Why shouldn't there be exclusive quests for romancable NPC's? Surely that adds to the longevity of the game? Want to see "that quest", need to play again with those NPC. It's an RPG, play it like one and role play being "in love" with NPC X,Y or Z.
Not every playthrough should contain everything, BG1/2 got this aspect spot on IMO. I've never played the Jaheira quest all through, can't stand her for long enough to do so. But that's fine, my choice. And XP, there is plenty on offer.
One thing though that did get tiresome with SOD (and to an extent went in that direction with the new EE NPC), is the exclusive items for particular NPC. It's not much fun keep finding equipment for "Goblin" when you don't have a goblin in party. Kind of felt a bit unrewarding. And Neera's gem bag? To attach such a useful item to a joinable NPC was really unecessary.
For the sake of argument, let's pretend we were making a D&D game of some kind.
What would be your top-three list of things you absolutely, positively would need to see present in that game -- whether it be in the story or the feature list?
I'm a bit late to the discussion, but my 3 would be:
1/ good, engaging story. Have a few twists and turns and make the world reactive to your actions. I prefer stories that have a bit of struggle to them; make me work for my first magical equipment rather than spamming me with too many options too early.
2/ a party of 6 or so. Make the party meaningful in both combat tactics and non-combat situations. Tactical combat that requires thought is pretty key; I get bored and unattached with gameplay that basically just needs you to level and equip your party and let them go. Similarly, have options for other party members to participate in conversations and have their personalities apparent in their optional responses (like an improved version of the storm of zehir conversation ui) Also give me options for my party members; the more the merrier for replay options, and options that cover party roles for different alignments (both law vs chaos and good vs evil)
3/ randomness. Randomize item locations, equipment on named enemies and have them use it etc. Make sure each play through is a little different. I find myself too tempted to build a character for specific equipment (e.g. a bg1 fighter specialising in longswords), where the randomness of IWD had me making characters for a role play concept and helped with immersion.
More importantly, I don't see what any of this has to do with romance in video games.
The reason it is there is in my post. I even quoted it.
As for the rest of your argument, I disagree to your assertion that the phrase is wrongly used. When you justify intolerance, hate, totalitarianism and worse in order to achieve your vision of a tolerant, loving, free society, the ends justifies the means. I did not want to bring it up directly because it is really skating far too close to the real world than I'd like.
Whether people consciously acknowledge it, I believe a large issue with video game romances is one of scope. When a protagonist is constantly moving from one story-driven obstacle to the next, it feels out of place for the audience to (often abruptly) shift their focus to an intimate interaction unrelated to the larger story.
Too often I see video games developers fall into the "we can fit it all in and do it right" trap. This leads to a model where event-driven storytelling must include (or exist alongside) relationship-driven stories. These games fail because they're not trying to make one game (or tell one story) so much as they are many. Content gets cut or becomes shallow and no one is happy.
Let's take a look at storytelling done right with a game like The Last of Us. The Last of Us succeeds in maintaining narrative focus in that the story is about the relationship between Joel and Ellie. The infection is secondary to this, serving as the impetus and vehicle which propels it (and thus the audience's interaction with it) in any given direction.
Conversely, fantasy (and other event-driven) games typically attempt to focus on how important, unique, or messianic the protagonist is. Only the protagonist has the potential to change the outcome, and they need to have a choice in how they do so. It places the developer in a precarious, but manageable position. What makes it unmanageable is the aforementioned need for inclusion of superfluous story elements that deviate from the scope of the event-driven narrative. Oftentimes, player romance options become offenders.
Now that's not to say that you can't have romance in an event-driven story, but it's about how you execute it to support your story, rather than draw attention away from it. The most seamless way to do this is to tie the romance in with the event(s) you are focusing on, giving it a deserved place. Since it was already mentioned, Casablanca is a serviceable example of this. Rick's romance with Ilsa is ultimately what drives him to make the decision he does regarding the letters of transit. Without it, the story isn't the same.
Similar to film, video games can only include so much content. This means your storytelling has to be tight in order to fit within those limitations. "Relationship options" only matter so far as their story-relevance and execution. In other words: they need to remain within scope.
Whether people consciously acknowledge it, I believe a large issue with video game romances is one of scope. When a protagonist is constantly moving from one story-driven obstacle to the next, it feels out of place for the audience to (often abruptly) shift their focus to an intimate interaction unrelated to the larger story.
