This is entirely dependent on what you mean by "in time". They've said they're pushing it out with the story patch which I can imagine is the big thing they have planned for this year. It's going to be like a mini expansion. That's a pretty ambitious and time consuming project. My guess is we'll see it in the last quarter of 2012. They might shoot for summer, but we all know that is likely to be very optimistic. For some people, it is already too late. If you go back through the past incarnations of this thread, you'll find a lot of people who've given up on this game. Others are willing to wait out the year. You'll have to decide for yourself if you'd rather wait without paying a sub or with one, or give up entirely.

Unfortunately, I think there is very little correlation between who takes courting gifts and who will be a romance option. In fact, some romanceable characters right now only take the courting gifts after the romance has been triggered. Companions who take these gifts for a small affection gain include M1-4X, Bowdaar, Guss and Talos, who as far as I know aren't romanceable for anyone.

Because it opens up the game to a loyal audience. Because Bioware have a history of including diverse romances. And because it's the right thing to do. KOTOR. Juhani was a lesbian and a romance option for female Revan. Read Karen Traviss. Specifically, her Mandalorian couple Goran Beviin and Medrit Vasur are gay, married and quite awesome. I think their decision to consider such a thing discriminatory probably means no.

It has been repeatedly stated that the exclusion of same-gender romances from launch was a scheduling and budget issue. It has also been stated that even some of the most beloved features could not be readied for launch. I understand that this isn't a value judgement on SGRAs! So my question is, how/why was it decided to treat same-gender romance as a different feature than opposite-gender romance? Wouldn't it have made more sense to roll out the romance feature when it was complete and not just half of it?

Thanks for taking the time to get into this with me, Zandilar. Gender does change and influence the dialogue though, at least in the male romances. Anders gets a whole speech about loving the person, not the body, and Fenris continuously references male Hawke as a handsome man etc. It is subtly different. It's less different than the changes from personality and actions, but that is what made it so good for me. I do believe the idea that the relationships were written to minimize the time and effort it took comes from a comment Gaider made in relation to the Straight Male Gamer letter and is not so much a statement of intent as it is a happy accident. It took slightly less effort to write and code than it would have if they had exclusively straight options. It's always amusing to me when this comes up because a) realism almost only makes an appearance when it means I, as a LGBT player, should get fewer options than the straight male gamer and b) realism in a heroic fantasy with magic and dragons... yeah. Sure. At their core, these relationships are designed to give us as the players some epic wish fulfillment so I damn well want the same consideration anyone else gets. Does that make it less realistic? Sure! But then it isn't particularly realistic that Corso Riggs could fall in love with a lightside petite Twi'lek as well as a dark side bulky Sith, and yet thanks to legacy that is exactly what can happen. So forced realism in this aspect of my games can go and die for all I care. I want choices. I'm very fond of the new romance characters in ME3, Steve and Sam are awesome and it only bothers me a little that they were shortchanged during the last few conversations. Their very presence and unapologetic sexuality gives me a lot of faith in how Bioware approaches the subject. That the execution was lacking in some parts only means there is room to grow. I'm unsure, however, if the ME3 model is a good template for SWTOR. A straight male player character still had the most options to choose from and the gay male player character still had the least. In SWTOR we don't have that same abundance of romanceable characters, especially if they aren't going to change any of the non-companion romances. Even if they add one new companion per class, we simply can't get that same amount of choice, or really any choice, unless we make characters available to both genders. Right now even most straight characters don't have a choice! What I'm trying to say is that the DA2 model may be different to ME3, but neither is exactly superior. There is nothing wrong with the DA2 model of companion sexuality. It is nice to have some exclusively gay characters in ME3, it really is, and I wouldn't mind seeing that in SWTOR, but to offer the greatest amount of customization and choice in SWTOR, a greater number of bisexual characters may be what we should expect. (Also, if they do go with a number of exclusively gay characters, I honestly expect this forum to explode. If Zenith is gay, I will laugh and laugh and laugh.) (Also, I may be one of the few people on here who thinks that the next generation of games should really look into something beyond the gender binary. Why choose a gender if we could just customize our characters to have the features that would express a certain gender, or not! The binary is a simplified concept anyway and video games could do so much to further self-expression especially for the trans community.)

