Sudden/Random Romances in Games

[Elvis Starburst]

How many times have you ever gotten into enjoying the characters in any game you play, when suddenly *BAM!* and two of them fall in love for very little reason, or just rather unexpectedly. Sometimes it makes no sense, other times you can make excuses to support it, but in the end, it still doesn't make a lick of sense what-so-ever.

Spoiler: Spoilers for Lufia 2 / Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals

I was playing Lufia, Curse of the Sinistrals for the DS the other day. Enjoyed the main characters, it was a fun adventure so far. I also liked how the main character Maxim is pretty much oblivious to Tia, his friend, liking him. Like, in *that* way. Got this new female party member, Selan. Cute, liked her, and Tia was jealous. Then, I kicked this boss's ass after a lot of struggle.

This is where it gets confusing... Suddenly, out of nowhere, when Selan and Maxim survive the big battle, they pull out an "I love you" to eachother, proceed to get married, and have a kid in about a year's time. WHAT. How?! When did this develop?! I was confused, a little annoyed too, honestly. I can argue that maybe they got to get to know eachother during travelling, but this just felt like a sudden brick to the face out of nowhere. I'm not content with it, it felt really out of place... Sure, Maxim and Tia wanted different things in life, but... How, and why THESE TWO?!

Anyways, that's just me ranting cause I was confused. I ask you, Escapist users... Have you ever encountered any moments where suddenly a romance between characters appears with little reason or expectation, or it being seemingly unfitting? Let's hear it!

 

[The Wykydtron]

Sort of Persona 3.

Spoiler

Junpei and Chidori have the Romeo and Juliet thing going on. I was just surprised really. Junpei is kind of a douche so him suddenly being 1. in love and 2. suddenly likable because the entire romance arc is fantastic comes out of nowhere to me.

I assume some people would call the romance the very moment they randomly met in the mall or something. But hey i'm blind to this shit

Oh and Yosuke finally being awesome and asking out Labrys in Persona 4 Arena. It's Yosuke. I expect no cool moves from him, nevermind him straight up asking a girl (who he has known for like 3 hours max) out.

It's all doomed to not really go anywhere because Labrys unsurprisingly turns out to be a robot (It's on the front cover, I ain't spoilering this shit) but points for trying XD

Yosuke starts climbing the Badass Ladder in leaps and bounds in Arena in general. He was and still kind of is, a complete loser! That's like, his ENTIRE gimmick! WHY IS HE SO COOL NOW?!

Oh and Benny in Fallout: New Vegas. I was on my 6th playthrough when I first noticed you can seduce him... Literally no prior warning just: you have the Black Widow perk, do you have sex with (and potentially murder afterwards) the guy who shot you in the face?

 

[The Madman]

Bioware are bad for it. be even slightly friendly to someone and the next thing you know you are in a relationship or they are professing love or your actual partner is acusing you of cheating

Ug, I've really started to hate that trend in rpgs lately. You can't even just be friends with characters it seems, it feels like 90% of the time it's sex of gtfo. Mass Effect is especially annoying in this regard, like in Mass Effect 1 where I accidentally had sex with some random Asari woman... how the hell does that work. Or Mass Effect 2 where I'm chatting it up with Mordin and he accuses me of flirting with him. Goddamit, I just wanted a friendly conversation, not everything is about sex dammit.

Bah humbug.

 

[Voulan]

I'm going to call Skyrim out on this. Simply wearing an Amulet of Mara could warrant several people to suddenly confess they wish to be with you, including that one person you fetched some mushrooms for once and never interacted with after. I can't really blame the game because it was barely a mechanic and was probably introduced very late into development, but the characters in Skyrim are already so wooden. What's worse is if you marry a strong warrior type person and they turn into a grovelling servant after you marry them. I'm so sorry Vilkas!

