PrimeJunta

Is thing thing still on?

If you try to make a banana omelet, you'll actually end up with a banana pancake. They're really tasty. We often have them for breakfast. Recipe: 1 banana 2 eggs some vanilla (optional) Mash the banana extremely well, with a fork. Mix in the eggs and vanilla if you're using it. Fry on a buttered or oiled pan, serve immediately, plain or with stuff you'd put on a pancake..

Folks, this is not going to happen. The devs have made it clear, and the game is deep in production which means something this fundamental simply can't be shoehorned in at this point without setting back development months. The next opportunity to agitate for it is if and when they announce a sequel.

Ow, that's gotta sting. You could probably even hit something with one of those things at that range.

That's a fair question, and I'll try to answer it. I would like to see romance in PoE where the PC plays some other role than lover. Perhaps it's a romance between two companions, or a companion and an NPC, or two NPC's, and the PC becomes involved through some story twist. Why? Because I believe it's extremely difficult -- I won't say impossible because in writing nothing is completely impossible -- to write a compelling romance for a blank-slate character. PS:T's romance worked because TNO is not a blank-slate character, quite the opposite really. PoE's PC is a blank-slate character, so unless someone really surprises me, I don't believe it's possible to write a romance worth playing for him/her/hir/it/them.

I've played them. That you even describe romance in terms of failure or success illustrates precisely what, in my opinion, is wrong with them -- and the fundamental difference in tastes and preferences I have with people who enjoy them.

@Death Machine Miyagi I figure that since I'm in the "anti-mance" camp, although I hope not in its violent wing, here's my two cents. My problem with cRPG romance is with the "push the right buttons, get teh secz" flavor thereof. The real problem is that most promancers appear to think that this is, in fact, the definition of cRPG romance. It's certainly exactly what it is in every BioWare game since BG2. Even if done reeeasonably well (Jade Empire), I still find it tacky, and that its very presence detracts from the overall experience. Of the IE games and their successors, IMO only Planescape: Torment pulled off romance well. It even had three whole possible romances: Annah, Fall-from-Grace, and Deionarra. Yet most promancers here appear to feel that they're not romances at all, because they're never consummated and there's no happily-ever-after. So I'm strongly opposed to romance as wish-fulfilment or pandering. If romance is integral to the story, and if the writers are good and dedicated enough to give the NPC's a real feel of agency, then I'm all for it. However, these romances would not look at all like the harem-anime things we have in all BioWare games since BG2, nor even the truncated wish-fulfilment versions in NWN2 or MotB, so I doubt most promancers would even accept that they are romances. And we'd be right back where we started. In threads like this one.

I would like to see modding tools. That said, if the data formats they're using are open (as they seem to be), and since they're using Unity which is also based on open standards, it oughtn't be too difficult to mod even without a dedicated toolkit -- and it oughtn't be too hard for the community to make modding tools. I can see how Obs would want to keep their eye on the ball and concentrate on making the best game they can at this point. Polishing up and releasing mod tools later would be cool though. I don't know if they want to give away some of their main competitive assets, such as their dialog editor though, which I hear is better than what others are using. Stupid capitalism.

Surely we've seen enough of their writing not to have to worry on that score?

It's in the TSA rectal examination pose. Anything would look bad in that. If they manage to animate it with a touch of cat in the movement, it's gonna be pretty cool.

The classes are a good deal more flexible than in D&D. Of course D&D had multiclassing and prestige classes, but the former was IMO pretty badly broken in all editions for a variety of reasons, and I think of the latter more as an attempt to address a weakness in the system that shouldn't have been there in the first place. From what we've heard of the PoE system, it'll be possible to play character concepts similar to most D&D3 prestige classes just by picking a suitable mix of stats and playing to those strengths. So I wouldn't be too concerned about that either.

@Kjaamor I don't think a romance written by someone who cringes at the idea of writing one would be all that much fun. Except in an ohgodmybrainpleaseno kind of way.

@IndiraLightfoot I think you may be over-thinking this. What Josh et al have been going on about is systemic balance, i.e., attempting to make it so that there isn't any single obviously winning way to do stuff. That's good, from where I'm at, as it makes a broader range of strategies and tactics viable: instead of having "how do I make the most powerful wizard" we get "how do I play this particular wizard for maximum efficiency." The only counterargument to that is IMO "it would be better if it was worse." While it sounds silly it's not always; sometimes things have a particular charm because of their rough edges. Most of the time, though, worse is just... worse. What you seem mostly concerned about is pacing and encounter balancing. Oblivion was a horrid thing that should never have been because all the encounters felt the same, due to heavy-handed level scaling and lack of (more than cosmetic) variety in enemies. I don't see any indication that PoE will turn out anything like this. For one thing, Obs has never fallen into this trap before. For another, Josh has repeatedly said that there are some (optional) encounters that only a few of the devs -- the devs! -- are able to beat, and he intends to keep it that way.

They did promise memorable companions as one of their core "spiritual successor" planks. I think it's premature to worry that they're going to renege on that, even if romance is out. There was a ton of companion interaction in MotB, for example, with romance only extremely peripheral (and, IMO, not well done at all). Same goes for KOTOR2, except that one didn't have any romance in it at all.

