Sorry to necro-post.
I have always found it interesting to watch the two sides of romance/anit-romance clash against one another. As one who used to be on the romance side (now as a game designer I have more appreciation for the design process and understand reasons why it wouldn't be included) to someone now on the fence I have made a number of interesting observations. Ill reserve those if anyone is interested and will talk about relationships in general.
Romance as it stands has been seriously painted in a bad light due to either poor writing in general or it is forced onto the player. Its peculiar when people argue these points and end up playing a lot of JRPG's where they are typically shoved down the players throat. That said I think that Larian has a chance here, a very unique one at that.
In D:OS they used a system to help create personalities for the two player characters based off of dialogue. These personalities granted actual mechanical bonuses to the characters as a whole, which is really cool and fresh. Now lets take a look at Fire Emblem Awakening, they have a support system for the units. Of course they show progression with the support system by upgrading the characters relationships from stranger > friends > best friends > lovers. Letter wise I think it is C > B > A > S. At any rate not everyone is S-support compatible with everyone which makes sense, but lets look at the mechanical benefits to this. In Genealogy of the Holy War, two characters marry and can no longer be paired with other units. Characters that have been paired get a +10 bonus to hit and avoid while within three spaces of each.
Larian is perfectly capable of producing something similar to this affect. I know I stated talking about relationships in general and have focused on romance so we can shift to rivalries. Rivalries can produce a pretty interesting dynamic, generally speaking rivals want to one up one another so what if on a mechanical level this increases their accuracy when within a certain radius. Romance might increase the defense of two characters and depending on the battle it could be more beneficial to pair with your lover or your rival. These are two bad examples but the overall point is still there.
Let' revisit writing now though, a lot of people are turned off of romance because of bad writing. I say revisit Dragon Commander, or watch a play through of that game. Initially I found it extremely strange that a Strategy game had romance in it at all. I was a little concerned about it and didn't think it would really be integral to the experience. So I married a skeleton, figured why not its new and exciting. Little did I know I was about to experience one of the coolest romance plots ever, it really is a testament to the writing capabilities that Larian has. Now Dragon Commander also had some really great moments with the generals as well, they felt pretty fleshed out and they didn't always get a long. In fact I could see a rivalry between Edmund and Henry. I really am not too worried about the writing that Larian can produce, more often than not it is good and polished as well as makes sense.
That leaves forcing romances and actual presentation of the romance. I think something that could be done to alleviate this is present the character with a certain scene early enough. Then proc some internal dialogue with the player. Lets say we have Gwynne and she just killed a bandit. The player looks at her a moment and has a moment of thought and can choose from the the following;
1. Wow, she would be a great rival.
2. Wow, I feel utterly indifferent.
3. Wow, I think I could love her.
4. Wow, get out of my party.
They are super blunt and would really break immersion if presented in that fashion, but that that idea and say you picked option 1. Now you will have more rival dialogue options through the game and you have begun the road to a great rivalry. Maybe you picked option 4, now you are going to have more hostile dialogue and the two of you start hating each other more and more. Something along those lines to kind of nudge the game in a certain direction with dialogue by help of user input early on would be a good deterrent. That said maybe you chose option 1 but end up feeling more of 3, the player should be able to still get there through dialog but the transition might be a little more challenging. Admittedly I do not have a great example for that but given time I could probably think one up.
Anyways I digress and thank anyone who actually read all of that.
