Avowed: Can You Romance Companions?

Still, Avowed is coming out at a time when romance in RPGs is a major selling point. Baldur’s Gate 3’s romance options made a big splash, so one might expect that any RPG trying to stay current would feel some pressure to include similar mechanics. That said, no former Obsidian RPG feels any less fulfilling just because it doesn’t include romanceable NPCs, so it would make sense why Avowed’s developers wouldn’t feel pressured to include the mechanic.

Avowed Does Not Allow Players To Romance Companions

Avowed’s Game Director Specified Why Romance Would Be Hard To Include

Players cannot romance their companions in Avowed. In an interview with Games Radar at EGX, Avowed’s Game Director Carrie Patel made it clear why romance was off the table for Avowed:

“It’s a ton of work”, Patel notes, on romance systems. “You want to make sure you do it right. And part of that is also you want to make sure that a player who opts not to romance but still wants to have a very deep relationship with those companions gets to have just as thorough and meaningful an experience on a friendship or ally path as [if] they went on a romance path. And so we felt that we could best tell our companions' stories and our players' relationships with them without the romance option”

Based on Patel’s comments, it seems clear that romance was something that was discussed as part of the development process, but ultimately not included due to the requirements for fleshing out these types of relationships. That said, Patel also made it clear that relationships with companions are important, even if they are strictly platonic.

In the same interview, Patel discussed the role that Avowed’s companions will play, saying they will help “tell the story of the Living Lands to the player.” Avowed’s NPCs embody different perspectives on the Living Lands and help the player get more of a feel for the game’s setting. They also each have their own rich internal lives and motivations that the player can delve into by developing a better relationship with them. Players should still invest time getting to know their party members in Avowed, even if it doesn’t lead to a romantic connection.

Avowed Isn't The First Obsidian RPG To Skip Romance

Many Obsidian RPGs Opt To Avoid Romance

Although some players might be surprised that an RPG wouldn’t include romanceable companions, this is pretty on-brand for an Obsidian game. While some Obsidian RPGs, like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2, do include romance, many others don’t. Similar reasoning to Patel’s has been used when developers on other Obsidian RPGs have been confronted about the game’s lack of romance.

In a 2018 interview with Polygon, The Outer Worlds’ Game Director Leonard Boyarsky said that the decision to avoid romance was made to “focus on role-playing.” According to Boyarsky, players will often make decisions simply with the intent of gaining favor with a certain companion. To Boyarsky and The Outer Worlds team, this took away from the authentic role-playing experience because players weren’t simply making the decisions they wanted to, but were letting decisions be influenced by who they wanted to romance.

Although the reasoning behind it is not as well documented, Obsidian’s Fallout: New Vegas also chose to skip having romanceable companions, and the closest it gets to romance are some casual encounters with other NPCs. The Pillars of Eternity franchise - which takes place in the same world as Avowed - included a few romance options in the second title, but not in the first. Based on what Patel and Boyarsky have said about their respective games, Obsidian seems more focused on creating rich environments for role-playing and, while romance doesn’t necessarily ruin that, it isn’t the main priority either.

Obsidian Is Smart For Not Rushing Romance Mechanics

Rushing Romance Mechanics Makes For Sloppy Storytelling

Looking at some relationships in other RPGs, it’s easy to see where Obsidian directors like Patel and Boyarsky are coming from when they discuss the downsides of including romance in a game. In other RPGs, like Mass Effect, when a companion is romanceable, the conclusion of their story is also the consummation of that romantic relationship. Often, this means not having a meaningful end to that character’s story if players choose to keep things platonic, and the storyline just sort of peters out.

An over-emphasis on romance can also sometimes flatten a companion’s storyline. If most interactions with a given character focus solely on that character’s relationship to the player, then there isn’t much room to develop the other aspects of who they are. Alternatively, a character could have a well-developed storyline, but a rushed romance feels tacked on as an obligation more than a natural progression of their relationship with the protagonist. Avowed’s development team was smart to recognize that romance can be difficult to do well and to avoid including it if there wasn’t time to get it right.

Source: Games Radar, Polygon