Based on the kickstarter update 11 where we heard some details on the single player experience, I wanted to give a bit of feedback.

Unfortunately I will not really have the opportunity to play multiplayer with my friends due to scheduling, thus I am focusing on the single player experience.

What I liked from the kickstarter 11 update:
- you can control each character fully as opposed to D:OS where e.g. vendors wouldn't talk to the NPC companions.

What worries me or what I didn't like:
- I can only create 1 character, it sounds like the game auto creates the rest
- the roleplaying feature from D:OS between the 2 player characters has been removed in favor of an automated reactive system

What I was hoping for was the feature to create all 4 party members, so I can get the classes and races I want. That is not possible.
What I was also hoping for was full ability to roleplay all characters, not playing of an automated reaction system. That is also not possible.

I really hope you will introduce these features with an option to give full freedom in creation and roleplaying, maybe as an option to either activate auto party member creation and AI or not. Or how about making it so I as a single player can create a multiplayer game and just control all 4 characters?
I am not suggesting completely removing the automated stuff as some really like that, however those of us who enjoy complete freedom please reconsider putting in an option to fully create and control all party members.

Anyway that is some immediate feedback based on the kickstarter update 11 video. Really hope you consider increasing the freedom to roleplay all characters fully.

Actually I think this is not set in stone and was probably a generic example. I mean, the 1 created character vs up to 4 thing.
Or at least you'd have to choose between presets. Or maybe recruit the companions you'd like to bring with you.

Maybe have a look on the ongoing AMA - the question may have been asked and answered already

Scratch all that, I totally forgot to watch the video ( the best one to date, haha ! ) so yeah looks like premade. I wouldn't completely rule out the possibility of creating the other characters at some point though. If those premades's reactions are based on a system of choice priorities, I think a fully customed party is still possible.

They are pre-set companions that will act like any other companion in every RPG ever. I called that a week ago :p It's kinda schizophrenic to role-play all the characters when they talk to each other, but whatever floats your boat, I suppose. I'm pretty positive we'll reach Mod Support, so I'm guessing someone will make a mod that will allow you to create your own party, old-school style.

I just didn't like the fact that AI companions won't act against us, ever. At least that's what I understood. They won't ever leave or attack us no matter how appalling or insulting we are to them. EDIT: They haven't mentioned how many companions there are, actually. So if it's only 3, then them not leaving would be a gameplay choice and not a story one.

This can be a good or a bad thing, depending on the way the story is set up. It sure would make for a more focused narrative that can intertwine beautifully with these four characters, this is somewhat comparable to Mask of the Betrayer. Okku and One-of-Many felt a bit like baggage compared to the HUGE impact Safiya, Gann and Kaelyn had on the story. I always thought that the "canon" idea for the party was You, Safiya, Gann and Kaelyn.

@Gnoster ICFZEbra asked about roleplaying multiple characters and Swen himself answered

Also I think that you can just open a multiplayer game for yourself (even in splitscreen on pc if necessary and you manually drop out the "second" player)



If we reach Love&Hate via Paypal then Larian will probably include some sort of consequence into it. I think they meant that they do not implement an AI that solves quest in their own way.

I'm going to be a dissenting voice here. I LIKE the idea of creating a single character and having other, fixed companions with their own points of view and reactions. I am not interested in role-playing versus myself - I wasn't in D:OS 1, so much so that I didn't play D:OS 1 on release - I waited until the AI personalities were added before playing for the first time.

I do not mind that I won't have the opportunity to customize my entire party, and that they will have their own distinct roles and strengths. It just means that I can focus on tailoring MY character in a specific way.

However, I'm a bit less certain on the AI companions never leave or attack. That really depends a lot on the specifics, though, and I have no idea what those are yet. It could be good, it could be bad. I don't want to be forced to take a spy for the Divine Magisters with us in our party, but other than that, it probably doesn't matter so much.

I was hoping we'd have pre-set companions, so you definitely aren't the single dissenting voice :p Role-playing all 4 characters yourself is basically schizophrenia.

If they don't leave, no matter what kind of atrocities we commit (if they are goody two-shoes), they are either woven from the same cloth as KotOR2's companions where they were all basically neutral, though it had a story reason behind it that I'm not gonna spoil. Suffice it to say it worked great. OR their personalities aren't strong enough to stand up to the PC (it depends on their overall personality if that is good or bad). It really depends on the context, simply put.

The start of the game involves breaking out of prison with your chosen companions. There is no tavern where sourcerers hang out where you can recruit another if a companion leaves.
Also, the story is being written in such a way that there are always reasons for the characters to work together for the main story, despite any competitive questing which may happen along the way in multiplayer. That story exists for the companions in single player, as well.

Personally, I liked role playing both main characters in D:OS, but with 4 characters I'm not sure I'd want to do that, even with that option left in.

I hope there are different companions to choose from at the beginning. I'm A-Okay with having pre-made companions, but I'm definitely not okay if I have to play with the same 3 every single time; that kind of makes it so the game has zero replay value to me.

From what I've gathered, there will be as many companions as there are origins, minus whatever origin the player picks. So if there are six origins, you'll basically have 1 and 1/2 playthroughs worth of new origins. It'd be incredible if there were eight different origins, so you'd have basically two fairly unique playthroughs, but that's asking a lot.

Some good input in this thread. As we all expect there are different preferences on how to play single player. I kind of divide the input like this:

1) The player creates the first PC, the rest of the party is auto created by the game (including race, origin, and skills), and dialogue between party members is based on a relationship status between the members.
Now the relationship can be divided into two subcategories:
a) Party members other than the main character are set to disagree when appropriate, but never work directly against the main character
b) Party members other than the main character are set to disagree when appropriate as well as directly work against the main character, e.g. setting them to "War" status will then remove control of the character until that "war" is resolved somehow.

2) The player creates all 4 party members with full control of race, origin, and skills, and any dialogue between the party members is chosen 100% by the player, never by the system. The relationship status system could still exist under this for those who want to pursue romance (if that stretch goal is reached).

I 100% acknowledge not all want complete freedom of all 4 characters and I do think the first option should be allowed. All I am hoping for is that the second option is there as well for those of us, who prefer that and want to roleplay that (whether starting a multiplayer game but not inviting any other player is a mechanically valid option is a question for a developer, so can't answer that). Personally I think all the above 3 options would be awesome to have, as it gives a lot of replayability.

Read the post you're referencing and I agree, I also read Swen's remarks as it will be possible to have complete freedom in creating all 4 characters and roleplaying them ingame. It does make me confused as to why they didn't explain both methods in the Kickstarter update 11 though, will have to see what the end result becomes. Hopefully it is both, so we all can play however we would like.

This is something I also came to like, actually. While a little bit strange at first, it was tremendous fun to play out the interactions between the two.

Though maybe if we have more than 4 companions to chose from, and they are written better than the D:OS ones, I won't miss that feature too much. It was a feature that set D:OS apart from any other party based RPGs, however.



Same here. What's the point if they cry foul, but at the end of the day, there are no consequences. Sure, with the Love & Hate stretch goal, we may not be able to win their affection if we constantly act against their will, but that's not such a big deal.

As strange as it was, I'd rather see a RPS to fight out opposing opinions with the party members than just have them whine about my decisions after the fact. Better yet, have dialogue to convince them of my point (which is already present for the multiplayer part, I believe), with success or failure depending on stats or origin or current standing with the NPC. And failure should mean just that ... you don't get to do what you initially wanted (i.e. looting the body).


In general, I find it a bit strange that the companions are supposed to have a mind of their own, but then you are able to directly control each of them in dialogue and make them say things that are out of character.

Either they are AI companions, in which case they should act on their own as much as possible or they are player controlled, in which case I should be able to create them myself at the start of the game.

Even from a gameplay perspective, I think it makes little sense to control them in conversations ... it diminishes the impact of the main characters origin and race, it takes away from the NPCs personality and it also decreases replayability if we can resolve any situation in any possible way.

And, in my opinion, it is completely unnecessary. Should we get to the Shapeshifting Mask goal, we also have the means to impersonate another character in those conversations where it may really matter. What use is there for the mask if we can already be any of 4 different personalities in dialogues at any point in time? In short, sometimes less is more.

I agree with Ka1man, that it will feel strange if you have an companion with an own personality but you can control him yourself.
example: One of your companions is a dwarf who dislikes humans and who fights for the freedom of the dwarfs. But when you control him you let him answer in a way that he betrays the dwarfs and cooperates with the ones who enslave them. But If you play your own char later and give such an answer, your companion will camplain and he says that he will always fight for the dwarves, no matter what.

I see 2 options, but I do not like both:
- Like Pillars of Eternity, you can control all chars and use their skills, but only the main char talks in conversations and makes decissions. ( It will not be like this from what I have read.)
- You main char has all options to choose from (In the example above he can be for or against the dwarfs, no matter if he is dwarf or human.) but when you control your companions you can only choose answers that are not against their personality. (This will take away freedom from the player.)

As I have said, I am not really happy with all of these possibilities. But I do not have a better idea.

There is another thing.

Lets say you start a 4 player multiplayer game and each player creates his char. After all chars meet and form a party, 3 players leave and you play the rest of the game as single player.
How can these chars all be player created and have an own personality at the same time?

Or is it like baldurs gate 1+2 that you can play with companions that have a personality or you create some chars yourself and those have no personality at all?

The single player companions might be existent and ready to be picked up somewhere else in multiplayer, too.
Or it might be possible to link previous answers into a vector that, together with character origins, determine which opinions he will express in the future. These opinions must have been arranged within a similar net of causality/consistency in the first place, ofc.
This isn't easy and it will restrict how Larian can develop their characters and I would not recommend it, but with lots of effort it might be a possibility.

It isn't really that hard to fix or come up with, tbh. If you are in single-player you don't control your companions in conversations. You can only use their stats when trading or crafting. Somewhat obscure reference: Vampire: The Masquerade: REDEMPTION (not Bloodlines) was like this. You could only choose the dialogue for the main character, but you could use the other companions' stats to barter. They were totally autonomous entities outside of directly controlling them for combat or shopping, or equipping them. They had their own opinions and interjected in dialogue etc. Just how I think the D:OS2 single player is going to work. The companions are going to have their own story and their own personality and when there is drop-in, drop-out multiplayer the second player isn't going to be able to choose dialogue options.

If you are worried about not being able to use their inherent skills/backgrounds, NWN2 has you covered. When you failed a check in conversations, a companion can interject with their own skills (it was programmed so they always succeeded and it made sense) and pass the check for you. The companions in D:OS can use their influence/abilities/backgrounds/connections to help in conversations like in NWN2

I'd be absolutely fine with that. But what I took from Update 11 makes me believe that it does not work like this, but instead:
And I think the video spelt it out even clearer, though I cannot get at that right now.