I keep hearing that, but can someone explain to me why that is such a hardship? Personally, the freedom that it gave me was absolutely stunning. DA2 will forever be the first game that really made me feel like I had the same worth as any straight player. And honestly, the flirt behavior of the companions was absolutely gated! It just wasn't gated by gender but by behavior/personality. And that? That was freaking magnificent. Hey, no, I understand that perfectly. I sometimes think that just being treated the same would be so much better than getting something "special" if that special thing means I have to wait for years or pay extra or maybe watch as that special thing gets pushed back again and again. In a perfect world, Bioware would have looked at romance as a whole, OGR and SGR as indistinguishable parts of the same feature, and never released just half of it. Unfortunately what we have is different. Perhaps some of you remember why I originally joined the forums: my male Smuggler was always conceptualized as gay, he'd flirt with women on occasion, but always back off as soon as they indicated any sort of interest. In the Smuggler story more so than most of the others, there is a very insistent assumption that the player character is straight. Even if there is no flirting of any kind going on, the companions will assume that the Smuggler is flirting/sleeping with the opposite sex left and right, or at least has done so until getting serious in a companion relationship. This heteronormative assumption hurt me. It made me angry. And it kept coming. My Smuggler stopped flirting with anyone when, on Nar Shaddaa, even unmarked dialogue choices would end with him sleeping with a woman. It turned out that the game would shoe-horn him into two categories - straight and willing or straight and a jerk. There is no way to play a Smuggler as anything other than deeply closeted and that hurt me. So I came here, asking for non-companion flirt options and the ability to define my own character's sexuality rather than have the game define it for me. I recently finished Corso's companion quests. I'm honestly at a point where I think that adding SGRAs right, as they said they wanted to, would take a lot more than just tweaking a few conversations. For some classes I'm sure it wouldn't take much, but the Smuggler at least is a minefield of heterosexism. And I want them to fix this. I want to be able to play a gay Smuggler, not just a token gay relationship with a companion when the rest of the game assumes he's straight.

Actually it makes perfect sense. The sand people are hostile to just about everyone. Whether you want to use them as a shield against the Empire or just want to save them out of the goodness of your heart, these people will shoot at you because they do not trust outsiders. So to save them, you may end up killing at least a few of them. You make the assumpution that the few guards you see are all there is and that you have to go through the thick of them to reach the water purifiers. You can avoid most of them, actually, if you go around the back a bit. It's not the writing that is lacking here.

Overall, I like it. The mostly borderless design makes it blur together a little too much for my taste, but it does look very elegant. I've found that it is harder for me now to discern between two separate posts in a thread, despite the background color tiling. I've also noticed that it's harder for me to see at a glance which threads have new posts since my last visit. And did we always have Arial as the native font? Because that is unfortunate XD

They are, actually! I read the original call to arms from one of the Florida based letter campaigns and they even had links to this thread and everything XD We're internet famous

