Most well-written game romance?

[Innegativeion]

Protagonist and Naoto Shirogane (Persona 4) by far the cutest couple.

All of my agree's. Both the calm, strong type. Best P4 romance IMO.

That said, since I've had Persona on the brain recently what with just finishing P4, and P4:A coming up soon, I'd say I really enjoyed

Minato(protagonist) and Yukari from Persona 3. Especially when Yukari has her heroic blue screen of death in P3: The Answer.

 

[In Search of Username]

The one with Kaidan in ME1. The one in 3 just felt forced, but in the first game it felt so natural, him gradually opening up to you. Although the 'I've wasted enough of your time' line was a bit annoying once you'd heard it 10 times. But yeah, that's my favourite. Oh, and Alistair in DA:O. His adorable shyness and one-liners. <3

Feel free to call my heterosexuality into question.

 

[In Search of Username]

Geralt of Rivia and Triss Merigold.

Really? I love the Witcher games, think they're a great example of a mature storyline in gaming, but the romance in those games was invariably what let them down. The game seems to just assume that every woman in the world is madly in love with Geralt and will do anything for him. And despite getting extremely jealous about Shani, Triss never seems to mind Geralt just fucking every other woman he meets. The romance is basically the only aspect of the Witcher I DON'T like.

 

[SpectacularWebHead]

Jackie Estacado and Jenny Romano from the Darkness.
It manages to be heartwarming, realistic and bittersweet, all in the space of the 1-2 hours in which we get to know them. And when she dies it gives the perfect motivation to play through to the end because we want to avenge her as much as Jackie does.

Ooh, gotta say that's close.
My top 3 in no particular order are: Any Romance from Mass effect that doesn't involve miranda *Fucking* lawson, Jackie and Jenny, and Ezio and Christina.

Ezio and Christina was tear Jerking, and pretty much the only thing in assassins creed 2 and brotherhood that didn't make Ezio look like a vengeance driven killbot of death.

The mass effect ones cuz, well, Bioware games are well written. They just are. So much so that I am Fairly sure I've fallen in love with Liara T'soni for realsies.

 

[AnarchistFish]

I loved the Shepard/Liara romance but it's hard to justify it objectively. It was really Liara who made that romance, considering that Shepard isn't really a character at all. You could see how it changed and affected her character. The devastation after Shepard's death, turning her into a less innocent and more hardened woman. The confusion when he comes back and her desperation in ME3 not to lose him again. She was by far my favourite character in ME.

Assassin's Creed too, between Lucy and Desmond, mostly because it wasn't a true romance at all. You could feel it building up in the first couple of games and it had the hallmarks of something that would blossom into a true storybook romance (without it being directly stated) and then BANG, the ending to Brotherhood comes along and shits all over that out of nowhere.

 

[AnarchistFish]

The mass effect ones cuz, well, Bioware games are well written. They just are. So much so that I am Fairly sure I've fallen in love with Liara T'soni for realsies.

dude don't tell anyone but I think me too <3

 

[SpectacularWebHead]

Nobody has mention Mario and Peach?! Come on guys! She bakes him a cake!

*Say it with me Rattman*
ThE CaKe iS a LiE!!!

 

[Blade_125]

eh might get flamed for it, but after playing ffx and ffx-2, i did enjoy tidus and yuna's thing they had goin on, first time i actively paid attention to a romance in the slightest in a game.

after that, shepard and garrus are clearly a personification of the bro code, you just can't get more awesome then that.

I always thought FFX got a bad rap. The plot was great and I enjoyed the romance with Tidus and Yuna, which was really well played out. The problems it had was it came out at the start of voice acting for video games, and the voice acting in this game is absolutely terrible. And it was the first FF game without full world travel so I think a lot of fans were mad at that. So no flame from me. THe romance was one of the best things done in the game.

 

[thebobmaster_v1legacy]

The mass effect ones cuz, well, Bioware games are well written. They just are. So much so that I am Fairly sure I've fallen in love with Liara T'soni for realsies.

dude don't tell anyone but I think me too <3

You guys are freaks.




Tali and Garrus, that's where it's at.

