Alright, I'm going to try and stymie our collective effort to outdo Tolstoy ( you too GM4Him
) by cutting this to the quick.
You've asked me how I reconcile this standpoint with roleplaying, and I think this is the essential difference in how we play.
I rarely identify personally with the main character, I don't play myself, not just because I'm not interested, but because, unlike in a tabletop game, there is rarely my persona in evidence in the stories being told. My dialogue trees don't stop at 6 branches, my world view isn't on a 3x3 grid (ok sometimes). When I roleplay I try to embody the character the game gives me. This has been a point of contention a few time already, it usually takes the form of denigrating Origin characters, or complaining about the plainness of Tav. I see two types of role-players, people who want to play an interesting version of themselves in this world and people who want to play an interesting character in this world.
With this in mind maybe you'll understand my point of view regarding making every character in this game available to you to romance, romance is a very compelling aspect of adventure, they're synonymous even, but that's a very different thing than making the game force it into existence for anybody who comes along.
I think most of our disagreements stem from this as well. I have more to say on this but the name of the topic is "More reasonable romance options"; and while I think we've proven this is on-topic, it may not be
that on-topic. Here are a few of the other places I've seen on this
Furthermore, I want to make clear, I don't think one way of playing is superior to the other, I just think that in a game with a finite amount of world states, playing a character with a finite amount of character states is conducive to better story-telling.
There is a lot more to respond to in your post especially about the romances in older games, P:K and DA:I, but I think everything else follows from this point....possibly.
