coolbeans said:
Hey! That's me. :) When I saw this pop up yesterday I immediately thought "damn... I should've commented sooner." Anyways, I appreciate reading your extended thoughts here. Aside from what we discussed in review comment, I would push back against the Ryan Lucan criticism. For one, it'd be tough to consider the Steph or Ryan romance option as anything new for the series. My recollection is kinda hazy, but I thought Max had potential 'exploring' options with that one guy (even if just kissing) and Rachel Amber was seeing that other guy on the side. It seems like a natural progression to have a hardset option for either side. I also thought he made sense, even if dialogue & emotional context could be weak. To elaborate... Spoiler!
I saw him as a two-pronged solution. You have a rugged outdoorsman who's both Gabe's best friend and son of the town's hero. So, he's dealing with that shadow which crushes him after he cuts the rope. There's also potential dramatic tension should Dad vs. friend/girlfriend be utilized. I think Deck Nine could've done better with him writing wise, but I think he serves a proper function that Steph simply couldn't manage on her own. It'd be tough to believe Gabe chilling out there for years without having a best guy friend.
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No worries, I just didn't have much else to do at the time, so thought I'd try and revive this topic. Glad I got one whole reply out of it. 
Well anyway, of course you're right, the choice has traditionally existed in this franchise, but what I'm getting at is that it just doesn't seem natural here to me. What I've heard is that the developers wanted the player to choose Steph as their partner, which makes complete sense to me because it really does seem like you're supposed to. In general, the choice doesn't feel like it's an equal one. It feels weighted in a certain direction by any number of factors, but because especially obvious when you compare the depth with which their respective meet-ups after the spring festival are explored by the people who made the game. There was clearly more heart behind one of these options, and indeed about two out of every three players do wind up picking Steph. I guess I'm one of those people who feels like rather than trying to convince players of what their better option is and designing much of the game around doing so, why not just keep things simpler?
I agree that there's logical room here for Gabe to have had more than one friend in town before Alex moved there, but I'm just saying it seems like it would've been somebody else. As to that hypothetical other friend needing to be male, *shrugs* I don't really care one way or the other. Ya make me feel weird. Much of my childhood (and some of my adulthood for that matter) was spent withough any friends who were girls/women as applicable. Hell, just think about all the other ladies here for that matter. 
That's not been too unusual a scenario for me, although you're right in that it does get a little awkward sometimes. Well what I'm saying is that I could perfectly understand somebody not having any friends of their own sex, personally, so that wouldn't really make a dif to me one way or the other.
