What in game Romance do you love, but fully acknowledge is actually, legitimately, messed up?

I’m not taking about the companions people love to hate, or the ones so over the top, they are secretly good. I mean the ones that absent “we just saved the galaxy together” wouldn’t be able to withstand a mild breeze without getting knocked over.

For me it was the Corso romance. I originally played him on a "dark" smuggler who slept around all over the place, even once bringing him with me on Voss for that tryst option. Only in retrospect do I feel pity but at the time I was just angry that he didn't really do anything and he kept talking like we were exclusive and we're having kids and such. I would have liked to have broken it off at some point but since they don't give you that option in vanilla he was just locked in no matter what you did or said.

I guess some relationships can come back from one person cheating, but multiple times and so blatantly?

Now I'm playing with him on a new dark smuggler that isn't romancing him but I do kill women like crazy and he HATES that

For me it was the Corso romance. I originally played him on a "dark" smuggler who slept around all over the place, even once bringing him with me on Voss for that tryst option. Only in retrospect do I feel pity but at the time I was just angry that he didn't really do anything and he kept talking like we were exclusive and we're having kids and such. I would have liked to have broken it off at some point but since they don't give you that option in vanilla he was just locked in no matter what you did or said.

I guess some relationships can come back from one person cheating, but multiple times and so blatantly?

 

Now I'm playing with him on a new dark smuggler that isn't romancing him but I do kill women like crazy and he HATES that

It's sad because it's not even unrealistic, just like the worst kind of relationship where the guy is so infatuated with the girl he puts up with being treated like dirt.

Mako or Ashara or Vette because they're babies & it's weird.

When you first meet them:

* Mako is 19

* Ashara is 21 or 22, depending on your interpretation of the timespan of the chapters.

* Vette is 19

So no, not babies.

When you first meet them:

* Mako is 19

* Ashara is 21 or 22, depending on your interpretation of the timespan of the chapters.

* Vette is 19

 

So no, not babies.

Nadia is 22 according to her profile, but I understand what he means. They're not babies, but they come across as student/teacher relationships, which is a bit squicky.

Well except Vette, that's just a slave/master relationship, which has it's own set of potential problems.

I think the problem is finding a 'bad' relationship that you also love. There are plenty of relationships I find 'bad', but sure don't love.

Although taken at face-value the Quinn romance could be called bad (Boss sexually harrasses underling, then underling tries to kill boss ... but together they fight Baras! and it's all hearts and roses after that O_o), and I love the Quinnmance.

When you first meet them:

* Mako is 19

* Ashara is 21 or 22, depending on your interpretation of the timespan of the chapters.

* Vette is 19

 

So no, not babies.

For us oldies; Those are babies at that age.

But it’s the way they speak and behave as someone mentioned above.

The male consular one is weirdest, I felt like a father figure to her and then was hitting on me. No thank you.

For us oldies; Those are babies at that age.

"us oldies"?!? I'm 52.

... but my *characters* are not.

IRL, I wouldn't want to go do ... that(1) ... with someone that age (but Miss Spooky Eyes, well, that's a different story), but my characters are about the right sort of age to flirt / etc. with someone in the early 20s range.

Observation: the age-at-first-meet of many of the companions is ill-defined, but Wookieepedia often has their year-of-birth. The one I can think of, off the top of my head, where the age-at-first-meeting is well known is the Anarchist herself, Kaliyo Djannis, documented in her Codex entry for Agents on Hutta as being 29.

(1) No, I'm not going to spell it out. Use your imagination.

It's more like bad writing. Companions ignoring sideways. Like flirting Lana after getting married to Nadia. I don't mind, that companions simply dislike, but not really care, if you do such BEFORE relationship starts. I mean most man and woman don't settle with their first, and they don't expect that from others. Especially someone like the Smuggler who is known to his charming.

It is actually nuts that you can run a romance like Corso's with all the cheating but nowadays if you get even to 5 meter radius for possible love interest you get this pop up "This will end your romance with XXXXXX are you sure you want to continue?". Especially when you can do like really nasty stuff in the game all trough your storyline even in newer stuff, but on relationships we have to be honest and loyal? I would imagine at least some characters might want ot test the water here and there before deciding where to settle, if you know what i mean.

The Kaliyo romance. I don't think I need to say more.

