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Thanks for the reply. :] Unfortunately, I saved over the one file that was before that point, shortly before realizing the problem. I tried to keep a certain number of saves, and thought it was safe to overwrite after enough hours of gameplay. Bad move. I did figure out some solution for this, and I'm gonna put it here in case anyone is curious or could use the info. I looked through some save editors, but only one worked, with no Bronze Sphere in the items list, and one of the other two didn't do items anyways. Then I looked up the item code, and learned the bare-bones basics of Hex ediiting through this page and its related site/links. I had to download a hex editor from download.com (not the hex-editor named on the site), saved two different slots of the same point in the game and picked one to edit (could also have made a back up), and essentially replaced a clot charm ("CLOTCHRM") item code in The Nameless One's inventory (not quick slots) with the Bronze Sphere's ("BSPHERE") item code. (In case the site's confusing or inconsistent or the link goes bad, this is how I dealt with it:) Open the file from the hex editor. To get the save file, go to the saves' subfolder, which is in wherever Planescape Torment's folder is, enter the folder of the specific save you want to edit, and click/use the "TORMENT.GAM" file. Make sure the file is in the hex format. The site states it should be ASCII (which I did). One needs to find the first "Nameless" in the file's code to get to the PC's inventory and such, keep going down until you find the item code's name (e.g. Clot charm's is "CLOTCHRM"). If the item you're replacing is also in a quick slot, it should be listed twice, and you should change the second one (I think, not positive, but this is what I did). Also, make sure the item you are replacing is in the inventory, and not a quick slot. If the name of the item one's replacing is longer than "BSPHERE," highlight the remaining letters to look at the hex code numbers connected to it (they'll be highlighted too, now, as a result), and replace the now highlighted numbers with "00." I'm not sure what to do if "BSPHERE" is longer than the original item code, or if that's an issue at all. Make sure, obviously, that the name is exactly "BSPHERE." You have to replace a preexisting item to get the item you want, due to the way the save files work (they "dynamically resize"). You can't spawn items out of nothing into empty slots. After I did this, I loaded the edited save file without any issue or noticed bugs/corruption. The Bronze Sphere was now in the inventory where the clot charm used to be...Success! I don't know that the game will treat the Bronze Sphere like it would treat the original, but it has so far (as far as I can tell). A better chance than none at all. I was able to save the game slot without issue.

I am currently at the Clerk Ward - and have done the majority of quests available thus far. I knew well to both grab and keep the Bronze Sphere, from the game and a couple tips. I specifically avoided dropping it or moving it out of inventory, but I realized lately that it was absent from any of the party's inventories. I think it's possible that I lost it in a glitch, via a death or cutscene. E.g. I may have given it to Morte, who may have lost it during a certain cutscene (which I heard was possible later on). Is it still there (I doubt it)? Is there a way to get it back? I attempted to use a save editor, but looking through the list of items I could hack into it, there is no "Bronze Sphere" or anything I would guess is related.

It's hard to remember how Project Eternity was pitched, and I didn't read all of the early updates, either. But when I threw some money at PE, it was because it was Obsidian - who would have more control/agency via Kickstarter - and it was going back to older RPG's, even just KOTOR (II) older. That way, it didn't take after more recent developments. Where the dialogue/writing/story's been narrowed and heavily cut, which includes the universe's level of detail. Or where action, cinematics, and voice-acting are given so much focus that it sacrifices the quality of writing and gameplay (both in terms of combat and things like choices/freedom in the game). If Obsidian wants to mess with the mechanics, or how RPG's are written/presented, and it's not just to streamline them and make them easy/quick, I fully support it. Usually, I've seen good logic and intent to their decisions, and even when Obsidian does not do well, they do something interesting. Which I prefer to blindly sticking to what they think "works."

