Amentep

I thought the discussion (at least in context of Pillars of Eternity) was rendered magically useless by the developers saying the game wouldn't include romances. As a pro-romance as a viable character interaction kind of poster, I see no point arguing for romance in PoE at this point; I'd rather - at least in context of PoE - look at the kind of character interactions they indicated would be in the game and ponder that. I'm willing to discuss the pros/cons of romance in other games or a sequel to PoE, but honestly at this point posting "But you gotta have romance in PoE because...because...because..." is kinda useless in my opinion. The developers are going in a different direction.

Interestingly, it seems that this Godzilla might have other monsters in it, so that makes it much more interesting to me (I really feared a retread of the typical "1st Godzilla film in a cycle" to be honest).

Hahah, somehow I *knew* you'd get Monaco!

If the characters have no interactivity outside of the romance (say, Aerie) then the loss of an interactive character is felt by anyone who chooses not to pursue the romance; in essence the romance is no longer optional if you want to use that character unless you just want an unintersting roster filler. To be fair, that it gives a player "more" options isn't exactly correct. As I mentioned before, the way BG2 game did romance was that there was, essentially one path for the character and you could progress to a certain degree in the relationship with that character without romancing but that the larger interaction was unplayable if you didn't romance, leaving some characters (pretty much everyone but Jaheria) a cipher if you didn't follow the romance. To do romance right you actually need to do two paths (intertwined or not), one so the character is interesting and able to divulge lore without being romanced as well as being romanced. This does give you more, but only because you're creating more content. If Obs has 10 NPCs and thus 10 character interactions, they have a choice add romances (which now adds character interactions) or keep to 10 character interactions which means that for some of those character the ONLY interaction you have with them is pursuing their romance. So you stay the same, but if the only interaction for a NPC is romance and the character isn't romance, the person not pursuing the romance has a character who not only isn't responsive (so just takes a slot) they can't impart any world lore to the player.

Which European Country Do You Actually Belong In? You got: Malta Steve Allen / Shutterstock You’re endlessly curious and love nothing more than getting stuck in a good book. You like to take walks in order to figure out what you’re doing in life. http://www.buzzfeed.com/marietelling/what-european-country-do-you-actually-belong-in

I like the lady at the right who - rather than being asleep - has a "I'm in Hell" expression.

Interesting, so the enigma is solved. A pity you have to kill them but I understand your concerns. But do all rats have disease, isn't it the fleas on the rats that spread disease? Don't rats live in some communities peacefully. I don't know the answer to these questions? Well in theory the plague was carried by fleas (assuming its true it was the Bubonic Plague), the fleas transferring to humans as the rats died. That said even without plague, rats could damage the house, and their excrement could also create health hazards in the home.

Cook meth? ...Wait, are you a chemistry teacher, or...? I wish. I've been wracking my brain about how I can take my knowledge of history and use it to be the best at an illegal trade, but I've come up with nothing so far. The closest would be running for office, but I'm not sure I could stomach that. I do have a nice RV though. etc., etc

My first thought was vole but that would be too large I think for the description you gave (and there would be other signs of a vole). Mus spicilegus (aka Steppe mouse or Mound-builder mouse) maybe?

Amusingly and IMO, typically romance relationships meant little reactivity if the character wasn't romanced; often the identity of the character was tied to the romance. Which means, to do it right, romanceable characters would need two interaction trees, one if the romance is pursued and one where there isn't (possibly not completely different trees, but you're looking at trying to make something so the player gets reactivity with the character based on what they choose to do). So to my mind a "perfect world" romance would need more planning/time (ie resources) than a relationship that exits along a singular axis (or between two poles).

You've got one tonne of air on top of you. http://www.physics.org/facts/air-really.asp

From what I've read it was a number of factors; salaries to big names was part of it. Part of it was the expense of making multiple floppy disc games (supposedly Wing Commander's success was a boon and a curse - great it sold well but it was on so many discs it was expensive to manufacture). And with the success and the changes in the expectations of consumers, they were growing in staff. Supposedly before it was sold, the Garriots had to dip into their personal savings to make payroll.

Some of us read the boards ...and that explains why they post on every board in the known universe except Obsidian's! *ba-dum-dum-tschhh*

Only if that Diet drink was Nuka-Cola, I hope!

^Well Ramis had quit acting years ago, but I think he preferred being a writer (Animal House, Caddyshack, Stripes, Back to School) and director (Caddyshack, Groundhog Day, Analyse This) anyhow. Still RIP.

