jarpie

Not "conveniently ignored" but there is a certain amount of forum ettiquette to follow about not creating endless, ridiculously long posts. It is nigh impossible to respond to everything. We've already had this discussion. In PM's even. Trying to play off now like I'm selectively ignoring all your points because I can't reasonably quote and answer every part of your (by your own admission) lengthy posts is absolutely unfair. I've asked before for you to list a few points for us to discuss, not post a page of things to respond to. I felt the most important thing to address this time was trying to get you to understand that I wasn't trying to patronize you. Often, less is more. The longer a post gets, the harder it is for everyone to read it and absorb it's entirety. Give me points to address, as long as they aren't too many at one time, and I'll debate with you. I freely admit that my posts (like this one) get entirely too long. But I am trying to only respond to certain points, and to keep my points as short as I can. I FAIL at keeping them short, ALL THE TIME, but I don't berate people for not addressing every little thing I say. Cherry picking and taking things out of context, however, I will call out. We haven't exchanged any PMs other than when I asked if you've answered my one post, not a single other one PM so don't try to claim otherwise, I bet mods can even check that if need be. My posts are long, but so are yours, like this one, and this my post isn't much longer, funny how I could process yours and reply. It's no my fault that you cannot into long posts, one would think that -novelist- would actually be able to read and process longer texts. Besides if you'd even read my post you'd see that I didn't make that many points - I explained with couple examples how the motivations can be taken into account with the themes of soul influencing player characters actions. You always could've drop me PM or message in the thread and say "Hey, you didn't notice this" if I hadn't replied to something you said. Edit: consider this as last reply from me to you.

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. But that's where the themes of PE potentially come in... did you save the kid because player character loves the babies or because in some past life the owner of the soul hated smell of burnt baby?

Maybe so but I'm still done with you as you conviniently ignored 75% of my post, and the points I was making, there's no point even trying to have a proper debate where both sides exchange properly done arguments, if the other side completely ignores what you say. I'm not putting you on ignore but consider this: We could've had a great debate where both sides respects each other's views and both gaining insight on each other's views but since you again resorted on ignoring what I said that's not possible. Again, Good day, sir *tips his fedora*

I think a major problem here is context, once more. "Choice and consequence" is a term for games that means something kind of specific. Clearly any video game lets you make "choices" if you want to delve into semantics - in Space Invaders, do you move the cannon left or right, do you fire now or wait a second then fire - with consequences being do you get hit by the enemy fire or survive, and does your shot hit or miss. But for role-playing games it tends to mean story and world changing choices... not just which load out of weapons you have or do you dodge left or right. So, clearly, in a game you need to have reactivity to the player's actions - else you might as well watch a movie passively. But when I say "choice and consequences" (and I think when most devs talk about it) they mean "player decides to save NPC A or NPC B, or player decides to join faction A or faction B, or player gives resources to the town guard swordsmen or to the town guard archers" - the kind of "here is a list of options which will decide where the story goes next" So, if we can get past the straw man of saying I'm saying the game shouldn't react to you, we can move forward. When I said "choice and consequence are nice in cRPGs but aren't essential", I meant story choices and dialog choices. cRPGs existed for years before these became conventions, and even after games started experimenting with them it didn't become a norm until the late 90's You can have great cRPGs (Wizard's Crown, Knights of Legend, all the Gold Box games) without any real story choices and no dialog choices. I don't scale down to anyone's level so I try not to make any snarky comments as you did basicly saying that I don't understand what Choices and Consequences mean...real classy Merin, real classy as I was being polite even though we have different opinions. Choices such as you mentioned either to save NPC A or NPC B has to have a real consequences, such as what the said NPC does, how it affects your character and how it affects the story/sub-story. For example since you didn't save NPC A and he was right-hand man of local leader such as a duke, he might send hired mercenaries after you, demand explanation, demand some sort of compensation, or something else what writer has come up with, and it might affect how the story progresses since you didn't save the NPC A thus not getting help from his master, and since you saved NPC B, he joins your group and you get help from his master who might be local thieves' guild leader which gives you different kind of help and takes you to the completely other route on how the game progresses, maybe different set of quests to progress in the story. Those are the consequences, the more consequences vary for the different options, the better C&C is - such as taking you to the completely different route, such as closing one venue and opening another. And by the way, C&C in Bioware's games are horribly done and are completely just fluff "choices and consequences" and no matter you choose the end result is the same, if you'd played Alpha Protocol or Fallout: New Vegas you'd know what I'm talking about...or understood what those different choices do. If you can't see the difference between Obsidian's games and Bioware's I can't help you, and since you cant keep this civil, I dont see point in debating with you since you resort on making snarky comments and ignoring most of the points I made. Good day, sir *tips his fedora* And Sylvius the Mad, you are way out of the ballpark on what single-player CRPG is thus I don't even see point in debating with you since you obviously are looking something completely different what Obsidian's games are.

