Boy meets girl. Boy wants to talk to girl but isn’t sure how. It’s an age-old problem, but one that isn’t an issue in Dragon Age: The Veilguard, a new video game in which a dialogue option can lead to love if it is marked with a big ol’ heart.
The studio BioWare did not invent video game romance, but it helped popularize the concept for the Western market in role-playing games like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Baldur’s Gate 2, which also bolstered its reputation for strong characters and narrative. In its franchises Mass Effect and Dragon Age, save-the-world scenarios are infused with opportunities to fall in love with companions who join the adventuring party.
Finding the right amount of subtlety is a difficult task for developers who incorporate romance. Flirting is often transmuted into a mechanic for players to literally score points with their desired partners. But falling in love is a much more subjective art.
“As soon as you start seeing a flirt as a check box, like, ‘I must have this many flirts in this scene to hit this number,’ it starts to get awkward,” said John Epler, the creative director for The Veilguard.
A more thoughtful dynamic requires an alchemy of gameplay and romance writing spread across conversations, intimate scenes and passive chatter. One companion in The Veilguard, a charming necromancer named Emmrich, calls the player “darling” in battle. Another companion, an awkward elf named Bellara who lights up when discussing her passion for repairing ancient magic artifacts, makes for a less suave courtship.
Epler, who wrote Bellara’s story line, said his inspiration for her romance had come from workplace sitcom pairings like Jim and Pam from “The Office” and Amy and Jake in “Brooklyn Nine-Nine.” Relationships in the shows “Our Flag Means Death” and “What We Do in the Shadows” also served as influences.
The market remains strong for games that emphasize companion story arcs. Baldur’s Gate 3 — which was developed by Larian Studios, not BioWare — sold more than 10 million copies after its release last year and became an instant standard for character romance writing. Many gamers plan their sessions based on whom they are hoping to romance, starting anew to pick a different paramour.
“For a lot of players, one of the major draws of these games is to be able to live out those romantic stories,” said Christine Tomlinson, a professor at Arizona State University who studies video game design and has written about the role of romance in franchises including Baldur’s Gate and Dragon Age.
Janelle Peifer, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Richmond whose work touches on parasocial relationships, said romance in video games could be a major asset to studios because it engaged a primary drive of the human psyche.
“This is like a capitalist heaven,” she said.
The concept of kissing in a video game was popularized in Japan, growing from early pixelated pornographic games to dating simulators and visual novels featuring intimate scenes doled out as rewards.
Then came more sophisticated dating simulators that shifted the focus to building meaningful relationships with characters in the world, including in the Tokimeki Memorial franchise, which began in 1994.
In most dating simulators, courtships are measured with a meter growing toward a heart, like a televised fund-raising marathon goal. Players progress by offering gifts related to a character’s interests, selecting satisfactory dialogue choices and prompted cinematic scenes.
It was a natural fit to apply that logic to role-playing games, in which a player can spend hours in getting-to-know-you sessions with companions. Japanese R.P.G.s tapped into romance systems early, with Dragon Quest V asking players to choose wives in 1992.
The stakes are high for The Veilguard, which was released this week for the PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, and has received generally positive reviews. It is the franchise’s first game since Dragon Age: Inquisition came out in 2014, and since then, BioWare has been plagued by mediocre reviews and poor sales for Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem, a game within the “looter shooter” genre trying to compete with successful titles like Destiny.
Originally titled Dragon Age: Dreadwolf after an antagonist, The Veilguard was given its new name as part of a conceptual overhaul to focus on companion relationships. Corinne Busche, the game director, said romances were important for immersion in a video game world.
“I’m not just showering my companions with gifts to raise a bar,” she said. “It’s how I, in this game, show up for them, helping them through their own problems and having those quiet, intimate moments with them and picking my moment to flirt.”
All of the seven companions in The Veilguard have specific titles describing their relationships to Rook, the player’s character. Those labels change over time, and what starts out as a “contact” or an “associate” can blossom into something more. Companions grow more powerful not through combat, but through the strength of their bonds with Rook.
The player’s side of that exchange is communicated through a dialogue wheel, a staple for BioWare games. Each speech option includes a hint of what the full line will be and an assigned tone for each selection. A heart denotes a flirty comment that could lead to romance; a jester’s mask is for sarcastic dialogue, and a suit of armor for intimidation.
The relationships are brought to life with voice acting and motion capture, much of which was recorded when Covid-19 safety protocols were strictest. To get around the need to social distance, BioWare hired an actual couple to perform the motion capture for many of the physical romance scenes, which were later woven together with animation.
The voice actors for The Veilguard recorded all possible iterations of a conversation, including intimate moments and emotional episodes along every character’s arc. Ashley Barlow, the performance director, said that how a specific character flirted was fleshed out in the recording booth by the voice cast, who worked with the written dialogue, character art and in-game footage.
“Every actor that we cast was ready to split their heart open and just bleed into the game,” she said.
In previous BioWare games, some companions would leave the party after disagreeing with a player’s choice. Although decisions can affect relationships in The Veilguard, Busche said, the team built finding forgiveness into those relationship dynamics.
Romances can be pursued in The Veilguard regardless of the gender of the player’s character. The first and third Dragon Age games included companions with defined sexualities, meaning that L.G.B.T.Q. players had fewer options to match their real-life identities. However, that design choice did allow for personal quests reflecting what it would mean to be queer in a fantasy setting. One Inquisition companion, Dorian Pavus, is a mage and a gay man who was tortured with magic by his father in an attempt to change his sexuality. He was available as a romance option only to male characters, but any player can learn his back story.
An early informational card that provides lore in The Veilguard details a general acceptance of pansexuality, except for nobles who are pressured into heterosexual pairs for political purposes. (Busche said that having representation for specific sexual orientations was important to the team, and pointed to other characters in the world who had specific queer identities.)
Companions can also choose to woo one another, an evolution from Mass Effect 3, in which some party members could start relationships if the protagonist chose not to pursue them during the sci-fi adventure. They also have romantic histories of their own, with hints at past relationships sprinkled throughout the game universe.
Those flourishes are to flesh the companions out as complex, multifaceted people, Busche said, not simply as characters adapting their personality to the player. They are meant to be distinct figures living in a world who develop bonds over time.
“You’re journeying with people,” she said. “Of course feelings are going to enter into the equation.”
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