Pshaw

I'd like the option to be evil but sadly I feel that in most games being evil or a jerk means you miss out on a lot of quests as not everything can have an alternate evil completion path. That said I think fallout 2 allowed you to do things in a fairly 'evil' way a good amount of the time. Killing off the citizens of Gecko in a nuclear explosion comes to mind. As does finding a childs doll then having the option of ripping it to pieces in front of her. I think generally a healthy sprinkling of things like that lets you feel 'evil' while still battling against the antagonist. Combined with plenty of choices to shoot first ask questions later I think that's the most evil you can get and it's a good amount IMHO. I would like to see an evil/selfish ending though. Perhaps you defeat the antagonist only to choose to replace him and conquer/destory the world or what have you.

Personally I always loved mage's familars in BG2. So I'd be open to the idea of all classes having them, or at the very least seeing familars return in 1 form or another. I don't really agree that they'd all need to be birds though. Their are plenty of animals out there in the world before you delve into fantasy creatures. I think it would be a shame to limit it to birds alone. I think it might also fit in best as a perk/skills where some classes start off with the perk and a base companion and if you skill up the skill it would allow you access stronger companions which you could find/purchase/train later on. Still the scaling aspect is uneeded as well, I just like the idea of starting out with a mouse friend with a few useful skills and by the end of the game having something a bit more exoctic with broader applications in and out of combat.

First off I'll just say I'm a huge fan of relationships between the main character and your party. I feel it adds to the connection can feel with certain characters in your party. I would go so far to say not having romance options would be a letdown as it's pretty much a genre standard both in games and literature. Now I won't say it's always handled in a good way. I think basically this comes from sex being the 'goal' of the relationship subplots rather than a just a furthering of a relationship. It doesn't need to be a goal or event, heck it doesn't need to exist at all for a relationship subplot to be worthwhile. Also the sex seems to be the determining factor of you even being in a relationship rather than it ever coming up before hand which seems a bit backwards to me. The DA series sometimes seemed to be based more around sex than real relationships for the most part. Which is a shame since the characters are pretty interesting in some cases so it's sad that in devolves into 'hey, you're nice to me so let's bang' at some point. Which does bring up another point. Romance shouldn't just be choosing the polite dialogue options over and over, at least not for everbody. Viconia in BG2 was a good example of this, sometimes you had to tell her she was wrong and have a fight and then later on you'd talk about the fight and move past it. That made it feel more real than just coddling her. Morrigan from DA:O was similar in that regard. Too much lovey-dovey stuff and you could scare her away entirely. Even you don't chase her away she's still scared of relying on the warden and will stop sleeping with you and still leave the warden in the end as he isn't the most important thing in her world. Sometimes being nice/agreeable nonstop makes sense and other times it doesn't I just hate to see it where it doesn't fit in. It's ok to not agree about what makes a romance 'good' or 'realistic' everybody has their own opinions on that sort of thing. Regardless I enjoy having romance subplots in the game even if they're a bit cliche at points. I'd rather have the option be present and attempted than nothing at all. For the romance haters out there from all we've heard about project eternity I don't think it should be much of an issue for you. Not only are NPCs going to be largely optional but if you still want npcs, just not the ones given to you, you have access to the adventures hall to make all the generic npcs you could want. Beyond that you can simply not pursue the dialogue options that lead to romances. So there are plenty of options already being planned to allow you to not be involved in romances if that's not your thing. Finally if you say it takes away from development time that could be used for a few more quest chains I'd just have to come right and say it's not a big deal. This game seems like it will be fairly large scale. I'd imagine 40hours for a complete play through will probably be a fair estimate. 40 hours of dungeon stomping, dialogue trees, and quests. You'd really begrudge the development time it takes to add romances to the game so you could have 1-2 more hours of quests where as the people who would like to see romances would get nothing if they were left out? I think that's a little disproportionate. Their will already be plenty of game to be played regardless of romances being in the game so I say let me and the people who want them have them rather than another handful of generic side missions. PS: As a quick aside to the LGBT community. I do agree that romance options should include characters who are gay/bisexual. Preferably in a game like PE where they can simply insert your characters sex into the dialogue very easily without voice acting I don't see why it shouldn't be included. Let people romance who they want to romance. In truth I'd love to see at least 1 NPC that was just homosexual. We get plenty of straight romance options, and bioware has included bisexual relationships as well. Still nobody has had a character (to romance) that only prefers same sex relationships. Apparently in every video game universe you're straight or your bisexual. I think that's a bit of a cop out. Sure I'd rather have bisexual characters than only straight ones but it's a bit foolish in this day and age to still be tip-toeing around the issue of just being strictly homosexual, people are homosexual, they're out there. I know this last topic can make people uncomfortable but so can any mature subject in a game. Murder, rape, abuse, and so forth are all used as needed without much concern for who they will make uncomfortable. I don't see why homosexual characters should be completely excluded from the industry to protect people who find it to be an uncomfortable topic.