It’s Valentine’s Day, which means love is in the air. Maybe you have someone to squeeze, or maybe you’re holding on to an unrequested crush. And to be clear, we’re talking about video game characters. Because let’s be honest, for some of us who have been playing video games since we were kids, game characters helped us figure out what kind of people we liked and what we wanted to see in romance. So we want to know: Who is your biggest video game crush?
This could be somebody you actually were able to romance in a game, so we expect to get a lot of BioWare characters in the responses (and we see you, Garrus lovers, you are so valid). But it could also extend to characters you don’t get to smooch. Maybe it’s a protagonist whose charisma you couldn’t help but love, like Nathan Drake. It could even be the antagonist of a game, because none of us are above loving a villain and if Minthara in Baldur’s Gate 3 showed us anything, it’s that you can fix people if you put in enough effort.
In the spirit of the season of love, we want to hear your stories about what characters you can’t help but have heart eyes for. What is it about them that you can’t help but be attracted to? Whether it’s their brains, their brawn, or just some sexy character design, we want to know everything!
As for me? One of my earliest crushes was Fang from Final Fantasy XIII, who remains an important part of my queer awakening. My current crush that I can’t help swooning over is Kafka from Honkai: Star Rail. But the most enduring video game crush of mine has to be Edelgard von Hresvelg from Fire Emblem: Three Houses. I still return to a mid-game save on my Switch from time to time, just to have tea with her.
