Note: I’m going to be posting spoilers in text and picture format. I am not going to mark them because there would be so many spoiler tags. Read at your own risk. Do not blame me if you see something you didn’t want to.

A few days ago, I made a [URL="http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1032628
”]thread[/URL] asking for people to think of games with established relationships (long-term relationships or marriages that predated the game’s start). It’s a topic that really interests me, and I hope that as we move forward, the game industry considers taking the topic of relationships a bit more seriously. There were some interesting examples posed (and a whole lot of bad ones from people not reading the OP), and eventually the replies got me to thinking. What exactly is it that has begun to bother me about relationships in video games? The more I thought about it, the more I realized that my problems really stemmed not so much from writing or themes, but from approaches and systems. Some of this will be a repeat of a comment I made in the thread, but I’d like to further hash it out.

OH BOY, I CAN DATE ANY OF THESE GIRLS?!

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Persona 4 Golden is probably the first example that comes to mind. Social Links are one of the first things that people who played the game will talk about. I know that’s certainly the case for me. I loved the game. I loved the cast. But if I’m really honest with myself, as much as I loved them, Social Links are goddamn shallow. Just looking at the “dating” side of things, you can be "dating" and cheating on essentially up to seven girls and face almost no repercussions. All that happens is that the game basically calls you an ass in a voice-acted scene and skips from V-Day to the day you leave. I might have taken that stuff more seriously if say, cheating on a girl broke S-Links or changed gameplay. But it doesn't. And really, P4G is a prime example of the stereotypical "power-wish-fulfillment-fantasy" romance found in video games.

P4G in a damn nutshell

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Frankly, I could talk about P4G all day. It's not just the relationships with your "girlfriend(s)" that is flawed. It's really the entire system. Once you max out an S-Link, you don't have to speak to or hang out with them ever again. In fact, it's probably a waste of your time, given the stat boosts you could be getting from other characters. You are literally disincentivised from spending additional time with the characters who you are supposedly closest to and are supposed to care the most about. It's actually a weird and unrealistic portrait of relationships. You don't become super-best-friends™ with someone and then stop talking to them for three months. I mean for crying out loud, you probably don't become best-friends as quickly as you do in P4G period.

Whoah! Even more datable girls than the last game!

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Well, how about Fire Emblem: Awakening then? The game is highly praised by many for it character relationship system. You can ship your favorite characters together, and recruit their children. Perhaps more importantly, “your” character can marry whoever is your favorite character, and then recruit your child from the future. It’s pretty much Fanfiction: The Game. But it too does the same thing that P4G does. Get your S-Support rank with a character and boom! Cute confession scene, stat-boost for battle and no more relationship growth!

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Once I got the above scene, my unit never talked to his "wife" outside of battle ever again. In fairness however, FE: A at least gives you the chance to grow your character through relationships with friends and with your child. But again, get a few Support ranks and you're done.

The GOAT cast? Maybe.

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Alright, well those are just those weird Japanese animu games right? Silly kid, Japanese games are just for otaku! What about some Western games then? Well then you might think of Bioware games. The dialogue options in those games are binary as can be and generally boil down to some variation of this:

Options
1) I'm a goodguy
2) I'm not so sure about this
3) I'm a jerk-ass

Like P4G and FE:A, Mass Effect 2 had a similar dearth of dialogue. After every mission, you will inevitably find yourself making your rounds through the Normandy, trying to speak to each character in your party. I mean they're all pretty damn awesome in their own way, so why wouldn't you want to? Every mission completed holds the allure of new dialogue and more character development. But all too often, your “friends” have nothing to say, greet you with a hello and tell you they’re busy. Whoopie do.

From a mechanical vantage point, a game like Mass Effect essentially boils its friendship/romance growth to choosing the right dialogue paths. And thus, from a kind of philosophical vantage point, the universe is created in such a way that the player character is so damn sexually desirable that certain outcomes are more or less destined. Answer correctly and Liara will be down to sleep with you . Answer correctly and Garrus will always be your number one bro (or honey if you’re playing FemShep). This renders each of these characters not as characters but as options. There’s hardly any complexity, effort or time that has to be put into the relationship (like a real-life one), so it really just becomes a battle of “who do I like the most?” And from a practical standpoint, in games like this with these wide spread of available romance options, for practical reasons (time and budget of the developers), the endings seem less fleshed out. In Mass Effect, all the romantic endings are the same: sex

Oh my God. They're all the same.

