Lurky

As someone who has personally delved into the BSN, I can tell you that these "gems" are not the outliers or exceptions to rational discussions. But my point was in posing the question, did romances in video games turn people into these.... things, or did romances in video games attract an existing group of troglodytes out of their caves? Either way, the boding. It does not go well. Hey, I actually speculated about why that happened several threads ago My conclusions were that what happened was something like this: 1) several people in a lovey-dovey mood meet in the same game forums 2) these people enter an uninterrupted feedback loop between each other where this mood is exarcerbated, which leads to: 2a) the people turn this mood into a bigger part of their behaviour and interests 2b) the discussion grows and entangles new people in the process, whose mood (and interests) are affected as well 3) some devs either see the growing interest or are caught in this loop, leading to some fan ideas being incorporated into the games themselves 4) the combination of the exarcebated mood with the developers being receptive to it leads into the various forms of obsession and entitlement you can find in the BSN I postulated that this lovey-dovey mood was created by the games and that this was unavoidable in videogame romances because they're inherently one-sided, but that's not the full picture: people can carry this mood from other places, so when they gather in one place they follow pretty much the same process, leading to the same self-absorbing degenerating feedback loop. This also means that there's not much the devs can do in terms of game content to stop this kind of behaviour, because it desn't really come from what they do, it comes from people being people. Turns out, the echo chamber effect of forums affect romance discussions too. In both sides. These threads should totally continue to be numbered. That way we'll be able to tell at the end

...Except for the fact that he didn't state that. He stated very plainly that he's not a fan of romances. He's said so on several other interviews before this one, at that. Avellone might not be the project director, but he's still one of the leads of the project, which means that he'll have a strong influence in PE nonetheless. I wouldn't dismiss his opinion so quickly. Additionally, Josh Sawyer isn't too keen on CRPG romances either. So, what we have is: a) the project director's opinion on romances is that they have to be either done well or not done at all b) the narrative lead says that he wants to try other things with the companions that aren't romances c) the narrative lead says that he wouldn't implement romantic subplots in PE anyway, as he'd approach love from a different angle Putting everything together, and considering their track record, I'd say that the leads have been pretty consistent in being uninterested (to put it mildly) in romances. The chances of them changing their minds are probably slim, too: they took a lot of heat for their stances regarding spellcasting or goal-based XP, but they stood their ground. Maybe you could say that Ziets (who is not working on the highest-level narrative) could push for romances, maybe you could say that last minute changes about this could happen... but everything points to the opposite direction. All in all, I think that romances are probably off the table in PE. As with the rest of their design decisions, they have their reasons, they will try their best to implement them in a way that is fun to the player, and that's it. We backed the project because we trusted their vision, not because we wanted certain features, after all. Honestly, I have no stake in this particular topic, and theoretical discussion of romances can be entertaining. But clinging to hope like that is likely setting yourselves for disappointment. Perhaps it would be wise to adjust your expectations to what you've seen until now, instead of what it could be

