00:00Have you ever been in love? Truly? Madly? Deeply?
00:04I haven't. I'm a games journalist, we're not allowed. But you probably think you have.
00:08Shadowheart, Astarian, Bastilashan, Alistair, Annaman, quite the virtual body count you've
00:13racked up, and I'm sure you have fond memories of all of them.
00:25I'm here to tell you that those fond memories are wrong.
00:27Very well, you have me.
00:28Romance in the vast majority of RPGs sucks, actually, and it's because the Bioware style
00:33Blank Slate protagonist is fundamentally unsuited to interesting romances.
00:37That's my big thesis. There's no other reason I think this. Please don't do psychology on me in the comments.
00:43No need to worry about me.
00:44You might think I'm mad, crazy, cuckoo, just plain wrong, mellifluous, tender, alluring in a homely sort of way.
00:51But stay with me. I promise I have a case to make here, and if you just stick with me
00:55you'll
00:56hit the end of this video entirely on board with my proposal to outlaw sex or whatever.
01:02Will you join with me, Shepard?
01:04Let our bodies and minds unite.
01:06Just tell me what to do.
01:12Let's start with the sexiest possible thing.
01:16A history lesson.
01:17Once upon a time, in a game called Baldur's Gate 2, there was a girl named Aerie.
01:21Aerie was a formerly winged elf who worked in a circus and had so much personal trauma.
01:27She was a great sopping bag of the stuff which she worked out over the course of an extended courtship
01:32with you, the male player character. At some point she'd even get pregnant and your resulting baby,
01:37whose name was Aerie's baby, would occupy a slot in your inventory for the rest of time,
01:42taking up space you might have otherwise used for a longsword or some sort of precious agate.
01:47This is a sequence of events which I now regard as having ruined all of video games.
01:52Do you see the problem here?
02:02I just described, flawlessly, the entire arc of Aerie's romance and I never talked about her
02:08partner beyond identifying him as male player character. A relationship, so I'm told, consists
02:14of two people. Sometimes more, if you're French. But my protagonist in Baldur's Gate 3 isn't a person.
02:20She's a level 9 monk who can do 6 attacks a turn. That's not a personality and is also not
02:26something
02:26you're allowed to put on a hinge profile. Apparently.
02:29But, despite the obvious flaws in the formula, RPGs keep doing it. They're expected to do it.
02:36Everyone gets really cross when Obsidian doesn't do it, despite the fact that Obsidian is 100% correct.
02:42The shape of BG2's romances is the shape of so many RPG romances since.
02:47Don't hurt those pretty lips of yours or mine.
02:50They feature heavily in my future plans.
02:53Swap out Aerie for Liara, Viconia for Lazell, Anaman for, I don't know, Solas or something.
03:00Decades later and I'm still expected to get invested in a so-called relationship between
03:04an actually fleshed out character and my protagonist, who is a breadstick with a morality meter.
03:09It's an unavoidable problem. For as much as I try to roleplay a certain vision of my avatars in games
03:15like Baldur's Gate, 2 and 3, Mass Effect, Pathfinder or hell, even Stardew Valley.
03:21They have fundamentally fewer dimensions than their romantic counterparts.
03:25I'm not invested in the alchemy that takes place between my cutout of a protagonist and their bow.
03:30It will never feel like much more than making my dolls kiss.
03:33Also, I don't actually have dolls. Please don't write that I have dolls.
03:37Before you accuse me of having a prudish heart of flint, I'm not against romance.
03:42There are games that pull it off really well. The Witcher 3? Great stuff.
03:45I could not be more invested in Geralt and Yennefer's kind of toxic,
03:49but also they're clearly meant for each other partnership.
03:52I thought you'd become a stranger to me. That I'd look at you and not feel a thing.
03:59But it's not like that at all. Nothing's changed.
04:03Cyberpunk. River War needs to stay very far away from me,
04:06but there's genuine chemistry between V and Judy, Pan Am or Kerry.
04:10Quality over quantity, V.
04:12Those are both CD Projekt games. Does that mean only the Polish truly understand love?
04:17Yes.
04:18But also, CDP restricts your range of roleplay.
04:22You can never really be evil Geralt, and however you play V, they're always clearly the same person.
04:27It gives their partners an actual personality to bounce off,
04:29and their relationships are a genuine foundation to build on.
04:40You just can't do that in a Bioware RPG, where one part of the romance could be anyone from
04:45John the Baptist to Sauron. Nothing of interest can be produced between two people,
04:49when one of them could exist anywhere on the moral spectrum.
04:52Just tell me what to do.
04:53How do you write a single romance that works coherently for both Albert Schweitzer and Albert Fish?
05:02Obsidian, God bless it, gets this, I think. It's why the studio has stubbornly refused to let you
05:07smooch anyone in its most recent RPGs, even when people got really angry about it. I don't even love those
05:13games, really. Avowed was fine, but it made a bold and entirely correct creative choice when it
05:19practically forbade you from kissing the big blue man, voiced by Garrus. Please do not firebomb my house.
05:25Also, yes, I know there's like a hidden mini romance in there if you're really committed, but whatever,
05:29that doesn't count. Romantic elements of Obsidian's games often occur between other characters,
05:35rather than between protagonists and party members. Christine and Veronica in New Vegas.
05:40You, you what? You met Christine? Where is she? Is she okay? Is she alive?
05:46Or Pervati and Junlei in the first Outer Worlds.
05:49I told her about how she made me feel. Bold like I acted. Strong. Smarter and kinder than I am
05:55on my
05:56lonesome. I listed all the things I liked about her. And then she pulled out a paper and read a
06:02speech.
06:03God, that's so much better. A romance between two actual people. How much more narratively
06:10interesting. How much more revealing about the people involved. How much less I have to worry
06:14about someone accidentally falling in love with me because I was kind of nice to them.
06:19All right, if that's the way you want it, fine. Now excuse me, I don't think I should be where
06:24I'm not wanted.
06:25In fact, the only time I remember Obsidian taking a stab at more traditional romances
06:29in semi-recent memory is Deadfire. Do you remember the romances in Deadfire? Me neither.
06:40So, perhaps what I want is not necessarily less romance in my blank slate RPGs, but more romance
06:46between characters that are actually fully fledged. More romances between my party members for me to
06:51spectate, and less between my party and their glorified blow-up doll of Alida. So what am I
06:55proposing here? That RPG deaths should forswear all romance for the rest of time just to fulfil my mad
07:02whims? Absolutely yes, I am. But failing that, maybe we could all take a cold shower and not demand
07:08every game with a dialogue wheel gives us a harem of hotties to choose between. It's not interesting,
07:13it's boring, and the resulting children are an enormous waste of inventory space.
07:18Oh, and don't forget to subscribe to PC Gamer and let me know all about your love life in
07:22the comments below. Actually, don't, don't do this at all.
