By Alex Calvin, Friday, 22 January 2021 19:26 GMT
Adjustments have apparently been made to prevent the audience from facing further criticism.
Mass effect 2‘s Jack was originally meant to be pansexual, but BioWare cut off non-straight romances due to concerns about negative media coverage.
In an interview with The Gamer, Brian Kindregan, author of Mass Effect 2, said that the decision to allow Jack only if users play as a male commander Shephard took place later in the development. It came in the wake of a 2007 Fox News report discussing the depiction of sex in the scientific RPG.
That Jack was initially meant to be pansexual will undoubtedly make a lot of fans of Mass Effect 2 sense. The character refers to romantic encounters with non-male partners, but is only a romantic option if you are playing as a male Shephard. The decision to reduce non-straightforward relationships comes in part because BioWare does not want its community to be criticized. The criticism that Mass Effect faced was the one technical gay relationship that was possible with Liara.
‘I tried the bow of [Jack’s] romance, which was for a large part of the development – it was actually very late that it became a male / female romance, ‘Kindregan said.
He continues: ‘Mass Effect was quite heavily and really unfairly criticized in the US by Fox News, which at the time … maybe more people in the world thought there was a connection between reality and what was being discussed on Fox News . The development team of Mass Effect 2 was a fairly progressive, open-minded team, but I think there were concerns at fairly high levels that if [the first] Mass Effect, which had only one gay relationship, Liara – who on paper was technically not a gay relationship because she was of a single sex species – I think there was concern that Mass Effect 2, if it would draw fire , had to be a little careful. ‘
The first Mass Effect game drew a lot of criticism – read: Pointless Pearl Clutching – but in the wake of the controversy, Ray Muzyka, boss of BioWare, said he was ‘proud’ of the sexual content of the title. With Mass Effect 3, these romantic options became ‘wider’.
Mass Effect Legendary Edition – a remake of the original Mass Effect games – is in the pipeline and will be released in the spring of 2021 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.