Is there a way to keep both Minsc and Edwin?
daerragh1
Member Posts: 8
I remember that it was possible in BGEE, is it possible in BGEESoD?
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If anyone has found a way, I would like to know aswell.... I like them bickering, no judging
Anyway, as soon as you find them, recruit both, then kill Dynaheir* and remove her from your party. As soon as you stumble upon Edwin, tell him to join your cause. Mincs will not mind.
*Just a quick additional note, I found that if you kill her in the inn immediately after joining, she will appear in the crowd when you are leaving the city, subsequently she is also present in the camp, therefore you can recruit her later if you change your mind.
I would love to have both Minsc and Edwin in a single playthrough. They are my favorite personalities in the BG series (for different reasons obviously). And I am actually holding off playing SoD untill I find a solution for that problem. And I still have not.
I did this in previous version of the game, therefore it might not work for the current one as you pointed out.
Basically micromanaged never letting them stand close together. So any pause in walking/fighting/action, positioned them on different sides of the room or different areas if possible (when an NPC is out scouting for traps and everybody else standing around and waiting) ect.
Was forced to do this because I was in the Underdark and needed them both.
Only the once though, once bitten, twice shy.
Edwin is far more valuable than Minsc, and I think I read that Edwin is always killed if they fight?
And on that run, both got through TOB to the end.
Now thinking about it, that must have been almost my first ever run through BG2/TOB as it was very important, as far as I was concerned at the time, to bring through the BG NPC's for the whole story.
+ actions having consequences is always nice.
Frankly, killing a character is a pretty chaotic evil thing to do, in the first place. Letting them die on purpose, also chaotic evil. Sealing them in stone via the scroll "flesh to stone", chaotic evil. Unless you're literally going to be THAT GUY who actually is Chaotic Evil, then you have no reason to be wantonly killing your party in the first place. Actions need to have consequences in context of the story (which they do), not in context of the player being a dickhead (and thereby messing with the story).
Bg2 didn't have an import feature for choices made in BG1. I don't think any game had that back then. It is a fairly new feature. Hence why things were handled that way. You can't really blame a game that is almost 20 years old for not having features that are fairly new now.
But what I really need is a happypatch that works on SoD too, so I can play with the personalities I want to have around. And not for powergaming (since they are both quite good) but simply the fact these two are my all time favorites.
BG2 had continuity issues with characters, but as the developers of SOD said themselves, there is "a year" between the original games and we don't know anything that happened during that time.
So although continuity breaking to some extent, it was reasonable and it was very possible to RP reasons for original characters to be missing, unknown, forgetful, dead, ressurected.
SOD has removed that year.
And have to say, that there is a certain arrogance of the developers to insist that certain NPC's who have now been being played with for nearly 20 years, (and the huge wealth of mods ect.), have to be ignored.
It's railroading for no other reason than they wanted to.
However, you bring up another solid point. Is it even possible, from a technical standpoint, to really kill characters? The Infinity Engine is still what the EE versions of the game are based on. Is it feasible to have this as a feature? We don't know at this point. If it is a possible feature, the devs would have to implement, because modders do NOT have access to the engine's source code.
I knew he was jealous of Minsc!
The begining of BGII wrote the end of SoD years ago. It's unreasonable to expect that there would be anything BUTa railroad from SoD when the end had already been written by BGII's begining.
Just spawning dead characters like that is bad writing for an rpg. It removes consequences from your choices. Might as well just be a movie.
But you can't just make characters immortal and remove choice from an rpg, due to a sequel. Just spawning a dead character over and over is arguably the biggest case of hand-holding in an rpg I have ever seen. It is like the writer is just fixing your mistakes as you make them, because the story didn't take deaths into account at all. It pretty much removes any say the player has in the story. Bad move in an rpg. the player should be firmly planted in the driver's seat in an rpg, and not be a passenger. Especially in a follow up to an rpg known for its freedom.
in my personal view thats was the best thing sod could do as now you don't feel forced to use the canon party anymore unless you want to.
sod had to end a certain way using the " it had no import' argument does not change this.
Half-Life allowed me to kill Barney... every time I saw him... yet he still appeared in Blue Shift.
This is hardly a new issue for video games. How many characters do we have that we would have to create alternate lines for? Khalid, Minsc, Jaheira, Dynaheir, Safana, Coran, Xzar, Montaron, Edwin, Imoen, Ajantis... am I missing anyone?
Of those characters, several have a huge part (Jaheira, Khalid, Minsc, Dynaheir, Edwin, Imoen). Asking the developers for your choices to carry over means creating an entirely new game for some of them. After all, what if I chunked Imoen? Now the entire plot line of BG2 is screwed.
And as @Dee mentioned in another thread: That means the developers would have to essentially create an alternate line for each of the six major characters. Not only that, but some of them are not independent choices. There would have to be different dialogue completely for the following scenarios:
1) Jaheira alive, Khalid dead
2) Khalid alive, Jaheira dead
3) Khalid and Jaheira alive
4) Minsc alive, Dynaheir dead
5) Dynaheir alive, Minsc dead
6) Minsc and Dynaheir alive
7) Edwin alive
8) Edwin dead
9) Imoen alive
10) Imoen dead
Choices 1-3 result in a massive revision of character interactions. Choices 4-8 result in a massive entangled mess of characters interactions that must all be revised and rewritten. Choices 9 and 10 essentially result in two different games.
I understand the idea of wanting complete continuity, but as a whole, I think the request over multiple games is a pretty demanding one. As with any game in any sequel, there are assumptions that are made in order for it to work.
After all, when Half-Life 2 came out, nobody said, "How is that possible? I made the wrong choice at the end of Half-Life, so Gordon Freeman shouldn't be alive."
The best thing SoD could have done is to use characters that aren't in BG2. Simple as that. That would have created no problems at all. Could just have had the "canon party" show up near the end and travel off into the sunset with you.
Nobody is asking Beamdog to add an import. The issue is that the game just respawns dead NPCs and stuffs them infront of you over and over again to force you to use them, or whatever. Beamdog is basically saying "You are playing an rpg wrong. Let's fix it for you". The game was linear to begin with, but this stuff takes it to a whole different level. Why even bother to give the characters hitpoint at all? They are clearly supposed to be immortal in SoD.
Live with it