I agree, Lephys, that different races in fantasy usually suggest differences in biology, and I prefer when a game uses that to inform its gameplay to some extent (it's why I like things like reputation systems, so that the game actually recognizes factions and alliances). So I agree that some mechanical/gameplay recognition of the differences between groups of any kind (species-wise, culture-wise, etc.) is great and arguably necessary. But on the note of different people recognizing other people as different, and treating them differently (story/writing wise), there's no need for actual physiological/mechanical difference. People will differentiate or group themselves with others for any number of reasons. It can be because someone is too tall and has pointy ears; it can be because they have tusks coming out of their otherwise human mouths on otherwise human faces. It can be because of the locals' social life excluding or including people they like/dislike for local reasons. That's ignoring culture and recent history, like any wars that went on or are going on between certain groups (including races, as races presumably are native/dominant in certain areas). I assume you already get this, but I believe that was what the original point was, and was definitely my own when I first read the earlier posts. There can be differences integrated and valid without actual mechanical changes. The point of looking at real life is to show that people will have reasons to react to each other differently despite a thorough lack to do so in the physical-differences department (in comparison to reasons to react differently to a lion or a squid). The color of someone's skin, a person's gender, their political leanings, their country of origin. There's a lot of bad history between people of the same religion, and just different branches, that live in the same area and in similar/the same cultures and that have similar appearances. I wouldn't try to show the differences between a Protestant and a Catholic during their initial schism through mechanics, unless I had a related, specific idea that messed with it (different kinds of faith-magic or whatever). The races ("species") can be differentiated by the world beyond just physiological difference.

Characters having more dialog doesn't make them more in depth, it just makes them have more dialog. As for being only slightly better then adventure hall dummies, could you elaborate how you came to that conclusion? This is one issue with spreading out resources/the writer's time and focus too much. BG had a lot of characters, but they had so little character to them that there wouldn't have been much loss as an "adventure hall dummy." If someone wants companions beyond mechanics, a lot of companions with a few lines (possibly sometimes same-y lines) is pointless.

Fallout: New Vegas or Knights of the Old Republic II had the best companions I've seen. Dragon Age: Origins' were well done, dialogue was awesome, but the concepts weren't as interesting and didn't seem to involve the themes/world as much. They also fell into (bad) cheesier writing more. Fallout 1 didn't have bad companion characters, but there wasn't a lot to 'em; haven't played enough of Fallout 2 to comment on that. Fallout 3's are pretty bad, or they have the same problem as Fallout 1. Fallout: New Vegas did a good job with character conflict and evolving them from the rest of the world (or adding to the world through the characters) . They had great concepts and generally good development; awesome dialogue. I'm impressed that they managed to give Ed-E some character/background, e.g. the history and battle tunes. Veronica is one of the few female characters I've seen that is actually interesting and not irritating. A lot of cool, small details, too - like Boone's remarks on the NCR's mercy kills or Caesar's death. Knights of the Old Republic I had decent characters, but fell into some bad writing. I liked that the characters interacted/fought (and with the PC, who otherwise gets the god/messiah treatment), and played into the PC's story or the dark/light side ideas. Jolee, Juhari, HK-47, and Bastilla (though more could have been done with her concept) were good. I think its sequel is generally better, however - more interesting and fleshed out concepts that messed with what the Force is, exactly, and how it relates to everything else (e.g. non-Jedi, like Atton and the handmaiden), and the ethics were far more gray (your companions aren't completely good, perfect people, and don't go on about how evil past actions were). The fact that it discusses the Jedi's flaws and nasty implications more is awesome. Kreia is probably the best of them. A bonus: T3 actually has a character in the second game. I think both Fallout: New Vegas and KoTOR II did awesome in that the characters feel more like individuals, rather than just tropes (not to say that they don't come from tropes or that tropes don't apply). Need to play Planescape: Torment, BG II, Neverwinter Nights II, and Jade Empire. BG's characters had less to them than Fallout 1's, though.

Obsidian isn't flawless, but I think their design choices often have some logic behind them. The tweaks they made in Fallout: New Vegas were awesome improvements - like the way they dealt with dialogue and categorizing guns. I'm not even close to a Pen-and-Paper RPG expert, or the old systems, and I'm having trouble imagining what the differences would be in its entirety. However, while I don't want something streamlined (this often means "simplified to kindergarten for the moronic masses" and "everything stripped out to bare bones for lazy development"), it seems that the intent is the player will have more freedom and builds can have more variety. E.g. You don't need to specialize in weapons your attributes would specifically give bonuses to, which was also significantly influenced by one's class and race in the older RPGs. That can make a pretty straight path on what a player should do. I want attributes, class, race, etc. to have an impact, but it'd be cool if this prevents the system from narrowing the kind of build a player can pull off or the kind of choices they can make. Tell me if I'm off, here.

