Regarding Romance

So, in regards to romance in CoGs how indepth are people looking for? It seems in most games it’s very shallow, with a name and some slight variation in conversations.

I would like to know (without thought on time constraints/experience) if you could have any type of romance system in a game, what would it be? What would you like to see? Events? Traits? Items? Special dialogue options?

Feel free to be as vague/detailed as you want.

Personally, I’m a hopeless romantic, so I love detailed romance options in games, any game. I can never get enough ^-^. The more I get the more I squeal.

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@FoxalypticWorld Ooh, I’m just like you! If the romance is done well, that is. If it’s cheesy and forced, then I won’t like it. But I do love to fangirl over certain characters. And I guess maybe I would like to see something more than shallow stuff in a lot of games, but I guess that’s just me. :-/ Unless the romance got in the way of the plot…

Oh I’d a few questions on a similar subject last year in case you’re curious. http://www.choiceofgames.com/forum/discussion/1355/romantic-options/

I think we’ve also other discussions if you’re willing to search through the archives.

As for me, I do think it’d be nice to have some more indepth romances. I do like a mix of both romance and plot, with both being woven together.

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I couldn’t agree more :slight_smile:
The more romance the better. But for me it should be like a steady developing romantic relationship like in Slammed between the MC and E.Ecstasy :slight_smile:
It just felt so natural and I really loved it.^^
So i’d be more than happy to play more games with a good amount of Romance and interesting Romance interests :slight_smile:

CoGs are designed to make the reader feel a bunch of things, sometimes it’s being a badass or being clever or powerful. But the most profound feeling it can give (in my opinion) is the feeling of being in love. I think that particular feeling far transcends levels and 100% Coolness stats and so forth.

I think a well-written, complex and realistic relationship is all you need to make the reader fall in love with a character. If you are able to integrate a system into this, then by all means. But personally I think those more game-like features are better suited for combat and skill challenges.

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I am a hopeless romantic myself, I adore romance in CoG. Actually, I look for that in any story more than the action. I do like a story with a great plot, characters and many choices but over all I like the feeling of being loved by a fictional character. Its very odd and silly to seek it fictional romance then again I don’t insert my birth name in the story just a fictional character that sorta resembles myself. I never can get enough of being the hero in every story and impressing the hot cutie character and having her fall in love with me.

I wish I was writer, if I was very confident to write a love story I would write it in a heart beat.

And of course add many sexy pictures in the story :wink:

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@Fairygodfeather Oh, thank you! I think I’ve read that archive, and a few others too.

@ErinRosado @FinalFantasyFreak @MultipleChoice and @Enigma_Nova Woah! Lots of hopeless romantics :D. Yes, I agree with all the above posts, anything that adds to romance in a story is a heartstopper (pun intended), I’m a sucker for a character once I know I can romance them (specifically thinking of Jesse from CoV).

@Enigma_Nova I tend to enjoy stories more when they have awesome romance options too. It’s sad that I get more excited by the convos I have with attractive sounding characters (personality wise, I’m a sucker for the semi_bad boy) that I do a lot of action.

I like romance that isn’t plain sailing, where there’s difficulties to be overcome.

In Choice of Games my favourite is in slammed with JJ. I just found it very satisfying. I also enjoyed the one with Ecstasy, although I prefer that if you turn down Ecstasy during the hotel scene, but ask them to wait for you. I think I liked both since the characters are so wound up in the plot.

I do rather like Ashleigh in Deathless too.

Villeneuve in Broadsides, although I wish that last scene was rewritten keeping the relationship in mind.

In Heroes Rise I like Black Magic. I’m also amused by the Jury romance, but I think that relationship would be stronger if a few minor edits could be made to the earlier games.

Paradox Factor is a story about love as much as anything. Perhaps not romance, but love is one of the driving forces throughout it.

I was disappointed in Choice of Romance though. That it wasn’t really a choice. And how in the third game Vega was far, far too easy and used much the same dialogue as Mendosa.

I despised Black Magic, but mostly that’s because of an issue that has since been fixed (the fact that the romance was forced and that you had to put up with BM instead of calling hir out on hir bullshit before you got to the…batteries). Still won’t claim to like her, though, because the narrative is still written in the expectation that you’ll want anything to do with hir (and how your decision to have sex with BM or not is entirely based on previous actions; you can’t make that decision for yourself when ze asks, unless that was edited at some point).

Choice of Romance was good as a standalone game, but its romance is meaningless as part of Affairs of the Court. Creating a game where two choices that are presented as “valid” end the game early is bad design. (Also, presenting the Torres-alone romance as a bad choice took away too much agency from the player.) Meanwhile, Mendosa throws hirself at you regardless of your interest or lack thereof, and Vega seems to have been given a romance plot in the third game because his fangirls asked.

