As I stated above, from what Bioware has previously stated regarding same gender romance we will be getting new companions to make those stories happen, which means that we should be getting a male and a female, presumably for each class. Obviously, this means they shouldn't be droids (that would be too weird and difficult to explain for romance IMHO). However, they might also make a male and female companion that any class can get just like they are with HK-51 or they might make a male and female for each faction, if not each class (which is obviously more ideal, but requires much more work to implement).

My thoughts are that these new companions should not just be strictly limited to being same gender romance options. Many SWTOR players have expressed frustration at their limited options for the romantic options (or lack there of) they already have. This would be a great opportunity to introduce a new choice for these players, as well as giving the same gender crowd what they want. For example, none of the female players have a choice about who to romance since their is only one male character available to romance per class and only three of the classes have two companions available for romance if you are a male character, leaving 5 classes without a choice if you want a romance at all. This is also a chance to add more humans or aliens to your party mix as needed for classes lacking such an option. For example, a lot of male Sith Inquisitors are unhappy that the only female they can romance is an alien, let alone the issues they have with Ashara's personality and/or story. So, I support making these new companions romancable by player characters of both genders.

I am going to stay away from addressing anything like human racial differences (asian, caucasion, etc.) for these companions as we can already see this type of thing is handled well with companion alterations available from vendors. We just need to have a couple of these for any new companions. Also, regarding some of the less-human-like alien companion species possibilities such as wookiees, rodians, or talz, I don't think they would work well as romancable companions for what I think are obvious reasons (I just can't comprehend kissing a rodian, let alone a talz with that staw-mouth-thing - I would rather kiss a wookiee...). As much as I would love to see a wookiee companion for another class besides the smuggler, I just don't want to see it as a romancable companion and that is what I am talking about here.

So, with all this in mind, I would propose the following as good choices for new companions or at least what I would like to see:

Bounty Hunter: has human (cyborg) female and human male as romantic options already, so I think this class should get an alien male and an alien female for romance. Any alien species would do as long as they are near-humans like the Chiss, Mirialan, Miraluka, Voss, Togruta, Twi'lek, etc. For the backgrounds of such characters we should probably get a force sensitive type of character since we don't really have one like that in the bounty hunter's group; perhaps a fugitive from the Korriban Academy would work well.

Imperial Agent: has an alien female, a human female, and an altered human male to romance. I would like to see an alien female and a very near-human alien type for the male like a mirialan or chiss, but not a togruta or twi'lek.

Sith Inquisitor: has a human male and an alien female for romance, so I think an alien male and a human female would be best to round things out better, preferably making at least one of them into an imperial officer type as your liason with the military arm of the empire. I am only at level 35 with my Sith Inquisitor, so I don't know how things progress with Rylee Dray, but from whay I know so far I think she is already in an ideal position to become the Sith Inquisitor's companion, though I would not mind Thana Vesh, either. For the male, I think a voss mystic could work out with the way the stories are so far for this class. Personally, I would like for the female to become my intelligence operative/secret agent/Emperor's Hand/slicing thief on the team; sort of like a Mara Jade-like character for my (supposedly) Darth Sidious-like character.

Sith Warrior: already has a female alien and a female human to romance, as well as a human male. So, I would like to see an alien male (maybe even being a bounty hunter on retainer to be like a Boba Fett to your Darth Vader) and perhaps a very near-human female like I expressed above for the Sith Inquisitor; specifically I would like to see a Chiss, female, imperial officer reassigned from the Intelligence Directorate for one of your special missions.

Jedi Consular: already has a near-human female and a human male, so I think an alien male and a human female would be best, though I wouldn't mind a more alien female since Nadia already looks very human to me. Perhaps some sort of archaeologist, imperial defector, or rogue-type background would be appropriate for a consular companion. A Voss mystic type of character might be very interesting, too.

Jedi Knight: has a human female and a human male for romance options, so I think we need a couple of aliens here, perhaps a togruta for those players with a fetish from watching the animated series or a nautolan or a twi'lek (what can I say about choosing them so often other than I think that Twi'leks are an iconic race that should be seen often in the game as more than just background characters and enemies)

Smuggler: already have human and alien females to romance and a human male, too. I think an alien male is in order and I could go with most any species for a female option. It might be fun to watch a fugitive, voss mystic have interactions with Guss... Maybe someone could become the ship cook...

