Something has been bugging me about Bioware games. There’s an awful amount of loving going on:
Mass Effect has the Paramour achievement, as does Mass Effect 2. You get these for going all Kirk on a crew member and having your wicked way with them.
Dragon age is even worse, with the First Knight, Witch Gone Wild, Easy Lover and Wine Woman and Song achievements for loving up your party members. There’s also the ironically named Hopelessly Romantic achievement for doing it with everybody!
By the time we get to Dragon Age 2 it’s a bit better as we just have the Flirtatious achievement for getting noticed and the Romantic achievement for, as it were, closing the deal.
That’s a lot of shagging instead of saving the world/universe!
I have two problems with all this. The first is that it’s just there to say that you can have hot sex with people. During none of these games do these signposted relationships feel like they are actually meaningful, and they’re just a numbers game of being nice to them until they decide that maybe you’re not that bad after all. The term romance is batted around by the achievements but they are anything but that, they are about manipulation of popularity. Out of all these games the only romance subplot I thought was meaningful was your Yeoman in Mass Effect 2, who notably doesn’t have an achievement, and in the end you just have a nice meal together and then, most importantly, she then feeds your fish from then on so they don’t keep dying because you are too busy saving the universe. Relationships like that are important.
It really feels like a missed trick but I feel that the sex part gets in the way of exploring the subject as you are nice to your chosen victim (and it probably really should be victim if you are doing it for achievements) until you get them into bed then you just ignore them. There’s no need to do any more, the bing has happened and your score has gone up. There’s got to be something better you can do than that. Some way that being loved can affect your world beyond the metagame, or beyond some gameplay reason that means you are basically just using them to get an advantage. It’s no wonder that most games avoid love in games. We have no idea what it’s for.
My other problem is the big one: there’s no achievements for not getting interrupted by carnal desires when you are meant to be saving the bloody galaxy. Or world. Is it too much to ask for a “Kept it in your pants” achievement? That’s just as valid a choice, but of course the achievements push you in the other way. In the same way you could have a “Didn’t get distracted by all those bloody minor personal problems on the way to killing the big bad” achievement to show you were actually committed to saving the world and no, as it ends up, proving how great you are to as many people as possible until you get bored and save the world as an afterthought.
What kind of example is all this to set the next generation of world savers? We’re doomed, they’ll be too busy shagging to do anything useful.
3 comments
1 ping
Akely
March 22, 2011 at 3:46 pm (UTC 0)
What kind of example is all this to set the next generation of world savers? All you need is love. John Lennon, smart man shot in the back. Very sad.
UnSubject
March 24, 2011 at 10:00 am (UTC 0)
Heh, the whole side quest issue is something that makes me chuckle in ME2.
“Shepherd, the entire galaxy is under threat by a race of giant alien killing machines who want to erase all organic life! Only you can save us all!
… but first, can you sort out Miranda’s daddy issues?”
Arieltalia
March 28, 2011 at 7:55 am (UTC 0)
ROFL I really like the “Keeping it in your Pants” achievement idea.
My male Hawke is definitely going to go that route, because he doesn’t fancy venereal disease nor pre-pubescent-looking elves.
/AFK: Humorous Choice Edition « Bio Break
March 27, 2011 at 3:16 pm (UTC 0)
[...] Consoling Gamers — Kirking your yeoman and other distractions “During none of these games do these signposted relationships feel like they are actually meaningful, and they’re just a numbers game of being nice to them until they decide that maybe you’re not that bad after all.” [...]