Disliked Elements, Mechanics, and Tropes

General
5022

There’s always gonna be matters of taste involved in which characters with predetermined relationships work for which players. In general, it’s kind of unavoidable in most cases. Unless it’s the type of story where the protagonist has no memories or just doesn’t know anyone where the story takes place, you’re going to have to have known SOMEONE beforehand and had some sort of relationship with them. Friends, family, etc.

Some games can have multiple options for how you relate to certain people (like how Infinity has you determine whether or not you’re close with your family), other stories have a certain relationship that are too central to the plot and characters. Like, not every best friend character could work just as well as an enemy. Few could in fact.

A lot of people seem to think that the issue is predefined relationships (or specific types at least) in general, and while that’s sometimes true for some people, sometimes they’re focusing on the wrong issue. A lot of the times the characters themselves just don’t gel with these players so they resent being put together with them, and that’s all subjective. Sometimes the characters themselves are poorly written too, which means that the issue isn’t the pre-defined relationship but rather the character themselves not being good.

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5023

In this case, I think it’s not that it’s predetermined in general or the dislike of the character (or even the writing, as there’s people that like Sally I’m just not one of them unfortunately) but - a present day strong predetermined relationship you can’t control that pushes the disliked character into personal/intimate areas and scenes of the MC’s life. That’s likely what grated on me the most here.

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5024

Just came across this thread, seems like a good place to vent about a design choice I dislike after I just had it pop up again in an IF I was reading.
I am absolutely sick of games that have gender variable ROs, but instead of just letting you pick them they give you a choice between being into men, women or both, then put the ROs into pre assigned sets based on that (or sometimes randomized in the case of picking both, but that’s much rarer).
Like as a bisexual person it really annoys me cause I feel like it comes from some sort of fundamental misunderstanding of bisexuality. Like obviously I can’t speak for all bisexuals, but I think it’s fair to say that there many of us, myself included, who do not have exactly the same taste in women as we do in men, meaning that we’re not necessarily be into an RO no matter what gender they are; there are gonna be some ROs I prefer as a guy or as a girl.
The way I see it, whenever a game has gender variable ROs, they effectively have twice as many ROs as advertised (give or take a few for games where not all ROs are gender variable and/or that have gender variable ROs with nonbinary options). And by making the options be fixed they’re effectively locking the player out of half of them, while severally limiting their control in which half get locked out.
Now in most cases the easy solution is to just choose to only be into one gender so your preferred RO is the preferred gender. And in most cases this is fine, your characters preference is never mentioned again, and you can just go on pretending their bi. But its not perfect. For one, some games will reference that choice later on, which is not fun if your a bi person who wants to play a bi character (at least in my experience), and the other is that it can make it harder to actually play out being bisexual, by limiting your options when it comes to multigender flirting/romancing e.g. if I’m into RO A as male, and RO B as female, but choosing the bi option makes A female or B male, and I’m not really into the other 2 ROs, tough luck I guess, no multigender flirting for me.
To be clear, I’m not trying to accuse these authors of anything, I don’t think this is done out of any sort of malicious intent or anything, I just wish they would stop doing it.

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5025

Related to this point, there’s also the odd implication that, for example, as a gay man, you’d prefer every single person in your close circle to be male, and for every meaningful (platonic) relationship you have to be with men. And it’s just a fundamental misunderstanding of how human beings work. I know it’s partly being done as a wish-fulfillment thing, but it feels very artificial and, dare I say, insulting–like the expectation is that these NPCs exist purely so I can smooch them instead of contributing to the story in their own right.

Personally, I’d rather they did away with using sexuality as a toggle for gender altogether. Some might argue it’s less “forward” than just outright picking each gender individually, but, look: we all 100% know why the game is suddenly musing about the MC’s sexuality. Better gently rip the bandaid off.

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5026

Otome style. I never liked it. I want to have men, women (and sometimes also nonbinary) in the main cast, even if I prefer romance only male ROs.

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5027

While I do agree, choosing as and when you meet each character will require that you know who you want to romance as and when you meet them, which a lot of people won’t. Pure first impressions aren’t a good way to choose an RO, but by the time you actually get to know them, it’s too late to choose. Consequently, even though I would definitely prefer a more gender-balanced group in principal, in practice I would usually just switch almost everyone to male, so that I don’t accidentally end up with the RO I would prefer set to the wrong gender.

