Zu Long

I have to say, I am a bit disappointed. Not because I really need romance in my RPGs, but because it seems so limiting from a roleplaying perspective. No matter what he or she does, my character will end up, inevitably, alone. It just feel kind of sad to know that in the back your mind from the get-go, you know? Still it is what it is, and I look forward to those interactions I will get to have.

I am always partial to a choice. It would be interesting if there were a series of choices you could make fairly early on that would lock you into a bad ending. However, there should always be the option of the player to succeed. I don't invest 40+ hours of my time in these games to feel like I wasted my time at the end.

I'm taking the over on that. It's only been 6 days and there have been 3 topics so far. My guess is closer to pt. 180 at least.

If it was as cut and dried as you appear to believe--that they aren't doing romances, full stop--why not simply say so? I'm thinking it's more likely they haven't decided yet.

Des Moines, Iowa, USA

Either a Human Paladin or a Cipher, not sure which.

I would prefer both paths be rewarded in different ways. While there should certainly be some sort of short-term gain from choosing a dark-side option, choosing to be good could easily net you some form of additional reward in the long-term, more important to the game than just a line of dialogue. That's not to say that there shouldn't be options where a "good" character can choose to save a party member by sacrificing of themselves, but those choices should be few and reserved for important moments in the game.

I hate to sound like M. Night Shamamalama-sama, but the best cRPGs always have a twist, where the main character is forced to define who they really are. Final Fantasy 7 had one of the best I've seen in any medium ever with Cloud's memory sequence. My favorite part of KOTOR II will always be the conversation with Atris after you crash land on her arctic base. (I played through it multiple times my first run through because it was so awesome). There was a moment like that in Jade Empire. There was one in the first KOTOR... Most good stories are about conflict both external to the main character and within the main character as well. The main character's journey should be in part about self-discovery, and most good RPG's have a moment (some have more than one) where the main character is forced to question themselves and come up with an answer relevant to major storyline.

I'm personally a big fan of riding off into the sunset with the love interest.

Final Fantasy 7.

I described the technical process for a signel game writer to linearly (e.g. 3 months) create character content and the choices required in adding romances. How would you respond to that exactly? By pointing out that I, personally, don't plan on taking any of the evil paths, ever, and I could use the exact same "resource" argument to say that they should be left out in favor of content that I would enjoy. As the other poster said though, that would make me pretty selfish.

Our castles-in-the-middle-of-a-lake must kung fu battle to the death. "All right, let's see what you've got!" (Special Attack)

I actually wouldn't mind the ability to have a standing company of soldiers you could send out to do various things around your demnese. Make roads safer, build homes, uproot dangerous kobold infestations. Possibly murder uppity peasants if that's what floats your boat. The ability to build it in the middle of a lake would be great for my own personal nostalgia.

I would love a faction with quests and everything, but I'd take lore. And I'd totally grab a T-Shirt.

However, there are romance arcs in the Witcher series (even putting aside the generic sexual conquests). Witcher is a love story, but Geralt is a loner. The same can't be said of Fallout or the Elder Scrolls, but those games should be appreciated on their own merits. I'm not saying they're bad. They just aren't my cup of tea. Skyrim is by any objective measure a better game than Suikoden V. That doesn't change the fact that I've played through Suikoden V several times, and have had a blast each time, while I returned Skyrim to my friend who let me borrow his copy after a couple of days. Peoples tastes are different. I only contributed to this game after Obsidian confirmed companions would be a focus, because I know my own tastes. Bioware sacrificed a lot of things in Dragon Age 2, though I didn't find combat all that bad. Then again, I am a veteran Dynasty Warriors fan, so I'll conceed the point. But I'm not sure there was a decision there to sacrifice them in favor of the romances. Rather, I've always thought that the companions and romances were one of the few things they got right. The companion interactions were so noticeable because it was one of the few things the game did really well. I tend to think that's because Bioware did those first. Then the time crunch came, so they started cutting corners. As you say though, romance shouldn't be the end-all, be-all focus of the game. But I do think it has a place in a game like this, and it's a feature I really enjoy, so I thought I'd speak up in support.

