I was expecting to see this request here, but to my surprise, there none!

With the interesting RP dialogs that party members sometimes have, it felt like the romance option was missing. The traits like romantic, heartless etc are perfect for some kind of a romance system. I believe that it ads much more depth to your party, and enriches the RP even further. I remember when I was playing Dragon Age: Origins, the combat and skill system was so boring, but the dialogs, story... and the romance is what kept me playing for days. I wanted to know how the forbidden love my party members had was going to end up. The characters felt much more alive.

I prefer a romance system based on the character traits, and one that does not affect the gameplay in any way. Of course, any other suggestions are welcome. I wonder what Larian thinks about this.

To be clear this is my esoteric attempt at romance for Divinity Original Sin. I take all credit/blame for it.

http://larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=62811&Number=555974#Post555974

Nice topic, I enjoyed reading it. I am also surprised as of how only a few people ever came up with romances, I thought it was a big part of RP. I know, a lot of mainstream games have it now, but still...

RPG romances have been quite controversial since Bioware decided all their games need 5+ of them (8 in DA:I!). I think RPG romance is fine in general, but when there's a bunch of them in a game, inevitably their quality and significance declines. A couple detailed, interesting progressions of a relationship are far more impactful than 8 shallow "press A enough times for sex" companions.

Not 100% sure what you mean by "romance based on character traits." You mean, like, if you're selfish, heartless, independent,, etc. you'll lose out on a chance for a romance with someone looking for a loving person (more generally, you need to have, say, 6/10 of the appropriate, compatible traits for the romance to be possible)? I think that's okay, but good dialog is the number one way to make a good romance.

I actually think there's nothing wrong with tieing some kind of gameplay effect to romance, but it should be a pro/con kind of thing. Like, say you gain some kind of bonus when you're in sight of your loved one (if it's a companion), but a minor debuff whenever you see them take damage. Nothing significant, but enough to convey a sense of love. And if you damage them too many times with AoE attacks or what have you, the relationship ends.

On an unrelated note, is the game ideas section on the uservoice site gone? Guess they just want pledge rewards.

I guess they didn't want 'Adult mode' or whatever.

Also, DA:I, and even DA:O's romances weren't a given. I think there was only 1 'press A to have sex' option in DA:O and that was quest related. But otherwise, was a lot of relationship building that was involved in those games.

If you want a 'Press A to have sex' game, go play God of War. In the first game, in the very first level you can do this an unlimited number of times!

I can still see both sections on the uservoice side, i.e., the pledge rewards and the game ideas.

Last night (for a little while, anyway) the link for the Game Ideas page was redirecting back to the Pledge Rewards page.

It appears they re-instated that section. Maybe it was just a problem with uservoice at the time?

I admit I really wanted something in DOS, but all I got was "they went their separate ways...", and I have no idea why.

Would love to see some more effort into it. Honestly it's one of the reasons why I never got PoE (that and guns, and no exp from quests, etc.) Overall the game just had more negatives and positives so I skipped it. I thought DOS was supposed to have something, but like I said got nothing.

Would love to see something in DOS2 and would like a little more guidance as to whether romance is succeeding or not.

Same here. When D:OS was first pitched, they told us that the romance between the two characters would be like at least somewhat important to the game.

I really kind of didn't find that to be the case, and was somewhat... disappointed.

Imagine a BioWare romance... now imagine that being forced upon you in co-op with a player you might not even know, or a good friend... Now imagine if, BioWarian style, you're guided into having sex with your good friend.

Would that be... maybe... awkward? Or do you guys think that would be awesome?

I think that would be fucking amazing. I can only imagine having an awesome time laughing my ass off if that happened in my game.

The game really is designed to be played with friends anyway (though whether there's more or less awkward than your character's romance with strangers is debatable).

Sounds like there's a good chance for romances to show up, considering how important the relationship between the characters is, and from what one of the writer's was saying on the RPGcodex.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=10045

Pertinent section (honestly, pretty funny at parts):


Romances​

Gameplay: So if you talk about acting like real characters, that means real emotions and interactions with each other. I've already asked about romance options, for example. You have plans to have it in there?

