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rionaleonhart) wrote2023-11-22 01:02 pm
rionaleonhart) wrote2023-11-22 01:02 pm
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I Also Complain About Female-Led Films Disproportionately Being Romantic. I'm Never Happy.
Can anyone think of examples of videogames where the protagonist inevitably has a romance with a male character? Not games with romance options, but games in which romance with a specific male character is part of the story and every player will experience it, regardless of their choices, in the same way Nate of Uncharted or Ellie of The Last of Us or Squall of Final Fantasy VIII unavoidably have romantic storylines with specific female characters? This isn't for a project or anything; I'm just curious.
It's weirdly hard to think of examples. Abby has sex with Owen in The Last of Us, Part II. I think Jodie always has a romance with Ryan in Beyond: Two Souls (Ryan is the worst, but that's neither here nor there). There's Evie/Henry in Assassin's Creed: Syndicate (I hesitated on this one because Jacob's billed as the primary protagonist, although, to be fair, Jacob also gets kissed by a man), and there's Transistor, where you're always in love with your sword who is also a dude. Other than that, I'm drawing a bit of a blank.
I'm not counting cases like Mike/Jess in Until Dawn, where you play both halves of an M/F pairing. I suspect these cases sidestep the gaming industry's weird reluctance to have male love interests because, if you look at it from the other protagonist's perspective, it's a female love interest.
Final Fantasy X-2 and XIII-2 are both games with female protagonists who had a romance with a male character in the previous game, for which they weren't the main character. In both cases their male love interest happens to be absent for almost the entire game in which they're the protagonist, which is an interesting pattern in light of the scarcity of male love interests for game protagonists generally.
The gaming industry is definitely showing an increasing willingness to have female protagonists, which is great. (Since 2014, I've been keeping a list of the games I've played in which the protagonist is female; the number of games on the list has nearly quadrupled from ten to thirty-six, twenty of which were released in the last decade.) I wonder, though, if the industry as a whole still thinks 'but the player will obviously be male, so you can't let the character they're controlling kiss a boy; that would be gay'.
I think it's cool that a lot of female videogame protagonists either have female love interests or have stories that aren't about romance at all; I'm definitely not saying that the protagonist should have to kiss boys in every videogame. But it does feel like there's an odd absence here.
It's weirdly hard to think of examples. Abby has sex with Owen in The Last of Us, Part II. I think Jodie always has a romance with Ryan in Beyond: Two Souls (Ryan is the worst, but that's neither here nor there). There's Evie/Henry in Assassin's Creed: Syndicate (I hesitated on this one because Jacob's billed as the primary protagonist, although, to be fair, Jacob also gets kissed by a man), and there's Transistor, where you're always in love with your sword who is also a dude. Other than that, I'm drawing a bit of a blank.
I'm not counting cases like Mike/Jess in Until Dawn, where you play both halves of an M/F pairing. I suspect these cases sidestep the gaming industry's weird reluctance to have male love interests because, if you look at it from the other protagonist's perspective, it's a female love interest.
Final Fantasy X-2 and XIII-2 are both games with female protagonists who had a romance with a male character in the previous game, for which they weren't the main character. In both cases their male love interest happens to be absent for almost the entire game in which they're the protagonist, which is an interesting pattern in light of the scarcity of male love interests for game protagonists generally.
The gaming industry is definitely showing an increasing willingness to have female protagonists, which is great. (Since 2014, I've been keeping a list of the games I've played in which the protagonist is female; the number of games on the list has nearly quadrupled from ten to thirty-six, twenty of which were released in the last decade.) I wonder, though, if the industry as a whole still thinks 'but the player will obviously be male, so you can't let the character they're controlling kiss a boy; that would be gay'.
I think it's cool that a lot of female videogame protagonists either have female love interests or have stories that aren't about romance at all; I'm definitely not saying that the protagonist should have to kiss boys in every videogame. But it does feel like there's an odd absence here.
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Technically I guess Jill of the Jungle meets the criteria, because she does marry the prince at the end, but that's a platformer with very little story. Though notable that the games were deliberately subverting established video game expectations by making the player character a woman who rescues and romances a man.
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Interesting to learn about Jill of the Jungle, too! I'd say it still counts, even if it's not a story-focused game. It reminds me of how I once saw it said that Portal's protagonist Chell did nothing for female representation in games, because she's a silent protagonist and the game would be no different if she were a man. I personally think silent female protagonists are still very valuable. Sometimes people are just female; there doesn't need to be a plot reason for that!
