No romance!

[Icesong]

Yes! Reduced ability to define my character!

[dlux]

Good. Romance in video games is extremely controversial. It is better not to bother with it and just make a good game.

[Eelectrica]

Good. Dev time wasted on romances is time not spent on actual content.

Edited December 8, 2018 by Eelectrica

[injurai]

Yes! Reduced ability to define my character!

 

There is always someone who tries to paint allocation of finite resources this way. Their justification is well reasoned.

 

Personally I can't believe they won't let me define myself as a poor line-cook trying to impress my chef for a promotion. Can't believe they don't facilitate that important aspect of my character's identity.

 

 

“We really wanted to focus on you role-playing your character,” Boyarsky said, “developing the unique personalities of your companions as fully fleshed out people.”

Romance, he said, has a tendency to funnel gameplay and temper the decisions players make in the game in unusual ways. For that reason, they opted to leave it out.

“We had to pick what we were going to put our time into,” Boyarsky said. “Other people have explored the romance angle in different ways. We felt like sometimes it kind of waters down your roleplaying for your character because it turns into this mini game of how do I seduce this companion or that companion. So it was just one of the things we felt wasn’t really what we wanted to focus our time on. [...] We’re really trying to be focused on a specific experience so that we can polish that experience and give players the best version of that experience that we can.”

Edited December 8, 2018 by injurai

[Selky]

I'm completely fine with this after Deadfire.

[slopesandsam]

I thought romances were a cute addition when they appeared in Dragon Age: Origins, but it annoys me that they seem to have become a staple of the genre.  They always cause me to stop thinking of the companions as characters, and start thinking of them as systems to be gamed.  It breaks my immersion.

[Vitalis]

I'm completely fine with this after Deadfire.

I think that's why they did them in Deadfire.

[Ogi79]

GOOD! I hate  good story water down  with  "romance"crap. You want romance?  go outside in pub or whatever and romance whoever you want.

[Hedronn]

There is real life for romances... I don't feel like they are needed in any game, especially in what looks to be ToW with his twisted universe, crazy and tongue-in-cheek humor and so on.

[Guard Dog]

I thought romances were a cute addition when they appeared in Dragon Age: Origins, but it annoys me that they seem to have become a staple of the genre.  They always cause me to stop thinking of the companions as characters, and start thinking of them as systems to be gamed.  It breaks my immersion.

They go back well before that

[Guard Dog]

I like a lot of personal interaction with NPC. Complex friendships, alliances, rivalries, even enemies is good. PoE did this right. I hear Deadfire too but despite pre-ordering & installing it I haven't gotten around to it yet. But the romance options in games are often contrived, poorly handled, and center far too much on solving the romance target's problems. The PC & NPC never come in as equal partners. I can think of very few that were done right. I liked Morrigan's in DA because she came into it with an ulterior motive which made for a good twist. Other than that, none were overly interesting. 

 

I like how Skyrim did it. No real effort was put into it, you can marry pretty much anyone and they all say the same stuff anyway. You could do it or not do it and not feel like you are missing something. Plus no one could complain about being left out. (unless you had a wood elf fetish) But Skyrim was a different kind of game than I think OW will be. You didn't just play Skyrim, you lived in it. Getting married in games that sell you houses is logical. I suspect in OW we're going to be moving around a lot

 

I like how FONV & PoE handled interpersonal relationships & friendships with companions  and wrapped them up with game play choices. I got far more enjoyment from that. So more of that from OW is good for me. 

[Wormerine]

I like how Skyrim did it. No real effort was put into it, you can marry pretty much anyone and they all say the same stuff anyway. You could do it or not do it and not feel like you are missing something.

:-D That's best summary of Bethesda RPGs I have every seen. "You could do it or not do it and not feel like you are missing something". 

[Guard Dog]

 

I like how Skyrim did it. No real effort was put into it, you can marry pretty much anyone and they all say the same stuff anyway. You could do it or not do it and not feel like you are missing something.

:-D That's best summary of Bethesda RPGs I have every seen. "You could do it or not do it and not feel like you are missing something". 

