If Pillars of Eternity had romances

[GadgetSun]

ALTOH.

COUGH COUGH COUGH.

 

wwwwwwwwwwwwwhhyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

:,( we'll be together in my head... I.. suppose...

[GadgetSun]

SIMULATING ROMANCE FOR WOMEN IN GAMES

BY LUZARIUS

 

Let's use POE as an example:

 

* Durance hits on female player.

* Aloth hits on female player.

* Eder hits on female player.

* Lesbian NPC's hit on female player.

 

A fight breaks out between Eder & Durance over the female player.

 

It's up to the female player to control the situation or let it pursue and decide which offer to accept. 

 

DAMN I'M GOOD.

 

Can't resist.

 

While Eder and Durance are facing off, Aloh is arguing with his alter ego about the proper tactics Kana has charmed the female player with a special chant composed just for her.  

 

That's the spirit! I love it   That would be such a spectacular scene.

 

 

WAAAAWAAAAWAAIIIIIITTTTT

does this ACTUALLY HAPPEN IN GAME?

 

AHAHAHAHA 

IM SORRY

I'M STILL MAKING MY WAY THROUGH THE GAME

I'm still trying to find my way to DEFIANCE BAY

sneaky little..

YOUUUTTTUUBBBBBEEEEE

[Shevek]

If PoE had romances...

Eder would keep trying to "pet" Wild Orlan PCs in increasingly inappropriate ways.

 

Hmm, no thanks.

[middydj]

No romance please. At all. No. For those wanting a relationship that matters in the game, then make something terrible to a well designed companion.

One companion the majority likes. GoT style. Or if you do romance throw in some sex like in Mass Effect. That was the only reason to do romance in Mass Effect....

 

In the end they will do what they want with the game. Just  as DAI turned into what it is.  It's ok for them. I don't have to buy or support it. If POE is the last game I buy from OE before it turns into another DAI. Thanks!

[Zwiebelchen]

You got to hand it to luzarius: he knows how to properly derail a thread.

[FlintlockJazz]

Is this where the Tyrion x Hiravias slash fiction getting posted?

[roller12]

The cycle of SJW

 

From bottom to top, inclusion level

 

Game has:

Gay romance. - Game is a gay simulator

Lesbian romance - Game is homophobic, no gay romance

Straight romance - Game is homophobic, no lesbian romance

No romance & good looking women - Game degrades women

ugly women & Eder - thats the stuff!

 

But thing is, only a certain type of people would find a game adventure featuring ugly women and beautiful men "normal". I also wonder why Mass Effect romances are mentioned so often, seems to me like some kind of fixation there. I for instance liked Mass effect romances, but i dont go around and talk about them at every corner in rage or love. (Couldnt care less.) Weird no?

Edited May 18, 2015 by roller12

[nipsen]

^pretty much. But.. could probably point out that when you write something, it's very difficult to actually don't make any kind of statement, or have any sort of purpose with the text.

 

You could feel that you are simply describing something that is completely and utterly normal to you, for example. Or make the events you describe sound commonplace. Wrapping them in a familiar context, for example. And then end up having difficulty justifying the way you described the events later, or perhaps realizing that the narrative you have used to explain what happened in the past was enticing to you in ways that it no longer is.

 

Lots of people tend towards saying that Ender's Game is a pretty neutral science fiction book, for example, in spite of O. S. Card's somewhat curious political views. And you could say that. That you don't see much preaching in the book, if any at all. But you can't escape the fact that the book glorifies the concept of exceptionalism, narrative purpose and Fate (given by unmentionable God) to a point where people will croak. I'm from Norway, we're bloody best at everything, including bragging - and reading Ender's Game still made me retch. The idea that the best product invariably comes from sacrifice and strife, the more extravagant the better, etc. It's the kind of reason-defying, self-deceptive bull**** that brought us what will be the third set of "meager 7 years" in a row when it comes to international diplomacy, for example. Because people (with actual power and positions) believe in narratives like that, internalize them to the point where it's not sensed they are there at all. And suddenly it's taken as true that if you beat a class of kids half to death every other day, only the most talented artist and greatest intellectual will survive. Because that's how it works, obviously. And it's also how capitalism unchecked by society, as well as rules and people in general, regardless of mere short-term cost in terms of lives and living quality, for example, will save the planet. And make it into an oasis where unicorns and golden hippogriffs greet you, by automatic necessity over time. Incidentally, gay people apparently seem to upend that entire social experiment and destroy the hippogriff oasis somehow.. It's always mentioned as more important than that snag about intelligent design. 

