Relationships in MY Video Games??

WARNING!! There are some spoilers for old video games in this article if you're sensitive about that kind of thing.

I’d like to bring up something we all take for granted - relationships. Interactions and relationships between video game characters ranks very high amongst the reasons video games are entertaining for me, up there with “unfair difficulty” and “poor gameplay decisions.” When you first saved Princess Toadstool from the final castle as Mario, you unwittingly observed a video game relationship (albeit a shi*tly developed one). Mario and Princess Toadstool/Peach/Daisy/Rebecca is undoubtedly the reigning “most popular” video game character dyad – typical “Italian American plumber who grows bigger from eating mushrooms, saving the Anglo-Saxon princess with no real reason to do it other than her being kinda cute, I guess” archetype.

Thanks, internet

But I’m not gonna talk about Mario and Peach. Their relationship is too boring, so I’ll supply some examples of relationships that stood out over time for me in video gamedom. I’m not going to be restricted to discussing just “romantic” relationships, either; video game characters as buds, bros, and pals will be discussed as well.

To start it off, one of the most captivating and inspiring relationships in all of video games is between the two compelling bundles of polygons - Squall and Rinoa from Final Fantasy 8. Squall’s a stoic, mostly quiet teenager who’s most famous line of dialogue is “…”, while Rinoa is... uh, I actually don't know what her core personality is like. I'm gonna go with “spunky.”

Anyways, I think Rinoa was the daughter of some singer who Squall's dad (Laguna) had a thing for, but that didn't turn out well. And that's how they're connected – Squall and Rinoa maybe could have been brother and sister, but became lovers instead. And it's not that apparent that they're deeply in love until the very end of the game. This relationship stands out for me because it tells players that you can have a compelling love story without an actual love relationship develop anywhere in the narrative.

Sometimes, characters can't get together like the way you'd think they would, or would like to. Case in point: Solid Snake and Meryl Silverburg from Metal Gear Solid. At the end of the game (depending on what ending you get), you'd think they were going to live together and have freakish children because Snake is a clone and Meryl is a ginger. However, in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, she's nowhere to be found.

In the chronological continuation, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, Snake ages 1000 years, and meets up with Meryl, who is not down to have old wrinkly man parts on her. So she goes for the next best thing: a member of the Sasaki family, Johnny Akiba. This particular lineage is notorious for having bowel movement problems in the most inopportune situations. Akiba's a nervous wreck, is the least experienced of Meryl's squad, and has that diarrhea thing, but in the end, he actually looks handsome as sh*t and has a Mr. and Mrs Smith moment with Meryl at the end of the game, sealing the deal (literally – they get married like two cut-scenes later). Just remember folks, if you want to get with that guy/girl of your dreams, make sure to be stuck in conditions of high anxiety; it's psychologically proven to work out.

Dan Hibiki and Blanka from the Street Fighter series of games taught me that if you're an ugly manbeast, or an unwanted joke of a person, you can still be friends with someone of equal grossness. Their relationship is interesting because Capcom decided that the top two “most rejected from society” characters should be best pals, and I think Capcom is genius for doing so. Dan is the only character (besides Blanka's mom) to call Blanka by his real name, Jimmy, and rumor has it that Dan's rolling taunt move is in respect of Blanka's roll attack. Finally, in Super Street Fighter 4, Blanka's alternate costume is Dan's martial arts uniform, and Dan's is tarzan-like primitive wear (which is I guess a nod to Blanka's lack of clothes). If this isn't evidence of transcendental companionship, I don't know what is.

And lastly (apologies if you haven't played Resident Evil 4), there's Leon and Ashley: