The Official Romance Thread

[BruceVC]

 

Yes I agree 100 % that Romance makes your RPG experience  more memorable and for me more immersive

 

Also I find I remember the people I have Romanced in the various RPG I have played through the years  almost immediately....but I can barley recall the other party members

 

So? Why is that important to you? Why does it matter to you that you remember them? Are you just saying you have really enjoyed romance in the context of roleplaying so much that it has been extremely memorable for you?

 

Thats cool, now WHY did you enjoy romance in these RPGs? Emotions? What emotions did it cause in you? Butterflys in your stomach? Or what? What are the good emotions and what exactly is it about romance in RPGs that emulates real romance so well that gives you those good emotions?

 

Yes in a way when I think of BG2 I think of Viconia, I really enjoyed the Romance arc with her

 

I don't think its emotions, not in the real sense because an RPG doesn't really have that type of significant real world impact on me. Its just a form of entertainment, like reading a book or watching a movie. Its not life changing, but in the context of gaming it is significant?

Edited November 26, 2014 by BruceVC

[Sheikh]

 Its just a form of entertainment, like reading a book or watching a movie. Its not life changing, but in the context of gaming it is significant?

 

YES IT IS. THAT IS ****ING EMOTIONS FRIEND. Now what I am asking you *cough* *cough*, is what emotions you experienced with regards to this romance with Viconia. Because I dont experience much emotions related to romance in RPGs so I have little to no ****ing idea of how and why romance in RPGs is an enjoyable thing and I want to find that out. I also want to find out what the **** are we even discussing here anyway in the first place? Huge ****ing mystery after 28 pages of thread.

 

I think it comes down to us discussing pure emotions in thsi thread which is largely meaningless to me. **** this I am out.

Edited November 26, 2014 by Sheikh

[Sheikh]

This thread is about pure emotions. And it is largely about good pure emotions.

 

But none of you would actually directly express those good emotions. BruceVC is a good example - guy refuses to share his emotions with us in this thread, but he keeps talking about them anyway. Everything he says is largely just pure emotion, but he finds a way to express that emotion indirectly with pseudointellectual sounding talk - in other words he is expressing emotions, but disguising them as thoughts. Thats why it sounds like utter nonsense. From a thought perspective, it is pure nonsense, but from an emotion perspective, it is extremely meaningful, its just that it is expressed in a hardcore dysfunctional way.

 

Dear friends, if you are going to discuss emotions, please have the courage to say out loud - romance with Viconia made me feel really ****ing great because it made me tingle inside.

 

Discuss whatever you want, but could we at least stop disguising our emotions as thoughts? That doesnt do anything useful and doesnt lead anywhere.

Edited November 26, 2014 by Sheikh

[BruceVC]

This thread is about pure emotions. And it is largely about good pure emotions.

 

But none of you would actually directly express those good emotions. BruceVC is a good example - guy refuses to share his emotions with us in this thread, but he keeps talking about them anyway. Everything he says is largely just pure emotion, but he finds a way to express that emotion indirectly with pseudointellectual sounding talk - in other words he is expressing emotions, but disguising them as thoughts. Thats why it sounds like utter nonsense. From a thought perspective, it is pure nonsense, but from an emotion perspective, it is extremely meaningful, its just that it is expressed in a hardcore dysfunctional way.

 

Dear friends, if you are going to discuss emotions, please have the courage to say out loud - romance with Viconia made me feel really ****ing great because it made me tingle inside.

 

Discuss whatever you want, but could we at least stop disguising our emotions as thoughts? That doesnt do anything useful and doesnt lead anywhere.

 

Are you asking me why I like Romance or are you telling me why I like Romance

 

The reality is I have explained why I like Romance many times, but I'm happy to explain again

 

Simply put an RPG for me should be as realistic as possible in a fantasy context. Since most RPG offer interaction with party members it is completely reasonable that physical relationships would also develop. Also I can really imagine my character on this hectic quest to save the world, face death on  a daily basis but also have a Romantic interest with someone in the party who my character  is attracted to and is prepared to die for me. I can't think of a closer emotional  bond, someone who is prepared to die for you on some  epic quest. So Romance is just the expected outcome on your typical RPG journey and  Romance adds to the immersive factor of the overall RPG experience

 

Hope this clears up why I like Romance

[Sheikh]

No it doesnt. You are expressing thoughts, please start expressing emotions with your words.

