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Romance: Viconia or Jaheria?

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  • SomeSortSomeSort Member Posts: 859
    ThacoBell said:

    SomeSort said:

    ThacoBell said:

    You have a much higher fixation on sex than you claim the devs did. In no romance is sex the climax, it is at best a footnote in the relationship. FAR more time and dialogue is spent getting your partner to open up emotionally and then learning more about them. "But we are expected to believe they had a line they wouldn't cross to preserve Aerie being able to be portrayed as "pure"?" I mean, the game IS rated "teen".

    Oh, and I don't know that I would call Aerie "exotic", she is an elf, she looks like all the other hundreds of elves seen in the game. "But ThacoBell, she is a WINGED elf." Not anymore she isn't, for all appearances she looks like an elf with some nasty scars. Good luck convincing anyone that she is really an avariel.

    If you take the first opportunity to have sex with Aerie, it's most definitely the "climax" of the relationship. (Narratively speaking, of course. I would never be so crude as to resort to punnery in matters of sex or war.)
    Its not the climax because that is its failure state. It happens at maybe the halfway point of the SoA relationship, and there is still more in ToB.
    It most definitely is the narrative climax. I mean, I hate to engage in Argumentum ad Dictionarium, but "narrative climax" is a phrase that means a thing.

    Having sex with Aerie the first time marks the end of the rising action (the wooing), and leads directly to the denouement (the breakup). (There's no real falling action here, but there rarely is in video games because a slow wrap-up doesn't really fit the mechanics of the medium.)

    The fact that it occurs in the middle of SoA is irrelevant because the romance is a subplot and is therefore free to progress on its own terms independent of the course of the main action.

    The fact that it's a failure state is likewise irrelevant. Many narrative climaxes are failure states, especially in tragedies. The climax of Romeo and Juliet is Romeo mistaking Juliet for dead and killing himself, only for her to wake up as he dies. That's a pretty massive failure state.

    The fact that there exists an alternate universe in which the romance does not enter a failure state at this point but instead continues on doesn't change the fact that in the universe where you made that choice, you have reached the narrative conclusion of that particular subplot. After all, there are alternate universes where Caesar heeds Calpurnia's premonitions and stays home from the Senate on March 15th. That doesn't mean the assassination isn't still a narrative climax in the version of the play that actually gets staged.

    So there's at least one version of one of the original romances where sex serves as the climax. (If you want to be more broad, I'd call the narrative climax of Viconia's relationship the point where you refrain from having sex with her towards the end of SoA, too, which makes two where the climax revolves around sex.)
  • ThacoBellThacoBell Member Posts: 12,235
    @Somesort The fact that there is still OVER HALF of the romance line left disqualifies "teh sex" as the climax. Seriously people, whats with the fixation?
    DreadKhan
  • tbone1tbone1 Member Posts: 1,985
    ThacoBell said:


    Its not the climax because that is its failure state.

    It is if you do it right, eh, know what I mean, nudge nudge?
    SomeSort
  • SomeSortSomeSort Member Posts: 859
    ThacoBell said:

    @Somesort The fact that there is still OVER HALF of the romance line left disqualifies "teh sex" as the climax. Seriously people, whats with the fixation?

    If Aerie breaks up with you because you had sex with her the first time, there is precisely 0% of the romance line left, because she broke up with you and therefore ended the romance line. Also, Aerie is the one who asked you to have sex with her and then broke up with you when you did. I'd say she's the one with the fixation. I'm just responding to the story as written.

    I mean, I'm not saying sex was the climax of Jahiera's romance line, am I? The climax there is obviously when Elminster appears and judges her. And Viconia's is the battle with the Handmaiden, though if you wanted to be overly broad the trigger for that seems to be the dialogue before where you refrain from having sex with her, which baffles her.

    Also, I just looked it up since it's been a while since I've played her romance, and even if you *don't* sleep with her, that's the end of the romance line in SoA. So no matter what, your decision to have sex or not have sex with Aerie is the narrative climax of her romance!

