Longknife

You are essentially claiming that because I haven't played your personal favorite, I have never encountered "romances done right," and the idea that maybe I just find romances in video games to be cheesy and off-putting is not even considered by you to be a possibility. Likewise if you're arguing that your singular example is the only instance of "romances done right," then clearly there's a problem and your example is an anomaly one would not normally expect from romances. This will also be the third time my question has been blatantly dodged as you seem to want to conveniently absolve yourself of any responsibility to answer it from here on out. As I've said before: yes this is ultimately a debate of opinions, but unless you can logically explain to Obsidian why romances are so neccesary, I see no worth in longing for it. And unless you can reasonably reinforce your opinion and shoot down any criticisms or counter-arguments, then yes, I do presume it means it's a bad opinion. I've still not gotten any responses to anything I've said about convincing the devs to include it, or how it's impossible for you or anyone pro-romance to say that they truly prefer romance over the actual subplots we'll be receiving, and thus it ultimately feels like people demanding more of the same without even TRYING something new. (which is exactly what this is)

Hello all. Yesterday I opted to make use of my Official PoE Backer Cryo-Freeze machine to cryogenically freeze myself until the release of Pillars of Eternity. Unfortunately as you can see, I appear to have become unfrozen two hours and 13 minutes too early. The machine is also no longer functioning and merely displays a message wishing me lots of fun with Pillars of Eternity. Does anyone know a fix so that I could cryogenically re-freeze myself for the next two hours? If not, does anyone know an alternative solution? Thanks.

Don't be ridiculous. Everyone knows piano player at a brothel ranks waaaaay above game journalist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pRQvEJ2ti8

Am I the only one that just find people like this to be idiots? The premise of a fight is stupid. It's the idea that well if Hitler could beat up Obama well then I guess we better elect Hitler, huh? It proves absolutely nothing. It's someone mistaking ego for actually proving a point.

Wake me when this releases. I'm going back to bed.

The thing about any examples listed is I'm not familiar with them so I do have to go actually make an effort to look at them, which takes time. As for them not being against it per se, I would stress the "per se." The thing is it's crystal clear they do not consider it a valuable use of their time to implement it, and as I've stated before, it's very very difficult to argue for romance when it's clear a good chunk of the community opposes it while nobody would be opposed to "more quests" or "more races" or the like. I would also agree with the sentiment "people would use it if it were there" and that "I see no interest in woo'ing someone who's designed to fall in love with me." Great example: The Lost in Binding of Isaac. The Lost is an absolutely horrible character that dies if he takes a single point of damage. He's purely there for the sake of challenge, and anyone whose played the Lost can tell you he's really pushing it as far as "challenging and fun" vs. "stupid and aggrivating" goes. And yet he gets played a lot. Why? Because he's there and because he has unlocks. That people would use the feature if it were included, I attribute more to the completionist attitude gamers have. There's two options: make romance tie into gameplay to validate it as a concept, or make it completely optional. The former has the issue of "forcing" people to get involved with it when they don't like it, the latter runs the risk of being so out in left field that it just feels misplaced. It's akin to all the people who were like "why is there Sims in my Skyrim" when Hearthfire was released for it; it just seems random, out of place, and doesn't appeal to half of the community, because if they wanted a house building life sim, they'd buy such a game. If you try to include everything in your game, you end up lacking in everything. So again, it's as simple as the developers quite reasonably deeming this not being worthy of their time. And again with my counter-question: why are you people so insistent romance HAS to be included when you have not even encountered Pillars of Eternity's story elements yet? You cannot even say if the story elements they've included are superior or inferior to the romances you like. This is exactly as I said before where I cannot possibly fathom why you would insist on being served the same exact thing you've seen before, because for all my love of New Vegas, if given the option between getting a New Vegas 2.0 where similar story elements are used or a new type of take on war in the Fallout series, I would choose the latter, because I do not know if the latter would be even better than New Vegas and I wanna find out. I wanna experience new thoughts, ideas and expressions, not the same one ad infinitum. It's very easy to sit here and say "it can be done," it's not so easy to actually be managing the game and trying to figure out what should and should be included. I still find it incredibly....bold and short-sighted to sit here and campaign for more of the same when we do not even know what story elements Obsidian chose to focus on over romance. Broaden your horizons a bit.