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Thinking of Falcom games reminds me that Yunica Tovah from Ys Origin sort of counts. She has a canon romance that you get to see in her route explicitly that is not with the other two playable characters/protagonists of the game.
And I also forgot about BL games of which (of those I've played) I'd say UuultraC qualifies because it has 3 canon m/m couples that you get to POVs from all of them so the love interest is always a canon male one no matter which POV is on screen. Hana ki sou also only has the romance between the two male leads in one of the main sections of the game. The other main half/route of the game has a platonic father figure & son figure relationship.
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Once you start to notice it...it's a pretty glaring absence. I mean, for selfish reasons I enjoy that so many playable female characters have female love interests, but they're not doing it for me, they're doing it because the presumed player is still a straight dude.
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It really is! It seems like there should be dozens of examples, but, when you think about it, there just aren't. I'm not sure I'd even count the Assassin's Creed: Odyssey DLC for the 'every player will have this romance regardless of their choices' question, as the player can still avoid the male love interest by playing as Alexios.
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(Anonymous) 2023-11-22 06:44 pm (UTC)(link)Trails in the Sky - The protagonist is indisputably Estelle, and the canonical romance between Estelle and Joshua is a big part of the arc of that game series. Heck, the climactic cliffhanger scene at the end of the first game has some extremely heavy stuff going on, which Estelle is a bit oblivious to and she manages to get out her love confession when he is trying to leave to keep her safe* (Estelle being the excellent protagonist she is proves throughout the second game that no thanks, she's not just being dumped behind and that she will proactively seek what she wants after a very small period of mopiness). It's a bit of a funny case since they've been raised together since they were about 11 and part of the arc is the idea of them as siblings versus them as a romantic partnership (although Estelle's romantic love for Joshua is never really disputed, it's more whether or not Joshua thinks in the same way). There's a (really cute!) flashback in the third game to the early days of them living together as 11ish year olds and Estelle's definitely insisting he's a sibling at that point, though Joshua doesn't particularly (although it's worth noting that Estelle is not the protagonist of that game, just the first two). So it's a bit of a contentious romance to some degree particularly to Western fans. I don't have an issue, I really liked it as an arc in context across the two games - and seeing how Estelle grows in the absence of Joshua for a sizeable chunk of the second game is brilliant (and he's not absent for the whole game so it's not FFX-2 style just chuck them out of the narrative problem solving).
Interestingly, the following Trails arcs - Crossbell and Cold Steel - both have male protagonists and neither of them have canonical romances, but have a romantic choice system that's a bit like Persona. Is the male protagonist a relation to making it a bit more harem like? You decide! I know the protagonist is male again in the arc after that but I'm not sure about romances, canonical or social link style system aside.
The ending of Trails in the Sky if you've ever got 20 minutes to spare to see what I'm talking about because I do think it's excellent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5J5SIBrZ0H8 SPOILERS, obviously.
*There's a morally dubious element to this scene at the end and I wondered quite how that looks, then I thought: although it's a non-romantic example, writing about that scene reminded me in parts of a Garnet and Steiner scene in FFIX which I don't think ever particularly bothered anyone from what I've seen - though I wonder if that's as Garnet was the one doing the morally dubious thing there?
You know, the sad thing is I'm actually struggling to think of a lot of games with female protagonists for this - let alone the bit where there is a canonical male romance! If I can think of any more, I'll come back.
-timydamonkey
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I'm actually struggling to think of a lot of games with female protagonists for this
It can be tricky! For the purposes of the question, games with a male protagonist who inevitably has a romance with another specific male character would also qualify, but I can't think of a single example.
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I guess there are a fair number of otome games where the female protagonist is going to end up with a guy, but not a specific one.
Arguably Celes and Terra are dual protagonists of FF6 and Celes has Locke, I guess? but that's stretching.
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I hadn't heard about this! Wow, imagine a world where men flirt with you when you're not receptive to it. Sounds awful. I'm so glad none of us have ever had to experience that.
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I can't think of much of any examples either, shockingly so :(
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Zoe from The Longest Journey series has two male love interests: her on-again, off-again boyfriend Reza and maverick computer programmer Damien Cavanaugh.
Madison can hook up with Ethan in Heavy Rain, but that game is garbage and it skirts into Mike/Jess territory.
In Lost Odyssey, two of the female party members have romances with two of the male party members—but who the protagonist is in these scenarios is debatable. And in Persona 3: Portable, the female protagonist can only enter into romantic relationships with male characters.