    Sure, there's ToB content left. But ToB is a separate game with a separate narrative, and the SoA content has to stand on its own because for an entire year ToB didn't even exist yet. That'd be like saying Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone doesn't have a narrative climax because over 85% of the story of Harry Potter remains to be told afterward.
  • ThacoBellThacoBell Member Posts: 12,235
    @SomeSort No, ToB is just an epilogue chapter for SoA, it is not distinct enough to be a separate game. The climax of Aerie's romance is her epilogue in ToB. Its a full circle closing of all her plot points, as well as poignant closure for charname as well. After having the only family he has known, he has now made his own, free from the taint of Bhaal. There are shades of this in Jaheira's romance, but Aerie's has the most unambiguously happy ending.
    DreadKhanAttalus
  • UnderstandMouseMagicUnderstandMouseMagic Member Posts: 2,147
    ThacoBell said:

    @SomeSort No, ToB is just an epilogue chapter for SoA, it is not distinct enough to be a separate game. The climax of Aerie's romance is her epilogue in ToB. Its a full circle closing of all her plot points, as well as poignant closure for charname as well. After having the only family he has known, he has now made his own, free from the taint of Bhaal. There are shades of this in Jaheira's romance, but Aerie's has the most unambiguously happy ending.

    How does that make any sense?

    If a person breaks up with another person, that's the end of the romance, that's the climax. 6 months down the line the person could be in another romance, maybe had a couple more in the interim.

    What you are essentially saying is that if a person had a romance at school, broke up, met the partner at a reunion 20 years later when they are married with kids to somebody else, those children are the climax of the school time romance?
  • ThacoBellThacoBell Member Posts: 12,235

    ThacoBell said:

    @SomeSort No, ToB is just an epilogue chapter for SoA, it is not distinct enough to be a separate game. The climax of Aerie's romance is her epilogue in ToB. Its a full circle closing of all her plot points, as well as poignant closure for charname as well. After having the only family he has known, he has now made his own, free from the taint of Bhaal. There are shades of this in Jaheira's romance, but Aerie's has the most unambiguously happy ending.

    How does that make any sense?

    If a person breaks up with another person, that's the end of the romance, that's the climax. 6 months down the line the person could be in another romance, maybe had a couple more in the interim.

    What you are essentially saying is that if a person had a romance at school, broke up, met the partner at a reunion 20 years later when they are married with kids to somebody else, those children are the climax of the school time romance?
    Except that this is a game, and there is a clear end (a climax, if you will) to any relationship path. If you don't reach it, then you failed to reach the climax as it was intended. This clearly doesn't work in real life, but the discussion was never about real life.
  • UnderstandMouseMagicUnderstandMouseMagic Member Posts: 2,147
    ThacoBell said:

    ThacoBell said:

    @SomeSort No, ToB is just an epilogue chapter for SoA, it is not distinct enough to be a separate game. The climax of Aerie's romance is her epilogue in ToB. Its a full circle closing of all her plot points, as well as poignant closure for charname as well. After having the only family he has known, he has now made his own, free from the taint of Bhaal. There are shades of this in Jaheira's romance, but Aerie's has the most unambiguously happy ending.

    How does that make any sense?

    If a person breaks up with another person, that's the end of the romance, that's the climax. 6 months down the line the person could be in another romance, maybe had a couple more in the interim.

    What you are essentially saying is that if a person had a romance at school, broke up, met the partner at a reunion 20 years later when they are married with kids to somebody else, those children are the climax of the school time romance?
    Except that this is a game, and there is a clear end (a climax, if you will) to any relationship path. If you don't reach it, then you failed to reach the climax as it was intended. This clearly doesn't work in real life, but the discussion was never about real life.
    I don't agree that the vanilla romances in BG2 work like that.

    Take the mod "Kivan" romance. Now that's clearly set up as a "trial" as an aspect of "gameplay" with a correct and an incorrect path to reach the goal of becoming a "romance". (and it's bleeding hard, that guy is so picky). And to be honest it's not very realistic at all, no woman has that much forbearance and patience.
    Fun to play, but fantasy.

    You are romancing Aerie, it has happened, goal achieved. It's actually more reflective of real life that a break up happens then, rather than "romance" being a goal to be achieved in game.

    With Anomen, you are in a romance already. It's not a goal to be achieved but you can mess it up.

