Merin

Final Fantasy 6 and Chrono Trigger are great role-playing games. I know from personal experience that the Persona and Tales series are of quality. Fire Emblem also has elements role-playing and is great ... less so during its GameCube and Wii run, but Awakening looks promising. I understand that Dragon Quest is on the same caliber. Even Feargus Urquhart (Obsidian CEO) spoke favorably of developing a sequel to Chrono Trigger, and was in talks with Square to make it happen. or Chris Avellone, for that matter - He mentioned it a few times in the countdown party, too. Chronotrigger got a lot of love from Obsidian that day! for the record, I've never player Chronotrigger - number of JRPG's I've even started you can count on one hand

How is anyone even supposed to respond to this kind of nonsense? Do you have military experience? I was in the service for 6 years. I never deployed (my time was before the "global war on terror") but there was PLENTY of romance between soldiers. Between MARRIED soliders, usually not with their spouses. My unit had two married couples serving together, one of which started dating and got married while in the same unit. Attraction, flirtation, love and sex is everywhere. You are kidding yourself if you think that, when your life is on the line, you don't start thinking of what's important to you... something worth living for.... an escape from the danger and horrors around you. If personal anecdotes and logic don't work on you, it took me thirty seconds to find this story - http://www.news9.com...ve-while-at-war

Someone arguing against role-playing in a cRPG.... I summon Sylvius the Mad to take over this argument. Sylvius, can you hear me?

Same here. All the talk about "gronards" and being "old school cRPG fans" always makes me sad when they treat IE as if it's classic. It's like people treating movies from the 90's as classics, the word "classic" starts losing meaning if it just refers to "what came out a generation ago." IE is not classic cRPG's... they are 2nd Gen cRPGs. I like them, yes... but the whole "one PC and recruit companions" model is a late 90's invention. Almost all the prior cRPG's with parties had you make your entire party. There are more games that do that party build than there are ones that do the IE party build method. It's like at BSN watching one person try and argue for silent PC, or less voice acting so we get more choices, and the legion of fans raining down that "I don't want to read" and "the voices and cinematics MAKE the game" and "I can't play those older games, and even DA:O is boring with how much I had to read." Grrr.

Irrelevant to your point, but his point wasn't yours. He said - I bit different here, Obsidian have no rights to change Lady of Pain, as it's WoC prerogative to change lore. Now, it's Obsidian's universe and they are free to do anything they want with their own creation) in reference to you saying you had no problem if they "made the choice to do it like it was done for PS:T, about allowing confrontation with LoP but it being a losing choice." He was pointing out that BIS didn't have a choice to allow LoP to be defeated. But then agreed that since PE is Obsidian's intellectual property that now they could actually choose what they wanted to do. You were focused on the results of PS:T and confronting the LoP. He was talking about BIS and/or OES being able to have that choice. While he quoted you, he was bridging from you, not responding directly to you. And his point, whether irrelevant or not to your specific point you were trying to make, not only logically followed your post, but was relevant to the thread topic and pointed out, accurately, that BIS didn't have the choice you were saying you liked. I understand you meant "if they choose to do it in PE how it was done in PS:T" and you weren't actually trying to get into whether they COULD have chosen otherwise, but that decision was the same as you not being able to kill Elminster in other FR games - Ed Greenwood had specifically forbidden it from being done. Both relevant points to the topic, tangentially connected by the PS:T references.

