potentially causing violence here but 🔥 video game romances
People who only care about romances in games can be annoying, but they will never be as annoying as people who have a superiority complex over being 'above' enjoying romance and shipping. People like to treat video game romances as a frivolous thing that's 'ruining' RPGs (mostly when talking about romances women and gay people enjoy, because lbr nobody is saying this about The Witcher), when imo most of the time, when romance is done badly enough to be detrimental to a game's writing, there were already WAY bigger issues at play. Veilguard companions being designed to be romancable and coming out boring and one-note as a result is more of an issue with the game's heavy focus on mass-marketability and wide appeal than it is with Romance as a concept.
It specifically annoys me when people say Obsidian games avoid romance specifically because they're deep and meaningful and smart, and not because Josh Sawyer et al just don't like writing romance and (as seen in Deadfire) are bad at it. And THAT, writers feeling forced to write romance to be marketable even though they know they can't deliver something good, is a real issue, but again that's more about how games are marketed and all games are expected to have currently popular features than it is about romance.