 

Seriously, though -- it's the wrong demand to make of almost any writing, that it should not provoke you or suggest anything to you at all. Because if it doesn't, what's the point? Just propaganda? Self-assurance for, you know, people who have critical problems they can't deal with? Personal solace from the world outside with all the strange things happening in it? Balm to avoid thinking uncomfortable thoughts?

 

I mean, if that's all there is to it, then you're at best asking a writer to craft a fictional piece of writing that makes what you believe always seem to make sense. And to make sure every step of the writing avoids describing certain uncomfortable things too accurately, just in case the description makes you uncomfortable, or accidentally makes you think too hard or consider things.

 

And I'm sure people understand how radical it would be to actually sit and make that demand of a writer, openly. If you started boycotting books that say anything whatsoever that doesn't constantly convince you of how everything you think and feel is correct, that never challenge you in any way, or inform you about anything at all. "That book here about a land far away of Milk and Honey! It's upsetting because it suggests what I have here isn't the best! Burn it! And the land too!".

 

No one would ever argue that. But somehow a.. surprising amount of people actively engage in "debates" about how certain things should be narrated and explained. In the proper way. For adults with well-developed preferences and opinions. By other adults with well-developed preferences and opinions.

 

Always fascinated me how much effort people put into this kind of thing. Don't people want to experience something new? Or is "adventure in tv and sofaland" really what we should be writing nowadays?

[roller12]

I'd hate do be completely banal here, but people hate new. They want bread and circuses. Havent read Ender's Game for pretty much the same reason, becoming disillusioned in sci-fi, it was all the same but in space, older sci-fi was filled with aspirations, i think that was lost somewhere on the way, probably when it became clear we arent going anywhere beyond low Earth orbit in the 21st century.

 

The book that comes to the mind though is "Fahrenheit 451", covering pretty much all the statements. Old sci-fi is genius.

 

in the very unlikely scenario that you havent read it, or for other people, here are some quotes

 

 

 

 

Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don’t step on the toes of the dog lovers, the cat lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. The people in this book, this play, this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, mechanics anywhere. The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that!… Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did.

 

"We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon."

 

 

Edited May 18, 2015 by roller12

[scrotiemcb]

Always fascinated me how much effort people put into this kind of thing. Don't people want to experience something new? Or is "adventure in tv and sofaland" really what we should be writing nowadays?

You might want to check out Malcolm Gladwell on engineering hits:

Edited May 18, 2015 by scrotiemcb

[nipsen]

hehe Brave new World, 1984 as well.. still as current as Fahrenheit 451. Perhaps more than they were.

 

..Dune, I think, was the first sci-fi book I really enjoyed. Heard a lot of curious interpretations of that book - but after reading through it a few times, I've settled on the same interpretation a few Arab and Persian friends have, about how it is a geological fable about the significance of the land itself. That the real main character is the planet, not the characters there. 

 

Frank Herbert has a few spins on romance as well in Dune. Huey's love for his wife, although she's not in the story physically, explains Huey's motivations and actions completely. So while we're not treated to many actual descriptions of their relationship, the character would be empty without his sorrow and determination explained through that love, and how Huey describes her indirectly. What sort of view he has on her, and how he doesn't act out of obligation but of mutual commitment. Chani and Paul, of course, is a relationship that breaks from how Paul ends up being less and less human. But still illustrates that path Paul is on, and how the rise of the heroic superman becomes inhuman, in a way that would be difficult to spot if the relationship wasn't there, and that it is developed fully.

 

So without those well-developed "romances" as a literary devices, the story about the planet might not have been as interesting. While.. we're stating banal things anyway

 

(..I think maybe Josh Wheedon had a good idea with Firefly, to pick up some modern things. About how relationships change, if they do at all, when distances are farther and places and social contexts are different. The entire "reversed gender roles" relationship between the pilot and Mal's right hand woman is really well done in that sense. That the traditional roles either don't fit, and don't matter either. While other more universal concepts persist irrespective of the wrapping. A soft, if stern, commentary on the gender neutrality "ideal" some seem to wish for. To the point where you start to sympathize with the pilot for being the weak female, etc. In a way you likely wouldn't have if the genders were switched again.

