The Sharmat

There is in fact a series of fantasy novels that explores that very possibility as a major theme. I wonder if any of the writers have read it.

Not going into specifics (though I've touched on it a bit in another post), but while Mass Effect was generally a disappointment to me, some of the best scenes I saw in the entire series were because of conditions that were generally considered 'failures' of a runthrough. There were awesome scenes that very few players saw because they involved choices portrayed as suboptimum, and were very easy to avoid. Even I fall prey to this trap. Years of gaming have conditioned me to want to win, so I've chickened out on decisions that immediately had negative ramifications and reloaded. So not only should we be able to fail, and not only should that failure be rewarded by content every bit as detailed as a success, but we should NOT KNOW we've failed until it's too late. At least for me, because I lack willpower.

And they won't. That's why I'm not afraid to hope for it here. They know what they're doing, and they know the difference between their niche and Bioware's, however subtle.

Why would fantasy slang be expensive?

I'm hoping this won't just benefit Obsidian and its customers, but will start an entirely new trend in the gaming industry where developers and consumers interact without intermediaries like publishers muddying the waters and burying competition. So even if it's not the intent, Obsidian deserves thanks for being a part of that change, as well.

The same could be said of any part of a game meant to deliver emotional response, if we're being that vague. Just because a thing has mostly been done poorly in the past doesn't mean it shouldn't be attempted. I dare say this kickstarter is a part of that. No modern publisher wants to make this game, or it wouldn't have been necessary to go to crowd funding. Yet...here we are. On the topic of a romance that had nice character development and plot implications in a video game: Safiya in Mask of the Betrayer worked out nicely, I think.

In Bioware's defense, didn't Morrigan's romance actually hugely affect the plot?

Alternatively, if elves and dwarves aren't terribly different from humans, why can't there be one or two multi-racial civilizations? Rome was a rather cosmopolitan place, for example.

You can have characters with moral codes they strongly believe in while in a truly grey setting without objective morality. Y'know. Like the real world.

One could argue that much of the point of fiction, or at least drama in fiction, is emotional porn.

In terms of demand: from this forum I get the idea that it's roughly a 50/50 split between those that want them and those that don't. Of course there's no telling what the 35k+ donors want. This forum may not be a good sampling of the consumers as a whole. Has anyone made a poll?

The recent layoffs suggest they are, in fact, short on funds. Developers tend to life hand to mouth. They get money for a game, hire people, then are forced to drop them once the project is over. Most profits from the product goes to the publisher, who then funds more games.

Playercharacter-sexual NPCs are pretty horrifying. It makes DA2 laughable.

I like that there may be crude guns in the setting. This segregation of gun powder and middle ages tech is incredibly artificial given that gunpowder arrived in medieval Europe in the late 13th century. Iron age weapons and tactics don't vanish the instant guns show up. Besides, it helps differentiate this game from every other fantasy setting.

Plate isn't the end-all be-all of combat anyway. Plenty of fighting styles and circumstances would find plate armor detrimental.

I really don't want more than two or three romances in game anyway. Anything more gets ridiculous, uses tons of resources, and starts looking like a harem anime. If some players don't see anything they like, then, well, that's life.

Am I understanding this? Your position is "Since they're making this now they obviously could make this before, so I'm not donating because they didn't make it years ago."?

This is very much an idea I'm seeing on multiple sites. I don't doubt it's hurting the donation stream.

I like this, with the caveat that behavior that an NPC views as positive for a potential significant other should not necessarily be what they'd find as positive behavior overall.You can like someone perfectly well without them being your "type" or what you're looking for in a mate.

The game had so much content that it resulted in an exotic quantum phenomena that caused spacetime to invert such that it finished before it was conceived.

Eh, I don't like the 'X likes chocolate, give her chocolate for +1 influence/romance points'. It kinda turns NPCs into virtual pets.

Choices and consequences, duskwind. Making sure all content is available for everyone regardless of your decisions is exactly what leads to bland, meaningless railroading.

Psychoblonde: I'm pretty sure that the game will at least be made with higher screen resolutions in mind than 800x600.

In the perfect world this would have a continuous yet branching story, as Mass Effect advertised but failed to deliver. The world isn't perfect though, so I'm expecting an excellent stand alone title with some nice diverging paths within the scope of a single game.

Mass Effect 3 seems like exactly the sort of tragedy this project is structured to avoid. Without the burden of a demanding publisher, AAA production values, and full voice acting, it's far easier to account for branching plots.