But if video games are ever going to be taken seriously as an artistic medium, they have to grow up, and that means learning how to love authentically.
No. That take is horseshit. They don’t have to do anything to be taken seriously as art. They already are. If you can’t see it because it doesn’t tick some of your boxes that’s a you issue.
I would actually agree with him in some level. Art should always be evolving, and it should be looking past its comfort zones, even past areas many others have failed, to do so.
It doesn’t need to be a form of “disqualification” as he says, but there IS value in applying change even just for its own sake.
We need videogame romances where you are both so enamored with each other; every answer is stupid and cringe but to them it’s the most romantic thing ever. Also the sex is silly and awkward and kinda gross, but they both have fun, a good laugh and enjoy it.
I heard about a very silly, cartoony game that applies this as a basis: Buster Jam. The two leads are in a relationship, but it doesn’t affect their lazy heroic dynamic in any way. Funny to have a villain remark “…you and your GIRLFRIEND…” and not get corrected.
This is a really weird way to argue a weird point. I think, the main issue is, most games are closer to boardgames than movies. And the author places them too close to movies.
And you can build boardgames for romance, sure. But, unless the romance is part of the core game loop, it’s something that breaks the flow of the game. So it gets abstracted away, or the romance is expressed in terms of the core game mechanics. Which, in video games are often reaching the next scene, dialog trees or gaining stat points.
And, even if you think they’re closer to movies, then most video games are closest to action movies. And here the word romance isn’t used. It’s just renamed love interest and is often just the price for saving the world, but the core ‘mechanics’ are the same.
And most romances will start as fun flings full of hope, not with the nitty-gritty logistics.
The logistics will come later, sure. But most Video-Games are set romantically in a few weeks of summer camp, so there is no need to figure out logistics just yet.
Open-World games, that have a character that travels around and meets people as part of their daily lives, sure.
But this argument would apply to games like the Elder Scrolls series. Not Cyberpunk 2077 in which the main character is dying and has only weeks left to live.
But, I do concede that most romances do fall flat once you’ve reached the top. You had your sex-scene and you may have your kisses, your hugs, the new greetings in dialogue, and the characters return to being cardboard in the background. I know it’s hard to implement, but still, it would be nice, if they could then play a larger role in, for example, the main story.
To touch on the point of “where do video games fit in media”; I am reminded of an old video that sticks with me, roughly shortly after the release of Elder Scrolls Oblivion, with Sir Patrick Stewart on the topic of covering games and whether they are art.
He put forward the framing of “who is telling the story” to classify where video games fall closest as art. You have four possible personas in storytelling/art:
• the author
• the director
• the actors
• the audience
He then broke down who is telling the story:
• in paintings and carvings, it is the artist telling all of the story directly through the media.
• in books, it is a combination of the author and the reader, it is the author’s words that create the story through the filter and imagination of the readers mind.
• on stage, it is the actors that tell the story to the audience.
• in film, it is the director telling the story through the performances of the actors who all filter the words of the writer.
He stated how he marveled at video games because they represent a new media where the storyteller is the audience directly. Yes the writer lays out the possible elements, the actors, if present, influence how the characters are percieved, and the director pulls all of that together.
But it is the audience that creates the story in every run through every action they take in the game, and as such they are closest to books.
Insofar as romance and based on the above, I think that once the planned beats are played out it is up to the audience as the storyteller to create the rest of the romance.
The point about who is telling the story is interesting, especially in regards to ttrpgs.
Because today, video games are everywhere and are telling insanly emotional stories. And to gamers, the guardrails feel natural. After all, they have to be there and have always been there, so the suspension of disbelief includes ignoring that you’re (in ttrpgs terms) on railroads.
But, the old guard has played ttrpgs while video games were in their infancy, so they never expected the GM to give them a framework, in which they could do everything, and that still produces a story that would make J.R.R. Tolkien give standing ovations.
They, instead, assumed that with clever incentives, the players would themselves want to play and create the stories themselves. As you pointed out, the GM would simply offer tools for the players to tell their stories.
But, to tie this back into romance in video games: Sure, you can roleplay that yourself (if you write it down, you have created fanfic) but, like in ttrpgs, it’s not ‘your’ character and you’re not the GM.
