Modding Pet Peeves

Big_Murray

I know a thread where we share our modding pet peeves will draw out some controversial opinions, and god knows I know this my opening contribution will probably be unpopular, but it's been one of my pet peeves with BG mods for years.

The original game hardly ever used emotes in character text. I think I can remember maybe two or three times in the whole game where it happens, and even then it's sparse. But in mods, I run into it all the time. It's incredibly immersion breaking for me to be playing the game and then suddenly to be reading long-winded emotes in character text, like (Imoen suddenly stops and dances a little jig, a huge smile sweeping across her elegant face as you watch her act like a little child etcetcetc).

To me, it's an example of bad writing. The original BG writers expressed things enough via the character's dialogue that they didn't need to use emotes, so that consistency should be kept when writing mods. Don't emote unless it's absolutely, 100% unavoidable.

Just a real pet peeve of mine.

LiamEsler

The only time BioWare ever really used action text was to indicate sounds. (grunt) (giggle) (snort) etc are all fine in my book, but as soon as you start veering into (Imoen tosses her hair playfully) territory I start going crazy

Shin

It never bothered me really. Literature as well as roleplaying games tend to consist both of what people do and what they say, and with the facial expressions and body movements of the IE sprites not really coming through, I can't see any problem with expressing it in so-called action style dialogue instead.

On the contrary, I find the writing can easily come across as stilted if the author desperately tries too hard to convey chains of events "naturally" through what someone says rather than emotes. Imo it's just using the tools available to you, much like the inclusion of e.g. romance music.

Big_Murray

Shin said:

It never bothered me really. Literature as well as roleplaying games tend to consist both of what people do and what they say, and with the facial expressions and body movements of the IE sprites not really coming through, I can't see any problem with expressing it in so-called action style dialogue instead.

On the contrary, I find the writing can easily come across as stilted if the author desperately tries too hard to convey chains of events "naturally" through what someone says rather than emotes.

That doesn't seem to be the case in the original BG writing.

NybCR

I both agree and disagree--for me, whether or not extensive parenthetical descriptions bugs me depends where I find it and how well it's written.

For example, if I find the parenthetical descriptions in PID's such as flirts, I normally have very little problem with it as long as it's well-written. Part of this may be because vanilla Baldur's Gate just doesn't *have* PID's for party members, so it's not like there's anything to contrast the modded material with... kind of...?

Then again, I may be biased, since I've tried a lot of mods whose PID content I absolutely loved, and was beautifully written. But hey, the heart loves what it loves.

But whenever I find excessive parenthetical descriptions mixed in with regular dialog (like in interjections, party banter, or at times, NPC-PC conversations), I usually want to tear my ears off. Sometimes the writing itself isn't awful, but then sometimes I mentally start editing out the parenthetical bits, and can't help but think the edited version in my head is way better.

I can understand why modders feel compelled to do it, particularly if they don't have anyone doing the voice acting for their mod. One of the great things about Baldur's Gate is the expression and talent of the voice actors. For the vanilla game, I've found I don't really *need* anything more than the dialog provides, even if the voice actor is no longer saying the lines I'm reading, because I can still imagine the voice and its expression in my head. If you're trying to convey a very specific idea or emotion, it's really hard to do that using only dialog with no voice-overs. Not to say that that's an excuse for lazy writing. It isn't.

So yeah, I definitely see where @Big_Murray is coming from; excessive parenthetical descriptions mixed in with regular dialog sticks out like a sore thumb and oftentimes breaks immersion.

LiamEsler

The problem is that action text *is* often used as a crutch. Good dialog doesn't need action text.

Shin

Big_Murray said:

Shin said:

It never bothered me really. Literature as well as roleplaying games tend to consist both of what people do and what they say, and with the facial expressions and body movements of the IE sprites not really coming through, I can't see any problem with expressing it in so-called action style dialogue instead.

On the contrary, I find the writing can easily come across as stilted if the author desperately tries too hard to convey chains of events "naturally" through what someone says rather than emotes.

That doesn't seem to be the case in the original BG writing.

Yeah, I wouldn't say avoiding emotes makes things worse either; there's defifnitely such a thing as relying too much on them. But I've also seen romances that were better for their inclusion - Dynaheir in the BG1 NPC Project and Fade comes to mind. In my opinion these romances are every bit as good as the official content - in some respects even better yet:

- They don't shy away from lengthy dialogue sessions. With official content, one can imagine a directive to keep exchanges relatively short and snappy, without getting too bogged down in discussion or without delving too deeply into what kind of person charname is.

- They aren't 95% lead-up (conflict, support, etc) and 5% actual, stable relationship, but follow a smoother curve where the insecurity eventually goes away and you display affection for each other - here especially I find that emotes can do a good job - e.g. like how it enables you to take hold of someone's hand without saying anything, just like you might in real life.


I tend to feel it's a lot like in novels or even movie scripts - though they can be mostly dialogue-based, there are generally still narrative passages where it's explained what characters do or even what they think. I don't see that as a result of poor writing per se, but obviously it should be balanced.. narration shouldn't be used in lieu of dialogue, but it shouldn't be the other way around either.

Cuv

For me it depends. Descriptive text in PST, for example, was great. Let you know something that you used your intellect or wisdom to detect. Emotes don't bother me in mods if they are well written, they can add to the immersion. Badly written or for fluff emotes can certainly break immersion.

Narcissist

Lore breaking mods that try to disguise that they break the lore. I don't mind if they're doing it in parody, such as Dungeon-Be-Gone, but mods like Saerileth disgust me to no end with how badly they break the lore. No Saerileth, getting a divorce is perfectly fine. Killing someone over wanting one is not lawful good and the person who wrote that particular piece of tripe should be ashamed.