You know.. I'm all for plot device when it's incorporated into the flow of things and doesn't go on-and-on-and-on-and-on, but when one NPC is (seems) so radically different based on who they're supposed to be romancing it just pisses me off.
Funny you should mention that... My main problem with the Anomen romance is that the party NPC Anomen and the romance NPC Anomen seem like two distinctly different characters. Despite its flaws, even if the flaw dosage
has been liberal, I happen to like his romance; I can even live with the romancing-the-therapist routine, annoying though it is. At least he shows more personality traits than just one (
positive traits, that is) as well as development as a character.
That’s just during the love talks, however. End romance theme music. Cue banter, or interjections, and I remember why only fifteen minutes ago I last wanted to strangle the damn bigoted bunch of pixels, especially in SoA. His attitude is almost surreal – I suppose it might work as comic relief, in a "what the hell is wrong with you" kind of way, but it’s not even amusing. More than that, the
change in his attitude is surreal.
This Jekyll/Hyde thing bothered me the first time around, and it’s only become more pronounced, the more I’ve played the game. It’s almost as if the romance was added on top of the character as an afterthought. Sure, I can appreciate that plans change, that the romance feature might have been developed after writing Anomen (etc, whatever.) However, the single female-PC romance feeling poorly integrated ticks me off even more than the fact that it was the only one, or the particulars of the romance. That's just me, of course.
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On a different note, and on to a pet peeve of mine: if the player wants to develop the protagonist’s relationship with an NPC, why does it always imply romance? Romance is fine and good, so is NPCs interacting with other NPCs, but if I were to make a wish list, more PC-NPC non-romance dialogues would definitely be on it. In the vanilla BGII game, at least, the majority of them are centered on the Bhaalspawn heritage (the easy way out, as has been pointed out above). There aren’t all that many, either – at least, not as many as to allow for any development of relationship. I remember being cheered, in my first SoA game, when Jaheira could
finally say something to my female PC besides complaining about the reputation, but… well, greedy child.
[Obviously, I use BGII as an example here, but I haven't seen much relationship developing in any other game, either. So the point is, "more cuddling, and more friendly chit-chat, too, please?"]
Then again, “development of relationship” would imply several different ways for the relationship to develop, I suppose. And, seeing how often the romances have only one possible path that doesn’t result in that fatal end-it-all SetGlobal… well. *shrug* I’ll take what I can get, and then ask for seconds. Greedy child.
