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Captain Oblivious posted:You know that the main antagonist, and arguably the canon romance/ending, is available to both men and women right? Yes, I looked that up. And I'd never go for it because she crosses those lines for me where I go "That's very sad and I am very sorry for you, but I'm going to turn your head into fine salsa with this mace."
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# ? Mar 18, 2021 18:37 |
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# ? May 22, 2024 00:26 |
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What video games have good gay romances? Maybe I'm soured by first encountering the concept in Dragon Age: Inquisition where the gay characters were the worst video game character there is and one that's just fairly standard Bioware unpleasant, but I'm not sure I've encountered a romanceable gay character I didn't hate. Bi characters, sure, the very same game even has a very lovable pansexual bull man. Also not fond of Glint or Hexxat, but I'm not really into any of the Beamdog romances. I guess I liked the crew members in ME3 well enough but I've never seen their romances because that would involve not dating Garrus. Zulily Zoetrope fucked around with this message at 18:47 on Mar 18, 2021 |
# ? Mar 18, 2021 18:43 |
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Zulily Zoetrope posted:What video games have good gay romances? Maybe I'm soured by first encountering the concept in Dragon Age: Inquisition where the gay characters were the worst video game character there is and one that's just fairly standard Bioware unpleasant, but I'm not sure I've encountered a romanceable gay character I didn't hate. I liked Leliana's and Zevran's romances in Dragon Age: Origins, Lana's in Star Wars: The Old Republic, and Traynor's in Mass Effect 3. For non-Bioware, I liked Mercedes and Dorothea in Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Yeah, options are incredibly lacking.
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# ? Mar 18, 2021 18:46 |
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yeah the romances in this game are not really good so it's kind of a moot question
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# ? Mar 18, 2021 18:47 |
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The Valerie personal quest dialogue options are all painfully bad and I cannot imagine pursuing whatever romance is available. It's actually pretty remarkable that most of the romancable characters in Kingmaker are also the very worst NPCs to talk to generally.
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# ? Mar 18, 2021 19:14 |
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Don't play Kingmaker for the writing lol, it's loving pathfinder
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# ? Mar 18, 2021 19:29 |
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Cythereal posted:Yes, I looked that up. And I'd never go for it because she crosses those lines for me where I go "That's very sad and I am very sorry for you, but I'm going to turn your head into fine salsa with this mace." That's a pretty weird reaction to have given that they are literally acting under magical compulsion.
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# ? Mar 18, 2021 19:49 |
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Captain Oblivious posted:That's a pretty weird reaction to have given that they are literally acting under magical compulsion. "Oh, all these evil things I did weren't really my fault! I expect you to forgive me because I'm hot!" is a hallmark of lovely writing.
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# ? Mar 18, 2021 19:53 |
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Zulily Zoetrope posted:What video games have good gay romances? Maybe I'm soured by first encountering the concept in Dragon Age: Inquisition where the gay characters were the worst video game character there is and one that's just fairly standard Bioware unpleasant, but I'm not sure I've encountered a romanceable gay character I didn't hate. Dorian is a bro tho.
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# ? Mar 18, 2021 19:54 |
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Cythereal posted:"Oh, all these evil things I did weren't really my fault! I expect you to forgive me because I'm hot!" is a hallmark of lovely writing. Pretty much evil major single villain in the game you have the option to let live or die, or possibly recruit. It's basically a hierarchy of evil, and everyone is working willingly or not for someone above them, and at the top are the real ones you need to smash down.
