Mass Effect 3 became the game in the sci-fi series where BioWare finally opened up the relationship possibilities for players wanting to romance a character of the same gender, with characters Esteban Cortez and Samantha Traynor only available for wooing if you played as a male or female Commander Shepard.
https://lastchance.cc/why-a-video-game-blockbuster-will-finally-allow-you-to-5888909%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
Given the level of fan concern when news of these options broke, the moves to offer lesbian and gay romance options were going to face unprecedented levels of scrutiny. A new interview on the official BioWare site reveals that Dusty Everman and Patrick Weekes—the writers who worked on the Cortez and Traynor story arcs—knew that a critical lens was going to hover over their work and lets the pair talk about how they approached their duties:
DE: I shared the concerns Patrick had about writing something that felt real. I’ve never been romantic with another guy, so I couldn’t write from personal experience. Also, there seemed to be extra pitfalls associated with a male same-sex romance. Some players have concerns over being “ninja romanced” – where a relationship shifts from friendly to romantic to the player’s surprise – and those concerns seem greater for same-sex romances.
Both writers talk about approaching the characters from a place of relatable humanity first, and not as individuals who needed to be billboards for a certain kind of nobility. Whether you’re happy or not about these characters’ existence and portrayal, people like them exist in the real world and their inclusion into Mass Effect 3 makes the game more representative of the planet players fight so hard to save in the game.
SAME-SEX RELATIONSHIPS IN MASS EFFECT 3 [BioWare Blog]