Kieron: Yeah... yeah!

Gameplay: Can you give some other examples about how they can interact with each other on an emotional level? Quarrels, fights... what else can we expect?

Kieron: I'm not sure what it will look like, but there will be a relationship system in there. It will have to be in there for the romance anyway. But about non-romantic options, I have no idea.

Watch: Why are there romantic options in the game?

Kieron: Why?

Bubbles: Yes, wonderful question. [Even the Watch can have one from time to time.]

Watch: Yes. I don't know why. So why are you trying to put romantic elements in this game?

Sarah: Roleplay. A lot of... uhm... RPG players want to feel like they can, uhm... kind of... have a full experience. When you choose to play the role of somebody, what would that character do? Would that character have a certain feeling about a character in their party? Uhm... ...you kinda want... as many options as possible to be able to live out the story that you wanna build. Uhm... i think romance is, like, not necessarily a required part of it, but it depends on what kind of story you wanna build, what kind of character you wanna play, I think. And, uhm, I was surprised actually, but the desire for this is a lot stronger than I thought it was, the romantic options.

Watch: Of course, often it's very childish or often very limited: you have gay relationships and you can change sex in real life. So where's the limit? What do you define as being romantic or not?

Kieron: Well, I guess if there's one thing we want to do as writers...

Watch: Or pure sex, that's also possible, we've seen that in the past.

Kieron: We certainly don't want a childish, quest-based relationship progress, if that makes sense. One thing [I don't like], playing games, is if I'm playing a game and have an option to romance a certain character and it's just a matter of talking to them now and probably doing something for them, and then, a few more missions later, I talk to them again and do something else for them. It's this kind of robotic progression as writers we want to make sure that the characters feel so fleshed out when they're interacting, if something was potentially to blossom in their characters, plot-wise, we want the player to be able to explore that in a role playing context. But we don't want to give them a sort of childish kind of "tick a box" "oh, I have a romantic option!" or "Now she's my wife," or "Now he's my husband." That's not the goal, the goal is to actually allow you to express the character. If I feel like I'm really playing this character, this human rogue, and I'm getting really into him, and it makes sense that the flirtations between [him and] somebody else starts to go somewhere then it should make sense that it should start to go somewhere.

Sarah: That's something I felt while working on Original Sin, the first one, the companions that we were writing, they felt really real to me, and I saw moments where, the way they were interacting with the other characters, it would have made sense if there was a bit of a seed between them, or if the player would have felt a little bit of something. I see it as a natural story progression.

Bubbles: I didn't get the original information about romances [I really hadn't -- clear PR failure there]. What exactly have you planned: romances within your party, romances with NPCs, pregnancies, real marriages...?

Sarah: Everything is kind of on the table at the moment...

Watch: Children?

Kieron: It's too early to commit to doing or not doing one particular thing. It's just something we wanted to add in, not necessarily something that we have a direct plan for how that looks in the game.

Sarah: Oh, well, kind of... well, it's true there's nothing set in stone like quest design wise, but Jan [Van Dosselaer, senior writer] is working on a system, we're still trying to flesh out how many starting backgrounds you can have, and whether, from the beginning, you can play as a married couple [married characters] or as two people who have history together, to see if their relationship can grow together or decline, depending on the choices that you make. That's something we're talking about now, a system to implement that from the beginning, so that it's very organic from their backstory, that you have a sense of interacting with your partner especially since it's in co-op.

Kieron: A few have got a passion for that, to actually see two characters already having a history, and that you see the continuation of that history as opposed to just something new. These two characters can still do something separate if they wish; it's not like they're automatically joined.

Watch: And you will do same sex as well?



Sarah: It's.... one the table, definitely. It will depend on how thoroughly we can do, uhm, every character having the potential to romance any other character, I don't know if it's gonna be that way, or if only these characters can have romances with these characters, and it's planned from the beginning, but right now, the player characters, the list of options we're considering, it's, like, extremely diverse.

