Owlcat Games recently returned to Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous and presented a dev diary with memories of working on the project and a story about creating romantic content.
According to the developers, one of the main questions that confronts an author of romantic content is: "how do you write about love so that it does not come off as cringe?".
They explained that people perceive things differently: "what is cringe for one reader goes straight to the heart for another." When developers work out their characters, they always think about who a specific romance is intended for:
We always keep in mind that some players will like it, and others will not. For some, it will feel close and dear; for others, it will seem boring. So if you do not like this character, look around — perhaps another one will be more to your liking.
The creators of Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous explained that the only alternative to this approach is to "...make a pleasant, averaged waifu for everyone and no one. In fact, that is a niche."
At an early stage of Wrath of the Righteous development, they ran into the fact that all three heroines turned out to be fond of eating people:
It is better to have that kind of default romanceable character among the other options. Otherwise, the player may end up in a situation like, "My God, I am surrounded by lunatics! Who are all these people? There is no one I can talk to normally." That is exactly what happened at an early stage of Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous development. At one point, we realized that we had three female romanceable characters — and all three were cannibals.
The developers then had to rewrite the characters to emphasize the differences between them:
Removing all references to cannibalism from Arueshalae and somehow distinguishing Camellia and Wenduag in this aspect, so that the differences between the characters would be more obvious. As a result, Arueshalae shifted somewhat toward the "averagely pleasant" archetype, but fortunately did not become entirely like that.
In the Owlcat diary, they also touched on other topics, such as the "secret floor method," and examined the process of writing romantic content.
