Starfield romances and relationships will let you get closer to certain companions and crew as you explore space. That's not a huge surprise for a Bethesda game but there some new ideas this time around, with Starfield's romanceable NPCs promising a more detailed and nuanced system than before.
Key to that is the promise of more awareness of player actions and dialogue choices from your companions. That can include what are essentially arguments, with characters not liking you for a certain amount of time after you do something they might disagree with.
How that will play out in-game remains to be seen - reduced combat efficiency perhaps? However, from what's been said about Starfield it sounds like there's more to romancing characters here than just winning them over and selecting them as an option. This is what know about Starfield relationships and romance below, which may well have more layers to it than people might be expecting.
Starfield romances and relationships explained
There are four 'main' companions, all members of the Constellation Starfield faction that are romanceable and feature their own missions. For them, the following romance and relationship details in Starfield have been confirmed by Todd Howard or Bethesda:
- There will be multiple romanceable NPCs across the Starfield single player campaign.
- Relationships are "more complex, in terms of whether they like you or they don't like you".
- It's possible to upset romantic partners in temporary ways, rather than just having permanent changes or breaking the relationship off.
- Companions come with their own unique quest lines.
While Starfield companions are the main options for romance, we do know that there will be a certain level of blurring between larger cast members and the Starfield crew members you can pick up around the galaxy. Crew members can join you as 'companions' for example, but it appears that only the 'main four' can enter in to relationships.
Bethesda's main goal with relationships seems to be complexity, rather than quantity of characters you can romance. The news that some relationships will be "more complex" than in other Bethesda games was highlighted in an interview Todd Howard gave, with an apparent emphasis on emotional nuance over simple like/dislike feelings. That seems to tie in with the new Starfield dialogue system both through characters reacting to what you say, and who you have with you potentially affecting your options.
Howard: "So we have a number of companions, but for them we go… I won't say super-complex-romantic, but more complex than we've had in terms of not just some, you know, state of they like you or they don't like you - but they can be in love with you and dislike something you did, and be pissed at you temporarily - and then come back to loving you(.) As opposed to just drifting out of that (romantic) status you're in a temporary "I don't like what you did" state."
So far the only romance we've seen in action is with Sam, the ex-Freestar Collective member who's been shown saying he "never loved anyone 'cept you" to the player.
One thing we know for sure is that Starfield relationships will be sexual in nature, with ESRB ratings mentioning "suggestive material in the dialogue [...] after sharing a bed with characters". Worth noting that Nudity is notably absent from the descriptions as well so it's probably going to be fairly discrete. There's also no word on if you'll get a buff for sleeping with your partner, a longstanding tradition for Bethesda games.