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What is the common theme here really? That in many of these games, there is a finite point where the relationship ends, and it comes (usually) before the game ends! I could have a "best friend" or a "girlfriend" by the second or third dungeon in P4G. And if that happened, the relationship stops growing. It stagnates. Actual relationships don’t just grow to a climax and then enter a happy holding pattern. There are ups and downs, and all kinds of complexities in long-term relationships. Most long-term friendships actually probably die from apathy. Most high school students suffer at least one breakup. So not only is your partner idealized, but so too is your entire relationship, becoming this happy box of rainbows and ponies.

Then of course, you can return to the "power-wish-fulfillment-fantasy" label that I slapped on these games. The most obvious example being that the "climax" and end of your relationship dialogue-tree is often…sex and stat boosts. Sex is my reward for getting close to a character, along with perhaps some bonuses for battle. There are numerous issues with this, starting from the fact that they treat physical intimacy as some ultimate reward of a relationship. They don't treat sex as a step in a long journey of growth, nor do they ever really allow your sex to have negative effects. The only example where I can think of sex being a negative is in Mass Effect 2 with Jack. Early on, she tries to seduce you, and if you accept you have a one-night stand. And when you accept this one-night stand, you never actually get to date her. Well that’s neat and unique. Why don’t more games do that? Sex with negative outcomes! Partners who refuse sex until marriage! Unexpected pregnancies! There are so many ways to flesh out that part of games. Sex and human sexuality is a huge and important part of life and locking it a gilded treasure chest at the end of a game (or character arc) is one of the worst ways to do it.

So many games are focused on making you the Savior of the Universe™, so that your relationships have to be power-fantasies. You never see your play character relying on your partner. Nah. Having a relationship with another character, and relying on them in even a tiny way emotionally would dilute your empowerment fantasy.

So, this leaves a lot of questions to consider:

Do relationship systems need something more? Or am I just making a mountain out of a molehill?

If they do need “more,” does more dialogue and branching narratives solve the need?

Can a game not treat a relationship as a reward system? Could the game eliminate explicit rewards and just encourage a player to be a decent human being to the characters they like?

Or is this ultimately a portrait of some existential problem within gaming? Namely that reality is so much more complex than simulations of reality and that you can’t quantify or define human relationships?

The problem is that these systems are added in parallel to the actual story/purpose of the game in examples like ME3, Persona 4. The system you're desiring would be ridiculously complicated to create in addition to the normal gameplay of your examples.

The games would be better if they just removed relationships tbh

I liked how in Harvest Moon: Animal Parade after you marry it opens up a whole 'nother row of 10 hearts to take your spouse through. That along with post-marriage events and new dialog as your relationship gets even closer felt really nice. That said, it's still a Harvest Moon game so the overall courtship and whatnot isn't exactly the deepest thing in the world. Still, it's nice that it lasts so long and it felt less shallow than most systems.

Obviously, not all games that include relationship systems can go as far as marriage, but more games could do with things like that and not make just setting the "in relationship" flag to "on" the end of the line for character interaction, but making it just another step in getting to know/interact with the character more.

Video game romantic relationships (henceforth, just "relationships") are often just xp bars in disguise, which is why they feel so artificial and wooden.

Simulating an actual relationship would require many nuances, and I'd be surprised if a game's budget allowed for such design if it wasn't the main selling feature of the game. (Relationships are only a subset of Social Links.)

I enjoy the games listed in the OP in spite of their ham-fisted representation of relationships. I would enjoy them even more if they were gone. Either do it right, or don't do it at all. I'd be 100% ok with totally platonic relationships. A positive side-effect would be not having to deal with the waifu crowd.

Regarding your complaint with P4G. I think you're making a mountain out of a molehill. There's plenty of room for growth in that system, but I think you're kind of missing that it's one mechanical system in a game filled with TONS of interweaving systems and that it inherently has limitations because of that.

