Poll of the Day > Are there any games with a romance option that means anything?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Outside of dating sims where it's mandatory for the plot

It's essentially nothing more than a collectable in Skyrim and Harvest Moon, showing up at your home base with the most basic dialogue for a "relationship". Fallout 4 at least has defined characters with their own plot lines, but even in that case you just get a single line of dialogue and an insignificant buff when you sleep together. Playing Persona 4 right now and there doesn't seem to be much to it either. Just some alternate scenes with awkward dialogue, which makes sense for teenage relationships, but then it just fades to black and says "you spend time together".

Are there actually any games where getting into a romantic relationship with someone develops further than an alternate scene or two and you have to build and maintain the relationship for more benefits and more character development? And like I mention in the beginning, games where that's the primary focus don't count.

Viva Piata.

I don't know if the Mass Effect series qualifies under your criteria, but you do need to continue the romance through the three games iirc.

peanutt121 posted...

I don't know if the Mass Effect series qualifies under your criteria, but you do need to continue the romance through the three games iirc.

I haven't played much of Mass Effect but I'd say it qualifies. I just don't know what comes of the romance options. Do you get unique character development and content that can only be accessed through these relationships? How different is it from having them as a platonic party member?

Also to branch from the topic, I would like to see a game where your relationship with a character isn't so linear. What I mean is that in any game where you build a relationship with someone, it can be approached at any time and almost never can be set backwards or ruined permanently outside of obvious bad decisions. You could neglect someone for months and come back to them and it'll be like you just met yesterday. I'd love to see games that have more complex relationship mechanics.

best I can think of are gameplay-heavy visual novels like sengoku rance, baldr sky, or aselia the eternal, where romance options put you on different routes that diverge a lot. it's still linear once you enter the route though

oh yeah, there was one (untranslated) game on the psx where you had to manage like a hundred characters' interpersonal relationships as they defended a military school from invaders. shit like if two characters get into a fight and get injured you wouldn't be able to choose them as mech pilots or intelligence operators for the next mission, and you theoretically had as much agency to the chaos as anyone else did. I think it had romance in it with some major characters?

Oh shit, didn't the Fire Emblem series do something with this?

oh yeah actually, FE4 (Geneology of the Holy War) takes place across two time periods and things can change depending on pairings and who's left alive

Awakening and Fates have future babies but they really affect nothing except the hair color and a few supports for the child characters

peanutt121 posted...

I don't know if the Mass Effect series qualifies under your criteria, but you do need to continue the romance through the three games iirc.

I can't speak for other paths, but my romantic partner in ME1 was not in 2 but returned in 3, but there as a friend. On 2 I had another romance but that person did not make it. On 3 I don't think I chased anybody. The people involved were Ashley and Jack. Jack's death was avoidable.

Wing Commander 3 allowed two mutually exclusive romantic options also in Robin/Flint and Rachel, either one ending sometime between 3 and 4.The latter returns in Prophecy (5), but there is no romance then and the manual includes a note to Blair that they are "happy they are on speaking terms again", leaving deliberately ambiguous if that means "after you picked the other girl over her in WC3" or "after your romance ended badly between 3 and 4". Either fits, and Blair is not the protagonist in Prophecy anyway. I don't recall if we ever see them interact.

WC3's one or the other is played for drama to the max. You make your choice as both are present in the same bar, and the moment you kiss one, the other storms off and you get a later, final scene with Blair trying and failing to calm them down. Or you turn both down and in so doing you basically tick them both off.

agesboy posted...

Awakening and Fates have future babies but they really affect nothing except the hair color and a few supports for the child characters

Didn't parentage affect the abilities that child characters had in Awakening? I remember that being a pretty meaningful strategic consideration (not that 13 was hard enough to need super-serious strategic consideration).

When my wife found my Tali shrine she divorced me so I'd say it's pretty impactful

Also in visual novels usually the entire story changes idk if you'd count that as a game tho

Sashanan posted...

Wing Commander 3 allowed two mutually exclusive romantic options also in Robin/Flint and Rachel

And whichever one you don't choose locks you out of gameplay content. Either you piss off your mechanic and she stops setting up your loadout for you (meaning you have to do it manually from that point on), or you piss off your fellow pilot and she refuses to fly as your wingman from that point on (though this may technically save her life because it means she won't be one of the ones on your final run on Kilrah).

Bg3 answered this so well that I'm wondering what rock TC has been hiding under

adjl posted...

Didn't parentage affect the abilities that child characters had in Awakening? I remember that being a pretty meaningful strategic consideration (not that 13 was hard enough to need super-serious strategic consideration).

outside of a bit of min-maxing (passing on the best gender-locked skill in the game, galeforce, to as many male children as possible since it's gender-locked), it has no lasting impact. the average player is probably unaware of the skill's existence until they already have a bunch of children, and even more seasoned gamers are probably unaware you can even pass down gender-locked skills in specific circumstances at all. and even then once you get all the kids pumped out, you will always have more than a full team of galeforce-capable characters- min-maxing will only get you another handful

people just think too hard about it

Awakening at least loosely justified the existence and inclusion of the kids, but despite the whole *spoilers for an old game* coming from a doomed future to save the past bit, which honestly ought to have been cooler they have zero plot relevance whatsoever aside from Lucina, because she's the only one whose guaranteed to exist. Like, mechanically speaking.

Fates, well, they're just kinda of there, because they were afraid to not have a feature from Awakening. But it's a nothingburger and there's so, so very much else wrong with Fates, soooo....

Salrite posted...

Also to branch from the topic, I would like to see a game where your relationship with a character isn't so linear. What I mean is that in any game where you build a relationship with someone, it can be approached at any time and almost never can be set backwards or ruined permanently outside of obvious bad decisions. You could neglect someone for months and come back to them and it'll be like you just met yesterday. I'd love to see games that have more complex relationship mechanics.

funny enough original persona 3 had some of these ideas but they removed them in future versions as people hated them lol

does the Sims franchise count ?

