No, but it leaves it up to the player to make those choices. And that is fair, don't you think? After all an RPG is about choices and making them. And why isn't Strong a romance option? Fair enough he can't reproduce, but other than that, bring it on.

This is great, right? You can even be all poly up in this game. Dudes, gals, ghouls, synths, it's all good. Spread the love!

Heck yeah its great. I don't see any downsides.

Have you been out in the world lately? I live and have lived in big cities most of my life, and, let me tell you, everybody's get-table by either six.

I miss the days when you actually had to work for it. Now all you need is to buy them a drink and they'll swing whichever way.

Besides, it's RP. Play the way you want.

Mines a Nun. She prefers the company of her dog and the occasional robot or synth.

With my spouse shot up before my eyes and my baby stolen by the murderers, hell i just wanna go out there and bang everybody! It's been 200 years!

I don't know why people get so bent out of shape over player-sixual choices. Arguing realism in a game that literally lets you build a settlement in 30 seconds flat with structures floating in midair and lets you carry 300+ pounds worth of equipment back and forth across the map seems silly at best.

I'm glad they went this route and didn't cave like BioWare did. I can go outside my door and be rejected by 90% of the people I approach any time I like. Don't need that in a video game where I'm supposed to be this awesome super hero. I get enough 'reality' in real life. Can't anything still just be a fantasy?

Well I would think he would have that bad boy, big and strong appeal to some of the lady's I think the problem I have with it being so "universal" is that the NPC's lose flavor, lose character. The NPC's should come across as real people and when you make them all "universal" you make them cookie cutter and unrealistic. They handled this aspect of the game much better in FNV. I don't know it just seems that the game has lost some personality, that the designers in a rush to make the game appeal to more people have discarded its roots.

I have to agree with you.

While I appreciate that the roles were strictly enforced in DA:I (if you were gay, you were gay, if you were straight, you were straight, if you were Bull, you up for anything!), I kind of prefer this from an RP perspective.

Still - wouldn't it be nice in real life if you could carry 300# easily for miles and miles? It would make grocery shopping so much easier.

I'm actually a little bummed that romance is behind a speech check. I'm totally going to make a mod that makes you pass any speech checks with your companions if you have the first (or second?) rank of Inspirational.

You a dawg dude!

It's actually behind a weighted rng check. Just quicksave and try again. You'll pass eventually - the whole thing is kind of silly and doesn't make a whole lot of sense. If there was some kind of a hard check where you just haven't built enough relationship points with the NPC - that would be great. This system?

It's just... meh.

You're just asking for divorce court.

My kind of odds!

I'm bisixual and a heavy drinking, heavy smoking, occasional woman(and man)-izer, your stereotypes about masculinity and sixuality are at the very least outdated.

That being said, I was extremely surprised when I could openly flirt with both Danse and Preston, it just didn't seem to make a lot of sense for either character and did feel like a cop out.

Hancock on the other hand is obviously down to party with whoever looks good at the time.

Why do you feel like they lose character? I think we're putting an unnatural emphasis on the fantasy sixuality of a fictional character. If you can't enjoy a character's backstory because of the possibility that her romantic dialogue choices might not be closed off to a player character of the same six, then the story was terribly weak to begin with and no amount of locking her into heterosixuality will save it. Same in the other direction.

The best stories are when it's not really addressed and the character can just have a backstory that isn't defined by their sixuality. Mass Effect's Samantha Traynor is a great example - it almost ended up being an after school special about her 'coming out' that I guarantee you, everyone would have hated and felt was out of step in a universe that already had a monogendered race running the place.

I just don't feel it's that big a deal. It wasn't in DA2. It wasn't in Skyrim. It's not here. Just mind your own game and stop thinking so much about what other people might be doing or enjoying in theirs.

He might not be the only one with outdated stereotypes...

There is one - friendship is kind of heavily sidelined. There should never be a "just" friends or a "more than" friends - sheesh, why can't I be platonic best bros with everyone in my party and have the game treat it as narratively and mechanically equal to romance (with a renamed/icon-swapped version of Lover's Embrace)?

1. Uhm, no...

Who's bent out of shape? o.O I'm stating a personal preference, in this particular scenario reality = immersion and I think it's a sad thing, that I can't get superflirty comedic with someone, because there is zip, zero, zilch chance of it actually being romantic.

1. Missing a particular character type is not being stereotypical. It's having a subjective taste in types of people... If anything, it's stereo typical to assume the opposite.

Here is what I want to know. Does the game somehow let you know that the NPC's that can be romanced could go either way? Would my character ever know that without ever having read one single thing about the game.

I haven't played so I don't know but I would think that if it was left either way and that choice did not come up in the game that a straight person, nor a gay person, not a bi or trans person would not think it odd at all that this person was interested in them. They would just think, "he/she goes my way. Woohoo."

I mean, when I met my hubby I didn't ever ask him, "are you straight?" Soooo....it really shouldn't bother us either way when playing the game. It should just feel right during the gameplay for whomever you are.

So does the game let you know, "hey, I'm Preston and I'm Bi."

It doesn't make sense for MacCready. He doesn't seem like the type to dishonor the memory of his wife by having six with someone regardless of male of female. He promised to be better for his son.

They would have been better off making Nick or Curie Romanceable

You can romance Curie, not Nick though, unfornately.

Not really. Apparently Piper and Cait do hint at it - someone mentioned Piper flirting with the singer at the Third Rail and another thing mentioned Cait looking for a threesome. Not that I've run into either scene. But other than that, it's kind of a... very personal sort of romance, in that (besides the fact that you have to instigate - although the persuade checks are very silly indeed) the characters you can romance just fall for you as a result of your interactions with them, and no fuss is made about their sixuality beforehand.

On the other hand, note that you are a 200-year-old, unfrozen widow/er looking for their son, but you can hook up with a whole bunch of people. If it works for you, it works for MacCready. Wasteland has different standards, it seems - in a radioactive hellhole, apparently you take love where you can get it. And yes, you can romance Curie - after her quest.

Regardless the option will come up as a dialog option 'Romance'. So I guess if you have no romantic interest just select one of the other three options. You can still get the companion perk either way.

It also seems like Skyrim (rather than NV by Obsidian) in that your character and their lover might be the only same-six couple in the wasteland. Are there any gay/lisbian couples or random NPCs?

It's not addressed in the game by the NPCs. When you initiate, if it goes well, they just behave understandably flustered and it progresses from there. We just knew that it would be this way because Bethesda announced it before the game released and so naturally this topic eventually comes up.

The way it was handled in game is fine. You don't actually have to flirt with anyone. I think Bethesda just looked at all the possibilities and learned from what other companies have done. This way no one is left out and they don't end up with hundreds of threads blowing up the forums because Cassandra was the only completely straight option for the straight male gamer and they were ticked. They sidestepped that sideshow (and boy, was it a show!) and now it's just one or two isolated threads with spatterings of "but my immersion!!!"

Believe me, this is better than the alternative. Better to spend their development time on the things we like with companions being a couple-conversation side attraction than the main attraction like they are in a BioWare game.

Bottom line too many companions are romanceable, not enough NPCs