Essay: Romance in Bioware Games Part 1

[CrimsonKale]

Romance in Games : Comparative look at Dragon Age and Mass Effect

First off I am going to preface this by saying that i truly enjoy making research projects like papers and miss my university classes the forced me to make them. I am a weird forever academic type and i don't expect anyone to actually enjoy reading these but this is going to be a fun project for me. I plan to do a few of these that analyze aspects of some of my favored games. I have a few in mind and this just so happens to be the first topic that i have had some discussions with friends before. So if you do read this all the way through i welcome your feed back and discussion.

For the longest time I have enjoyed playing games, since i was 13 i have looked eagerly forward to the next game in a franchise or the next big revolutionary thing. And with those entries we have made a great deal of progress from the simple hack and slash of early games to fully 3D and scripted productions of today. The advancements in games these days are truly amazing and wowed me in a way that i never though of before. And with these advancements in games it is my opinion that RPGs have been the most affected and enhanced. The addition of voice actors for NPCs, the addition of companions, added graphics, and branching narrative just to name a few. These were truly wondrous additions to a forum that allowed the player to truly loose themselves in the new reality that the game offered. So why is it that I find that the addition of romance options are almost always forced and clumsy. There are some that do romance options better then others, for example The Witcher series and then there have been some poor entries like Fallout 4. For the purpose of this post I plan to look at the romance options in two of my personally beloved series whose romances that I reacted to very differently the Mass Effect Series and the Dragon Age series. I find this an interesting example because these two games are created by the same company with similar writing styles and narrative. So why is it that i hate the romance options in Dragon Age games, but love the romance options in Mass Effect games? For simplicity purposes this will focus on the first 3 Mass Effect Games and the current 3 Dragon Age games.

Mass Effect for those who are unaware, was a Bioware title that took place in the future in the Milky Way galaxy. It was a galaxy wide space opera where the main protagonist and playable character SHEPARD, struggled to save the galaxy in the primary three games. By compassion the Dragon Age trilogy took place in the created land of Theadus and followed around three different player characters the Warden, Hawk, and the Inquisitor, in a similar epic to save the land from a great threat that could destroy everything the player characters hold dear. As a set up I personally think that this is a great start to an adventure. Sprawling epic adventures really appeal to me and many other in the gaming community. And as is befitting of games of this nature the story and the real preference is in the hero's journey rather then the climax. In both games the player will collect companions to follow and aid them, learning a great deal about their followers along the way. In both games i find that the introduction, establishment, and development of the companions to be top notch. There were many times that I found myself laughing at a joke that Rex cracked, or felt the sadness for Cole when he struggled to grasp at what it is to be human. And as one would think both games offer the option for the character to develop feelings for the companions or secondary characters. This option I found to be interesting as it allows a deeper connection between the player and an a secondary character. Personally I was excited to learn in that I could romance a companion in Dragon Age and Mass Effect. It was a concept from Bioware I was familiar with in Bioware games but it was an area I felt was not always done well, from a previous romp though their Neverwinter games. By comparison Dragon Age and then Mass Effect I found that the romance systems to be much more engaging, more effective and over all more fun and immersive. It allowed the player to participate even in some token way, in a relationship with a sexual preference that may not be their own. A point that was bough up in a Zero Punctuation Review for Dragon Age 2 *1. For the most part both Dragon Age and Mass Effect had the same system and set up for romance options. The divergence for me occurred in the second installments of both games. Where I found the romance in Mass Effect to be more real and the romance in Dragon age to be less engaging and fun. Which is not to say that it wasn't fun to learn more about these characters, but rather it felt off and kind of strange to me. It want until the third installment of both that i decided I hated the romance options and to a certain extent the characters around them for Dragon Age and by contrast loved the romance in Mass Effect and by extension the characters. But why? I had to ask myself why I hated Dragon Age romance but not Mass Effect.

[JackofTears]

It kind of depends on what kind of age rating they're shooting for with their players and if they want to go through the effort of censoring the scenes for release in certain countries.

[isturbo1984]

The romancing options have always been something that has been poked fun at. Mostly because having it in out video games makes some people uncomfortable. But also because of the cringe factor. I a good romance cutscene from Mass Effect 1&2 and The Witcher series is something that is worth complimenting. I hate the lazy ones these days that just show a character kiss and the screen fades to black with an accompanying achievement pop, lol. It's lazy. Either include it or don't.

[RaptureReady]

I enjoyed your essay. However, why are you writing an essay about romance in bioware when you could be writing an essay to Bethesda?

[CrimsonKale]

NEVER!!!! your just being intolerant of the spelling disabled. LOL naw i thought of it I just haven't gotten around to it. Plus i see those adds all the time and they feel targeted. I'm not sure if i should be impressed that the internet knows i suck at spelling or insulted lol.

[MakeGamesGreatAgain]

Try Grammarly, it definitely helps.

[CrimsonKale]

Thanks for the feedback. I thought about that but yes i thought it would have been weird to just randomly drop sections of my essay into odd parts of the conversation.

[CrimsonKale]

I think pc culture makes deep romance options in games obsolete. It's hard to make a romance real when almost every character swings both ways. I really hated the romance options in AC:Odyssey, well it's not really romance at all, I called them: "Let's fuck options".

I agree that ME's romance threads were much more realistic and engaging than Dragon Age ever was. Well, except for romancing Cassandra in DA:I That was pretty realistic, and gradual. If you stick with her that is, because initially I didn't think of her much either, but later she does open up.

