Party to have fun with banter
Merry
Member Posts: 9
I'm a first time player in BG-1, my multi thief/mage just got to Beregost and there are already 8 NPC who ever wanted to get into the party. Still they seem to be more like long line of NPC in Oblivion who were ready to marry me, than to characters with properly written script.
Will they have more story-related banter in later chapters? The only NPC I remember for now is Xzar and I'm going to return to Friendly Arm's and get him back. And Jaheira got French accent... But it's neither interesting nor funny. Please, share your thoughts
Will they have more story-related banter in later chapters? The only NPC I remember for now is Xzar and I'm going to return to Friendly Arm's and get him back. And Jaheira got French accent... But it's neither interesting nor funny. Please, share your thoughts
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Unlike BG2, in BG1 there are no romances. But with the BG:EE's three new NPCs (Rasaad, Neera, and Dorn) you're going to see more conversation than with the original 25.
If you don't mind being spoiled a little we can tell you which NPCs you *might* see some interactions between...
Monty and Xzar have quite the number of lines (mostly batshit insane), and they have a few unique interactions with outside NPCs (chapter 7, a guy near iron throne, or the other mages in sorcerous sundries).
Coran and Safana also banter a lot, mostly Coran hitting on Safana (okay, he hits on everyone, but these banters are unique to them) and getting shot down. he also has his very own quest in Baldur's Gate.
surprising, there is actually a lot of chit-chat in BG1 too, you just have to pair the right people together to get some unique dialogues. off the top of my head:
- Xan makes fun of Ajantis (good boy)
- Alora tries to cheer up Edwin (and does!)
- Eldoth has half the world rotating around him: Shar-Teel despises and insults, Skie adores, and Garrick wants to steal his girlfriend off him, not sure if all unique or just some of their banters
- Yeslick and Kagain despise each other
- ...and of course the two harper fools chat amongst themselves, iirc Jaheira also hates Faldorn
there may be more, but the Xzar-Monty and Coran-Safana pairs definitely produce the most interesting ones.
also, the new NPCs talk. a lot. good thing in case of Neera, though I still feel like shoving a... well, a shovel down Rasaad's throat whenever he opens his mouth. (his stay in my party was shortlived at best)
http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/12045/npc-interaction-and-banter-guide-ok-finished
It's not complete because I based it on Vanilla BG which has alot of banter bugs but it's decent enough to see who interacts with who.
Most of the BG NPCs have quite limited banter. It's not like BG2 where each NPC had their own subquests and would frequently interject. In BG1:EE you'd best to pick up the three new NPCS if you want NPC specific subquests because they are fleshed out more than the original NPCs were.
It's possible to pick a party of NPCs in BG1 that will never ever initiate any sort of banter.
The best party for banters is the following:
1. Eldoth
2. Garrick
3. Skie
4. Shar-Teel (She will eventually fight Eldoth to the death.)
5. Xan
But getting these five can be real troublesome on a first playthrough because some occur later in the game and most of them are incredibly difficult to use in battle.
The best way to go about this is to pick a NPC you really like and then surround them with banter compatible NPCs.
For example if you really like Jaheira then you'd best recruit Khalid her husband and Faldorn her rival. You can recruit Xzar and Montaron but be warned that they will attack each other to death, so they would only be temporary recruits. The other two slots would be filled by anyone else since there are very few Jaheira specific banters left. I'd recommend Kivan since he does the odd comment to Faldorn, Khalid and Jaheira. Maybe Coran because he'll then hit on Jaheira and Faldorn will try to compliment him.
The following Jaheira party is really fun because there are environmental banters in the gamescript that will execute depending on what sort of map you are in (forest, dungeon, city, day or night). Some NPCs do not have environmental banters like Coran.
If you add up all the environmental banters of the following five, you'd get 19 lines of dialogue, add that to the 20 or so character banters and you have 40 lines of dialogue. I included Tiax because whilst he rarely insults the others, he will have banters with the game maps which is really entertaining, he's the token anti-hippie of the group.
1. Jaheira
2. Faldorn
3. Khalid
4. Kivan
5. Tiax
I would recruit Jaheira, Khalid and Kivan since you get them very early on. Then recruit Montaron and Xzar until they start a fight, then kill them. Recruit two random NPCs until chapter 3, then ditch one for Faldorn. Ditch the other when you get to the city of Baldur's Gate for Tiax. And there you'll have a really entertaining party of NPCs. You can always ditch Faldorn, Kivan or Tiax for one of the new NPCs if you want but I don't have any information on what banters they bring.
DinsdalePiranha, thank you. Hm, this one is not exactly funny. The dead person is up to the dice?
You didn't include Edwin in the final list, does he have less interactions than others? I'm going to get to BG2 after finishing BG1, but I'm a very slow player, so they might make BG2:EE before I get to it. I wish BG series was around when I was a kid and had way more time for it.
May fight to the death against Dynaheir only if Minsc is present
May fight to the death against Ajantis
10 Unique Banters towards Alora
3 Unique Banters towards Minsc and Dynaheir
2 Unique Banters towards Ajantis.
2 Unique Banters towards Dynaheir
2 Unique Banter towards Dynaheir and Alora
1 Unique Death Quote towards Dynaheir
3 Insults towards Minsc, Yeslick, Ajantis, Khalid & Eldoth
Received insults from Minsc2, Yeslick1, Khalid1, Jaheira2, Garrick1, Safana1, Branwen2, Xan2, Eldoth2 & Kagain2
Received special comments from Xzar3 & Viconia1
Replies to insults with 1 Response
Replies to compliments with 1 Response
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So if you want an Edwin centric party then choose Dynaheir (without Minsc or else they will fight) and Alora. The other two slots could be anyone. Just don't pick Minsc or Ajantis otherwise Edwin will fight to the death.