I have a more general question:

Are D:OS1+2 designed as single player game with the option to have a multi player ( like baldurs gate) or as a multi player game with the option to play alone?

I played D:OS1 as single player and it was one of the best games I have ever played.
But some things seemed very strange to me until I realized that it can be played as multi player (2 main characters, RPS between player characters, no pause, . . . ).

I have not played a multi player game for a very long time. The only multi player RPG (not MMOs) I have ever played was Secret of Mana.

As far as I analyzed it, it was an experiment trying to combine both. Mechanically it was a huge success even if some of the systems needed more work (char progression past a certain point, talents, perks), but all in all it was very well made. The insurmountable chasm was the writing. By making both main characters blank slates (to accommodate multi-player in the story), it relegated them to non-entities that the universe just treated as the special snowflakes du jour. Without proper context and input from the other main character it all felt token, unreal and absurd when they were trying to talk to each other.

This would've been an amazing opportunity to explore the relationship between you and the characters. That whole "reincarnated heroes" plot could've been dropped, it really didn't matter anyway, and made the characters literally the puppets of the universe or the Source. I.e. the Source creating life (it can do this, because of its healing properties), so it can save the planet from the villain-of-the-week. Since the Source isn't an organic entity, the characters feeling like puppets on a string would be LITERALLY that. The gameplay/story interweaving like this would've been grand to see. That would explain your lack of backstory, "chosen-ness", your ability to dispatch foes normal people wouldn't be able to, the characters trying to imitate life, but not quite getting it right (when trying to talk to each other), multiplayer would make more sense, the rock/paper/scissors thing would've been the Source failing to understand other points of view etc. This concept could've been explored and expanded upon and it would've been the "main story" with the dragon business being a side-thing that you have to complete in order the preserve the world.

I digressed a lot lulz.

This. To me making the player create the whole party is just lazy on the developer. Granted, I think it should be an option for those that just want to make some meta-team to blow through the game with. But I want to find some NPC companions and have to learn about them in game, see if we 'click' or not, determine if I want to do any personal quests for them or not, etc.

This is one of the best ideas I have heard so far.
Unfortuanatly the EE is to close to release that they will not change the main story any more, I guess.

By the way: What is source and what is the difference between normal magic and source magic? I have found a wiki but it is only about the games and not the world. D:OS is the only Larian game I played so far.

It's not very well explained (which is good). It's the unique thing that the Divinity universe has. In DivDiv it was basically healing magic and it wasn't explored further than that in the other games. If they had explored it in the way I said, the logical conclusion would've been that YOU (the player/s) are the Source; that's one hell of a gameplay and story interweaving example and quite the artistic statement and realization. The healing thing would be driven even further, you are actually fixing (healing) the problems of the universe by simply playing the games.

I have one good example for a similar thing:
Okami is a Zelda like game. Setting is the japanese mythology and the country has been consumed by darkness. You are the sun god Amaterasu in the shape of a white wolf and you have to restore the world. Often this is meant literally, so you can repair things or let plants grow. I like the game very much. There was only one question that bothered me: How can a wolf carry lots of weapons, potions and other items? (well, its a god )

New video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxgRf1DxyYQ (Part 2) @ 1:10:53 - explains a little more about the love and hate relationship with the companions.

Yes a companion can leave your party and can get aggressive towards you. You may start with only one character which I do not mind at all, as you get to replay the game with another origin which is a big win. I also know why allot of people like to start with a party at the beginning but Larian need to make it more sense when starting with those characters at the beginning of the game to the end. "Hey why are you in Jail with me? who are you? other party replies "I'm just a minion that helps you with your quest" THE END.

Though I am sure they said you will meet some companions in jail, and I can agree that when playing the second play through you may know where all the companions are at or already know their back stories with the same companions in jail. That is why I can see that people want to start with a party and get different journey with them instead of finding companions that you did not take or know more about in your first play through.

So yeah I can actually see both sides, though if we start with a party it need to make SENSE and choose which companions are with you that have back stories why they are in jail and so on. Who knows we might have companions or origins thats start from the jail and others you can find in the world (which may not have a origin at all). It's really confusing as Swen said that these companions have origins and playing multilayer they will all start in jail with you and they remove the companion from the world that have the same origin as you.

I know there are some people who would love to roleplay with themselves but I believe Swen say that you still can do that on the AMA reddit. I am more into the developing relationship system and I know most people would not love to roleplay each of the character and decides who gets the bacon or oops I have back stabbed myself...

So is Love&Hate (I am more about in between) will be worth it? Yes because for a better single player experience as you get to choose and make decisions within your party.

This is where things start to fall apart though. They are looking at it from the wrong end. We don't need a *system* for relationships, we need fully fleshed out companions who are their own people and work from there. Having a system like in DA:O is actually detrimental to the whole thing. They should naturally react to our surroundings and decisions which befits their character and the context.

What I was saying about the "developing relationship system" is I think what Larian wants for the Love&Hate stretch goal is that we can REACT or respond to their decisions or the choices you make throughout the game and develop more dialogue options with them. Which is "naturally" being able to react with them.

For example without that stretch goal, we might only hear their thoughts and their decisions but we cannot respond or just say yes or no. That is very natural which you are talking about and either way I do not mind as I agree that the companions must be fleshed out and react naturally in the game and I think that is what they are aiming for without the stretch goal and that was the system I was talking about.

Example that might be without the stretch goal: Gweyyn: "I hate you, you killed my brother" and the only respond you may have is "I will take my leave" - I just hope we have more dialogue options without the stretch goal.

OR she wont care when killing her brother at front of her, as it's just a NPC.

I think thats what they are actually aiming for with the relationship system especially when some origins can clash together. Though this is also confusing as you can be Gweyyn and kill your own family and your party reacted to do that, I think I just went to a whole different level with the relationship system.

So yeah I am not sure how they will be developing the Love&Hate but I think we have to wait for more info when the mod goal is reached and I am sure what you just suggest is what they are aiming to do without the stretch goal.

Ah, k. The word "system" wasn't really gelling with me and was bringing up unpleasant memories of Influence gained: Kaelyn the Dove +10 or Kreia disapproves -arbitrary points.

I totally agree with you.
I play KotoR2 again. There and in many other games (NWN2, DA:O, . . .) I feel the game forces you to play the mini game:

Guess what answers like your companions most.

If you guess wrong you reload and try again.

Dialogue should never be a mini game. Not for reputation (see examples above) and not for perks (like D:OS1) Dialogue choices must make sense in the context of this specific situation, including the reaction of companions with their own personality.

I think with the system I have seen in the videos they are on the right way. Your char has several tags, some from background, some from skills, some from you behaviour, some can change and some not. So you are human, noble, female, mage, cruel and deceptive.

This reminds me of PoE. While the system of PoE is not perfect, it is much better than many other things I have seen. It does have some problems however. You can be honest and deceptive at the same time and when you talk to somebody he likes you because you are known for being honest and in the next moment the same person dislikes you because you are known for being deceptive.

Regarding the beginning of D:OS2:
There are 100 people in a prison and 4 of them escape.
One of them is created by the player.
This means you can have 0 to 3 companions.

Does it mean that if you play single player, you can choose who escapes together with you and you have a selection of several companions to choose from? something like this:

you say: "Ok, I have arranged that we can hide in a box and somebody will smuggle the box out at night. There is only room for 4 people in the box. I take the human mage, the dwarf warrior and the elf archer with me. Sorry lizard priest and undead rogue, have a nice purging."

This does not really feel right. But if the game gives us a random selection of up to 3 chars ( of several pre made companions) this does not feel good either.

I do not have a god solution for this but I am not a writer for games.

Hmm interesting video. At 1:11:15 tokshen actually asks directly if it will be possible to create the full party as a single player, and the Larian employee actually can't answer if that will be in the game, so that sort of backtracks somewhat from Swen's answer in the Reddit AMA.
To be fair this interview is probably done before the AMA, so maybe they decided on it in between. Would be really nice with a complete description of all the different single player options though.

Nah, I don't think it will be like that. You will meet other companions outside of prison, they might or might not be Source-users (speculating). You won't choose your companions at the character creation screen :p You'll probably meet 1 optional companion that you can take with you in the prison or just leave alone. Still speculating, but that's how I'd do it.

All the companions are sourcerers, whom you escape with. The prototype being shown now has the party ending up on an island after being shipwrecked escaping from prison. I suppose there could be some distance between Fort Joy and the nearest port, but I don't imagine there would be a lot of sourcerer hangouts between the two, or there would be much selection of other sourcerers at the docks also fleeing the Divine Order's purges.

I'd guess it may work like the oldie Dungeon Master, where you indeed choose 3 characters to go along with you in a "prologue" kind of map, and you have time to review your choices.

A way to make a better experience out of it would be to be left rotting in the cell and have enough time to befriend the other potential characters. This "befriending" would be a kind of choice in disguise, but it would feel more natural and less "jerk" to make your daring escape with them.
"Befriending" is obviously a wild term, since you may end up fighting one another.

Anyway it would seem like a slightly more elegant solution in order to be able to choose your companions calmly, and avoid the ludonarrative dissonance ( I placed it! 10 points! ) of having to choose during a time-critical moment. "aaand what do you do ? Oh you cook? alright, you're in. You? You're a ventriloquist? hm. Let me check that guy, be right back." "Guys, huh, the guards are coming..." "yeah just a sec."

Another, sneaky system would be to actually have to choose them quickly because you don't have time enough. While you wouldn't be able to precisely choose the characters coming with you, the pseudo-randomness of the process sounds interesting, as you'd end up with a rag-tag team of people who do not trust each other. This may yield some surprises. Still I reckon most people wouldn't like that, especially in a tactical RPG. Forcing your players to do something quickly in real time wouldn't be a smart choice.

Ludonarrative dissonances that matter are mostly related to the game as a whole, not a moment-to-moment thing. They don't have a reason not to trust each other. Escaping from prison directly with the companions means all of you have the same motivation and goal, for the same reasons. That's not ripe for drama :p The other thing is that, if you don't encounter sourcerers "in the wild" that means they are all in Fort Joy. Which IS ripe for drama. But if you DO find some, then it begs the question why couldn't they have been a companion and avoid the menagerie of companions you *choose* from at the beginning, like choosing your pokemon starter :p

Oh, the example I mentionned was more in case the game urges you to choose fast because the guards are coming, but actually leaves you all the time in the world. It's a fairly commonly accepted thing in videogames that always bothered me. Fake feeling of urgency. Either make it real or don't do it !
I'm perfectly okay with escaping with a few companion of misfortune

By the way, and because I like off-topicing, one game that totally fits the description for the LND is probably the Last of Us. I never played a game that I found so frustrating : the girl loudly running everywhere or engaging in casual chatting during infiltration moments where silence is very important, pushing you out of the way to take your place ( I actually died once to that ), was a real immersion breaker. And since TLOU was supposed to be an immersice, ambience-based game, it was a clear deal breaker.