Simply put an RPG for me should be

 

No, how it makes you feel not what it is.

[Lephys]

There's nothing preposterous about that. Again, you're describing standard video game NPC structure. The problem with plugging romances into that template is that the reaction itself never seems to feel right or organic.

I don't know if it was intentional or not, but you just wedged two unrelated quotes together. It now seems to me like you're responding as if I had said that a virtual personality reacting to its surroundings is somehow preposterous.

 

However, on the problem with the reaction feeling organic, I acknowledge that that is a tricky thing to do. However, I dare say that even friendships in video games between a character who isn't actually you and another virtual character don't really ever achieve organic feeling. I mean, they can be pretty darn good, but you're still limited in how you can react to things, when you can react in a meaningful way (a way that actually affects the NPCs reactions, via code), and how you can experience these events and reactions (you're watching everything from a bird's-eye view, so it's not really the same as empirically experiencing someone's friendship-building choices.

 

So, the best you can hope for, with any inter-character relationship of any type, is the level of organic-ness you get from reading about characters in a book. Except you get more choice as to what one of the characters does and says, and, indirectly, what that character's personality is like.

 

That being said, "Look at (insert game here that has blatantly bad romance stuff in it, for various obvious resons)! See, we can never do better than that, and that sucks!" is still not, and never will be, any kind of rational reasoning or deduction.

 

Just because we'll never make a cRPG make you REALLY feel like you're ACTUALLY falling in love with a person, doesn't mean that there's no better fit to be achieved than what's already been achieved. And really, I'll bet there are some games out there with much better romances than anything you've pointed out thus far, but the rest of the game was so un-noteworthy that no one cares and they go unreferenced.

 

More to the point: It is not unusual to do a good deed for someone (or a few good deeds) and then they react by becoming your friend. But it DOES feel odd to do that same good deed(s) and suddenly they react by falling in love with you. You are operating under the false notion that "love" or "romance" is no different from any other kind of interpersonal bonding.

That's an awfully skewed comparison. Do you go out of your way to help someone one time, and they suddenly become your best friend in the entire universe, as if you had grown up together and know each other better than anyone could even know themselves? No. It takes time. So, why should love not work the same way? Once again, I don't understand your leaps. "It's dumb for people to suddenly love you." Okay, so maybe they shouldn't suddenly do it. Maybe they should do it via a different adverb. Like... gradually, maybe? That's a good one.

 

I, personally, don't want a game in which anyone suddenly becomes my really great friend. I should hope that person would think more along the lines of "Okay, well I know that I can at least trust this person for now," and would gradually develop more and more trust in you and become better friends with you as time went on. You can call out romance all day, but if a game did the same thing that usually happens with romance, with friendship, I'd say it has a crap Friendship implementation, and would've been better off without Friendship in the game.

 

And no, I'm no operating under the false notion that "love" or "romance" (I guess we're not even acknowledging that they exist, now, with the Quotey Marks of Allegation?, *shrug*) are no different at all from any other interpersonal bonding. I apologize for not outright saying it in a sentence, and instead conveying the idea through a probably-unnecessary amount of context and elaboration, but I shall rectify this here: Love/romance is no different from any other form of interpersonal bonding in terms of the aspect of their gradual development, and their ability to be measurably represented via coded writing and reactions. Obviously all interpersonal relations aren't identical. But they share many similarities.

[Azarkon]

 

Then why are people and creatures alike all getting engaged like there's no tomorrow?

 

6_u

Because there is no tomorrow?

 

 

I'm going to take issue with Sawyer's statement about not having the resources to do romance correctly. Romance is simply a facet of a character - and didn't Obsidian set as a design goal, highly reactive NPCs with their own unique personalities and developed story arcs? How does one distinguish, resources-wise, between an in-depth PC-NPC relationship and a romance? In my mind they are one and the same. It's though Obsidian completely forgot about their own experiences working on games eg PS:T, where love - both amorous and platonic - was not a mere appendage but a central conceit woven into the plot, the NPCs, and their interactions with TNO.

I think the answer is in Sawyer's statement. He said they didn't have the resources to do romances correctly. And he's probably right about that. Obsidian does not have a staff of Harlequin novel writers, like Bioware does. So any romances they would have attempted for PoE would have probably sucked ass, like they do in every Obsidian game. And that's, You know, the opposite of correctly.

