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'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 "rewarded" with 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 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.
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 culminates in a sex scene that only exists to arouse horny teenagers and leads to no meaningful development in the relationship; Haven, on the other hand, 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; I think it's meaningful that the game doesn't end with a sex scene, because sex is not the end game, but a small part of a much more complex relationship.

I never managed to romance Auntie :/

Haven
Gonna check it out!

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.

Ngl, it's not my kind of game but this sounds very cute and exactly how a healthy relationship should work.

Nice, just like in real life

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!

Valid

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.

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.

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.

My wife and I played Haven back before we got married, and never got around to finishing it. Really ought to dust that game off again. Playing it as a couple was really fun, and actually helped us to learn things about each other.

Romance isn't the most logical thing, and a video game lives in a computer and kinda has to be logical.

So it's either going to be some scripted events written by a human which the player doesn't have control over, or it'll be along the lines give item X to character Y, select dialog option B and now she loves you. The first doesn't fit the medium and the second is a really terrible way to portray a relationship.

Maybe some LLM algorithms might portray romance better? But I don't feel good about that. Don't want to burn crazy amounts of electricity talking to a LLM character in a video game and the game would have to be online only, which means it cold be shut down at any time.

Even if we have the tech to have an LLM kind of algorithm that wouldn't use too much power and could run locally, it would really suck if you couldn't progress in a game because the LLM decided they don't like you. So it would still be a side thing, and not important to the main story of a game.

One of my favorite video game romances takes place in the Legend of Heroes: Trails series. When first described on paper in a quick summary, it's something some people might roll their eyes at, but it's built very well.

Something that had to be nailed down early about it was, it really couldn't be optional, based on "relationship score", or even happen on its own time. One of the best scenes in this duology centers around a huge character reveal, which puts forward the confession of love all at the same time; while that relationship had been a slow tease through individual scenes, it suddenly became a huge, very important part of this large conflict.

I definitely think for better relationships in games, we need a lot more focus on characters, and we need to stop viewing the relationships as rewards; sadly I don't have many further ideas than railroaded stories, but I think there's probably more options out there.

One of the videogame characters I was most attached to was Agro the horse in shadow of the colossus.

For involving the PC i'd say nameless one and annah in planescape torment.

Good banter , good complementary skills (i'd usually focus on magic in pst and have annah do the sneaking around and lure them into the blast zone ), some teaching/learning, some anger, some grief, mutual dependency / ass saving; literal resurrections of course; some infidelity possibilities or at least jealousy. And , of course, you can get the tattoo even though she's scared of the tattooist.

It wasn't plot linked as the other stories involving Deionarra and -spolier- and arguably not even necessarily a meaningful romance, but really good interpersonal dynamics over the course of the game that make the adventuring group more than just a collection of bashers walking from a to b.

Actually retrospectively -spoiler- might also be a good answer even if it was a bit unrequited desperate and mutually destructive.
maybe i just really liked that game. I haven't played many modern games though.

There comes a point where it is too real, and when the loading screen comes up and you see yourself in the reflection of the screen, that's going to create a really negative experience for a lot of people, not just gamers.

Which is why everyone should just play on anti-glare screens! They aren't reflective enough for that to happen!

Some games in the past were like this but people complained because "I want the goth baddie but I am not an 80 year old man with a white beard named Santa Claus, this game's romance system sucks."

No. Because you see, and may not quite understand, real life is totally different than what is depicted in games. This is primarily because video games aren’t real, and therefore cannot reciprocate affection.

On the other hand, romance in the real world is life affirming. It is among the most beautiful things human beings are capable of. It is a gift and one I have been able to share with my partner for over 18 years.

Astarion shot me down :(

You've gotta admit that there's something satisfying about the perfection of the duct tape strip, and the fact that some bozo paid another bozo mega bucks for it.

🫡

I also would love to see this!

It's kinda sorta not a game in many ways but dispatch did a decent job I thought.

Dialog wheel:
"You are cuter!"

"No! You are cute"

"You are the cutest!"

You are my cutie pie!

Party rolls a D20 to avoid dying of cringe

Trails in The Sky are so good. The franchise lost me mid-Cold Steel, unfortunately it became something else and I wasn't the target audience.

Oh, I do think that romance is logical. After all its purpose is to ensure the survival of the genes. It's just that the romance algorithms and the hardware they're running on have been hotfixed for millions of years so there are insane amounts of technical debt, that make the algorithm hard to figure out.

