Ieo

WUT. GOG.com or BG:EE coming out next month. A lot more votes suddenly after the Kickstarter. I was surprised to see that--more surprised to see the last surge actually surpassed the first day (really did not expect that).

@Loranc (and others), You missed my reply. I'm curious what you'd have to say about that as a resource limit--because unlike making up random numbers, a time frame really was given by the devs for writing a companion's content. (Copy-pasting the whole thing for expediency, I guess.) The time is what I disagree with. But it depends on what level of inclusion:

And I called those extremists silly too, the lot of them! You're probably much more able to navigate a contentious (of sorts) oral conversation than I can--there's a reason why writing is a good portion of my profession. Honestly, I think the only real "what everyone would like to see" we know from all the locked romance threads is that the gradient covers the entire field. So that's not particularly helpful to Obsidian if they really trawl the forums.

(she wanted every companion be romanceable and bi, or at least one be pansexual, and there should be a cheat to skip all combat.... ). Please save all of us, Obsidian! Who said this? A friend IRL. Who has never actually played a CRPG in her life, and I'm careful to point out that companion interaction takes up like a third of balanced game content (thirds combat, world interaction, companion interaction), and earmarking a substantial amount of content when we have only 8 characters is plain unfair and unnecessary... All the arguments have been made already, but boy. Hearing her talk and get all animated "The Dragon Age romances were the best part of the game!" (Uh, if the rest of the game was crap, I suppose you might think that way...) The time is what I disagree with. But it depends on what level of inclusion. You can't ignore someone talking to your face like that--it's easy to ignore someone on the forums. But yes, I agree with you.

It's both ends of the bell curve, really. There are people who insist that romances are the height of "meaningful deep" character development, when that's not true at all (in entertainment and life) and thus demand (no, really, some do) a large proportion of character content be earmarked for only that. Then there are people who cannot stand the inclusion of any lovey-dovey for lack of realism, pandering to (insert audience type), etc. Now, I think there has to be a reasonable compromise, but I will admit that actually talking to one of those people in the former group, in person, pissed me off enough that would fall squarely into the latter end of the bell curve. Holy crud. Thank goodness she is not the target audience for this game, but I really could never abide by... that.... (she wanted every companion be romanceable and bi, or at least one be pansexual, and there should be a cheat to skip all combat.... ). Please save all of us, Obsidian!

I'll bite. But it's way past my bedtime so this may not make a whit of sense, and if that's the case, I plead innocence and deny it ever happened, though most likely that just means I'll forget by tomorrow morning that I posted at all. As I explained elsewhere, I believe that "romance," unlike the more straightforward feelings "lust" or "hate," represents a full entertainment/literary genre that encompasses social and cultural expectations far beyond those simpler emotions, because romance is supposed to lead into specific physical intimacy and idealized forms of long-term union. I guess I'm talking about the classical chivalric notion at this point. This isn't to say that romance in itself is more valuable or interesting than any of the other elements of the human psyche you listed, but rather its application is forked and invariably leads to complex issues parallel to the above: sexuality alongside relationship expectations. Both are messy in practice--no, not that kind of messy. Here's a fascinating fact about the romance genre in particular, and I'm speaking very broadly now and not limited to game applications: Unlike any other genre, it has a tendency to simplify the social relationship for purposes of dramatic storytelling. Interestingly, this also leads to particular sociocultural ramifications as the audience who watches and enjoys this type of simplified dramatic presentation inherit and then expect these idealized and typically quite unrealistic elements of "romance"--from their partners or fictional future partners. Typically, men may feel resentful when the target audience* of the romance genre, women, are expecting things of them that aren't reasonable ("If you're my true soul mate, you'll know how I feel and what I want without me telling you"). Likewise, if the romances in the gaming industry is traditionally for males (uh, not anymore with Bioware, I guess), then certain subtle hopes or expectations may be placed there too. That's not to say that people cannot separate fact from fiction, but it's rather surprising how malleable human expectations of "ideal forms" really are. So... I think romance as a genre often elicits polarizing views by the specific social divide it tends to produce or exacerbate in real life practice. http://www.cios.org/...17/3/01735.HTML http://www.tandfonli...926189108250854 http://onlinelibrary...2543.x/abstract *I don't really blame the women, though; a lot of the romance genre throughout history were created by men. I'm sure there's an anthropological view on that, but that's for another day. **There was another point I wanted to make, but it swam away with the goldfish.

