SWTOR’s Approach to Same-Gender Romances
During BioWare’s livestream of their Guild Summit today, the topic of same gender romances with player companions was brought up, and their answer bothers me.
The good news is that they’ll probably come sometime this year, along with the next updates to the story. The bad news is that they don’t have plans to make it happen sooner, and that it won’t be for all companions, because it would not fit all of them.
It’s that last bit that seems slightly off to me – currently, if you can’t romance a companion, there is absolutely no reference made to their sexuality at all, for the most part. So adding same-gender romance to that companion would not deviate from their character; it would be adding on a new facet that you just hadn’t seen before.
BioWare is essentially saying that, even without their sexuality having been referenced, you should be able to TELL who would be open to same-gender romance and who wouldn’t (if you can’t tell ahead of time, then it wouldn’t feel wrong either way; i.e., would fit the character to have it). That they inherently act differently from a character who isn’t gay/bi, even in non-romantic situations.
I understand that when creating these characters, the writers likely gave them stories and attributes beyond what we see in game. But really – I don’t care. The character that matters isn’t the one in their head, it’s the one in the game, and it’s simply wrong, in my opinion, for them to suggest that characters which betray no hints of their sexuality should “fit” one way or another in terms of SGR.
March 13th, 2012 at 5:43 am
I actually bought the game thinking it was already implemented. I had heard the talk about how Bioware has promised the first MMO with SGR and how ground-breaking it was. I had heard the line about how important they are to Bioware games. I had seen all over the net before launch that it was there and how excited people were. I lavished gifts on a companion (expensive when she doesn’t have a love or favorite) to get to the romance option. Only to find – nothing. Visit the forums and discover it’s a future feature. Then keep levelling affection and the very blatant discrimination becomes very, very apparent. I had created my character the wrong gender for what I wanted to do in the game.
And even worse any research seems to come back to “it’s about the children” by couples happy to conduct a marriage in real life while living with a child where there are no black screen fade-outs. Or “the USA is a homophobic country” so the rest of the world has to suffer. This game is supposed to be marketed to the wider general public, and not merely to a minority of hate-filled bigots
March 14th, 2012 at 2:58 pm
I knew about it before I bought the game, but didn’t really give it much thought – it seemed strange, but I knew with them being published by EA they’d have to cut some things for launch. I never expected to experience it in-game, since I always play the same character and romance the same type of character (male warrior and vulnerable/sweet girl – Aerie, Neeshka, Leilana, etc – respectively).
Then I got in and discovered I couldn’t stand the way males look in light armor, so my Shadow became a female… and then I experienced this, and actually thought about it.
Why would ALL of the SGR storylines be developed separately from the OGR ones? Why would ALL of the OGRs be ready, and not a single SGR? It’s almost impossible not to see that as discriminatory.
They could say they’re just making the ones people want first, since obviously the majority of players will be straight. Except two things – they added plenty of female character romance options when women are also a minority of the playerbase; and plenty of male players are going to be playing female characters and want to romance females.
That’s even assuming that that SGR and OGR should be developed differently (and not just swap pronouns), which in itself seems discriminatory…
It’s not something I’m going to quit over or anything, but I’m definitely disappointed in BioWare.