Romances: Disparity in quality and quantity

[Guest 4412420]

I wouldn't say that was a "problem" unless you consider every single game, movie, book, etc. to be problematic for not catering to every single person on the planet. You're never going to make everyone happy. Games like this are not heaven-machines. The type of question you're asking could be applied to SO many fixed things. What about the people who don't care to have a relationship with Johnny Silverhand? You can't avoid that in Cyberpunk. What about people who don't want to play a male character who practically has a daughter? You can't avoid that in Witcher 3. What about people who don't want to play a sci-fi? What about the people who don't want to play a fantasy? Etc., etc., etc. All of those are going to be "problems" for someone here or someone there.

I'd like to clarify something too. I'm not opposed to stories where romance is at the center of it. They have a place in video games. Fixed romances can work in games where the protagonist is also fixed. I simply think that a game like Cyberpunk with a semi-fixed protagonist like V isn't the right kind of game for something like this.

Relationship with Johnny is fixed, yes, but you have an ability to decide just what kind of relationship V can have with him. They can be friends, or V can antagonize him repeatedly and refuse to give him control.

The best thing about Cyberpunk's LIs is that they're all different people. They come from different walks of life, they have different goals, different tastes. All this makes them feel more alive and interesting to interact with. One-size-fits-all kind of romance option removes that. At their core, they'd be the exact same character regardless of which gender or sexuality you'd pick for them.

 

[koalahugs]

I'd like to clarify something too. I'm not opposed to stories where romance is at the center of it. They have a place in video games. Fixed romances can work in games where the protagonist is also fixed. I simply think that a game like Cyberpunk with a semi-fixed protagonist like V isn't the right kind of game for something like this.

Relationship with Johnny is fixed, yes, but you have an ability to decide just what kind of relationship V can have with him. They can be friends, or V can antagonize him repeatedly and refuse to give him control.

The best thing about Cyberpunk's LIs is that they're all different people. They come from different walks of life, they have different goals, different tastes. All this makes them feel more alive and interesting to interact with. One-size-fits-all kind of romance option removes that. At their core, they'd be the exact same character regardless of which gender or sexuality you'd pick for them.

That's fair and I totally see the case for it but like you said the game failed to fully develop every romantic story. You've been frustrated by that more than most probably. Personally I think making love essential to the plot would've made perfect sense for this game just because loneliness/human connection are such prominent themes in the story already. (Whether that be via fleshing out multiple LI's really thoroughly without breaking the game or just focussing on one character - or just a couple, like you mentioned earlier).

Re: your second paragraph, "you have the ability to decide just what kind of relationship" - dude, exactly, I know. That is what I was saying in the first post I made about this.

"...they could've varied things depending on the nature and quality of the relationship..."
and
"But even though their relationship was locked in, we could still affect the nature of it."

And yes, you're absolutely right, one love interest would mean they'd only be one person - it's not as if I'm unaware of that. That's literally what I was making the case for. A clearly defined character. Just like Vesemir is, just like Johnny is, just like Ciri is, etc.
Like I said, when you make a game, what features you want and what you're willing to sacrifice to make it happen, is up to you. Everything has a cost to it unfortunately.

Fewer love interests = fewer story constraints but you're "catering" to less people
Lots of LI's = you're catering to more people but there are more story constraints

Either way you have to pick your battles. Personally I'm not wanting to be catered to so much as I simply want a good, well developed story. If that could be achieved with multiple love interests, that would be incredible. I've just never seen it yet.

 

[Yllana_Ardais]

I want to be catered to in the sense that I want to decide what gender LI I want to romance. I think we should be past the age where you get a pair of tits shoved in you face even if you are not interested in women at all. So probably at least two fleshed out, bisexual characters would be necessary. I'm not against that, but it feels nicer if you have a bit more freedom to choose.

Personally, I think for a game as huge as CP, one romance option for each sexual orientation and gender is already not a lot and they aren't even balanced. I have a feeling if we only got one girl and one guy, the guy would still have drawn the short end of the stick. (but that's just me being salty).

