Everlove: But I Wanted to Shag Them All! 2

This month is Romance Month! All of our arti­cles in April deal with romance or rela­tion­ships (or both!) in games. We are still accept­ing sub­mis­sions for guest arti­cles for a few days yet, so feel free to send drafts and/or pitch­es to Bill Coberly at editor@ontologicalgeek.com!

In the­o­ry, I am the per­fect can­di­date for Everlove: Rose. I have always enjoyed roman­tic movies and trashy (what my cousin calls “granny-porn”) nov­els; I can’t deny that I was tit­il­lat­ed by the prospect of a romance game, par­tic­u­lar­ly because I don’t real­ly have the patience for the long term RPGs of the world that pro­vide roman­tic arcs. I had seen my hus­band play through Mass Effect and Dragon Age, and I couldn’t help but find the love options, dia­logue, and encoun­ters shal­low at best. Perhaps, I thought, a game could dive more deeply into these areas and the result could be, if not a high artis­tic expe­ri­ence, at least more car­nal­ly sat­is­fy­ing.

If that desire is pos­si­ble to ful­fill, Everlove is not the game to do it. While there are many cri­tiques one could make of this game, I will cen­ter around one that I think is pret­ty impor­tant: the devel­op­ers for­got what would make it fun.

Never has the Mary Sue trope been so per­fect­ly encap­su­lat­ed in a game, but I am not sure that the devel­op­ers can be blamed on this score. Almost all romance media aimed at women has a gener­ic, slight­ly will­ful hero­ine you are expect­ed to replace with your­self. Half the fun is this sus­pen­sion of dis­be­lief, and the way that men throw them­selves at you like wild ani­mals in a Cabela’s hunt­ing game.  (Is it real­ly hunt­ing if they are so will­ing to be caught?) Clearly, this is part of the fan­ta­sy ele­ment that runs through all such media aimed at women—beautiful men dying to com­mit to you.

The story is bland. Modern-day Rose is see­ing a life-regression ther­a­pist who wants to help her under­stand some dreams she has been hav­ing about a beast. Of course, the only way help Rose is to go back in time to one par­tic­u­lar life and try to get laid by four equal­ly gor­geous men. I warned you.  Now, don’t let me fool you, it is a tried and true method to set sala­cious sex in the past. Fine. I get it—corsets and knights and jousts seem to be the only way we can sus­pend dis­be­lief enough to believe in all-consuming love. But why limit your­self to one time peri­od, par­tic­u­lar­ly when you have gone to the trou­ble of intro­duc­ing past-life regres­sion ther­a­py? Instead of some strange and ves­ti­gial mumbo jumbo about a beast (a story as bor­ing as it was unfleshed out), I couldn’t help but won­der why we didn’t fol­low Rose and these men through sev­er­al lives of con­flict­ing loves. The story should have been hon­est about being a tur­bu­lent romance, and romance should have been more cen­tral­ly the cat­a­lyst of the regres­sion ther­a­py. It would have been great to see the love inter­ests evolve over mul­ti­ple lives, to watch as the king’s main heal­er in the medieval era changes to a medic in the first World War, to a hot­shot plas­tic sur­geon in New York. Such a pro­gres­sion (or one like it with more inter­est­ing specifics), would have made the time trav­el (which is usu­al­ly a nar­ra­tive crutch) more for­giv­able because it would have been fun.

The weak­ness of the con­ceit might be for­giv­able if the moment-to-moment game­play was enjoy­able, but the Silicon Sisters made a num­ber of key mis­takes. First, and per­haps most unfor­giv­ably, it forced me to focus on one man very early on in the game, and yet still makes me go through the exact same inter­ac­tions later on, even if I picked some­one else! Such a flat choice so early on, cou­pled with the exact same encoun­ters with the romance paths shaved off, proves that the devel­op­ers don’t know what makes tele­vi­sion shows like The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, and even America’s Next Top Model and Chopped so enjoy­able. The point isn’t to clear the road quick­ly, the point is to enjoy and to draw out the selec­tion process. No one would watch the The Bachelorette pick her love after four episodes and then have her first year of mar­riage for the next 18.