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# ? Mar 18, 2021 20:00 |
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Cythereal posted:"Oh, all these evil things I did weren't really my fault! I expect you to forgive me because I'm hot!" is a hallmark of lovely writing. Well, no. You're not supposed to forgive her because she's hot, you're supposed to forgive her because she literally lacks volition and this whole thing is one big bit of theater to amuse a Fae Lord. You and her both are pawns and killing her is literally what he wanted you to do. It was supposed to be the poetic finale to his play. Nine hundred and ninety nine kingdoms ground to dust by the wicked nymph and she is struck down in the eleventh hour by a great hero, so that the Lantern King can have a laugh. It's why he helps you in various disguises throughout the game. She's not the real villain. Captain Oblivious fucked around with this message at 20:11 on Mar 18, 2021 |
# ? Mar 18, 2021 20:09 |
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Chairchucker posted:Dorian is a bro tho. He's not the worst, but I never really got over his introduction, where you're cast into a story that is the grimmest and most painful setpiece in the series, and he just shits all over the tone because he just got there and the player has to know that he is both glib and sassy. Also you can tell him slavery is kinda hosed up and he'll burst into a big defensive rant about how his house slaves are fed and happy and much better off than any serf or peasant. That may well be true in the game's setting but it's kind of a turn-off for me.
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# ? Mar 18, 2021 21:22 |
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Cythereal posted:"Oh, all these evil things I did weren't really my fault! I expect you to forgive me because I'm hot!" is a hallmark of lovely writing. I really don't want to defend Kingmaker's writing because lol but yeah this isn't actually what's going on just fyi
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# ? Mar 18, 2021 22:30 |
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Psycho Landlord posted:I really don't want to defend Kingmaker's writing because lol but yeah this isn't actually what's going on just fyi You can convo skill pretty much every single villain expect the very first one who you have to kill to take over his camp. It's a mix of good/evil stuff but generally there's a lot going on behind the scenes you don't find out about until much later. There's one evil guy who freely admits "yeah, I'm gonna gently caress up your kingdom and bring it to ruins, but it'll probably take me several centuries to get to it, you'll be long dead by then so I'll help for now" and he joins your side. Also, the "forgive evil hot chick" romance is spaced out across the 80+hrs and was a massive secret for months after the game launched because there's a ton of stuff you have do across all the encounters for it to even flag as an option. It's entirely possible to miss the "real" final boss based on the decisions you make as well. It's not great, and I think they went ahead and made it much easier to achieve in the current edition, but while nothing you do in the game really has that much effect on anything besides some random end slate comments, the various interactions with and about the main villain actually have long term significance.
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# ? Mar 18, 2021 22:48 |
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All vidya game romances are bad. They're all extremely superficial. Like elementary school romances.
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# ? Mar 18, 2021 22:49 |
Who are you to judge Aerie's relationship with me?? It's more powerful and real and heavily modded than you'll ever understand.
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# ? Mar 18, 2021 22:56 |
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Ratios and Tendency posted:Who are you to judge Aerie's relationship with me?? It's more powerful and real and heavily modded than you'll ever understand. Godhood > lovely superficial gameified "romance". Whoever at Bioware came up with the idea back in the day should be erased from history. The very concept has now metastasized into a malignant cancer you can find in a lot of RPG games.
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# ? Mar 18, 2021 23:14 |
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Suspicious posted:All vidya game romances are bad. They're all extremely superficial. Like elementary school romances. The romance between Garrus and Ta'li is good, actually.
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# ? Mar 18, 2021 23:17 |
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Boogle posted:Godhood > lovely superficial gameified "romance". If I were a god nobody would be able to stop me from kissing my husband
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# ? Mar 18, 2021 23:29 |
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Suspicious posted:All vidya game romances are bad. They're all extremely superficial. Like elementary school romances. This. Why the hell do people demand to romance companions in RPGs.
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# ? Mar 19, 2021 03:18 |
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Mans posted:This. Why the hell do people demand to romance companions in RPGs. horny
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# ? Mar 19, 2021 03:21 |
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Boogle posted:Whoever at Bioware came up with the idea back in the day should be erased from history. The very concept has now metastasized into a malignant cancer you can find in a lot of RPG games. genre sci-fi/fantasy can sometimes be more than a guilty pleasure; but it is often just that. Zane fucked around with this message at 04:43 on Mar 19, 2021 |
# ? Mar 19, 2021 03:52 |
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Boogle posted:Godhood > lovely superficial gameified "romance". The godhood is also superficial and gamified, because it's a game. Let's not pretend there's any more dignity to be found just because the story doesn't include kissing.
