1) how are you supposed to know that you should go to Bodhi, if no one gives you the hint?
2) And also, having allied with the dark elves has no effect on what happens later in Suldanesselar? Can't you kill Elhan anyway?
?
Journal Entries! I'll put in journal entries to help show people what to do next. We had them already for the Viconia-House Jae'llat-Imrae quest, but I didn't have any entries after you summon the Demon.
If I put in a series of entries that go from Viconia acquiring the aid of the demon all the way to the very end it'll be really clear what you're supposed to do next. We should've done it already, I was just being lazy.
@Arthasil Okay thanks to you I went back and recoded it so that even if you leave mid-battle with the elves it still all works out. As long as you don't use cheats to teleport, that first part of chapter six will be unbreakable. I wrote up journal entries too which I'll put in there. So next release that'll be there.
Until then though you can make things a little weird if you fight the elves in Chapter 6 but leave before you beat Elhan and go get the Rhynn Lanthorn before he talks to you about it (so make sure you wipe out your Elven enemies before you leave).
The next release will still be a bit, since I'm only about half done with Bodhi NPC in SoA, and I want to get that to a good stopping place before she's released.
Can I ask for more information about Clara? Never really played any of the beamdog NPCs for some reason. Hexxat seems to be the least liked of the BG2 new characters, and although I don't really know much about why I'm wondering if Clara is much different in personality?
Can I ask for more information about Clara? Never really played any of the beamdog NPCs for some reason. Hexxat seems to be the least liked of the BG2 new characters, and although I don't really know much about why I'm wondering if Clara is much different in personality?
Clara did not really have one. she was just a thrall for hexxat that gets killed.
I can't even romance him a dude (Haer I mean lol) ;_; Dorn damn you my male Bhaalspawn loves you but he hates you too.
Haha. That's because we didn't write the HD romance mod (though we appreciate it for what it is, in all its bodice-ripping glory).
Update: I now have a fully working and tested SoA Bodhi NPC (including the scene and dialogue where she can join you in Chapter 6). Still a lot of stuff to add, but it's a good start. You only have the option of accepting her surrender if you worked for her in chapter 3 though.
xD
Damn you guys might get me to actually listen to Bodhi instead of instantly stabbing her. *toasts*
Can I ask for more information about Clara? Never really played any of the beamdog NPCs for some reason. Hexxat seems to be the least liked of the BG2 new characters, and although I don't really know much about why I'm wondering if Clara is much different in personality?
As megamike15 said, Clara only has one line of her own in BG2:EE. We got a little more of her story from talking to Hexxat, and the other 98% we made up. So personality-wise Clara is very different from Hexxat.
Hexxat is a self-absorbed, demanding vampire who does nothing to please you and expects you to do whatever she asks. She's a basic thief.
Clara is a con-woman who's just trying to survive in a big, dangerous and hostile world. She's probably as self-serving as Hexxat, but she at least pretends to be interested in being helpful and pleasing others. She's a thief, but uses the Shadow-Dancer kit. Her stats and other abilities also improve over time as she banters other people.
Update: Writing and editing continues on existing projects. Bodhi fully works and is tested as a party member in SoA (and she's already in ToB), so we're now just adding in dialogues to make her fit into the Suldanessellar story. If you have her in your party and go to the Order of the Radiant Heart they'll attack you now too. I added in all the journal entries for the second Viconia in Ust Natha quest too (the Demon one).
Coding-wise I just finished a small expansion of the Windspear Hills Quest (making the order go hostile if you don't get Garren's help) and I also made it so if you fight the Order at any time the elite Noble Order of the Radiant Heart Knights that Bioware made come and help (since bioware put all this work into making this Noble Order Knights party, but 99% of players never see them). We have a few different quests or options for attacking the Order in this mod now, so figured they could use some extra defenders.
Without the mod if you anger the Order doing the Windspear Hills quest and don't ask for Garren Windspear's help the Order doesn't turn hostile at all, but if you wander around Amn there is a small chance that the afore-mentioned Noble Order of the Radiant Heart Knights appear and attack you. And at that point in the game they're really tough so likely they murder you.
Request: If Bodhi is in your party and you're attacked in the Radiant Heart HQ, add a dialog saying that the vampire (Bodhi) isn't welcome here so people know why they're being attacked. Preferably add a verbal warning with no aggro on the first time.
Request: If Bodhi is in your party and you're attacked in the Radiant Heart HQ, add a dialog saying that the vampire (Bodhi) isn't welcome here so people know why they're being attacked. Preferably add a verbal warning with no aggro on the first time.
I can definitely manage a line of dialogue (since there's already dialogue there when the Knights of the Most Noble Order of the Radiant Heart come), but there will be no warning shots.
I'm just going to put that in the first thread post and the read-me: If you get Bodhi (and you have to basically sacrifice Imoen to do it) all of the good NPC's and the two druids will object. The Order and Drizzt will both attack you if they're there or any other time they see you. Bodhi gleefully hunts down and eats people every night and having her in your party makes you a horrible, rotten, evil person. (Yes, Hexxat also eats people, but she's at least discreet about it).
If there's any warning system it should be Bodhi herself saying going in there is liable to end in a fight. But yeah the paladins themselves shouldn't give a warning lol.
If there's any warning system it should be Bodhi herself saying going in there is liable to end in a fight. But yeah the paladins themselves shouldn't give a warning lol.
We tried to put in a lot of warnings that you're going down a really evil path, on the same level as feeding the silver dragon eggs to the drow demon, killing the silver dragon to get her blood, or poisoning the druid grove (all of which cause the same NPC's to attack you in BG2:EE). Worst case you load .
Unrelated to that I just loaded the oldest save I had on the way to testing something, and found out a few bugs. Not ones that affect any new game of course, but ones that were breaking my ancient game. So I put in a few redundancies to fix them (not things that'll affect anything for new games, but it'll make the older saves work again). So if you happen to have an older save with a Mazzy friendship and it doesn't work right on the newer versions that will be fixed on the next release.
That my absolute oldest save from years ago now works on the latest version is pleasing to me.
Looking forward to the Bodhi content. There are too few evil female party members in the game.
I wonder if a romance, a fling or some unhealthy bond based on Bodhi's lust for the PC's divine blood could be possible.
I doubt Bodhi is capable of experiencing real love but Irenicus reaction due to seeing Bodhi switch sides due to being addicted to the smell of the PC's divine blood would be quite entertaining.
And yeah, I doubt the paladins of the Radiant Heart would bother with warnings. They do not deal with such evil creatures with nothing but steel.
Looking forward to the Bodhi content. There are too few evil female party members in the game.
I wonder if a romance, a fling or some unhealthy bond based on Bodhi's lust for the PC's divine blood could be possible.
I doubt Bodhi is capable of experiencing real love but Irenicus reaction due to seeing Bodhi switch sides due to being addicted to the smell of the PC's divine blood would be quite entertaining.
And yeah, I doubt the paladins of the Radiant Heart would bother with warnings. They do not deal with such evil creatures with nothing but steel.
Romantic Encounters includes a scene with Bodhi. If you have RE and slept with Bodhi there then we have some additional dialogue. Beyond that I make no promises.
Chapter 7 is going to have a lot of Bodhi dialogue since there will be plenty for her to say and be said to her in the Elven City and with Jon.
Looking forward to the Bodhi content. There are too few evil female party members in the game.
I wonder if a romance, a fling or some unhealthy bond based on Bodhi's lust for the PC's divine blood could be possible.
I doubt Bodhi is capable of experiencing real love but Irenicus reaction due to seeing Bodhi switch sides due to being addicted to the smell of the PC's divine blood would be quite entertaining.
And yeah, I doubt the paladins of the Radiant Heart would bother with warnings. They do not deal with such evil creatures with nothing but steel.
Romantic Encounters includes a scene with Bodhi. If you have RE and slept with Bodhi there then we have some additional dialogue. Beyond that I make no promises.
Chapter 7 is going to have a lot of Bodhi dialogue since there will be plenty for her to say and be said to her in the Elven City and with Jon.
Cool! Looking forward to it.
The "addiction to Gorion's Ward blood" thingy actually happened in ToB with the courtesan vampire girls who just couldn't resist the smell of divine blood. Plus if I remember correctly Bodhi in her ending to Ascension seemed to suffer from "withdrawal" regarding the small piece of the Gorion's Ward soul (that she was given for her cooperation) whose effects ultimately ended and it made her go crazy lol.
Anyway, any plans to give Bodhi some small quests or unique weapons/items?
If there's any warning system it should be Bodhi herself saying going in there is liable to end in a fight. But yeah the paladins themselves shouldn't give a warning lol.
We tried to put in a lot of warnings that you're going down a really evil path, on the same level as feeding the silver dragon eggs to the drow demon, killing the silver dragon to get her blood, or poisoning the druid grove (all of which cause the same NPC's to attack you in BG2:EE). Worst case you load .
Unrelated to that I just loaded the oldest save I had on the way to testing something, and found out a few bugs. Not ones that affect any new game of course, but ones that were breaking my ancient game. So I put in a few redundancies to fix them (not things that'll affect anything for new games, but it'll make the older saves work again). So if you happen to have an older save with a Mazzy friendship and it doesn't work right on the newer versions that will be fixed on the next release.
That my absolute oldest save from years ago now works on the latest version is pleasing to me.
Oh yeah I personally wouldn't recruit her because I play LE and Dorn is already pushing it (and my PC mostly takes him out of sentimentality from taking him in BG1 lol). But yeah no surprise everyone attacks when you have the unrepentant and blatant vampire villian on your team xD
If I could get some flirts with my male PC and Haer even if it doesn't result in a romance though *puppy eyes* especially if Dorn gets jealous lol.
