Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition

[Aotrs Commander]

But it has to be said that the apparent compulsion to slap romances on top of every RPG no matter how appropriate lends credence to the point that they are (mostly) awful and at least to some degree pandering to rejects that play through escapist fantasies because they match all the stereotypes and subsequently don't have a lot going on in real life.

Isn't all roleplaying escapist fantasy (especially to the eyes of People Who Don't Like That Sort Of Thing?)

At a loss as to how a pretend romance is any different to a pretend friendship or a pretend bad-ass Swordsman With Attitude.

An elegant description of the root of the problem. I have no idea how this can not disturb someone. On the other hand, arguing is pointless because everyone involved already made up their minds about the subject and that sort of opinion never ever changes by talking about it.

Take a look at the majority of romances in any media. The majority of them are fairly badly done. And, for that matter, there are large segments of the populace who like that sort of thing (see runaway success of Fifty shades of Grey, or things like Mills & Boons stuff or the inevitable presence of love interests in action movies; the latter of which are almost unilaterally badly done).

Why should roleplaying games be any different? Are we, as roleplayers, inherently superior to unwashed masses or something?

(Well, I know I am, but of course my definition of "unwashed masses" extends to "explictly everything that is not me" because I am a Evil, omnicidal megalomanic.)

It's okay to suggest that it would be better to have no romances at all (and I would say, great, let's ensure we don't confine that to video games and expand that to all other forms of media while we're at it, thanks), and replace it with other, better character interaction; but if we say "okay, but they've got to be decent", it means, as it's a relatively recent feature, they're never going to get good at it if they don't practise and see what works. (And I'm not sure anybody ever has done a really good one yet, especially for a blank-slate protagonists, because it's just flat-out hard to do in that circumstance; people seem to have enough trouble doing it well with developed characters...)

Neither Bioware nor Obsidian have done stellar jobs in that regard - but at least, unlike some, they actually have tried. Arguably, I think the best attempts were in ME trilogy with the ones you started with characters from the first game because they had chance to build sensibly, and with a semi-ordained character that gave them at least some clue what they were going for (and to be fair to Bioware, the friendships you could establish with those characters were extremely well done. The BG NPCs wish they were Garrus!¹)



¹Okay, unfair comparison, comparing decade-and-the-rest old games (whose writers had less experience with the medium) with the Best NPC Companion Ever²... Heck, it's unfair to compare the other ME characters to Garrus...! (Okay, maybe Tali and Liara.)

²Garrus must be, because he's the only NPC companion in umpteen years of computer gaming that I wrote lyrics for a Humorous Song Parody for...