Kieron: Extremely diverse. And again, it won't be to tick a box, it will be because it feels good and it feels right for the characters.

Bubbles: You already said that romances would be an integral part of role playing. This is a tricky proposition you may act in a way that would make a romance likely, but you may not want a romance. Do you envision presenting the player with clear options saying: æ³¥oing this will start a romance? do you plan on putting up regular reminders that you might be able to pursue something?

Sarah: The way that I've seen it working so far is that you have an event or something that will trigger a dialogue, and you should be aware that this is a romance dialogue. Something will happen, you have a choice of four responses, one is very flirtatious, one is guarded or neutral, one is completely neutral, and one is dismissive or something like that. So you should be fairly aware of the relationship you're creating when you choose these. I'm not sure this is exactly how it's gonna go into the game, but when we've talked about how it's gonna work, this is kind of how we envision it. A bit like the affinity affection [sic] dialogues in D:OS they were a bit gamey, not the best element of the game, but we're envisioning something like this where you have four options.

Bubbles: In the first game, you had deeply intertwined systems between a character's personality and gameplay elements like combat. You could act a certain way and become immune to Charm. You could also choose between taking talents that were very relevant in combat, or you could take something like Pet Pal. Are you going to keep going with that mechanic, and have something like rivalries between characters or romances affecting concrete gameplay statistics?

Sarah: That would be fantastic! That would be amazing! Like, if we can keep that kind of basis that we built, and then build on that, so that the character development is even more tied to your progression? That would be very, very cool.

Sorry to necro-post.

I have always found it interesting to watch the two sides of romance/anit-romance clash against one another. As one who used to be on the romance side (now as a game designer I have more appreciation for the design process and understand reasons why it wouldn't be included) to someone now on the fence I have made a number of interesting observations. Ill reserve those if anyone is interested and will talk about relationships in general.

Romance as it stands has been seriously painted in a bad light due to either poor writing in general or it is forced onto the player. Its peculiar when people argue these points and end up playing a lot of JRPG's where they are typically shoved down the players throat. That said I think that Larian has a chance here, a very unique one at that.

In D:OS they used a system to help create personalities for the two player characters based off of dialogue. These personalities granted actual mechanical bonuses to the characters as a whole, which is really cool and fresh. Now lets take a look at Fire Emblem Awakening, they have a support system for the units. Of course they show progression with the support system by upgrading the characters relationships from stranger > friends > best friends > lovers. Letter wise I think it is C > B > A > S. At any rate not everyone is S-support compatible with everyone which makes sense, but lets look at the mechanical benefits to this. In Genealogy of the Holy War, two characters marry and can no longer be paired with other units. Characters that have been paired get a +10 bonus to hit and avoid while within three spaces of each.

Larian is perfectly capable of producing something similar to this affect. I know I stated talking about relationships in general and have focused on romance so we can shift to rivalries. Rivalries can produce a pretty interesting dynamic, generally speaking rivals want to one up one another so what if on a mechanical level this increases their accuracy when within a certain radius. Romance might increase the defense of two characters and depending on the battle it could be more beneficial to pair with your lover or your rival. These are two bad examples but the overall point is still there.

Let' revisit writing now though, a lot of people are turned off of romance because of bad writing. I say revisit Dragon Commander, or watch a play through of that game. Initially I found it extremely strange that a Strategy game had romance in it at all. I was a little concerned about it and didn't think it would really be integral to the experience. So I married a skeleton, figured why not its new and exciting. Little did I know I was about to experience one of the coolest romance plots ever, it really is a testament to the writing capabilities that Larian has. Now Dragon Commander also had some really great moments with the generals as well, they felt pretty fleshed out and they didn't always get a long. In fact I could see a rivalry between Edmund and Henry. I really am not too worried about the writing that Larian can produce, more often than not it is good and polished as well as makes sense.