The topic seems to have become about romances again, so I'll just try to wrap the offtopicness quickly. Well, D&D uses the alignment system for several things. Paladins, for example. Surprisingly, some people actually like what they add, precisely for roleplaying reasons. As for more potential, think outside the box. Mind readers, lie detectors, magical entities that can pass judgement on your true intentions, familiars or spirits that represent inner desires, things like that require knowing true intentions and characterization of the PC. All of these can be devices used in a story. You might not like them, but I think they can be interesting to deal with. And this is our major source of disagreement. You play primarily for the roleplaying, not so much for the story. I play for both. I am willing to accept some interferences in my roleplaying if it means participation in a better world and story (not too many, though), but you aren't. Of course we aren't going to agree if we have such different preferences. What I do is try to roleplay within the constraints of the system, once I know them. I know it's imperfect, I know some options will be missing for me, but I accept it as a limitation of the medium - after all, videogame characters and videogame worlds are always going to be limited to the content the developers have been able to create for them - and if the constraints are broad enough I'll have a good degree of freedom anyway. When I want total freedom in roleplaying over everything else, I seek real people, who aren't affected by these constraints. Sure, real people can be annoying, but that's the price to pay if you want lifelike interactions (or sets of actions and reactions if you prefer it that way, but that's longer to type). Alternatively, you can make mods for the games, and add the options that you feel are lacking. You'll get the best of both worlds if you do that, actually. As for motivations, again, we have different stances. You insist and insist that they are unknowable, almost as if they should always remain that way. I know that they can't be fully knowable, but I like knowing things, and I like if that unknown can be subverted. Knowing things also lets you build approximations that help you deal with reality, and with people. Even if you don't agree with this approach and claim that it's for crazy people (in bolded letters, at that) because having a degree totally gives you the right to judge people, these approximations can be pretty damn useful in real life. They're valuable, no matter what you say. And why did I go on with this topic for so long? Because I like knowing things. I didn't really understand your approach before, but I understand it much better now. So, even if I personally think you're still kind of pretentious, thank you for engaging with me Regarding romances, I have a question for those who are most interested to see them. How would you integrate them with the rest of the game? I don't mean "I want to see this and that". I mean that, according to what we know until now, companions can be completely optional, and Avellone wants to explore other types of relationships that aren't love. Considering how much attention romances drain, how would you integrate everything together so that no content is overshadowed? Just curious.

It seems like we're working with different definitions here. You make a distinction between your real motives and the motives you claim, but most people I know equate the two as the same. The problem is, the game needs a way to know your true motivations if it wants to do something with them (such as changing your alignment, for the systems that have it), and the least immersion-breaking way to do that is making you say them in the game. But for you, if you're saying them then they're not your real motives, only claims. How should the game know them, then? Should the game screw off and not be allowed to try to do something with that? That seems like a waste of potential. KotOR2 used a different style, yeah, but it was interesting in its own way, and it didn't interfere with player agency anyway. That's why I suggested to try out different roleplaying approaches - if you see that the game is going for a different style with the PC, drop your approach and pay attention to the method the game is showing. If it wants you to learn your own past during the story, then take it in stride, instead of trying to have your character already planned as if it were a D&D session. Besides, waiting until you know the story and the setting properly seems like something you'd need before fleshing out your characters, anyway. It'll certainly bring you less frustration. I guess my point is that, while giving feedback for what you like and what you don't is nice, decrying one form as better than the other is pretty damn limiting. The game certainly won't adapt to you because the technology isn't there, so you'll get more enjoyment out of it if you adapt than if you don't. That's not knowable from within the game. Why he gets the response he gets is always a mystery to your character. Your character is a pretty poor people person then. He can't, I don't know, guess? Try to match past behaviors and known actions into a model of behavior that could help him anticipate the kind of responses he could cause? I mean, I've seen your "motivations aren't ever knowable!" spiel, but I have to say I disagree. You may not know that in an absolute sense, but in practice most of us are more predictable than we think. Trying to understand people at least a little is pretty necessary in order to function in real life, so it seems to me like you shouldn't have trouble translating that to a game. If you can work with estimations in real life, your characters shouldn't have problems with that either, right? By the way, what do you do if you're in a setting where mind readers and magical lie detectors exist? How do you pretend that your PC is lying to one when the NPC should realistically be able to tell that? Wouldn't you say that a [Lie] option would be necessary there, thereby needing to express your real intentions in some way?

Then you might want to try a different approach from time to time. If it doesn't work with certain games, you could try to adapt to what the game gives you. As long as the game still gives you a good list of options to choose, what's the problem? What did you think when you played KOTOR1 and found that the PC was Revan? Did you think "wow, I did not see that coming" or did you think "this is bullcrap, how dare they trash the personality and background I had elaborated for my PC up to this point"? Because if you do the latter, you're going to be unable to enjoy some good storytelling devices. Discovering things of your character you didn't know can be used for good.

And then you give The Witcher as an example, which is anything but subtle. Keep digging, I can still see you

It's kind of funny, actually. There's such a stigma attached to romances that people always have to add this disclaimer and justify themselves And just like many people who feel the need to put these kind of disclaimers, your justifications completely contradict your claim. You're asking for completely gratuitous and prominently featured tililation, which is kind of a defining feature of porn and dating sims. You could at least try to admit it. By the way, I voted no at everything, because of how profoundly biased your poll is.