Trooper: I would like to see a human male and an alien female with the trooper since he already has a female human and an alien male to romance. They could fit in as the ship's pilot or something. I haven't gotten any companions past Dorne yet, so this might already be taken care of at a point in the story that I haven't gotten to yet, but maybe one of them could fit in as the team slicer or mechanical engineering expert. From what I know Tanno Vik is the demolitions expert, Yuun is the scout, Dorne is the medic, and the droid and aric are your heavy weapons gunners. Engineering, piloting, and intelligence are positions that might not get filled by the end of the story.

Faction-wide options: If it comes down to only getting a couple of companions limited by faction, then I would say that both factions should get an alien male and an alien female to romance, but they should be very near-humans like Miralans or Miralukas. My reasoning is that out of all the classes the majority of existing romances are with humans.

For some companion ideas I think characters that have already been met in the class or planetary stories, such as Thana Vesh or Rylee Dray, would make for great companions as they already have a history established in the game, even if they become companions for a different class (that could be quite interesting, too).

What would you guys like to see as possible future companions?

I like the idea, but adding 16 new companions to the game would require a lot of work in terms of writing, voice acting etc. I think it would work better if there was one male and one female per faction and you get a choice between the two.

As for species, that would be hard because you can never please everyone, but it would be nice to be able to have a Chiss or Mirialan companion.

Bioware has stated that they will release same-gender romance via new companions introduced later, but within a year of release. They also clarified that they will not change existing characters to become same gender romancable, so speculating about romancing existing companions of the same gender as your character would be pointless.

Oh, hooray. That means people might get stuck with a completely unlikable character specifically designed to be your same-gender romancing buddy.

This means that all the work I put into being the best possible Bounty Hunter and doing everything right for Mako - was basically just me getting stuck in the same-gender-Friend Zone. That's ****. I love you, Mako!

Edit: All I really want from BW here, is to make the characters believable.

During your Class Story, you'll only get to [Flirt] with the opposite gender and if they aren't fixing that I just want to have a completely valid reason as to why exactly I should fall for the new character they're introducing without making them obviously stereotypical.

I swear, if my Smuggler or BH runs into a butch female mechanic with a love for speeders and bad behaviour, there'll be hell to pay.

I stopped romancing with doc hoping one day i could romance with scourge, i know its weird and all but...

I'll wait for you...

Here's what I want to see for companion characters:

1) a Male Jedi Knight (0 in the game while there are 4 female ones)

2) a Female Sith (0 currently in the game, Jaesa doesn't count since she starts as a Jedi)

3) More Male Romance-able companion characters for Female players (Sith Warrior is the only class in the game with two for female players while Sith Warrior, Smuggler and Agent have two for male players)

4) Additional Companions with completely different Light/Dark stories

5) A Jedi Healer Companion

Additional things I'd like to see from a customization standpoint:

1) Companion specific Titles - through story or otherwise

2) Companion Specific mod-able gear

3) Companion gear set bonuses

4) Additional abilities - gained through quests or drops

5) Customizable Abilities/Ability Bar

Jonas Balkar for male troopers.

Corso Riggs for male smugglers.

Doc and Scourge for male knights.

Malavai Quinn for male warriors.

Andronikos Revel for male inquisitors.

Vector Hyllus and Watcher Three for male agents.

Iresso and Tharan for male consulars.

The list goes on on. We also need flirt options that can progress even further with the npcs we meet in the galaxy, like the ones that were already programmed to respond to opposite-sex etc. Simplify this by extending the behavior to all npcs capable of a sex-life, no asinine divisions or tokens necessary. Duke Organa is an example. Royalty, patriarchal flair, and the precious name are no shields to make any bro "safe." No exceptions.

It worked beautifully for Kaidan in ME3. Do it again with these guys. Females too, for the ones who are into that. They must range from obvious to obscure, regardless of hetero-based hang-ups about gender from devs who are years and years behind. Repeat the process that was done for Kaidan and improve upon it.

I do not believe for even a second that the decisions we've made for our characters' storylines are written in stone. Anyone who doubts this, just reexamine the variables in your characters' choices and ask yourselves if in the future this buggy game with its slow content updates would actually deign to respect all our current input into storylines, if the level-cap finally does raise. I'm positive there will be resets and/or incentives to re-perform the storylines shortly prior to a new level cap being added, and there will be changes to funnel us into mostly uniform starting points for our class stories at 50 so that BioWare will have less backside-covering to do for themselves.

How does this relate to necessary revisit of all flirt-capable NPCs? Better question is how could it not relate? When BioWare finally does re-tool our existing storylines to better cope with their own backside-covering for the raised level cap, they will be forced to openly commit via actions (if not words) SWTOR's attitude about LGBT gamers. By then at the latest, even the haters who work on this game will have to face up to the fact that "standardizing" all the love-interests into addressing our toons by title instead of gender actually presents less work for them, more enjoyment for gamers. If this game is going to stick with saying "sir" and "my lord" at all times, BioWare cannot pretend "voice-acting and programming issues" to be their excuse.

