One of Pierce's war buddies you recruit for the Bastion assault is a woman who got a cushy job by becoming an old but powerful Moff's mistress. Pierce tells her to get the guy's troops for the Bastion assault, she objects on the basis that she hates sleeping with a dirty old man. Pierce tells her to take one for the team. Yeah, and if you kill Juhani rather than save her, it drives Belaya nuts and she pops up on Korriban as a Sith.

Eh, I can forgive it in Dorian's case because he's one of four gay/bi characters and the only one who plays it that way. Josephine never once mentions the PC's gender or her own sexuality, she simply reciprocates the PC's interest and does so regardless of gender or for that matter race. Agreed. Especially given the constraints of the existing game, playersexual might be the best compromise. Especially for light-siders given that Lana's completely gone off the rails from being a sane, highly reasonable and rational woman to being a bog-standard dark side Sith from what we've seen of the expansion so far and Theron, if he is a companion in the expansion, is morally dubious at the best of times. Star Wars has a long issue of almost every LGB character in the setting being a bad guy or having very close calls with it. Two Mandalorians in one of the Traviss books, an Imperial Moff in one of the latest books, a fallen Jedi who can be redeemed in KOTOR, a Jedi Padawan who can fall (also in KOTOR), a Sith Lord on Makeb, and a Sith Lord and a morally ambiguous spy in Shadow of Revan. Lemda Avesta stands out for being a reasonably nice, if curt and snappish, bisexual individual in Star Wars.

You're making a false equivalency. I'm all for more flirt options for straight characters. I'm also all for more flirt options for bi and gay characters.

Trust me, bounty hunters feel your pain. We're saddled with Skadge and no way to dump him into low orbit without a space suit.

I think some of the issue is also gender disparity. Every single female companion currently in the game is romanceable by men. LS Jaesa is kind of not, but she can agree to marry a male PC and bear his children even though she doesn't have a romance track per se. More classes than not also have only one female companion. There are a few male companions, on the other hand, who are not romanceable and could easily be gay: Zenith, Talos, Rusk, Scourge. Pierce can be a friend with benefits to a lady warrior, but it's not hard to imagine him being bisexual and preferring a fully fledged relationship only with men.

This is what I'm afraid of, that the game will go "Oh, your lesbian PC is a moral and upstanding person? Too bad, she's going to be very lonely." I don't expect Bioware's returning to the friendship/rivalry system that worked so well in DA2, but it sounds like that might be the most we can hope for at this point.

Senya sounds pretty DS, too, going by her story blurb on the main website describing her as having nothing left to live for but vengeance after losing everything.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that Valkorion isn't really dead. People think he is, but I doubt he's gone for good.

To the surprise of no one, absolutely not a word about this in the stream tonight. Total non-answer about companion romances or developments of any kind.

See Vette. For aliens especially, there's no difference between being a prisoner and a slave. Your PC didn't directly explain it, but the obvious implication is that she was enslaved after her arrest until the Sith noticed she was force sensitive. The PC was a slave, but their family wasn't necessarily - my Inquisitor took an option explaining that her family was killed when the Empire invaded her homeworld but she survived and was enslaved, for example.

There probably will be, considering that Lana's been confirmed to be a companion and Theron seems a shoe-in, but Bioware has still said almost nothing about how companions are going to work in the expansion.

Both of these are completely wrong. I just finished my loremaster title tonight. Here is everything you need to complete Galactic Loremaster: Inquisitor/Warrior that have completed their class quest on Korriban Trooper/Smuggler that have access to Ord Mantell Consular/Knight that have completed their class quest on Tython Characters on both factions that can access and complete Corellia planet arc (level 47+) Level 50-55 characters on both factions with access to Makeb No lore entry can be locked out. The only class specific lore entries demand that you have to level a Warrior/Inquisitor, Trooper/Smuggler, and Knight/Consular to level 10. This should take about one hour, collectively, if you're a subscriber. Not much longer than that if you're not. Every lore entry is accessible if you're willing to put in the effort. You can't do it all on one character, true, but such is the nature of the completely optional achievement. And let's be honest: you aren't finding all the pesky things without a guide to begin with.

