This topic's been on my mind on and off for a while. I suppose it started with the first entry in this Cracked article. Sorry if I sound like one of those "video games are causing society's decline" pests, but after the Isla Vista killings in May and the publication of the perpetrator's manifesto, I got to thinking about the "society owes you a lover" trope and its presence in video games--more specifically, how some games might inadvertently reinforce the idea. A lot of the Harvest Moon games come to mind; even if you're a jerk to pretty much everyone else in town, including your livestock, you can win a woman's (or man's) love simply by giving her/him the right gifts on a regular basis and maybe completing a few tasks that pop up. As much as I love the Harvest Moon games, this aspect of them has come to bother me. It's worth pointing out that I doubt many (if any) developers actually want their games to convey that kind of message, but the risk of such a message being accidentally conveyed is an issue that I feel needs attention.

This problem with certain portrayals of romance in games led me to ask myself: what is a good way--if not the ideal way--to portray romance in video games? Admittedly, while this question is important when dealing with any romance in modern media, such as movies, I feel the question becomes even more important in several games. In a game in which the player has no control over whom his/her character ends up with, such as Final Fantasy VIII, it's simply a matter of the developers needing to show a good relationship forming. If the player is the one deciding such things, though, it then becomes important to address how the player would go about getting his/her character into a relationship. Done wrong, an optional love interest in a game boils down to little more than a prize you win after completing a quest. My view is that this isn't just a matter of portraying the characters as people, but also one of portraying the development of their relationship as more than a mere sidequest. This is also my view in the case of dating sims and other games in which romance is a central part of the plot rather than an optional part.

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I was gonna say, don't we already have a topic like this but I think that was more a general Romance one...

For me, it heavily depends on the genre of the game and whether the romance is an important plot point to the story or character or if it's something that is sort of supposed to be in the background, not too noticeable but not completely gone or optional.

Final Fantasy VIII is a good example of where the romance is supposed to be a rather important part of the story, and the character development of one or two people basically revolves around it. I felt it did it wrong, or at least it didn't convey to me the fact that I thought, yes, Squall and Rinoa ended up falling for each other for/with good reasons, they shared enough scenes together that evolved their relationship into a romantic one that I can believe.
Well, it didn't and that is just terrible because the romance was so important.

Now, in games like Harvest Moon, the spouse tends to end up being nothing more than moving, talking furniture in your house after marriage that may pop out a baby some time afterward or help in getting a baby to pop out of you. So there, it makes sense that the romance is heavily simplified to the point of Gifts and making some scenes that might or might not be very romantic. Because the focus of the game isn't on the romance.

Dating Sims, of course, do a better job at this, since the point is to appeal to the player, charm them and get together with someone. So you have a lot of scenes, a lot of mushy-cute romance stuff going on. Makes sense, after all.

For me, if the romance is important to the game or character, I want to see the relationship develop. I want to see maybe how they initially met - or, if they've known each other for a bit - give a short (!) exposition on how they met, how they get past an awkward stage or begin to be gentle or caring towards the other. I don't want them to meet, have a scene here or there and - Time Skip! - they suddenly have a 10 year old kid that was conceived in the meantime. They're a family now and they're happy, no asking questions!

And yes, scenes and dialogue. But not tons of dialogue that serves as exposition on how things go. After all, videogame. Visual Medium. Show, Don't Tell. Some telling is okay, as long as it doesn't take too long and it feels like they should've cut this out and just handed me a little book with the manual that explains everything about the couple, with a note that I need to read it prior to playing the game.
Which is terrible. You don't leave important shit out of the game and only reveal it in supplementary material.

C-A

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I don't especially like romance in video games, it often comes off as forced and full of horrible horrible clichés that just uggh.
I don't mind it if a romance is actually established by the time the game has started however, I think I just have trouble with the speed and ease of romances forming in RPs.

For example, I didn't have a problem with Snow x Serah (in fact I think married/engaged relationships are an interesting thing to explore in a fictional situation) and almost found it kinda sweet. It might seem like Cat bait but there's not that many pre-established relationships in RPs out there that are actually focused on I can think of.

