Project Eternity: What type of romance do you want?

crpgnut

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I'm just curious. Since PE is a party-based game, what type of romance options do you want in the game, if any at all? I'm playing through Fallout New Vegas, which is one of the recent games Obsidian has made that has companions. In that game, romance is basically taken out of the equation for hetero males because Veronica is gay, Cass is bi, but only when drunk out of her mind, otherwise she's gay too, Boone is the only hetero male, while Arcade might be a romance option for males, but I really don't know because I don't lean that way. I can have as much sex as I want, but romance isn't viable. If anybody has played as a female courier, can you have a romantic relationship with Cass and/or Veronica? I enjoy the companion mods that offer romance, but most of those are about sex more than love. The Willow mod is a very nice blend of the two and mostly clean. The kissing and sex scenes are all fade-to-black with sound making the suggestion. I believe the mod was written by a female. Alpha Protocol had a very nicely written romance that was far more innuendo than reality, but I thought Ming was a good attempt at writing plausible romance in a game.

What do you think?

My opinion is to leave the physical side of romance out of this isometric game and instead focus on the mental and emotional aspects. I think physical romance should be left to first person games and doesn't really fit in this type of environment. To be fair to everyone, either have romances for hetero, gay, and lesbian or leave it out all together. Bisexuality should probably be an option too, to cover all the bases. That just seems like a lot of characters for the budget Obsidian is dealing with....
 
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I wouldn't want any.

Romances are typically a generic cop-out to give gamers a shallow facade upon which to care for characters in the game. There's plenty of ways to get emotionally invested in a title's characters without some cheesy flirting dialogue or pixellated baby-making.

Give me characters that I would instead feel pangs of regret over letting die in battle, or characters whom I both despise and respect (ala` Irenicus).

"Romances", as they're used today, are a distraction.
 
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Planescape: Torment.

You know, Anna pretty much jumped on your character despite calling you ugly.

But...Chris Avelon write "great romance". They fall into the category of creepy, end badly or just plain wrong.
 
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Having been force fed ingame romances for years now i would much rather they focus on fleshing out the party as a whole and skip the tired cliche that rpg romances have become.
 
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I would like to see them like BG2. I know many weren't happy with them, but I still regularly consider leaving my wife for Aerie :biggrin:
 
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Though I was much more long-winded about it, I'm with the leave it out group. I enjoy the rated-R "romances" in Bethesda mods for the escapist fantasy that it presents, but I don't need to have that type of stuff in every game. I just don't think that with all the rest that they've promised in the kickstarter, they have time to do whole sets of romance options. I also have strong feelings for Aerie, bn. Although with that voice of hers, I always felt a little guilty about them. She sounded like she was 14 :D

However, I'm trying to think of a non-romanced character that I ever cared about dying and come up blank.
 
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Best adult romance game ever made:

A Dance with Rogues, Part One & Part Two (NWN 1 mod)
 
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"Romances", as they're used today, are a distraction.
More like a disaster.
I want no type of romance. Absolutely nothing. Not in PE, nor in any game ever. Haven't seen a single game that handled this aspect in a way that didn't make me feel annoyed. Of course I have no problem with including it as long as no important quests or in-game items are related to it, but other than that, it's repulsive.
 
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I would like to see them like BG2. I know many weren't happy with them, but I still regularly consider leaving my wife for Aerie :biggrin:
Imo, BG2´s romances are pretty much the worst way to go about it.
Quality of writing aside, gating large chunks of content via romance checks without compensation sucks.
If there are to be any developing relationships between pc and companions in PE (and there very likely are), it definitely should not be along the "either you´ll romance me or I´ll be silent for most of the game" lines.
There´s a whole spectrum of possible kinds of relationships and I hope Obsidian will implement this stuff organically and without devoting more content to one type at the expense of others, both in the context of the companion roster as a whole and in the context of individual companions.

Also, coincidentally there´s a brand new interview with Avellone where he sorta addresses the issue :):
Not a big fan of romances. I did four in Alpha Protocol because Chris Parker, our project director, demanded it because he thinks romance apparently is easy, or MAYBE it’s because he wanted to be an asshole and give me tons of them to do because I LOVE them so much (although to be honest, I think he felt it was more in keeping with the spy genre to have so many romances, even if I did ask to downscope them). At least I got to do the “hatemance” version of most of them, which makes it a little more palatable.