They break up in the end, mind.

Eh, I agree that I can't see them ever becoming involved. They have almost nothing in common and are only merely polite to each other even before Lana's calculated risk.

Well said, and I agree on most counts. I would love it if the expansion added same-sex romances to Nadia and Risha and Elara and the like *after* their current companion story arcs. Gives the relationship and chemistry time to build and develop without immediately jumping into overt flirtation and trying to cram the serious arc of a relationship into the already limited number of conversations.

You're in Special Forces. Not the best career path if you want stars on your uniform when you can't talk about most of your history with the promotion boards.

Welcome to the Jedi Knight story. It's the most poorly written class story in the entire game.

My character was well aware that it was an option. She's gay, and a high school dropout internet nice guy from Nowheresville was never going to change that. If I'd had the opportunity I would have taken a side trip to Dantooine or someplace as boring as he is and left him there for good.

The agent can point out the problems with the Shadow Arsenal to Kothe: he intends to use them as a stick to intimidate the Empire into surrendering. The Sith already regard pretty much everyone as expendable, and the threat of city-busters isn't going to intimidate them. The Eradicators sure didn't. So that phase of the plan isn't going to work. Leaving the choice being either Kothe backing down, in which case the Republic loses face, or Kothe activates it in which case congratulations he's successfully enraged the Sith Empire, given them clearance to use superweapons on the Republic, and ruined the Republic's reputation in the rest of the galaxy. Kothe does not have much to say to that analysis.

Could not stand Corso on my lady smuggler. The dude would not take the hint that she was gay, ever. Every. Single. Conversation. Had a flirt prompt. Despite not taking a single one, ever. Still maxed out his affection because he wasn't actively offensive like Skadge, but I won't think twice about kicking him out in the expansion if we do indeed get some choice in companions. He really reminded me of Nice Guys, and made me think he spent the entire time on my smuggler's ship (all the time after I recruited Bowdaar) posting manifestos on space reddit about how it's so unfair that the most perfect woman in the galaxy keeps ignoring the perfect guy for her and what does that creepy jock Lana have anyway.

Going with my agent, to show those delusional mutants with their laser swords that there are far more dangerous things in the galaxy than they.

In short, everyone worried that same-sex romances will be "forced" on them? They're worried that they'll have a male companion who will treat them like Corso does a lady smuggler, a neverending parade of flirt prompts that never goes away. Eh, I'm willing to forgive the sham marriage in the agent's case. You're a spy, and spend a lot of the game pretending to be someone that you're not. Is a sham paper marriage to accomplish your agent really anything different, even if you're not straight? If you do participate in the marriage, the NPC flatly acknowledges this for the legal loophole that it is and doesn't want to consummate the marriage because they know perfectly well that you don't love them in the slightest and they'll never see you again once you finish your mission and leave Voss. I played my agent as a lesbian, and while she did use flirtation and seduction as tools here and there she was never actually required to sleep with anyone, and for the agent in particular the flirt prompts they take are probably not actually indicative of their romantic or sexual preferences.

Better than Doc, who actively gets irritated at a female PC if you tell him you didn't bring him on board for romance purposes, or Corso who has at least one flirt prompt for a female PC in every single conversation with him up to and including the last one even if you've never picked one ever.

Not a very small minority, and you're also overlooking all the straight players who take same-sex flirt prompts and romances. Even beyond the adolescent boys getting off on girl-on-girl, there are plenty of straight players who take those options on some characters. It wouldn't even be a large amount of editing to be done if Bioware does revise existing companion romances to be hero-sexual as one option. They'll be getting the VAs back in anyway for the expansion. Beyond that, your argument is just the usual "Don't spend money on X thing I don't enjoy because it clearly offers nothing to the game, spend money on Y thing I do enjoy because it's clearly important to the game!" charade.

Because it's still an issue. No.