And in romance movies there is always a pursuer and a pursued party. And, as audience, we can clearly identify the correct behavior for the pursuer. But, if you identify with the pursued party, then these romance movies will feel like it's all chance, because the pursued often has very little agency.

A scoring system just formalizes this behaviour. And in video games, you as a main character have all the in-game agency. A romance, that would move the agency to an NPC will feel like the "OMG it's you, the grand champion" guy from Oblivion, or like a courier desperately trying to talk to you no matter where you are.

And I generally don't have an issue with local LLMs in video games, but I really don't think there is a way to make them work. Dialog trees are a really good way to give a player some control, while not overwhelming them with choice.

LLMs might work by allowing characters to acknowledge things you have done outside their own little storylines.

And, sure, I can type in my question. But this will be clunky and imo break the flow of the game. And I really don't want to sit infront of a computer and be talking out loud to some NPCs.

Okay, so it's a personal opinion based on experience. Cool, good for you. Glad that's cleared up.

You mean a dense protagonist harem anime?

I think that romance in video games is... well it's just like romance in any other medium. It exists to paint a picture in your head of what love looks like, because that's something they can sell to you.

If you want a game with natural feeling, organic romance then that's going to be the game. Full stop, simply having a cast of 10 characters already makes this very complicated.

Idk man this comment was far cringier than any video game romance that I’ve ever seen.

The game already works this way I believe. There was a point during EA that each character was way too keen on the PC though. Gale in particular was a problem they had to go back and fix.

There is of course more to it, but this was actually a key factor in my own marriage lol

Do you mean the being shot down part? Cause the devs have said in interviews that they purposely made the characters player-sexual.

Yeah I mean the way you play your character, depending on the likes/dislikes of the companions does have an effect on whether or not you can romance them.

They are otherwise player-sexual in that they are all evidently bisexual.

Sounds like it's a little more nuanced than I thought. In my play throughs it seemed like everyone was always ready to go!

Yes, among other things.

my favorite is fallout 4 after just watching your wife/husband get murdered you can almost immedeately start a harem of lovers 😂

When you grow up, it won’t be.

I’m pretty sure the majority of the entire planet thinks real world romance beats pretending pixelated characters actually give a shit about you.

But clearly your personal opinion is that of the minority- and is no less valid.

The opposite in fact. Sounds like a 10th grader wrote that.

Keep telling yourself whatever works for ya.

Well back on the 2077s men were well known to be animals.

Astarion has the best relationship narratives IMO, and was by far more satisfying than any other. He's been broken for so long, forced to seduce thousands of people, never having any of his own choices. When you finally show him that he has that now, that when the REAL relationship with him starts.

God I hate this type of argument about arts and entertainment. The logical conclusion of "this can be unhealthy for some people so nobody should make it" is "dumb everything down for the lowest common denominator."

And you keep on being yourself Mr cornball

I don't believe it's just unhealthy for "some people". I think it's unhealthy for everyone, and for our society as a whole. Simulating romantic relationships with fictional characters is a bad idea, because it dulls our sense of the real thing, and removes the need to intact with real people. It removes the ability to fail. A video game can't be true enough to life that one mistake can ruin a relationship, because even if that's the case, the player can reload his save. It becomes too comfortable and too safe.

As far as dumbing things down... is Civilization (as a series, let's not split every hair here) dumbed-down? How about Doom? Beyond All Reason? Factorio and Mindustry?

I'm not saying that games shouldn't make us feel. I don't even hate the idea of a romantic story involving characters who are not the PCs (or linear "romances" like Final Fantasy 8). I'm talking about the "Romance Options" that became prevalent in games because of Mass Effect. The player's avatar should not be involved in player-driven romantic relationships.

Love in the Ultima IV sense? sure. Love in the Mass Effect/Dragon Age sense? No.

I think i might have touched this subject before, but im really torn how many games handle sexuality of the characters.

I kind of hate how in many games every dateable character are main character-sexual. I feel like it robs the characters some depth when they dont care of the character is he/she/other. It makes the characters feel bland amd plastic.

But on the other hand games are a medium where player should be able to craft their own story and feel accepted, so devs should limit and hinder the player as little as they can. Especially when the real world can be so hostile towards the sexual minorities.