 

PS: there's no such thing as a platonic romance. If it's platonic, then it's a friendship. And Obsidian did not rule out friendships in PoE. It's a good bet they're in.

 

As for PS:T, well... Take it up with Chris Avellone? He's not the lead writer for PoE. He's got a limited role in the game's development so any romance he would write for the game would have been minor and peripheral at best. (and a waste of talent, but that's just my opinion)

 

Did I actually write that post only twenty days earlier? Yikes, felt a lot longer than that. I haven't had the time to return to it till recently, so sorry for the missed replies.

 

In any case, I understand what Sawyer said, but my contention is that his statements about 'deep NPC interaction' and 'we don't have the resources to do romances' contradict each other. Romance IS a form of 'deep NPC interaction' and it's best that it's treated that way rather than as harlequin escapism. Romance is not added content onto a character; it is intrinsic to the characterization itself.

 

It's fine that the NPCs in POE do not fit the bill. I don't want to end up with a game ie DA2 where every other NPC is a conveniently single bisexual in heat just because the developers felt the need to hit all their constituencies. But at the same time, I don't see why romance is so special that it requires so much additional resources to develop over other NPC interactions. Indeed, it's down that road that we get to DA2 in the first place - holding romantic interactions on a pedestal over all other forms of interaction.

 

In life, as in art, which imitates life, there are a lot of complex, poignant, and deeply affecting relationships characters are able to have with each other. Examples that involve no romance whatsoever are plentiful, and recently in the gaming industry one of them - father-daughter - has been getting a lot of attention in games eg Bioshock Infinite, The Last of Us, Walking Dead. And in case you want to be less male-centric, then there's the equally popular sister-sister and mother-daughter pairings that Disney has recently made subversive. Are such relationships less resource intensive to get 'correct' simply because they don't involve romance? I'd say that's a gross misconception.

 

All interpersonal relationships are capable of being profound, complicated, and messy. All of them are also capable of being simple and superficial. Look at the 'romances' found in your average Michael Bay vs. the 'friendships' found in your average Joss Whedon. It's not just romances that are hard to get 'correct.' It's all 'deep NPC interactions.' Therefore, there's no cause for why we need to single out romances for the extra effort ... unless we're already treating them as pandering features ala Bioware.

[Azarkon]

 

The decision's made and done, so I'm not here to crusade about it, and in fact I care little, ultimately, whether amorous love is central to PE - to each game their own. But the explanation given for why there won't be romance in PE: *that* I take issue with, and is what prompted this post. Don't put love on a pedestal. Love is basic. It is instinct. All else being equal, a complex character that is romantically involved with the PC is no easier and no harder to portray than a complex character that is platonically involved with the PC. In fact, as JRPGs show, it's frequently the opposite.

 

 

It actually is harder to portray. The classic JRPG romances are made the way they are because it's easier. When you're writing romance, it's way harder, and much more expensive to deal with the changes that happens after the romance starts. The character development and the change in group dynamics etc is not easy to make credible. 

That's one of the reasons why most games with romances ends with some defining quest, event or battle after the shagging. 

 

I think you're putting romance on a pedestal, so to speak. Again, I go back to PS:T because this being the Obsidian forums, I reckon the bulk of people here know it:

 

Morte vs. Annah - what makes you think the latter was harder to write, besides MCA's own proclivities against writing romance in the first place? Morte has, from what I recall, a greater quantity of lines, and a greater amount of interactions with the PC through the course of the game. The fact that Annah was in love with the PC did not result in her interactions with him being fundamentally lopsided vis-a-vis the other NPCs. Personally, I don't think there was anything wrong with the PS:T romances - ie they were not 'bad' / 'incorrect' - so I bring it up again and again as an example to counter the idea that romances are content++.

 

Now, to take a step back, what DOES make romances content++ is the pedestal attitude for which Bioware is famous. See, when you regard romances as being extrinsic to the character - as a feature of the game, as extra content - then you get into all sorts of trouble with demographic inclusiveness. Make one such romance, and suddenly there is an outcry for a dozen others because the one romance you made did not fit XYZ sexual orientation and thus your game becomes discriminatory against XYZ group, and bam, your company's in the crosshairs of social justice warriors and has to devote a tremendous amount of resources to be inclusive every time you do romance.