    Vic, sorry I can't remember.
  • ThacoBellThacoBell Member Posts: 12,235
    If we want to talk real life, for me the climax of romance isn't a single event. It's the culmination of a life spent together. Its all the experiences good and bad, that they have gone through together. So for me, the sex being the end of a relationship is still no climax. A broken relationship is no climax either, it is just a dead thing.
  • UnderstandMouseMagicUnderstandMouseMagic Member Posts: 2,147
    @ThacoBell

    I think people have romances all the time that don't always end up in a whole life spent together. People grow apart, they move on and you can't dismiss their experience as simply being a "broken relationship" or a "dead thing".
    SomeSort
  • ThacoBellThacoBell Member Posts: 12,235
    @UnderstandMouseMagic Well, they grew apart, that relationship is no more. So yes, it is dead. That doesn't mean they have a relationship of a different kind, but the old one is dead and gone.
  • SomeSortSomeSort Member Posts: 859
    ThacoBell said:

    @SomeSort No, ToB is just an epilogue chapter for SoA, it is not distinct enough to be a separate game. The climax of Aerie's romance is her epilogue in ToB. Its a full circle closing of all her plot points, as well as poignant closure for charname as well. After having the only family he has known, he has now made his own, free from the taint of Bhaal. There are shades of this in Jaheira's romance, but Aerie's has the most unambiguously happy ending.

    Why is the Baldur's Gate trilogy called the Baldur's Gate trilogy despite only having two proper games in it, (ignoring SoD because it was the BG Trilogy long before that came on the scene)? Because it was envisioned as a trilogy, it was designed as a trilogy, and most importantly, it was plotted as a trilogy.

    The fact that they released the third chapter of the trilogy as an expansion for the second chapter instead of as a standalone game is a sad fact of rushed development schedules and business realities. But the trilogy was designed from the ground up to be a story in three parts, and all three parts stand on their own narratively.
  • SomeSortSomeSort Member Posts: 859
    ThacoBell said:

    Except that this is a game, and there is a clear end (a climax, if you will) to any relationship path. If you don't reach it, then you failed to reach the climax as it was intended. This clearly doesn't work in real life, but the discussion was never about real life.

    This makes no sense. The story of the relationship progresses as the story of the relationship progresses. The fact that there are multiple possible outcomes does not mean that only one of those outcomes is "right" and therefore only that outcome has a climax. Instead, *each* of the possible outcomes has its own narrative structure and narrative climax.

    I mean, if Haer'Dalis challenges you to a duel for Aerie's hand and you cede it rather than fight him, would you not consider that a climax, because in some alternate universe you could have chosen *not* to cede it and instead played things differently?

    Because personally, I think "your friend challenges you to a duel for a woman's love" is kind of a textbook narrative climax for a love triangle like that.
    Artona
  • DreadKhanDreadKhan Member Posts: 3,857
    SomeSort said:

    ThacoBell said:

    Except that this is a game, and there is a clear end (a climax, if you will) to any relationship path. If you don't reach it, then you failed to reach the climax as it was intended. This clearly doesn't work in real life, but the discussion was never about real life.

    This makes no sense. The story of the relationship progresses as the story of the relationship progresses. The fact that there are multiple possible outcomes does not mean that only one of those outcomes is "right" and therefore only that outcome has a climax. Instead, *each* of the possible outcomes has its own narrative structure and narrative climax.

    I mean, if Haer'Dalis challenges you to a duel for Aerie's hand and you cede it rather than fight him, would you not consider that a climax, because in some alternate universe you could have chosen *not* to cede it and instead played things differently?

    Because personally, I think "your friend challenges you to a duel for a woman's love" is kind of a textbook narrative climax for a love triangle like that.
    When I played she just walked off with him, no option to even kill both to recover gear. That was the CD version though.
  • SomeSortSomeSort Member Posts: 859
    DreadKhan said:

    When I played she just walked off with him, no option to even kill both to recover gear. That was the CD version though.

    I know there are several ways for it to play out, but I forget most of them because I always just push Aerie and Haer'Dalis together, since I think her romance with Charname is the weakest of the original three, but her romance with Haer'Dalis is fantastic.
  • ThacoBellThacoBell Member Posts: 12,235
    @SomeSort "Why is the Baldur's Gate trilogy called the Baldur's Gate trilogy despite only having two proper games in it, (ignoring SoD because it was the BG Trilogy long before that came on the scene)?"

