How Star Wars: The Old Republic Handles Sex

Though BioWare made a name for itself in the videogame sex field with Mass Effect, the studio’s upcoming Star Wars MMOG will keep things mostly PG, though it’ll still have moments with a “romantic feel and vibe,” whatever that means.

Now that BioWare has established that gay people don’t exist in Star Wars: The Old Republic (or at leas the word “gay” doesn’t), they can feel free to just ruin the party for everyone altogether. Despite having something of a reputation for being frank and forward-thinking about sex in games, BioWare will keep it clean in their Star Wars MMOG.

Apparently BioWare’s not creating this world on its own terms so much as it is on the terms of the Star Wars universe and sort of franchise vibe as a whole. Since sex is never really explicit in the movies or the stories from which the movies take their inspiration (1940’s serials), it will never have an explicit presence in The Old Republic.

Lead writer Daniel Erickson gives the example of Han and Leia’s romance in the original trilogy, which he says is “always very implied,” as a good example. “Even when they’re being flirty, even when [Han’s] being a complete scoundrel, he’s doing it very understated,” Erickson explained.

So BioWare’s looking at classic Humphrey Bogart-Lauren Bacall movies, in which witty quips with sexual undertones do more rubbing up against each other than physical bodies, for some of their inspiration in “how you get sexual tension and romantic feel and vibe in the air without being explicit about anything.” That, Erickson said, is “really staying true to the Star Wars feel.”

I’m not so sure about this. I know they’re making a T game here and sex in an MMOG is completely out of the question, but still, you either have it explicit or completely clean. A “feel and vibe” is just teasing.

Consider that Bogie-Bacall movies are pretty sultry (at least to me) in that what they don’t say is always more scintillating than what they do. Which brings up the idea that what you keep silent always ends up manifesting itself in some way or another. This is especially true when it comes to fantasy settings where people can play out their desires. No doubt in my mind, somewhere in The Old Republic, there’ll be wookie sex happening. It won’t be actual, literal wookie nookie programmed by BioWare, but it’ll be real enough for the people doing it. There is no escaping this.

[Via MTV]