That leaves forcing romances and actual presentation of the romance. I think something that could be done to alleviate this is present the character with a certain scene early enough. Then proc some internal dialogue with the player. Lets say we have Gwynne and she just killed a bandit. The player looks at her a moment and has a moment of thought and can choose from the the following;

1. Wow, she would be a great rival.
2. Wow, I feel utterly indifferent.
3. Wow, I think I could love her.
4. Wow, get out of my party.

They are super blunt and would really break immersion if presented in that fashion, but that that idea and say you picked option 1. Now you will have more rival dialogue options through the game and you have begun the road to a great rivalry. Maybe you picked option 4, now you are going to have more hostile dialogue and the two of you start hating each other more and more. Something along those lines to kind of nudge the game in a certain direction with dialogue by help of user input early on would be a good deterrent. That said maybe you chose option 1 but end up feeling more of 3, the player should be able to still get there through dialog but the transition might be a little more challenging. Admittedly I do not have a great example for that but given time I could probably think one up.

Anyways I digress and thank anyone who actually read all of that.

Sorry, dialogues should not give combat bonusses.
Relationship between chars should not do it either.

This is against my rule that I have said several times:

Dialogues should not be a mini game. Not for perks (D:OS1), not to get "You have gained influence on companion x." (KotoR2, NWN2) and not for karma/alignment.
Every dialogue choice that gives combat bonusses or that change a numerical value will push the player to min/max the char, making role playing much harder.

Relationships should be interesting by itself, not a tool to achieve something else.
Please do not make it like DA:O (the only dragon age game I have played) and push the player towards having sex with every party member.

Yeap. Character interactions should be their own reward. Bringing stats into the whole thing destroys anything of the sort.

But doesn't it actually helps role-playing character a bit? As in, being on edge / feeling safer when near someone you compete with (a rival) or someone you trust (a friend)?

That's said, as a gamer I never cared much for stats One rarely needs a perfect / max score to complete the game. But I know a whole lot that do care a lot about that, so I guess I can understand both sides.

[quote=Madscientist][/quote]


Hey that's perfectly cool too! You are correct as well! Actually I think both ways are correct but the truth in it is some people who min/max well toss aside the story to stomp through the game as best they can. Happens a lot.

I wouldn't say that it destroys it though, when you look at the Rivalry and Friendship between Legolas and Gimli they were in contest and counting their kills. Arguably they were fighting harder and fiercer than they would have alone. So why not toss a bone out to try and weave some game play mechanics into it?

Ultimately it comes down to the player to role play. I think if a player truly wants to role play their character they will. I often times toss aside min/max, in fact I rarely ever do that, to really immerse myself into a game. Its not important to me personally to have dialog add numbers and combat bonuses, I do enjoy games that add that but they are by no means essential.

I guess that's the state of games now a days. A lot of classic games required a lot of things to be perfect, otherwise the game was unbeatable. Like you needed to have specific stats items, done a thing at a specific time that probably wasn't mentioned to you.

Makes you wonder if they fell to bad design for the sake of complexity huh?

Well, yes and no I'd say. IIRC there was an interview in which Larian admitted that 85-90% of all people who beought DOS only played the game in SP.

So designing the game exclusively for co-op with SP being a big afterthought would imo be a HUGE mistake given the simple fact that the overwhelming majority of their fans and actual players want a nice SP experience.

I can only suggest that Larian concentrates on the SP at least as much as on the MP because in the end, that's what a lot of people are interested in, with many of them never even touching the MP aspect.

Based on that line of thought I think that adding specific SP elements to the game would be a good and very appreciated idea, having deeper relationships between the player and his companions being among that. We have competitive question for co-op and that's awesome - for people who want to play the game in co-op. For the 85-90% of gamers who are interested in the SP there should be elements that make up for that. A serious and carefully implemented relationship system (which could include romance) would imo be a very fitting system that pretty much only works in SP. There is nothing wrong with that.

