Andraste

You're saying 'gender balance' like it's a good thing. What else would you expect from an Evol Feminist?

Man, I wish that Evol Feminists really had the kind of power over games that some people imagine we have. (I'd start by using it to fix the gender imbalance in almost every group of cRPG companions, Pillars of Eternity and Dragon Age included. Then I would make the devs give me a pony.)

I've always found it weird that people apply the 'BUT REALISM!!!' argument so selectively. I mean, what are the chances that the Watcher would run into one person - and only one person - of each class that wants to join their party in POE1? Or that they just happen to be in the right place at the right time to meet both a guy who belongs to the Leaden Key and a guy that's being chased by them? That seems far more unlikely to me than having a couple of LGBT people in a group.

Did BioWare ever actually say that the DA2 love interests were playersexual? I know that David Gaider said they were bisexual, both in interviews and on his now-deleted Tumblr. (I mean, I think it was a really bad idea to leave Anders, Fenris and Merrill's sexuality as vague as it was and leave fans to fight about this for the rest of time. Especially since it lead to Anders not telling FemmeHawke about his relationship with Karl. I just don't recall anyone from BioWare ever saying they were playersexual.)

Why is the stuff the Goldpact Knights and Bleak Walkers are fanatical about more absurd than the stuff the Wayfarers or Shieldbearers are fanatical about?

There definitely are romances, though. A quote from Josh Sawyer's Tumblr: "All companions will have a number of relationships that can form with each other or the Watcher. Some of those will be romantic in nature, but certainly not all of them. The form of each relationship will depend on the individual companion." So we don't know for sure if the Watcher can become romantically involved with their companions - it could be that romances are limited to relationships between companions, although I doubt it - but we do know that there are romantic relationships involving companions in the game. Some of us have been here since the Black Isle days .

The latest Twitch stream also discussed a future stretch goal for an eighth companion. (Hooray!) Since the Aumaua Moon Godlike is a Chanter, it follows logically that this stretch goal companion will be a Druid. (I'm hoping for a Dwarf, but it might be a Pale Elf instead .)

The PC can have sex with prostitutes in both Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age 2 but you don't get any stat bonuses for it. I don't really care either way if they include sex workers and/or bonuses for having sex with them in the next game. I would love that. In fact, my ideal game relationship would be an ongoing friends-with-benefits thing where the companion breaks it off if you confess that you've developed feelings for them. I've never seen that, only characters that start out just wanting sex and develop feelings for the PC. (Not that I have anything against Zevran, Isabela or Iron Bull, etc. etc. but something different would be nice.) There are some of those in the Dragon Age games - Sebastian and the player can have a celibate marriage in DA2 because he's made a vow to the Chantry, and the Josephine and Solas romances don't even have the fade-to-black sex scenes that are in the other romances in that game. You can also complete the Alistair romance in DAO after telling him you want to wait until after the whole Archdemon thing is dealt with. I thought those were all fine options, and wouldn't mind seeing romances that don't explicitly include sex or explicitly don't include sex.

Based on what little we have now - my 'canon' Watcher will take Edér and Pallegina because they were in her party in POE1 and they're friends. Planning to keep Pallegina as a pure Paladin. I want Edér to tank, but if he can do that as a Fighter/Ranger then he's getting a pet of his own. Third companion will proooobably be Xoti as a Priest if I find Priests as useful as I did in the first game. (Besides, I want to hear her Eothas-related conversations with Edér ...) That's not set in stone, though, and party depends on how Paladins and Druids work in regards to healing and buffing. (My Watcher is a Druid.) Anyway, after that I'll rotate everyone else through the fifth party slot until I find somebody I can't live without.

I found the dragons in Pillars more beautiful. They were colorfoul and adapted to their environments. The dragons in Dragon Age look like ... Dinosaurs with horns. I mean, this can look cool, I found the Dragons in Divinity 2 very interesting, but they are just massive and I forgot always, that they are there. dinosaurs would be better than dragons. every crpg has dragons, but where are the dinosaurs? d&d had loads o' dinosaurs. include an island with dinosaurs and a giant gorilla. too much? fine. nix the gorilla, but dinosaurs is still deserving more love. so, less dragon and more dinosaur is the solution. HA! Good Fun! There are actually a bunch of dinosaurs in Dragon Age: Inquisition, not that anyone calls them that. The Western Approach is full of them.

Actually, both Morrigan and Cassandra were written by a gay man . Dunno about Jack, though.