As neither of us have ever played that mod, we have no plans for that. Bodhi is really more of a side project, so she'll probably never have a huge amount of content. Just whatever @BCaesar feels like writing. So dialogues and interjections through chapter 7, a few talks in TOB and the like.
However, @Ryz009, I'll see what I can do there since that should be fairly easy to add in. We usually have a few CN comments on these NPC romances that let you turn them off, so I could add some flirting/jealousy in that section.
And I should have the Russian translation for the new version up sometime this week.
The "addiction to Gorion's Ward blood" thingy actually happened in ToB with the courtesan vampire girls who just couldn't resist the smell of divine blood. Plus if I remember correctly Bodhi in her ending to Ascension seemed to suffer from "withdrawal" regarding the small piece of the Gorion's Ward soul (that she was given for her cooperation) whose effects ultimately ended and it made her go crazy lol.
Anyway, any plans to give Bodhi some small quests or unique weapons/items?
Well she's already loaded down with unique items and her claws are possibly the best weapons in the game (she's in ToB already. If you want her, just ask the fate spirit). All those un-removable items on her are what make her function in the game as Bodhi-the-vampire, along with a bunch of code for her mist transformation (otherwise she'd just be a normal NPC).
Bodhi's all added and tested in SoA. Her remaining storyline dialogue for SoA is all done (though we might add some more random interjections here and there) and Clara's quest is almost done being written as well. Then we just need to keep editing them to our satisfaction and code them. Which thanks to Covid lockdowns shouldn't take all that long.
I've got some ideas for more ToB content for Bodhi as well, but first things first. Don't know that we'll ever give Bodhi a ton of interjections the way we did for Clara; we'll probably just add them here and there as they come to us.
I don't want to be "that guy" "(who also comes out of nowhere)" "(what a jerk)", but I feel I must. While I initially enjoyed most of the mod, I have an issue with how the romance with Mazzy starts with her petition to be "courted" (this is with version 2.33 btw). This post is going to thread over similar ground to what ThacoBell had commented back in August, so I'm afraid I'll revisit some of that.
I've been trawling through the thread, and among other relevant things, I've read that the romance is not to be expected to be changed in any meaningful way. So I'm not here to demand this or that to be changed. But I've been mulling my thoughts for several days already and I'm convinced that I'm either being too silly for overthinking this or going old-man-yells-at-clouds (when I realized it I went over 3500 words, so huh, oops, long read warning), or this is something that deserves being discussed, if only for the potential betterment of the mod. I'll try to summarize the matter as best as i can. I hope nothing here comes across as aggressive, that's not my intention. I understand this took a great deal of work and that alone deserves respect.
Some context first: I don't play runs with multiple romances playing at the same time, but I won't cancel them if they aren't coded to conflict with each other, I simply take them as if I'm reading two or three books at the same time. I usually maintain Imoen Romance as a default in my install order. This is relevant on a conceptual level, due to the compatibility provided for it. This is also an EET install, which has been giving me plenty of crashing problems, but no overall content issues.
This was my first try at ATM. I went over the readme, saw the notes about the romance with Mazzy, and thought it was interesting. I didn't notice there was an Imoen-Mazzy romance on the side, that can also become a triangle with Charname with the IR mod, until I started seeing the dialogues. Mind that I have no problem with the concept of a polyamorous sex positive relationship; I think that is a positive idea, and quite the leap from the times of Bioware's more traditional romances and the first mods.
I also started the run making a beeline to recruit Mazzy asap. I saw the content she has with Viconia, Korgan, Keldorn and the Radiant Heart, and after doing most of the last, I moved to Spellhold. Here's where I started thinking something was wrong, but I'll leave that for later.
1) The Imoen-Mazzy talks leading to their romance: weird timing and clashing with the IR mod
At Spellhold, Imoen greets Mazzy as if they knew each other for a long time. Shortly after they talk about sleeping together, and immediately after that, Imoen asks Charname for permission to, quote, jumping Mazzy's bones. This is followed by the later talks where Imoen chases Mazzy constantly.
I looked up in NearInfinity and apparently there is another version of the greeting talk that starts with asking if Mazzy was a knight. This one seemed more appropriate for that moment, and I just assumed the mod got a bit derpy because of the EET installation, and got the ToB and SoA introductions mixed.
That aside, others have already talked before about three three issues in this point: character compatibility, timing, and characterization. I roughly agree with them so I won't talk about that.
1.1) Imoen being sexually active is something I have no problem to accept easily, but too big of a deal is made about Gullykin in a single dialogue. One thing about it that others might not have said is that it can clash with any run where the player had ignored Gullykin, or taken Viconia before getting there, or ignored Montaron and Xzar...
Too much is assumed in this talk, and other than axing or reworking it, I'm not sure what would be a solution. Maybe adding a component for at least EET adding a scene to Gullykin in the BGEE section implying this orgy could help. But honestly, there's simply nothing to do there beyond accepting and reporting the cleaning of the kobolds and a quick thievery. I see absolutely no reason for any player to stick around the town for this to make sense, and it feels silly to suggest that the rest of the group is waiting under the sun gazing at their navels while Imoen gets around for days.
1.2) It's perplexing how easy it is for Imoen to get together with Mazzy compared to Charname.
These two have just met, have a talk about who is who and another about sleeping together, and this happens before even leaving the Spellhold basement. It's all the more vexing when considering that Mazzy potentially spends a lot more time along Charname than Imoen, and even then she's reticent of Imoen's aggressive chasing at first. It felt strange reading them getting to that point already with not even two days passing. I had already spent quite some time going around with Mazzy before that, advancing her friendship track and exhausting the options in the dialogues she initiates every so few days, and I barely little else. It's true that Mazzy joined the party at the same time she lost her fiance and she needs time to accept that. But that's a consideration that should play for both Charname and Imoen, not only one of them. I'll mention this later.
1.3) This might be a very subjective point, and feeds on the previous point, but All Things Mazzy clashes with Imoen Romance. At first I accepted the reasoning of "I need something to get my mind away from the torture"; it didn't mesh all that well with the writing in vanilla as I read it, where while trying to stay cheerful, Imoen is moody because of her focus on getting to safety and deal with Bodhi and Irenicus. Personally, I can see a lot of anger reading between the lines. And taking refuge in sex and a relationship at that moment is not how I imagine her, or imagine ending well or with any stability in any case. But I can accept it.
But it does actually clash with IR. Yes, she wants safety of peace, mind, and body, but she actively reflects on what's happened to her. She keeps going back and forth about what happened even if she doesn't want to dwell on it, she looks at her scars, and one of the most (in)famous talks in the mod in fact is when she starts, as she says to basically get it all out, recounting in gruesome detail what Irenicus actually did to her, up to an including the duergar that she ended obliterating. She wants someone to listen, understand and accept, someone to reassure her (and this isn't even the romance track). The current talks with Mazzy, on the contrary, where Imoen aggressively chases her, are about someone wanting to forget. I'm not opposed to Imoen using her sexual self-control and power (I'd advocate for more snuggling and cuddling and the more comfy body contact here, but that's just me), but while I can barely give it a pass on a vanilla install, it just doesn't glue together with the state of mind that IR explores.
This clash with IR got crowned after reaching the Underdark exit, shortly after the forest camping scene from IR. For those who don't know what happens there, the only important thing of note is that, (spoilers) if all the prerequisites for the romance are fulfilled (getting at least two of the Imoen dreams before Spellhold, and not being an ass to her), Charname and Imoen can lose themselves in the moment and potentially sleep together. This is followed by Imoen later refusing to talk to Charname for a while until she's ready to have the "big grown up what-the-hells-didn't-happen talk" that dictates whether the romance actually starts or not, and she's very much in a state of mind that makes her stand her ground and argue against you. And this doesn't happen until Bodhi is dead.
The thing is, that just before that, Imoen very enthusiastically tells to Mazzy that she did it with Charname and it was amazing.
Talk about a dissonance in tones.
That's... not what she should be saying at that point. Right now, Imoen (again, with IR) is confused and angry; at Charname, at Irenicus, at Bhaal, at life, at people, at the world. At hydrogen, even. She shouldn't be showing this enthusiasm to Mazzy. It would make more sense to have such a conversation wait at least until Charname and Imoen had the big talk, but right out of my head I'm not aware of many other moments during SoA where Charname and Imoen explicitly sleep together beyond some talks where she teases you with it (there's an event at the groove if Charname is a druid where Imoen goes full sex crazy because of some insect bite, and is later ashamed of it so I doubt that counts), at least not until ToB.
Was this another EET weirdness? I'm willing to think yes, but it's hard because I wasn't having this problem with other interactions among characters, either vanilla or modded. Honestly, while I can be wrong, at this point I'm of the opinion that ATM and IR are just not compatible conceptually. At least for me, but there's just too much friction between what each mod tries to do, as far as I've seen.
2) The courting. Oof. Oof.
When I moved to Athkatla after the Underdark, Mazzy stops me and says that she wants me to court her, by killing the Shadow Thieves.
I'm sorry, Mazzy. My brain just skidded, jumped on its side, and started rolling until it mercilessly crashes against a wall. The driver is battered but alive. Can you repeat that?
"I have helped you rescue your oldest friend and we will get to Irenicus soon enough, do not worry. But I require this from you if we are to be together."
For a start, I do not think that we are working with remotely similar methods of weighing priorities and urgency here, and this bothers me. A lot. Because from the moment since tells you what she wants until you do it, there are plenty of not good things here.
Let's make stock of things. The party is on the clock to restore Charname's and Imoen's souls, and stop he currently raging genocide in Suldanesalar. I think, from a narrative standpoint, this is pretty easy to accept. Yes, you can quest around and waste your time for years ingame during this chapter, but that's story and gameplay segregation. The main focus of the party during their working hours, as presented in the text that's purely post Underdark, should be on killing Bodhi, bring back the Lanthorn, and untangle the mess of fuckery at Suldanessalar by offing Irenicus. Not only because there are currently people dying, but because Imoen is also dying as long as Bodhi lives, and Charname will loose themselves to the stain as well.
