Ieo

There are compromises available for the mere inclusion of romance paths. The only question is how much manpower (linear development time) is required to implement them. (1) Majority non-romance content for any romanceable character, where the romance path doesn't take more than maybe a quarter or something of total character content. Anything close to 50/50 for a character's content split is just too much of a sacrifice, IMO, since we don't have many companions to pick from. (2) Full parallel development paths that are mutually exclusive: If there are 40 banters and 3 quests down the romance path, then there are 40 different banters and maybe the same 3 quests down the nonromance best friend path. (3) One pansexual option. (........That was actually a friend's suggestion. I'm... I'm not even sure how I feel about that.) Then that leaves additional problems for players wanting variety: M/F, F/M, M/M, F/F. Which I won't worry about because I'm more concerned with overall general good character content regardless of romance.

Obsidian already confirmed (somewhere, interviews, so many) that the VA level will be same as BG, only the beginning bits and the rest text. Which is great. Lots of reasons to do it that way, too, but I can't be bothered to cite at the moment. --> This is for the party NPCs; I don't remember hearing anything about PC voice specifically. Probably BG level, would be my guess.

Uh, depends on what you mean by "work"--the dev comments scattered about have been clear that nothing is truly set in stone and a number of things are still fluid. Especially when it comes to mechanics, which are the underlying framework of a CRPG. Since the mechanics are still fluid around the edges and not quite set in the middle, Obsidian wasn't going to start work on this months/year ahead of time; think about it--what if the Kickstarter failed? A few months or a year of work unpaid for that? Makes no sense. In the past month, however, yes, they could start work on it shortly after the first 27 hours of KS, but I don't see it before that. Too risky on manpower, considering they have a current project already and are loaning Avellone to Wasteland2. That said, as others have already noted--Obsidian is saving a lot of time and money by cutting out the "unnecessary" bits: console/tablet ports, multiplayer, 3D cinematics, full VO, etc. I don't think we have anything to worry about in actual development time. Additional time for QA, though--I'm all for that.

I will just restate my general views on romances in games from the other thread: I'm fine with this (minimal, subtle, not latching into central plot) kind of implementation with the only caveat that non-romance content must be at least equal to romance content in the parallel/exclusive sense--it's a problem if a character is written with a romance path taking up 50% of its content, then someone who pursues it gets twice as much content as someone who chooses not to pursue it. A much better implementation is to have that 50% generic content that branches as a "Y" into two equal and exclusive paths, one of "romance" and the other of "bromance/best friend" or whatever. And this cannot be dismissed with "just ignore it" because we only have eight companions. Eight. Not eighteen. For a party of six. Honestly, if we were going to have over a dozen companions of considerable depth, I'd have much less of a problem with this overall, but that's simply not within the scope of the project. Companion interaction is critical for PE, and that means everyone should have equal opportunity to experience it in both quantity and quality. The only other fundamental disagreement I have with some people who want romances is the idea that "romance" somehow brings higher objective value to a character interaction. To repeat myself, since I doubt most would read the earlier parts of this thread: I don't believe stories "benefit" or not by inclusion of romance but rather that such stories are either designed to be such from the outset by virtue of genre application or the plot mechanism is specifically added to hook proponents of said genre--thus romance is not something I see as having additional intrinsic value in a fictional work, but is either the underlying nature of the story itself already or is used for marketing. Either you like the genre and reactive positively to the audience targeting, or you don't care for it (for whatever reasons). There are many other aspects of a relationship that give depth and meaning, and romance isn't by default any better than them. Page 11 of the last locked thread also has a fair discussion on specific development resource limitation worries. P.S.: I'm not against romance inclusion on its face, but there are plenty of caveats. PS:T subtlety seems to be the most favored.

PE romance threads: Holding moderators hostage since September 2012. What's funny is that there are a whole bunch of "I don't understand why" or "I don't see how" etc. posts after this thread was moved from the gameplay subform to the general subforum, even though all those points were already addressed/questioned in previous posts---people just talk at and past each other, over and over, refusing to read any of the prior history except the last page or two. Topic ban was a good idea after all.

Actually there is one actively moderated romance thread open at the moment.

Why was this thread necro'd? "Victory"? Guns are officially in and part of the lore. But they are very rare and brand-new. The thread should be locked.

