Sistergoldring

Cool shield.

The shields are fantastic. LC is a very clever paladin.

I think the game looks like it could be good and I'm interested but my gut tells me that this is an awful lot of game for such a small budget. I'm going to watch it for a bit but at the moment I'm more inclined to hold on to my money until it's published.

Silver - yeah, I'm not surprised. I'd heard that David Gaider had done something with the modders but I only got interested in modding with DAO and so I never installed mods on any earlier title. I guess it means I'm in for a lot of fun now I've joined the party.

Wow, that sounds AWESOME! Well worth a reinstall. Thanks Silver for telling me about it, you rock.

Well personally I don't use respec options but I've been playing these sort of games for a long time now and am pretty familiar with the CC process and I don't much care if my character build is suboptimal so long as it is consistent with the character I'm playing. However I don't feel against it being a feature for other players as long as there is something to deter it being used as a combat tactic. If I was new to the genre I can see that it might be possible to pick badly and in fact to pick so badly that you lose enjoyment in the game particularly if PE has (as I hope it does) a complex CC system. So I guess I would support it if a respec option was included, I don't want anyone who could enjoy PE to throw in the towel because they've accidently gimped themselves horribly. I think that it's OK to be a little forgiving of mistakes and provide and avenue for an inexperienced player to rectify some poor build choices.

Thanks Silver - I've got all of them except Ascension. How good is it because I don't want to have to go through the whole reinstallation again if I can't just add it on top of the others? I've just loaded the game up and it's still looks so good (Ok, it's modded to hell but....that doesn't count.) I got shivers down my spine at the with the opening narration. You know I've never played multiplayer at all, so I'm going to be the worst team mate ever when we get this thing up and running!

Hiya Silver - yeah, can't get rid of me it seems! I've been lurking around on the romance/romance hate thread (WHY DO I DO IT ) We're talking about getting some multiplayer games up and running on the OO website and some other exciting member only activities so hopeful we'll have a lot more interaction happening there soon...........anything to stop the pointless arguing I've been doing lately! Also I've been inspired by all the PE discussion to get BG2 off gog and try and get it running on my PC because I've keep remembering just how great it was. I'm not holding out too much hope though, I think I'll end up playing in one of those horrible tiny boxes for about 5 minutes before I get cranky and turn it off!

JayDGee - amazing effort on the steam group. I hope your typing fingers have held up!

I'd like my companions to ask for their cut. It seems realistic that they would want a share of the loot. I'm not sure I get the whole experience side of thing but I'd expect them to want to keep their gear and a cut of the loot and any special personal quest Item they'd picked up.

This is pretty much off topic but I'm not sure where else to post it. Casey Edwards your music was lovely. I listened to Noble Serenity with a big foolish grin all over my face and was tapping my feet to the beat in Dwarven Dweller. Thank you for sharing it with us, I really hope you're going to tell me I can buy Noble Serentiy somewhere!

You know I actually started typing a reasoned response to Shevek's post and then I realised that there was absolutely no damn point. If you want to believe that people who want to include romances in PE are patheticly trying to compensate for their own social inadequacies or simply have some sort of sexual fixation with pixels, go right ahead. If you want to believe people who have told you repeatedly that they enjoy crpgs actually meant I want to play the sims, knock yourself out! There is no discussion to be had here.

This thread has become nothing more than a pathetic joke. It needs to be shut down.

I am aware that varied NPC reactions are in short supply in most CRPGs and I feel that games are lesser for it. The aspect I feel Bioware gets pretty consistently right in their RPGs is in their attempt to provide reactive companion NPCs. Like them or loathe them a Bioware companion will from time to time express opinions and react to a players actions. I think this aspect makes the world more interesting. Sure, I think the ways they’ve selected to monitor companions feelings have been a little clumsy and open to abuse but the attempt is no less valiant for that and they are trying to create a mutable world for the player to enjoy. Personally, I’ve always felt that if a character can like you the game should provide an avenue for them to dislike you, otherwise you end up with an unnatural world where it seems that your companions will only ever tell the PC how wonderful they are regardless of the fact that your character has in fact been a total douche for ½ the game. This form of companion worship does not interest me as a player, I prefer NPCs to have personality and their own point of view. The reason I continue to play and support Bioware’s Dragon Age series despite their recent and lamentable interference with my PC’s autonomy is precisely because they still give me NPC’s who respond to my actions. I disagree that a romance requires a unique and separate tree from friendship in the majority of PC, NPC conversations. In most circumstances I interact with my husband in exactly the same manner as I interact with any other close friend except that I add the word ‘honey’ to the beginning or end of my sentence. Personally, I wouldn’t want the writers retyping the same responses merely to add an endearment to them. Only issues unique to the romance should require an independent dialogue option and I don’t see the cost of implementing that dialogue as prohibitive.