I think the only solution for this would be modding. Create your own character in your head, and make a Story Overhaul Mod that lets you add the character's reactions and the reactions of the NPCs and the world just the way you see it. If you want the game to react exactly your way, you'll have to do it yourself. Also, that way you might learn a thing or two on just how much work this sort of thing takes. You know, for all the people who say that writing stuff doesn't take a lot of effort

You know, no matter how you put it, a CRPG will never have the same freedom of interaction you'll have in a PnP roleplaying session. Even if you fill in the blanks yourself, the technology isn't there yet to allow your imagination to have an effect on the world. This means that if you play a CRPG, you have to get over the fact that you're playing an imperfect simulation in a controlled environment. It's just something you have to accept in order to be able to enjoy it. This situation has advantages: when you have limited knowable elements, you can control all their actions, reactions and interactions with each other. You can make them interact in a way that is enjoyable to the player, and you can make them interact in a way that they tell a compelling story. The fact that the interactions they follow are familiar storytelling structures means you can guarantee the player the emotional reactions a good story can give you, in a way that procedurally generated elements cannot do. So far so good, right? Here's where the division of opinion comes: should the PC be a part of this controlled simulation? Should the game give the player some limited means to interact with the rest of the simulation, or should the game leave that to your unlimited imagination? Both approaches are probably valid, but Obsidian favors the former. It's just what they do, so of course people in these boards are going to defend it. Personally, I think that, if you have accepted that you're playing an imperfect simulation, you could accept that the interactions you'll get with the world and with the NPCs are only going to be "good enough": broad enough to cover as much as possible, but maybe not as nuanced as they could be if you were playing with real people. So, if you've already accepted that you're playing a simulation, why not make it as reactive as possible to all its elements, including the PC? Sure, this means that you'll be restricted to a limited array of options, but thanks to them you're going to be able to see the PC being a part of the world, causing reactions and interactions like the rest of them. Not everything is going to be there, but that's okay: you've already accepted the limits of the medium, so exploit the possibilities these limits offer as much as you can. As long as the game gives enough and diverse options to the player, this can be a good compromise between giving freedom to the player and enjoying the benefits of being a part of a world and a story, that react to you. So what does that mean for the motivations and characterization of the player character? I think the best option is a compromise: the player should be offered a diverse array of options to choose how to define them, so that the game can know how to react to them. I think this is a good thing: it gives you freedom to choose (from a limited list, but if it's well done most options should be broadly covered) and it ensures that the game knows what you want, which means Cool Things* that add to the world's reactivity to you. How much impact should this choice be given? That depends on the story: if your character's motivations aren't a very important part of the game, then they shouldn't have big repercussions on it (like cutting access to quests or using autodialogue to take over the PC). If they are a significant part of the game, they should have some repercussions, which means that special effort should be invested in both giving a broad selection of choices and accounting for them all. Maybe not everything will be in, but you know, you've already accepted the limitations of the medium if you're playing it. *By Cool Things, I mean stuff that adds to the integration of the player in the world, things like playing off your motivations and your world views with those of other NPCs, to gain a good insight into their characters and affect your influence with them (and this influence could actually have repercussions in the story, such as making easier or more difficult to side with certain factions or characters). You could also record this motivation choice in your savefile, so that the characters could bring it up later when it's relevant; for instance, if you do something that strays from what you said earlier a companion could call you out on it, which a) would be very unexpected for the player, and b) could let you build even more complexity into your motivations (were you lying earlier? did your character's views change? why?). By Cool Things, I don't mean some examples that have been given, like closing off quests based on an answer of something you were going to do without knowing that it would have that effect. That's bad design, not reactivity.