Which I can tolerate fine as a black box mechanism, but under no circumstances would I ever tolerate a visible meter of any sort in relation to character development. That just cheapens the entire effort into a very visible minigame. Copious amounts of flaming dog feces upon certain doorsteps....

I never did play Arcanum. But from what I understand, that was a classic "technology vs. magic" setting, wasn't it? And steampunk? The role of stamina/health in combat has a direct correlation with the lack of healing and resurrection magic, by the way. I wouldn't look at the mechanic in a vacuum like some people did with cooldowns ("omg cooldowns PE is gonna be an MMO!"). And from what we know about the PE world so far, guns are very new and used for a very specific purpose (anti-wizard, mostly); it has to do with the historical period and general setting archetype that Sawyer is interested in, not necessarily related Arcanum. Remember that the KS page specifically mentioned homage to the three big IE game franchises, not Arcanum.

No. There have been other threads about this. The dungeon is optional---not everyone enjoys dungeon crawls. A city with a massive amount of lore and quest content should definitely not be gated behind an optional mega dungeon crawl. On the other hand, a city built on top of the optional mega dungeon would be fine.

"Romance" is not the deepest exploration of someone's character. Ever wonder why plenty of married people have a spouse to whom they're romantic and yet have a different best friend? "Romance" does not have specific intrinsic value above other elements of emotive expression to create a deeper relationship with someone, fictional or not. This is certainly one of the fallacious concepts I strongly disagree with, and I suppose I can blame it somewhat upon the rise of social networking and all these younger people completely failing to understand that a proper "friendship" is more than a number on Facebook.

Even if there aren't official tools, modders will make their own. Like WeiDU, right? Just the fact that Obsidian will keep the content data transparent is the biggest step.

Actually, I see mods as precisely a way for players to create for themselves what they might want in the game or see as a missing element, poor Mary Sue fan-fic quality and all, not something to specifically emulate for inclusion into Project Eternity proper. If someone honestly believes they're missing a "decent" transsexual romance option, let them write it themselves. Let content mods and core game remain separate forever more. That's not a bad thing.

****ing IE ate my post... I agree that there are several different ways to express and convey emotion, but let me ask you this. If the romance did not include sex and was in no way intrusive or a major part of the storyline (meaning that you wouldn't notice it unless you were looking for it) and done in a way that truly did enrich the character(s) it was implemented for, would it bother you to the point of still being 100% against it? This wasn't directed at me, but I'm fine with this kind of implementation with the only caveat that non-romance content must be at least equal to romance content in the parallel/exclusive sense--it's a problem if a character is written with a romance path taking up 50% of its content, then someone who pursues it gets twice as much content as someone who chooses not to pursue it. A much better implementation is to have that 50% generic content that branches as a "Y" into two equal and exclusive paths, one of "romance" and the other of "bromance/best friend" or whatever. And this cannot be dismissed with "just ignore it" because we only have eight companions. Eight. Not eighteen. For a party of six. Honestly, if we were going to have over a dozen companions of considerable depth, I'd have much less of a problem with this overall, but that's simply not within the scope of the project. Companion interaction is critical for PE, and that means everyone should have equal opportunity to experience it in both quantity and quality. The only other fundamental disagreement I have with some people who want romances is the idea that "romance" somehow brings higher objective value to a character interaction. To repeat myself, since I doubt most would read the earlier parts of this thread: I don't believe stories "benefit" or not by inclusion of romance but rather that such stories are either designed to be such from the outset by virtue of genre application or the plot mechanism is specifically added to hook proponents of said genre--thus romance is not something I see as having additional intrinsic value in a fictional work, but is either the underlying nature of the story itself already or is used for marketing. Either you like the genre and reactive positively to the audience targeting, or you don't care for it (for whatever reasons). There are many other aspects of a relationship that give depth and meaning, and romance isn't by default any better than them.

Page 11 is the only worthwhile page in this thread.

I'll ignore the rest of your post since I can psychologically pick it apart, but the first statement is something everyone can agree on. However, in the second statement you're skating into the "if you don't want to romance someone, then hire an Adventurer's Hall merc"--maybe you don't realize what you're implying here, but making romance-exlusive companion content is exactly why a good number of players are against having them in the game at all. Actually yes, cause love - is one of the core emotional things in this world. Only 'foreveralone' guys don't understand this. There are many forms of love. Love of family, love of country, etc. To shoehorn the concept of love as purely a sexual or romantic gesture, I think, is very sad. Agreed. :/ Platonic love among the other types isn't given enough screen time in general these days. That's what I'm hoping for instead of all the baggage that comes with mass media requisite "romance." Yeah, the thread should've been locked after our little conversation.