    Because people are silly. If we are counting expansions, then it should be a quadrilly to accoutn ToSC>


    "This makes no sense. The story of the relationship progresses as the story of the relationship progresses. The fact that there are multiple possible outcomes does not mean that only one of those outcomes is "right" and therefore only that outcome has a climax. Instead, *each* of the possible outcomes has its own narrative structure and narrative climax."

    Because the romances change the epilogue, carrying it through all the way is clearly the intended "win state" of the romance. Remember this isn't real life and everything in a game is either "you win, here is your rewaard" or "you lose, here is your bad ending".
    DreadKhan
  • UnderstandMouseMagicUnderstandMouseMagic Member Posts: 2,147
    ThacoBell said:

    @SomeSort "Why is the Baldur's Gate trilogy called the Baldur's Gate trilogy despite only having two proper games in it, (ignoring SoD because it was the BG Trilogy long before that came on the scene)?"

    Because people are silly. If we are counting expansions, then it should be a quadrilly to accoutn ToSC>


    "This makes no sense. The story of the relationship progresses as the story of the relationship progresses. The fact that there are multiple possible outcomes does not mean that only one of those outcomes is "right" and therefore only that outcome has a climax. Instead, *each* of the possible outcomes has its own narrative structure and narrative climax."

    Because the romances change the epilogue, carrying it through all the way is clearly the intended "win state" of the romance. Remember this isn't real life and everything in a game is either "you win, here is your rewaard" or "you lose, here is your bad ending".

    So Viconia and the epilogue if you have "won" the romance...........?
    ArtonaThacoBell
  • ThacoBellThacoBell Member Posts: 12,235
    @UnderstandMouseMagic Yes, Viconia has the WORST romance for several reasons. I feel like the devs wanted to do one "tragic" romance and they landed on VIconia on the spinning dart board. The worst part is, its a total diabolus ex machina that comes out of nowhere and makes no sense.
    Attalus
  • SomeSortSomeSort Member Posts: 859
    ThacoBell said:

    @SomeSort "Why is the Baldur's Gate trilogy called the Baldur's Gate trilogy despite only having two proper games in it, (ignoring SoD because it was the BG Trilogy long before that came on the scene)?"

    Because people are silly. If we are counting expansions, then it should be a quadrilly to accoutn ToSC>

    People aren't silly, unless by "people" you mean "the developers of Baldur's Gate", who were clear that they wrote the games as a trilogy but released ToB as an expansion because of business realities.

    Anyway, we're not counting games or expansions.

    We're counting narrative arcs. BG has a beginning, middle, and end. It has a clearly defined primary antagonist and a story that progresses the task of defeating that antagonist. It is temporally distinct from the other two chapters in that one cannot progress back and forth between them.

    BG2 has a beginning, middle, and end. It has a clearly-defined primary antagonist and a story that progresses the task of defeating that antagonist. It is temporally distinct from the other two chapters in that one cannot progress back and forth between them.

    ToB has a beginning, middle, and end. It has a clearly-defined primary antagonist and a story that progresses the task of defeating that antagonist. It is temporally distinct from the other two chapters in that one cannot progress back and forth between them.

    Tales of the Sword Coast is a... erm. Tales of the Sword Cost has a... umm. Tales of the Sword Coast tells a story with a clear... errr. Tales of the Sword Coast sure does have a fun dungeon.
    "This makes no sense. The story of the relationship progresses as the story of the relationship progresses. The fact that there are multiple possible outcomes does not mean that only one of those outcomes is "right" and therefore only that outcome has a climax. Instead, *each* of the possible outcomes has its own narrative structure and narrative climax."

    Because the romances change the epilogue, carrying it through all the way is clearly the intended "win state" of the romance. Remember this isn't real life and everything in a game is either "you win, here is your rewaard" or "you lose, here is your bad ending".
    Okay. So if Aerie falls in love with Haer'Dalis, have you lost that romance? What if you never tried to trigger the romance in the first place, did you lose that romance? If you try to romance two characters at once, then when you are forced to choose one of them, does that also count as a loss? If you finish the romance with Aerie, do you consider yourself having a 33% romance success rate because you simultaneously failed the ones with Viconia and Jahiera?