@Karkarov A blank slate character who feels like an actual character is a tough equation to balance. PS:T and The Witcher managed it by not giving you a blank slate character; both TNO and Geralt have a lot of baggage in their respective worlds. I'm not sure I can think of a "blank slate" cRPG where the character eventually did become a real character. BG's Bhaalspawn wasn't altogether blank-slate either; I didn't particularly care for the way e.g. the dream sequences imputed a lot of feelings and motivations to you, nor for example Imoen as McGuffin in BG2. It jarred with the blank-slateness of it. That sort of thing would work better if you had some real background. DA:O tried, with the origin stories, but totally failed to capitalize on it in the actual game IMO. I thought it was a wasted opportunity; it would've taken a fair bit more writing but it could have been possible to make the game feel more reactive to your origin without having to do complicated stuff like rewrite quests -- most of it could've just been done with dialog flavor. It will be interesting to see how Obs handles it this time. And I share both your hopes and concerns re The Witcher 3. I love the hell out of the two Witchers, but a big part of the love is because of what they could be rather than what they are. Both fall short of their potential; TW1 because it's so obviously a first effort in many ways, TW2 because they clearly had to cut the ending short. (Aside from a laundry list of niggles obviously, I mean QTE's WTF?)

More the other way around, I think. I tend to like Obsidian's games (and Troika's and BiS's before them) because they explore such stuff. They occasionally stumble of course, but that's better than never wandering off the tarmac.

@Alfiriel I'm pretty sure they didn't drop romance in order to make less NPC interactions. More like the opposite really.

If more of us dealt with disappointment like this, the Net would be an altogether more agreeable place. :salute:

I figure they're doing this kind of stuff with those cool tan illustrated CYA panels, plus dialog. They could always throw a poison status effect on top of that. Don't think there's much point for a whole dedicated mechanic, especially as multiplayer is definitely not on the cards.

The devs have been saying that PoE is set during a golden age of progress and discovery. While I'm sure there'll be plenty of room for all kinds of interesting conundrums, ethical, political, and otherwise, it doesn't sound exactly dystopian or cynical to me.

@TrashMan IMO it's generally a mistake to classify people as "racist" or "not racist." It's more accurate and more useful IMO to describe attitudes or actions that way. I believe everybody has some racist attitudes, and occasionally acts in racist ways. I don't think I've ever met anyone who doesn't, and I can't see how it could be otherwise, as we absorb our attitudes and learn our reactions from our social environment, and our social environment is deeply racist. Thing is, different people deal with this situation in remarkably different ways. Many if not most get reflexively defensive about it. They angrily reject any suggestion that they might hold racist attitudes or act in racist ways, often inventing quite elaborate stories to avoid having to address such suggestions at face value. Others acknowledge that they too have such attitudes and occasionally act in such ways, and therefore pause to consider whether the suggestion might have some merit; if they decide that it does, in fact, have merit, they might even attempt to change their behavior on that point. Or if it's a deep, unconscious bias – as is usually the case – they attempt to be more aware of it and catch it before they act on it. I much prefer to hang out with the second variety of people. So yeah, I would characterize your preference for white women as racist, but I would not consider it helpful to characterize you as racist for it. It's just a racist attitude. Everybody has them. The more intersting thing is what you do with it. If I was in your shoes, I would acknowledge that preference, and then attempt to be aware of it and not let it influence the way I interact with women of any race.

Burn the heretic.

True, the stances are very lifelike. That guy in the green puffy breeches is handling his a bit carelessly though. It's an interesting looking situation actually. Makes you wonder what they're up to. They're clearly waiting for trouble, laying an ambush perhaps, with the matches lit and everything ready, but the guys in the back seem to be in conversation and not paying much attention to what's coming. Hardened veterans who trust their comrades on the lookout to warn them to shut up and look sharp on time? The style isn't my favorite, but the guy can draw and knows what he's drawing, that's for sure.

Matchlocks, actually. Cool, though, and would fit PoE nicely IMO.

I'd be surprised if this kind of thing wasn't in the game, and doubly surprised if there wasn't at least a solid attempt to do a good job of it. Obsidian has done this before with varying degrees of success; in MotB we had the Rashemen matriarchy and the enmity between them and the Thayvians and the racism towards the Hagspawn, and more recently in FO:NV there was the horribly misogynistic and generally rather awful Caesar's Legion. That's IMO an especially encouraging precedent as it managed to create a believable portrait of them, instead of just making them a one-dimensional essentially evil Enemy that can only ever be resisted. I'd say the biggest flaw with MotB in this respect was that while there was a lot of prejudice in the world you were in, you, the PC, were never at the receiving end of it, not even through your choice of companions. Perhaps PoE will manage it better. (Also, btw -- as games go, both Witchers did a fairly good job of working both sexism and racism into the game without doing it reflexively or unthinkingly. I'm more than happy to forgive their occasional stumbles for everything they did well, and the risks they took to do it at all.)