Okay, here's the point: You play some scenes from your childhood. You interact with characters in you village / neighborhood. These are representative of your youth. Either you are interacting with kids already your friends and/or siblings, but also meeting new kids and having "adventures" that display/cement relationships. No, you don't play the entirety of childhood through adulthood, but you get a taste and you make some choices and you get to experience, not just read some text backstory explaining what happened. Visceral and experiential, what we like about video games as opposed to just reading books. After you've established who you are and who your childhood friends are, events that brought you together or tightened your bonds... the story jumps ahead to where you are now adults, so the real adventure can begin. Your experiences with the characters who you reunite with (some never having left your side, some having gone far away and lived very different lives by the time you find them again) gives you a connection to the party members and a history that you don't get from reading some backstory text. It could have just been the characters as adults. The story could have had them just refer to events from their past, or do very brief flashbacks. But the story was much more effective because you got to see them as kids AND see them as adults. Did "skipping over the intervening years, unimportant as they were to the story" hurt things? DA:O's origins is this on a much shorter time frame (and with characters who don't become companions but with whom you DO interact with again, and this is well done IMO.) DA2 did this horribly poorly - and would be an example of what you are say, "artificially advanced time." But, that said, this is a common story telling technique. You don't have readers/viewers/players engage in the monotony - you give them the interesting and the relevant. Now, clearly, the childhood events in my example would need to be relevant. Clearly. That's the point.

Some of the jRPGs have dealt with this idea - Namco's TALES OF GRACES f for example; more or less with 4 main characters Asbel, Sophie, Cheria and Hubert all as kids where they have an adventure (that goes wrong) and then later as adults who end up coming together to deal with some further issues that tie into that original ill-fated adventure. I was hoping for a western style cRPG. But, yeah, jRPG's like this concept. Cloud and Tifa, childhood friends. I don't remember character names, but Golden Sun I think did very similar things, too.

But...its part of the Planescape game that the LoP can't be killed. She has no stats. The game setting manual explicitly talks about this when explaining why she has no stats and how to handle her. So...why would BIS *want* to change that or think it was an option? I suppose he could have not known the LoP was unkillible and think that WotC asked for her not to be killed so as not to effect the setting...? In the TSR D&D Forgotten Realms novels before the Black Isle D&D games, several gods are killed in the Times of Trouble (Avatar Trilogy back in the day.) Some by gods, some by men. Gods can die in D&D. Others can rise up to be gods. In MotB you are on Myrkul's remains and you can forever end him - you don't think that WotC gave them permission to do that? If their story plans called for the possibility, why WOULDN'T Black Isle have wanted to let you be able to kill the Lady of Pain? Thing was, whether they wanted to or not, it wasn't their property and it wasn't their call. That's the point.

Dating myself (and setting myself up for ridicule), there's a Bon Jovi song from New Jersey called "Blood on Blood" with the idea of very close friends... I'd love to be able to establish THAT in a cRPG. I have, actually, but only in a game like IWD. You think romance is unbelievable in a short time span like most game stories... you try and justify blood brothers in the same short period of time, those kind of friendships grow over years, not days. Another example - Stephen King's It. The connection the group of main characters in that story have... I'd love a party to grow that way. Which leads to a very interesting concept - how about a cRPG where you first play children, and you pick up your "companions" as your friends, have some adventures.... and then the game story jumps a decade or two in the future, and you need help and track down your childhood friends? THAT would be better than romance, IMO.

Yeah, no. It's there for those of us who like creating more than one character. Wasteland 2 is doing it, just like Wasteland did. Wasteland - my favorite game ever. Did you guys read Chris Avellone's blog on him creating his characters for Wasteland? It was fun to read! It's even more fun to do that yourself!

I'm for the character being allowed to pick a fight with a god. I'm also for - if its the direction they want to go - the gods being treated like the Lady of Pain in Planescape - you can challenge her but its End-of-Game & reload to do so. I bit different here, Obsidian have no rights to change Lady of Pain, as it's WoC prerogative to change lore. Now, it's Obsidian's universe and they are free to do anything they want with their own creation) Oddly enough, I didn't suggest Obsidian had the rights to the Lady of Pain, or that Obsidian should change her. What I did suggest is that I wouldn't mind Obsidian allowing the player to challenge the gods in PE - and it be an insta-lose for the PC/player. Just like LoP in PST. I think, maybe, what was being suggested was that since the Lady of Pain is property of TSR / WotC (weird 1999 release means I'm not sure exactly who was giving the marching orders as the game was being developed, probably WotC) that Black Isle was told they couldn't allow players to kill LoP. As in it wasn't necessarily a choice on Black Isle's part, but an instruction. Doesn't nullify your point, Amentep. But I don't think your take away from what Cultist said was quite right, either.

