Remember the message board kerfuffle in ’09 about gay and lesbian relationships in The Old Republic MMO? Well, it looks like they will be an option – eventually – in The Old Republic after all. Here’s the official statement:
Due to the design constraints of a fully voiced MMO of this scale and size, many choices had to be made as to the launch and post-launch feature set. Same gender romances with companion characters in Star Wars: The Old Republic will be a post-launch feature. Because The Old Republic is an MMO, the game will live on through content expansions which allow us to include content and features that could not be included at launch, including the addition of more companion characters who will have additional romance options.
Given Bioware’s track record, this isn’t a huge surprise, but it’s good to know it is a consideration.
It’s a step forward for the LGBT community. Yay!
It sucks it was even in question. But I’m glad they did it.
I haven’t been following the development of this very carefully, but how exactly do you do any kind of programmer/writer established sexual relationship in an MMO? I aggressively avoid the MMO genre, but with interactions going on at a player to player basis, isn’t a romantic episode of any flavor pretty much going to be wherever you can find it?
I think TOR will have a lot more player character to non-player character interactions, similar to the non-MMO RPGs that Bioware has done, where you play a main character, and eventually collect a party of followers, so you can play as a group selected from your party, and this is where the romances can kick in. In the original Dragon Age game, there were four NPCs that you could pursue sexual relationships with – two were straight, two were bi, so no matter what gender your character was, there were three different options to pursue. unlike other MMOs where player-player interaction was the bulk of the game, i think the main storyline will happen as player-NPC.
It surprises me that this kind of thing is so talked about. I mean just add it as an option to begin with and move on. I for one would find it quite amusing to hit on straight male character in a game just to see what responses have been programmed in. Don’t tell my wife though ;)