BSoda

This whole discussion over pricing is kind of pointless. It certainly wasn't budgeting that led to the exclusion of romances.

So it is finally confirmed then ? Not that it comes as that big of a surprise considering certain devs ...uhh... reservations concerning the topic from the get go. I will still admit that I am a bit disappointed by that. I would have loved seeing Obsidian taking romances beyond the BW teenage-novella level.

Indeed. I actually tend to see the opposite as bad design. Having all content available to all character builds kills replayability and significantly weakens the impact of the choices made by you, the PC. If you carry this train of thought to the extreme you end up with a Bethesda RPG where a magic only character also ends up being a master thief and world renowned two-handed weapons expert.

Imo gore is pretty much superfluous in a real mature game. Much more than romances which at least ideally contribute to the story / game. But ehh it's no skin of my back either way.

Hmm...nice interview. Too bad there is little new information in it, though.

We are already here.

Instead of laughing it off, perhaps you can provide a better example of an emotional scene in RPGs ? ...or at least lay out why this scene doesn't work for you ? (wooden animations ? dialogue ?) ...you know being constructive to the thread.

The ME3 duct-kid is an especially good example on how *not* to do emotional impact. There was zero connection to that npc. This coupled with the forced traumatic dreams of the protagonist just came off as a really obvious "now you must feel sad" ploy by the devs. Imo it was even worse because the game didn't even let you decide on how you feel about it -they automatically assumed that your avatar would react sad and thus override the player in front of the tv/monitor. BAD, bad game design.

You shouldn't read too much into that interview. Chris Avellone is not the project leader nor is he the only writer for PE. He simply stated that he's bad at writing romances...so far this has no impact on the game itself.

I somehow get the impression that you are not talking about 'romance' but love as a more abstract term. Of course love doesn't have to be sexual. Most parents love their children. You can even love inanimated things like a country. Thinking sex plays absoluetly no role in a loving relationship between adults, however...that's kind of naive. Trust is a big part of it, too -but that alone can also be found between close friends and siblings/family.

No allocation of resources to any form of mp/coop/lan mode. The sp campaign needs every last droplet of devtime it can get...too many former, traditional sp games went the mp/coop route recently...and not for the better.

I don't feel the devs should waste resources on what is essentially an implementation of cheating. If you want to break the game, that's fine -but please do it on your own clock.

This pretty much...and it's not "people" (as in a majority / consensus kind of reading) that say that. It's basically the anti-romance crowd latching on Avellone's interview because it validates their viewpoint and hopes for the game. That Avellone isn't stemming the whole project himself and that he in fact didn't even make a statement about romances in PE is simply contrary to their standpoint.

GTA IV is believed to be one of the (if not the) most expensive (non mmo) video game made so far. It cost ~100 Million A title in the sales-wise successful COD franchise goes for about ~30 million. The Witcher 2 cost around ~10 million. ...and I think BG2 was around 5 million.

Yes. Sadly, that quest was impossible to complete and player was left in the dark( Pretty sure it ended exactly where they intended it to end. Yeah. The player can't fix everything. I actually liked the outcome of this quest.

It may surprise you to know this but I do a lot of reading on this subject and it's not just me who has this opinion. I'm not saying this from a position of ignorance. I happen to know from being in the communities of said games that they are popular with women. I read the blogs of other women who game and participate frequently in debates on the subject. I'm in no way speaking for all women but just presenting what is evident time and time again. Here is a link from a 'female geek' website that pretty much matches what I have said as an example. Note the many comments below lauding the piece. http://www.themarysu...e-protagonists/ What did you think of New Vegas ? Because I honestly don't expect Obsidian to kind of bork this up. Imo, they've done well on this topic, so far.

This. I remember some Bioware dev being especially proud that their female / male Shephard is virtually the same (aside from how the are addressed in the game). I always thought this was more a sign of laziness than anything else on their part. Well that 'laziness' is a nice relief for women who want their female protagonist to be as heroic and non sexualised as a male one. I guess that what I'm trying to say is that at the moment characters like FemShep are the closest thing to a decent female protagonist that we have and that's why they are popular. Let me try and put it a different way, sure the gaming industry can do better as you very rightly pointed out, but at the moment those are the characters that are popular with women because we don't have much else. If we want to be a hero FemShep gives us that chance without the extra baggage of being a character whose primary feature is 'she is a woman' and isn't there to pander to men. Well I just think "ideal woman protagonist" = "male protagonist with boobs and female honorific" is...well lazy design.

This. I remember some Bioware dev being especially proud that their female / male Shephard is virtually the same (aside from how the are addressed in the game). I always thought this was more a sign of laziness than anything else on their part.

I agree with everything but don't pull a Fallout timed main quest. That sucked. I play games to relax and having the game constantly tell me "hurry, hurry...you've got no time for this, hurry up !" is not my idea of a fun game.

When I think of a mature game, I think Showtime, HBO and not Disney. Just having mature elements in your plot doesn't make it a "mature game", imo. (The opposite is true, as well). I trust Obsidian to find the right balance, though.

It's the most heated debate for sure, atm...but I hardly think it's the "most" important point of concern for anyone here.

Arcanum's opening was great. Let's do something like this. We certainly don't need any solists.

1. The already have an engine (Unity) 2. They already have a lot of tools (e.g. for managing dialogue) 3. There is no publisher taking its (huge) cut out of the later earnings (so they can throw some of their own money in, if needs be) 4 Million will be enough to make a BG2 like (in scope) game, imo.

Escapism is an interesting point here, but is your ideal place really somewhere where all women are perfect (and, if it comes to that, willing)? Uhm. Wait. Don't answer that... Still, I'd find it much more interesting when in a world of normal looking women there was one that looked perfect - and then you discover that she is a quite hateable and shallow character and you prefer your not-as-perfect but interesting companion... Lol my ideal place ? The ideal place for pretty much everyone is populated by beautiful people -hence why even the ugly people in movies / tv shows are almost always played by actually attractive people. That's how it has been for the last 100 years or so...your implications that connect this fact to sexuality and shallowness is pretty telling of your character, though. A companion doesn't suddenly grow interesting just because he / she is ugly, neither is he / she "shallow" just because he /she's beautiful.

Agreed. Movies / TV / Books / videogames are all a form of escapism. It's not a coincidence that even the actress who plays Brienne in GoT would be considered traditionally beautiful. She certainly doesn't fit her description in the book ("her eyes were the only thing beautiful about her").