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[PA Comic] Wednesday, December 3, 2014 - Thy Rod And Thy Staff
Dog
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
[PA Comic] Wednesday, December 3, 2014 - Thy Rod And Thy Staff
http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2014/12/03
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I could only really pursue relationships with the aliens. Most of them don't really function as official crew--they stay around to help you out, but don't have to take orders from you. Actual Marines though? I found it utterly inappropriate. I accidentally started down the relationship with Ashley and immediately reverted to an old save because I was so squicked out. She's telling you that she's willing to work with aliens if he says so: "If you tell me to kiss a krogan, I'll ask which cheek." One of the responses was, "What about me?" Since it was bundled with other unrelated topics, I thought it was branching to a new topic of her opinion of me as a commander. But no, Shepard proceeds to ask her if she'd kiss him if he ordered her to.
I never saw any of that awkwardness with Tali, though. She has no professional obligation to you--she's on board as a friend.
On the other hand, complexity in these "relationships" has still fallen woefully short of what most have come to expect from good fiction. Concepts like tension, jealousy, infatuation, and loss are either misrepresented or totally absent. I guess that's the problem with the companion approval/attraction system being basically a mini-game akin to finding a working Asteroids arcade console in the game world.
Some of the relationships in Inquisition have more complexity to them. Try Blackwall's.
And soon they'll be cooking you meals and giving you money from their eBay business.
Anyway, it seemed less harass-y and more like my Inquisitor is oddly desperate. Those two things aren't mutually exclusive, of course. But because there are so many people you can flirt with, and with everyone (except possibly Sera) the Inquisitor's flirtatious comments come from out of nowhere, it's like she's thinking about how to get with everybody. Which is... odd.
On the other hand, if they had other characters launching themselves at the Inquisitor, it could easily look like a nerd boy "everyone wants to blow me cuz I'm awesome" fantasy. Eh. The only thing I'm sure of is that all the romantic stuff in Bioware games remains a work in progress.
Honestly, in a world where 90% of the adults seem to have lost their spouse under tragic circumstances I'm not surprised the courtship process has been streamlined somewhat. Particularly when the one proposing to you hunts dragons for a living. You kinda go into a marriage like that expecting to be back in the dating scene in a few weeks.
Actually I think it's more or less explained in exactly those terms in-game by the priest of Mara who gives you the marriage quest or whatnot. Makes perfect sense.
You know, coming from somebody who has been playing a lot of the Shin Megami Tensei and Persona series over the past year, it's funny to me that someone is talking about Mara in this thread about this comic.
Ha, that's true. I wonder if the spouses are sad that the Dragonborn keeps on truckin. "Man, when are they going to get eaten by a troll?"
Better than those clingy Fable spouses. "I'm leaving you! You infiltrated an evil prison for five years and didn't even say goodbye! Your son is a grown man now and has forgotten your face!" So high maintenance.
"He sold the dishes, took all the gold, and left me here with nothing two pretty soul gems and a pile of old swords with terrible enchants. He better get eaten or I'll kill him when he gets home."
When I play Skyrim, loot OCD makes me an awful spouse. Hell, it makes me an awful houseguest - let me spend the night and everything that's not nailed down will be at the pawnbroker in the morning.