Mass Effect: Andromeda’s New Approach To Romance

GameInformer has published a new write-up on Mass Effect: Andromeda, which focuses on the ways the writers are attempt to deepen the romantic subplots of the series in the new game. I know many old-school CRPG fans loathe romances, but please keep it classy in the comments:

The team wants romances to feel legitimate, not like an artificial game mechanic. Different characters want different things from their romances, whether it’s physical or emotional, and Walters states that some romances can happen early in the game, while some characters may take longer to let their guard down. He also confirms that BioWare got rid of what he refers to as “the hard line,” where you’re trying to fit in romances before you reach a certain point and it cuts off the opportunity for a romance to occur.

Walters says the team wanted to make romances more varied than previous entries. “Just because someone has a romance doesn’t mean they have a longer relationship arc with you,” Walters says. The team even re-envisioned what a romance looks like. As Walters says, “Think of the relationship moment with Garrus in Mass Effect 3 where you [shoot bottles off the Citadel]. Does it always have to be, ‘Get someone into the bed?’ or can it be, ‘Let’s go have a bros’ moment or a friends’ moment.’ I think once [our writers] started to think in those terms, it expanded what those scenes could be like. But if you want to get down to the sex scene stuff, we got aliens, alien environments…we keep coming up with unique places to have some interspecies relationships.'”

Walters says the writing team has worked hard to make sure characters are unique and fun to get to know. “The [characters] that aren’t romanceable should have just as interesting and in-depth an arc as the ones who do,” he says. “That’s one thing we did to make it feel more natural. We have to check ourselves because we know the fans want romances, so the obvious thing is to make [everyone] romanceable, but that’s not real. We’re trying to find the balance between ‘yes, it’s a game,’ but we want to make these characters as believable as possible and the situations as believable as possible.”