Death Machine Miyagi

They may be throwing piles of money at the game, but that doesn't mean they aren't completely clueless as to how to translate those piles of money into an actual good game. They threw piles of money at The Old Republic as well, remember?

The problem is that Obsidian is good at writing and fan modders mostly not. Also building these from the beginning makes the game much more atmospheric than just add romance much later. A game like this should be build with romance in mind to be actual feature great romance. Most Obsidian romances have been mediocre or downright bad. I'm sure fan modders could do worse...and have...but it would actually be fairly easy to do better.

In Fallout: New Vegas, the mods I most appreciated were the ones that made the world feel more dynamic and alive. I'm guessing the same will be true here. I can tell you the kind of mods I'm not looking forward to seeing, as well: anything animesque, anything that breaks the fourth wall too hard, and anything with new story material that resembles bad fan fiction.

I remember Klamath as a whole made me dubious as to whether I was playing a true sequel for awhile. All the characters were recycled, the music was recycled from the first game's travel map, the enemies were either boring or irritating... And if you specialized in guns, the first part of the game was frustrating in the extreme. Part of me understands that they wanted to emphasize that your character was a tribal with no access to guns, but another part of me can't help but notice that having to punch everything or use a spear until you found a decent gun was not fun if your character wasn't specced for either. Do you really want to start people out with 'realistic, but not fun'?

Playing as a Female Character through the Baldur's Gate franchise offered me a single option for romantic pursuit - Anomen. Anomen. I'm going to let that sink in for a moment... The fact that the single character available for a Female Player Character in arguably one of the "Best Examples of Video Game Romance" is Anomen. Anomen... The living embodiment of an arrogant white knight cliché. If you think that Anomen is somehow better than any of the Bioware characters that came after, I'm going to have to laugh at you until my sides split open and my body explodes from the strain. Don't get me wrong here, Anomen is a very well written character. However, there is not a thing in the world that could convince me his existence is anything more than placation for Female Players. He is literally where Bioware's idiotic standard of romance started. He was the very first fan service romance they wrote. I'm not a lover of Bioware romances, but this idea that Baldur's Gate was the best they ever offered us is quite simply drivel to me. /Opinions. Oh, c'mon. Anomen was awesome. Way back in the day, I played a female paladin and brought him along to see how his 'romance' played out. Everything was going well and love was in the air. Then he went off on a rant, openly insulting Mazzy for being a halfling who wants to be a paladin. He did this completely unprovoked and apparently for no other reason than because he likes being a ****. So I hit him in the face with Carasmyr and he exploded into bloody gibs. Not the most paladin-like thing to do, but he had it coming. A budding romance which ends with a paladin hacking her prospective boyfriend into pieces with a +5 holy sword. That's the stuff of soap operas.

They couldn't have called Baldur's Gate 'Bhaalspawn Chronicles' for the same reason they couldn't have called Citizen Kane 'Rosebud was his Sled'. For the first game possibly, but the other two campaigns it was known the PC was a Bhaalspawn. Yeah, but what's the point of a name for the whole series that can't be used for the first in that series? The whole point of an overarching series name is to make people who liked that first game want to buy the second and the third and so on. The best name is one that can roughly fit all the games, without exception. In that regard, Baldur's Gate didn't work very well because we never saw Baldur's Gate again after the first game. But that's still better than a title which can only be used for the sequel and onwards. At least when people saw the name 'Baldur's Gate 2', they knew exactly what game series was getting a sequel.

They couldn't have called Baldur's Gate 'Bhaalspawn Chronicles' for the same reason they couldn't have called Citizen Kane 'Rosebud was his Sled'.

To be honest Baldurs Gate series in 2/3 doesn't take place in the vicinity of the titular city. So we can have new BG game take place in Sigil. The name for the BG series should be Swoard Coast or Bhaalspawn. Yeah in all fairness "Tales of the Sword Coast" would have been a better name for the series than an expansion. It could have been, for example, Tales of the Sword Coast: Baldur's Gate, and Tales of the Sword Coast: Shadows of Amn. As I recall, the original name for the series was going to be Iron Throne, since that group was the central villain for most of the first game. I guess maybe they considered that too spoilery. Spoiler issues are also why the series name couldn't include anything about Bhaal or Bhaalspawn: to those playing the game for the first time in 1998, your character's identity as a Bhaalspawn was supposed to be a big twist near the end, not the common CRPG knowledge it is nowadays. In either case, yeah, Tales of the Sword Coast would have been a much better series name. Doesn't spoil anything and fits both the first game, the sequel and the expansions for both.

