You know what’s wild? The answer that immediately comes to mind is Warframe.
Genuinely, I’m not remotely joking, Warframe has some of the best video games romance I’ve ever encountered.
Two things really stand out to me about the conversations in Warframe.
First, the things they learn about you are often just as important as the things you learn about them. The article talks about the process of two people figuring out how they fit into each other’s lives, and that’s exactly what you get with Warframe. You need to actually show that you can be someone they can love, as well as simply showing interest in them.
Secondly, and I think maybe more importantly; most of the conversations in Warframe don’t feel “important.” They all are. But most of them are about comparatively trivial things. A lot of it is literally just people sharing shower thoughts, or jokes, or talking about dumb shit, or getting things off their brains.
Also, the way the characters interact feels distinct and different. Amir, the most obvious case of ADHD in the universe, writes five messages for every one of yours (these conversations all happen through “Not MSN Messenger”), and most of the time what he needs is for you to just listen while he unloads all the chaotic shit in his brain. Eleanor, the journalist, writes long, carefully formed sentences with correct punctuation and grammar. She poses questions, prods and pries, tries to dig secrets out of you. Aoi will sometimes just send you a string of emojis, and will be delighted if you reply the same way. She likes to be silly, but more importantly she needs to just know that you’re there and you cared enough to reply. It’s the written equivalent of squeezing someone’s hand. Some characters will pester you, others are more likely to wait for you to talk first. There’s a unique dynamic with each of them.
Aielman15@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
I liked Haven’s romance, because it’s the only game that actually bothers to have two protagonists already in love, and the entire story is their marriage life.
Too many games show romance as a slow burn which eventually culminates in a kiss at the very end of the game (and then roll credits), or a checklist that eventually ends with the two characters mimicking sexual intercourse within the boundaries of video game physics, and then… Nothing, because the sex scene is the “reward” for going through the checklist, not the beginning of an actual relationship.
Haven begins when the two characters are already in love. They flee to some deserted planet and live their happy life. They joke, they play, they have sex, they argue and talk and annoy each other. It’s one of the most convincing relationships I’ve seen in a video game.
Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 6 hours ago
My wife and I played Haven back before we got married, and never got around to finishing it. Really ought to dust that game off again. Playing it as a couple was really fun, and actually helped us to learn things about each other.
Paradachshund@lemmy.today 10 hours ago
If you don’t mind sharing, what are the differences in how sex is portrayed in this game vs how you don’t like it?
Aielman15@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
I’ll preface this by saying that this is my personal opinion and it’s in no way representative of how Ace gamers (or even gamers in general) should evaluate their games.
TL;DR: the game actually develops the characters and their relationship, which in turn makes me care about them, which in turn makes me tolerate their sex scenes. Meanwhile, many other games that treat sex as a prize take the easy route: they give you a checklist, and if you complete it, you are “allowed” to see a poorly animated sex scene with a character who doesn’t care about you in the slightest and is only there to arouse the player.
LONG COMMENT: For me specifically, it’s a matter of context, mood and consent. While I’m still not exactly comfortable with sex scenes, even in a game like Haven, I didn’t hate them because they felt natural and coherent. They were not a “reward” for me, but a choice made by the characters.
I’ll use Mass Effect 2 as an example of a game whose romance options I didn’t like. I never felt like the crewmembers were actual people, because they never did anything on their own. They stayed in their room doing… nothing, like they were part of the ship’s furniture. There was a stoic soldier, and an assassin with a conscience, and a hardcore vigilante, and even a badass warrior-nun! It didn’t ultimately matter, they never did anything. But as soon as I stepped into their room, they’d start unloading their sad backstory on me, like I was their therapist or something. They never showed any interest in me whatsoever; they barely knew anything about my character beyond my name, but I was expected to care about them, for some reason?