If you ask me, DOS 2 can be as much a SP game as it can be a co-op/MP game - if Larian only wants it to be that way. If they concentrate too much on the latter aspect they will alienate a lot of their fans though, by the way the same people they tried to attract with all the talk about the more serious writing, the inclusion of people like MCA and so on. They claimed that DOS 2 is meant to become their BG 2 - and honestly, that rises a lot of expectations for a lot of people.

Bottom line, I'm all in for a proper relationship system that includes shades of love and hate, if it's properly made (and I trust Larian enough to think that they are able to do so), even if it's a SP-only feature.

Yeah: I've no interest in MP with either friends or strangers, and wouldn't have pledged for D:OS2 if it was mostly aimed at the MP market. I can't speak for the gaming demographic in general, but for myself and most of my gaming friends, SP is definitely the main preference. The few times I've tried MP I've played it as if it was an SP game anyway!

I guess I prefer being clumsy, clueless and generally cack-handed away from watchful eyes.

Sounds odd, not only all my friends used to play the game as coop game with their significant others, but as well the twitch chat at the 24-hour stream event was talking a lot how they played the game in coop, or how they looking for new coop partners for the ee release this month, etc

I donï½´t thinkt that I would have rated the game as high as I did when I could not have played 'real' RP within the game and overrule decisions or get overruled by my wife. It was this unique mechanic which made DOS for me so outstanding even when it was clumsy executed if you not played on lan.

Wow great atmosphere here. I love it! Its rare to see people discussing romance on such level

1. I liked the article (going to read the whole thing probably) and I really hope that they will be able to truly flesh out all aspects of possible relationships.
2. Loved romances id dragon commander, especially if you choose classical elf beauty and you will support her in all her endeavors... how that could end? :-D, I think that if Larian wont encounter any problems (that would prevent them to do a lot of polish of text) than we can expect great dialogs and stories in DoS 2
3. I don't know if you should be told that you are romancing character... take it like that: You like the character and you pick dialog options that represent the way you feel about that character and after some time you could find that, she/he loves you... wow surprise, but what did you except ? you know it could be a natural surprise (if you didn't see it coming)

I agree, you should pick dialog options without knowing where they lead to. Probably you will expect something, but you never know how it plays out. Maybe you think you are flirting but actually the other character hates flirting, or disagrees completely with your opinion and starts yelling at you and than you have to live with that. I would love a few unexpected curveballs like that. Just RP and see what happens.

It's rather hard to not care about it when picking option X gives you "godhuman abilities" while option Y gives you "1 minute less time to cook an egg"... as some of the bonusses for D:OS1 turned out for roleplaying.
Worst was if you flopped, since an equal rating meant nothing, so rollplaying yourself rather than sticking to something and then keep giving that type of answers were even more discouraged.

I would not mourn it going away.

@LordW:
There's a small difference (Read: gigantic) between getting married out (which, think of it, isn't much romance to start with) or meeting someone out on the road randomly, and then this random person sleeping with you 5 dialogues later (read: The BioWare romance). Now BG2 did this a lot better, mostly due to the extended time (more organic build-up rather than just "hey, I just met you. I don't know you baby, but here's my cabincard, now go bang me baby") which only big games are allowed, and hopefully D:OS2 will be apart of it.

But with the modern gamer, even if you have a good build up, a loving relation and it's realistic, not carnal, you just get legions of gamers just go and complain. Since apparently "romance" isn't "romance" without a sex-scene. Now we all know that's absurd, but that's exactly the crowd romance attracts, and you will undoubtedly dissapoint, so the question is; why are you even going to try to appease those you know you cannot appease by doing things the way you want (relationships) rather than what they want (5-conversation sex unlocks).

It's opening a can of worms that should be left closed for good reasons... and I doubt Larian really understands what they're really in for promising 'romance'.
Let's hope I'm wrong though.

