Originally Posted by Flooter
Originally Posted by ArneBab
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The romance writing as described could be inserted into any game. If its qualities don�t include �meshes well with the rest of the experience�, I�m not as ready to call BG3 �art� as Larian seem to be.
It�s not *just* to engage with fanfiction. Only the bear scene is just that.
The presentation closes with summary slides

Mind the *just* here. I don�t disagree with the point that they have fanfiction writers as part of the target group, I just don�t see them as the only target group.

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which I believe prove my point. (my commentary in green)

Originally Posted by Endslide 1
1. Why does romance matter beyond fanservice?
a. Life defining feature incomparable in importance to a subset of the audience. This reads like a definition of fanservice.

I know fanservice only in definition from Anime where it means inserting scenes of scantily clad women regardless of character or plot. But only for people who watch the anime already.

The point I see here is rather that romance is a necessary condition to reach that audience at all.

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i. Causes people to break up with poor partners IRL. Larian write dialogue the way arsonists start fires.
That�s a pretty strange quote, yes. Maybe they mean that people trapped in unhealthy relationships can realize that life could be better?

There are people trapped in abusive relationships in real life and this could help them get out.

On the other hand the example she gave where someone broke up because they did not recognize the deceit of the NPC and thought it genuine love feels wrong. That should be a warning to tread carefully when creating fictional romance.
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d. It is the longest tail of the fandom you will create - people will write about a good romance in fanfiction for years.
The character analysis in those fanfictions will continue debates about your work for a long time. Players just don't respond to any other feature in this kind of manner. "Fanfiction writers are the best fans, so make sure to keep them happy."
I missed the "in fanfiction" when reading this. And I see that long tail outside fanfiction, too.

I�m not sure whether this is only true for romance, and not rather something about experiencing a character. That said: when I think back the relationship parts of roleplaying sessions in the past 20 years are still more present in my mind, so she may have a point.
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a. Do not have your romance culminate at the end of the game. Games have a longer playtime than any other media format. We have a lot of space to show the development of a relationship once it has begun, and we rarely take advantage of it. In the talk, this is framed as an opportunity to add depth to characters (because fanfiction writers care about character depth). All well and good, but no mention of how it could add depth to the overall story (fanfiction writers toss the story aside, so who cares?).
She�s talking about improving romances here, so a point about improving the plot would be off topic.
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d. Don't treat this as pure escapist wish fulfilment. People will forget a story that is too 'happily ever after'. Again, impact for its own sake. There are a million ways to leverage a subplot of a larger story. Being impactful is only one of them, and it can be detrimental to the rest of the game if it turns focus away from something more thematically relevant.
Maybe that�s what makes the Lae�zel romance special: it�s the one which is most closely tied to the plot.
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e. Animated sex that is explicit is going to age. For this one, the presenter brought up a clip of another game, just to laugh at it and move on. Classy.
Didn�t they violate that rule with Minthara?
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f. Players find solidarity and community in liking romances with unconventionally attractive characters. These characters are the target of way more obsession. To be clear, when Larian say "better romances", they mean specifically "romances that generate more obsessive fans".
The aspects of romance writing described here enhance the experience for the fanfiction community above all else. It's explicitely about maximizing word counts on fanfic sites - not improving the overall game experience.
Some of the points boost fanfiction production, but 1 abc and 2 bcde do not.

That�s why I think the argument that this is only or mainly about fanfiction doesn�t hold.

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Originally Posted by ArneBab
And they actually go for dark themes, so I don�t think many other games could have inserted that.
So yeah, they go for dark themes. But it feels like they do so because they're ticking boxes, not because those themes coalesce into something meaningful.
I see something in that direction, but rather that they want to enable different story progressions � a wide variety of ways through the plot � and this means stepping back and starting the plot design with an onthology: which types of relationships could we include? And then writing characters that match these.

Once you start writing branching plotlines, that becomes important: how to make sure that each branch is actually distinct from the others?

Maybe that�s also why Halsin feels out of place: there�s actually no space left for another kind of romance so they had to find something to get him in (which is then: coming too late to the party).