Would you like to see more same sex couples in gaming?

[Fynn]

Fire Emblem Fates is a step in the right direction, but it is barely a step. I mean, there's one female and one male option. In the entire game. I was curious and looked them up, and one is... well, here's an excerpt:

"Sadistic and callous, Niles derives pleasure from watching the suffering of others, a fact made plainly evident throughout his supports, where he visibly becomes excited when bearing witness to the pain and discomfort of his conversational partners."

The other character isn't much better:

"Rhajat is extremely prejudiced and stalks those she deems "compatible" with her. She thinks her father is childish. She often spends her days researching dubious spells."

So Rhajat is a predatory gay, and Niles is a sadistic gay. Such progress! Maybe they get meaningful development during the game, who knows. But from the surface, they seem like terrible representations of LGBT people.

To be fair, if Awakening is anything to go by, this is how all the characters are written. Over-the-top caricature bordering on psychopath is a thing for a lot of them. Played for laughs.

It's kind of similar to the new gay options added to the Enhanced Edition of Baldur's Gate, in that it seems like unfortunate implications on paper, but actually works in the context of the game. In BG EE we get a bisexual half-orc and lesbian vampire who are both evil. But not only are both of them compelling characters and okay to use in neutral or good parties, but their sexuality is completely incidental to their alignment and only really comes up in the romances, so it's not like they invoke the All Gays Are Depraved trope

Also, yeah, we totally need more main gay couples and beta gay couples, like if Sephie was a guy in FFVIII and still developed a relationship with Irvine, or if Balthier was a girl. Seriously, the beta couples are sometimes way more compelling than the main ones (looking at you, the Last Story).