 

[koalahugs]

I want to be catered to in the sense that I want to decide what gender LI I want to romance. I think we should be past the age where you get a pair of tits shoved in you face even if you are not interested in women at all. So probably at least two fleshed out, bisexual characters would be necessary. I'm not against that, but it feels nicer if you have a bit more freedom to choose.

Personally, I think for a game as huge as CP, one romance option for each sexual orientation and gender is already not a lot and they aren't even balanced. I have a feeling if we only got one girl and one guy, the guy would still have drawn the short end of the stick. (but that's just me being salty).

But you don't think having just one love interest, but with the ability to change their casting (like you already do with Cmdr Shepard or V), would cater to you? As a thought experiment, if it was another RPG videogame - would you really be so against that? Even if it was really well written? Because the alternative tends to be exactly what you've described: male LI's getting the short end of the stick.

 

[Yllana_Ardais]

But you don't think having just one love interest, but with the ability to change their casting (like you already do with Cmdr Shepard or V), would cater to you? As a thought experiment, if it was another RPG videogame - would you really be so against that? Even if it was really well written? Because the alternative tends to be exactly what you've described: male LI's getting the short end of the stick.

As I said, I woudln't be completely against it, but it kind of goes against the "RPG with many choices" image in my mind. It would really depend on how the LI was written.

But it's not like male characters HAVE to get the short end of the stick if there are several options. It's kind of tedious to always bring up Bioware, but even when there were numerically less male characters to romance, the romances themselves had the same amount of content and care invested in them. As a female or gay player, you did not feel as if you were just an afterthought. Same in Greedfall, for example. Male characters don't automatically get a less well written romance, it is a concious (or mayybbbe unconcious, because so many of them are straight guys?) decision by the devs.

 

[rippercityransom]

As a thought experiment, if it was another RPG videogame - would you really be so against that? Even if it was really well written?

I think the thing you'd miss if you did something like this is a community appeal. If you were able to customize the character you'd lose out on threads like the Kerry/Panam/Judy appreciation because they'd all techincally be different. As well as losing out on opportunities for representation in other ways, such as River being Native American (which I'm not totally sure is confirmed, but let's just say it is true as an example.)

A CAC approach to it is something I probably would try, in all honesty. I think just the fact that a dev would try could be an acknowledgement of this weird halfway area male romance options can fall into. I'm a person that seeks out RPGs with romance options, almost exclusively at this point. I'll play them without but not often, and it's because the options give me a lot more replay value for whatever reason. Without actually having an example of this kind of game I can't say for sure, but I feel like it being one character locked into the story you're missing out on dynamics between a LI that's an advisor to your PC, or one that's a sworn guard, or another that's just a captain that's been hired to cart you around. A skilled writer could make it work and I might even enjoy it, but I'm not sure I'd prefer it to a more traditional approach as long as devs are able/willing to put in the effort to make things balanced. If a writer wants to put in a romance in their main story but they absolutely cannot imagine putting in more than one, sure a CAC approach would be neat, but then it also just sounds like they want to write a linear story, which more people are forgiving of having locked characters like FF relationships.

 

[Feline_Witcher]

As I said, I woudln't be completely against it, but it kind of goes against the "RPG with many choices" image in my mind. It would really depend on how the LI was written.

But it's not like male characters HAVE to get the short end of the stick if there are several options. It's kind of tedious to always bring up Bioware, but even when there were numerically less male characters to romance, the romances themselves had the same amount of content and care invested in them. As a female or gay player, you did not feel as if you were just an afterthought. Same in Greedfall, for example. Male characters don't automatically get a less well written romance, it is a concious (or mayybbbe unconcious, because so many of them are straight guys?) decision by the devs.

I gotta give it to Bioware on this one. All the romances in DA or ME felt like they had the same level of effort/content put into them and therefore canonical potential for the plot and main character.

