Quantum Entanglement's Romance

When all is said and done, there’s 2 overall approaches to writing a love story.  The first is the Meant to Be angle.  This covers scenarios like love at first sight, unexpected and spontaneous attractions/hook-ups that seem more to do with checking off a box on a narrative To Do list than anything to do with the characters themselves, pre-existing romantic engagements whose validity you’re just required to accept, and destined love--love stories that fate determined would happen, or a couple falling in love because they’re reincarnations of lovers in a past life, etc.  And the second approach is the Doing the Damn Work angle, which covers love stories that are formed over time between characters who have a demonstrably solid shared dynamic, observable chemistry, and a coming together of personality and affection, all of which has been both constructed and organically grown by the creators.  This second method generally takes a good deal of effort, and some talent.

You can guess which approach most writers decide to go with.

That’s not to say that there aren’t certain benefits and laudable qualities to Meant to Be romances, mind you.  The idea of 2 people who are just right for each other, immediately, by some inscrutable will of destiny, does tap into some primal part of our emotional brain and please us to think about.  Even if real, lasting love is more often something forged through a developing, mutual process involving a truly dizzying array of factors of understanding, appreciating, assisting, attracting, working for, accepting, supporting, trusting, validating, and enjoying one another, we still seem, as an audience, to be hardwired to thrill to at least some small degree over the concept of romance being something immediate and decreed by some inexorable higher power.  And our feeling that way even makes sense!  Because no matter how you slice it, love is a thing more indefinable than otherwise, and though we may be able to recognize what kinds of people we trend toward for romance, we don’t actually get a whole lot of say in who we fall in love with.  Religion and mythology were most often born as ways for human beings to explain the phenomena of the world around them which they didn’t otherwise understand--it makes sense that we similarly cling to concepts of love at first sight and fated romance in response to an emotion which is still so much beyond our ken or control.

With that said, most of the really great love stories, the ones that last and inspire, are ones whose creators put in the time and effort to build and develop.  You can keep your Auroras and Phillips, your Snow Whites and Princes Charming; I’ll take my Beasts and Belles and my Flynns and Rapunzels, thanks.  I find the idea that some jackass prince having a single dance with some lady who runs off at midnight to be of far less romantic substance than the concept of a military captain questioning and then re-questioning his sexual orientation over the course of a few months because of that 1 weirdly effeminate recruit in his squad.*  Whether it’s showing their ability to come together as a couple to overcome all obstacles thrown at them, working through personal and emotional difficulties and becoming an inseparable part of who one another is, or just getting to know each other over time and being shown to have a vibrant, flavorful, and genuine chemistry, the couples created by the Doing the Damn Work angle will always stay in your mind more strongly than those reliant solely upon the Meant to Be approach.  It’s similar to Show, Don’t Tell--1 method of storytelling’s almost always got the upper hand on the other.

With that said, it’s a pretty awesome thing when a couple like Gabby and Marine from Quantum Entanglement comes along: a romance that works on both levels.

The love story of Gabby and Marine has all the benefits of a destined love, you see.  1 popular Meant to Be trope of romance is the idea of 2 individuals who were in love in a past life reincarnating and falling in love all over again, based strongly upon lingering feelings from their lives before, or some prior life oath, or some other such thing.  Xeno- games seem fond of this approach, for example, what with Elly and Fei in Xenogears, and what KOS-MOS and Shion were clearly meant to be in the Xenosaga trilogy.  Sailor Moon stakes something like 80% of its content on the reincarnated lovers angle with Sailor Moon and that dingus Tuxedo Mask, as another example.  Sometimes you can even get a kind of interesting take on it, like with the Kalach-Cha and Safiya in Neverwinter Nights 2’s Mask of the Betrayer expansion, or Hawkman and Hawkgirl in the recent DC Superhero Girls cartoon.  Anyway, regardless of what happened in a previous life, however, these are, in the present, 2 new people who have found themselves thrown together into love by a fated force beyond their control; it’s almost the perfect representation of the Meant to Be style of romance.

