Dragon Age: The Veilguard's romanceable companions won't just wait around for you to woo them—also, they're all canonically pansexual

In RPGs, there are a couple of ways that developers have handled romances—and, specifically, sexuality within those romances. The first route is to have specific orientations for each character. For example, Zevran in Dragon: Age Origins is bisexual, whereas Alistair is straight.

The second route is to make companion characters «playersexual» ala Baldur's Gate 3—they have canon sexualities sometimes (Astarion and Karlach are canonically attracted to, at least, men and women) but they're never specifically set in stone, and will adjust to the player's interest regardless of their gender.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard has apparently seen these two routes and decided to go with a third option, which is to make the entire cast and crew pansexual, according to a recent interview with game director Corinne Busche via IGN.

According to the interview, Busche has seen playersexual characters done in ways that are «really off-putting where these characters are adapting to who you, the player, are». However, the interview claims Busche instead considers the cast of Dragon Age: The Veilguard to be implicitly pansexual across the board.

«I might be playing a straight male character flirting with [Harding], but I choose not to pursue a romance. She might get together with Taash. So my perception, my identity has no bearing on their identities and that comes through really strongly.»

It's… an interesting third option, to be sure, and I have mixed feelings about it as a pansexual man myself. I think what Busche says about the off-putting nature of orientations changing to the player's whim is fair enough—but I would also argue that, in such games, orientations that don't gel with playersexuality are never set in stone.

For example, Astarion and Karlach from Baldur's Gate 3 are canonically bisexual or pansexual—Astarion has fallen for men in his past, but will also go off and have a fling with Lae'zel, whereas Karlach's origin character story sees her fantasising about both men and