It's a mainstream game, that should tell you something of its immersion. Elie (or whatever her name was) was actually done so on purpose. We have to be able to differentiate between story and gameplay segregation, and LNDs. Elie was the former. Hope from FF13 was an LND. He was portrayed as weak, cowardly and useless, but he sprang into the fray whenever the characters were fighting.

I shall read more about LND then, as I'm not sure I see a difference between Hope and Ellie. They made Hope an acceptable combat companion but stuck a weakling personnality on him, which doesn't make sense ; Ellie is a vulnerable little girl whose lazy programming contradicts the game's main objective which is protecting her. Maybe the difference comes from the fact that Ellie's programming was done so because they tried to give her a realistic behaviour but failed, while for Hope they just disregarded the character's personnality and still purposefully made him a fighter ?
I'm quite interested in that LND thing, as I always try to analyze why I didn't like an otherwise popular media ( game or movie ), and this would give me another tool to understand ( although it only works for videogames ). That said, I've been sleeping 3h a night for the last three nights, so my braincells are kind of fried right now ! =)

Sorry, I have not played TLOU or any FF after 12.

Lacrymas, what is the difference between "story and gameplay segregation" and LND? As I have written before, I assume LND means that the game story wants you to do something but the game mechanics force you to do something else. An extreme example would be that the game tells you that you are the hero who tries to save the world and wants to help everyone, but the game encourages you to kill and plunder everything for exp and loot. In fact, D:OS1 does it a lot. You can steal everything and there are several situations where you get exp for solving something peacefully and then you kill them anyway for even more exp. I have never heard the term LND before and the wikipedia article in not very helpful.

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Dr Koin, I agree that the false urgency in many games is very annoying. Someone tells you: We are under attack by an army of orcs. You must come at once!" You agree, then you do 10 other quests, go shopping and you discuss with your companion the history of philosophy from stone age to post apocalyptic sci fi. Then you finally kill the orcs and save everyone.

D:OS has turn based combat (= slow) and Larian focuses on world exploration. This does not fit well with situations where you have to react fast in real time. There in a good example in Dragonfall. Terrorists place bombs in the sewers. When you enter the sewers (= start the quest) you have 10 turns to disarm 3 bombs. If you take too long it makes BOOM and its game over. It feels a bit strange that you run around and disarm bombs while terrorists shoot at you (you do not have the time to kill all of them first), but it does produce real urgency in a combat system very similar to D:OS.

The most important thing about LNDs is that they aren't avoidable. In D:OS you were portrayed as the heroes, but you weren't forced to do anything bad, so there's no LND there. Ellie was made in such a way as to not obstruct gameplay. She isn't ever attacked or heard by the NPCs during gameplay. LNDs usually happen when the writing is lazy and sloppy. It also depends on the context - you might be heroes but the story puts you in such a situation as to be unavoidable to do bad things. If done right that would be a great storytelling tool.

The sense of urgency can be written as such on purpose and can be used as a local climactic point. It separated by gameplay doesn't diminish its tension all that much, it only diminishes if you stay put on purpose and find out that it isn't all that urgent. I.e. perspective :p They can make it timed of course, but if they play their cards right it wouldn't be necessary.

Isn't the overriding goal to 'escape to lands controlled by the Black Ring'? That's a reason enough for other escaped Sourcerers to be traveling in the same direction.

I can see a way for some companions who didn't make it with you onto the boat or something to be in other areas of the game, especially past the first island. We haven't seen the escape sequence. We don't know how many companions are available to choose from the start (probably not that many, though. D:OS 1 only had 4, and two of those took several more months after release to add).

Maybe there's a second boat and ours just got unlucky and crashed. Who knows?


***

Freedom and Urgency

As for a sense of urgency. I don't particularly care either way. A sense of urgency is great for creating tension and an atmosphere, but that is also at odds with exploration-based gameplay. D:OS is a game about freeform exploration, and putting urgent timers on everything would kill that part off. The boat with the Divine Magisters will arrive "tomorrow", but tomorrow will never come. It doesn't fit with the desired gameplay experience. Freedom and urgency are opposing forces in terms of gameplay.

You can only put a sense of urgency into D:OS by restricting or removing some of the freedom you get. The Luculla Mines are the key example. You lose the ability to travel or escape in a pretty arbitrary manner basically for the benefit of a two-minute or four-turn escape sequence. It was a little clunky.

The Luculla Mines thing was contrived, though. That's a perfect example of how NOT to do tension right.

I think the best way I've seen urgency used in a game is by giving a choice. You can either do 1) Save this town, or 2) Go slay this monster. You can't do both. By doing this you are forced to make a meaningful choice, that changes the game going forward, but you can take your time in making that choice. So you don't have to be in a hurry to make the choice, but when you do someone lives and someone dies. I also like how this adds a lot to replay value.

Though I haven't played it myself (it's on my wishlist) I think Wasteland 2 had some choices like this.

No, those are the Bioware-type choices which don't befit RPGs. You shouldn't choose such things in dialogue. There should be nothing stopping you from leaving 2 people to defend the town, while the other 2 are on the hunt for the monster or simply leaving without doing any of these things. You also shouldn't choose it from a drop-down menu. Choices should be natural and in no way enforced by the interface. Consequences should also be logical and connected, whatever they may be. Look at Fallout 1 and 2 for an example of how to do reactivity and C&C well.

Chris Avellone is going to write for Larian!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Maybe not the best thread for this, but I have it open and I can't contain my excitement.

You are right Lacrymas.
Watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=3&v=VJJaGSV75y0 (and also other videos from this one. I liked those about realism, uncomfort and "the shandification of fallout)

Before I stopped playing it out of pure boredome and frustration over the clunky gameplay, I had time to see one of those choices : it's really lame and doesn't bring much. What's more, it's precisely what Lacrymas despises : you choose to go to A or go to B, by clicking on a map instead of choosing in a drop down menu but it's all the same really.
Once I cleared the town, I was sent to the lab. Sure it' now overrun by mutated experimentations, but you have to do both in the end. I stopped there, right at the front door of the lab.

But really I find WL2 to be a ... waste, haha. Maybe the enhanced edition will be better but I'm not going to try and find out. I don't know whether it's free or I have to buy it again, I just don't care about it anymore...

And Chris Avellone ? Well, I'm kinda sad for Larian's team of writers. I already voiced how I wasn't thinking it was an interesting idea to bring him along, so no need to do it again. At least he will only do 1 origin story. I'd like to know which one after I finished the game, so that maybe I'll corrected if it happened I chose that one and really liked it, otherwise I'm not that big on the man.

Hail to the allmighty king of RPG writing

I hope he fits to Larian. Larian games have their special sense of humor. Chris made the best RPG characters ever, but his creations are about torment, suffering, endurance and such things.

Yeap.



Wasteland 2 mummified me from boredom.




If the origin stories are the way I think (hope) they are going to be. I.e. they are explored and expanded throughout the game, Chris would be a perfect fit.

Back to topic, about fake urgency:

The ultimate example I know is BG2. Once you come to the city there are tons of people who throw their quest at you and each one must be done at once (says the quest giver, you can do it whenever you like). There are some timed quests in BG2 that make sense (jans family, some in the drow city), but most quest have no timer.

It looks like most people have accepted fake urgency to be normal in RPGs. I do not like it. Urgency can be good in an action game, but not so much in an RPG, especially if the RPG is much about exploration.

I have read something (maybe gamasutra, I am not sure) about Portal1. The final battle has a timer. In the beginning it had no timer, people finished it in 3 minutes and it was not very impressive. Then they added a timer of 6 minutes. Suddenly people needed 4 minutes and they were filled with fear and tension. Suddenly it became much more engaging. The writers were also happy because they need only writing for 6 minutes. But Portal is not an RPG, it has a linear environment and it takes place in real time.

BG2 isn't really an example of good writing in general. It has other things going for it. If you don't want to play with fire (it's fairly difficult to do right), then just don't write such scenarios, there are many, many other ways to create tension.

I guess one problem is that real urgency is hard to achieve in a non-linear game. You can have it on a small scale, such as side-quests that are based on a timer (like the ship on fire in D:OS), but it is usually not very satisfying, because when the timer runs out, the quest is failed. Unless the failed quest leads to other things that would not happen with the quest successful, this is just bad from a design perspective. Players will not like it when stuff happens constantly that is outside their control.

On a grander scale (like the Divine Magisters about to arrive in the D:OS 2 prototype), it introduces world-changing consequences. I mean, what would happen if the Magisters arrive? It shouldn't be simply game over, since that again seems to be bad design. Instead, players might no longer be able to walk about in the open, additional enemies would be roaming the island, certain areas could be blocked off, etc. ...

One also would expect NPCs to behave differently and acknowledge the change through new conversation topics and maybe new quests, etc ...

It's a huge amount of work, for an event that may never happen if the player is fast enough. And it's challenging on the technical side too, since large-scale changes to locations and NPCs are difficult to achieve. Mostly you'd have to prepare different versions of the same level and switch over, unless the engine was written with such flexibility in mind and can apply those changes to existing levels/areas/maps/whatever.

I agree, I said it was a little clunky. I guess I should have said "very clunky".


Urgency may work well in some games, but it just can't work well in freedom-heavy games like D:OS. The creators don't want to cut you off from completing quests because of one choice you make, which restricts what the consequences of choices will be. Multiplayer and freedom of movement also make urgency difficulty to accomplish.

The teleporter pyramids, button-to-teleport-to-stronghold, and free escaping as long as you are not right nest to an enemy all wreak havoc with the writer/designers' ability to create the threat of a situation where you might get in too deep to get out.




None of that will happen because the Divine Magisters will never arrive. They'll always be arriving tomorrow. Tomorrow will never come.

But that does bring up an interesting point. I think it would be interesting if there were some maps which are perpetually at one time throughout the entire thing. Like one map which takes place at night and it is night throughout the whole thing.

That is why you restrain yourself and limit the choices to those that affect you and your party. Not every multiple-path should have earth-changing consequences, or any of them really, if you want to have a true reactive world. That way you can better control the design and outcomes of actions without retconning or introducing plot holes. MrBTongue's video, which Madscientist posted, explains this very well. (I'm familiar with his work in general). I.e. Manage the scale.

I know. My point was purely hypothetical in answer to the question why there exists mostly fake urgency in RPGs. Because real urgency requires a prohibitively large amount of effort to implement in a satisfying manner.

I made 2 games with the RPG maker 2000. There it would be easy to do this. But I know nothing about programming and I have never worked with a program that creates 3D worlds.

It's not technically *double* the work, but it's not easy. Still - manage the scale.

TBH, I was thinking on a reply on my way home, but decided to check the video first. To my surprise, it had my answer right there: namely "failure is a consequence".

Since we were just talking about (fake) urgency, I guess the most common "motivation" for the player is the looming catastrophe. But letting it actually happen would amount to a failure state. And a lot of games don't want players to fail.

