It's been a couple years, but maybe you remember the ridiculous fake controversy that erupted on Fox News after the first Mass Effect was released, where they flagrantly misrepresented the game's sex scenes as being hardcore with full-frontal nudity. Well members of BioWare's forums remember, and one asked the developer point blank if fear of another controversy led them to tone down the sex scenes in Mass Effect 2. BioWare's answer: No.
"It's kinda funny that this topic keeps coming up over and over again," said BioWare's Stanley Woo, responding to the charge in the forum post (via Cinemablend). "People who claim to be old enough and mature enough to handle sex and nudity in a game seem to believe that any lack of sex and nudity in the game is a sign of self-censorship. They generally don't believe that a game can be called 'mature' without explicit sex and/or nudity."
If you haven't played either game, they both allow you to potentially "romance" party members, which can lead to sexual intercourse. In the first game, the sex cut-scene featured partial nudity (which is to say, "side boob"), a little bit of groping, and not much more. Mass Effect 2 now features even less skin, with the characters' underwear staying on at all times and a cut away to implied sexual intercourse. And Woo says that was entirely their call, without any outside influence.

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