The worst thing about romances (apart from the awkward "love scenes" which I never want to be a part of) is when you effectively alienate the others, by not romancing them.

I can certainly understand some of your fears. The possibility that the developers went against their own creative freedom to put something into the game for the sole purpose of not going against a popular opinion being held by society combined with the possibility that the characters were cheapened to do so, are perfectly understandable fears in my opinion.

However, those are possibilities only. Another possibility is that when regarding this small portion of the game, the developers weighed player freedom against realism and decided to go with player freedom while completely ignoring currently held popular opinions entirely because their focus was on trying to provide what they considered the best experience for the players that they could.

In fact, it's not only entirely possible that the developers didn't cave into pressure from society and limit their own creative freedom, it's actually the most probably possibility when taking into account the currently changing opinions in our society.

By this I mean the fact that many people (especially those under 35) have been showing an increasing demand for diversity in their storylines (movies, tv, video games, etc) for the past several years and by choosing to have all of the romanceable characters not care about gender, Bethesda actually went against one of the most popularly held opinions, by a very large segment of their target demographic, concerning diversity. According to a large and growing number of these individuals, the best choice Bethesda could have made was what Dragon Age Inquisition did with having several different sixual orientations and genders. As such, I think that rather than go with popular opinion, Bethesda actually decided to go against it because they eventually concluded that the type of game they want to make involves trying to maximizing player freedom where they can.

I hope it's more than asking for pie..

If it's not.. no thanks.

Even though it was a hell of a bumpy ride, I had a lot of fun with the Ahnassi romance in Morrowind. http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Ahnassi,_a_Special_Friend

The fun nature of Ahnassi's romance and the fleshed out interactions and storyline Serana had would be my ideal.

I loved Ahnassi, I got a mod so I could romance her too. That would be ideal.

I don't see why the feature is forced.

Why would you not want every player to have the romance choices they choose?

Aye, she was very sweet, likable and endearing. I hope whoever wrote her is also working on this game. If they did a character like Ahnassi before, I sure as hell hope they can do it again.

Yes. I sure hope that too.. -s-

I don't see how this has anything to do with PC. I don't remember there being any kind of controversy about players not being able to romance all followers. I think we gotten to point where people like to complain about PC when there isn't any. And to be honest people crying everything is PC are just as annoying as SJWs.

What is everyone's problem with the romance in Inquisition?

Seeing NPCs that I have to fight with act all dopey and unclothed.

Heavens forbid they display basic biological emotions outside of battle.

Double post.

I don't want to see them act all cheesy. Makes them look dumb. I'd rather interact with them other ways, have more conversation options, or be able to go out for a drink with them or go shopping with them and ask their opinion on some new gear or something. Now that would be awesome.

I still don't get why killing is so okay in media but boobs are the worse thing ever. Go around beating people in the head with a crowbar while wearing a gingerbread mask is fine but going to a strip club and seeing video game nipble is terrible.

I don't hate it but I do have a problem with it pretty much ending after the six scene. After you sleep with them their is nothing else you can really do with them.

That's just it - it's pointless cheese while trapped in a video where you have no control, and nothing else. I'd rather have real activities we could do with our companions, when we felt like it, having them respond to us on the fly. And not be helplessly trapped in a terrible movie. It feels awkward, and hollow, and isn't any fun at all.

The romance in Dragon age Inquisition was very well done. My only beef was the bigger picture, the sixual LGBT fantasy world where they are the majority rather than the minority. Add to that all the warrior women with wizard weak men and we end up with a sixually strange game. I want to play in a fantasy world, not a sixual fantasy world.

Sounds like your issue is the whole bigger thing of the game world being centered around the player. Like, they're the only ones who can solve a problem (defusing the bomb in Megaton, etc), they're the ones everyone waits for before big events happen, etc.

It's just more of the same thing, it's not some "LBGT fantasy world", it's standard-RPG-fare catering to player freedom.

Wait what? Sorry. After you said 'sixual fantasy world' I completely forgot what you were talking about...

My issue with DAI is that the only straight female looks, acts and sounds like a man. I mean give me a break. And the only female elf companion ... is the ugliest elf in the entire game. I mean it, just try to find one uglier. I've read all the conspiracies about why the romances were like they were in DAI and I don't know which, if any are truth, but it's obvious they had some agenda and it wasn't to be normal or realistic.

Cassandra is my favorite character and I didn't find Sera ugly at all.

Hmm. Never really understood that view of Cassandra. Seems perfectly "female" to me (sure, female Crusader, but that doesn't make her a "man". )

It was a bit disappointing that Cass wasn't open to my Inquisitor's interest, but like I said elsewhere - it's probably better, narratively/etc, to have companions with defined personalities/preferences (as opposed to Beth's "everyone for everyone!!"), since it allows for more varied/detailed/interesting/whatever dialogue & relationship interactions.

Oh, and Maximvs - another thing to think about for your "but the % is too high!" issue: They're trying to cover options for all players. Gay, lisbian, straight male, straight female. But most games only have a small pool of companions to use to fill all those possibilities. So of course the percentage of non-straight sixualities will be higher among that group than in the general population - they're not a random sampling and they're not meant to be. Just like their selection of character class/combat roles isn't a random sample - like, there's 1/3rd mages, so that must mean that 1/3rd of all the people in the DA world are mages, too! (no, no it doesn't mean that at all. It means that the devs wanted an even choice of classes for the player to choose from.)

Sorry but the bridge of Sera's nose literally comes right out of the middle of her forehead. It's freakish looking and anything but attractive. But that's just my opinion (not that it comes out of the middle of her forehead, that's just fact, but that it's freakish). Some people may be into that. And don't let me get started on Ms. Disney Princess romance. Anyway... getting off topic.

I feel the "all companions are bi" is overly simplifying things. People make it too big of a deal and just make knee-jerk reactions.

I think the more interesting rationale is simply that these characters have no specific sixuality until it becomes relevant.

There's no reason "NPC A" can't be one thing in my game, and something else in another players'. Unless it's somehow integral to the story, it shouldn't really make a difference.

As far as calling up percentages - thank goodness developers don't just make all their decisions by referring to polls. I'd rather support a developer that is trying to make a good game.

Fair is fair - this is a consistently hot-button topic that tends to quickly go downhill and lead to a lot of warnings.

Probably would have gotten to this quicker, but I'm just getting off a ten-hour shift, taking my son to Tae Kwon Do, making dinner, etc - can't always be everywhere at once.

But yeah, best to lock this too for now. I'll discuss with the other mods if it's better to leave this thread closed or try to clean it up - if other mods want to kind of babysit this thread, there's some chance it could open again as from my brief skimming it does appear to have been going mostly civilly.