Even on a small scale, there is often no opportunity to make a wrong decision. No wrong answer in dialogue, no way to irreversibly fail at the solution of a puzzle, no dungeon area that remains forever locked if we do or fail to do something.

How can there be real urgency if nothing negative or inconvenient is allowed to befall the player, no matter the scale?

That's called "bad design" and "hand-holding consolitis". I.e. BiowEAre. Of course failure is a consequence. In Planescape Torment you could fail conversations let alone anything else. Failure should be a consequence not because of "hurr durr console tards don't know challenge" but out of the overarching goal of creating a believable world with real causality. Failure also doesn't mean the "game over" screen, though that is one state of failure.

And the "game over" screen is probably the worst way to implement failure. Certainly a necessary evil in many games, but I much prefer less binary fail-states. And also subjective fail states. Say you have to defend a village from monsters, and there's lots of villagers that can be killed. The likely fail state probably won't be you getting killed, but the village being decimated. A way to signify that the player has done a more or less crappy job defending if more than X% of the villagers have died can be a good way to create a non-binary, subjective fail state. Some players won't care if a bunch of people die, and may just use them as meatshields. Or you might even prefer they die if, for some reason, their essence is being used to power some sort of artifact, and the more of them that die, the stronger the item.

As for urgency, I would really like to see, for example, the magisters show up on the island eventually, but you either need to have some way to show that time is passing to the player, or their arrival needs to be tied to certain events (the much more likely and easier solution.) It could be tied to one main event, or maybe if you complete 5 side quests, a party has arrived. I think this would work much better for something where people are trickling in, like refugees or a disorganized monster invasion, instead of for a ship, where the arrival of a big group of people is fairly binary.

I'd use the game over screen only in the eventual death of the whole party, even if you somehow screw up the main quest. Though I don't know how that would be signified, in Morrowind if you killed a plot critical NPC, a text pops up telling you that you have inadvertently failed your "destiny" and should probably reload if you want. You can continue playing normally though, you just can't complete the main quest anymore. Though there could be a better way. Like the magisters throwing particularly tough enemies at you until you simply can't beat them and lose. Like the final choice in Half Life 1, where the G-man asks Gordon to choose whether to help him or not. If Gordon chooses (i.e. not going into the portal, not choosing it from a drop down menu) not to help him he teleports Gordon to Xen, with no bullets and an army of aliens ready to pounce him.

Heh. Been avoiding them like the plague ever since DA:O. Although mostly for their stance on DRM. But there wasn't anything about the games to make me reconsider either.


Exactly. I do have hopes that with the competitive gameplay present in D:OS 2, there will be more opportunity for failure in single player mode. Simply because there'll be alternative solutions available that allow for failure to be fun.

Actually, the things I remember most from D:OS were my failures:

All of those were great (because unexpected and therefore surprising), but still, chances for failure were few and far between. Having more of them would definitely make for a more intense experience.

Well, Larian has a design philosophy that you can always complete the main quest, even if you kill everyone. So the only ultimate fail state would be death of the whole party, yes. Which is fine, but I also like how they're letting you resurrect at the graveyard so long as not everyone in the party has died, though that of course has to have limits to not make death completely trivial.

I say on death, you lose all source points you had, and you lose some reputation, and maybe some gold or something. However, not sure if deaths at the hands of other players should affect you the same, especially in the likes of the arena. And maybe the more times you die, the more punished you get.

I also think some kind of intangible punishment for death would be cool. Like, every time you die, your soul slightly fractures, increasing the chance that your soul will be destroyed when you finally die permanently (instead of reborn into a new creature, like most souls). Could have little or no gameplay effect, or maybe it affects something at the end of the game, like the final outcome of your character.

Yeah, but the outcome of the main quest should be different if you kill everyone, I just used Morrowind as an example where you *could* screw up. Also "punishing" is not a concept that should be employed. Incentives should be given for characters who don't die, rather than punishing those that do. It may sound like "dumbing down", but the reality is that most "punishments" in games are cheap and annoying more than anything. It's enough if you have to go and resurrect characters at the GY.

True, but how many would still be in the area of Fort Joy? I would think most would have fled when the purging first started, if not when Bishop Alexander gained control of the Divine Order (since his anti-sourcery stance wouldn't have been a secret). I suppose there could be a safe house somewhere collecting sourcerers, who can only leave port when the weather is bad and the night dark enough a ship can sneak in and out of port without being searched, or something. I don't see how that would be any different than having a selection of companions in prison, though.

I agree the outcome should be different if you commit genocide, but you should still be able to beat the game, unlike with Morrowind. Either way, where you fail if you kill a main character, or if there's always a road forward because everyone keeps journals in their pocket, it can feel a bit contrived and immersion breaking, but I'd prefer the latter.

I think we can have both the stick and carrot for death. Sure, punishments can be annoying, and it's a hard balance between trivial drawbacks and punishments worthy of reloading, but I'd rather there be even a minimal, tangible drawback to death than nothing. But rewarding people for never dying is also a good idea. So 3-4 deaths in a game wouldn't punish you much, but you wouldn't get any sort of reward, but dying over and over again or never dying would have more drastic effects on your character, perhaps mostly in an intangible way.

I meant, "other prisoners FROM Fort Joy could get out during the escape". As in "Other potential companions who you meet in prison but do not end up on the ship you escape from".

Who cares if some people die a lot, though? If there are incentives for not dying that would be enough deterrent for people not to want to die. Arbitrarily punishing people for death smacks right into old-school MMO territory (Everquest) where the point was for you to play as much as possible. In a finite game like D:OS/2 (i.e. non-respawning mobs for example) that isn't such a good idea. Your argument is that it somehow cheapens death, but death in games IS cheap in general. The reload button exists so death is trivial. The question shouldn't be "How do we punish the players?", but "How do we make this more fun, challenging and rewarding for all tiers of players?".

Failure should be a possible outcome of decissions and not all (but maybe some) outcomes result in game over. As said in the video (not sure if this one or another one of him) he said that something that would fail definitely in the real world should also fail in the game. The most simple example is if your lv1 char meets some lv99 guards and tells them "Run or I cut you to pieces (attack)" and he ends up as a pile of meat on the next wall.

In another discussion (at obsidian? I am not sure) somebody gives an example. There is a game and somewhen near the beginning somebody asks you to meet him alone in a dark alley. If you go there you will be attacked by some strong thugs and you will most likely die. Many people complained about that because they expected a quest. the devs answered: "If you cannot fight well and you follow a stranger into a dark alley alone you are an idiot and deserve to be killed. The game works as intended." I do not remember what game it was and I did not play it.

I dislike that you cannot fail the main quest and that people drop a note when you kill them. This feels unrealistic (Oh no, I use the bad R word (realistic) again). When you kill somebody who is significant for the main story or if you make things that go extremely against your main goal (genocide of several towns would be one idea, your rep is so bad that nobody wants to deal with you), then you should fail the main quest. The question is how you deliver this to the player. Two obvious choices would be the Morrowind style or the game over screen (both not so good). The best way is to stick to choice and consequence.

In case of D:OS2 this would mean, if you do things that are obviously bad for your primary goal the inquisitor will rule the world and he will purge everybody including you.
In case of D:OS1 if you kill the weaver of time (was this her name?) than the void dragon will destroy the universe.

By the way, in Planescape:Tides of Numenera the death of the main char will send him into a "mind maze" where he may discover new things and he will eventually return to the normal world. I think I saw in a video that normal companions (= they are normal people and not a XXX (what was the main char again, castoff?) they will be gone forever (like PoE). However P:ToN is a very special setting and this would not work in a more "normal" world.

Just to be clear on this as well - in a properly made RPG you won't find level 99 guards. In single player RPGs you/mobs aren't powerful because you/they have levels, you/they have levels because you/they are powerful. Witcher 3 is absurdly bad in this. Randomly stumbling on 30th lvl bandits that are tougher than mythical beasts you fought 5 levels ago. High level trash mobs are MMO design and it works good there, but is nonsensical in single player RPGs.



That's probably the Tortured Hearts module for NWN. A Dance with Rogues may also have such a sequence.



I think Swen may have missed the point on this. The main argument for the main (and all other) quest/s in RPGs is that it can be completed in multiple ways, NOT that it can't be failed. However that may simply be his design choice, though I can't understanding the reasoning behind it.

I don't understand that fascination with "you can kill everyone" at all. I mean, that has little to nothing to do with actual roleplaying. It's just fooling around with the systems and you shouldn't expect that you will be able to continue the story as intended after you killed a whole town or so. I think you should definitely be able to fail the main quests and side quests if you make really wrong (and stupid) decisions.

On this I must completely agree. I never got the killing frenzy that seems to befall certain gamers, and in some very story driven games that should be, say, punished. Like not being able to complete a quest anymore or a system of reputation or I dunno. However it's hard to say what is a "killing frenzy" and what is a " mere error", possibly because of the UI or because we were expecting a different result.

Well, in most other RPG's, you don't have random Level 2 Helpless Civilians declaring war on hardened Level 99,264,823 warriors because a warrior picked up an apple which was not his.

I just imagined, as a bridge with the level-scaling topic, the Helpless Civilian actually also being level 99,264,823 and proceeding to beat the hardened warrior into a pulp because of an apple.
"Well, that escalated quickly".

They should probably concentrate on more elaborate choice - consequence paradigms and not think too much about "killing everyone".

Sorry for the lv1 char vs the lv99 guards.
I like extreme examples to demonstrate general concepts.

When I read your stuff I think of this:
lv99 villager: I give you the epic quest to kill a lv2 wolf.
lv1char: Why? You could kill it by just looking at it.
lv99 villager: Because I could crush you like a fly. But I prefer to see you suffering.
This is complete nonsense, but players would not commit genocide anymore

Exactly :p All villagers would be 1st level, because that's what they are - untrained villagers. Levels are just a representation of power, not the power itself. That's why 99 lvl villagers giving you quests to kill lvl 2 wolves break immersion :p

Just gonna repeat what I said in the topic I made on the matter.

PLEASE give me the chance to make and fully control (as in fully roleplay) multiple characters.

I genuinely enjoyed making duos in DivOS and roleplaying them both and I feel that DivOS2 would be a lesser experience if I couldn't do it again.

Hell, by Swen's stated goals of making it to where the MP doesn't have anything in it that the SP can't have this makes the most sense, since the AI won't fight you on anything you can't have any competitive questing unless you are able to fully control and roleplay more than one character.

Easy: competitive questing for MP, love&hate for SP.

That's against Swen's stated goals that both MP and SP be essentially the same.

Also no, that's pretty bullshit.

I do not want to be forced to roleplay more than one character against each other. It's pointless.

Also, Competitive questing and the DM/GM mode already goes against that stated goal, so that pledge is already broken.