Charname knows that, Imoen knows that, and Mazzy, having gone with them at least from Brynnlaw to the other side of the Underdark, must know all of that as well. So with that in mind, let's rewind and think what Mazzy is asking for here. She asks you to kill the Shadow Thieves or, the dialogue files on hand, Bodhi if the others are already dead.
2.1) Implications
If she asks to kill the STs, she's asking Charname to put a stop on these very imminent threats (Imoen's death, Charname's doom, Suldanessalar's currently ongoing destruction. And Irenicus making a big global divine mess that isn't exactly small, but they don't know that yet) to eliminate what at this point is a group of crooks. Professional crooks who deal, among different things, in slavery, and that are extremely skilled and dangerous, but crooks. For the sake of argument, let's forget any moral consideration about the STs, and that they honor the deals they make with you to the letter. They're all bad to the bone, and they keep doing bad things, period. Even then, the STs are a passive threat in no way involved in anything as imminently dangerous as what the party knows Irenicus is actively doing.
This is not a minor distraction like a stranger looking for help and asking the first mercenary looking passerby for it, and then you deciding what to do about it; or a quest that started in chapter 2 and the player not remembering to actually finish before traveling to Brynnlaw; or an evil party finishing the human skin quest. Or visiting any Ilmater temple that you pass by to ask for forgiveness in behalf of Yoshimo, or reading some nearby books and run to the ruined temple to resurrect the romantic interest. In fact, there are no quests that only become available after the Underdark, only optional encounters that would have been too difficult to handle before this point (Kangaxx or Firkraag). Mazzy's asking you, knowing how dire things are to distract yourself from the much more important threat with a minor threat that isn't going anywhere. She is hotheaded, sure, like when she sees Gorf abuse a bystander and decides to duel him, but this goes above and beyond not considering the needs of the people she's asking things off.
On the other hand, if she asks to kill Bodhi... well, it's not a distraction. But she's turning a goal that you needed to reach to progress, that Imoen needs to survive, into a condition for her love. I find this in bad taste and I don't dare touch it with a ten feet pole. Who seriously decides to work with Bodhi instead of the STs even when playing an evil Charname and not for the extra loot, anyway? ... Oh, that many. Never mind then. But my point stands.
2.2) The lies
Mazzy then talks with Viconia, confessing she only asked Charname to court her in this way because she wanted more time to decide if she wanted to be a relationship. She's fully conscious that she's also misleading you, asking to show your love for her with "a righteous cause" when she's actually being selfish.
Frankly, I had experiences in real life with people telling "I need time to think" when all they wanted was to play me around so I'm biased and I recognize it, but this made me want to throttle her by the neck with homicidal rage. Remember that Imoen needed considerable far less time, thought and effort to get Mazzy to consider a relationship with her, and Mazzy doesn't lie to her in any moment.
2.3) Imoen's silence
There's nothing in the dialogues stating that Mazzy is talking to Charname away from the group, but Imoen, at no point at all, says anything to any degree. No peep. No nothing like "Mazzy, is this necessary? I'd really, really prefer if we just focused on recovering our souls first" at the very least, or "are you really asking this, that I need to *survive* and in general we need to get things done, as a condition to a relationship to my lifetime friend?" And that's only if you only count the Mazzy-Charname romance and not the other angles. After killing Bodhi, Imoen kiss her in public, to much cheering of the party, signifying the start of their relationship, bringing full circle the theme of referring to Imoen as "Mazzy's maiden", and that's the last thing I've seen about the matter.
Either she's being willfully ignorant, or being kept ignorant. And that's not Imoen. Forget about IR, vanilla Imoen is more observant than that, and assuming a good Charname that hasn't repeled any of them, I don't think they wouldn't have discussed the subject. Depending on how such a discussion goes, it could even open a possibility to Imoen breaking with Mazzy on her own; doesn't even need to be a dramatic thing that ends with both shouting at each other, just a small chance for a non confrontational "oh, d'oh, I was too dazzled by the shining armor but she's just a human halfling after all and I don't think this is the kind of basis for a relationship I want" for example would be enough. I think it would be justified in this case.
2.4) No dialogue options and lack of challenge
Clearly, refusing Mazzy's petition would bar me from the romance track, but it also doesn't offer any venues of dialogue, much like killing Hexxat closes off her dungeons, or like in SoD, when you accept the option of surrendering to the crusade and the commanders say "hell naw thanxs". With the difference that the commanders saying "no" forces you to see the content, while telling no to Mazzy closes access to her romance content.
Now all of this I've been mentioning, by itself, wouldn't be so bad, it could even be an interesting twist in Mazzy's character! She has an unrepentant and idealist view of romance, of course she's going to be blindsided in these matters and want to believe for a moment she's a princess!
But it's one thing for a character to have double standards or be an hypocrite. It's another to not be able to challenge them. There needs to be ways to discuss these kinds of things. And there's the thing that really sours the entire business for me: there is no way that I have seen to question Mazzy or argue with her. There are some replies when Mazzy asks for this "test" that allow for some discussion, but all of them are things like Charname saying that he's also a thief having worked for the STs, or pretty straightforward "no I won't do it" lines. They're petitions for clarifications, or refusals. But nothing that allows to argue with Mazzy about the gravity of her petition.
This is the main sticking point of the issue, and of the mod for me. Everything before can be left as, but at the very least, it would help immensely to be able to talk Mazzy around this entire thing. Imoen joining the questioning or doing it on her own, even potentially killing their romance, would be a good bonus.
It's like the mod implies that the only right path is doing what she asks; sure, refusing is a choice, but not a meaningful one because one would naturally want to see the content. And the only reason she's not questioned left and right is because she isn't driving everyone straight to a cliff (though it makes one wonder about what happened to her party at the ruined temple).
It is cute? Maybe, if you're into that. Is it frivolous? Yes. Selfish? You bet. Does it make sense? For me: hell no, not at all.
And then it clicked.
3) Conclusion
Charname might still be the mouthpiece and the commander, but this mod had turned Mazzy, subtly, into the *protagonist*. There are times where the mod has her decide the outcome of a dialogue for you. She becomes the energy behind actions like saving Viconia from the mob, neutral-izing Viconia instead of the player and even going further by turning her from Shar to some vague neutral good-ish? divine force that she can't even identify, but it's kinda sorta implied to be Arvoreen... Her Radiant Heart quests sending her to do both quests you'd naturally do on a vanilla game, including the main story. The overall treatment of Imoen as Mazzy's "lady". She realizes she loves violence, which takes Korgan in a rapey mood being killed by her, then raising him because she refuses to let him to be right about that. And don't misunderstand me, all of that is still good on its own or together, they're pretty good snippets! Characters can be allowed to pitch in the changes caused in the world and other characters, within reason.
But the more changes a character is capable off (even Charname), the more the world needs to be able to push back, beyond replies that cancel the pursuit of content. And I can't avoid but seeing the whole of the mod in a very different light with the courting petition in mind. That broke the illusion for me. I kept playing, but it made the run too uncomfortable for me. At some point, I thought to drop Mazzy the "nice" way at her house and keep going without her. But the moment I went inside her mother insists on turning Charname and at the very least Imoen (who jumps far too excitedly at the prospect for my current mood) into halflings, irreversibly as far as I could tell. That, and giving me a halflings-only gender bending belt, so we could give her grandchildren. In any other circumstances that would have been a funny piece of characterization and potential storytelling, and I would have gladly rolled with it. Here, it just made me close the game, and killed any lingering energies in me to keep playing this run.
TLDR: Please consider giving more ways for the player and characters to argue and push back against Mazzy where appropriate?
i feel eet might have bugged something out. i can't remember if it was 232 or 233 but i know they added an option to just stop the new romances added by npcs including imoen's and mazzys to make it more compatible with ir.
The romance in this mod is written in a very modern way that feels slightly out of place to me in the setting. I like the other options and Mazzy's characterisation, but the romances could use a bit more show and less tell (in the sense that most of the dialogues seem to centre around who-with-whom and under what very modern relationship arrangement, rather than convey the actual, you know, feelings of the characters for each other in context).
I don't want to be "that guy" "(who also comes out of nowhere)" "(what a jerk)", but I feel I must. While I initially enjoyed most of the mod, I have an issue with how the romance with Mazzy starts with her petition to be "courted" (this is with version 2.33 btw). This post is going to thread over similar ground to what ThacoBell had commented back in August, so I'm afraid I'll revisit some of that.
I've been trawling through the thread, and among other relevant things, I've read that the romance is not to be expected to be changed in any meaningful way. So I'm not here to demand this or that to be changed. But I've been mulling my thoughts for several days already and I'm convinced that I'm either being too silly for overthinking this or going old-man-yells-at-clouds (when I realized it I went over 3500 words, so huh, oops, long read warning), or this is something that deserves being discussed, if only for the potential betterment of the mod. I'll try to summarize the matter as best as i can. I hope nothing here comes across as aggressive, that's not my intention. I understand this took a great deal of work and that alone deserves respect.
Some context first: I don't play runs with multiple romances playing at the same time, but I won't cancel them if they aren't coded to conflict with each other, I simply take them as if I'm reading two or three books at the same time. I usually maintain Imoen Romance as a default in my install order. This is relevant on a conceptual level, due to the compatibility provided for it. This is also an EET install, which has been giving me plenty of crashing problems, but no overall content issues.
This was my first try at ATM. I went over the readme, saw the notes about the romance with Mazzy, and thought it was interesting. I didn't notice there was an Imoen-Mazzy romance on the side, that can also become a triangle with Charname with the IR mod, until I started seeing the dialogues. Mind that I have no problem with the concept of a polyamorous sex positive relationship; I think that is a positive idea, and quite the leap from the times of Bioware's more traditional romances and the first mods.
