Tracey John Interviews BioWare

During GDC last month, Tracey John had an opportunity to speak with Mass Effect 2's project lead Casey Hudson and both Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka (separate interview) about a question she had when playing their latest space-faring offering. Her 1Up article provides an excerpt of the question she felt like posting right now, though a full interview took place concerning DLC strategies and sundry other items.

What John wished to know, however, was why her lady Shepard could not romance Tali, on whom she was set.

Hudson's response was two-fold. The first reasoning he gave was that this would have included planning for extra content, and at a certain point the team had to make a decision on what not to include so as to ship the best product they could, instead of just recycling scenes for both sexes.

However, where his explanation gets a bit hairy is when he states:

So we kind of pulled back and said, "Well, the love interest is part of the story and it helps you care about the characters in a different way." We still view it as... if you're picturing a PG-13 action movie. That's how we're trying to design it. So that's why the love interest is relatively light. ... That's another thing we did better than we did before. We really lock you into character. Tali is really interesting because the whole idea of her character and what she's concerned about and her experience and age -- we kind of factor all those things, and we designed the love interests really around the particular characters because they're all quite different. So her (love scene) is a little more innocent and fun.

It is difficult for me to read that and not deduce that an M-rated game's lead is saying that they viewed the game as PG-13, and a same-sex romance may have troubled those waters. Given public perception on the issue, that may well be the case. Ratings are not objective and ruled by a society and the morals it espouses, whether or not I perceive those to be wrong.

However, the Tali quote just confuses me. If Tali were to have a relationship with lady Shepard, would it not be possible for it to be innocent and fun? What makes it that way for male Shepard that could not be replicated with lady bits involved?

Ray Muzyka's response was what we have heard before, and I shall not rehash that particular argument.

Again, I would be a lot more impressed if BioWare simply stated that they did not wish to include it into the game. Their explanations just seem to be digging a deeper hole of cynicism for the future of the Mass Effect series; a series I will continue regardless, admittedly.

Tracey John even chalked it up to being given PR speak. While the answers seem a bit odd, I am glad she went ahead and asked them regardless.