S.Links bind into fusing, they bind into combat, they bind into spending time in a calendar system. Because of this, they need to have limitations and structure. If it were -just- dating-, I'd agree that it's a shallow system, but it doesn't exist in a vacuum.

Kalnos said:

Spoiler

The games would be better if they just removed relationships tbh

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I hate that in most games, relationship systems basically end as soon as someone becomes your SO. That's, like, when the hard stuff actually starts! There's tons of room for interesting character writing once two characters are in a relationship, but most games just treat being together as an achievement to be reached and not the start of something radically different for people.

I think Harvest Moon is the only series I've played where you need to actually maintain and continue a relationship with characters beyond "kissu kissu let's do a sex okay we're a couple now"

Honestly I just think relationships are too complex to accurately simulate in a game, however I do still enjoy them in some cases.

Dragon Age: Inquisition stood out to me recently for having some characters rebuff your advances despite being eligible, ie a straight male character not being interested in the female MC. The romance paths in that game also varied in terms of how quickly they happened and how they culminated (some of them don't ever have a sex scene, for example).

The path to romance is still very simple, but DA:I gives you responsibility for pursuing the characters as far as I know - I don't recall the companions flirting much, but I was given options to flirt with almost everyone, even those who weren't available. So I think this is a step forward but it's still a very basic portrayal of romance.

I'm not particularly fond of the Social Links in Persona either, despite loving the games and characters, because as you say there is no incentive to spend time with a character after maxing out their link. It's the complete opposite of how a real relationship works. That said, I still enjoy the process of getting to know the characters and wouldn't want that feature removed by any means. It's a tricky situation since the Social Links tie in very tightly with the other systems in the game, as Venfayth described.

orthodoxy1095 said:

Frankly, I could talk about P4G all day. It's not just the relationships with your "girlfriend(s)" that is flawed. It's really the entire system. Once you max out an S-Link, you don't have to speak to or hang out with them ever again. In fact, it's probably a waste of your time, given the stat boosts you could be getting from other characters. You are literally disincentivised from spending additional time with the characters who you are supposedly closest to and are supposed to care the most about. It's actually a weird and unrealistic portrait of relationships. You don't become super-best-friends™ with someone and then stop talking to them for three months.

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Actually, you do. When you get older you'll find that your strongest relationships don't need reinforcement. Some of my best "relationships" are people I might only see a handful of times a year anymore- but it doesn't matter, you can pick up right where you left off with no drama or issues.

This is pretty much inevitable as life, kids, and careers get in the way. Persona speeds this process up, but by no means is a strong relationship that doesn't need constant interaction and reinforcement unusual as you age.

Manmademan said:

Actually, you do. When you get older you'll find that your strongest relationships don't need reinforcement. Some of my best "relationships" are people I might only see a handful of times a year anymore- but it doesn't matter, you can pick up right where you left off with no drama or issues.

This is pretty much inevitable as life, kids, and careers get in the way. Persona speeds this process up, but by no means is a strong relationship that doesn't need constant interaction and reinforcement unusual as you age.

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This is a really silly response. If we were dealing with a game wherein the playable characters moved away from each other, I wouldn't see an issue. But we're not.

In Persona, you are living in a small town. You are going to school with each other. You are going on missions with each other. You're in close proximity. You are dating people.

In Mass Effect you are on a ship together. You are going on harrowing missions together. You're in close proximity.

In Fire Emblem, you're traveling together. You're camping together. You're married to people.

Besides, I disagree with extrapolating your friendships to people in general. For most human relationships, contact is essential

It'd be nice if games explored non-romantic relationships to. Sibling, parental, plain ol' pals. Stuff like that? I remember Harvest Moon: ANB having meatier child raising than other HM games and it was pretty nice.

orthodoxy1095 said:

Do relationship systems need something more?

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Ya they need to be more interactive. Just picking the "right" dialogue option, just overloading a character with gifts, just having them in your party alot, isn't really interactive! I like the semi-parental bonding things with Kazuma & Haruka in the Yakuza games where ya take her around town and win her toys or do well in a mini-game. Its by no means perfect and has its own sets of issues but its a far cry better then just dialogue options or seeing a still screen of MC and other character at an arcade having fun!

