*shrugs* The imbalance doesn't bother me because I enjoy playing different types of characters.
There are eight love interests this time around (not counting Harding). You're bound to find someone you like.
I didn't, i had to delete my male Dwarf and be forced to play a female to get the only one that was passable to even try romances, that to me is incredibly poor writing and mechanics when you force customers into roles to enjoy their game...
but in all fairness add an equal amount in for everyone..
They did. All players have the same options. If you want to impose restrictions on yourself, it's your problem
But romances shouldn't be the main reason why you've picked to play this certain race or gender. The idea of playing out the relationship between my Inquisitor and Blackwall seemed appealing, but I'd have to play a female for that. But that wasn't worth it for me so I stuck with I always gravitated towards to, which is a male elf. Lucked out in the end since Dorian was tied for first choice anyway, but that's beside the point. I just think that deciding who you pick to play as based on the character who you want to romance is odd.
Granted, I'd still prefer an even six-way split (three male, three female, two homosexual, two bisexual, two heterosexual- one for each gender). But if there's another imbalance, I'd rather not get caught up in that drama again, and bank on that the quality of the relationships written is worth more than the amount of options you get to pick.
*shrugs* The imbalance doesn't bother me because I enjoy playing different types of characters.
There are eight love interests this time around (not counting Harding). You're bound to find someone you like.
That's fine for you, but not everyone likes to or has time to play that many different characters. I mostly self-insert, because it's the only way for me to have a relatable protagonist. They added options for more orientations so people of those orientations would actually have options, instead of having to romance no one or roll a protagonist that didn't have their orientation. If other people want to explore those romances and get something out of them, like I said, awesome. But that's not me, and it doesn't have to be. So I don't have 8 options, I have 2, and neither one suits me or my characters.
Folks... I think I'm just going to quote what Allan Schumacher said about this exact issue - you can find these comments in Sera's thread:
Just to note, all bisexual characters would mean less total romanceable characters. Which means that people that would get romances they want now would not get them then.
The bottleneck for creating characters is less writing, and more cin design.
DA2 had 2 player models and 4 love interests, meaning custom cinematic scenes (required if you have intimate touching) required 8 scenes (assuming you only need one).DAI has 8 player models. If we have at least 4 love interests (I suspect our minimum), that takes 32 scenes (assuming we only need one).Alternatively, if we were to have no bisexual characters, we could use 4 (one gender, 4 races) per pairing, and we could have 8 love interests in the game with not tooooooo much extra work required by cinematics (writing would need more, but if it is determined that they have the capacity and cin design does not, then it's not a net drain on the overall timeline).Now lets say we have those 8 love interests, and we mandate that in order to be fair they must be bisexual. Now we have 64 scenes to make. Lets assume a scene takes a cindesigner one day to make. We just added a full man month of work to the cindesigners. John Epler would be very, very sad
They are absolutely not just a palette swap. "Palette swap" doesn't even make sense in the context that you're describing. (I'm actually not sure what you're referring to specifically... I'm assuming you mean model swap and am going with that....)
If you're lucky, you can just swap out the character model. You can't with our characters. Unless you want that gentle touch on the shoulder to be a horn in the eye if you're a Qunari, or a dwarf groping the genitals instead.I'd argue that most of the work is in the fine tuning, rather than setting up the base scene. It's relatively quick to say "I want you to stand roughly here." The fine tuning comes in making the characters interact because computer graphics gives absolutely zero concern that you're about to clip that 3D mesh into that other 3D mesh.
There's nothing stopping us from making bisexual options. It's still the same rough amount of work for cinematics, and it DOES save on writing. We very well could have gone with 4 romance options and made them all bisexual. But maybe it means we wanted to mix things up a bit. It means we've created romance content where otherwise there wouldn't need to be.
I factor them in, even if it is odd. My first interest in these games is to explore the lore and the characters. I see the romances as just another way to do that.
I roll males on occasion, but usually to play a character that I don't identify with as acutely. They're usually ruthless or extremely pragmatic. Dorian is the whole reason I rolled my first idealistic male Bioware protagonist, and it was worth it.
I don't think romances should be the main reason why you pick this character or that.
But after the first playthrough, then romance probably would factor in a whole lot more after you've experienced the story for the first time, and just want to explore character relationships.
I didn't, i had to delete my male Dwarf and be forced to play a female to get the only one that was passable to even try romances, that to me is incredibly poor writing and mechanics when you force customers into roles to enjoy their game...
It's poor writing because you couldn't romance a female with a male?
I didn't, i had to delete my male Dwarf and be forced to play a female to get the only one that was passable to even try romances, that to me is incredibly poor writing and mechanics when you force customers into roles to enjoy their game...
