Another poll that associates romance with BioWare. This is not a registered trademark, people. Tes can feature relationships without any inspiration from BioWare, Fable or whatever. Yes, I want romance and I want it to be optional, because some of my characters will seek for this and some will not.
Good grief, someone who realises that romances in games are about the character you're controlling, and not about you? Err... am I still in the same forum
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I always wonder what's wrong with TES players. Love? Childish! six? OMG, doesn't happen in real life! Seriously, intimate relationships to other humans are probably the most important thing for almost all humans no matter what race they are, what's their social status or what country they live in. No one of us would even be alive without it. Yet as soon as someone asks for it to happen in a TES game there is a loud outcry as if someone was asking for being able to [censored] children. This is meant to be a role-playing game. Yet people don't want to play one of the most important parts of life with their character, for whatever reason.
Maybe because they feel people could see them as nerds who got no real life and no real girlfriend/wife? If that is the case and if you have a life outside computer gaming then I wonder why you have such a strong feeling about this subject. I'm happily married and I feel that a true RPG needs relationships between characters. Everything else would feel artificial and is indeed one of the things that ES games are lacking big time. Characters feel like empty computer figures who only exist for the purpose of handing out tasks to the player. And not like living human beings with emotions and relationships. Everything you get to see the relation someone has to you is a silly disposition value.
I agree that a believable relationship is pretty hard to make in a computer game though. There is always a limitation, you've only got a limited amount of dialogue choices and things you can do. But that is true for most things in a CRPG. Just look at Companion Vilja (mod for Oblivion). You can build up a relationship with her and it works pretty well imo. Funnily enough she's the only character in the whole game I really feel connected to.
Part (only part) of the problem is that TES games have ended up with a very large audience who play them either as action-adventures or as sandbox games rather than roleplay games. Nothing wrong with playing the games that way, but if that's the only way people want to play the games, then that's where they want the development resources to go... and I suspect they resent time being spent on strong story-driven RPG elements.
If I wanted a nagging wife, I'd get one in real life so I could at least mooch off her paycheck.
But what have in-game relationships got to do with real-life? First, it isn't you, it's a character you're controlling. Second, it's a fantasy setting, with all the bizarre possibilities that allows. Your character could be a sinister mage, getting a warrior to fall for her so that he'd act as a meatshield. Your character could be a thief, romancing the lady of the castle so as to get the key to the treasure vaults. Your character could be a bounty hunter, a cynical loner, who to his horror starts to fall for the khajiit assasin he's been paid to bring in.
None of them you, none of them real. None of them substitutes for the real thing, but great entertainment - for those who like roleplay and story.
Romance only occurs in Bioware games because they are central to the stories to a certain extent. They are things that they feel need to be added because of the emphasis on character companions. It wouldn't fit in elder scrolls, where the emphasis is on individuality, and wandering into the wide world. It just doesn't seem to fit.
Agreed, it could be difficult. But even if Skyrim didn't make use of companions to add romance elements to the storytelling, it might well be possible to add a few romance arcs with NPCs who are also adventurers, or wanderers displaced by the civil war. A romance taking place in episodes at different locations (ie, wherever your character happens to be) at intervals during gameplay.
heres an idea walk down the street and ask the cute girl who works at the coffee shop and ask for her number, take her out to a funny cute movie (I hear Rio is good) and start a real relationship
game relationships are a waste of time and a mockery of the real thing,
Again, why do so many people see romances in games as a replacement for real life? Romantic movies aren't seen that way. Romances on television aren't seen that way. Romances in books aren't seen as replacements for real life. They're just stories for entertainment's sake.
So why do people see games as so different? Are we really unable to tell the difference between games and real life?
That's all I need. Come home from slaying dragons and saving the world and then I get yelled at for not picking up some milk and then I have to go to dinner at the inlaws.
No thanks.
Nah, it's ok, she killed her in-laws for the bounty. That you put on their heads. Dark Brotherhood assassins are like that, they don't let family get in the way of business
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» Wed Mar 30, 2011 12:17 am 
