Same Sex Romance Mod

I'm really glad you like it, Sir Drell ! Thanks for the kind words.


Here's a few updates: As the ME2 mod is being tested, I've been doing a lot of work on the ME3 mod, and Thane's content is now finished. I edited his first conversation at Huerta to prevent a romanced MaleShep from getting any unvoiced dialogue, so some of the platonic dialogue will be used instead, but Thane will still call him "siha" and he'll still get the Paragon interrupt to kiss him.


Luckily, Thane's death scene and funeral scene in the Citadel DLC already have fully voiced and functional romance dialogue for MaleShep. The only other change I had to make was to one of his video messages, to remove a line that referenced the romance scene in ME2 and referred to Shepard as "she".

As for Tali, almost all of her content is finished as well. FemShep can now properly rekindle her romance in the first conversation with her, which will enable the unused flirts during the Geth Dreadnought mission.


After choosing the rekindle, if FemShep invites Tali to the cabin, the romance will automatically lock-in and FemShep will get a "new" Paragon interrupt to hold Tali's hands. I've also edited and tested most of Tali's other romance-specific content, such as her "I love you" on Rannoch (which FemShep has some audio for), her final Rannoch conversation, her post-Rannoch conversation on the Normandy, the Citadel red carpet scene, her apartment visit, her party dialogue, and her final conversation on Earth. There's also some FemShep audio in Ash's hospital conversation if she romanced Ash in ME1 and Tali in ME2, so I restored that as well.

The only thing that's left is the Extended Cut romance goodbye, which FemShep also has the audio for. I've already made the edits, but I don't have a save to test it yet and I'm not sure if they'll actually work (cutscene edits can be difficult), so it might take a while to finish.

And speaking of cutscene edits, I also managed to restore an animation in MaleShep and Kaidan's romance scene. The extended dialogue that FemShep has couldn't be restored since there's no MaleShep audio, but now the scene will no longer fade to black before MaleShep sits on Kaidan's lap, and Kaidan will also pick him up and carry him to the bed.

Damn, I need to get a move on testing ME2. I've been so hung up on SWTOR lately...

rondeeno you are doing a great work! thank you!

Are these mods to be released on Nexus?

This is quite interesting: might actually play ME again just for the romance angle. As much as I liked Liara it'd be interesting to play through with a different LI. What seems weird is if all the dialogue was recorded why they then decided to lock out SS romances.

I guess I have a bit of a soft spot of ME as it did have quite a significant effect on me IRL.

I'm slightly confused, though admittedly that's quite easily done. Immature gamer backlash? Executive with an unhelpful attitude? It seems particularly weird as Liara was a fairly conspicuous SS romance even if she is mildly alien.

Apologies if I'm being a bit autistic, I often fail to see the obvious until someone goes, "oi, Vom, over there, big obvious thing, you missed it!"

Oh, yeah, now I see what you mean. I hadn't thought of other people's creepiness being responsible for the discrepancy. :/ I guess by the time of Oranges they had better decision-makers, whether less prejudiced or more bold. It's a bit sad to think of some executive telling them, "I don't want that in there, you have to remove it" after they'd gone to the trouble of actually doing it all properly in the first place.

Exactly - we see the same over in Dragon Age, too. Look at the mods that make Alistair, Cullen, and Solas bi. They're built out of in game material, with the Cullen and Solas romances actually having some voiced dialogue from the Inquisitor, despite how since ME3, the voice actors aren't recording all the dialogue for both gender PCs. Alistair needs no more than the splicing of pronouns into his dialogue, and considering Zevran has a romance sequence as well, they COULD have the models playing right.

It honestly comes across as homophobia on the part of the production side to me, in that while, yes, they're willing to give M/M players content, it has to fall into a CERTAIN TYPE of content - the Zevrans, the Dorians, the Iron Bulls, the stereotypes of gay men or the 'I'm totally into women, but I'll make an exception for you' bi men. Anything else gets the 'oh, well, we just didn't see them as the kind of character who'd be gay' treatment. I will go to my grave swearing that's why Cullen's bi romance was cut, because he is a character of religious faith and the closest Inquisition offered to a Disney prince style romance, the kind they have offered before for women, but to men? No, they will have the "sexual deviant" and the "flamboyant stereotype" and that's options and they'll be happy, right?

I mean, it's setting M/M players up for struggling to express dissatisfaction, because yeah, there are options, and they didn't HAVE to include them, and it's progress seeing a gay companion, so we should totally be happy with what we get, even if it's unsatisfactory because it's more than others offer and it's still a choice, even if it's a choice between two things that we don't particularly want either way, while female players have more options total... Like you want to be happy for it as an option, but at the same time, you find it a bad option, and what do you really do?

And, yeah, F/F players don't get it any better - so far, EVERY F/F option is femme, which lets them play into the lesbian fetishization for straight guys. Hell, Traynor's romance scene in the shower plays out like a bad porn. And don't even get me started on Cassandra... Too late. BioWare KNEW from DA2 that there were women who wanted to romance her. Throughout the romance reveals, it was the straight dudebros who were whining about her being 'ugly' and 'manish' (and that was the polite versions), while the women were all 'hold me in your muscular arms my beautiful girlfriend.' And then it's revealed that she's a straight romance only? What the fuck here? Hell, it's not just about the butch representation that is virtually non-existent, it's about the fact that this woman of tremendous faith would have been a MASSIVE boost to all same-sex attracted players, given the faith/sexuality issues in our world.

BioWare's homophobia in this is that "benevolent" kind, that believes that representation is a zero sum game, if you have gay/bi characters, that is all you need. Meanwhile it's not about mere existence in these universes anymore. It's about the stories they're telling, the experiences of these characters, and what they go through. There are wlw who NEEDED - not just wanted, but needed, if they were going to keep their head above water in a world where the wrong thing said or done in the wrong place can get you seriously hurt if not dead - Cassandra, a woman of faith and religion, to be attracted to women. I needed Cullen, a man struggling with self-worth and trauma, fighting to be someone he can look in the mirror and respect, to be attracted to men.

It's not enough just to have gay characters. And I don't think BioWare's really gotten that message yet.

It was really sad how people attacked both Cass and Cora and they made them both straight.  They really should have been bi, Bioware is just shitty like that.  My only issue with the  straight guy romances in inquisition is there aren't any non-humans since that is typically my preference.

Immature gamer backlash but it's kind of unclear.  It's like this: straight dudes get excited to see two sexy ladies going at it but get uncomfortable even thinking of two guys having sex.  Though, oddly, there were no issues with Steve Cortez I know of.  Kaidan, though, was another story, because people felt he was "stolen" from them or some other bullshit.  Plus, with all the crying, Cortez likely "fit" more into ideas straight guys had about gays. 

Now, that said, we know dialogue was recorded fully for BroShep with Kaidan and FemShep with Ashley.  This supposedly had nothing to do with BioWare intending to have same sex romances available but instead for some "behind the scenes" stuff.  Unclear how, but that's the claim, including by the voice actors.

It's weird, true, but even rondeeno says the dialogue was unfinished.  It sounds like they wanted it but couldn't for various reasons: backlash from precious snowflake straight boys, time constraints, money constraints.  Why they would follow up in ME3 is truly mind boggling since the ME2 stuff was incomplete.  Perhaps the same reasons behind the same male and female dialogue with Kaidan and Ashley.

Truly strange was not taking the obvious route with Jack and FemShep.  She would have made way more sense than Tali.