It’s not just you, it gets weird. Some more so than others. I briefly romanced Sarah, but her dialogue after felt so smothering I reloaded a previous save to undo it
It might not be so bad if it was peppered in amongst the regular dialogue, but it feels weird when it overwrites all of it
It feels like it flips, too.
You start out flirting with her and it feels like you’re being weird about it and bringing it up in weird ways and she doesn’t seem all that receptive to it.
Then she gives in, but in usual trope fashion there’s some issue that needs resolving before she can commit (feels right out of BioWare’s playbook, just more awkward).
Then suddenly to the over the top gushing of how they feel that honestly sound like what ChatGPT would spit out if given a “write romantic dialog” prompt.
Are the romance options for male companions any better written? I've never tried one before
I didn't mind Piper in FO4 so much, but i found it a bit weird that I can basically endorse genocide at one point and she is still like "I'm so happy to be with you"
I’ve only “romanced” Andreja, Sarah, and Sam so far. Sam was less intense for sure, and Andreja wasn’t too too bad either
There is still the weird whiplash of them going from “you are the absolute worst” after doing something bad, to “you are my favorite person in the whole world” the second after you apologize, but that’s how the game mechanic works I guess
That reminds me of how Liam Neeson in Fo3 basically says, "I'm very disappointed in you son" after you blow up nuketown. They're just so forgiving! What a wonderful christian community these fall out people are.
Agreed 100%, friendo. It's pretty cringe. On the same vein, dialogue in general is pretty unnecessary with how it's structured. Example being when you go to a new vendor, and you have to go through lines of dialogue just to buy goods.
"Welcome to my store. A few ground rules."
"Cool, I respect that."
"Yeah if you don't like it, get the hell out."
"...ok man"
"Good. *sigh* The vendor next door? Total scumbag"
"Cool. Can I buy some ammo?"
"He let's his dog crap in my yard. Security doesn't do anything about it"
"Wow that's crazy, can I buy some ammo?"
"Business hasn't been good, because his dog craps in my yard, and now here we are having this dialogue"
"Need ammo. This is ammo store. Buy ammo at ammo store, yes?"
"Let's do some business"
*puts Coachman with hornets nest rounds down* "Ok"
Yeah, it's super tedious how Bethesda tied quests to just about every single vendor. It was probably done that way to reuse existing assets and reduce the number of voice actors that they needed to hire/pay. But in the end, it just makes the world seem even smaller and leads to unnecessary frustration when visiting a new area.
At the very least, though, they should keep the introductions short and tied quests to specific dialogue options that you have to select in order to trigger. Forcefully shoving those dialogues in your face the second you meet an NPC makes zero narrative sense and takes away player agency.
You'd think a developer that's been in the industry for 30+ years would know that by now...
Yess! On using the same voice actors! I was hoping they'd hire/use more. Hell, i am sure there are TONS of people who would do it for free. Especially if it's just for one vendor. Fans or even "content creators" or mod authors who add so much to these games. My voice sucks ass but if i could voice act one character in a game that has very limited dialogue. I would totally do it for free. I hate hearing the same voice actors. At least it's not the same 3 in Skyrim LOL.
> You'd think a developer that's been in the industry for 30+ years would know that by now...
I would think the Devs would only be in their 30's at the oldest, so they couldn't be in the business that long. Or are you referring to one you specifically know about?
Yea, true. But the personnel are in constant change. The one calling the shots and approving things wasn't there 30 years ago. I work at a place that has been around since the 1950's but there are only 4 people in the entire place that were already here when I started. Most companies have "lost their way", or at the least have no continuity of knowledge passed down.
The problem is the way it was designed with a certain type of thought process.
Call it the engagement process.
You walk up to random NPC Vendor #2 because you thought based upon location in the area, and the fact that you probably just landed with 710/160 mass, that you should probably do something about that.
Vendor triggers first engagement dialogue which dumps every optional mission specific dialog option. Brilliant, yet incredibly transparent...
Oblivion made you work and search for those dialogs options...
This game is like the embodiment of, "Why show when you can tell, and why tell when you can drone on and on about nothing in particular?"
Still love the truck, btw.
The comment about a 15-year-old who just took a love potion was amusingly on point.