Other thoughts: - We need a romance where you get married and the NPC you romanced starts really letting him/herself go. Their character portrait starts getting fatter and fatter and they start getting really defensive and snippy about their weight gain. - Also, it would be interesting to have a romance in which the NPC is actually a con-man/woman. You go through the typical Bioware-style dialogue trees, where you pick the 'nice' dialogue options and play the warrior-therapist and they slowly open up to you. Then one day you wake up and they've ransacked the party's treasure and disappeared. Turns out their entire sad story was a huge lie to sucker you into lowering your guard. To be fair, they would need to give you subtle warnings of what's coming, but I bet a lot of people are so fixated on the typical routine of 'be the super-ultra-nice guy and get laid' that they wouldn't catch on before it was too late. - How about some romances which aren't between you and some absolutely gorgeous babe/hunk? Make some romances in which the NPC is actually pretty ugly, but has a great personality. Or a romance in which the potential romance partner is sentient, but not humanoid, and therefore the relationship can evolve into love but without possibility of consummation. I would find all of these things entertaining if done right, but I'm guessing a depressing number of pro-mancers would find anything beyond the standard Japanese dating sim approach ('say the right things to get laid!') to be almost a slap in the face.

Having a CRPG romance that evolves into something as petty as this might actually be pretty funny. Whoever said romance involves intimate talks with the one true love of your life, as Bioware seems to think? Sometimes it involves bitching your partner out over using the last clean towel or insulting the size of his ****.

Yep. Seeing stuff like this show up is when you know the designers are going above and beyond the call of duty in terms of world building. Given how much effort seems to have been expended in making the rest of the world feel believable, I wouldn't be at all surprised to find at least one of the writers has sat down and considered just what everyday life the various cultures of Eora is like, including entertainment.

There was a book I read about 18th-19th century Russian culture. It had a section on serfs, who as you can probably imagine didn't live the most stimulating lives. The thing I most remember about that section was that 'entertainment' among serfs tended to amount to a few things: 1) Sex. If you've got a wife or husband, then hey, why not? Its free. Theoretically. 2) Violence. Holy crap, the violence. You could find plenty of amusement in beating the crap out of someone, be it your wife or your neighbor or your children or the whole village getting together and beating the hell out of each other. Serfs could be some violent people. 3) Alcohol. Of course. I don't expect it was much different for peasants and other dirt-poor people in the middle ages and early renaissance. What I'm saying is I will be disappointed if we meet a peasant in PoE who doesn't spend the 30 minutes a day he isn't farming alternating between getting drunk, beating his wife and screwing.

If we can at any point and in any way select the deity our character worships, if any, it might be cool to have a 'holy' weapon which changes its properties depending on your patron deity. But a 'Holy Avenger' sword, +5 vs. evil, only usable by paladins and all the rest? Nah.

NWN2 romance was one of the better examples of when a game would have been better off if they had just dropped the idea entirely. Aside from the abruptness and out-of-nowhere aspect of it, Elanee was kind of a creepy stalker and Casavir was a boring mute who had the same repetitive dialogue choices about his first quest line throughout the course of the game. Mask of the Betrayer was slightly better.

For a while, I thought this thread was going to wither on the vine. It left me slightly astonished to see such a thing happen to a romance thread. Now people are bickering and arguing. All is right with the world.

I wonder if, in retrospect, Bioware may have been better served in regards to the Knights of the Old Republic 'brand' if they had avoided making it into an MMO and instead just kept making engrossing story-centered single player games. As I recall, the announcement there would be no KOTOR 3 and instead we would get an MMO was met with much the same contempt that's being heaped on the concept here. I think its become very common for people in general, not just the RPG geeks gathered here, to react to the announcement of a new MMO set in their favorite franchise with a groan rather than any enthusiasm. Whether it's fair or not, I now associate a company's decision to make an MMO with the kind of myopic stupidity you'd expect from a senior EA executive or some other such figure who doesn't understand games beyond the potential they have for milking customers dry. I expect that Obsidian is smarter than that.

I think the real tricky issue would be that it would be an entirely different game from the first two. Deities play on a different level than even epic level adventurers, and fight for different stakes. How would you design combat? The only thing that could seriously threaten you is another deity. Things like armor class and hit points and spellbooks would almost certainly be but a quaint memory for a PC who is literally a god. What about party members? Would the player travel with the more powerful of his/her new worshippers? Other deities? Or would the game be played solo, since realistically there isn't anything but another deity who could add much to combat when fighting alongside you? Typical RPG gameplay would change from finding cool new loot and gaining levels to finding worshippers and a portfolio which you can embody. Slashing your way through hordes of enemies would still be possible, I suppose, but almost certainly absurdly easy and pointless for a divinity. All of the above could be an epic and awesome game, and I'd be only to happy to try it if it were made, but it sounds more like Populous than Baldur's Gate.