 

The way to avoid such ordeals is to not treat romance as extra content in the first place. Don't make it about 'romance vs. no romance.' Make it about character A vs. character B. Don't sell romance. Sell the story and the NPC interaction that just happens to have romance every now and then.

 

I don't think Obsidian needs to be afraid of including romance in their games. I do think they need to be afraid of the attitude that romance is extra content, and that because it's extra content, it has to be equally distributed across target groups.

Edited November 26, 2014 by Azarkon

[Azarkon]

I personally feel recreating romance in video games is boring. Recreating adventures and war is interesting because you cant do that really in real life unless you for example went to the iraq war or something along those lines, but that is dangerous and requires enormous dedication.

 

On the other hand I can go outside and approach any girl I want to if I wanted to start a new romance so why would I do it in a video game instead?

 

That is my perspective and probably my masculinity talking. I know this is all part of a duality so I would be interested in hearing the other side of the story - why is romance in a video game interesting? I know that women arent good at approaching the opposite sex, so it doesnt work as easily for them. So from the perspective of femininity, it would be different, but how exactly I dont know 

 

I do not personally feel like romance is an extension of roleplay. Romance is just romance the same way my romantic partner is not an extension of my character in any way, just a complementing part of my life. For roleplay purposes a romantic relationship is no different from any relationship. Roleplaying is not about relationships at all, its about individuals, their personas and characters. Relationships aka interacting are useful to bring that character inside the person through social interaction. But really from the perspective of roleplay, I feel relationship = social interaction. Relationship (whether it be master-tutor relationship, romantic or friend or enemy relationsip) is just a special type and/or form of social interaction and romantic relationships do not deserve special attention from my perspective.

I am in complete agreement as to the idea that romance is no different than any other deeply felt relationship. As to why people want them in games - I ought to hope it's not simply because they want what they lack in life! But that rather, it's because romance is a form of character interaction and critical to certain types of characterizations.

 

Going back to the Annah example, the pathos of her story depends on the fact that the love she develops for TNO results only in a state of greater misery for both of them due to TNO's curse. There's no way to represent this pathos without romantic interactions with Annah, as there's no way to represent Deionarra's tragedy without her unrequited and ultimately futile attempts at trying to get the PC to love her - and thereby regret what his previous incarnation did.

 

These two characters - along with Ravel - are depicted in PS:T as being tormented by their doomed romances, and their suffering are ultimately driving forces for TNO to 'change the nature of a man.' These characterizations work because romantic love is, at the end of the day, a powerful human emotion and therefore we're able to believe that it's capable of such grand tragedy. That, and not pandering, is why you ought to include romance in RPGs.

Edited November 27, 2014 by Azarkon

[redneckdevil]

Deep npc interactions and romances do not contradict one another. Romances can be a "form" of deep npc interaction, but doesnt mean that every romance will be a deep npc interaction or that the effort/ability is the same.

Just because someone can do a story with deep npc interactions doesnt mean they can do one using romance as a tool to do so. I GM and i consider myself lretty good at story telling and i can create characters the players will hate, will want to protect and stick up for, be intimidated by by just wlrds alone etc etc. I CANNOT come up with a great or interesting love arch/romance at all. It pisses my woman off because she sees my notes and characters and stories i write and gets mad because for the life of me, i cannot write or come up with something romantic for her as often as i can with stories.

imho its a helluva lot easier to come up with an epic tale, a horror story, a good mystery than it is to create a decent romance story for me.

reason is because action, epicness, mystery, and even horror is so much easier to conjure up because i have seen and/or felt those emotions and tales whereas a romance to be done well, u have to have insperation for, a well to dip from. And while i have alot of love in my life, its more simple than something complex because thats i view/like romance. The torrent of emotions and how and the steps that lead up, during, and after are hard to capture to me in something on the same level as the rest kf what i can do.

some people are really good (or think they are at romances) while others arent. Doesnt make them less writers or story tellers, people just have their niche. Romance authors will find romance easier than horror, and so on and so forth.

 

So ill end by saying, it is not a contradiction. Romance is a vehicle a writer can use to create deep relationships between characters, its just not all writers/storytellers have the license much less that vehicle of their own to try to drive. They just use other vehicles to get to the same place, doesnt make it all the same or that everyone can all drive the same thing.

