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It’s exactly what it says on the tin

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I like to work for it a little bit. I’m definitely not engaged with anyone who throws themselves at me just to have a RO. (If the personality is slutty or clingy/needy, then that would be ok for them to show interest because it makes sense, but then any interactions after should reflect that. A slutty character should always be looking around, a clingy one should smother you, etc.) I recently played a CoG game where I’d declared my MC as same-sex oriented, but I apparently chose an “overly friendly” response to an opposite-sex character, which apparently triggered a romance flag. After that, I could only rudely reject her, no option for a “Oh, sorry. Funny thing about that mixed signal…” response. So, that just showed me that that RO was so easy to engage that I did it accidentally after not showing any interest at other opportunities.

I think Lost Heir did really well with romances. As someone else said, the ROs has identifiable personalities whether or not you engaged with them romantically. There were actually things you had to do to get them to engage with you, and it some were easy to blow it with or not earn enough favor with. I liked the opportunity to have children in the second part as well as the discussion about their worthiness to be your partner.

So, make a romance in a game something I have to earn, like in real life. Make it have meaningful consequences, not just an occasional sentence about physical contact in between other goings-on.

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I was thinking about more realistic issues. And probably way more mundane than it sounded like. Definitely not something that would cause too much offense, I think, just differences in how people see and behave in relationships.

For example, an NPC who, depending on your choices, either becomes your best and most loyal friend or your emotionally distant partner because they separate friendship from romance. The character could have different romantic arcs based on their relationship status to the MC, but I realize that the execution would probably be needlessly complicated. Not to mention that it probably isn’t as exciting as I originally thought. :sweat_smile:

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I think most people add romance to their games nowadays as a side quest or worse as a feature. What I mean by feature is that they tack one scene on in the game so the game has romance. I’d honestly there’d be no romance at all if this is the case cause it tends to ruin the flow of the plot.

I’m honestly happy to have any romance because I’m a hopeless romantic but it’s kinda getting to the point where the mostly feel same and stagnant. In order to make a romance memorable and outstanding, it needs several things in my opinion:

  1. Connection to the plot - I think most people have pointed this out but it amazes me how little of the time I actually see it done. If you can strip the romance from a story and nothing changes than its never going to be memorable to me. When something big happens to your MC, you better believe it will effect your romance as well. I like when your relationship directly effects how the plot progresses. This can be a matter of changing and adding scenes. And not just adding the date scenes or one on one moments where the MC and RO talk about the plot. I remember in Superlatives, the moment that stuck with me in the Dusk romance wasn’t the actual date scene, it was the rescue scene at the end. The person I had to save changed based on who I cared about most. Also, Dusk had a history with the main villain so that added another layer to the scene and gave him a stake in the plot rather than it simply being all about the MC. in the Wayhaven Chronicles, the plot is pretty similar but the scenes are all different based on who you are romancing. I’d love to see more games with that sort of dedication to romance.

  2. Connection between characters - A good rule of thumb is asking why do these two love each other? It shouldn’t just be that they happen to be in the same place, have similar hobbies, are attracted. There’s a difference between being friends and being best friends. Being lovers and being mates. When you are in a relationship that strong you see everything and you accept that person anyway. It’s not always about kisses and sex. This is a person that can look at you and know what’s wrong. Someone who is there to drastically enrich your life. This comes from good character development but knowing about the little quirks of someone, how the react under pressure with and without their partner, what’s their favorite music genre and why. Kissing scenes are fun but I’d be more interested in seeing how they both react to finding a spider in the bedroom or happening upon a karaoke night at a local bar. I just want to see the attention to detail and the why. I understand that in a role playing choice based game not every MC is going to connect to that one RO, but that’s why there are options. And I’d rather have 2 or 3 well defined deep options than 15 shallow ones.

  3. The process - honestly how often does a relationship go dating > kissing > sex > marriage? Maybe I’m inexperienced but there are very few people I know that followed the straight line guidelines of courtship. But that’s almost exclusively the path I see in games. I rarely ever see an exploration of the end of a relationship or a marriage in progress. Even the buildup to a relationship can be vastly different for everyone. Maybe one of the RO happens to be someone the MC had a one night stand with years ago. It doesn’t have to involve sex either, just some sort of history between them. What if the RO turned down the MC when they asked them out? I thought Fallen Hero did this really well with the MC and Ortega. And you could choose not to have that past if you wanted too. I just think there are so many possibilities besides the meet, sex, love romance.

So TL;DR: make the romance weave with the plot rather sitting outside the bubble, show more of the little and unique moments of the characters and their relationship rather than just kissing and dating, and play with different stages of a relationship rather than just the honeymoon phase or at the very least, mix up the steps in the honeymoon phase. That’s what I think will make a interesting romance.

