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At least those flowers aren't Daisies.
Examples of Love Triangles in video games.
  • Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War: Chopper pursues Edge who pursues Bartlett and later Blaze.
  • In the Dating Sim Always Remember Me, there’s a point in the story where you’re forced to choose between the Amnesiac Lover and another love interest. Choosing the love interest means you can no longer interact with the Amnesiac Lover.
  • BlazBlue: Bang loves Litchi, but Litchi mostly sees Bang as a friend after she gets to know him better. She loves Arakune/Roy, but Arakune, who lacks most of his memories of his human life, is more annoyed about how persistent she's trying to find and "help" him. Even as Roy, he only saw Litchi as a colleague and friend, but nothing more.
  • In Country Tales, the main character and the narrator are attracted to each other. Unfortunately for them, the narrator happens to be the mayor's fiancee.
  • In Diablo III Lyndon and his brother Edlin both fell in love with the same woman, Rea. Rea chose Edlin and the two married. Lyndon never admitted his feelings to Edlin and chose to step aside gracefully. Then Edlin gets murdered in his cell in Westmarch and Rea is revealed to have done it. But why?
  • Disgaea:
    • Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten: Although it's never outright stated that Fenrich has a thing for Valvatorez, the game throws enough hints at you that it can be assumed he's in one of these with Vulcanus and Valvatorez. And when you consider his less that friendly relationship with Vulcanus, well...
    • Disgaea 5: Alliance of Vengeance: Seraphina (A) falls for Killia (B), but Killia already had it heart set towards Liezerota, even after her death (C), and Killia has been a lot closer to her and brushes off Seraphina's advances. No revelation or turn of events ever stops Seraphina from claiming Killia is hers, not even Lieze coming back from the dead.
  • Dragon Age:
    • Dragon Age: Origins:
      • Leliana vs. Morrigan if your character is male, while female Wardens have Alistair vs. Zevran, and Zevran and Leliana are bisexual so they're actually third options for the same-sex player. Having two interested in the player makes one of your romances confront the player at some point down the line to force you to dump one of the romances.
      • This can also occur accidentally with the infamous "ninjamance" bug. A player character who is in a committed relationship with Alistair, Morrigan, or Zevran can inadvertently trigger Leliana's romance flag just by being nice to her. The player's partner usually reveals the Love Triangle by telling them that they have to make their choice, which can be absolutely baffling to someone who has no idea they've stumbled into this trope. The devs were much more careful in the sequels about making sure that player relationships are formed deliberately.
    • Dragon Age II doesn't appear to follow the same format as Origins. No one seems to care if the player pursues more than one romance. Not really surprising either since all romance options, excluding the chaste priest Sebastian, are bisexual. A Fenris/Hawke/Anders is the closest thing to being a love triangle. It's heavily implied that Anders has strong feelings for Hawke, even if he's turned down for someone else. Also Fenris continues to wear his alternate outfit (unlocked by romancing him) even if he's not the "endgame" romance and it's implied that he regrets running out. Fenris and Anders will have party banter about Hawke if she or he slept with Fenris and then with Anders after Fenris ran out after they spent the night together.
  • Dragon Quest V tries to have one of these, but the player will feel absolutely horrible if they go for the woman other than the one that's obviously supposed to wind up with him.
    Flora: Hero has known her for a day. Cute and nice enough, though shy almost to the point of a hikikomori. Has a fiercely determined suitor already.
    Bianca: Obviously loves the Hero. Is cute and tomboyish. He's known her since childhood, when they exorcised a haunted castle together, hwe rescued her from being held captive, and got a Glowing Ball of Plot Significance, with a promise to meet again. The Hero's Pet Baby Wild Animal recognizes only her bow. Her mother died, and her father is in a bad way, but will recover from sheer joy if the Hero marries her. If not, she will be forced to become a mistreated barmaid.
    • But if the player marries Bianca, they'll still feel like a jerk since the lavish wedding Flora's father had planned for his daughter becomes the lavish wedding for a stranger instead. Oh, and the remake adds a third bride, Flora's older sister Deborah, and choosing her means dumping both Flora AND Bianca for a woman who just showed up. The DS version tones down the Bianca bias a bit, and removes the Diabolus ex Machina if she's not the chosen girl.