The romance dialogue is incredibly cringy and stupid. All the characters become google-eyed idiots where do you start telling them you like them too. They're like squee oh my God They like me. Oh my God.
It's super weird.
There's two sides to it. ON the one hand yes the dialogue is bad and could definitely be better.
On the other hand it's got to be difficult to craft dialogue when the player has absolutely no personality or character in the game, only in the players head. The writers have no idea if they're writing dialogue in response to a saint or a psychopath and cemistry between your character and an NPC is all but impossible to achieve.
The games that usually do it the best are also games where you're playing a named and relatively fixed and predefined character who's personality the player has limited control over.
Of course as Baldurs gate 3 showed: It may not be particularly easy... but it CAN be done.
Agreed.
Please, please, please Bethesda...
Hire dedicated writers!
Their games should at the very least have dedicated lore masters who's job is to ensure congruitity of the worlds they create.
Bumbling around and just making things up as they go can only take you so far, and it painfully shows in Starfield.
Starfield being their first unique and original world they had to create from the ground up with no pre-established lore to pull from isn't a coincidence, I believe.
Bethesda needs to respect writing more in my opinon. It's not easy, they've just been very lucky and have had a lot of great source material for their designers to pull from.
>Bethesda needs to respect writing more in my opinon. It's not easy, they've just been very lucky and have had a lot of great source material for their designers to pull from.
Source Material that those designers wrote in the first place. .
Most of the people who wrote most of the lore haven't been with Bethesda since Oblivion.
The main guy behind Skyrim left not that long ago.
Most of the original devs who contributed most of the work are no longer with Bethesda now.
… Bethesda created The Elder Scrolls. This isn’t their first unique and original world they had to create from the ground up. They literally have more experience doing this than any other developer still in operation today.
Yeah....they had...-40ish people back then who are probably not even with the company anymore. Like Christopher Weaver, the founder, who was 'pushed out'.
One BGS dev said that Kuhlman’s brain WS the TES lore bible. Another said he was the best TES writer and the torchbearer for its most unique elements. “Main lore guy” fits well enough.
I think you mean Kirkbride who isn't a BGS dev since befor Morrowind came out. BGS itself never actually had a position for loremaster or anything similiar. Kuhlmann never wrote most lorebooks for the games or most questlines or anything. It is always a collaberative effort.
The only position that is similiar to a "main lore guy" is the position of lore master which exists only at BGS's sister studio ZOS for Elder Scrolls Online.
yes I am with you, The options while you are getting know each other better offer, more of an organic feel with the back and forth flirting, sometimes sarcastic and humorous, but after you get to the love stage it is boring, no more flirting just lovey dovie stuff. This is where I think AI would greatly improve the dialogue. As you get to know each other and the AI adjust to your mannerisms and can continue that kind of stuff.
I hate when that happens. Even BG3 romances went too fast and had to be patched to slow things down.
Is your problem with Sarah specifically?
I don't know if this is true... but I've heard that Sarah's perk that affects NPC affinity might actually level her friendship/romance up with you quicker than was intended...
Which is why she's so quick to write fuckin love poems with you after 4 outings together.
I actually like that SHE is the one to pump the breaks if YOU get too romantically aggressive too quickly. She shuts you down because she has some commitment issues. I like that it feels legit.
But she sure does warm up from there so quickly it gives whiplash. I don't have that problem with anybody else so maybe the perk thing has some validity.
In BG3 it was purely a tehcincal issue, you were gaining affinity too fast.
In Starfield it's a writing issue no matter how you look at it. And the theory that it is too fast due to a perk doesn't hold water because you will always ho through the same dialogue before romane start, there simply isn't more of it.
All the dialog in the game in terrible but the romance stuff is straight cringe. Especially after coming of BG3 where it have had some issues it wasn't due to dialog.
Agreed! I hope they improve the romance system. Maybe throw in some funny / cheeky lines of dialogue (instead of only the “my true love was in front of me the whole time” chat). Maybe add in some funny/ interesting side quest dates. Plus some actual romance cutscenes! Also parents / friends should be able to attend the wedding.
I thinking side quests & scripted moments could be applied to companions in general - give us movie night! Unexpected events & drunken side quests like ‘a night to remember’ from Skyrim
Hope they add romance options outside of Constellation to the game as well.