I also dislike it when game romance is done via an avatar. That's just annoying self-insert stuff which I find just ugh because the romances always end up forced with this incredibly blank and bland character. It'll either come off as incredibly rushed and sometimes poorly written (ala Fire Emblem Awakening) or it'll just seem overly mechanical and the people are just 'there' to be romanced (like Persona and Dating Sim games).

Course there's a market for them games of course but I prefer it when they are more believable. I kinda like the other Fire Emblem games for that, they really limited the people you could talk to and eventually romance in comparison to Awakening. That's because the characters were actually WRITTEN to have chemistry with each other based on their own personalities. If you put a bunch of people together there's no guarantee they'll all interact well or hang out with each other. Some might just have nothing in common. Awakening seems to go around this and just pair up everyone which cheapens the romance in the end and leaves you with some rather weak pairings. In the Sacred Stones I felt the relationships were largely better because they didn't try and link everyone up arbitrarily.

End Result, I don't especially like romance in games.

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Unless it is a dating game, I think romance should just be part of the story, or else not in the story at all. Basically, out of the player's hands.

I'll admit there was at least one non-dating game I've played that did allow the player to choose which girl the protagonist ended up with, but it always felt cheap since the plot didn't really revolve around the romance.

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There are I believe a few Romances in some of the Dragon Quest games.

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Well I was gonna use some other FF couples as examples... for Snow and Sera, I find it hard to believe it. They come up as bland characters, but we're told they're engaged. I have nothing against that, I agree, engaged or married relationships tend to be rare in videogames, it would be nice to see this done well. Which, I think, it wasn't. We're shown in flashbacks how the engagement came about - said shortly after the revelation that she's a l'Cie and doomed to either turn Crystal or Monster, that Snow won't abandon her/leave her alone and then he pops the question. (I know I sound like Light with this, but it got hit on the nail: "She turns l'Cie and you pop the question?") Scenes prior to that... just... don't show the relationship. A scene prior to the engagement is how she's a l'Cie.

You know, I would like to see these two done well, but the game focuses on the whole l'Cie thing. But it goes back to what I originally said. If the romance is important to the story, or to the character and makes up a rather big part of who he or she is, it should be important for it to be, you know, depicted well and like it is important. And Snow and Sera didn't do that.

Now look at Cecil and Rosa from FF IV. Rosa's main character trait is her love for Cecil... but it's not a focus and she seems bland. Which, strangely enough, is okay this time around because shortly after I meet her, I leave, then she appears as the sick NPC I have to heal, then joins my party... and is kidnapped shortly after, having no screentime again. Since she doesn't seem important to the story beyond "Reason for Cecil to do this or that", it doesn't matter. (Similar to how it was okay that Sera didn't have much of a character in XIII - majority of the time, she spent it as an emotional plot trinket in my inventory)

C-A

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*shrugs* I figured it might be something you'd disagree about but I don't think it's worth arguing about at length here so I'll just say this.
In this case, the fact that I think it's interesting to focus on already established relationships is specifically because I don't like the 'starting up phase' like I said those often seem horribly forced. The scene on the bike was all I needed to see some chemistry between them, whether you think the characters are bland or not they appeared to really enjoy each others company in quite a romantic setting so I can settle for that. I guess I can see the romantic side to proposing to a L'Cie, it promises that even if everything goes to hell you'll still be there for someone. It's like having a partner diagnosed with cancer and promising to get married before they die so you can have that title if it matters to you. I guess I just never understood Lightning's argument against proposing to a L'Cie.

Though yeah Cecil and Rosa is a bit of a bland love story, I'd be intrigued to see how they handled it in the After Years when they were actually married though.

Lulu and Wakka were also married by X-2 but it really didn't get that much focus enough, little more than married NPCs in any case.

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I do think that Dragon Quest 5 handles the romance very well considering it's pretty much the center of the plot.

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Well as romantic as it is to marry someone who is terminally ill with cancer and leaving the title and all... it can cause you huge problems when the person dies. Like, since you're legally married and all, you're stuck with the bills. And while part of being married is that, too, yes, it can be quite... annoying to deal with. Especially if it's on top of the grief of losing someone beloved.