I also started the run making a beeline to recruit Mazzy asap. I saw the content she has with Viconia, Korgan, Keldorn and the Radiant Heart, and after doing most of the last, I moved to Spellhold. Here's where I started thinking something was wrong, but I'll leave that for later.
1) The Imoen-Mazzy talks leading to their romance: weird timing and clashing with the IR mod
At Spellhold, Imoen greets Mazzy as if they knew each other for a long time. Shortly after they talk about sleeping together, and immediately after that, Imoen asks Charname for permission to, quote, jumping Mazzy's bones. This is followed by the later talks where Imoen chases Mazzy constantly.
I looked up in NearInfinity and apparently there is another version of the greeting talk that starts with asking if Mazzy was a knight. This one seemed more appropriate for that moment, and I just assumed the mod got a bit derpy because of the EET installation, and got the ToB and SoA introductions mixed.
That aside, others have already talked before about three three issues in this point: character compatibility, timing, and characterization. I roughly agree with them so I won't talk about that.
1.1) Imoen being sexually active is something I have no problem to accept easily, but too big of a deal is made about Gullykin in a single dialogue. One thing about it that others might not have said is that it can clash with any run where the player had ignored Gullykin, or taken Viconia before getting there, or ignored Montaron and Xzar...
Too much is assumed in this talk, and other than axing or reworking it, I'm not sure what would be a solution. Maybe adding a component for at least EET adding a scene to Gullykin in the BGEE section implying this orgy could help. But honestly, there's simply nothing to do there beyond accepting and reporting the cleaning of the kobolds and a quick thievery. I see absolutely no reason for any player to stick around the town for this to make sense, and it feels silly to suggest that the rest of the group is waiting under the sun gazing at their navels while Imoen gets around for days.
1.2) It's perplexing how easy it is for Imoen to get together with Mazzy compared to Charname.
These two have just met, have a talk about who is who and another about sleeping together, and this happens before even leaving the Spellhold basement. It's all the more vexing when considering that Mazzy potentially spends a lot more time along Charname than Imoen, and even then she's reticent of Imoen's aggressive chasing at first. It felt strange reading them getting to that point already with not even two days passing. I had already spent quite some time going around with Mazzy before that, advancing her friendship track and exhausting the options in the dialogues she initiates every so few days, and I barely little else. It's true that Mazzy joined the party at the same time she lost her fiance and she needs time to accept that. But that's a consideration that should play for both Charname and Imoen, not only one of them. I'll mention this later.
1.3) This might be a very subjective point, and feeds on the previous point, but All Things Mazzy clashes with Imoen Romance. At first I accepted the reasoning of "I need something to get my mind away from the torture"; it didn't mesh all that well with the writing in vanilla as I read it, where while trying to stay cheerful, Imoen is moody because of her focus on getting to safety and deal with Bodhi and Irenicus. Personally, I can see a lot of anger reading between the lines. And taking refuge in sex and a relationship at that moment is not how I imagine her, or imagine ending well or with any stability in any case. But I can accept it.
But it does actually clash with IR. Yes, she wants safety of peace, mind, and body, but she actively reflects on what's happened to her. She keeps going back and forth about what happened even if she doesn't want to dwell on it, she looks at her scars, and one of the most (in)famous talks in the mod in fact is when she starts, as she says to basically get it all out, recounting in gruesome detail what Irenicus actually did to her, up to an including the duergar that she ended obliterating. She wants someone to listen, understand and accept, someone to reassure her (and this isn't even the romance track). The current talks with Mazzy, on the contrary, where Imoen aggressively chases her, are about someone wanting to forget. I'm not opposed to Imoen using her sexual self-control and power (I'd advocate for more snuggling and cuddling and the more comfy body contact here, but that's just me), but while I can barely give it a pass on a vanilla install, it just doesn't glue together with the state of mind that IR explores.
This clash with IR got crowned after reaching the Underdark exit, shortly after the forest camping scene from IR. For those who don't know what happens there, the only important thing of note is that, (spoilers) if all the prerequisites for the romance are fulfilled (getting at least two of the Imoen dreams before Spellhold, and not being an ass to her), Charname and Imoen can lose themselves in the moment and potentially sleep together. This is followed by Imoen later refusing to talk to Charname for a while until she's ready to have the "big grown up what-the-hells-didn't-happen talk" that dictates whether the romance actually starts or not, and she's very much in a state of mind that makes her stand her ground and argue against you. And this doesn't happen until Bodhi is dead.
The thing is, that just before that, Imoen very enthusiastically tells to Mazzy that she did it with Charname and it was amazing.
Talk about a dissonance in tones.
That's... not what she should be saying at that point. Right now, Imoen (again, with IR) is confused and angry; at Charname, at Irenicus, at Bhaal, at life, at people, at the world. At hydrogen, even. She shouldn't be showing this enthusiasm to Mazzy. It would make more sense to have such a conversation wait at least until Charname and Imoen had the big talk, but right out of my head I'm not aware of many other moments during SoA where Charname and Imoen explicitly sleep together beyond some talks where she teases you with it (there's an event at the groove if Charname is a druid where Imoen goes full sex crazy because of some insect bite, and is later ashamed of it so I doubt that counts), at least not until ToB.
Was this another EET weirdness? I'm willing to think yes, but it's hard because I wasn't having this problem with other interactions among characters, either vanilla or modded. Honestly, while I can be wrong, at this point I'm of the opinion that ATM and IR are just not compatible conceptually. At least for me, but there's just too much friction between what each mod tries to do, as far as I've seen.
2) The courting. Oof. Oof.
When I moved to Athkatla after the Underdark, Mazzy stops me and says that she wants me to court her, by killing the Shadow Thieves.
I'm sorry, Mazzy. My brain just skidded, jumped on its side, and started rolling until it mercilessly crashes against a wall. The driver is battered but alive. Can you repeat that?
"I have helped you rescue your oldest friend and we will get to Irenicus soon enough, do not worry. But I require this from you if we are to be together."
For a start, I do not think that we are working with remotely similar methods of weighing priorities and urgency here, and this bothers me. A lot. Because from the moment since tells you what she wants until you do it, there are plenty of not good things here.
Let's make stock of things. The party is on the clock to restore Charname's and Imoen's souls, and stop he currently raging genocide in Suldanesalar. I think, from a narrative standpoint, this is pretty easy to accept. Yes, you can quest around and waste your time for years ingame during this chapter, but that's story and gameplay segregation. The main focus of the party during their working hours, as presented in the text that's purely post Underdark, should be on killing Bodhi, bring back the Lanthorn, and untangle the mess of fuckery at Suldanessalar by offing Irenicus. Not only because there are currently people dying, but because Imoen is also dying as long as Bodhi lives, and Charname will loose themselves to the stain as well.
Charname knows that, Imoen knows that, and Mazzy, having gone with them at least from Brynnlaw to the other side of the Underdark, must know all of that as well. So with that in mind, let's rewind and think what Mazzy is asking for here. She asks you to kill the Shadow Thieves or, the dialogue files on hand, Bodhi if the others are already dead.
2.1) Implications
If she asks to kill the STs, she's asking Charname to put a stop on these very imminent threats (Imoen's death, Charname's doom, Suldanessalar's currently ongoing destruction. And Irenicus making a big global divine mess that isn't exactly small, but they don't know that yet) to eliminate what at this point is a group of crooks. Professional crooks who deal, among different things, in slavery, and that are extremely skilled and dangerous, but crooks. For the sake of argument, let's forget any moral consideration about the STs, and that they honor the deals they make with you to the letter. They're all bad to the bone, and they keep doing bad things, period. Even then, the STs are a passive threat in no way involved in anything as imminently dangerous as what the party knows Irenicus is actively doing.
This is not a minor distraction like a stranger looking for help and asking the first mercenary looking passerby for it, and then you deciding what to do about it; or a quest that started in chapter 2 and the player not remembering to actually finish before traveling to Brynnlaw; or an evil party finishing the human skin quest. Or visiting any Ilmater temple that you pass by to ask for forgiveness in behalf of Yoshimo, or reading some nearby books and run to the ruined temple to resurrect the romantic interest. In fact, there are no quests that only become available after the Underdark, only optional encounters that would have been too difficult to handle before this point (Kangaxx or Firkraag). Mazzy's asking you, knowing how dire things are to distract yourself from the much more important threat with a minor threat that isn't going anywhere. She is hotheaded, sure, like when she sees Gorf abuse a bystander and decides to duel him, but this goes above and beyond not considering the needs of the people she's asking things off.
On the other hand, if she asks to kill Bodhi... well, it's not a distraction. But she's turning a goal that you needed to reach to progress, that Imoen needs to survive, into a condition for her love. I find this in bad taste and I don't dare touch it with a ten feet pole. Who seriously decides to work with Bodhi instead of the STs even when playing an evil Charname and not for the extra loot, anyway? ... Oh, that many. Never mind then. But my point stands.
2.2) The lies
Mazzy then talks with Viconia, confessing she only asked Charname to court her in this way because she wanted more time to decide if she wanted to be a relationship. She's fully conscious that she's also misleading you, asking to show your love for her with "a righteous cause" when she's actually being selfish.
Frankly, I had experiences in real life with people telling "I need time to think" when all they wanted was to play me around so I'm biased and I recognize it, but this made me want to throttle her by the neck with homicidal rage. Remember that Imoen needed considerable far less time, thought and effort to get Mazzy to consider a relationship with her, and Mazzy doesn't lie to her in any moment.
