Jack was supposed to be pansexual in Mass Effect 2, but BioWare changed her romance after the mainstream media criticized the first game.
In the 11 years since Mass Effect 2 was launched, fans have often wondered why Jack – a character who specifically refers to times when she became intimate with non-male romantic partners – can only be romanticized as Commander Shepard a man is. As it turns out, that should not have been the case. Jack was originally written as pansexual, but her relationship conditions changed towards the end of the development due to concerns about receiving the mainstream media for the first Mass Effect game.
After Mass Effect was launched in 2007, Fox News presented an extraordinarily tactless panel related to the depiction of sex in the game. As expected at the time, sex was talked about as if it were completely taboo.
The panel sparked a domino effect, leading to unfounded criticism, not only of Mass Effect’s sex scenes, but also that it contained a non-straight romantic option in Liara T’Soni (Kaidan Allenko was locked up in a straight-only ratio arc. to Mass effect 3).
‘I tried the bow of [Jack’s] romance, which was a big part of the development – it was actually very late that it became a male / female romance, ‘Brian Kindregan tells me. Kindregan was the lead writer for Jack, Samara, and the first critical road mission on Horizon in Mass Effect 2, and also did the first pass on Grunt and Tuchanka: ‘She was essentially pansexual for most of the development of that romance.
“Mass Effect has been pretty heavily and really unfairly criticized 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,” Kindregan continues. ‘The development team of Mass Effect 2 was a fairly progressive, open-minded team, but I think there was a concern 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. ‘
Interestingly, Courtenay Taylor – who played Jack in Mass Effect 2 – also said she would originally be a pansexual character. In a recent conversation with our very own Kirk McKeand, Taylor said:
‘It’s funny to me because my understanding has always been that she was pansexual. So I do not know if it’s just something I deduced from the character, or something she said that might have been cut. I was surprised that there was no female romance possible because that was my understanding. I think it was the time, you know? That was, what – 2008/2009? The industry has changed exponentially since then, and BioWare has been the leader. I do not know if this amounts to a budget constraint or that someone might be like ‘it’s too obvious’ because everyone was like’ of course ‘she’s a lesbian’. But my feeling was always that she was [pansexual] and it just did not carry through. The community, of course, changed it right away so you can have it your way. ”
As Jack’s author, Kindregan explains that he does not necessarily agree with the decision to change her sexuality. He understands why this happened and says: “it was not like some anti-gay person in the Mass Effect 2 team who said, ‘This is not going to happen to us’.” Instead, it had to do with the firestorm of controversy that Mass Effect received in 2007, and the attempt to reduce the amount of criticism that would be directed at the community by stores like Fox News. “The short version is that many of us were asked quite late to concentrate the relationships on a more traditional kind of vector,” says Kindregan.
“I have definitely heard a lot from people who were surprised that Jack was not open to it,” he continues. “I understand why. I would say that there are many seeds planted in her conversations that definitely imply that she is pansexual – she once referred specifically as part of a group. She says there was a guy and a woman she was dating, who invited her to their robberies and to their bed. She definitely refers to those things. It was explicit to send the message that yes, this is a character who is pansexual. In the eleventh hour review of its cleaning, she was already partially recorded with voice-over. Not all of this could be changed.
“I would say even with the things I could change, and I don’t know if it was the right decision or not, I still saw her as a character with an edge,” Kindregan says. ‘Not edgy, but with the advantage of not following traditional norms. I think I would, even during the review process, keep some of the things there with a feeling of like yes, this is a person who has done a lot of things already, from the farm and down to Paris. ‘
Eventually, however, Jack became a romance option available exclusively to the male Shepard, despite both her writer and actor agreeing that she was originally supposed to be pansexual. 2010 was only three years after the infamous Fox News Mass Effect debacle, which is why BioWare was reluctant to follow some of the ideas that were specifically put into early development. At the end of the production, the only non-straight romantic options were in play:
- Kelly Chambers, who is not a group mate and does not disqualify other relationships.
- Samara, who expresses that she has feelings for you but eventually rejects you – Kindregan compares it to someone who says, sure, I’ll be with you, but I’m in love with this other person and I’ll make you fall for it. when they come to call.
- Morinth, which literally kills you in less than one second of having sex.
“I worked with lesbian developers who came to me and said, ‘Why is Jack not in me?'” Kindregan said. “And I have to say, ‘I’m so sorry, it’s partly my fault. ‘But I still insist on keeping her with a more diverse background. Maybe one day Jack will be portrayed as a pan. ”
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