Well, regarding romances, I'll try to sum up the various objections I've seen to them in these threads, the way I understood them. Long post ahead. We already discussed the "how much does including them cost" argument in previous threads. I said this: Ah, but that's cheating There are many, many types of relationships that can be explored between the PC and a companion aside from friendship. You can have mentor-student (do you seriously want to put a romance when the characters have such a power dynamic?), or sibling-like relationships (a romance there? ewww), for example. And those are just on the happy part of the spectrum. You can have rivalries, revenge, indebtment... the list is long. Saying "romances are easy to incorporate" because one type of relationship (or maybe a few types, if you want to be lenient) could be adapted to include it is not really applicable. What about the others? You can't cram a romance in many of those without coming off as cheesy, or as severely creepy, and I have some serious doubts it can actually be pulled off well without negatively impacting the non-romance route. Deciding what kind of interaction you're going to have with a companion is decided at preproduction. That's why I said in my post that this kind of stuff has to be decided at the beginning. It can't be added in. It can't be "just a few lines". It simply cannot be done if you want to have a cohesive, internally consistent character. The objection is this: romances cannot be done properly in a videogame without making serious sacrifices of character diversity and branching interactions, and they require too much development and story focus to do them justice. Thus, it's better for the rest of the content if they are left out. Some people have said: well, what if romances are reduced to just a single companion, in order to allow variety for the rest of characters? In order to have one romance that is well-done, we could sacrifice breadth and equality of options. The problem is that this doesn't really solve anything. The player character can be any of six races, male or female, and many other customization options that would restrict your romance options if they were to be addressed realistically. If you make an NPC companion that can be romanced only by human male mages, that leaves the rest of customization options without the ability to pursue a romance, unless they restrict themselves to playing human male mages. What about female players? Should they be forced to play males? Should they be forced to romance an NPC that goes against their sexual orientation if they want to play the romance? Should they miss out on an important relationship they care about because it revolves around a male PC? The same goes for male players if you reverse options. You don't like it when the game gives you less options for your particular roleplayed PC in comparison to other options, do you? The people who want romances are very varied, so arbitrarily saying "okay, only these PC customization options are eligible for a romance" is not going to go well. People will feel discriminated. Especially when you factor in delicate topics like sexual orientation and representation of minorities. This means that making romanceable NPCs that have their own tastes and preferences is not an optimal solution. To solve this, another approach is the "loves you no matter what" NPCs. Here is where the complaints about "romances are shallow" come: the PC is a tabula rasa. An NPC that has to cover all the customization options the PC can have cannot have unique personalized interactions: no matter how you cut it, a male/female relationship between a human priest and an orlan rogue should not have the same interactions as a female/female relationship between a human priest and a godlike paladin. Trying to acknowledge all options is a combinatorial nightmare and would shorten the non-romance route dramatically, so romances would have to be very broad strokes to work for everyone. And that goes against what many people expect from romances: a special, unique link with an NPC. It cannot feel unique if it doesn't account for anything that makes your PC unique. And there's also the problem mentioned earlier of the delicate topics of sexual orientation and representation of minorities: many people are tired of the pansexual approach. Basically, it feels cheapening for many people, because it doesn't account for all the diverse nuances of sexual orientations and makes them feel irrelevant, which is not something you want to do with such a delicate topic (among other reasons). Many people are not going to be happy with this option either. So this means that NPCs that cover everything aren't viable either. To solve this, another approach is having several NPCs with a romance route. Here is where the complaints about "romances turn the game into a dating sim" come: as my quoted posts say, a romance has to be an integral part of the character if it aims to be believable. This leads to a bunch of companions that have a large part of their character very similar to the others; it's a necessary evil if it aims to provide equal options for everyone. This means that you are sacrificing character diversity for the sake of a feature not everybody wants. And we only have 8 companions; accomodating enough romances to please enough people is going to affect a good chunk of the party. What if you want to have truly different relationships with everyone? Tough luck, because accounting for diverse romances to choose took that option away. And if you change that and make all romances inherently different you are again sacrificing equality. If you make the straight romances happy and the gay romances tragic, get ready for the "Obsidian discriminates against the gays" complaints. If you make the straight romances tragic and the gay romances happy, get ready for the "gay agenda" complaints. If you make the male PC romances happy and the female PC romances tragic, get ready for the "Obsidian discriminates against women" complaints. If you make the female PC romances happy and the male PC romances tragic, get ready for the "feminist agenda" complaints. And they will come, I assure you; few things make people as irrational as romances, as the constant bickering in these threads can attest to. Besides, there's also what Avellone said in an interview quoted on the first page: The moment romances are included, the player makes the mental jump from "let's meet these people" to "let's see who I can bang". This is inherent to romances over other types of relationships, because of their very nature: they drain your attention and your focus and don't let it go (if you've even been infatuated, you know how it feels). They condition the way the player thinks. It gets tiring to be surrounded by people who always think about the same topic. It's one of the biggest problems of the BSN, the romance obsession many people have. In short: you cannot include the type of romances that would please a significant portion of their target audience without making serious sacrifices in design. From what I've gathered, this is the core argument against including romances. And frankly, many people are tired of these design sacrifices. There's already a company that takes this approach of being very inclusive with romances, where are we supposed to go if we want something different? Of course there's going to be opposition to the inclusion of romances if it leads to one of these sacrifices, sacrifices that people are tired to see for the sake of a feature you can find with a lot of ease in many games. So that's the most common criticisms I've gathered. They're not fully expanded because this post is already long enough, but it's a start. And before anyone jumps on me: I'm not trying to convince Obsidian. They're grown ups, they can take decisions for themselves. But honestly, I think the people who argue for romances seriously underestime the implications needed to make them happen in the way they want. What I'm trying is to inform everyone of what having romances truly implies. I know I'm going to fail, but damn it, I want to see something different too.