Also, the only reason the romance bits in Mask of the Betrayer worked was because George Ziets helped me with them since he was able to describe what love is to me and explain how it works (I almost asked for a PowerPoint presentation). It seems like a messy, complicated process, not unlike a waterbirth. Don’t even get me started on the kissing aspects, which is revolting because people EAT with their mouths. Bleh.

So if I were to implement a romance subplot in Eternity - I wouldn’t. I’d examine interpersonal relationships from another angle and I wouldn’t confine it to love and romance. Maybe I’d explore it after a “loving” relationship crashed and burned, and one or both was killed in the aftermath enough for them to see if it had really been worth it spending the last few years of their physical existence chained to each other in a dance of human misery and/or a plateau of soul-killing compromise. Or maybe I’d explore a veteran’s love affair with his craft of murder and allowing souls to be freed to travel beyond their bleeding shell, or a Cipher’s obsession with plucking the emotions of deep-rooted souls to try and see what makes people attracted to each other beyond their baser instincts and discovers love… specifically, his love of manipulating others. You could build an entire dungeon and quest where he devotes himself to replicating facsimiles of love, reducer a Higher Love to a baser thing and using NPCs he encounters as puppets for his experimentations, turning something supposedly beautiful into something filthy, mechanical, but surrounded by blank-eyed soul-twisted drones echoing all the hollow Disney-like platitudes and fairy tale existence where everyone lives happily ever after.

Sounds like a plan to me :).
 
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Definitely I want romances in. Makes the game more believable when characters can fall in love, it's an RPG after all.
 
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It's a staple of every rpg now and people who will buy the game will want them. You guys do realize people will be buying the game after release right?

Romances if they are done right enhance a game. So yes put them them in. All the naysayers can go cry in the corner on there soapbox that romances ruin games
 
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It's a staple of every rpg now and people who will buy the game will want them. You guys do realize people will be buying the game after release right?

And yet, they didn't fund the game. So if the majority of backers want actual depth to characters and not just some sophomoric attempt at puppy love, yay us.
 
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And yet, they didn't fund the game. So if the majority of backers want actual depth to characters and not just some sophomoric attempt at puppy love, yay us.

Obsidian wants to sell the game after release also so yes it does matter. Yes you and I backed the game but they will make more money after release. Also you can have actual depth to characters and add romance.
 
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People also want multiplayer and vanity armor DLC, but that ain't what this project's about.

In all likelihood, Obsidian will likely include some token relationship quest trees to appease backers who, for whatever reason, like to play their part in a pixelated romance novel with awkward dialogue. And I'll skip it, as I've done for every single game that i can recall.

But, first and foremost, I am hopeful that they won't cater to and try to appease the mass market mentality that didn't fund the project in the first place.

Edit: What truly vexes me is this question: "What the hell is wrong with being a great friend to another character, a character with whom you share complex thoughts and worries… what is wrong with being such a friend and not wanting to get into that person's pants?" It's so damn irritating and just plain insulting to feed me this shallow drivel dialogue when all it leads to is some ultimate "let's bang" option. And that's what I hate about romances - it detracts from deep characterization all around. And they're almost always juvenile.
 
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Yuck. Romances in RPGs are terrible. Please focus on the important stuff instead. Good party banter seems much more feasible, though.

Wow, regarding Avellone's lack of real world experience with this sort of thing! I wonder if all romance plotting devs have this excuse. That would explain a lot. :p ;)
 
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DeepOne nice find. Hopefully that will ring true. And since this is a crowd sourced game I'm guessing this sentiment will get heard as its a popular notion.

To me "adult romances" is the main reason I have bought any of the modern RPG's particularly from Bioware.

But that's not to say its not an important element in any storytelling. The only author in the novel form that I think has been successful without romance was Asimov, and he didn't add romance to Foundation because he just didn't even think about it as a 20 year old geek writing sci-fi for pulp magazines in the 1930's. He would add it in his 1980's sequel and it makes it much more interesting.

Maybe video games are just too much in their infancy for this or (more likely) the companies are just too desperate and insecure for sales.
 
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I would like to see them like BG2. I know many weren't happy with them, but I still regularly consider leaving my wife for Aerie :biggrin:


Another one who wants romance in PE to be like BG2 romance. However, I have no consideration of leaving my husband over Anomen :p
 
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