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agree with you (save for the marriage bit lol)…but , its alot of work though . Not saying it cant be done . Just saying , video games for exemple who have romance…often add it just for fun . Of course it could be much more…

But anyway…

would you play a game where the ending depand on who you romanced ? and it can end Happily ever after or all gloom and doom!

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Make the ro do some of the work or show the first sign of interest

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Oh it would definitely be difficult accounting for every character and romance but it’s a bit rarer to see an author putting the same attention to detail into a romance as they do into other aspects of the plot like the action or micromanaging your character’s stats. And you can add a little scene or two of romance and it can be satisfying, but if you want something to be great it’s gonna take a lot of work.

I think that would be interesting to have the ending based on who you romanced. When it comes to happy or sad, I’ll always lean towards happy. The best part about games though is you can have it either/or depending on your choices. The only way I’d be satisfied with a forced sad ending though is if I can see it coming from a mile away. And the worst thing would be making me think that there’s another way, making me work for a better end, and then pulling the rug out from under me anyway. I HATE those endings (coughMassEffect3cough). I think it’s done to make things more realistic, but the last thing I want playing a game is to be reminded of the futility of hard work.

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but if you can see it from miles away…where is the suspence ? whine :yum:

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I agree with every point of yours and I have yet to see a game implementing all of that into a RO. But I can’t really blame authors for not indulging that deep into romance in their games, it’s hard to write and easy to ignore for the sake of plot.

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I’d say I has more to do with there is already a lot of writing and coding for an author to deal with and they just decide not to add to their workload.

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Also, we have to take into account that not all authors are romance writers since they are afterall writing for another genre and highly subjective as well since different readers have their own headcanons on how each romance should go.

For me at least even though I would like to see more romance scenes but since the story is an adventure novel foremost, I wouldn’t mind the few romantic scenes in them as long as everything is wrapped up nicely.

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Can’t argue with that, but I suppose it depends on the priorities. If an author wants to write an adventure story, then I doubt they’ll save themselves the trouble of coding the things that makes the story adventure-y (for lack of a better term)

Do you think it would be better to have a good distance between the player and the romance for the sake of headcanons?

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For me as a reader, there should a balance. If you cater too much for the sake of headcanons there might be no much left for the romantic interaction in-game.

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I like/agree with what most people wrote. The idea of being pursued is generally unheard of in Choice of games, its mostly just you going out of your way to seek romance with a certain character.

That being said, I don’t like that the overwhelming majority of characters that are romanceable will react positively to your flirting. I’ve had situations where I’m in the middle of an intense battle with a character then the option to “kiss/flirt” with them appears when moments before they were desperately trying to kill you.

Also, call me crazy but I kind of enjoy the idea of rejection then “winning over” a certain character but that’s just my masochism kicking in.

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I personally I’m a sucker for controversy in the romances I pursue (in game that is.) I don’t want to have a smooth romance where everything is peachy and easygoing. I want something to rock the boat. I tend to have a weakness for RO’s from rival factions or starting off on the wrong foot and have some hostility between my RO’s.

Last and also very important to me is that the relationship gets acknowledged, not just a simple romance scene and afterwards it no longer gets acknowledged.

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Heh, I also have a knack at “romancing my rival” romance. There’s something that feels rewarding if you can break the hard-shell of your RO.

I don’t mean that a sweet romance can’t be good, but in the end, hardship strengthens the bond, isn’t it?

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Exactly! Having controversy also gives the relationship some body in my opinion and gets myself more emotionally involved into the story.

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“Why do these two love each other?” Hmm, that might be for the reader to decide as well as the writer, since the reader creates the MC in their imagination. Even if choices reflect the MCs character, the reader imagines the manner in which different MCs might say or do the same thing differently, for different reasons. The game itself does help this when the MC;s compatible personality scores, as well as just shared hobbies, or agreeing/concerned responses, lead to romance with a given love interest.

I was thinking with Open Season coming out that the Redemption season characters weren’t bad characters, but none of them were compelling love interests; there was nothing written to suggest the MC was attracted to any of them, and no time for meaningful interactions, or very much except talking heads.

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This is just a pet peeve of mine but I kind of don’t like when the game makes you pick between “choice that’s important for the story” and “flirt/spend time with the RO you like and miss out on important stuff.” Like, I get it, you can’t have everything but… I don’t know, I pretty much always want to pick the right thing which means ROs get pushed to the side and since I love romance subplots it just makes me sad to miss out.

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I see that in some games , like BW Swtor online . You get 3 reply a la Mass effect and one of them is a ‘Flirt’ but also the path for the romance . So I’m like…Urgh…if I don’t pick the romance…does it even stick? But I also wanna use that 1st reply here!

if you were to have both , how would it go though? like have small scene for Flirt and romance ? and everyone seriouse during main story dialogues ?