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# ? Mar 19, 2021 04:33 |
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It's really funny to me that they thought nobody would be interested in wooing the half demon art major guy with an accent but kept in the plotline where you sleep with a lady who said she's like a mom to you when you first met
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# ? Mar 19, 2021 05:38 |
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Video game romances are fine and cool as a concept, they exist because a lot of people want and enjoy them and they're almost universally optional as well, so I generally find them one of the weirdest things for anyone to actively rally against. How they're executed in a given title is something one can most certainly debate, but on a general level going full on "you enjoy a different aspect of this fantasy RPG than me, now perish" is pretty unnecessary. Ultimately it's all just different flavors of dumb fun, in my mind not too different from people wanting to play through RPGs on "Story Mode" or somesuch equivalent that eliminates all or most mechanical challenge because they don't care about blowing up goblins with wizard wands as much as party interactions and having a chill adventure. Kanfy fucked around with this message at 11:59 on Mar 19, 2021 |
# ? Mar 19, 2021 09:10 |
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I demand a volcel mode in RPGs because I’m cool and more mature than the masses
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# ? Mar 19, 2021 12:58 |
I feel like if you played through BG2 with a female CHARNAME you could very easily not even be aware it has romances.
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# ? Mar 19, 2021 13:07 |
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Kanfy posted:Ultimately it's all just different flavors of dumb fun, in my mind not too different from people wanting to play through RPGs on "Story Mode" or somesuch equivalent that eliminates all or most mechanical challenge because they don't care about blowing up goblins with wizard wands as much as party interactions and having a chill adventure. It's me, I'm the one who likes both video game romances and chill story mode difficulties (there's a very rare few video games I sincerely enjoy on hard difficulties, but only a few). Partly because I'm queer irl and I like my protagonists to be likewise. And it's an unfortunate fact that the standard protagonist in video games is still overwhelmingly a straight white dude. To get same-sex romances you need either Bioware of old, indie games which then tend to be about being gay (or, God forbid, a gay woman). Games where I can play as a gay lady without the whole game revolving around that are exceptionally hard to find, and many of the options that do exist have a long and unfortunate history of making their gay romance options extremely problematic, like Sera in Inquisition, all the queer women in Pathfinder Kingmaker, the gay option in Fire Emblem: Fates, and so on and so forth.
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# ? Mar 19, 2021 13:15 |
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Kanfy posted:Video game romances are fine and cool as a concept, they exist because a lot of people want and enjoy them and they're almost universally optional as well, so I generally find them one of the weirdest things for anyone to actively rally against. How they're executed in a given title is something one can most certainly debate, but on a general level going full on "you enjoy a different aspect of this fantasy RPG than me, now perish" is pretty unnecessary. The problem is that Bioware pioneered and popularized it to the point where it has become another poorly executed checkbox on a AAA feature list. I'm pretty sure a long term relationship isn't supposed to start by my character being a manipulative rear end in a top hat so I can get them to bone the pretty elf lady (or equivalent). Also consider the fact that a lot of people like to self insert into games like these instead of playing an character... it doesn't say a lot of good things about interacting with the opposite sex.
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# ? Mar 19, 2021 13:34 |
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An intersting interview about a dead BG2 mod: https://medium.com/covering-baldurs-gate/return-to-windspear-the-inside-story-of-baldurs-gate-ii-s-cut-project-exclusive-interview-c8b4dcb908bc
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# ? Mar 19, 2021 14:48 |
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Boogle posted:The problem is that Bioware pioneered and popularized it to the point where it has become another poorly executed checkbox on a AAA feature list. I'm pretty sure a long term relationship isn't supposed to start by my character being a manipulative rear end in a top hat so I can get them to bone the pretty elf lady (or equivalent). You mean behaving out of character and trying to guess what the other person wants to hear isn't the basis of a strong, loving relationship in real life???
