Bioware has just announced that in the new Rise of the Hutt Cartel pack, will include a new “gay planet” where players can meet and enter relationships with other same-sex characters. This comes as a stark contrast to how same-sex relationships were handled in other Bioware games. In franchises such as Mass Effect and Dragon Age, same-sex relationships were available in the game from the start and if the player wanted to engage in a same-sex relationship, they could freely do so. Adding the option as DLC and making a planet exclusively for players looking to engage in same-sex relationships is a very odd way of handling it.
Jeff Hickman, Executive Producer of Star Wars: The Old Republic said “I want to apologize that this is taking so long to get in the game. I realize that we promised SGR (Same Gender Romance) 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.”