...No, they're reacting to what you tell them is your motivation. There is no inference if you're telling them plainly. Also, for a lot of people, that distinction you made is irrelevant. It's your choice if the motivation you've chosen is really yours or not. It's your choice if you choose a [LIE] dialogue option but you're not really lying. Do what you want. But many people are going to think that you're complicating yourself needlessly. If you have a diverse array of answers that cover what you want your character's motivation to be, why not choose the one that matches? You guys were honestly worried that people were advocating for things like autodialogue and removing control from the player? On the Obsidian forums, by the people who routinely trash Bioware? Seriously? From what I percieve, what people want is a diverse array of answers that cover pretty much all possible motivations your character could have, including lies and various forms of manipulation. If you have that, why would you need to pretend you're not saying what you claim? Choose the [LIE] option if that's the case; that way you get to say and preserve your character's motivation, and the game knows what you want so it can make the people of the world react accordingly. Isn't that better than having to play it in your head?

How? Motivation has no external force. It can't affect the world to cause a reaction. If I save the baby from the fire because I love babies or if I save the baby because I hate the smell of burnt baby, the world will react to it the same way. With one baby that isn't burned. If someone asks why I saved the baby, what I tell them isn't my motivation either. It's what I want them to believe. Motivation can't affect the world, but it can affect how the NPCs see you. They are part of the world too. Maybe it's not your real motivation. Maybe you lied, and your reasons for lying can be very variable. It's your choice if you want to lie or not; the point is, stating your motivations can make people react to you. If people want reactive NPCs, giving you the option to state the why adds to this reactivity. Hell, in the case of PE, even lying could cause a reaction too. We have psionics. Maybe they can tell if you're lying. Now, you can enter the debate of whether this can be done well or not, but that's a debate of implementation. I agree that it's usually not done very well, and you can only state your motivation with complete freedom in PnP roleplaying to a real GM. But that's why cRPGs are simulations. If the simulation can be good enough, it can add a lot to the game, I think. Some people do care about the whys. Those people are crazy, because the whys aren't ever knowable. Wow, you just trashed an entire school of ethics in a single sentence. Way to go. No, caring about that is not crazy. We're clearly not going to agree on this, so let's just drop the topic.

