Originally Posted by Seho
The banter has nothing to do with polygamy, it's just flirting (well, not even that) and doesn't change monogamy. Exaggerating this just shows the immaturity of some players.

Maybe it's a bit unfair to say, because there might be people, who put themselves into their character's shoes in an interactive relationship more than others. And being cheated on or the feeling that your LI is flirting with or interested in others, can be a very unpleasant feeling, which you're not loving to feel or experience in a game. For some people, it's enough to have experienced these unpleasant or harmful feelings in their real life. Plus, everyone feels jealousy differently. That doesn't necessarily mean they are immature. Just take a look on the lecture of the romance feature lead of Baldur's Gate:

Originally Posted by Quote by Romance Feature Lead Baudelaire Welch
« (...) in games, people are forcibly confronted with questions about what they want out of a relationship more when they're playing an interactive relationship than if they were passively watching a scripted romance film or scripted romance.»
Originally Posted by Quote by Romance Feature Lead Baudelaire Welch
«Players are forced to actively put themselves in the shoes of someone in a new relationship. That can make them recontextualize their own life. I mean, that's what art is meant to do anyway. Art is meant to make you rethink your position in life, and that's the mirror to nature principle. But because of the self-insert nature of video games being so strong, players can feel this on a fundamental, instinctive, and interior level that you wouldn't necessarily if you are watching a story playing out externally».

Originally Posted by Quote by Romance Feature Lead Baudelaire Welch
«Part three, how do we make Romance better for our players? There are so many types of challenging relationship issues that exist out there in the real world, but we've just never seen depicted in games. This is still in a fairly early stage of being a feature that's even perceived as something mainstream. You can just pick one of these challenging relationship themes and you can write about it. And then you can be the very first person who's ever covered one of these themes. I mean, when in a video game have you ever seen a breakup scene that wasn't just like, oh, I would like to exit the romance quest now and no longer pursue it? You know, when have you, as a player, ever wanted to break up with a fictional character in that game? When have you ever been cheated on? When has a character ever come to you and told you that they think the spark has gone from your relationship? When has a character's mental health suffered from being in a relationship? When have you ever been gaslit? When have you ever seen your partner become abusive?»

I cannot say for Shadowheart, what was meant for her. But if people are feeling unpleasant, when she is flirting with Halsin, it can be understandable. People are often putting themselves in the shoes of the character and "feel this on a fundamental, instinctive, and interior level" in an interactive romance far more than in movies, and that seems to be intended in this game:

Originally Posted by Quote by Romance Feature Lead Baudelaire Welch
«And this to me is the difference between seeing a romance character arc externally in a TV show and playing through it myself in a video game. But isn't this also the kind of feeling we want to strive for in an immersive video game to happen overall?»

"I would, thank God, watch the universe perish without shedding a tear."