Who said anything about forced? Hell, if you had read my first bit I talked about the OPTION to control multiple characters, which through that OPTION you get competitive questing in Single Player.

Also DM Mode is a completely separate animal from the main campaign so that isn't even included in there.

Sabotaging yourself in single player makes no sense (and is entirely optional in multiplayer), but competitive questing will result in there being more options and quest solutions, and NPCs reacting more to your characters as individuals than as a group, more replayability, etc.

I honestly don't see how competitive questing is sabotage, regardless it gives me a chance to see the other side of a quest chain and determine which side I actually want to succeed.

That was my point (replying to Stabbey), that not having sabotage in single player doesn't make competitive questing any less of a benefit.

I included the word "forced" to specify that I didn't care if it was an option as long as it wasn't the ONLY option.



Resources and time will be spent on it, so it matters. But I suppose someone did make the good point - that DM mode might be multi-player only, but Love and Hate is more of a single-player only thing.



Maybe... but I tried thinking about that from a different angle, and wondered what would prevent those options and quest solutions from appearing in a single-player game, and only make them possible in a multiplayer game. Off the top of my head, I couldn't think of anything which would prevent those choices from appearing in a hypothetical single-player only game. In my opinion, that makes the argument - that it is only the presence of multiplayer which is responsible for that wealth of choice - hold less water.

Multiplayer isn't required for those choices to exist, but the presence of multiplayer does enforce that standard, and removes the temptation to cut corners in particular situations to make certain quest scripting easier, or if time starts to run out, etc.

Rather than try to think of things that would prevent these options in a single player game, try coming up with other motivations that would get a developer to decide to more than quadruple a lot of the dialogue and add many more quest solutions based on different party members. Freedom and immersion, etc, could be done quite well with much less work.
Of course a particularly strong vision or gameplay plot mechanic for a game could do this, but the fact that party based single player games do not generally have dialogue and quests based on all the different party member races (if an option) or origins (if they have any) means this is not generally considered a desirable feature given the relative benefit and resource cost compared to other aspects of the game.

is it possible to play single player mode with only a single character?

i ask, b/c i like the challenge of playing a game solo that is originally meant to be played in a group (like eg baldurs gate)

I believe I may have the best of two worlds since I'm going to play it coop with 1 friend, meaning we should get Love&Hate from the second character we control each =)



Same here :p
Sure it goes against all the hard work done for the game but as a challenge for a new playthrough it's neat !
Although I think I had an answer to that, which was that it should be very possible. Especially with the Mask should it be interesting to do. Although it depends on whether there will be 4-men based puzzles ( like, everyone has to split up for a bit in order to stand on a different pressure plate ). Also depends on the possible inclusion of a Lone Wolf equivalent, which sounds harder to do this time around since the game is designed for 4 characters rather than 2+2.

I seriously don't know why people are against the option of creating and controlling the RP of multiple characters, it already exists in DivOS and since DivOS2 is using the same engine then all they should feasibly have to do to implement it is not take it out.

They are already writing MP dialogue so it's not like this would add a significant work load.

Hell, I even have a simple idea of how making multiple characters could work. After making your first character a box pops up asking if you would like to make another one, click yes and boom, another character, then another box, and another if yes again, and another till you made all 4 or only as many or few as you want to make. That way Stabbey could only make just one character, I could make two, and everyone is happy.

I think Larian should reconsider the depth of the love&hate aspect for SP which means that it should go even deeper than they said in the KS video updates. For example, Swen said that companions would only tell you if they like or dislike certain action of the PC but they'd never actively act against the PC. I think that if Larian really want DOS 2 to be their very own BG2 they should aim for similar depth for interaction with your companions which means that some of them should be able to turn against you in case you act severly and thouroughly against their convictions. Of course D&D is based on a rigid set of attitudes (good, neutral, bad and its detailed attitudes) but something like that already exists in DOS with the predefined character traits for your 2nd PC (like loyal, charming, friendly). I think the system could work similarly, but - and that's good - also in a way more differentiated manner which means that the relationship between characters is based on various traits and a chain of respective actions of the PC.

Of course a system like that would require a goood amount of available companions (along the lines of BG2 or more) so that you have a chance to build up a party that "follows" your ethical attitude within the game and so that you have a chance to substitute characters that leave your party or even turn against you if you act in opposition to their convictions.

I really hope Larian gives this a second thought because it would imo enhance the narrative experience for the SP in a way many people have good memories of after playing the old Infinity engine games. It would give party interaction and the relationship to your companions a more realistic and more in-depth aspect that would give you another incentive to reconsider your narrative decisions within the game aka "Do I really want to kill this guy for money, if it means that this certain companion might be pissed about it and might even leave my party or turn against me?" That would add another layer of narrative depth to the SP experience that would imo make up for the non-existing competitive questing in SP. If Bioware could do it for BG2 in 2001 I'm pretty sure that Larian would be able to pull it off in 2015/2016 as well - even in an advanced and evolved manner.

Because majority of playerbase is not schizophrenic and doesn't really fancy talking and debating with themselves in a RPG (which is what the absurd dual dialog is in SP) Aside that I fully agree with your post. As long as it is optional it is no problem at all. But it wasn't optional in D:OS. On release day there were no (even now half-assed, imo) AI personalities. So you had 2 puppets with about as much character depth as a puddle on the road and if you wanted to experience the full game you had to enable dual dialog, and thus lead schizophrenic debates with yourself over the matter of stolen fishes (woohooooo!) (example) Worse, these dual dialogs did not develop the character, they only affected stats. So as a powergamer you *had* to actually game the dialog and not roleplay..

Mind you, in RPG's I can accept 1 puppet, aka 1 char that does what I want* and says what I want* (with the restrictions of his defined history and backstory) but D:OS pushed it too far by making the 2 puppets not just identical from the outset but also incredibly boring personalities. I honestly wouldn't even TALK to the source hunters as they are portrayed in D:OS and I don't think I would want to fight for "their" side after D:OS either.

To be frank, if it is an option I want to join the side in D:OS 2 that fights source hunters.

Anyway, this is all long debated to death. As long as a 2nd puppet is optional no problem...

On the other hand, you could call a writer schizophrenic because he writes full blown characters all by himself, including their conversations and eveery other kind of interactions =) Or children who likes to create their little world with their legos and stuff.
but I'm just nitpicking.

I have nothing against full RP control of the characters. Sure, it somehow sounds weird given the apparent goals of Larian which is, this time around, giving real life to the party members. It also somehow defeat the purpose of the hidden agendas, and could even be assimilated to some kind of "cheat" since you could disregard your characters feeling when it doesn't suit your playstyle.
However I fully expect that people wanting to RP the four characters are precisely NOT going to cheat.

What's more, it's "just" a matter of allowing single players to actually fully customize their party right from the start, and I REALLY, REALLY want that feature too. I'm going to play coop anyway, but I never feel like a recruited party member is "mine" when I didn't get to create them myself. In BG, I always create my own party. In PoE I'm annoyed I had to go with companions. In DOS1 I took lone wolf. In Skyrim / tes games I NEVER play with companions ( I feel they are authentic lone wolf kind of games ). Sole exception I had so far is Fallout New Vegas.

So, yeah, while I don't really care about roleplaying all my characters, I really care about having the possibility of creating all my characters myself, and I feel like this is a common goal. So just give us the possibility to add as many handmade characters as we want at the start of the game and everyone's going to be happy =)

Playing games like BG with a generic party is imo completely pointless and the game was NEVER made to be like that. Neither was DOS or PoE. Actually, a lot of what is great about them is about the companions. It's much of the heart of the narrative experience.

So making something like that would be the complete opposite direction than what Swen told us so far about the vision for DOS2, to blend narrative better into the gameplay and enhance it on almost every level. DOS2 is meant to be Larian's BG2, not it's Icewind Dale...

The issue with companions in game like BG is that they never really feel like a true part of the story, but rather like optional content - even if the main plot is what makes the player meet them. I mean, Imoen is around sure, but we can just tell her not to come. Same for Khalid and Jaheira - you meet them as part of the plot but that's it, somehow.
Companions in BG2 were a tad tighter to the PC ( Imoen served a bigger purpose this time around ) as far as I could see, but still, you could bring whoever you wanted based on personal likings.

The biggest issue with party-based cRPG is that party members rarely really matter.

It's not a surprise then that people would like to just dismiss them entirely. Hell, sometimes their little problems completely contradict the main plot, like, "help me reclaim my castle!" "yeah but I'm kind of on the clock here, who knows what the bad guy are doing to my childhood friend..." "I won't like you if you don't help me" "okay then".
Creating your own party ensures that you can optimize your group, and a lot of players like optimization/theorycrafting in their games. You will avoid being annoyed with petty irrelevant problems if you don't like that or feel it's out of place.
Not to mention you may not get to choose the starting stats of the characters, prompting you to possibly choose between a char whose story you're interested in, but with bad starting caracteristics which would give you a handicap ; or a character with the exact attributes you're looking for, but a story that you can't even care about. Bioware is very good at forcing you to bring along characters you don't like because otherwise you would suck at fighting...

Of course, the intended goal with DOS2 is to make the party members relevant. However I trust it should work either way, since it is theorized for now that the party members will get their origin stories from the pool of available stories minus the one you chose for your own character. So, hiding the dialogues lines or making them available to the player, there's not a big difference. It can be even funnier to find out that by choosing solution X you really did put character Y in a corner, and try to solve that - or just get along with it.


TL:DR ; some people like creating a balanced team ; DOS2 should not suffer from the "handcrafted story for specific party member" like BG/lots of cRPG ; it's just a matter of enabling people to create as much characters as they want to and giving them full control.

Companions are a pet peeve of mine. The problem is that you can't force them into a player's party. Remember what's-her-face-the-farm-girl from NWN2? People threw a hissy fit because of her. That complicates things obviously. The best companions are from MotB and KotOR2. In KotOR2 Kreia WAS the story, while in MotB the story actually started and could proceed because of the actions of your companions (Imoen getting kidnapped doesn't count as *her* action). You couldn't have assaulted the Fugue Plane if Kaelyn hadn't gathered an army before that. The story wouldn't even start if Safiya didn't exist and you couldn't get the best ending without Gann's involvement. THOSE are good companions, not random people who you just meet for no particular reason. You could also totally ignore them, if you so desire. The story should move because you and the people around you (i.e. companions) move it, not because the universe decides you are its chew toy du jour. All the elements and characters being part of the story is what (good) writing is all about. It's an accomplishment if you can do it. I actually threw a tantrum over at the Obsidian forums because the characters were nobodies and had no involvement/connection to the plot.

About you making your own characters - giving more option is always good, so go wild. Some people don't feel schizophrenic debating,talking and sharing opinions with themselves :p

If someone is interested - http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/75911-the-disconnection-between-companions-and-the-overall-story/ I'm the OP.

