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I got hitched the other day in The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim, and I’ve got to be completely honest about this: It’s strictly a marriage of convenience. I’m entirely ambivalent about my chosen life-partner outside of the stat buffs and cash I strip off her on a daily basis. She might as well be a well-proportioned ATM machine.
My real-world wife’s probably fine with that.
C'mon, baby! We can work this out!
I, on the other hand, just went through a courtship that mainly consisted of equipping a magic necklace and showing up to the church on time. My faux marriage doesn’t even demand that much of me. And this is supposed to be a role-playing game? Really? Because I’m not feeling the virtual love.
A good number of games purport to give you the boy/girlfriend experience, and developers clearly want players to invest in these relationships, but then they go all commitment-phobe on us. Because, laughable as the lead-up might be, what happens after you make a love connection breaks the entire experience. Or maybe you think it’s an accident that every possible love interest in Mass Effect becomes completely unavailable in Mass Effect 2.
One — Liara — comes back for a quickie downloadable romp, but that's about it. Presumably, this allows you to Captain Kirk it through the sequel, gaming new relationships to keep that feature intact. Like everything else in a typical RPG sequel, Mass Effect 2 hits the reset button hard. Powers? Skills? Companions? Lovers? All flattened back to zero.
In fairness, Mass Effect does a lot of things right. You build up a romance over the course of 10, 15, 20 hours of gameplay. Open with casual conversation. Move into light flirtation. Get serious. Not a bad model for real-world dating, actually. But the moment you consummate your relationship, whomever it's with, you're done. One final "Hey, we did it and it was fan-frickin'-tastic!" dialogue tree remains, then the person you spent 10, 15, 20 hours getting to know better completely shuts down as a sentient creature. Just when things get interesting, The End. You're done, Casanova.
Hell, my new Skyrim wife didn't even stick around for our entire ceremony. The temple door slammed shut behind her before the priest even passed out our rings.
It's not you. It's me. I find you physically repulsive.
C'mon. Don't we have enough one-night stands in gaming? That's what The Witcher's for. Nothing wrong with some free love, but if we're supposed to invest in our special friends, then don't end at "Quest Completed: Had Sex." Stick around for a while. Let's see what happens after we get the girl (or boy) and if we can make this thing work in the long term. And I don't mean in a Stepford Wife a la Skyrim way or as the henpecked beau to a crazed pay-attention-to-me-now Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas-style girlfriend. I want more talking, deeper sharing, special missions (and/or mission perks), and hey, I dunno…maybe we can have sex again at some point.
I’ve got a simple fix for this. Don't make sex and/or marriage the finish line to every relationship. Spoiler: Once you’re out of college, it usually isn’t.
Want high-impact gameplay? Follow what happens after Ethan and Madison’s little hotel tryst in Heavy Rain (also the only title with a unhook-her-bra-behind-her-back minigame). Or picture how Mass Effect might’ve played out if things got hot and heavy with a squadmate before you had to pick someone to die. You (potentially) either send your lover to his/her death, or you both live with the consequences of your showing favoritism. Which you totally did. Role play that for a while, hero.
Always bust out "teh awesum" on the first date.
So when Mass Effect 3 rolls around, I want the relationship I built up in Mass Effect 2 to carry over in the exact same way all my other decisions do. Don't make me start over again, and definitely don't expect me to choose someone new. I got to know this particular lady intimately, in more ways than one, and I do not want to toss her aside for the new flavor of the month. No, I want to see where this thing goes next. Hell, use it against me in the narrative, playing off my fondness for one character versus another…or against the survival of entire worlds. Make me decide between her and Earth.
Choices like those won't carry the same weight if the relationship drops out of sight or simply ends off-screen, without any input from the player. Once you commit, everything should change in your interactions with that character. And those changes must not happen at the very end of the game, when it’s too late to take advantage of them.
Let’s not get too creepy — virtual girlfriends do not equal flesh-and-blood women – but we do build relationships in these games. We play favorites. We get physical. The least we can do is respect these characters in the morning. Particularly since we’ll get a better game out of it.