  • Drakengard has an interesting Love Triangle between Furiae, Inuart and Caim that's only alluded to as being serious one or two times in the whole game. And the sequel repeats the trend by setting up another triangle between Nowe, Manah and Eris. In the end, it is Manah who gets the guy.
  • In Mia's route in Duel Savior Destiny a love triangle of sorts that Taiga never seems to realize pops up between him, Lily and Mia. Lily never really has a shot, but Mia's jealousy leads to her becoming more unstable. The jealousy is somewhat understandable: Right as he confesses his undying love for her Mia is quite able to smell Lily's smell on him after the pair spent the previous evening having despair induced sex over the apparent loss of Taiga's sister and Lily's mother.
  • The Elder Scrolls:
  • There's an implied Triangle in Fallout 3 between Amata, the (male) Lone Wanderer and Sarah Lyons. The UST with Amata is fairly evident right from the beginning if you take the right conversation options while Lyons' only hint is a single line she drops at the end of Broken Steel where she expresses sorrow that if they would've met under different conditions, they might have "become... friends". This being Fallout, you can screw it all up by damaging the Vault and forcing Amata outside, leading to her being interrogated and executed by an Enclave patrol as well as sending Lyons into Project Purity where she dies from radiation.
  • Fear Effect. Trailers for Fear Effect Inferno reveal that one would have developed between Hana, Rain, and Glas. Hana loves Rain very much, and she begins to show affection to Glas. Rain loves Hana very much, and she appears to want to have sex with Glas and maybe more than that. Glas begins to show affection to Hana, and he appears to be willing to have sex with Rain and maybe more than that. This would have been one complicated Love Triangle and how it would have been handled is not revealed. One trailer indicates that Rain and Deke have formed a relationship. Talk about complicated relationships!
  • In Feel the Magic: XY/XX, you and another man are fighting over a girl. In The Rub Rabbits!, you're going after one girl, and another girl is going after you.
  • Final Fantasy:
    • Kain from Final Fantasy IV spends the majority of the game fighting with his best friend Cecil over Cecil's lover, Rosa. He even maintains his affection for Rosa through his two Face-Heel Turns. Certain versions of the script up the ante by implying Barbariccia, the Archfiend of Wind, has a thing for Kain and is thereforejealous of Rosa.
    • Final Fantasy VII has Cloud, Aerith, and Tifa, arguably the most famous and hotly debated love triangle in video game history. Even twenty years since the game's release, there are some people who still argue about it in forgotten corners of the internet. (While Square Enix has refused to concisely answer the question of who Cloud loved more, or if he and Tifa settled down together after the events of the game, a vocal portion of the fandom have chosen to resolve it by either declaring Aerith and Zack to be Together in Death, or Cloud/Tifa/Aerith the One True Threesome). The situation repeats in Final Fantasy VII Remake, albeit with new developments that both calm down and intensify the arguments around it.
      • Even many years after the release of the game back in 1997, this very site had to lock down the Final Fantasy VII main page, the YMMV page and the Playable Characters page for over ten years due to rampant Cloti vs. Clerith Edit Warring, and the restriction on page editing was lifted only relatively recently. That's how fiercely debated this triangle was.
    • Final Fantasy VIII:
      • In a subversion, the game initially seems to be setting one up involving Squall, Rinoa, and Seifer, particularly when Rinoa thinks back to the time she spent with Seifer the previous summer and confesses that she thinks she might have been in love with him. However, by the time all three of them are brought together, Squall and Rinoa are beginning to grow close to one another while Seifer has fallen under the sorceress's influence, to the point that there's never any actual romantic conflict involving the three of them.
      • Seifer's henchmen, Fujin and Raijin, are utterly loyal to him. As he grows more distant, they start to depend more and more on each other, eventually parting ways with their leader.
  • Fire Emblem:
  • Halo 5: Guardians surprisingly includes one. Between Chief, Cortana, and Warden Eternal. Warden obviously harbors similar feelings of devotion toward Cortana that Chief does, though Cortana only reciprocates the feeling with Chief, while her attitude toward Warden is more "Stop Helping Me!" than anything else. Master Chief is more focused on Cortana's new belief in tyrannical rule than romance.
