If you had to pick a good love story, you might think of something classic, like Jane Austen's Emma or Casablanca. Or maybe tragic, like Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin or Romeo and Juliet. Or possibly cozy, like Heated Rivalry or Netflix's Nobody Wants This. What probably doesn't come to mind is a video game love story, and there's a good reason for that. Despite the appearance of variety, video game romances only come in one type. And it hardly even counts as a romance.

Games are still young as a storytelling medium, so the lack of memorable love stories compared film or literature is hardly surprising. What is surprising is just how little romance has changed in over three decades. In 1994, Konami's Tokimeki Memorial made popular the idea of dating in video games. It was hardly what you might call romantic, with its stat-based progress and checklist approach to relationships. But it set a precedent for how to Do Romance in games, and later titles, like Harvest Moon, built on that formula. By 2000, the likes of Baldur's Gate 2 added a stronger element of personality, with more complex characters who played important roles in bigger stories, but not necessarily in each other's lives. Relationships consisted of saying the right thing at the right time and then, like magic, love occurs. 26 years later, game romances are still written like they were in 2000, with obvious exceptions like (usually) not being as sexist anymore and occasionally being decent enough to show more than one type of love.