That's fine for you, but not everyone likes to or has time to play that many different characters. I mostly self-insert, because it's the only way for me to have a relatable protagonist. They added options for more orientations so people of those orientations would actually have options, instead of having to romance no one or roll a protagonist that didn't have their orientation. If other people want to explore those romances and get something out of them, like I said, awesome. But that's not me, and it doesn't have to be. So I don't have 8 options, I have 2, and neither one suits me or my characters.
Folks... I think I'm just going to quote what Allan Schumacher said about this exact issue - you can find these comments in Sera's thread:
*snip*
Thanks! All of what he said makes perfect sense. Still (unless you're bisexual, because you naturally have more options), people are still going to have 2 options to choose from whether you have 6 (2/2/2 romances) or 4 (bisexual romances). So, it could be argued that they should choose 4, and consequently you would have more fleshed out writing and scenes with those companions. I'm not even saying this is what they should do, but an argument can certainly be made for it.
It's poor writing and mechanics because you didn't find a romance that you specifically liked?
I get only wanting to play a certain type of character. That's fine. But at the end of the day, that's a limitation you place on yourself.
I prefer playing dwarves. Because of this, I'll probably never romance Cullen. That doesn't make him less of an option, it just means I've set certain parameters for myself and, yeah.. they're limiting. But it's worth it to me because I love playing dwarves. On the other hand, I liked Solas enough to roll an elf even if that's not my first choice.
I'm not saying that anybody should HAVE to play outside their comfort zone (though... don't knock it til ya try it and all that jazz), but only wanting to play -- let's say -- a straight male mage elf PC who is only interested in female human mages, I mean... that's a self-imposed limitation, and some people act like Bioware's out to get them by not satisfying it.
I'm all for varied options in the game, but someone's always going to be upset that the NPC they want isn't interested in them, or pretty enough for them, or... It'd be like that whether we had two or twenty LIs.
I get all that, but there is a big difference in my opinion between a true self-imposed limitation, like playing different races, and playing as your own gender/sexual orientation. I don't really see that as self-imposed, and if I can't relate to anything besides that combo, well.. I know, sucks to be me, but I can't help it.
I get all that, but there is a big difference in my opinion between a true self-imposed limitation, like playing different races, and playing as your own gender/sexual orientation. I don't really see that as self-imposed, and if I can't relate to anything besides that combo, well.. I know, sucks to be me, but I can't help it.
Even given that caveat, I'd still say it applies. I mean, my (main) Warden is a straight dude and I'm neither of those things.
At any rate, I think it's more of an instinctive or emotional limitation than a conscious one, but I still say it's self-imposed. And there's nothing wrong with it. It's just how some people want to play. But wanting to play like that doesn't actually negate your other options, is all I'm saying.
It kind of negates my options if I at best can't relate and at worst feel uncomfortable. My main point is that Bioware added homosexual options for homosexual players first, and to have more options second, because at least they understand self-inserting or partial self-inserting. I'm not saying you don't, that was just the main thing I was trying to bring up.
As long as it's more of a race-specific than sex-specific imbalance, I can live with it. Having to wait another 3 years to possibly like a romance option in DA sucks enough without having to worry about whether people might inherently get more options than me.
I actually wouldn't want them to go back to race-limits. Especially if it means dwarves and qunaris get least options, that doesn't really encourage me to play either race.
But romances shouldn't be the main reason why you've picked to play this certain race or gender. The idea of playing out the relationship between my Inquisitor and Blackwall seemed appealing, but I'd have to play a female for that. But that wasn't worth it for me so I stuck with I always gravitated towards to, which is a male elf. Lucked out in the end since Dorian was tied for first choice anyway, but that's beside the point. I just think that deciding who you pick to play as based on the character who you want to romance is odd.
Granted, I'd still prefer an even six-way split (three male, three female, two homosexual, two bisexual, two heterosexual- one for each gender). But if there's another imbalance, I'd rather not get caught up in that drama again, and bank on that the quality of the relationships written is worth more than the amount of options you get to pick.
Well.. I actually usually in BW games build my character somewhat around romances and LIs. Circle mage for Cullen who is pro-circle, Qunari mage for Dorian cause it's most intresting pair to me, proud Dalish archer with Solas ^^ I wasn't first happy at all about Solases restrictions and didn't want to play elf at all in the start, but somehow I ended up making one 
If that's what makes you happy, I can't tell you otherwise. You do what works for you. I just wish people would quit complaining about romances and what they had to do for Inquisition. That ship had sailed so long ago, and I just think there's no use crying over it.Well.. I actually usually in BW games build my character somewhat around romances and LIs. Circle mage for Cullen who is pro-circle, Qunari mage for Dorian cause it's most intresting pair to me, proud Dalish archer with Solas ^^ I wasn't first happy at all about Solases restrictions and didn't want to play elf at all in the start, but somehow I ended up making one
I actually wouldn't want them to go back to race-limits. Especially if it means dwarves and qunaris get least options, that doesn't really encourage me to play either race.