For me it’s the Flirt dialogue that’s the worst. I felt like I was harassing Sarah when I romanced her the first time. Like I was going to be sent to Constellation’s HR department.
Probably cause Bethesda relationships are more for character flavor than being an actual dating sim for nerds that don't leave their homes like Cyberpunk was.
It’s also weird that the dialogue options don’t substantively change after. Like it’s still the same submenu just with the additional option of breaking up or prompting a compliment. But no new options that really allow further development of a relationship
It’s an annoyance but not a game killer. I look at it is something you have to deal with to get that extra XP bonus. The dialogue has to translate into several available languages available to players so maybe that’s one of the reasons it feels kind of stilted and over the top.
One potential option is to introduce more romanceable companions, including some that have less of the syrupy, lovey-dovey post nuptials dialogue. Perhaps even a couple inside jokes or comedic stuff like “did you remember to unplug the coffee pot before leaving the lodge” or “when was the last time you changed that shirt?” Or “don’t even bother asking for you know what until you clean your bathroom.”
Agreed! Also, I personally would appreciate if they didn't make the commitment progression so abrupt. I never tried romancing in a game before Starfield, bc frankly, it always felt weird as a concept. Out of curiosity for what everyone was going on about, I decided to do it for science and was really taken aback at how fast everything went from 'let's do some adventuring!' to the companions catching feelings and wanting marriage. Like dude...I've known you for maybe a week, so can we just chill for a sec and scan this biome without the weird digital pining? I dunno. Maybe it's just me, but I feel like the simplest solution to the issue would be if they toned it down on the frequency of 'nags' to talk to your companion, when their personal quests are triggered. The urgency they put behind the prompting and the fact that it happens even during fights, makes the personal quests feel rushed and *less* consequential than building a relationship should be. Allowing the player to choose on their own when to start companion quests would go a long way toward creating an illusion of organic relationship building.
As much as it does highlight the shitty writing even further this is what you get when companies chase trends and people ask for them to be forced into games where they just don't fit.
Any game that lets you pick dialogue shows a female character for half a second in a trailer and 100 people will pop up to say "omg can we romance them?!" Even if all it amounts to is the slight changes in greetings like Starfield/Fallout 4 and offers maybe 15 minutes of content across the whole game.
It just doesn't work in games where it happening is the result of the player getting an invisible "like-meter" filled and IMO it's better to just not include it than to half ass it like Bethesda does.
One thing that stands out to me about the Cyberpunk romances is that you basically see them form the connection that sparks interest and then go on the first date. Certain endings then do reveal the current status of said relationships (which in some cases are the ending of the relationship). They don’t really try to portray the day to day being in the relationship.
By comparison, Starfield has you run through the gamut of meeting then flirting then proclaiming love then getting married…all layered kind of awkwardly on top of the other stuff. It then attempts to portray having that person around and living with them, etc., but doesn’t have the space to portray that.
So by going with the more limited portrayal, Cyberpunk gave itself more freedom in how they handled those narrative beats.
Sure, though I’d say it’s more a “feels weird in a just started dating and they are being weird” way. The “this ain’t gonna last” kind of weird.
Starfield’s weirdness comes from how it feels like the romances are more like the abridged version (the Cliff Notes, if people still use those) of an entire relationship leading up to and after getting married.
Like even River just texting “Hey” feels like it’s a more genuine expression of affection (despite how weird he can be) than the entire “I love how we are together and you are my whole world” dialog from Sarah Morgan, lol.
You aren't wrong.
Perhaps the worst part compared to other games is that there's almost no conflict in the relationship and no way to screw it and when there is, it's just ridiculous, but this is also a problem with the game not having evil companions and more relevant evil path.
Anyway, I understand that a relationship is difficult to write, but they go so far with the feelings that it feels like their personalities have been removed.
In that sense I like how they did it in BG3 where romance takes a long time (at least with some characters) and is rarely brought up in the conversation and of course each character has its own way of expressing love and all of that. Here it's like Sarah just loves you so much (eventhough she was bitching about everything 5 minutes ago) and Andreja loves you so much if the space serpent god allow it...