I think Rosa got shoved aside very much in TAY and Cecil has that one thing where he re-accepts his past or so... as for Lulu and Wakka, well... quite honestly, it felt like such an asspull that those two got together, let alone married and are expecting a baby. They snipped at each other at times in X, had one scene where she supported him when he almost fainted, and had the shared grief over Chappu, but other than that... there was never any indication that there was something there between them.



How? Does it show the romance progressing or...?

C-A

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Taken from TvTropes:


Because threatening your younger sibling instead of actually trying to talk to them is the perfect way to see if they're lying or not. I will never not be angry at that scene.

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Am I the only person who thinks Light acted just fine? If my younger sister suddenly told me "I am now a Pulse l'Cie, although nothing of Pulse's has been active for centuries on Cocoon... also, I'm marrying my boyfriend, who you totally hate." Of course Light would think that the former was just a pretty stupid lie to make the latter seem like "less worse" news... heck, maybe Sera's plan was to piss Light off so much that she'd say "Get out!" and she'd take that as permission to elope with Snow.



I'm trying to remember Rosa's dialogue... well, I recall her forcing Lydia to learn/use Fire, not knowing (or seeming to care) that she had good reason to hate Fire... um... also her sneaking onto the ship to the moon cause... Cecil suddenly was a mysogynistic ass and told them to stay away from the fighting, when they had done a ton of fighting earlier... I remember her whining that Cecil "isn't the Cecil she fell in love with" when she visited him at night in his room... but... I don't recall her being very vocal against Baron...

C-A

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If we're only talking about canon pairings?

Snow WhitexBigby <333333333333

SevenxLotus <3333333

With special attention to the former, their relationship seems very natural to me and not forced in the slightest. Plus, I love Snow

No. We are talking bout video games that has Romance IN it. Not canons. o.o

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It's pretty much the center point. DQ5 plays out as a coming of age story. It goes through a journey of a boy's life from childhood, to adulthood, to fatherhood. The ending of the game pretty much has a full fledged family going out and killing the villain of the game. I mean, the romance isn't super deep or anything, considering it was an SNES game, but considering the plot revolved around romance as well as one growing up, it transitioned, I think pretty smoothly. Granted, I feel it's best if you marry the girl the game is hinting towards you marrying, but you do have the option to also marry a girl you barely know who's rich and all, which would kinda kill the whole childhood romance thing the game built up, but hey, main story options in an SNES RPG? Don't recall too many of those back then.

So, in short, yeah. If you marry the girl the game wants you to, the romance practically progresses. The flavorful party dialogue when she joins you does a good job of this too.

Honestly, considering both this game and FFVIII center their plots around romance, I think DQ5 was leagues above Squall and Rinoa. Bianca>>>>>>>>>>>>Rinoa.

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In light of the recent video by Extra Credits, I feel I can now justifiably revive this thread. They brought up a lot of interesting points, and I'll probably be parroting a lot of them in this post.

Maybe I just haven't been exposed to the right games, but there appear to be many aspects of romance that simply aren't common in video games. As at least four of this forum's regulars can no doubt confirm, there's a lot more to romance than simply falling in love and deciding to get together. There's still what comes after that moment the two of you decide to become a couple. I think the Extra Credits team hit the nail on the head with regards to portraying what I'm calling the more important parts of romance: while they're what holds a relationship together, the player's control over them is limited from the start if the relationship isn't one the player chose to initiate, which can in turn limit the player's interest in said relationship. There's also the matter of making a truly engaging story out of these parts of a relationship. As a fan fiction author who's dealt with romance stories, I definitely understand the difficulty involved in writing a good relationship past the "Yes! We're finally together!" phase. As much as I love the idea of Lana Skye being Lana Edgeworth by the time of AA4, writing a compelling story for the time after they're together is a lot harder than writing a compelling story about their efforts to reach that point in their relationship. TV Tropes has a page on this phenomenon.