At a guess a 90% IIRC conservative Christian population (42% Roman Catholic) combined with years of colonial anti-sodomy laws and - based on the homosexual death penalty law that was put to Parliament in the earlier version of the now signed bill - a belief that homosexuality is the root cause of HIV/AIDS.

Yeah there's a big push to have all students aware of Title IX and how it effect the campus and how to report things and such.

IIRC, Vin's Babylon AD was produced by StudioCanal (which is part of the same Canal+ group that produced La Cité des Enfants Perdus) and Legendé, so is arguably a French production. That said Ron certainly has a greater presence in non-US financed (or co-financed) productions (such as the Spanish/Mexican co-production Cronus) but that may also be due to the length of his career, his identification with genre films, his willingness to work in many films, and possible the fact that his first film was (again IIRC) the French backed Quest for Fire (some 9 years before Vin's first, uncredited, film appearance) as reasons for the disparity. ********** For my movie watching, I saw Die Farbe (2010) - an adaption of Lovecraft's "The Colour out of Space" which was pretty good when it was pulling directly from the source, but while I felt moving it to post WWII worked, most of the other original elements didn't work. Then I watched Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 which was fun. Not really my favorite franchise but it had enough weirdness and gags to be entertaining.

I confess, this may be the first time I've seen "good graphics" and "Morrowind" used in the same sentence... At the time it was released it was considered to have very good graphics, and indeed for it's time it did. I found it unplayably ugly. it was about a year later when I finally played having installed a bunch of mods to beautify it. But maybe I was alone in that opinion at the time...

I confess, this may be the first time I've seen "good graphics" and "Morrowind" used in the same sentence...

The things you describe are called faeries or sidhe and they have very little in common with the Elves. Granted that Tolkien drew inspiration from them, but that doesn't make it his fault that people today took inspiration from him and made it in to something else again. The elves we know today are awful in large part to being inspired by the awful elves Tolkien depicted. You start with an awful base and your modified version is more likely than not to also be awful. Not sure if its a blasphemous opinion, or just trying to speed read too fast, but initially I read this conversation as using "Elvis" instead of "Elves".

Oh I agree with this one entirely. Because if combat was what defined an RPG then hack-slash games would be the epitome of RPGs. I don't think perspective (1st person, 3rd person, isometric) matters to either being an RPG or to the innate quality of the product I don't think TB, RtWP, RT matter either I don't think there is an inherent superiority to computer RPGs over Console RPGs or vice-versa I don't really care about the setting as long as its compelling; from a practical standpoint video games interpretation of modern, science fiction and fantasy boil down to the same ideas presented in different ways and in their specific context. While games have gotten more complex (graphics, storylines, options and input ability), I'm not really convinced they've gotten better since I was playing Ultima and Phantasie and Wizardry. Who cares if you put on a piece of plate mail and your character appearance doesn't change? Its an abstraction in a role playing game, not a computer based medieval armor wearing simulator. It is better to be a bad game that is entertaining than a good game that is boring

Well...its all well and good until the genealogy records show you're descended form Obed Marsh and then its just awkward.

Uematsu and Hisaishi are deaf like Beethoven (because that was the reason for the comparison with Samuragochi)?

You're comparing an open-world RPG where the possibilities are endless (a non-hostile NPC could be a villain for instance) to Bioware's linear railroaded RPG. Besides, I would argue that Dragon Age 2 is much worse in that regard, despite the restrictions on player freedom. You spend most of the game killing mobs of random people around every streetcorner, being a mage doesn't prevent you from romancing a character who wants to kill all mages, etc. Gay characters = good. Characters whose sexuality fluctuates to always be attracted to the player = horrible. Well arguably the character wouldn't be gay, but bisexual in that case. But every character being bisexual seems to stretch credulity in this modern day. Well so what to your so what which links to his so what which really means I'm saying so what to..... Thanks Amentep....now I'm completely confused You got me, I just wrote it. My point is that, yes, any relationship can be written poorly. Generally speaking I agree with the poster (in this thread or another) who said that usually if the character has a non-romance relationship that is poorly written most people just say "that character was poorly written". Now the developers have said they don't want to do a romance because they don't think - given the factors in the game of time, money, creators involved, whatever - they don't think they can do it justice, but are planning to do other types of character reactivity. Maybe those will be good, maybe they will be bad. The developers, though, think they can do that to their satisfaction and not romance. So the fact that romance could be done good or bad is, to my mind, a side issue to what the developers have said as their reasoning. Since personally I see romance as a specific subset of character interactions within the larger scheme of things, I'm always happy with character reactivity, dialogue, plots, etc when they're done well. I, personally, do not require that reactivity to include a romance.