I mean, that’s what fanfiction.net is for if you want to ship Bowser and Peach.
this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2025
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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.
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.
I enjoy well-done romance in games. It's just a taste thing.
Does that exist?
Mass Effect did it quite well (at least some of them like Tali), although with a touch of cringe
And The Witcher obviously
And of course some story games like Life Is Strange, but they're character-focused so it makes sense
What's your fave?
I've played so many it is hard to have a favorite. I like when different games try to incorporate romance, but I still prefer visual novels. I have played so many where you are a guy romancing women (these usually are bad quality and an excuse to see sex, I am fine with sex but at least emphasize the romance) but have been getting into otome games where you are a woman romancing guys. There are still bad tropes in some of these games, like noncon (I only do consensual). There are also queer games like Dream Daddy I enjoyed.
For non-VN I would say I liked Bioware's games, Stardew Valley, Harvest Moon games, Story of Seasons games, Rune Factory games, Persona games, Divinity Original Sin 2, Baldurs Gate 3 (haven't beaten yet, seems promising), Cyberpunk 2077 (Judy), Life is Strange, and Obsidian/Bethesda (sorta).
Nice to see a shout-out for DOS2. I liked that it leaned into its sex scenes when called for. Too many M-rated games are still afraid to go there with it. I also feel like it's a bit more earned when it takes a while to develop, or as is often the case, the setting is so oppressive that it puts romance firmly in the background. Mass Effect 3 was great about this.
Liara
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
that's only true because most of you motherfuckers do robotic gamified romances that don't feel natural, heartfelt or interesting.
I as a video game enthusiast do not want my character to experience romance. It doesn't happen in real life the way it is portrayed in media, and it's fucking boring seeing it over and fucking over again. Gimme tragedy, gimme a problem I can solve, a mystery, or a war to fight. But romance, and sex, have not a damn place in those things. Developers of apparently every damn media have gotten it drilled into their heads that we want to read, watch, play thru, and otherwise experience their mental masturbation. Well I for one, don't fucking want to experience it at all. Gimme a story, and if you can't do it without pointless sex scenes then you don't have a fuckin story, you have a story about fuckin.
Did romantic feelings have any place in Max Payne 2?
Sometimes it's fun
Well this is funny sex humor
Not romance
This is the same thing TV shows figured out ages ago: you give people a flirty relationship and it's generally fun to watch. You turn that flirting into an actual relationship and it's boring + usually some fan service where the authors of the show try to get their female coworkers as naked as they can be manipulated into getting. And then they always need to make that same female coworker get pregnant and force her to fake giving birth.
Tldr it doesn't matter what the fans want, authors are fucking pervs.
I dunno. problems, mysteries, and war aren't usually portrayed realistically in video games, either.
1000% agree.
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.
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.
The upside I guess is that a lot of cis straight men got to experience how uncomfortable unwanted advances are.
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.
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.
As usual big business trying to figure out a cookie cutter formula to repeatedly make billions in profit. But games are creative, not formulaic.
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You’re starting on the wrong end.
People want games that the devs care about making. Whether it has sex or friendship or romance or relativistically-accurate jiggle physics.
People don’t know what they want until it’s in front of them, but devs know what they wanna make.
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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.
That's right "industry execs" — you just need to turn down the romance by 40% and the sex by 15%, add 50% more friendship and 25% more adventure, control for the desired level of political correctness, add just the right variety of behavioural feedback loops, and you'll have a maximally profitable game.
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Just because you really enjoy golf doesn't mean you want every movie to have a half-assed awkward golf game stuffed into it.
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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.
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Now, I like a good romance here and there. Who doesn't?
That being said, games like Sonic 06 are very good examples of why romance isn't welcome in some places
Oh really. And what do you think he's collecting all those rings for?
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I really enjoyed my Shepard and Liara romance during the Mass Effect trilogy, but I don't think it's particularly well executed in most other games.
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