Might be a bit too late in the thread for accurate results, but I added some dating/engaged option.

I'm living with my girlfriend in real life and I'm interested in seeing what they've done with companions and romance in the game.

Not necessarily marriage specifically, but I will probly check it out at some point, just to see for myself.

More just interested in relationships and interactions with NPC's as a whole.

And honestly I look at videogames as interactive storybooks, TES I especially like because it's almost like writing and/or living the story myself and I have yet to read a book in the fantasy genre that didn't have romance of some kind in it, it deepens the story and makes the characters relatable, fallible and also complex.

Even if the romance in Skyrim is cheap and contrived though, I think my imagination can pick up the slack.

I already have to do that at least a little with most games anyway, s'called "Roleplaying."

Myself, I'm married and I don't feel strongly either way. My RL marriage is good - it hasn't sullied my opinion of marriage - but I'm no hurry to tie the knot in Skyrim. For me, the biggest attraction to a Skyrim marriage is simply having someone in my house. Oblivion houses were despairingly lonely. Having someone else around the house would go a long way to making the game more enjoyable. I will probably wed all my characters for that reason alone.

Other than that I'll get married just to explore that particular game system and test the limits of how deep they've made it.

EDIT: If there's a game mechanic which allows your friendly acquaintance to move in without the need to get married I would be happy with that.

Although there could be more than one way to implement marriage "properly." I already like that relationships appear to be more deed- and less dialogue-based than in Bioware games. I really hope they'll feel less manipulative and be more partnership/affection- and less six-oriented than in DA. In general I'm hoping that their approach is light and witty, doesn't take itself too seriously, and isn't such a resource hog that you feel that you haven't gotten a full game if your character doesn't find a suitable partner.

Hmh. So they added marriages in the game. I expect this to be a shallow, crude representation.

I wonder if they managed to get crossbows, spears, throwing weapons and other things a lot of us miss from Morrowind into the game, or if the resources were used for something completely useless. (adds another spoonful of pessimism to the cup)

I am single but I am excited to get married in Skyrim and in real life... you should also put that as a option.

So far the numbers (given how few votes there are it's hard to tell) seem very even between like/dislike/don't care.


I disagree with that. If you create a character who's wildly anti-social (or socially inept) then the chances are no NPC would like that character. So no option for romance. Roleplay choices can and should have consequences in a roleplay games, and if one of those consequences is to block off all the romance options in the game, then so be it. I think romance options can (and given the need for decent, character specific dialogue, should) be specific.


The thing is, is an RPG an acting-out of the player's fantasies, or is it a storytelling mechanism? In other words, are the developers just giving the player a way to tell a story about a character they've dreamed up? And what is wrong with telling a story about a dashing romantic hero? Or a misogynistic, self-serving anti-hero? Or a sad, rootless anti-heroine? Or a steadfast but romantic heroine? One can invent a character who's actions one doesn't like, or approve of, and still use an RPG to tell a damn good story about them.

However, if players are using an RPG to act out their own fantasies, and identify closely with their character, then I can see how they might find the inclusion of romance a bit weird. Best for those players to simply avoid the option .


:shrug: People want games to be fun. Can't blame them for that. Can't blame them for wanting to enjoy a grand fantasy adventure, either. Doesn't mean I want Skyrim over-simplified, because I'm selfish that way, but Bethesda do have to cater to a lot of different players if they're going to recoup their massive investment in the game.


For fun?


Perhaps. But if Bethesda restrict their customer base to the most skilled, experienced and/or determined players, then they're going to make far less money, and we'll get a correspondingly cheap game. Basically, they might be able to produce low-res isometric sprite-based RPGs with highly complex gameplay, great lore, and little content. Not much more.

Ok, perhaps I'm overstating the case, but we would lose a huge amount from the games. These days I doubt they'd be able to make a game as good as Morrowind if they restricted themselves to Morrowind's budget.


That's putting it a bit strongly. Any professional developer cares about the quality of the product as well as about pleasing their customers. And I suspect that professional pride in what they do runs particularly strongly in Bethesda. But it's true, they do have to recoup the money they've invested in Skyrim because there are a lot of employees depending on them for a living - and yes, that does mean they have to sell enough copies of the game.


I fear that you're right about it being shallow.

However, not all resources are the same. The resources for coding, modelling, animating and balancing a complete fighting style (throwing weapons) alongside multiple other fighting styles (light-melee. heavy-melee, close-magic, ranged-magic, archery, and combinations/variations of these) are not the same resources for designing quests and writing dialogue. Yes, maybe by dropping this feature (or one of the factions, or a chunk of the main quest) they could have managed with fewer quest developers and hired some extra weapon/combat people to work more on that aspect. Or maybe the extra work of doing a proper job on an additional fighting style was so great they'd have had to lose more people from other teams than they could afford. Without knowing the sizes of the teams and the complexity of the different features and the budgetary constraints (heck, the number of toilets in their office is a consideration, when it comes to manpower ), then we simply don't know if the marriage thing had any serious impact on any other feature.

We can guess, but we can't know.