After a few such interactions, they’d ask me to do a job for them (tied to their sad backstory), and after that, they’d suddenly go “hey, we got a lot of chemistry, want to bang?” like it was some kind of reward. Congratulations, Player! You visited this character enough times, picked the correct dialogue options to keep them talking about themselves, and even completed a risky mission on their behalf: you totally deserve the steamy hot sex scene!
And if you do, they do… nothing, ever again. They become part of the furniture of the ship - but this time it’s permanent, because there are no more interactions with them.
The game doesn’t care to take your relationship in any meaningful direction, or better yet, it isn’t building any kind of relationship between them and your character in the first place. It was all in service of the hot steamy sex scene.
Sex is the prize, and it painfully shows in the way the dialogue is written. It feels… icky. Dishonest. I was turning everyone down at every opportunity, as if I was Matrix-dodging their heart-shaped bullets, because the game made it very clear that everyone was down bad for my character. But it also felt like the game was constantly second-guessing me, asking me if I truthfully cared about those characters, or if I was doing what I was doing because I wanted to reach the “prize”.
It reached a point where I stopped interacting with a character altogether because she made me deeply uncomfortable (it was the second-in-command/crew therapist: in our very first interaction, she told me she wanted to bang me; in our second interaction, she informed me that she thought the insectoid guy I had just recruited was hot stuff and needed to get laid).
The game also has a Codex, and the very first entry is “This is an all-female alien race. [Infodump on their sexual life]” which would almost be hilarious if it wasn’t for the sexist connotation. Like, I could go on for days about the many ways ME2 made me feel uncomfortable during my playthrough, but I’ll stop here.
In Haven, sex is never treated as a prize: the player is not tasked with doing stuff to unlock the sex scenes, and the sex scenes are not used to titillate the player. There are dozens of unique interactions between Yu and Kai - some of them playing games or being goofy, some of them doing mundane stuff like cooking or taking a shower, and some of them having sex - because sex can be a (meaningful) part of a romance, but it’s not the only component of a relationship.
The way they talk and interact shows that they like and care about each other. I was willing to “accept” the sex scenes because it was what they wanted, not what I wanted; It was a natural development of their relationship and not a “prize” that I achieved by pressing buttons on a dialogue wheel. Whereas many other games lack substance and depth, and have shallow relationships built on a fake score system which tasks the player with increasing the meter by doing arbitrary stuff, which then culminate in a sex scene that only exists to arouse horny teenagers and leads to no meaningful development in the relationship, Haven builds the relationship first and foremost, and keeps developing it for the entirety of the game. Sex is one of many possible interactions between the characters, and it’s never something that you need to achieve, but something that happens naturally and organically because the two characters really love each other.
Paradachshund@lemmy.today 7 hours ago
Thanks for writing all that! I’m interested as someone who isn’t asexual, so I find your perspective really interesting since it’s not something I can personally experience.
I haven’t played mass effect, but that write up mirrors how I’ve felt about a lot of games with tacked on romance. Also, as someone who does enjoy sex, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a good sex scene in a game. Baldur’s Gate 3, for all the hype about the sex in it, was still pretty weak imo. You’re not missing much in other words!
I mentioned it in another comment on this thread about BG3, but it sounds like mass effect also went with the “player-sexual” approach, meaning every character is into you no matter who you are. I find that approach really off-putting personally. I would much rather have characters love or hate you based on the character you made. This means you could even try and get shot down, which would be a nice realistic image of dating where that is always very possible (even more bonus points if a game let you fuck up the relationship after it started).
I like how you emphasize the focus on a relationship in Haven. I think most romances in games are dating simulators, not relationship simulators, and I hadn’t been able to put that into words until you said all this.
I’m someone who has always preferred the stability and comfort of an established relationship over the high stakes feeling of dating, but that’s not true for everyone. Some people who only like the beginning, and once things settle they lose interest. I’ve been happily married for a long time, and I don’t miss dating at all. It seems like there need to be more relationship simulations so that people like you and I can enjoy romance in games more!
Coelacanth@feddit.nu 13 hours ago
Huh, had no idea that game existed but that does look pretty different from what we usually see.