Definitely! It takes a the right kind of man to put up with her. My agent was like her in many ways so they were good together. Plus Watcher 2 rejected him badly because that stalker was spying on him while he was getting giggy with Kaliyo

Corso is another one. Flirting with everyone, sleeping with Darmas, the Twilek on Balmorra, making out with Skaavak. Having his cousin work for me and lead the gang too. I think I even kept Torchy on one of my smugglers. lol -- yet Corso hung in there all the way. I kind of feel bad for him now. And when you do KOTFE, what Bowdar says about him was pretty funny too (something about him weeping on his shoulder, lol).

Although taken at face-value the Quinn romance could be called bad (Boss sexually harrasses underling, then underling tries to kill boss ... but together they fight Baras! and it's all hearts and roses after that O_o), and I love the Quinnmance.

Malavai was actually my pick lol.

There are a lot of… “problematic” components to the SW/Quinn relationship, on both sides.

You’ve got the Sith Warrior who at best is early 20s, at worst late teens (as best as I can tell going off in-game context) and Quinn is 37 when you first meet him. You’re looking at roughly a difference of two decades.

So you take all power imbalance that comes from a Powerful Sith repeatedly flirting with an underling who’s indicated they’d like to “keep things professional” but then you have to offset that by the fact that your character is essentially just a young hot head (and trained/brainwashed/encouraged to be that way by the Sith order).

Then (something a lot of people overlook imo) you have to consider that a 37 year old man isn’t exactly going to be naïve in this situation. While I can’t deny that one of the most powerful Force Users in the galaxy is going to be intimidating, I also can’t ignore that Quinn is clearly portrayed as a very cunning officer, and would clearly have his own reasons for feeding into the relationship.

That doesn’t even get into the betrayal itself. Although even that gets murky because, honestly, that’s just kinda what happens in the Sith Empire.

So you end up with this crazy, messed up relationship, that while all kinds of wrong, still works because in Space Fantasy anything goes. At the end of the day I love the Quinn romance because while I’m not blind to it’s messed up nature, I also wonder what kind of relationship can even survive the climate of the Empire? Seems like this might be best case scenario when you’re working for Space Hitler.

I would imagine at least some characters might want ot test the water here and there before deciding where to settle, if you know what i mean.

You mean it's the motion of the ocean and not the size of the boat right?

On topic: Nadia. oof, that girl's got some daddy issues.

Definitely! It takes a the right kind of man to put up with her. My agent was like her in many ways so they were good together. Plus Watcher 2 rejected him badly because that stalker was spying on him while he was getting giggy with Kaliyo

It's one of my favorite romances because she gives you so many opportunities to end it. She won me over when she said "I love you" followed by "and if you tell anyone I said that, I'll bite your tongue off." No problem girlfriend, that's not the body part I was worried about anyway!

She's one of the few vanilla romances in the game I'd like to see a bisexual option for.

Doc comes to mind especially at the beginning with his flirtatious comments but eventually you get to see how sweet he really is and then when he comes back in Ossus it is a sweet reunion.

His whole trying to rush you before you could get cold feet was endearing. Even if he's a character trope a lot of people aren't crazy about, his trope is executed to perfection imo.

I think for me it was Cedrax, I know there are more obvious ones, but Cedrax irked me quite a bit. He's quite like Doc in his flirtatiousness and womanizing, so when I started out with my first JC, I thought he was like Doc, who was pretty cool in my books...and then he treated my girl like trash, used and dumped and for what, a bambi-voiced, ego stroking, seemingly idiotic twit of a hologram (yes I'm salty about it.) Needless to say, I hate Holiday and everything about her and wished she'd been unplugged. Forever.

So yeah, Cedrax was messed up...who leaves a flesh and blood person for pixels? <.<

I think for me it was Cedrax, I know there are more obvious ones, but Cedrax irked me quite a bit. He's quite like Doc in his flirtatiousness and womanizing, so when I started out with my first JC, I thought he was like Doc, who was pretty cool in my books...and then he treated my girl like trash, used and dumped and for what, a bambi-voiced, ego stroking, seemingly idiotic twit of a hologram (yes I'm salty about it.) Needless to say, I hate Holiday and everything about her and wished she'd been unplugged. Forever.

