Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, and Dragon Age: Inquisition narrative lead David Gaider prefers RPG casts where everyone isn't immediately into you - and casts where some characters aren't romanceable at all.
Romance in RPGs was somewhat reignited by Baldur's Gate 3's overwhelmingly horny approach where the entire main cast was player-sexual. In other words, all of the party members were available to romance no matter what gender your character identified as, a feature also seen in Dragon Age 2 and Dragon Age: The Veilguard, most recently.
And it's a topic Gaider has chimed in on in the past, but when asked about it in a recent interview with GamesRadar+, the developer said there's a "sharp divide in the player base" between people who want to freely romance everyone in the cast and players who want to be realistically rejected.
"This is one situation where you can't do it both ways," Gaider told us. "Yeah, it's got to be one or one or the other. And those players who are on either side of this argument are never going to be okay with what's going on, like, on the other side."
First things first, Gaider is clear that, despite its name, player-sexuality as a term doesn't actually refer to a sexuality - like hetero or homosexuality - it's a gameplay feature. Characters don't change their sexual orientation, they're just down to bang your character regardless of your gender.
And it's something BioWare tried out in Dragon Age 2 and quickly abandoned by the time Dragon Age: Inquisition rolled around. "That was my doing and my preference," Gaider said, "because I think it takes away an element of agency from the character, and, I mean, there are players who absolutely prefer player-sexuality and it's totally justified."
"But I think you do some get something in return for that, because when a character is player-sexual, it feels like every romance is always on the table. It means you have to craft a story for this character where romance is a possibility. And that limits the different types of stories you can do. They always have to be somebody who ultimately could romance the player. And so that is quite limiting."
Gaider argues that, sometimes, it feels like certain characters are just there to be smoochable and that takes away a certain amount of their interiority. "I wanted characters who had their own motivations [and] maybe I had to earn their friendship," he said. "Maybe there's a different path... where they could distrust me, or we could have rivalries. They could have their own motivations that didn't align with my own... And I like the idea of characters with agency, where romance is a possibility, maybe, or maybe they have their own relationships."