Some groups might play that way, everyone being a quasi gm who can tell a part of the story freely and then handing the scene back to another player.
But in most groups, I think, players want to control only one character (themselves). To them it feels violating to either take away/control someone elses character or having your character be played by someone else.
And in video games, the only character you have is your main character. Thus roleplaying other characters is like taking away the GMs NPCs.
But, your point does work in games like The Sims, where, even though the dialog/romance options are limited, you can add back that level of meaning through roleplaying. Or in games like the elder scrolls, where the storylines aren’t intertwined. But Cyberpunk 2077 does pull your romantic interest into optional endings, so the characters behavior might then no longer align with your interpretation, because the game took back control of its characters.
“Thank you for coming. It was nice of your friend to help us meet.”
" I was there. I was there 3000 years ago … when Isildur took the Ring. I was there the day the strength of men failed. I led Isildur into the heart of Mount Doom, where the Ring was forged, the one place It could be destroyed! It should have ended that day, but evil was allowed to endure. Isildur kept the ring. The line of kings is broken. There’s no strength left in the world of Men. They’re scattered, divided, leaderless."
“…o-kay. Would you like to share some entrées or … Let’s order some drinks first.”
BG3 romances seem shallow and kind of transactional because it is a mix of characters who don’t know each other having a whirlwind romance in a relatively short period of time. They are easily comparable to the majority of romances in movies and books with similar circumstances.
The other thing that is always going to make romances in games difficult to do in more detail is a lack of real world senses that play a huge part in attraction. Smells, tone of voice, flirting based on what is cutrently happening are either impossible or extremely time consuming to implement in a computer game. Like you could luck into picking the right cologne for a character or something, but that is along the same lines as picking the right voice lines.
Not saying it is literally impossible to do, but it really is a monumental task to implement relationships that don’t seem forced or obviously mechanical in a video game. If they did implement one perfectly, the randomness of real life would make it nearly impossible to have a romance as there are so many things that can easily derail a relationship forming including just not being in the mood to reciprocate affection because of some completely unrelated event!
I think it also makes them feel more shallow because the characters are all “player-sexual” to use an industry term. Basically every character is into you if you want them to be.
I’d love to see more games have characters with preset likes and dislikes and how you’ve built and played your character will determine who will be interested (and who will shoot you down!)
Part of me thinks the devs should just be more settled about having more relationships that don’t involve the player. You get 5 supporting characters, and character A, in their “relationship event” with you, admits that they have feelings for character C and want your advice because they don’t know how to express it.
BG3 dialogue and story is also crafted to be “over the top”, where everything is always stressful and everyone has some crazy insane magical high stakes backstory. Of course the romance, such as it is, isn’t going to feel realistic.
There’s genres of games that are supposed to be relationship sims and nothing else. The relationships and characters are still hollow and would only draw in the loneliest people.
Well, I listen to Shadowheart’s story and since I’m a warlock who pacted with an evil master just because I wanted to do cool tricks, I felt I shouldn’t judge.
(Also she is a ride or die goth girl).
This brings me to an interesting question, only briefly touched upon in the article (and with too few examples): which is the best video game romance so far?
You know what’s wild? The answer that immediately comes to mind is Warframe.
Genuinely, I’m not remotely joking, Warframe has some of the best video games romance I’ve ever encountered.
Two things really stand out to me about the conversations in Warframe.
First, the things they learn about you are often just as important as the things you learn about them. The article talks about the process of two people figuring out how they fit into each other’s lives, and that’s exactly what you get with Warframe. You need to actually show that you can be someone they can love, as well as simply showing interest in them.
Secondly, and I think maybe more importantly; most of the conversations in Warframe don’t feel “important.” They all are. But most of them are about comparatively trivial things. A lot of it is literally just people sharing shower thoughts, or jokes, or talking about dumb shit, or getting things off their brains. But how you handle those interactions matters just as much, if not more, than the heavy stuff.
Also, the way the characters interact feels distinct and different. Amir, the most obvious case of ADHD in the universe, writes five messages for every one of yours (these conversations all happen through “Not MSN Messenger”), and most of the time what he needs is for you to just listen while he unloads all the chaotic shit in his brain. Eleanor, the journalist, writes long, carefully formed sentences with correct punctuation and grammar. She poses questions, prods and pries, tries to dig secrets out of you. Aoi will sometimes just send you a string of emojis, and will be delighted if you reply the same way. She likes to be silly, but more importantly she needs to just know that you’re there and you cared enough to reply. It’s the written equivalent of squeezing someone’s hand. Some characters will pester you, others are more likely to wait for you to talk first. There’s a unique dynamic with each of them.