2.3) Imoen's silence
There's nothing in the dialogues stating that Mazzy is talking to Charname away from the group, but Imoen, at no point at all, says anything to any degree. No peep. No nothing like "Mazzy, is this necessary? I'd really, really prefer if we just focused on recovering our souls first" at the very least, or "are you really asking this, that I need to *survive* and in general we need to get things done, as a condition to a relationship to my lifetime friend?" And that's only if you only count the Mazzy-Charname romance and not the other angles. After killing Bodhi, Imoen kiss her in public, to much cheering of the party, signifying the start of their relationship, bringing full circle the theme of referring to Imoen as "Mazzy's maiden", and that's the last thing I've seen about the matter.
Either she's being willfully ignorant, or being kept ignorant. And that's not Imoen. Forget about IR, vanilla Imoen is more observant than that, and assuming a good Charname that hasn't repeled any of them, I don't think they wouldn't have discussed the subject. Depending on how such a discussion goes, it could even open a possibility to Imoen breaking with Mazzy on her own; doesn't even need to be a dramatic thing that ends with both shouting at each other, just a small chance for a non confrontational "oh, d'oh, I was too dazzled by the shining armor but she's just a human halfling after all and I don't think this is the kind of basis for a relationship I want" for example would be enough. I think it would be justified in this case.
2.4) No dialogue options and lack of challenge
Clearly, refusing Mazzy's petition would bar me from the romance track, but it also doesn't offer any venues of dialogue, much like killing Hexxat closes off her dungeons, or like in SoD, when you accept the option of surrendering to the crusade and the commanders say "hell naw thanxs". With the difference that the commanders saying "no" forces you to see the content, while telling no to Mazzy closes access to her romance content.
Now all of this I've been mentioning, by itself, wouldn't be so bad, it could even be an interesting twist in Mazzy's character! She has an unrepentant and idealist view of romance, of course she's going to be blindsided in these matters and want to believe for a moment she's a princess!
But it's one thing for a character to have double standards or be an hypocrite. It's another to not be able to challenge them. There needs to be ways to discuss these kinds of things. And there's the thing that really sours the entire business for me: there is no way that I have seen to question Mazzy or argue with her. There are some replies when Mazzy asks for this "test" that allow for some discussion, but all of them are things like Charname saying that he's also a thief having worked for the STs, or pretty straightforward "no I won't do it" lines. They're petitions for clarifications, or refusals. But nothing that allows to argue with Mazzy about the gravity of her petition.
This is the main sticking point of the issue, and of the mod for me. Everything before can be left as, but at the very least, it would help immensely to be able to talk Mazzy around this entire thing. Imoen joining the questioning or doing it on her own, even potentially killing their romance, would be a good bonus.
It's like the mod implies that the only right path is doing what she asks; sure, refusing is a choice, but not a meaningful one because one would naturally want to see the content. And the only reason she's not questioned left and right is because she isn't driving everyone straight to a cliff (though it makes one wonder about what happened to her party at the ruined temple).
It is cute? Maybe, if you're into that. Is it frivolous? Yes. Selfish? You bet. Does it make sense? For me: hell no, not at all.
And then it clicked.
3) Conclusion
Charname might still be the mouthpiece and the commander, but this mod had turned Mazzy, subtly, into the *protagonist*. There are times where the mod has her decide the outcome of a dialogue for you. She becomes the energy behind actions like saving Viconia from the mob, neutral-izing Viconia instead of the player and even going further by turning her from Shar to some vague neutral good-ish? divine force that she can't even identify, but it's kinda sorta implied to be Arvoreen... Her Radiant Heart quests sending her to do both quests you'd naturally do on a vanilla game, including the main story. The overall treatment of Imoen as Mazzy's "lady". She realizes she loves violence, which takes Korgan in a rapey mood being killed by her, then raising him because she refuses to let him to be right about that. And don't misunderstand me, all of that is still good on its own or together, they're pretty good snippets! Characters can be allowed to pitch in the changes caused in the world and other characters, within reason.
But the more changes a character is capable off (even Charname), the more the world needs to be able to push back, beyond replies that cancel the pursuit of content. And I can't avoid but seeing the whole of the mod in a very different light with the courting petition in mind. That broke the illusion for me. I kept playing, but it made the run too uncomfortable for me. At some point, I thought to drop Mazzy the "nice" way at her house and keep going without her. But the moment I went inside her mother insists on turning Charname and at the very least Imoen (who jumps far too excitedly at the prospect for my current mood) into halflings, irreversibly as far as I could tell. That, and giving me a halflings-only gender bending belt, so we could give her grandchildren. In any other circumstances that would have been a funny piece of characterization and potential storytelling, and I would have gladly rolled with it. Here, it just made me close the game, and killed any lingering energies in me to keep playing this run.
TLDR: Please consider giving more ways for the player and characters to argue and push back against Mazzy where appropriate?
i feel eet might have bugged something out. i can't remember if it was 232 or 233 but i know they added an option to just stop the new romances added by npcs including imoen's and mazzys to make it more compatible with ir.
The romance in this mod is written in a very modern way that feels slightly out of place to me in the setting. I like the other options and Mazzy's characterisation, but the romances could use a bit more show and less tell (in the sense that most of the dialogues seem to centre around who-with-whom and under what very modern relationship arrangement, rather than convey the actual, you know, feelings of the characters for each other in context).
I agree with a lot of that. It was written over a period of years, in various segments, so a lot of parts of it don't fit as well as they could. Certainly if we were doing it now we'd write (and code) a lot of it differently, and some of the lines aren't great.
The Imoen-Mazzy thing can just be turned off (most of the NPC-NPC repeating dialogues can). It isn't meant to be fully compatible with the Imoen romance in writing (since we try to write things as if the game was unmodded), just the triggers.
Mazzy is meant to be somewhat of a pain, since in the unmodded game she's a pain. She's one of the few NPC's that refuses to wait for you (she always goes home), she'll leave or try to kill you more than any other NPC in the game (she might be tied with Keldorn, but I think she edges him out slightly), and she has more conflicts with other NPC's than anyone (where she either threatens to attack a NPC or in Hexxat's case actually does).
In every other part of BG2 she was essentially unbendable; you could do what she wanted and she'd be happy. You could be of mediocre goodness and she'd quietly come along while offering her self-righteous opinions, or if you were even a little bad she'd try to kill you or leave. In the game she's a party leader (was leading the old party, is thinking of starting a new one, and actually does lead a new one in her epilogue) who just happens to be traveling with the main character provided he's good enough to be worth her time. So that's what we started with.
At some point when we've finished up our current projects (which are almost done) we may re-read and re-write a lot of Mazzy's stuff. This whole thing has been one giant learning experience on both the writing and coding side, and given how huge the Mazzy segment is (pages and pages and pages of word files, some of them written by us years apart) it has the most inconsistency and issues of any of the projects in this mod, and has never been given a solid edit after the last parts of it were finished. Mostly because we were just so happy to be done with it and able to move on to other things.
Okay, back to the task at hand. I just sent the most recent version to Ratatoskr for posting, so it should be up soon (she has to fix one bug she found first).
She'll post the full patch notes when she posts the new version, but basically we added Bodhi to SoA along with all her story stuff in chapters 6 and 7 and at the start of ToB. There's a story split for Bodhi at the end of SoA; if she saves Suldanessellar with you then she has the option of getting her body and soul back and becoming a Chaotic Evil Elven Monk as her reward from Queen Ellesime (it's your choice whether she accepts or not). As per request we added in a dialogue if you had slept with Bodhi earlier using the Romantic Encounters mod, and another one if you didn't.
We also fixed a number of bugs, including a couple of game-breaking ones (which is why we're posting this now rather than waiting). And there's an expansion to the Windspear Hills quest if you ignore Garren Windspear and head back to Athkatla. Related to that, the Knights of the Most Noble Order of the Radiant Heart (which I'm sorry to say I didn't think of; they're from the original game) now help fight against you whenever the Order of the Radiant Heart is your enemy.
Also added a couple more interjections in for Clara too, one for evil Anomen, and one for Mazzy.
An update on the to-do list:
- Clara's NPC quest and the Dorn-Haer'Dalis romance are both fully written and edited (in code form), but we didn't put them in yet since we wanted to get this version out with all its bug fixes. But Ratatoskr will code those soon and we'll release that version next.
I haven't figured out what I'll do yet while she's doing that. I could start pulling all the Mazzy dialogues back to word files so we can start looking them over, and make Mazzy's romance quest also available if you're just friends. There's also a couple things left that are more or less written that I could finish up and start coding (a Clara-Viconia quest in Chapter 7, and a Wilson-Jaheira romance). I could add more Bodhi stuff in ToB too. We'll see how things go.
Changelog for the next version that I'll be posting shortly:
Changes: 2.42
A. Main Mod: All Things Mazzy: Added an interjection (chapter 6 under the graveyard). Also a few bug fixes.
B. Main Mod: Darkside Anomen
1. If Anomen is doing the Fallen Paladin Quest after he has failed his test there was one interjection which did not fit. We removed it and added a new one.
C. Main Mod: Misc.
1. Added an expansion for the Windspear Hills Quest to make the Order turn on you if you forget Garren Windspear's help. You can now fight your way to peace should you wish to.
2. Re-added the Knights of the Most Noble Order of the Radiant Heart to fight you if you attack the Order of the Radiant Heart (they exist in game, but the way they're coded most people will never see them).
D. For The Evil: Viconia in Ust Natha
1. Updated AI scripts so your drow allies no longer remember old slights and fight each other.
2. Added journal entries to help guide you.
3. Added a fix so you can now leave the battle before you defeat the Elven leaders and still have the story progress.
4. Added some bug fixes.
E. For The Evil: Bodhi NPC
1. Added Bodhi NPC to SoA!
A. You will only have the option to gain Bodhi if you worked for her in Chapter 3.
B. As in ToB, Bodhi is incompatible with all good or druid NPC's in BG2:EE. She is also the enemy of Drizzt and the Order of the Radiant Heart.
