No matter who you picked you were going to agitate people. The light hearted waifu poll at the end of MoA should have been a clue, it clearly showed thier pick was not the lead and whilst there was low participation there was not a run away winner. I am a little suprised the Dev's didn't see this coming. The problem was broader but the romance was easily the worst offender and the one that really hurt the game for me. All that got wrenched away in Liberation Day and not just on the romance front. As a spin off we should try to seperate out Academy but it still left an impression. We get to chose what we value, who we talk to, how we respond, who we trust, who we spend time with and Academy really reinforced that. Subconciously that makes the character us, not someone we are watching. Shields is a player insert more than most JRPG characters largely because we are given far more choice than in most JRPGs but even down to something a simple as first person perspective. I think the original poster hits the nail quite squarely on the head. In that context, having a scripted romance for Kayto Shields feels like WE are forced to romance someone, because the distinction isn't that clear-cut.

But maybe he was intended as his own character, but Mask of Arcadius led us to believe otherwise (and the spin-off Academy only reinforced that feeling) : while most of decisions we take only give us an illusion of control, it still allows us to invest part o ourselves in the character : his morality is for the most part left to us, his stance on the Alliance is left between the player's hands, ect.

Now, is Kaito Shields different? He isn't a blank slate, true. But I feel like the devs failed to account for one drastic difference : in those JRPG, the player isn't 'incarnating' the main character, he's just along for the ride and listen to his story (it might be his last chance ^^). Most of my experiences in that domain come from Final Fantasy and Tales of ***, and more often than not, I had no problem with the romance there. It is true that many JRPG have a fixed romantic story between protagonists, and, it can work pretty well. Now, I can see the logic of that argument. Many interesting points were raised, but I wanted to expend a bit on one thing : the part where he says something along the lines of 'we didn't think a forced romance would be a problem, since it's common practice in JRPG.' So, I was lurking on the game official forums when I saw Samu-kun last comments on Liberation Day.

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