I agree with the other comment about Haven, but I’ll also plug in Potionomics. It’s more gamified in terms of giving gifts to the chosen NPC you wanna court, but the voice lines and the way the love interest acts feels fairly natural in my opinion. And nothing ends after kissing, it just becomes deeper.
I liked Haven’s romance, because it’s the only game that actually bothers to show the actual relationship.
Too many games show romance as a slow burn which eventually culminates in a kiss at the very end of the game (and then roll credits), or a checklist that eventually ends with the two characters mimicking sexual intercourse within the boundaries of video game physics, and then… Nothing, because the sex scene is the “reward” for going through the checklist, not the beginning of an actual relationship.
Haven begins when the two characters are already in love. They flee to some deserted planet and live their happy life. They joke, they play, they have sex, they argue and talk and annoy each other. It’s one of the most convincing relationships I’ve seen in a video game.
I’m Ace, and the game made me realize that I don’t hate sex. I just hate the way sex is usually portrayed in media.
I’ll preface this by saying that this is my personal opinion and it’s in no way representative of how Ace gamers (or even gamers in general) should evaluate their games.
TL;DR: the game actually develops the characters and their relationship, which in turn makes me care about them, which in turn makes me tolerate their sex scenes. Meanwhile, many other games that treat sex as a prize take the easy route: they give you a checklist, and if you complete it, you are “allowed” to see a poorly animated sex scene with a character who doesn’t care about you in the slightest and is only there to arouse the player.
LONG COMMENT: For me specifically, it’s a matter of context, mood and consent. While I’m still not exactly comfortable with sex scenes, even in a game like Haven, I didn’t hate them because they felt natural and coherent. They were not a “reward” for me, but a choice made by the characters.
I’ll use Mass Effect 2 as an example of a game whose romance options I didn’t like. I never felt like the crewmembers were actual people, because they never did anything on their own. They stayed in their room doing… nothing, like they were part of the ship’s furniture. There was a stoic soldier, and an assassin with a conscience, and a hardcore vigilante, and even a badass warrior-nun! It didn’t ultimately matter, they never did anything. But as soon as I stepped into their room, they’d start unloading their sad backstory on me, like I was their therapist or something. They never showed any interest in me whatsoever; they barely knew anything about my character beyond my name, but I was expected to care about them, for some reason?
After a few such interactions, they’d ask me to do a job for them (tied to their sad backstory), and after that, they’d suddenly go “hey, we got a lot of chemistry, want to bang?” like it was some kind of reward. Congratulations, Player! You visited this character enough times, picked the correct dialogue options to keep them talking about themselves, and even completed a risky mission on their behalf: you totally deserve the steamy hot sex scene!
And if you do, they do… nothing, ever again. They become part of the furniture of the ship - but this time it’s permanent, because there are no more interactions with them.
The game doesn’t care to take your relationship in any meaningful direction, or better yet, it isn’t building any kind of relationship between them and your character in the first place. It was all in service of the hot steamy sex scene.
Sex is the prize, and it painfully shows in the way the dialogue is written. It feels… icky. Dishonest. I was turning everyone down at every opportunity, as if I was Matrix-dodging their heart-shaped bullets, because the game made it very clear that everyone was down bad for my character. But it also felt like the game was constantly second-guessing me, asking me if I truthfully cared about those characters, or if I was doing what I was doing because I wanted to reach the “prize”.
It reached a point where I stopped interacting with a character altogether because she made me deeply uncomfortable (it was the second-in-command/crew therapist: in our very first interaction, she told me she wanted to bang me; in our second interaction, she informed me that she thought the insectoid guy I had just recruited was hot stuff and needed to get laid).
The game also has a Codex, and the very first entry is “This is an all-female alien race. [Infodump on their sexual life]” which would almost be hilarious if it wasn’t for the sexist connotation. Like, I could go on for days about the many ways ME2 made me feel uncomfortable during my playthrough, but I’ll stop here.