One interesting variation on this is Emily in the Dishonored series. In the sequel game, where she's an adult, she has a canonical partner that we never see and is referenced but never gendered. The goal was to leave it up to the player's discretion, as Emily is canonically bisexual. (When I started writing fic for it, I had fun creating fraternal twins of different sexes and leaving it equally ambiguous which of them was Emily's lover. I could get away with it because Wyman is no one's first name ever.)
Overall, I think you're more likely to see this in otome games, which are traditionally targeted toward female gamers. And since they're largely novels you occasionally interact with, this is... kind of unfortunate. (Although now that I think about it, you would love Amnesia. One of the potential love interests completely loses his mind and locks the protagonist in a cage for weeks. And then there's a secret fifth route with murder.)
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she has a canonical partner that we never see and is referenced but never gendered. The goal was to leave it up to the player's discretion, as Emily is canonically bisexual.
Oh, huh, I hadn't heard about this! That's a really interesting choice.
One of the potential love interests completely loses his mind and locks the protagonist in a cage for weeks.
Oh, man, I do love characters experiencing hideous isolation! (I also got really confused for a moment because I thought you were talking about Amnesia: The Dark Descent, which I am only vaguely aware of but I'm pretty sure isn't a dating game.)
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date mebe gay anyway. |Dno subject
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Arc and Kukuru in Arc the Lad. The Descendant of Erdrick and Princess Gwaelin in Dragon Quest 1. Cecil and Rosa in Final Fantasy IV.
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I asked my partner about this and the only example he could come up with off the top of his head was the (older) Tomb Raider games, but he said the male love interests in those games are Bond Girl style love interests -- they never last because they either die or turn out to be villains.
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I don't think the problem is assuming that the player is male. At least, not *just*. Like, in Disney movies we have female protagonists and zero romance. I think mandatory heterosexuality has been so overused that now everyone is trying to make sure they're not considered part of the problem.
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It's definitely possible I'm being overly cynical about the motive behind it! My first thought in response to your 'backlash against mandatory heterosexuality' suggestion was 'but it's rare even in older games', and then it occurred to me that older games a) had considerably fewer female protagonists and b) were even less likely than nowadays to introduce a male love interest for a male protagonist, so it's possible 'have more female protagonists' and 'cut down on giving female protagonists male love interests' were just socially conscious movements that happened to occur at the same time in the videogame industry.
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I don't think anyone brought up Bayonetta! (I know shipping her and Jeanne is very popular but I think given [events] of Bayo 3 and how flirtatious they are overall, I'd say Bayo/Luka are pretty much intended canon.)
Lollipop Chainsaw might sorta count, though Juliet and her boyfriend are already in a relationship at the beginning of the game. And I think they still are through the end (you know even though his head gets cut off.)
No one played this and even I'm having trouble remembering but I found The Centennial Case : A Shijima Story to have a really tragic-romantic main pair, though mayyybe that was like, shipping goggles I really liked them and it definitely isn't a major aspect of the game.
Err Immortality. Er. I don't want to say anything about it but it probably technically kinda does. I would not use the word romance but it's technically what you're asking for. Great game. lol.
And this definitely doesn't count because they fall into the "you play both characters" camp, but Vanillaware games tend to be some of the more romantic-minded games imo. Odin Sphere and 13 Sentinels in particular, considering they pretty much pair up every m/f main character.
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This is a toughie. The lack of female protagonists (to say nothing of the bigger lack of explicit queer male protagonists) really comes into play with this one. The fact most male LIs are from games where you can select from a list, that way obstensibly straight male players don't have to deal with it.
That being said, a few examples of games where a male love interest is presented as mandatory:
Trails in the Sky got mentioned by someone else and is a great example.
The Xenosaga trilogy's protagonist is the female engineer Shion Uzuki. Her past relationship with a male character, and her subordinate's crush on her, is a recurring element of the plot throughout, with those relationships being a major focus of the climax of the final game.
Bayonetta 3 very irritatingly falls into this category at the very end of the story.
Fatal Frame is very sapphic
and full of incest, and doesn't fit percectly, but the protagonist Rei from FF3's entire story is about coming to terms with the loss of her fiancee, who died when she was behind the wheel just prior to the game starting. Though he's not a physical presene, Rei mentions him constantly, and as the game spends a lot of time in their shared home, you really get a feel for how their relationship had been. Fatal Frame 1 sorta retroactively makes the protagonist's, er, brother the LI but the less we talk about that the better.Resident Evil has a few arguable options. RE3 has some shiptease between Jill and Carlos. While you play as Carlos a few times, the game is really from Jill's perspective. Code: Veronica has the even more arguable inclusion of Steve, who's playable protagonsit Claire's companion. But. Like. It also might just be a crush on his part.
