Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity [BETA RELEASED, GO TO THE NEW THREAD]

I don't know about romance but love has always been a very strong driving force in all the works by Avellone (Gann, Kreia, Ravel, TNO) and by Ziets in MotB. Sometimes this may be romantic love or even a "romance" if you want to call it that but it's really more about the idea of love: the love to one's country, the love to an idea, the love of a parent, the love between friends, the love to one's duty or freedom, and so on.

Not sure why I'm throwing this out there. I do think these games are better for it rather than worse. This has nothing in common with what Bioware does.

 

That's because your definition of political incorrectess is based on a librul strawman.

 

Actually he didn't say that. A mature game without issues such as these is lacking, however... because if there are not difficult questions to explore in the game, then what's matue about it?

 

Sheek: Yes, I concur. I am not saying he's amazing as far as literature goes, because that's just not true, but as far as video games go he really can show us that the medium still has a long way to go and he's going in the right direction.

Shame few others are.

 

I never claimed that TW2 was realistic. It was you stating that. Realism is not necessarily important in, especially in the work of fantasy (realism is taken care of by "suspension of disbelief" and "conworld consistency" factors). Validity of themes, however, is.

 

Very true. I think you can also distinguish between the realism of the setting itself and the plausibility of the way the inhabitants react to the setting. So a world in which magic exists is unrealistic, but if the inhabitants of that world act in a way which makes sense given the existence of magic it feels realistic. If they don't act in a way that makes sense, it seems silly (such as in almost every videogame romance ever).

If the human inhabitants of the world were never gay, that would actually be extremely implausible, unless you made the non-existence of homosexuality an explicit condition of the world. In other words, unless you create a lore based reason for why there are no gay people, the absence of gay people does not make sense.

The argument that this is a medieval setting is an unconvincing argument for this reason; you are not making it a perfect representation of European history (elves, magic, at least a few relatively modern notions of right and wrong will likely be included), so on the question of how societies treated homosexuality in the past, you are making explicit choices about which medieval mores to include.

So viewing the inclusion of a common aspect of human behavior, such as homosexuality, as some kind of "unnecessary" meddling is kind of silly, as you are meddling the moment you begin to create a fantasy setting.

 

updated my lyric_suite.txt

 

What the fuck happened? I'm a way from this thread a couple of pages and it turns into GD?

 

Lyric Suite, please go back into your cage. thank you.

 

Yep, there's no necessity, but there is also nothing definite that should prevent them from doing so if it reinforces the message. And as I said, if Obsidian is shooting for "mature RPG" - as they promised in their initial video - they will need some mature themes for thinking adults - not necessarily the most sensitive ones, but at least something. Without them the game's going to be a juvenile romp.

 

Not only for that but also to provoke serious questions and make player look at certain values from a different perspective - there doesn't have to gameplay mechanic around it if they are subtle enough, though for the major themes there should be (e.g. C&C).

We are not on the same page it seems. The problem with Bioware is not necessarily that they include all their crap - it's that it doesn't serve anything else but pointless pandering to sexual deviants and mawkish love stories. There's no *theme*. And even if it were it has to be realised well - which never happens in Bioware games due to bad writing.

I agree, though Alpha Protocol could do better if it included less silly stuff that undermined it all the way.

 

This "ideal" of romance is based on a "transcendent" model which resides in a divine archetype which is where the whole idea comes from in the first place. It is because Avellone points towards that archetype that his "romances" are not as offensive as the more mundane standards used by Hollywood and modern media in general, including Biofag and their irk.

Like i said many times, good story telling hinges entirely on the efficacy in which a writer is able to adhere to the eternal principles which govern the "higher" nature of man. Thus, heroic literature can be considered great only to the degree in which the author is able to convey something of the sense of the heroic without any interference or distortion from a lesser, human perspective.

It is because of this that homosexuality has no place in great romantic literature, because, being a distortion of the divine archetype in question a priori, it cannot be elevated to such a transcendent degree in the first place. From a purely human point of view, there's very little difference between homosexuality and heterosexuality, but at that point what does it matter? I sure as hell am not bothering with art just to experience the mundane. That goes even for video games.

 

Fixed.

 

Get the GD shit fuck out of this topic.

 

I just think that something should be going on in the background - the world should be giving impression that it lives its own life beside PC and that certain things do happen in it without your input. It's not an appeal for realism but an appeal for context.

 

See? So as long as they remain thematically consistent "ghay is ok".

 

Their artists have redeemed themselves for now, go back to the drawing board with the character concepts though.

 

Hey, Morte read again what I have tattooed on my back.
(...)
Read everything.

 

But the entire idea of replayability in this scenario (beyond having actual trees of story options) is that you should NOT know what options are available apriori or at least NOT BE ABLE TO HAVE ALL VISIBLE with the same build. Differing builds should get a chance to create their own story by having access to different dialogue options only their CHOSEN (since everyone can choose all the skill apparently) skills.

 

And that is the same thing? How?