How is romance dialogue triggered?

broshimo

Hi everyone, first time posting here after using the forums a lot through the power of google

I've played a lot of BG1EE, but this is my first time playing BG2. Is romance triggered randomly or is it combination of in-game time plus some random factor? I didn't really pay much attention to Neera's romance in BG1EE, but Aerie is completely tactless when chirping on her backstory right at the end of unrelated quests:

Case 1:

Oh we finally killed the last remaining despicable slaver? Let me tell you about my glorious winged elf race:

Case 2:

Thank god we're done with curing that bitch our fellow companion Jaheira's curse, let me tell you how much I miss my dear Uncle Quayle:

These have given me a good chuckle, but this was the icing on the cake:

immensely jealous of the attention I gave to Jaheira, Aerie "awakens" with cries that she's also having a nightmare:

sarevok57

there are 2 factors that I know of that triggers the romances

#1 - from what I know romances are on a timer, usually about 30 real life minutes ( although jaheira's might be an hour? ) anyway, you can use some handy dandy console cheats to "speed up" in game time if you want to hurry romances up if need be

#2 - going into certain areas will also trigger romance dialogues, like entering aladon's lair, finishing the avatar quest in the eye seeing eye dungeon and things like that

#3 - the odd time when you go to rest ( depending on what romance talk you are on ) will also trigger a romance dialogue as well, and sometimes this will be mandatory for the romance to continue

but I would say about 70% of the time you romances are going to continue from real game time, and the funny thing is, even if you pause the game for an hour and un pause it, it will trigger a romance dialogue

I remember one time I was romancing jaheira and I was on the asylum island, and I paused the game right after one of her romance talks, I came back 2 or so hours later, un paused the game, and she went right into her next romance talk, good stuff

PaulaMigrate

What is described in the OP is a general behaviour of NPC banters and not restricted to love talks.
It goes like this
- some timer has expired, like @sarevok57 has described above
- some talk, banter, love talk etc would be due
BUT
- the game checks that you are not in a dungeon, not in a battle and that no enemies are nearby - in order not to interupt the proceedings with inadequate talk interupting it.
THEN
- battle is over or you come out of the dungeon, etc and immediately all the supressed talks fire off.
- you probably saw that when coming out of a large dungeon, everybody had something to say (and most of it was random talk),

There are of course banters that trigger from certain game events and are related to the story, but that's another story.

Look at just about any NPC script and you will find these:

!See([ENEMY])
See(Player1)
!StateCheck(Player1,CD_STATE_NOTVALID)
CombatCounter(0)
!AreaType(DUNGEON)

In the code above a ! means *Not* e.g. !AreaType(DUNGEON) means *not in a dungeon area*.

UnderstandMouseMagic

When you are about to fight Firkrag.

Every bloody time.

Must be something to do with the adrenaline flowing or more likely a last ditch attempt to "sow your seed" before meeting untimely death.

Not the only thing Anomen has in common with a pot plant. It explains his obsession with Crimson Rhodelias.

Artona

I can't recall which NPC that was, but once I was approached with romance talk in Spellhold.
While fighting SCS Irenicus.
With party precisely positioned so fallen planetar would chase Mordenkainen Sword instead of them. Ah, that was one of my saltiest reloads.

tbone1

UnderstandMouseMagic said:

When you are about to fight Firkrag.

Every bloody time.

Aerie and Jaheira as well, I think. It must be "not a dungeon", for some reason.

broshimo

@PaulaMigrate @sarevok57

Good to know! I pause the game and wander off to do other tasks irl all the time, so no wonder the romance dialogues get triggered often. The third set of pictures actually triggered three total banters, the one not shown was from Yoshimo.

It initially felt pretty rushed because I was getting a ton of romance banter within 4 game days, though I've read that the increased banter is one of the prime differences between BG1 and BG2. I didn't expect it to be at this level, but now I know my heavy usage of the Pause features triggers banters.