Vargr Raekr

As old as my tounge and a bit older than my teeth. Fallout 1, Ultima VII, Dark Sun: Shattered Lands, Arcanum, Shadows of Amn, Planescape: Torment. However, I only discovered the Black Isle / Troika / Bioware games years after they were released. I found out about the Fallout series, for instance, because of the hype and controversy surrounding Fallout 3 back in 2007. I was only able to own a proper copy of Planescape: Torment when it went on sale on Good Old Games. I am old enough to remember Ultima VII and Dark Sun when they were new, however. Those are the sorts of games I nostalgia over, while the turn-of-the-mellenium isometircs were games I played a few years back, once I was already comfortably an adult.

I wrote this in the previous thread, but it got buried fairly quickly. Of the games listed as inspiration for project eternity (Arcanum, Temple of Elemental Evil, the first two Fallout games, the Infnity Engine games), only Shadows of Amn had direct romance. And this scene was, by far, the best done romance scene in the game: http://youtu.be/Wdy-k_qLdQg If romance can be used to drive a story forward like this, I don't think many would object. On the other hand, we know that the lead designers / writers on this project do not like writing companion romances. Perhaps it would be best to allow them to focus on the aspects of the game they are passionate about. We should also bear in mind that there are non - romantic interrelationships possible as well. Do not underestimate the magic of friendship. Big adventures, tons of fun, high charisma scores, faithful and strong. Sharing loot out, fighter bonus feats, and magic makes it all complete! In all seriousness, the companions will almost certainly be written. And there is a fair likelihood of there being some sort of friendship system (Arcanum, KOTOR II, Alpha Protocol, and even the Dragon Age series all experiemented with variants of this.) If well written companions and a more semsible friendship tracking system is what the Project Eternity developers are passionate about doing (and they are the best in the industry at this sort of thing!) then I would rather have a game with these features then another middle of the road romance track. Added ponies for audacity. Because ponies.

Why did I ever bother?

I feel that romances as such should only be included if they are going to be this well done: Of all the games listed as inspiration for Project Eternity, only Shadows of Amn really has any romance content; and this is by far the best done romance scene in the game. Seeing as most of the lead writers on this project are not interested in writing romances, we would likely not get much in the way of results if we forced their hands. I don't see how it would be a good idea to take them away from implementing features that they are passionate about, in order to implement features that they are not. Given this, I would rather have either excellent incidental content such as the above, or nothing at all.