._.

We'll never know what's in FFG's journal Yeah, that one kept bugging me for a long while. Eventually I came to the conclusion that I was never going to get a peek in that journal. Damn my curiosity I believe people busted it open in an item editor or something and discovered

._.

It's not for any of us to decide "fit." There are MANY awesome "local" artists out there who could potentially fit. But short of Obsidian throwing an open audition or something, encouraging threads like these just generally seem, well.... (And I'm far more interested in instrumental than vocals, unless the vocals have no words, when it comes to games.)

I'll get back to you in 2014.

Nah. Let Obsidian choose who they will and compose what they believe is appropriate for Project Eternity. Too many "HIRE THIS PERSON!!" stuff.

We're definitely in good hands there, and judging by the very basic story intro for PE, it's all set. Avellone @1UP:

Or, you know, in the case of BG1/BG2----maybe play the first game?

Dragon Age: Origins --- completely forgettable plot because from the beginning that antagonist guy Loghain simply did not make any sense to me. Or at least, his presentation was very shallow and unconvincing to me. AND he was so obviously "evil" in a Disney way within the very first cinematic thing you see of him. And Darkspawn? Sooooo boooooring usual horde menace. So, uh, that's what not to do. Bad guys take over/destroy world for no particularly good reason is one of the most overdone basic plots ever. Mini-bad guy betrays his best friend and gets him killed over... I dunno what.... really... wth? PS:T --- Surprise! Layers and layers of truths that end up coloring other truths that uncover not only more of the story but the "nature" of the player character. Moreover, the plot presents some hard questions, some with no good answers. Interestingly, there wasn't an "antagonist" in the traditional sense. This was a real thinker's plot that didn't treat the player stupidly at all. Dodecahedron! Baldur's Gate 1 --- There were some interesting twists starting from the initial mystery that kept uncovering clues all the way to the various antagonists at the end, and the counter-relationship between the PC and end antagonist. So, again--not so obvious from the outset. Baldur's Gate 2 --- Irenicus wasn't a run-of-the-mill antagonist in that his revenge was very specific, and he actually didn't have anything against the PC, interestingly. ToB, though. People have complained about the whole Bhaalspawn weirdness, and I agree it wasn't the best treatment. The whole Gorion part--oh, I see Death Machine Miyagi just posted about that. Yeah. Consistency.

Hm, now that you mention it, it did seem kinda awkward. "Wait, why are my dialogue options this?" Yeah, I remember that a bit more now. Well, on the plus side, her character was very interesting and classy. I still wish to god I could've chopped up the armoire for kindling. Anyway, overall I'd rather the NPCs be a bit spread out but not too difficult to find, with both location and a join quest/conversation that makes sense, between the "piece of cake" and "sweat" options, really. Maybe make the quest/conversation more interesting/difficult than the actual location.

I suspect it would be closer to BG, but Obs might try something different. One thing in BG (2, at least) was that even though the dialogue wouldn't change, that party NPC's stats actually counted. I remember distinctly that depending which party member was most proximal to a door in the Asylum, the guard's dialogue options would change based on that proximal character's INT or WIS. Since my PC had just average-ish stats in those, I had Jaheira or Imoen (forget who) auto-initiate that dialogue based on party position. Interesting as that was, I don't like it, especially for those forced pause-dialogue scenes where some band of enemies swoop down on your party while you're walking through some area all spread out--and they manage to talk to Minsc first, with a super low CHA. None of that, please. Allowing us to switch speaker upon initiation by the other party would be nice, or explicitly pick an automatic spokesperson in the GUI.

