This discourse was going around twitter today apparently and im curious takes from here.
Which is it for you?
For me i prefer playersexuality. I want to be able to romance any romance option regardless of my charachters gender. I dont want to be stuck with only Arcade Gannon if i want to do m/m
I agree that sexuality can be important to a charachter. But if you wanna do that, seems like the charachter can just not be a romance option.
That said. In RPGs devs can do what they want. You want a charachter to be monosexual and a romance option, have at it. (Unless theyre all straight, then fuck you).
I do kinda hate what The Sims did by adding monosexuality. Felt like such a virtue signal that made the game less fun. All Sims being pansexual was always more fun for me. Especially since i usually play that game as a pansexual slut. Unless i decide my player Sim is mono, but thats on the player's end.
Monosexual townies in the Sims should at least be optional (is it? Idk havent played Sims 4 since this update).
In a perfect world where more game writers weren't annoying dipshits who see writing gay or even bi characters as beneath them, romance options with defined sexualities would be no issue.
In this world I have been burned one too many times playing a game with romance options where the heterosexual romance options are with the characters who are plot relevant and have the most content and the gay and bi options are the side characters who have less content, sometimes explicitly because they're the ones who can get killed off for fun (THIS IS ABOUT YOU BIOWARE I AM SPECIFICALLY TALKING ABOUT YOU, YOU PIECE OF SHIT HACK FRAUDS FUCK YOU)
yeah no, just give me playersexual characters every time, even in ths cases where the devs make it clear they were written with straight relationships as the implied default (Stardew Valley....)
i remember they did it right with jade empire, and even included male bisexuality and throuples. then they got scared of fox news and cut gay carth from mass effect
They've still done it as recently as Mass Effect Andromeda, the original gay male options were a choice between either a genuinely HORRENDOUS side character storyline and a cool side character with no content.
They only added in a gay male romance with a plot relevant character in a god damn update patch.
Jade Empire deserved a sequel so fucking bad.
Well, there's at least one way to solve that problem...
spoiler
Kind of hard for straight to feel like the default when your romance options are 12 buff furry dudes.Can you expand on SDV feeling like het was the default even though you have the option of not being? I never personally got that feeling so Im curious.
It's more that the NPCs themselves don't have a lot of mentions of being attracted to people of the same gender, especially compared to the reverse. The game acknowledges your relationship with them (ie you can be a gay/bi awakening in some cases), but not so much when it comes to the NPCs as individuals.
Like yeah Leah does have acknowledgement, but at the same time the game does that trick where her ex changes gender depending on the player's gender. ...Okay that's probably because you can punch her ex but I still have mixed feelings about it since I'm not sure there's acknowledgement that she's bi if you're playing a dude, but I might be wrong.
Ah ok I get you. Yeah that thing with Leah is a bit annoying.