But Jarpie, in how many games has it really been like this? I would say that the clear "romance branch" part of the companions in the Bioware games is clearly less than 50% (and they are almost the only ones doing romance). I played most their games and the bulk of all companion dialogue is aside from any romance. It is just a few sentences, which is why they suck to begin with. I don't see why it really hurts, even if I would prefer to only have this if it is really well written and well-done. Then the romance would be as pointless and shallow as in Bioware games and several in here have said that they don't want Bioware romances.

Why can't a deep character NPCs with different personalities and motivations not - under specific circumstances - be romanceable IF it fits the character (and PC), story, etc. I'm not sure I understand why NON ROMANCE = deep character with personality and ROMANCE = shallow character with no personality by necessity (not saying that games don't end up this way, but I'm not convinced this is at the feat of romance vs. creators not being able to realize a romance in an interesting way)? Just replying this quickly... Because they would have to write completely separate branch for both romance and non-romance route if you want it to be equally deep for both or you get what for example Aerie was in BG2 - first 2/3 of the conversations were just friendly coversations and then you choose if you want to be lovers or not, and if I remember correctly, the friendship conversations basicly ended there and then there were just couple more for romance coversations in SoA. Since it's a given that they have fixed time to write companions, they would have to spend half and half writing both, and potentially having just potential dialogue cut in half for both instead of having it for non-romance route only. Roughly putting it; either for example 2000 lines for just non-romance branch, or 1000 lines for non-romance branch and 1000 for romance branch.