With that in mind, let’s meet the love inter­ests of Everlove:

1. Prince Warrick is a cute, tow-headed lad who loves to make bold pro­nounce­ments and to thwart his par­ents. He is a real (Prince Charming.)
2. If brood­ing men are more your style, look no fur­ther than the brother-cuckolding yet law­ful good Lord Blaxton. Don’t let his incred­i­bly hor­ri­ble actions while in charge of the realm fool you, his feel­ings are very ten­der.
3. Thorodan is going places. A heal­er who had a very close rela­tion­ship with your deceased father, Thorodan is seri­ous about remov­ing both curs­es and your clothes.
4. Finally, there is the rogue, Garrett. He likes his women spicy and sex in the for­est. ‘nough said.

Instead of a sin­gle fork in the road, I pro­pose that three would have fixed many of the prob­lems I had with the game. As the pri­ma­ry plot in the fan­ta­sy world revolves around Rose’s sup­port or dis­trust of the Rebels, it would make sense if the first fork would cause you to move towards the rebel­lion or towards the law. I com­plete­ly agree with the cre­ators that you prob­a­bly can’t be both a sup­port­er of the rebel­lion and of the King’s Man’s harsh jus­tice. Also, each man enjoys dif­fer­ent per­son­al­i­ty traits and ban­ter, so it would seem that the stoic Blaxton would like respect­ful talk, while Garrett (the rebel leader) enjoys a girl with a will­ful streak and a robust sense of humor; the Prince is a wild roman­tic and with very frag­ile feel­ings, and I still don’t under­stand what makes the Potion Master tick (anoth­er prob­lem with romanc­ing him).  The sec­ond fork would bring it down to two men, and the final fork would allow you to final­ly select the man you want. This mechan­ic would make play­ing through all the sce­nar­ios worth your while because those men might still be in the mix.

Now, per­haps this sys­tem of mul­ti­ple forks might lead to more sex with mul­ti­ple men, but I fail to see how this is a bad thing.  Rose is a hip, mod­ern girl, and she should def­i­nite­ly try the waters to make sure she has made a good choice.  Also, the sin­gle sex scene is very, uhm, anti­cli­mac­tic story-wise.

This leads me to anoth­er large prob­lem with the game: if you play through the game mul­ti­ple times to try dif­fer­ent roman­tic part­ners, you real­ize that the puz­zles and nar­ra­tive inter­ac­tions are exact­ly the same. You will always find Thorodan’s potion and a let­ter about the prince’s true pater­ni­ty, and your aunt will always need the same potion to cure her hang­over. I was over­joyed when I found the “skip puz­zle” but­ton. On later playthroughts, I also start­ed ran­dom­ly hit­ting dia­log options dur­ing the scenes with the other men (which hap­pen no mat­ter who you are actu­al­ly court­ing), because I knew it wouldn’t affect my main rela­tion­ship.

My final cri­tique is that you couldn’t court your best friend Fendral. She has the most beau­ti­ful “come hith­er” eyes.  In many ways, Fendral is the best fit for Rose—she is funny, will­ful, rebel­lious, and truly cares about Rose as a per­son. Also, one of the scenes you have with your Aunt lets you know that your Aunt is a les­bian and that her part­ner is very impor­tant to her. Such an inter­ac­tion would make a les­bian rela­tion­ship seem more pos­si­ble and pos­i­tive, and would have been an excel­lent time for a 5th track to appear. I also would have enjoyed being able to romance Fendral while romanc­ing any of the other men; that would have been a bold sto­ry­telling choice, and would have helped to deli­cious­ly com­pli­cate the romance plot (which is always a nec­es­sary part of mak­ing the genre tit­il­lat­ing) .

In all, I feel that the fail­ure to prop­er­ly engage with the act of choos­ing as well as the sim­ple copy-paste of inter­ac­tions and puz­zles was depress­ing. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly true because play­ing through mul­ti­ple times should be half the fun of this sort of game.  Unfortunateley, Everlove won’t be replac­ing the tried-and-true romance novel for­mu­la or The Bachelorette any time soon.