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Video game romances need to evolve beyond lore dumps
(www.polygon.com)
This is Visual Novel erasure! :yells-at-cloud: Good article.
I usually skip romance arcs because they are so painfully cringe to wade through. The exceptions are, for the most part, movies by another name (eg FFX) and can play to a film's strengths in writing and acting.
The major problem is the interactive medium of games itself; how can one build a compelling organic romance when there can be nearly limitless choices? It's like how traditional stories in Open World games cannot have any real tension because it removes the freedom from the player. I think what makes romances in films, plays, and books work is because you are always one step removed in the observer's position. This distance is much blurrier in games because you are directing and making choices for the character, and obliterated when you are the character doing the romancing. Then there's the ugly truth in games that simulating Reality is often not fun. Accurate physics is actually pretty boring and hard. Going through a virtual breakup sounds like a cyberpunk dystopian hell. Then there's the game save which renders any important decision moot. This video talks about how failure/difficulty in games is itself difficult to design because we don't like failure. It touches on romances too. A big point he makes is how a game cannot take the player aside, gauge their reaction to events, and adjust itself. Without this feedback all we have are dialog trees and stats. Then there is the risk we get what we ask for, and players start legitimately romancing their NPC characters like this MIT study is suggesting happening with current generation chatbots. All that being said, I still would like to see what a romantic arc might look like that plays to the strengths of games.