Not exactly. This part of what I said is important - "what is best left to the imagination and what is important to concretely show" Some parts of the game's story need to be shown a specific way. Important scenes, important reactions from NPCs.... when something vital to the theme or plot of the game happens, the player needs to make a choice (if a choice is offered, but we are talking role-playing here and not cut-scene exposition I assume) and the game needs to react to that choice. But what reaction should be shown? Another part of this point on "gutter" or "left to the imagination" is that the game design shouldn't force decisions on the player's character or force reactions on the player's character. Dragon Age 2 is a horribly bad example of this done wrong - with all the auto-dialog and paraphrasing. Ostensibly Hawke is supposed to be your character, but there are many instances where Hawke is prescripted to react certain ways no matter what you've done in the game up to that point. This is bad. The reactions should be on the NPC's (characters outside the players control for personality, background and backstory, etc.) but not from the PC. The world should react to what you do, NPCs (including companions you didn't design) should react to you... but the game shouldn't prescript your reactions. Now, before you mention it, yes, there will be a limited number of dialog options to choose from. And maybe none of them fit exactly your character you thought of when you created the character at the start... but that's the limitation of a cRPG, and you still get to choose what best fits. It's not a script with some optional versions of what you can say or how you say it (ugh, unless, again, it's Dragon Age 2.) Sometimes what happens after you make a decision needs to be shown to you. But sometimes it is better to have a vague reference and let your mind concoct the full ramifications to suit your views of the story. The more the game can be made the player's own, the more the player tends to be immersed and tends to enjoy it more. But its not about the game, or the story, not reacting at all. It CAN be, as I have tons of fun with games where the story and NPCs really don't change based on your actions (Gold Box games, Bard's Tales series, etc.) Choice and consequence are nice, I like them, and I'm not saying they shouldn't be in a cRPG. But they aren't essential. I don't think you are trying to use reactivity as a red herring, but for the point of creating your own character, it is one. Here's where I start to diverge from Sylvius on things... I adapt my character to the game I'm playing and accept the limitations of the cRPG format. He is much deeper into his character, his way, and the game can be wrong. But, going off of what I said earlier, the game should NOT give motivation to your actions unless it solicits you, the player, for what your motivation is. Reasoning for what choices your character makes? Often best left to the player's imagination. It's far too late for me to start looking for this kind of thing, but I know several Obsidian devs have commented on "creating and playing your own character" and given very similar (if not to the detail and focus on the "gutter" point) as to what I'm saying. The cRPG game that lets you make your own character should let you play you own character - this is a big reason many players prefer silent protagonists. Not everyone, but many. Almost all Obsidian games (and Black Isle Studios games) play very well this way. The biggest exceptions are Alpha Protocol and possibly Planescape: Torment. Especially games like the Icewind Dales, the Fallouts, and Storm of Zehir. How can the developers write meaningful alternate routes, choices & consequences or options if game wouldn't solicit responses and reactions from the player, and make player to react to what happens in the game world and show the effects on the player character and his dialogue to what happens in the game? And what about gameworld and NPCs reacting on what you do, just the actions? Don't you think that if they write the dialogues where you can choose motivation behind your actions, they can then branch it out on NPCs and the gameworld that how they react both the action and the motivation? Since you want deep relationships so badly to the game, tell me this; how can they write any meaningful relationships with the NPCs unless they show player character having potential motivations and reacting on what the NPCs say, or NPCs reacting to the motivations player character has? Don't you think that player choosing from potential motivations makes the interactions with the NPCs much more deeper than with just very little of motivation shown or none at all? I'll give you an example; You choose to do something to the Companion A, later Companion B pulls you to the side and asks why did you do it and game gives you several options for the motivation, and depending on what you choose, it affects your relationship with the Companion B but also potentially Companion B's relationship with Companion A. See now? What about the writer wanting to show several potential motivations for the player character to choose from and building up the character they have written or do you think you are better coming up with them than MCA for his character, for example? Also as I talk below, how they could deal with any themes concerning for example, friendships or how the souls affect the behaviour unless they write player character reacting to the other characters and what happens in the gameworld, also if they wouldn't give player any motivations to choose from how they can deal with the soul possibly influencing the choices you make? If for example they write that player character makes choices on what the motivations are for what he does, and then they show player character remembering the soul's past lives, wouldn't the motivations be important in dealing with that and not just the actions since they are dealing with the themes that does soul and its history influence the player characters behaviour? More places/options there are for choosing potential motivations, the more in detail (in depth) they can deal with the theme of having souls influencing player characters and NPCs choices, actions and motivations - also with how the soul possibly influences your potential motivations for actions toward the companions. Edit and addendum: Now, this is important - they have to show the motivations in the context of the gameworld how it (the world itself, characters etc) react to the motivations of the player character or otherwise dealing with the whole theme is moot because there would not be points of reference to which compare player character's motivations and actions vs. the gameworld how the writers want. If they would make a game like you want then the player is basicly just playing puppeteer, which is completely against on what CRPG should be - and how PE seems to be shaping the themes for PE. The less there are shown player character reacting what happens in the game world the more game becomes like Bethesda's games where rest of the gameworld is just there for the player to play puppeteer and becomes completely superfluous and bland instead of giving impression that player character is part of the small world, instead of world being there for the player character to toy with. If the developers wouldn't write reactions and motivations for the player character to the game, how it can then possibly deal with any themes I talked above? For player to deal with these themes we have to see how they affect our character in the gameworld to get a proper view of the themes. If they won't ask and show any reactions from the player to show in the game (dialogue, text descriptions etc), then the player character is just a very blank state who is completely disconnected from rest of the game, game world and other characters. Choices & Consequences with the real consequences like in Alpha Protocol or Fallout: New Vegas are essential in a good CRPG since otherwise there wouldn't be real reasons for doing alternate routes/paths and replaying to see how it affects rest of the game, your character and the NPCs if you choose differently.