Too often I see video games developers fall into the "we can fit it all in and do it right" trap. This leads to a model where event-driven storytelling must include (or exist alongside) relationship-driven stories. These games fail because they're not trying to make one game (or tell one story) so much as they are many. Content gets cut or becomes shallow and no one is happy.
Let's take a look at storytelling done right with a game like The Last of Us. The Last of Us succeeds in maintaining narrative focus in that the story is about the relationship between Joel and Ellie. The infection is secondary to this, serving as the impetus and vehicle which propels it (and thus the audience's interaction with it) in any given direction.
Conversely, fantasy (and other event-driven) games typically attempt to focus on how important, unique, or messianic the protagonist is. Only the protagonist has the potential to change the outcome, and they need to have a choice in how they do so. It places the developer in a precarious, but manageable position. What makes it unmanageable is the aforementioned need for inclusion of superfluous story elements that deviate from the scope of the event-driven narrative. Oftentimes, player romance options become offenders.
Now that's not to say that you can't have romance in an event-driven story, but it's about how you execute it to support your story, rather than draw attention away from it. The most seamless way to do this is to tie the romance in with the event(s) you are focusing on, giving it a deserved place. Since it was already mentioned, Casablanca is a serviceable example of this. Rick's romance with Ilsa is ultimately what drives him to make the decision he does regarding the letters of transit. Without it, the story isn't the same.
Similar to film, video games can only include so much content. This means your storytelling has to be tight in order to fit within those limitations. "Relationship options" only matter so far as their story-relevance and execution. In other words: they need to remain within scope
.
Any example of such romances stealing away attention from the main story in Bioware-style games? (because this is what we discussing here, right?) That future potential game we are taking about will contain companions (this is why the topic was started). And companions have some kind of relations with protagonist anyway - despite presence or absence of romance. This is what we WILL have at any rate - companions and dialogs with them. All romance does in BW-style games is adding a couple more dialogs\cut-scenes (in case of BeamDog project that should be dialogs-only). How can it distract from the main plot?
Hmmm...thread seems to have turned in to a Romance/no-romance discussion thread... Can we agree that both sides have made their points for @David_Gaider to peruse and consider and move back toward folks posting their 'list' of what they'd like to see/not like to see in the future offerings from Beamdog?
For the sake of argument, let's pretend we were making a D&D game of some kind.
What would be your top-three list of things you absolutely, positively would need to see present in that game -- whether it be in the story or the feature list?
Iam really late for the party. First, let me praise your work, and how I admire the commitment to create something with a soul. Some times I read people saying, its fantasy, you believe in orcs and trolls and don't accept X. Well its exactly here that the core of good story development resides, understand what brakes imersion, what is coherent, even in a fantasy world.
The priorities are: Story, characters, races, make you care about the world. AI Dialogues yes, AI auto combats No. Isometric is important but Dragon Age "wasnt" and it worked, Pausable combat seems like a must though.
I have seen some people leaving, hope BD is doing fine because there some talented people there.
1. The game should be isometric, real time with pause and party based. I quess there are numbers of things in that phrase, but basicly thats what I love about these games and the games that continued baldur's gate tradition. Like Dragon age orgins or Obsidian's Pillars of eternity for instance. That being said, I'm not against some modern camera options ofcourse, but there better be isometric battlefield camera if the game is party based.
2. Good, but faithfull adaptation of classical D&D ruleset. Please do not "dumb it down".
3. Its kind of difficult to name one story feauture, but consistent and believable gameworld is quite high on my list. For example the level design: I just don't get Bethesda's fallout universe at all.
There has been a massive nuclear war hundreds of years ago and yet the world is still in same shape more or less. Even if people have orginized a society which is living in a town which has electricity and many basic comforts, they somehow still live in dirty & rotten houses and sleep in dirty beds. Nobody has cleaned the old cans or broken computers or even put some fresh paint on indoors or fixed the indoor plumbing. It just doesn't make any sense!
Or how can the food items from pre-war era be still useable? Even how these societies sustain themselves often just doesn't make any sense. Shouldn't there be farms surrounding towns for instance?
17 pages, does anyone have an overview of who suggested what?
I fully trust that @David_Gaider has memorized every single suggestion and is doing his damnest to make every last one come true. Yes, even the contradictive ones.
17 pages, does anyone have an overview of who suggested what?