Yes, all NPC interaction requires work and thus uses resources. We differ in our opinion that spending any of those resources on romance is worthwhile. You think it is not, I think it is. I enjoy well rounded and complex NPC characters and I enjoy the capacity to interact with them in multiple ways. In as much as is practical I want to have the NPCs simulate a person with a human beings capacity for reacting both positively and negatively to situations. So I want a lot of NPC reactivity in PE, in fact as much as the writers can possibly squeeze in. I believe NPC reactions are a great and relatively inexpensive way for Obsidian to reinforce consequence and difference in the world. Resultantly I will always advocate for more NPC dialogue variance rather than less as it is a part of roleplaying that I enjoy. Thus any funds spent on providing branching dialogue that expands the range of possible interaction with the NPCs is for me money well spent. I would usually prefer two shorter well written branches in which an NPC either likes your action or expresses dislike about your action over one longer well written dialogue which does not change based on the NPCs personality. It is much more meaningful to me if I for example burn down a village to achieve an aim and then face a barrage of ‘you’re a ruthless bastard’ from a companion than it is to burn down a village in an act of ruthless bastardry and have no negative reaction from a companion you would reasonably expect based on their established character to be disgusted by the action. I see the potential for romance as a logical extension of a friendship type of NPC PC relationship. It is something that if the circumstances and characters would be positively disposed towards should be possible to explore. I don’t agree with the argument that a satisfying romance subplot necessitates the same level of resources that are devoted to establishing the NPC as friendly to the PC as to me romance can develop quite naturally and satisfactorily from a friendly relationship tree with minor variations. Similarly if a non-friendly or casual romance branch is also included then it really takes minimal effort or resources to type a more sophisticated version of ‘Hey babe, how about it?’ and ‘Go to hell loser!’. After all the aim of PE isn’t to write an epic love story and romances if included need to be managed in a fashion balanced with alternate NPC PC relationships. Further to this point, that as the budget increased so did the scope of PE, absolutely Obsidian is now creating a larger world and more companions. They now have greater opportunity to explore different NPC character relationships without having to shoehorn any and all interactions into a very limited amount of NPC personalities. I originally expected deep and well developed NPCs with branching dialogue trees and I now see no reason for them not to be able to include a romance aspect or subplot for some of them as we have so many more characters and personalities to explore. Obviously if you feel that variability in companion interactions is an undesirable feature and that you would prefer the NPC dialogue doesn’t change in response to the PCs actions then you naturally would see no value in funding an increase in the range of potential options available for the PC to explore. I have no issue with anyone who plays their game differently than I do but as I enjoy the feature I will advocate for it’s inclusion.

There’s something that’s been bugging me in this thread and I think it’s the argument I keep reading that developing romances would somehow swallow up so great a proportion of the ‘character’ budget that it would reduce the funds available to develop well rounded interesting non-romanceable companion subplots to a triviality. Now this would in fact be a pretty reasonable argument in a Bioware AAA game where the romances have unique models, cinematics, additional voice acting and even unique animations associated with them but I don’t think these features are even on the table for PE. One of the greatest advantage for me of a non cinematic or text based game is the ability for it to include so many more dialogue options for the NPCs and PCs because it’s just so much cheaper to produce them when it’s text typed in a box without all the fancy bells and whistles associated with modern AAA titles. So assuming that no cinematic, animation or special resources are required for developing a romantic subplot for some characters (because we aren’t having the grand kissy-kissy scenes) I fail to see how adding a romance could eat up any more budget than any other branching type of NPC character exposition. And if romances in fact aren’t any more expensive to implement than other NPC features doesn’t the whole argument really devolve into an individual’s personal opinion that they would prefer it if the money was to be spent elsewhere or aspects other than romance were focused on? Just as the support for romances is a statement of personal opinion that an individual enjoys this feature and would like it included. I feel that having available to them close to 4 times the asking price for funding the original PE model then the developers should be able to provide us with quite a comprehensive array of possible NPC interactions including friendships, rivalries, dislike, affection and romantic love.

I want NPCs with defined personalities and their own opinions and I want them to react to my PC's actions in individual ways. Therefore, I would prefer it if an NPC betrayed (left whatever) my PC if he/she acted in a way that was abhorent to them. I am also keen for the NPCs to be able to display a wide range of responses to my PC, all the way from hatred to affection. The more reactive NPC interaction I have the more the game world is brought to life for me.

Ummm Merin, I'm pretty sure I was taking a pro-roleplaying stance based on the fact that the player's role in an RPG is to create and control the personality, motivations and within limitation actions of the PC.

