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I say yes, insofar as they keep it subtle and optional, as you said. Plus, I would say that Beth has already touched base with the Best Friend type of relationship in their games, at least in part. Baurus and Ahnassi come to mind here. Ahanassi should be obvious, and Baurus really does act a lot like a best friend, or at least a good friend. so how the relationships among the characters are maintained in this game
This "optional" is another no-no into equation. Keep in mind that time and resource will come in hand when putting the game. Using up some portion of the resource mean it lost somewhere else. The "optional" part would also lead to "wasted" potential to those who really just wanted to play the Elder Scroll series, namely exploration and quests. It hurts that if one get married, they either stay at one town or travel elsewhere with or without yes spouse. This would lead to immersion breaking in all three case, especially if the said spouse isn't a combatant.
The Sims quite a bit. Once she was watching me play Morrowind, and asked me to explain what I was doing. At the time, I was moving things around my house, and trying to decide what I wanted to wear. Then she proceeded to tell me how much Morrowind was just like The Sims. And she's right. You can play it that way. You can wander around and cultivate relationships, decorate your house, and just be part of the world. Certain mods even force you to deal with all sorts of mundane things like eating, drinking, and sleeping. I think there are quite a few people out there that would like to see a Dark Ages/Renaissance setting for The Sims. You never know, it might be enjoyable.
I'd say absolutely. One of the things that kind of disappointing me was the lack of any relationships. Not per say, romantic. Does it make sense that you saved Baurus' life TWICE and he still just treats you like another blade or a soldier? It would've been cool to become friends with Baurus and maybe get him as a follower or him offering you training or something. Heck, relationships of all types should be in TES V. Maybe if you kill somebody in the family, then the remaining family members would not like you and their disposition would drop to 0 and won't offer services if they offer any. Maybe you could chat it up with somebody of the opposite gender, and if they get to know you better, you could become friends with them and so on.
Yes, because I form imaginary relationships between my characters and npcs anyway. I detach my characters from myself very well. I made a mod that adds a family to Oblivion, with a husband I was role-playing as a female character, a teenager, and two relatives, and people said that they liked how they felt at home there and felt that that was sort-of missing. So I really think it can work, it just depends on how it's implemented. We've never really seen a game like Oblivion take a trip down "Romance" lane. It worked fairly well in so it can work. But the writers are going to have to be people who know a lot about people.
That's something I didn't like in Oblivion, you can meet someone you never met before, get very personal or secretive information out of someone by paying 500g or complimenting them a few times. So it would be cool for example, let's say there's a man named Xavier and I have to gain his trust to receive an important quest room him, it would be nice if I could meet him roaming around the streets earlier in the game, build up a friendship with, then later I take the quest without having to become friends with him. But I can see the other side of this to where it would be annoying to have to gain trust with everyone you meet for important or secretive quests, but most quests are not secretive.