Anyway, I’ll state that I’m with FairyGodfeather on the idea that I like romances that aren’t plain sailing. However, I’ll also be the first on this thread to state that I am unequivocally not a hopeless romantic, which is why I’m looking forward to the romance and marriage options in the Infinity series, and how the one does not equal the other. Also, while it was an incredibly minor and almost tangential subplot, I liked how Choice of Kung Fu intertwined the romance arc and the politics of the setting, and I think we could use more games where you could reasonably enter into a romance solely for Machiavellian reasons, without being confined to doing just that. (Mecha Ace only did that in a rather backhanded way, and not in a way that the player or PC could have ever predicted.)

The most romantic story I adore the most was Hero Rise.

When I first started playing before Hero Fall I wanted my MC to be with Jenny more than Black Magic and Lucky. My MC’s character seemed to fit well with Jenny than the others.
Jenny is the MC best friend, she’s loyal and trusting. Jenny’s character had more depth which made me care about her more.

As for Black Magic well she was irresistible couldn’t help not turning away from her sexy charms. Lucky on the other hand was sweet and cute but wasn’t that interesting to me. And Prodigal…well I don’t want to spoil the story for anyone who hasn’t read Hero Fall. All I gotta say about my MC’s relationship with her was bittersweet. I love the character even before Hero Fall and being her lover was a beautiful ending for the trilogy.

Choice of Romance, I liked the story being with the Queen. The battle with Tomas and trying to win the Queens heart was intriguing on the other hand I liked eloping with Mendoza. She was more in love with the MC than the Queen. I just wished the story with Mendoza continued, like have the MC go on a adventure with her and helping with her inventions to defeat Tomas.

Way Walkers, Sem is a great character I loved how he had a bad boy vibe with a heart. I befriending him my first play through because I knew he wasn’t a Red follower and that he’ll be freaking awesome! I just wished he was a girl lol! So I deiced to romance Shelley and Kess. I love Shelley’s mysterious personality so I hope she will have a great part in the third Way Walkers book. Kess is sweet and affectionate I like how close she is with the MC but I don’t think she meshes well with the group Sem and Jun just like Shelley. Then again her sister may be a huge part in the third book. Hmmmmm…

Anywho, As of right now I am seeking another great CoG. So does anyone know another good CoG story?

@Ramidel and @ FairyGodFeather I think they should have called CoR Choice of Court or something, since it’s more about the whole courtly backstabbing than romance. I never loved the King, which annoyed me that I had to be with him to continue.

I agree, I like romances that have some hurdles, which is why I despise many games that put romance as a back burner, in which you “date” someone, then never hear from or about them again.

@Enigma_Nova I’ve never tried Shelly out, but I may check into her, and I had a mega soft spot for Sem too. He made my good girl go bad…

As for good CoG stories, have you ever played ‘Snow’ on Chooseyourstory? That’s a good romance game, albeit somewhat sad. Or in the WIP section of COGs try ‘Guenevere’ or ‘The Clueless Teen’s Guide to Living with the Supernatural.’ Both are favorites of mine. In Guenevere you take on the role of King Arthur’s bride, seeing things from her point of view. Very fun and the writing is well done!

In the Teen Guide I thought I wouldn’t like it, but I loved it. It’s a unique action/comedy/romance which blends surprisingly well, and the comedy is that old slapstick TMNT humor that seems to have been lost in media for awhile now.

@FoxalypticWorld

Are all the games you listed can be bought on the apple store?

Btw and I love TMNT!

@FoxalypticWorld: The thing is that originally, Choice of Romance was supposed to be a dating sim of sorts that stood on its own. Then it turned into Affairs of the Court.

The more romance the better, I say. (If it’s done well, naturally.)

I’d love to have the romances be interwoven with the plot, to have them as an aspect that affects what happens rather than a simple afterthought.
Also, I like a bit of drama. Not exactly the cheesy soap opera stuff where everyone cheats on everyone and then dies, mind you, but…well, if the MC goes off to save the world or enters the biggest battle yet or something, I want a heartbreaking goodbye scene and/or something that fits the LI in question.
I want a bt of conflict. Feelings that grow and grow and one day just bubble over. Hurdles to get over before MC and LI get together.

What I liked about Tin Star was that the LIs didn’t swap gender. You had two women and two men and that’s it. The whole genderswapping thing isn’t something I mind, really, because it gives you more options, but I would really like if there were some differences between the character from one gender to another. Something that acknowledges ‘hey we’re in a straight/gay relationship’.

Then again, that might give people the idea to make some LIs unavailable for one gender and before that happens, I’d rather have no romance at all. *glares at Bioware*

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Speaking from a pure mechanical standpoint, what is there that can be done that will tug at the heartstrings… Just having a little bar fill up and a pure numerical value is obviously not enough. Remembering events, booleans and string-vars comes to mind, but what else… Gifts, being useful. A tragic and untimely death. Having something in common with them which makes it easier to sympathize. Common values and an interesting personality.


