Death Machine Miyagi

Excluding any authors and writers currently working on the project, naturally.

Its pretty much what I expected, and what I expected was: a game that could be a massive improvement over a modded BGT, but won't be at release because so many mods have been made incompatible by the changes. I bought it to support the developers, as I support the concept wholeheartedly, but I doubt I'll have much interest in playing it until mods get updated and patches are released and so forth.

BG1, with the expansion pack, already has a romance. Its short and leads nowhere compared to the BG2 romances, but its there. It consists of one easily avoidable NPC on Werewolf Island who only shows signs of romantic attachment if you complete all his/her quests. It effects nothing and is barely noticeable. I guess you'll have to swear off the original BG forever. Or something. Because optional content you don't like is just...too...much.

It's now over an hour since launch and the farthest I've gotten is 'getting download info.' I guess they must have really underestimated just how hard their servers were going to get hit.

No, I pretty much understood what you meant, but I'm not really in a position to give a good answer. The BG1 NPC project was a collaborative effort between a whole bunch of us, each tasked with our own NPC(s) to write. I did a few for Shar-Teel before someone else picked her up (and was later amused to find the person who worked on her later even included some of the short 'backstory' I wrote up for her), I did at least two banters between Tiax and every other NPC in the game, I introduced some environmental dialogue and so forth. All of those I know firsthand, but as for the others, I only know the dialogues I saw when I was playing. I never read all of the compiled new dialogues; there were just too many to sit down and read them. So yeah, I wouldn't want to say. It would be an uneducated opinion. EDIT: I misspelled 'uneducated'. Should I have left that as it was, to strike home the point?

I don't get it? You wrote him to be an evil ass who would not tolerate people who didn't keep with his ideals and somehow you were wrong? No the people using a mod to circumvent having characters stay true to themselves are the ones who are wrong here. This isn't Barbie Fantasy fun time, it is Baldur's Gate and a Lawful Good Paladin and a Chaotic Priest of Cyric should not be in the same party. The end. Again, what was it you did wrong exactly? You wrote the dialog based on what you knew. It isn't your fault he got placed differently. PS: We are now 35 minutes past launch and we still can't finish the pre load. Probably better to say that these were less horrible mistakes on my part and more things that make me not want Tiax in the party for long when I play BG nowadays. He's damned quiet for the overwhelming majority of the game and has prophetic understanding of upcoming events in Chapter 1. That, in addition to his awful stats, makes him pretty sub-par. As for the other thing, the game already has evil characters revolt and leave if your rep gets too high. In retrospect, introducing a redundant Tiax-specific event was pointless. If people don't want evil characters to leave, then I don't like forcing to down their throats.

Guess that makes you royalty around here, Miyagi. Not sure when I'll get to play BG1 again plus mods, but do you have any companions you'd recommend having around(other than Tiax)? The reason I hesitate to admit that I'm the writer is that I don't really like the dialogues I wrote all that much. Most of them are fine, but I did two very bad things: 1) I introduced a thing where Tiax leaves the party if your reputation isn't low enough, or else gives you five days to do something horrible or else he leaves. It seemed reasonable, given that he's a priest of Cyric, but for those players who used things like the 'happy mod' to ensure NPCs would never leave regardless of reputation it was basically re-introducing a disliked feature with no way around it. 2) I assumed he would always be found in Baldur's Gate Chapter Five, because that's where he's placed originally. Little did I know they would introduce a feature sticking him in the middle of Beregost from Chapter One on. Thus, I freely used references to things like the Iron Throne that the party should know nothing about in the early game. Aside from that, because again I was assuming you would only get him late in the game, I had barely any material for Mr. Tiax that wasn't late game stuff. All in all, Tiax needs a lot of tweeking to make right. But anyway, recommended NPCs? I couldn't say for certain because I'm not sure what kind of party you want. For a good play-through, I've tended to stick with Imoen, Jaheira, Khalid, Dynaheir and Minsc, but that gets pretty tiring after awhile. Evil play-through tends to be me as a thief multi- or dual-classed with something else, Viconia, Edwin and Kagain. XP split four ways means much faster advancement.

It is a great mod that adds a BG2 feel to BG1 companions (even some romances). Oh yes, I know. I....ehh, I wrote the Tiax dialogues for that mod, way back when. The Tiax quest and most of what Tiax says is my work.

The main programmer on BG1 NPC Project is a beta tester on BG:EE, so the Enhanced Edition version should be up and running before long. But the others you won't see until BG2:EE is released anyway.

Weidu doesn't work with BG:EE....yet. The modding community will be busy fixing that over the next month or so. Beyond that, the Baldur's Gate forums have a sticky at the top giving tips on both which mods are confirmed to still work with BG:EE and how some now non-compatible mods can be made to work. A number of the best modders of days past seem to be making a return to update their mods for BG:EE, too, though that may take time.

And yeah, have it pre-ordered and almost completely downloaded. Just need that final piece and Candlekeep, here I come...

I've been trying to think of something interesting to say, but frankly there's only so much you can talk about with information we've already had for awhile. It'll pick up once we have new info to chew on.

Yes, I can't wait to see 'Longer loading times so you can truly sit back and appreciate your saved games!' being touted as a feature. You've got a winning idea right there. Cha ching!