  • This factors into the backstory of Haunted Hotel: Phoenix. As the game progresses, the player finds evidence that Steven (A) was in love with Amanda (B), who was in love with Duke (C), who was using both of them for his own agenda. It eventually comes to light that this is all still happening - Steven isn't as dead as Amanda would have the player character believe.
  • Inazuma Eleven starts with a triangle, but it becomes more of a love polygon as of the third game of the original trilogy.
    • Aki and Natsumi both like Endou, who remains oblivious to both of them, and while her relationship with Endou is stated to be platonic, Touko often enjoys to tease them by acting like his love interest. In the third game, Natsumi is Put on a Bus and Fuyuka takes her place in the triangle, until she returns and Endou has three girls to choose from by the end of the game.
    • Meanwhile, Ichinose is implied to like Aki, while having a very clingy admirer with an unambiguous crush on him named Rika whom he's not interested in.
    • The love polygon is solved in Inazuma Eleven GO, where Endou is married to, depending on the adaptation, either Natsumi (every adaptation except GO Dark) or Fuyuka (GO Dark) and Aki is implied to have a relationship with Ichinose.
    • In Ares no Tenbin, Anna believes there exists one. She likes Nosaka, but she sees him with Akane, whom she assumes to be his girlfriend (it's not clear if she's actually right). There's also Nishikage, who's pretty much Ambiguously Gay for Nosaka.
  • I Was a Teenage Exocolonist: If romanced by Sol, Anemone finds herself caught up in one between them and Vace. No matter how close she and Sol are, Anemone will initially start dating Vace due to her trauma over her brother's death. However, if Sol has enough Persuasion or Empathy to get her to see how toxic and abusive Vace is, or has gathered enough evidence to expose his control over her, she will dump him and be open to dating Sol. This can also double as a Bisexual Love Triangle depending on the Sol's sex and gender.
  • One exists in Jade Empire, between Silk Fox, Dawn Star, and a male player. You can exacerbate it by expressing an interest in both of them, resolve it by expressing an interest in only one, or if you have a high enough Charm skill you can have them both.
  • Jak and Daxter:
    • It is clear in Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy that Jak and Keira are in a relationship, yet Daxter still tries to win Keira's heart. This is no longer true starting in the second game, with the introduction of Tess.
    • Jak II: Renegade:
      • Keira is still in a relationship with Jak, but she also harbors a huge crush on Erol, who also likes her back and wants her to become his mechanic. She and Jak nearly break up when she refuses to believe that Erol was the main reason behind his Dark Eco corruption. By the big race, Keira finally shows her support for Jak, and calls him the best racer in Haven City. After the race, Erol becomes so angry at losing both the big race and Keira, that he tries to run over Jak, but ends up crashing into several barrels of Dark Eco.
      • We also get Ashelin, who's shown in a few cutscenes to harbor romantic feelings towards Jak. Although they (presumably) kiss at the end of Jak 3, Jak decides to remain with Keira in the end, while Ashelin starts a relationship with Torn.
  • Kingdom Hearts has a bit of a Love Triangle between main protagonist Sora, his best friend and rival Riku, and their mutual love interest and childhood friend Kairi. It tones down considerably following the first game, probably because Riku knows how his two friends feel about each other and wants them to be happy.
  • The Legend of Zelda:
  • Mass Effect:
    • Mass Effect has either human love interest, Liara, and Shepard (the Player Character), assuming Shepard led both of the others on enough.
    • Mass Effect 2
      • The game introduces some potentially complicated ones, as Shepard can have expressed an attraction to as many as five characters (either gender) over the course of the story, including an unrequited one to Samara.
      • If Shepard romances Liara T'Soni in Mass Effect and then a different character in Mass Effect 2, Liara will argue with Shepard about this during Lair of the Shadow Broker.
    • Mass Effect 3
      • This game can potentially feature one straight-up if Shepard pursued a romance in both the first and second game, given that the developers explicitly described the ensuing situation as a "Love Triangle." Given the possibility of NEW romance options in the third game, this could quickly get out of hand.