Yeah, that happens a lot in RPG's. The line sounds like it cuts off the conversation/line of thought, so it comes off like it's out of no where and trolling. KOTOR II's isn't terrible, but it will almost make the exit line, "Forget it. I had other questions," or "Nevermind [...]." Even if that doesn't really fit the conversation (it often doesn't). The one that always seemed odd was when a few characters in Fallout: New Vegas, previously friendly or happy or whatever, had the judging, brooding, ominous, silent ellipses as a goodbye. E.g. The Followers of the Apocalypse leader chick. ME's exit lines were real weird, too. Way better than being stuck in a long conversation that you can't skip through/get out of, though.

It sounds like Obsidian is trying to make every class viable and valuable, where the classes outside the core group are solid and can stand on their own. In which case, I'd guess it's whatever classes failed to provide as much interest story- or character-wise to the writers or didn't quite fit. E.g. Avellone pointed out how interesting the concept of a Chanter was in Project Eternity's world and the ways you could mess with it. And the Chanter is one of the classes to expect, off of the update.

It actually seems surprisingly possible that Obsidian will do another Fallout. Haven't yet found the original source that I saw, but I found this, and this, via googling.

Schedules... They're more like guidelines anyway! Name that reference, and win a prize! ...Pirates of the Caribbean?

On the note of the backer site, does anyone know why it's taken so long for PE to get its own? Is it possible some won't get a copy of the game, even if they pledged enough?

If they can flesh out every character, then eight is more than enough. Usually, the number of characters that have a full arc and aren't half-baked - or given a fair/equal amount of attention - is far smaller than eight. Fallout: New Vegas suffered from this some, where Arcade Gannon and Raul were relatively hollow or cut off compared to Boone or Veronica. They were really cool characters, but they didn't get as much focus and were somewhat disappointing as a result. I get the idea that more characters means more chance to find an appealing personality/concept, since there are more to pick from, but sheer numbers doesn't compensate for writing; the quality or amount of effort put into it. The more characters the developers make, the less time or work they give them. Or check that they are done well. Suddenly the chance you're gonna get a cliche, stock, obnoxious, repetitive, boring, blank-slate bot with little to no character attached rockets to its zenith. If the entire selection of people you have to work with are worth less than generic blobs, and still very possibly written where they annoy the player, the number of that selection is worthless. I liked a couple characters from Baldur's Gate, but only vaguely, and only because their battle lines amused me (Minsk, Xander), or they made killing things far more fun. That's not character, that's not interesting. I could go to the Hall of Adventurer's or mod and create more charming guys than that. Skyrim's companions had the same problem, and the AI was stupid and soulless enough that I named every companion "Lydia [number here]" based on the number of companions that had died before. Yeah, there's a risk you won't like a character, but that risk is greatly based on how well they're written, how much time was put in their creation. Throwing more companions into the blender wouldn't solve the writing issue. And as someone said, I prefer having a reactive, believable character that seems to be in the world and adds to it rather than some dude with a couple one-liners.

I start with normal on the first playthrough. I plan to go with Expert mode, if it's similar to Harcore, which is an awesome concept and did well in New Vegas. I'd try Trial of Iron in a different playthrough. It's something I want to mess with, but I'll probably make a crack character and see how far I can manage to go.

There are situations I could see that people comment or focus on an event instead of actually greeting you, such as when a big disaster just happened. But even with that, you have a good point. Generally, this doesn't bother me, at least in part because I'm used to seeing it in games. What I start to notice, though, are lines like: "Heard some more people got attacked last night." "Patrolling the Mojave almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter." "I used to be an adventurer like you. Then I took an arrow to the knee.." The first one was worse, because everyone in one, tiny room were saying the same thing in the same way. If NPC's repeat a line too often, especially when they're next to each or the line's odd, the game/world loses some credibility. More natural, believable dialogue would be great, though.

Ah, I see; that's really cool. Thank you for the clarification. :]

I had to get a slacker-backer donation when my original Kickstarter donation failed to properly register my debit card at the end hours. I always found it funny, and fitting to my slow, procrastinating self in most situations. But the BG reference is brilliant. :D Requiem of a Backer The Last of Us Backers

Are we talking hilarious bugs or just game-breaking bugs? If it's Bethesda-engine-style quirkiness, where a dog's eyeballs are just outside of it's eye sockets, or I can accidentally fly through the sky and walls, or Doc. Mitchell's head cranks upside down and he starts floating, I'm looking forward to this. :D I'd hate to get F:NV's earlier lock-up spamming, though..Or quests that I can't finish.