Just wanted to chime in to say that I disagree with this assumption. What if you want the world and the NPCs to react to your motivations? If you don't state them in the game, you lose this dimension of NPC interactions. Granted, it's very difficult to cover all motivations, and not having your preferred option sucks, but if the conversation is well done the options should be broad enough to make this a non-issue. Arguably he's right, the game can't know the players motive only react to his choices. The game can only react to what you do not why you did it (which is why the old "donate to a church / whack a villager" reputation meter in the IE games was kind of wonky). However, there is the question that if the game only reacts to what you do under appropriate understandings (for the game) of what you did, then is it essentially indistinguishable from understanding what your motivations were (or at least render the motivations moot) in context of the game / NPC. I'm not sure I follow you, or if you didn't follow me. I'll try to make myself clearer just in case. First off, you seem to be assuming that the game cannot react to the whys, only to the whats. You do things, but people don't know the motivations behind them. Like in real life, you can't know the motivations of many people, only react to their actions. Am I right? Lose that notion. Forget it. For the sake of this discussion, imagine that the game can react to the whys. The game can react to them if you input them, via dialogue. Restrictive, but it can be done. That way, if you input these whys, the game and the people of the world can react to them. And this is like in real life too. It's deontology versus consequentialism: some people care about the whys. And if these people care about the whys, then giving you the option to input them in the game adds to the C&C and reactivity of the world. For the people who like reactive worlds, this is a good thing. Did I make myself clear?

Just wanted to chime in to say that I disagree with this assumption. What if you want the world and the NPCs to react to your motivations? If you don't state them in the game, you lose this dimension of NPC interactions. Granted, it's very difficult to cover all motivations, and not having your preferred option sucks, but if the conversation is well done the options should be broad enough to make this a non-issue. And just like NPCs should react to the player's actions, I think it can be interesting to explore their reactions to their motivations. Maybe you just hate the guts of that character and want to make patently clear to him that you did what you did just to piss him off; I damn well expect a reaction in that case. Or maybe you simply want to have a conversation about souls or something about the world with the NPCs; playing off your motivations and your world views with theirs can give you a good insight into the characters and affect your influence with them. Going further, this motivation choice could even be recorded in your savefile, so that the characters could bring it up later when it's relevant; for instance, if you do something that strays from what you said earlier the character could call you out on it, which a) would be very unexpected for the player, and b) could let you build even more complexity into your motivations (were you lying earlier? did your character's views change? why?). Yes, this is very difficult to pull off, because it pushes the writers to really think outside of the box to cover everything; that's why it's usually simplified or not included at all. You might say "if it's going to be simplified and lose the options I like I'd rather have nothing at all and fill the blanks in my head". I say "when it's done well, it can really add to the immersion in the game, and make you feel like you're actually part of this group of people". Is it feasible to add in something like this in PE? Probably not, but I'd certainly like to see it at least in a limited matter This is resembling a lot the arguments for and against romances, don't you think? The people for them argue that "it really adds to the game", while the antis argue that "it's better if it's not there". Just like you believe that C&C regarding PC motivations shouldn't be there (because it can't cover the motivations of your PC properly, I understand?), some people believe that it's better if romances aren't there (because they cannot be done properly in a videogame without making serious sacrifices of character diversity and branching interactions, as well as requiring too much development and story focus to do them justice). I hope that this lets you understand the position against romances better Also, you guys have made several posts since I started writing this. Damn I am slow a slow typer

Unless you are a latecomer to the franchise and play game 2 immediately after game 1. Don't make assumptions

The problem is, while those few moments of interaction in the past are better than nothing in order to establish some connection with the characters, for the player it's still just a few moments in the grand scheme of things. You can't ask the player to react to the characters as strongly as if you really had known them for as long as the story says, because it just can't have the same impact as a more prolonged contact with them. In your example, even if the past events that set the main story in motion are engaging enough that the characters make an impact on you, you can't ask the player to react to them as if you had known them for years. In short, the story should ask only for the emotional investment it builds up. Anything more than that, and there's bound to be some disconnect between the player and the PC. So, if you want to pull off long-lasting relationships with the companions that feel believable and immersive to the player, you should let them spend a more or less equivalent amount of real time with the characters as what's implied in the game. This means that you have to look for more effective ways to establish that connection than just giving you bits and pieces. And if you ask me, you can't do that in just one game. I think it's only possible to pull it off with several games with recurring characters, when the players have had time to play and replay the game several times and explore the characters in all their facets. Since Obsidian would like to continue working in the world of PE and having recurring characters, I think it would be interesting to see that long-term approach for different relationships across different games. Bitter rivals that become friendly rivals that become brothers in arms, randomly met people that become friends that become almost inseparable (or, on the contrary, drift away with time), revenge and guilt that becomes forgiveness that becomes trust... And the reverse path should be possible too, such as with close friends that become enemies. It doesn't have to escalate to something unmanageable if you know what you're doing and plan accordingly, and you shouldn't plan it out so much that the player feels like being railroaded, but just like there is a vast array of character interactions you can explore, it grows even more if you consider all the sheer variability of possibilities one kind of relationship can evolve into. Of course, we're still in the first game, and it hasn't even been written yet. No matter how much they could grow, relationships should feel somewhat self-contained in each game; even without the long term approach, there's still a lot to explore. But if you want to explore relationships that involve some serious player investment and sense of familiarity, I think this would be the best way to go

