Oskuro wrote:
If I knew how to pull it off, I would. The thing is that I'm not a fan of how sex is usually portrayed in games (if it is portrayed at all), not only because it is juvenile and often insulting (to both men and women), but, mainly, because it isn't sexy at all.
So I guess what I'd like is a game where sex is an integral part of the story/game mechanics, but is not treated as "porn" (I define porn as anything you stop thinking about once you're done wanking to it).
I've played through Nut Puncher Saga recently (aka Saint's Row The Third), and although the game world is full of sex, you can't actively participate in it (technically you can, if you are the second player during coop Escort missions... But it is hardly significant enough), which always stroke me as odd... the protagonist is supposed to be this complete psychopath with an utter lack of morals, yet a line is drawn at fucking around on a whim?
Yes, I know it is all due to publishers trying to avoid societal backlash... But that doesn't stop me from wondering how such a game could be done.
I think the closest thing to what you're talking about is probably a game called
Kamidori Alchemy Meister.
Unlike most pornographic games it's actually a game, a Fire Emblem style SRPG not a visual novel. (quite an involved one, several maps will take a number of attempts to succeed due to a combination of multiple failure states, enemy behaviours that capitalise on your strategic deficiencies basically immediately, difficult combats requiring good positioning, turn limits, etc. You'll be glad there's no permadeath in this one).
The relationship, which includes sex, between the protagonist of the game and one of the three main heroines is critical to the plot. So critical in fact that the plot is completely different depending on which one you go with (and not just "some dialogues are different", the whole situation changes and in at least two of the plots the overall story is thematically linked to the nature of the relationship. For instance with the elf character the main concern in the relationship is the fact that elves live for much longer than humans and so she will outlive you many times over, and the actual story is about the breakdown of an ancient seal created by elves and long dead inhabitants of your city, which has been forgotten due to the short lifespan of humans, so the themes reflect each other pretty damn well.
Now, the porn is still there for porn (it's pretty tame, by Japanese standards), but it's there in the context of a 90 hour RPG and in the context of actual relationships between characters that develop over those 90 hours and generally feels more like "RPG with sex scenes which happen to be explicit", because the main draw of the game is still the game (it's like 30 hours before the first sex scene, it pretty much has to be).
(Probably the best JRPG I've played in the last five years, by the way, and the way they do relationships and sex takes enormous shits all over, for instance, Bioware)