Who's Your Favorite Romantic Pairing From a Video Game?

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Ah, it's the best time of the year, isn't it? Red and pink-tinted everything; bouquets that your significant other spent too much money on that are already wilting just a few days after the romantic holiday. 'Tis truly the season for discount Valentine's Day candy.

In honor of this very Valentine's-themed week, we have one simple video game related inquiry for this week's Community Question: Who's your favorite romantic couple from a video game, and why?

Mike Williams, Reviews Editor

My very first thought is the whirlwind that is the deep, abiding bromance between Kazuma Kiryu and Goro Majima, but who has all the time in the world to write about such a grand relationship? One that plays out across seven games, only three of which I've actually played?

Instead, I think I'm going to go with the Master Chief and Cortana. This was a surprising one for me, because it's largely done from Cortana's side. The Master Chief is a walking, living tank and Cortana is an advanced artificial intelligence, but she's the one that does the legwork.

Though he doesn't say much, the Master Chief's actions belie his need for Cortana in his life. At the same time, Cortana slowly becomes more "human" over the course of the four games, moving from sardonic AI to emotional confidant. This culminates in her sacrifice at the end of Halo 4 to save John's life, marking her first and last chance to actually touch the genetically-engineered combat machine she loves.

Of course, they brought her back in Halo 5, so that's all kind of moot, but before that it was a really touching finale!

Nadia Oxford, Staff Writer

There are a lot of sweet, catastrophic, and intense romances across the JRPG genre (it's practically illegal to make a JRPG lacking in sexual tension), but every so often I find myself thinking back to the relationship between Locke and Celes in Final Fantasy VI.

While FF VI technically lacks a central protagonist, the game's narrative spends a lot of time following Locke and Celes as they grow closer together. They start out with significant flaws: Locke can't let go of his dead girlfriend, and Celes has trust issues on top of fuzzy loyalties. Both characters lean on each other as they repair themselves, but the game rarely shines a spotlight on the duo to remind you "Hey! These two are hot for one another!" Rather, their relationship builds up slowly, survives an episode of intense suspicion, and then weathers the end of the world itself. In the end, there's a gentle coming together that just feels right. It's a nice example of showing versus telling, something JRPG stories aren't always great at.

Matt Kim, News Editor

I honestly can't really think of a video game romance off the top of my head that isn't related in some ways to the Persona series, and a lot of those romance paths are kind of dull. A bit too heavy on the anime tropes, if you know what I mean.

I think rather than choosing a video game romance I found to be meaningful, or particularly well-done, I'd probably choose Leon Kennedy and Ada Wong's interactions throughout Resident Evil 4. They had a spy vs. spy thing going on which was pretty enjoyable, and made for some fairly entertaining cutscenes (that slow-motion gun fight is classic). I'd probably watch a rom-com starring Leon and Ada actually as long as they both still kept up their spy shenanigans.

Caty McCarthy, Features Editor

For one, I love all the relationship endings in School Days. (Just kidding!) On a more serious note, I was originally going to opt for some obvious choices: Elena and Nathan from the Uncharted series, PaRappa and Sunny from PaRappa the Rapper, or my obvious JRPG OTP: Zack and Aerith. Then I started thinking back on all my favorite otome games, which all seem to have suitors who are pretty awful to the usually amnesia-stricken player. Then my real favorite romantic relationship hit me on the head like an anvil in a cartoon: Yukari and the protagonist from Persona 3, duh!

I've always seen the nu-Persona series (as in, from Persona 3 onward) as having "canonical" romance options, even if most of the women in each game are datable. In Persona 3, it's Yukari and Aigis. In Persona 4, it's Yukiko and Rise. (Rise is the more perfect choice, in my opinion; and the light spin-off Dancing All Night only cements that.) Persona 5 muddies this trend a little more, but Makoto, Ann, and Futaba seem to get the biggest focus.

But for me, Yukari's route is the absolute best and most worthwhile, going beyond the base game to make the epilogue even more impactful too. Her past mirrors that of the protagonist, as they both have deceased parents (or rather, her father is just dead, while her relationship with her mother is strained). Through the relationship with Yukari, you learn more about her struggles, her fear of death, and the whole Social Link is the Persona series at its very best: where power and growth manifests off the battlefield, just as much as it does in the heat of battle.