The difference between jarpie's characters and yours is that yours are completely disconnected from the game. If neither the gameworld or other players/npcs react to your PC's actions/traits/etc they might as well not exist. Any bits of story that are implied, any character reactions or backstory or events not shown on the screen are all in your head. Your imagination is what makes games and stories work. As Scott McCloud would tell you, the gutter is the most important part of sequential storytelling. And this is what makes cRPGs so compelling to those of us who DO role-play our characters and prefer LESS game reactivity to our characters. The more the game is coded to give reactions, the more limited your choices as a player are. But if you imagine what is happening in the gutters, then the story truly becomes yours. The skilled story-teller (or cRPG designer) is the one who knows what is best left to the imagination and what is important to concretely show. Chris Avellone understands this well. Look at him go into detail designing ONE character for Wasteland. ONE. http://forums.obsidi...l-set-symphony/ The game is NOT written to provide scripted responses to his character design. It's not even going to give him a "biography" box to type some of that in. Why must this "might as well not exist"? Why can't the stuff in your head be just as much fund as the stuff on the screen? The gutter is the most important part. So let me get this straight... you want (or prefer) a RPG which has minimal amount of reactivity, choices & consequences and ways of game to react for your decisions, which is basicly opposite of what Obsidian has always been doing? Are you sure you're in the correct forum since reactivity/reacting to the players choices, C&C and your decisions actually making a difference are Obsidian's forte? If what you say is true then you should just love Bethesda's games because they have very minimal amount of reactivity and you are free to "roleplay" character you yourself create. Isn't the whole point in roleplaying a character to see how the world and others around react on what you do and why you choose your actions, then they react to your actions as their characters would and then in turn you react how your character would and so on, and that's why people roleplay when playing PNP or in multiplayer games like MMO or NWN where you can see the reactions in other characters? What if game gives different motivation to your actions in later dialogue than what you have imagined in your head to the character, do you disregard your own imagined motivation, or do you take what the game and the writer has given?

In Finnish defence forces sexual relationships in mixed units between comrades are common place things and some times this relationships continue even after service. And even in full male units soldiers it's commonplace thing to go strip bars and see girlfriends on free time and even constantly calling for them in service hours. And of course it should be also remebered that in Finnish defece forces most of the soldiers are in service only for compulsory 6-12 months. And war brides are some what common thing in long wars. So romantic relationships can flourish in middle of misery and dead. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_bride I stand corrected then but I originally meant soldiers who are fighting in the frontlines having relationships with each other.

How is anyone even supposed to respond to this kind of nonsense? Do you have military experience? I was in the service for 6 years. I never deployed (my time was before the "global war on terror") but there was PLENTY of romance between soldiers. Between MARRIED soliders, usually not with their spouses. My unit had two married couples serving together, one of which started dating and got married while in the same unit. Attraction, flirtation, love and sex is everywhere. You are kidding yourself if you think that, when your life is on the line, you don't start thinking of what's important to you... something worth living for.... an escape from the danger and horrors around you. If personal anecdotes and logic don't work on you, it took me thirty seconds to find this story - http://www.news9.com...ve-while-at-war No I don't but what I've heard from finnish army with mixed units it's different from what it is then in american army. Must be differences in the cultures of countries and armies.