Can a game not treat a relationship as a reward system? Could the game eliminate explicit rewards and just encourage a player to be a decent human being to the characters they like?

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I think a different attitude/dialogue towards the MC could be reward enough! No need for stat bonuses or super cool equipment an all that.

It seems like a lot of it either "Pressure the person" or "Tell them what they want to hear even if it's not what you or the character thinks" both of which are a little on the skeezy side.

I mean, I'm not sure there's really a way to do it right, so I don't know if they even can be fixed, but the current status can be a bit off putting.

The problem with many affection systems, is that you're incentivised to make everyone love you for the maximum gameplay benefit. When a character's feelings towards you gives you a stat boost, or changes their competancy in battle, it makes the player see that character's feelings as just another stat to max out. This is especially compounded when there are "incorrect" answers to dialogue options. Why pick those, if the alternative is that you get a useful stat boost?

There's also the problem of engaging with an affection system, only so that you get an extra cutscene or two. You're incentivised to "complete" the narrative by pursuing one person, and punished for just making your own choices. It's the same issue that plagues moral choice games; if you don't devote yourself to a choice, you get a less complete game.


Tales of Symphonia has an excellent affection system. It's heavily based on the Golden Saucer dating mechanics employed by FF7.
It's not about reaching a "love" threshold, the game merely tracks who likes you the most, and arranges the game based on that. There are no fail-states (well, there's one, but it's very well hidden, and it's a very suitable outcome in context) you get the same amount of game, and the same amount of cutscenes no matter what you choose to do.

The game casts your choices and actions against the personalities of your party. Did you want to go grill the govenor for information instead of charging into the enemy base like an idiot? Well, the cool-headed adults in your group really liked that, but the younger people probably think you made the wrong choice. Maybe you're being nice to someone your friend has a crush on, or you're being too trusting of a self confessed murderer. A party member might have an ulterior motive for travelling with you, and your actions are inadvertantly making things harder for them.
The best thing about this affection system is that there are no wrong answers, even if all a choice does is make someone like you less. And by that same token, there are no right answers either. You make your choices based on what you'd want to do, and your party decides how they feel about it. There's no gameplay benefit, and you don't get more cutscenes if you engage with the system "correctly". And even if the game tries to pair you with someone you don't like, you're stealthily given the power to reject them in favour of someone else who likes you.

I just assumed a lot of the post "we're a couple" stuff was implied rather than spelled out for you. Partially to keep the rating down, partially logistics. I guess it would depend on the game in question though. A lot of stuff likely goes on in FE Awakening between the actual battles. Army camps and troops have a lot of day to day things we probably wouldn't want to actually do, as an example. The post marriagey hanky panky's probably part of that

Now, I would like slightly more dynamic relationship stuff like what Fable 2 kinda did (randomly generated potential relationship characters with every new game) but also failed at (dance/fart a few times, throw some chocolate or flowers, get hitched). But that's pretty hard to do when your team/squad/whatever are set in stone. Unless you want like...random possible personality traits with your squad, but that sounds like a lot of work just for what in most games is an optional distraction rather than a focal point.

I agree so much. The fucking "talk to this guy/girl, get sex" is the dumbest thing ever.

I think Fire Emblem does it the best out of all of those games, to be honest. But mostly because it integrates its relationship system into the regular gameplay and I'm not that big a fan of the dialogue trees present in your other examples. I think if they managed to address the problem of maintaining relationships they'd have a pretty solid system on their hands.