 

I mean, that's perhaps what annoys me the most about the "free for all" type relationships people write into games and modern sci-fi now. That it's really just as simple as creating and justifying woman characters that play the roles of "traditional" men, and really just perpetuating the same gender-roles that we supposedly were criticizing. Have a friend who pours over everything Vampire Diaries, for example. And when she started explaining it, she ends up retelling - without realizing herself - the kind of moral values and gender archetypes that supposedly went out of vogue in the 1920s, even in the worst Christian bastions. But this resonated with her, and she simply didn't see the way the books were putting a modern spin on Luther's catechism. Hopefully this is read a bit differently by the 12-year old girls the books are written for - but good grief.. It couldn't have been more obvious if virgins gave birth and angels were flying around the church-spires at night.)

[Tennisgolfboll]

Romance is a pretty big part of storytelling.

 

Calisca would have made a great romance option. Great character and voice acting.

[FlintlockJazz]

hehe Brave new World, 1984 as well.. still as current as Fahrenheit 451. Perhaps more than they were.

 

..Dune, I think, was the first sci-fi book I really enjoyed. Heard a lot of curious interpretations of that book - but after reading through it a few times, I've settled on the same interpretation a few Arab and Persian friends have, about how it is a geological fable about the significance of the land itself. That the real main character is the planet, not the characters there. 

 

Frank Herbert has a few spins on romance as well in Dune. Huey's love for his wife, although she's not in the story physically, explains Huey's motivations and actions completely. So while we're not treated to many actual descriptions of their relationship, the character would be empty without his sorrow and determination explained through that love, and how Huey describes her indirectly. What sort of view he has on her, and how he doesn't act out of obligation but of mutual commitment. Chani and Paul, of course, is a relationship that breaks from how Paul ends up being less and less human. But still illustrates that path Paul is on, and how the rise of the heroic superman becomes inhuman, in a way that would be difficult to spot if the relationship wasn't there, and that it is developed fully.

 

So without those well-developed "romances" as a literary devices, the story about the planet might not have been as interesting. While.. we're stating banal things anyway

 

(..I think maybe Josh Wheedon had a good idea with Firefly, to pick up some modern things. About how relationships change, if they do at all, when distances are farther and places and social contexts are different. The entire "reversed gender roles" relationship between the pilot and Mal's right hand woman is really well done in that sense. That the traditional roles either don't fit, and don't matter either. While other more universal concepts persist irrespective of the wrapping. A soft, if stern, commentary on the gender neutrality "ideal" some seem to wish for. To the point where you start to sympathize with the pilot for being the weak female, etc. In a way you likely wouldn't have if the genders were switched again.

 

I mean, that's perhaps what annoys me the most about the "free for all" type relationships people write into games and modern sci-fi now. That it's really just as simple as creating and justifying woman characters that play the roles of "traditional" men, and really just perpetuating the same gender-roles that we supposedly were criticizing. Have a friend who pours over everything Vampire Diaries, for example. And when she started explaining it, she ends up retelling - without realizing herself - the kind of moral values and gender archetypes that supposedly went out of vogue in the 1920s, even in the worst Christian bastions. But this resonated with her, and she simply didn't see the way the books were putting a modern spin on Luther's catechism. Hopefully this is read a bit differently by the 12-year old girls the books are written for - but good grief.. It couldn't have been more obvious if virgins gave birth and angels were flying around the church-spires at night.)

By those definitions there already is romance in the game:

 

 

Sagani and her husband and kids.

Lady Webb and Thaos.

The PC in a past life and Heretic Tart if you choose the right options.

 

 

 

I think the issue is that when people say romance they are usually talking about the conversation tracks with NPC companions that lead to jiggle time.  Honestly, unless the PC is a predefined character and not a custom made one then those ones just can't work, it requires the companion to be basically open to a relationship and fall in love with such a wide range of possible characters even if you restrict it to just one gender and orientation that it just cannot be well defined by definition. 

[BruceVC]

 

hehe Brave new World, 1984 as well.. still as current as Fahrenheit 451. Perhaps more than they were.