    Or, perhaps, is it possible for a narrative to be neither right nor wrong, but to simply be a narrative? You can pick which characters you want to take, and any combination you take is "right". If you want to watch Valygar murder Viconia, you can do that and it's "right". If you want to turn Edwina over to the Red Wizards, that's fine. If you want to push Anomen towards LG, that's cool, but if you don't like him when he's so stuck up and would rather push him to CN, that's also cool. You're free to enjoy Sarevok just as much when he's evil as you do when he's good.

    Saying "BG2 is a game so obviously there's a right way to play it" kind of spectacularly misses what has given BG2 nearly two decades worth of staying power.
    Artona
  • fatelessfateless Member Posts: 330
    I'd just like to point out that Aerie wanting to sleep with you and then breaking it off with you when you do is something that can be a sign of abuse in her past even though it isn't mentioned.

    However. To touch on things a bit more. Considering this is a game there must be some metric to say whether a particular story comes to a climax or not. And we have one. The Epilogues. If you sleep with Aerie and the romance breaks. Last I recall she gets the same epilogue as if you didn't romance her at all. However if you romance her and let her be with HD(which there is one way to keep them in the party, not that I remember what it is anymore), as I recall that has an affect on her epilogue. And we all know carrying her romance all the way through ToB gets her a different epilogue.

    Viconia is the only one where the epilogue kind of bothers me. It feels like one of the unfinished pieces of the game. like there were supposed to be more epilogues to trigger with her that just never got finished and put into the game. Because it doesn't take into account various things that can happen to her like her alignment change and such. You either get a epilogue for not romancing her or one for romancing her and that's it. But she is one that changes more in the course of things than the other two.
    ThacoBell
  • ThacoBellThacoBell Member Posts: 12,235
    @SomeSort No, because you never started it in the first place. If you romanced Aerie and THEN she ended up with Haer'Dalis, then yes, you would have failed the romance. These games give a great amount of freedom in *how* you do things. Not so much in how it ends, so there is very clear failure states for certain things, like romances.
  • AttalusAttalus Member Posts: 156
    ThacoBell said:

    @UnderstandMouseMagic Yes, Viconia has the WORST romance for several reasons. I feel like the devs wanted to do one "tragic" romance and they landed on VIconia on the spinning dart board. The worst part is, its a total diabolus ex machina that comes out of nowhere and makes no sense.

    Agree totally. I have rarely been so disappointed as the first time I finished ToB and read Viconia's epilogue. Subtly, the devs made it worse when David Gaider's "Ascension" mod changed the epilogue, but it was still bad.

  • RedWizardRedWizard Member Posts: 242
    Viccy
    I'd rather have a waifu that would raise me from the dead instead of one that would just get on with another man a few weeks later because of some treehugger philosophy.
  • MalbethMalbeth Member Posts: 27
    Khalid deserved better than Jaheria. Don't dishonour his memory by making the same mistake.
    DreadKhanUnderstandMouseMagic
  • Google_CalasadeGoogle_Calasade Member Posts: 80
    edited July 2017
    To this day, the Jahiera and Viconia romances are some of the best in all gaming (never have romanced Aerie because I've never kept her that long - will have to keep her on another play-through). How the relationships were handled in SOA is (frankly) brilliant and never-matched, where you had to work at building the relationship, unlike say what CDPR does with theirs, where there is the big and obvious moment and every other decision regarding the romanceable character matters crap-all. Am still waiting and hoping that someday some developer will go beyond the meet, get to know, and have sex with part and actually incorporate maintaining and growing a relationship in a game or else the relationship dies, where the success/death of said relationship impacts the game directly or indirectly. That would be interesting.

    Back to topic, I don't choose between Jahiera and Viconia. I used the tweaks mod so I could romance both. :smiley:
  • UnderstandMouseMagicUnderstandMouseMagic Member Posts: 2,147
    @Google_Calasade

    So you enjoy the romances because you have to work at them....and cheat on both.
    LOL.
    I hope you feel dreadfully guilty about it or even better, some magic AI infects the game and you get caught.

    Now that would be something new in a game, the ability to have a clandestine affair with another NPC without the first one knowing.
    tbone1ThacoBell
  • Google_CalasadeGoogle_Calasade Member Posts: 80
    edited July 2017
    @UnderstandMouseMagic

    Don't be so quick to judge. The hours I have available for games number very few (hence my seventy-four posts here in FOUR years), so I pack in as much as I can per play-through.
    MirandelUnderstandMouseMagic
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