A Year Later, Whats the General Opinion on ME:A?

@EgoMania

Well thought out, and I loved the thread you listed and the data contained once you opened the spoiler section at the top. 

There is a whole lot of data collected by that thread on love interests and who was popular.  I know EA/Bioware should have this kind of info from data collected in game but even still, I would hope they at least glance at this thread when they look into their next love interest for games.

One of my takes on the linked thread was how much a disappointment Liam was as a romance character considering his screen time and obvious push towards Ryder.  Liam's highest percentage of romancing among all groups, was 9.6% with Hetero and Bi-sexual females.  This group WAS the one they were looking to have him romance and he only managed to bring in a little under one in ten women.  This to me is a writing issue along with maybe an art issue as it showed Bioware didn't create a character people wanted to romance.   Since they did better with Peebee and Cora on the male side, I have to wonder if they either didn't consult enough with women in what they wanted or consulted the wrong ones(too agenda driven or biased) to get information to appeal to the majority(Or maybe he was written by a straight guy who has no clue what women actually want.....).  They did manage to get it right seemingly with Reyes romance for Hetero females, but he falls to Peebee for Bi-sexual females....which makes me wonder if hetero females "settled" for him or if he was that good an option for them.

I also wonder if Bioware in Anthem is going to have any romance....but then I also wonder how much story they are going to have in Anthem as well.  Story takes time, effort and for a game like they are leaking Anthem to be, continued effort in creating ongoing story.....and I don't know if they will bother and instead just make it more combat/exploration/event driven game.  I know it would drive me crazy to have to balance all the different groups and people to try and make them happy so they don't savage my games and still make most gamers happy enough to buy my current game and future games.  According to surveys, LGBTQ people survey out to be 3-5% of the population, and I don't know the % of them as gamers.  Female gamers  in games like ME and DA are usually around 30% of the gamer population BUT Bioware usually pulls a higher percentage(DAI pulled almost 50% women) and more women are gaming now than ever before.  Historically males were 90% plus, but that has changed over the years, and now depending on the type of game women can make anywhere between 5% and 70% of the games player base.  I don't think I could balance and keep happy the mix of gamers that Bioware draws....I would end up ticking a group or three off and causing bankruptcy if I was in charge of it.

I think the biggest issues come when agendas override the story content.  By this I mean, you design a game to cater to a certain agenda instead of making a great story and if it also furthers your agenda that is ok, but not the point.  I watched a video recently on some of this and they used Dorian from DAI as one example, and Steve Cortez from ME3 as the other.  They basically said, Steve Cortez was obviously written as a Gay love interest character that had a minimal story and Dorian was an interesting character, with a deep character who just happened to be gay.  The team of ME3 "needed" a gay character so they cobbled together Steve Cortez, while the DAI team wrote an interesting character and backstory for someone who just also happened to be gay.  The point in DAI was the story, and the point in ME3 was the character.   This idea is one I can fully understand and after looking at both, I can agree on.  I know I have often complained about doing thing "just because" in games and how it hurts the story....whether it is sex, sex scenes, violence, blood, or language used, don't do it unless it makes sense for the story.  In previous threads I had complained about the ME2,3 love scenes because Bioware seemed to want mature content, then chickened out in the end and threw underwear on, which didn't make sense in the story.  I said you should either show what you made, ie people in bed without underwear, people taking showers naked, OR fade to black and just imply what happened, because the half measure hurt the story.  They(BIoware) actually did both in MEA.....and people still complained, so lose lose for them.......and I really liked that they in the end chose to honor their story.