 

[MuonGold]

Romanticism in The Witcher is much better than Cyberpunk. The secks was better too but only marginally. The real problem is the Cyberpunk story is radically shallow. There are very few reasons love Panam, Judy, or River. Kerry is a reasonably fun storyline and some others are a fun too but none are romantic

Surprisingly, the Meredith Stout romance is most epic and rememberable due to shock factor and fitment for the game but that is the only one

 

[rippercityransom]

I gotta give it to Bioware on this one. All the romances in DA or ME felt like they had the same level of effort/content put into them and therefore canonical potential for the plot and main character.

As much as I love Bioware games, I hate that they even have to keep coming up. I'd never want all games with romance mechanics to just copy/paste the BioWare formula because it has its own weaknesses. Chatting to each companion after a main story mission in DA:I can sometimes be a literal hour and a half of just dialogue and it can burn you out quick, but I do agree with you. BioWare won that one, hands down. You worded it perfectly: they all have the same canonical potential. Without that same or similar effort it quickly turns a gay male V and a straight female V into an inferior version of what's offered, inconsequential. It's less about the love interests themselves and more about the V we were "supposed" to play vs. how we played.

In an ideal world, I kind of think I'd prefer the CP approach with all the characters attached to the PC but not necessarily to each other so events with them make sense to take place in different sections of the main story, spaced out instead of getting exposition dumped on you until you're crushed dead. CP77 just fumbled it so. hard.

In other news, I filed a support ticket on River's broken phone calls and niece/nephew after "Following the River" (wasn't sure the right category to put it in so I just picked quest progression?) and the response was "Thank you for your message, and report. We will look into the issue." I was kind of hoping for a "this is a known issue" but it was probably just a form response.

 

[Guest 4412420]

As much as I love Bioware games, I hate that they even have to keep coming up. I'd never want all games with romance mechanics to just copy/paste the BioWare formula because it has its own weaknesses.

It's good that CDPR tried different romance mechanics and didn't copy BioWare's approach. But at the same time their method is a bit confusing, because I have no idea what they were trying to do with Kerry's and River's romances. Were their romances suppose to develop more like Judy's or Panam's? Were everyone's romances intended to be like Panam's but they ran out of time?

You worded it perfectly: they all have the same canonical potential.

Usually, in discussions about what's canon, the answer is "whatever you picked". With Cyberpunk, if you asked which romance option is canon, the answers would be overwhelmingly in Judy's and Panam's favor. It wouldn't be surprising either, because Kerry and River got short-changed in a lot of ways and I'm baffled why or how this happened.

In other news, I filed a support ticket on River's broken phone calls and niece/nephew after "Following the River" (wasn't sure the right category to put it in so I just picked quest progression?) and the response was "Thank you for your message, and report. We will look into the issue." I was kind of hoping for a "this is a known issue" but it was probably just a form response.

I submitted a bug report once and got a response that they're aware of the issue. It's likely that not many people reported it, and the developers probably prioritize bugs that get reported most often. Hopefully River's bugs will be fixed in the next patch.

 

[Ashii]

I gotta give it to Bioware on this one. All the romances in DA or ME felt like they had the same level of effort/content put into them and therefore canonical potential for the plot and main character.

Please tell me this is a joke.

Ashley in ME3 barely had any content or normal conversations compared to every other LI (most likely because her original writer Chris L'Etoile left BioWare mid ME2, but still). Traynor had only auto dialogues with like... 2 convos at most and she doesn't even go out outside the Normandy like... every other romances.
Tali also got a very short end of the stick in ME3. Thane dies. Jacob cheats on FemShep, leaving her. Jack is only for a moment in ME3. Miranda can also die and has only a few scenes compared to other, more "important" LIs.
Liara got the most content of every other LI through the trilogy.

This is what you call the same level of effort and content? What BioWare actually showed me is that they went with favorism route - they focused on one LI and that was Liara.