Hollywood in general is completely guilty of this. As soon as you see two characters in a film as main characters that are different genders and relatively the same age, you know that by the end of the film they'll be together and have experienced a cheesy sex scene at some point. And it always happens with very little context or reason at all. It legitimately makes me quite angry watching films now because its so stupidly typical and predictable.

 

[Euryalus]

Bioware are bad for it. be even slightly friendly to someone and the next thing you know you are in a relationship or they are professing love or your actual partner is acusing you of cheating

Ug, I've really started to hate that trend in rpgs lately. You can't even just be friends with characters it seems, it feels like 90% of the time it's sex of gtfo. Mass Effect is especially annoying in this regard, like in Mass Effect 1 where I accidentally had sex with some random Asari woman... how the hell does that work. Or Mass Effect 2 where I'm chatting it up with Mordin and he accuses me of flirting with him. Goddamit, I just wanted a friendly conversation, not everything is about sex dammit.

Bah humbug.

Spoiler: It always ends being something stupid like this too.

OT: Honestly I notice it more in movies since the runtimes are shorter and it seems more "all of the sudden."

The most recent example I can think of is in Man of Steel. I know louis lane and superman are a thing, but holy ham sandwhich did they have no chemistry in that movie. It felt like they jist spontaneously started kissing.

 

[alphamalet]

How about Heavy Rain. Sex scene out of nowhere that is inorganic, feels forced, heavy-handed, and unnecessary. Pretty much standrad fare for most of the story in that "game".

 

[DementedSheep]

Shoehorned romances are really common for some reason. It's annoying in books and movies to. I guess romance is just one of those tick boxes people feel the need to add to story to make it more dramatic and in games and movies they might not have time to develop it properly.

Bioware are bad for it. be even slightly friendly to someone and the next thing you know you are in a relationship or they are professing love or your actual partner is acusing you of cheating

Ug, I've really started to hate that trend in rpgs lately. You can't even just be friends with characters it seems, it feels like 90% of the time it's sex of gtfo. Mass Effect is especially annoying in this regard, like in Mass Effect 1 where I accidentally had sex with some random Asari woman... how the hell does that work. Or Mass Effect 2 where I'm chatting it up with Mordin and he accuses me of flirting with him. Goddamit, I just wanted a friendly conversation, not everything is about sex dammit.

Bah humbug.

Yeah whats wrong with just having a solid friendship with someone? At least in their more recent one you still get a decent amount of dialogue with them even if your not in a romance with them but in some of there old ones barely learn anything beyond there name if your aren't in romance with them.
And if your talking about the Consort, that pissed me off to. She spouts psychoanalyst bullshit at you based on what background you picked and the only options you get are "wow you're amazing!" (which they tired to make look like two options even though its the exact same dialogue) or "uh...thanks?" with no indication at all that second will lead to sex.

 

[TheYellowCellPhone]

Mass Effect 1. I had regular conversations with my crew members, because I was interested in learning a bit of Mass Effect's lore -- the krogan virus, Wrex's merc work, Tali's pilgrimage, or whatever else. I don't know, been a while since I played Mass Effect.

So I was at the mission where I was about to go on that one planet in the supernova cloud after fixing the relay point (or finding the coordinates, I don't freaking remember.) About to board the party, and suddenly Ashley has sex with me.

Out of nowhere too. All I did was talk to her about poetry once and the game thought the next logical step was to have sex with her.

 

[ShinyCharizard]

Dragon Age II with Anders constantly going gay on me. Seriously Anders for the fifth time not interested.

 

[IllumInaTIma]

Oh and Yosuke finally being awesome and asking out Labrys in Persona 4 Arena. It's Yosuke. I expect no cool moves from him, nevermind him straight up asking a girl (who he has known for like 3 hours max) out.

Nevermind him making somersaults out of sudden and beating Akihiko in speed!