You know what, since this thread seems to try to cover "relationships" in general aside from romances, I'll say something about that. Mainly, that Avellone's approach makes me very happy. Romances are very common, so I'm much more interested in seeing other relationships with the companions. Go wild! You know what, since we've talked about romances so much already, why don't we try to talk about these other types of relationships? What types would you like to see?

I'm not worried about us having an impact on the game, because I trust that Obsidian won't do that. My worries are about bitterness and gloating and overblown expectations tainting the forum discussions. Sure, the stakes are minor, but it's still a drag to have that around when reading and participating in the forums. Then again, we are a minority, so maybe I shouldn't worry. After all, people got over the cooldown issue, right? But I don't know, if the people who care about the romances react in the BSN way, even a minority can still be pretty loud. Again, I'm not worried about having an impact in the game (because I trust that won't happen), but about having an impact in the forums. Oh well. We'll see, I guess.

You know, it worries me the reaction the forumites will have when (if?) we have confirmation one way or another on the inclusion/exclusion of player romances. It worries me because the radicals of the winning faction are going to feel validated by the authors and rub it in every time they can on the faces of the losing side, which will throw accusations of pandering and caving in to the pressure. That's the way it usually goes, anyway. This never ends well. The losing section of fans will be angry and resentful for the duration of the game, which will put a damper on many, many discussions; it's going to be a long 18 months here. The behaviour of the winning section of fans will probably depend on what Obsidian ultimately decides, but I doubt it will lead to calm, reasoned stances. If no romances are included, the more militant anti-romancers might direct their energies to crusading against other topics (but they'll probably keep doing that anyway), and if romances are in, then the more militant pro-romancers might become overenthusiastic and start asking for the sun and the moon in terms of impact of the romances in the game, and growing to have overblown expectations just by entering a feedback loop between each other. Or at least, that's what usually happens, in my experience. Just look at the Bioware forums: the romance requests have increasingly become bigger in scope. It's likely that this could happen here, too. This is not an attempt to sway the discussion in any direction. It's just that I've followed closely this phenomenon on the BSN; it didn't end well there, and it could happen here too. Just voicing my worries, because I have doubts that either side will behave when this issue is settled.

Ah, but that's cheating There are many, many types of relationships that can be explored between the PC and a companion aside from friendship. You can have mentor-student (do you seriously want to put a romance when the characters have such a power dynamic?), or sibling-like relationships (a romance there? ewww), for example. And those are just on the happy part of the spectrum. You can have rivalries, revenge, indebtment... the list is long. Saying "romances are easy to incorporate" because one type of relationship (or maybe a few types, if you want to be lenient) could be adapted to include it is not really applicable. What about the others? You can't cram a romance in many of those without coming off as cheesy, or as severely creepy, and I have some serious doubts it can actually be pulled off well without negatively impacting the non-romance route. And guess what? Deciding what kind of interaction you're going to have with a companion is decided at preproduction. That's why I said in my post that this kind of stuff has to be decided at the beginning. It can't be added in. It can't be "just a few lines". It simply cannot be done if you want to have a cohesive, internally consistent character.

