This came to me after seeing a recent post on Midnight Suns.

It always really annoyed me how relationship systems in most games are very linear

• Either NPC is negative on you or positive
• Being positive is generally better rewarded and is always often the optimal choice if you remove player expression from the equation (Better rewards, less punishing outcomes, actually unironically easier to accomplish)
• Having a negative interaction erases some progress on the positive influence you built up.

Tyranny tracks it similarly to New Vegas with some small adjustments

In Tyranny, City/Faction Reputation AND Companion Relationship is tracked as either Favor & Wrath or Fear & Loyalty.

I really like this system as it means accruing Negative Reputation isn't just erasing whatever progress you built before and the game isn't expecting you to do a Full Asshole or Full Goody Good run or Full Mama Bear (Just Right In the Middle) *

It just makes a lot of sense to me, all your actions matter and what you did before can't just be wiped away. There being no grindable ways (In the sense you can keep repeating it) to just farm these relationship points makes whatever progress you gain feel much more important. You can even enable settings in-game to have choices outright show you the reputational impact of selecting them if you find these types of systems to be fiddly.

Do let me know if I am just an Obsidian fanboy screaming at clouds and this is actually something done by most games already, the most recent ones I've played have not (IE; Fallout 4, Midnight Suns)

*Okay maybe Tyranny might be one of the worse examples here as it does encourage you to try out multiple runs via Chorus, Disfavored, Independent, and Anarchist paths. Still, not being aligned to Karma but rather to reputation feels less narrow in approach? I can go through all of these paths with a lot of nuance on what I want my Fatebinder to be and not just be openly be Pro-Chorus, Disfavored, or Pro-Cities, or Anti-Tunon.