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 You brought up "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." which I recountered with soldiers since obviously they are probably closest example from the real life for player character and his/hers troupe and I never said they wouldn't maintain interest in sex and/or relationships, for example being in off-duty but do you think they look that from their comrades at frontlines? But enough of that since we obviously have completely opposite viewpoints, and maybe american army is different than what I've heard about Finnish army so maybe that's the difference in cultures in armies. Way to completely miss my point - my point was that the writer of the character writes the potential personality, motivations, and obviously the choices into the dialogue or the descriptions, if it isn't there then it's not there unless you start imagining things or making things up on your own. If you are expecting it to be like Bioware's or Bethesda's games or JRPG you will be (very) disappointed - I've played all other Obsidian's games except Dungeon Siege 3 and they all have concentrated much more into how you decide to solve quests: sneak, speak, kill etc and also for example like in FNV where you choose from perhaps several alternatives on what you do (For example help NCR, help Legion, help Mr. House or just you) and especially what consequences those actions have than the Bioware's approach of having more drama inside the party or dealing with their personal issues. I've noticed that at least some people who have come to this forum have wrong impression on what kind of RPGs Obsidian does, and PE will be quite a bit different from what Bioware, CDProjekt or Bethesda are doing, and especially what kind of tone, mood, characters and writing their games have and PE will have. From their previous games I'd be willing to bet that it's going to be much more 'subdued' than some people seems to be expecting. Fortunately I can trust Obsidian to take the route I talked above. Edit and addendum: I know MCA said: 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.

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. Go ask from any soldiers if they are looking for love from their comrades when they are in the frontlines, from any veteran or current soldier - especially if they are with gender-mixed units. I very much doubt that romantic relationships or sex with your comrades is one of the things in their minds. And anyone who brings up "roleplaying" when talking about single-player RPG, you are playing a character and its aspects/varitations what writer has written for you to choose from, you are not playing character you can delve into and roleplay role you want. Where single-player computer RPG excels are the alternate paths or options you can take in either the story/sub-stories or quests; Do you take Option A and take the stolen item you've found to the authorities and gain their favour, or Option B and take it to the underworld fence and gain their favour or Option C and keep it to yourself and gain neither of their favours, and possibly wont get their help in the future but this is just one example. That brings me to the Choices & Consequences which is very much tied to the before-mentioned alternate paths or options - Alpha Protocol was actually pretty good in this; different things happened depending on what you chose to do and weren't just replaced with some flavour text like in many of the other rpgs or characters replaced with another character who then did the same thing. In the timeframe and the usual amount of the dialogue between you and the companions, it's pretty damn hard to establish anykind of relationships with your companions - especially multiple branches and make them all believable; why do you think it's been done so rarely where you can take different routes with the companions? If you really want to play a role you should look into RP servers in MMOs, or even better RP Persistant Worlds in Neverwinter Nights 1 or 2, I played in RP-server in NWN 1 for 3-4 years and I played probably dozen completely different kind of characters with their own personalities what I myself created with their backgrounds, behaviour, strengths and flaws and interacted with the characters of other players - single player game gets -nowhere- near of that experience.