      • During the Time Skip between 2 and 3, regardless of whether female Shepard romanced Jacob, he starts a relationship with and impregnates another woman. If they were together in 2, it's implied he was less serious about it than she was. Shepard has the opportunity to thoroughly call him out on his behavior in the Citadel DLC.
      • Tali'Zorah seems to be in a bad case of this in regards to Female Shepard and Garrus. She gets flustered and nervous when telling Shepard she'd be willing to link suits with her, one of her species' most intimate shows of trust. Likewise, if she was not romanced by Male Shepard or if Garrus was not romanced by Female Shepard, Tali hooks up with Garrus at the end of the game. Comes to a head in the Citadel DLC, where, if she gets drunk enough, she mumbles as though in the middle of a threesome fantasy between herself, Female Shepard, and Garrus.
  • Mega Man:
    • Mega Man Battle Network:
      • Guts Man.EXE wants Roll.EXE, but she's mutually attracted to Mega Man.EXE. Of their respective netops, Dex crushes on Mayl, and Mayl crushes on Lan. Lan is initially Oblivious to Love, but later gets together with Maylu.
      • Mega Man Star Force: Both Luna Platz and Sonia Strumm have feelings for Geo Stelar, who may or may not like them back. It is never resolved by the end of the first game. In Star Force 3, depending on whose item you reclaim in the Stolen Items quest (Sonia's bag or Luna's handkerchief), one girl gets to hold hands with Geo while the other pigs out in an angry fit. If you pick Bud's shirt, both of them pig out.
    • Mega Man Legends: Volnutt is pursued by both Roll Caskett and Tron Bonne.
  • Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots: Snake and Otacon are raising a child together and Naomi acts as a foil for their happiness right up until she dies.
  • Neverwinter Nights:
    • Hordes of the Underdark contains a severely underdeveloped one that might exist between Nathyrra, Aribeth, and a male player. It can potentially end in them accepting that you love them both.
    • Neverwinter Nights 2 has a slightly better defined one (though Neeshka's romance plot was cut from the final game) between Neeshka, Elanee, and a male player and a rather obvious tension for female player's affections between Casavir and Bishop (whose romance plot fared slightly better than Neeshka's).
  • Nintendo Wars: Implied between Max, Grit and Nell in the first Advance Wars, before never being mentioned again. It's never one hundred per cent explained what happened, but Grit left Orange Star for Blue Moon to give Nell and Max the room they needed.
  • Owlcat Games:
    • Pathfinder: Kingmaker: There are enough potential love interests that the Baron(ess) can get themselves into quite a tangle. Each sex of PC has one hetero love interest—Valerie for males, Tristian for females—plus the preexisting polyamorous couple of Octavia and Regongar who are both bi. A DLC adds an additional triangle with Kalikke and Kanerah, tiefling kineticists who are twin sisters and will query you on other love interests. Depending on player choices, they may end up with none, one, or possibly a partial Marry Them All ending: Octavia and Reg can invite them into their existing relationship and may or may not stay together afterwards, while the PC can marry both Kalikke and Kanerah.
    • Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous: A total of seven love interests are available: six for male Knight-Commanders, four for females (counting Queen Galfrey's Courtly Love route). It is possible to pursue as many as are available to your PC up through Chapter 5, but at that point your various love interests will corner you and demand you choose. Except for Daeran, who is fine with polyamory; the problem is that nobody else is.
  • Persona:
    • Occurs twice in Persona 2, both times with Maya Amano and Tatsuya Suou. Word of God says that Maya was Tatsuya's first love; he is fiercely determined to protect her, but due to the nature of their relationship does not see her as an eligible romantic option. Maya's feelings for him are unconfirmed. The third member is Jun Kurosu in Innocent Sin and Katsuya Suou in Eternal Punishment. Jun is Tatsuya's best friend who shares his devotion to Maya, but is also romantically interested in Tatsuya himself. Their pairing has been borderline confirmed and the promises they have made to each other drive the plot. Katsuya, on the other hand, is Tatsuya's older brother who falls in love with Maya over the course of the second game, though his devotion to the former prevents him from acting on his feelings for the latter.
