Breden isn’t expressing any interest. Nor am I. But for some reason the game decided I want an option to immediately kiss a guy I’ve met once.
I think that’s related to your sexuality being decided by which version of Breden you find amazingly attractive. While a bit sudden, I don’t think it’s really forced, as in the same choice you can instead lash out in response to their impudence. Or just take the middle option and do neither.
…You don’t think it’s weird to kiss someone you just met based on orientation? If it were a flirt option I’d understand it. Kissing option? No, that’s just utter madness. If someone tried that with me I would immediately start pummeling them into the ground.
But, anyway this is getting pretty off topic; this isn’t even the thread for that game.
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Personally the only times I like romance are when it gives a chance to interact more with the interesting characters.
(Edit: I wrote this then realized it made it sound like this was the only issue with romantic subplots. Its not but I just chose to talk about one no one else seems to have realized the effects of.)
However there are a lot of characters who aren’t given the romance option, when they’re gonna die. Maybe there should be a dating app called protagonists meet, and when you sign up you become immortal.
The most obvious example is Community College Hero by @hustlertwo if you care about spoilers don’t read on because it won’t let me blur it, but CCH is years old at this point, and rightfully popular.
Oragami is probably the most interesting female in the series, except the one true RO Tress (if you disagree you will share Oragamis fate.) Now when I first played I found it weird how you could sleep with pretty much everyone except her. Then learning that she wasn’t actually 18 in the next one, which seems like a weird detail only added to justify the lack of options. All this for reasons I won’t pretend to understand, did he just not want to put in effort of two versions of the death? No Eric Moser is many things, but not lazy. Did he just not want to piss people off? Probably but I’m not completely sure.
The thing is that I like being attached to sinking ships, that makes it all the sadder, though in the case of CCH I do understand that CCH is supposed to be mostly happy, but if that’s the case why did he kill off an innocent charitable young teen, who was in college without seemingly anyone noticing pre-mortem?
Now we all probably know that Oragami is somehow alive in the space in between, undoing all the sadness except for the money (excuse the pun) blown on the funeral. That’s for shadowed, though I’m certainly not a fan of reviving dead characters I will atleast admit it’s well foreshadowed. Plus if it is supposed to be supers then about 7 and a halfish issues is a pretty long streak of death.
This is not to pick on Eric Moser, not every authors recognition reflects their quality, but for the most part he’s earned it. Tress, Combat Wombat, and Dirty Girl are always fun to read about, and he takes feedback much better than a lot of people.
It’s just that he’s the most popular, so he has a bigger target on his Lawyer brained back.
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It’s bad from a business standpoint imo. I can’t think of anything more certain to piss off a chunk of your reader base than unavoidably killing off their preferred romance interest. Seems like a great way to lose sales and get bad reviews.
The character was never meant to be a romantic option. Full stop. @Eric_Moser 's only fault here (if there was one) was that this was not communicated to everyone equally well.
Eric does a lot correctly in his game designing – unavoidable killing of romantic options is not one of the things he does. In fact, he goes to great lengths to avoid killing off any, such as Hedonist.
@Fredrick-No-E – @hustlertwo and @Eric_Moser are not the same person. I mean, they share some traits, but they are not one and the same person. You might want to change that in your post.
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I just meant that I think that’s why authors in general don’t just kill RIs as plot points. I probably shouldn’t have quoted that part. I haven’t played the game in question, didn’t mean to imply anything about the author. Just my observation of games as a whole is that killing romance interests seems like a sure fire way to anger your player base.
It’s not just IF, either; imagine how Mass Effect fans would have reacted if BioWare unavoidably killed off Tali midway through the romance plot line.
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Ehm… suicide mission and Rannoch flashback… They actually did it, kind of, and no quick time event can save her.
Also… Kaidan and Ashley in ME1, any RO but Liara in ME2, and Miranda, Jack, Kelly, Steve and Samara (honourable mention) in ME3.
Actually it’s safe to say that the only RO with plot armor are Samantha and Liara (and even Liara was meant to potentially die in a earlier concept and can still die if your WA are too low and she’s in your team during the final run
EDIT also Samara case: the only RO who will reject you even if she developes real fealings for you and she’ll cry for doing it
To make a long story short: because it makes me feel things.
(If written to my liking.)
I’ve been a big romance fan since I was a teen (I read all those horrible dime novels about big strong men clashing with headstrong women with a hefty dose of sexual tension) and it’s still the one theme that will give me what I crave when consuming media: positive emotions.
Even though I’ve switched over to mainly wlw romance, that still holds true. A well-written romance can make me squee like a little girl, give me an ache deep in my chest (the good kind so long as I know it’ll turn out alright in the end), make me cry, make me angry - it can make me feel every emotion the characters are going through deeply.
I’m sure there are plenty of people who simply don’t ‘feel’ romance plots and that’s fine, but for me the inclusion of romance (especially with a choice as to which romance that is) has become my main criteria for choosing what books I read and what games I play. That doesn’t mean I won’t consume media without it, but when it comes to IF, yeah, I probably won’t read one that doesn’t have romance options.
tl;dr
World cold, romance subplots warm.
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I am a little confused by the conversation (and took the liberty of adding some spoiler tags to @Fredrick-No-E comments just because they are pretty specific and spoilery and I’m hoping to grab some new readers to the whole series when F&G comes out).
