Cantousent

IWD is my second favorite of the IE games, right after PS:T and right before BG2. ...And I *am* a story whore. Well... maybe just a whore who likes a good story. The point is, IWD was billed as a hack and slash game and you could ignore a lot of the story if you wanted to do so, but I thought many of the characters in the game were clever and cool. Sure, they were pulling a fast one with the ending, but even that worked out nicely. IWD2 probably was the second best in terms of the story simply because it managed to preserve the evil nature of the antagonist while giving the player room to sympathize with his (or their) cause. BG 2 had a good story, but really shone in terms of NPC interactions, which Bioware did extremely well with KotOR. and KotOR used the Star Wars universe, with which I have been steadily displeased since the introduction of ewoks. Even at my relatively young age when I went to the movie, I still hated ewoks. Grom mentioned something in jest or sarcasm up above that I'd actually been considering as an example of something akin to romance done right. Maybe bromance. The Nameless One's relationship with Dak'kon, complete with the realization that a former incarnation of TNO had at the very least taken advantage of the Gith, was remarkable. ...And it was remarkable at every level. At early levels, Dak'kon is inscrutable and mysterious. If you don't pursue more with him, he remains an enigmatic figure. As you progress in your relationship and understand that you've actually had some sort of extensive interaction with him in the past, the relationship itself becomes a conundrum. If you take the time to finish the circles and choose to help him with his struggling faith, then he still has mysterious elements that remain unknown and you're still left wondering about everything that happened between the two of you in the past, but you've got an unbreakable bond. As far as I'm concerned, they could have just made him an exotic looking chic and it would have had everything necessary for a true romance. I mean, what's in a name? Call him Dak'kette and give them a kissing scene for all I care, it's still one of the great NPC relationships in any game I've played.

I thought they'd added a cosmetician class to the game. Seriously, I like the party, although I'm digging the idea of a Homeresque chanter. So, in that case I would think about replacing the Pally. I'll reserve the real choice for when I get my grubby hands on the game. ...Or I might Replace the Paladin with a half-orc barbarian named Gromnir il Khan. You never know. :Cant's tongue in cheek grin icon:

Hiked in the Crafton Hills trails for a while and then went to the gym. Now I'm getting ready to sift some flour to make pizza for dinner tonight. Afterwards, the wife wants to go on a short walk. I'm getting close to my weight goal of 220lbs, which is probably a little heavy, but I'm 6'2" and I intend that a good chunk of that weight will be solid muscle. I'm already transitioning from a weight loss plan to a fitness plan so I don't end up gaining it all back. Life. Is. Good!

I get you ol' Azar, but the best answer I can give on the phone is that I want more from my 'hero' wish fulfilment than to walk in the room and have the bad guy die at my feet. If the general story arc for the Obsidz games were the same as for the romances I've seen, I'd be calling them puerile also.

I played WoW for years and was about halfway through the bosses in... Firelands? Something like that. Playing with a guild was fun, but I also found that I was increasingly losing my life to WoW. I was forgoing doing stuff with friends in real life to play online. I was out of work, had no care about anything in real life, and gained a huuuuge amount of weight. I'm not saying WoW is to blame for that. *I* am to blame for that, but taking a break from multiplayer was absolutely necessary. I do sometimes miss some of the things my gifted friend and mare enjoy about finally beating a boss with my guildies. For right now, I'm doing single player only, but I would be willing to try a new multiplayer game or even an MMORPG if it had a good amount of single playable content and I could experiment with a little MP on the side.