EDIT: Granted, now that I think about it, more than a few games do expect you to know who you want to romance right from the start, but that’s not good either. :sweat_smile:

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5028

Hard agree – mostly because I just don’t see the point of this? From a coding perspective, it is incredibly easy to have nicely selectable options for setting this, or at least no more difficult than making hard-coded sets. If you’re implementing gender variations, I think the “select at beginning/select as you meet/randomize” suite of options is best.

I also find it very unbalanced in an uncomfortable way. Like, if this were a book/tv show/movie, I would spot the questionable gender dynamics of an all-x team or a harem/reverse-harem team a mile away, but in IF it’s fine because they’re all romantically available? I guess? It’s fine if that’s what you want, but it’s really not my cup of tea and I don’t want to compromise mine/my character’s gender or sexuality to avoid it - just give me the immersion breaking option. (I bring up gender, because some games peg those hard-coded RO genders to gender…for some reason.)

Addition: also, frankly, I think this approach re: sexuality misses out on more nuanced gender dynamics between characters and platonic relationships that could be really interesting to explore. Like how can the relationship between a male gay MC and a female “RO” be different if you two are close, best friends, super important to each other, but not romantically attracted but everyone expects you to be? Or one-sided attraction? Or weighing a romantic relationship vs. a platonic one, because in IF let’s be honest there’s an unchallenged relationship hierarchy. Obviously these won’t fit most stories and aren’t everyone’s choice, but I think stories with these aspects are worth telling and developing, and we can’t get there by pegging RO gender and MC sexuality as packages.

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5029

Just make every ro’s gender random each playthrough. And then cite realism or something.

5030

Something that’s been bothering me more and more, but… when every RO is squeaky clean and perfect and nice.

Heart’s Choice has this especially bad; it doesn’t matter if the RO in question is a noble, a criminal, a merchant, a peasant, a member of the royal family, or anything in-between, they’ll always be kind (either openly or deep down), they’ll always have progressive views, they’ll always reject social practices and norms that are or can be seen as cruel, even if those are the norm in their society.

Logically, I know why those ROs are written that way. Nobody wants to romance a racist, or sexist, or classist, or bigot after all, especially not in a community like CoG, which hosts a lot of LGBTQ+ and BIPOC people, along with people from other minorities.

But idk, to me having a cast of characters that are all progressive and kind and perfect just makes them feel bland. In a narrative, kidness stands out the most when it’s contrasted by cruelty or other unpleasant stuff, so having all characters be “kind” doesn’t highlight their qualities compared to other characters, it just makes them feel same-y. And I find that there’s a lot more value in a person learning about the error of their ways through character development, rather than being a static “perfect” figure from the get-go.

I’m also just a lot more fascinated with character flaws than character qualities in fiction, because what makes a person unique aren’t just their good points, but their bad points too. To me, a character that can be disliked will always stand out more and be a lot more interesting than a character that can do no wrong for anyone. And especially in Heart’s Choice, the downside of having all ROs be kind and perfect is that it unintentionally makes them feel more like props for romance than actual people, and thus ironically makes me less interested in them as a result.

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5031

I don’t think you’ve been to the CoG subreddit. Either of them. There is definitely market for mean, bigoted, toxic and generally “Red Flag” love interests. It’s just that games from the Choice of Games and Heart’s Choice brand tend to play everything safe on every level. Hosted games and WIPs can get away with having prejudiced ROs, though it’s easier when that bigotry is of fantastic variety (e.g. Carrie from Blood Moon) rather than something relevant to the real world.

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5032

I have a theory on why Choicescript Games and Hearts Choice tend to be safer. I could be waaaay off but its my little conspiracy theory.

On the “Looking for Writers” page for Choice of Games, it mentions that “If we’ve rejected your application to our Choice of Games label, feel free to apply again after 12 months.” which probably leads to potential writers leaning towards the safer side; why risk your one chance per year on something less likely to pass the approval? Especially when the standards (in terms of what content you’re allowed to include) appear to be much higher for the main label since they have a brand image to maintain.

