BG2EE DLC Idea: Valen
Baxyratty
Member Posts: 190
Hear me out here. A lot of people have used the Valen mod, myself included. a good chunk of the writing is solid, hand heck she's fun to play with even if she's overpowered. my suggestion/request would be, buy or obtain the rights from mr. Weimer, get Valen a new voice actress, give her real banters, a character sidequest, and make her vampiric powers progress at a slower rate so that she doesn't become a one character party by the first 4th of the game, and you guys would have a pretty nifty DLC that i'd gladly pay extra for in the future 
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Comments
Also, I don't think you need to worry about rights. Valen is, after all, not an original creation but a modification of an existing character. Extra lines or not, that should put the IP rights with the license holder. Don't think it's much of a problem anyway, the mod is not exactly densely written (by the author's own admission) and would need to be reworked so substantially you might as well start from scratch.
The only solution I'd see is to offer something that mod makers can't provide, e.g. voiced banter with the VAs of the new Overhaul NPCs, or perhaps some hard-coded abilities that can't be replicated with modding tools. If you don't offer anything special like that, I don't see it being a viable option that can compete with the modding scene.
I don't have a problem with the general idea, I just don't think it's a viable option for DLC. Mods are too popular, and too prolific, so it would have to be something mods can't do (or do badly).
Maybe a celebrity VA? I'd totally buy a Claudia Black as Valen.
Secondly, making a mod NPC into a paid DLC would go off as well as a fart in church. When people try to monetize something that was originally free in the first place, a lot of people come out and complain against that. Example, The Skyrim Romance Mod. The author started a Kickstarter for her mod, because she wanted to pay her team for all the hard work that they've done. As soon as she did that a lot of people came out of the woodwork, and harassed the crap out of her.
Finally, wouldn't it just be a lot easier if someone just made the NPC mod more compatible with BG2EE? That way Beamdog wouldn't need to deal with the legal stuff, and try to get into contact with someone that they might not be able to get into contact with.
Another thing to consider specifically with regards to Weimer's mods is that, unlike the majority of NPC mods out there, Solaufein and Valen are existing characters in BG2. So if Beamdog were to get different voice actors and construct different storylines/dialogues for them, they'd be perfectly within their rights to sell those specific characters as DLC. (And, I suppose, one could make the argument that a more professional touch would make those two much more appealing, since the major criticism towards Solaufein has always been regarding the way Weimer wrote him.)
The larger issue is that if Beamdog were going to sell new characters as DLC, they would've done it by now. Waiting two or three years after a game's release just doesn't sit right from a business perspective.
Valen was a tricky one: in order to install you must copy valenL and valenS from valen folder to portraits foler.
ehhh... once Sola was crashing my game in Temple District, will play and test.
ps. necroposting
All you'd need to do to solve that problem and give the player some agency back would be to fire off a line of dialogue when Valen goes off-script, and in each scenario there's a different "out". Like, if you have 15 or 16 CHA you can persuade Valen to give the eggs back, but when she wants to fight Drizzt CHA won't work; you need high STR to intimidate her instead.
That way, you will inevitably encounter at least one scenario where you don't have enough of the right stat to stop her, so she gets her moment of evil independence without it being a constant and consistent problem.