Like IWD then, where you gave "voice sets" to all the characters you created? But then when you picked dialog responses there was no sound? I think that was my point. Sorry if it was poorly worded enough to not convey this. EDIT - not just IWD, all IE games for you characters you create, plus the NWN games for your characters, too. Yes, fully expect the "bark sets" (I think this is what they call the barks.)

No, you are not. Line them up for me.

Just to be clear to some people on here - there's going to be limited voice acting. Like BG and PST (and even IWD, though you didn't have recruitable NPCs), most of the time everyone will be "mute" and there will be no cinematic cut scenes, not even animated dialog scenes I'd wager (though I don't know if that's been said one way or the other) so, you know, everyone will be standing still while you pick dialog choices. The whole "my character standing mute" is usually used to refer to unvoiced PC's in a cinematic dialog scene, like BioWare does (or Obsidian did in sequels to BioWare games, like KotOR 2 and NWN2.) I'm playing SoZ right now, and being able to pick who answers in dialog, and them (because of different stats, alignments, classes and skills) having different things they can say had developed into quite the fun role-playing experience for me. Picking who speaks up, who says what... and in my head filling in the small details of what is happening... I know it's not for everyone, but I find that so much more fun than sitting back and have cinematic cutscenes of developer written characters interact with each other (I know that's not what PE will be like, but that's the end goal of what "having fully fleshed out NPCs as companions" is) I've had more fun with IWD parties than with any combination of characters from BG or BG2.

I would have no problem with it provided it works within the context of the story and the characters involved. And/or the unrequited relationship mentioned in the Avellone text. Or no romance. Or the ability to spend your time pursuing a character only to have them ultimately decide not to want a romance with the character. Or a romance where the characters never get past the earliest stages of the romance. I don't think the game has to provide a happy or a fullfilled romance or a sex scene to be interesting and work within the context of the game. I would love to see some unrequited romance.... your MC can pursue a character, and the character knows you want to be with them and is nice to you but lets you down gently, time after time. There are some interesting RP opportunities in such a situation. One of the things I'm enjoying about PS:T right now (despite so many dead ends in quests and being able to get quests readded to your quest log after you've already completed them.... grrr) is the playing with the concept of love. PS:T isn't just trying to satirize more cRPGs, it's satirizing many aspects of traditional storytelling. Seriously, anyone who says love and romance isn't dealt with, and often, in PS:T has blinders on ... or has a very narrow definition of what "love and romance included" means. Back more on topic - there are so many ways that romance could be part of the story and the game... and I think it'd be a shock if PE doesn't have romance in it in several places. It just isn't likely to be a major focus of the gameplay mechanics - which, IMO, is a darn good thing.

It depends on the feel of the game. My sense right now is that you won't have access to the Adventurer's Hall right away, that you have to "find" it... as in the game story will progress far enough that the "in-game tutorial and prologue" will finish before you get your full party compliment. More than any cRPG developer, Obsidian (though others with companions sometimes do this, too) like to give you your companions slowly over the story, introducing them at story-relevant points. So the game won't be designed to handle a maximum sized party at the start, and hence you won't be able to create party members until after a certain point. I could be wrong on that, but it's how I see things right now. I like the idea of a Wasteland / Storm of Zehir approach, where you make most of your party but still recruit a few companions. It won't work that way in PE, but I'm hoping to get maximum replayability out of the game by only taking a few companions per play, and getting to see new companions' stories and additions to the game in subsequent plays. I have a playstyle with companion-based cRPGs that I pick a party and play with it through the whole game, unless the game forces characters into or out of your party at times (and I despise this), as this allows me to focus on a party dynamic, role-playing, and, again, maximizing replayability. With the ability to still have a full party, make most of my party like I prefer to anyway, and focus even more laser-like on a limited number of companions for story and RPG purposes... well, I'm a very happy camper.

