Can NPCs Fall In Love? | Extra Credits Gaming

Why is it that only the player ever seems to start dating someone in a video game? Like, I know there are a few exceptions and excellent ones at that, but in the vast majority of games where you can have a relationship, none of the NPCs fall in love with each other or start romantic relationships of their own. And that's weird, right? Because if they did, not only would it pay off my personal Astarion Gale Carlack fanfic love triangle, but it would also make NPCs in a game's world seem like more real, complete, well-rounded characters. Plus, it would also create new experiences for the player and take some of that creepy romantic partner as trophy factor out of dating in games. So, let's explore some ways our games can make NPCs a little less shallow, get out from under these bad romances, and reinvent the love game, shall we? Dang, went full Lady Gaga there for a second. Thanks so much to Ground News for helping to keep us in the know. Okay, the answer to this one is kind of simple. Most designers are so focused on

making the player feel special that they can sometimes forget the experience that the player can have is more special when the player themselves is not the one special element in the equation. What do I mean by that? Well, by making it so only the player can develop a relationship, it makes it a game action, aka not something that just happens naturally in the world on its own. And it can feel artificial and often strange because it translates to picking who you want your partner to be and acquiring them with little to no agency on their part, which obviously isn't how relationships work in the real world. And so, you start to form some dissonance there. Baldur's Gate 3 is a great example of this. Now, that game is amazing, we all know it, I love it, I put more hours into it and started more level one characters than I am comfortable to admit in this episode, but I got to say those characters are way too horny just for my character, even after the infamous cold water patch hit. Are you seriously telling me I'm supposed to believe that none of these smoke shows are hooking up? Sure, you get instances like Shadowheart mentioning that Halsin is easy on the

eyes, but that's not really what I'm talking about. If none of these high fantasy hotties are going to fall in love with anyone but me, I kind of feel like that takes away from the experience a bit and makes it less special that one of the NPCs would actually want to choose my very attractive halfling to be with. And when it is just the player character getting to have relationships, there's all these ancillary experiences we can never put in our games, like going on a double date or comforting a friend who's going through a breakup or rough patch or giving advice, no matter how ill-advised, on what they should do or what they should wear for their big date. These are all really human moments that are just sort of left on the table and would deepen our relationship to other characters in the game if those characters themselves could, you know, have relationships outside of with the player. And honestly, the cool part here is adding something like this from a design perspective really isn't that hard to put into a game. In fact, it's way easier than putting in player relationships because as a designer, you don't have to worry about as many branching choices or changes in dialogue because you can orchestrate most of the entire thing yourself. Plus, you don't even have to take focus away from the

player as most of the relationship growth can happen in scenes the players already involved in. For example, you could have a part of the game where maybe your party is exploring an underground crypt or something. And then in a cutscene while trying to maneuver through it, two of your NPCs could like accidentally brush hands as they progress. You could then have them begin to banter and flirt just by how you write their dialogue. And then later, after the dungeon delving, when you're back at camp, you could have these really fun interactions that would make the world feel more holistic with each of them individually pulling you aside to talk about how they feel about the moment and questioning if the other NPC is like, you know, really into them. And having NPC relationships doesn't have to curtail player freedom. If you wanted, you could design your game so that players can romance anyone and then NPC romances only start after the player has made their choice. Now, personally, I think that is far less interesting than say an NPC the player wants to romance that then starts a relationship with another NPC because of all the dilemmas that creates if the player decides to try anyway. But, you know, maybe that's

just the years I spent watching General Hospital after school with my mom talking. What? They had a vampire in that show. Look it up. Now, if you want to go full bore with NPC relationships, you could also incorporate them into the mechanics. Like, for example, a character in a relationship maybe taking a hit for their partner if that partner is at low life. But, you know, you don't have to. Simply having relationships grow in different ways through narrative moments not only would grant the NPCs new depth and allow them the possibility for change in a way that most video game NPCs are never given. But, again, that helps the world the player is playing in feel more real and lived in. One thing to note though, the starting a relationship part is pretty important because we have plenty of examples of video game characters who we are told have partners or are married, but then that fact also never matters. For instance, like in the Mortal Kombat franchise. We are told that Sonya Blade and Johnny Cage eventually got married. But, we missed most all of that relationship develop. And when the games in that franchise really started getting their story modes cooking, we're thrown right to the end where they are

estranged and have an adult daughter who I just so happen to main the hell out of it in MKX. And while I realize that Mortal Kombat is not a relationship sim outside of my own head canon, I think the example still holds. Our in-game NPC romances need both the volatile excitement of starting a new relationship and the inherently interactive nature of doing so in order to give the player the most opportunity to witness the growth of that relationship, thus making it more meaningful to the player because it allows them to interact with the participants about that relationship as it evolves. Of course, that's not to say that a romance established before a game's beginning can't be meaningful. It's just, you know, harder to do. And we sort of haven't achieved the easy thing yet that we've been positing. So, let's just stick with that. Watching a relationship grow also makes moments of loss or separation much more meaningful. Something like a character death or even just the party splitting up for a time. When you know that someone is leaving someone else behind, especially if it happens at a troubled time in a

relationship, leaving a disagreement or misunderstanding unresolved while the heroes are forced to split off to achieve different parts of their world-saving plan. That's just good drama right there. So, all of that is to say, the goal of these NPC romances should always be pointing toward making the players relationships in the game feel more organic, more special within the world. Because all of the sudden, relationships as a concept are truly part of that game world and not just a mechanic. Heck, even the implied possibility that your romantic partner could have fallen for someone else kind of makes the fact that they chose to be with your character feel much more meaningful. Those characters then become more than just a trophy or a victory lap and start to become your character's partner in a much more real-feeling sense. But, however you approach this, if you are building player romance into your game, just stop and ask yourself, does it make sense that no one can fall in love with anyone else in the game but the player character? Because unless

there's some unbelievably good reason for doing it this way, it will just make the player character a Mary Sue and strip away the possibility for a ton of meaningful interaction for the player and the NPCs they experience the world with. So, I guess the summation of this entire episode is this. Developers, please let your NPCs date and hook up and get married. Let them sacrifice for each other, argue, poke fun, break up. When you do that, you'll let them become more fully realized characters in those most incredibly important ways. Because romances in games would feel that much more meaningful to the player if every character in the experience was free to go gaga over each other. Ah, Hey, at that. Brought it back. Wait, HOLD ON. WHY DO I HAVE Lady Gaga on the brain? Oh, that's right. I just read that article I found on Ground News about how Joker Folie à Deux is getting a R rating. That's going to be interesting for a musical. I love Ground News because rather than getting conflicting information and sensationalized coverage from my seemingly endless social media feed, now I get my news from somewhere

I'm way more confident I can find the whole story. And that's because Ground News shows you exactly how news stories are being covered and compares the ways different news organizations cover the same topics from all across the political spectrum, which I find super helpful when I'm trying to analyze news stories that my kind of out there Uncle Kevin keeps sharing with me. Stop it, Kevin. And that is due to their awesome bias distribution chart, where you can see all sorts of information about the various media outlets you get your news from. Everything from factual accuracy to political leaning to who actually owns said media outlets. That one I always find particularly interesting. All in one easy-to-read location to help you spot media bias and better understand your own reading habits. story about how a man who used a megaphone to lead an attack on police during the January 6th riot got 7 years in prison. And I could see the bias, compare headlines, and the total number of reporting sources. Huh, you know, I would have thought that an attack on police would have gotten a bit more coverage on the right. Plus, they have a blind spot feed that lets you check out news from beyond your regular haunts, a

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