Maybe one day, someone in charge of making video games will figure out remember that compelling, unique, decently challenging and rewarding gameplay is the actual fundamental component of a video game, and that everything else is important, but ultimately secondary to that.
Hmmm… Or, or, hear me out: what about you’re some guy in some mysterious place, but here comes the best part: this time you have amnesia and you must shoot guns at monsters to uncover the truth?
Is another… open world survival pvp crafting game.
Preferably with zombies.
And season passes.
And 83939583 in game cosmetics.
…
About a month ago, as a joke, I said that like the most frustrating, evil game I could imagine would be basically a game that is nothing but shitty NPC escort quests, through an active warzone with other players in PvP, where the NPC is fragile, annoying and whiney and pretentious as possible, moves slower than you run but faster than you walk…
…and every time they get wounded or just scared or drop something or trip or see a butterfly, you go into a bethesda death stare with them where you have to get through a 10+ step dialogue tree that is different everytime and only has a single success state, all others result in you having to retry…
… and its all still an active real time combat zone while you are locked into this, you and idiot NPC still vulnerable to other players.
The state of video gaming is such that within minutes, someone said this would actually be a game they’d want to play, that its an actually novel idea, sounds fun.
When I read that, my mouth dropped, in a dazed stupor.
EDIT: Fuck, all you’d have to do is call it Puppy Girl Escort Quest, and make the person you’re escorting be varying kinds of kawaii waifus, surprise, the game is actually a harem anime.
So what you’re saying is, an extraction shooter where you play as a bodyguard for the VIP NPC, with some fun risk reward mechanics related to straying from the NPC for loot, and deciding which items to keep for yourself and which to give to the NPC? Sounds quite novel, could be fun
Romance in video games is fun, yeah, but it’s usually just something extra. It’s rarely the main focus and I’m hard-pressed to really imagine how to make it the main focus without making a gooner game. Usually romance/sex is sort of the cherry on top of an otherwise good game.
Money is the old economy. Teens have something that adults don’t have that is infinitely more valuable than money: attention. This is how, despite having no money, teen taste and culture is so over-represented today.
I genuinely think that money is no longer the goal of the top economic echelon. Techniques for controlling how people spend money can be generalized into controlling all their behaviour; total power.
Half-assed sex scenes (no pun intended) are probably worse than ones that are well done.
I still think a lot about one of the beats in a DA:I romance. But like… all the ones from DA:O were kind of bad. But also the one I played in DA:V was so PG-13 and sterile it wasn’t any fun at all.
I’ll admit my fondness was more about her character being interesting and I don’t remember much of the mechanical aspects of the way the game handled relationships.
To be fair, the DLC that added the absurd +50 approval gifts was an optional download released on April 1st. The gifts system as shipped by the vanilla game was not too bad, and was not enough to make a companion swoon over you single-handedly. At least I don’t think so. That being said, I can’t pretend DA:O is the height of dating sims or anything, either.
Actually. Sometimes it is. The actual problem is that you’re trying to figure it out at all. If you’re trying to engineer the perfect product, it will always be a shit game. Good games come from passionate developers who have an idea, not from board meetings and focus groups.
And a major disappointment you couldn’t romance in Cyberpunk and the romance in Outer Worlds felt so half assed. Romance can be a great part of a game.
You can romance in Cyberpunk, but the romances have gender preferences. Judi and River will only romance women, Kerry and the other one I’ve never actually met will only romance men.
Really? Fair enough, I don’t recall there being any options to romance anyone when I played, but I must have just missed it. I remember the forced gay scene, which, like, fine, but I’m not gay, so it would have been cool to get at least one chance with a girl, lol, but it never seemed to come up no matter what I did with female companions in tow.
Panam is the other romancable character. If you do her entire side story (which is quite good) and choose the right options throughout, you’ll have the option to romance her near the end of the game. She’s only attracted to characters with a masculine body.
The romances in general are very easy to screw up. You lock yourself out of several right at character creation unfortunately. Here’s what you need for character creation to get each romance:
Judy: Feminine voice and body
Kerry: Masculine voice and body
River: Feminine body
Panam: Masculine body
As long as you meet the requirements, you can romance 2 people in vanilla, though there’s something at the end of the game that requires you to pick one of them
You also need to do their side missions, but you meet each of them in the course of the main story. There’s also 4 romantic encounters that sadly don’t go anywhere serious.
You can get it on with Meredith Stout, the militech lady who threatens you near the start of the game. If you don’t insult her, you can get another mission from her in act 2. There’s also 3 encounters that can happen, but those are potential story spoilers
Remember when all those internet duds were mad that Dragon Age 2 was “sHoVinG tHe gAy aGeNdA dOwN oUr tHroAts!!!” because the NPCs would romance the PC regardless of gender? And they absolutely lost their shit that Anders might express interest and, if you’re not interested, you’d have to politely turn him down once?
Those are the worst sort of people and I frankly wish them ill.
Been saying this for a long time now. Romance in video games is about as batshit-cringy as it gets and is a tremendous waste of time that could have been used to add meaningful content or fix stability issues/bugs instead.
