Where are the romances?

[Roman Wybranowski]

Hi

You are going to put out a dlc, I assume. Can you add romances? Especially with Ellie for me. I want romantic relationships. Can you, Obsidian, directly answer this question, if romances will be available in the future?

Cheers

Roman

[YogaFlame]

One thing I didn't like was after all the money I spent for parvati she still wasn't interested in a relationship with the captain . It was the only reason why I did. I thought maybe something of a hint for later would have been cool. 

[Staehrminator]

I think it's a terrible idea for anyone to enter in a romantic relationship with their boss. And the walls in those cabins are thin, man.

That said, Vicar Max is welcome to enlighten me any day.

[GammaReagan]

Surely, Max could take my confession any day, but I find it quite refreshing with a game where sleeping with your companions isn't an attainable option. 

Edited December 22, 2019 by GammaReagan

[daven]

Here we go again...

[Wormerine]

On 12/11/2019 at 6:29 AM, YogaFlame said:

One thing I didn't like was after all the money I spent for parvati she still wasn't interested in a relationship with the captain . It was the only reason why I did. I thought maybe something of a hint for later would have been cool. 

She probably saw through that, and decided to milk you for as much as she can.

[AwesomeOcelot]

Quote

I think it's a terrible idea for anyone to enter in a romantic relationship with their boss. And the walls in those cabins are thin, man.

Meh it happens quite a bit though, they're not really under contract and I'm not paying them. If the walls are thin it's fun to creek the bed as much as possible.

Quote

One thing I didn't like was after all the money I spent for parvati she still wasn't interested in a relationship with the captain .

Hahaha. She wasn't interested in an intimate relationship with anyone. She also was explicit in what she was doing. Did you try to romance SAM as well?

[Jewelsmith]

There's a Polygon article where Leonard Boyarsky says something along the lines of not wanting romance to influence the player's decisions. 

“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.”

With limited time and money to develop the game, adding a romance system would have meant losing other characters and side quests, and not being able craft the story they wanted to tell. 

But saying that love "waters down" roleplaying... That doesn't make any sense to me. Caring about the crew did not "water down" my game experience. The exact opposite. I really enjoyed being able to ask my favorite crew members for their opinions during quest moments, or having them join the conversations. In a game where the player is expected to craft a personal journey and choose from various nuanced dialog choices and moral decisions, why shouldn't feelings and relationships be a factor, just as in real life? 

The Outer Worlds could have characters who are not romanceable, if they want to have a particular story arc like Parvati's, but they could have at least acknowledged that the player would have an interest and shut it down in some clever, character-related way. Ellie could have said, "Sorry, I make it a habit not to sleep with my boss," or Max could have said he was too devoted to his religion to have a relationship, or Nyoka could have said, "You're not screwed up enough to be my type," etc.