I'd say completely sudden romance between main hero of Front Mission 5 and his superior officer. So, basically, it is explained that they are old childhood friends and she has some sort of crush on him. You can complement her here and there, but generally protagonist is shown to be very shy and reserved guy. BUT THEN. After some particular event, you go to her office, talk about something and trigger a cutscene where protagonist suddenly engages his macho-mode, starts talking all smoothly and convinces her to sleep with him. I mean, they had really interesting and sweet relationship going, but that sudden change of mood kinda put me off.

 

[scorptatious]

Probably Steiner and Beatrix from Final Fantasy IX.

Although I personally don't mind and I found the scene between them hilarious.

 

[BrotherRool]

The worst example I've encountered was in Indigo Prophecy. As a pro-tip, it's not a smart move to suddenly sleep with the

Spoiler

cold dead body of a man you met at the side of his recently dead ex-girlfriends grave (who he'd just restarted a relationship with) and who you've only really interacted with when investigating his gruesome murder, which wasn't his fault and he isn't crazy because he assured you an ancient God took possession of his body and made him murder that person

.

That one knocked me for six.*



Also in Dragon Age I bluntly told Alistair that I wasn't interested in him and nothing could work out between us, yet somehow he thought I was cheating on him with my openly acknowledged relationship to girlfriend Lelianna. That's stalkery levels of possessiveness.




*Only just realised that's probably a cricket term.

 

[The Wykydtron]

Oh and Yosuke finally being awesome and asking out Labrys in Persona 4 Arena. It's Yosuke. I expect no cool moves from him, nevermind him straight up asking a girl (who he has known for like 3 hours max) out.

Nevermind him suddenly making somersaults out of sudden and beating Akihiko in speed!

I'd say completely sudden romance between main hero of Front Mission 5 and his superior officer. So, basically, it is explained that they are old childhood friends and she has some sort of crush on him. You can complement her here and there, but generally protagonist is shown to be very shy and reserved guy. BUT THEN. After some particular event, you go to her office, talk about something and trigger a cutscene where protagonist suddenly engages his macho-mode, starts talking all smoothly and convinces her to sleep with him. I mean, they had really interesting and sweet relationship going, but that sudden change of mood kinda put me off.

Hmm, speaking of superior officer romances, i'm reminded of Jin and Tsubaki in BlazBlue... It was pretty much them being cute together in childhood and school then everything hit a pretty much indefinite hiatus once Jin went brother hunting loopy. Not to mention Tsubaki's own poor decisions... Crazy, short-sighted battle nun incoming.

What kind of car does Jin drive?

A NIISAN!

[sub][sub]I love that joke XD[/sub][/sub]

 

[Vern5]

I didn't realize so many people playing Mass Effect 1 have such trouble reading the "signals"

At any rate, most video game romances are shoehorned into the plot in order to humanize the characters or create relatability (probably not a word). The problem with a lot of these romances is that most of them don't seem to happen organically, which would require subtlety. However, it seems that Bioware is aware of this feature of romance and the writers made the romantic subplots so subtle that most people blundered into them unintentionally.

I'm plodding my way through KOTOR right now. I'm vaguely aware that my character has some sort of relationship with Bastila. Of course, between her lines, her voice actor, and my character's increasingly stupid lines, I can't really isolate what they like about each other. It's a completely meaningless romance and I imagine that the only thing attracting these two together is that ridiculous "Force-Bond".

Here's a thought: I can't remember that last time I played a game where two members of the main cast were having a completely casual relationship. Yes, they cared about each other and constantly had sex but they weren't spouting off declarations of undying love to each other. I don't think I've ever seen that, at least not in a way that was represented positively.

 

[likalaruku]

Hey, a fellow Jontron fan.

Hmm, I remember one of my companions in Neverwinter 2 suddenly confessing to my avatar, but I dumped her because I liked the grumpy Elf dude. I literally had no idea that the lady thought she & I had some kind of chemistry & you know...you give a fujoshi a male character & she's not going to be satisfied with a female love interest.

