Amentep

Can't speak for others (well I could, but I'd probably be wrong) but I don't see anything "productive" in being angry over inclusion/lack of romances in the game. Sure I'm probably squarely in the pro-romance crowd, but ultimately while there are probably a few with strongly held beliefs on both sides who might feel vindicated/"butthurt" if romances are/are not included to their preference, I imagine most of the people here will be talking about the quality of the game (which would only involve romances if there ends up being any in the game).

Yeah, the official BIS IRC channel didn't actually work all that well, and I think there were issues in oversight of it. Not against it, just saying that I'd imagine Feargus, Josh and others at Obsidian remember BIS IRC and may not be keen to restart such a thing. Or they could not care either. Still haven't developed much as a mind reader.

Um...can't really agree with that; while you can argue the movie version was made to appeal to men and women both (the idea was that men would want to be him and women would want to be with him) I think that's simply because the movies need broader appeal than the books. And even with that they had to change with the time due to societies changing values on women and their contributions (compare Tatiana Romonov, SMERSH spy recruit in the 60s with - say - Wai Lin of the CPESF in the 1990s) The book version is probably more so a male fantasy than the movies; Bond lives alone and has plenty of money to do what he wants when not on a mission, doesn't believe in long term relationships (because usually one or the other of the two end up getting on the nerves of the other) but still gets women to go for him at the drop of a hat. The only permanent female characters are Moneypenny (the boss' secretary) and Bond's housekeeper, an older lady. Seems like the intent is to present kind of ideal life for a man of the period (of writing) action, adventure, sex and no strings attached. Very few of the women characters got much consideration (although I don't find Bond to be as reprehensible as a lot of other people either; I've known some others who've described the literary Bond as a vile character (to be fair, I haven't read all the books)).

I think we need a bit more reality here. Where did romances and low intelligence dialogues become mutually exclusive again? They aren't. I think the comparison is being made because both are dialog focused additions to the game that not every player will access. There are players who don't want to have romance in the game, for whatever reason. There are players who never play low intelligence characters, either. So both of those are relatively similar examples of text-only parts of a game that are for a limited percentage of the audience... so from that comes the jump that one could lead to the elimination of the other, if it comes down to limited writing resources. That's the range of the debate, at least as I see it. There are no limited writing resources. They could have had both romances and low intelligence dialogue at 1.1 million. The entire idea is a myth. Or they could have neither. It takes time to do anything in a game, so by the nature of game development, time is a limited resource. Therefore there is a limited resource - time - allotted for the writing of all dialogues, I'd think. Thus comes the "if they had time to do low int dialogue or romance dialogue but not both, what would you want them to do?" question.

Honestly I think it should be a mix that is dependent on the cultures created. Ie one culture may be egaltarian and another not or something. And within each should be people who don't conform to the norm as opposed to *everyone* believes X (for whatever X is).

The only way to not be bland is to not be afraid of being offensive.....some will be offended no matter what but the single, surest way to offend the most is by trying really hard to not offend anybody. Well...its a fair point. Not really what I was thinking of, ie I was thinking of being intentionally offensive to not be bland as opposed to having people find offense in something because you didn't second guess everything at every step of development.

I'm genuinely curious - is it possible to not be "utterly bland" and also to not "offend anyone"? If the game manages that, will you still regret your backing? Or is the only way to not be bland is to be offensive? Not trying to attack you, but I'm a bit curious about this line of thought because to me I'm more interesting in "how they use it" than "what they use". nope....when you do a crowd pleaser the game always suffers severely. So you are saying that the only way to not be bland is to be offensive?

I'm genuinely curious - is it possible to not be "utterly bland" and also to not "offend anyone"? If the game manages that, will you still regret your backing? Or is the only way to not be bland is to be offensive? Not trying to attack you, but I'm a bit curious about this line of thought because to me I'm more interesting in "how they use it" than "what they use".

I dunno if I'm representative but when I played a female PC in BG2, I was more annoyed that the singe straight female romance was with Anomen than I was that my male PC got more romance options. Since I couldn't stand Anomen I never did the romance (because I never had him in the party). EDIT: Didn't feel like I was missing out for ignoring the content there either. So... We're still talking about a creative output - one line of companion dialogue may be written in ten minutes and it may also then be rewritten dozens of time taking hours (if not longer) to get right. I'm a believer that the characterization in RPGs are important (which is why I'm pro-romance). So IMO my mom shouldn't react to me romancing Merrill, Anders, Isabella, and Fenris the same way; so its really not writing one line and done. The dialogue shout-outs should fit the character - what did my mom envision for me as a kid? Does she want grandkids (in which case a Male PC- Anders / Fenris relationship or a female PC - Merrill / Isabella relationship should not be treated the same as Male PC - Merrill / Isabella or female PC - Anders/Fenris). Does she buy into the anti-elf sentiment (changes Fenris and Merrill) or anti-Mage (changes Anders and Merrill)? I just don't see making these decisions as being trivial things.

Well if we can be so unlucky as to have PST style of character development - romance or not. I'm perfectly fine without romance as long as the characters are well realized - my thinking has always been that part of characterization, part of developing that in-depth NPC could include (not must) the idea that maybe that NPC might fancy the PC and that maybe it could be addressed in interesting ways. But if it doesn't - no problem.