C. Similar to ToB, Bodhi is an over-powered killing machine, but her claws tend to make enemies explode meaning you cannot loot their items (except for quest items).
D. If you sold the Cloak of Dragomir to Bodhi in Chapter 3, she will have it in her inventory when she joins you. This allows her or Hexxat to walk in sunlight but lowers their stats while they wear it.
E. Added many dialogues and interjections for her in chapters 6 and 7.
2. Added Bodhi-the-Elf NPC to ToB. At the end of SoA, should you direct Bodhi to accept Queen Ellesime's offer, Bodhi-the-Elf will ask to come with you. She is a Chaotic-Evil Elven Monk. Good NPC's will again travel with her except for Mazzy, Anomen (if he's still with the Order), and Keldorn.
F. As always we fixed many additional typos and bug fixes as we found them. Many thanks to everyone who reports errors on the Beamdog forum thread.
The beauty of it is that the Jaheira side of the romance was already mostly written (like Minsc-Neera or Clara-Anomen), so all that needed to be written was the Wilson side. With lines like, "Grraaa, growl. Roar.", "Snort, snuffle, grrf?", and "Snuffle, sniff... roar! Roar... growl, sniff sniff. Snort... growl. ROAR!", I can confidently say that it is some of our finest work.
The beauty of it is that the Jaheira side of the romance was already mostly written (like Minsc-Neera or Clara-Anomen), so all that needed to be written was the Wilson side. With lines like, "Grraaa, growl. Roar.", "Snort, snuffle, grrf?", and "Snuffle, sniff... roar! Roar... growl, sniff sniff. Snort... growl. ROAR!", I can confidently say that it is some of our finest work.
Doesn't Jaheira have the ability to turn into a bear?
This might have the most awesome romance dialogue ever!
Comments
Journal Entries! I'll put in journal entries to help show people what to do next. We had them already for the Viconia-House Jae'llat-Imrae quest, but I didn't have any entries after you summon the Demon.
If I put in a series of entries that go from Viconia acquiring the aid of the demon all the way to the very end it'll be really clear what you're supposed to do next. We should've done it already, I was just being lazy.
Oh well that's convenient. Here we were just making stuff up
Until then though you can make things a little weird if you fight the elves in Chapter 6 but leave before you beat Elhan and go get the Rhynn Lanthorn before he talks to you about it (so make sure you wipe out your Elven enemies before you leave).
The next release will still be a bit, since I'm only about half done with Bodhi NPC in SoA, and I want to get that to a good stopping place before she's released.
Clara did not really have one. she was just a thrall for hexxat that gets killed.
so the mod's version of her is 100% fanmade.
xD
Damn you guys might get me to actually listen to Bodhi instead of instantly stabbing her. *toasts*
I know which is why I was so sad that the mod was f/m only.
As megamike15 said, Clara only has one line of her own in BG2:EE. We got a little more of her story from talking to Hexxat, and the other 98% we made up. So personality-wise Clara is very different from Hexxat.
Hexxat is a self-absorbed, demanding vampire who does nothing to please you and expects you to do whatever she asks. She's a basic thief.
Clara is a con-woman who's just trying to survive in a big, dangerous and hostile world. She's probably as self-serving as Hexxat, but she at least pretends to be interested in being helpful and pleasing others. She's a thief, but uses the Shadow-Dancer kit. Her stats and other abilities also improve over time as she banters other people.
Update: Writing and editing continues on existing projects. Bodhi fully works and is tested as a party member in SoA (and she's already in ToB), so we're now just adding in dialogues to make her fit into the Suldanessellar story. If you have her in your party and go to the Order of the Radiant Heart they'll attack you now too. I added in all the journal entries for the second Viconia in Ust Natha quest too (the Demon one).
Coding-wise I just finished a small expansion of the Windspear Hills Quest (making the order go hostile if you don't get Garren's help) and I also made it so if you fight the Order at any time the elite Noble Order of the Radiant Heart Knights that Bioware made come and help (since bioware put all this work into making this Noble Order Knights party, but 99% of players never see them). We have a few different quests or options for attacking the Order in this mod now, so figured they could use some extra defenders.
Without the mod if you anger the Order doing the Windspear Hills quest and don't ask for Garren Windspear's help the Order doesn't turn hostile at all, but if you wander around Amn there is a small chance that the afore-mentioned Noble Order of the Radiant Heart Knights appear and attack you. And at that point in the game they're really tough so likely they murder you.
I can definitely manage a line of dialogue (since there's already dialogue there when the Knights of the Most Noble Order of the Radiant Heart come), but there will be no warning shots.
I'm just going to put that in the first thread post and the read-me: If you get Bodhi (and you have to basically sacrifice Imoen to do it) all of the good NPC's and the two druids will object. The Order and Drizzt will both attack you if they're there or any other time they see you. Bodhi gleefully hunts down and eats people every night and having her in your party makes you a horrible, rotten, evil person. (Yes, Hexxat also eats people, but she's at least discreet about it).
We tried to put in a lot of warnings that you're going down a really evil path, on the same level as feeding the silver dragon eggs to the drow demon, killing the silver dragon to get her blood, or poisoning the druid grove (all of which cause the same NPC's to attack you in BG2:EE). Worst case you load
Unrelated to that I just loaded the oldest save I had on the way to testing something, and found out a few bugs. Not ones that affect any new game of course, but ones that were breaking my ancient game. So I put in a few redundancies to fix them (not things that'll affect anything for new games, but it'll make the older saves work again). So if you happen to have an older save with a Mazzy friendship and it doesn't work right on the newer versions that will be fixed on the next release.
That my absolute oldest save from years ago now works on the latest version is pleasing to me.
I wonder if a romance, a fling or some unhealthy bond based on Bodhi's lust for the PC's divine blood could be possible.
I doubt Bodhi is capable of experiencing real love but Irenicus reaction due to seeing Bodhi switch sides due to being addicted to the smell of the PC's divine blood would be quite entertaining.
And yeah, I doubt the paladins of the Radiant Heart would bother with warnings. They do not deal with such evil creatures with nothing but steel.
Romantic Encounters includes a scene with Bodhi. If you have RE and slept with Bodhi there then we have some additional dialogue. Beyond that I make no promises.
Chapter 7 is going to have a lot of Bodhi dialogue since there will be plenty for her to say and be said to her in the Elven City and with Jon.
Cool! Looking forward to it.
The "addiction to Gorion's Ward blood" thingy actually happened in ToB with the courtesan vampire girls who just couldn't resist the smell of divine blood. Plus if I remember correctly Bodhi in her ending to Ascension seemed to suffer from "withdrawal" regarding the small piece of the Gorion's Ward soul (that she was given for her cooperation) whose effects ultimately ended and it made her go crazy lol.
Anyway, any plans to give Bodhi some small quests or unique weapons/items?
Oh yeah I personally wouldn't recruit her because I play LE and Dorn is already pushing it (and my PC mostly takes him out of sentimentality from taking him in BG1 lol). But yeah no surprise everyone attacks when you have the unrepentant and blatant vampire villian on your team xD
If I could get some flirts with my male PC and Haer even if it doesn't result in a romance though *puppy eyes* especially if Dorn gets jealous lol.
However, @Ryz009, I'll see what I can do there since that should be fairly easy to add in. We usually have a few CN comments on these NPC romances that let you turn them off, so I could add some flirting/jealousy in that section.
And I should have the Russian translation for the new version up sometime this week.
Well she's already loaded down with unique items and her claws are possibly the best weapons in the game (she's in ToB already. If you want her, just ask the fate spirit). All those un-removable items on her are what make her function in the game as Bodhi-the-vampire, along with a bunch of code for her mist transformation (otherwise she'd just be a normal NPC).
Bodhi's all added and tested in SoA. Her remaining storyline dialogue for SoA is all done (though we might add some more random interjections here and there) and Clara's quest is almost done being written as well. Then we just need to keep editing them to our satisfaction and code them. Which thanks to Covid lockdowns shouldn't take all that long.
I've got some ideas for more ToB content for Bodhi as well, but first things first. Don't know that we'll ever give Bodhi a ton of interjections the way we did for Clara; we'll probably just add them here and there as they come to us.
I've been trawling through the thread, and among other relevant things, I've read that the romance is not to be expected to be changed in any meaningful way. So I'm not here to demand this or that to be changed. But I've been mulling my thoughts for several days already and I'm convinced that I'm either being too silly for overthinking this or going old-man-yells-at-clouds (when I realized it I went over 3500 words, so huh, oops, long read warning), or this is something that deserves being discussed, if only for the potential betterment of the mod. I'll try to summarize the matter as best as i can. I hope nothing here comes across as aggressive, that's not my intention. I understand this took a great deal of work and that alone deserves respect.
This was my first try at ATM. I went over the readme, saw the notes about the romance with Mazzy, and thought it was interesting. I didn't notice there was an Imoen-Mazzy romance on the side, that can also become a triangle with Charname with the IR mod, until I started seeing the dialogues. Mind that I have no problem with the concept of a polyamorous sex positive relationship; I think that is a positive idea, and quite the leap from the times of Bioware's more traditional romances and the first mods.
I also started the run making a beeline to recruit Mazzy asap. I saw the content she has with Viconia, Korgan, Keldorn and the Radiant Heart, and after doing most of the last, I moved to Spellhold. Here's where I started thinking something was wrong, but I'll leave that for later.
1) The Imoen-Mazzy talks leading to their romance: weird timing and clashing with the IR mod
At Spellhold, Imoen greets Mazzy as if they knew each other for a long time. Shortly after they talk about sleeping together, and immediately after that, Imoen asks Charname for permission to, quote, jumping Mazzy's bones. This is followed by the later talks where Imoen chases Mazzy constantly.
I looked up in NearInfinity and apparently there is another version of the greeting talk that starts with asking if Mazzy was a knight. This one seemed more appropriate for that moment, and I just assumed the mod got a bit derpy because of the EET installation, and got the ToB and SoA introductions mixed.