 

  When you realize nothing is good you don't have to worry about missing something good!

[HoonDing]

good thing theres no romance

 

just look at everyone

 

uglyyyyyy

[teknoman2]

i'd rather have no romance at all than romance made to just check a box in the list of features. the only game that i actually liked how romance was done was Alpha Protocol. Dragon Age, Mass Effect and many others, all had canned romance dialogue options; you just had to choose who you wanted to go for and just pick the obvious lines to get to the result.

[SonicMage117]

Romances take alot of thyme to do right...

 

I'd rather have that effort go towards something more meaningful like making a talking peanut or a shiny toilet that floods itself. Something unique and different.

[bronzepoem]

Romances take alot of thyme to do right...

 

I'd rather have that effort go towards something more meaningful like making a talking peanut or a shiny toilet that floods itself. Something unique and different.

Have gun but no romance?You must be kidding me.

[Big-Ben]

Actually no he's right. The stuff Bioware does for instance costs A LOT of money. Like more than you can possibly imagine. I'd much rather have that spent on core gameplay if the money is tight. Approval ratings are not the same. It's way easier to do "You're a good leader" than it is to do "MAYBE I wanna bang you if you follow these 2397842893472934 steps".

[injurai]

ME also had romance from the very first game, and since there was limited representation in that first entry, they've had to expand the cast and relationships in order to cover all bases. It's a form of feature that creep that scales incredibly poorly.For one romance tends to be modal, you flirt over a long period and then boom a relationship is conveyed different. It eats up a lot of the long term character development branching that can be written for characters, because now you have this side relationship story that needs similar branching factors to whatever quest this character is undertaking. Most people don't see this content, and when they do it tends to be rather samey. I know it was for ME2.

 

The other issue is that either you write characters who's sexual orientation disappoints the fanbase, or you make the character player sexual and it undermines the character from having a well defined identity. These characters aren't merely collapsed quantum states, they have lives before meeting the protagonists that needs reflected. If they are discovering themselves that should be something that isn't solely being a reflection of the player's own desires. That just leads to awful writing and I think most fans pick up on how unsatisfying and groan worthy it is.

 

I think the best way to have romance in an rpg is between party members, and the player get's to basically be match-make and/or crotch-blocker. But even then, limit it to a love triangle or something that you can interfere with. And the player's interference should probably be a function of actually trying to pursue some greater goal.

[SonicMage117]

 

Romances take alot of thyme to do right...

 

I'd rather have that effort go towards something more meaningful like making a talking peanut or a shiny toilet that floods itself. Something unique and different.

Have gun but no romance?You must be kidding me.

Actually I'm 100% serious.

 

 

There isn't one Crpg I've ever played where romances made more sense than your standard lazy open world action game romance. So there's that.

 

 

However, I always remember stuff like a cool lookimg gun, a nice car or a weird room that makes me stop and say to myself (yes. I do talk to myself): "Wow, I wonder who thunk this up. This is crazy". That's the kimd of stuff I want to see stiffy!

[Malcador]

Romances take alot of thyme to do right...

I dunno, I think romances use cinnamon.

[LittleArmadillo0]

 

Romances take alot of thyme to do right...

I dunno, I think romances use cinnamon.

 

A good romance requires thyme, cinnamon, and vanilla.

[SonicMage117]

Oh my.

 

This season on Romance Chef with John Stamos!

[jf8350143]

No romance is not a good thing, but also not a bad thing. It just depends on whether the devs want to do it or not.

[Foamhead]

There are always twits who think that by hating things which are popular they are so much smarter. They are usually from the RPG Codex coincidentally.

 

They've never had romance options in their games so I don't see why Obsidian feels the need to advertise this fact in every game. At this point I think they are trying to appeal to said above twits.

 

Between being Windows 10 exclusive and more of the same appeal to fanboy philosophy, my interest is completely zero now.

 

*Edit*

 

By Windows 10 exclusive I mean in terms of PC. I should have been more clear that I was not including consoles.

Edited December 10, 2018 by Foamhead