Okay, if the thrust of your argument against romances is that they're all the same and there's no original concept left to explore, you shouldn't be consuming any media at all, because all stories have already been told countless times over. There is no such thing as a new or original story. What there are, are new and original settings and characters. The stories have all been told already, but the people they happen to and the how and why of them happening is what makes them interesting. And this applies to romance as much as it does any other aspect of any other story. And frankly, your self-admitted "high-horsing" is coming across as condescending and, for some people I'm sure, almost offensive, with your implication that anyone who enjoys a romance in a game (which is not terribly different than a romance in any other media) is some kind of emotionally stunted social reject who can only experience intimacy through a virtual "waifu". Just because you can't think of a good, interesting way to do romance doesn't mean it's not there. I'm extremely tired cause my dumbass neighbor conveniently seems to use power tools whenever I'm sleeping and my lack of sleep this morning is suddenly hitting me (and lo and behold he has them back out now and it's 10pm wtf?), so I'm gonna simplify my response down quite a bit, but I might post some more later. 1) Arguing a hyperbole has never been a productive or objective argument. Saying "WE SHOULD NEVER CONSUME ANY MEDIA EVER THEN CAUSE IT'S BEEN DONE BEFORE" is just ridiculous. It's akin to if I say "Hitler has done some terrible things so we probably shouldn't put too much value into claims he made" and the response is "EVERYONE HAS DONE TERRIBLE THINGS AT SOME POINT IN THEIR LIVES SO WE SHOULD NEVER PUT VALUE IN ANYTHING ANYONE SAYS EVER." There IS a degree of truth to it, but it also blatantly fails to see the rather obvious point being made. Yes you are correct, but my intention with my statement cannot be more obvious, and instead you've chosen to look over it and make a meaningless blanket statement that does nothing to further the conversation by either addressing or challenging the claim I've made. 2) Let me spin it around to really sum this point up: How would you propose doing romance in PoE that would be universally well-received? Just like you're annoyed with what you perceive as elitism or something, I get annoyed with the constant "THAT DOESN'T MEAN IT CAN'T BE DONE." I could go to the President right now and say we should go land on one of Jupiter's moons and he might say it's not really conceivable, to which I could correctly respond "JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN'T IMAGINE IT DOESN'T MEAN IT CAN'T BE DONE." That's great and all, but if YOU want it done, YOU are expected to help explain how it's plausible and a good idea. You're essentially expecting Obsidian - a team that has expressed disinterest in doing romantic subplots - to wave their magic wands and somehow do romance correctly. This is also part of the reason I'm not afraid to come across as so bold and offensive on this topic: because I firmly believe that if an idea is this simple to criticize (see my posts above about how it's not truly feasible to please everyone with romance) and so difficult to defend (all of your defenses have been inobjective broad statements that could be applied to literally anything), then yes, it is a ****ty idea. Maybe this is my law studies talking, but where I come from, debate is a matter of "put up or shutup." I don't agree with this "that's just like ur opinion man" view of things. Of course these are opinions, but if you've got a popular opinion, then I believe you should be able to defend it. Thusfar, I've yet to see a good defense as to how and why romance should, could and would be included. The answers are all "just do it" or "hire someone that can." So yeah, let's switch it around: how would YOU make it happen? What video game do you know of that provides a romantic interest that's universally praised by everyone and does not hit-and-miss with a lot of people showing complete disinterest in the feature? Remember I'm not saying it's not doable to make one some people will like, I'm saying it's not doable to make one that appeases to enough people that it warrants the time and effort spent designing it. Name examples of extremely popular romantic interests that did not have mixed reviews, and explain to me what kind of romantic interests you had in mind that you think everyone would be happy to see. And again that's essentially my problem with the whole pro-romance crowd. A lot of meaningless "IT COULD WORK" statements with absolute ****-all to actually reinforce those claims or shoot down any counter-claims I'm presenting. Why should a romance have to be universally praised to justify its existence? If we've established one thing in recent years, it's that people who play video games are a wildly diverse crowd with loads and loads of divergent interests. Making anything that is universally praised is impossible. Your argument could be used to suit basically any aspect of game design. Hobbit-like creatures aren't liked enough, cut the Orlans. Nature-loving types aren't liked enough, cut Druids. Spears aren't popular enough, cut spears. Magical catastrophes aren't liked enough, cut that stuff out. Why should romances need to be superbly written to justify their existence over anything else? Beyond you not liking them? To see such an opinion on the forum of a Kickstarter backed title is utterly baffling to me. ''Infinity Engine RPGs aren't universally praised enough and not worth the ressources, don't make them''. This seems suspiciously similar to the logic you advocate, someone correct me if I'm wrong. Again you're arguing hyperboles.... The point is that if you want romance, you have to convince the devs it's a valuable asset to waste time on, AKA that enough people will appreciate it to warrant it's existence and cover sales. It's controversial in the sense that some people find it incredibly cheesy and are put off by it, unfortunately for you. People are not put off by the idea of new races or creativity with races, that's the difference. If someone doesn't like the Orlan race or the like, they can avoid playing as them and actively play a racist character for all they care, and ultimately the race still serves the basic fundamental structure of the game as an RPG. If someone doesn't like a town, they can choose not to visit it and only visit it when it's absolutely neccesary and then get out, but again the town is serving the basic structure of the game by providing a hub for quests, characters etc. Likewise you would not expect these make or break a game. Example, the Altmer are unpopular in the Elder Scrolls series, this does not hinder sales. The issue is that romance basically falls onto the responsibility of writers. And as stated before, video