That aside, others have already talked before about three three issues in this point: character compatibility, timing, and characterization. I roughly agree with them so I won't talk about that.
1.1) Imoen being sexually active is something I have no problem to accept easily, but too big of a deal is made about Gullykin in a single dialogue. One thing about it that others might not have said is that it can clash with any run where the player had ignored Gullykin, or taken Viconia before getting there, or ignored Montaron and Xzar...
Too much is assumed in this talk, and other than axing or reworking it, I'm not sure what would be a solution. Maybe adding a component for at least EET adding a scene to Gullykin in the BGEE section implying this orgy could help. But honestly, there's simply nothing to do there beyond accepting and reporting the cleaning of the kobolds and a quick thievery. I see absolutely no reason for any player to stick around the town for this to make sense, and it feels silly to suggest that the rest of the group is waiting under the sun gazing at their navels while Imoen gets around for days.
1.2) It's perplexing how easy it is for Imoen to get together with Mazzy compared to Charname.
These two have just met, have a talk about who is who and another about sleeping together, and this happens before even leaving the Spellhold basement. It's all the more vexing when considering that Mazzy potentially spends a lot more time along Charname than Imoen, and even then she's reticent of Imoen's aggressive chasing at first. It felt strange reading them getting to that point already with not even two days passing. I had already spent quite some time going around with Mazzy before that, advancing her friendship track and exhausting the options in the dialogues she initiates every so few days, and I barely little else. It's true that Mazzy joined the party at the same time she lost her fiance and she needs time to accept that. But that's a consideration that should play for both Charname and Imoen, not only one of them. I'll mention this later.
1.3) This might be a very subjective point, and feeds on the previous point, but All Things Mazzy clashes with Imoen Romance. At first I accepted the reasoning of "I need something to get my mind away from the torture"; it didn't mesh all that well with the writing in vanilla as I read it, where while trying to stay cheerful, Imoen is moody because of her focus on getting to safety and deal with Bodhi and Irenicus. Personally, I can see a lot of anger reading between the lines. And taking refuge in sex and a relationship at that moment is not how I imagine her, or imagine ending well or with any stability in any case. But I can accept it.
But it does actually clash with IR. Yes, she wants safety of peace, mind, and body, but she actively reflects on what's happened to her. She keeps going back and forth about what happened even if she doesn't want to dwell on it, she looks at her scars, and one of the most (in)famous talks in the mod in fact is when she starts, as she says to basically get it all out, recounting in gruesome detail what Irenicus actually did to her, up to an including the duergar that she ended obliterating. She wants someone to listen, understand and accept, someone to reassure her (and this isn't even the romance track). The current talks with Mazzy, on the contrary, where Imoen aggressively chases her, are about someone wanting to forget. I'm not opposed to Imoen using her sexual self-control and power (I'd advocate for more snuggling and cuddling and the more comfy body contact here, but that's just me), but while I can barely give it a pass on a vanilla install, it just doesn't glue together with the state of mind that IR explores.
This clash with IR got crowned after reaching the Underdark exit, shortly after the forest camping scene from IR. For those who don't know what happens there, the only important thing of note is that, (spoilers) if all the prerequisites for the romance are fulfilled (getting at least two of the Imoen dreams before Spellhold, and not being an ass to her), Charname and Imoen can lose themselves in the moment and potentially sleep together. This is followed by Imoen later refusing to talk to Charname for a while until she's ready to have the "big grown up what-the-hells-didn't-happen talk" that dictates whether the romance actually starts or not, and she's very much in a state of mind that makes her stand her ground and argue against you. And this doesn't happen until Bodhi is dead.
The thing is, that just before that, Imoen very enthusiastically tells to Mazzy that she did it with Charname and it was amazing.
Talk about a dissonance in tones.
That's... not what she should be saying at that point. Right now, Imoen (again, with IR) is confused and angry; at Charname, at Irenicus, at Bhaal, at life, at people, at the world. At hydrogen, even. She shouldn't be showing this enthusiasm to Mazzy. It would make more sense to have such a conversation wait at least until Charname and Imoen had the big talk, but right out of my head I'm not aware of many other moments during SoA where Charname and Imoen explicitly sleep together beyond some talks where she teases you with it (there's an event at the groove if Charname is a druid where Imoen goes full sex crazy because of some insect bite, and is later ashamed of it so I doubt that counts), at least not until ToB.
Was this another EET weirdness? I'm willing to think yes, but it's hard because I wasn't having this problem with other interactions among characters, either vanilla or modded. Honestly, while I can be wrong, at this point I'm of the opinion that ATM and IR are just not compatible conceptually. At least for me, but there's just too much friction between what each mod tries to do, as far as I've seen.
2) The courting. Oof. Oof.
When I moved to Athkatla after the Underdark, Mazzy stops me and says that she wants me to court her, by killing the Shadow Thieves.
I'm sorry, Mazzy. My brain just skidded, jumped on its side, and started rolling until it mercilessly crashes against a wall. The driver is battered but alive. Can you repeat that?
"I have helped you rescue your oldest friend and we will get to Irenicus soon enough, do not worry. But I require this from you if we are to be together."
For a start, I do not think that we are working with remotely similar methods of weighing priorities and urgency here, and this bothers me. A lot. Because from the moment since tells you what she wants until you do it, there are plenty of not good things here.
Let's make stock of things. The party is on the clock to restore Charname's and Imoen's souls, and stop he currently raging genocide in Suldanesalar. I think, from a narrative standpoint, this is pretty easy to accept. Yes, you can quest around and waste your time for years ingame during this chapter, but that's story and gameplay segregation. The main focus of the party during their working hours, as presented in the text that's purely post Underdark, should be on killing Bodhi, bring back the Lanthorn, and untangle the mess of fuckery at Suldanessalar by offing Irenicus. Not only because there are currently people dying, but because Imoen is also dying as long as Bodhi lives, and Charname will loose themselves to the stain as well.
Charname knows that, Imoen knows that, and Mazzy, having gone with them at least from Brynnlaw to the other side of the Underdark, must know all of that as well. So with that in mind, let's rewind and think what Mazzy is asking for here. She asks you to kill the Shadow Thieves or, the dialogue files on hand, Bodhi if the others are already dead.
2.1) Implications
If she asks to kill the STs, she's asking Charname to put a stop on these very imminent threats (Imoen's death, Charname's doom, Suldanessalar's currently ongoing destruction. And Irenicus making a big global divine mess that isn't exactly small, but they don't know that yet) to eliminate what at this point is a group of crooks. Professional crooks who deal, among different things, in slavery, and that are extremely skilled and dangerous, but crooks. For the sake of argument, let's forget any moral consideration about the STs, and that they honor the deals they make with you to the letter. They're all bad to the bone, and they keep doing bad things, period. Even then, the STs are a passive threat in no way involved in anything as imminently dangerous as what the party knows Irenicus is actively doing.
This is not a minor distraction like a stranger looking for help and asking the first mercenary looking passerby for it, and then you deciding what to do about it; or a quest that started in chapter 2 and the player not remembering to actually finish before traveling to Brynnlaw; or an evil party finishing the human skin quest. Or visiting any Ilmater temple that you pass by to ask for forgiveness in behalf of Yoshimo, or reading some nearby books and run to the ruined temple to resurrect the romantic interest. In fact, there are no quests that only become available after the Underdark, only optional encounters that would have been too difficult to handle before this point (Kangaxx or Firkraag). Mazzy's asking you, knowing how dire things are to distract yourself from the much more important threat with a minor threat that isn't going anywhere. She is hotheaded, sure, like when she sees Gorf abuse a bystander and decides to duel him, but this goes above and beyond not considering the needs of the people she's asking things off.
On the other hand, if she asks to kill Bodhi... well, it's not a distraction. But she's turning a goal that you needed to reach to progress, that Imoen needs to survive, into a condition for her love. I find this in bad taste and I don't dare touch it with a ten feet pole. Who seriously decides to work with Bodhi instead of the STs even when playing an evil Charname and not for the extra loot, anyway? ... Oh, that many. Never mind then. But my point stands.
2.2) The lies
Mazzy then talks with Viconia, confessing she only asked Charname to court her in this way because she wanted more time to decide if she wanted to be a relationship. She's fully conscious that she's also misleading you, asking to show your love for her with "a righteous cause" when she's actually being selfish.
Frankly, I had experiences in real life with people telling "I need time to think" when all they wanted was to play me around so I'm biased and I recognize it, but this made me want to throttle her by the neck with homicidal rage. Remember that Imoen needed considerable far less time, thought and effort to get Mazzy to consider a relationship with her, and Mazzy doesn't lie to her in any moment.
2.3) Imoen's silence
There's nothing in the dialogues stating that Mazzy is talking to Charname away from the group, but Imoen, at no point at all, says anything to any degree. No peep. No nothing like "Mazzy, is this necessary? I'd really, really prefer if we just focused on recovering our souls first" at the very least, or "are you really asking this, that I need to *survive* and in general we need to get things done, as a condition to a relationship to my lifetime friend?" And that's only if you only count the Mazzy-Charname romance and not the other angles. After killing Bodhi, Imoen kiss her in public, to much cheering of the party, signifying the start of their relationship, bringing full circle the theme of referring to Imoen as "Mazzy's maiden", and that's the last thing I've seen about the matter.
Either she's being willfully ignorant, or being kept ignorant. And that's not Imoen. Forget about IR, vanilla Imoen is more observant than that, and assuming a good Charname that hasn't repeled any of them, I don't think they wouldn't have discussed the subject. Depending on how such a discussion goes, it could even open a possibility to Imoen breaking with Mazzy on her own; doesn't even need to be a dramatic thing that ends with both shouting at each other, just a small chance for a non confrontational "oh, d'oh, I was too dazzled by the shining armor but she's just a human halfling after all and I don't think this is the kind of basis for a relationship I want" for example would be enough. I think it would be justified in this case.
