i have never seen Bastian say that on my girl characters though i do not have maximum rapport with him yet

Thanks for the info. I could do an experiment to try to definitively answer this question, since there isn't a clear answer yet.

According to UESP, Bastian has 16 different idle lines. Let's assume that they are chosen randomly and with equal probability (except possibly the "girl line"). I then can record the next 91 instances where Bastian says an idle line with my male toon. If at any point he says the "girl line", we have definitive proof that the line isn't gender-specific. With our assumed uniform distribution there is less than a 0.3% chance of obtaining no "girl lines" if we take 91 samples. Therefore if we record all 91 instances without a "girl line", we have a p-value p < 0.003 and can say with 3σ certainty that the "girl line" is not in the pool of potential idle lines for male toons.

Considering how infrequently I manage to hear idle lines, even when actively trying to, I might report back with findings in a few years lol.

M1SHAAN wrote: »

Apparently one of Bastian's lines of dialogue which can fire after idling for a long time is as follows:

I don't have a romantic partner back home, but I know a girl who would get mad if she heard me say that.

According to UESP, this line will only fire if the player character is female, which would imply that Bastian is straight.

Have any of you heard that line with your male player characters? I ask because my favorite (male) toon is hopelessly smitten with Bastian, and I'd like to know whether or not I need to break his heart </3

I don’t think this line is meant to refer to the player in any case (and that would be awfully presumptuous if it were). But I actually don’t think the line means anything other than a joke — a lot of his phrases are kind of odd and memey IMO.

So, seems he is straight, and he says the line to either gender character as part of small talk.

He's allowed to be straight. Hell, he could be bi, or whatever other identifiers people have nowadays, too. Just 'one girl' back home for him that has a shine for him. Doesn't mean he cares for her, though.