Race Reactivity?

[Faerunner]

I'm so looking forward to playing different races for this game, it's not even funny. Especially the "wild" versions of each race, like the wild orlan, the wood elves, the boreal dwarves, etc.

 

I'm curious about the level of in-game reactivity from different characters though. While I personally don't need much in-game acknowledgement to enjoy (as that's what the imagination is for) I am curious about how many comments our characters will receive in-game.

 

Reason being, the developers seem to have hinted that there are more cultural and socio-economic differences between races than in, say, the Forgotten Realms (which, let's face it, is easy to do since Faerun is something of a fantasy kitchen sink). So far, it sounds like some races are already in for a fair amount of reactivity; like the orlan, who have been largely enslaved and displaced by larger colonial powers, and the godlike, which are revered or reviled, depending on the region.

 

My only question is, will all the races receive a similar level of reactivity? Or will some receive more comments than others? For instance, in NWN2, drow and tieflings got a fair amount of comments through the game, while, say, halflings and half-orcs barely got a mention.) There seem to be a lot of races and subraces in Dyrwood, so I can't imagine there's much in the dialogue budget to include reactions to every heritage from many different characters throughout the game.

 

I don't know, it's just something I've been wondering about. Any thoughts, comments?

[Nirgal]

Wouldn't know how they are handling it, but i also look forward to lots of race reactivity

[bonarbill]

I actually hoping for gender reactivity as well.  I know this may sound a bit sexist, but some people do treat others differently based on whether they are a man or woman.

[rjshae]

Perhaps a race-vs.-race or gender-vs.-gender modifier to the faction rating would work? I.e. you may have a favorable rating with an NPC's faction, but  the NPC dislikes your race/gender so you get a neutral or perhaps even a somewhat hostile reaction.

[IndiraLightfoot]

And subrace reactivity as well, between the Orlan subraces, for instance. Also, social strata reactivity, but that's a given.

[Labadal]

This is one of my biggest hopes for the game. It adds further replay value.

[motorizer]

As much reactivity as possible please...race,subrace, gender, class, stats, clothing, companions... (arcanum reacted to most of this stuff) .

I want to feel like character creation meant something

[KillerClowns]

I don't need every farmer and merchant to comment on a Godlike's odd appearance, but race should be touched upon where appropriate. I'd love it if, say, a human supremacist group had racial slurs for every other race and a speech about "a traitor to your kind" for humans.

 

At least some of these some of these reactions might be subtler, requiring multiple playthroughs -- an elven character might be civil, if cool, to a human, and only reveal he's actually a racist prick to a fellow elf. It encourages multiple playthroughs, to see the world through perspectives hidden from previous PCs

Edited August 14, 2013 by KillerClowns

[lolaldanee]

sure hope there is going to be a hell of a lot of that stuff

[Nonek]

Personally i'm hoping the Elves at least are a different species and not a race of humanity, I really don't wish to be connected genetically to any tree sniffing, frollicking, daisy humper, however distant that relationship may be.

[Lephys]

Apologies for going pseudo-off-topic, but this talk got me thinking about racial reaction in relation to the whole "We should be able to pick who does the talking for the party, instead of it being automatically chosen for us" notion.

 

Wouldn't it be great if we could switch talkers in the middle of a dialogue? You know, your Charismatic (or whathaveyou) main character Elf greets this farmer, and he reacts decently well. But, as indicated via dialogue action/description text (or by how he's speaking, etc.), he seems to be eyeing your godlike companion with what appears to be awe. So, your character takes notice, and subtley nods to the godlike, or motions in some way, or whispers, to suggest "Would you be so kind as to take over?"

 

I don't know exactly how that would be systemized (for lack of a better term), as far as the mechanics go. But, I think it could be done, after some thought and effort.

 

After all... how are you to know how someone reacts to which races/traits in what ways, until you see their reactions in action? And it seems a little silly to just abruptly drop a "Goodbye!", then immediately turn around and have another character in your party strike up with "Hey, I know that guy just said 'goodbye,' and we're traveling as a group, but now I want to talk to you, about the exact same stuff he was talking to you regarding. :)"

 

It could even be based on a sort of perception check, or some manner of check. You notice evidence of the NPC's reactions toward certain characters in your group, and you get the choice of reacting accordingly. Or those characters do, based on their own perceptive skills. Maybe they discreetly ask if they might take over? *shrug*. Or, obviously, if the person was reacting quite negatively to the character doing the talking, "I should probably try letting someone else give it a go" is a simple conclusion there. Something along those lines.

Edited August 14, 2013 by Lephys

[Jarmo]

One thing always bothering me, is how a game makes a big deal about the race and racism,

Viconia, Neeshka, Sten. All were pretty much under a death threat wherever they'd go.

A drow! Let's kill it! Fetch the pitchforks!

 

... and then the game kind of forgets the whole thing!

After the rough start, there's no problem getting into a town or an eyebrow raced when you

appear with a a drow in your party, or an abyssal demon or whatever. That part of the game is done.

[AGX-17]

Apologies for going pseudo-off-topic, but this talk got me thinking about racial reaction in relation to the whole "We should be able to pick who does the talking for the party, instead of it being automatically chosen for us" notion.

It's completely off topic.

 

Your unrealistic (to say the least,) expectation that they would consider making every companion character into, essentially, a fully implemented player character is simply absurd.

[Lephys]

*blink blink*... o_o

 

I'm fairly certain that its involvement with racial reactivity in conjunction with the thread's title being "Racial Reactivity" quite literally makes it at least partially on-topic. The reason I apologized for "pseudo-off-topic" is because I paired it with additional ideas that weren't specifically confined to the topic, since you could have the proposed dialogue system stuff without having any racial reactivity at all (with other forms of reactivity).