In Haven, sex is never treated as a prize: the player is not tasked with doing stuff to unlock the sex scenes, and the sex scenes are not used to titillate the player. There are dozens of unique interactions between Yu and Kai - some of them playing games or being goofy, some of them doing mundane stuff like cooking or taking a shower, and some of them having sex - because sex can be a (meaningful) part of a romance, but it’s not the only component of a relationship.
The way they talk and interact shows that they like and care about each other. I was willing to “accept” the sex scenes because it was what they wanted, not what I wanted; It was a natural development of their relationship and not a “prize” that I achieved by pressing buttons on a dialogue wheel.
Whereas many other games lack substance and depth, and have shallow relationships built on a fake score system which tasks the player with increasing the meter by doing arbitrary stuff, which then culminate in a sex scene that only exists to arouse horny teenagers and leads to no meaningful development in the relationship, Haven builds the relationship first and foremost, and keeps developing it for the entirety of the game: sex is one of many possible interactions between the characters, and it’s never something that you need to achieve, but something that happens naturally and organically because the two characters really love each other.
Thanks for writing all that! I’m interested as someone who isn’t asexual, so I find your perspective really interesting since it’s not something I can personally experience.
I haven’t played mass effect, but that write up mirrors how I’ve felt about a lot of games with tacked on romance. Also, as someone who does enjoy sex, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a good sex scene in a game. Baldur’s Gate 3, for all the hype about the sex in it, was still pretty weak imo. You’re not missing much in other words!
I mentioned it in another comment on this thread about BG3, but it sounds like mass effect also went with the “player-sexual” approach, meaning every character is into you no matter who you are. I find that approach really off-putting personally. I would much rather have characters love or hate you based on the character you made. This means you could even try and get shot down, which would be a nice realistic image of dating where that is always very possible (even more bonus points if a game let you fuck up the relationship after it started).
I like how you emphasize the focus on a relationship in Haven. I think most romances in games are dating simulators, not relationship simulators, and I hadn’t been able to put that into words until you said all this.
I’m someone who has always preferred the stability and comfort of an established relationship over the high stakes feeling of dating, but that’s not true for everyone. Some people who only like the beginning, and once things settle they lose interest. I’ve been happily married for a long time, and I don’t miss dating at all. It seems like there need to be more relationship simulations so that people like you and I can enjoy romance in games more!
I’d probably argue games that ‘can’ do this well is JRPGs because they tend to be a slow burn and have a lot of small side conversations that are not directly plot related, which allows the characters and relationships to get fleshed out.
The ones that immediately come to mind are FF 8/9/10 but I’m certain there are others.
In games where the romance is like a mechanic and not a part of the story? Hmm that’s a tougher question because I think mechanics/gameification tend to ruin the human part of relationship building.
Depends if you want to include actual romance games into the evaluation, because those are entirely dedicated to romance itself, making games like Baldur’s Gate hard to compare against.
Well no, I’m mostly interested in games with a side of romance. I would expect to be able to hold actual romance games and visual novels etc to a higher standard. Though actually it would be interesting to compare the best romance game/visual novel romance to the best “video game romance”.
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They make good points until this bullshit:
No. That take is horseshit. They don’t have to do anything to be taken seriously as art. They already are. If you can’t see it because it doesn’t tick some of your boxes that’s a you issue.
I would actually agree with him in some level. Art should always be evolving, and it should be looking past its comfort zones, even past areas many others have failed, to do so.
It doesn’t need to be a form of “disqualification” as he says, but there IS value in applying change even just for its own sake.
Some games are art. Some are money grabs or outright scams.
And that’s true for any “artistic” medium as well
Valid
Bonjour
I just ignore all romance in games because even at its best; it’s cringy and makes me feel weird and uncomfortable.
Nice, just like in real life
We need videogame romances where you are both so enamored with each other; every answer is stupid and cringe but to them it’s the most romantic thing ever. Also the sex is silly and awkward and kinda gross, but they both have fun, a good laugh and enjoy it.
I heard about a very silly, cartoony game that applies this as a basis: Buster Jam. The two leads are in a relationship, but it doesn’t affect their lazy heroic dynamic in any way. Funny to have a villain remark “…you and your GIRLFRIEND…” and not get corrected.
