Dedicated Mass Effect modders use audio files to reinstate same-sex romances in Legendary Edition
Shepherd and Kaidan in Mass Effect 3. (Bioware)
Game modders have discovered unused dialogue in Mass Effect Legendary Edition which they’re using to reinstate missing same-sex romances.
According to a report by The Gamer, there is unused dialogue for same-sex romances for Jack, Jacob, Kaidan, Ashley, Miranda, Thane and Tali in the code for the Legendary Edition.
Of course, often multiple lines of dialogue are recorded in excess of what’s required as the narrative is later trimmed. But in this case, modders will now have access to this dialogue to create full same-sex relationships for Shepard and their teammates.
The Gamer spoke with Ryan ‘Audemus’ Ainsworth, who manages the largest Mass Effect modding community in the world.
While the dialogue exists for characters to certain degrees – some characters, like Kaidan and Ashley, have entire conversations recorded, others only snippets – modders will be able to cleverly splice it all together to create the fan-requested same-sex romances.
“The first thing is that just because this audio is present doesn’t necessarily mean the character was intended to have a same-sex romance,” says Ainsworth.
“A lot of the time this audio gets recorded accidentally just due to the sheer volume of lines that Mark Meer/Jennifer Hale [the voices behind Shepard] had to record; it’s very easy for certain things to slip under the radar.”
Ainsworth admits the lack of LGBT+ representation in the Mass Effect trilogy is disappointing, but at least PC gamers can now potentially experience the game with same-sex romances.
Fans have already been working on a mod for the first game, but this new report suggests this can now be the case across the entire trilogy of Legendary Edition.
It was previously revealed that Jack and Jacob in Mass Effect 2 were planned to have same-sex options but these were scrapped in light of a Fox News segment on the first game that falsely accused it of containing nudity.
Fans have since been petitioning for Bioware to patch Legendary Edition and include romances, but the developer is yet to respond.
Have a read of our thoughts on the first game in the trilogy here.
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