Character Relationships in Fangames: How to go about it?

[tguy4001]

So, I'm at the part of my fan game development process where I have most of the game outlined in my mind at the very least. I have the beginning, the end, and a bit of the middle in there, most of them just key turning points in the story. However, while writing up the script, I'm thinking in the future and wondering how to write character relationships.

Since I'm planning on having a protagonist that's just as much of their own character as the rest of the cast, I have to really make sure I get this right since this can arguably make or break the game before the plot even kicks in at full force, and even after the plot has started up. I'm looking to develop both platonic and romantic relationships in regards to the protagonist + other characters. On the platonic side, I imagine that to be the easier part, but the problems I have with that side right now aren't an issue for me. However, from what I can tell so far, writing up the romantic side of the protagonist's relationships is the harder part by far.

Right now, I see 3 potential paths I can take here:
1. Set up a single person as the love interest. With only 1 love interest, I can spend time developing said relationship all throughout the entire game if I wanted, and it might come out better for it.
2. Set up multiple love interests. I'll admit here that this is more of a problem of having inclusion than anything else. For example, maybe a player just doesn't like the love interest planned, likes another character more and feel like they'd be a better pick as the love interest, or they're in the LGBT+ community and want to connect with the protagonist more. For whatever reasoning, the idea of multiple love interests and the idea of "choosing" between them does have merit. However, just thinking on it now, it does have the potential to bloat the game a bit, depending on how far I take it, but I think I could still make it work either way.
3. Just don't have a love interest at all. To be completely honest, the reason I'm even brainstorming through this whole thing is because of a point in the story that requires another character that the character has a deep connection that isn't their family, just to make it have more of an impact on the players, but if I honestly can't think of a way to make the romance writing good, then I just won't do it and go for a best friend connection instead, although that may dampen the theoretical impact a bit.

And that's it, really. I honestly couldn't think of how to go about this other than the first 2 paths mentioned above, and even then I'm having a hard time picking between the two, so I thought I'd turn to the people here and see if I can get some pointers on how to go about this.

 

[Zygoat]

If you went with only one love interest, but it was the same character regardless of if you chose the male or female character, you could potentially solve the problem of LGBT representation because if the character is male and you chose male, there's a gay relationship and if the character is female and you chose female it's a lesbian relationship. As far as liking a character goes, there will always be people who like or dislike any given character, and there's not much you can do about that.

Sun and Moon had hints that Lillie was potentially romantically interested in the player character, regardless of gender, so you could do something like that.

 

[Aki]

If you went with only one love interest, but it was the same character regardless of if you chose the male or female character, you could potentially solve the problem of LGBT representation because if the character is male and you chose male, there's a gay relationship and if the character is female and you chose female it's a lesbian relationship. As far as liking a character goes, there will always be people who like or dislike any given character, and there's not much you can do about that.

It counts as a representation technicality, but from a player's experience this isn't really how attraction works? If the romantic interest is a male character and I'm not attracted to men, it's not gonna be fixed somehow by me playing as a man or a woman.

If the entire romance aspect is only for a single story moment I'd vote to drop it; romance subplots aren't fun when they're just tacked on. If you want to write with romance as a major theme though, I think that'd be really cool! In that case I'd say focus on a wirting a single character. Having multiples and making them all believable would probably involve an entire relationship system, which should be designed as part of the game, not added on top.

 

[Keemonto]

If you do want to include multiple romance options, one solution would be to do a friend group, develop all of them and their connections with one another, and then let the player pair off with one if they so choose. The characters are all close that way, and you develop them all together, so whether the player picks or doesn't pick a character to pair off with doesn't remove that character from the story or reduce that character's impact, but -does- potentially get you that heavier impact from a romantic relationship, while baseline guaranteeing some impact just from the friendship end of things.

I'd say a key to doing that successfully is to pay attention to the motivations of the other characters apart from the player character. Give them drives, and have them pursue goals separate from what the player character's doing. That goes a long ways toward making them feel more realistic and fleshed-out, and will help them feel different from one another. It also gives you opportunities to give the player more intimate, one-on-one interactions with them away from the group.