MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry
BioWare is to continue its fine work in the area of same sex relationships by bringing them to MMO title Star wars: The Old Republic.
The studio has previously attracted praise (and, from the right at least, some criticism) for integrating gay relationship options into games like Mass Effect. Players of The Old Republic can expect similar functionality soon.
I want to apologise that this is taking so long to get in the game,” executive producer Jeff Hickman stated. I realise that we promised SGR [same gender 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.
We are adding SGR with some NPCs on Makeb and do intend on pursuing more SGR options in the future.”
Hickman was also bullish about the health of the game, which he claims has been significantly boosted by last year’s switch to free-to-play.
The launch of the free-to-play option with our new Cartel Market has been an amazing event for our game,” he added. The game is incredibly healthy with an ever increasing number of players who are actively playing. Having said that, we know we haven’t gotten everything perfect, and we are still working hard to make The Old Republic everything you guys desire.
More than anything we wanted to get folks back in and playing the game, and bring back the excitement and camaraderie – we feel like we’ve made great strides over the last 6 months towards these goals. All signs point to a very bright future for our game.”