    • Persona 4: The NPCs you can meet in the shrine include a young boy who is being fought over by two young girls. The boy, who the text refers to as "Weak-Willed Boy", gets dragged along with whatever the girl that got to him first that day wants. For his part, he just wants to play soccer. Towards the end of the game, both girls get sick of his milquetoast attitude towards them and ditch him, becoming BFFs in the process.
  • Each chapter of Phantasy Star III ends with a love triangle being resolved, though the characterization is so thin that you might not have known one existed. In each case, your male protagonist is proposed to by two women; his choice of bride can lead the plot in some curious directions, and the rejected choice is typically thrown out of the story (unless Ayn chooses to marry Thea; his son is able to meet with Sari, the reject, and learn some information from her).
  • In Professor Layton and the Unwound Future, Layton is revealed to have been in a loving relationship back in college with Claire, who died in an accident. At the time of her death, there were not one but two hypotenuses in this quadrangle. One was her boss (A1), and it's implied that she was aware of his feelings but didn't return them, a fact which he reluctantly accepted; the other (A2) was a fellow student at their university, and there's no indication that she even knew he existed. A2 took her love for Layton much harder, and it became his Start of Darkness.
  • The sequel to Rival Schools, Project Justice, has one in the Teachers' Path since Hayato Nekketsu and Hideo Shimazu have feelings for their teammate Kyouko Minazuki. By the end of the path, Hayato has realized that Kyouko does love Hideo back, and decides to step aside.
  • In Shin Super Robot Wars, this trope happens with Amuro Ray, Aya Kobayashi, and Chen Agi. In a Space Route scenario, Amuro and Aya start complimenting each other on how swift they are in combat, Aya clearly interested in him as more than a fellow pilot. Chen continues glaring at the two of them from her place in hiding. In another Space Route scenario, Chen is pleasantly surprised when Amuro invites her to accompany him to the city.
  • Played with in Skies of Arcadia. While Aika and Fina both show occasional feelings for Vyse, none of the three ever show any real desire to resolve the triangle.
  • Sly Cooper has two examples, both of which ended in disaster.
    • The first three chapters of Sly 2: Band of Thieves has one, where Sly develops feelings for both Carmelita and Neyla, a pair of Interpol agents. Neyla appears to return the feelings to Sly, even going as far as to arrange a date together. But then she betrays Sly (and Murray) at the end of Chapter Three, ending the triangle. Sly eventually gets together with Carmelita at the end of the third game*
    • Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves: Sly, Bentley, and Murray end up the target of Penelope's affection. Sly is uninterested because of his own feelings towards Carmelita. Murray acts as a mentor to Penelope, but since he's Ambiguously Gay, he shows no romantic feelings towards her. Bentley is the only one who actually has feelings for Penelope, and even shares several interests with her; he wins her heart when they save each other from Captain LeFwee. But then Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time reveals that Penelope actually saw the Gang as a Meal Ticket to wealth and world domination; she's trying to control Bentley for her goals, and is planning to murder Sly and Murray for being in the way.
  • The Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) game guide states that Rouge may have feelings for both Knuckles and Shadow. What they think of her in terms of a crush is unknown, but Rouge does get along better with Shadow...
  • Star Wars Legends:
    • Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords: With a male Player Character, one develops between the Exile and his two female companions Handmaiden and Visas Marr, while if playing as a female it's with Atton Rand and Disciple. With the Restored Content Mod, if the party is Dark Side Atton/Brianna will challenge Visas/Mical to a duel to the death over them.
    • Star Wars: The Old Republic:
      • Male Smugglers, Imperial Agents, and Sith Warriorsnote  all have two female love interests to choose from, where most class and sex combinations only get one. At a certain point, the ladies in each set of Romance Sidequests will demand you pick one of them (and if you try to Take a Third Option, one of them will dump you anyway).
      • Female Sith Inquisitors can take part in a brief one on Alderaan. It's possible for them to have started a Friends with Benefits relationship with Andronikos Revel by this point, and on Alderaan the Inquisitor can flirt and have sex with another Sith apprentice, Urtel Moren. Andronikos surprisingly approves and shacks up with a castle maid for the night, though he balks at the Inquisitor's suggestion to Double Date later. Urtel Moren ends up dead later and the Inquisitor can express regret at his death, and much later one of the Sith Ghosts she captures in Chapter 2 takes his form on Voss to mess with her.