That’s not how senior management approvals work. You’re not allowed to pitch an opinion. Youre only allowed to make recommendations based on something that previously worked or if it’s a direct request by multiple users in an official feed back form. Why do you think there is no creativity in AAA games, they call it “data driven decision making”.
Hades was also HUGE and I find it hard to believe it was mainly for the gameplay as even I, a gameplay purist, have always been drawn in by Supergiant’s storytelling.
I don’t hate games that have it- though I do wonder what better content there would be if the developers didn’t focus on all the mechanics and coding involved in making it work.
Too forced, every dialogue option is either slightly flirty (at least) or just telling them “fuck you and die”.
Even when you say you just want friendship and avoid the most flirty options, it won’t stop the game from trying to throw you in a romance. I hated that.
Yep. It did depend on the companion a bit, IIRC Shadowheart and Astarion’s romances wouldn’t be triggered unless the PC picked the flirty dialogue. But then there were some companions who would pursue the player. I hated how I couldn’t just be Gale’s Bro, and Halsin is just plain creepy.
Gale has a problem where he interprets interest in his backstory as romantic interest. Which is kind of realistic, but no one wants to be on the receiving end of that in real life or in a game.
Like bro, put your dick away and tell me some gossip about Mystra.
I mean, I played Firewatch. It’s part suspense and mystery but I felt there was a possible romance angle there that is hard to deny. You can make it platonic and straightforward but I remember feeling quite connected to the person on the other line.
Then again, I’m twice the age of a “teen” so I don’t know if it fits.
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Maybe one day, someone in charge of making video games will
figure outremember that compelling, unique, decently challenging and rewarding gameplay is the actual fundamental component of a video game, and that everything else is important, but ultimately secondary to that.Hmmm… Or, or, hear me out: what about you’re some guy in some mysterious place, but here comes the best part: this time you have amnesia and you must shoot guns at monsters to uncover the truth?
No, come on man…!
What we need…
Is another… open world survival pvp crafting game.
Preferably with zombies.
And season passes.
And 83939583 in game cosmetics.
…
About a month ago, as a joke, I said that like the most frustrating, evil game I could imagine would be basically a game that is nothing but shitty NPC escort quests, through an active warzone with other players in PvP, where the NPC is fragile, annoying and whiney and pretentious as possible, moves slower than you run but faster than you walk…
…and every time they get wounded or just scared or drop something or trip or see a butterfly, you go into a bethesda death stare with them where you have to get through a 10+ step dialogue tree that is different everytime and only has a single success state, all others result in you having to retry…
… and its all still an active real time combat zone while you are locked into this, you and idiot NPC still vulnerable to other players.
The state of video gaming is such that within minutes, someone said this would actually be a game they’d want to play, that its an actually novel idea, sounds fun.
When I read that, my mouth dropped, in a dazed stupor.
EDIT: Fuck, all you’d have to do is call it Puppy Girl Escort Quest, and make the person you’re escorting be varying kinds of kawaii waifus, surprise, the game is actually a harem anime.
So what you’re saying is, an extraction shooter where you play as a bodyguard for the VIP NPC, with some fun risk reward mechanics related to straying from the NPC for loot, and deciding which items to keep for yourself and which to give to the NPC? Sounds quite novel, could be fun
Romance in video games is fun, yeah, but it’s usually just something extra. It’s rarely the main focus and I’m hard-pressed to really imagine how to make it the main focus without making a gooner game. Usually romance/sex is sort of the cherry on top of an otherwise good game.
Who cares what teens want?
They don’t have any money.
Is that why no one cares what I want? Because I don’t have any money? 🤔
Money is the old economy. Teens have something that adults don’t have that is infinitely more valuable than money: attention. This is how, despite having no money, teen taste and culture is so over-represented today.
They also will become adults. So hook them now. They might also have access to their parents’ money.
I genuinely think that money is no longer the goal of the top economic echelon. Techniques for controlling how people spend money can be generalized into controlling all their behaviour; total power.
Half-assed sex scenes (no pun intended) are probably worse than ones that are well done.
I still think a lot about one of the beats in a DA:I romance. But like… all the ones from DA:O were kind of bad. But also the one I played in DA:V was so PG-13 and sterile it wasn’t any fun at all.
You underestimate the power of my crush on Morrigan.
I think that you can just give them gifts until they’re horny for you is like the quintessential example of poorly done video game romance.
Wait isn’t that basically how it works in Stardew Valley too?
I never got far in stardew, so maybe?
I’ll admit my fondness was more about her character being interesting and I don’t remember much of the mechanical aspects of the way the game handled relationships.
To be fair, the DLC that added the absurd +50 approval gifts was an optional download released on April 1st. The gifts system as shipped by the vanilla game was not too bad, and was not enough to make a companion swoon over you single-handedly. At least I don’t think so. That being said, I can’t pretend DA:O is the height of dating sims or anything, either.
Actually. Sometimes it is. The actual problem is that you’re trying to figure it out at all. If you’re trying to engineer the perfect product, it will always be a shit game. Good games come from passionate developers who have an idea, not from board meetings and focus groups.