Gamers aren’t ready for that level of realism.
May I recommend Haven then
This is a really weird way to argue a weird point. I think, the main issue is, most games are closer to boardgames than movies. And the author places them too close to movies.
And you can build boardgames for romance, sure. But, unless the romance is part of the core game loop, it’s something that breaks the flow of the game. So it gets abstracted away, or the romance is expressed in terms of the core game mechanics. Which, in video games are often reaching the next scene, dialog trees or gaining stat points.
And, even if you think they’re closer to movies, then most video games are closest to action movies. And here the word romance isn’t used. It’s just renamed love interest and is often just the price for saving the world, but the core ‘mechanics’ are the same.
And most romances will start as fun flings full of hope, not with the nitty-gritty logistics. The logistics will come later, sure. But most Video-Games are set romantically in a few weeks of summer camp, so there is no need to figure out logistics just yet.
Open-World games, that have a character that travels around and meets people as part of their daily lives, sure.
But this argument would apply to games like the Elder Scrolls series. Not Cyberpunk 2077 in which the main character is dying and has only weeks left to live.
But, I do concede that most romances do fall flat once you’ve reached the top. You had your sex-scene and you may have your kisses, your hugs, the new greetings in dialogue, and the characters return to being cardboard in the background. I know it’s hard to implement, but still, it would be nice, if they could then play a larger role in, for example, the main story.
Very well put.
To touch on the point of “where do video games fit in media”; I am reminded of an old video that sticks with me, roughly shortly after the release of Elder Scrolls Oblivion, with Sir Patrick Stewart on the topic of covering games and whether they are art.
He put forward the framing of “who is telling the story” to classify where video games fall closest as art. You have four possible personas in storytelling/art: • the author • the director • the actors • the audience He then broke down who is telling the story: • in paintings and carvings, it is the artist telling all of the story directly through the media. • in books, it is a combination of the author and the reader, it is the author’s words that create the story through the filter and imagination of the readers mind.
• on stage, it is the actors that tell the story to the audience. • in film, it is the director telling the story through the performances of the actors who all filter the words of the writer.
He stated how he marveled at video games because they represent a new media where the storyteller is the audience directly. Yes the writer lays out the possible elements, the actors, if present, influence how the characters are percieved, and the director pulls all of that together.
But it is the audience that creates the story in every run through every action they take in the game, and as such they are closest to books.
Insofar as romance and based on the above, I think that once the planned beats are played out it is up to the audience as the storyteller to create the rest of the romance.
The point about who is telling the story is interesting, especially in regards to ttrpgs.
Because today, video games are everywhere and are telling insanly emotional stories. And to gamers, the guardrails feel natural. After all, they have to be there and have always been there, so the suspension of disbelief includes ignoring that you’re (in ttrpgs terms) on railroads.
But, the old guard has played ttrpgs while video games were in their infancy, so they never expected the GM to give them a framework, in which they could do everything, and that still produces a story that would make J.R.R. Tolkien give standing ovations.
They, instead, assumed that with clever incentives, the players would themselves want to play and create the stories themselves. As you pointed out, the GM would simply offer tools for the players to tell their stories.
But, to tie this back into romance in video games: Sure, you can roleplay that yourself (if you write it down, you have created fanfic) but, like in ttrpgs, it’s not ‘your’ character and you’re not the GM.
Some groups might play that way, everyone being a quasi gm who can tell a part of the story freely and then handing the scene back to another player.
But in most groups, I think, players want to control only one character (themselves). To them it feels violating to either take away/control someone elses character or having your character be played by someone else.
And in video games, the only character you have is your main character. Thus roleplaying other characters is like taking away the GMs NPCs.
But, your point does work in games like The Sims, where, even though the dialog/romance options are limited, you can add back that level of meaning through roleplaying. Or in games like the elder scrolls, where the storylines aren’t intertwined. But Cyberpunk 2077 does pull your romantic interest into optional endings, so the characters behavior might then no longer align with your interpretation, because the game took back control of its characters.
So I have to roleplay romance in my role playing game? I don’t play role playing games to play roles! /s
Multidimensional choose your own adventure.
You know how people build relationships in meatspace? Lore dumps.
“Thank you for coming. It was nice of your friend to help us meet.”