As for Shar-Teel, the funny thing is she is a misandrist and he is a misogynist, so a fight to the death is actually quite entertaining since both are such horrible people. Anyways, when NPCs do fight to the death you can always reload and hope they don't do that or download a mod that removes all NPC duels. The winner of a death duel is really the stronger character, so it's not really a throw of the dice.
Here are the following combinations of NPCs that will fight to the death:
Ajantis vs Tiax
Ajantis vs Eldoth
Ajantis vs Kagain
Ajantis vs Montaron
Ajantis vs Xzar
Ajantis vs Shar-Teel
Ajantis vs Edwin
Branwen & Tiax
Quayle vs Tiax
Dynaheir & Edwin (only if Minsc is present)
Minsc vs Edwin
Eldoth & Shar-Teel
Jaheira & Xzar
Khalid vs Montaron
Khalid vs Xzar
Kivan vs Viconia
Kagain & Yeslick
So if you don't want to lose an NPC, don't have a party with any of these combinations.
The Dan Simpson BG1 walkthrough lists the lines that the NPCs speak and Dan has identified in some cases who the lines are directed at, but for many of them he doesn't know. I have that recreated that document here, and if anyone can help me fill in the gaps that would be awesome!
Edit: Okay, I'm sifting through Mordeus' excellent thread and it will take some time, but I would expect who all speaks to whom can be gleaned from that thread.
@DinsdalePiranha You're right about insults.
Banters in BG1 are broken down into the following three categories; General, Unique and Environmental Banters.
General Banters are throw away comments by an NPC to another NPC, sometimes triggering off a counter reply from the complimented/insulted NPC. But every NPC has their preferred NPC to insult and compliment, if you don't have the right pairing you'll receive no banters at all.
Each banter is marked as either an Compliment, Insult or Special. And the replies are either Compliment or Insult specific. Certain characters like Xzar are special cases, where they will speak aloud to every NPC in the game, so they will banter with everyone.
If you have a party of NPCs that are all compatible with each other then the banter will be triggered at a random target. For example a party of Branwen, Shar-Teel, Kivan, Minsc and Ajantis, will have Branwen praising one of them with her only compliment line despite it being compatible with all of them.
Unique Banters are a set of dialogue trees with multiple paths directed at one or two NPCs. Sometimes the banter will be triggered all the way, other times it will be cut off prematurely. There are variations of the same banter depending on which NPCs are around. For example Edwin will have around three variations of the same taunt, one directed to both Minsc and Dynaheir, one directed to Minsc if Dynaheir isn't around and one directed to Dynaheir if Minsc isn't around.
The last kind of banter is based on the environment. If a character walks into a map that is either a night, day, forest, city or dungeon setting they will say a line of dialogue. But certain characters like Coran have have no environmental banters.
There is another kind of banter which is connected to the selection menu. The line of dialogue a character has is dependant on if they are the leader of the group or the randomly generated comment at being clicked. There are a set of common responses and then there are a set of rare responses. Every NPC has around the same amount of selection banters, so it's not really worth mentioning.
I must warn about Imoen. She has by far the worst number of banters. In fact she banters with no-one in Vanilla Baldur's Gate. I don't know if that was changed in EE however, since alot of her dialogue files were glitched. There was at least one banter she had with Eldoth but it never triggered in Vanila BG. But if you count up all her sound files she has around half the number of the average NPC.
I just started work on the EE Banter FAQ and it does look like Imoen wasn't touched. It's a pity that they really can't touch the old NPCs because there are some forgotten sound files of hers that could be used.
It's interesting that in the case of IMOEN20 and IMOEN22 the original developers just split those lines into selection banters.
IMOEN01 - "Please sirs I'm sorry for what I've done but a girl has got to eat you know?
IMOEN20 - "I told you that it twas Eldoth that had done the deeds, I nothing more so leave me to go"
IMOEN22 - "Good on you if you save the day, I don't care for I am gone"
IMOEN23 - "Good to see you round dix again" (I can't make out the last three words so I'm estimating)
I wonder what the original intent of these banters were, especially Imoen's connection with Eldoth. Sounds like Imoen got framed by him.
It's going to take me probably two or weeks to get this banter guide finished. It's a little more complicated than I expected. Especially with the complexity of Neera, Dorn and Rasaad. Actually make that a month, there are over one hundred lines to sift through :S
Admittedly that's a part of her character - she will do what is necessary to survive but doesn't revel in evil. Still...
My personal favorites (for BG2) are Minsc and a gnome thief named Jan Jensen. These two play off each other brilliantly and can be quite amusing. Jan himself is hilarious and with most other companions he has something entertaining to say, but I think he is funniest with Minsc (personal opinion).
I also highly recommend putting Viconia and Firecam in the same party (though not a no-reload game). They can be extremely fiery in their exchanges and will usually come to blows. But it is a fun ride while you are going.
But yeah, BG2 did a much better job of adding that in than BG1 did.
So, what do I do? I'm at reputation 18, so they're about to split anyway. I want to see them get destroyed by goodness!
http://www.sorcerers.net/Games/BG/bg_npc_conflicts.php
Not entirely sure how accurate it is, especially now with BG:EE.
I had also heard that Xan interacts with the Viconia/Kivan squabble, though I don't know if he does.
Heh this cheers me up too! Very suprised when i heard their banter first time.
A "Raistlin&Bupu" cameo/easter egg i assumed back then.