Your observation on the videos is what prompted this thread. To a degree I can also appreciate your second comment. I think thought that how well that can be done really depends on the style of game. I haven’t got the impression that the P:E is going to be of the same comic over the top style as the fallouts were. (They were deliberately immature in some ways - Harold and the reaper always get a chuckle) In many games these days there are the extra gore and extra blood options - often on by default. Why? What do they add to the story or characters? How are they mature? If someone looses an arm so be it but there is no need to glorify/gorify it. The same with other content. It happens let it happen and get on with things not give these things more superficial value that they deserve. Even in BG its amusing at first when you kill with a crit and they explode (I was 17) but after a while it just becomes litter on the screen that has no value and really has no need to be there. Its amusing yes but not strictly mature. One thing that got me recently was a game where some of the action voice comments by a character had swearing in it. So every 3rd or 4th time I told him to perform an action the guy swore. I wasn't offended by it but I don't want to have to sit there and listen to it as I try to play the game. I don't play games or read books or watch movies to be exposed to excessive exaggerated sex violence swearing or anything. As a side note books that I have read that have the most swearing but do it well are books where they have created their own swear words to suite their created world. (Even the Witcher does this to a degree I think?) A huge portion of this has to do with context and respecting that context and the maturity of the subject material appropriately. I think lot of people are getting more and less mistaken wibe of the Project Eternity - They seem to think that it'll be more like The Witcher or "Bioware" over the top style, or then something like Fallout 1 or 2 which were over the top in their own way, and even Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 had pretty exaggerated story/plot. The impression I get from the interviews I've read and especially from the interview with MCA after the Kickstarter that they want to do something what's more like Arcanum or PS:T from the mood-standpoint. It haven't been long since I played Arcanum last time and it was very subdued compared to the more newer games, even when compared to the before mentioned BG2, or even BG1.

It seems mods are masochists who just loves to read inane topic which just goes around and around and around and around and around and around and aroud and around and around on the exact same arguments as the sixty previous pages. :D

Ah, so you're along the lines of 'relationships' Avellone was mentioning being interested in exploring, a lot more interesting than NPCs being a) your buddy b) love interest, heh. Seems bizarre how dogged the interest in this is, with this Steven Segal-esque topic in the forum. Maybe we should just make a thread saying "Interpersonal relationships" where we can all....essentially say "Obsidian shouldn't screw up!" together. I get the feeling - perhaps wrongly - that there are those at the polar extremes of "no relationships with NPCs just fighting, stealing or spell slinging" to those who think that "romance should always be an option with every NPC", though. That's not really my feeling since I think the games and characters should dictate what relationships make sense. I want relationships with my companions - I actually would -love to- have proper and well done "Brothers in Arms"-camaraderie, which has never been done - the difference with that and romances is that (and the point we've been making) is that romance = fewer people would enjoy that than the friendships.

And I apologize for the snark. I hate snark, and really dislike when I get smarmy. I also apologize for not taking into consideration that English (or American style) might not be your native language. Can't we try one point at a time? Few people actually enjoy reading overly long posts and, honestly, evidence to the contrary, I don't like writing long posts where I have to answer so many points. Let's do one at a time. We can be civil about it, and disagree. I wouldn't be trying to engage with you if I didn't think we could have rational discourse. I believe you are trying to really communicate, and I'd love to as well. I can try but ever since of my education in business school I haven't been very good at using fewer words - they always gave us papers to write for one/two/etc pages when the actual content would've fitted into half of that so we had to stretch and fill them more and less artificially - made me a very good for writing something what needs to be long though but unfortunate side-effect was that I tend to do it on everything :D Would be very useful for writing 'official' discourse with the businesses and what not but maybe not always as useful for forums >_>.

The "film-game" thread wasn't a debate. The fact that a thread is allowed to exist that was just you wanting to have a public "private" discussion with me is quite strange - that should be a PM thing. And it began to be wall of text answering wall of text about something that, seriously, I can't imagine too many people will stay up at night wondering about "Geez, is the movie industry better at not just doing big AAA blockbusters than the game industry, the same, or worse?!?" I still don't know what your point of making a thread for it was. ... "High tower." Isn't that a mixed metaphor? Don't you mean I'm on a high horse, or an ivory tower? .... I'd agree that you haven't begun to debate. Common ground. .... "Boy." Am I supposed to be black or young? I'm not sure exactly how I'm meant to take this condescension. Help me so I can be properly flustered and outraged. Well, pardon me for not getting american or english figures of speech correctly as I am not native speaker. I got a bit too snarky in that post but as I said it's late and I'm tired so apologies for that. I'm just gonna throw wall of text with actually solid and factual arguments, which you wont read since you cannot into long posts so what's the point? Btw. did you even read my last post from that other thread?

