Is there any institution more filled with excitement and serendipity than marriage? As stressful as it can be putting together a huge celebration, it’s hard to be anything but joyous when you’re among the friends and loved ones of two people deciding to spend their lives together. There’s no more recognizable and infectiously gleeful social ritual than a wedding, and the best turn up in all of your media, including books, movies, and sometimes even video games.
It’s actually pretty difficult to pinpoint great weddings in video games outside of dating simulations, though. You’d think there would be many more, considering games are become better and better at capturing every aspect of the human experience in digital form. There are a short list of stand outs, though.
5. Rhys and Maia – Phantasy Star III: Generations of Doom
What makes this wedding particularly memorable is that it gets interrupted the first time around. As Prince Rhys, heir to the throne of Landen, begins his vows in a wedding to the amnesiac Maia, a dragon-like creature appears and kidnaps her. This was seemingly a move to restart an old conflict between Rhys’ people – The Orakians – and their long time rivals, The Layans. The first part of this epic sci-fi/fantasy RPG involves Rhys’ quest to recruit top men and women to help find Maia.
The most interesting part of the game comes after this first “act” when you realize that Rhys doesn’t necessarily have to marry Maia. In fact, if you decide to change your mind about the marriage and marry someone else, it’ll change the characters available to your later in the game, as the generations shift. Rhys and whomever his bride is will have a different playable main character depending on who Rhys marries, which will dictate where you stand in the ages old racial tensions plaguing the land. No other game incorporates marriage into the story in such a meaningful way, but the Phantasy Star RPGs are such cult games, only a select few would ever call them memorable.
4. Bowser and Peach – Super Paper Mario
Though it wasn’t the most successful, or mutually agreeable, wedding, Bowser’s attempt at Peach’s hand in Super Paper Mario marks the first time Bowser did something outside of simply kidnapping the woman. The break in tradition is mostly because Bowser was under the hypnotic influence of Count Bleck, a mage looking to fulfill a dark prophecy in order to destroy the world with the power he’s gain from it. Bowser would actually join the Peach, Luigi, and Mario in stopping Bleck, by collecting Pure Hearts and cancelling the apocalypse.
3. Elaine and LeChuck – The Secret of Monkey Island
Another short lived attempt at holy matrimony, the spectral LeChuck shows up to a church on Melee Island in hopes to take Elaine as his bride. For all he knew, this was a completely legitimate play at his heart by the governor. Protagonist and love interest of Elaine, Guybrush, would believe in the legitimacy of this marriage as well, and would go to great lengths to stop LeChuck from taking his lover away from him. They are both idiots.
Elaine built an elaborate plot to lure LeChuck into a false sense of security by presenting this wedding as legit. After being kidnapped by the pirate, she was going to use a dangerous anti-ghost potion on him to destroy the man who she felt was the root of all evil. Guybrush crashing the wedding ruined her pretty good plan, so they had to rely on the far worse plan of Guybrush dueling him. It all worked out in the end.
2. Vivi and Quina – Final Fantasy 9
After escaping Lindblum via the creepy crawly mega bug subways of the Fossil Roo, Zidane and crew end up near a town of dwarves named Conde Petie. In order to cross into the Sanctuary (coincidentally where they needed to head next), a marriage would have to happen. Through a convoluted series of events, Zidane and Dagger end up the dwarven equivalent of married.
If you take the proper steps during this process, though, you can get a bonus wedding between the black mage Vivi and the eccentric gastronome Quina Quen. This awkward and hilarious scene really plays well with the playful yet sincere tone of the main wedding, and steals the whole sequence.
1. Johnny and Meryl – Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
Johnny Akiba is a stupid character, and it was incredibly weird and random to seem him reappear in the series, still pooping on himself in dark corners. Weirder still is that he would fall in love with Meryl, and want so much to be near her that he spent 10 years doing whatever he could to get on her squad all low key like. Taking the weird cake is that, through all of his creepy stalker style, Meryl would find him as appealing as he does her, and would marry him by the game’s end. The most memorable part of all this isn’t the marriage though, it’s the proposal.
In pure action movie motif, Johnny and Meryl are pinned down by a seemingly endless stream of bad guys. As they trade fire with the enemy, their own survival chances looking slim, Johnny decides that now is the perfect time to pop the question. Meryl turns him down, but in a surprise twist, she does it only so she can be the one to propose to him. Johnny is taken aback, but accepts gleefully. From then, they find a way to make out for ten minutes while shooting oncoming bad guys in synchronicity. Love is a beautiful thing.
Whats your favorite video game wedding? Tweet us @CurseGamepedia, or leave a comment below.