Loranc

Thanks guys, that's what I get for not coming to the forums and seeing what was going on with the development of the game. Life's just been busy!

That would explain it then lol. Haven't been on the forums in forever, so didn't know. Thanks!

Signed Retail Collector's Edition This tier includes: Signed Collector's Box Version of Pillars of Eternity, DRM free for Windows, Mac, or Linux, with DVD and printed manual. Cloth Map of the World. Pillars of Eternity Kickstarter Backer Cloth Patch. Pillars of Eternity Mouse Pad. Hardcover full color Pillars of Eternity Collector's Book Early Access Beta Key. Pillars of Eternity T-Shirt. Special Thanks in-game credits. Thank you postcard from the development team. VIP Forum Badge. Digital Strategy Guide. Digital Novella by Chris Avellone. Digital Campaign Almanac. Digital download of the Cooking with Tim Cookbook – An RPG-themed e-Cookbook. Digital Download of the making of Pillars of Eternity Documentary. Digital download of Wasteland 2 DRM free. Digital download of Pillars of Eternity's first expansion pack. Kickstarter Exclusive In-Game Pet. Digital High-Res Game Map. Digital High-Res Concept Art Pieces. Wallpapers for Multiple Monitors. Pillars of Eternity Themed Ringtones. Digital Downloadable Soundtrack in MP3 and FLAC. Digital Collector's Book. Digital Downloadable Copy of Pillars of Eternity, DRM free for Windows, Mac, or Linux. Kickstarter only in-game achievement and item. I've checked my box like 3 times, thinking I'm overlooking it, but there's no physical dvd that came with it, when there should be. I got the manual and everything else, but no physical dvd of the game, how the heck did that get overlooked? Especially after paying 250 dollars lol.

I was going to reply to Merin's posts, but seeing as they have nothing to do with romance, i'll stick to Tigranes point. I'm almost tempted to say it's not worth trying another time Tigranes. I think enough has been said about this topic.

I fail to see how this applies to this discussion at all. Yes, if you're roleplaying then you're making the decisions your character would make, given his personality. No one is disputing this. The issue is whether that personality should be created entirely by the player, or whether it should be handed to the player by the writers. I insist that the player needs to be the one to create that personality, because that's the only way for the player to know what his character should do in any given circumstance. It simply isn't possible for the writers to provide the player with sufficient information on which to base his roleplaying decisions if the player isn't allowed to invent that information himself. Only when the mind of the character is populated by the player can the player be familiar enough with the contents of that mind to make decisions on its behalf while still maintaining character coherence. My whole post and argument was responding to Merin's.(I quoted his post below.) Stating that the player character shouldn't have any motivations of his own, except for the one's that the player chooses for him. And I was explaining as to why this would never work. The player character should and will always have underlying motivations of his own, and since we are talking about a crpg, I don't see how my statement doesn't apply to the discussion. I think you're really grasping at straws if you believe that the entire personality of the character should be completely up to the person playing that character to decide, because that's just not possible. Not just budget wise or time wise, but physically to implement such a system into a game, isn't possible. There are an 'unlimited' amount of personalities, motivations, goals, etc that a character can have. To write an infinite amount of dialogue so that each person playing the game could play the character in a way that matched their personality, just wouldn't be possible. Sure, the player needs to be given options so that they can choose which path best suits the way they are playing their character, but to have a complete independent system that allows the player to have complete control over all the characters motivations, the amount of time it would take to create that game would be abysmal. That's why the writers put in an underlying personality to the characters that they make, subtle motivations that are there whether we wish them to be or not. To say that the writers/developers should have no say at all, in what the characters underlying motivations are is just crazy. They can't make a game without having the underlying motivations mapped out for the character. Have you ever tried writing a blank character? I mean sure we could play it like D&D and make our characters our own way, but this game has to be 'pre made' for us to play it. We can't play as we go, so therefore the choices and motivations that are there for us to pick from, absolutely have to be pre implemented into the game. There's no way of getting around the fact that your character will never have complete freedom. Unless you want to get rid of all the quests, dialogue, beginning, ending, middle, and yeah.. pretty much the whole game. Think about it logically, the text, choices, paths the character can choose, all of it has to be pre planned and pre implemented into the game before it ships. It's literally impossible to implement these things in a meaningful way, to have a rich story, world, dialogue, without having an underlying sense of who or what the character is. Thus, the writers will have to implement their own thoughts, for the underlying motivations for the character. I'm sorry, but unless you want to play a game where all the dialogue options and choices are the exact same no matter how you build your character, so that way you can just 'imagine' in your head that you're playing the way you want to play, this type of implementation is just non existant. It's the reason most games have three options, the evil choice, the good choice, and the neutral or indecisive choice. I'm glad that PE is getting rid of the stereotypical good vs evil theme. If you can, I'd love for you to explain to me how the writers could implement a system into the game that would make the character completely fit the needs of each and every person playing, so that the motivations would fit exactly the person playing the game. How they would go about making the choices and dialogue so that the character always feels like he/she is doing exactly what you want them to do, and how to completely ignore any conflict of this within the game's world itself. Because, I personally don't see how this can be accomplished.

