Little busy with, you know, a game or something. I'll drop back in when I can.
I'll give a shameless bump and add a new question...
Who was the first Bioware writer to work on a romance? And what character was the first romance written for (I'm guessing it was BG2, but I may be wrong)?
Can't answer the first question, but I think the first romance was in BG1. Or at least the first romance I saw in a BioWare game. It was extremely brief and had the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the face. XD You could flirt with a werewolf villager of the opposite sex while stranded on their island. I forgot their names. Anyway, after that Charname makes note of possibly developing feelings for said NPC in their journal. By the time everything there goes to pot, you sort of admit you have feelings for each other openly but can't stay together because of your racial differences, and so it ends tragically ect.
It was pretty horrid all things considered, but I can't give them too much flak over a rough first attempt. Probably also didn't help that it was in an expansion with a minor NPC that doesn't join your party. I wonder how many people missed it altogether?
With the new fancy boards, I thought I'd quote you, Lukas, to get a ping on your radar.
Not sure if this is consider "old games" conversation or not, but how much of the planned Exalted March DA2 Expansion made it into DA:I and how much was left on the cutting room floor, so to speak?
Gaider replied on his tumblr that the Well of Sorrows came from the expansion. They were in the very early stages of development when it got cancelled, though, so he didn't reveal much more than that. Only that things would have ended badly for a lot of characters.
Gaider replied on his tumblr that the Well of Sorrows came from the expansion. They were in the very early stages of development when it got cancelled, though, so he didn't reveal much more than that. Only that things would have ended badly for a lot of characters.
Guest_mikeucrazy_*
a Thresructions without me...what!!!! i am sooooo........
At least for the long-term ones in BG2, wouldn't that be Dave? *Points at Page 11 of the topic, the big-ass quote*Who was the first Bioware writer to work on a romance? And what character was the first romance written for (I'm guessing it was BG2, but I may be wrong)?
I had just started with BioWare, getting my feet wet writing a bunch of the Athkatla plots in Baldur’s Gate II when James Ohlen told me his idea for romance plots… a long chain of interactions over the course of the game specific to someone romancing the character. Seemed… simple enough? Nobody had ever done something quite like that, to my knowledge. At least, not to that extent. There was a romance arc in Final Fantasy 7, sort of, which I’d played. So kind of like that?
Gosh what a nightmare. As was the case with many things in BG2, this kind of ballooned beyond initial plans. At every turn, it was “hey, maybe this could happen here if you’re in a romance” or “hey, maybe we should add this” or “hey, maybe Bodhi kidnaps your romance and turns them into a vampire”. That won’t be hard to do, right? Which was awesome, sure, but the scripting teams were already doing cartwheels to keep on top of all the content. Add to that the plot timers based on real-time mixed with those based on game-time and it was a recipe for bugs. Bugs, bugs, bugs, bugs. This being my first game, it seemed like a bewildering sea of them. There were so many bugs in the Jaheira romance alone James once posted a sign on his door which essentially read “IF YOU’RE COMING TO TALK TO ME ABOUT JAHEIRA BUGS I DON’T WANT TO HEAR IT!” I thought for sure they were all going to get cut. I’m pretty certain they teetered on the edge of it for some time.
But they went in. It just seemed like too much effort to waste, and they were kind of cool even if they were pretty prone to breaking badly. That was just how we rolled in those days. I don’t think we ever imagined it would be popular. Did guy gamers (remember there was only one romance aimed at female players) really want this sort of content? Seemed like a dubious prospect.
And yet… whoa. It became a thing. It took on a life of its own. I suppose the cynical could imagine that we simply liked the positive response and did more of the same to “pander” (there’s that word again) to those poor, deluded fools who couldn’t see how obviously insipid such plots were… but this was a visceral reaction. You don’t ignore that. This was something people hadn’t seen much of, and they wanted to see more. So, yes, I’d say it was something that definitely went right. It was kind of great to be there at the start of it, though I recall being a little chagrined at the time to find myself the only writer who wanted to write the guy-romances. Odd how things change.
Interesting. I can only imagine Corypheus was the big bad in that scenario as well...?
Seems plausible, but he did not say anything about Cory. Or Hawke's grand purpose in the expansion.
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