I'm also a space racist because I found romancing aliens in Mass Effect weird. It never gave me that dopamine boost as the human options did. But being attracted to your own kind is not racism. At least I reject that notion. The same way as not wanting to have sex with a trans person doesn't make you transphobic either.

By far my favorite romance option in the ME trilogy was Miranda. Why? Because you get the best and most rewarding scenes with her in ME3. Especially if you get the citadel DLC, seriously you must not miss that.

On a technical aspect, what I disliked about the ME games, is that if you turned down the romance dialogue option just once during the game, then you lost the option forever. And on first playtrough I never wanted to be that pushy. but I Did finish ME1 and ME2 at least a dozen times, so I had time to experiment.

Yes i think that the PC culture has had a lot to do with the devolving narrative of some games. Every character being able to be BI really hurts the game. Oddly enough this didn't hold true in DA:I there were some characters that you couldn't woo. For example Cassandra would only go for male Inquisitor and Cullen would only go for female Inquisitor. Its just a shame that the BI an gay characters are so insufferable when romancing them. I'm not saying that ONLY gay people can write the gay romances but perhaps a bit more consultation would have made it better. So it was like they had half of the equation in ME and half of the equation in DA.

[CrimsonKale]

A great read. Though a few spelling errors awakened my inner grammar nazi. Lol sorry. I honestly miss romancing in most games either because I play them too fast or I'm just dense. I like your take on the differences between the series. Strange that it seems like the same studio is reading from two different play books.

LOL its ok I'm useless with out Spell check.

[The_Dirk_Diggler]

To be fair OP started title with "Essay:....". I think that if OP had tried to gradually introduce talking points later it would have been clunky and if there isn't much reader engagement it would look weird. Probably easier to just lay everything on the table and if dialogue ensues so be it.

[JackofTears]

I respect that you, OP, have a lot to say on the subject, but maybe post a synopsis first and then introduce your more detailed ideas as they come up in the course of discussion. I only say this because seeing three pages of text opening the thread will turn a lot of people away - it turned me away - and that's too bad because this is a subject I find very interesting. Dumping a long paper on someone at the start of a thread is a bit too overwhelming and it will only limit discussion, maybe avoid it in the future.

[MadMummy76]

I think pc culture makes deep romance options in games obsolete. It's hard to make a romance real when almost every character swings both ways. I really hated the romance options in AC:Odyssey, well it's not really romance at all, I called them: "Let's fuck options".

I agree that ME's romance threads were much more realistic and engaging than Dragon Age ever was. Well, except for romancing Cassandra in DA:I That was pretty realistic, and gradual. If you stick with her that is, because initially I didn't think of her much either, but later she does open up.

I'm also a space racist because I found romancing aliens in Mass Effect weird. It never gave me that dopamine boost as the human options did. But being attracted to your own kind is not racism. At least I reject that notion. The same way as not wanting to have sex with a trans person doesn't make you transphobic either.

By far my favorite romance option in the ME trilogy was Miranda. Why? Because you get the best and most rewarding scenes with her in ME3. Especially if you get the citadel DLC, seriously you must not miss that.

On a technical aspect, what I disliked about the ME games, is that if you turned down the romance dialogue option just once during the game, then you lost the option forever. And on first playtrough I never wanted to be that pushy. but I Did finish ME1 and ME2 at least a dozen times, so I had time to experiment.

[The_Dirk_Diggler]

A great read. Though a few spelling errors awakened my inner grammar nazi. Lol sorry. I honestly miss romancing in most games either because I play them too fast or I'm just dense. I like your take on the differences between the series. Strange that it seems like the same studio is reading from two different play books.

[MakeGamesGreatAgain]

I hear you on ME:A. I was writing every single day before I played that game, so bad writing became even more offensive to me - and I think there was only one or two sequences that I truly felt like I was in a space opera Sci-Fi game in the entire game.

It’s funny that the Mass Effect romances were written just after NeverWinter Nights. There were several great player made modules that had some great romances in them, and they probably learned how to do it right by following that, same with DA:O.

On ME:A, the one thing they did get right is how the end the game. Whoever Ryder romances gives you a cutscene at the end, and if you romance the lesbian scientist in the ship, she tells you something amazing about that sector of Andomeda that sparked my interest. Too bad it’s not being supported anymore.

https://youtu.be/Vofx3UgmNQU

14:54 and you can see the sequence - you only get this when you romance Suvi.

[CrimsonKale]

It was an interesting piece to read and I look forward to reading more of your projects.

I played ME2 not that long ago and absolutely loved it. I ended up with a relationship in that game, but it's not the part that I fondly remember the game by. The relationship aspect was just an option in the game that Shepard could take at some point. I did it more to see if there were extra missions for him.

Maybe I don't feel emerged enough with my characters to actually care what they are doing. When I opt for a relationship in a game it usually with the hopes of getting more out of the game(items, quests, etc), but the times I've encountered this option it was an optional side story with no effect on the main story.
For the same reason I often play previous Fallout games twice. Once with a male and once with a female, because they have their own unique conversation options and I hope to encounter something new.

Perhaps I'll change my mind after playing DA2 though. I've got the game on Origin (which I haven't opened in months) and will give it a go!

I'm glad you liked it thank you. And no, the relationships in Bioware games never really effect game play to much, it really is more for a deeper look at on companion and how they would react to being presued romantically by the main character. And DA2 while i thought fun despite its many issues, still told a fun, if smaller story to DA1 and 3 the romance system in DA 2 similar to MA2 but the companions wern't worth the time in my opinion. They were fun to have in a party but but it felt like little effort was given to their romance options.