If you've got everyone herosexual (i.e. regardless of their history that may or may not be straight/gay, they can develop feelings for a hero of either gender. Functionally they'd be bisexual but only if you look at it from a meta perspective), that's maybe not as realistic, but it is the most fair for everyone, giving us the most choice for each character. If we've got characters with set sexuality, we need a lot of companions to reach that same level of fairness and people will still want those they can't have. I know this is vaguely what they intend, but I'm afraid it tends to come out badly for the non-straight characters, or funnily enough, women. Just statistically and with the number of choices provided to us. With the limited amount of characters, we tend to get exclusively straight ones, and then bisexual ones to give SGRA options. Exclusively gay romance options are very, very rare. Not to say Bioware doesn't do them, they absolutely do, just that compared to straight options, there is an imbalance. This is saying nothing of the quality, of course, which is usually top notch, just that it often railroads our choices. My opinion is generally the more choices we have the better. I'd love it if at least the early romance companions (those we get within the first two or three planets, who spend most of the leveling experience with us) would be available for both genders. These are arguably the companions that have the power to affect us the most throughout the story. Corso, Kira, Aric, Mako, Vette - whatever people think of them, it's hard to deny that they have a pretty big impact on how we feel about our classes and our story. I would absolutely like to see exclusively gay options if they think they can do them well - frankly, Zenith strikes me as someone who was always meant to be a romance and if he's going to be gay only, I won't complain (I might even roll another consular just for him). But I'm also aware that they don't have infinite resources and that the game doesn't really support a too large number of personal companions for each class. When the bunks are full, the bunks are full Realism isn't going to work with just five companions each, not statistically, because that means there would only be a single gay or lesbian or bisexual companion for every third class or so. And I don't know about you, but I'd rather they all be technically bisexual than only getting a gay one for a Consular, a lesbian on the Smuggler and two bisexuals for the imps. Uh, sorry for the long post. I have a lot of feelings today.

Then I apologize for quoting you - I did not mean to imply that I thought you personally held these beliefs, only that the beliefs themselves are not all there is. And I will not deny that the haters were loud and insistent. Just as they are now for ME3, just as they are for this game. Bioware has one of the most toxic fandoms I have ever seen. It's like these people love to hate them. What I mean is merely that this is not a representative sample of the entire player base. A lot of people loved DA2, but the environment then, as now, was such that saying so got you flamed from here to Kirkwall. To get back on topic, I still think that this game is bigger on customizing the companions with armor and even skin color/facial features than any Bioware game before, and that their interests already run to some wildly different species and personalities/politics/moralities if you stuff them full of gifts - for the devs to insist that sexuality must be unchangeable when everything else about them is fluid seems somewhat silly.

What exactly do you think I assumed? I was merely reacting to the statement I quoted and the post above yours about Anders and the idea that DA2 is unilaterally considered a bad game, especially when it comes to the way romance was handled. If I misunderstood, I apologize, but I don't really see how I made assumptions about your personal preferences.

To be fair, for a lot of people DA2 is exactly the perfect example of a Bioware game, in just about every aspect. Opinions, everyone has one, and gauging the value of a thing by the reaction on internet forums is never an accurate assessment. See ME3 - was it perfect? No. Is the reaction to it that you can see all over the net proportional and appropriate? Not at all. I loved the hell out of DA2. I loved that we got to choose who we wanted to love, regardless of gender. And it's not even true that everyone was bi - Sebastian wasn't, and Aveline was stringing me along until it was way too late to pick someone else - she only had eyes for her man. Another thing that isn't true is that Anders will always inevitably put Hawke in the position to choose between flirting and pissing him off - that only happens to purely diplomatic Hawkes who agree with everything he says. So please, I know it's a popular scapegoat, but let's leave the myths where they belong - in Varric's little collection of romance novels. If SWTOR took a page out of DA2's book when it comes to romance, I would welcome it. DA2 was an amazing game and a brave narrative departure from your normal RPG. There was never anything wrong with companions that would fall for the hero no matter the gender and I have yet to see a good argument against it. A lot of the time, not saying this is true for anyone here, but a lot of the time, when people say companions should have a defined sexuality, what they mean is that there should be more companions for them and them alone. Usually it means token bi characters like in DA: Origins, with the more narratively important romances reserved for straight people. DA2 had its share of problems, but when it comes to romance not being like Origins wasn't one of them. And SWTOR would do well to look at DA2 and ME3 for its romance content - those two games have slightly different approaches, but they are far ahead of the curve when it comes to how to do SGRAs right.