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# ? Mar 19, 2021 21:16 |
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Insert gifts, receive sex payout
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# ? Mar 19, 2021 21:31 |
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Xerophyte posted:I have started GMing PF2E in the last year, which has had the primary effect of making me more annoyed at PF1E and videogames based on it for being so bad in comparison. I don't want to start edition wars, but why the annoyance? I know gently caress all about either edition of Pathfinder.
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# ? Mar 20, 2021 00:01 |
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JustJeff88 posted:I don't want to start edition wars, but why the annoyance? I know gently caress all about either edition of Pathfinder. Pathfinder 1E was taking 3.5ed and adding tons of crunchy rules for immersion or technical whatever. Pathfinder 2e apparently reversed that but kept the core ideas in place.
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# ? Mar 20, 2021 00:10 |
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JustJeff88 posted:I don't want to start edition wars, but why the annoyance? I know gently caress all about either edition of Pathfinder. The fundamental flaw of Pathfinder, and 3.5E D&D, is that it confuses breadth for depth. It has a TON of options but most of them are dogshit and thus kind of irrelevant and exist only to make you go "wow this is a really cool concept. Shame that there's something else that does everything it does but better in every way". See also how Primalist Bloodrager makes Barbarian have no reason to exist. Not that it had much reason to exist in the first place given caster hegemony, but after Bloodrager was published it became EXTRA pointless. So with all these trap options scattered everywhere it's very easy to end up in a situation where one or two people are carrying the party, or have to actively try NOT to carry the party, and the rest of the party are the dude from Monty Python clopping coconuts whether they know it or not. That part is less of a problem in a single player game, but the sheer degree of trap options still means that encounter design is a nightmare because the margins between two parties are so vast that it's hard to judge what the player will actually bring to bear.
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# ? Mar 20, 2021 11:03 |
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The breadth is fun for tabletop because if players think a certain class or build's concept is cool, they can build a character around it. Of course, in tabletop a dm can always fudge the rules so a gimmick character isn't totally terrible/overpowered. Doesn't translate so well to videogames. E: all that said, as DM I'm always real careful what sourcebooks are permitted because it can quickly get overwhelming for some players and dealing with powergamers can be headache once they start citing feats from half a dozen different sources or whatever. Fruits of the sea fucked around with this message at 13:52 on Mar 20, 2021 |
# ? Mar 20, 2021 13:50 |
Fruits of the sea posted:The breadth is fun for tabletop because if players think a certain class or build's concept is cool, they can build a character around it. Of course, in tabletop a dm can always fudge the rules so a gimmick character isn't totally terrible/overpowered. Doesn't translate so well to videogames. I disagree pretty strongly. Maybe I wouldn't if all of the options were viable, but they're not. The breadth is just an illusion concealing the fact that there's only a couple really viable option paths. I virtually never had fun. It was exhausting planning every character out because I had to make sure I wasn't missing some stupid tax or trap that was going to render my build stagnant at level 8 or whatever. The death of System Mastery as the dominant philosophy in TTRPGs was the best thing to come from that era.
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# ? Mar 20, 2021 14:04 |
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That's fair. We play pretty fast and loose with the rules in my group so we've changed feats or equipment between sessions to make a cruddy build work, but I get that's not how everybody likes to play.
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# ? Mar 20, 2021 16:36 |
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It's not really even an issue of "not how everyone likes to play". It's more "you shouldn't need to fix a systems many and crippling flaws ad hoc to have a good time". DMing is enough work as it is, you shouldn't be expected to be an improvisational systems designer just to avoid gross imbalance. And lo, there are many systems where you don't need to do that.
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# ? Mar 20, 2021 16:46 |
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# ? May 22, 2024 00:26 |
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Knowing what I know about 3.5 D&D, I see what you mean. Kingmaker not having a way to reset a character makes for very tense level-ups.
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# ? Mar 20, 2021 17:20 |