" I was there. I was there 3000 years ago … when Isildur took the Ring. I was there the day the strength of men failed. I led Isildur into the heart of Mount Doom, where the Ring was forged, the one place It could be destroyed! It should have ended that day, but evil was allowed to endure. Isildur kept the ring. The line of kings is broken. There’s no strength left in the world of Men. They’re scattered, divided, leaderless."
“…o-kay. Would you like to share some entrées or … Let’s order some drinks first.”
Yes, also meatspace romance is built not just on the pivotal but a whole lot on the mundane.
BG3 romances seem shallow and kind of transactional because it is a mix of characters who don’t know each other having a whirlwind romance in a relatively short period of time. They are easily comparable to the majority of romances in movies and books with similar circumstances.
The other thing that is always going to make romances in games difficult to do in more detail is a lack of real world senses that play a huge part in attraction. Smells, tone of voice, flirting based on what is cutrently happening are either impossible or extremely time consuming to implement in a computer game. Like you could luck into picking the right cologne for a character or something, but that is along the same lines as picking the right voice lines.
Not saying it is literally impossible to do, but it really is a monumental task to implement relationships that don’t seem forced or obviously mechanical in a video game. If they did implement one perfectly, the randomness of real life would make it nearly impossible to have a romance as there are so many things that can easily derail a relationship forming including just not being in the mood to reciprocate affection because of some completely unrelated event!
I think it also makes them feel more shallow because the characters are all “player-sexual” to use an industry term. Basically every character is into you if you want them to be.
I’d love to see more games have characters with preset likes and dislikes and how you’ve built and played your character will determine who will be interested (and who will shoot you down!)
Part of me thinks the devs should just be more settled about having more relationships that don’t involve the player. You get 5 supporting characters, and character A, in their “relationship event” with you, admits that they have feelings for character C and want your advice because they don’t know how to express it.
Shallow and rushed, since it has to develop in a few dozen hours of gameplay with a limited number of NPCs!
BG3 dialogue and story is also crafted to be “over the top”, where everything is always stressful and everyone has some crazy insane magical high stakes backstory. Of course the romance, such as it is, isn’t going to feel realistic.
But iwant my romance with the frog-lady to be realistic!
Do you mean the lady from WhoVille?
I never managed to romance Auntie :/
There’s genres of games that are supposed to be relationship sims and nothing else. The relationships and characters are still hollow and would only draw in the loneliest people.
Romances are stupid shallow fluff that serve no purpose except to draw in lonely people. They’re idiotic and predatory.
For me, romances are just so they can carry shit that I find.
Are you my girlfriend?
Lol, no, but I’ve been there. “Can you meet me at my apartment? I bought a dresser I need your ‘help’ with”
Pack mule romance. Love it.
Guilty as charged
and horny! sometimes its not enough that they are naked!
Not that different than a lot of the relationships I had when I was young to be honest.
“I’m horny and they’re hot” leads to a lot of shallow “understanding” of someone’s shitty behavior.
Well, I listen to Shadowheart’s story and since I’m a warlock who pacted with an evil master just because I wanted to do cool tricks, I felt I shouldn’t judge. (Also she is a ride or die goth girl).
Though the frog lady is the best.
I like the head of the bandit troop under the burning city.
As a Durge i’m always like “tell me more, i’m intrigued.” She loves that answer.
This brings me to an interesting question, only briefly touched upon in the article (and with too few examples): which is the best video game romance so far?
You know what’s wild? The answer that immediately comes to mind is Warframe.
Genuinely, I’m not remotely joking, Warframe has some of the best video games romance I’ve ever encountered.
Two things really stand out to me about the conversations in Warframe.
First, the things they learn about you are often just as important as the things you learn about them. The article talks about the process of two people figuring out how they fit into each other’s lives, and that’s exactly what you get with Warframe. You need to actually show that you can be someone they can love, as well as simply showing interest in them.
Secondly, and I think maybe more importantly; most of the conversations in Warframe don’t feel “important.” They all are. But most of them are about comparatively trivial things. A lot of it is literally just people sharing shower thoughts, or jokes, or talking about dumb shit, or getting things off their brains. But how you handle those interactions matters just as much, if not more, than the heavy stuff.