 

So yeah, Cedrax was messed up...who leaves a flesh and blood person for pixels? <.<

I kinda felt the same, difference was that he started out as slightly better than Doc in his flirting ways, so i decided to give it a try with one of my femele JC, to be dumped in the end because the stupid holo was electrifying his bed while he was sleeping

I felt like throwing them both out the airlock, but that was not possible. And he even had the nerves of being jealous when Iresso started flirting with my JC after HE dumped her

I think for me it was Cedrax, I know there are more obvious ones, but Cedrax irked me quite a bit. He's quite like Doc in his flirtatiousness and womanizing, so when I started out with my first JC, I thought he was like Doc, who was pretty cool in my books...and then he treated my girl like trash, used and dumped and for what, a bambi-voiced, ego stroking, seemingly idiotic twit of a hologram (yes I'm salty about it.) Needless to say, I hate Holiday and everything about her and wished she'd been unplugged. Forever.

 

So yeah, Cedrax was messed up...who leaves a flesh and blood person for pixels? <.<

I have to agree about Cedrax, just because it ends up being "bad romance" even if all you been doing has been telling him off. I mean he "breaks up" with you even if you never even flirted with him, game just assumes you did the deeds with him no matter what your character actually did or choose. Disgusting.

I have to agree about Cedrax, just because it ends up being "bad romance" even if all you been doing has been telling him off. I mean he "breaks up" with you even if you never even flirted with him, game just assumes you did the deeds with him no matter what your character actually did or choose. Disgusting.

I somehow managed to pick the right options to avoid this one entirely, or my JC's story mercifully didn't have this bug (although it was bugged in several other ways). When he got on the ship and started calling my JC "my Jedi" I picked the option that said something like "I am not your Jedi and I never will be. Don't forget that." Cedrax apologized, he never hit on her again, and there was never the suggestion that they'd slept together. IIRC his conversations didn't even offer flirts after that and my JC was never offered an option to sleep with him at all.

The Kaliyo romance. I don't think I need to say more.

I've been forming a more nuanced view of the Kaliyo romance. What follows is long and a bit spoilerish, so it's tagged.

Make of that what you will, but ultimately, that interpretation makes the Agent/Kaliyo far less messed-up than, say, SW/DSJ.

I kinda felt the same, difference was that he started out as slightly better than Doc in his flirting ways, so i decided to give it a try with one of my femele JC, to be dumped in the end because the stupid holo was electrifying his bed while he was sleeping

I felt like throwing them both out the airlock, but that was not possible. And he even had the nerves of being jealous when Iresso started flirting with my JC after HE dumped her

I wish I could've evicted them both from the ship too. Believe me, I had no interest in housing and helping either one after that little episode.

I have to agree about Cedrax, just because it ends up being "bad romance" even if all you been doing has been telling him off. I mean he "breaks up" with you even if you never even flirted with him, game just assumes you did the deeds with him no matter what your character actually did or choose. Disgusting.

Urgh, it sounds awful even if you don't partake of the one nighter. Silly me, when I was starting out, I thought that was the start of things with him. Never again. He can take his holo-bambi and buzz off.

I've been forming a more nuanced view of the Kaliyo romance. What follows is long and a bit spoilerish, so it's tagged.

 

We all know that "the truth" and "Kaliyo Djannis" are in no way best buddies. Translation: she's a pathological liar.

 

She will lie to people (and occasionally *with* people, as it were(1)) to get what she wants(2), but she's also lying to herself. What "breaks" somewhere around the Wheezer incident is that she realises that what she wants, really, is someone like the Agent, who knows what Kaliyo is like, and is willing to accept her as what she is.

 

Ultimately, she wants a lover with whom she can be herself, one for whom she is Kaliyo Djannis rather than some role that the real Kaliyo is playing, because this state of always playing a role is wearing on her.

 

(1) Once again, I'm not going to spell it out for you. Think about what it means to "lie with someone"... Hint: it does not mean "stand next to that person and cooperate in speaking falsehoods."

 

(2) That one girl, the Senator's daughter, that you meet in that one companion mission with Kaliyo, is frequently cited as a reason why we should think KD is bisexual, and of course that's nonsense. I *know* that the girl says "You seduced me into running away from Coruscant", but that's a *figurative* use of "seduce" - if she had said "enticed" instead, nobody would ever cite it as a reason for thinking that KD is bisexual.

 

Make of that what you will, but ultimately, that interpretation makes the Agent/Kaliyo far less messed-up than, say, SW/DSJ.

I think you can see that a completely different, more authentic, relationship was formed with the agent based on her resentment at losing it. Her reunion paints a pretty clear picture of how the writers imagined the relationship.

As far as being bisexual, I always assumed she was. It wasn’t just the specific example you mentioned, but several passing phrases and her relationship with you if you’re female isn’t really sisterly. Knowing how carefully BioWare treaded that line at launch I felt that was the intent we were meant to pick up.