They do talk about their past lives. As for their loves, the last thing I want from a girlfriend is to spend hours talking about those other girlfriends she's had. In fact I find very creepy that Manshep takes advantage of a man who is emotionally maimed by the death of his husband. Which means your approach can go wrong, and my approach can go right. And my approach gives you more choice.
Interesting, both my husband and I spent time talking about our past relationships. They were a part of who we were. It was part of getting to know each other. Not everyone you meet is going to be free of past emotional entanglements and you better realize that right away or your options in life are going to become more and more limited the older you get. Not only that, but you're going to make yourself into a bit of a hypocrit. I want no past emotional entanglements from you, but nevermind my own.
Damn, he would have been a lot better.
He would have been less interesting. He would just have been this guy tossing insults at Vega, and I would have had no reason to actually talk to him beyond finding out that he's my on-board shop keeper. Consequently, he would be dead in every single playthrough.
Coincidentally, I find Traynor less interesting, too, but she would then become more interesting than Steve because she at least plays games.
Imagine Kaidan without having killed his instructor trying to defend Rahna who then was terrified of him.
You mean a gay man couldn't have done that?
I don't know. Do gay men generally fall in love with women? Keep in mind that Kaidan plays as bi in ME3. A bisexual man could fall for a girl. I left out that detail of the backstory because I assumed you knew it. I guess I was wrong. Kaidan was in love with Rahna, and that's why he snapped so hard over the instructor's abuse of her.
It's also why Kaidan is so emotionally repressed. Taking all that out changes a large part of his character, or necessitates trying to explain it in another way because if you want Kaidan to play out as believably gay ... he probably shouldn't have fallen in love with a girl.
Imagine Zevran without a background that necessitated he learn to sexually please anyone in order to get close to his targets.
Haven't played DAO.
In all three cases, the character becomes less interesting because you have to remove specific details about their pasts that make them who they are and make them more interesting. They become more shallow.
You can make solid characters by giving them a background that doesn't revolve around sexual orientation, like Ashley and Kaidan in ME1. Ashley would not have been shallower if she had been available to femshep by default.
You can, but you also limit a lot of things by removing it entirely from the picture. Just like it's not believable that everyone you run into is Shepard-sexual, it's also not believable that absolutely no one had some kind of major formative event in their past that revolves in some way around a past love. Not everyone has to have it, but it's unrealistic to expect that no one has.
And DA2 did this with Aveline, and she was one of the most intersting characters because she had a realistic development arc across the 10 year span because she wasn't limited by the need to be emotionally and sexually crippled to cater to the whims of the PC. And it's off but she was also one of the favorite characters alongside the dwarf narrator. Isabela was another favorite and she wasn't crippled either because she was and could be unapologetically bisexual.
The others all had to play believably as either straight or gay, and it showed. They didn't really develop across all 10 years aside from their plot-centric arcs.
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