Alright, I should be sleeping, but I just noticed the rest of the Guild Summit panels have been put online. We've discussed the quote before, but this is something people need to see to judge for themselves. I've tried my hand at a crude transcript for those who don't want to/can't watch the video right now.

They said it at the Guild Summit.

It is indeed what floats many boats around here. Some people just like gay romance. It's no different from liking straight romance in essence.

I think I've gone mad from waiting right around the end of February. It was a dark time. I think we all remember the wait for Q&As to release only to be disappointed again and again, feeling like we were not just waiting, but waiting without an end in sight. I feel better now! Less like the world has it out for me. More hopeful. Definitely no longer inclined to write sternly worded letters to Bioware about this. They haven't always done SGRAs right, but many times they were the only people doing them at all and they've gotten progressively better at it. I'm excited to see what they have in store for us.

Women don't make good frontline soldiers for the same reason they don't make good athletes... oh wait, they do. The reason you haven't seen that many female front line soldiers is because there is an enormous barrier to entry, even in countries with supposedly equal opportunity. Would you say that all males make good frontline soldiers then? No, and 1 out of 7 seems a reasonable number for them as well, there's just that many more of them trying for the job in the first place. Your personal experience is not a fact of life. Women in general can and do make just as competent a frontline soldier as men do, they just haven't been given the same chance to prove it.

I think there is a difference between our own or people-to-people RP and what a game canonically allows for, which is why it is so important that SGRA comes as soon as possible. There is something about being validated by the Powers That Be, you know. Canon is a powerful thing and being able to just have the same opportunities as everyone else, to see yourself reflected like that, that's invaluable for a whole lot of people.

No, it will be implemented because it's the right thing to do. Bioware sell a game with romance, it's in their and our best interest to offer that feature to all their customers and not just a select few. And that's the toggle argument in a roundabout way. Basically, it's unnecessary to force a single choice at the beginning of character creation or after the patch. It is unnecessary because they players make the choice in each conversation, giving the power to change the character on the fly or try out something new or make an exception or indulge some fantasy at any point. That's choice.

I thought the same thing!

There are reasons why a SGRA-specific toggle is offensive that we aren't allowed to discuss here. It goes into real life politics and morality and the mods are working hard to keep that kind of talk out of the forums. However, if we're talking about an all-romance toggle, you ask, why is that offensive? Well, look at what thread you're posting in, and now look at what you're asking. You aren't asking about an all-romance toggle in the Suggestion Box, you aren't asking about it in a general romance thread. It only ever comes up in here, about this part of the romance equation. There is, in fact, a thread about all romance toggle in the Suggestion Box and if you wish to seek it out and post there, you will find the idea to toggle off all romance is not in itself considered offensive. But you aren't there. You're here. Think about it.

Don't worry too much about it, just remember to keep it safe for a public forum It's kind of like standing in a crowded bus, with old ladies and younger kids and almighty google. If you wouldn't say it there, it's probably not a good idea to say it here. I'm actually not too worried about offensive names - they already happen and the always will, but usually reporting them tends to take care of that problem relatively quickly.

I really hate to be the frigid, curmudgeonly lady who shrieks in the background, but can we please please keep the kink and explicit sex talk out of this thread? For one, it's bordering on being against the TOS, especially when discussing our personal fantasies/experiences. For another, this is the only place people have to talk about same-gender romance and some of this stuff can trigger some pretty awful memories for people, even if you're all about safe, sane and consensual. I know this is going to come across as PC police or moralizing and if safety for everyone means I'm going to have to wear that hat then I will. I'm not saying that any of this is inappropriate in itself, I would never even want to imply that, but this thread needs to be a place for everyone. I hate to be the person that tells everyone off for having fun, I do, but please remember that this thread only exists at the pleasure of the moderators. There is nowhere else for any of us to go on this forum and if we get shut down because someone got a little overenthusiastic, that would be a shame.

Which is kind of my point - her reaction is likely not due to any categorical disinterest in women but rather an issue with the situation/the people involved.