My preference is definitely yes. Companions are my favorite part of any RPG. The fact that there aren't any in the Elder Scrolls or Fallout or The Witcher series are part of why those games don't really appeal to me. The idea of roaming around an area slaying monsters and performing heroic deeds with a group of friends is to me a big part of what an RPG is all about. Romance springing up between characters within that group is and should be an option in the game. For the record, I guess I'm one of those Bioware fans some people in this topic dislike. I really enjoyed the romance options in all of the recent Bioware games.

I don't know. Having played Metal Gear Solid 2, this concept isn't nearly as much fun as it sounds like.

My favorite villain of all time is still Sephiroth from FF7. At no point in any video game before or since have I ever felt as menaced by a villain as I did about halfway through FF7's first disk.

Man. Wish I'd thought of that.

Because if there exists a clear-cut 'right way' to do things, the objectively 'best' path that leaves everyone satisfied and everything set to clearly the best outcome, then the message sent is that this is a world where all that is needed for everything to turn out all right is for you to do the right thing. There is no conflict except whether or not you feel like being a d*ck. Take Dragon Age. You've got the quest where the little boy is possessed by the demon. The options, as I recall, amounted to 'kill the little boy or let someone sacrifice him or herself to save him.' Quite grim, as originally presented. Immediately shoots up to fluffy when it becomes clear there is a path in which you can save everyone and get rid of the demon at the same time. If you do anything other than that, you're not making a hard choice; you're just being a d*ck. The game itself remains rather fluffy for allowing you the easy out without the hard choice. But that's an issue with the design of the quest. What if sacrificing the little boy gained you something extra? What if your run to the Circle had a time limit, and if you don't make it EVERYONE dies? For the record, I sacrificed the mother the first time because my character didn't think going all the way to the Circle and back was a realistic option. There are ways to make choosing between good and evil difficult within the confines of the game. And again, I think you can design it so that to some extent it's the player's choice. For instance, going back to our example of the run to the Circle in DA:O. Suppose it had been timed. No problem, just reload if you don't make it, or lower the difficulty, right? But now you throw the Path of Iron and Expert options on there. No reloads. No going back. You get to choose. Can you make it through the whole thing on hard difficulty in time? Would it be better to take the sacrifice in order to be sure? See what happened? The players own choices, both in game world and out controlled how dark the setting was, and there's STILL the option to make it through if you're skilled enough. That's what I mean when I say grimdarkness should come from the player.

@Tammerlane- Man I remember seeing that game and thinking "A Squaresoft game about a Dragon Knight? This will be awesome!" I was profoundly disappointed.

See, but I don't see why the existence of a path where things turn out well somehow negates the legitimacy of a path where things don't turn out as well. It's like saying the existence of light-side paths in KOTOR and KOTOR II means the dark-side paths aren't viable. Why? I've never found it to be true. I DO feel it when there is no light side path, as well as when there is no dark-side path. How does the option to choose automatically make it light-side?

As I said at the time, Dragon Age was about as tame as a Mid-West Ren Fayre. If having to do battle with the man who brutally murdered your mother while her twitching, reanimated, stitched together corpse stumbles about the battlefield is tame to you, I'm guessing I wouldn't enjoy anything you actually think is hardcore.

I'm definitely farther towards the MLP:FIM side of the scale. But I think games should be designed where the grimdarkness of the world is in part an extension of what your character does. You want to be the shining knight who saves the world and winds up president of the New Republic? You can do that. You want to be an ends justify the means tyrant who does whatever is necessary to rise to power and then enforces his will on the world with a blood-soaked fist? You can do that too. But a lot of it should come from the player. Enforcing endless no good choices dilemmas, to me, is just as empty as magical happy solutions to all problems.

Put me down for unlimited ammunition. I'm just going to point to all the people in this topic who used ranged weapons to annihilate people before they closed in Baldur's Gate 1 and 2. I did the same thing in DA:O. In both cases limited arrows did NOTHING to stop you from outfitting your entire party with bows and raining death. That being the case, why bother with it? It doesn't take any planning beyond remembering to fill up on arrows at each town, for sums that are pitifully low almost immediately. Immersion strikes me as a poor excuse. We all love using our imaginations otherwise we wouldn't be here. Is it really so difficult to imagine your archer simply makes arrows (or gunman making bullets or what have you) whenever he's got some down time and therefore has a plentiful supply handy at any given moment?