Extra Punctuation: Why No Couples in Games?

[hexFrank202]

Add me to your list of boys who don't 'possess it'. Largely, I cannot get aroused by people on my screen making out or having sex without character development; without weight to the event.

But enough of that, here's what I really wanted to say today:
Yahtzee, I am loving this journal more and more every week. Not just that it's covering topics even more interesting, but that it is getting to be ridiculously and unfathomably well-written. Not a single sentence is boring or predicted; it's the kind of razor-sharp, fully-alert writing I strive to produce myself. In this very paragraph, you can see how embarrassingly hard I am trying.

Yahtzee, you care to be excellent in everything that you do. I have a lot of respect for that.

 

[svenjl]

Speaking of which, didn't Red Dead Redemption feature a married guy whose family is still alive? That's a rarity right there. Meanwhile Relic takes it a bit further with a gruff dude who killed his wife (as well as everybody else on the planet) for heresy and believes he did the right thing.

Yeah, but for the main part of the game they only serve as a 'Princess Peach'. Although (spoiler alert) the last hour of the game obviously makes up for that to a certain extent. Then again, an ending like that pretty much makes up for every fault a game could possibly have, if you ask me.

I was thinking Red Dead too as I read the article. John Marsden (haven't played it for ages but I think the name is right) has to do the bidding of federal agents who are basically holding his wife and son hostage until Marsden takes out his former gang. It's pretty epic. I'm married and I found the scene *SPOILER ALERT* where Marsden rides back to his ranch to be reunited with them quite poignant. I also spent much of the game before that wondering if he'd end up with the ranch owner's daughter he hangs out with and helps a lot. It seemed like she had a real soft spot for him. Great game, brutal ending and you bet I had the son hunt down the old SOB fed who double-crossed Marsden.

 

[Truly-A-Lie]

The problem with Persona 4's relationships was how they weren't part of the main game. I enjoyed them and they were done well in-and-of-themselves, but nothing in the main plot changed based on them. Tell Chie she looks sexy while dating Yukiko? No problem. Try to pair up with the girl you're dating in any situation that seems like you'll be pairing up with someone? Sorry, they'd rather go with Teddie. Get the girl you're dating to sit in your lap during King's Game? She's just as embarrassed as if she hadn't been dating you for 5 months. They don't even give you special goodbye if you were dating them!

I can understand that they wouldn't want to record that much dialogue, but even in the text only parts they don't add anything. Your final goodbye to everyone you maxed out is the worst. Your girlfriend(s) don't change their goodbye at all. They don't even tack an "I love you" onto the end of the text. Ugh.

(If you couldn't tell, this bothered me periodically throughout my 80 hours of Persona 4)

Yeah that did annoy me too, I think the worst one for me was during the beauty contest and Teddie asks if they're seeing or liked anyone. I was in a relationship with Chie at the time, and she just got embarrassed and said nothing. I got angry, but I managed to stay in character. In my mind, she was ashamed to even publicly say we were going out and I took to thinking that it was over because she wouldn't even stop that bear's crazy advances.

I do really like the options that are there, and the build up to a relationship, but it does need to come together a bit tighter for Persona 5. Starting with consequences for dating 5 people at once. Besides that, other characters reacting to your status as "taken" would be nice and new dialogue options for when you are. Yukiko asked me out while I was going out with who was meant to be her best friend, and I couldn't even say "sorry but I'm taken."

 

[aescuder]

And yet this problem exists in all other media as well. And they have no excuse seeing how they've been around for so much longer. The answer to this problem is really, really simple. Happy couples have no real conflict and that's not interesting. Also, believable romance is incredibly difficult to write and the games industry, at least, still has the excuse of not always being written by professional writers.

Agreed. Yet oddly enough, half the sitcoms out there are about the small conflicts within a married life or long-time relationships. I'm thinking of modern family, everybody loves raymond, king of queens, HIMYM, Arrested Development, etc. Videogame narratives can easily stretch out to 40 hours (at least old RPGs used to) so they have plenty of time to pander around 2-3 seasons of existing relationships. I'm wondering if its because the conflicts does not revolve around a grander scale or combat that videogames tend to stay away from existing relationships.

Even if it doesn't revolve around main gameplay mechanics (although it would be interesting if it could), a mini-game where you can banter/tease/argue with your long-time gf during a break from all the fighting can speak volumes.

But yes ultimately it is because of bad writers in the industry. Also game designers that can't design with/around complex relationship narratives.

 

[HoradricNoob]

Come now. how about Sam & Max. Those fuzzy little guys made a great couple.

 

[PlasticTree]

I also spent much of the game before that wondering if he'd end up with the ranch owner's daughter he hangs out with and helps a lot. It seemed like she had a real soft spot for him. Great game, brutal ending and you bet I had the son hunt down the old SOB fed who double-crossed Marsden.