2.4) No dialogue options and lack of challenge
Clearly, refusing Mazzy's petition would bar me from the romance track, but it also doesn't offer any venues of dialogue, much like killing Hexxat closes off her dungeons, or like in SoD, when you accept the option of surrendering to the crusade and the commanders say "hell naw thanxs". With the difference that the commanders saying "no" forces you to see the content, while telling no to Mazzy closes access to her romance content.
Now all of this I've been mentioning, by itself, wouldn't be so bad, it could even be an interesting twist in Mazzy's character! She has an unrepentant and idealist view of romance, of course she's going to be blindsided in these matters and want to believe for a moment she's a princess!
But it's one thing for a character to have double standards or be an hypocrite. It's another to not be able to challenge them. There needs to be ways to discuss these kinds of things. And there's the thing that really sours the entire business for me: there is no way that I have seen to question Mazzy or argue with her. There are some replies when Mazzy asks for this "test" that allow for some discussion, but all of them are things like Charname saying that he's also a thief having worked for the STs, or pretty straightforward "no I won't do it" lines. They're petitions for clarifications, or refusals. But nothing that allows to argue with Mazzy about the gravity of her petition.
This is the main sticking point of the issue, and of the mod for me. Everything before can be left as, but at the very least, it would help immensely to be able to talk Mazzy around this entire thing. Imoen joining the questioning or doing it on her own, even potentially killing their romance, would be a good bonus.
It's like the mod implies that the only right path is doing what she asks; sure, refusing is a choice, but not a meaningful one because one would naturally want to see the content. And the only reason she's not questioned left and right is because she isn't driving everyone straight to a cliff (though it makes one wonder about what happened to her party at the ruined temple).
It is cute? Maybe, if you're into that. Is it frivolous? Yes. Selfish? You bet. Does it make sense? For me: hell no, not at all.
And then it clicked.
3) Conclusion
Charname might still be the mouthpiece and the commander, but this mod had turned Mazzy, subtly, into the *protagonist*. There are times where the mod has her decide the outcome of a dialogue for you. She becomes the energy behind actions like saving Viconia from the mob, neutral-izing Viconia instead of the player and even going further by turning her from Shar to some vague neutral good-ish? divine force that she can't even identify, but it's kinda sorta implied to be Arvoreen... Her Radiant Heart quests sending her to do both quests you'd naturally do on a vanilla game, including the main story. The overall treatment of Imoen as Mazzy's "lady". She realizes she loves violence, which takes Korgan in a rapey mood being killed by her, then raising him because she refuses to let him to be right about that. And don't misunderstand me, all of that is still good on its own or together, they're pretty good snippets! Characters can be allowed to pitch in the changes caused in the world and other characters, within reason.
But the more changes a character is capable off (even Charname), the more the world needs to be able to push back, beyond replies that cancel the pursuit of content. And I can't avoid but seeing the whole of the mod in a very different light with the courting petition in mind. That broke the illusion for me. I kept playing, but it made the run too uncomfortable for me. At some point, I thought to drop Mazzy the "nice" way at her house and keep going without her. But the moment I went inside her mother insists on turning Charname and at the very least Imoen (who jumps far too excitedly at the prospect for my current mood) into halflings, irreversibly as far as I could tell. That, and giving me a halflings-only gender bending belt, so we could give her grandchildren. In any other circumstances that would have been a funny piece of characterization and potential storytelling, and I would have gladly rolled with it. Here, it just made me close the game, and killed any lingering energies in me to keep playing this run.
TLDR: Please consider giving more ways for the player and characters to argue and push back against Mazzy where appropriate?
I agree with a lot of that. It was written over a period of years, in various segments, so a lot of parts of it don't fit as well as they could. Certainly if we were doing it now we'd write (and code) a lot of it differently, and some of the lines aren't great.
The Imoen-Mazzy thing can just be turned off (most of the NPC-NPC repeating dialogues can). It isn't meant to be fully compatible with the Imoen romance in writing (since we try to write things as if the game was unmodded), just the triggers.
Mazzy is meant to be somewhat of a pain, since in the unmodded game she's a pain. She's one of the few NPC's that refuses to wait for you (she always goes home), she'll leave or try to kill you more than any other NPC in the game (she might be tied with Keldorn, but I think she edges him out slightly), and she has more conflicts with other NPC's than anyone (where she either threatens to attack a NPC or in Hexxat's case actually does).
In every other part of BG2 she was essentially unbendable; you could do what she wanted and she'd be happy. You could be of mediocre goodness and she'd quietly come along while offering her self-righteous opinions, or if you were even a little bad she'd try to kill you or leave. In the game she's a party leader (was leading the old party, is thinking of starting a new one, and actually does lead a new one in her epilogue) who just happens to be traveling with the main character provided he's good enough to be worth her time. So that's what we started with.
At some point when we've finished up our current projects (which are almost done) we may re-read and re-write a lot of Mazzy's stuff. This whole thing has been one giant learning experience on both the writing and coding side, and given how huge the Mazzy segment is (pages and pages and pages of word files, some of them written by us years apart) it has the most inconsistency and issues of any of the projects in this mod, and has never been given a solid edit after the last parts of it were finished. Mostly because we were just so happy to be done with it and able to move on to other things.
She'll post the full patch notes when she posts the new version, but basically we added Bodhi to SoA along with all her story stuff in chapters 6 and 7 and at the start of ToB. There's a story split for Bodhi at the end of SoA; if she saves Suldanessellar with you then she has the option of getting her body and soul back and becoming a Chaotic Evil Elven Monk as her reward from Queen Ellesime (it's your choice whether she accepts or not). As per request we added in a dialogue if you had slept with Bodhi earlier using the Romantic Encounters mod, and another one if you didn't.
We also fixed a number of bugs, including a couple of game-breaking ones (which is why we're posting this now rather than waiting). And there's an expansion to the Windspear Hills quest if you ignore Garren Windspear and head back to Athkatla. Related to that, the Knights of the Most Noble Order of the Radiant Heart (which I'm sorry to say I didn't think of; they're from the original game) now help fight against you whenever the Order of the Radiant Heart is your enemy.
Also added a couple more interjections in for Clara too, one for evil Anomen, and one for Mazzy.
An update on the to-do list:
- Clara's NPC quest and the Dorn-Haer'Dalis romance are both fully written and edited (in code form), but we didn't put them in yet since we wanted to get this version out with all its bug fixes. But Ratatoskr will code those soon and we'll release that version next.
I haven't figured out what I'll do yet while she's doing that. I could start pulling all the Mazzy dialogues back to word files so we can start looking them over, and make Mazzy's romance quest also available if you're just friends. There's also a couple things left that are more or less written that I could finish up and start coding (a Clara-Viconia quest in Chapter 7, and a Wilson-Jaheira romance). I could add more Bodhi stuff in ToB too. We'll see how things go.
A. Main Mod: All Things Mazzy: Added an interjection (chapter 6 under the graveyard). Also a few bug fixes.
B. Main Mod: Darkside Anomen
1. If Anomen is doing the Fallen Paladin Quest after he has failed his test there was one interjection which did not fit. We removed it and added a new one.
C. Main Mod: Misc.
1. Added an expansion for the Windspear Hills Quest to make the Order turn on you if you forget Garren Windspear's help. You can now fight your way to peace should you wish to.
2. Re-added the Knights of the Most Noble Order of the Radiant Heart to fight you if you attack the Order of the Radiant Heart (they exist in game, but the way they're coded most people will never see them).
D. For The Evil: Viconia in Ust Natha
1. Updated AI scripts so your drow allies no longer remember old slights and fight each other.
2. Added journal entries to help guide you.
3. Added a fix so you can now leave the battle before you defeat the Elven leaders and still have the story progress.
4. Added some bug fixes.
E. For The Evil: Bodhi NPC
1. Added Bodhi NPC to SoA!
A. You will only have the option to gain Bodhi if you worked for her in Chapter 3.
B. As in ToB, Bodhi is incompatible with all good or druid NPC's in BG2:EE. She is also the enemy of Drizzt and the Order of the Radiant Heart.
C. Similar to ToB, Bodhi is an over-powered killing machine, but her claws tend to make enemies explode meaning you cannot loot their items (except for quest items).
D. If you sold the Cloak of Dragomir to Bodhi in Chapter 3, she will have it in her inventory when she joins you. This allows her or Hexxat to walk in sunlight but lowers their stats while they wear it.
E. Added many dialogues and interjections for her in chapters 6 and 7.
2. Added Bodhi-the-Elf NPC to ToB. At the end of SoA, should you direct Bodhi to accept Queen Ellesime's offer, Bodhi-the-Elf will ask to come with you. She is a Chaotic-Evil Elven Monk. Good NPC's will again travel with her except for Mazzy, Anomen (if he's still with the Order), and Keldorn.
F. As always we fixed many additional typos and bug fixes as we found them. Many thanks to everyone who reports errors on the Beamdog forum thread.
Sounds unbearable
Haha.
The beauty of it is that the Jaheira side of the romance was already mostly written (like Minsc-Neera or Clara-Anomen), so all that needed to be written was the Wilson side. With lines like, "Grraaa, growl. Roar.", "Snort, snuffle, grrf?", and "Snuffle, sniff... roar! Roar... growl, sniff sniff. Snort... growl. ROAR!", I can confidently say that it is some of our finest work.
Doesn't Jaheira have the ability to turn into a bear?
This might have the most awesome romance dialogue ever!
Wilson: Roar, roar roar.
Bear Jaheira: Growl, growl, growl.
Wilson: Roaaaar, roaaaar, ROAR!!!
Cannot wait for the sex scene.