When Your Dating Pool Includes Elves and Mages

Boy meets girl. Boy wants to talk to girl but isn’t sure how. It’s an age-old problem, but one that isn’t an issue in Dragon Age: The Veilguard, a new video game in which a dialogue option can lead to love if it is marked with a big ol’ heart.

The studio BioWare did not invent video game romance, but it helped popularize the concept for the Western market in role-playing games like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Baldur’s Gate 2, which also bolstered its reputation for strong characters and narrative. In its franchises Mass Effect and Dragon Age, save-the-world scenarios are infused with opportunities to fall in love with companions who join the adventuring party.

Finding the right amount of subtlety is a difficult task for developers who incorporate romance. Flirting is often transmuted into a mechanic for players to literally score points with their desired partners. But falling in love is a much more subjective art.

“As soon as you start seeing a flirt as a check box, like, ‘I must have this many flirts in this scene to hit this number,’ it starts to get awkward,” said John Epler, the creative director for The Veilguard.

A more thoughtful dynamic requires an alchemy of gameplay and romance writing spread across conversations, intimate scenes and passive chatter. One companion in The Veilguard, a charming necromancer named Emmrich, calls the player “darling” in battle. Another companion, an awkward elf named Bellara who lights up when discussing her passion for repairing ancient magic artifacts, makes for a less suave courtship.

Epler, who wrote Bellara’s story line, said his inspiration for her romance had come from workplace sitcom pairings like Jim and Pam from “The Office” and Amy and Jake in “Brooklyn Nine-Nine.” Relationships in the shows “Our Flag Means Death” and “What We Do in the Shadows” also served as influences.