While I'm not sure I like your poll, I suppose having romance would be a good thing, but Beth would have to take a leaf out of Bioware's book.
The romancable characters would have to be only a few (perhaps one per race?) with distinct personalities and believable chat.
Otherwise, you'll just get the Fable problem where, while you can technically marry everyone, every character is as flat and boring as a pancake with no chocolate sauce.
What I'm saying is, unless Beth can pull a Mass Effect/Dragon Age, then romance is a no-no.

Biased poll is biased, and videogame romances are -- without exception -- face-meltingly awful.

I just registered to tell you that you're INSANE.

Played The Witcher?


This is amazing. Welcome to the forums.

As far as romance in Skyrim goes, though I still can't figure out if this thread is really about this subject or not, my thoughts are that Bethesda should be working to perfect what they've got, which is what I think they are doing. If they decided to add this new dynamic to the game and didn't get it right, then my guess would be that all you people would come flooding back with something along the lines of "What the hell were you guys thinking putting that into the game?!"

Let them do what they're good at.

This topic makes me want to line up all of the "suggestive" emoticons together on my post, and then dump them all into a TES game...
I must admit, I am pretty messed up, with quite a colored past and all.
If these guys commit to making an advlt game, the advlts will start to assert themselves as advlts, asking for advlt things, like complex concepts and advlt... concepts...
You can already see it happening.

More on topic:
I like the idea of a little romantic interplay, nothing too serious if it suits you, but since children aren't allowed to play, who cares, you kid isn't allowed to "discover his/her sixuality" on this game, although that's how most... video gamers... often do it.
As a psychologist, I completely understand that some people are more serious (aka insecure) about their love life, and some have dark pasts like me, and some are completely carefree and open to trying new things, and some people are idealists (aka never got any), and some people think it's gross (aka children), and the rest don't care because they have it going on or have just given up on love and the dating scene.

On topic:
Yes. It should feel natural, like you should suddenly realize that your partner is saying more romantic things, no meter that says how much they like you. Like you may be out on a perfect sunset, and I guarantee the devs know when there is one, and your partner sighs and says "isn't the sunset beautiful tonight?" or some such mushy thing, once, not like the constantly repeating sound effects of the last game.
The simple fact of the matter is that they have been experimenting with relationship stuff since the first game I played (Morrowind) and possibly earlier. I'm sure we all remember Nels Llendo the bandit, or Crassius Curio the (possibly homosixual) dude on the main quest, and who could forget the House of Earthly Delights in Suran?. Pucker up.
They did say something about children in Skyrim, didn't they?

Besides, the themes of all of these relationship encounters were quite... on the edge... they don't seem too shy if you don't mind me saying.


I guarantee it.

On a final note, I personally have sorted my issues, and so I don't really care if it is in or out, but I hope if it's in that it is pleasant and not too "Fable".

me either!

I don't care if romance is in as long as it's optional. Pretty funny that ShadowWolf registered just to make his comment. good going.

Lusty argonian maid any one

As I always say- "I trust Bethesda"
If they think they can make it work and fit- awesome, it'll be a lot of fun
If they think it won't fit or will take away from the rest of the game- sorry dude, your dying alone

Romance in video games is stupid, not to mention awkward. One of my many gripes with DA2.

Me: Hey it's Anders from awakening! He's my favourite :celebration:

Anders: Hey sixy!

Me: :bolt:


It's really unnessecary. It doesn't add anything to the game, I don't want to have a corny virtual relationship. Nor do I want to get my kicks from a video game.

I'm in Skyrim to make life changing decisions, fight monsters, shift political landscapes, and change the world.

I'm not in Skyrim to have awkward, PG-13 relationships.

Bethesda please, PLEASE don't add in romance. I'd rather have you remove the carriage system than add in something so irritating and pointless.

Bethesda, please, PLEASE, don't do this.

Why can't you people just get off of this subject!?
I see at least 5 new threads a day on this.

You need help. Now.