I have to say I agree with jarpie on this. It would make no sense for the characters own self motivations not to factor into the game world at all. In the end, whether you're playing Baldurs Gate or Planescape Torment, your character had their own self motivations that probably completely differed from the person playing that character. Especially in Torment, the Nameless one had several motivations that I could of given a crap less about, but they were interwoven into the character. Even though through dialogue, the player is given choices to choose from, there is still a very underlying concept of the character that is built into the game from the start. We play the role of the character as the developers have portrayed him/her to us. Though we have many options of dialogue to pick from there is not an infinite number of choices to be made, which means we inevitably are forced to choose one of the paths that the developers have written, total free play-ability, or sovereignty in this case of a character, just cannot work in a game such as this. In order for a game to be created where the actual character's motivations were non existent, they'd have to ship us a blank game. Even in NwN if you were playing on a role-playing server, if you ignored your characters own self motivations and purely played the character based upon your own self motivations, then you were not properly role-playing Any true role-player will tell you this. Now as blunt and bold as that statement is, it's true down to its core. That is the very fundamental of role playing, you assume the role of a character. Saying that motivations should be based on what 'you' the player have stated that characters motivations to be, isn't truly rping that character. Being a DM on a NwN server, we encountered this problem many a times. It's very hard to move away from something that you want your character to do, but know in your mind that your character wouldn't truly do that, so you're then forced to properly role-play that choice, by choosing the path that your character would take, or you can choose to not role-play that choice and do whatever you want. Thus destroying the whole point and meaning behind the words role-play Now speaking specifically about PE, we are now taking on the role of a character in the vision of the writers. So, yes we should be forced to have underlying motivations and goals that the character has, whether we chose them or not. Why? Because, otherwise you wouldn't have a game to play at all. Though you have control over the choices and paths the character takes, the underlying ones will always remain. It's what leads you from the start of the game to the end, many choices and paths in between. Otherwise why even bother going to find Sarevok in BG? The underlying motivation for the character was to find his father's killer, whether you agreed with that or not, or no matter what options or paths you chose, whatever you did would eventually lead you to Sarevok. Unless you decided to just not beat the game. So to say that the player character's motivations shouldn't enter into the design of the game at all, really makes no sense to me. I cannot fathom how you could play any sort of role-playing game, including NwN where you are playing your own character, without having an underlying sense of the character. Especially in NwN, your character will always have his/her own motivations, it's just with PE we are now working with the developers/writers characters motivations, which is what gives us our choices and paths we can choose from in the first place.

More buggy than ME2? Can't say I agree with that at all. I bought the CE of ME2 when it came out and I never experienced any bugs with that game, and I've played through it a good 4 or 5 times now. Alpha protocol on the other hand I've had several clipping issues, but my main grievance with that game was just that it was too darn easy. Otherwise it wasn't bad. Wish they'd make a new fallout game, not sure how well New Vegas did sales wise, but I loved that game.

