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So does the interview and why she chose that name.
Goblins is my favourite webcomic. Actually, I’ll even go as far as to say it’s my favourite comic and I have been wanting to do a Goblin issue just to highlight it. I am grateful she allowed us to interview her.
So many other contributions I still have to read. Nice work all!
Yeah, I just noticed it was handled in the magazine itself as well. I was just very confused when I read Tilly's original post.
I won't say Goblins is my favorite webcomic (*cough* OotS *cough*), but it's definitely top 3 material for me. Still hoping to be able to play Alternate Reality at some time. Seems she made a TTS version for playtesting recently?
We’ll be murdered if we don’t ask this question to you: The Soultaker Dagger, the one Gorion’s Ward uses to kill Skie at the end of Siege of Dragonspear is considered a large gaping plot hole left unresolved. How in your mind, as one of the people responsible for writing SoD, was that supposed to be resolved?
In an expansion to Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition that a small but vocal group of self proclaimed fans all but ensured would never get made. I’d hoped to bring Corwin and the other playable Siege NPCs* into BGII:EE (though it would’ve been tricky getting the timeline to work in Voghiln’s case). The exact details of how that would work were barely into the discussion stages before the company’s creative direction shifted to a new project that would’ve been amazing (and I say that even though I wouldn’t have been part of it). (*I include Safana in that number. We didn’t have the authority to make any changes to the core BGIIEE narrative, but if we had gone ahead I’d planned to campaign hard to give her an alternate ending in addition to the one she got.)
The set-up I wanted was that Entar Silvershield would make Corwin an offer she couldn’t refuse – bring Gorion’s Ward back to face justice for what happened to Skie and get a reward that would ensure Rohma would never have to worry about going hungry or homeless.
So Corwin sets out tracking the Bhaalspawn, trying to capture them. For a while she’d hound the PC (possibly with a party that included EE playable NPCs that weren’t brought in for the sequel), taking shots at them, but each time there would be a dialogue component that would let the player try and convince her they’re innocent, tell her to get lost, and/or declare themselves beyond the Flaming Fist jurisdiction or the Grand Duke’s moral authority. Or kill her, of course, though I’d probably have had the “NPCs should be smart enough to run away from a losing fight” argument again somewhere along the way.
Depending on player response and reputation, Corwin would start to believe them or not, but Rohma’s her ultimate concern – she’s got to get the player back to Baldur’s Gate one way or another, for her daughter’s sake. Eventually, the player would be able to find evidence proving they weren’t responsible for Skie. Depending on previous actions, Corwin either join them as a playable NPC and help them go after Irenicus and (hopefully) a solution to the Skie problem, not believe them and keep after the PC, or believe them but still keep coming after them because Rohma – a moral dilemma for her, but she’ll put what she sees as the greater good ahead of any individual person who isn’t a blood relative. If she’s still trying to catch the player, things would come to a head when the player got a hold of both the Soultaker dagger and documentary evidence that Skie could be restored to life with it. At that point, again depending on the player’s prior actions, Corwin could conclude that getting Skie back is more likely to win Entar’s approval and become a playable NPC or, if the player’s really been a jerk, try to take them out so she can get the reward and then go on to try and get the elements to restore Skie herself.
By the end of Shadows of Amn , the successful player would have been able to collect the various elements needed to restore Skie, gone back to Baldur’s Gate, get into the place Skie’s body is stored at in a variety of different ways, restored Skie, and made peace with Entar. If things went really really well, this would set up an expansion between SoA and ToB that would actually take place largely in the city itself and would have both Corwin and Skie available as playable NPCs.
Would you be willing to write an unofficial mod (much like Ascension) if the community found some way to fund it?
I honestly don’t know. Realistically, I probably wouldn’t actually be able to do it just for a lack of time but leaving the story unfinished bothers me. For a long time I assumed Beamdog would eventually get the opportunity to finish the Skie storyline-I’d resigned myself to the idea someone else would almost certainly end up writing the thing, but was comforted by the notion that it would get written, if only because, you know, David Gaider. Doing it without Beamdog or WotC support... I don’t know. It feels wrong, but I haven’t given it enough thought to decide if it feels more wrong than leaving the story where it is. Sorry I can’t answer more definitively than that. It honestly never occurred to me that the scenario described was a possibility.
So it irks me that this expansion for BGII was scrapped as I would have played the hell out of it. Bringing in the SoD NPCs to BGII was on most people's wish lists. I also like how this expansion would have been added to the original campaign instead of tacked on in between SoA and ToB.
It irks me even more that the project that they cancelled this expansion for, in turn was cancelled, as from what I have gathered so far, a new planescape game written by Gaider would have also been amazing to play.
I still think Beamdog should do this expansion if their allowed too. If not, I'd be up to try to get it unofficially made much like Ascension.
Special thanks for @ashafetov for the amazing cover arts.
