Mass Effect 4 Should Take Notes from Baldur’s Gate 3’s…

Summary

Romance in individual Mass Effect games feels disconnected and less impactful, with love scenes at the end essentially as a reward for players, while Baldur's Gate 3 offers ongoing and dynamic relationships with higher stakes.
Mass Effect should borrow design principles from Baldur's Gate 3 to improve romance options, creating more engaging and emotionally resonant stories.
Baldur's Gate 3's romance system is more in-depth, thoughtful, and impactful, offering a more enjoyable role-playing experience, and Mass Effect 4 could benefit from learning from it.

Modern, mature RPGs marketing to adult audiences will frequently feature romance subplots. It could be argued that this trend was spearheaded and popularized by BioWare with games like Dragon Age, Mass Effect, and the first two Baldur's Gate games, and it's a trend that will no doubt continue with Mass Effect 4. Although the smash-hit Baldur's Gate 3 was not developed by BioWare, the developer should borrow some of its design principles when crafting romance options in Mass Effect 4.

With Mass Effect 4 potentially bringing back various elements from previous games in the series, it's likely that romance systems will make a return as well. Since its first entry in 2007, romance has featured as optional side content in space-faring adventures, providing players with some more low-stakes, personal narrative content to contrast the existential threat of the Reaper and Collector invasions. Mass Effect 4 should continue to improve romance content, and Baldur's Gate 3 can provide some good notes.

Romance in Baldur's Gate 3 is More Dynamic and Ongoing Than in Mass Effect

Romance in the Mass Effect games, while often well-written, is presented more like a reward for players at the end of the game. If a player chose the correct dialog options (which usually boils down to simply agreeing with anything that the love interest says), then they get some flirtatious responses, and eventually "earn" a love scene just before the final mission. Outside these specific, rare conversations and climactic scenes, not much is different about the relationship between Shepard and the love interest character.

This can make the romance plots feel disconnected from the rest of the game, which in turn makes them feel less real and impactful. While these isolated scenes can be some of Mass Effect's most memorable moments, their isolation from the rest of the experience can make them feel cheap and inconsequential. Essentially, the romances boil down to expressing interest and then waiting for a love scene at the end of the game. Very little, if anything, changes when it comes to how the object of Shepard's love interacts with them, and there isn't much that can go wrong once the player gets locked into a romance plot with one character.

Contrast this with Baldur's Gate 3, which lets players initiate romantic relationships with NPCs almost immediately. The relationships start as casual flings, or the beginnings of courtship as Shadowheart describes it, before gradually developing into more serious connections. Mass Effect games have several romance subplots but none of them are as ongoing as the ones in Baldur's Gate 3. This extra content helps make these romances more engaging and complex, leading to more varied, emotionally resonant stories.

On top of this, Baldur's Gate 3 has higher stakes with its romances. There's not much that the player can do in Mass Effect to mess up romantic prospects aside from explicit means, but there is plenty that can go wrong with relationships in Baldur's Gate 3; the player has an approval rating with each NPC that will increase or decrease in accordance with the choices that players make. If a player makes enough choices that transgress a romance option's goals or ethics, they will fall out of favor with the character.

Although Mass Effect is a choice-based game, it doesn't have nearly as many choices that can impact character relationships in this way. If Mass Effect took a page out of Baldur's Gate 3's book in this regard, it could lead to a more in-depth, thoughtful role-playing experience. The longevity and intricacy of Baldur's Gate 3's romance system make it more enjoyable to engage with, more believable, and deeper in terms of both narrative and gameplay, and Mass Effect 4 could stand to take a few lessons from it.