 

[AnarchistFish]

The mass effect ones cuz, well, Bioware games are well written. They just are. So much so that I am Fairly sure I've fallen in love with Liara T'soni for realsies.

dude don't tell anyone but I think me too <3

You guys are freaks.




Tali and Garrus, that's where it's at.

haters gon hate

 

[Romblen]

I liked the Tali and Garrus romances. Garrus and Tali have both been with Shepard from the start and both have made their sacrifices. I like the idea of the relationship coming from working through hardships together. Yes, there were other romances, but it didn't really feel the same with other characters. Miranda only existed to be sexy.

 

[Kekkonen1]

I know that it wasn't particularily well written and I suspect I am in the minority in this, but I absolutely LOVED the romance in FF8!

Captcha: be nice - listen to captcha!

 

[Dragoon]

My favourite romances are a lot of the social links in Persona. You really get to know the characters and by the time you get to lovers stage you really feel connected, my favourite was Chie in Persona 4 she's just so awesome

 

[Manoose47]

I think it is Jaheira from Baldur's Gate II.

It felt organic.

It began with me just trying to comfort her, but then she started to hit on me, and then, suddenly, we were together. It just felt right.

yup good thing you never told her what really happened to khalid


for me when i was younger anyways aerie from Bg2 was the real standout relationship, you could go through so much with her depression, duels to the death, her death, subsequent bout of vampirism, gettin knocked up, plus she was so needy.. which is ironic because now i think that would drive me insane.

Well played though Bioware talk about invested writing

 

[Jarek Mace]

Baldurs Gate 2 romances were superbly well done, and I congratulate Bioware on that.

 

[Dark Prophet]

ME romances felt pretty good they are not only well written for a RPG but voice acting is also very good. My femShepard is in a relationship with Liara, I didn't start any relationships in ME2 and now in ME3 we are still together and if Alenko asked me about my feelings I felt kinda bad when I told him I'm not interested in him.

 

[NotALiberal]

Sounds pretty awesome, though it definitely sounds pretty complex.

This is actually how it mostly used to be done for Bioware games. The Baldur's Gate games did not have obvious paths to their romances, and it would often get affected in different conversations.

Well if that's the case, what's changed? This doesn't seem like something they'd cut out if it was so great, even for the sake of "Appealing to a broader audience".

Dialogue, it's much easier to write long subtle branching dialogue trees in text. It's much less feasible to record all of that in voiveover.

Well now that i've given it some thought I think i'd prefer that the dialogue options remain tight and focused anyway. I don't mind if the character arcs are a bit linear. The characters you interact with are great and go a long way in enriching the game, but they're still not the main focus of the game. Really i'd be surprised that a Commander Shep would even have the time to commit to a full fledged authentic relationship anyway what with being constantly busy trying to save everything ever.

Disagree respectfully. The first Witcher game had so much dialogue (not all of the voice acting was good mind you), but it knocked my socks off. Major characters like Triss, pretty much always had something new to say after small plot advancements. It was insane. I wish the second game followed up on it.

 

[Evil Alpaca]

I think that romance isn't well suited for RPGs because it becomes a stat to level than a depiction of social interaction.

The dialogue for the Mass Effect romances was okay but I never liked the fact that it never affected the game. It seemed like once you got the congratulatory cut scene, that was it for actual affect on the game. It never seemed to progress beyond a simple achievement. What's worse is that it kinda feels forced to fall for a member of the crew. I felt it rather uncomfortable that I could kill Liara's mother in front of her and she was still was a romance option.

The best romance depictions are the ones where the romance is taken out of the player's hands. Games like Shadow of the Colossus tell a much more compelling narrative involving romance than Sheppard and his space harem.

 

[Nero18]

Drake and Elena in Uncharted was really well done. Especially in the third game was fantastic. Some scenes made my heart melt

 

[NKRevan]

It's pretty easy to see a trend here.

People either like choice in their romances, or they prefer the scripted ones.

Where the scripted ones are generally (And I put that GENERALLY in capital letters) better written, the choice ones give the player the power to...well, choose.

And therein lies the crux of the issue. If you make long, branching dialogue trees that all have to tie together somehow and offer various relationship opportunities, you cannot go to the same degree of depth as a scripted storyline. Why? Because of choice. Because you need the player to be able to pick their LI otherwise they get frustrated.

That's my theory at least.