Reminds me of one of my fav characters who’s a spy who uses seduction as a tool professionally but is completely different in private life.
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This is all so fantastic to read about. I wasn’t expecting such a fast discussion so I can’t reply to everything but thank you to everyone posting!
This makes a lot of sense. Do you tend to prefer to have longer to get to know the characters in a platonic way, or by having your character express (maybe internally) that they’re interested in a future romance? not necessarily pining, but specifying that there could be something there? Or is it more fun to develop a purely nonromantic relationship over time and then have it shift into romance as desired?
maybe establishing mutual respect and care before moving into romance? I’m not super familiar with FH as I don’t play many unfinished series, but it’s also my understanding that some of the ROs were established solidly as non-romance-orientated characters in Rebirth before shifting into romances in Retribution - I think this may help it feel organic partly because of there being variety between different romance structures for different characters. I ike what @EvilChani has said below about the FH romance progression, it makes them sound natural.
I admit I have sometimes felt like this 
If a character has feelings and there aren’t sufficient other factors leading them to hesitate, I sometimes think “OK… so why aren’t they opening their mouth and saying something?” I’ve tended to encounter that more in books than games, though.
this is defintely a whole thing and I quite like going in the other direction and having some characters treat sex or kissing more casually, with emotional connections arising later. But I’m aware that doesn’t work for every character or MC. On that subject, I need to watch this talk next week - I’ve seen a clip and it looks very interesting, but I haven’t got round to the whole thing yet.
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This one for me! I prefer MCs who don’t consider romance before knowing the person. (Although flirting for fun doesn’t need to be out of question.)
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I like slow burn in the sense of getting to have an entire relationship with a character - from first meeting to friends to first dates to closer ties to girl/boyfriend to important decisions to the options of marriage and children as appropriate and the like. I dislike the idea that slow burn is used only to extend excessively the period up to the declaration of love or the marriage/pregnancy aspects - if it suits I like the whole hog since it’s a great way of showing character development.
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That’s a hard question. I’d probably consider them as a romance option relatively early on if I knew they were available and seemed compatible, but wouldn’t vocalize it (to either the RO or other characters) until a lot later. So from the outside looking in it’d probably appear platonic for a long time even if the interest was there. If that makes sense.
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I think having the option of being friends with a character before being lovers is always nice. Probably why so many with Mass Effect gravitate to Garrus and Tali is that we had an entire game getting to know them as allies before either thought they and Shepard could be more than friends, plus they can have a romance together if you leave either be, which shows their own character development.
Weyhaven does this well by allowing for a friendship slowburn with another character alongside your chosen romance, which improves each character nicely.
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Now I’m wondering whether a friendship-to-romance really counts as a slow burn, if there’s no “burn” of pining or will-they-won’t-they or “oh no we mustn’t”. I don’t feel like Garrus and Tali are in the same category as the Wayhaven folks because there isn’t anything with that tone in ME1 but maybe I’m being overly finicky… It’s very interesting to consider!
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Which is why I originally said it depends on what one considers a slow burn!
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Very much agreed!
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My two cents on this…
No, Garrus and Talli aren’t slow burn. I think there’s a big difference between pining and friends-to-lovers. The latter is something that never worked for me. In the past, I had one of my best friends try to kiss me after we’d been friends for like five years and I slid out of there so fast it made his poor head spin. He’d already been friend-zoned. If he had tried that not long after we met, and had started to get to know each other, it might have worked. But after that long? Sorry, I can’t shift gears after I put you in the friend zone.
Pining is pretty much my definition of slow burn and why I despise it with every fiber of my being. I don’t pine. That’s not my thing. Either you’re interested or you aren’t, so playing a game where I’m forced into an MC that sits around ooh-ing and ahh-ing and simpers while they stare longingly at the object of their affection is torture unless I have some way to avoid it or speed shit up (this is one reason why I didn’t like The Golden Rose–Hadrian is in this category for me and I can’t take it).
Now, playing a romance where the friendship and physical part (not necessarily sex, if it doesn’t fit the characters, but at least making out!) are built simultaneously? Totally my jam. Then you can move from the “we want to rip each other’s clothes off every time we’re in each other’s orbit” stage to the “netflix and chill” stage, where you hang out enjoying each other’s company without having to paw at each other constantly. That’s fun to play (and to write, for that matter!).
To quote Chiana from Farscape, “Fast with the body, slow with the soul.” (or something along those lines… been a while since I watched it!)
@HannahPS I decided to put on that video you linked to while I’m working just to see what it’s like. It is awesome and, when she starts explaining how to bring chemistry into the mix, it really shows how you can have differently paced romances with the same LI that actually fits the LI and the RP’d MC. Not done with it yet, but wanted to let you know that you made a great rec!
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The issue with a “slow burn” romance in games like these is that the games are only so long, so that a slower romance is often just picking up as the game is winding down. A sorta ‘all smoke no fire’ kinda thing.
This is exacerbated by games that are structured in a “Do task A with Alice, RO scene, do task B with Bob, RO scene, do task C with Cindy…” kind of way that limits RO interactions in a way that means you might only have a handful of real romance focused scenes in the game. If there’s only a few romance based interactions with them, having most of them be slow burn stuff makes it feel badly paced because there’s no time for a payoff.
I think for slow burn stuff to work you really need a lot of time with the RO just so that there’s still space left to do things with them after the slow burn finally catches fire.
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I think I like a slow-burn because there’s so much potential for misread signals, miscommunication, etc. Even in a friends-to-lovers, slowing that process down just gives the character so much time to stew in their romantic feelings, which exposes what is really interesting to me – how and why someone develops and maintains feelings for someone else! It does the work of characterization on both sides to see them trying to deal with their feelings, whether they are continually choosing to stay interested in someone or whether it’s a situation where they feel like they don’t have a choice in the matter.
