Jacob From Mass Effect Gay Romance Was Cut Because “America Wasn’t Ready for It”
Jacob Taylor might not have been the character you’d expect to be chosen as the gay romance option back when Mass Effect 2 was in development. Ever since the game released back in 2010, there have been a sleuth of rumours about who and who wasn’t a same-sex romance option. We previously found out about Jack, but now we’ve found out Jacob suffered the same fate too.
The news comes from Jonathan Cooper, who had previously worked on BioWare’s Mass Effect series as an animator. In a tweet that directly referenced the cut content of Jack being pansexual, Cooper added that Jacob Taylor was also part of those cuts.
“TIL you can’t romance Jack as Femshep in Mass Effect 2. I animated both scenes for Male & Female. We prevized Jacob as the male/male, matching shot-for-shot from Brokeback Mountain.” Cooper tweeted, “was told at the time “America isn’t ready for it”. Perhaps it still isn’t.”
This news isn’t all that surprising now that we know more about why Jack’s pansexuality was cut, but that doesn’t make it any less disappointing for queer fans of the sci-fi series.
I asked Cooper, via Twitter, if there were any substance to the rumours of Thane and Miranda also being same-sex romances that were cut. But Cooper stated that during their time in animating the Thane romance scene there had been no indication he was meant to be for a Male Shepard. This doesn’t necessarily mean that Thane wasn’t an option, but it does mean that, unlike Jacob, a gay romance scene was not in the cards for the Drell assassin in Mass Effect 2.
At the new information of both Jacob and Jack’s gay romances being cut in Mass Effect 2, fans have started to wonder if they’ll be added to the Mass Effect: Legendary Edition. Considering the age of the game and how BioWare have stated before that they only intend to improve mostly visual aspects, we highly doubt this cut content will be restored. A shame because despite being in the future, Mass Effect feels wildly behind its fantasy counterpart, Dragon Age, in terms of queer romance.
Still, some may feel relieved that Jacob wasn’t the gay romance – especially since he cheats on Shepard in Mass Effect 3. Yeowch.
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Thank you America..
To be honest.. Maybe they were not ready? Instead on blaming it on countries, I mean Dragon Age had gay/bi romances from the start.. But future based games did not.
I don’t know about American not being ready… Corps are often wrong about what Americans actually want. But as much as Kaiden Alenko gets a lot of flack, I kinda liked how his relationship worked out. I played my Shepard as being into Kaiden but knowing it wasn’t possible, but then as Kaiden realizes he actually loves Shepard, and that he started falling for him way back in the first game, and that he’s pansexual, it all comes together.
Mind you, I’d have preferred three games of Kaiden/MShep, but meh. We got what we got.