Originally Posted by MalacPok
Originally Posted by Marielle
Despite some of the controversial things that have been written about in this thread, I can't help but note that the romances in BG3 are made much more interesting and deeper than in most other RPG games. Sure, the pestering from almost all companions can be annoying, but this is completely overridden by the awesome effect of starting a romance early and suddenly with whichever companion the player is attracted to. The need to reject everyone else is, in my opinion, a minor price to pay for this. Of course, it would have been nice to soften the story somewhat, for example by giving the player the option to tell other companions that he already has a love interest and thus stop their advances.

I'd argue romances in BG3 are not deep at all. You select the right flirty lines until you get sex scene as reward. The end. That is not a romance. The fact that you are romancing a specific companion almost never comes up during the normal storyline. They don't act like a romantic partner at all. If you perceive any depth there, it must in your roleplaying head.
I understand that it would take an insane amount of work to make romances meaningful with so many options and potential situations, but that's just another reason to tone it down. The game should not advertise itself as a dating simulator if it does not have the right amount of content to support it.

I agree that the romances in the game aren't honestly that much deeper from a game design and interaction perspective than what you get in most other crpgs I've played, though I do think they're well written. What I do disagree with is the notion that Larian advertised this game as a dating simulator. That's hyperbole I've seen several times and am honestly a little sick of. They advertised that romance would be a part of the game, along with plenty of other features. The actual time spent discussing romance was, I think, about proportionate to the amount that we actually got. Though I will also say that Larian oversold just how complex the romances in the game really were. From my limited experience at least, the romances have one or two branches and the beats are going to be the same no matter how many times you play, and you're depending on the branch you go for, you're going to be saying the same things in each playthrough (which is, I feel, an issue with the main game as well. Depending on what morality you want to play as, you're going to be saying more or less the same things each run, with race/class specific stuff mixed in).