This is surprisingly hard to think of. My brain wants to name major characters. The problem is the fact that the roles are so small that they're easy to forget in the grand scheme of things. The Overseer in Fallout 1 was great. I think he was well done for his role in general, but one unique ending for the game and this made his character awesome. There's also the guy with a low intelligence in one of the towns who, if you have a low intelligence as well, you can have a politely mannered conversation with in-depth. Also. The crazy dude in the church, way later on, that makes a reference to "I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire." It was worth going back to the messages log to read the full conversation with that guy (the game kept skipping to the last line). :D In Mass Effect, beyond what I saw pointed out earlier, there was a turian at Noveria. Not very important, but the writing was entertaining. There was also Leeroy Jenkins, way back at the beginning, and the crazy man who was foretelling everyone's doom shortly after. Also, Nihlus. A lot of the minor characters in BioShock were well done, they had individual stories that helped portray different perspectives of what had happened and often went beyond one audio diary. Also, in BioShock 2, Mark Meltzer was great - if you had the viral campaign's backstory. The despairing hero/soldier guy in Demon Souls - he's extremely cynical, sits at the first stone. It appears that his lack of will, or his general inaction, causes him to lose his life/soul/existence. In Dark Souls, the first knight you meet during the introduction. Ish in The Last of Us. Tommy, Marlene, Tess. Sarah was well done. Rattmann in Portal. Where would the cake meme be without him? ;] The corrupt spheres in both games were great, too.

What? No, "This isn't Project Eternity: Harvest Moon?" ;] I saw my biggest issue with this well explained multiple times, but the first I saw was this (particularly the part in bold): This is exactly it. I don't care that it's a romance, it is that so many are so poorly written and make a character feel far less fleshed out and believable than if they were not romantic interests. Because a game often limits the story and character for anything outside the romance. Because I don't care about a romance at all, but because of these limits I am cut out of any of the character, or any of the story related to that character. If the romance isn't simply done to pander and lazily tacked on, where it contracts from the game's writing otherwise, and doesn't take away from the character and story otherwise, then I'm fine with it; I'll congratulate the fans going for romances. If Obsidian finds a way where the romance is valuable to the story in some way, I would support it. It otherwise suffers as a bad gimmick that drops the quality of the game. That was a big issue I had with Mass Effect 2: if one didn't or couldn't romance a squadmate, the level of development, character, etc. usually was bare minimum or didn't exist. The concept of various kinds of interaction is a great idea, and it hasn't been done enough. But it would be cool to see in Project Eternity. No. One does not require an interest in romance or sex to be interested and engaged in dialogue, story, or RPG's. Not all writing or story revolves around it. Even heavily romanced Bioware games. Nor does it need to or should. And this comment would imply that writers such as Avellone must not pay attention to dialogue and narrative. In the same post that you are arguing other players might deny you of an option they can avoid, you appear to be dismissing the possible lack of genuine choice for them. Though I may be misunderstanding you. The very point is that it is -not- an option for people who do not want to romance, not that there are too many. Forcing a romance to develop a character is cheap replayability that forces a player to trudge through a largely identical game to see one character that was locked away because the PC didn't want to mush dirty parts with them. If the player doesn't want to do the romance, then they don't get to see the character at all, at any point. That's a no-choice choice. A false option. For players that play the wrong gender, it is not even a false option - unless you're saying players should be railroaded into what gender they play, too, just to get the story out of a genre famous for its attention to story. That stifles development entirely for many, and destroys any possible non-romantic development for the character themselves. Not everyone, if anyone, is purely defined by their romances, and characters can easily be dynamic and/or well written through other means. Good examples off the bat are Boone, the Burned Man, and Veronica from Fallout: New Vegas, or Joel, Ellie, and Marlene in The Last of Us, or Bastilla (non-romance version) in KOTOR, Sten in Dragon Age: Origins, or a bunch of -minor characters- in Demon/Dark Souls. These are just games I've played (again) recently. In fact, there are plenty of characters ruined, or essentially absent/pointless to anything platonic, because of poorly written, ham-fisted romances. Again, in KOTOR, although Carth was never even close to a great character, made me roll my eyes or cringe in pain and humor to the terrible, cheesy romance lines that made a bad 1950's film feel genuine. The only game I can agree with that is Mass Effect 2, but that is a flaw, not a strength. I understand that romances can be appealing, and that some are well done, but even those well done usually can be done in another way that doesn't involve romance at all (e.g. "The Power of Friendship"). More options the better, romances that fit, are believable, and have purpose (such as thematic value) are great, but every one of the other games that I've played were great because of everything else. Because I don't usually do the romances. And they stood completely on their own merit outside of that. As someone who plays for the game and for the great story, I wouldn't even blink if the romances were deleted from the content. Also, as pointed out earlier, Fallout: New Vegas had no romances whatsoever, and its story doesn't feel out of place without the romances. It is also, currently, the best story I've seen in any game. Both for the well-done and clever writing itself, and for the amount of options and freedom it gave. I could see my claim debated against Last of Us, or Planescape: Torment (haven't played that yet). Neither of those had romances. This isn't to say a game is bad for having them, but it isn't necessary. Additionally, under the categories you mentioned, Planescape: Torment, Fallout 1, and Baldur's Gate didn't have romance options (though I heard BG's DLC changes that). From what I have seen of the latter two and heard of the first, they are excellently written and provide more choice and options than some of the more recent RPGs that also fit in the list you provided.

