The recently released "Mass Effect": Legendary Edition launched with various discoveries about the history of the series and a few changes (elements that were cut, elements that could not be restored, and small tweaks that you probably did not notice). One of the major discoveries was that a certain same-sex romance option was to be included during development, so much so that scripted dialogue exists in the game's files, but it did not appear in the final product. [Voice actors always record more lines than are used in the final product. But as former Bioware animator Jonathan Cooper revealed earlier this year, other elements of same-sex romance were removed from the game for more dubious reasons.

Cooper continued: "But the rules are different between the movie and the game. Personally, I still think it was a bad decision to cut it, as I protested at the time. Screw anyone who has a problem with it - they don't deserve to play our game."

A new Gamer report talks to Ryan 'Audemus' Ainsworth, a well-known Mass Effect modder in that community, about what same-sex romance options already exist in the Legendary Edition files According to Ainsworth, there is dialogue regarding the characters Jack, Jacob, Kaidan, Ashley, Miranda, Thane, and Tali.

"There is dialogue for all of these characters to varying degrees," says Ainsworth: some, like Ashley and Kaidan's dialogue in "Mass Effect 1," are complete cut romances; in "Mass Effect 2," unused romance dialogue is partially present but missing in later scenes; Ainsworth cites the romance between Shepard's woman and Miranda as an example, with audio dialogue restored from in-game files.

The full report is well worth reading and touches on the technical aspects of why the Legendary Edition made this possible. But the bottom line is that modders can restore the seven same-sex romances that are (currently) in the game's files, and in most cases can work with the "official" voice.

"The fact is that the Legendary Edition files still contain all of the unused same-sex romance voice-overs.