That happened in W2's and DFA's campagin as well. It's the spike at the end of the kickstarter. The thing Eternity did better isn't that. Eternity was the most stable Kickstarter, keeping pledges up during it's entire run. I don't disagree with that ... but I think, overall, Reaper and especially Order of the Stick were more impressive (not end amount, sure, but overall growth.) OotS was an amazingly steady incline. Reaper had a phenomenal boost at it's end.

Raise your hand, everyone who wants angsty teen conceptions of love. C'mon, show of hands. *waits with hand firmly not raised* Isn't that what real life is for? Took two pages this time.

People who spout without reading all the history and reams of arguments.... no right to ask that question. That's a pretty high bar you set there. Did you read all the threads on romance, every post? I didn't. And I'm not going to. Sheesh.

Romance should be some part of the game. Some characters should have love interests, be they companions or NPCs in the background of the story. Some characters should be motivated by caring for another person in a romantic way. How big a part? What theme is Obsidian driving for - it should fit in with the theme. How much romance? Exactly the amount that fits into the writers and developers desires for the kind of game they are making and the story(stories) they want to tell. What kind of romance? I'd prefer it'd not be the main character romancing the companions, but if that is what Obsidian is going with I'll be okay with it. I'd rather it was not companion / main character, and have it an optional side thing with a (or some) NPCs in the background (if it has to do with the player character) or, what I really want, side stories or (if Obsidian's plan) the main story. What I don't want - some kind of "game" where you "pick the right options" and you "win", as a formula applied to multiple "romance options." That's not romance - that's achievement hunting. In the end, like I'd wager most people on the forums, I want Obsidian to make the game they want to make the best way they can, and not include or exclude anything that THEY are passionate about just because a tiny group of people are advocating for or against it (regardless of what IT is.)

I don't think anyone is accusing me of being terse, so I'll be understanding. And I'm sure we'll have responses longer than few sentences - just if you could start with a few points that were only a few sentences, so we can focus our dissertations on said points....

And I apologize for the snark. I hate snark, and really dislike when I get smarmy. I also apologize for not taking into consideration that English (or American style) might not be your native language. Can't we try one point at a time? Few people actually enjoy reading overly long posts and, honestly, evidence to the contrary, I don't like writing long posts where I have to answer so many points. Let's do one at a time. We can be civil about it, and disagree. I wouldn't be trying to engage with you if I didn't think we could have rational discourse. I believe you are trying to really communicate, and I'd love to as well.

I've been skimming / skipping lots of very long posts (tad hypocritical of me, I admit freely) - which one are you referring to? He's judging people reading 1\10 of a post. teh intarnetz. Ah. I personally dislike the ones who see several paragraphs making an argument about one point, say "Casablanca is a better film than Citizen Kane" as an example, and the interlocutor mines the argument to find the phrase "Don't amount to a hill of beans", grabs it out of context (it was quoting Casablanca), and says "See, Poster A says people who prefer Citizen Kane don't amount to a hill of beans, how insulting! mock outrage!" But, sure, only reading the first or last sentence and not even bothering to read the rest is pretty similar. Who is doing that?

This isn't the ending of ME3, something that hundreds of thousands of people have (or can have) a great deal of passion and commitment to. This is a few weirdoes arguing about an obscure issue behind their computers. I also don't think it'll be a large reaction either way. The people who were going to "pull their money" because they didn't get exactly what they wanted already did, and have put up about as much a stink as they could. I honestly believe, little to no romance or companion romances and romance as a part of the plot, the vast majority of people eager for this game will love it for the story and mechanics and not the amount of romance in there.