      • Forged Alliances and Shadow of Revan permit all PCs to start flirtations with Theron Shan and Lana Beniko, though only one can be consummated in SoR (previous romances are not referenced because your class companions are mostly Demoted to Extra once the class story is finished).
      • Blocked by game mechanics beginning in Chapter IX of Knights of the Fallen Empire: it is possible to flirt with Theron, Lana, Koth Vortena, and returning companions simultaneously up to here, but "locking in" a romance beginning at this point overrides any previous romance.
  • There's the Mario/Peach/Bowser triangle in Super Mario Bros., even becoming a major plot point in Super Paper Mario. Mario and Princess Peach are more or less the franchise's Official Couple, while Bowser is an Abhorrent Admirer of Peach.
  • Alicia and Princess Terria both like Waffle in Tail Concerto. Waffle seems to slightly favor Alicia by the end, but nothing is explicitly stated and he's apparently fond enough of Terria that Cyan has decided he's his rival for her affection. In Solatorobo, Terria has given up on Waffle entirely, instead crushing on Red in that game, meaning Waffle and Alicia ends up being more likely to happen.
  • Tales of the Abyss just after the one-tenth mark or so through the game gives the players Asch/Natalia/Luke, with Natalia being attracted to both Asch and Luke (Asch reciprocates, but his clone Luke simply can't like her that way). By the time Natalia has stopped being attracted to Luke (finally able to keep them separate in her memories and cheering on Luke's crush on Tear), there's hints she might be attracted to Nice Guy Guy as well as the emotionally distant Asch.
  • Tomodachi Life has scenes where one Mii confesses their romantic feelings to another. Occasioanlly, a third Mii may pop in, becoming a love rival for the Mii doing the confessing, or you might tell a lovestruck Mii to go after someone who's already taken, resulting in that same scenario. In rare instances, this can escalate to a Love Square. The Mii being confessed to will take several seconds to think before choosing one of them, leaving the others in a slump; if the Mii picking had a significant other and chose someone else anyway, that SO-turned-ex will be hit with Sadness status.
  • In Valkyria Chronicles III, both Imca and Riela eventually fall in love with Kurt; the player gets to choose which one of them gets the guy.
  • Vanguard Bandits as a few of these, with the Triangle being determined on which of the Multiple Branches the player decides to head unto.
  • There are several examples in Warcraft III: The Stormrage brothers, Malfurion and Illidan, with Tyrande Whisperwind. Winner? Malfurion. Then Frozen Throne has a new triangle: Arthas-Jaina-Kael. Who wins? Probably nobody, since Arthas has completely thrown away his soul and love to become Lich King, and as of World of Warcraft, Kael is just thinking to have a hot sex with Kil'Jaeden.
  • X-Change Alternative 2 has a fantastically bizarre version of this. Yuuki (a guy) has his body accidentally swapped with Sayuri (a girl). In Sayuri's body, Yuuki realizes that he loves Sayuri, so he decides to go to confess but before he gets to confess Sayuri tells him that she has something important to tell him. And then declares that she loves Mine (a girl), thinks of having her body swapped with a guy a gift by god and is going to confess to Mine. He of course decides to support her decision. When Sayuri confesses to Mine, her response clearly declares that Mine loves Yuuki. So all in all, Type 2 became Type 4. Oh and the storyline also involves Type 2 (two of them) AND Type 5. In one storyline you'll get to see 3 types of love triangles.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 1 has Melia (A) falling for Shulk (B) after he fetched water ether crystals by himself to heal her after she passed out in her introduction. At first it seems like it could work despite Shulk being Oblivious to Love, but the return of Fiora (C) resulted in this.
  • This is how most of the weeks and rivalries in Yandere Simulator will be portrayed: Yandere-chan is in love with Senpai. So is the rival of the week. Senpai is oblivious to both their affections. Yandere-chan must find a way to get rid of her rival before she confesses her love to Senpai. (Exceptions are Muja, who Senpai seems to mutually crush on, Hanako, who's instead Senpai's clingy little sister, and possibly Megami, as it isn't clear at this time whether she actually has a crush on Senpai or not.)

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