Spoilers: soft spoken- lack of Hate/Violent absolute Speech options

Beowulf

https://imgpile.com/image/nHOIg
https://imgpile.com/image/nHkMc
https://imgpile.com/image/nH0AN
https://imgpile.com/image/nHWeW
https://imgpile.com/image/nHFCP
https://imgpile.com/image/nHQV1
https://imgpile.com/image/nHg6L


You are in some kind of Skinner rehab Western mindset. This is also a problem with the Beamdog creators who brought pop culture and current trendy world view into my raging bloody war game where you CLEAR dungeons of other SENTIENT creatures. You do not reason with orcs you kill them just like the elf god wants to kill the Orc God Paladins are taniable icons of good who kill thinking dragons and humanoids as thier ever lawful and goody god tries to kill the evil gods. Go back to your inclusive schools and work places and coexist be respectful and kind. But leave me alone in my fantasy world to kill creatures I deem naughty in my sight only worthy of blasting or blading

Why is there a rather weak reply to the Shanagans in the cave - that is hardly blood thirsty and angry? Why is the face off with the giant Orog conciliatory and at worse just saying you will cut my head off- none of them seemed tough. Why is there no evil option to plant a twisted seed in the Druid grove? Why am I only able to seem soorry to a dragon spirit all sad about her dead? There was one option that was a bit gruff but hardly angry

I talk to the assamir in the end and can only say something cynical I can't even curse her and the big bad devil. Maybe I just want to say
"Swallow this Three feet of cold enchanted steel and then we can talk of who controls and moral compromises!" (I just composed better dialogue option in twenty seconds)

The chat choices are all mushy and too kind.
For the trail and later to Corwin and in fact when they catch u with dead Skie you have no choices of saying cruel blackguard hate. You can in all those circumstances say "nothing I say can change your mind." Which is hardly hateful and defiant as an changed Bezerker or blackguard or any rebel evil aligned character would say.

I could go on and sight more chat options but overall it was too vanilla and kind

mf2112

WoW?

Philhelm

@Beowulf It's okay to indiscriminately kill sentient beings, you just can't say offensive things while doing it. That would just be too evil and non-PC (but I repeat myself).

rapsam2003

/10

Beowulf

It was perhaps PC as you think Philhelm... but it seemed just a lack of raging vision - or perhaps a concious choice to soften the dialogue on the writers' parts- my point is it is about blood and anger if you are rping like that. I mean you do not get Conan in a trail or facing a devil and sayin. "I say nothing to you you are closeminded." (or whatever the lame weak bland most negative comment was) Or, "You were doing wrong and evil all along just follow through on it Shining Lady."

No Conan would speak to the Devil and say,

"I do not parley with Hellish scum. This Lady can die as well as you but your foolish philosophy talk will soon be made wiser when I cut your head off and you can stream all the gurgles you want to out your throat Devil."

How cool would it have been to do A Trrion Linaster on trail rant. But nooo all I get in response to the false accusers and later Corwin is some lame- forgot the exact quote- "Whatever I say makes no difference to you. So I say nothing to you."

Instead you could have said,

"Yes I killed Skie, I slaughtered heaps of Flaming Fist when they turned against me falsely calling me a murderer of Duke Elton. And if I were free I'd reave through this city and slay the lot of you and loot the bloody gold off your corpses too!"

And to Corwin you could say,

"You were but a pawn in my party, I killed her in cold blood and I will see your hot death flowing at my feet from this good sword now."

I should try and replay it- so painful- just to take some screen shots of the weak dialogue. Even the most negative responses are rather more indifferent and aloof than hateful and evil. I just wrote two chat responses in 2 minutes that are strong and nasty unlike the bland most negative responses I had to choose from.

Also rapsam stop posting only a meme every time I post - that is childish and spamish of you. We all need to contribute to my amazing helpful constructive criticism so the next game is way cooler. I still am happy I bought the game but the last 15 minutes was rather weak.... well I liked the clearing and meet up with the 2 pairs and Imoen... but between the Devil and that ugghhhh

Beowulf

Ok I just replayed it to see if it was as poorly worded as I thought- there are a few chat options that are somewhat threatening and angry for someone desrepecting my Fighter - but still a bit soft in my view - the harshest negative comment is hardly angry.

"I am not going to argue with you captain- I will however kill you if you get in my way."
Ok that is the MOST nasty you can get to Corwin who before comes and does NOT help you when she sees you in jail after she has been in your party. Even a Lawful Evil Black guard would not say that he would say:

"I am not going to bandy guilt and innocence with you Captain - I will however execute you for your treachery against me as repayment."

That is much better - of course a raving Chaotic and Evil Character is just going to say something hateful and insane..... not oh please move or get in my way and I will poke you... poor chat choices for the final curtain on that Character.

https://imgpile.com/image/nHOIg
https://imgpile.com/image/nHkMc
https://imgpile.com/image/nH0AN
https://imgpile.com/image/nHWeW
https://imgpile.com/image/nHFCP
https://imgpile.com/image/nHQV1
https://imgpile.com/image/nHg6L

"Blackguard or no her fate was sealed the first time she raised arms against me" ok ok I suppose that is threatening and sullen at least not really Dorn level hate in a CE sense though.

