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Welcome back to Pushing Buttons! In the spirit of carrying my perennial real-world lateness over into this newsletter, let’s talk about love, even though it is now 15 February and everyone will instantly forget about romance again until this time next year. As 500 different articles will already have reminded you this week, so much of the art that we humans make is about wanting someone you can’t have, having someone you don’t want, missing someone you once had, or sometimes even how much we like person/people we’re actually with. Not so with video games, though. Games are different. Very few of them are preoccupied with love.
This would traditionally be the place for a cruel joke pointing out that that’s probably because nobody who makes or plays video games ever gets laid, but come on, it is 2022 and we have surely left these dumb stereotypes in the 90s. I do wonder why so few games really engage with this fundamental aspect of the human experience, though. I’ve played video games A lot in states of heartbreak or infatuation, but usually to get myself away from the overwhelming feelings I was experiencing at the time, not to examine them.
The problem with video game love stories is that they often revolve around player choice. In a game, whether it’s a dating sim or Dragon Age or Harvest Moon, you generally choose whom you’re going to romance, and then it just … happens. In Mass Effect you might have to do a couple of missions to help your alien crush out first before they’ll jump into bed with you, and in Harvest Moon you have to give a potential spouse about 400 gifts before they’ll give you the time of day – but you can’t really fail at video game relationships. The fun is in picking your target. Even in The Sims, if you’ve got two little computer people with totally opposite personalities who can barely speak to each other, a really determined player can usually still marry them off, like some megalomaniacal matchmaker.
Naturally, this is not how human relationships work. They are rarely so transactional. So much art has been made about love precisely because it is extremely unpredictable, and people so rarely get what they want out of it. In relationships according to video games, generally you get whatever you want. You’re hot bisexual Spartan Kassandra, wandering ancient Greece in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and picking your conquests like low-hanging fruit. You’re Commander Shepard, having (on closer examination) wildly inappropriate relationships with several of your crew.
When love stories actually work in games, it is because you have less influence over them. I’m thinking of Geralt and Yennefer in the Witcher series: they are independent people whose lives keep intersecting, and though plenty of Geralt’s potential romances in those games are embarrassingly pornographic, the ongoing story of his on-off relationship with Yenn feels much more real, partly because she keeps leaving him. Florence is a game about a love story that turns into a game about a breakup, where your futile attempts to fix things result in the puzzles becoming unsolvable. Games like Gone Home and Unpacking (I keep mentioning that game, don’t I?) tell love stories that you gradually uncover, leaving room for inference.
I think one of the best love stories in games is actually Uncharted 4, a game about a big pirate treasure hunt that nonetheless makes room for not just the relationship between star Nathan Drake and his wife, Elena, but also the love between Nate and his brother, and also the love of adventure. It’s basically an extended action movie, but I nonetheless think it’s a story about how love can change us, and there still aren’t that many of those stories in games.
I also couldn’t write about this topic without mentioning To The Moon, the only game that properly broke my heart. I won’t spoil that one, but if you’ve not played it … do. And I have to point you in the direction the only game that’s ever made me cry in public, anna anthropy’s Queers in Love at the End of the World. It’s an interactive fiction game that’s over in ten seconds, designed to be played over and over, inspired by its creator’s experience of the transformative power of queer love. It’s sad and blunt and sexy, and it still gives me shivers.
If you’ve played a game about love that really hit you, hit reply on this and let me know. I’ll share them, along with some other reader recommendations, in a future issue.
What to play
I have spent two weeks playing Horizon Forbidden West. This totally eccentric, massive, open-world sci-fi game about a flame-haired warrior and a bunch of robot dinosaurs, and despite the fact that it has weird controls, a meandering plot and so many different ideas going on that it’s impossible to keep track, I love it. I was suffering pretty badly from open-world fatigue for the past few years, but this was something I could really sink into – largely because it’s so gorgeous, with its sprawling continent of mountains and deserts and overgrown ruins and underwater caves, all teeming with interesting mechanised monsters to fight. I cannot believe games now look as good as this. My ten-year-old self would never believe it.
Crucially, it also gives you new and interesting things to do beyond the first ten hours, so I never felt like I was just checking icons off the map. It says a lot that I’ve been cramming this game in order to review it, but still want more. If you’ve got space in your life right now for a massive game, this is an excellent choice – though with Elden Ring out later this month, it’ll soon have competition.
Available on: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5
Approximate playtime: 40 hours (with much more if you want it)
What to read
Keeping with the theme, a new Sims story pack featuring a love story between two women will not be released in Russia, to avoid falling foul of the country’s homophobic laws on homosexual “propaganda”. Developers at EA Maxis stated that they didn’t want to censor it. But clearly, actually boycotting Russia in a show of solidarity with the series’ millions of queer fans is a step too far for the company.
Nintendo is adding classic tracks to Mario Kart on Switch, and is also reimagining the beloved and bestselling Wii Sports, as Nintendo Switch Sports. News that warms my heart.
Just in case any video game executives are reading this and still think jumping on the NFT bandwagon is a good idea, Worms publisher Team17 angered its staff so much with an ill-considered surprise announcement of Worms digital artwork that a load of them ran to Eurogamer reporter Tom Phillips with all kinds of stories about the company. Yeowch.
What to click
Sony trains AI to leave world’s best Gran Turismo drivers in the dust
Pokémon Legends: Arceus review – makes even old-school fans feel childlike again
Uncharted review – Tom Holland game adaptation is action-movie by committee
Question Block
No Question Block this week, as I’m writing this advance so that I can spend half-term running around after my small children. Just reply to this newsletter or email us on pushingbuttons@theguardian.com to send in a question for future issues.