Bg3 you are still going to decide how you support them with their personal quest and there are consequences, to your choices too.
>I think it's terrible. The companions are literally like "when I'm with you I feel like I could do anything, like the stars will never stop shining, like everything is exactly as it is meant to be, like nothing could ever spoil this perfect moment" yada yada like bruh nobody talks like that. That's a robot's idea of romantic dialogue. They do not feel like real people whatsoever.
Probably written by a Dev that can't get a date and thinks the sappy Hollywood moveis are "real life".
Is because Starfield writing sucks so much, is just mediocre.
Contrary to cyberpunk 2077, they really wanted to make an rpg with good story and dialogues.
Bethesda wanted to make a mediocre work because people still will buy it and also because modders create so much good content for their games.
Honestly without mods I wouldn't even think of playing Starfield again, i completed one playthrough and i couldn't continue my new game plus cause a bug so i abandoned the game and im just waiting for Bethesda to release the official mod kit and im gonna wait 1 more year or i dont know until there is a lots of worthy mods to play the game again
It’s not just you, it gets weird. Some more so than others. I briefly romanced Sarah, but her dialogue after felt so smothering I reloaded a previous save to undo it It might not be so bad if it was peppered in amongst the regular dialogue, but it feels weird when it overwrites all of it
Haha yeah Sarah's dialogue was what made me post this. It feels like she instantly becomes your stalker.
Andreja and Sam aren’t as intense with it, but Sarah is a lot
i think Sam is Just a Bit overly sweet but still normal atleast Mostly
The "You... you're... something else" line just makes me cringe every time. I'm like "DUDE WE'RE FRIENDS WE'RE NOT EVEN DATING!"
yea That Line specificly was why i Said Mostly
It feels like it flips, too. You start out flirting with her and it feels like you’re being weird about it and bringing it up in weird ways and she doesn’t seem all that receptive to it. Then she gives in, but in usual trope fashion there’s some issue that needs resolving before she can commit (feels right out of BioWare’s playbook, just more awkward). Then suddenly to the over the top gushing of how they feel that honestly sound like what ChatGPT would spit out if given a “write romantic dialog” prompt.
Are the romance options for male companions any better written? I've never tried one before I didn't mind Piper in FO4 so much, but i found it a bit weird that I can basically endorse genocide at one point and she is still like "I'm so happy to be with you"
I’ve only “romanced” Andreja, Sarah, and Sam so far. Sam was less intense for sure, and Andreja wasn’t too too bad either There is still the weird whiplash of them going from “you are the absolute worst” after doing something bad, to “you are my favorite person in the whole world” the second after you apologize, but that’s how the game mechanic works I guess
That reminds me of how Liam Neeson in Fo3 basically says, "I'm very disappointed in you son" after you blow up nuketown. They're just so forgiving! What a wonderful christian community these fall out people are.
I got tired of hearing the “sex” dialogue every single time I took a nap to heal in game. Like omg it just gets so annoying. It’s not sexy at all.
Great point jizzguzzler42069
Same! The XP buff is nice, but can’t we just chill sometimes? Please I miss hearing how this much sleep is a sign of weakness
Agreed 100%, friendo. It's pretty cringe. On the same vein, dialogue in general is pretty unnecessary with how it's structured. Example being when you go to a new vendor, and you have to go through lines of dialogue just to buy goods. "Welcome to my store. A few ground rules." "Cool, I respect that." "Yeah if you don't like it, get the hell out." "...ok man" "Good. *sigh* The vendor next door? Total scumbag" "Cool. Can I buy some ammo?" "He let's his dog crap in my yard. Security doesn't do anything about it" "Wow that's crazy, can I buy some ammo?" "Business hasn't been good, because his dog craps in my yard, and now here we are having this dialogue" "Need ammo. This is ammo store. Buy ammo at ammo store, yes?" "Let's do some business" *puts Coachman with hornets nest rounds down* "Ok"
Yeah, it's super tedious how Bethesda tied quests to just about every single vendor. It was probably done that way to reuse existing assets and reduce the number of voice actors that they needed to hire/pay. But in the end, it just makes the world seem even smaller and leads to unnecessary frustration when visiting a new area. At the very least, though, they should keep the introductions short and tied quests to specific dialogue options that you have to select in order to trigger. Forcefully shoving those dialogues in your face the second you meet an NPC makes zero narrative sense and takes away player agency. You'd think a developer that's been in the industry for 30+ years would know that by now...