Welcome aboard, Lath. Just keep track of where the lifeboats and lifejackets are located. You never know when you'll have to jump ship. :Cant's rueful grin icon: So, I saw good points in your post, but I'd like to address this argument in particular. When 'evil' options were first included in games I remember, they tended to be simply rude or greedy. The design teams experimented with ways to include a broader set of responses that still fit into the overall narrative. As more designers experimented, the responses began to flow more naturally out of the story itself. In fact, in Mask of the Betrayer, I was sometimes jealous of how well some of the evil responses were done (as someone who always plays the good guy). With romances, I would argue it's been the opposite. I don't think it *needs* to be that way, only that it has become so. The romances are included and used to appeal to folks for a variety of reasons, from personal desire for romantic fantasy stories to a desire for another way to manipulate the game for mechanical rewards. We have better evil options because folks who railed for evil options in the first place were dissatisfied with shallow and laughable attempts to reflect the truly dark elements of human nature. Sadly, it doesn't seem that there is the same demand from romance advocates for an improvement on the *quality* of romances. ...And I agree with... Gair? Anyhow, someone mentioned the 'quota system.' I think this is the death knell for advancing the quality of romances in video games. Once you demand that artist check boxes in order to inoculate themselves against vocal subgroups, you've crippled their art. It's like demanding that every romantic comedy include a couple from every racial group, every combination of racial matches, homosexual, heterosexual, bi-sexual, and transgender in the story. How the hell do you approach anything remotely cohesive in that setup? ...And, since different actual playable species exist in these games, people naturally and rightfully want to see at least *some* impact on that choice in the game. If I were a designer working with these restrictions, I would punt also.

What the hell is up with everything being online multiplayer these days? I've been playing F.E.A.R. Extraction Point and it made F.E.A.R. Online pop up in my suggested queue in Steam. I keep feeling tempted to try an online game again, but I don't want to get sucked into something I have no time to play. I looked into the Path of Exile you guys keep talking about, but same deal. So I keep checking the Steam store and I keep not buying games. Ho Hum. Any suggestions for something worth a peek or two?

I'll be honest with you, it's easy to be cynical and go all crazy on the other side when folks perceive the situation as 'either/or.' By the dog! If we could just step back and stop hounding each other, we could have a little sunlight. Okay, okay, I'll stop. Seriously, though, that's why I say that the romance crowd should stop trying to make this about romance as such and more about different ways to address relationships in general. The fact is, every incremental step still gets you towards your goal, and I'm saying that as someone who isn't even for romance in games. ...But, if taking incremental steps has two benefits, one for each side. The first benefit is for the romance advocate. He gets closer to his goal. The other benefit is for romance detractors. They might end up with a romance, but all those little steps will at least make the quality of the end product better. Of course, it's easier to give that advice to the romance crowd because it's a sneaky but effective way to achieve your goal. My advice to the anti-romance crowd, by which I mean folks who actively hate it, is to fight for every inch because you don't want the end product because you see romances in CRPGs as simply, irrevocably, and irreparably bad.

You're a mean ol' bastard, Stun, but I *did* laugh out loud. However, Lephys did peg my point (and made it better than me, the swine). Start out with relationships and craft something with them. Don't start with romance in mind. Have a relationship and see where it leads in the narrative, which could conceivably be romantic.

I don't mind the idea of romances per se. Across the spectrum, I see folks who see NPCs as purely functional, like shopkeepers and the like. On the other end, I see folks who want the PC to find the love of his life and spend a considerable amount of time exploring the unfolding of his relationship with that person. I don't really understand the term Promancer, but if you want romantic elements and more significant interaction, then the best way to win over the crowd isn't to include romances. The best way is to introduce elements that can eventually blend into an actual romantic scenario. Don't fight like hell for a romance for this game (which is ridiculous at this point anyway) and don't even rail for it in the next game. Take the long view and fight to include those design decisions that will be palatable to some of the folks who disagree with you about romances but might enjoy a story that introduces the trappings of romance sufficiently that it's not only palatable for your current foes, but even raises to the level of interest. ...And you can take a small amount of interest and find someone skilled enough, then use it to make a truly romantic story. ...But that's where you'll probably still lose me. Forget my specific scenario. Most of your players might not be married. Let's just look at folks who're old enough to have had meaningful relationships. How is a single game going to rise above laughable for most such folks? How about people who've been in serious relationships that have failed? What about someone who's married and meets someone who's clearly interested in him and with whom he falls in love. In a CRPG you can have a two minute dialogue. In real life, you might ask yourself if you want to throw away thirteen or fourteen years of marriage on a relationship that's probably going fail anyway. Love isn't just wanting someone to make your various body parts feel good. Love is loyalty and respect and willingness to throw it all on the line. Grom mentions Ravel, for whom I always personally felt sorry. I would cite Annah and Deionnara as well. If they weren't fighting for their lives, would Annah and the Nameless One gotten together? For a brief time of absolute misery, quite possibly. I guess they had sufficient time to blow off some stress and hop in the sack. That would have been believable if done right. Gratuitous and pointless, but perhaps not sinfully so. Romance? Ha! I don't think the door is closed on romances, but how do they please this vocal subset without trivializing real human relationships in the process. Hell, they should practice making other relationships a little more realistic in CRPGs before they throw it all on the line for romances. Good Lord, you think dragons are scary? Just wait until you wake up from an all night bender, hungover and wishing for death, only to be faced with the dread glare of your beloved princess who *will* make your life hell for the foreseeable future before you make it up to her and she decides she loves you again. If they could create a game that depicts that accurately, I'd agree they can do real romance. I'd also probably pass it over, but that would depend on the game.

