Mangonel

I think part of the problem RPG's lack tension is we, as the PC know what our own goals are so that removes a source of tension from the relationship. Perhaps a way to reintroduce this would be to have Love Interests act in a manner that would test PC commitment? The writing would have to get creative to put the LI in a situation to act out-of-character enough to shake the PC's opinion though.

Gotta say, I loved what I saw. Just makes the anticipation build that much more.

Only thing I know, is that my character will be Fighter/Barb. I'll make up my mind when I get full ability lists. Beyond that I usually play my party with the characters I like and try to make it work.

rofl, this a thousand times this. A game needs to have a romance plot where the character is stalkerish up to eleven. The potential hillarity. But yea, BioWare has a habit of being hamfisted with the 'romance confirmation' dialogues. Problem is, esp in the ME series, they took a turn for quantity over quality. Their concept of having to give the player a 'heads-up' before they get into something they can't undo is also a sad symptom of modern gaming in general though. Games with pick-your-love-interest romances typically use some kind of points system to determine the characters romance state. Usually a set of key points you have to get correct and number of general do-things-they-like points. Problem is the key decisions are usually few and made obvious, exposing the meta-game. Secondly there is usually only two states for the character, romanced or not. Which is another major contributor to awkwardness. To make the romance more natural there would have to be more key decisions where only a percentage of them must be correct.The majority of these decisions must hide their importance. This is in addition to general do-things-they-like points. Further, at least three states would have to exist. And I mean actual character states (indifferent->like->love), not just an adjective that gives you clues to your progress on how many romance points you have. Having enough content to have numerous key decisions and general for-points decisions would inherently require a large game. Layering differing dialogues for at least three character states for multiple love interests is an exponential increase in writing. Thats without even considering having realistic party banter regarding your advancing romance during various stages of the game. A linear story would prune a lot of writing because you'd know at what points players could have what characters in what states. A dynamic game that lets you complete plot quests in various orders is a ridiculous can of worms thats near mind-boggling. Thats completely ignoring the possiblity of having a character's romance state degrading. When you really think about the dev costs it becomes kinda obvious why games with pick-your-love-interest romances tend to have shallow or bad romances. Equally obvious why Obsidian is just not bothering with PoE.

I'm sure others have mentioned this, I usually try to read threads before commenting, but 33pp is practically a novella. First let me say, I'm a character driven person. Doesn't matter if the story is epic, if I don't care about the characters. Similarly if the story is the biggest cliche trope-pile the world has ever seen, I'll deal with it if I really like the characters involved. Thats why I like romances in RPG's because I find them to be ways to open up characters to more development that they wouldn't otherwise have. Just like IRL people tend to have sides of themselves they only show to their significant other, and when done right the 'reward' to me for a romance plot is getting to see that side of the character. That said, a shallow ad-hoc romance for romance's sake is a waste of time. As long as Obsidian puts the effort into making the characters actually have interesting character I'm fine. Frankly, I think the reason romances are included in a lot of RPG's is because its a quick and relatable way to justify one characters affection for another. You could call it lazy writing in these circumstances because it is. Its far simpler to convey that two characters love each other as the impetus for their actions than it is to try and make a believable situation where a platonic relationship would spur the same reactions in the given characters.