We've had a few compilations of the comments made in the thread, sorted into various "types". I'm not sure we would ever release that publicly, however. What use would it be?
Yeah definitely. He will not rest untill every suggestion in this thread has been fullfilled.
It's very interesting information, to be sure, though I don't find much of it surprising. The suggestions tend to fall into what I would consider the hardcore spectrum of fandom, which is -- more or less -- Beamdog's demographic.
Hopefully no-one thinks we're looking at this as a crowd-sourced list of features for a future game, however. That would be unfortunate, if so.
If someone asks the crowd to make a list for you at least it should be somehow a bit indexed.
I guess the list would give you a decent reflection on which features are to the liking of people, but as you say they probably will not transverse much from the base game but are rather a reiteration of how good the base games already were.
I don't know if that has been already mentioned, but: spells being used to solve quests. There are only a few instances of that in BG (detect evil, charm), but frankly, for a game this size and with so many spells, it is still very little. Not every quest should have a "magical solution", of course, but it'd be nice if here and then you could use a spell in a way that doesn't involve combat.
I remember on my unfinished playthrough of Mysteries of Westgate (NWN2) I had Charm person on my Bard and during a dialogue while I was sneaking into a manor a servant stopped me and I had a normal answer, I think a Bluff and Intimidate Answer, and then it had [Charm Person] and I was like WHAT THAT'S RADICAL! I *think* it's the only time I've seen a spell check in a dialogue box before.
2) Find a way to make it so the player can play their way (I.e. Have actual advantages to being an evil bastard, not feel compelled to make certain choices because that's how you get the best loot, start a turf war then sit back and enjoy the mayhem, victory through subversive politics, etc.)
3. Story/audio > graphics. I am all for lush ISO-backgrounds, but the thing I love about the BG saga (and the original Star Wars trilogy) is that it utilizes the viewers imagination to fill in a lot of the gaps. That's how that intangible attachment is made. I would love to see the game be playable on as wide a range of systems as possible. Accessability will allow for more players, more money, more stories.
I don't know if that has been already mentioned, but: spells being used to solve quests. There are only a few instances of that in BG (detect evil, charm), but frankly, for a game this size and with so many spells, it is still very little. Not every quest should have a "magical solution", of course, but it'd be nice if here and then you could use a spell in a way that doesn't involve combat.
I remember on my unfinished playthrough of Mysteries of Westgate (NWN2) I had Charm person on my Bard and during a dialogue while I was sneaking into a manor a servant stopped me and I had a normal answer, I think a Bluff and Intimidate Answer, and then it had [Charm Person] and I was like WHAT THAT'S RADICAL! I *think* it's the only time I've seen a spell check in a dialogue box before.
So much this. There is no way to make magic less magical than to make it combat only.
What's the obligatory amount of time to worship at David Gaider's feet before replying? Five minutes should be good, yes? I'll be back when I'm done...
Okay, with that out of the way, my list looks more or less like many others here:
1. Companions!! People I can love, hate, kill, save, spend hours talking to around the campfire and otherwise make a part of my in-game life. Gotta recruit them all (and keep them from killing each other, somehow).
2. Lore. History. Mythology. World-building. I CRAVE BACKGROUND.
3. And this may be a given, but please, please, please let me choose my PC's gender, race and general physical appearance. Not being able to do this turns me off an RPG immediately - especially one based on my beloved D&D.
As for the specific questions on companions, at least as far as the romanceable ones go, yes, there is one single, very common element which I could definitely do without, but it's never going to go away, ever - because that element is sex. Having sex with your love interest is more or less mandatory the vast majority of the time; often it's treated as the relationship's end game. I, however, am asexual (and slightly sex repulsed), so that gets... old. Fast. But I realize I make up about 1% of the population and no one is ever going to cater to my tastes (except whoever wrote Josephine in Inquisition, that person is awesome), so I'm cool with it.
Not mandatory for sure, but I would really like a soft limit to max number of party members.
I always found quite annoying the "sorry 7th guy, you mess the balance of the party, please go away" thing. It hurts the suspension of disbelief. I would better like a "morale" system (not necessarily quantifiable by the player) like mount&blade, where you can virtually stack all the companions, but due to each of them disliking more people than they like and the eventual arising of discontent, you have a reasonable set maximum in the long run. A part being more sensible it would be also helpful for adding temporary or event related carachters (rotating quest carachters? A bunch of guys you met before come to help at the last moment in the big fight? You finally got to the very reason of your quest but you didn't keep in the party the guy with the geas? ). The problem is the timing in the introduction of new companions as some time is required for the carachters to asses the surrounding personalities, preventing out of scale parties. Probably it's needed a more step-by step introduction of little groups of conflicting companions (BG1) instead of the big hub route (BG2).