My stomach is a mortuary for all manner of dead beasts. As long as the meat is cooked, I have no problem eating in a former mortuary.

Thanks Grom. I dunno, Voss. I took the reply to be more or less tongue in cheek, although he may very well hate doing game romances. PS:T didn't have a conventional kissy faced romance and I don't think anyone could have accused it of ending happily ever after. Hey, instead of a 'romance,' how about having a child who ends up joining the other side and fighting against you. That could be fun, making the PC's kid end up being one of the boss encounters. Sounds a little cruel, but why not? ...Or remake PS:T where The Nameless One falls in love with The Transcendent One? That would also have the side benefit of counting as a same sex romance.

Good God, Avellone's answer was absolutely painful. Sure, it was funny, but now I keep thinking of the passage: "...see if it had really been worth it spending the last few years of their physical existence chained to each other in a dance of human misery and/or a plateau of soul-killing compromise." I just celebrated my 19th anniversary a couple of weeks ago. Thanks for harshing my buzz, ya jaded bastard! For the record, there's no soul-killing compromise. There's implacable resistance. Get it straight.

I'll look into that, Woldan. I don't plan on carrying around 28kg of kit, but then again I never do anything other than day hikes right now. I don't think I'll ever convince my wife to go camping at all or go anywhere without public restrooms. She thinks I'm crazy schlepping around a roll of toilet paper. I've discovered I truly love hiking in the hills (I'm a neophyte, so I pretty much stick to trails) but the purpose still remains to lose weight and get in better health. Same for weights. I don't do them to build muscles per se, but to lose weight and be healthier, although I do appreciate getting my muscle definition back.

Luckily, the game is too far along to change this. I'm definitely with the crowd who does *not* want procedural content. The point of these games is the microbrew feel. I want to know they thought about everything in the game and tailored it specifically to the story. I would be extremely unhappy if they changed to a bunch of random events and took the lazy route of having tons of respawns all the time. Now, some respawning in a sensible way, such as a different group of critters moving into a cleared den after a certain amount of time, doesn't sound all that bad, but having an entire area suddenly respawn all the monsters isn't just wrong for this game, it's just wrong for most games. You expect it with WoW, and it's perfectly fine, but it usually just smacks of lazy design work and grinding.

When I walk on city streets, I wear a 40lbs weight vest. I hate the thing because it's tough on my shoulders, but it's made a big difference with my shoulder definition. It's not really weight training or aerobic. More endurance I guess. I have a friend who is a personal trainer, and we've worked out a routine where I do two days of heavy weight sets and two days of light weight sets. I keep looking for something low impact on my foot to take some of the stress off of it because I have real problems with it, but as long as I can hang with the discomfort, I really enjoy the hiking. When I hike, I wear a pack for water and whatnot, but I'm looking into getting a better way to carry more water. Come summer, water will be a real bitch. I'll need a lot more and I need to find a way to carry it without it getting as hot as it does. In the triple digit heat of last summer, I literally took water from one of my bottles at the end of a walk and brewed tea with it, that's how hot is was. Anyhow, I've always been big on trying new things, so if anyone has suggestions I'm listening.