I don't mind, really, but a quick point: One of the best ways to undermine your own argument is to contradict it - within the same day and thread, no less. Of course, maybe that was intentional. Also, how much you enjoy a game is not the equivalent of how much of an RP it is (unless you like it for having less..or something? and I misunderstood). RP's are my favorite kind of game (as a whole), and Mass Effect (1) and BioShock are among my top favorite games, but I don't get the two confused and think it's because they allow me to RP the most. More choice and freedom in what a player character says, does, thinks, and who they are (including background) are big factors in that sort of thing. Ignoring the very specific background and start BG gives one's self, it provides a lot more choice (at least in what I know and experienced, I haven't -finished- it yet) than ME (mostly in dialog, and ethics and ideas, but also choice a lot of the time). I'm guessing DA2 as well, from what I know and have been told - I wouldn't know for sure, on that one. Which one is a better game, also, is different than which one is more or better of an RPG.

I'm pretty sure this was just a joke, but even if one only finds flaw with the ending, the problem is more than Casey Hudson. And that whole "artistic integrity" seems more like an excuse/attempt to calm the storm by justification (made by the public-relation guys, not Hudson or other staff) that failed, not the actual reason the ending was what it was. The ending would have been seriously flawed no matter what, though it would have bothered some fans less if done differently. As one individual pointed out, an exercise to illuminate this would be to try to make a more satisfying ending that tied up everything, made a justifiable conclusion that fit the lore, did not introduce any new characters, plot elements or other aspects (thus only used those already introduced through the rest of Mass Effect 3 (or earlier)). And you can't change anything previously shown by Mass Effect 3. By most accounts of what a thoroughly good/mostly unflawed ending is, it's virtually impossible to make one for Mass Effect 3 (though it's more possible to make one that's acceptable to some- most fans). Well, not everyone. I, for example, started becoming a horrible "purist" (would that be the word?) after being massively disappointed, frustrated, and enraged by Mass Effect 2. I always love how deleting flawed features from a game instead of improving them, and deleting RP aspects in an RPG, was consistently called "refining." I should have told my teacher, when I did half the work I was supposed to, that I "refined" my research paper by deleting half of it - because that half was incorrectly cited. I'm still amazed that people, after playing through myself, didn't notice the writing was increasingly unplanned and inconsistent with Mass Effect 2 or 3, or (in 2) that it was weird that there was almost no main plot/the main missions were infrequent and small. Or that the maps were terrible. Or that the leveling and dialogue choices were simplified. Or that dialogue and story was minimized so that it could be more "cinematic." Or that the ethics/philosophy/ideas were dumbed down (from Lovecraftian concepts of cosmicism and homage to that mythology (and Star Trek/older sci-fi) to Independence Day/popcorn movies). Didn't even keep the style of scenes or appearance to, again, keep homage to older sci-fi. I will say Mass Effect was always problematic as an RPG, though - the fact that they picked voice-acting of the PC over more options and variety in the dialogue trees is a kind of unpleasant sign of what Bioware might have started to care about more. It's one of my favorite games because I'm a sucker for sci-fi and the universe is awesome, but it pales (on quality/extent of RPing alone) in comparison to Dragon Age: Origins, New Vegas, Baldur's Gate, maybe Neverwinter Nights, Fallout 1, Fallout 2 (Fallout 3?), some of the Ultima series, etc. etc. Uh, wait, what, be on-topic? Trilogy? Nah, I'm not buying it - I'm sure that wasn't obvious by this post at all. Even if I loved the last two games, though, I already have them. And the last two don't hold high replay value, so I maybe wouldn't even if I didn't have them and enjoyed them. The first may have replay value for me, but that might just be a result of nostalgia/a need for some happy-medicine-therapy-time from the others. Also, I didn't take some of the teammates with me enough - like Wrex, I should have had Wrex way more. I miss that guy.

