Death Machine Miyagi

I thought for sure you'd post this link instead.

Heresy. Where does this "it's optional" sentiment come from? A good romance isn't "optional" in the sense you imply. If a romance were to be well written it would resonate in everything the character says and does in some way or another, no matter if you go down the actual romance path or not. His rejection or acceptance, his attitude, his outlook, his plight- these are all things that would be affected by having the character be involved in a romance with the PC. That's why romances are so hard to write well. It's easy to write an optional romance. Writing one that is good is a completely different matter because everything about the character would have to tie in to the romance in some way as you cannot have this sort of path - even if it were just a path you can take or not take - without it being organically spawned from the nature and theme of the character in question. Think you're creating a false dichotomy: either romance is done well and forced down your throat or romance is done poorly and is optional. P:E is supposed to be a call-back to the Infinity Engine games. When....say, Aerie starts whining about her wings in Baldur's Gate 2, you know how to get her to shut up, avert the romance and start having her act like any other companion? You tell her to shut up. Romance over. What's so wrong with that?

I can't imagine there's much I could say in this thread that hasn't been covered a dozen times over, and I would rather have my genitals shaved with a ginsu knife than endure 400+ posts of the pointless back and forth bickering that has constituted every other romance thread I've seen on this board, but hearing Avellone's approach and Sawyer's approach has set me to respond here nonetheless. For me, romance in an RPG is nowhere near as important as relationships. A romance is one kind of relationship. Other relationships include rivals, family, business partners, bosses, subordinates, servants, masters, and god only knows how many others. Relationships helps define characters, both your own PC and the NPCs you interact with. Your PC is fleshed out by being friendly or adversarial or whatever else with any other character he/she interacts with, and that NPC is in turn fleshed out by his reactions to you. In that sense, I hope they let you pursue relationships of all sorts throughout the game. If at all possible, I want my PC to be a character in his own right given a personality by my choices and interaction, not just a generic and forgettable medium through which I experience the game. With that in mind, a romantic relationship in an RPG is not inherently bad. Its hard to imagine something that could define and flesh out a character more than letting them choose who they have a romantic relationship with. Its simply that its usually done so badly that people can forget this. Either it falls into the NWN2 category of being a useless afterthought ("What the hell!? Stalky elf lady/old paladin guy who hasn't had anything new or interesting to say since his introductory level is making moves on me? Now? Why, for god's sakes? Get away get away get away!") or it becomes tepid poorly written teenage wangsty crap. Romance should be included if the writers want to include it and feel they can do it better than it is usually done. It should not be excluded on principle because icky romances have no place in a CRPG (I find people who hold this position so violently at once disturbing and fascinating), nor should it be included because every modern CRPG needs some generic forgettable romance to be any good (same as above). Do it if you want to and you can do it well. Otherwise, forget it. That is my position as of right now.

Torment came pretty darn close, as evidenced by the fact that it had a beginning, middle and end...all of which made sense rather than obviously falling to pieces because of a rush for the Christmas release. So was Daikatana. But whatever, I get the sense this 'debate' is going nowhere fast.

That's a pretty shallow way to measure something being 'finished', though. A beta test of a game might have the same beginning, middle, and end. It might also crash every few minutes, have all the dialogue missing for a good chunk of the game, or have a game-ending bug or two. But hey, a beginning, middle, and end means its finished, right? There is more than one definition of 'finished', basically. You're using a forgiving one in which the absolute bare bones exist. I'm using a demanding one in which the game that is released at least comes close to the game they hoped to release.

It had a beginning and a middle. An end is debatable.

The only thing I gathered from that romance answer is: Chris Avellone won't be asked to write romances. That doesn't mean the game itself will have them or won't have them, just that MCA wants nothing to do with it. Maybe not even that. His main ire seems to be for the shallow, tepid puppy-love that passes for romance in a lot of Bioware RPGs. EDIT: Sorry, will refrain from further romance comment, but I'm afraid to go over to the dedicated romance thread to discuss it. A lot of comically extreme opinions on a subject, neither extreme of which I can entirely understand...

It was a project, I'll give it that. Not sure I would attach 'finished' to it unless you're using 'finished' as a synonym for 'released.'

