I started my reply asking whether or not six would be necessary in the game, then I thought of one of my favorite movies and a quote from it:

"Necessary? Is it necessary to drink my own urine? No, but I do it because it's sterile and I like the taste."

So, what the heck, I say throw in some harlets and let me spend my septims getting a sin fix. Why? Because I like the taste, man. I like the taste.

When it comes down to it - if "six" (shhhh.....) is in the game - you will be able to have six and then kill the person.

Hopefully this does not create a generation of serial killers - either way I am down for a lil pr0n game xxyyyyaabbxxyyy RT beaver slap - just kidding, a little romance is nice but nothing too graphic as kids will be playing the game.

My two sense - I can not beleive i wrote that

Edit: My 2 cents

This is a very torn subject for me. I can see both sides of the argument all too well, and it's hard for me to pick a side, but in the end, I gotta say I'd rather not see it come to life. After the success of the Partners mods, I'm sure it's something Bethesda has looked into, but that kind of thing would be very hard to implement and make everyone happy.

Personally, I think it's not a great idea because it would take the feeling of being a loner out of TES, which is one of the things I love about the game. Your character is the only one of your kind, adventuring across the entire land to do what (s)he has to do. For this reason, I always find myself abandoning partnership mods. I always have the Partners mod installed in my copy of Morrowind, simply because it feels like one of those must-have-mods, but I find that I use it maybe 5% of the time, and always for a very specific role-playing save. And even then, it is used even far less for a PC-NPC relationship. I enjoy role-playing when I play TES, but I don't like aspects that make me feel like I have to be somewhere, which is what a relationship aspect would do. Between quests, I'd feel obligated to go visit my honey back home. But even then, you could always role-play being a loner, which, going back to what the TC was actually proposing, it would create a really emotional aspect of the player character to be longing for the type of relationship you may see NPC's having. And maybe when things are said and done and the world is saved, you could pursue a relationship. But in the end, I'd say leave this kind of thing to the modders. TES is lucky to have such a wonderfully gifted and dedicated modding community, which is something we should never take for granted. We all have ideas we'd like to see in the series, but unfortunately a lot of these ideas will never see the light of day, speaking in terms of Vanilla games. But I'm sure within moments of Skyrim's release, modders will be hard at work implementing all the ideas we debate on these forums every day.

You see this kind of thread a lot these days, and I figured I may as well get out all my thoughts on the whole relationship debate right now. Just my 2 cents.

I've seen an article that said that videogames actually provide an outlet for anger and a desire for violence, keeping violent people off the streets more often.

Nonetheless, I think six is a step too far for the game. It'd give it a high rating, would be hard to program, and would not really add much. Relationships between NPCs though are nice and easy.

It's entirely likely that this will be M rated. Just judging from the past games. I believe the only T rated or lower game in this series is Morrowind, wasn't Daggerfall even M? Of course kids will play this game, but the ESRB has tried to make sure they can't. Whatever is going to be added, you can't blame the company because a kid played it, because they directly state that kids shouldn't play this.
I remember a relative of mine telling me about an experience while they were working at Gamestop. This parent bought Grand Theft Auto 4 for there 11 or 12 year old son, and a few days later, he came back to return the game because it was inappropriate. He was extremely pissed off. But not because of the killing, the prosttutes, or anything of that nature. He was pissed because a character used the word "[censored]". GTA4 is an M rated game, and the parent bought it. I don't know about you, but I blame the parent, the parent bought it.
Personally, I don't believe age is the number of years you have, I think age is your maturity level. If a kid isn't mature enough to not run around the house yelling "[censored]" at the top of his lungs all day, he shouldn't be able to play a game such as that.

Edit: Ah, they censored me. The N word is what is censored.

I think the point of my comment is to show that children are ill prepared for such content and until society deals with six differently, games need to be a bit senstive to those facts. When it comes down to the rating system, parents need to be aware of what they are buying for their kid - no doubt. Stores selling games need to publize this information a bit more - at the same time I would like to see games with an XXX rating along side of the R - as this could be really fun for the mature crowd. :poke:

As someone mentioned before, It's done really well in Bioware RPGs. Though not the six part... The romances, they add really a lot of depth into the characters and all, I love TES games, I really do, but it's always the loner game for me, I don't have any friends in the game whatsoever, no companions - that could travel with me and help me kill stuff and accomplish goals and such. Even with mods or how it has been done in Fallout (it's not a tes game but still done by bethesda), I didn't really care much for the characters that tried to follow you or something, they were just some dull figures. I'd like that to change a bit I guess, but knowing Bethesda, we won't be seeing this in Skyrim unless they have some sudden change of heart I am not disappointed by this however, because like I said, TES RPGs were always the "lone wolf" type ones.

Dim the lights?!? It's blow out the candles, dear.

Hopefully you can create deep enough relationships with some characters in the game so it would create some feelings. At least I don't want to feel like that I'm just playing a game, and that the NPCs are so generic that they can all just die and I don't care. A hero must have a feeling that he's fighting for something.

Bioware did it right. When the time for nookie came in Baldur's Gate II, it was a "fade to black" thing - you woke up the next morning with new dialog options, and that was it. However, the actual relationship dialog and progression was incredibly good, and well integrated into the game. Each relationship had its own side quests, and some simply weren't possible.

Of course, BG and BG2 were designed around a party system. You were never intended to go it alone for very long at all. (you could, of course, but it would be absurdly difficult) TES games have always had the player as a lone wolf - and it's only the modders who brought in the idea of a party or companions. Which is why I hope companions are implemented enough to get solid hooks for the third party companions, and expect little else from them.

I think the "loner" thing is really a personal thing. It is YOUR character. If your character is a loner so be it, then don't court any NPC! That doesn't mean everyone's character should be a loner like your own.

Wouldn't companions be more of a threat to the loner thing anyway, and those are already confirmed?

You have to be 12. That was th least sixy thing ive read since Great Expectations...

Let's wait until AFTER we get out of the uncanny valley.

Dragon Age did it well as well as the witcher. Not implying that Dragon Age did it as well, better or worse than the witcher. Those two games handled love and relationships differently of course but something 'round those lines shouldn't be impossible for them to disc out, passing Americas laws on the horrible S word. I know I'll be putting a coin in the swear jar for thinkin' 'bout the word, but anyhow u know.
If choppin' a man or woman (if not to pieces but) to death is tolerable, then sayin' to someone u grown fond of in a game that u care for them shouldn't be to hard to implement beyond making it morally "wrong".
Don't know if I made any sense. Not a na(t)?ve english speaker(writer).