I don’t know about you, but I’m super into video game romances, as popularized by BioWare RPGs fifa coins and things of the like. They’re my (and, I think, a lot of people’s) secret shame. It’s probably not healthy to get so emotionally invested in watching piles of ones-and-zeroes making goo-goo eyes at each other, but here we are.

Traditionally, of course, video game romances, um, climax with characters locking lips and clipping through each other’s horrifying digital fleshforms in scenes too steamy for our corporeal reality. There is usually a progression, is what I’m saying. While recent games like Dragon Age

 Inquisition and Mass Effect 3 made things a bit more nuanced than “insert conversation until a triumphant sex scene falls out,” romances still tend to proceed along a pretty video-game-y line of logic: put in diligent and consistent effort, and eventually you will earn a thing. Maybe it’s sex, maybe it’s a complicated yet rewarding relationship, or maybe it’s a bittersweet tryst.

Recently, though, I played a couple games where I straight-up got shot down. And you know what? I appreciated it... after having some time to think it over. Yes, I might have quit The Witcher 3 for two months after learning of my inexorable romantic fate, but that’s beside the point. OK, not entirely beside. How about facing the point, but at a 45 degree angle? Is that good? Is everyone happy with that?

In The Witcher 3, I Geralt of Rivia, slayer of countless mythical beasts and fucker of EVERYONE did www.hellofifa.com not get my typical power fantasy happy ending. The game doesn’t really shut any doors for you if you have tons of casual sexytime encounters (and believe me, there are plenty of opportunities, because The Witcher), but once you start stoking the flames with actual emotion, the stakes go way up.