(Side note: Fallout 3 is greatly flawed, and a sad downgrade from 1 and 2, but it's not a game I hate. Certainly better than BOS (fan nickname I remember: "POS"), from what I know and have seen of the latter.) This is actually a really interesting, awesome article - it's impressive how open and honest this person is, even if they're admitting something in their past (assuming it's a true story, of course). And their attitude earlier on about stealing from others that seem better off is certainly not that uncommon. At least in justification, if not motivation - the feeling of righting a wrong inflicted on one's self. It's an example of games being a good form of therapy (to an extent), or doing things you can't (whether because of law, culture, or personal restraint/inability), or dealing with stress you can't or aren't allowed to deal with outside of games. And one of the points of RP's is being something one isn't in real life (if they want). It's also a very nice show of someone using and applying ethics or ideas and thinking about it in a way they hadn't before. In this case, the game didn't even directly try to make a conversation about it (usually, at least - New Vegas might have more), it just allowed the particular player to interact with and put themselves in a world that coincidentally related to their ideas and opinions. While games aren't something one should base their personal philosophy on, it's pretty awesome that this guy thought about an issue more critically as a result of their experience.

That was certainly the case for me - that I never played the first two. In fact, when I first was given Fallout 3, I wondered where the hell the other two were, expecting they were more recent releases that I should have noticed in a T.V. ad or E3 (especially since, by then, I vaguely knew that Bethesda was a pretty big/well known company). The two games came in the '90s, and I wasn't even paying attention to what games were out then, I just played the ones I got from family. Fallout 3 was one of the earlier, "darker," "smarter," (I know that probably sounds ridiculous, thus the quotation marks) and more expansive games I began playing around then. I was then and am now a nerd, so I obsessively enjoyed the concept of doing this alternate universe based on the concepts, science, sci-fi, etc. etc. of the '30's-'50's. It was one of the first RPG's I ever got to play, or where I was given any -real- sense of freedom or choice. That I could remember. It's atmosphere was amazing, exploration was ridiculously fun, it had more story, character, and dialogue than most of what I knew of, etc. etc. It was so comparatively better to what I was used to that it was among my favorite games for a good while, and certainly my favorite universe. It was also why I tried to play Oblivion, before being annoyed by it's more noticeable flaws (comparatively) and my gut hurting too much from laughting at the (comparatively) awkward voice acting, dialogue, and animation of faces. Two things make Fallout 3 unplayable for me, even with its nostalgic value, however. One was it's system, despite what I just said, didn't have enough variety to make a whole new playthrough worth it. I had (again, being very obsessive) already done everything the first time, or 96-98% more likely. When I tried again, a good while later, I was so frustrated by the sameness that I restarted with a character consisting of 1's and 10's in S.P.E.C.I.A.L. and similar extremes in skills. This still wasn't enough - the differences in combat were minor, and the differences in story/RPing/dialogue were virtually and essentially absent. The other reason was that Fallout: New Vegas raised the standard, and became (and still is) my favorite game - maybe my favorite thing. Suddenly, Fallout 3's world looked much more shallow and empty, the writing too simple, the ethics much more glaringly problematic, the conflicts and plot much less interesting. I still have a soft spot for Fallout 3, and I appreciate that it got me into other games - indirectly, into older games and RPG's - but I don't think I could play it at all without another couple decades to forget everything in it (and I'd have to try very hard to forget everything, too). If then. I have a couple other things I wanted to say here, but I'll put it in another post later.

Absolutely! I didn't think that negative status (and the results from that) with others, either groups or individuals, was even a question. It's especially great if the attitudes can change based on events in the game or one's (or another party member's) actions - it's the reason the reputation system in Vegas was so much fun. The more variety of character interaction and consequences, the better.