Same-Sex Relationships Coming to Star Wars: The Old Republic
This article is more than 2 years old
If it’s a “long time ago in a galaxy far, far away,” then you might assume that there was a dearth (Darth!) of liberalism when it came to the way relationships worked out. From what we’ve seen, this is more of a love heavy universe than one where libidos are in hyper-drive. I can just picture Han Solo asking someone, “Hey there suns-shine. Would you like to have sex with a hairy, seven-foot-tall piece of muscle that doesn’t speak English? You do? Then I’ll tell Chewie to watch the door.”
Picture, if you will, your Solo-like character from Star Wars: The Old Republic using this bit of bombastic flirting on another male, which will be your choice once Bioware releases the Rise of the Hutt Cartel expansion pack in a few months. A new planet called Makeb will appear, and players will be able to flirt with same-sex AI and win their trust by performing missions with them to win them over. But don’t expect sleazy one-night-stands, as the same-sexiness aspect doesn’t go much past flirting and trust-forming, at least until a later update is released which allows the romance to flow.
A Bioware blog entry from Jeff Hickman, executive producer for The Old Republic, quells fans’ worries about the baby steps this project is taking. “I realize that we promised [same-sex relationships] 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.”
This is the same company that gave us same-sex and inter-species relationships with Mass Effect, and it’s an applause-worthy choice to continue bringing today’s liberal attitudes towards sex and love out to the masses. For a film series that started out with fans cheering for what would have essentially become an incestuous relationship, a couple of ladies kissing in the corner of the Cantina seems even more like a mild, but important, step forward.
