Tarlonniel

So that's one ground-breakingly well-written and nearly invisible romance for The Sharmat, one full-on, in-your-face, David Gaider-esque romance for me. Anyone else want to put in an order?

Maybe all the gods will be love interests in the next game. If Pallegina is still around, I'd totally hook her up with Hylea and watch the sparks fly!

Never go full sharkboy.

The closest thing to a non-sexual romance I've seen is one of the paths for Sebastian Vael (from DAII) - he's celibate for religious reasons. But it's all tied to his character arc so the sex issue, as such, doesn't really come up.

Being able to turn down sex would be an excellent option, yes. And if the NPC offering then decided they didn't want a romantic relationship without sex, that would be a perfectly valid (and realistic) response. But I've never seen a game which included an exchange like that. At best, you can turn down immediate sexy times, but with the expectation that they'll happen later.

In that case, the term would be homoromantic asexual. And a low sex drive is a low sex drive. No sex drive is asexual.

Soooo this is getting way off-topic - unheard of on this thread, I know - but I can answer a few of those questions. I've seen aromantic and asexual included on the LGBTQAMX[vowels][consonants] spectrum, but I don't know what the official stance on that is, if one exists. You're correct that hetero/bi/homo/pansexual can be combined with asexual/aromantic to get all sorts of interesting flavors (and there's also demisexual, for bonus confusion points!). And you can get people who are aromantic and asexual (see above, sometimes aromatic is just taken to mean both of those).

Oh yes. Aromantic is the term for folks who aren't interested in romance. Asexuals just aren't interested in the sex part.

I'll join you! I'm sure Edér and Xoti will be very happy together.

In all my DAI playthroughs, he spent the whole game chilling in Starkhaven and waiting for his wife to get back from saving the world/Fade/whatever. Not sure where all these strange rumors about invading Kirkwall came from.

Ooooh, I love adding to the list of reasons I don't exist. Chick on the internet, female gamer, asexual, Sebastian Vael fan... *slowly fades from reality*

I'm importing my rogue for my initial playthrough, planning to multiclass as rogue/cipher. Aloth is the only companion who'll carry over in that save and I'll fill out my party with three of the sidekicks - Ydwin and Rekke definitely, plus whichever of the other two I like better.

To be 100% honest: romancing Aloth (sans Iselmyr, CENIC can have her ). But since that may or may not be possible, goal #2 is: go everywhere, talk to everyone, search each nook and cranny for every bit of lore in the game, and then, in the end, guide my PC down the path of doing some good in their world. Then go back and roll another character to experience the story a different way.

Also, some of us played those old titles for the first time as adults, not children. I was in my 20s when I discovered BioWare games; my family didn't have the money for them when I was a child. I still rank the Baldur's Gate series at or near the top of my all-time favorites.

Plot twist: in PoE3, you play as the right hand of Abydon. Literally.

I'd be okay with this under one condition: that a few obvious red flags go up early in the relationship to signal where it's headed. With Anders, I thought BioWare did that fairly well. With Solas, I thought they did not and Trespesser became a big bag of not-fun for me as a result, which, in turn, makes me want to avoid DA4. BioWare toyed with the "bad romance" idea a few times in SWTOR and sort-of-almost headed that direction with Reyes Vidal in ME:A. I think the Pillars team could pull off something interesting in that area, I'd just prefer not to be blindsided with it.

All combat will be resolved via interpretive dance.

I've put over 200 hours into PoE1, but I have zero steam achievements. That's because I only play in one mode: god The second game ain't gonna be any different.

Just hire a wingless avariel cleric to carry the baby around on her back. Totally safe. That's what responsible adventurers do.

The devs have implemented a "decision wheel." Every time you need to make a choice, a wheel pops up with three options to select from, colored blue, green and red. Each choice will have far-reaching effects in that it will change one (1) line of subsequent dialogue and alter the color of your clothing/armor slightly. Any companions who don't like your color palette will leave the party. Choose wisely.

I could only bring myself to kidnap her on my "evil" playthrough (which, obviously, was not very evil, because I'm a huge softy). So I'll get to see her content at least once with only a small, niggling amount of guilt.

Apparently they plan to hit the racism angle harder in Deadfire; I'm curious to see where they take it. I recognized that they were going for the "hides pain with humor" trope, but yeah, neither the pain nor the humor made much of an impact on me. Oh well. I'm writing Edér in a fanwork and I've sometimes come to appreciate characters much more that way - hopefully it happens again.

It's not about being non-fantastical, because Sagani fits that category too and I love her to bits. There's just nothing about Edér which hooks me. He sorta wanders into the story, talks about his brother for a bit, then wanders out. Maybe it's his lack of passion; Sagani is immensely dedicated to her family, her village, and her culture, while Edér barely seems to care about anything. Except petting stuff, of course, which was amusing, but he doesn't seem to care about the animals themselves so much as their pettablity. Oh yeah, and the racism was lovely.

I must be the only person in the universe who's "meh" on Edér and sorta really hates Iselmyr

I like partial voice acting. I don't need an actor to read me two full paragraphs of NPC backstory, even if they're a good actor. And I especially don't need one showing up to make awkward sex scenes even more awkward (D:OS2 ).