No sane person wants [censored] in a game. You're just sick.

As for the poll, like I said, it's very bias (so if I don't want romance, I just want to kill monsters? Queens and castles? What?) And based on your posts, you just make this thread get even more weird and off-topic.

Please refrain on making posts like this. Not to mention there's 100 topics on this. Please don't take this as me being rude, I'm just telling you how it is.

Oh, and NO to romance, video games tend to implement them badly, just because they're Bethesda (and I love them too) doesn't mean they can do it.

Romance has no place in the Elder Scrolls, it would detract from the what is most important. TES games are fantasy/adventure RPGs, it's about exploring, doing quests and killing monsters. Let's keep the unnecessary and awkward romances to Mass Effect. Anyway, most of the time it's pulled off in an incredibly awkward and unnatural way. It was passable in Mass Effect, but it was really ridiculous in Mass Effect 2. They'd need to spend a lot, too much time in order to make a good romance system, time which could be used for something much more important to the series. And I mean, don't you play TES games to be able to do things you can't in real life? Kill monsters and be part of a fantasy universe? Anyone can romance people in real life, I don't see any interest for my character to romance a NPC whom I can't care much about. How would you choose your spouse? What would she have over someone else? Such system is a bit too complicated to pull off decently, and we already know Skyrim won't have such feature because we were told most NPCs have very limited conversation options. But seriously, running around girls in video games? You really need to be desperate or something.

Indeed. Developers have shown how much they can't write decent relationships. Anyway, if anything, you'd need an entire game dedicated to romance in order to pull of something decent. It would be too complicated to pull off appropriately in a game that works on so many more aspects - and in depth - of roleplaying. Anyway it would detract from the actual game.

Romance isn't "irritating and pointless" if the actual developer effectively uses it for the game. BioWare generally does a good job using romance to further character development, which makes the game more believable and fun. Anders is just an exception, as he was practically hitting on Hawke virtually every time by just picking the "good" option.

If there were any romance system in Skyrim though, I wouldn't want it to be in the game for the sake of having it (ala Fable). Romance would need to make sense in the context of the game and would have to actually add something to it. I will say I think relationships need to be better and more beneficial overall (whether that leads to romance is another thing).

I'm sorry, but I think Bioware generally does a very poor job at romance (Look at DA2) in my opinion.

It's just hard to implement romance in video games with out making them feel very awkward and unnatural.

No thanks... This is what i hated most about some RPGs.

Anders was the only romance character that I think could have been implemented in a more subtle manner. Everyone else seemed fine in DA2, as most of the criticism goes to Anders because he was so overt and it really came out of nowhere. We can go all the way back to Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire, Mass Effect 1 and 2, and even Dragon Age: Origins, and I would argue they all had solid romance systems.

The game that truly does a poor job of implementing romance is Fable. It was never good nor necessary in the first game, and it has not gotten any better.

Depends on your definition of good job. It's very awkward and unnatural imo. A couple of conversations, a couple of good words here and there and you have someone in your arms. Shepard really seems to be a master seducer despite doing nothing to warrant this. At least in KOTOR it wasn't "hey I love you" "I love you too", it was a bit more subtle and realistic. Video game developers in general are terrible at designing romances. It's quite normal in a way, their specialty was never writing good male/female relationships.

Indeed... in KOTOR it was much more tastefully done... Much more subtle.

In Bioware's recent additions... it was way too formulaic and the formula showed through... (Do them a favor or two, tell them you want them, and then there's a six scene)...

It was very.... creepy in how easy it was. Unless you were a total moron and chose the (You're ugly) option, there was like no chance to screw it up with them... which is like... "omg you girls are EASY". The end result with Mass Effect was a creepy assortment of girls absurdly easy to get in bed with.

Maybe that makes some people's ego feel nice... but me... I see it as fake and creepy.

Where do you get this "we" schtick? *I* want an Elder Scrolls game, not a dating simulator.

That's not the way to behave.