I don't want them to either. I could live with it though. You're not going to see a lot of female dwarves or qunari for instance, because that means you can't romance Cullen or Solas. And that's sad. But better to have race restrictions (if they absolutely have to) then gender imbalance, that's all.
Just hope DA4 works out better in your favour. Or try and be more open with the design choices. But whatever is going to be put out, someone's gonna be unhappy. Just don't expect Bioware to change the base game to accommodate for whatever a part of the fanbase wants.
Oh, I know they can't please everyone. And I do hope DA4 works out better. I haven't complained heavily on the forums about this, but it does disappoint me. Mostly because they've done it 3 games in a row now! It gets frustrating because it makes you feel like you're this odd-one-out whose taste is so out of the ordinary that you doubt the devs will ever add anything you like. I just want my female Alistair/Cullen!
Oh, I know they can't please everyone. And I do hope DA4 works out better. I haven't complained heavily on the forums about this, but it does disappoint me. Mostly because they've done it 3 games in a row now! It gets frustrating because it makes you feel like you're this odd-one-out whose taste is so out of the ordinary that you doubt the devs will ever add anything you like. I just want my female Alistair/Cullen!
Be disappointed, sure. I know I was when it was revealed that Blackwall was a female-only romance. Not so disappointed now since I could just go on Youtube and see how the story plays out for myself. So, wait, Cassandra wasn't it for you, or were you hoping for a female knight as a romance interest for female player-protagonists? I can't say much about the former other than "I'm sorry", but with the latter, you're definitely not alone. I'm hoping to see something like that for myself, but I'm not gonna hold my breath. Still...
TBH I'd rather have 4 ungated ("bi") romance options than 6 gated romance options. For every given protagonist that means 4 options instead of just 2. But that's just me.
(Props @midnight_tea for digging up all those quotes, much appreciated!)
Not to burst your bubble, but since Inquisition and the extensive talk of inclusivity of heterosexual, homosexual, and bisexual (and pansexual) characters, I have doubts that they'll utilise the four ungated playersexual feature again. I think you already know this, but I guess you can only hope.
Besides, you do have at least four ungated options in Inquisition anyway if you include both sexes, rather than one sex or the other. The four options just change depending on your choice of Inquisitor. I'm assuming you meant you would like access to all the romance options, regardless the number and regardless your choice of character in this case, yes?
Be disappointed, sure. I know I was when it was revealed that Blackwall was a female-only romance. Not so disappointed now since I could just go on Youtube and see how the story plays out for myself. So, wait, Cassandra wasn't it for you, or were you hoping for a female knight as a romance interest for female player-protagonists? I can't say much about the former other than "I'm sorry", but with the latter, you're definitely not alone. I'm hoping to see something like that for myself, but I'm not gonna hold my breath. Still...
Yeah, the latter. An Alistair/Aveline/Cullen/Cassandra type female who is available to a female protagonist. I'm somewhat hopeful they will just because they haven't, and they want the options to feel different. Glad I'm not alone.
Yeah, the latter. An Alistair/Aveline/Cullen/Cassandra type female who is available to a female protagonist. I'm somewhat hopeful they will just because they haven't, and they want the options to feel different. Glad I'm not alone.
The only one I like is not romanceable.
You're definitely not alone. None of the 8 romance options are to my liking
Who is it? There is actually no one I would want to romance who isn't already an option, so I'm curious.
I do not think it entirely fair to say "females have six romance options, males have only four."
First off, not all female players are bisexuals who consider the female characters options. Probably goes the same for male players and Dorian (although, who does NOT want to romance Dorian??).
But i digress: So, leaving out the two female options, I am now left with Cullen, Solas, Iron Bull and Blackwall. Now, I do not really care for quanari, so that's down to three. And bearded guys ... (unless they're in Vikings)? So, now I have two options. And if I am not an elf, Solas is out.
Leaving me with "one option". Tadah!
In my book it's not the quantity (although having more than one option as I was reduced to in Jade Empire and ME1 was a bit boring), but the quality of the romance options. And I usually end up only liking one maybe two of the options presented to me.
So perhaps it's more that a lot of guys ended up not romancing anyone?
I am hoping and waiting for som dlc to bring closure to my choice of romance in DA:I, that's for sure, but then ... i chose to romance someone.
TBH I'd rather have 4 ungated ("bi") romance options than 6 gated romance options. For every given protagonist that means 4 options instead of just 2. But that's just me.(Props @midnight_tea for digging up all those quotes, much appreciated!)
Yep I definitely want a return to the da2 approach for the next game. Don't like the race and sexuality gating they introduced to block off content and find the vast disparity in li numbers between sexualities very wrong.
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