Issue with background reactivity.

[Starwars]

I'm all for reactivity in games, and I'm *very* happy to say that I think PoE will have plenty of it. And I believe additional reactivity dialogues were added with the latest beta version.

 

However...

 

As I understand, the story will have us as new to the land in which PoE take place. I can't shake the feeling that I find it a bit weird that someone here would call me a slave when A) that life is behind my character and B) how would they even know in the first place?

 

Reactivity is, again, great and one reason I'm really looking forward to this game. But it also has to make sense in the game-world.

Edited November 29, 2014 by Starwars

[Lephys]

However...

 

As I understand, the story will have us as new to the land in which PoE take place. I can't shake the feeling that I find it a bit weird that someone here would call me a slave when A) that life is behind my character and B) how would they even know in the first place?

Dunno. In Brandon Sanderson's The Stormlight Archive book series, Kaladin (one of the main characters) has a brand on his forehead from being a slave. He hides it at times, but anyone who knows to look for it is pretty much going to know he was a slave.

 

While explanation is always nice in-game, I like to think it's not a stretch of the imagination to figure there are just ways that people who know about the slave life in the PoE world would recognize aspects of other people that those without such knowledge would simply miss.

[Starwars]

I thought that as well, but then I hope it would be explained somewhere. I also got reactivity on my merchant background character, which also kinda rubs me wrong considering he was armed to the teeth (and it wasn't a dialogue option where I got to say anything particularly merchant-y as I recall).

[Osvir]

I noticed this with Rumbald too, [Mercenary] *Missing String*

It's cool that they react to your backstory, but shouldn't I be the one having the Dialogue option:

4. [Mercenary] "Well... for a bit of coin anything can happen"

 

Or similar.

Or Lord Harond's guard saying [Mercenary] "My lord, a mercenary...". Of course, I can narrate this part myself, and doesn't have to be a dialogue option really. It's semantics, in a way.

I also felt that... when I was in the Skaen Temple, my character had the job to find Lady Aelys and deliver her back to Lord Harond (My character was aggressive, evil). But I got stuck in the dialogue, with no option of [Mercenary] "I don't give a sh**, I've got gold to collect!! (Attack)".

It'd be fun with some Background Projection in the dialogue too, that causes Background Reactivity

[Rahkir]

While explanation is always nice in-game, I like to think it's not a stretch of the imagination to figure there are just ways that people who know about the slave life in the PoE world would recognize aspects of other people that those without such knowledge would simply miss.

 

I think that's a good mentality post-production, but not during. Having a coherent, tight-knit world where things "make sense" sets the mood for the more theatrical narratives. It's part of world-building to have explanations, which is probably why Sanderson details and mentions that Kaladin has a brand on his forehead instead of simply having in-universe characters acknowledge that he's a slave without any explanation. Leaving it up to the reader to infer that he has some sort of distinguishing slave-mark would be poor taste.