Cortez's story arc in Mass Effect 3 drew a varied response from critics and players, and become part of a wider discussion about the media portrayal of LGBT characters, particularly with its themes of heartbreak and loss.

By contrast, his goal for a romance centered around Cortez was to write about a "meaningful human relationship that just happens to be between two men", and at the same time supporting the game's theme of total interstellar war and the consequent widespread loss of life.

[2] Lieutenant Steven "Steve" Cortez is introduced in Mass Effect 3 as a Systems Alliance commissioned officer who is assigned to the Normandy SR-2 for overseeing cargo bay modifications prior to the galaxy-wide Reaper invasion.

If the player chooses to engage with Cortez during mission downtime, Shepard discovers that he rarely takes time off from his duties and that he still grieves over the loss of his husband, Robert, to the Collectors, an antagonistic alien faction introduced in Mass Effect 2.

Shepard may chooses to be supportive towards Cortez during their conversations: the latter eventually finds the strength to move on from his mourning in despair, and survives the crashing of his shuttle during the final assault on Earth towards the end of Mass Effect 3's story.

[8] By April 2012, Jeff Brown, vice-president of corporate communications at EA, claimed that his company was inundated by "several thousand" letters and emails protesting the inclusion of LGBT content in the video games it publishes like Mass Effect 3.

In this scenario, Kremp argued that Cortez' "otherness" as represented by his bare body realizes its subversive potential as it becomes irrevocably visible, resisting not only the "pressures of heteronormativity but also the naturalized link between LGBTQ and hegemonic whiteness".

[19] Jordan Youngblood analyzed how LGBTQ-identifying characters like Cortez are integrated into a "larger systemic ludic process of thinking" about populations who are reduced into numbers and resources to be leveraged in the Mass Effect trilogy.

[18] To Youngblood, Cortez's presentation "fuse benign queerness to questions of race", given his dark brown skin tone, occasional bantering in Spanish with his crewmate, and story arc as an openly-gay man who recently lost his husband to war.