[Capella]

Originally Posted by El Gallo Understand I'm not saying the guy petitioning to not encounter gay team players is right. Aside from a label under characteristics how do they express being straight or gay? If they do take some sort of action to prove that point and it is some sort of goal to work towards in the game, my point, for me at least stands.

BioWare games are heavily story-focused. You have companion characters who are in your party who help you in combat. You can also talk to them outside of combat. It helps you learn more about who they are, what they fight for, why they're following around some dumbass hero when they have other things in life they could be doing. This is totally consistent with the goal of a story-driven game, imho; in real life, between missions, people on, say, a military vessel have conversations about their lives outside of the military. So, why shouldn't my military squad have conversation during downtime? All characters get a chance to chatter with you. Now, it's also a fact that for romanceable characters, they can also put a move on you/have a move put on them by you. Because, again, this is a thing that happens in real life in these types of situations. And choosing to romance a character can unlock conversations with them that tell you something you might not know if you a.) never talked to them ever or b.) never romanced them.

I've been talking in general BioWare terms, but let me give you a specific example of a point when a romance changed things in a game.

Heavy endgame spoilers for the Star Wars: The Old Republic Sith Warrior class storyline below.

So one of the characters who follows your player character (PC) around is named Malavai Quinn. He's your ship's pilot and a consummate military professional. Before he joined you, he spent 10 years languishing on a rebellious planet because of a pissed-off boss, owing an obligation to your master Darth Baras, but unable to discharge it. When Baras sends you to Balmorra and assigns Quinn as your temporary liasion, he finally sees someone competent on this planet with him, and he helps you blow the shit out of a Republic base. When you're done, you decide his help was competent and you get to keep him. He then proceeds to travel with you for two years. Right before the endgame for the class, Quinn pulls a blaster on you, tells you he's been working for Baras, and informs you you need to die. If you'd been ignoring the fact that this game has a thing called "story" and just been playing to look for high-end gear, you'd be confused as shit right now. See, all that info about 10 years on Balmorra? About owing Darth Baras a permanent debt? All of that only happens if you have a conversation with him to ask him about why he wanted to follow you. There are 3 potential ways to come into the blaster scene: a.) If you choose never to speak with him, it's just out of the blue. b.) If you talk to him and you're male or a disinterested female, you find out his past. You understand he has a debt. c.) If you're a female PC, and you're in the romance path, the two of you have been in a relationship, potentially a legal one. This is how c.) went down for me: In game, I spent over eighteen months carefully breaking down his "stoic soldier" routine. He claimed he wanted to be professional, but he finally told me he loved me. I helped him kill his first boss! I aided him in reclaiming the rank he should have held in the Imperial military. For the love of god, we talked about marriage. And children. About having a future, and a legacy- and in the end, in the end, he pulled that blaster on me. Because as much as he loved me, the Sith Empire's culture demands that you obey your superior, and Baras ranked me, and Baras told him to kill me. So he pulled that blaster anyway. So tell me, which of those 3 options is the most dramatic storyline? And if you're a male PC, you never get the chance to get the most interesting nuances. Having the romance active actually affects the outcome of your game! So restricting the romance solely to opposite-sex PCs means that you are literally missing part of the story. And that's unacceptable, and I'm glad that BioWare and EA are pushing to have PC-sexual and homosexual love interests, that way everyone can experience turns of the story.

tl;dr: I can buy sexual orientation not being impactful in a game like Duke Nukem. But in games where being able to talk to your companions actually affects the goddamn storyline, it had better fucking well be allowed to everyone.