And Gabby and Marine have that!  Because, as a result of the routine memory wipes they submit to at the mandate of their clandestine super-science employer, every 6 months there’s a new Gabby and Marine, who have to start over with who they are and what their relationship is and will be.  So the fact that they keep finding themselves drawn to one another, with only the very slightest of prompting (in the form of a letter) from their previous selves, means that their romance is effectively identical to the idea of reincarnated lovers coming together again and again as a fated couple with each life they live.  And Quantum Entanglement works this angle very skillfully.  Early in the game, the instinctive draw that Marine and Gabby feel toward one another is established well through their dialogue and Marine’s monologue, as well as their actions.  Marine and Gabby both mention lingering traces of interest and compulsion toward one another, both privately and aloud, and when confronted and put on the spot by Dr. Larsen about who she truly wants to pursue a potential love with, Marine’s response can only be Gabby.  And there are also several moments that emphasize this automatic connection without words--Gabby instinctively makes her way to Marine’s room the first night after their memory wipe, without realizing what she’s doing, because it’s so ingrained in her to be there with Marine, for example, and Gabby’s retaining the muscle memory of how to perfectly make Marine’s favorite breakfast food.  There’s a ton of stuff, early into Quantum Entanglement, that takes advantage of the Meant to Be angle of these being 2 souls destined to come back to each other over and over, and it all very effectively establishes the love they’re fated for.**

I absolutely love the scene of Marine finding the letter that she left herself.  That saying Gabby’s name aloud, that testing it out as an inquiry being made of her inner heart, could provoke such an acute, unconscious pang of emotions that it would bring Marine to tears, is an amazing and poignant idea to me.

I’m convinced that if that had been the end of it, just 2 women infatuated with each other because they were Meant to Be from their previous memory incarnations, this still probably would have been a fine love story.  I mean, the story of Catherine and the Nereid in Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle was basically no more than a fated love deal, and I adored that one; it would’ve been the best romance in the game had it not been for Carmina.  So obviously Saint Bomber could have pulled off something solid with just this alone.  

But he didn’t rest on his laurels.  He Did the Damn Work, too.  Quantum Entanglement is a short RPG, only a few hours long, but its creator packed those hours full of interactions between Marine and Gabby, interactions that show us time and time again how well-suited they are for one another.  Practically every object and detail of the environment in QE can be examined for a bit of reaction text, and the majority of that involves interactions between both characters.  There’s also a lot of scripted story events and conversations between them, so even if you squander your experience with the game by rushing from 1 step in the story to the next, you’ll still see a ton of character development for them.  And it all comes together into a really compelling romance.

First of all, their casual conversation is engaging and full of the kind of easy, organic banter you see between 2 people who are on just the right set of wavelengths to be beneficially similar and different at once.  They enjoy similar approaches to humor, ethics, and values, and tend to agree more often than not--you can totally understand why they get along, when they have so much in common.  But they also are quite different people, too--plenty of Marine’s interests are ones that Gabby indulges, but doesn’t share, Gabby has a peppier (but less forgiving) personality, etc.  You can totally understand why they get along, when they’re different in ways that compliment and even complete 1 another.  When you see them interact, Marine and Gabby strike you as a realistic representation of a couple who have found their groove with each other and are exactly alike and different enough to work.  Their banter in this game shows that off, and it’s a real treat to see.

It’s also neat to see how that banter, and their general interactions, evolve.  There’s a gradual curve to the way Gabby and Marine talk to and view each other over the course of QE that goes from a trusting, but unsure stage of feeling one another’s personality out, to eventually being fully in sync, depending and finding support in each other, and being able to openly express their deep affection for 1 another.  There’s no landmarks in this progression, no single conversation you can point to in which they progress from friendship and tentative affection to love and devotion, but somehow, their dialogue going from, in the beginning, talking about possibly liking each other, to, by the end, Gabby and Marine each being comfortable in openly stating her love for her partner and that statement being a reinforcement of feelings that are already known and understood, feels like it’s taken such a natural progression that you’ve barely noticed it happening.  I would give a lot for more RPG writers to be able to create so organic and smooth a progression of affections in their romances as Saint Bomber can; even Final Fantasy 9’s Dagger and Zidane, which are an excellent example of this kind of natural progression, needed more visible goalposts as they went about their romance.