I hope the Wild Surge will rage on again one day.
@JuliusBorisov So, when is Beamdog going to finish that Soultaker plot?
What Andrew detailed in the interview doesn’t seem to address that particular point.
Well spoilers for SoD:
At the end of SoD, the main character is having a vivid hooded figure dream (Irenicus) and in the process of it kills Skie, the Duke’s daughter from BG.
When you wake up, both your party and the flaming fist are in the room with Skie dead at your feet and blood on your hands.
You are brought back to Baldur’s Gate to stand trial for the murder, where it is revealed that Skie soul can’t be resurrected because diviners determined it rests inside the Soultaker Dagger artifact which they can’t locate.
Tie it in with BG2, the soul taker dagger (and Saravok’s sword) was one way Irenicus attempted to replace his soul before realizing he needed a divine bloodline to do so.
If the dagger was suppose to be broken, a powerful mage like Irenicus might know how to fix it, and probably did, while you were after the shiny lady but when Thaco talks about the plot hole, it’s about the events above.
It’s just sad that they had closure to this planned but didn’t follow through because of If what Foley said was true, the whole SoD controversy.
I think many people here would rather have a BG2 expansion than A&A which has went dead on the news front after it hit the steam page.
But if WotC and Beamdog do not want to do it, I think with a little bit of community help, and a bit of pestering we can get Foley to write something similar he had planned for an expansion and release it unofficially.
~
Thank you all for the kind words regarding the magazine. It was hard to step away from it (especially after this last issue where Tilly scored an interview with both Foley and Ellipsis) but I had personally put a lot on hold to work on it and I want to revisit some of those projects. The magazine was eating a lot of my free time and I always felt guilty if I was doing something else instead of working on it.
It may return in the future, or even sooner than that. It is the Beamdog community magazine and if someone wants to pick up the mantle to keep releasing it, they are more than welcome too, however, I may not be around to support it fully and I would personally like guidelines followed if they do.
I would also like to thank everyone who has written or submitted to the magazine. Wild Surge was always suppose to be a vehicle to showcase the creativity of this community and without your support and dedication, we wouldn’t have made it past issue #2.
And as always, thank you for reading.
Did it ever come back around from that?
Yikes. I'd always hoped that people were being pessimistic when they talked about how profoundly that scandal had effected Beamdog, but this sounds like confirmation that further work on the Baldur's Gate franchise was scrapped after that.
You mean when he saved Kin from the Goblinslayer? Or when he teamed up with the Goblins to get away from Kore?
Well the answer to those questions is both no, not yet, however there is foreshadowing that it might happen, but it did add more depth to the Minmax character.
It's been a long time, but if I recall there were two events that happened in rapid succession.
First, he experienced the connection that signifies among Kin's people that they were soulmates. She meanwhile has lost her memories of the gift he gave her, due to that other Kin throwing it into the abyss. When she responds with skepticism, Minmax uses her slave leash against her, showing that he was never worthy of her trust in the first place, but he's treated as the sympathetic victim in all this, while the alternate Kin is the real villain who twisted Kin against him.
Shortly afterward, Minmax is on the run with the goblin crew. That one goblin who was traumatized, branded as a monster, and now is like a despondent vegetable. He would not respond to any of his friends and family, but for some reason he responded to Minmax.
It just was a bit much for a guy who at this point in his development was still mostly into mass murdering monsters, with occasional exceptions for cute girls or allies he needs to survive.
With bookmarks, click.
Without, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll...
TR
I use to hyperlink the bookmarks in past editions under the ToC.
One thing I kinda wanted to simulate is reading an actual magazine. I didn’t want people to flip just to the game reviews or interviews and then not read anything else. I wanted people to scroll through it like flipping through a magazine or read it front to back as everything that was submitted should be enjoyed equally.
I'll readily agree that Minmax grabbing Kin's slave leash was a heinous thing to do, but people in the throes of emotional distress often tend not to make rational decisions, in the same way that a drowning man will frantically clutch at his rescuer and wind up drowning them both. (Also, Minmax has probably, what, Int 7?) What I respected Minmax for was the aftermath where he tried to apologize and ask if there was anything he could do to make things right. And when Kin told him to drink the tea (aka "get out of my life, I never want to see you again"), he did it. He respected her wishes, even though it meant never seeing the person he loved again.
As for why Kickasso responded to Minmax when he didn't to his own friends/tribesmen, that I did find a bit odd. Then again, perhaps Kickasso saw in Minmax a kindred spirit. The two of them are clearly similar in personality and temperament, so Minmax "gets" him in a way that Kickasso's own family never did. (It's been a while, but I do remember the other goblins getting quite exasperated with him over his behaviour.) Remember too that Kickasso's torture and disfigurement were done by humans (or non-monstrous folks, at least), so the knowledge that at least one human doesn't regard him as a monster might be quite uplifting for his spirit.