I'm not rink, but here goes. No. If they want to do A and don't want to do B, then they should do A. Your question is, as someone else pointed out, a false dichotomy... but I answered the spirit of what you are asking anyway. Next question. So you want a new round after the film-game debate? If you want serious debate with me like in film-game debate, sure - you need to be taken back to the ground from your high tower. I'll get you those three questions tomorrow when I'm not tired (it's almost past midnight here). I actually love to debate - I haven't even began, boy.

You didn't answer if YOU WOULD WANT TO FORCE DEVS TO REMOVE LOW-INT DIALOGUE WHAT THEY LOVE TO WRITE FOR THE ROMANCES WHAT THEY DISLIKE TO WRITE JUST BECAUSE YOU SELFISHLY WANT ROMANCES IN. You didn't answer if YOU WOULD WANT TO FORCE DEVS TO REMOVE LOW-INT DIALOGUE WHAT THEY LOVE TO WRITE FOR THE ROMANCES WHAT THEY DISLIKE TO WRITE JUST BECAUSE YOU SELFISHLY WANT ROMANCES IN. Truth be told, I tend to agree with the argument that low intelligence dialogues patterned after the speech of mentally handicapped persons are offensive. The whole thing started decades ago around tabletop role-playing as a way to punish players who min/maxed and ended up with low intelligence, for the general amusement of everyone around the table. That might be funny privately, among friends, but as a public statement it does border on tasteless. I would exclude them for that reason. Obvious troll is obvious, reported. Nice going with low-int = handicapped people and implying that Avellone would write them as such.

You didn't answer if YOU WOULD WANT TO FORCE DEVS TO REMOVE LOW-INT DIALOGUE WHAT THEY LOVE TO WRITE FOR THE ROMANCES WHAT THEY DISLIKE TO WRITE JUST BECAUSE YOU SELFISHLY WANT ROMANCES IN.

This was in the very recent interview with Chris Avellone - Does that look like they're gonna put romances in?

You people are un-fooking-believable or just trolling. Rink, I asked from you: Low-intelligence dialogue has been asked by a lot of people and devs actually -loves- to write low-intelligence dialogue, so would you want to force devs to drop something out of the game what they love to write just because you selfishly want romances romances in? So, would you want to force devs do that?

I think we need a bit more reality here. Where did romances and low intelligence dialogues become mutually exclusive again? He brought up the low-intelligence dialogue and how it could be removed from the game and impliying that romances could be written on instead. ... why? Here: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/61768-unofficial-pe-relationshipromance-thread-pt2/page__st__480?do=findComment&comment=1258833

I think we need a bit more reality here. Where did romances and low intelligence dialogues become mutually exclusive again? He brought up the low-intelligence dialogue and how it could be removed from the game and impliying that romances could be written on instead.

Of course if you are right about the devs telling that they dislike to write romances then the whole discussion is futile, not because of ressources or anything but because there will not be any :D You are correct, low int and low charisma dialogue will affect the whole game, but it is like romances in the way that it is optional (you don't have to play a character like that if you dont want to) and is even more redundant than romances because you have to redo all dialogue accordingly and you will never see both things in one playthrough (thus reducing content for people that play the game one time only). That's exactly why it costs so many ressources to do and romances compared to that are nothing in terms of ressources. Low-intelligence dialogue has been asked by a lot of people and devs actually -loves- to write low-intelligence dialogue, so would you want to force devs to drop something out of the game what they love to write just because you selfishly want romances romances in? You are mistaking reactivity with the different branches of the character routes. Minsc would react to that no matter your relationship is with him but the reaction would be different according to your relationship with him; here let me make simple diagram for you. Hamster in microwave yes/no / Friendship friendship reaction angry/friend / friendship reaction not angry/friend Minsc \ \ Romance romance reaction romance reaction angry/romance romance reaction not angry/romance Clear enough? So making romance route it's already double the dialogue sub-branches. Every branch they write for characters exponentially multiplies the dialogue needed for the character.