This feels like such a non issue because games and movies these days have basically zero sex appeal or romance
It was a pleasant surprise that you could romance people in BG3
And a major disappointment you couldn’t romance in Cyberpunk and the romance in Outer Worlds felt so half assed. Romance can be a great part of a game.
You can romance in Cyberpunk, but the romances have gender preferences. Judi and River will only romance women, Kerry and the other one I’ve never actually met will only romance men.
Really? Fair enough, I don’t recall there being any options to romance anyone when I played, but I must have just missed it. I remember the forced gay scene, which, like, fine, but I’m not gay, so it would have been cool to get at least one chance with a girl, lol, but it never seemed to come up no matter what I did with female companions in tow.
Panam is the other romancable character. If you do her entire side story (which is quite good) and choose the right options throughout, you’ll have the option to romance her near the end of the game. She’s only attracted to characters with a masculine body.
The romances in general are very easy to screw up. You lock yourself out of several right at character creation unfortunately. Here’s what you need for character creation to get each romance:
Judy: Feminine voice and body Kerry: Masculine voice and body River: Feminine body Panam: Masculine body
As long as you meet the requirements, you can romance 2 people in vanilla, though there’s something at the end of the game that requires you to pick one of them
You also need to do their side missions, but you meet each of them in the course of the main story. There’s also 4 romantic encounters that sadly don’t go anywhere serious.
You can get it on with Meredith Stout, the militech lady who threatens you near the start of the game. If you don’t insult her, you can get another mission from her in act 2. There’s also 3 encounters that can happen, but those are potential story spoilers
I really hate when game devs don’t make all characters opportunistically bisexual.
Remember when all those internet duds were mad that Dragon Age 2 was “sHoVinG tHe gAy aGeNdA dOwN oUr tHroAts!!!” because the NPCs would romance the PC regardless of gender? And they absolutely lost their shit that Anders might express interest and, if you’re not interested, you’d have to politely turn him down once?
Those are the worst sort of people and I frankly wish them ill.
Agreed. Give me my Judy, Panam, and River harem damn it!
I thought you said Outer Wilds.
Been saying this for a long time now. Romance in video games is about as batshit-cringy as it gets and is a tremendous waste of time that could have been used to add meaningful content or fix stability issues/bugs instead.
It can be cute inold school adventure games tho
What’s this from?
https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Dakka
I meant the cartoon ork in a suit :P
You’ve also simultaneously failed age verification
Good Sir I’m almost 40. I thought Ancient Aliens Guy was ubiquitous.
Never enough dakka.
Related game: Mothergunship
SIGNALIS is a game about romance and I loved it, it is one of my favorite relatively recently released games.
Maybe you’re doing it wrong?
As usual big business trying to figure out a cookie cutter formula to repeatedly make billions in profit. But games are creative, not formulaic.
Yeah it’s too bad their formula isn’t “what if we made a good game?”
That’s not how senior management approvals work. You’re not allowed to pitch an opinion. Youre only allowed to make recommendations based on something that previously worked or if it’s a direct request by multiple users in an official feed back form. Why do you think there is no creativity in AAA games, they call it “data driven decision making”.
bg3 was literally one of the biggest games of the year…
also the sims 4 has been going for years
Hades was also HUGE and I find it hard to believe it was mainly for the gameplay as even I, a gameplay purist, have always been drawn in by Supergiant’s storytelling.
Bets that it wasn’t because of the romance.
I completely avoided all of the romance and loved the game because it’s a fantastic game.
I think it’s cool that it’s there for people that enjoy it though.
I don’t hate games that have it- though I do wonder what better content there would be if the developers didn’t focus on all the mechanics and coding involved in making it work.
The romance was the worst part of BG3, imo.
Too forced, every dialogue option is either slightly flirty (at least) or just telling them “fuck you and die”.
Even when you say you just want friendship and avoid the most flirty options, it won’t stop the game from trying to throw you in a romance. I hated that.
Yep. It did depend on the companion a bit, IIRC Shadowheart and Astarion’s romances wouldn’t be triggered unless the PC picked the flirty dialogue. But then there were some companions who would pursue the player. I hated how I couldn’t just be Gale’s Bro, and Halsin is just plain creepy.
Gale has a problem where he interprets interest in his backstory as romantic interest. Which is kind of realistic, but no one wants to be on the receiving end of that in real life or in a game.
Like bro, put your dick away and tell me some gossip about Mystra.
Maybe it was deliberate and intended to give some self awareness to some people who won’t take no for an answer and keep trying.
The upside I guess is that a lot of cis straight men got to experience how uncomfortable unwanted advances are.
A romance story is good if’s not half-assed and a game doesn’t depend on it. 16-bit RPG’s did it well.
If they want sex they’ll go to pornhub
Some people prefer multiplayer games.
I mean, I played Firewatch. It’s part suspense and mystery but I felt there was a possible romance angle there that is hard to deny. You can make it platonic and straightforward but I remember feeling quite connected to the person on the other line.
Then again, I’m twice the age of a “teen” so I don’t know if it fits.
No one wants to admit they want that stuff in a survey but those are always super popular