Crafting In-Game Romances (Article)

[Nafai]

A few tips from Chris Avellone, culled from his experience at Obsidian/Bioware, which is fairly extensive as his games have, since Baldur's Gate II way back, always had some sort of romantic possibility (as opposed to a scripted FFVIII type romance) with one or more NPCs. Really more for RPG games than anything, but may be helpful to us: http://forums.obsidianent.com/index.php ... owentry=79

[monele]

That and the other thread linked from it were very interesting reads.
I'm actually surprised the writer admits not being good at romance and still try doing it ^^;... as someone pointed out : maybe it's best to leave it to someone who likes to write such things :/...

[chronoluminaire]

Hmm. I disagree with them on the point where they say "keep the chase going - no consummation till the end of the game, if at all". It really winds me up when an anime that's had great romantic tension between two lead characters ends without them getting together or making any progress in their relationship. Especially if we're writing romance stories (ren'ai), I vote strongly for allowing a romantic relationship to start in at least one of the paths. (Most of our games are like this, but just in case people were risking getting ideas...)

The examples he gives of things like Cheers are completely irrelevant. Cheers is an ongoing series, and one where episodes are written by different people. RPGs and ren'ai games alike are bounded, with a beginning, a middle and an end. And one of the things we want to see in an ending is a conclusion to the romance. (Good or bad - either is better than keeping on muddling along in the middle.)

[Jake]

It really winds me up when an anime that's had great romantic tension between two lead characters ends without them getting together or making any progress in their relationship. Especially if we're writing romance stories (ren'ai) [...]

I rather suspect that this is the main thing here, though; it's kind of important when telling a story to have closure at the end of it, but it's OK to leave side issues, flavour parts and so on dangling at the end - in fact, wrapping everything up at the end makes a story seem faker than a Shakespearean comedy.

By way of an example that came up here quite recently - one of the ways that the anime Gankutsuou differs from The Count of Monte Cristo is that it moves Albert up from an also-ran practically to the role of protagonist - and in doing so, they had to rewrite a couple of the plot elements. It was OK in the book for Eugénie to run off with her music teacher, and for Albert to not care, because he was just a side-character amongst many. But with Albert bumped up have a higher plot reponsibility in the anime it's more necessary to get more mileage out of that kind of relationship and to have a proper 'end'.

(Although I should point out that I've not finished watching it yet, so I'm not sure that it does - just that I expect one and I'll be disappointed if there isn't one.

The examples he gives of things like Cheers are completely irrelevant.

While I agree from the point of view of stories about romance, I think it's important to recognise also that RPGs tend to be a lot of little interlinked stories; you have a minor quest in each town you come to, some of which just delay you, some of which introduce new characters or remove old ones, some of which also further the main plot at little, but I don't think it's too much of an error to think of them as like episodes in a series. And in that vein, if you consummate too early then the player may lose interest in the little quests that roll the game along.

[chronoluminaire]

The examples he gives of things like Cheers are completely irrelevant.

While I agree from the point of view of stories about romance, I think it's important to recognise also that RPGs tend to be a lot of little interlinked stories; you have a minor quest in each town you come to, some of which just delay you, some of which introduce new characters or remove old ones, some of which also further the main plot at little, but I don't think it's too much of an error to think of them as like episodes in a series. And in that vein, if you consummate too early then the player may lose interest in the little quests that roll the game along.

Well, it depends what your story's about. If it's a Save The World story with a Love Story as a subplot (as most RPGs and most Hollywood action films are), then tying up the Love Story at 80% through the story lets you focus on Saving The World in the final 20%. If, on the other hand, the romance is the primary story (as is the case for most ren'ai games, at least stereotypically), then you need a good reason to tie things up much before the end. Perhaps another obstacle surfaces (in which case things aren't really tied up), or a challenge that's been around for a long time needs dealing with (which might mean the romance isn't the primary story after all).

[monele]

if you consummate too early then the player may lose interest in the little quests that roll the game along.

According to these commenters, the main problem of NWN2 was that once you consumed... there was *nothing* else afterwards.. you couldn't even talk about what happened... There's nothing worse (romance related or not) than not acknowledging events in a game (like someone dies but all conversations stay the same with team members)