There's no shortage of characters to romance in the Mass Effect trilogy. Depending on which version of Commander Shepard you're playing, you can enjoy deep relationships and clunky cutscene coitus with Ashley Williams, Liara T'Soni, Kaidan Whatsisname, Miranda, Jack, Garrus, Tali, Javik, that weird fish guy everyone stans, that non-fish guy everyone hates, and a handful of others.
But when you're horny in space, is that really enough? How about one more?
Thanks to The Hatboy Project mod, you can now add Jeff "Joker" Moreau to your seemingly endless list of intimate conquests in Mass Effect 3. The mod "creates an all-new romantic narrative for the player to explore" with the quick-witted and endearing pilot of the SSV Normandy. There are new branches of dialogue, custom-written romantic versions of conversations, new ambient voice lines, the option to go from flirting to a committed relationship, and yes, even a "romance scene that is in keeping with the other vanilla options." A traditionally awkward Mass Effect sex-cutscene, in other words.
How is this possible? According to modder SpaceD0lphin, the mod required lots of "patience, technology, duct-tape and prayers." You can see a bit of the mod in the launch trailer below, including new voice lines for Joker that seem to be a mixture of spliced existing dialogue and AI voice acting software (xVASynth is credited on the mod's page).
It's pretty convincing—that really does sound like Joker's voice actor Seth Green, and only occasionally is there a tiny bit of awkward inflection that doesn't quite land. Still, it's extremely impressive.
If you want to see more, there's tons of video clips at The Hatboy Project's YouTube Channel, and you can learn how the mod came together at the devblog here (a good place to start is with this deep-dive on some particularly tricky dialogue).
Joker isn't available to romance for both versions of Commander Shepard, unfortunately. "BroShep," as I'm just learning he's called, can't knock boots with Joker, only the Jennifer Hale "FemShep" version of Shepard. The mod is also only compatible with the original Mass Effect 3, though a Legendary Edition version is in the works. You can find it here at Nexus Mods.
