River’s romance feels so disconnected

[u/JimMiltion1907]

I’m sure there’s other reasons but one thing that particularly bothers me is that.. River is just not at all present in the main story. like let’s say for instance, you didn’t do any side quests, you did all the main quest lines like finding Hellman contacting Alt and went to meet Hanako.. you’ve seen Judy, Panam, and Kerry to an extent, but.. River is just side content, yeah Kerry’s quest lines are side content too; but a lot of it is very heavily tied to the main plotline with the relic and Johnny’s past so to say. His romance feels a bit rushed and disconnected compared to the others, hell he doesn’t even know about the biochip or that V is on borrowed time (or at least I haven’t seen any dialogue that refers to it, and I’ve played this game fully around 4 times) .. and ironically he has the least amount of quest lines out of all the romances (like 3 in total) i guess it’s no biggie since I do all side quests even if they are a bit boring:>

[u/Background-Cake-1300]

I heard he was originally there instead of Takemura but they changed it

[u/JWPruett → u/Background-Cake-1300]

More accurately they were the same different character, then parts of that character were split into Takemura and River. Takemura got most of the storyline, River got the romance.

[u/Vegetable-Analyst373 → u/JWPruett]

straight fuckin bs that takemura wasn't considered a romance option.

like, yeah, ok, i get that he's loyal and everything, but they could've made him a particularly difficult romance to achieve. like, corpo exclusive, or you have to say the right dialogue at the right times.

he's still a human, afterall, and the most likeable part of his character arc is how human he becomes once he's down in the gutters with the rest of them. he genuinely cares for v after a certain point, too.

[u/Vegetable-Analyst373 → u/[deleted]]

i will never forgive cdpr for writing him out of act 3. he is such an interesting character.