I Also Complain About Female-Led Films Disproportionately Being Romantic. I'm Never Happy.

[rionaleonhart]

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.

Comments

[pauraque]

I want to say Laura Bow has a male love interest, but it's been SO long since I played those games that I don't remember the details.

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.

[ryulynn]

The only game that fits your criteria that I've played that comes to mind in Valkyrie Profile 2. Otherwise I feel like I too get canon m/f with a female POV more in games where you get to play both sides.

[netgirl_y2k]

After wracking my brain, and my my game library, the only one I could come up with was if you're playing as Kassandra in Assassin's Creed: Odyessy then there's a male love interest in one of the DLCs, but it's only in that DLC and there was a pretty big backlash to it.

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.

[(Anonymous)]

Let's see...

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

[lassarina]

Reading this made me think of the brouhaha over DA2 when Anders will initiate flirting with the player character, and how incredibly fucking butthurt gamer dudes were, especially because DA2 is "everyone is a bisexual mess." How dare a man flirt with them! Though of course that is a choose-your-own-romance game.

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.

[apiphile]

I suspect avoiding the inevitability of a female character HAVING to romance a man might be related to "it has bad vibes and people don't recognise that the 'enforced' element of a romance is not awesome regardless of the gender of the people involved because we're loudest about the m-forced-on-f element".

[necrophilia]

Rosella from King's Quest leads two games in the series and has a male love interest in Edgar.

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.)

[zarla]

Legend of Kyrandia 2 has Marco although I never bought that relationship lol. But then again I probably just wanted Zanthia to date me be gay anyway. |D

[samuraiter]

*thinks*

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.

[chacusha]

To be honest, I'm having trouble of thinking of any games I've played that had a female protagonist at all, where it wasn't also the case that you can choose the gender of your protagonist (i.e. the player has a male "out").

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.

[halfcactus]

I don't remember the get-together but in Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure the main character is definitely in love with the prince. It's a very fluffy fairy tale-ish game... I want to replay it now haha

[artabria]

Mmmm... Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia? Maybe? It has dual protagonists, one male and one female, and they end up together.

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.

[ichthyocentaurs]

I was going through my reading page after not much time online and this was fun to think about, so excuse it for being a bit late haha. At first I was like "there's plenty of games like this" but I play a lot of otome games so that's pretty weighted... and I was surprised that there really are not many I could think of. If there's a female protag, she's so often romanceless, interested in a woman, or the male love interest is also playable. But I wracked my brain!

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.

[thenicochan]

(hi, it's me, Mr. Late To The Party)

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.)