Romance in RPGs

[The_Mask]

Creating a good romance in an RPG is the same as creating a good villain: you have to have someone smart behind the steps and thought-process of creation. Or a ******, if you want a funny outcome.

If you have today's midwits, you get slop. I think it's just that simple.

[TKVNC]

I feel this plays into an entirely different issue that a lot of game characters (protag or secondary) are vastly unlikable, as they are written by unlikable people. (or demons)

When you realize that a good chunk of the characters featured in modern AAA games are nothing more than the self-inserts of these very same unlikeable people, then everything begins to make sense.

It's vexing how a lot of classical writers, especially of fantasy, were Christians. And suddenly in the last 20+ years, it's been destroyed by atheists. I'm terribly vexed. What could they mean by this?

Satan thinks he is winning, I suppose.

WEF money is all but infinite, and so is their capacity for deviancy and evil.

[just]

witcher 1 card collecting is the best romance
i dont think one needs more

[Kain]

Love minmaxing arranged marriages in Fire Emblem in order to fill my army with genetically superior ubermensch child soldiers

I never cared about minmaxxing, only shipped the pairs that I liked. But once you have your favorite pairs setup, the remaining options can get a little odd, like Hayato only having Kagero or Effie to choose from (doubt those latter two would be onboard with that realistically) as opposed to say Mozu or Hana.

All after Awakening are ****** Emblems (minus Shadows of Valentia and Warriors, which have no romance).

[Demonic Fate]

Romance in CRPGs is never great because the rules need to be encoded in a program. Input: a series of specific dialogue options and explicit choices that the player has made. Output: 1 or 0, love or not love. The same choices must have the same outcome every time, otherwise players will complain.

This is not how women work; this is barely even how dogs work.

A "love simulator" would have to take into account the attractiveness of your paper doll, the vibes you gave while taking specific choices (did you take the first option every time or did you hesitantly exhaust the dialogue trees?), the way you look at the woman when you talk to her, the way other women see you, whether other men are available or not, and 1-2 completely unguessable preferences that are specific to each woman and that you will never find spelled out anywhere because she herself is completely unaware or in denial of thme.

(AI-written romance might ironically be an improvement, not for any of the reasons its advocates bring up, but because it will sometimes **** out and decide to break up with you for mysterious reasons that you are completely unable to decipher.)

Alternatively, the game could be faithful to a pre-modern/post-apocalyptic setting and have all the women rush to (lovelessly) shack up with you because you are able to feed a family adventuring party of 6 and scare away any raiders. I'd kill to read the Polygon reviews.