Mass Effect Trilogy: 9 Crazy Facts You Never Knew
7. FOX News Forced Jack To Be Rewritten
The noughties were a heady time for video game controversy.
Rockstar spilled Hot Coffee over themselves with a poorly-hidden sex-based minigame in GTA: San Andreas; Bully was alleged to promote bullying in schools (despite anyone who played it realising the game actively punished you for being a dick to your classmates); and Mass Effect was charged with bringing interstellar porn to the masses.
FOX News - perennial polyp in the anus of the news industry - delivered a typically ill-informed take on the sex scenes in the original Mass Effect, accusing the game of featuring "Full Digital Nudity". It didn't, unless you count side-boobs and bums as "Full Nudity".
In an interview with TheGamer, writer Brian Kindregan revealed that the end result of the furore was that Mass Effect 2 was forced to remove its same-sex romance options, with the mononymous Jack both being railroaded into heterosexuality.
Kindregan admits this change from on high didn't sit well with a lot of the team, and that hints as to Jack's true, pansexual nature remained in the game (most notably a conversation where she talks about sharing a bed with a male-female couple).