Sobriquet

This is, of course, very true. I understand it's a completely different ball game but I thought it might be illuminating from a consulatative perspective. I mean, I imagine you'd get a very different list than the one above - although, admittedly, some of it might be completely irrelevant. In most the romance plots I've played through the interactive element has usually consisted of: "want a romance with NPC" / "want to be friends with NPC" / "want to be cruel to the NPC" / "completely uninterested in talking with NPC" with a dialogue choice for each alternative, usually, actually in that order. And there's often very little room to manoeuvre within that i.e. you romance a person wrong or you romance them right and if you acccidentally cheese-grater them you've very often messed it up completely. I'm not saying that the NPCs should open themselves masochistically to regular cheese-gratings but sometimes I would really appreciate the opportunity to have a row or say the really funny cutting remark and, you know, it not sabotage everything. Perhaps I'm just a bad person to date but very few of my relationships have revolved around me always saying the nice line at the top! I guess the thing is, it rather feels like there are two options: romance and not-romance. And nothing in between. ?But maybe I'm doing romance plots an injustice, but generally I don't remember them with any particular affection.

I have to agree with the people who have posted above: if you don't like writing romance, get someone who does or don't do it. Talk to some romance writers, perhaps - it's not the maddest suggestion in the world. Perhaps I'm being picky but it does seem to me (and, from the forums, many others) that it rather comes across that the romances in NWN2 were written with great reluctance by someone who would rather be doing something else. I guess there'd be an outcry if you cut the romance plots altogether but, personally, I'd rather have nothing than something done half-heartedly. Also I'm not sure a list in an altogether helpful approach (but, hey, what do I know?) - the problem with romance, I think, is that it's so incredibly personal. One woman's Prince is another woman's frog. I didn't particularly like the romantic interests in NWN2 - although well voice-acted Casivir was way too angsty and his declaration came as something as a shock to me because I'd basically just ignored him. Elanee was just ... a bit ... blah? I'm sorry that's not very articulate but she was kind of grim and self-righteous and uninteresting. Also the love story such as it was had a sort of tedious inevitability to it: if you hang around with these people long enough they'll eventually decide they love you. And the influence mechanic doesn't help either. Because the only way to gain influence is, essentially, to suck up to your companions there's no sense of interaction there. Its them speaking and you trying to guess the right response. Perhaps part of the difficulty is that romance plots in computer games tend to contain very little tension or conflict. Assuming you don't set out to sabotage them, they tend to just happen. Couldn't there be romantic rivalry? And why can't there be doomed or thwarted love stories? FF7's Aeris was a very successful tragedy, wasn't it?