Romance and video games have a long and rocky history. While love stories are nothing new for the genre, many games still treat intimacy as a reward. Players are often presented with a handful of different datable companions and are usually treated to an awkwardly animated sex scene after plying them with a number of gifts and compliments. This simplistic portrayal can reinforce toxic harmful ideas about how relationships should work.
Dragon Age: Inquisition is one of the rare games that doesn't fall into this trap. Despite being almost 7 years old, BioWare's fantasy epic still has a better understanding of how romance and intimacy can change and inform peoples' lives than many games released today. While certainly not perfect, because no game is, Inquisition nevertheless has many achievements in the field of romantic representation that would-be successors should learn from.
What makes the romances in Dragon Age: Inquisition so interesting is that they're tied much more closely to each potential partner's personal drama. While most party members can work through their issues whether they're dating the player character or not, mixing that development into a relationship adds so many layers of complicated depth. Commander Cullen, for instance, is visibly struggling with addiction, having abandoned the magical lyrium that gave him his superpowers.
As Cullen's condition worsens, he questions if he can lead his soldiers while suffering from withdrawal symptoms. The player's influence ultimately determines whether he breaks free or goes back to taking the drug, and there are significant consequences to relapsing. If Cullen starts taking lyrium again, not only will he break off the relationship, he'll end up living on the streets as an addict. The only way for players to save their future together is to help him persevere. It's an exhausting struggle but, if overcome, it can lead to one of the few legitimately happy weddings in the story.
Granted, this isn't the first time BioWare has tied their characters' relationships to their development. However, the more realistic issues each ally grapples with in Inquisition makes them feel weightier than Morrigan choosing whether or not to help a demigod reincarnate. As a result, even the more explicit romances feel complex and believable, as is the case with Iron Bull's story. The giant warrior is quite openly into casual sex and BDSM, and the player is free to hook up with him whenever they want. However, their blossoming romance does a lot to flesh out both his character and his homeland.
Bull hails from a culture that advocates self-mastery, and his sexual dominance comes off as an extension of that. However, he's lived apart from his kind for so long that he questions whether he still belongs with them. He's terrified of that possibility because he's seen his fellows turn feral without their homeland's guiding principles, but he also loves his mercenaries and enjoys the freedoms he's found with them. The double-life becomes impossible to live, and he's ultimately forced to choose between these conflicting loyalties.
The tragic irony of Bull's story is that, for all his talk of dominance in both life and love, he is effectively a slave struggling with the issue of whether to break his chains. While he does a lot to humanize his people, it's also clear that their devotion to order has damaging effects on their citizens' minds. Nowhere is this better seen than when a loyalist Bull turns on the Inquisition at his peoples' behest, casting even the player aside as if they were nothing. It's an incredibly heartbreaking scene because, until this moment, the two had expressed their love and even considered marriage. To learn it was all a lie casts the entire story in a very dark light.
As with Cullen, the only way for Bull to live freely and happily is for the Inquisitor to encourage a break from his past. Again, however, the struggle is a difficult one. For Bull to be free means becoming a traitor to his country, and his history of killing in its name makes him fear he'll regress into a savage brute. Though friendship can help him achieve stability, his romances with either an Inquisitor or fellow party member Dorian give him more to hold on to and help him live a happier life.
Dragon Age: Inquisition does romance so well because its love stories force players into making hard choices. While a romance can certainly be sweet and supportive, there are also fights and rocky patches that must be overcome for a partnership to persevere. Sometimes a single decision can change a person's life, and one lover may have more power over the other than either realizes. However, while Inquisition shows that love can require sacrifice and struggle, it also shows how it can redeem and uplift. That willingness to show every side of this complex emotion is exactly why its romances aren't just the best in the series, they might just be BioWare's best yet.