Point of order:

They also clarified that they will not change existing characters to become same gender romancable,

No they haven't.

What they said was they wouldn't just take the existing companions and swap a couple pronouns in their dialog; that if they were going to write a s/s romance they'd take the time to make sure it felt like a genuine story of its own and not a poor man's copy of the "real" or "base" or "default" o/s romance. Which still doesn't mean a whole lot of difference, really. Resources sort of demand it. If you look at Dragon Age 2, for example, which put a huge percentage of its various dev budgets into NPC story and interaction, Fenris and Merrill's romances are still basically identical regardless of who you romance them with. Anders and Isabela will treat the PC subtly differently - Isabela seems a little more open with and possessive of a female Hawke than a male Hawke, Anders is a little more patronizing with one - but 98% of the lines are still the same, the base story arc is the same, the fundamental theme of the relationship is the same. And they've got a lot more story material to work with to begin with than any of the SWTOR romances.

All that said, there's still a serious lack of choice on offer if you're limiting romancable companions to human and near-human. Since the majority of classes have exactly one female companion period , and a lot of the guys are, like, wookies and talz. So as much work as it would be, adding new companions is still plausible (though I'd think one per gender per faction would be the absolute max, and it'd more likely just be one per gender shared across both). And as far as that goes, I actually would hope for some super-butch speeder mechanic, since I have no interest in the Nadia/Kira/Mako "little sister" type that I'd otherwise have for most of my favorite classes. Choice is good.

More than anything else, though, I'd hope for a low-level character, someone you can pick up by the time you leave Coruscant or Dromund Kaas. That way, even if I didn't plan to romance them, they'd be of great use; Agents and Bounty Hunters are far too lonely for far too long (and Bodyguard mercs could seriously use some tank or DPS. At least classes that get their healer five dang planets in can use the ship droid).

I only ask bioware to make sure the new romanceables are healer companions, considering that 90% of the time, everyone uses the healer companion since it makes leveling and doing dailies far more easier.

Point of order:

 

(and Bodyguard mercs could seriously use some tank or DPS. At least classes that get their healer five dang planets in can use the ship droid).

I have to disagree with the ship droid, it has no parts at all, so anyone would have to spend crazy amounts of credits to get droid parts or to get the mats to craft them, themselves and the fact that they gain no affection what so ever, makes them a waste to use.

The issue with the companions is that, they are still positioned in a way that makes it seem like they weren't planning on the healer being the most widely used on all classes, they even had companions use special mod kits to choose the companion's roll, man, that would be cool if they kept that in there, but sadly, they changed that during the beta.....such a huge mistake bioware........huge mistake.

Oh, hooray. That means people might get stuck with a completely unlikable character specifically designed to be your same-gender romancing buddy.

 

This means that all the work I put into being the best possible Bounty Hunter and doing everything right for Mako - was basically just me getting stuck in the same-gender-Friend Zone. That's ****. I love you, Mako!

 

Edit: All I really want from BW here, is to make the characters believable.

During your Class Story, you'll only get to [Flirt] with the opposite gender and if they aren't fixing that I just want to have a completely valid reason as to why exactly I should fall for the new character they're introducing without making them obviously stereotypical.

I swear, if my Smuggler or BH runs into a butch female mechanic with a love for speeders and bad behaviour, there'll be hell to pay.

Killing two birds with one stone would be a pretty unfortunate choice here, alright. The best option would be to open some companions up for your character's same-gender needs, some for the alien angle, with some overlap here and there. That way my female bounty hunter can sweep that incorrigible Gault Rennow off his feet, while my big ol' bear of a male inquisitor can win the heart of Khem Val (er, eventually).

That way my female bounty hunter can sweep that incorrigible Gault Rennow off his feet, while my big ol' bear of a male inquisitor can win the heart of Khem Val (er, eventually).

I think the only thing Khem Val wants to do with your heart is eat it, literally. Nomnomnom.

If there's one thing I'm sure of, it's that Thana or what ever her name is from the SI story will not become a companion. Why? Because SI had the option of killing her. So what you are asking Bioware to do is either throw a huge **** you to anyone who killed her, or create an alternative companion for those who killed her (waste of time/$$$ creating 2 companions as opposed to 1).