Absolutely. I'd add TNO and Ravel Puzzlewell into there, which is an example of how a less traditional 'romance' actually can enhance a game. That relationship isn't about teenage ego stroking at all, but about a very bizarre and almost certainly unreciprocated infatuation that results in the entire sad course of events of the game. Ravel isn't a nubile waifu waiting for you select the 'nice' dialogue options so you can get that fade-to-black sex scene, but a millennia-old monstrous hag who has destroyed countless lives merely for her own amusement and yet oddly enough finds in TNO a moment of human longing. Her love for TNO is integral to the story and feels far more tragic than anything else.

I am curious when I see people thinking there will be a PoE 2. Shouldn't we play PoE first and see if it lives up to our expectations before discussing the hypothetical sequel. Plenty of time to do that during the PoE 2 kickstarter campaign anyway. I'm pretty sure that if PoE is at all successful, and it seems very likely it will be, Obsidian is going to want to expand on a series they have the exclusive rights to. So yeah, I would be more surprised if there isn't a PoE 2.

I'm curious when I see the number of people who think PoE 2 might be better romance-wise than 1. From the opinions we've gotten from Obsidian writers, MCA actively dislikes romances and J.E. Sawyer, while saying nothing outright, comes across as decidedly disinterested in them. This makes me interested to know if Obsidian actually has anyone writing for them who would want to write an in-game romance for any reason other than because that's what's expected of them. And if they don't, isn't it very, very likely that their romances are destined to be pretty bad, even if PoE 2 makes it possible? Pretty much every 'romance' I've seen from Obsidian has been pretty sloppy, half-hearted stuff.

I'm not one of the no-mancers or whatever you want to call them. I remember the romances in BG2 and Torment with fondness, the former because I felt it gave me a chance to better establish my character as something other than a bunch of stats and the latter because TNO's various doomed relationships were thematically important to the game. The lack of romance doesn't make or break the game for me, but if they had included it you wouldn't have found me among those bitching about it. But I don't see how 'no romance' instantly equates to 'character interaction will be shallow.' Why is the only possible relationship romantic, in your eyes? What about mentor and apprentice or brother and sister or simple close friendship? Was the relationship between Dak'kon and TNO less rich because there was no romantic tension involved? Isn't it entirely possible that they intend in-depth interaction with an NPC outside of a long chain of dialogues leading to awkward fade-to-black sex? If PoE resembles Icewind Dale in the depth of its character relationships and interaction, you'll find me right here with you bitching about it. Obsidian is keeping the story part of the game tightly under wraps, though, and I don't feel like anyone who doesn't work there is in any position to make that judgement yet. Just...give them some credit, alright? Given their track record, haven't they earned a little faith in their ability to create memorable NPCs and NPC interaction?

I'd have done the same if I wasn't perpetually broke.

I'm certain there will be 'optimized' character builds and not-so-optimized ones. It would take either a minor miracle of system balancing or every class/stat combo being homogenized into a bland mass of sameness for it to work out any other way. Just so long as the not-so-optimized ones are still viable, I'll be sufficiently impressed. And yes, I will be very, very impressed if the pistol-wielding gang of barbarians can actually work out.

Setting aside party composition, I'm genuinely interested to test J.E. Sawyer's claim that a whole variety of character builds will be viable and effective, as opposed to wizards needing maxed out intellect or fighters needing maxed out might and most other stats being dump stats. What if I play a rogue with a focus on Intellect and Resolve instead of Dexterity? Will that be workable? Will I get a rogue that is still effective, just in a different way? I want to see and play around with all my party members stats in that way.

I like to immerse myself in video games but LARPing while playing video games may be going a little too far for me. That, and "my character grew up as a slave in a noble's house, but can never tell anyone about that, ever, OR do anything that ever has anything to do with that past, ever ever ever in the whole game" kind of puts a damper on the whole roleplaying thing. How do you play a role if you don't get to play that role? I mostly just treated it as a bit of impromptu creative writing practice. For example, given the circumstances BG1 opens with, how could I make Gorion's ward an interesting and distinctive character as opposed to a generic arrangement of stats, even if only in my head? What class would it make the most sense for Gorion's ward to be? If I'm playing a Paladin or Ranger or Wild Mage or what-have-you, how do I create a rational explanation for how a 20 year old sequestered away in a library his/her entire life gained those skills? What was my character's opinion of Gorion or Imoen or any of the other bit characters in Candlekeep? How did he/she react to watching his/her stepfather gutted in front of him/her? How does he/she react to...well, just about anything that happens in that game and its sequel? And so on. In theory, it seemed like it would be all a quite entertaining experiment, taking what material was there and working to make my own writing enhance that as best I could. In practice, I found the whole experience exhausting and didn't get much beyond Chapter 2 of BG before just playing normally. It would be a whole different experience, of course, if the game reacted to the backstory, but since it can't it mostly just felt like writing bad Baldur's Gate fan fiction no one could possibly ever read but me. That's treading in levels of geekdom that make even me shy away in horror.