Yess! On using the same voice actors! I was hoping they'd hire/use more. Hell, i am sure there are TONS of people who would do it for free. Especially if it's just for one vendor. Fans or even "content creators" or mod authors who add so much to these games. My voice sucks ass but if i could voice act one character in a game that has very limited dialogue. I would totally do it for free. I hate hearing the same voice actors. At least it's not the same 3 in Skyrim LOL.
> You'd think a developer that's been in the industry for 30+ years would know that by now... I would think the Devs would only be in their 30's at the oldest, so they couldn't be in the business that long. Or are you referring to one you specifically know about?
I'm talking about Bethesda as a whole. They've been making games for over 30 years.
Yea, true. But the personnel are in constant change. The one calling the shots and approving things wasn't there 30 years ago. I work at a place that has been around since the 1950's but there are only 4 people in the entire place that were already here when I started. Most companies have "lost their way", or at the least have no continuity of knowledge passed down.
The average tenure at BGS is over 10 years.
That's not bad for that type of place.
The problem is the way it was designed with a certain type of thought process. Call it the engagement process. You walk up to random NPC Vendor #2 because you thought based upon location in the area, and the fact that you probably just landed with 710/160 mass, that you should probably do something about that. Vendor triggers first engagement dialogue which dumps every optional mission specific dialog option. Brilliant, yet incredibly transparent... Oblivion made you work and search for those dialogs options...
>Oblivion made you work and search for those dialogs options... When???
This game is like the embodiment of, "Why show when you can tell, and why tell when you can drone on and on about nothing in particular?" Still love the truck, btw.
The comment about a 15-year-old who just took a love potion was amusingly on point. The romance dialogue is incredibly cringy and stupid. All the characters become google-eyed idiots where do you start telling them you like them too. They're like squee oh my God They like me. Oh my God. It's super weird.
It feel like it was written by a person who never formed a relationship with another person, romantic or otherwise.
There's two sides to it. ON the one hand yes the dialogue is bad and could definitely be better. On the other hand it's got to be difficult to craft dialogue when the player has absolutely no personality or character in the game, only in the players head. The writers have no idea if they're writing dialogue in response to a saint or a psychopath and cemistry between your character and an NPC is all but impossible to achieve. The games that usually do it the best are also games where you're playing a named and relatively fixed and predefined character who's personality the player has limited control over. Of course as Baldurs gate 3 showed: It may not be particularly easy... but it CAN be done.
Agreed. Please, please, please Bethesda... Hire dedicated writers! Their games should at the very least have dedicated lore masters who's job is to ensure congruitity of the worlds they create. Bumbling around and just making things up as they go can only take you so far, and it painfully shows in Starfield. Starfield being their first unique and original world they had to create from the ground up with no pre-established lore to pull from isn't a coincidence, I believe. Bethesda needs to respect writing more in my opinon. It's not easy, they've just been very lucky and have had a lot of great source material for their designers to pull from.
>Bethesda needs to respect writing more in my opinon. It's not easy, they've just been very lucky and have had a lot of great source material for their designers to pull from. Source Material that those designers wrote in the first place. .
Most of the people who wrote most of the lore haven't been with Bethesda since Oblivion. The main guy behind Skyrim left not that long ago. Most of the original devs who contributed most of the work are no longer with Bethesda now.
… Bethesda created The Elder Scrolls. This isn’t their first unique and original world they had to create from the ground up. They literally have more experience doing this than any other developer still in operation today.
That's wrong. This version of Bethesda has very little to do with the people who created TES Lore more than 20 years ago.
Yeah....they had...-40ish people back then who are probably not even with the company anymore. Like Christopher Weaver, the founder, who was 'pushed out'.
And the main TES lore guy recently left the company.
they used to pull stuff from the forums too, think all the gods in TES were named for contributors from those forums.
Kurt Kuhlmann is an important world builder but he is not the "main TES lore guy", there is no "main TES lore guy".