And even if she did survive the fight and escaped the exploding spaceport, she would be hell bent on killing you, not joining you. I'm not saying anyone out there cannot create a fan fiction where she joins up, but what I'm saying is it would go against everything her character was. Not to mention any DS Sith who attempted to kill her would never trust her.

Now she is very popular among SI players so what i see Bioware doing is creating a character similar to her (although she is a Jasea Willsam that doesn't like you or tries hard to make you believe she doesn't), and making her a companion.

If there's one thing I'm sure of, it's that Thana or what ever her name is from the SI story will not become a companion. Why? Because SI had the option of killing her. So what you are asking Bioware to do is either throw a huge **** you to anyone who killed her, or create an alternative companion for those who killed her (waste of time/$$$ creating 2 companions as opposed to 1).

 

And even if she did survive the fight and escaped the exploding spaceport, she would be hell bent on killing you, not joining you. I'm not saying anyone out there cannot create a fan fiction where she joins up, but what I'm saying is it would go against everything her character was. Not to mention any DS Sith who attempted to kill her would never trust her.

 

Now she is very popular among SI players so what i see Bioware doing is creating a character similar to her (although she is a Jasea Willsam that doesn't like you or tries hard to make you believe she doesn't), and making her a companion.

The Thana mission line is for all Empire classes. Too bad she wasn't a companion though, cool character. She was one of the few people my Juggernaut didn't kill.

I have to disagree with the ship droid, it has no parts at all, so anyone would have to spend crazy amounts of credits to get droid parts or to get the mats to craft them, themselves and the fact that they gain no affection what so ever, makes them a waste to use.

While I agree that it's dumb he starts naked, every single time you get the option to pick a companion item as a quest reward post-Coruscant/Kaas, you get the option to pick a droid part.

They're typically green and emphasize End over Aim but they're still adequate for a healer, healer comps don't need to be geared particularly well to be effective. At level 15-19 when you first get him he doesn't need to be geared at all, if you're in at least half blues yourself.

As far as affection goes, there are extremely few conversations in the game that force combat and none at all that are forced post-combat (you can always esc out), so if you're worried about optimizing both combat and story then you can just swap companions before conversations.

The only thing you can't work around is only having one type of companion for thirty levels. Which only happens to bounty hunters, because every single other class has both the ship droid (heals) and their starter (DPS or tank) from the beginning. Adding yet another early game healer is not a solution.

I'm not saying it wouldn't be damn nice for all the poor knights out there, mind you (who gives a class that can tank or DPS a tank and then a DPS? how is that helpful?). But they at least have options. If you're stuck playing twin turtles with Mako, you do not.

I stopped romancing with doc hoping one day i could romance with scourge, i know its weird and all but...

 

 

I'll wait for you...

No it is not. I completely agree. I would rather have Scourge than Doc. Sure Doc is fun, but I think that romancing Scourge would be a better challenge.

I'm hoping that they do come out with new or able to romance characters that are in play. I have finished my female trooper with Aric. At first I was like, "oh will", but after getting past his stiff personality was fun. I laughed at the end where I got mail from him with gifts.

I'm lvling a jedi consular and I had a quick fling with Tharen, but Holly the hologram got in the way. Go figure a npc can romance or be in love with a hologram, but i can't romacne Zenith who is a Twi'lek. I even lose affection points with Tharen because of my responses when it comes to Holly. Not that I want to romance him, I just see it as a program and nothing else. I just than give him gifts to get them back. All I get is Felix. Ah, no. Can't stand his voice, even tried changing his look, but nope. Don't like the character,

I have to say, what better way to say I love you than with Zenith's line, "So, who do you want me to kill". Is that not love. LOL. I also say, that Zenith affection points went down when I showed emotion about Felix. Could it be possible?

I have to say that I love Corso. He is a blast. I love that he tries to be the Romeo, but ends up tripping over himself and handing you a gun.

I know that male characters for romance are having the same problem. So, lets cross your fingers.

I like the idea, but adding 16 new companions to the game would require a lot of work in terms of writing, voice acting etc. I think it would work better if there was one male and one female per faction and you get a choice between the two.

 

As for species, that would be hard because you can never please everyone, but it would be nice to be able to have a Chiss or Mirialan companion.

I love the Chiss character. Two of my toons are Chiss

So HK gave us a new, generic (as in available for everyone) DPS companion.

I humbly request a new, generic Healer companion. I seriously dislike both Quinn (uh, why is he still on my ship and not spaced out an airlock?) and Talos ("oh, we won!" No Sith companion should be so frequently surprised of his success!). I would *love* to replace them.