Love for every hero in Dragon Age: The Veilguard. All companions think you are great – no matter what you are. Boring, thinks MeinMMO demon Cortyn.
Similar to Mass Effect, the Dragon Age series is one of my absolute role-playing gems that I have loved – even the rather controversial Dragon Age 2. Therefore, I am quite glad that with “The Veilguard” the next installment of the series is slowly coming within reach.
However, one detail from Veilguard already bothers me – namely the fact that the player character can enter a romance with every companion, because all companions are pansexual.
This was revealed in an interview with IGN. All characters in Dragon Age: The Veilguard are pansexual – meaning: the gender of their partner does not matter to them.
From my perspective, this is monotonous and frankly lazy. Not only does it devalue my choices about what kind of character I want to play, but it also makes the companions less interesting and more boring when one just says in one area: They have no preferences at all.
I fondly remember Mass Effect, at least the original trilogy. There were romances there as well, and quite a few of them. But these had limitations. For instance, male Shepard could enter different relationships than female Shepard.
I thought that was incredibly cool.
Yes, I was saddened that Tali’zorah never wanted to know anything about my female Shepard. However, I was pleasantly surprised that Samantha suddenly showed great kindness, while she was cold towards male Shepard.
That gave me the feeling: The NPCs are well-thought-out characters with their own preferences.
The interview also emphasized that the characters are not “player-sexual”, meaning they do not inherently feel attracted to the played character. “Player-sexual” is often a somewhat pejorative term when the respective characters primarily see a romantic option in the protagonist.
But ultimately, “player-sexual” in a video game is essentially the same as “pansexual”. Because no matter what character you play, everyone finds you attractive and interesting.
I am aware that Dragon Age is ultimately a game where one wants to dive into a fantasy. Not everyone necessarily wants to deal with things like “Ah, sorry, you are unfortunately a guy, I am not into that” or “Phew, I can’t really deal with elves, let’s just be friends”.
I would have liked to do that. For me, that is also part of a good, well-thought-out character.
You could now take Baldur’s Gate 3 as an argument that this can work wonderfully. After all, all companions there are also pansexual and they do not care about the species of the player character. While I also found that a bit strange, at least there was the mentality of “In a few days, we will all be dead, so fuck it” – literally.
Maybe Veilguard can convince me why it logically makes sense for absolutely all characters to be pansexual – but the first impression is that the companions are just playthings of the main character and not independent characters with their own wishes and preferences. And that makes the actually well-thought-out figures that have always characterized BioWare games a little more colorless.
