February 14. Valentine’s Day. Valentine’s Day. On this day, couples in love go to the movies, cafes, restaurants, clubs, guys give their girls flowers, gifts and other ways to prove their love. And everyone else makes good money from this. Love is glorified (especially on this day) wherever it can be done: on TV, in movies, series, books. And, of course, computer and video games. And often it is the love story of the game that touches you much more than a movie or a book. After all, we are in the place of the main character, and therefore we ourselves experience everything that happens to the main character.
And it would be unfair to neglect the most outstanding love lines in games on the eve of Valentine’s Day. Therefore, I present to your strict judgment a small list of those interactive love stories that personally hooked me the most. I will deliberately not take those games in which there is no love LINE, and love is presented as the reason for all the hero’s misadventures or as one line in the dialogue (a striking example is Dante’s Inferno, where the hero goes down to Hell for his beloved in order to save her, but there is no trace of any relationship here).

Final Fantasy VIII

Creations of the permanent creator of the great series Final Fantasy Hironobu Sakaguchi has always stood out for its well-crafted and very interesting story. Each part had a main theme and many secondary branches and parallel storylines. In Final Fantasy 8, such a parallel storyline was the love story between the two main characters: Squall Leonhart and Rinoa Hartilly, who first meet at the graduation party at the Balamb Garden Academy, in which Squall was awarded a combat rank SeeD. Despite the fact that Squall is gloomy, always serious and reserved, and Rinoa is open, cheerful and cheerful, that’s why they didn’t immediately like each other and our common language, although they danced together. The development of their relationship takes up a good half of the game. The next meeting of two suffering hearts takes place in the Timber Forest, where it turns out that Rinoa is not just a girl from the prom, but the head of a local rebel organization that needs to help the graduates on their first mission.

At the end of the task, everything https://casino-admiral.co.uk/ does not go according to plan, new details of the reasons for the complicated political situation are revealed and the sorceress Edea wounds Rinoa with a huge ice spear, which is very colorfully and dramatically shown in a CGI video in which the wounded Squall falls from the sorceress’s pedestal, and Rinoa, with sad eyes and a cry, tries to keep him from falling.
All the adventures of our heroes together are accompanied by their dialogues, in which Squall mainly tries to be romantic, but restrains himself (as if he is constantly depressed), and Rinoa constantly tries to stir him up, cheer him up, which looks very cute. After the heroes are divided into 2 squads, dialogues give way to monologues with the mental torment of a separated couple. Squall gloomily reflects on the world situation and periodically remembers Rinoa with regret. The girl herself suffers without him, sometimes cries and pronounces heartbreaking monologues, asking for Squall’s help (even though a minute ago she killed a huge monster with her own hands). Squall soon notices an even greater affection for Rinoa. After she falls into a coma, there is no one left to encourage Squall and, oh, like a real hero, he rushes into the past in order to save his beloved, kidnaps her from captivity, does many things, the purpose of which is to return Rinoa to his arms.

The climax of the line occurs when Squall, stuck out of time, meets Rinoa, who returns him to the present, which is accompanied by a magnificent video and the main song of the game – “Eyes on me”.

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The love story of the eighth “final” would not have been so magnificent and memorable if not for 2 details: the musical accompaniment of Nobuo Uematsu, who paid great attention to the emotional content of the compositions, based on the emotional and artistic portraits of the characters, and very beautiful CGI videos, which at that time were the highest quality and most beautiful in games and the best in the series. There are other love lines between characters in the series, but I chose this one – the best and others (for example from parts 9, 7 or 10) I will not indicate in this article.

Mass Effect

Throughout all 3 parts of the Captain Shepard saga, the player can have a romance with 5 girls (and two guys) to choose from. But, in my humble opinion, the brave captain’s most extensive and developed love story is with the blue-skinned Liara T’soni. It is present in all three parts and therefore the novel can be continued from the very beginning of the first part and finished at the end of the 3rd.
For the first time, Shepard, having just received the legendary Normandy, meets a young (only 100-plus years old) asari when he flies to the ruins of a Prothean station for a scientist who, as he knows, has evidence of the guilt of Saren, or rather his accomplice, Matriarch Benezia. This scientist turns out to be Liara, Benezia’s daughter. After returning to the ship, during the “debriefing” in the conference room, Lyra for the first time connects her mind with Shepard’s mind to transmit and decipher the contents of the Prothean beacon, which managed to discharge into Shepard’s head. After this point, you can develop a relationship with the timid but sweet asari. If you go to talk to her after each task, she will tell you something new during each conversation, and will be embarrassed about the mistakes she makes in communication, since she is more of an introvert and was alone at excavations for a long time and did not communicate with anyone. But, despite this, she tries to understand the captain and develops sympathy for him, which she talks about in one of the conversations. The relationship between a young and inexperienced scientist and a novice captain and a newly-made hero (in the first part) ends in the bed of the captain’s cabin on the Normandy.

In the second part, after the death of the captain, Liara, using her scientific mind and analytical abilities, becomes a respected person in the information world of one of the asari planets. The comic "Atonement" describes how Liara participated in the recovery of Shepard’s body after the destruction of the Normandy SR-1 by collectors and the transfer of his remains to Cerberus for restoration. After a miraculous resurrection and the captain being given a new ship, the Normandy SR-2, he is given the task of finding out who the collectors are, where they come from and where they go after they take a colony of people on one of the border worlds. On one of the planets (the central hub in Mass Effect 2) Shepard meets Liara (if you had an affair with her in the first part, then in the captain’s cabin there will be an electronic frame with her photo). After helping on the planet, which Liara asks for, you can take her back to the team of the new Normandy. Again, after each mission we talk with her and develop relationships, take her with us on missions (fortunately, she is an excellent biotic fighter). In one of the downloadable add-ons, Liara becomes, with the help of the captain, the same Shadow Broker for whom we worked in the first part of the saga. After all the sentimental conversations at the end before the suicide mission, we find ourselves back in bed with our blue-skinned beauty.
Part 3 of the love story spends the least amount of time. It all consists of several conversations in film style (by the 3rd part, the directors of the series had learned to stage cutscenes no worse than Hollywood) and a scene before the main attack on the citadel, in which Liara connects their minds and thanks Shepard for everything. For the last time.