Romances in NWN 2 and RPGs in general

[Tigranes]

jorian: he means, Josh Sawyer did not say GENDER=MALE because he was talking about male players. It does not matter if the player or his RPG character is male or female. The point is that in RPG romances, all females are attracted to male players, and all males are attracted to female players, often for no reason. Viconia's example shows that even when there is a reason, it is often shallow. So it's about the writing, not about the players' gender.

 

Anyway, romances will naturally be difficult, since love is one of the hardest emotions to understand and convey in writing, especially when it's interactive. I think straightforward infatuation or rather could work fairly well, though - or romance inside the party even.

[mkreku]

More pr0n? ? ?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Actually.. yes. What's the point of romance when you know before it starts (or ends) that the most it'll ever lead to is incredibly cheesy dialogue (gushing love declarations after ten minutes of idle chit-chat) and hand holding? If you're lucky, you'll get a kissing scene with clipping problems.

 

They would have to incorporate a massive (not-yet-existent) AI to be able to pull off an interesting romance in a game, since the computer would have to be able to improvise and surprise to be interesting. I don't think it's the writing in itself that fails (some of it is quite good) but the restrained format of dialogue trees.

 

My pick-up lines are seldom in the same universe as Bioware's writer's..

[Tigranes]

But my wings, mkreku. I have lost my wings.

[Lare Kikkeli]

i like the GTA style. hot coffee, biatch.

[@\NightandtheShape/@]

More pr0n? ? ?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I think I have to shoot you.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

It was sarcasam mixed with a mild satire.

[Missy]

They're almost universally poorly written, fumbling attempts at expressing intimacy from shallow characters in awkward and inappropriate situations to a character that attracts the NPC because GENDER=MALE.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Pretty much sums it up for me.

 

Also - Anomen as mentioned -

[Winterwolf]

This is my attempt to make an intelligent posts on romances....don`t judge me.

 

Personally I like the idea, but not the style in nowadays romances. This playing shrink for potential bed-mates is really tiresome. Actually now thinking about it my best romance experiences were not really romances. Frigidazzi in Serpent Isle practically raped the Avatar....ah, I really liked Ultima 7, it had plenty of these "you thought you rule but you really suck" moments....with all of the half of population of the world dying thingie. Anyway I liked Katrina from Quest for Glory 4 also....she wanted to kill the Hero and ended up dead...beautiful. It seems I like them when they are more hinted at rather than fully drawn out. Or perhaps it is because all these fully frawn out Biowarian romances seem to me to have too much similarities with cheap romance novel writing. It really feels like this to me:

 

PC: I want to have wild sex with you.

Possible romance option: My father broke all of my toys when I was little.

 

Rince and repeat 10 times over.

Romances have worked best for me when they have been subtly hinted at, creating the feeling right between not being in love and just about falling in love...you know, whe everything is intense and interesting. Bioware romances give me the feeling "happily" married....you know when your spouse is nagging at you for leaving your underwear in every possible location ever imagined to man.

Personally I especially like it when romances give a little Quills moment (the scene with the priest and the maid)....when they end before even getting to sex or even first kiss. Now that`s tragedy, a true ironical "you thought you rule but you really suck" moment. That scene in Quills is one my most favorite scenes ever, and I wish to see that kind of writing more in computer game romances. True, across-the-stars romances have to be little wrong in some way (like incest in Elric for example) but not in the "my father broke my toys, oh please be my shrink" way.

 

P.S I liked Anomen. That revenge scene of his owned me totally.

Edited November 6, 2006 by Winterwolf

[Jorian Drake]

jorian: he means, Josh Sawyer did not say GENDER=MALE because he was talking about male players. It does not matter if the player or his RPG character is male or female. The point is that in RPG romances, all females are attracted to male players, and all males are attracted to female players, often for no reason. Viconia's example shows that even when there is a reason, it is often shallow. So it's about the writing, not about the players' gender.

 

Anyway, romances will naturally be difficult, since love is one of the hardest emotions to understand and convey in writing, especially when it's interactive. I think straightforward infatuation or  rather could work fairly well, though - or romance inside the party even.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

thank you for explaining

 

as for Viconia, she's a drow, they don't expect to ever get the feelings 'trust' or 'love'.

The player char for her was like a sextoy slave for all the female drows in the Underdark. It's how she interprented the feeling for the player at the start.

 

 

As for female&male romances,

i guess i should now also add that equal rights for a girl-girl and man-man relations too.

 

 

Also, reason needs to be added for these feelings sometime, but not always. Love isn't really racional anyway.

[Dark_Raven]

Seems to me the male romance options are nicely written where us females get shafted with whiners and wimps>>> Anomen, Disciple and Carth. Whats the deal with that? I like romances but I have to play a male in order to get a decent one like Viconia or Aerie in BG2 or Bastila in K1.

[J.E. Sawyer]

@Josh: Do you think the writing for CRPGs' romances is worse than everything else that's written for CRPGs?

The prose isn't necessarily any better or worse, but the writing often comes across as worse because I think many people are more sensitive to the context of romance than to other situations.

 

"Oh, [CHARNAME]. I know that I'm a devout pacifist druid of Eldath and you're a halfling cleric of Talos, the Lord of Storms, but... as I stand next to you among this pile of fourteen freshly fireball-charred goblin corpses, I really feel something special between us. It's the sort of bond that could only be felt between me and someone like you, someone with the [PROTAGONIST] tag."

 

3. Shut up and get out of my face.

 

"Oh... oh, [CHARNAME], how could you? After that one previous node of dialogue where you gave a non-hostile response, I thought I was something special to you! Well now I see I was wrong!"

 

5. I hate you and hope that the Lord of Storms consumes you with a divine call lightning spell.

 

"Okay, I'll end this dialogue now, but you better know there's only one more floor trigger that's going to give you the option to be my sweetheart!"