Crusader Kings I guess, but I don't think that's the question you're asking.

TheSlinja posted...

funny enough original persona 3 had some of these ideas but they removed them in future versions as people hated them lol

I mean, judging from 4 that's the right choice and I have no idea how it could've worked in 3. There's way too many relationships to manage and very tight time constraints that it'd be impossible to keep up. So I guess I could see how it'd be tough to make work in a video game.

Actually, now that I think about it, this did happen in GTA4. If you refused a request to hang out from one of your friends you'd lose relationship status with them. The way around it was to accept and call them back to cancel oddly enough.

SinisterSlay posted...

Bg3 answered this so well that I'm wondering what rock TC has been hiding under

Game's way too big for me to even think about but I guess you could call that an absurdly detailed exception.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

And whichever one you don't choose locks you out of gameplay content. Either you piss off your mechanic and she stops setting up your loadout for you (meaning you have to do it manually from that point on), or you piss off your fellow pilot and she refuses to fly as your wingman from that point on (though this may technically save her life because it means she won't be one of the ones on your final run on Kilrah).

Turning down both does not have either of those effects, at least. For the final mission, I think your wingmen are supposed to die to force you to do the Trench Run, I mean, the Kilrah run that is not at all reminiscent of the Death Star Trench Run whatsoever, alone. But somehow I found after each waypoint one of the three vanished wordlessly and I'd be alone anyway - but that also meant they didn't die.

Sashanan posted...

Turning down both does not have either of those effects, at least. For the final mission, I think your wingmen are supposed to die to force you to do the Trench Run, I mean, the Kilrah run that is not at all reminiscent of the Death Star Trench Run whatsoever, alone. But somehow I found after each waypoint one of the three vanished wordlessly and I'd be alone anyway - but that also meant they didn't die.

If I remember correctly they kind of leave it vague whether or not they're being killed or just getting shot down but surviving, but functionally it just treats them as dead. And yeah, it auto "kills" one pilot from your squadron after every mission/checkpoint (unless one dies "naturally" during the mission), so you're slowly being picked off one by one until Luke Maverickwalker is the only one left.

I think they did it that way so they could justify pilots like Maniac and Vagabond coming back in WC4, but Flint, Vaquero, and Flash never being referenced or heard from again implies they might have canonically been the ones on that mission.

I'm pretty sure if you took Flint on that run and she "dies" she definitely counts as dead for the ending. But you can also keep all of your wingmates alive if you deliberately order one of them to return to base each leg of the trip, which simultaneously counts as the wingmate you need to lose but also keeps them alive. At least I vaguely remember doing that when I played. It's been a really long time since the last time I played it.

Also, how can you say the Kilrah run is anything like Star Wars? I mean, it's not like they got Mark Hamill to play the main character or anything.

agesboy posted...

outside of a bit of min-maxing (passing on the best gender-locked skill in the game, galeforce, to as many male children as possible since it's gender-locked), it has no lasting impact. the average player is probably unaware of the skill's existence until they already have a bunch of children, and even more seasoned gamers are probably unaware you can even pass down gender-locked skills in specific circumstances at all. and even then once you get all the kids pumped out, you will always have more than a full team of galeforce-capable characters- min-maxing will only get you another handful

people just think too hard about it

Ah yes, Galeforce. That was it. An option for min-maxing, but not remotely necessary.

There's a relationship mechanic in Tales of Symphonia but I don't know how meaningful people would consider it. It's not inherently romantic, but depending on who you develop the highest rapport with and ultimately who you pick, you get to learn more about them and the story and ending change a bit. The sequel (which is not good) also makes reference to it, and lets you carry forward your choice for a short follow-up which varies in quality (as in one is so bad that one of the character models doesn't even show up, lmao),

I actually quite like the relationship mechanic in that game. Is it particularly complicated? no. But it has some meaningful outcomes depending on your choices in a way that a lot of relationship systems don't, and characters can and do hide things from you that you never find out about them (and the main character, even) unless you make those choices. I generally don't mind things being small as long as they're meaningful. *glares at Tales of Xillia 2*

One that literally just popped into my head - Thousand Arms.

You have to romance multiple women throughout the game. You have a few dating sim mechanics that influence how much each girl loves you (going on dates, conversational choices, giving gifts, etc). And then you forge new weapons in tandem with one of the girls, so the more they love you, the more powerful the weapon is.

Mystic_Myotis posted...

There's a relationship mechanic in Tales of Symphonia but I don't know how meaningful people would consider it. It's not inherently romantic, but depending on who you develop the highest rapport with and ultimately who you pick, you get to learn more about them and the story and ending change a bit.

I'd say Symphonia is only a very tiny step up from Persona 4, it is entirely just a few altered/extra scenes outside of one single scenario that changes a few more things. There's also no maintaining any sort of relationship and you can just pick who to go with as long as they're in the top three

Leisure Suit Larry

Dragon Age: Origins.
Not absolutely essential but it can save your life...

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Also, how can you say the Kilrah run is anything like Star Wars? I mean, it's not like they got Mark Hamill to play the main character or anything.

"Well, one way or another, we'll find out what Flash is made of. I guarantee you that."
"...isn't that the guy from Star Wars?"

ParanoidObsessive posted...

One that literally just popped into my head - Thousand Arms.

You have to romance multiple women throughout the game. You have a few dating sim mechanics that influence how much each girl loves you (going on dates, conversational choices, giving gifts, etc). And then you forge new weapons in tandem with one of the girls, so the more they love you, the more powerful the weapon is.

I don't remember the weapon but that was the only way to unlock magic.