Oy, I'm picking up a disconcerting habit of posing questions without answering them for myself. My answer: "realism" (maybe better used in quotes, as it has been above) is important to me primarily because it indicates to me the designers are interested in the world they're designing. A realistic map tells me the people who created it sat down and considered what kind of terrain makes sense in a given area rather than just randomly scattering desert or jungle or arctic tundra wherever they feel it would be cool. A realistic treatment of swords or armor or whatever is important only because it tells me the creators have done their research on how swords and armor have historically been used. In short, 'realistic' to me means 'the designers sitting down and doing their homework' which in turn means 'the designers going above and beyond the call of duty to create a cool and believable world.' It is much, much, much easier to do an a**pull than to research something and try to make it feel as true to life as possible. Basically, its a nice touch, but is it essential? As the Infinity Engine games show, not at all. Its like showing off, not critical but nice to see regardless. Gameplay is still king. Is something realistic but boring or aggravating? Cut it without a moment's hesitation or regret. Is something unrealistic but makes gameplay far less of a pain or a lot more fun? Add it in, no worries. Just my take.

At least two threads on the main page at this time (Two handed swords and Do you care about a realistic world map?) address this question in the particulars, while the most recent update addresses it in regards to armor. But let's address the issue in the broadest terms, covering anything and everything: does it matter to you, the prospective player, when the designers try to make the world they're designing realistic? Do you appreciate it when swords or armor look and perform like their historical counterparts, or do you not particular care so long as you can get cool stuff? Do you prefer a world which feels like the real world outside of the occasional fantastical elements (like, say, souls and magic and non-human races) which define it, or is that irrelevant to you so long as the world is entertaining? Let's face it: the Forgotten Realms of the Infinity Engine games? Not realistic, not by a long shot. Yet still really fun. Would they have been more fun, more interesting, if the designers had played around with making them feel more like a real world?

Yes. I think, for the purposes of this thread, the word 'trope' is a better fit for when a commonly used plot device is value neutral. 'Cliche' is a negative term used for a trope which has been so overused as to provoke eye-rolling or feelings of boredom when seen being used yet again. So is dungeon exploration a cliche or a trope? It depends on the player, of course, but I would guess for most its a trope. Complaining about a dungeon in an RPG is like complaining about explosions and gunfights in an action movie.

Are they not currently firmly in the hands of the developers? Did I miss something? This is a forum. It is not a manual for the developers and not a list of demands about what they need to add to make their game any good. We are all powerless in what they choose to add, and thankfully so, since if we did have any actual power over content our collective and contradictory nagging would probably make the developers long for the good old days of publisher control. Yet if, given this reality, we choose to say nothing at all about our hopes and expectations for the creative direction of this game, why are we even here? Again, this is a forum. We discuss things here. it doesn't mean we are demanding things be added or removed; it means we express our views and, maybe every once in a rare while, a developer passes through, sees and agrees. Or doesn't agree. Or doesn't think twice about it. Whichever. We aren't discussing it so a developer can see it but because we're interested in the game, do not currently have the game, and so instead channel that excitement and interest into chatting about it and what it may or may not do. So yeah, I hope we see a lot more threads in which people talk about what they want to see in the story or what they want to see from the characters. Just so long as they lack any power to enforce those views, the more the merrier, and it would be pretty dull around here without such discussions.

Hmmm. So having dependable villains is a cliché? I worry, as per my initial post, that the swan-dive away from "cliché" risks ending up with too-cool-for-skool pretentiousness. It matters not if they are barbaric savages, humanoid tribes or whatever, but a race of dependable mooks is a standard and, in many ways, helpful gaming trope. Subvert it, sure, give it a twist, liven it up. But... nonsensical? Nonsensical in the "orcs are evil to their bones" boring Tolkien way. PE doesn't have alignment, after all. Make them a race with different motivations and culture and maybe even a faction (go go World of Warcraft!), and that's one way to do it better. But the Dragon Age darkspawn fell into that booooooring trap, to be sure. Agree. Races that are pure evil (or pure good) are boring for about the same reason characters who are pure good/evil are boring, though at least in the case of evil characters you aren't left debating the merits of genocide.

Are you worried P:E is being developed by RPG hipsters? I don't mind killing orcs so long as I can do so ironically.

Can't say it has ever really bothered me that much, but I always appreciate things that show the writers care about their world and want it to make sense. So on that level, yeah, I'd prefer a world map that is realistic over one with randomly cobbled together deserts and jungles and the like.

Also, I would say a cliche is, pretty much by definition, a Bad Thing to some extent or another, or at the very least Not Good. Check a dictionary and you'll find it linked to words like 'trite', 'stereotyped', 'predictable', 'tired', 'overused'. Just as you can't describe something as being trite, predictable and overused without implying that its on some level not good, the moment you describe something as a cliche you are attaching a negative image of that thing. Now, the degree to which it is a negative is a different matter altogether, and most cliches are pretty harmless. They're just examples of the creative types phoning in their work, which isn't laudable but at least allows them to (in the best case scenario) focus more attention on those aspects of their work they want to make really new and fresh and interesting.