[Missy]

@Josh: Do you think the writing for CRPGs' romances is worse than everything else that's written for CRPGs?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The prose isn't necessarily any better or worse, but the writing often comes across as worse because I think many people are more sensitive to the context of romance than to other situations.

 

"Oh, [CHARNAME]. I know that I'm a devout pacifist druid of Eldath and you're a halfling cleric of Talos, the Lord of Storms, but... as I stand next to you among this pile of fourteen freshly fireball-charred goblin corpses, I really feel something special between us. It's the sort of bond that could only be felt between me and someone like you, someone with the [PROTAGONIST] tag."

 

3. Shut up and get out of my face.

 

"Oh... oh, [CHARNAME], how could you? After that one previous node of dialogue where you gave a non-hostile response, I thought I was something special to you! Well now I see I was wrong!"

 

5. I hate you and hope that the Lord of Storms consumes you with a divine call lightning spell.

 

"Okay, I'll end this dialogue now, but you better know there's only one more floor trigger that's going to give you the option to be my sweetheart!"

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

[Hurlshort]

I remember when I hooked up with both female romantic interests in Jade Empire. That was epic. Still, it's pretty easy to discourage the romances in Bio games, just say the most offensive thing.

[J.E. Sawyer]

I remember when I hooked up with both female romantic interests in Jade Empire.  That was epic.  Still, it's pretty easy to discourage the romances in Bio games, just say the most offensive thing.

I didn't get that far in JE, but I remember thinking that the romances were better/more appropriate than most others I had seen.

[Pidesco]

It seems to me that that stems from a design policy rather than the writing itself. Perhaps developers should approach romances more as a secret side quest, rather than a main feature of RPGs. With this in mind, romances should be made easier to screw up (you say the wrong thing, and you're done), and also, the PC should choose who he/she wants to romance. This should make things seem a little bit more open-ended and not as scripted as they usually are. The problem with this approach is, of course that a lot of development time/money is spent on something that in the end, won't be experienced by most players of the game.

Edited November 6, 2006 by Pidesco

[J.E. Sawyer]

I agree, which is why I feel that romances should either receive less (i.e. zero) time or significantly more time per character.

[Pidesco]

Also, the way romance development in BG2, depended on how long you had been playing the game, and where your characters were at any given time, worked a lot better than just making the development dependent on what level you were on.

[Arkan]

Also, the way romance development in BG2, depended on how long you had been playing the game, and where your characters were at any given time, worked a lot better than just making the development dependent on what level you were on.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Agreed, but BG2 takes a lot longer to finish than games today, and it often led to oddly placed romantic conversations...

[Lare Kikkeli]

seriously guys, if i'm looking for accurate protrayal of human emotions, i wont be looking at dnd, game or book.

what i've always wondered is why no game studios ever hire actual authors to write the dialogue.

[@\NightandtheShape/@]

I agree, which is why I feel that romances should either receive less (i.e. zero) time or significantly more time per character.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I getting that Sim's with text feeling.

 

[@\NightandtheShape/@]

seriously guys, if i'm looking for accurate protrayal of human emotions, i wont be looking at dnd, game or book.

what i've always wondered is why no game studios ever hire actual authors to write the dialogue.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Because writing dialogue for games and for books are different.

[Azarkon]

as a secret side quest, rather than a main feature of RPGs. With this in mind, romances should be made easier to screw up (you say the wrong thing, and you're done), and also, the PC should choose who he/she wants to romance. This should make things seem a little bit more open-ended and not as scripted as they usually are. The problem with this approach is, of course that a lot of development time/money is spent on something that in the end, won't be experienced by most players of the game.

 

But then you have people whining about how difficult it is to romance a character and how romances should be something that everyone experiences through the course of the game.

 

Sometimes I think that people want harems of slavishly devoted characters, and there's some truth to that - after all, I doubt by "romance" most people are actually looking for a replay of RL relationships.

[Morgoth]

seriously guys, if i'm looking for accurate protrayal of human emotions, i wont be looking at dnd, game or book.

what i've always wondered is why no game studios ever hire actual authors to write the dialogue.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Because writing dialogue for games and for books are different.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I tend to agree. Just hiring a professional writer from whatever industry, throwing him into a room and then say "Go, write story!" just ain't working today. Writing for video games also means embedding yourself into the design and art team in order to revise and improve your dialogs faster.

But well, in general, it's not just romances that are still stuck in geeky-time, just feeling awkward and all. Stories for fantasy/SciFiction in video games generally still tend to be too much based on mythology, you know, turning Russians into Klingons and add some Drama, based on some silly War from Real Life . Etc Etc. You know how flat Star Trek or Star Wars feels. At least to me.

[Walsingham]

I like the notion of approaching it as a secret side-quest. It should also be possible to have different kinds of relationship. i.e. your sporty warrior women are more likely to be in for some energetic activity, and less mooning around. While your half-insane mage types would be more problematic.

 

Having someone join your party as a stalker might be ahealthy educational process for some roleplayers.

[Azarkon]

Can't say I disagree. There usually is a sense of accomplishment involved - people who like RPG romances tends to think, for some reason, that if you devote alot of time and attention to a character romance should be the reward (I guess it's something of a fantasy for how real life should work?) In that sense it comes down to the gameplay - romances can be a form of gameplay, rather than just ambience/flavor. Course, I'm not suggesting to go as far as those dating games in Japan but... Well, you get the idea.

Edited November 6, 2006 by Azarkon

[J.E. Sawyer]

seriously guys, if i'm looking for accurate protrayal of human emotions, i wont be looking at dnd, game or book.

what i've always wondered is why no game studios ever hire actual authors to write the dialogue.

Studios have, and the results are not demonstrably better.