Also, the way the characters interact feels distinct and different. Amir, the most obvious case of ADHD in the universe, writes five messages for every one of yours (these conversations all happen through “Not MSN Messenger”), and most of the time what he needs is for you to just listen while he unloads all the chaotic shit in his brain. Eleanor, the journalist, writes long, carefully formed sentences with correct punctuation and grammar. She poses questions, prods and pries, tries to dig secrets out of you. Aoi will sometimes just send you a string of emojis, and will be delighted if you reply the same way. She likes to be silly, but more importantly she needs to just know that you’re there and you cared enough to reply. It’s the written equivalent of squeezing someone’s hand. Some characters will pester you, others are more likely to wait for you to talk first. There’s a unique dynamic with each of them.
Ngl, it’s not my kind of game but this sounds very cute and exactly how a healthy relationship should work.
DayZ. The warming embrace of the games player base envelops you like a warm blanket.
I agree with the other comment about Haven, but I’ll also plug in Potionomics. It’s more gamified in terms of giving gifts to the chosen NPC you wanna court, but the voice lines and the way the love interest acts feels fairly natural in my opinion. And nothing ends after kissing, it just becomes deeper.
Buuuut that’s just, like, my opinion, man.
I liked Haven’s romance, because it’s the only game that actually bothers to show the actual relationship.
Too many games show romance as a slow burn which eventually culminates in a kiss at the very end of the game (and then roll credits), or a checklist that eventually ends with the two characters mimicking sexual intercourse within the boundaries of video game physics, and then… Nothing, because the sex scene is the “reward” for going through the checklist, not the beginning of an actual relationship.
Haven begins when the two characters are already in love. They flee to some deserted planet and live their happy life. They joke, they play, they have sex, they argue and talk and annoy each other. It’s one of the most convincing relationships I’ve seen in a video game.
I’m Ace, and the game made me realize that I don’t hate sex. I just hate the way sex is usually portrayed in media.
If you don’t mind sharing, what are the differences in how sex is portrayed in this game vs how you don’t like it?
I’ll preface this by saying that this is my personal opinion and it’s in no way representative of how Ace gamers (or even gamers in general) should evaluate their games.
TL;DR: the game actually develops the characters and their relationship, which in turn makes me care about them, which in turn makes me tolerate their sex scenes. Meanwhile, many other games that treat sex as a prize take the easy route: they give you a checklist, and if you complete it, you are “allowed” to see a poorly animated sex scene with a character who doesn’t care about you in the slightest and is only there to arouse the player.
LONG COMMENT: For me specifically, it’s a matter of context, mood and consent. While I’m still not exactly comfortable with sex scenes, even in a game like Haven, I didn’t hate them because they felt natural and coherent. They were not a “reward” for me, but a choice made by the characters.
I’ll use Mass Effect 2 as an example of a game whose romance options I didn’t like. I never felt like the crewmembers were actual people, because they never did anything on their own. They stayed in their room doing… nothing, like they were part of the ship’s furniture. There was a stoic soldier, and an assassin with a conscience, and a hardcore vigilante, and even a badass warrior-nun! It didn’t ultimately matter, they never did anything. But as soon as I stepped into their room, they’d start unloading their sad backstory on me, like I was their therapist or something. They never showed any interest in me whatsoever; they barely knew anything about my character beyond my name, but I was expected to care about them, for some reason?
After a few such interactions, they’d ask me to do a job for them (tied to their sad backstory), and after that, they’d suddenly go “hey, we got a lot of chemistry, want to bang?” like it was some kind of reward. Congratulations, Player! You visited this character enough times, picked the correct dialogue options to keep them talking about themselves, and even completed a risky mission on their behalf: you totally deserve the steamy hot sex scene!
And if you do, they do… nothing, ever again. They become part of the furniture of the ship - but this time it’s permanent, because there are no more interactions with them.
The game doesn’t care to take your relationship in any meaningful direction, or better yet, it isn’t building any kind of relationship between them and your character in the first place. It was all in service of the hot steamy sex scene.
Sex is the prize, and it painfully shows in the way the dialogue is written. It feels… icky. Dishonest. I was turning everyone down at every opportunity, as if I was Matrix-dodging their heart-shaped bullets, because the game made it very clear that everyone was down bad for my character. But it also felt like the game was constantly second-guessing me, asking me if I truthfully cared about those characters, or if I was doing what I was doing because I wanted to reach the “prize”.