No, they don't. They champion the illusion of choice. Most of their choices have no consequence. Later games from them are limiting choice due to their focus on cinematic presentation and full VO. To be honest though, I don't understand you desire for romance. When you claim you can imagine party members on the one hand, and prefer that to dev designed companion. Then on the other championing dev developed romances. Surely you could just imagine the romance, right? I think ME3's ending had the best champion of choice options ever. Made me laugh so hard when I reloaded to see what the other two options did. Someone said it best on youtube. On a more serious note, you could just imagine the whole game. But, that would suck and be pointless. Some people want combat, others want dialogue, exploration, lore, companions, dungeons, pirates, you know the list goes on forever. Asking someone to imagine romance because it's something they'd like to see in the game is a bit silly. I'm sure there are several things you'd like to see in the game that we'd love to tell you to just go imagine them instead.

no problem with it so long as it fits game, character, etc. Some of the jRPGs have dealt with this idea - Namco's TALES OF GRACES f for example; more or less with 4 main characters Asbel, Sophie, Cheria and Hubert all as kids where they have an adventure (that goes wrong) and then later as adults who end up coming together to deal with some further issues that tie into that original ill-fated adventure. Great...jRPGs... next thing you know folks will demanding that we be able to make heros that look like effiminant teenage girlish boys (with bare midriffs and low cut pants) with blue/pink/yellow spikey hair and carry swordguns. They can have a romance in game with their childhood friend. You will have to deal with an evil imperialistic power. In the end, the government of said power will be ruled by an evil church or a cabal of rich jerks or both. You will travel about till you get a boat and finally an AIRSHIP! You will use the airship to go to a large flyng castle where you will rescue your childhood friend/hopefully future wife from the big bad evil guy with long hair. He will kill her but your righteous rage will fuel our powerful revenge in righting all wrongs before you awake and realize it was all a dream... or was it? Ya... I love where this thread is going.... Obsidian... ignore these people. Romances are a very bad idea. Most of the relationship ideas have been abyssmal. I love how you read the words jRPG and freaked out without reading anything else. Here i'll highlight the important parts to make it easier for you. So... you quoted people talking about non-romance situations being better than having romance in the game... then went on to complain to obsidian to ignore these romance and relationship ideas... when the ideas had nothing to do with romance or relationships in the first place. They were alternatives to relationships and romance, known as brother in arms, or friendship, etc etc. Not to mention your lack of jRPG knowledge is abysmal in of itself. That's like saying all crpgs are based on bio ware games. Which some people probably actually believe that, but most of us who actually enjoy crpgs knows that there's a lot more producers of said rpgs than just bio ware. All of your complaints about what you would call a typical jRPG are a common theme in typical crpgs as well. Though at least with jRPGS you don't have to worry about some perv creating a nudity mod that thousands of people download. But that being beside the point NOBODY was even stating anything about wanting PE to be like a jRPG they were only mentioning a brother in arms theme that a game had, and how it could work well in PE.

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. I'm still in favor for some dark romance. Not sure why all the rpgs these days, have this bright cheery theme to them when it comes to romance. I have no doubt that if romance is added into the game it will be extremely mature and well done. We're not talking teen romance here. He could do an awesome theme that doesn't even involve romance per say. One of my favorite flicks is Man on Fire with Denzel. It really reached into the depth of character and asked the question 'what are you willing to sacrifice to save someone, and what lines are you willing to cross.' Just looking purely at the theme of the movie, I would love for Avellone to break the trend of normal rpgs. Why does the game have to end with the hero being victorious? Maybe he accomplishes what he set out to do, but there doesn't need to be the traditional happily ever after. I guess what i'm saying is that I hope if we do see romances in this game, they do not follow the normal trend. But, I'm perfectly fine with not seeing them as well. I'm looking forward to the traditional trends that Avellone is going to break. I want to get pissed off at my adversaries, to have enemies actually have story and meaning behind them once again. Romance to be a curse and not a blessing, not easily obtainable, and no god forsaken sex cut scenes. Here's to hoping that this game can deliver real emotion to the player, make me care about the main character, my companions. Make me hate with a burning rage those that are my enemy. It's been a long time since there's been a truly hate-able character in a crpg, or even a main character that I gave a crap about.

People are the real monsters, I think we need to see some more politicians in this rpg.

I get it, don't add anything onto the armor. Armor is armor for the sake of being armor. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Jsp1Nh0Cc8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIaORknS1Dk

I can't find, it's buried somewhere beneath all the rubble on the forum. I know I read it and wish I could find it again. He was saying something a long the lines of the main character suffering and will continue to suffer throughout the story, having no real options to be in a romance with someone. I just wish for the life of me that I could find that quote, if I had a better memory... or maybe someone else remembers reading it on the forum and knows where it was.