 

..Dune, I think, was the first sci-fi book I really enjoyed. Heard a lot of curious interpretations of that book - but after reading through it a few times, I've settled on the same interpretation a few Arab and Persian friends have, about how it is a geological fable about the significance of the land itself. That the real main character is the planet, not the characters there. 

 

Frank Herbert has a few spins on romance as well in Dune. Huey's love for his wife, although she's not in the story physically, explains Huey's motivations and actions completely. So while we're not treated to many actual descriptions of their relationship, the character would be empty without his sorrow and determination explained through that love, and how Huey describes her indirectly. What sort of view he has on her, and how he doesn't act out of obligation but of mutual commitment. Chani and Paul, of course, is a relationship that breaks from how Paul ends up being less and less human. But still illustrates that path Paul is on, and how the rise of the heroic superman becomes inhuman, in a way that would be difficult to spot if the relationship wasn't there, and that it is developed fully.

 

So without those well-developed "romances" as a literary devices, the story about the planet might not have been as interesting. While.. we're stating banal things anyway

 

(..I think maybe Josh Wheedon had a good idea with Firefly, to pick up some modern things. About how relationships change, if they do at all, when distances are farther and places and social contexts are different. The entire "reversed gender roles" relationship between the pilot and Mal's right hand woman is really well done in that sense. That the traditional roles either don't fit, and don't matter either. While other more universal concepts persist irrespective of the wrapping. A soft, if stern, commentary on the gender neutrality "ideal" some seem to wish for. To the point where you start to sympathize with the pilot for being the weak female, etc. In a way you likely wouldn't have if the genders were switched again.

 

I mean, that's perhaps what annoys me the most about the "free for all" type relationships people write into games and modern sci-fi now. That it's really just as simple as creating and justifying woman characters that play the roles of "traditional" men, and really just perpetuating the same gender-roles that we supposedly were criticizing. Have a friend who pours over everything Vampire Diaries, for example. And when she started explaining it, she ends up retelling - without realizing herself - the kind of moral values and gender archetypes that supposedly went out of vogue in the 1920s, even in the worst Christian bastions. But this resonated with her, and she simply didn't see the way the books were putting a modern spin on Luther's catechism. Hopefully this is read a bit differently by the 12-year old girls the books are written for - but good grief.. It couldn't have been more obvious if virgins gave birth and angels were flying around the church-spires at night.)

By those definitions there already is romance in the game:

 

 

Sagani and her husband and kids.

Lady Webb and Thaos.

The PC in a past life and Heretic Tart if you choose the right options.

 

 

 

I think the issue is that when people say romance they are usually talking about the conversation tracks with NPC companions that lead to jiggle time.  Honestly, unless the PC is a predefined character and not a custom made one then those ones just can't work, it requires the companion to be basically open to a relationship and fall in love with such a wide range of possible characters even if you restrict it to just one gender and orientation that it just cannot be well defined by definition. 

 

 

Yes the definition and what is expected from Romance is a Romance arc with people in your party. You want to get to know them and develop the friendship to a point where you have a  non-platonic relationship

 

Anything else is window dressing as far as I concerned and is not Romance 

Edited May 20, 2015 by BruceVC

[FlintlockJazz]

 

 

Yes the definition and what is expected from Romance is a Romance arc with people in your party. You want to get to know them and develop the friendship to a point where you have a  non-platonic relationship

 

Anything else is window dressing as far as I concerned and is not Romance 

 

Then you and I shall never agree and must fight to the death in the Backer Battle Arena. 

[bluepotions]

I'd roll a character, probably a half-mad priestess of magran who got all hot and weird for durance's sweaty misogyny.

 

I'd prefer to bromance Kana, and live with him Sherlock-style, smoking pipes and telling people impossible tales.

[Eywa]

I would romance Thaos but he kept running away from me.

[abaris]

 

By those definitions there already is romance in the game:

 

 

 

Not to forget the brothel in Ondra's gift.

[kabaliero]

PoE probably would have had romances if people, in any possible way, could just stfu about it for two seconds.

Edited May 25, 2015 by kabaliero

[Gorbag]

PoE probably would have had romances if people, in any possible way, could just stfu about it for two seconds.

If people could stfu about anything just like that, we would have a discussion board full of nothing but romances.

 

BTW good job bumping the thread after 5 days of silence, just to tell people to stfu. Attaboy.