I would recommend that certain character builds not be suddenly ineffective in major/boss fights. Major enemies who are arbitrarily immune to magic/precision damage/whatever when the game has otherwise encouraged you to build your character around such things is pretty frustrating.
Comments
Why shouldn't there be exclusive quests for romancable NPC's?
Surely that adds to the longevity of the game?
Want to see "that quest", need to play again with those NPC.
It's an RPG, play it like one and role play being "in love" with NPC X,Y or Z.
Not every playthrough should contain everything, BG1/2 got this aspect spot on IMO.
I've never played the Jaheira quest all through, can't stand her for long enough to do so. But that's fine, my choice.
And XP, there is plenty on offer.
One thing though that did get tiresome with SOD (and to an extent went in that direction with the new EE NPC), is the exclusive items for particular NPC.
It's not much fun keep finding equipment for "Goblin" when you don't have a goblin in party.
Kind of felt a bit unrewarding.
And Neera's gem bag?
To attach such a useful item to a joinable NPC was really unecessary.
1/ good, engaging story. Have a few twists and turns and make the world reactive to your actions. I prefer stories that have a bit of struggle to them; make me work for my first magical equipment rather than spamming me with too many options too early.
2/ a party of 6 or so. Make the party meaningful in both combat tactics and non-combat situations. Tactical combat that requires thought is pretty key; I get bored and unattached with gameplay that basically just needs you to level and equip your party and let them go. Similarly, have options for other party members to participate in conversations and have their personalities apparent in their optional responses (like an improved version of the storm of zehir conversation ui)
Also give me options for my party members; the more the merrier for replay options, and options that cover party roles for different alignments (both law vs chaos and good vs evil)
3/ randomness. Randomize item locations, equipment on named enemies and have them use it etc. Make sure each play through is a little different. I find myself too tempted to build a character for specific equipment (e.g. a bg1 fighter specialising in longswords), where the randomness of IWD had me making characters for a role play concept and helped with immersion.
As for the rest of your argument, I disagree to your assertion that the phrase is wrongly used. When you justify intolerance, hate, totalitarianism and worse in order to achieve your vision of a tolerant, loving, free society, the ends justifies the means. I did not want to bring it up directly because it is really skating far too close to the real world than I'd like.
Too often I see video games developers fall into the "we can fit it all in and do it right" trap. This leads to a model where event-driven storytelling must include (or exist alongside) relationship-driven stories. These games fail because they're not trying to make one game (or tell one story) so much as they are many. Content gets cut or becomes shallow and no one is happy.
Let's take a look at storytelling done right with a game like The Last of Us. The Last of Us succeeds in maintaining narrative focus in that the story is about the relationship between Joel and Ellie. The infection is secondary to this, serving as the impetus and vehicle which propels it (and thus the audience's interaction with it) in any given direction.
Conversely, fantasy (and other event-driven) games typically attempt to focus on how important, unique, or messianic the protagonist is. Only the protagonist has the potential to change the outcome, and they need to have a choice in how they do so. It places the developer in a precarious, but manageable position. What makes it unmanageable is the aforementioned need for inclusion of superfluous story elements that deviate from the scope of the event-driven narrative. Oftentimes, player romance options become offenders.
Now that's not to say that you can't have romance in an event-driven story, but it's about how you execute it to support your story, rather than draw attention away from it. The most seamless way to do this is to tie the romance in with the event(s) you are focusing on, giving it a deserved place. Since it was already mentioned, Casablanca is a serviceable example of this. Rick's romance with Ilsa is ultimately what drives him to make the decision he does regarding the letters of transit. Without it, the story isn't the same.
Similar to film, video games can only include so much content. This means your storytelling has to be tight in order to fit within those limitations. "Relationship options" only matter so far as their story-relevance and execution. In other words: they need to remain within scope.
That future potential game we are taking about will contain companions (this is why the topic was started). And companions have some kind of relations with protagonist anyway - despite presence or absence of romance. This is what we WILL have at any rate - companions and dialogs with them.