There's also the matter of addressing relationships that don't work out or are destroyed by outside forces (such as death). It's exceedingly risky, which is probably why I can't think of many cases. I'll grant that I recently played a game in which the main protagonist's implied love interest dies, but the weight of that death hinged entirely on me caring about their relationship in the first place (I did, but my feelings are not everyone's feelings). I suppose you could plan out a game in such a way that you pursue a love interest in the first part of the game while the second part deals with how you respond to said love interest's death, but it's still the same problem in that if you don't care about any of the potential love interests, you're not going to be that affected by their deaths. It's similar with a breakup. If you didn't care about the character in the first place, you're going to welcome the breakup.

One thing Extra Credits brought up that I had never really thought about, though, was rejection. I can recall a few cases of characters being in love with the protagonist, but stepping aside so he/she may be with his/her canon love interest, but I can't think of any times the protagonist has been the one who can't be with the character he/she loves. I suppose it's the same problem as before: it deprives the player of agency. If the player really wants to get together with a particular character, he/she will be understandably annoyed that the character in question isn't an option. Mass Effect 3 arguably touched on this (at least for heterosexual characters) by introducing Samantha Traynor and Steve Cortez. Both characters are homosexual, so if your character isn't the same sex as them, you can't romance said characters. It's a nice start, but it's not quite what I'm hoping to see with regards to rejection. With the Mass Effect 3 example, rejection is still ultimately sidestepped in that an opposite-sex relationship is simply impossible for those characters. Technically, they're not interested, but one of the feelings that comes with rejection (maybe if I did X, they'd be interested) can't form here. It's kind of like the difference between facing an enemy that is defeatable, but way above your level, and facing an enemy that is invincible.

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Which can also backfire horribly. I have to like the characters before they go into a romance, so that I can care an hope that they do get together. If they skip making the characters likeable or even properly introducing them to me beyond "This is my name and sort-of relationship I have with this character" and immediately proceed to make sure I spend a good chunk of the game focusing on getting this character to fall in love with mine, it will annoy me. Because I don't know this person, I don't care about this person and repeated, forced interaction will result in making me dislike the characters.

For example, look at Final Fantasy X or Tales of the Abyss. Several times, the game will only proceed if I talk to Yuna or Tear, respectively. It's bothersome because in the former case I don't like Tidus, so I don't care what he does as long as he keeps his mouth shut, which he ultimately doesn't do around Yuna... and with Tear I don't care because I just do not see any romance actually blossoming between her and Luke.

Or even Twilight Princess. I'm told Ilia is super important and I have to follow her and find her and all, but all I saw of her was that she likes horses and is a tsundere. And I dislike the former, cause it's a character type I just dislike, regardless of gender. But being repeatedly told that I/the player character care about her is annoying because I just... don't. Forcing me to interact to force me to care will backfire.

C-A

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Ah it's been so long since I've watched extra credits I forgot how good it was. I can think of examples for most of the situations they talk about there but it's by no means common.

As for people turning you down when you ask them (and not on grounds of different sexual preferences):
Mass Effect 2- Samara.
Samara is a justicar, pretty much a warrior monk of justice who while having unquestionably strong morals does not let anything get in the way of it. At one point her code is telling her to hunt down a villain and as Justicars are regarded as borderline superheroes throughout the Galaxy many aren't willing to stop her. However to do so she would have to blitz through a crime scene and so the head of the crime scene (while wanting to help Samara) is tied by red tape. Samara calmly acknowledges this and says though she doesn't wish it as she respects the law, if they continue to refuse her access she will need to kill all the law enforcement that oppose her because her code commands her to go ahead. Such is her ties to her "code".

As such she refuses you a relationship on these grounds. Once she's allied with you she says she is focused too much on the mission and getting involved with you might compromise her Code somewhere down the line. Of course if you are a "Bad guy" she'll just turn you down flat without even mentioning the Code is holding her back.

Additionally: Vivienne from Dragon Age inquisition.

She turns you down because she's already in a committed relationship of sorts. Though granted I've not played the game and if they wanted to slip in another 'spoilery' reason for her turning you down they could.

