In the lead up toAvowed’s release, much was made about how, likeThe Outer Worldsbefore it, there wouldn’t be romances, and the game would instead focus onhaving players develop platonic relationships with their companions.
Developer Obsidian had decided to steer away from traditional romance mechanics, where you woo a specific companion (or several) and instead take that out of the equation entirely, largely because implementing an equally satisfying platonic path would have expanded the scope of the game beyond feasibility.
But as players have made their way through the game in the last month, this turned out to be false. Well, notexactly. It turns out you can romance one character, who I’m not naming because of spoilers, but you can probably guess who if you’ve been playing it. Are there more? Nobody knows! That’s the great thing about it.
RPG Romances Are Too Calculated
Romances have been an RPG mainstay for decades, and to many players, they’re the most emotionally fulfilling part of a game. Our own Stacey Henley has written aboutthe importance of romances to her and what she hopes to see in the Witcher devs’ new game. Rhiannon Bevan has waxed lyrical aboutDragon Age: Origins’ Alistair and how she fumbled him. I, myself, have whined on this website aboutadoring Baldur’s Gate 3’s Karlach and, likewise, fumbling her.
TheGamer’s staff are never beating the rizzless allegations, I suppose.
But at the same time, there are reasons not to want romance in an RPG. Romances often don’t make a game better – in fact,they can detract from the overall experience. Because of the form a video game takes, things that feel organic in real life are prescriptive when simulated in a game. To use an item, you open your inventory and press a button. When you talk to characters, you choose from options already given to you, if you get to choose at all. When you move around an environment, you’re able to only go where the developers allow you to.
It’s very much the same with romances: you’re tallying up approval points. Once you know a character is a romantic option, a specific set of actions that RPGs have long drilled into your head might kick in on autopilot. You do and say the things that will most please that character, roleplay be damned. You give them gifts they might like. You know that if you do the right things, they’ll want to date your character. It’s what they’re programmed to do.
Sure, you might get a deeper understanding of a character by doing these things. They might reveal things about themselves you wouldn’t have seen if you were just friends. But they also become flattened to mere code in a player’s mind – not fully fleshed-out people, but trophies to acquire.
Not Knowing There Was Romance Made It Feel Organic
Obsidian didn’t really lie about romances not being in the game, but it certainly obfuscated them. Rather than outright saying that yes, you may develop a romantic relationship with a character, it said that if it were to include romantic options, it would “really, really, really do it right - or not at all”.
And, to be fair, romanceisn’treally part of the game, per se. How the romance actually shows up is that you’re able to solidify your relationship with that character at the end of the game, and it will appear in your ending slide sequence. But you never really get to see this romance play out, nor do you ever really know you’re working towards it.
By not revealing this potential to players beforehand, Obsidian made it so that players could take the characters on their own terms, and it made it so that you could experience those characters as deeply as if you’d been trying to romance them. You’re not trying to game the system and make them love you – you’re just getting to know them. In many ways, this feels far more organic than the typical lovebombing you might do when trying to get a BG3 character to like you. you may’t look up a romance guide if you don’t know there’s a romance to begin with.
Is it a little misleading to say there’s no romance in the game? Sure, but it’s also not really a lie. Thereisromance, just not a romance mechanic as we know it. I think I like it better that way. To find that your organically developed relationship can blossom into something more is a wonderful surprise, and sometimes that’s the realest thing of all – love can surprise you. It might not be what players wanted, but it might have been what we needed.
