Gamasutra
By Katherine Cross
The “romance options” are one of the most talked-about aspects of modern RPGs, the anodyne name betraying the fundamentally lifeless simulation of sexual relationships afforded to us by most games. But it’s still tremendous fun, finding the right partner for all your grand adventures. “Partner” in the singular, of course; one of the great conflicts imposed by nearly every RPG is the choice of romantic partner. Which “option” do you choose? To whom will your character be committed, ostensibly for life?
It gets tedious after a while, especially in games like Mass Effect where all romance options are not created equal. Falling in love with Specialist Traynor or Kelley Chambers is quite fun and fascinating, but in spite of being mutually exclusive with all other romance options, they lack the sheer depth of Shepard and Liara’s trilogy-spanning love affair. More than once me and my queer gaming friends have said “why do we have to choose?”
Then along comes Fallout 4 with a ray of radioactive sunshine.
In its unpretentious way, Bethesda has set a new industry standard for dealing with one of the most unexplored dimensions of relationships in video games: polyamory. Simply put, Fallout 4’s romance options are not mutually exclusive. You can flirt with, sleep with, and develop relationships with multiple characters concurrently, with both companions and regular NPCs.
No fuss is made about this; neither preachy treacle nor artificial conflict impede the simple presentation of a world where your character can be unproblematically poly.
Make no mistake: this is a watershed moment in mainstream gaming, and it is very much worth celebrating. Just as we are finally moving away from portraying heterosexual relationships as the default norm in story-based games, so too can we move away from the staid portrayal of monogamy as the only option. But this is also a very preliminary first step, and if developers want to really explore polyamory, there are plenty of interesting routes they can take that will generate realistic conflict and even interesting new game mechanics.
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When I told my partner and her other girlfriend about this, I described the situation as one where there was “no drama” for carrying on multiple relationships, to which one quipped, “Oh, so it’s definitely a fantasy then.” What her wry joke was hinting at, of course, is that in the real world polyamory is rarely free of theatrics and emotional anguish. Whole websites and books exist to teach people how to conduct themselves in relationships with multiple partners. Communication, the desiderata of any relationship, becomes an absolute lifeline here; clarity, openness, and a willingness to be constantly vulnerable are all necessary to be happily polyamorous, contrary to those who think it’s inherently easier than monogamous relationships due to the supposed lack of jealousy (that doesn’t quite go away either). …