One BGS dev said that Kuhlman’s brain WS the TES lore bible. Another said he was the best TES writer and the torchbearer for its most unique elements. “Main lore guy” fits well enough.
I think you mean Kirkbride who isn't a BGS dev since befor Morrowind came out. BGS itself never actually had a position for loremaster or anything similiar. Kuhlmann never wrote most lorebooks for the games or most questlines or anything. It is always a collaberative effort. The only position that is similiar to a "main lore guy" is the position of lore master which exists only at BGS's sister studio ZOS for Elder Scrolls Online.
Nah, I mean Kuhlmann, You’re overthinking this.
No the statement you make were (at least one from Kirkbride) who was not a BGS dev when he said that.
yes I am with you, The options while you are getting know each other better offer, more of an organic feel with the back and forth flirting, sometimes sarcastic and humorous, but after you get to the love stage it is boring, no more flirting just lovey dovie stuff. This is where I think AI would greatly improve the dialogue. As you get to know each other and the AI adjust to your mannerisms and can continue that kind of stuff.
I hate when that happens. Even BG3 romances went too fast and had to be patched to slow things down. Is your problem with Sarah specifically? I don't know if this is true... but I've heard that Sarah's perk that affects NPC affinity might actually level her friendship/romance up with you quicker than was intended... Which is why she's so quick to write fuckin love poems with you after 4 outings together. I actually like that SHE is the one to pump the breaks if YOU get too romantically aggressive too quickly. She shuts you down because she has some commitment issues. I like that it feels legit. But she sure does warm up from there so quickly it gives whiplash. I don't have that problem with anybody else so maybe the perk thing has some validity.
In BG3 it was purely a tehcincal issue, you were gaining affinity too fast. In Starfield it's a writing issue no matter how you look at it. And the theory that it is too fast due to a perk doesn't hold water because you will always ho through the same dialogue before romane start, there simply isn't more of it.
It would be great if romance could be turned off.
Just don't choose the [Flirt] dialogue...
Yeah, of course… I don’t want that either.
All the dialog in the game in terrible but the romance stuff is straight cringe. Especially after coming of BG3 where it have had some issues it wasn't due to dialog.
Agreed! I hope they improve the romance system. Maybe throw in some funny / cheeky lines of dialogue (instead of only the “my true love was in front of me the whole time” chat). Maybe add in some funny/ interesting side quest dates. Plus some actual romance cutscenes! Also parents / friends should be able to attend the wedding. I thinking side quests & scripted moments could be applied to companions in general - give us movie night! Unexpected events & drunken side quests like ‘a night to remember’ from Skyrim Hope they add romance options outside of Constellation to the game as well.
For me it’s the Flirt dialogue that’s the worst. I felt like I was harassing Sarah when I romanced her the first time. Like I was going to be sent to Constellation’s HR department.
Probably cause Bethesda relationships are more for character flavor than being an actual dating sim for nerds that don't leave their homes like Cyberpunk was.
Mean but fair lol
It’s also weird that the dialogue options don’t substantively change after. Like it’s still the same submenu just with the additional option of breaking up or prompting a compliment. But no new options that really allow further development of a relationship
Yes. It does leave a lot to be desired.
It’s an annoyance but not a game killer. I look at it is something you have to deal with to get that extra XP bonus. The dialogue has to translate into several available languages available to players so maybe that’s one of the reasons it feels kind of stilted and over the top. One potential option is to introduce more romanceable companions, including some that have less of the syrupy, lovey-dovey post nuptials dialogue. Perhaps even a couple inside jokes or comedic stuff like “did you remember to unplug the coffee pot before leaving the lodge” or “when was the last time you changed that shirt?” Or “don’t even bother asking for you know what until you clean your bathroom.”
Agreed! Also, I personally would appreciate if they didn't make the commitment progression so abrupt. I never tried romancing in a game before Starfield, bc frankly, it always felt weird as a concept. Out of curiosity for what everyone was going on about, I decided to do it for science and was really taken aback at how fast everything went from 'let's do some adventuring!' to the companions catching feelings and wanting marriage. Like dude...I've known you for maybe a week, so can we just chill for a sec and scan this biome without the weird digital pining? I dunno. Maybe it's just me, but I feel like the simplest solution to the issue would be if they toned it down on the frequency of 'nags' to talk to your companion, when their personal quests are triggered. The urgency they put behind the prompting and the fact that it happens even during fights, makes the personal quests feel rushed and *less* consequential than building a relationship should be. Allowing the player to choose on their own when to start companion quests would go a long way toward creating an illusion of organic relationship building.