I kinda liked what Arcanum did with the Chosen One: You spend a huge chunk of the game being told you're the second coming of a Christ-like figure...

Clearly the only solution is to avoid the cliche of snubbing cliches by embracing cliches.

To be fair, there's also a thin line between repeating tried, tested and much-loved tropes and being completely creatively bankrupt. In both cases, let's hope the line is not crossed.

I think the examples from Planescape show the best way to do it: they don't directly mock the cliche, they just subvert it and leave the player puzzled as to why they can't find a good old magical longsword friggin' anywhere.

Depends on how its done. I'm definitely not hoping for a return to the Fallout 2 days. Its a bit cringe-inducing to replay that game and pick out Monica Lewinsky and Dan Quayle jokes that are now stale by long, long over a decade.

A big chunk of Torment especially consists of the writers thumbing their noses at RPG cliches: there are no swords, the lowly rat is (in the form of cranium rats) supposed to prove a big threat if massed together, there is no grand universe-shaking quest, the game is designed so that you are encouraged to die to advance the plot, there are no elves or dwarves or haflings, your mental stats are actually a lot more important to getting a good ending than your ability to beat the crap out of things, and so forth. This has been stated outright by MCA in several interviews by now. I suspect P:E will continue in that hallowed tradition and give a few of the more tired RPG cliches a good ol' kick in the balls. But which of these cliches is really asking for it? What things have you seen in about a billion different games that would you now like to see torn to shreds by our esteemed game designers?

On the subject of villains done badly, RAE mentioned Loghain earlier, but I think there is a Bioware villain who absolutely trumps him for awfulness. *SPOILER* (Kind of) if you haven't played Throne of Bhaal! Melissan, the primary antagonist of Throne of Bhaal. Oh, does that really require a spoiler warning? The game itself practically tells you flat out...twice...that she is a bad guy. The big talking stone heads first with their oh-so-subtle remarks about how someone seemingly friendly will actually be a foe, then Gromnir (the NPC, not the poster) basically tells you her plan detail for detail. I gather we were supposed to not figure it out quite so early, but I have never figured out why anyone with a functioning brain would think we wouldn't. We don't know this chick at all. There has been no hint of her existence in past games, we haven't seen her do anything benevolent except the obviously counter-intuitive plan of herding all the Bhaalspawn into a small enclosed area 'for their safety', and overall we simply have zero reason to trust her beyond the game forcing us to trust her at every turn. The lessons the crappy villain Melissan teaches us: 1) If you want to have a 'sympathetic' NPC turn out to be a villain, spend some time making them....y'know, sympathetic. Build up a feeling of trust between them and the PC. They did this pretty well with Yoshimo by making him a pretty nice guy driven into betrayal by circumstances, but completely dropped the ball with Melissan, who is about as hammy and unconvincing an 'ally' as they come. 2) If we do not find the NPC in question sympathetic and do not trust them from word 'go', do not force us to find them sympathetic with railroading dialogue that makes it impossible not to play along with their not-so-devious plan. 3) Give us some build-up. Melissan might actually have been a nice villain if her existence had at all been foreshadowed in previous games. Instead, she felt like a last minute character shoe-horned into the Bhaalspawn plotline. Mostly because she was. 4) Speaking of which, if you have had two previous main villains with exciting and original motives like 'become a God', then perhaps its time to mix things up a little bit motive-wise? There are more I'm certain, but those four are a nice start. Basically, don't make a villain like Melissan. She is the opposite of a good villain.

I can see the emotional/spiritual/whatever argument for him being a villain, but the curious thing is that all his villainy prior to his last confrontation with you is directed towards helping you. Because in helping you he is (literally) helping himself. He isn't a friend, for certain, but an ally, even if a hated one? Yes. He does horrible things to Dak'kon that end up with Dak'kon as your companion; if he had not done them, you would not have Dak'kon as a companion. He frees Morte from the pillar of skulls, so Morte wouldn't be a companion either without him. And Deionarra is only there to help because of him. In that sense, no matter what you think of him on a moral level, he is not an antagonist for the overwhelming majority of the game. He's on your side. Even the Vhailor thing is directed towards helping you. After all, your goal is to die, right? Keeping one of the few things around that can kill you, though nicely sealed away where he cannot harm you until you choose to release him, is merely a very shrewd back-up plan in case there is no other way out. Now, is he a villain? That's much more certain. He's evil thorough and thorough. He's a villain...but he's your villain until just before the end. Part of what makes him a great character.

Yes. While I hope for some bad guys who are pretty obviously 'bad', I also hope you can nevertheless sign up with those same bad guys and help them achieve victory in the end game. Obsidian has a track record of allowing this, so I'm confident we'll see something of the sort.