It's one of the few things I liked about 13. They attempted to explore a relationship beyond initially hooking up. Snow and Serah are already established by the time the game starts, in fact they are moving to the next level - marriage. Though admittedly this is still another form of 'initiation' love story. Just replace 'hooking up' with 'getting married' so it's still got plenty of excitement and (as Extra Credits put it) that "Yes" moment. It was pretty interesting to see I'll say and it's a shame that they sort of bailed out of anything like that fairly quickly. Serah becomes frozen the whole game so we never need to see her do anything and by the next game where she's actually a main protagonist she sends her now-husband away so she can gallivant around time with the new young pretty Japanese protagonist without him seeming like a third wheel.

(To it's credit apparently there's an ending of XIII-2 where Snow shows up, makes Noel feel useless like a third wheel as Snow and Serah go off to save the day in hilarious fashion)

I think the "initiation" of relationship is just a really easy sell to players (in addition to being the easiest segment to pull off). I agree that it's a little weird and unhealthy at times how players always have total domination of relationships but I can see that if devs took that agency away from players there would be backlash from restricting player's freedom.

Sometimes this comes across as ridiculous though, I remember hearing about someone raging to the developers because Cullen wasn't gay in Dragon Age. Giving players so much control of their relationships in games can foster that weird sense of entitlement.

I know I've used Bioware games quite a lot here, for clarity: I don't think they've done them bad, the romances they build upon are actually pretty good and they do cover some variances as time and breaking up (at least by virtue of distance) do occur in Mass Effect. Between Mass Effect 2 and 3 one of your previous romantic options has gotten himself married (or at least in a committed relationship) and so can't be with you if you romanced him before. I think the domination of romance is a ongoing problem in games, also prevalent in Dating Sims (understandably so) and in Fire Emblem recently. Though I don't think it was a problem until Awakening when you had an avatar for yourself. Beforehand all relationships were between other characters and they couldn't just hook up with anyone they wished.

I'd like to see relationships explored more but it's difficult to implement I suppose

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Exactly. We don't know anything about them, they are established as being engaged from the get-go and done. We don't know them, we don't know why they're attracted to each other, Snow's reason for even asking Sera to marry him can come off as... well, in unfriendly terms "a promise that he ultimately won't have to honor" or put in overall terms "a nice attempt at being by her side, but ultimately won't help a lot". And as you say, Sera spends majority of the time frozen. What we do know about them is in flashbacks, but we don't get to know anything about them as a couple or characters themselves.



Uh, in defense, she didn't send him away. Sera said she's convinced that Lightning is alive and Snow decided on his own to leave and find her, ultimately seeing her in a dream and then getting branded again or what not, something like that. So, Snow left on his own. Sera just let him leave.



I think it'd be interesting to see an RPG where the romance, growing and developing in terms of relationship itself and the characters, was a main focus. I would say Tales of Destiny 2 did that, since Kyle and Reala's romance is kind of a focal point, with her searching for a/the Hero and Kyle deciding to become her hero (though he already previously had dreams of becoming a hero like his parents).
Though it ultimately went down in less importance, since you're more focused on fixing the time thingy going on and all that and the two have a final, kind of weird (in terms of story events) hook up at the end. The romance is, once again, pushed aside from the bigger Save The World plot. Though I think I'd still say that Destiny 2 is the Tales Of to date where romance was really important.

C-A

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Well I found it sufficient, but hypothetically I think outside of the Snow/Serah example if we want future games to cover more than "hooking up" then we'll need to make concessions on what they can show in a relationship. A game only has so much runtime after all, if a couple is already established there's only so much screentime they can get which they then have to split between "life as a couple" and flashbacks of "Building up to a couple" if that's what you would like. Even then thats already splitting screentime between the Couple, the Plot, and whatever the main character gets.

Sure it's possible one of the main characters IS in the couple but I think it's a doubtful trend in games as it takes away that element of 'hooking up' from the player as is. I'd like to see it done but with the way the market is now I think it's an established norm by this point and those kind of norms are monumental to change.