I can´t completly agree here. While too little interaction with the NPC in question and too little regognition of the relationship is definitly bad (like in Skyrim,Fable,..), the same is also true if you have too much. Small subtle things, like changing the sound the character makes if you click his/her portrait, small one line long remarks by other character and so on, are a much better way to communicate the relationship to the player. This also has the benefit that the player has enough space to fill in gabs with his/her imagination. I wasn't suggesting that the game become PC FANTASY ROMANCE: THE GAME if a romance was initiated; only that I don't think the summation of a romance to be a "married" perk and a companion you can't kick out of your party until you divorce them is a terribly interesting design. And I also don't think that adding a well-realized romance is necessarily trivial; "small one line long remarks by other character" would need (for realism) several triggers just to make work (so the character doesn't start dialogue in combat or similar inopportune times). Add reactivity to the other NPCs? Well now you have to think through 7 more reactions to the relationships and probably at its various stages...etc.

To be fair I think PST could be seen as romances; I certainly felt that as a player that TNO was supposed to have a romantic connection to Annah and possibly FFG. Its subtle but it was there to my mind. And because the characters are all so well-realized you there's plenty there regardless. IWD I think conceptually could never support romance; neither was very strong on character being very plot oriented (and dungeon fighting). That leaves BG; I think the reactions of players to those characters is what shaped BG2 to allow more character relationship options (NPC-NPC and PC-NPC).

I'm all for having variety so people can flesh out (lewl) their character the way they want. And I'm all for the game makers to make their NPCs in ways they want. I'd argue for chainmail bikinis provided the clothing (can't really call it armor) has a negligible effect to protection. Or is magical. And then the player can decide if they want to be sexy or functional.

First just because you are in a relationship with somebody does not mean that you talk about nothing else. The relationship status can be easily expressed by changing a few lines, e.g. how the character responds, how he/she adresses the main character. However the less reactive the relationship - and this is any PC / NPC relationship, not just romance - the less impact it will have on the player. And then you get the marriage in Skyrim that seems to exist so you can get a free store because it matters not at all to anything else in the game. I think for those of us who want the romances in the game, we'd want that aspect of our PC / NPC relationship to matter in the game beyond a facebook like status update. To be fair, just because you couldn't create a 3,000 line extra NPC by cutting 1,500 lines doesn't make creating the 1,500 lines trivial, either. Most of them do realize that; they just firmly believe that the romance dialog path doesn't need to be created at all.

It's only a detail, of course (Cadegund's armor has been fixed, does not bother me so anymore, but is still "genderized", by the way). And it would be just that, a minor detail, like "sensible shoes" or tissue colours, if we did not live, all of us, in a society of masculine domination. That was really my point though, in regard to the idea that changing Cadegund's armor was some PC move (I actually think it looks better changed, personally, so I like the second armor purely on aesthetics) - its a moot point if the game is good, if the character well written and all that.

Invisible pooka, ala Harvey...

I've always liked the idea of using an optional "job board" for most fetch quests. Makes a lot more sense then having every Tom, **** and Harry Peasant ask you to gather some random item they lost in a field or something. Make it so the jobs change every so often and you've got something that people can do if they choose to and then if a more important quest is a "fetch" quest it can be disguised a bit more.

I think I ended up with dual wielding halberds, IIRC. It didn't make sense, but it was fun. Personally while tanking and stuff is fun, if they're going the swashbuckling route as an option I think there needs to be better/good use of parry / disarm

In the end, will anyone really care - if the game is good - whether or not Cadegund's armor had extremely detailed boobs on it? Would anyone be put out - if the game is good - if some ritzy society lady is wearing a sexy but unrevealing party frock or if the barmaid is showing a bit of cleavage or if the villagers all have sensible shoes? EDIT: That is to say, I think the art direction is really up to Obsidian as they determine what this world is and what makes sense for it.

i don't remember it being THAT bad. *goes to look* lol...I go there to look and the first thread I see is about romances... Anyhow, looks to be okay to me, maybe a bit too busy with the background and all - I do prefer simple colors and all to textured background images.

And no man would be caught with that on the battlefield. I have to disagree on that. I'm pretty sure the design was used in combat and tournaments. Everything I've read (and remember) said the phallus cod-pieces came into vogue once armor became about fashion rather than function. Dunno if what I've gathered over the years is accurate, but I'd think a protrusion in your armor right there that could easily take a hit (intentionally or accidentally) would be something you'd not want to encourage.

If it takes time from developing other things to develop an export / import system, that could be an argument against it.

I think at *best* it might add additional discussion dialogues on use (akin to the "Speak to the Dead" spell in ARCANUM, but, you know, on living people) or similar to the Paladin scenario above. I doubt the Cipher class will have extra dialogue as they mindprobe everyone in the world as I'd imagine that would just be too much.

Well they've already said that if they have to delay it to make sure its a quality product they will (IIRC from Feargus in an interview or chat). So if it happens and they communicate it to the backers - no problem. I want it good, not Tuesday.

But it could be a very good year! OBTopic - personally I think the NPCs should be designed to look like they should look for what the game/setting/lore supports. I'm for the PC to have options, however I think with limited time / budget the best options to focus on are the realistic ones.