Nhhhh...

I think there is a difference. The proper analogy would be that you are given a world defined very tightly by say, Larian, and you as normal person suddenly are given the task of creating characters in that world, something Larian was supposed to pay writers for and do itself, even though you paid money with the explicit goal to have this done for you by writers that are vastly more proficient than you.

For me that would make a game a no-buy. I buy RPG's for story and immersion. And if I had to do something like described above I would not feel like I had gotten what I wanted out of that buy. In fact I would feel scammed. I guess I am just strange like that

What it comes down to is that I can agree that there should be options to cater to all playstyles. But properly written companions with character development, feels, and immersion, are for me an ABSOLUTE must and I would say make up 70% of the buying value for me. It just goes to show that everyone looks for different things in their games, and that is totally ok. As long as D:OS 2 does not repeat D:OS 1's mistakes.

In case you wonder, remaining % is 15% music and 14% gameplay and 1% graphics. ;P

Ps.: Properly written can mean locked classes, but I would be OK with it assuming I can define their level up path from level 1 onwards. (I hated that in PoE, now patched, but I don't play now, I played on release).. eh, I mean I hated that they leveled to your level on some template (which REALLY gimped the Mage)

Absolutely! And with the way DOS2 seem to be developped, I still strongly believe both playstyles can be accommodated for.



Yes, exactly. Such a disconnection between the companions and the story is what brought me to just avoid them. They may have some interesting personal stories, I generally play them during a first playthrough ( Bioware games force you to bring companions along anyway ), but if I can avoid them for new playthroughs I will. DOS1 even had a talent to get rid of companions without suffering the consequences gameplay-wise ( sorry, Adora ).
In the end, I just prefer to have a blank slate team to better enjoy the main plot with no awkward, out-of-place companions interactions.

Funny enough, one game that had a nice approach of various companions with their own origin stories was Seiken Densetsu 3 aka Secret of Mana 2. You chose the main character and their story would become the "main" plot. The two others characters would imply different interactions based on where they are coming from whenever you would set foot in their homeland, and their nemesis would be different ( I believe it worked in couples - 6 heroes sharing 3 nemesis ). I always liked that in this game, and this is a reason why I sometimes play it again. ( class system was fun too. )

After playing Bioware games, I can't really get into the story when I don't have "buddies" with me, with whom I can communicate, share feelings and insights etc.
I tried Witcher (the first one) 3 times, but I was too alone in the world. If there wasn't Siegfried and Shani, I would have ended with it even sooner.

Bad news for you: D:OS2 will not be like KotoR2 or MotB.

As far as I know, it goes like this:
- There are 4 escaped prisoners and you create 1 of them.
- You select a background for your char.
- The other 3 companions will have backgrounds you have not selected for your char. (not sure how. is it random, can you select it, something else?)

So regarding one background, you can be this person, it can be a party member or you will never see him. It can be that you have background A and a companion has background B and when you play the game again it can be the other way around.

I think it will depend all on how your companions are selected and how they interact with you and the other companions. Since you are all escaped prisoners, you have a reason to work together. But you should have the option to abandom them and play alone. (Though I always used a full party in RPGs.)

By the way: Were EXP divided between party members in D:OS1?

Those are just predetermined stories though, that doesn't mean they won't be connected to the main plot. I would think that's the entire point, how all origins have a stake in the plot. If they just have a burger king's club collection of backstories for no reason than just to have them, then what's the point? If they are these bubbles of vacuum that have no connection to anything why are they even there? It wouldn't matter what they are, what they contain or what they say, because it could literally be anything. Again, what's the point?

I really liked The Witcher. (I have only played part 1).
Parties are good for turn based combat or real time with pause.
Companions are worse in real time action games. some examples:
- I play KotoR now and my main char does about 90% of the damage. Your companions are mostly there for story reasons.
- In Fallout3 and skyrim, my companions ran away because they saw a rat (or something else) at the horizon and they chased after it and then they ran from one enemy to another. When I have a gun (or bow) I play as sniper (move slowly with stealth and aim for headshots from great distances) so companions are often more harmful than helpful.

my result: Companions are good when you have full control over them (in combat, RP or story is something different). I mean you can control all of them all the time. If you can control only one at a time, the AI is often so terrible that you feel they are addicted to committing suicide. (There are 20 enemies ahead and I am a fragile mage. Lets charge right in and when everyone surrounds and bashes me I trow a fireball at myself, so I hit everyone.)

I don't see your gripe with that. Well, of course the integration of companions in the main narrative can always be improved but for video game standards, your companions in BG2 (or beyond, Planescape Torment) were quite tight with the PC, and on top of that very reactive to the actions of the player.


And your solution to that is that you just scrap party members altogether, making them mere combat robots without any meaningful narrative and without any well written heritage and behaviour? I see the same shortcomings with traditonal CRPG companion design but I want the exact opposite: I want even more meaningful companions instead of dropping them altogether which imo makes no sense at all, following the argument that the existing companions don't matter enough for the overall narrative.


That's actually a big surprise and it makes no sense after all imo. It would make sense if you go on without ANY companion, just on your own. Good luck with that in games like BG2 (I heard of people who beat the game with only one character though).

I don't see the point of the min-max theory here. You imo can't argue with narrative issues here and gameplay issues there. If you criticize companions for their narrative shortcomings, you should actually want the writing to be improved (anything else is IMHO a mere insult to the writers at Larian...). You can of course criticize the companions writing for its gameplay consequences but I'd say that this is basic game design to give you certain tools at hand with which you are free to beat the game. Complete freedom might be a goal for a game, but not necessarily (usually narrative is used to tighten the freedom you can have in a game and to focus it to a certain narrative environment that has itself consequences to how the gameplay turns out -> it's the narrative which gives both context to the gameplay and makes it possible in a certain predefined environment in the first place). Especially not if your overall vision is to tightly integrate the narrative in the gameplay experience. Reducing the amount and quality of the narrative (of which companions are a GREAT deal in a traditional party RPG) makes imo no sense at all. On the opposite, it's like openly telling the players that their companion writing sucks and that people are free to just skip all that stuff. If you ask me Larian should be proud of their companions and make them a core part of their game experience - just like Bioware did for BG1/2, even if you (and me) would have liked an even better integration into the overall narrative.

What you say about the typcial "companion quest" in Bioware games is true. But there are certain things we should talk about. First, such companion quests are no necessity in order to make meaningful and interesting companions. It's just the typical Bioware formula people know. And then again, you can always improve upon that formula. Second, much of your criticism is true for A LOT of side quests in almost any RPG I know. That's not at all an exclusive problem with companions. Truth is that side quests often compete with the main quest in video game RPGs and that comes naturally, because in most cases the main quest and the side quests (to which traditional Bioware companion quests belong) have different narrative and design goals. While the main quest is often designed to increase the emotional impact and to create a certain feeling of tension, side quests are there to distract and to broaden the world. Their purpose is actually in many games to literally distract the player from the main quest, even if that means that there is a certain narrative break. I see the issues with that and I critized a lot of games exactly for that. With open world design the problem got imo even worse in the past few years (with Witcher 3 being the last infamous example for exactly the same inconsistent quest and narrative design). Bottom line: while I agree with you that many companion quests somehow compete with the main narrative, it doesn't mean that you can't improve upon that. And honestly, most RPG players I know just get used to the fact that the main narrative and the side content often just "co-exist". It's not the best of all solutions, but it's imo a lot better than just to reduce the overall amount of narrative content (basically scraping every side content that competes with the main narrative...). If you apply the same philosophy to every RPG (or other story-driven video game) a lot of awesome, heart-breaking, interesting, engaging, thrilling and just well-done content would be gone. Honestly, I don't want to sound arrogant, but I pity everybody who can't look over that narrative break and therefore isn't able to enjoy side content just for what it is on its own. Same is of course true for companions in many ways. As I've said, for me companions were one of the major factors of the old CRPGs like BG2 that made these games so great. Without that BG2 would just be a mediocre D&D simulator on PC if you aks me, ripped of a lot of its emotional impact. I would be extremely disappointed if that's the direction Larian wants to go with Divinity and DOS 2 in particular.


Actually I don't think so. I never had that issue with any Bioware game. I also think that taking people with you who "makes your party weaker" is a serious and powerful decision, for both the narrative and the gameplay. You can win every encounter in Bioware games even with an unbalanced group. It's just harder. It's a decision you have to make if you want your favorite folks to accompany you or the "best fitting ones" for the fight - and a meaningful one.


BG never "suffered" from the story for specific party members. You were never forced to engage into them anyway, with a few (meaningful) exceptions.

The goal to "create a balanced team" though has actually nothing to do with the narrative after all. It's a pure gameplay decision that puts the narrative in second place - something that is against the vision of DOS 2 actually.

Very true, imagine Mass Effect without Garrus and his awesome voice actor.. or yeah, Tali.. or Dragon Age without Morrigan and the Dwarf (2/3) I guess the important companions are different for everyone. Let's just say that Dragon Age and Mass Effect are both my favorite "cinematic" RPG series. Doesn't mean I scoff at good RPG's, but it means that for example, I wasn't a huge fan of the way things were done in PoE....

But I agree that this can be taste... very subjective whether one likes that more movie inspired style or hates it. For me, I like all RPG's.. except the ones where I am puppet master. Funnily in D:OS I had a puppet and a companion. And at the end I really hated my 2 puppets because only my 1 companion (had 1x lone wolf) had any real character.

Where do you have that from? Any source? I can't remember that I ever heard that it will be that way...

But if that's really true I would be EXTREMELY disappointed. That would make "companions" even a lot worse than those in DOS and I actually don't think that Larian would do that, literally beating SP fans in the face (>80% of their actual customers) just to enable certain things in MP...

I do hope that "companions" for DOS 2 will mean that we can choose from various available people, just like in the traditional Bioware CRPGs. If there is anything that works in their games until today, it's the party creation aspect (a lot of people play these games almost exclusively for that aspect, me pretty much included). If there will really be only three pretty random "companions" that will start with you in prison the SP would indeed be a ton worse than MP - by design. I do ardently hope that this is not true though...

@LordCrash:
In the videos of D:OS2 your group starts at a coast and I think Swen said that you just escaped prison and shipwracked at this island all of you want to get away from that island.
OK, I do not remember that anyone said that all companions are escaped prisoners. Maybe I understood something wrong.

Yeah, but the impression I got was that there were not JUST four, but you could only take three companions with your main character. If there are only like 4 or 5 possible options then that would be bad.

--
Well I feel like I randomly threw around my feelings in a very non organized manner in the spoiler section above, but really it's simple.
- I've been very disappointed by companions in the cRPGs I played, and felt more attached to my chars in, say, Eye of the Beholder or Legend of Grimrock, or during a fully customized party game of BG1. DA:O is the only exception I can think of, were the companions could turn out to be the real stars of the story. Okay, maybe Bastilla in Kotor1... ( I didn't do Kotor2 ).
- Thanks to the Origin Story concept, I don't feel like DOS2 characters are even companions. Since I see all of them as heroes of the story, it somehow makes sense we could be able to create all of them from scratch. I am not opposed either to the notion of RPing them ourselves. It's just another way to play the game.