Because I am sure someone would have rubbed that in my face pages ago :D @Jarpie No I did say if you take your "ressources"-argument seriously, then you would shoot against other features than romances, like for example the low-int-dialogues. My diagram would look like this, so for me both reactions are with emotions to what you did. For me romances can be exactly that. Minsc: Hamster in microwave yes --> Friendship reaction angry --> dialogue accordingly Hamster in microwave no --> Friendship reaction happy --> dialogue accordingly NPC2: Comfort when sad yes --> Friendship reaction affection --> dialogue accordingly (possible romance much later) Comfort when sad no --> Friendship reaction distant --> dialogue accordingly I know I read it... and I will find it, it may take me a while but i'm looking. Though i'm unsure now as to if it was Avellone or Sawyer who stated that the romance wouldn't fit the main character. Avellone also tried to get the romance removed from other games such as Alpha Protocol. Which tells me he is not in favor of them. But, let me try and find that quote, I'll find it eventually.

First of all nobody said they hate writing romances. Secondly if ressorces really are your argument there is no way you can support something that takes this much more ressources than romances and is clearly optional as well even if they like writing it.. If you do not shoot against it, then it shows that your argument of ressources isn't that important to you. Then what were you trying to say with this? "If you really worry about ressources in optional features go where a lot of ressources are needed - for example redoing whole dialog for low int or low charisma. probably 50 times more dialog affected, right?" Low-intelligence dialogue actually adds to the whole game-experience from start to finish with all characters, story and the quests - unlike romances which only adds for the said companions if they are meant to be completely optional (it doesn't take anything else off from the game, such as anything from the quests, the story, the substories/-plots, interaction with other characters, interaction with other npcs etc. and wouldn't take any extra resources - the point which has been recountered before). Besides, people have asked low-intelligence dialogue a lot, and that's something what devs have said they love to do, devs also have said that they dislike to write romances. Those were the points we have argued against romances and how they would take the unnecessary amount of the extra resources. I actually hate the idea of low intelligence writing, even though I believe it should be in the game for the sake of making sense rp wise. The reason I hate it, is because I will never use it. I have never in my life and history of playing an rpg, made a character with under 10 intelligence. You get to thinking about the wasted hours it takes to implement this, the things they could of added instead. And I start to understand why people are so against adding romance into the game. Coupled with the fact that it probably has never truly been handled well in the history of crpgs. (this statement was about romance and not low intelligence writing.) So you're in favor of censorship due to people having strong opinions about a subject? Banning a topic just for the sake of not 'feeling' like dealing with it, is a bit childish to say the least. Obsidian needs to man up on this topic already, to assume at this point that they don't know if they have the 'budget' for it or not is ludicrous. They either need to say no or yes, and then this whole thread becomes less important. I expect at the Obsidian office Chris is banging his head against the wall , there's probably even an indent by now. As I'm sure I read somewhere that he hates romances. It's also been stated that it won't fit the main pc, not the vision that Chris has of him anyway. So, if it won't fit the main pc all this talk about more dialogue and all this extra writing is pretty moot. Unless what we're arguing is this 'Chris Avellone's vision of the Main Character is wrong and he should have 'my' vision instead', as harsh as that sounds, it is what it is. He specifically stated that the main PC would not be fit for a romance. Unless you're stating that it should be 'forced' into the game, most of these arguments and 'points' so to speak, are a waste of finger wiggling. I'm all for romance, but it has to fit the story, and it must make sense. Seeing as the option for the main pc having a romance is out the door, are we really saying that we want it forced into the game? All these folks arguing for romance, is that where we're at now, that it should be forced into the game even though Chris stated that it doesn't fit the main PC and that he doesn't enjoy writing romance in general? Of course it doesn't have to be the main PC, i'm all for side quest romance. Romance being a broad term and all, there's plenty of ways to implement it into the game. The most difficult way is to add it via the main pc, that does in fact require the most amount of work. Are we starting a new topic? If so, please let me know. We'll call it the 'Chris Avellone's vision sucks, and we want him to envision us a new main pc.' Then we can get to debating that topic, which should be slightly more interesting than the current topic.