All romance does in BW-style games is adding a couple more dialogs\cut-scenes (in case of BeamDog project that should be dialogs-only).
How can it distract from the main plot?
If the participants would like to continue discussing games with/without romances, you can do it in a new thread.
First, let me praise your work, and how I admire the commitment to create something with a soul. Some times I read people saying, its fantasy, you believe in orcs and trolls and don't accept X. Well its exactly here that the core of good story development resides, understand what brakes imersion, what is coherent, even in a fantasy world.
The priorities are:
Story, characters, races, make you care about the world.
AI Dialogues yes, AI auto combats No.
Isometric is important but Dragon Age "wasnt" and it worked, Pausable combat seems like a must though.
I have seen some people leaving, hope BD is doing fine because there some talented people there.
2. Good, but faithfull adaptation of classical D&D ruleset. Please do not "dumb it down".
3. Its kind of difficult to name one story feauture, but consistent and believable gameworld is quite high on my list. For example the level design: I just don't get Bethesda's fallout universe at all.
There has been a massive nuclear war hundreds of years ago and yet the world is still in same shape more or less. Even if people have orginized a society which is living in a town which has electricity and many basic comforts, they somehow still live in dirty & rotten houses and sleep in dirty beds. Nobody has cleaned the old cans or broken computers or even put some fresh paint on indoors or fixed the indoor plumbing. It just doesn't make any sense!
Or how can the food items from pre-war era be still useable? Even how these societies sustain themselves often just doesn't make any sense. Shouldn't there be farms surrounding towns for instance?
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/822599/#Comment_822599
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/789657/#Comment_789657
...No pressure, David.
Hopefully no-one thinks we're looking at this as a crowd-sourced list of features for a future game, however. That would be unfortunate, if so.
I guess the list would give you a decent reflection on which features are to the liking of people, but as you say they probably will not transverse much from the base game but are rather a reiteration of how good the base games already were.
1) Replayabilty (I don't care if it's not a word)
2) Find a way to make it so the player can play their way (I.e. Have actual advantages to being an evil bastard, not feel compelled to make certain choices because that's how you get the best loot, start a turf war then sit back and enjoy the mayhem, victory through subversive politics, etc.)
3. Story/audio > graphics. I am all for lush ISO-backgrounds, but the thing I love about the BG saga (and the original Star Wars trilogy) is that it utilizes the viewers imagination to fill in a lot of the gaps. That's how that intangible attachment is made. I would love to see the game be playable on as wide a range of systems as possible. Accessability will allow for more players, more money, more stories.
Okay, with that out of the way, my list looks more or less like many others here:
1. Companions!! People I can love, hate, kill, save, spend hours talking to around the campfire and otherwise make a part of my in-game life. Gotta recruit them all (and keep them from killing each other, somehow).
2. Lore. History. Mythology. World-building. I CRAVE BACKGROUND.
3. And this may be a given, but please, please, please let me choose my PC's gender, race and general physical appearance. Not being able to do this turns me off an RPG immediately - especially one based on my beloved D&D.
As for the specific questions on companions, at least as far as the romanceable ones go, yes, there is one single, very common element which I could definitely do without, but it's never going to go away, ever - because that element is sex. Having sex with your love interest is more or less mandatory the vast majority of the time; often it's treated as the relationship's end game. I, however, am asexual (and slightly sex repulsed), so that gets... old. Fast. But I realize I make up about 1% of the population and no one is ever going to cater to my tastes (except whoever wrote Josephine in Inquisition, that person is awesome), so I'm cool with it.
I always found quite annoying the "sorry 7th guy, you mess the balance of the party, please go away" thing. It hurts the suspension of disbelief. I would better like a "morale" system (not necessarily quantifiable by the player) like mount&blade, where you can virtually stack all the companions, but due to each of them disliking more people than they like and the eventual arising of discontent, you have a reasonable set maximum in the long run. A part being more sensible it would be also helpful for adding temporary or event related carachters (rotating quest carachters? A bunch of guys you met before come to help at the last moment in the big fight? You finally got to the very reason of your quest but you didn't keep in the party the guy with the geas?
The problem is the timing in the introduction of new companions as some time is required for the carachters to asses the surrounding personalities, preventing out of scale parties. Probably it's needed a more step-by step introduction of little groups of conflicting companions (BG1) instead of the big hub route (BG2).