I really like how well Marine and Gabby support each other, too.  Each woman is very encouraging to the other, and does whatever she can to help her partner stay safe, keep going, and maintain her spirits, whether that be through encouraging words or protective actions.  But what really takes it a step forward and impresses upon me just how strong their feelings are is how much work each woman puts into keeping ahold of herself for the other’s sake.  As I mentioned in my previous rant about Quantum Entanglement, the constant quips and wisecracks that Marine and Gabby engage in with their banter are in many ways genuine, but at the same time, are also a coping mechanism that they use to keep themselves able to keep moving forward and not succumb to their terror and despair at the situation they find themselves in and the terrible things they keep witnessing.  Beyond just overtly encouraging one another, Gabby and Marine also do their best to support each other by staying strong for the other.  What I really like about that is that this act for the sake of her partner also winds up being to her own benefit, too, as each woman might not have otherwise been able to find enough of a well of strength to carry on if it were only for her own sake.  I think that’s a really touching and romantic thing--showing that love is the sort of thing that buoys and empowers you even as it compels you to do all you can to support the person you care about.

There’s time and care put into showing us reasons for Gabby and Marine to love each other, too.  From what I’ve spoken of so far, you can obviously infer that they appreciate one another’s sense of humor, they get along well, and they each give their everything to support each other.  They go out of their way to better the life of one another, like Gabby having become great at making Marine’s favorite breakfast, and Marine frequently stepping forward to be Gabby’s protector, physically and emotionally.***  They’re clearly physically attracted to each other--a fact which each of them manages to convey without being creepy or otherwise unhealthy about it, yes JRPGs it actually is possible to do that--and each has moments in which they so greatly impress the other in some way that you can practically feel the other’s heart flutter and hear her intake of breath.  Everything just lines up for a genuine, natural story of an enduring and passionate love between these 2 people.  You’ve got the grandiose acts and events that satisfactorily bring your average RPG characters together in romance, and maybe more importantly, you’ve got the little gestures and connections that keep a couple happy and interested with one another in the long term, once the ardor of the game’s action and questing wears off.

I’d lastly like to point out that beyond just the fact that this is a well-written, sincere love story in its own right, it is, in addition, a good example of a romance in the narrative sense, too, for the fact that the romance does not get in the way of the story and characters.  See, there’s this thing that happens a lot where a love story in a game, or really any medium of expression, can collide with other narrative elements, rather than coalesce with them.  It may feel like it’s tacked on just for the sake of being there (Agnes and Tiz in Bravely Default 1 and Second), or the characters’ actions and personalities when in love are departed enough from what we saw before that they now seem out of character (Dart in Legend of Dragoon), or the romance begins taking focus away from the main story (Final Fantasy 8).  Or sometimes all 3 of those problems occur simultaneously (Priere and Croix in La Pucelle Tactics).  Not so with Quantum Entanglement--the romance was clearly an important and valued part of the narrative as a whole, it fits perfectly into the main story without taking any attention away from it, and in no way do Marine and Gabby’s feelings for each other lessen, change, or obfuscate their personalities.  Saint Bomber clearly valued the characters he had created, who they were as people in their own right, and wanted to create a romance between them, for their sake, not just forcibly build one around them, if that makes any sense.

And yes, I know that, on this point, I’m essentially praising the game for accomplishing something that should really just be basic, common sense in telling a story...but, as I’ve said, RPGs are just generally not great at romances.  Having the basic competence to write your love story into the game in a way that doesn’t somehow damage the other elements is surprisingly uncommon in this genre.

Anyway, I think I’ve said enough on this matter.  The point is, Quantum Entanglement has got a great romance, and I think it’s worth saying so, and why.  This is a love story that retains all the benefits of a destined love, yet also puts in the work of creating a realistic couple by showing their chemistry, giving them a lot of time and material to interact with and bond over, and displaying their causes for loving one another and their excellent capacity for supporting each other.  This is a wholesome, engaging love story, and this genre needs a lot more romances like it.















* “Somehow I’ll make a man out of you” indeed, amirite?


** Also, something that’s really cool?  The very title of this game can be seen as a reference to Gabby and Marine’s connection.  While Quantum Entanglement is obviously a reference to some of the scientific theories of many worlds and the multiverse and so on, which has surface relevance to the game’s events, it could also describe Gabby and Marine themselves, a statement that they are so intrinsically meant for each other that they are impossible to perceive as separate entities, like quantumly entangled particles.  Also, when broken down, you can see it as saying that their being together (their entanglement) is an immutable fact across all possible realities (the application of quantum theories regarding multiple universes).  I have no idea whether this is in any way intentional and there is every possibility that I just don’t understand higher sciences well enough to grasp what these terms actually mean...but I’m a goddamn romantic so these are the interpretations I’m sticking to.


*** Whether or not it’s strictly necessary.  Gabby...let’s just say she can generally take care of herself.