Anyway I am not going to type out all the chats. I guess it was just trying to limit memory and be conciese so you are not quite as full of bile as you like but still,

"I doubt there is anything to convince you of my innocence- your mind is made up" As the final chat option as the MOST negative rebellious hateful and angry - that is really a lame choice - I mean all you had to do was copy and paste a Motoraon hater quote or something. The trail chat choices were really bland and I could not RP a final defiant rant like,

"You can not put me to Death. I am the NEW LORD OF MURDER! Blubber your whining cries of judgement. I WILL CUT THESE CHAINS AND YOUR GUTS IN DUE TIME!" Blaaaahhhhhhhh! ... or something sullen and emo like that... anyway I am trying to give some constitutive criticism. Too many modernisms in the chats and not enough hate and bile filled vitriolic to reply with. Have a nice day. Overall thanks for the game Beamdawgs. I need to go Kill Amnish soldiers now in BG2. Everyone have a peaceful and positive evening.

mf2112

They probably had to tone things like that down due to a fairly large potential audience of teenagers. I can only imagine the outcry from some groups here in America if straight-up evil dialog options were included. Fortunately Beamdog has in no way stopped people from making mod packs.

Kitteh_On_A_Cloud

Nowadays everything has to be politically correct. Words first have to be sugar-coated and wrapped in soft cotton. Breaks immersion, highly irritating, and it makes real discussion and debate nigh impossible.

Kitteh_On_A_Cloud

@mf2112: Please. I played the original games when I was 14. The dialogue options had no negative impact on me whatsoever. Kids get pampered too much nowadays.

rorikon

You seem to have posted screenshots depicting events nearish the end of the game. They look rather spoilerific at a glance, so I avoided reading the actual dialogue. Not everyone has finished SoD yet, a warning or spoiler tags would have been nice.

Beowulf

Hmmm I guess you are right MF2112 I suppose very violent bloody language might have labeled them with an NC17 or however they rate games unsuitable for minors. I had all this pent up fat disenfrached unfulfilled male anger for Corwin after she rebuffed my advances and then later comes to visit me -not free me- and talk more trash and then all I could say in our very last meeting was bar my way and you will die. That is hardly vengeful sullen CE Rage like Tiax would say right before he slapped her silly.

mf2112

Kitteh_On_A_Cloud said:

@mf2112: Please. I played the original games when I was 14. The dialogue options had no negative impact on me whatsoever. Kids get pampered too much nowadays.

Sure, but those dialog options are not what the OP was suggesting by a long shot.

I agree @Beowulf that some of the "evil" options are rather weak sauce for evil role playing. I don't know if there are any current projects for modding them but it wouldn't surprise me at all.

Purudaya

Nowadays, a lot of folks seem to confuse political correctness with basic human decency. It's the same group of people who didn't like being told that calling someone "retarded" was unacceptable or that naming a football team after the color of a group's "red" skin is offensive. The idea that social mores and language should never change from what you see as ok is incredibly entitled, imo.

With regard to the actual game:

I'm doing an evil playthrough of SoD right now and have noticed no major deficiency of evil options. You know how many NPCs your evil charname has to say "good day" to in BG1?

This is another instance of confirmation bias. Players have decided that SoD is SJW or PC orwhatever and now they see it in every dialogue option and every line. I'd suggest playing through the originals and counting the number of times where you wish there could have been a darker/more evil dialogue option. I can tell you it's a lot...because I just did it.

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

Purudaya

JonSnowIsAlive said:

@Purudaya Why should SoD not try to raise itself above the deficiencies its parent game contains? In what way is saying: "something's bad, but BG did it that way, so let's not try to rise above it" constructive? The bhaalspawn saga is all about murder. Should you choose so, you could embrace that aspect and voluntarily or involuntarily terrorize each and every individual that surrouds you, just the way Sarevok did. Let's say I didn't like what Corwin says to me at SoD's end, why would it not be ok for me to respond:

Know that I will hurt you for this, Corwin. I will set this city ablaze and hunt down its puny Dukes, your father and, yes, your precious little Rohma. When the screams stop and the streets run red, I will stand atop their fallen corpses and you will know that I came for you. Do not mistake ME for anything else than what I am: my father was Murder and I its blade. You may run or even try to fight it, but yours is the life I seek and in the end I shall have it. Never forget this, for I vow it as surely as my heart is black and my blood runs red.

I am no writer at all, in fact I just popped this on the fly as I was writing, but surely dialogs in this vein could make the writing feel more profound than lines akin to "I don't like you Corwin".

I don't actually disagree with you on this - evil options have always been a weak spot for the BG series as a whole. My complaint was with people trying to single out SoD as if it was new in this regard or as if it was trying to insert some kind of PC agenda into the series. When I said that my evil PC has had to say "good day to you" to several NPCs in BGI, that didn't mean it was a good thing

SoD continues the tradition of the originals in that it leans towards good playthroughs. If it hadn't, it would stick out by comparison. This whole thing sounds like mod territory to me - I believe it's relatively easy to add new dialogue options as long as they lead to the same outcomes.

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

Ammar

There are certainly examples where a stronger, evil option would be appreciated.

The suggestions given above are all too long and indeed a bit over the top, not in the sense that I say sentences like that should not get published. But they do not really fit in the world of BG anymore. A simple "You and your family will pay for this" would suffice.

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

Purudaya

What I REALLY want is for Beamdog to make the game files as moddable as they made the interface with the recent patch. You can now completely replace the UI with a very minimal learning curve, but it's still a nightmare to add in a new sword or create a new NPC.

There have been several times throughout the series where I wished Charname could have said something (evil OR good) that simply wasn't available. Changing a dialogue option at the top level of a dialogue tree (changing only what you say, not how the enemy responds) should be easy, but it doesn't appear to be if current mods are any indication. I'm not a developer and from what I understand the infinity engine is a hardcoded nightmare, but I really hope Beamdog continues their work on making these areas more accessible. I would love to be able to download a roleplaying pack that lets you add modular "personality types" to the game - aloof, sociopathic, fanatical, demure, etc.

Are there any mods like this now?

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.