You missed the part about my comment applying to 'IRL' and all that. I guess reading comprehension isn't your guys' strength.

Wow what a horrible thing to say. Seriously dude that is messed up. I guess I thought those women were just adults having some fun not...what you are implying. It was not even like they did anything inappropriate or dirty they just did the party pose thing. Nah, I'm a psychologist and sociologist. It's kind of my job and nature to think of these things.

It wasn't IRL, calm down. At best it's obnoxious to a shy or sexually repressed person. Impolite, rude. Also it's context sensitive, you'd have to be sexually repressed to a harmful degree to consider asking someone to come closer because they look fine as "never okay". This isn't Tehran or Salt Lake CIty. Convenient of you to cut the part of my post that said context does matter.

This. Both "time of discovery" and location must make sense for the character. Difficulty and such should be relevant around that. Examples: Yeslick in BG1. Unfortunately his story was never fleshed out as much as I liked and I was sad that he didn't appear in BG2, but finding him was like finding a little treasure deep in a prison held by enemies--he was captured for information, see. Nordom in PS:T. OMG finding that bugger was annoying as hell because he's somewhere in a randomized combat maze! And yet, it totally made sense for his character. He was lost, literally. Fall-from-Grace, proprietress of the Brothel for Slaking Intellectual Lusts, very easily found within her establishment. But she wouldn't join with you until you were... uh... I don't remember now. Finished certain quests or whatever. There are lots of ways to make both the discovery and party-joining of companions interesting, sometimes difficult or not, and sensible for their backgrounds. I do hope and expect that Obsidian makes this work well--not too front-loaded but not too late that development would be a pain.

In context, I have to wonder if they felt compelled to do so to get more KS pledges. Context does matter (unmoderated internet stream), but that wasn't a singles bar, either. The dismissive attitudes are generally disappointing; I just hope people realize that that sort of behavior and the attitude of "no one got hurt, it's no big deal" doesn't fly IRL for various reasons either. The reduction and trivialization of a woman to her sexuality with that type of attention creates a short path to her feeling genuinely uncomfortable and threatened in many situations. That is never okay.

It's pretty bad that when I see "Morgan Freeman" and "voice acting," I think of penguins, isn't it? PC should be silent for the quest dialogue, but I would like more soundsets for the battle/selection VO than BG/IWD.... Not many selections I liked for that.

Well, there's definitely some give and take, and ultimately it will be a matter of a sliding scale. In your proposal, a high percentage of nonromance content against the romance path would be fine to me. Others, however, may want the full romance gamut with minimal "waiting period"... I believe the "more than friends but still not romance" options are what many have advocated for, specifically the bromance/womance, but your point about romance opening specific intimacy doors is true when talking about individual differences. The bromance/etc. path would apply to your first-second statement, though. I do worry about the inclusion of romances, resources notwithstanding, because I think it's fair that there be good options for the wide-ranging audience including LGBT, yet also taking into account character authenticity in terms of race/culture and individuality, on top of the fact that we only have eight companions to work with. Another reason why I advocate more for bromance/womance is that it can be applied much more reasily, IMO, across sexual and racial lines. (There is platonic love and romantic love, among other things, but even though romance doesn't require sex, it is the emotive expression of that type of love that leads to sex.)

Voice actors are very expensive and kind of force you to write less dialogue? Yep. And the cost skyrockets alongside logistics issues as dialogue is refined and edited down the line, meaning VA has to be redone; I believe it was Avellone who described how, with full VA scheduling and whatever, that aspect of the game had to be locked down months ahead of time compared to textual dialogue content that can be continually tweaked right up into beta. Interesting stuff. And I think it was a Feargus Q&A that mentioned the average VA costs. Honestly, I think one of the most fascinating things about the Kickstarter was that many aspects of the game development industry are made more transparent to otherwise unknowing and overly demanding players...