Romances, yay or nay?

[Amentep]

I've never played Mass Effect and no virtually nothing about it except that the main dude is called Shephard who communicated via a crude dialogue wheel and was able to have Sex With Aliens. In Haiku format can someone please explain the contentious ending to the series that caused so much wailing and gnashing of teeth?

 

spoilers:

 

The end of the game comes down to the player given an artificial three part response (that vaguely correspond to the three main paths - renegade, paragon and neutral) from a new character who appears godlike at the endgame. Your choices are:

• Take control of all sentient machine life (reaper, geth, EDI), destroy the mass relay system (which according to the last expansion of ME2 destroys the system its in), destroy the citadel (and everyone on it and the citadel is in the earth system and is a mass relay as well as a space station), & Shepard dies
  
• Destroy all sentient machine life (reaper, geth, EDI), destroy the mass relay system (which according to the last expansion of ME2 destroys the system its in), destroy the citadel (and everyone on it and the citadel is in the earth system and is a mass relay as well as a space station), & Shepard dies
  
• Merge all sentient machine life (reaper, geth, EDI) with humanity so everything is biological/machine hybrids, destroy the mass relay system (which according to the last expansion of ME2 destroys the system its in), destroy the citadel (and everyone on it and the citadel is in the earth system and is a mass relay as well as a space station), & Shepard dies
  

Later they made a changed ending which revealed that destroying Mass Relays didn't actually destroy the system, a lot of people actually got off the citadel and didn't die (but not Shepard) and added an extra choice to reject the three above choices that leads to the Reapers destroying all advanced organic life and starting the sequence over again.

 

 

 

Hey, Romance Fans, what do you think about these NPCs?

 

* Relationship Sage: When things aren't *quite* right between you and your love interest, you can pay 100gp at the Relationship Sage and the NPC will kiss you chastely. Per 100gp multiplier things get steamier.

 

* Relationship Herbalist: When you end up romancing two or more members of your party, you might end up with... a rash. The herbalist charges 100gp to make everything better again.

 

* Divorce Cleric: So you got caught in the brothel. Again. And it's all over. The game will take 75% of your treasure (if you are a male character) so your NPC lover can spend it all on tennis lessons, therapy and shoes. Plus, go and get herself a richer boyfriend too. If you are a female character you can fleece as many male NPCs as you like until there are none left.

 

Come on, romance has choice and consequence. You cant have it all your own way.

 

First one seems to be artificial and not appealing - much like donating to a church to improve your reputation (even if you're a homicidal maniac) in BG2.

 

If a game was to have sleeping-around options (say, prostitutes) it might make sense, but I'm not sure its an appealing form of resource management (although certainly plays with choice and consequence)

 

I think a way for divorce and consequences in such would be important if characters could get married. Let the NPC spouse get killed a lot = divorce. One thing I didn't like about divorce in Fallout 2 was that there wasn't really any consequence (besides a monetary / item loss penalty, as I recall). After the shotgun wedding, you'd figure dad would have come out with both guns shooting down the line in the game.

 

And yet even after Feargus Urquhart said:

 

If we listened to everyone, it would be a Japanese turn-based dating sim with insect people.

 

in a recent radio interview, romances are still being discussed.

 

Hahahahahahah, Feargus is funny.

[Malcador]

And you really like snide comments.

 

What I don't like are disengenuous arguments using faulty logic and a lack of facts. And I don't like straight up poisoning the well.

 

Whether someone posts on the BSN forum doesn't invalidate any point they make.

 

All the BSN bashing is a distraction and an attempt to be dismissive of anyone who does want romance in the game. There's a handful of bullies on this thread who seek to brow-beat and belittle anyone they disagree with into silence so they can get their way.

 

It isn't going to work. Ignore is a wonderful tool.

 

Hardly snide, unless you've got monomolecular thick skin. It's kind of amusing you'd take that stance, given your assumption about the 'anti-romance' people and RPGCodex. You're right though about it not invalidating points, but comments are generally at the BSN not really accusing people from BSN, like yourself, of anything.

 

As you being a victim, come on, if Obsidian is going to put romances in or not, you think this forum has much bearing on that (well or much else, to be honest) ? And ignore features are for the weak

[Gyges]

So can we just agree that we want optional romances, well written and intelligent like we could expect from Avellone, not some testosterone fueled t&a-fest. That they should be included if it doesnt require a great deal of sacrifice from other aspects of the game. All this as a means of further role-play and re-playability

Edited September 25, 2012 by Gyges

[Shadenuat]

Kisses and huggies, or people dying in Afghan. Which is more relevant to incoming party-based Infinity-successor game and why? Discuss!

[Merin]

Sad that it isn't a fact. What you are trying to quote is the study that showed more AMERICANS are shot and killed in Chicago than AMERICAN SOLDIERS are shot and killed in Afghanistan.

Oh thank heaven that Afghans aren't being shot in Chicago, that makes the City's gangs far less violent.

 

That's a good attempt at a diversion, especially with selective quoting.

 

More people are shot and killed in Chicago on a weekly basis than in Afghanistan. Sad fact.

 

You're statement, as stands, implies that more people are shot in a week in Chicago than people are being shot a week in Afghanistan.

 

But the story you are trying to quote from is only about Americans, not people. There are a greater number (not percentage, just raw number) of citizens in Chicago shot in that given study than American soliders in Afghanistan.

 

My point was living in Chicago doesn't mean you'll get shot. You have a .0084 percent chance of being shot. (sorry for my previous failure to convert decimals to percenatges - being correct - and the ratio remains the same) To give you a comparitive idea, the chances of you being struck by lightening in your lifetime is .033 percent. You are nearly 4 times as likely to be hit by lightening in your life than to be shot in Chicago.

 

Your rebuttal was to make it seem more dangerous to live in Chicago than to live in Afghanistan - patently untrue. But even if the study you were referring to is what you MEANT (American soldiers, not people in Afghanistan in general), you still have a much higher percent chance of being shot as a soldier (.1426 percent - again, fixing decimal to percentage here) than as someone in Chicago (.0084 percent.)

 

16 times more likely to be shot and killed as a US soldier in Afghanistan. Your point was empirically wrong.

 

---

 

What does this have to do with romance?

 

About as much as bashing BSN.

Edited September 25, 2012 by Merin

[Undecaf]

Kisses and huggies, or people dying in Afghan. Which is more relevant to incoming party-based Infinity-successor game and why? Discuss!

 

Maybe people want to kiss and hug a dying Afghan making both relevant in some weird way.

 

Or... maybe not.

[Tale]

Subtlety get me nowhere, I'm learning. It seems nobody has any interest in discussing romances anymore and wants to instead discuss mortality rates of wartime vs the inner city. An interesting enough discussion for its own thread in way off-topic, not quite the point here.

 

I'm closing the thread. When people have new things to add on the possibility of romances in Project-Eternity, they can create a new one.