Romance between game characters, can it be done?

[DGMacphee]

Scid:
Sacrifice -- good point.

Narangas:
Guilty as charged -- I wouldn't have humanity any other way.

The flaws are like the metphorical sprinkles on the donut.

And yes, I felt a sense of lost when playing Sakura too.

I don't know if you've gotten there yet, but try the ending where you end up with Ruri (the Rei Ayanami-look-a-like) -- that's the most touching ending.

As for calling it a graphical "choose your own adventures", I say if it works and you enjoy it or learn something out of it, then who's to degrade it for you?

[Soft, Gooey, Delicious.]

It's a difficult view to explain -- you are probably wondering what the hell I'm babbling about.

No, I get where you're coming from. Emotion is central to just about all artwork. I'm not saying don't love things though. I'm saying, don't fall in love with characters and don't try to make others do the same. The whole idea of a character is that it's a construct. It's designed as a representation of some aspects of a person. An actual person has so much depth, i fail to see how you can confuse the two.

[Las Naranjas]

DG- That was the first one I got, even before you spoke of it.
But there's a similar sense of loss when you don't chase her, even though you win.

But what absolutely fascinates me about adventures is the fact that most of the divergent storylines are far from what you'd call profound literature. But there's no denying that they have an emotional impact that I haven't found in most genres.
Interactivity increases the impact so much I've been writing thousands of words trying to get an adequet impression of that in my major work for 4 unit english.

Similarily, many of the endings in Bladerunner had a far greater impact on methan the film, even though the film was infinitely better written, and the themes were explored much more skillfully.

Fucking hell, melodrama can rip your heart out in an Adventure.

--edit--
Even when there's no choice I should add. Even if it's the only way to continue the game, you doing it (as such) increases the impact.

[Cerulean]

I think you're drawing a line too sharp when you take it so literally. No, the things we feel for fictional characters are not on the same level as the things we feel for real people, but they're still valid feelings and serve their own purpose. When in some special way I fall in love with a character in a story, I'm not "wasting" my emotions on something that isn't real; it's more like practice, building up the muscles of caring so that they are usable when I need them.

And, as you have noted, there is a lot of false love in the real world. To be honest, there are a lot of people in the real world who are too shallow to be real people. So when a character, whose thoughts and motives are truly an open book, becomes deep enough to care about (and as creators know, they can take on a life and reality of their own sometimes), it's just helping people learn how to love someone for who they really are, to graduate from "What about that one? Her body looks pretty enough to serve the purpose" to "I would like to know someone with a mind and personality like ___'s."

[DGMacphee]

Rabbit:
Like I said, that's more obession than love.

It's very similar to stalking someone because you "love" her or him.

And also think a lot of fictional characters have depth.

In every character on the page, we see overselves -- that is what gives them depth.


Narangas:
Ditto on Blade Runner.