I don’t think its intentional, but a lot of the games feel very “safe” in terms of both content and mechanically.

Its fine because its created a niche for each of the labels, and Choice of Games is something safe and predictable. Like, 99% of the games on Choice of Games, I wouldn’t mind giving to teens/tweens, but it does mean that generally if you’re looking for something outside of more “normal” relationship content, you probably won’t find it in Choice of Games

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5033

I think I need to add that there are still rules to Hostedgames and there have been games that have been changed or rejected for having too much problematic content or problematic content of a certain type

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5034

Please don’t make those sorts of assumptions about me. I understand why you did, but I’d rather you avoid it, especially since I myself am one of those people that like toxic or red flag ROs, so I am well-aware that the market exists.

But there is also a difference between liking red flag ROs and having an RO with discriminatory ideologies that hit a bit too close to home. While they’re both at their core fictional characters, and while both of them can be triggering depending on how they’re written or presented, one of them definitely comes off as more palatable than the other.

To rephrase what I said: I understand why CoG as a brand would rather play it safe in that way, but I wish it didn’t lead to characters being so same-y and bland so often.

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5035

I feel like there are three strands to it: romanceable characters being bigoted in ways that affect people in the real world, romanceable characters being flawed in other ways, or romanceable characters being rivals or hostile to the PC.

I’d expect something like a romanceable character being unrepentantly homophobic or like, constantly doing terrible things* to be questioned by the editors to see how the writer was planning to handle it in-game. I did a summary of the house style over here - it’s fine to depict bigotry if it’s done thoughtfully, it’s just that the narrative shouldn’t support/glorify it.

I can’t speak to depicting real-world bigotry in detail as it’s not something I tend to write about much, but in my experience, perfect/kind love interests absolutely aren’t something enforced by CoG/HC at the application stage - or ever! If all the romanceable characters were set up to hate the PC, I could see that raising questions about the risk of it being one-note, but CoG have always been perfectly happy with accepting pitches from me with flawed romanceable NPCs, or romanceable NPCs who are hostile to the PC. I’ve never had them give me feedback suggesting that characters should be nicer or less flawed, or that I shouldn’t lean into the characters’ imperfect or unkind aspects.

I do agree there’s a risk of romanceable characters becoming flatter if the writer is prioritising them being likeable/relatable/universally appealing though. I see this in other media too, but games (and dating sims in particular) can be especially tricky for this because of ending up focusing on perceived player wish-fulfilment to the detriment of rounded-out characters.

I haven’t experienced that with the CoG and HC games I’ve completed, though - perhaps I’m playing the wrong (or right) ones. Or I end up not playing until the end if the characters haven’t gripped me.

*although I will say: CoG never asked me to tone down Mayor Ferro from Blood Money, who’s a nasty piece of work who does various horrible things in the game, nor to dial back anything about some of the bad things some of the Noblesse Oblige or Honor Bound characters have done or do onscreen.

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5036

Javi shows up
“Let’s fight!”
Me: Dafuq? O_o

Still doesn’t beat CdlC’s Blaise:
“I’m gonna get you expelled, you fuck!”
Me: Do I even KNOW you, lady?

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5037

There’s something in Hawkins that has altered my brain chemistry and made me search like a hound for anything like it. Dusk was… similar, Wakefield and JJ too, but man, mecha just adds a new layer of wonder. Like, yeah, he might be a battle-hungry bastard, but at least he does that in a cool robot.

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5038

It’s still in its infancy, but Diana aka Guinevere over a Knights of Venus is very definitely giving me Hawkins vibes (but she’s female, don’t know if you’re interested):

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5039

I understand why now. Hawkins was the best done rival romance I’ve ever seen. The fact that you can get a happy ending with them is the icing on the cake, too.

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5040

How about multiple happy endings? I like Seven-Year War on most of my Hawkinsmancers, but Captain has the most sugoi flavour text imaginable.

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5041

I really should check out the other endings. I’ve played twice now and always get the Damocles ending. I love my MC running it with Hawkins, and that ending thing with him saying to come back to him was just perfect. :heart:

1 Like