Yeah, I kind of expected that his wife would die and that he would eventually get married to Bonnie, or something like that. The game also spends much more time in establishing the likable character of Bonnie and her relation with John than is the case with his wife (until the ending that is). There is also this scene near the ending where his wife (forgot her name) meets Bonnie, and I couldn't help to notice the difference between my attitude towards the two women and John's.

The fact that Bonnie remains alone and sad does help in making the story more grim/realistic and less fairytale-ish, though. Not that that wasn't clear yet, but still.

 

[fieryshadowcard]

It would be nice to see a game with the protagonist already in an established relationship with someone, a relationship that serves to add depth to the character but is not immediately used either as a plot tool or as the functioning premise of the game. Catherine (anime trope-isms and all-around lack of understanding of the way humans work aside) is a step in the right direction, but it's not what I'm getting at based on what I just described. Why not have a game where player control shifts between the player and the significant other depending on the point in the game you are at? And I don't mean as something level-based. It could even be manual, where the characters have different strengths that can either be instructed (though less effective considering it's AI) when you're not playing them or controlled directly when you are, where you jump between them and therefore have more control not over their gameplay but their interactions and responses? Why not have a game where the missus (or the mister for the politically correct) even as an NPC is not always off-screen as a goal or something to be obtained and instead serves as a constant interaction for a protagonist who does not have to be a silent husk--you know, a 3-dimensional character? In that regard, their relationship isn't what gets the game going, but keeps the characters accessible and compelling. Of course, that requires good storytelling and an understanding of all the possible ways a player might choose to interact with that person. Sounds like hard work, right? But are we really fine with not asking games to work harder to keep us interested 30-something years after gaming really took off?

You know what would be an awesome game? Think of a family like that in the Incredibles (no, I don't mean a game adaptation of the movie, just a concept of an entire family united for a common goal), and set it up where they all have individual pros and cons but all can be controlled by the player; I don't even necessarily mean that you need to give them powers, just things they excel at and whatnot. Make some parts of the game where you only have access to one, but most of the game where you have access to all of them. And make it so that there's no one correct way to go through the obstacles presented in the game. And make some choices easier or harder based on who you interact with and how. You know, it'd be like the Incredibles meets Sam and Max meets (at least from what I've heard about the game) Deus Ex.

The depth and complexity it would require to make such a game come to fruition is immense, I'm sure. But I cannot honestly think of such a concept not being a damn great, timeless game. Or at least the stepping stone for whatever game truly achieves that status.

 

[Hosker]

Having relationships in games would just be boring. How are they meant to be worked into the gameplay? Dragon Age does it best as all it takes are a few gifts and conversations and they're done. Once you're actually in the relationship it would be very boring: you would know just about everything there is worth knowing about that person, so conversations would be a chore.

 

[fieryshadowcard]

Having relationships in games would just be boring. How are they meant to be worked into the gameplay? Dragon Age does it best as all it takes are a few gifts and conversations and they're done. Once you're actually in the relationship it would be very boring: you would know just about everything there is worth knowing about that person, so conversations would be a chore.

That's only true if 1) your only interest in a relationship with someone is that you (the player) want to bang said person (which means you're projecting yourself on the protagonist rather than treating them as a separate entity) or 2) the writers behind the games don't have any ability to make the relationship itself or the partner interesting.

How would they work it into gameplay? That's simple, really, based on the idea that a relationship implies (at least) two people going through the events of the game together in some form or other. The idea that two people have to deal with the events of the game together, and that their ability to do so could very well be influenced by how strong or how weak their relationship is, and that the things they collaborate on are based on how well they understand and trust one another, it could be very rich and fulfilling. This doesn't even have to be a co-op system; in fact, I really was only talking about singleplayer. The problem you're having is that you only see relationships as something to be tacked on as a game mechanic or a goal/side-goal to the game, as opposed to being integral to the character(s) and how they interact with the settings and circumstances around them.

In short, rather than deciding whether or not shooting the guy in the head prevents "her" from helping you later or locks you out of that shiny item you wanted, it'd be a lot more fun if the game immersed you enough to care whether shooting the guy in the head would scare "her," or even if you'd rather she shoot the guy in the head for you instead. And that's a very base example of how a relationship could be utilized in-game based on the current bland state of gaming.

 

[hawk533]

2- Us as gamers: I rarely use blanket statements to refer to groups but the whole thing about gamers being single losers who can't get a girlfriend is probably not too far from the truth for a lot of us. When the presumed majority of gamers out there are probably single it's a little bit pretentious of those of us who are happy in a relationship to assume tha they are distraught by how they don't realistically show the quirky dynamics of a happy couple interacting and displaying affection for each other, in other words, no, I was not disheartened because I couldn't draw parralells between how me and my dearest beloved talk to each other and how Shepard and [insert your personal choice of love interest here] interacted in Mass Effect (at no point was I ever outraged because they didn't watch movies and play old Sega games together).

