Things that I Look for in Games
When it comes to video
games, I tend to be very picky and selective about the games I play, and there
are a multitude of things that I take into account so that I know for a fact
that I’ll enjoy everything the gameplay as to offer. I look for games with a detailed
graphics and art style, intricate dialogue, character customization (weapons
and armor or character’s appearance), and etc, but there’s one thing that every
game should have before I purchasing it, which is to tell a great compelling
story. Most people tend to assume that there’s only one story being told and
that it can be seen in the plot-line, but there are multiple stories being told
through a number of different factors that are seen throughout the game’s entirety.
For example, the story can be seen in the dialogue, the environment, the
characters, the clothing, weapons, and much more.
So for this particular blog
post, I’ll be focusing on one of these factors that has the ability to tell a
story, and the type of story it tells branches away from the main story toward
more of a mini-story: the romance between characters in video games.
The
Missing Piece: Romance
In one of my previous blog posts, I talked
about how the ‘decision-making’ aspect in games offers a great way for the
audience to connect more with the story, and in the last blog post I mentioned
how side-characters are able to pull in the players’ attention to both the
story-line and the protagonist, but there was something that I forgot to add in
the last post about side-characters and how they’re able to win over gamers in
a way that most games have yet to incorporate and further understand: in-game
relationships.
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| Created by Ahitagni Mandal |
Now,
some of you are probably thinking “in-game relationships? Like romance?” and
yes, that’s exactly what I mean! It may seem a bit odd for a game to provide a
type of feature that allows the player to become romantically involved with a
fictional character, but it isn’t completely unheard of or rare.
Bring
Forth the Virtual Romance
In games like Dragon Age and Mass Effect (created by Bioware), they allow players to have a
romantic experience with NPCs that are important to the context of the story. Not
only do these games provide the interactive experience, they also provide a
more realistic and modern setting to the romances that can be done in these
virtual worlds. For example, if someone were to play as a female, they have the
option to romance a female NPC, instead of romancing a male character, and vice
versa.
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| Romance Options from Dragon Age Series (moodyrebelmage.tumblr.com) |
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| Romance Options from Mass Effect Series (kotorcomics.tumblr.com) |
In both game
franchises, there tend to be 6 romance options (the characters that can be
romanced) in the game that are available to both male and female main
characters (depending on whether the player plays as a female or male protagonist),
and each romance contains different dialogue, cinematic cut-scenes, and endings.
These romances tend to either start somewhere near the beginning of the game or
about halfway into the gameplay, and with the large amount of hours that are
still left toward completing the game, the game writers and developers probably
thought it best to create these ‘romantic characters’ that could be discovered
by the player that contained their own unique stories of trail and hardship,
such as trying to survive a devastating war with your ‘loved one’ or helping
your ‘lover’ overcome certain challenges, that can branch off into becoming
side-quests.
Well, this is where I
leave off for this post! I'm gonna play video games now, bye!
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| queen-berry.tumblr.com |
P.S. For those who have tried to romance the Iron
Bull in Dragon Age Inquisition or Garrus in Mass Effect, it took forever for
them to actually take the hint! (Damn those calibrations!)