Strange_Trees

Although I agree with you, romance guides are inevitable as long as the game is deterministic. They could add a random variable for it but I don't think that's too good for narrative. As I said, I agree 100% with the rest of the post. I suppose it could be interesting if some of the variables depended on who else was in the group at the time? For example: Companion X triggers a conversation in regards to some recent happening in-game. Companion Y, if present, can interject with something that X finds disagreeable. Depending on how the conversation goes, the Player can side with X or Y, in each case angering the other, or neither, angering both. Let's say without some high stat check, it is not possible to resolve the conversation amicably with both X and Y. Of course, if Companion Z was present instead of Y, maybe things would go differently. And these could be significant factors, not just a throwaway interaction. With that, something like a "Romance Guide" would be less of "Select answers 1, 3 or 4, but NOT 2, give cake, kiss, congrats" and end up looking more like a Let's-Play in text form.

Yeah, wish fulfillment is pretty much the killer of good narratives. There already seem to be people celebrating that they'll "get to smooch Aloth" or something and I'm just scratching my head all confused cause those sorts of specifics haven't been confirmed anywhere? What if Aloth only wants to smooch someone other than the Watcher? I'm sure there's going to be plenty of entitled whining if any of the relationships don't pan out the way people are fantasizing. Hopefully they'll make the system complex enough that it wont be easy to game. The concept of "Romance Guides" is pretty inherently silly, and mostly just seemed to ruin character roleplay immersion in Bioware games, where it wasn't unusual to see people talking about "How they imagined it actually went down" because the things needed to be said and done to keep the "romance" in play didn't jive with their vision for the character.

Currently I'm sitting on the Elite Collector's Edition + the Painted miniatures. And crying at what the USD to CAD exchange rate is going to do to that price tag. I'm a bit torn cause I initially pledges Elite for the Guidebook, before it was an extra addition. I really want the miniatures because the 3 returning companions were also my top 3 favs from the first game, but downgrading to the regular collectors with the Guidebook and miniatures as add-ons would only really save me $20, and I think I might be willing to part with that for the statue.

Nothing wrong with having preferences. Eh, not really a fair comparison. Developers have their own vision for what they want their game to be, and fan feedback helps them improve that within that scope, but expanding the scope into something no one is really excited about or cares for is going to reflect poorly in the final product. I like romance fine, but I recognize that implementing it within a game without a set protagonist is either going to take up a massive amount of the writing time/budget, or it's going to be something so thin and poorly done that it detracts from the rest of the quality (hilarious memories of Skyrim's marriage system which apparently they didn't care enough about to prevent corpses from spawning in the chapel and offending your guests) , in which case why bother? The answer from Obsidian has generally been that if they did romances, they would want to hold them to a very high standard, which within their current means they simply don't have the time and money for. I'm sure if they ever get to that point they'll write some amazing romances, but until then I'm sure they'd rather they focus on the aspects they want and can finish to their satisfaction.

Yeah... I cringe a little every time someone points to BG2 like it's some shining beacon of how to properly write a video game romance. Even if the content of the writing itself was decent, the implementations were kind of garbage. The variety sucked. Men can either choose the innocent girl-next-door, the bad-girl, or the milf. Women get... that one obnoxious guy. Maybe. Only if you don't mouth off at him when he's being insufferable. Not to mention the only way to change a characters ending is to at some point play hide-the-hotdog. Nothing else between meeting a character and the end of the game will effect their potential story outcome, and that just seems like lazy writing to me. Not to mention that the character-development basically stops at a certain point if you're not romancing them. I remember when mentioning one of them in a "Least favorite character" type thread you'd be guaranteed to get some protest along the lines of "But if you romanced them you would know..." and I'm like NO STOP IRRELEVANT my experiences with a character are valid whether my character boned them or not.

They've been saying around interviews and such that they plan to use the scripted encounters more. Even adding some new features like being able to see a characters skill score before selecting them, and having characters be able to assist others. Hopefully that means Aloth will stop twisting his ankle every single athletics check >.>

Disagree there, it's completely different. Saying "so and so is going to be a possible romance for the player" is more in line with "this is how they're story can potentially be resolved" rather than "they exist in this story". We don't know know the exact details of Edér, Aloth, and Pallegina's returns, only that they're present as characters. It's like reading the blurb on the back of a novel, you may get some names and some general ideas of the plot, but it's not going to tell you how the book is going to end. If the back of the book told you who wins and who dies and who lives happily ever after, the book wouldn't be worth buying in the first place

I wonder if they'll handle it like in Tyranny, where you can make a pass at some of the companions but they turn you down Although I've been giving it some thought, and I really hope that if Obsidian ever does decide to do romances, they never announce it. Because if they do announce it as a feature, it basically reduces it to a stupid mini-game. Also, it basically becomes a spoiler. I mean really, saying "the companions will be romanceable" is a spoiler, much like saying "Yes the companions have personal quests, but they'll all be introduced with a goal that's essentially unreachable because we're exploring thematic things, so when someone asks you to help find out what happened to their dead brother, you'll never actually find out." in the PoE1 pre-release promotions would have been a spoiler as well. Now I'm thinking it would be hilarious if they just said "Yes." but gave no more details ever and let people figure it out themselves, even if there actually wasn't any

I wonder how large the whales get in Eora? Blue whales can get up to 30 meters long, so Leviathan's could be up to 300m? Hard to imagine a creature that big Also wondering if Polpovir might be the new Xaurips in this part of the world.