It reached a point where I stopped interacting with a character altogether because she made me deeply uncomfortable (it was the second-in-command/crew therapist: in our very first interaction, she told me she wanted to bang me; in our second interaction, she informed me that she thought the insectoid guy I had just recruited was hot stuff and needed to get laid).
The game also has a Codex, and the very first entry is “This is an all-female alien race. [Infodump on their sexual life]” which would almost be hilarious if it wasn’t for the sexist connotation. Like, I could go on for days about the many ways ME2 made me feel uncomfortable during my playthrough, but I’ll stop here.
In Haven, sex is never treated as a prize: the player is not tasked with doing stuff to unlock the sex scenes, and the sex scenes are not used to titillate the player. There are dozens of unique interactions between Yu and Kai - some of them playing games or being goofy, some of them doing mundane stuff like cooking or taking a shower, and some of them having sex - because sex can be a (meaningful) part of a romance, but it’s not the only component of a relationship.
The way they talk and interact shows that they like and care about each other. I was willing to “accept” the sex scenes because it was what they wanted, not what I wanted; It was a natural development of their relationship and not a “prize” that I achieved by pressing buttons on a dialogue wheel. Whereas many other games lack substance and depth, and have shallow relationships built on a fake score system which tasks the player with increasing the meter by doing arbitrary stuff, which then culminate in a sex scene that only exists to arouse horny teenagers and leads to no meaningful development in the relationship, Haven builds the relationship first and foremost, and keeps developing it for the entirety of the game: sex is one of many possible interactions between the characters, and it’s never something that you need to achieve, but something that happens naturally and organically because the two characters really love each other.
Thanks for writing all that! I’m interested as someone who isn’t asexual, so I find your perspective really interesting since it’s not something I can personally experience.
I haven’t played mass effect, but that write up mirrors how I’ve felt about a lot of games with tacked on romance. Also, as someone who does enjoy sex, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a good sex scene in a game. Baldur’s Gate 3, for all the hype about the sex in it, was still pretty weak imo. You’re not missing much in other words!
I mentioned it in another comment on this thread about BG3, but it sounds like mass effect also went with the “player-sexual” approach, meaning every character is into you no matter who you are. I find that approach really off-putting personally. I would much rather have characters love or hate you based on the character you made. This means you could even try and get shot down, which would be a nice realistic image of dating where that is always very possible (even more bonus points if a game let you fuck up the relationship after it started).
I like how you emphasize the focus on a relationship in Haven. I think most romances in games are dating simulators, not relationship simulators, and I hadn’t been able to put that into words until you said all this.
I’m someone who has always preferred the stability and comfort of an established relationship over the high stakes feeling of dating, but that’s not true for everyone. Some people who only like the beginning, and once things settle they lose interest. I’ve been happily married for a long time, and I don’t miss dating at all. It seems like there need to be more relationship simulations so that people like you and I can enjoy romance in games more!
Huh, had no idea that game existed but that does look pretty different from what we usually see.
I’d probably argue games that ‘can’ do this well is JRPGs because they tend to be a slow burn and have a lot of small side conversations that are not directly plot related, which allows the characters and relationships to get fleshed out.
The ones that immediately come to mind are FF 8/9/10 but I’m certain there are others.
In games where the romance is like a mechanic and not a part of the story? Hmm that’s a tougher question because I think mechanics/gameification tend to ruin the human part of relationship building.
Depends if you want to include actual romance games into the evaluation, because those are entirely dedicated to romance itself, making games like Baldur’s Gate hard to compare against.
Well no, I’m mostly interested in games with a side of romance. I would expect to be able to hold actual romance games and visual novels etc to a higher standard. Though actually it would be interesting to compare the best romance game/visual novel romance to the best “video game romance”.
Ellie and Dina in The Last of Us 2 maybe?
only one right answer here
Not sure if this qualifies, but I found the (past) relationship between Kratos and Faye in the new God of War games really touching.
Other examples I can think of: Ellie and Dina (TLOU2), Tidus and Yuna (FFX), Geralt and Yennefer depending on how you play (TW3).
As every generation ends up saying, romance is dead.