I just think there are multiple ways of playing the game, which is a VERY nice thing. Let's not corridor-view ourselves into thinking there is only ONE WAY to play a game, this is wrong and a bit naive. There are powerplayers, explorers, min maxers, completionists, speedrunners, Roleplayers, Single Players, Coop players, Players Vs Players, people that hate magic, people that hate melee... Within the scope of DOS2, all these type of players can be accomodated for quite easily imho, so let's just do that !

I believe they are going for 1 origin story per writer, which would make 8 of them plus the Mask.
So I reckon they will pre-make 8 characters and depending on what you selected for yourself you will get to choose between the 7 left ?

The companions need to do something in regards to the narrative. DA:O was actually atrocious for this. The companions never actually do anything and their relevancy is just railroaded plot - Alistair just happens to be what he is, Morrigan's thing is only possible because of Flemeth, and that's it for major involvement in anything. Even in their own side-quests they do nothing and wait for our input. That's weird and they start feeling like meat puppets for the player's enjoyment rather than equals in the narrative. I can't stress this enough. Controversial statement - DA2 is the best Bioware game in terms of narrative. Why? Because of its focus on characters who move the plot. Arishok, Varric, Meredith, Anders, Isabella and even Hawke in the first act. It went bananas at the end, but I expect nothing better from BW. Sadly, the bad production of everything else in the game means Bioware won't do anything like this ever again. This is exacerbated by the fact that players criticized it for the wrong things. There is nothing more frustrating than seeing people criticizing something you do as well, but are criticizing it wrong. Enough about that.

I don't know what else to say on the topic of companions really.

Well, apples and oranges. PnP is a "true" MP approach, while CRPGs in SP are completely different imo. There is a huge difference between interacting with real people and with pre-written AI companions. PnP and co-op are pretty much based on the interaction itself. It's the core of the experience and there is a completely different approach to gameplay requirements. Min-max in PnP/Co-op is based and dependent on the interaction with other players. Nothing of that is true for SP. In SP you basically just have to make it up with yourself, which opens completely different approaches to both narrative and gameplay decisions. You can easily scrap min-max approaches for a preferred narrative experience because there is nobody you have to justify for that, for example. It's true that many people in SP follow min-max strategies as well (and many of those who do actually come from PnP...) but it's neither a requirement nor does it have any benefit of its own. You don't help your party with it (like you would in co-op/PnP), you basically only make the rest of the game easier for yourself (while, weirdly enough, an overal easier gameplay experience is just one mouse click away...). So balancing a party in a SP CRPG or min-maxing your char is in no way a requirement. It's an option, another level of freedom, that you can value against other elements (like taking your fav companions with you). Myself, I often ended with taking the same companions with me in Mass Effect, for example, even though I knew that the gameplay would be a lot harder with them in my party. But I valued having them with me higher than having a balanced party. That was a conscious decision of mine, which is pretty much at the core of what SP RPRs are all about in the end imo.


Honestly, I think we are of such fundamentally different opinion here it's pretty much impossible to find common ground. I care for handcrafted companions if they are well written. That's pretty much it. If they have a certain take in the main story only the better, but it's not a requirement. Well handmade companions always improve the emotional impact of any narrative in a party CRPG for me. They are basically what a party CRPG is all about for me.


Well, there is nothing wrong with having annoying people in your party in the first place imo. I don't get why some people mistake well written characters with likeable characters. I can enjoy a companion that is "problematic" if it's well established. I guess it's my love for well written characters and stories in general, which is the prime reason why I love story- and character-driven games in the first place.
On top of that your second argument has no big weight in DOS since you could already reskill your companions in DOS. So if you hate mage X that much that you can't have him in your party anymore, just reskill your rogue to be a mage and your good. DOS gives you actually that much gameplay freedom that you can even get around narrative "issues".


Sorry, but every companion in BG2 had a ton more depth than anybody in DA:O, no matter if they were part of the main story or not. Also, you can't see a difference between a random NPC asking for your help and a well established CHARACTER? Wow, that's pretty much denying that there is character writing in general if it's not intended to be part of the main narrative completely. I think that this is totally not true. BG2 for example had a shitload of extensive dialogues with your companions (between various group members, between them and the PC and a ton of ambient dialogue as well) that gave them a lot of depth as characters. Comparing that to a random NPC is completely pointless, even if you think that the companions have too little meaning for the main narative.


I think this approach is designed to fail tbh. It's something that might work well in co-op (for which it is designed) and miserably fail in SP if it will stay that way. There are various reasons for that, starting from typcial player psychology to design obstacles to be honest. I'm pretty sure Larian themselves have not a single clue how to really pull that off in SP at this point in development...


No, it can't. Simply because PnP and SP RPGs are fundamentally different in a lot of core aspects of how and why you do certain things in the game. You might want to play a SP RPG just as an imaginary round of PnP but that's actually not how others envision SP RPGs to work at all. They (like me) see it as an interactive version of the traditional choices novel.

And how should dialogues work then? If these companions are just mindless robots only created for an optimally balanced party, how do you suppose companions to weigh in in dialogues and narrative decisions. Typically, SP RPGs with a full party are written to integrate companions into the decision making by at least giving their opinion on certain actions or even leading to consequences like leaving the party. I can't see how that should work for a custom party. A lot of dialouges were either to be designed from the start to only integrate the PC or they had to be different while having such a party. While the first option would be the worst that could happen the second option is bad as well because it would indeed increase the work load for the writers, while basically telling them (and yes, you DO that!) that you don't care at all about their character writing and that you deem it so bad that you either go without any character writing at all.


You only see the negatives. It's like you don't see a certain thing to be fulfilled and immediately scrap the whole concept, even trying to tell me that a companion would be on the same level of a random NPC just because they have no direct impact on the main narrative (which is by the way not true at all because by helping the PC in combat they have an extremely important impact on the story also on a narrative level, coming from emergent gameplay).
That you're no forced to engage in their own quests is regarded as good game design, not only by fans of Bioware but also by a ton of game designers. Pretty much every RPG is created with a main narrative and optional side content. I know a ton of awesome side quests of various RPGs that had little to no impact on the main narrative. Many of them were even better than the main narrative. You know, content in video game can be good for themselves, on the small scale, even if the bigger scale leaves a lot to be desired. I don't support your view at all that there was any alleged prerequirement to make every companion ultimately meaningful and 100% important for the main narrative in everything they do and say. I think their content and interaction with the PC can be fun no matter what - if they are just well written characters that offer well written and fun content. You know, there is more for me than just black and white. I can have fun with non-perfect companions, much more than having no companions at all.


Maybe it's all my fault and I completely misunderstood the narrative concept for DOS 2. Maybe it was just wishful thinking on my behalf (I actually fear that the longer I think about it...). But what you say here is something I don't see possible and something I don't see fun for SP. Maybe (probably?) DOS 2 is indeed a co-op game with an inferior SP that tries to mimic PnP MP without ever getting the basics of why SP usually works differently in video game RPGs. If that's the case DOS 2 will be actually a lot worse for me than DOS because this time we have 4 of these "I want to play PnP with myself" chars than only 2 (with 2 "real" companions). And I very much agree with you that if SP is only envisioned as a solo version of basically the same PnP gameplay making a complete party for yourself makes even more sense than taking AI controlled and predefined characters.


I have to disagree strongly here. I mean, that's what many people think and what make many games really bad in the end. Focus is imo a games best friend, while making it accessible and playable for everyone is its worst enemy. It's typically the reasons why all AAA games feel and play more or less the same, following a common denominator approach, that should a little bit fun for everyone while it lacks the depth and focus to really offer expectional fun to a specific group of people. You know, I rather have some games I really don't want to play than only games I only want to play for certain aspects. So in general, I don't agree with your notion that it's easy to accomodate to all different kind of players because in my experience (based on playing a shitload of video games in the past 15-20 years basically each and every day) that's almost never true or even possible.

Back to DOS 2, I have to say that the way the MP is envisioned already hurts the SP by a mile, especially if you don't seperate the two in core elements. Maybe it's time then to actually declare DOS 2 a MP/co-op game at its very core without trying to convince people that SP will be just as good. Because I fear that this is a promise they won't be able to stick to with the current approach. Or maybe it's just me and my weird old-school opinions about traditional party CPRGs and their narrative and emotional impact. I can't really blame Larian for wanting a Bioware game in good I guess...

With such a quote war going on I don't know who is saying what, lulz. Just going to reply to nobody in particular: The main advantage of writing pre-made companions is, *drum roll....* being able to logically tie them to the whole and develop their idea! In a PnP session, it's pretty much impossible to do such a thing if you are improvising. The same way a huge musical idea can't be done while improvising and it needs to be thought up and written down. Beethoven can't improvise his 9th Symphony :p. If you don't do this then the companions become token and they aren't any better than adventurer's hall husks. They literally mean nothing and they can be substituted with *anything*. That's why writers are on the team, the main plot can be written on a napkin by the janitor and it would serve its purpose. This is what writing (any kind) is about - developing and expanding upon an idea and the elements of it to form a coherent, logical whole. Everything else is dilettante-ish scribbling which amounts to nothing and goes nowhere. Climaxes, changes and everything else that has to do with the plot, are all necessitated by the involvement of the characters within it and leading to a logical point where these things are forced by their actions and don't simply happen because we have to go somewhere with this whole "plot" nonsense.

It feels like I'm beating a dead horse here, but so many video game writers treat the writing like some random slice that is their pet project rather than a mover and shaker of the whole. That's what Chris Avellone gets and that is why he is such an outstanding writer, his characters *matter* and are the focal point of the whole narrative. That is also why it's so coherent, logical and satisfying. This also comes with the perk that by tying the plot to the characters you are less likely to trip over plot holes and inconsistencies that jar you out of the story and break the fundamental principles of storytelling.

But really, Larian didn't advertise any kind of scripted companion so far in any manner, unless I miss something at some point in time.
The characters are all going to be originated from the pool of Origin Stories, meaning there won't be any specific, handcrafted companion *at all*. There will be premades I reckon : class and race will probably be set in stone, like, Origin Story 1 is a warrior redhead Dwarf named Maximilian, OS2 is an archer blond elf named Legolass, OS3 is a mage brunette human named Raven, etc. ( all tremble before my mighty naming imagination ! )
The most handcrafted I can imagine to be beyond that is that the writer will probably give preference to answer A from origin story 1 in a certain situation while origin story 2 will prefer the answer C in the same situtation. Thanks to Love and Hate I expect this to be a bit more organic in nature, like if origin story 1 hates you, he will rather choose answer B whereas should he like you, he will go with A.