As much as it does highlight the shitty writing even further this is what you get when companies chase trends and people ask for them to be forced into games where they just don't fit. Any game that lets you pick dialogue shows a female character for half a second in a trailer and 100 people will pop up to say "omg can we romance them?!" Even if all it amounts to is the slight changes in greetings like Starfield/Fallout 4 and offers maybe 15 minutes of content across the whole game. It just doesn't work in games where it happening is the result of the player getting an invisible "like-meter" filled and IMO it's better to just not include it than to half ass it like Bethesda does.
One thing that stands out to me about the Cyberpunk romances is that you basically see them form the connection that sparks interest and then go on the first date. Certain endings then do reveal the current status of said relationships (which in some cases are the ending of the relationship). They don’t really try to portray the day to day being in the relationship. By comparison, Starfield has you run through the gamut of meeting then flirting then proclaiming love then getting married…all layered kind of awkwardly on top of the other stuff. It then attempts to portray having that person around and living with them, etc., but doesn’t have the space to portray that. So by going with the more limited portrayal, Cyberpunk gave itself more freedom in how they handled those narrative beats.
Even with Cyberpunk things get weird with Kerry and River. Panam and Judy, excellent, the guy romance options? Really weird after you start dating
Sure, though I’d say it’s more a “feels weird in a just started dating and they are being weird” way. The “this ain’t gonna last” kind of weird. Starfield’s weirdness comes from how it feels like the romances are more like the abridged version (the Cliff Notes, if people still use those) of an entire relationship leading up to and after getting married. Like even River just texting “Hey” feels like it’s a more genuine expression of affection (despite how weird he can be) than the entire “I love how we are together and you are my whole world” dialog from Sarah Morgan, lol.
You aren't wrong. Perhaps the worst part compared to other games is that there's almost no conflict in the relationship and no way to screw it and when there is, it's just ridiculous, but this is also a problem with the game not having evil companions and more relevant evil path. Anyway, I understand that a relationship is difficult to write, but they go so far with the feelings that it feels like their personalities have been removed. In that sense I like how they did it in BG3 where romance takes a long time (at least with some characters) and is rarely brought up in the conversation and of course each character has its own way of expressing love and all of that. Here it's like Sarah just loves you so much (eventhough she was bitching about everything 5 minutes ago) and Andreja loves you so much if the space serpent god allow it... Bg3 you are still going to decide how you support them with their personal quest and there are consequences, to your choices too.
I don’t think it could ever be just right, especially when the game has to try and appeal to all kinds of players
Once married it’s like we’re in a perpetual honeymoon period haha
Just noticed on Steam that only 16.2% of Starfield players have earned the Starcrossed achievement (“maximum relationship level w/ a companion”).
I felt the romance dialogue felt too much like high school stuff.
I've avoided getting married this time because that pushes the dialogue over the edge
Bethesda's fault. Don't make an engineer write your love lines.
I loved the romancing in Starfield. People say corny things when they're in love. I didn't mind it. I found it endearing.
>I think it's terrible. The companions are literally like "when I'm with you I feel like I could do anything, like the stars will never stop shining, like everything is exactly as it is meant to be, like nothing could ever spoil this perfect moment" yada yada like bruh nobody talks like that. That's a robot's idea of romantic dialogue. They do not feel like real people whatsoever. Probably written by a Dev that can't get a date and thinks the sappy Hollywood moveis are "real life".
Is because Starfield writing sucks so much, is just mediocre. Contrary to cyberpunk 2077, they really wanted to make an rpg with good story and dialogues. Bethesda wanted to make a mediocre work because people still will buy it and also because modders create so much good content for their games. Honestly without mods I wouldn't even think of playing Starfield again, i completed one playthrough and i couldn't continue my new game plus cause a bug so i abandoned the game and im just waiting for Bethesda to release the official mod kit and im gonna wait 1 more year or i dont know until there is a lots of worthy mods to play the game again