 

[WildOrchid]

I gotta give it to Bioware on this one. All the romances in DA or ME felt like they had the same level of effort/content put into them and therefore canonical potential for the plot and main character.

I'm sorry but Bioware had no equality in terms of romances, if you were a gay dude or a lesbian woman, you were pretty much stuck with one to none LI, in the whole trilogy. They only just added a lesbian in ME3.... Writing wise and content wise, CP does a lot better job than bioware did in mass effect.
Unless you are a hetero dude, then a whole harem of women is waiting for you so bias is playing a huge part here.

 

[Restlessdingo32]

But you don't think having just one love interest, but with the ability to change their casting (like you already do with Cmdr Shepard or V), would cater to you?

Personal opinion, the notion you would have less romances with the ability to adjust them to fit the player is the wrong direction to go toward. No matter how insignificant those aspects of a character may be for determining what they can and cannot do they are a part of it. A character is the sum of it's parts. You can't change those parts without changing the character. Whatever goes into that character should be preserved as much as possible.

As a thought experiment, if it was another RPG videogame - would you really be so against that? Even if it was really well written?

Yes. For the reasoning provided above. If the goal is four romances the proper approach is to provide four romances. Reducing that number to, say, two and letting players adjust those characters to fit sounds like a cost cutting measure. Corner cutting is almost never synonymous with "good".

Because the alternative tends to be exactly what you've described: male LI's getting the short end of the stick.

That's more because it gets screwed up though. That or the functionality really exists to satisfy a check box on a feature list (earlier mentioned trap concept).

As I said, I woudln't be completely against it, but it kind of goes against the "RPG with many choices" image in my mind. It would really depend on how the LI was written.

I think the problem with it is the entire purpose of a player created character is player agency. The player gets to decide how the character they are assuming is constructed. Optional romances fit with that design philosophy because they offer the player agency over their character gender/sex/sexual preference and ways to express those traits (romance selection). Even though it would conceivably be possible to fit forced romances into that equation it's so incredibly limiting and would be such a pain in the ass to get right it raises the question of why you would try.

Fortunately, I don't think romances need to be incorporated into the "main quest". All they require is suitable character development, enough exposure and reasonable execution to create an emotional attachment with the romance options. Even though tying the romances to the main events of a game can achieve these requirements it's not explicitly required to do so. There are other ways to get there. I think by now CDPR has shown side content can be just as compelling as anything with "main quest" slapped on it.

In CP's case all options have suitable character development. This is to say all of the characters the player can romance were sufficiently developed. As a player there is enough there to make you feel like you understand what makes those characters tick. The problem rests on the exposure and execution fronts for some of the romances. If they could "fix" anything those areas would be where it should happen.

It's good that CDPR tried different romance mechanics and didn't copy BioWare's approach. But at the same time their method is a bit confusing, because I have no idea what they were trying to do with Kerry's and River's romances. Were their romances suppose to develop more like Judy's or Panam's? Were everyone's romances intended to be like Panam's but they ran out of time?

Does it really matter? To me it seems like this is one of those things where, as a player, you should simplify. The content was delivered as it was. As a player it's not my concern what difficulties go into it. It's either good or it isn't.

 

[larrackell]

I submitted a bug report once and got a response that they're aware of the issue. It's likely that not many people reported it, and the developers probably prioritize bugs that get reported most often. Hopefully River's bugs will be fixed in the next patch.

Fingers crossed. I submitted and got this response as well. I've got one or two others to do it that I know it. There's hardly an acceptable excuse for it not being fixed, when they added Judy's stuff.

 

[Guest 4412420]

This is what you call the same level of effort and content? What BioWare actually showed me is that they went with favorism route - they focused on one LI and that was Liara.

You're right that the Mass Effect trilogy is not a great example to use, as imbalance most definitely exists there.

When it comes to favoritism though, CDPR are just as guilty of it with Panam.

Does it really matter? To me it seems like this is one of those things where, as a player, you should simplify. The content was delivered as it was. As a player it's not my concern what difficulties go into it. It's either good or it isn't.