At the end of Aveyond 3, if you have Mel continuously spurn Edward, she ends up marrying Lars from Aveyond 1 off screen. Lars isn't even in the game. Edward & Mel had a completely one-sided relationship & no chemistry & she (cold antisocial rude crude semievil thief that she is) would have made a terrible princess.

 

[The Madman]

I didn't realize so many people playing Mass Effect 1 have such trouble reading the "signals"

Signals? What signals. In the example I gave there's a scene where you complete a quest for the 'consort' and she gives you some bullshit rambling as a 'reward', at which point your options are "Gee Thanks!" and "Is that it, seriously?", which if you choose leads to random ass sex with some skanky Asari prostitute.

I just wanted money or something, she's obviously wealthy after all. Wonder if that's how she responds to every other disappointed customer, in which case no wonder she's popular: "Hey lady, think I got the wrong amount of change." and BAM, sex!

Liara was annoying as hell in ME1 too, practically all the does is fawn over Shepard from the moment she's brought on board the Normandy and there's almost no reason for it. Takes like two, maybe three dialogue before you're having sex. Meeting women at a bar takes more than that!

Of course I did find Liara improved over the course of ME2 and 3, but her introduction in the first game is still just plain annoying to me.

 

[likalaruku]

Dragon Age II with Anders constantly going gay on me. Seriously Anders for the fifth time not interested.

Does this Ctrl+alt+del comic pretty much nail it?

 

[Sabitsuki]

Bioware are bad for it. be even slightly friendly to someone and the next thing you know you are in a relationship or they are professing love or your actual partner is acusing you of cheating

Ug, I've really started to hate that trend in rpgs lately. You can't even just be friends with characters it seems, it feels like 90% of the time it's sex of gtfo. Mass Effect is especially annoying in this regard, like in Mass Effect 1 where I accidentally had sex with some random Asari woman... how the hell does that work. Or Mass Effect 2 where I'm chatting it up with Mordin and he accuses me of flirting with him. Goddamit, I just wanted a friendly conversation, not everything is about sex dammit.

Bah humbug.

I.. am not really sure I understand where this is coming from? I've played through all of the Mass Effect games, and as far as I am aware getting into a relationship with a character is pretty well defined, and incredibly easy to opt out of. You also generally have to choose some fairly flirty responses before things start to move towards the relationship side of things, and nothing pressures you to reciprocate their feelings even if it does; Once you refuse it's back to business as usual, absolutely nothing stops you from just being friends.

Though the Sha'ira thing can very much come as a surprise.

On topic: Indigo Prophecy (Fahrenheit) comes to mind. Carla goes from thinking Lucas is a cold-blooded psychopath to falling in love with him over the course of about an afternoon. During which she was nearly killed by a sentient AI and then whisked away into an underground society of Homeless people who protect the world.
The sudden development of love was so horrendously handled that I seriously thought it was going to turn out that Carla was being mind controlled. Then, of course, after their rather creepy love scene, Carla resigns to the sidelines for the remainder of the game. Presumably so she can sit there and watch all passive and doe-eyed, essentially making all development of her character up to that point entirely meaningless.

 

[KoudelkaMorgan]

I would say pretty much half the npcs in Dragon's Dogma that want to jump you simply because you talked to them more than a few times. Like the innkeeper.

Pretty much everyone with a name, other than Festus, really.

Quina at least makes some sense, but I don't like her.

I went with Madeline.

Also, Rydia and Edge in FF4. She may be grown up due to the time differences, but she pretty much just shows up out of no where and, being the only other female in the group that isn't Rosa or a petrified child he of course falls in love with her on the spot.

Aurora and Nephi in Black Sigil suffer similarly from the "well these two are single so why not" paradigm. Except in this case she is a teenager and he is like 2000 years old and a demon or something similar from another world entirely.

Might as well have Relm hook up with Umaro, and Strago with Mog, while we are paring up random side characters.