Lets not mention BioWare I would rather not think about that Jersey attitude. But lets mention BG2 (as you said), Planescape Torment (it wasn't romance per say, but if you had good imagination and got really into it there was ) next KOTOR 1 (romance with bastila was quite interesting) and lastly neverwinter nights 1 (also it wasn't romance per say and there wasn't all that much dialog but still my imagination could run wild).
About Larian, did you see romances in Dragon Comander? I think they can pull it off ... and they have Char on team! A woman! Previous romances were mostly written by dudes (from what I know) and some of them said in interviews that they didn't know what they were doing :-D, I think a little woman touch will be a great help here.

Well the easy solution is the give the romance and then add a whore house to every town for those that just need to bang something.

I also would note that in many romances the 'sex scene' ends up being the WIN for the whole romance subquest. It's like that was the goal and now that you have it the romance is basically over. I did love how in BG2 (comparing them again) the romance continued into the ToB expansion, even having one romance give birth to your child.

I know it's not what the game is about, but I am anxious to see what's done in DOS2. DOS1 was a terrible disappointment to me. I made a couple, but apparently couldn't get the dialog right during conversations and at the end one wanted a romance and the other said 'see ya later' and left.

What I would love to see is system-based romance, where both your stats and dialog will factor in, when a character gets attracted to you. It's not only about what you say, but also how you create your character, which desides how the romance turns out. Some character might be attracted to strength, crafting and the egotistic trait, while perception, lore and altruism affects their attraction negatively. Of course charisma would make everyone more attractive, if you'd want to make a man- or womanizer build. Maybe you could be able to hook up with anyone, but the process would be a lot harder and you'd really have to tread lightly not to mess up the relationship.

On the surface this might seem a bit artificial, but in real life love isn't just about having nice conversations. Attraction is biological too. This would be an oppotunity to make the dialog more situational by reflecting why the characters are interested in each other. If done right, this could really make the romance feel significant.

It would also mean most builds could only have a few options to choose from. But I think this approach would really be in spirit with D:OS' system-philosophy by making the consequences of you character build affect how the story turns out and make each character and playthrough unique.

Duncan male warrior - strength 18 (bg system)
Alieandre female sorceress

Conversation goes:

Duncan: *Is picking up heavy axe of the ground.*
Alieandre: Is thinking *Such muscles! I must let him romance me.*

Thing is that it would add terribly much complexity into game. Because even if you are not her type there should be way for you to "seduce" her. So there would have to been three types of conversations beginings
1. She likes your body!
2. She is like "meh".
3. She finds you repulsive.

I think that writers would be on suicide watch if they should write all of this

I think that idea is good, but terrible to implement. Lets start up small. Then maybe in DoS.... erhm Divinity3.

[quote=Hassat Hunter][/quote]

Hello.

I respectfully disagree. I think that it is a can of worms that needs to be addressed. I do agree that Bioware has done a rather sub par job on their writing of romances, but thats not particularly the problem. The problem is that people are looking at this as the industry standard. It shouldn't be. Another company should be allowed to give this a shot and do much better then (hopefully) become the new industry standard as opposed to Bioware. I think they did absolutely horrid with it in Inquisition.

I will say that Jade Empire had a decent romance sub plot, and it was kind of funny if you chose something specific near the end even your valued partner would leave you. Yes though, I think it should be addressed and not just ignored, otherwise nothing will ever change about it without people trying.

Yeah, if you are a terrible writer. With a simple bioware style system the conversation could also start:
Aliandra: Hi, I love you because you are the hero and I'm attracted to heroes and I know you are a hero because you did that nice thing just before, and you also talk a lot with me, whichi I like heroes to do.
Duncan: Yeah, I go boom boom on baddy baddy...

(Actually Duncan is spot on for Fallout NPC)

Sure, it's more complex, but this is a video game, and what they are doing with the competitive questing is already ten times more complex than this. It's just about unlocking a dialog script, when certain critirias are met.
About the writers going kamikaze - You are talking about a company that midway through their prodution decided to make every animal in the game talk, but only if you choose one specific talent!