I guess it is pretty pointless to speculate, but since we have no idea if CDPR are even aware of not just this thread but how people feel about this disparity overall, there's not much else we can do but guess and keep this thread going.

 

[larrackell]

but since we have no idea if CDPR are even aware of not just this thread but how people feel about this disparity overall,

Paweł Sasko is aware of it, so I'm sure others are. He apparently commented on it a few streams ago (but I wasn't watching it, so idk what he actually said).

 

[Restlessdingo32]

I guess it is pretty pointless to speculate, but since we have no idea if CDPR are even aware of not just this thread but how people feel about this disparity overall, there's not much else we can do but guess and keep this thread going.

Fair enough. I'm not sure why they wouldn't be aware of it though. It's been discussed to death on their own forum. I'd wager at least someone at some point has mentioned it on reddit, twitter or whatever other medium CDPR uses for feedback.

Really my meaning was it doesn't matter why. It could be because games are hard. It could be because they didn't have enough time. It could be for any number of reasons. I don't think the reason is critically important. It can be simplified down to some players experienced the romances, thought some were lacking, explained why and, in an ideal world, offered suggestions to improve them.

I think all of those boxes have been checked in this thread in some form at one point or another. It's up to CDPR whether they feel those discussions warrant adjustments to the game. In fairness to them, they've had a lot on their plate in the last... 8+ months. A lot of it arguably self inflicted but, well, shit happens.

 

[Guest 4412420]

Paweł Sasko is aware of it, so I'm sure others are. He apparently commented on it a few streams ago (but I wasn't watching it, so idk what he actually said).

I went to check his last stream on Youtube, and found a comment from the person who apparently asked the question and tried to clarify what they meant because Paweł misunderstood the question a bit, I guess? Judging by the question they asked about romances but he only talked about quests and storylines overall, and didn't really talk about actual romances.

Spoiler: Timestamped stream bit

 

[rippercityransom]

You've saved me! I was just considering how to go about finding this exact stream.

That video was... not promising. I'm not sure he misunderstood the question so much as was just confirming that River has less content on purpose because braindances take more time to make, so he has the same amount of effort put into him on a "time invested by devs" front, and the same case for Kerry. Unless I am also misunderstanding or being overly pessimistic. So if they invested 10 hours total in each character, they spent 6 hours on Panam and Judy's main quests and had 4 left over for romance content, but Kerry and River took up more time in their main quests so they had 9 hours invested in the quest and only 1 hour of dev effort left over for romance content. So his explanation is they didn't play favorites because they all got 10 hours of attention, even if we as players only see 10 quests vs 3.

 

[larrackell]

I went to check his last stream on Youtube, and found a comment from the person who apparently asked the question and tried to clarify what they meant because Paweł misunderstood the question a bit, I guess? Judging by the question they asked about romances but he only talked about quests and storylines overall, and didn't really talk about actual romances.

Spoiler: Timestamped stream bit

Thanks for finding that, you're a legend.

That video was... not promising. I'm not sure he misunderstood the question so much as was just confirming that River has less content on purpose because braindances take more time to make, so he has the same amount of effort put into him on a "time invested by devs" front, and the same case for Kerry. [...] So if they invested 10 hours total in each character, they spent 6 hours on Panam and Judy's main quests and had 4 left over for romance content, but Kerry and River took up more time in their main quests so they had 9 hours invested in the quest and only 1 hour of dev effort left over for romance content. So his explanation is they didn't play favorites because they all got 10 hours of attention, even if we as players only see 10 quests vs 3.

Yeah, that left a bad taste in my mouth even though I get what he's saying. It somehow makes it...more? frustrating? to hear that explanation. Like, I get that there's more variables to River's story, I get it, but how does it make it better that there's no romance anything until the last five minutes of the storyline (not counting snide comments from Johnny)? It justifies it but also absolutely doesn't.