Just pondering here. What was it that made you like a character? 

An open question to all of you. Could it be as little as the descriptive text? 

For instance Black Magic had a string var where you filled in what celebrity she/he looked like, I’m curious whether that had any effect, I just filled it in as “A shining fart”. :stuck_out_tongue: Yes, I’m not always awfully mature about these things. But in either case, Black Magic wasn’t much more than a conquest, I wanted to boink her and then I wanted to boink her and Lucky both, but sadly I was denied that route.

I think the last “video-game” character I cared about was Aeris, despite Ted Woolsley’s awful translation. And it wasn’t really about her personality either, which wasn’t all that special. It was the fact that in a culture where everyone is pretty much immortal (reload save, phoenix downs), losing someone forever was a real shock back then.

But to do so in text form, how can one portray the same emotion. I dunno about you all, but if the text gets too heavy I sometimes just skim to get to the choices, and say you happen to skip a wall of text to get to the action, then you just might have missed a pivotal death scene and you’re wondering why that character is no longer available.

Which is also a reason why I feel that horror games don’t work when text-based. But of course that’s just partly the limitations of the medium and partly my own fault for skimming in the first place, but even so… I don’t skim in a book that I like, but these aren’t books, these are games, I want to control my character, make choices, I don’t to sit and read page after page of text that usually doesn’t even give away any pivotal information. I remember there was one game where you had to pay attention to guess the right color…I think it was the first Heroes Rise game, you had to remember what color finger tips a bad guy had. That was a pretty good trick that really made me think, huh I should probably pay more attention from now on, but I don’t remember that it had much of an impact even if you guessed it wrong until there was only one choice left, and there was only one such instance in the game anyways.

Speaking of walls of text, got carried away…

@Enigma_Nova ‘Snow’ is on Chooseyourownstory website, and the other two are in the WIP section right here ^-^.

@MutonElite I only skim if I’ve read it before or I’m uninterested. Otherwise I don’t mind lots of text. ^-^

I love romance in games and honestly even really shitty romance is enough to get me to play lots of things, especially if it’s GAY (gee what a surprise).

I will say that for COG in particular, I would like to see more people build romances independently of one another. As it stands, most romances in these games are all essentially a palette swap of one another. You get the same plot, the scenes are all in the same place, serve the same function, and end in the same way, but instead of Character A, you get Character B instead. That’s fine for most people (the kind who play a game once), but for people who like to go through multiple times it can get grating. I will say that I know it’s extra code work to do so, though, so I understand why more people just stick to what’s easy.

A good example of what I would like to see though is Zombie Exodus, where there are several romances and while there were some universal generic scenes, most of them had distinct trajectories. Dating Heather was pretty different from going with Delvin, basically. Even still, I think writers here can go even further.

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@SpaceLesbian thanks for mentioning ZE. It was first time writing romance and tried to give each character a motivation which I haven’t seen in other games’ romances. Many games make romance an accessory and I *tried* to give those storylines perfect. It’s difficult to keep so many sub-plots active but the readers seem to enjoy it. And with my future games, I hope to push things further.

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I only played Heroes Rise after the patches were implemented. I did not like Black Magic during my first playthrough, it was @P_Tigras who managed to win me around.

I was annoyed at the third Choice of Romance game. You could enter into a romance with de Vega solely to manipulate him, but you couldn’t continue to be a schemer. You would fall in love with him, that was annoying.

Heh JimD’s relationships in his game are crazy. I seem to recall saying to him “hey Devlin wouldn’t say that” when each of your RIs were meant to say something, and he’d actually go and change it. There were definite differences between all four, different endings too, and you couldn’t just replace one character with another. It was great, utterly crazy looking at the code and I’ve no idea how he kept track, but great.

It’s a level of customisation that makes games extremely replayable. I know the main games will just have places where they’re interchangeable and I do find that annoying, especially if it’s in your last scene. I want the ending to be the best, to be the pay off for going for a particular character so it’s disappointing if it’s just the same thing with names switched.

So I didn’t like that how at the end of CoR Mendosa and de Vega had the same dialogue. That Mendosa had finally given up on the whole “we should get married” thing. That these two completely different characters, with different life experiences, would end up as being the same and they were the same throughout. It felt shallow. Easier to write, certainly but it’s one of those shortcuts I wish they wouldn’t take.

It was the same for the end of Heroes Rise. Black Magic and Lucky shouldn’t be interchangeable. If you’ve finally managed to romance one of them, you shouldn’t find the experience nearly identical to the other. Sure, earlier in the game when it matters less, that’s more forgivable but not the last scene.

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