Yeah, I realized my poll omission earlier in the thread, but it was too late to change the poll by then (editing posts has a relatively short window). Just think of the Fallout button as covering all Fallouts. Obsidian wasn't directly involved in BG, no, but they were closely tied to Bioware back in the day and used their engine (and Black Isle published Baldur's Gate, so clearly not all publishers are/were evil ).

Yes. It was incredibly embarrassing, being associated with the Kickstarter. Someone tried to start a joke thread about the "greenshirtgirl" and it was quickly locked down--at least the forums are moderated for such stupid behavior. (Apologies to the women of Obsidian--not all of us interweb peoples are jackasses controlled by gonads, honest.) Honest error, nikolokolus. Don't suppose you could still edit it or something. As for other egg ideas. Something to do with beards?

Second. What about an in-game copy of Tim's cook-book? I think since they already planned to give that out with tiers.... Well, I think it'd be great if that were hidden around the game instead of being dispensed as a PDF as a tier reward. Make us work for them, lol.

Yeah, I can kind of see how it might be a lot of work if the engine doesn't have hooks for something similar to begin with. On the other hand, if there are going to be 'hands off' in-game cut-scene style sequences, it seems like a number of the hooks (for replaying a sequence with the same effects) probably exist already? *shrugs* But would the cut-scenes be stored as recorded video clips already?

Yeah, not #1.... that only reminds me of the disgusting chat that went on asking for porn shots of the female employees. There was also this thread: http://forums.obsidi...10-easter-eggs/ I liked the random recipes within the game (BG2) and the LEGENDARY pantaloons. Legendary.

Thanks for all your hard work on this, Ink Blot. It's invaluable for those of us who can't keep up with KS comments. End of a chapter. Beginning of an era.

This is factually incorrect. I do believe Obsidian said in their streamed live KS video that players could have sex with all the dragons. Ah, er... ahem. I feel a bit like I should explain a bit about that... >_> For ah... reasons. SWTOR was an attempt to merge the 'party NPC' with an MMO in that players have companion characters that join them in the process of the class storyline. Among them are romance options that can be explored if the players want to, and ONLY if they want to, as they took work to up the character's opinion of the player with gifts, talking to them, and having them present during storyline moments where decisions made by the player gained them or lost them points with that character. It let players who played more 'squishie' types solo easier as one of their companions was always a tanky-class, and a tanky character could use a healie or dps companion at will. Groups were limited to 4 characters, so two friends could run around with 2 companions out and so on. It was a neat take on it, however that turned out. >_> Gwah. I do not like it when games try to mix technical genres. I like my SP games competely SP, my MMOs as traditional MMOs (yes, I've played a couple), and everything else in their proper places.... Content experimentation is fine, but when the mechanics of one genre break a strength of another genre (e.g. I do remember a friend telling me how SWTOR companion "pets" broke grouping behavior in the game, among other things--and MMOs in general should encourage grouping), that's bad. I didn't know you could actually romance them, though. Eh. Well, it was by Bioware/EA... That said, forgive me if I don't consider SWTOR a valid implementation of potential party NPC interactions. Even if SWTOR didn't do that sort of dialogue right, well.... SWTOR didn't do a lot of things right.

The stone guy makes me think of the petrified remains of a trapped and killed god....

(1) Without a doubt the latter is more friendly, although for the sake of narrative, I wouldn't characterize it as a free conversion so much as ending the romance on good terms (2) I can indulge most designs, but Swtor left me believing that blending platonic and romantic dialogue tracks together is sub optimal unless the platonic conversations are altered perceptibly to indicate that a relationship exists between the two characters. The romance neutral conversations in Swtor were mildly immersion breaking. (1) That works. (2) Errrm, forgive my confusion, but isn't SWTOR an MMO? I have no idea how dialogic content containing "memory" would work in that setting. It could be your poor experience with the proposal was hampered by the underlying technology? Romance NPCs in an MMO? I'm still flabbergasted... How would that work in a group...