 

And I in no way suggested all companion should become fully realized player characters. I'm somewhat sure I comprehend how you arrived at that, and it was an overshoot of my actual idea.

 

There have already been games with dialogue systems that allowed companion characters to "take the reigns," so to speak, of dialogue, without having their own entire dialogue sets for the entirety of gameplay as separate from the main character's.

 

All I'm suggesting is the utilization of differences in character-to-character reactivity (including racial) in dialogue. If you're trying to get information from someone who hates Elves but worships godlike, why would you have your godlike stand around kicking pebbles and in NO WAY directly contribute that reaction while you have your Elf stand there and beat his head against a brick wall of dialogue, just because "He's the speaker, o_o..."? I guess that's not at all absurd.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Apologies for going pseudo-off-topic, but this talk got me thinking about racial reaction in relation to the whole "We should be able to pick who does the talking for the party, instead of it being automatically chosen for us" notion.Wouldn't it be great if we could switch talkers in the middle of a dialogue? You know, your Charismatic (or whathaveyou) main character Elf greets this farmer, and he reacts decently well. But, as indicated via dialogue action/description text (or by how he's speaking, etc.), he seems to be eyeing your godlike companion with what appears to be awe. So, your character takes notice, and subtley nods to the godlike, or motions in some way, or whispers, to suggest "Would you be so kind as to take over?"I don't know exactly how that would be systemized (for lack of a better term), as far as the mechanics go. But, I think it could be done, after some thought and effort.After all... how are you to know how someone reacts to which races/traits in what ways, until you see their reactions in action? And it seems a little silly to just abruptly drop a "Goodbye!", then immediately turn around and have another character in your party strike up with "Hey, I know that guy just said 'goodbye,' and we're traveling as a group, but now I want to talk to you, about the exact same stuff he was talking to you regarding. :)"It could even be based on a sort of perception check, or some manner of check. You notice evidence of the NPC's reactions toward certain characters in your group, and you get the choice of reacting accordingly. Or those characters do, based on their own perceptive skills. Maybe they discreetly ask if they might take over? *shrug*. Or, obviously, if the person was reacting quite negatively to the character doing the talking, "I should probably try letting someone else give it a go" is a simple conclusion there. Something along those lines.

Play NWN2 SoZ. Obsidian did it there.

[mcmanusaur]

Hmmm... Reactivity is always good, but I can't help but wonder if it encourages players to (otherwise pointlessly) choose exotic races. I suppose that's not inherently a bad thing, but I'd hope that this sort of thing would be equally relevant and interesting for every race.

[Karranthain]

Hmmm... Reactivity is always good, but I can't help but wonder if it encourages players to (otherwise pointlessly) choose exotic races. I suppose that's not inherently a bad thing, but I'd hope that this sort of thing would be equally relevant and interesting for every race.

 

That's where cultural backgrounds would be handy (fairly sure I've seen Obisidian mentioning that those will be in the game, but can't find the relevant post).

[Kjaamor]

Race, class, gender and background reactivity are all really cool ideas, and I'd love to see them be well-implemented in the game.

 

...but I can't help but be reminded of Vanilla NWN2, which featured a handful of these reactivities at the start (or start of each party member's time with the group), and then never seemed to mention them again. That just seemed weak and I often wondered if it would've been better if they just hadn't bothered.

 

I get the impression from what has been displayed so far and general racial planning that racial reactivity will be feature, and I'm confident it will handle this (and just about everything else) better than NWN2V did.

[Lephys]

Play NWN2 SoZ. Obsidian did it there.

Thanks. I'll have to get around to it, when I can. I played a bit of the original campaign for NWN2, and I know of at least a few times when you were prompted to encourage/allow a companion into the dialogue action. The same thing was done in the DA games (I think 2, most notably?). But, in both (although, granted, I didn't play too much of NWN2), while nicer than none, they just seemed FAR too sparse. I think in the DA games, that I recall, you could do it like 3-or-so times throughout the entire game. And it was usually with very specific things, like "Let such-and-such, who severely hates this person, yell at them/kill them, rather than doing all the talking."

 

So, like I said, I'll have to check out SoZ.

[Tsuga C]

Obsidian has carte blanche with this game and I cannot imagine them failing to include three or four race/culture references per chapter. As they've bothered to populate this world with more than the tried and true humans, elves, and dwarves, I'd wager that they're going to make races count for something more than simple cosmetic and minor statistical differences.

[Greydragon]

It would also be interesting if random townsperson A can't tell the difference between 'wild' and 'normal' i.e. the subtle 'they all look alike' racism.

 

Also some horrible biases because party member is 'an abomination' simply for choosing a character class that is unheard of, for example; for an Orlan. Remember poor Mazzy the halfling in BG2 who couldn't be a paladin because of divine (ruleset) racism? Only in reverse. A race that despises magic as unholy meets a mage of their own species, etc. 

 

Religious bias would also be a nice twist; popular cult vs traditional tribal animism, etc. Even simple doomsday cult references i.e. it is such and such a day and year which means we shall all die horribly because of math and coincidence.

[Chrononaut]

Well, I hope that any racial stuff in PE will go beyond a few lines of flavor text here and there and a different looking character model. I know OE are probably reticent about any bonuses or penalties to races, but I feel there needs to be more to race than flavor or there's not much point having races at all. If a Human, Dwarf, Elf, Orlan or whatever all have exactly the same base stats, what's the gameplay incentive to pick one or the other?

Edited August 16, 2013 by Chrononaut