Let's talk relationships in games, or something!

[wallwalker]

Testing the poll option. Also, I'd really love to participate in some discussion about this, after a conversation on LJ and some further conversation about it with my boyfriend. Things that work for people, things that don't work for people, things people would put into their own games if they were designing their dream game, whatever. :D

Poll #2265

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 5

View Respondents

Which of these varieties of relationship/romantic subplots in RPGs do you prefer, if you had to choose?

View Answers

Lots of characters as potential options, but less detail put into each subplot.
1 (20.0%)

A few character options, but more detail put into each subplot.
1 (20.0%)

I'll take either, I'm not picky.
3 (60.0%)

I don't like these sorts of subplots, or I don't care.
0 (0.0%)

Other - I will elaborate in a comment.
0 (0.0%)

(By the way - I am still taking more drabble requests, and will get to the currently-posted ones soon. If anyone else wants to play, feel free! Post is open until I reach ten.)

Comments

[wallwalker]

I chose the first option for three reasons:

1. When a game does give a lot of detail about a relationship, well, I end up wanting to rewrite a lot of it that doesn't work for me so well, anyway. That's if I like the friendship or couple; if I don't like it, I just try to ignore it or not choose its option. So small hints/details seem to work better for me.
2. I don't mind filling in the gaps, really. I think that a lot of people are divided on this point, now that I think about it.
3. The more options there are, the less likely I am to dislike or be bored by ALL of them. (Although my boyfriend did have an excellent point in saying that no matter how many options you give, someone's going to dislike or be bored by all of them...)

So, I guess that what I mainly ask of games are, one, a way to alter the way that characters feel about each other in the first place, and two, a way to do it that affects how they interact in the game, which would make a HUGE difference in how some of the plot points would play out, since it would affect who trusts or mistrusts whom. Star Ocean 2 had the closest mechanic to what I'd really like, but even it wasn't perfect; it still had a lot of times in the main plot where the two leads were sort of thrown together, no matter how much you made them dislike each other or how much you made them like other members of the cast. While it might not have bugged me hugely, it did bug me occasionally.

[lassarina]

So, funny thing. 4 different options for relationships in Dragon Age: Origin (vs. one per gender in Neverwinter Nights, and 3 total in Mass Effect). I am in love with ALL of them. I am going to play this game enough times to SLEEP WITH ALL OF THEM. Uh. But Bioware hits my narrative and character buttons super hard.

that being said: to quote the lovely and very very smart celeloriel, I ship Squall with "growing up" and Rinoa with "therapy." Yet I'm all over Celes/Locke and Zidane/Garnet, and you will never convince me Balthier/Ashe wasn't strongly implied by canon, EVER. Also Kain/Fiend but. I have my obsessions.

[wallwalker]

Hey, sounds good to me; you're talking to the person who has played Star Ocean 2 at least seven times to see as many endings and different interactions within the game as I could. (Also, I want to play Dragon Age: Origin so much! I need to find out if my PC can handle it, since, um, I tend to avoid buying games for consoles I don't own myself on principle.)

I guess that what I really would love to see in more games are more choices for the players. I'd like to be able to nudge the characters in other directions if I want to, have it work in the context of the game's events, and not end up totally ignored in the end because the plot dictates that two particular characters MUST be together. I admit that this wouldn't work with a lot of games - it wouldn't really have worked for, say, most of the Final Fantasy series. But if the game was made in such a way that it could accommodate it, that would be awesome, and the more choices it gave me the better.

On a side note, what I've seen of ME2's various options for both genders have me intrigued, for the most part. (Most of the female-PC options and about half of the male-PC ones interest me, to be exact.) This is not the entire reason that I want to play that game too, but it's most certainly a factor! But I want to play the first game so that I can import saves, because the sort of continuity that Bioware promises between the games in the trilogy is highly relevant to my interests, and - once again - I avoid buying games for consoles I don't own. And while I might eventually have enough interest in various PS3 (or, shockingly, PSP) games to buy one of those consoles, I really can't justify dropping the money on a 360 for what will eventually amount to three games. So my other option is to upgrade my PC so it'll run ME2 passing well, and this will have to wait. (I wish that Bioware had a way to import the saves across consoles, as that would solve my problems nicely, but no luck.)
I wonder if anyone's ever going to try to mod the game to make more characters into romantic options, or perhaps to make all romantic options open to both genders. (Scratch that - I know someone's going to try, but will they succeed?)

Heh... Kain/Valvalis* is pretty much the first real non-canon pairing that I ever shipped. Although I will never be convinced that her anger over his leaving Golbez's service is influenced by not wanting him to leave her presence, in some sense or another.
*I default to calling her that because, well, I played that game so many years ago and so many times. Call her what you wish. :)

[lassarina]

(I played the SNES cartridge but once, then the hardtype fantran like 5 times before I got to the properly-correct Italian rendering, so it's stuck in my head the other way. XD)

Bioware's really good about not forcing romance to make plot choices, at least now. Back in NWN there was one boss fight that could be avoided if you happened to be playing a male PC and you took the romance route (such options not available as female, argh.)

The 360 actually has some really good RPGs - Lost Odyssey, for example, which is by Mistwalker (aka "Everybody who worked at Square and then left en masse when the merger with Enix happened" - Mistwalker is run by Sakaguchi and hired Uematsu to do the Lost Odyssey music, for example.) I bought it for Lost Odyssey, and only just recently bought a PS3 when the boy offered to split with me as our Christmas gift to each other.

The PSP is pretty epically awesome, though.

It's not too hard to upgrade your PC to run Dragon Age - mine is nearly 4 years old, and I souped up the graphics card and the RAM and it beats the min specs and hits the recommended in most categories. The game keeps crashing, but that appears to be a flaw in the game itself rather than my rig, as near as I can tell.