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SGRs — Hell has finally frozen over

2 January 2013
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Dear Luci­fer,

I am so very sorry for the icicles on your te.… youknowwhatImean.

Okay,  not really. But but see­ing you under that moun­tain of blankets, clasp­ing a mug of lava-hot chocol­ate in your shiv­er­ing claws… I thought you might want to hear some kind words.

Hope you’ll accli­mate soon, I heard a snowstorm is comming.

Sin­cerely, Cleeyah

Sooooo, with that out of the way, let me just say YAY! Finally! We have word from Jeff Hick­man him­self about Same Gender Romances in his latest State of the Game post:

First of all, I want to apo­lo­gize that this is tak­ing so long to get in the game. I real­ize that we prom­ised SGR to you guys and that many of you believed that this would be with a com­pan­ion char­ac­ter. Unfor­tu­nately, this will take a lot more work than we real­ized at the time and it (like some other pieces of con­tent we talked about earlier in the year) has been delayed as we focused on the changes required to take the game Free-to-Play. As we have said in the past, allow­ing same gender romance is some­thing we are very sup­port­ive of.

Secondly, I want to reveal today that we are adding SGR with some NPCs on Makeb and do intend on pur­su­ing more SGR options in the future. More details to come!

I am very happy and excited that we now have offi­cial proof that this con­tent is com­ming. Nev­er­the­less, the state­ment itself is wide open for spec­u­la­tion. What, for instance does “many of you believed that this would be with a com­pan­ion char­ac­ter” mean exactly? That we will not get romances with com­pan­ion char­ac­ters at all, or just not for the next updates? And will adding the same gender flirts in Makeb be all that is given to us? Won’t that make the game pay2gay?

My per­sonal inter­pret­a­tion of Mr Hickman’s words is that SGRs that go bey­ond simple one-off flirts will be made, but they won’t be in pub­lish­able shape within the fore­see­able future. To appease us they throw us a few bones with same gender flirts in Makeb. Now, this might just be another attempt of string­ing us along for another year. Or it might not. Only time will tell. Right now I am cau­tiously optimistic.

As you see, the answer has pro­duced more ques­tions. Let’s hope we won’t have to wait that long for answers again. Or we’ll have to involve GLAAD again. Because, let’s be hon­est here, I highly doubt we would have got­ten a peep if we hadn’t involved GLAAD and sev­eral other gam­ing out­lets. You see, Bioware, we are still able and will­ing to break out the thumb­screws if neces­sary. *evil grin*

P.S: I cur­rently take bets on the prob­ab­il­ity of a SGR teaser scene being included into any trailer they might pro­duce about the expan­sion. It would make my day, but I some­what doubt it.

Characters, The Old Republic , , , , ,

6 Comments to “SGRs — Hell has finally frozen over”

  1. Targeter4. January, 2013 at 18:32

    To be fair, they always stated that SGRs with com­pan­ions were highly unlikely and that any SGRs they added were going to be with new char­ac­ters. The tech­nical lim­it­a­tions con­cern­ing VO work and what­not are pretty daunting.

    I’ll try to dig up the link where they said com­pan­ion SGRs weren’t on the table.

    Oh, and I’m back after my hiatus!

    Reply
    • Targeter4. January, 2013 at 18:34

      http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/09/13/swtor-companions-will-have-same-sex-romance-options-eventuall/

      So, here’s what Stephen Reid said in 2011: “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.”

      So, looks like exist­ing com­pan­ion romance was a long­shot and new com­pan­ion romances were on the table. Hey, at least we’re get­ting some­thing, eh?
      Tar­geter last pos­ted: Back in the Saddle … or … Fall­ing in Love Again

      Reply
      • Cleeyah4. January, 2013 at 21:05

        And then you have Mr Erick­son who said:
        “When we do this, we wanna do it right, we wanna do it with the char­ac­ters that make sense, that we always knew that we wanted to do it for those, so you guys know and we’ve talked about it before, it ended up being a budget and schedul­ing issue. There are romance arcs that we wanted to do that didn’t make it in the game, we knew which char­ac­ters (I’m not gonna tell you)…”

        So, it isn’t really that clear­cut. This might mean that yes, we will get SGRs with exist­ing com­pan­ions, or it might mean that we will get SGRs with new companions.

        So, only time will tell if my male Agent will get the oppor­tun­ity to have BSOCK with Vec­tor. ;)

        Reply
    • Targeter4. January, 2013 at 18:36

      Oh, and to be double fair, Bioware has always embraced the SGR option in every RPG they ever pro­duced; it’s a pretty impress­ive record that other RPG makers have yet to match.
      Tar­geter last pos­ted: Back in the Saddle … or … Fall­ing in Love Again

      Reply
      • Cleeyah4. January, 2013 at 21:12

        Of cours, Bioware has an excep­tional track record here. That makes the long silence we had to endure even more puzz­ling. The people at Bioware are known to be very cap­able to put the smack­down on big­ots and hategroups, so that couldn’t have been the reason.

        Some people spec­u­lated that the investors might keep them from com­mit­ting to SGRs, but then you have Ginger Maseda, EA’s Global Tal­ent Acquis­i­tion and Inclu­sion Leader, say­ing this in an inter­view: “There have been no ques­tions, com­ments or con­cerns raised from our investors with regards to sup­port for LGBT ini­ti­at­ives in the com­munity or hav­ing LGBT char­ac­ters in our games,” Maseda said, cast­ing a net bey­ond DOMA and into the company’s decisions to cel­eb­rate Pride Month and allow gay player char­ac­ters in Star Wars: The Old Repub­lic. “Essen­tially, it’s been a non-issue from an investor perspective.”

        So, why the ever­lov­ing EFF didn’t we get a pos­it­ive state­ment sooner? A simple “Yes, we are still com­mit­ted to this” would have been enough.

        Reply

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