Basically it boils down to "How much of a couple's life can we reasonably show alongside an overarching story that ultimately may not be focused on them?" You can show screentime to convince them of how the couple got together or you can show them life as a couple but I think it's incredibly difficult to perfectly balance both. Concessions need to be made somewhere down the line. I'd say the concession should fall on the side of the "hooking up" phase, partially because overusing flashbacks to show backstory would be clunky I think as a story should either be told in the present or entirely through Flashback (Ala Prince of Persia ((Sorry that's a big spoiler but it's an early PS2 game at this point))). The other reason I think the past should make the concession is because I believe if a couple has enough chemistry you don't need to question how they got together.



Hmm maybe I'm misremembering but I was under the impression Serah had been pleading with Snow desperately to go and investigate the crystal because she believed her sister was still alive. *shrug* Well the point was they quickly shifted the 'baggage' out the way.



I think there's a mindset in Game Development, that romance is "boring". Therefore you can't have a game that focuses almost exclusively on it, as a lot of it is not fantastical and mundane living things. It's a "side" to the "Main course" of the game. The only time Games seem to think it's worthwhile is the high octane thrills of a forming relationship, hence dating sims.

In fairness though games have been able to look at it a little more recently. Mass Effect has the unique position of featuring the same character who can form relationships over a span of time which means it can actually explore relationships over time. You can break them, cheat on people, or forge a lifelong relationship to the point you start picking out beachfront property (not even kidding). Another recent game that is interesting this way is Catherine as it does explore the tensions and ups and downs of relationships with the main character having his doubts, and a "better offer", some of his doubts are genuine and some are unfounded.

Catherine's actually probably the best exploration of romance in a video game in...well as far as I can remember actually.

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Well I wouldn't say romance is in the focus of Catherine. It more comes across to me as a problem that can surface in all kinds of relationships, especially in long-running ones that had no real ambition to getting anywhere. The game is good in showing Vincent's worry and insecurity when Katherine suddenly starts talking about properly settling down with Vincent, marriage and maybe even children.

But the game ultimately doesn't focus on that, immediately bringing us the temptation in form of Catherine and making it seem more like Vincent is just a pussy who can't stand his ground properly. Which makes him annoying. (He does get better toward the end, which is where Troy Baker's voice fits better for Vincent but I personally think Troy Baker did not portray the insecure and worried Vincent properly for the previous nights) It more is like "Ho ho, hijinks of kind-of cheating on your girlfriend".

Though, at the end, the game goes completely out of the view of romance as any kind of plot and suddenly it's about... weeding out people who don't settle down and just have fun, also to get rid of cheaters and... man, that plot at the end made no sense...

While I get what you mean in cutting out the hooking up phase, Pierre, I think getting to hooking up can be interesting, too. If it's done properly. Though that's the key word, especially if people think romance is boring: properly. If they do it properly, giving us time to kick back, observe the characters getting close to each other, eventually hooking up and maybe even onward from that, it can be quite interesting.

Look at Lufia: Rise of the Sinistrals. It certainly seemed to have Maxim and Selan get married and love each other a bit out of nowhere, though they have been warming up to each other over the course of the game. They get married at kind of the half-point of the game. You'd think, hey getting married, yeah nothing anymore after the kid got born, too, right? Well not really. While the Sinistrals are still a major threat and the point of defeating to save the world, Maxim and Selan's relationship is still in the picture. Especially Selan feeling insecure about her relationship with Maxim. Heck, one of the dungeons is basically built around trying to rid Selan of her insecurities and display the love and trust she and Maxim share.
And it's quite a lovely scene to have. And relateable because I'm sure every person is at least sometimes insecure.

...And then there's the ending... which has nothing to do with their romance but... God dammit...

C-A

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Well maybe it's not about "romance" as such in Catherine but it explores a relationship in a way that games don't normally. It captures the chaotic ups and downs of a couple's life through a turbulent time. Granted because it's Atlus and...a GAME it does go off the deepend a bit with it's supernatural elements but it still taps into relatively unexplored territory when it comes to relationships in games.



Yes I see that, there's various games that do the 'hook up' very well. I'm not saying eradicate it entirely or that it's uninteresting because I know from experience that's not true. I've seen good relationships in games but the point is that games don't explore much else other than the hook up.

Would definitely be a game worth talking about if they did balance the hook up with the other phases of the relationship well.

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