Amentep

There's a difference, though, between enjoying looking at the opposite sex (or even enjoying being looked at by the opposite sex) and being required to dress a character in a game in skimpy clothes because that's the only option you've been given. Note I'd say the same about ridiculously spiky armor that would have you spiking yourself in the head if you tried to raise your arm slightly; given that there is a limit to how much they can design I'd rather them look at the stuff that's the most utilitarian, which would be reasonable looking clothes and armor. For the PC yeah...have options(including bulky and skimpy and in-between), but for NPCs there should be a mixture of styles from across all levels. I am really not into the whole "ban skimpy battle dresses from the game". I'd agree; that's where Obsidian's world building takes over and they decide what the societal norms are and so on. The best of both worlds would be to design all sorts of armor for all sorts of taste and clothing as well. But limitations being what they are, I'd start with the relatively neutral and work out from there than start at either extreme and work towards the middle.

The Dryads were nymphs; they were in essence tree spirits. Does PE's world support the existence of a soul of a tree? If so what does it mean? Do other natural features have souls like the other nymphs, Naiads, Anthousai, Oceanaids, etc? Do objects get souls (similar to the Tsukumogami - objects that come to life after they reach 100 years)? What would a "harpy" or "satyr" mean in context of PE's mythology? Creatures with warped fragmented souls who turned to dark magic to complete their soul via bonding with animal souls? Will animals have souls?

There's a difference, though, between enjoying looking at the opposite sex (or even enjoying being looked at by the opposite sex) and being required to dress a character in a game in skimpy clothes because that's the only option you've been given. Note I'd say the same about ridiculously spiky armor that would have you spiking yourself in the head if you tried to raise your arm slightly; given that there is a limit to how much they can design I'd rather them look at the stuff that's the most utilitarian, which would be reasonable looking clothes and armor.

How do Dragons fit with the soul concepts? Are they soulless? Are they souled? Are they intelligent or just giant animals (frankly if their just giant animals, give us Dinosaurs instead, IMO)? If a character could "be" a dragon, what does that mean about them? About their souls? Could the mythology of PE even have this make sense? To me these are the questions that would need to be examined.

I'm a bit neutral on the subject. If they're there, they're there, if not *shrug*. But a few thoughts: If Vampires were adapted to PE's setting mythology, my thinking is that for them to be the horror for PE that they should be for us (literary created sympathies aside) perhaps the idea would be that they leech the actual souls of people (rather than blood)? This would probably make them one of the most reviled creatures in PE mythology and one which would be seen as a bane on existence. Perhaps the victim becomes a souless shell instead of dying? (a zombie? A vessel for a an animal soul to inhabit?) If Werewolves were adapted to PE's setting mythology, the idea for werewolves is usually the idea of a man who is possessed of an animal like nature (willingly or through a curse) which may include transformation into said animal. Perhaps there is dark magic that allows for some kind of "soul transference" between man and beast? A curse on a human "soul" ripping it from its shell and placing in an animal body (and if the mythology says animals have souls, that animals soul in a human body?) The curse givers - like the Vampire above - would be seen as an affront to nature and the cycle of souls; the werecreature(s) may be both pitied and feared... Or something. I think there are ways to put these types of creatures in PE, but they really must be filtered through PE's reality and mythology and not just dropping Dracula or the Camarilla or Larry Talbot down in PE and just moving on.

I would have no problem with it provided it works within the context of the story and the characters involved. And/or the unrequited relationship mentioned in the Avellone text. Or no romance. Or the ability to spend your time pursuing a character only to have them ultimately decide not to want a romance with the character. Or a romance where the characters never get past the earliest stages of the romance. I don't think the game has to provide a happy or a fullfilled romance or a sex scene to be interesting and work within the context of the game.

If they decide on this I can live with it. But I didn't like the board in the witcher games because you had no motivation to read the text and get into the story why you had to fetch that things. You knew it was just about fetching X of Y right away when you searched something on the board anyway. I think that is much better done if told in person by an NPC imho, where u can tell a story and "disguise" the fetch-quest with something interesting. For me the problem is that fetch quests are often so minor that you wonder why someone would bother a complete stranger walking down the street with them. To me the Job Board leaves room for the player to choose to accept/ignore the quests that are "I want 3 apples" and if the devs have a more involved fetch quests can add them to the job board or have an NPC give them in a way that makes sense.

Raise your hand, everyone who wants angsty teen conceptions of love. C'mon, show of hands. *waits with hand firmly not raised* Well, see it kind of depends on the story. If the characters were modern teens, it'd be fitting to have angsty teen luv. For this game, it doesn't seem to involve traditional modern conceptions of teens or teen life as its story focus (from what little we know) so wouldn't fit the story being told. Again the story being told should dictate the elements in the story.

For me I'd think Dual Wielding would be best served as non-long weapon in primary hand, small weapon (dagger equiv) in the off-hand and that's it. I don't need to dual weild flails(*) or halberds...That said, I'd be happy to not have dual weilding at all too. *I'd imagine that would be quite the feat, to be honest.

I'm not crazy about the idea of the character being unkickable. Be nice if you could kick them out BUT if you did so without giving the NPC their due they show up later in a random encounter with an adventuring band or something. I'm terrible at this sort of thing, but I'm all for things that make the NPCs a little more than an appendage of the player (which ironically is some of the problems with romances). If I wanted a non-descript character for me to invest my own imagination in, might as well let me create all my party to begin with, IMO.

Ah, so you're along the lines of 'relationships' Avellone was mentioning being interested in exploring, a lot more interesting than NPCs being a) your buddy b) love interest, heh. Seems bizarre how dogged the interest in this is, with this Steven Segal-esque topic in the forum. Maybe we should just make a thread saying "Interpersonal relationships" where we can all....essentially say "Obsidian shouldn't screw up!" together. I get the feeling - perhaps wrongly - that there are those at the polar extremes of "no relationships with NPCs just fighting, stealing or spell slinging" to those who think that "romance should always be an option with every NPC", though. That's not really my feeling since I think the games and characters should dictate what relationships make sense.

Can't speak for others, but I want the main NPCs (usually joinable NPCs, but may not be exclusive to that) to be well realized. Full characters who are developed in interest and goals as much as a computer NPC can be (given time / resources / character and game scope). I want the PC to be able to interact with them and build some kind of relationship - if appropriate for the character this could include friendship, rivalry, indifference, romance, and/or many other types of relationships.

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.