Def agree with the general sentiment that slow-burns allow for a lot of tension. Even when the feelings are pretty well-concealed, it heightens the drama in any given interaction!
But to echo the point @feurio made:
…a lot of attempts at slow-burn in IF can make you feel like you’re actually missing content by waiting to develop the relationship, because you’re holding back on engaging in romantic scenes, and then when you finally “arrive” it still doesn’t capture what can be so appealing about the burn. Honestly, I’m really looking forward to the Jolly Games books for that reason – having a long-form narrative actually allows for that kind of build up, and those games in particular are good about rewarding romantic interest while letting the characters still stay in that “pining” or “crush” stage that is sooooooo tantalizing in good burns. I liked that a bit in the Verses games too, tho picking Oli for my slow-burn was ultimately less rewarding, but it still informed my decisions and was a very interesting way for me to develop my MC/read Oli’s development.
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Wow, I love this discussion! So many thoughtful and inclusive (for lack of a better word) viewpoints.
As someone who adores romance, and spends quite a lot of time reading and writing it, I thought I’d give a bit of a summarized version of what slow burn means to me:
One of the main draws is the gradual development of a deep emotional connection between the characters, which allows the reader to become more invested in the relationship. Rather than relying on quick, superficial attraction (though that can be part of it too!), slow burn romances should emphasize the importance of building trust, mutual respect, and genuine affection over time. This can happen in multiple ways, through adventuring and overcoming things together, or through learning about the other love-interest through other characters or events, or seeing them in a different light than they had in the past. I think the most important part is to have emotional epiphanies baked into the story for both characters, where they realize they are not so different after all, and that they realize that they don’t want to live without this new-found knowledge, leading to the characters wanting the other character to be a staple of their life. These moments should be small and scantly noticeable, but added together create a lovestory that feels like it was bound to happen from the start. Character traits should complement each other, like the popular sunshine/grumpy trope, etc.
Characters should fit together like puzzlepieces that were just turned the wrong way around from the beginning. (Does that make sense? 
)
This slow build-up of tension and anticipation can create a more intense emotional payoff when the characters finally come together romantically, making the relationship feel more earned and satisfying. Sex can happen at any point during this journey, or not at all, as it is absolutely not the final destination, nor anything that constitutes a meaningful relationship. It isn’t even part of the equation, unless you want it to be. The slow burn approach also allows for more complex character development, as the audience gets to see how the characters evolve and grow over time as their relationship progresses. Slow burn romance, at it’s core, means deep, robust, romance to me. It has to be built with care, and patience.
Additionally, slow burn romances often involve more realistic and relatable conflicts and obstacles that the characters must overcome in order to be together. This creates a more engaging and emotionally resonant story, as the audience is invested in seeing the characters navigate the challenges and find a way to be together.
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Slowburn is like rice for me and those who live near me, I can’t say I like it but I say I need it.
Up until now almost all romances I have read are slowburn, it’s not like I’m looking for it, it just all over the place. Everywhere I go, I see slowburn. So I used to read over 200 chapters (or more) to look at the main couple finally “canon” with a guarantee that they will live happily ever after and no break-up.
You can say slowburn raised me lmao, sorry I can’t say anything much since everybody said it all :v
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I’m ace (and maybe in the aro spectrum), so romances without a considerable build up simply don’t make sense to me.
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This is hard for me to pinpoint, because a “slowburn” relationship in a multipart series is different from a slowburn relationship in a stand-alone game.
An example of a favorite slowburn in a stand-alone title is the outlaw’s daughter in Tin Star.
Examples of favorite “slowburns” in series include the teenager in JimD’s ZE: Safehaven, Eric_Moser’s invulnerable superhero in his Community College Heroes series, and Malinryden’s nano-built superhero in their Fallen Hero series.
In general, unless the game is tagged as a romance-specific game (eg. Fayl’s Heart Choice gladiator game) it is very hard to execute a slowburn romance in a single game. Tin star with 1 million words is the exception.
Each of my favorites are executed much differently – the key commonality is the writing of the author. The execution of the slowburn itself always allows the details to flow well, or to disrupt my enjoyment … there is no checklist to check off for me because the execution of the slowburn is what makes it or breaks it for me as a reader.
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Beautifully said! 
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I like slowburns because I like playing the experience of slowly falling in love, of experiencing something far beyond superficial infatuation, of building a strong, deep bond based on shared understanding and experience. I don’t like deus-ex-machina that keep popping up to drag out the process. I want it to be natural, not artificial.
It’s very, very hard to think of a slowburn romance I really liked that was confined to a single game. The time limitation is a big issue; lots of time spent on the lead-up to the relationship means almost no time in the relationship, which is a bummer because I like that part too. One of the reasons I enjoy BioWare games so much, especially the Dragon Age series, is because they often strike what feels to me like a good balance. Alistair and Cullen are lovely. I’m struggling to think of a good CoG example; maybe I’ll just mention the one I’m currently playing, Changeling Charade. It’s unique in that you start out sort of semi-engaged to one of the ROs, who’s a complete stranger to you, so the “courtship” phase happens simultaneously with the “getting to know you” phase, which is an excellent time-saver. I don’t know yet how far the relationship will progress in the remainder of the game, but so far I’ve been able to take it slow without worrying too much over missing out on the romantic stuff.
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Angst.
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I feel there is a room for a organically developed romance without slow-burn, it just requires careful and character-based approach.
And at times I wonder if love is even necessary for romance - can a good dynamic be found in bed companions, in people who share the bed, yet not the feelings? Something primarily sex-based as a romance option would be interesting to try, especially if they won’t catch feelings. Would be even more interesting if love was one-sided.
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