In general the issue with fixing systems like P4 just seems to be manhours required. The cop-out would be to not allow the player any relationship as soon as he starts one, forcing him to break up before starting a new one with other characters. But that seems too simple and I'd much rather have cheating addressed in the story/character interaction since this is a role playing game and at least some player choice should be possible. Considering the 9 (?) dateable girls there are in P4, this would mean there are 512 possibilities of dating and not dating them and you'd have to have a different scenario written by each character about finding out about each combination of transgression(s). Which seems like a huge amount of required script and recorded dialogue. After all, it would be just as shallow of a system if Yukiko reacted the same to finding out you cheated on her with that nurse she doesn't even know compared to finding out you cheated with her best friend Chie. Especially if the story still wants Yukiko's and Chie's friendship to change as a result. All of these little variances would need to be accounted for in a proper relationship system and I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon, considering the very static way in which S-Links are written. They need to start with giving you some actual impact on the S-Link first, because right now even your dialogue choices don't really change anything in one S-Link, let alone in the other ones.

(Plus, you get to bang Chie and Naoto, what's not to love?)

Yeah. What's been said is pretty much how it is. It'd be great to get better systems, but relationships in most games take place parallel to the main content, so there's not going to be as big of a focus on spending as much hours and work to improve them.

Apologies for this long bulk response. I finally got home and had time to read through all your excellent responses.

batfax said:

I liked how in Harvest Moon: Animal Parade after you marry it opens up a whole 'nother row of 10 hearts to take your spouse through. That along with post-marriage events and new dialog as your relationship gets even closer felt really nice. That said, it's still a Harvest Moon game so the overall courtship and whatnot isn't exactly the deepest thing in the world. Still, it's nice that it lasts so long and it felt less shallow than most systems.

Obviously, not all games that include relationship systems can go as far as marriage, but more games could do with things like that and not make just setting the "in relationship" flag to "on" the end of the line for character interaction, but making it just another step in getting to know/interact with the character more.

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That's actually really cool about Harvest Moon. Even if the relationship stuff isn't the most amazing, the pure longevity sounds fantastic. It's great to have a game where you hit a "climax" (confession/marriage/kid) and the relationship still gets to continue, rather than leaving you hanging in the wind.

Lumination said:

Video game romantic relationships (henceforth, just "relationships") are often just xp bars in disguise, which is why they feel so artificial and wooden.

Simulating an actual relationship would require many nuances, and I'd be surprised if a game's budget allowed for such design if it wasn't the main selling feature of the game. (Relationships are only a subset of Social Links.)

I enjoy the games listed in the OP in spite of their ham-fisted representation of relationships. I would enjoy them even more if they were gone. Either do it right, or don't do it at all. I'd be 100% ok with totally platonic relationships. A positive side-effect would be not having to deal with the waifu crowd.

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What kind of game could you have where the relationships were a main function? Like a comprehensive dating sim I guess?

I feel compelled to note for anyone who stumbles across this thread: I too loved the games in my OP. I'm taking them to town a bit particularly because I know them well enough to nit-pick. I feel like I too might be alright with taking out the relationships.

Venfayth said:

Regarding your complaint with P4G. I think you're making a mountain out of a molehill. There's plenty of room for growth in that system, but I think you're kind of missing that it's one mechanical system in a game filled with TONS of interweaving systems and that it inherently has limitations because of that.

S.Links bind into fusing, they bind into combat, they bind into spending time in a calendar system. Because of this, they need to have limitations and structure. If it were -just- dating-, I'd agree that it's a shallow system, but it doesn't exist in a vacuum.

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We can spin the P4G stuff however we want and excuse it with the limitations of game mechanics, but that's still not enough for me to get over this:

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Being the last time you hang out with your "best friend" and choose dialogue.

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Sagely said:

Dragon Age: Inquisition stood out to me recently for having some characters rebuff your advances despite being eligible, ie a straight male character not being interested in the female MC. The romance paths in that game also varied in terms of how quickly they happened and how they culminated (some of them don't ever have a sex scene, for example).

The path to romance is still very simple, but DA:I gives you responsibility for pursuing the characters as far as I know - I don't recall the companions flirting much, but I was given options to flirt with almost everyone, even those who weren't available. So I think this is a step forward but it's still a very basic portrayal of romance.

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Interesting to hear that Bioware didn't flood the game with sex. I'm actually very impressed by that.

As to the second bolded part, you're right that it's a step in the right direction to be able to flirt with someone and find out they're not available. It would also be nice if flirting took on a more dynamic, two-way state.