FYI around 40% of adults in the US play video games. A majority of people that play video games are normal people with normal relationships with the opposite sex (or even the same sex).

Furthermore, I didn't say that video games needed to have a 'happy couple', I said realistic. Lots of relationships aren't successful or are strained. How great would it be if the character was in a difficult relationship where their partner was slightly abusive? Think of all the interesting choices a game could have if 3/4 of the way through the game that partner was captured. Would you want to come to the rescue to save someone that doesn't seem very loving? Maybe that would save the relationship, maybe it would lead to further abuse.

Relationships are such a huge part of the human experience that neglecting their true complexity robs games of a lot of their potential as a storytelling medium.

 

[awdrifter]

Well, there's Love Plus, I hear that lets you marry the girl...

But seriously, yeah. I don't get why the girls always have to be virgins and stuff (when you have a young boy and an older female relative in a Japanese videogame, like Sharla and Juju from Xenoblade, they're ALWAYS brother and sister, why not have Sharla be Juju's mother?). I guess they think players want to see those women as THEIR love interest and that nerds somehow demand virgins but can't we move beyond "it's a she because that has sex appeal"?

Speaking of which, didn't Red Dead Redemption feature a married guy whose family is still alive? That's a rarity right there. Meanwhile Relic takes it a bit further with a gruff dude who killed his wife (as well as everybody else on the planet) for heresy and believes he did the right thing.

Because Cerna (I refuse to use the EU name for her) probably would've been considered a bad mother for leaving Juju behind to go on some adventure with a young boy. The current set up is a lot less awkward imo.

Dragon Age 2 had some pretty good relationships, but they develop way to fast. Choose the love dialog choice 2-3 times then you're already in bed with that character.

Actually, Xenoblade's relationship system is pretty good, you actually have to fight along side the characters (in your active party) to increase the relationship level with them. Of course being a CERO B (equivalent to ESRB E10) rated game, they can't go as far as Dragon Age 2. But it's still nice to see that system being implemented.

Back on topic, Catherine seems like a dating sim with some puzzles added, so the relationship will definitely play a bigger part than most other games where shooting and killing is the main focus.

 

[jmarquiso]

What we need is a Sam and Max style set up, in which the two are around each other consistently, with a secure and knowing familiarity with one another. They can exchange witticisms, alternate play styles, and an affection for each other from the start.

Someone mentioned Guybrush and Elaine in the games following Monkey Island 1, and I'm inclined to agree.

 

[Kanatatsu]

I think the reason relationships aren't depicted in video games is because they are BORING and video games are supposed to be FUN.

 

[The_ModeRazor]

Let's face it, when you and everyone you know lives in constant danger of being messily torn to shreds, emotional attachment becomes... a weird thing. You crave it, but you know that when the inevitable comes (and it always comes sooner than you'd like), it will hurt you even more (this applies even to us regular peoples... but the chances of a death in our circle is considerably lover, so we just ignore it). How people handle this is up to fucking themselves. Or in the case of fiction, the writers.

Although that might be giving them too much credit.

 

[jmarquiso]

Having relationships in games would just be boring. How are they meant to be worked into the gameplay? Dragon Age does it best as all it takes are a few gifts and conversations and they're done. Once you're actually in the relationship it would be very boring: you would know just about everything there is worth knowing about that person, so conversations would be a chore.

You know I dated a girl once who's ex-boyfriend was a big gamer. The problem with their relationship was that he viewed it as some sort of video game, which came from a lack of maturity. If he did something wrong, he'd have to produce that magic bouquet of flowers or item that would somehow fix things back to the status quo, or elevate it to the next level.

And it's true, some men view relationships in this way - that there's something you can do to fix it - and this is why game mechanics don't WORK for relationships. A partner isn't someone with morality bars and like/dislike bars. There is no +1 karma for a nice thing you do. Relationships are complex.

This isn't to say that Yahtzee isn't right that relationships should be part of games.

Look at Kane and Lynch (I've only played the first one partway through, but bear with me here). It's a co-op game and they go through it. They banter with one another like an old married couple. There is a relationship there formed by the gameplay, and it could be as simple (lets get through this level) or as complex (why did you shoot me! I'll shoot you right back!) as you want to. Another example of a great in-game relationship is Atlas and P-Body.

Leisure Suit Larry III also had an interesting system that turns the usual adventure concept on its head. For the first half of the game you play a typical Liesure Suit Larry game, and finally sleep with the one character he can sleep with, Passionate Patti. After this, Larry's kidnapped, and you spend the second part of the game playing Patti attempting to rescue Larry. It turns out these characters are made for eachother and two sides of the same coin.

 

[jmarquiso]

Counterpoint: By this logic, why is Kane and Lynch so awful? Discussion for another time.

Well because Lynch is a terrible character and the writing is awful?