Which BioWare titles have non-heterosexual characters in the majority? (Spoilers: it's none of them.) In DAII everyone was bisexual. Inquisition had two gays and two bisexual. The straight characters were four, just like the non-straight (three of those were only available for females PCs, though). That's not a correct representation of sexual orientations, since more than 95% of the world population is straight. I'll also add that having a setting based on medieval Europe where people think it's ok to kill others because of their faith or social class but somehow everyone is more open-minded than contemporary real world people about being sexual orientation/identity is also ****ty fanfiction-tier writing. Which BioWare titles have non-heterosexual characters in the majority? (Spoilers: it's none of them.) In Dragon Age II they were all bisexual. Also, Inquisition had two gays and two bisexual. The straight characters were four, just like the non-straight (three of those were only available for females PCs, though). That's not a correct representation of sexual orientations, since more than 95% of the world population is straight. I'll also add that having a setting based on medieval Europe where people think it's ok to kill others because of their faith or social class but somehow everyone is more open-minded than contemporary real world people about being sexual orientation/identity is also ****ty fanfiction-tier writing. In DA2, four out of the five love interests are bisexual and one is straight, but not a majority of your companions, let alone a majority of the characters in the world. There are various reasons why there's less homophobia in Thedas than there is the real world, but my essay about that would be really off-topic.

Which BioWare titles have non-heterosexual characters in the majority? (Spoilers: it's none of them.) Dragon Age 2. And DA:O was 50/50. If we're only counting LOVE INTERESTS then DAO was 50/50 and DA2 was 80/20 ... but that's not what you said. There is no BioWare game in which the majority of characters you can interact with are lesbian, gay or bisexual. There are a heck of a lot of characters in Dragon Age 2 who aren't love interests, and most of the ones that have a stated preference are straight. Even a majority of the companions are heterosexual in DA2 - it's Bethany, Caver, Aveline, Varric and Sebastian vs. Anders, Fenris, Isabela and Merrill. (I guess you could count temporary companion Tallis and have it balance out at 50/50, but she's only available for one DLC.) Across the whole Dragon Age franchise - counting novels, comics and The Last Court as well as all three games - there are forty-nine LGBT characters with speaking parts, including a few that aren't important enough to have names and some that are only ambiguously gay. Given that the whole franchise has well over five hundred characters, I don't think that's disproportionate at all. (If anyone is wondering why I bothered to count them, it's because when people on the internet complain that there are too many LGBT Dragon Age characters I like to have some actual numbers to put things in perspective.)

Which BioWare titles have non-heterosexual characters in the majority? (Spoilers: it's none of them.)

Fingers crossed, this will be a stretch goal. As for the class of our entirely hypothetical dwarf companion: either Chanter or Druid makes sense, if the shirtless Huana dude doesn't have both of those covered. Alternately, they could make the dwarf a Barbarian and make Serafen's Cipher class compulsory, which might make more sense given his backstory. My preference is Dwarf Druid. Don't think I've ever seen a companion like that in a cRPG.

Slightly off topic, but: people do realize that not all BioWare romances have compulsory sex in them, right? There's Solas and Josephine in Inquisition, and you can also advance the romances with Alistair in DAO and Dorian in DAI without sleeping with either of them. While sex was often the end point of the romance back in the BG2 days, that really doesn't happen with most of the more recent BioWare romances. Having sex is really just the starting point with characters like Morrigan and Zevran.

Story-wise your character must be fun at parties. In my run Zahua gets to swim in a blood pool, though Some crazy homeless guy started ranting to me about seeing me on fire, so I put him out of his misery. Weirdly, the lady who is the keep at Caed Nua said he was still there, driving travelers away from my property. I'm scared! To be fair, becoming an angry ghost that scares travelers is something that Durance might plausibly do with his afterlife ...

Cyan ground circles for non-party NPCs. Having green for everyone can get confusing when the scene is crowded.

Something keeps deleting the chant in Kana's top slot. Not sure what triggers it. (Taking him out of the party, maybe? I just put the phrases I wanted in Slot C instead.) No idea if this applies to all Chanters - which would mean it needs fixing - or is a Kana-specific issue which will be irrelevant anyway.

Given that we're playing the same character, I don't think this will be the game where we get new backgrounds. That said, if they were going to do them I'd like to see Dyrwood, Readceras and Eir Glanfath options along with the Vaillian Republics.

P&P rulebook YAAAAAAAAAS. Now, to come up with some short adventures in the setting that my friends would enjoy playing ... (I love GMing, but I'm terrible at sustaining long campaigns.)

I'm most excited about the prospect of getting companions instantly on repeat playthroughs - no repeats of waiting until Act II to get Pallegina, or trekking all the way to the White March for Zahua, Maneha and the Devil of Caroc!

I, too, hope that the unrevealed companion is a mountain dwarf. (Sagani is one of my favourites and I hope we get to travel to Massuk and meet her family in POE2, but we've already had a Boreal dwarf companion so it's time for a change.) Now, for an eighth companion stretch goal, I would like to see a female pale elf or another godlike. (Or a female pale elf who is a godlike, I guess.)

Thank you for your valuable contribution to our message board.

Yeah, I love being able to do it for roleplaying reasons. (My current Priest of Eothas is going to use Gaun's Share all the way through the game, because he thinks finding it in Gilded Vale was some kind of sign from his god. He's likely to be disappointed when the sign turns out to mean 'FYI, I am coming back to eat your soul later, so use this draining enchantment to stay alive until then!')