Tolkien at least did this in a perfectly acceptable fashion: elves weren't really dying out or anything, just heading overseas to Valinor, which all things considered sounds like a pretty awesome place to be. Saying 'yeah, you guys can have this place, we're going to another place which is better than anything you losers have over here, and no you can't follow us' is far more understandable than just accepting that your race is dying and you need to make way for the humans.

Meth is a helluva drug.

I sort of agree with this. I think it's better if races are only loosely confined by their innate abilities, and are more individual than we usually see. A racial group might have a certain history and reputation as per racism, but it shouldn't be confining as it usually is. I sort of agree and sort of don't. When 'race' amounts to elves and dwarves rather than skin color, the implication is that these are entirely different species. A dwarf isn't a vertically challenged human. A dwarf is a dwarf. The same goes with an elf or any of the other races. When you remove 'racial concepts' entirely, all you've got is a bunch of humans divided by how pointy their ears are or how tall they are, which is pretty boring. Which isn't to say 'likes to drink ale, speak in a Scottish accent and use an axe or warhammer' should be an in-born dwarven trait, or that there shouldn't be members of a race who stray well outside the norm. It is merely to say that there should be some commonalities in thought and behavior between members of a certain race to remind us that these races are not just humans with minor physical differences.

The P:E wiki tells me the developers have stated there is no significant cultural divide between elves and humans living in the Aedyr Empire. I hadn't noticed that before. Am I wrong to interpret that as, effectively, 'elves are like humans with pointy ears that live for centuries'? Unfortunate, if true.

I won't be, at least if 'Dark' stands for 'Evil.' I hope no races will be based upon being intrinsically good or bad. If there does turn out to be a 'dark' vs. 'light' divide in P:E elves, it should be about something other than their stance on kicking puppies.

In general, I would like to see races (not just elves) which amount to more than just, for example, 'pointy-eared humans who live hundreds of years and have tree houses.' If a race is actually a distinctive race, they should have some attitudes and behavior which strike the player as completely alien from how a human would behave. Tolkien actually did do this pretty well; his elves seemed like they were a race apart. Others haven't done as well, and I count most D&D depictions in that category.

I gotta admit, I don't like elves much. I really regretted that BG2 didn't let an evil character finish the job Irenicus started in Suldanessalar. All those elves arranged for that reward ceremony at the end, led by the Queen Elf whose stupidity was the cause of the entire plot...I would have really liked to have been presented with the option to say to her, 'Y'know what, thank you for all this and I am deeply appreciate of this dinky little amulet you gave me for saving your entire civilization, but I really have only three words to say to all of you: Abi-Dalzim's Horrid Wilting.' BAM! Room cleared and you walk out laughing.

Just refrain from the Dragon Age 'idea' of having your character walked around caked in gore after a battle with a few rats....while no one seems to notice. Personally, if someone walked up to me on the streets with blood and brain matter spattered all over his clothes and started chatting with me, I'd probably politely excuse myself and call the police.

And cookies! I actually really want them to do this. And I want reaction shots of people who thought they were going to play Elf Classic instead getting this:

We all know the classic fantasy elf, what you might call the Tolkienesque elf. Immortal (or nearly immortal), in touch with nature, given to frolicking and laughing and living in tree houses and the like. Pointy ears and beautiful. Used to have a vast empire but are currently dying out and/or leaving the mortal world for someplace magical and wondrous that lowly humans can't go. Tend to use lots of bows, be extraordinarily adept with magical stuff and not get along with dwarves. You know the drill. Most of the elves we've seen in fantasy have been variations of this, with differences to account for setting. But it has seemed to dawn on a number of writers, extending back for quite some time, that the typical fantasy elf can be goddamn annoying. They get under the skin for the same reason people despise the Mary Sue: anyone or anything, even an entire race, which comes across as the writer trying to force perfectly pure pureness and goodness down your throat tends to create a gag reflex. If a person or a race is good at everything and everyone loves them except for the misinformed or the evil, who typically hate them because of jealousy, then there will be a backlash. With this in mind, we have seen wild variations of Elf Classic, ranging from Dragon Age and its Jew Elves (no longer the Master Race, now living in ghettos and treated as second class citizens) to Skyrim and its Nazi Elves (pretending to be the master race, hated by everyone) and so on. The subversion of Elf Classic has become almost as prevalent as Elf Classic itself. So, long post made short, how would you like your elves served in P:E? Are you looking for your typical fantasy elf? A subversion of your typical fantasy elf? What kind of elf makes you happy and what kind makes you gag?

In theory, I like the idea of playing through a game and not reloading when your party members get chunked. In practice, I almost always reload. From a challenge perspective its great and I applaud those who refuse to reload. Yet from a roleplaying perspective I find it odd how indifferent everyone else in the party is to the guy they have just traveled with for days or weeks or months suddenly getting blasted into bloody giblets. And from a gameplay perspective I find it irritating to have to find another NPC who fits that slot, is leveled up to the same extent and fills the same role in the party.

Because, almost invariably, a created NPC is a mute with no personality. Warping the mind of an NPC is fun precisely because they are depicted as having a mind.