Lindsay said:

It'd be nice if games explored non-romantic relationships to. Sibling, parental, plain ol' pals. Stuff like that? I remember Harvest Moon: ANB having meatier child raising than other HM games and it was pretty nice.

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Probably why Nanako and Dojima were actually among my favorite S-Links in P4G. It was nice to have a more "family-centric" angle to the relationships.

Corpekata said:

It seems like a lot of it either "Pressure the person" or "Tell them what they want to hear even if it's not what you or the character thinks" both of which are a little on the skeezy side.

I mean, I'm not sure there's really a way to do it right, so I don't know if they even can be fixed, but the current status can be a bit off putting.

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I definitely don't like the "tell them what they want" aspect that many of the relationship tracks seem to have.

Junahu said:

The problem with many affection systems, is that you're incentivised to make everyone love you for the maximum gameplay benefit. When a character's feelings towards you gives you a stat boost, or changes their competancy in battle, it makes the player see that character's feelings as just another stat to max out. This is especially compounded when there are "incorrect" answers to dialogue options. Why pick those, if the alternative is that you get a useful stat boost?

Tales of Symphonia has an excellent affection system. It's heavily based on the Golden Saucer dating mechanics employed by FF7.

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This brings up an interesting example. Alpha Protocol is the only game that I can think of where there aren't really "incorrect" answers per se, and giving the "asshole" response may actually serve you well in the long-run.

I'm a bit skeptical about Symphonia, but your post reminds me that I need to play it since I have it sitting on my PS3...

Kenai said:

I just assumed a lot of the post "we're a couple" stuff was implied rather than spelled out for you. Partially to keep the rating down, partially logistics. I guess it would depend on the game in question though. A lot of stuff likely goes on in FE Awakening between the actual battles. Army camps and troops have a lot of day to day things we probably wouldn't want to actually do, as an example. The post marriagey hanky panky's probably part of that.

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I definitely wouldn't want to do the day-to-day things in FE:A's camp life. That would get too tedious and end up as an entirely different type of simulation. My issue with FE:A remains that you have four conversations, and out pops a baby. Nothing after that. Your relationship story effectively ends there. Now, if the ending of the relationship coincides with the end of the game, great. But I got my unit married in FE:A and played for like another ten-fifteen hours. I honestly didn't feel that connected to "my wife." At least in P4G, if you date one of the main playable party girls, she'll come back up in cutscenes and party dialogue. But once I married Cherche, I effectively never heard from her again.

My biggest problem is when relationships(platonic or romantic) are more for cheap player gratification than anything. I don't know, it kind of became a joke/meme how in P4 everyone would be on the protag's dick but I really don't find that particularly rewarding and I don't think it encourages good writing.

orthodoxy1095 said:

I'm a bit skeptical about Symphonia, but your post reminds me that I need to play it since I have it sitting on my PS3...

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If you've played FFVII or FFX, then you'll have already seen this type of affection system on a smaller scale. It doesn't do anything at all to build a realistically interactable relationship, but it encourages roleplaying by stealthily customising the experience to match your choices.

I honestly don't know why this system has fallen out of vogue in favour of the downright harmful "fill everyone's love-meter with hearts to win prizes" approach.

orthodoxy1095 said:

We can spin the P4G stuff however we want and excuse it with the limitations of game mechanics, but that's still not enough for me to get over this:

Being the last time you hang out with your "best friend" and choose dialogue.

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Spin? I'm not spinning it, I'm clearly and simply saying it's unimportant because this is a mechanical game system that exists with a context. It would be nice to have a reason to spend time with characters after you max their social link, but it would also be counter intuitive because you have an incentive to max as many social links as possible, which of course is difficult to do because you have to manage your time effectively.

The game does a poor job of recognizing how your social links progress outside of the social link and 'spending time' systems. That is a much more valid complaint about the game. They should absolutely make your social links mean more outside of the social link system, but saying you should be able to keep spending time with someone after the social link is 'complete' is a bad idea and doesn't make any sense in reality.