No preference. It would really depend on what happens in the main game and the expansions, and how the two would intertwine in the overall narrative. So I could go either way,

All we have currently is an Instagram tease

I liked the health/stamina split for what it seemed to show from a lore perspective. That healing magic wasn't magically stitching wounds closed mid-combat, but rather keeping a combatant standing while they're bleeding profusely from multiple injuries that should have knocked them flat on their ass already. I don't recall the exact details of what PoE2 will have, although I think it would simply replace the concept of dying at 0 health with dying at 3 injuries+knockout? If so, it's still similar in concept I think?

I think the appeal of Edér for a lot of people, myself included, is the times he's just there being supportive. Those times where he shakes the player awake because they're having a nightmare and sounds genuinely concerned (A+++ voice acting from Mercer there) were some of the most endearing interactions I've seen in a video game. I was so used to interactions being limited to "listen to me talk about myself and then solve my personal problems" that I was pleasantly surprised every time I was in a conversation with a companion and they ask something along the lines of "How are you feeling?" or "What are your plans for the future?" Definitely not something I was used to seeing.

Considering what a volatile hornet's nest the topic is, I don't expect any of the developers to make an official comment until after the funding campaign is over.

I think that's more of a political marriage, kind of a symbolic 'joining of two peoples'. They're not expected to physically consummate. I suppose views interracial (or would it be interspecies?) relationships would vary culture to culture. Since reproduction is limited to within ones own species (I assume that 'sub-races' could probably mix?) I imagine any culture with hereditary property laws may be alright with dalliances and whatnot (illustrated by the broad selection in the Salty Mast), but expect their heirs to eventually marry and have kids.

I'd say stretch goals need to be something the developers themselves want, and would look forward to implementing. If romances were added and reached as a stretch goal, even if the developers still weren't thrilled about the idea, I'm sure that lack of enthusiasm would be apparent in the final product.

I think the assumption mainly comes from Bioware being tossed around as an example of "romances in video games". Which makes me shudder cause I find Bioware romances, well, awful. Other examples like The Witcher are kind of apples and oranges. Writing a relationship between Geralt and Yennefer isn't going to be the same as writing a relationship between a player character of variable sex/race/height/age and an companion with a set background. Plus there aren't really a lot of other examples of romances in recent games with custom protagonists. Skyrim's marriages were rightfully butt of many jokes, and Fallout 4's protagonist wasn't very customizable personality wise in the end on top of the romances being fairly shallow. I imagine there's also some residual saltiness from how often these arguments come up in forums. Sure happened with Tyranny. Generally you can expect these to devolve into one side accusing the other of being "Lonely bitter people who hate love and want no one to be happy" with retorts of "You just want to f**k pixels because no one wants you irl" eventually maybe. I don't mind romance personally, but I feel a proper, well done romance in a game would need a lot of resources. Probably in the stretch of thousands of extra lines of dialog per romancable NPC, with all the fun dialog tree juggling that would entail, to make it seem believable. Just seems like there are better places to put resources into, especially when it comes to smaller budgets and timelines.

I've seen the devs answer that the digital download gives you a choice between Steam and GoG keys.

I see romances as being very similar to racing mini-games. Sometimes they're done well, often not. Some people enjoy them, some people don't. If the developers really feel that it would improve their game and want to do it, by all means I support that, but I don't want to see them dump resources into aspects of the game they don't want to (thus taking those resources away from where they could be better used) just because someone else does it.

I find turn based combat both boring and a frustrating chore Like oh look, half my group is getting hit by an AoE good thing they just politely stand there and take it instead of moving out of it. I abandoned playing some older games because by the time combat ended, I was bored enough to not even remember what I was doing in that area in the first place (looking at you, Fallout 1 >_>)

My original thought was that it was south of the Eastern Reach, running roughly West-East parallel to whatever the coast of The White that Wends looks like. But the Fig campaign says it's located even further east from the Reach, so now I'm thinking it may run mainly North-South? It could possibly be a long enough island chain to be near both the equator AND the southern edges.

I guess this means we're probably losing all our hard earned gear as well Goodbye Sabra Marie, you were my beautiful trophy from finally beating that stupid dragon, and I will miss you dearly. Edit: Please let me save my menagerie of small vanity pets. That little bog bat was everything to me ;_;

I'm really hoping for some skin varieties in the hunter animal companions. I played a Pale Elf ranger with a lion, but in my head I always imagined it was a snow leopard :[

The lore highlight feature from Tyranny being in makes me very happy :D I wonder if they'll also use it to wiggle in some of the other uses it had in Tyranny, such as mental intrusions and drug induced hallucinations?

This! https://www.instagram.com/p/BJbB6FLAb7Y/?hl=en And also this, coming directly from the pdf he used for his Code Europe talk and kindly shared with his twitter followers: Schermata 2017-01-21 alle 19.14.30.png Oh, and by the way: won't you all look at Obsidian's new homepage... Looks like we're dealing with a brand new corsair-type of character here! Also look at this Josh Sawyer's presentation picture: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/58877228/Code_Europe_2016_Game_Programmers.pdf New Eder (and Pallegina?) picture with him standing on a ship with mast on the background. The other character semi-hidden in the picture doesn't quite look like our Pally, though: if you look closely enough, you can see what seem to be some strings of white hair waving around Also if you look really close at the hand holding the pistol, with blue skin and visible fingernails (so not a glove). My money is on a Pale Elf companion :D