I'm not going to lie, I would absolutely knock myself out making avatars with something like this. I'd LOVE it.

but I wouldn't expect them to write party-interactions like in Bioware games for example but something quite a bit different from content, mood and tone. Really, it seemed to me that your point in bringing up frontline soldiers was to imply that the scenario I described in which a character would be interested in pursuing a sexual or romantic relationship with an NPC was unrealistic and perhaps even ridiculous. I can’t really see any other possible interpretation of the comment but I’ll take you at your word and as the reality that frontline soldiers do in fact retain their basic human desires has been pretty much established by former and serving members of the military in this thread then I feel there is no need to continue the discussion. I in return begin to suspect that you simply enjoy a different aspect to RPGs than I do as actively imagining things ( specifically a character and how they would respond to different situations and people) is exactly why I enjoy RPGs. In a game without a set or voiced protagonist the personality and motivations of the PC is usually left entirely to the player. The writers provide different responses for dialogue choices and probably have their own interpretation of why someone would choose these options but my characters reasons for doing so are not predefined or dictated to me. Therefore (I’ll use DAO as an example because you seem familiar Bioware) I can select a dialogue response to Morrigan that indicates an interest in a romantic encounter but at no time am I prohibited from deciding that my character’s reasons for saying this are a) because he is telling her what he believes she wants to hear in order to get her into bed or b) because he sincerely feels this way or indeed any other situation that I can imagine which is consistent with the character I have created for them. Thus very different characters can explore the same situation with the same dialogue and yet be entirely distinct personalities with their own internal conflicts and motivations. My hope for PE is that they provide a reactive world, interesting NPCs (that respond to the PC’s actions with a distinct personality) and a compelling storyline. I feel confident based on the studios pedigree that this is what they will do. I will be heartily disappointed if Obsidian emulates 1. The Witcher. I don’t play it as I loathe set protagonists such as Geralt. 2. The Elder Scrolls franchise. It doesn’t provide me with the detailed NPC characterisations that I enjoy and I find the current combat model boring. 3. JRPGs, I have no experience with at all so while they might be amazing and well worth copying I can’t comment as they have never appealed to me enough to play them ; and 4. Bioware’s current cinematic and full voice focus actively interferes with the choice aspect of the RPGs I particularly enjoy. I want a Baldur’s Gate type of experience that focuses on choice, reactivity and gives me tactical combat. Currently PE seems my best hope of getting this and I hope it also includes the option to romance companions if I decide that my character would try their luck in the circumstances, just as I hope that it includes a capacity for interparty conflict. I couldn’t care less about romance related NPC quests, romantic cutscenes and the rest. If I get an acknowledgement and NPC dialogue responses in-game that reflect the fact that a relationship exists then I’m perfectly content. I can't get the formatting right, sorry for the horrible text! - Colour changed, it's still not good though. Ok hopefully this is clearer.

In the real world people are complex and I don't see how your comment relates to my ability to create a character whose motivations differ from your description of a frontline soldier just as I imagine there probably are in fact people who serve in the armed forces and maintain an interest in sex and/or relationships. This commentary however is a totally irrelevent to the discussion. Actually I can roleplay a variety of different characters and their relationships with NPCs in totally distinct ways within the limitation of a single player experience and have done so many times before to my satisfaction. I don't ask that every internal motivation of my character is reflected in -game but I know the why and wherefore of my actions and it's enough for me to enjoy the process. The fact that you declare this to be impossible doesn't impact on my enjoyment in doing it one bit! A voiced PC makes things much more problematic but this will not be the case in PE. I'm glad that you enjoy NWN and MMOs, it's nice to find something you like doing. Personally, I enjoy single player PC RPGs and intend to go on playing them as I have been doing ever since I gave up playing PNP RPGs well over a decade ago

I completely support this statement. From a roleplaying perspective companion romances have always seemed perfectly logical to me (which is not to say that they have always been implemented perfectly) without spending any time on it I can think of a couple of reasons why someone facing death on a daily basis would be pretty darn keen on establishing some kind of intimacy with another person. Just for example I could choose to be someone who is completely overlooking an NPC's woeful character in order to shore up a ready supply of sex before I meet my demise or I could play as someone who's found love in a state of crisis. I don't think romances should be necessary for the game to be played or enjoyed by consumers but it adds another dimension for your character if you are keen on that sort of thing, so I see no reason not to include them in some form.

LC - You're a total sweetie for volunteering to do everyone's shields, definitely gives you Paladin points in my book.

I think the artists can come up with a happy medium between dressing all the characters in burqas (men too after all fair's fair) and the standard pantless, cleavage-fest fantasy female fare. If I can have a female PC who looks like she got dressed in the morning without the intention of sexually exciting every male she encounters then I'm OK with the occasional bit of eye-candy for the boys in appropriate circumstances too.

I love a bit of romance in my games, so long as they aren't the loathsome pointless Skyrim marriage thing. If the characters are interesting and well written and the relationship is more than a getting into their pants mini game then I find romances add to my enjoyment of the game. So in short I support casual slaughter during the day and Paladin snuggling at night!