Also note that the game is much less about 'telling people what they want to hear' and much more about being supportive. It's strange how alien 'being a positive person' seems to be to people who complain about the idea of telling social link characters what they want to hear. A few social links punish you for being too nice, and instead want you to give them 'the hard truth'. The social link stuff certainly isn't profound, but it's not garbage in most cases either. They're microcosms of pretty common social situations.

ME3 did something right with the romantic relationships that nobody talks about.
They changed how the rest of the group interacted with not only you, but the rest of the characters (apart of the usually love scene).

More games need to do that.
Dont finish the "social link" at the end of the love or max friendship scene, make the characters behave like you accomplish that thing up until the end of the game For example make the loved one interact completly different in the final moments of the game during the group dialogs, or make your two persons in the group have interactions with themselves becuase you choose another route. This would be a really cool thing to see in Persona games. You havent choose Naoto as a girlfriend when it gets to x part of the game? just continue its little romance story with Kanji until the end of the game, maybe help them to get there (or choose not to).

XANDER CAGE said:

I hate that in most games, relationship systems basically end as soon as someone becomes your SO. That's, like, when the hard stuff actually starts! There's tons of room for interesting character writing once two characters are in a relationship, but most games just treat being together as an achievement to be reached and not the start of something radically different for people.

I think Harvest Moon is the only series I've played where you need to actually maintain and continue a relationship with characters beyond "kissu kissu let's do a sex okay we're a couple now"

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In GTA IV, the percentage-based relationship system used with friends is carried over to the online dating side missions, meaning Niko needs to maintain contact with his girlfriend(s) or she/they won't answer his calls. There's one girl that once you reach a certain percentage with, will get super pissed and show up at Niko's other dates in mini-cutscenes, and harrass him with phone calls if he cheats on her.

SpacePirate Ridley said:

ME3 did something right with the romantic relationships that nobody talks about.
They changed how the rest of the group interacted with not only you, but the rest of the characters (apart of the usually love scene).

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It was great whenever this happened! I also appreciated how some squadmates could pair off with each other if you didn't romance either of them - Garrus and Tali did that in my game. There's a hint of it in Inquisition too, although I didn't see it demonstrated as clearly as in ME3. It's more realistic than the characters being available to your MC and no one else.

Junahu said:

If you've played FFVII or FFX, then you'll have already seen this type of affection system on a smaller scale. It doesn't do anything at all to build a realistically interactable relationship, but it encourages roleplaying by stealthily customising the experience to match your choices.

I honestly don't know why this system has fallen out of vogue in favour of the downright harmful "fill everyone's love-meter with hearts to win prizes" approach.

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Ohhhh gotcha. Yeah, I know that system well. Definitely a shame that it's fallen out of favor.

Venfayth said:

The game does a poor job of recognizing how your social links progress outside of the social link and 'spending time' systems. That is a much more valid complaint about the game. They should absolutely make your social links mean more outside of the social link system, but saying you should be able to keep spending time with someone after the social link is 'complete' is a bad idea and doesn't make any sense in reality.

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The reality is that there is no such thing as a "complete" social link in real life. If a Social Link is going to "end," ideally, it would "Max" around the endgame. Not possibly months before the game ever ends.

Even more ideally, and this is getting into the realm of pure fantasy because of the work required, it would be amazing if the game could provide enough content so that you don't "have" to hang out with each character.

SpacePirate Ridley said:

ME3 did something right with the romantic relationships that nobody talks about.
They changed how the rest of the group interacted with not only you, but the rest of the characters (apart of the usually love scene).

More games need to do that.
Dont finish the "social link" at the end of the love or max friendship scene, make the characters behave like you accomplish that thing up until the end of the game For example make the loved one interact completly different in the final moments of the game during the group dialogs, or make your two persons in the group have interactions with themselves becuase you choose another route. This would be a really cool thing to see in Persona games. You havent choose Naoto as a girlfriend when it gets to x part of the game? just continue its little romance story with Kanji until the end of the game, maybe help them to get there (or choose not to).

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I didn't play ME3, so I was actually too unfamiliar to comment on that.

To you second point, that's exactly the thing I'm wishing I could see. It would probably require more manhours (a LOT more), but it would be so much more rewarding to see your relationship continue after the "climactic" scene.