Hello everyone, well you see, I got into Mass Effect thanks to Andromeda and the Legendary Edition (of which I have already done three complete games), and I have a question. Does anyone happen to know why ME1's romanceable characters seem to be so shoved into the story? Let me explain, within all the different decisions I have made, I have not had a romance with anyone in ME1 (to make sure of that I decided not to talk to said characters and thus avoid any accident), but still in the introductory comic of ME2, Shepard makes comments about Liara and Kaidan/Ashley, and even Kelly asks about how Shepard feels about Kaidan/Ashley even though nothing has happened. I don't know, I feel like they are continuity flaws and I feel like the ME1 romances are almost obligatory
You have a relationship with them whether it is platonic or not is up to you. The introductory comic just recap if imported or can choose if not. If you don’t have a active romance meaning choosing focus on the mission the comic Will reflect that as that is one of the choices the comics gives you/recaps along with who did’nt survive Virmire and a couple others.
If you play as a male Shep it is Ashley that triggers the beacon and if you play Femshep it is Kaidan. I always find that curious.
That's just the way they decided to write Genesis, that "interactive comic". I always just skip it; it's not needed in any way if you play through ME1 first. They specifically make sure to have awkward and blatant "romance" comments about Liara in it, even if you never romanced her in the first game, but that's just her being BioWare's favorite.
It's annoying for sure, but the only thing to do really is to just skip that damn comic, lol. I wish they made it optional in the LE, since simply having that DLC installed makes the intro with Miranda and the Illusive Man much lamer than in the original game.
Considering that there is also no option to break up with them if you romance them I feel like maybe they haven't quite figured how exactly to handle it yet back when the original ME1 came out. I remember that they were surprised with how many people wanted to romance Garrus and Tali, probably because they didn't realize back then that many people would be into aliens :p
But also, yeah, it's mostly the comic that makes it annoying - ME2 itself does make it sound like Kaidan/Ashley should be important to you but it's not explicitly romantic. Liara is the one who gets pushed onto you more, with the hug and all, but even that has mostly platonic vibes if you keep it so (though in ME3 Aethyta for some reason refers to you as if you are romancing Liara even if you are not which is dumb).
What do you think?