games are like pie graphs: you can choose to dedicate a certain % of your time and effort on X feature, but there is a deadline, so any time spent on one feature would cut into the slice another feature holds. Imagine New Vegas if Boone and Cass were romantic interests. Imagine seeing a rehaul where Boone's story was less about him coming to terms with his colored past and more about him learning to find love again after having lost his wife, with you as a female character potentially being that woman, or as a male, you set him up with another girl. Imagine of Cass was less about confronting issues facing you in one of two ways and more about trying to get in bed with her. The problem? Well I'm sure the people who have no romantic interest in Boone would be kind of upset his story basically changed into something they don't care about. Setting him up with a girl sounds very boring and dating him just sounds corny, not to mention the reality that female gamers are in the minority for this and again, may show absolutely no interest in a character and personality type like Boone. The result is the companion system is sub-par compared to before. Again with Cass, it just feels weird if you've no interest in her and your reward for helping her with her quest is that she wants to sleep with you. Or maybe you have no interest in her as a character and personality. The companions as they stand are inoffensive. You may show less interest in Boone's story than Veronica's, or Veronica's than Raul's, but there's not really a character that stands out as offensive in regards to them and their quest feeling annoying. You still feel motivated to partake in all of them and complete their quests a certain way. But if some of them have the main functional purpose of being love interests and you're not interested? That's annoying. You feel this awkward sort of obligation to bring them along even though they bore you to tears, or you avoid them entirely and that feature is a wasted effort. You might be saying that characters already get avoided for roleplay. Yes, but this strengthens the game. It feels more immersive when a character crosses you or you refuse to bring a character along due to their allegiance. A character that falls in love with every male/female character unanimously feels dumb. You might be saying it doesn't have to feel dumb. True, but again, you are now diverting resources away from "vanilla" storylines towards more controversial ones. Controversial in the sense that it's clear not everyone approves of romance in games and hell, the devs themselves do not seem interested. You might say you can have romance alongside basic vanilla companion storylines. You can, anything is possible....but again, that time cuts into something else. Some feature is going to suffer for time spent on romance AND the vanilla companion experience; you'd lose quests or weapons or perks. The time has to come from somewhere. Can you convince Obsidian that time spent on romantic interactions is more valuable than being spent on quests, weapons or perks? It is ultimately a question of resource and time management, so your goal is to convince them this is a worthy cause. The people saying "I want this race" have it easy as more races = more diversity = more lore and RPG elements, which serves much of the core substance of the game. The people saying "I want X town" have it easy as more towns = more stuff = more characters, items, lore....you name it, which again helps the core substance of the game. The people saying "I want romance," you have a minority opinion. It seems to be a decently sized one, mind you, but your desire to see romance also does not tie into the core experience of the game....at all. It's kinda tacked on, and even if you choose to include lore or RPG elements with it, this too poses a problem as people feel OBLIGATED to take part in the romance to experience the full game, which some may groan as they go through it. So what happens? When you guys go asking for romance and another group equal in size to you guys asks for more races or classes, guess which one is more universally anticipated and less controversial? Bingo, not you. To answer your question, it needs to be universally acclaimed or the developers are not going to bother. It's that simple. They want to make a game everyone will enjoy, and when only ~30% of the community seems interested in a waifu while another 20% absolutely loathe the concept...well, suddenly more sure-fire features, such as platonic companion quests covering other topics, seems like the better investment of time. It's that simple. I'd also like to point out....why the insistence romance must be included? Much of the romantics are arguing "it can be good if done right." ....So what's to say what Obsidian wants to write and is already writing won't be good if done right? You guys haven't even given it a shot. You're sitting here insisting (or rather implying) that a plot cliche that you know and love must have presence in everything you'll play or the experience won't be as good. How can you even know? You can't. For all we know the game might release and you'll love every minute of the story, and even if you catch yourself thinking "it'd be better with all this PLUS romance," that's again not thinking realistically because Obsidian cannot wave a magic wand and include EVERYTHING that's ever wanted. The inoffensive ideas that aren't controversial and that the devs WANT to do get included, the offensive ones that draw a divide between the audience get skipped. It's basic marketing here. And again as I've said before, I've yet to hear an argument as to why and how romance should be done. It's just empty claims of "I want romance" with very little details given as to what and how. I see two posts since I last requested this naming games they liked but not even naming or describing why those games got it right, but that's it. I'm sorry but if you realistically want it, you gotta do better than that. I'm simply being realistic here; this is a case where they're gonna want to hear more than "I want it." I keep saying Obsidian doesn't seem to want to make this and people should accept that. I don't see why that's such a controversial thought because I'm speaking realistically. I'm not even speaking about "could/should," I'm talking about will they realistically do it, to which the answer is no. I don't see the reason to demand this game be just like some other game that had romance that you liked. Go play that game when you want your romance kick then. I certainly don't go to forums like the Mass Effect ones and complain they included romance. There the devs wanted to, so sad day for me. Here the devs do not want to, so sad day for you. And no, this isn't some concept where games with romance > games without, so convincing is not that simple.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8awWsWUn6M