I have to own, I've never understood the actual term 'promancer.' It doesn't offend me, but it's just weird. I can get what LW is saying, which is in effect that you shouldn't judge the whole community by the craziest fringe. Sadly, the fact is every group in existence is partially defined by its fringe elements. At this point, I think it's tough to call for romances. There is no way in hell they could put in romances in a game that's allegedly shipping this month without royally pissing off just about everybody on every side. Figure out a good approach for the next game and give it a shot. Also, I would rather see one extremely well done homosexual romance involving a transgender character than a bunch of crappy romances with heterosexual characters and one token crappy homosexual romance. I have no interest in romances in general and I'm not going out of my way to play a transgender one, but I also don't like the vast majority of rap. That doesn't stop me from appreciating the occasional rap song. If you're going to do it, make it good.

I just tend to see romances in games as generally puerile sorts of adolescent wish fulfillment. Anyone who's been is a serious relationship can't take the vast majority of video game romances seriously. I have to admit that I thought the sexual heat approach the devs took between Annah and The Nameless One was actually pretty good though. ...And the sort of messed up romance between Deionarra and TNO was pretty well done. I guess the point is, romantic relationships between individuals is tricky to do and handling it delicately and realistically in a video game is pretty tough. Now, if they took a light touch and really developed something that could lead to a romantic relationship at or near the end, I guess I wouldn't mind so much, but I don't want them to force a full blown romance on me in any way that doesn't arise naturally out of the story itself, kind of like Miq said above. EDIT: Just read LW's response and it seems more less reasonable, although I'm still leery of romances.

I personally think the combat would be great in PoE if they included kill XP. :Cant's trolling grin icon: So, for a somewhat serious answer, there are things that I liked in principle when I played the beta last, which was a while back. To me, it has a more potential for strategy than NWN, but it could very quickly devolve into a cluster **** mass of bodies all piling on one another. If I weren't careful, battles would often start to resemble a Caligulan incestuous orgy. However, the way the spells worked and the fact that you control a party of characters with quite a large number of special abilities and spells made it appealing to me and I'm absolutely certain they've improved things to make it easier to employ tactics. Even when I played it in the past, I could engage in tactical and strategic thinking if I weren't lazy. Having separate health and... endurance? whatever The thing is, having two different stats for overall character health, one which is quickly lost and regained and one which is slowly lost and hard to regain made for a bit more depth in terms of resource and time management.

Hey, they made a thread just for me! Okay Okay, I have to admit, my tastes tend to outreach my wallet, so tonight I'm only drinking a big can of fosters ale, some malt liquor stuff that's disgusting, and a bottle of two buck chuck merlot. Yeah, I know. Mixing drinks. Haha, suckers! As long as I don't eat a lot of salty food and I remember to chug some water before bed, I'll wake up bright eyed and bushy tailed early tomorrow. :Cant's aching liver icon: If I have any braggable drinks in the future, I'll be sure to come back here for the Boozehound anonymous meeting. :Can't wry grin icon:

Ha! Not a senior citizen. Just... broken in.

I was thinking of getting Hand of Fate, but I'll put it off now. l don't have a lot of time anyway and so I try to be more choosy than I used to be in the past, when I would just buy whatever caught my eye straight away.

I think I'll replay Wasteland 2 again. I don't know what my party will be, but the patching news is enough to make me itch to give it another shot. If I do another run, it will be my third full run, which will make Wasteland 2 one of the most played games on my steam list.

That's funny that you remember that, Bruce. Yeah, one of the ****tail waitresses would walk by my sales office all the time and smile at me. I don't think she was all that interested, but she was pretty and it always made my day. That was at... the Rio, I think. I worked at a lot of places, but mostly at the Flamingo and Bellagio and at the place named for our very own member, the Monte Carlo.

I don't hate it quite so much now, but I haven't been there in years. As a kid, we never went to the strip, but we could see the lights which was cool. Later, when I did go, it was just too loud and full of inebriated people. There are folks handing out porn flyers and all manner of weird stuff going on. In small doses, it's kind of cool and vibrant and exciting, but too much of it and you feel like you're on a continual drinking binge laced with some unsavory and unsafe narcotics. <.< As for you, GD, I'm doing pretty damned well, thank you! I've discovered that I apparently always had the makings of an avid hiker. When I was forced to march, I hated it. Now, I feel bummed if I miss a day! lol