So after V has successfully swooned Judy, I finished of the River quest.

A little surprised not to see the option of Answering Joss' question with "I'm seeing someone now"

Was a bit jarring to have to break poor River's heart on the Tower.

Were you expecting the game to remember your prior actions and relationships and change dialogue accordingly? :P

When I walk into a shop, and I get a new dialogue option due to a incidental datashard or read email, then Hell yes.

I think putting romance options in, with out it effecting other romance stories was a bit of an oversight.

More so when they designed same sex relationships, not to have the option "Sorry you're looking at a Stereo Output/Dual Input situation"

Yeah, that would require an additional variable. Something like relationshipJudy=1 and if relationshipJudy=1 then speechOption.enable("Sorry, I am in a relationhip"). But that kind of programming is way beyond our current technology, right?

Not surprised tbh, relationships overall weren't handled all that well. Limited choices, disney level "love scenes" and once finished and you romanced whoever, you get ignored (although that actually does feel like real life)

So the problem is that although you can reject the second romanceable character, the rejection dialogue option is not worded the way you wanted?

<Insert generic response about how much more difficult and expensive game development is than it was 20 years ago>

+1 for diversity hires.

Its a matter of immersion

The team put huge efforts into creating emotional responses; writers, voice actors and animators all doing their best to make you believe that bunch of pixels on the screen are real, or at least real enough to make you feel something.

Romancing is such a significant part of the game it covers at least 3 (that I know of) long branching quest lines.

The also decided to make one of those exclusively lesbian, yet in the dialogues with River when talking of past partners I could only reply as exclusively heterosexual.


As scripting and writing go, these were easily avoidable. There very next thing that should have happened after deciding to make Judy a purely lesbian romance option should have been to ensure that same character choice mirrored in other connected quest lines.

Even excluding sexuality, having completed one romance quest line the option of "I'm in a relationship" should be unlocked in any other romantic quest.

This gave me an idea. Would be cool if you had an option in the character creation: monogamous/not monogamous.

If the option is set to monogamous, and if you are already in a relationship, "Sorry, I am in a relationship" would be your only option. If not monogamous, then you could choose between accept, reject and "Sorry, I am in a relationship".

"romancing" is literally just fanservice fluff that people started demanding more and more after games like Mass Effect that were one of the first to have actual sex cutscenes. That's why it's in every game now, not because it's a "significant part of the game".

If I role play, I will role play dagnabbit. I want that I need to cook food at home if I want to eat. And after eating I want to put the dishes away. If I don't, and run out of dishes, I don't have the prompt to cook. And when the food expires, it should lower my health instead of increasing it.

And I want to know how to use those three seashells.

Romancing its just a development of the art form and far from fan service. Its part of an more complex and engaging interactive story.

I like side quest that draw me into NPC's lives, some times they're more interesting than the main quest line.

Its a significant part of the game because CDPR spent a lot of time and effort making it so, hence the surprise they missed out something that should have been obvious

Absolutely

I agree wtih OP. This is another example of not enough attention / workmanship to a key part of the game. Either do romances properly or don't do romances - that is always an option. Many RPGs don't have romances at all. Romance is an easy way to engage player into the story - it is easier in my view than designing and implementing a really interesting and deep character otherwise.