That's all I can think up off the top of my head. Other male LIs are games where you have romance options, or you play as both characters frequnetly (Ada Wong is the star of her own side story, and technically Leon is her love interest during it, but Leon's also the protagonist of the main story sooo). It seems when the protagonist is female we're a lot more likely to get another woman as an option (which is in no way a bad thing in the slightest) and I can't think of a playable queer male protagonist who has a canon male love interest that isn't just heavily implied (here's looking at you, Ike from Fire Emblem.)
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Fatal Frame 1 sorta retroactively makes the protagonist's, er, brother the LI but the less we talk about that the better.
No, wait, talk about it! What??? I think what really mystifies me here is the 'retroactively'.
I can't think of a playable queer male protagonist who has a canon male love interest that isn't just heavily implied (here's looking at you, Ike from Fire Emblem.)
It's tough! I think the only game I've ever played with a canonically queer male protagonist (who's a concrete character rather than a customisable avatar) is Life Is Strange 2, and, although you can kiss another boy in that game, it's locked behind an unpopular story choice.
Some people think you can choose Sean's sexuality; I disagree! In the optional conversation you can have about his sexuality, all the options are compatible with bisexuality: 'I think I'm more into girls', 'I find some boys cute', 'I can't really think about dating right now' or the very clearly bullshitting 'uh, yeah, I've had a ton of girlfriends, I'm definitely super super straight'. And, regardless of what option you choose during that conversation, it's possible to kiss Finn later, so the sexuality conversation definitely isn't intended to be a point where the player chooses Sean's sexuality; you're just deciding how he chooses to express it.
There's also Tyler, one of the dual protagonists of Tell Me Why, although I haven't played that myself; I've just watched Ginger play it. In addition to being trans, he has a romance with another guy; I'm pretty sure the romance with Michael is optional, but it feels notable that he's the only romance option, so your choices are 'romance with male character or nobody' rather than 'romance with male character, female character or nobody'.
It also feels notable that both of the games I can think of with canonically queer male protagonists are by the same developer!
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Weelllll (and spoilers definitely follow, heads up) in Fatal Frame you play as Miku, a sixteen-ish year old high school girl. She and her elder (early 20s) brother, Mafuyu, can "see things other people can't see" (i.e: ghosts and spookums.) Their mother commit suicide due to being overwhelmed by her power when Miku was a child, leaving Mafuyu to raise his sister. Miku's very insular, and her world seems to revolve around her brother as her sole support system.
In the game's prologue, Mafuyu goes to the alledgely cursed Himuro Mansion where a famous author-- and Mafuyu's mentor-- recently went missing. Unfortunately, Mafuyu also goes missing, so the game proper has the player take Miku through the mansion, chasing after the specter of her brother. Their relationship, to me, read kind of odd, but they seemed to be brother/sister and that was it. Probably. The game ends with Mafuyu, who's still alive, choosing to willingly die to be with the Onryo of a shrine maiden whow as wronged in life, and who's suffering binds a Hellmouth from opening and a calamity from occuring. Miku is left completely alone, broken and traumitized from the event. Roll credits!
Miku returns in Fatal Frame 3, now around 18-19, and has moved in with a slightly older gal named Rei. Rei's deceased fiancee was friends with Mafuyu, so they took in Miku when she had no where else to go. This game involved Rei and Miku going to the "Manor of Sleep" in their dreams, a place where the bereaved are summoned when they no longer have the will to live. Miku's parts involve her chasing the spectre of her brother (again) in the dream manor to reunite with him. She's also super sapphic with Rei (we stan) and in the end, Rei saves them both and they resolve to find the will to live... together.
Except psych, because Fatal Frame 5 takes place years later and we learn that Mafuyu's spirit came to Miku in the dream manor to give her inspiration to live, and by inspiration to live I mean- and I really don't know how to put this delicately- some ghost dick. So Miku ends up pregnant (!) with her brother's (!!) ghost baby (!!!) which drains a bunch of her life force, so she gives birth and then dissapears to go get ghost married (!!!!) in a ceremony to her brother (!!!!!) who's sorta-technically promised to the suffering shrine maiden from the first game (I'm outta exclamation points).
So, yeah. Retroactive incest.
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If you ever get a chance to play the franchise give it a try haha