Konnichi wa, minna-san!

I meant to put this blog post up on Valentine's Day to celebrate but GameSpot had a brain fart and the post didn't go through and I didn't save it. So here it is, a month late:

So, today I would like to talk about a rather unusual subject when it comes to games. Well, its unusual in almost every genre except for RPGs. Im going to talk about romance and marriage in video games. Im playing through Fire Emblem: Awakening right now and the game brought on this topic. But let me start from my first experience having this in a game.

The first game where I experienced building up a relationship and eventually marrying someone was in Harvest Moon on the GBA. At first it was my sisters game and after a while she asked for my help in doing something in the game. I figured out what needed to be done and gave it back to her. I watched her play for a while and I thought to myself: Man this game looks boring. You wouldnt catch me playing this! After a while she got bored of it since shes not really a gamer. Since I was limited on what I could play when I was a kid and the game wasnt being used I gave it a shot. What followed was 6 months of non-stop playing. I was completely enthralled by this simple game. I finally stopped after those 6 months but the game left a permanent impression on me. This was the first game I played where I could live out a virtual life and it felt rewarding. And as I mentioned, this is also the first game where I could have my main character marry someone. This concept was completely alien to me at the time. At first I didnt even know I was making the girl fall in love with me since I was dating every girl in the game since I thought I was just being a nice guy. When I finally reached the top level and she married me I was like... WHAT?! Then we moved in together and had a child and I was even more mystified. But because of that, it made me pay attention to the series and it soon spun-off into a great game series: Rune Factory. Rune Factory is basically the same game except with RPG elements and combat. Its my dream when it comes to a simulation game.

After my first experience playing Harvest Moon, and I started getting into this generation of games, I found myself playing more and more RPGs which was likely influenced by my many childhood years of playing Pokemon. In the RPGs I started playing (Dragon Age, Mass Effect) there were instances of romance and an intimate relationship. Eventually I started figuring out that RPGs have these kind of relationship building in them and I think this is when I started liking RPGs more and more until it became my favourite game genre. I mean, as humans, we rely upon the companionship of others. I was taught to appreciate the bonds of friendship between others when growing up and to see the good in everyone. While I cant always adhere to that, I understand the importance of it. The friends I made in high school are still my friends and we always find time to hang out when we dont have important things to do. So whenever I play RPGs or watch anime, I want to see bonds grow and foster between characters. If its not there, I wont like the game as much. I think I put characters before anything else now that I think about it.

Anyway, now to talk a bit more about marriage and the life afterwards. In most of these games, especially the Japanese ones, once you get married theres usually something that happens afterwards. Most of the time, it comes in the form of kids. I love this concept. Maybe simply because its my dream to one day get married, have kids and live a happy life. As I said, the first game where I saw this was in Harvest Moon and later Fable II. In those games I tried to be a good husband and father. Some might say Im getting into the game too much. Perhaps I am. But my only problem with those games is that the child never grew up past their childhood. Heck, in Harvest Moon, the child never became a child, it stayed a baby and thats when I knew I had gotten pretty much as far as I could in that game. Now, with Fire Emblem Awakening, the children the characters have in the game are playable after theyre born. Now thats what Im talking about! What makes this concept even better is the relationship that exists between parents and their children. The game does a great job of making you like or even love each character and the reason why is the feeling of family shared between each character. Whether they become friends, lovers, or a real family, the feeling is there. Very few games utilize this unfortunately. I do understand why though; I can tell a ton of effort went into Fire Emblem Awakening. The games production values are ridiculously high and the review scores speak for themselves. To have a game where any person can become another persons lover and to have dialogue accompanying it is a task by itself. To have those characters have kids, give them dialogue and to add in the models and all that extra stuff...It will be very expensive and time-consuming indeed. But I really do appreciate the effort and Ive already repaid Nintendo by buying two copies of their game plus the Fire Emblem bundle that comes with the 3DS. I may buy a third as well to spread the gospel. (Konata reference) Oh, and the DLC... I cant help it if Im in love with this game!

As long as RPGs continue to build bonds between their characters and include romance and marriage, chances are it will forever remain my favourite game genre. Relationships between characters and their interactions with each other remain an important part of a game for me. So that ends my long blog post about this kind of stuff.

Mata ato de!