Edit: Fallout 1 and 2 had a lot of dialog options based on your stats. Every dialog line was rewritten I your intelligence was low. It's the same, just with the npcs saying things based on these.

Just a little OOT here : it's really sad that this never was reiterated in any games I know of. With the lowest score in intelligence, you character is so dumb that people don't even bother to try with you. It's like : "Radscorpin'... Gun... Go kill!", up to refusing to talk with you.

@Koin - (Off-topic) They did something similar in vampire bloodlines. When you humanity was low your dialog would get increasingly more agressive and psychopathic, and they also had a clan (class) that said everything in riddles or metaphors. One of the best rpgs ever made.

True, and I played a Malkav. Could never bring myself around to replay it with another clan...

Okey you got a point there, Larian are really pushing it, still i think they are chewing already a big of pie, not sure if they could handle dessert as well.

About fallout, ye dialogs were really great and it had a lot of options based on your stats, but still i think that origins stories Larian is trying to push is way more complex, sure if that was combined with stats it would be great, but again.. Complexity... could they do it? ... or more specifically would they have the budget for it?

I really hope that all will work out for larian and that they will be able to push dialogs to new heights. (yes im only talking about dialog because it matter to me most)

Vampire bloodlines was great! But mostly i just remember THE HOTEL... scaaary.

Did you play Vampire masqeurade? I didnt play it in a long time now, but i really loved the story... and it was sooo long.

p.s. i heard that there are a lot of mods for vampire games... maybe a new playthrough eh?

Yeah, that would be up to them, but suggestions never hurt. And remember they already have the engine, game mechanics, a lot of assets and a bigger budget. They should really be able to push the bar even further.

The mods for Vampire are mostly fixes, new classes and restored content, but still a great game. Think I've played through it 4 times. I actually didn't like the malkavians that much. Always felt a bit weird that you said these completely strange things and most of the time no one took notice. Loved toreador, strength and speed. You could literally kill everyone in a room with an axe before the first guy hit the ground.

I loved the first half of VtMB, which was much more strongly story-driven and had a lot of intrigue. The second half, not so much, I found it just got a bit too shooty and violent for my liking. But the bit that I liked I really enjoyed an awful lot.

That's because they rushed production at the end. They ran out of time/money/whatever and couldn't finish it properly, that's why the end devolved into shooting galleries full of generic baddies.

It's mostly the 4th and last act thats bad. I think the unofficial patch fixes that segment and unlocks the content, they never finished. The guy who makes it still releases updates to the patch now and then. I've have actually not played it fully with the patches. Tried a while back, but lost interested, because I've simply over played it.

Exactly. I myself am an SP guy. Though i was kinda disappointed in the companion story, interaction and depth thingy in D:OS, i still accepted it and enjoyed the game. Larian shouldn't ignore the SP elements, it does make up for the bulk of the content in a RPG and its evident in BG2 how important it is.

WhIle I can understand where you guys are coming from, there are literally no games that exist where your characters can have ANY sort of relationship in multiplayer. Heck most games just assume one player is the hero and ignore the existence of the other players. It's kind of jarring when you're playing with friends and you aren't allowed to have your characters interact. Ever.

That's why I'm hopeful that the rivalry/friendship AND romance system is for single player and multiplayer. Just because it would be more fun for people like me who do play co-op exlusively. I mean, my options for playing co op rpgs with my boyfriend that aren't just hack and slash games...Uh...The old infinity engine games...NWN...NWN2...And that's it.

I would be fine with set companions that people playing multiplayer can't acess or something. BUT I would be at the very least disappointed if the relationship system was SP only. (And remember guys BG2 did have co op. It was very bare bones co op but it still existed. >.>)

Don't worry. They have already showcased that in multiplayer you can interact in-game. You have always a few choices what to say/do and in SP the NPC character will pick one depending on your actions etc. so I think that it was build for multiplayer but that tool will be superbly used in singleplayer. At least I hope it will be like that in end.