Hey there! I wrote a post talking about that three pages ago, right here. You might be interested in rereading it, and it would make me happy because it takes me time to write stuff like that. I mean, it's just four paragraphs. It's not even that big of a wall of text. Could you do me that favour, please? Thanks! If you reread it, you will notice that what you said is patently wrong. You can't just "change a few lines", because the entire character has to accomodate for these new lines if you want them to feel natural. It should be noted that the resources spent in a new companion and the resources spent in expanding existing companions aren't really comparable. Creating a new companion takes a lot more work than adding new content to an existing companion. For starters, you have to create all the assets of the new character (art, AI, gameplay that has to be balanced...). You also have to do all the entire process of preproduction I mentioned in the linked post above. It all adds together, and it takes much more work to do all that than expanding on existing companions where you can reuse all the basic stuff. Also, it should be noted that the kind of resources spent in late BioWare games and here isn't really comparable. A new companion with depth comparable to the others would require spending significant money on a new voice actor. Did you know that many voice actors are paid in hours? It's much cheaper to churn out more lines of the few actors you have than hiring new ones. And then there's the cutscenes. Do you know how expensive those are? So much, that PE probably won't have them, or only in very limited amounts. I'm not talking to the people who don't want to listen. I'm just adding stuff for anyone who might want to read this thread without participating, or for anyone who might actually want to participate and try to make themselves useful. Let me hope that people like that exist, man.

Or Ventrue dialogue. Dominate had unique dialogue options, and it doubled as a combat ability too! The Ventrue and Malkavian unique dialogues weren't free to use, either. You had to spend a bit of your resources to use them, and that resource wasn't regenerative. So it wasn't that cheap. Seriously, insightful dialogue is cool, but Ciphers can manipulate other souls too (according to Update 15). I want the ability to do that in dialogue and in combat

I see that there's been some discussion regarding the time it takes to write a romance, versus the time it takes to write a character. For this, remember that the process of writing a character is not just typing dialogue on the screen. There's a whole process that comes before that. First, preproduction: you have to decide on the high level concept of the character, basic roles it will fulfill in the story and so on. Then you have to start designing the character, by fleshing out its personality, background, the interactions the PC will have with it, possible quests and so on. Only when you have all this nailed down you go into production, and start writing actual dialogues and actual game content, which also has to be iterated on and peer reviewed before it's considered finished. Deciding whether a character will have a romance or not is a design decision, which comes before starting to write dialogues. But a well-done romance develops with time, which means that all the dialogue before the "hey, romance trigger here" moment has to accomodate for it, so that it doesn't come from nowhere. In other words, the romance cannot be isolated from the rest of the character interactions if it aims to be believable, just like a friendship or a hidden secret or other types of relationships need to have some basis to build on. This means that the decision of having romance dialogue permeates the entire character. And writing and designing all that takes much more time than the few romance-only lines would take to write. Granted, the final game dialogues can be written subtly, so that if you don't choose to activate the romance the alternative route flows smoothly. I think that's the best way to go, because that way the impact of the romance can be ignored easily for those who don't want it. But saying that romances take little time to create because that small portion of romance-exclusive dialogue takes little time to create is simply not true. That's just the tip of the iceberg; everything before it has to account for the romance, and that takes much more time to write. Comparing the 2-3 months it takes to write a character to the time it takes to write a romance might be a much more accurate comparison than you think it is.

And this is why romance threads never, ever end. We spend pages and pages arguing and going back and forth discussing several topics without really agreeing, and when we manage to start seeing eye to eye more civilly and compromising on a few things that most everyone is okay with, someone new sees the thread, barges in without reading previous posts and unwittingly pushes the hot topic buttons without knowing the context at all, starting the whole process again. We are so easy to troll, aren't we? For the new people, if you bother to read this: here is a list of commonly brought up "must haves". And here is something you must take into account if you don't want to disrupt the conversation. First guy pushed the buttons of "close relationship = romance" and "romances as a separate feature", just to start, and Second guy pushed the button of "but we're not asking for Bioware-style romances at all!", just to start. Seriously, we need to start gathering links to well liked posts, and ask for them to be put in the OP. Hopefully this way we won't have to repeat ourselves so much.

Now that you say it, Mirror's Edge had an "extras" section. New stuff was unlocked there after each chapter, showing concept art and early design ideas. Could be another way to do it.