Yeah, that character was a kid. I aged her down to make the situation more tragic. She was never ever ever ever meant to be a romance option. I mean, hell, I introduced like 25 characters in Trial by Fire, not all of them are going to be ROs. I find it odd for anyone to take a position that an author can’t kill off any character that any reader could conceivably want to romance.
Oh and me and @hustlertwo being mixed up…hmmm. Well, we’re both dads and we’re both on Twitter. I’m not sure how much further the comparisons go. He is sort of lame.
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This is true. And any time you want to send those CCH royalties over that you’ve been wrongfully pocketing, I’m ready.
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Breden definitely thinks so.
I tend to like romance in CoG games when it brings opportunities for other things I like:
- Getting to know interesting NPCs
- Character-driven rather than plot-driven momentum in the story
- Drama!
Of course you don’t need romance to have those things, and not all romances make the most of the opportunity. Some of my favorite CoGs have no romance; others of them wouldn’t be weakened if they’d left it out.
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Oh, ok, that’s better, lol. I obviously didn’t actually try to select that option, so I didn’t know how he would react. I just thought it was an incredibly strange option.
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This is kind of my point that there needs to be a bigger focus on interesting characters that are not RO’s in many games. Origami was flagged as a friendship zone character, but because she wasn’t romancable this annoys some readers. If everyone has to be romancable to be considered worthwhile, then this puts limits on what authors can do with their stories because killing off a RO tends to go down very badly. IMO characters should be characters first with their own storylines and interests, and RO’s second to make them better rounded out, more interesting individuals. If killing off a character makes the most sense to a storyline, then this should be able to happen without authors like Eric_Moser being called out for doing it.
(Incidentally, one of the reasons why Abysm’s veil went out on hiatus is because I found I had written myself into a corner by allowing people that were not planned to be RO’s be potential RO’s by popular demand which kind of caused issues for me later down the plot line and I needed time to attempt to rejig and sort out my storylines in a way that hopefully won’t upset readers later in the game. I perhaps should have just stuck with the original vision for the story I had, but there is a very strong need to include RO’s rather than just friends in games, and authors do like to try and please people who are supportive of what we’re writing.)
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depends on the story
like choice of cat game it did not have romance witch was fine
but other games with human char i would prefer the option
I don’t often enjoy games that have romance be the sole focus but I like romance to be in the game in some capacity because I feel like it adds something to the world and it’s more interesting for me to interact with it
When it comes to romance, I dance an odd line. Which I’ll get to in a moment.
As far as stories go, I do like romance. Or even romantic elements, so to speak. I enjoy seeing the character I’m following find that one person who they’ll turn to in times of need, which is especially good after a high-stress situtition. Like losing a friend or loved one, either by accident or because a difficult choice demanded a sacrifice.
Romance, in a story, can push the MC to extremes. The best part is when the MC is getting ready to topple over a point where there’s no turning back, who might be at odds with what they normally do, and have that one person be : “Yeah, not happening. Get over here.”
As an example, a mc that’s anti-killing getting ready to kill an enemy because the mc had a mental break. In a normal situation, the MC might just beat the ever-loving shit out of the antagonist and leave it at that. But this one moment, when on the brink of breaking their own moral code, the RO sweeps in and stops it from happening. Or maybe they kill the antagonist on the mc’s behalf.
Another thing I really like about romance is the romance, the tension that runs between the characters and the desire. When it comes to sexy times, I’m all for it. Most romances I read, I read because I want to see how all that tension comes to a climax in a fit of passion, either sweet or intense.
This is probably why I love romancing Mason in Wayhaven. He’s a physical person, he obviously wants to be be physical with my mc. And my mc, she’s shy and flighty and utterly refusing to believe she’s attracted to the moody smoker that likes to perch in the corner like an aggressive bird of prey. On top of stopping a killer, working her job, she also has a personal issue about trusting others.
It’s dramatic, makes things fun, and I enjoy it a lot.
However, I detest romance simply for the sake of romance. It has to play a part, in some way or another. Even if it’s a background feature, romancing a RO should change a few things along the way, even if it’s simply for comfort, helping find information, or something else. If you can remove the romance from the story and have the same narrative, then just remove the ruddy romance.
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It depends if the romance is writen good. I don’t want insta love or love triangle. I want some slow burn romance.
But the thing that’s important to me when reading are characters and story. If the characters are sympatic and good writen (when i think that someone characters should be together, i will just ship them anyway), if the story is interesting, then i couldn’t care less about romance.
I do play games without romance in them, but I prefer games that do, and I’m much more likely to buy a game if it’s advertised as having romance. It makes both my character and the other characters in the world feel much more alive and interesting, and gets me more invested in them and what’s going on. Ever since I discovered BioWare lo these many years ago, a game where my character doesn’t make deep connections - including falling in love - with other characters over the course of their journey has felt empty.
Oddly, I’m not so much a fan of romance in books, movies and other forms of entertainment, probably because I often don’t like the characters involved or how they treat each other, and in a non-video game there’s nothing I can do about it.
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I don’t know if it’s necessarily the romance I crave, though I definitely do enjoy it.
What I really want is for my PC to be wanted, to feel that other characters care about them, that they matter. And that often seems to be forgotten outside of romance options.
And well, the power-fantasy of everyone being attracted to/interested in my character (whether I want to romance them or not) is also quite fun and ego-stroking.
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