Imo I think the DA and ME games haven't aged very well when it comes to romance stuff either, I think it was just more of a new thing to a lot of people when those games came out so people were all like '' wow I can bang these people in my vidya game? '' much like how many people were blown away by Skyrim even tho Skyrim is barely a RPG compared to the previous games.
But Skyrim to many was their first ever RPG so everything was new.
I've gone into this in another thread so I won't do it here again but I just think the writing of romance subplots in RPG's feels very childish and more like horny teenagers.
I also think it can be seen in online discussions regarding it like people fetishizing Karlach as a '' muscle mommy '' and everything surrounding her romance basically being memes and '' ha ha so quirky ''.
There's rarely much actual emotional depth to them, it's mainly just sex and kissing which is not really what an actual relationship and love is about ( you don't even need to love each other to have sex lmao, and a ton of NPC's in the game want to have casual sex with you so it's not even unique to your romance partner ).
I know just calling things tumblr is a bit memey too but it does feel like '' tumblr romance fanfics '' with how it's treated in RPG's, it's usually just horny or '' tee hee he/ she's so embarrassed so cute ''.
Any depth there is too tends to be totally one-sided, while I do think there is some depth to Shadowhearts romance for instance and with Tav being there for her as emotional support I never really felt like she was there for Tav at all.
It's basically a one-sided be nice to someone to fill up their meter so they'll have sex with you.
People just seem to be more interested in a hug/ kiss camp option than actual meaningful writing.
