No one has said a word

lastknightleft

I got this cause I thought it had all the improvements of Baldur's Gate II but I've gotten all the way into Nashkel and been playing for over four hours with a full party and no one has said a word, I kept the original 5 I got (khaleed and Jaheera, Xzar and Montaron, and Imoen) because I wanted to see what they would say with all the banters and discussions like the NPCs in BGII had, and yet they haven't spoken yet other than the banters they did in BG 1. Am I being impatient, do they break their silence or do they only say the things they already said in the original game and if so then I feel like I didn't get what I paid for because that was the one reason I got this. It said it had all the improvements of BG2

Silverstar

There are only new banters where the new companions are involved. They never promised they'd add new banters for the old ones between the old ones and indeed due to contractual limitations, there's only so much they can do with them.

TJ_Hooker

It has all the improvements of the BG2 engine, like kits, dual wielding, etc.

Also, as @Silverstar mentioned, they are actually contractually prohibited from adding things like extra banters between old NPCs.

Kilivitz

Khaleed?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dWeeUIZFgA

Sorry OP, I couldn't lose the joke.

Schneidend

Even if inter-party banter could reasonably be considered one of BG2's gameplay features, what would you want the NPCs to say? Stuff from BG2? That's what BG2 is for.

Pecca

It's worth noting, that there is a mod called The NPC Project, that adds a lot of banters to NPCs, which is exactly what you want. Well it's not out yet for BG:EE, but soon will be.

Blakes7

What I want is for beamdog to do official banter's for the old companions. Mods can vary a lot in quality, especially in the writing department. But we can't have everything we want sometimes I guess :-(

Lemernis

I'm hoping that one day we'll see professionally done banter upgrades (i.e., creating a whole lot more of them) by Beamdog in a DLC. No single element would revitalize the gameplay experience more, imho. That would amount to an almost brand new experience of the game, really. And as a DLC mod it would be optional, preserving the integrity of the original game for purists.

Delvarian

Blakes7 said:

What I want is for beamdog to do official banter's for the old companions. Mods can vary a lot in quality, especially in the writing department. But we can't have everything we want sometimes I guess :-(

I feel the same way about this. I'm always a bit uncertain about some random mod that adds banters. Are they going to be on par with the real game? Will they be true to character? Will they even use proper spelling and grammar?
I can assure people though, that as someone who is very picky about content mods, I fully endorse the NPC Project mod. Everything about it is top quality, and with the contract restrictions placed on Beamdog is probably your best hope for BG2 style banters. Download it for BGEE when it's available, you won't regret it, and hey it's free.

lastknightleft

Well I was a huge fan of Gibberlings Three BGNPC project for the tutu, and I guess that's why I was so dissapointed, I don't feel like I got that much for $20 that I didn't already have with the TuTu. Still the game does look great (except for the fact that they got rid of the brightness adjustment).

DJKajuru

Blakes7 said:

What I want is for beamdog to do official banter's for the old companions. Mods can vary a lot in quality, especially in the writing department. But we can't have everything we want sometimes I guess :-(

Trust me - BG1 NPC project is a masterpiece.

Rhyme

Blakes7 said:

What I want is for beamdog to do official banter's for the old companions. Mods can vary a lot in quality, especially in the writing department. But we can't have everything we want sometimes I guess :-(

I understand this point, but here's the thing... Developers can also vary a lot in quality. You're assuming that if beamdog does "official" banters for the old companions, those banters will be good. But other than paying a bunch of money for the rights to the game, what credentials do they bring to the table that modders do not? They're still not the authors of the BG2 dialogues you liked so much. The only difference between "official" banters and "mod" banters is that mod banters are optional... So you better hope you like the new "official" content, because otherwise you'd have to hope that somebody makes a mod to undo it.

This isn't meant as a criticism of Beamdog's work. I think they did a swell job with their dialogue. But it's still true that buying the BG rights and working on a BG product does not automatically grant you the abilities and style of the original BG writers.

Wikkid_Suhn

Good point @Rhyme. I will mention that the new scenes and dialogue have been well done, at least in my opinion.

Bigfish

Part of the issue is that NPC's have to actually be pretty close to initiate banter. The other part is that the non-dialogue- banters can be cut off by move commands. Most NPC interaction faqs make it seem like people will jump on each other the first chance they get, but that seems rare and far between, unless you park two hostile NPCs next to each other and just let the time flow by. Even that might not do it.

Paheej

Rhyme said:

I understand this point, but here's the thing... Developers can also vary a lot in quality. You're assuming that if beamdog does "official" banters for the old companions, those banters will be good. But other than paying a bunch of money for the rights to the game, what credentials do they bring to the table that modders do not?

I would think that being on the original BG and BG2 teams would "certify" them a bit more than your average modder. Their new BG characters are probably better than any mod NPC - at least any that I have played.

But yeah - what the OP wants is the BG1NPC Project.

TJ_Hooker

Paheej said:

Rhyme said:

I understand this point, but here's the thing... Developers can also vary a lot in quality. You're assuming that if beamdog does "official" banters for the old companions, those banters will be good. But other than paying a bunch of money for the rights to the game, what credentials do they bring to the table that modders do not?

I would think that being on the original BG and BG2 teams would "certify" them a bit more than your average modder. Their new BG characters are probably better than any mod NPC - at least any that I have played.

I'm not sure if any of the BG veterans working on EE were actually involved with dialogue/writing for the original games. Then again, even if they were I probably wouldn't know about it, so if anyone knows better please correct me.

Vintrastorm

Bigfish said:

Part of the issue is that NPC's have to actually be pretty close to initiate banter. The other part is that the non-dialogue- banters can be cut off by move commands. Most NPC interaction faqs make it seem like people will jump on each other the first chance they get, but that seems rare and far between, unless you park two hostile NPCs next to each other and just let the time flow by. Even that might not do it.

Really? How close? I mean, if the party is further away than the borders of your screen I can see why they wouldn''t start a dialogue banter. But heck, I never figured my NPCs wouldn't banter because they were 15 pixels too far away.

Bigfish

Generally speaking, when using CTRL-U to force banter, no one says anything to each other unless they are right next to the other person. If that's the case, even your formation may keep banters from happening.

Kilivitz

Rhyme said:

You're assuming that if beamdog does "official" banters for the old companions, those banters will be good. But other than paying a bunch of money for the rights to the game, what credentials do they bring to the table that modders do not?

The difference is that they will hire professional writers, who are not only likely, but also expected to have more experience, baggage and even talent than most enthusiasts you're gonna find out in any modding scene.

I'm not saying professional writers will always provide great content, nor that amateur writers will always write crap, but if you wanna discuss credentials, the odds are always slightly in favor of whoever has the financial means to pay for a service that will go through a company's revision, quality control, etc.