[Sheikh]

Romance wont be in poe lets end thread/

 

There isnt going to be any meaningful discussion in this forum about romance because we have nothing to base the discussion on.

Edited November 27, 2014 by Sheikh

[Lephys]

Romance wont be in poe lets end thread/

That's not what the thread was started for, so let's not.

 

Also, it could be in the sequel / expansion.

[Sheikh]

 

Romance wont be in poe lets end thread/

That's not what the thread was started for, so let's not.

 

Also, it could be in the sequel / expansion.

 

 

Yeah but this is poe forum, not poe sequal / expansion forum. And predicted future with the help of a crystal ball is not a good basis for discussion in my opinion. I can predict that poe sequel is going to take place directly in our brains without the help of computers or our senses, is it worthwhile to discuss the implications of that too?

 

Josh's claim in an interview that if Obsidian were to do romances, they would want to do them right and that a good romance takes time they did not have for PoE.

 

 /thread

 

That's not what the thread was started for, so let's not. 

So what was it made for?

Edited November 30, 2014 by Sheikh

[Lephys]

So what was it made for?

As before, here are the rules:

 

Romance in PoE Thread Rules

 

- This thread is for people who wish to actually discuss the roleplaying merits of romances (or lack thereof) in regards to Pillars of Eternity. You can lament or celebrate that they are not included, argue why the game would have been better or worse, give examples from games that did it well or did it poorly, talk about modding efforts to add it in, or discuss how it might be included in future expansions or installments and anything related to those subjects, etc.

 

- Anyone posting simply to make fun of or abuse people who like or dislike romance or to point out how often this topic has been done before will find their posts deleted. If the thread goes off-topic or gets very hostile, it will get pruned.

 

- Other romance threads will either be deleted or merged into this one.

 

Knock yourselves out.

[Sheikh]

- This thread is for people who wish to actually discuss the roleplaying merits of romances (or lack thereof) in regards to Pillars of Eternity

 

Cant be done, the end. Thread was baseless from the very beginning or at least since we have known there will be no romance in poe.

[redneckdevil]

 

- This thread is for people who wish to actually discuss the roleplaying merits of romances (or lack thereof) in regards to Pillars of Eternity

 

Cant be done, the end. Thread was baseless from the very beginning or at least since we have known there will be no romance in poe.

BALDERDASH!!! (Shakes cane from rocking chair) This thread was created so that we could flap our gums back and forth in a caved pin about romances or the lack there of without getting all ghe other threads all hot and bothered by the content of what is going on! Without this thread to cage it in, can u imagine all the other threads getting crazy ideas such as holding hands and (gasp!) dancing and shaking their bums to try and attract other threads! I mean. An u imagine what the threads would look like?

People cant stop talking about it so this is here to keep all the talk in one place...so SHHHHHH. Or else all the other threads will cant on and ull see "romance this" "romance that" all over the dagum place.

 

Keep it locked tight and rdy tbose gates so we can shove all of it in here.

 

 

 

 

 

And yes i have been drinking!!!

[Sheikh]

Yeah I am talking about it too here.

 

And I think the thread has been **** and is cotinuing being **** so either way it isnt working.

 

You dont solve a problem by containing it. You solve it by working your way to the core issue and doing something with it which is what I am doing now and here.

[Lephys]

And yes i have been drinking!!!

That's only two letters away from "thinking". Close enough for me.

[Sheikh]

 

And yes i have been drinking!!!

That's only two letters away from "thinking". Close enough for me.

 

No its not. Everything he wrote is pure delusion. At least he admits he was drinking, but honestly I would have preferred he start with saying that.

 

If you guys are so depressed and anxious to not be able to think well without alcohol, do something good with your health not bury it with symptomatic remedies like alcohol.

 

And it shows, once again, what sort of content this thread attracts.

Edited December 1, 2014 by Sheikh

[Blarghagh]

Guess what? You can regard "Pillars of Eternity: General Discussion" as being in regards to a franchise and an expansion has always been in the cards, so it's still relevant. It's also possible to discuss how romance would have been implemented had PoE included them (as hypotheticals) as well as how people will or would like to see them modded in. Finally, it's not even up to you guys to decide whether a thread will be closed but up to the moderating team, so your discussion is infinitely more pointless than you think this thread is. Either way, this one's getting closed for length and the next one is going up shortly.