Is it me, or is everyone very quiet?

Bejogo

Forgive me if this has been raised before, but some industrial-strength Googling has yielded nothing conclusive on the subject.

I'm beginning to notice that the NPCs in the Enhanced Edition are extremely untalkative. After dozens of hours of gameplay, I've experienced only a handful of banters. This includes parties which I know should have extensive banters between members; Keldorn and Anomen, Mazzy and Valygar, Mazzy and Korgan, and so on.

Now, I know that banters are random and tend to depend on how close the NPCs are, but after playing the game for so long I'd expect them to be at least a little more vocal. I remember playing the original version in my early teens, and some party configurations would hardly shut up long enough for us to have a swashbuckling fantasy adventure. It was basically my way of going to the pub and having a chat before I could legally do so.

Has anyone else experienced this and, if so, voiced similar concerns? Could it be a result of enabling the debug mode, or installing certain mods?

I'd be interested to hear if anyone else has noticed anything similar.

Tresset

You want them to talk? Press ctrl-i a bunch! They will talk.

elminster

How long ago was your early teens? Its possible you are just misremembering.

Any two characters are generally only going to have a handful of dialogues between each other in Shadows of Amn and generally they will have even less in ToB.

Also while you are going through the Underdark portion of the game you won't see any party banters. So that might also be contributing to what you are experiencing.

Bejogo

Tresset said:

You want them to talk? Press ctrl-i a bunch! They will talk.

Call me old-fashioned, but I rather like the pleasant surprise of naturally occurring dialogue!

You are right that CTRL+I does force chats (in some cases; in many more, two party members just pivot on the spot and stare quietly at one another), so evidently the game can get its act in gear, it just doesn't. Perhaps the natural timeframe between banter attempts is simply very long.

elminster said:

How long ago was your early teens? Its possible you are just misremembering.

Long enough ago that I don't remember where my hairline was; recent enough that I remember there was a lot more chit-chat than I'm currently seeing.

I know there aren't reams of dialogue, but I do know there are several chats that my NPCs simply aren't having.

Tresset

elminster said:

Also while you are going through the Underdark portion of the game you won't see any party banters. So that might also be contributing to what you are experiencing.

Banters are only blocked by dungeon type areas. Most of the underdark is considered a dungeon but Ust Natha isn't and banters can still happen there (yes, even in drow form).

Tresset

So, uhh, I think I figured out how the banter driving .2da works. In BG2:EE every 10 minutes there is a 10% chance of a random party member attempting to initiate a banter. If the random party member that was selected can find no valid banter partner the banter fails and you will have to wait another 10 minutes to get another chance. Sooo every 10 minutes there is a 10% chance of maybe a banter happening... Those are pretty slim odds...

Would anyone be interested in using a mod of this if I were to make one? I would most likely make the banter chance of a banter attempt happening 100% and maybe even make an attempt happen every 5 minutes. This would most likely mean that most banters would happen pretty fast and early in SoA so your party members would likely run out of things to say to each other about half way through SoA. This would likely be more ideal for ToB which is a much shorter campaign. I cannot make it discriminate between SoA and ToB so it is either they run out of things to say by mid SoA or they most likely not say everything in ToB.

Heck with it... I will just make the mod and if you want it then you can have it. I will be open to feedback.

http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/40530/mod-increased-rate-of-banter

Heindrich

@Bejogo I have quite recently played both BG2 vanilla (from GOG) and BG2:EE. I can confirm that the inter-party banter rate has not been tinkered with by Beamdog, at least significantly to a degree I noticed. The reason for the difference you perceive has probably to do with:

1) When you were a beginner, there was a lot more random exploring, you spent a lot more time wandering around taverns, looking around corners, speaking to everyone that didn't have a generic name like "Amnish Soldier" or "Commoner". That gives a lot more time for random banters to occur. As veterans of the game, we tend to just go directly from quest to quest, because we know exactly who to speak to, where to go and what to kill, and as @Tresset mentioned, many dungeons block banters, so it's really the intervals where the banters happen.

2) You may have got the impression that there were a lot of random interjections from early-Chapter 2, when you get bombarded with NPC quests and romance dialogues, especially if you have multiple compatible romance options. These give the impression of a very vocal party, but they are not really inter-party banters.

JuliusBorisov

Looking at a thread title, I was sure it was about the recent forum activity.

Bejogo

Tresset said:

So, uhh, I think I figured out how the banter driving .2da works. In BG2:EE every 10 minutes there is a 10% chance of a random party member attempting to initiate a banter. If the random party member that was selected can find no valid banter partner the banter fails and you will have to wait another 10 minutes to get another chance. Sooo every 10 minutes there is a 10% chance of maybe a banter happening... Those are pretty slim odds...

Now that I think about it, aren't some banters also location-dependent? That makes some cases even more improbable.

I for one think the mod you suggest sounds terrific, and would definitely use it myself. As @Heindrich observed, veteran players tend to tear through the exploratory portions of the game, which is when most of these chats occur.

Schneidend

Sounds like you had one or more of the banter mods installed way back when.

Skatan

I agree. I believe the banters are too few and too far between. I love the way the NPC's come alive through their banter and would like more of it. I don't mod much though, so haven't tried any NPC mods etc.

Gallowglass

Skatan said:

I love the way the NPC's come alive through their banter and would like more of it.

Me too, but the practical problem is money: the voiced lines are a key element of bringing the characters to life, and recording professional voiceovers is an expensive stage of the development process.

I think we all agree that voice talents like David Warner (voice of Irenicus) added significantly to the excellence of BG2, but he's a well-known actor with a successful career. I'm not sure what guys like him charge for their work these days, but I'm darn sure he doesn't come cheap.

Skatan

@gallowglass: I think the way they made it, having voice actors speak the first few lines and then we have to read the rest is good enough and should be fairly cheap as well. I don't need more spoken material, I would make due with more written banter.

Arunsun

Dennaton in BP2 as well as Baeloth are also masterpieces of work. I must say I always shiver when I hear the "Come one, come all, to the greatest show this side of the Astral plane."

Bejogo

Gallowglass said:

I think we all agree that voice talents like David Warner (voice of Irenicus) added significantly to the excellence of BG2

Ah, David Warner. The man to whom commas and full stops were just more enemies to be crushed.

Gallowglass

Skatan said:

@gallowglass: I think the way they made it, having voice actors speak the first few lines and then we have to read the rest is good enough and should be fairly cheap as well. I don't need more spoken material, I would make due with more written banter.

Yes, I agree that voicing just the initial sentence or two of a speech is generally enough to set the tone and bring the character to life, but (from various comments made by devs) I understand that even this partial-voicing style can cost a surprising amount of money - professional actors are expensive, recording studio time is expensive, etc.

Skatan

You are probably right, I know nothing about that sort of thing. Then I restate my opinion and say that I would have enjoyed purely written material, even without the first line being spoken I mean, when Jan tries to steal Boo from Minsc, I just laugh out loud. It's so amazing to see all of these (crazy) characters come to life through their interactions.

Bejogo

I personally find the new dialogues between the Enhanced Edition NPCs and the old Bioware NPCs a little jarring, precisely because they don't have those initial few lines voiced. Perhaps it's different for those who are used to playing NPC mods, which by and large aren't voiced, but I'm not.

It's not by any means a deal-breaker; I think the new writing is terrific and very true to the spirit of the original characters. Similarly, I'm not suggesting that they should or could have done it differently, this is just my £0.01346 on the subject