SP is probably going to not feel very much different than MP except the answer of the companions will be preselected by some writers magic rather than by another brain somewhere else in the world. As a player, you will still get to select your answer and watch what the other characters think of the situation. Only difference will be that you won't control the full party in MP.

Since this is how I expect things to unfold, you can easily understand why I'd say "please, don't force us to play a warrior dwarf as the Origin Story 1 companion, maybe let me at least choose his sex/class, and better even his race *if applicable*. If we can in MP, why couldn't we in SP ?".
It may then be way too complex to give a weight to each and every possible answer coming from race, trait, talent, and origin story, so ultimately choosing to create your own party member would simply lead you to having to assume full control of the character yourself.
Should you choose to pick the premade character though, well then, you're in for the standard companion action.
- You want your own custom team, create 1 to 3 more characters, and assume full control of them.
- You want scripted companions reacting by themselves to your actions and to the world, pick the premades.
Both type of players will have the same experience regardless because in the end, everyone pick a story from the OS pool. And neither solution will diminish in any way the work of the writers. One player will get something more unexpected as the scripts will play with/against him, and the other will get to see the full range of possibities.

It's really just a different take on things and none are less valid than the other, regardless of what I may think of 90% of the companions in cRPGs.
Because, do not get the wrong idea : I still see as perfectly valid the fact you like playing with prewritten companions. As I think I said, that's how I do my RPGs too. If given the choice, though, I will ditch them in subsequent playthoughs. DOS1 was actually the first time ever I immediately ditched the companions by going dual Lone Wolf. When I did BG:EE recently, I immediately formed my full custom party because I already had a go at the companions years ago and didn't want nor need to have them again with me. Sorry, Minsc and Boo! And this has nothing to do with the fact they are well or badly written : it's more about how well they contribute to the flow of the whole game, storywise as well as gameplay-wise.

I disagree very strongly. As I've said before, PnP and a SP RPG are fundamentally different.

PnP and co-op gameplay is all about interaction with real people. Everything you do is made with the other players in mind. It's a collaborate experience with the interaction between players (and consequently, their PCs) at its core.

SP RPGs though are (for many people at least) about the narrative experience at its core. A story-driven game is basically a narrative experience with a certain degree of interaction and choices of various kinds at your hand. Since it's a narrative experience well written characters can exist for their own good, just for the sake of offering a well done narrative experience. Well written companions don't necessarily have to be at the heart of the story to offer something to enjoy. To compare such companions to mindless henchmen is both wrong and pointless. The taks of a mindless henchman is to be a tool for gameplay. Such a henchman has no narrative value or purpose. A well written companion though is completely different for a SP narrative experience since they blend into the overall narrative, which is much, much more than just the main plot or the main quest path. Following that logic every(!) side quests that is not fully and meaningfully integrated into the main storyline was ultimately pointless, completely ignoring that there there is a lot of fun and value to be found besides the main path. Calling all of that pointless is sad because for some people it's not at all that way. It's just a testament of an ultimate black-and-white thinking that misses a lot of what makes SP actually fun in the first place for quite some people. I mean, if you play a SP (party) RPG like BG2 like a PnP session in MP you're probably doing something wrong because such a game is not really meant to be played that way (which is imo prettyclear given their basic game design and the way they create their quests and characters and so on and so forth). Their main value lies in the emotional impact that comes from the relationship between the PC and their companions, no matter if they are fully tied to the main narrative. They can co-exist and still have a big value no matter what. So no, it's not necessary to tie them to the whole, and it's no prerequisite either (although there is of course additional value in doing so, no question here) since it's not the basis of why they are so important for many people.


Important explanatory note:

I think a lot of this discussiom has actually to do with player psychology and how we all play games - and ultimately experience them, on both an emotional and logical layer. There is little doubt that people experience games differently (empathy and its various manifestations are said to have a prominent role in that) and that different experiences lead to different wishes, opinions and expectations. That includes a whole range of topics from the question how one roleplays ("I am the character" vs "I care about/guide the character") to the question whether one is more interested in the whole picture of things ("logical") vs the emotinal impact of emerging gameplay ("emotional") (which is basically at the core of the discussion whether "choice" or "consequence" is of bigger important for an RPG). So I guess there is no one "right" way to play from the start, since we all play games in a certain way that is based on how our subconsciousness works. So we already start from different grounds when talking about game design and our convictions about what games should look like - and sadly there is little common ground between many of these manifestations. So what I call very important for a SP RPG might turn out meaningless or unimportant for sb else and vice versa and nobody of us is really right or wrong in the end (although I can get pretty angry if people claim that something is utterly pointless without ever thinking about the possibility that it might be of big importance for sb else who plays the same games quite differently...).

If that's true then it was indeed my fault all the way through and I just hoped for a much better Bioware experience (damn, that BG2 really hosed me...) while I missed the crucial information about the SP.

If SP is intended to be that way it will utterly worseless and inferior-by-design, at least for me. That pretty much kills of any anticipation I had for DOS 2 at this point...


I don't think at all that this is a GOOD design for SP at all. I think it's just an inferior version of MP actually - and that's bad. It's like Larian's telling me "Hey mate, you don't have real friends? Well, don't be too sad, we can at least mimic a PnP session for you with people who might sound like real people playing with you." That has imo nothing at all to do with how traditional SP (C)RPGs worked so far - for a good reason. But while we're at it? Why is there no competitive questing in SP? If SP is only mimicing MP why is some content cut without giving the player anything in exchange? Well, I fear that you were indeed right that DOS 2 is designed as a MP only game - that can be played in SP in some way as well, if you lack the friends, completely disregarding that the vast majority of people are actually looking for a thrilling narrative experience (of course with good gameplay) in SP. They want REAL SP, no MP mode with predefined bots. I mean, we have only began to speak about the love&hate stuff. While I don't like the discussion myself that much, the whole romance thing actually is pretty obvious to demonstrate the differences between MP and real SP. A rather deep and well written romantic story (like apparent in BG2, of course based on video game standards) is pretty much pointless in MP. There is a reason why there are no deep romances in PnP campaigns. Because it's WEIRD and also doesn't work that well when actual real persons interact with each other in a game, even when they're roleplaying (except maybe some die-hard roleplayers). Backstabbing can be fun in PnP or real co-op - romance usually not that much. Romance can be in SP - being backstabbed by AI companions out of the blue, well, not that much either. You begin to get the picture why I don't want the SP to be just MP with (maybe well written) bots?


If you ask me I think the whole SP companion design like described here is - sorry - utter bullshit. SP should work like in any other traditional SP CRPG where you a wide range of well written companions to choose from and which you meet along the way (which doesn't mean that they can't be well integrated into the main narrative by the way). This whole origin stories for companions will be an ultimately inferior experience in SP, I can almost guarantee it - and it's very likely not really that what a lot of SP fans are looking for...

So I do understand why you think that way. But please understand why I think that the whole design might/probably result in an inferior SP experience (to both the MP AND other party CRPGs) for many people (me included). So I rather have the basic SP game design changed than even extending the options for people who actually already prefer co-op/MP and only want SP as a simple substitute for times in which there friends are out of house or whatever...


I don't think so. Well written characters go well beyond their "origin story" imo. A well written character is the whole person, how they behave, how they look, how they talk, how they act, who they are. If you can make random characters and just assign a rather random origin story to them you have only pervertions of random henchmen but not real fleshed-out characters in any sense of the word. I really don't understand how you concentrate so much on the consistency with the actions of the companions with the main narrative while you have obviously no issue at all with them being no consistent PERSON in the first place. Reducing that to an origin story and how its consequences is scripted in dialogues is only one element I see necessary for well written and believable companions. Every other element must be fitting and consistent to actually reach that level to have an emotional impact on me (and that's what I ultimately look for in any story-driven game). The randomness of the system you (and Larian?) envision here actually defies that goal of mine and sorry - but I'm not at all happy with that, quite the opposite.



Well, I can understand that, I honstely do. The problem is though that I now fear that there won't be any real companions who are at least on the level of those in the CRPGs of old (or even DOS1) in the first place...


Well, there is a whole LOT of space for interpretation what "contribution to the flow of the whole game" means. I think we have pretty different interpretations about that actually.

I generally agree with Lord Crash's position.

It's not possible to assemble an interesting and solid character from a bunch of tags slapped together by an algorithm. If you don't believe that, look at how the AI personalities from D:OS turned out - they don't really resemble coherent human thought. (For example, some personalities can encourage a thief to steal from the fish vendor, and then promptly turn them in. An actual person wouldn't do that, they would have a consistent position.

A tags-slapped-together personality would also not work for the love-and-hate relationship system. (See the ending to Vanilla D:OS, and how the way the characters act throughout the game conflicts with how the sudden attitude change at the end.)

I've known people who would encourage rule breaking and then totally rat someone out the instant an authority figure showed up (primarily in school).

I dunno: I guess that's the skill to being a writer, and not being much of a writer myself, it's not a skill I possess in any great quantity! I think I'd rather let someone else do it... though I reserve the right to be generally disgruntled and discontented either way.


The solitude can sometimes be overwhelming, though I think that's maybe a core part of the game's intended "feel". It was bad enough even when I preferred the lone wolf approach, but after playing games where I'm part of a team (particularly the Bioware stuff) it becomes overpowering. That said, it's not entirely unlike the feeling I had when adventuring in Ego Draconis, especially with the sometimes haunting music.

At least The Witcher 3 has Roach on call most of the time, who has an impressive ability to appear in frequently quite silly locations.

Just gimme the ability to create and RP as many or as few characters as I want and I'll be happy. Not too concerned with the other companions if I get my duos in...though I might find myself enjoying RPing all 4 potentially but right now I just want the same joy I had with DivOS and rping my couples.

@LordCrash

You are kinda missing the point there. It isn't about the main quest, it's about a coherent whole. If they are just random little stories that are connected to nothing then what is their purpose? You can just sit and read a book while the loading screens are on and the experience would be the same regarding the story. Planescape Torment's companions weren't tied to the main plot, but they were tied to the protagonist in some way. They also saw a kindred spirit in their suffering in The Nameless One. They had a reason to follow him and they all helped him to regain his memory. In KotOR2's case Kreia was the story, but the other companions are the Lost Jedi who had ties to important factions within the story. Handmaiden - Atris, Mical - The Republic, Visas - Nihilus, Bao-Dur - Mass Shadow Generator etc. The companions in MotB weren't tied to the main plot, but it was only possible because of their intervention, like I mentioned you couldn't assault the Fugue Plane without Kaelyn's army, you couldn't get the best ending without Gann's help and the story wouldn't start without Safyia.

That is what it's meant by coherent whole, not only tied to the main plot. They need a purpose in the whole thing and not just be random disconnected vacuum bubbles who are there just to fill space and words. Side quests and side characters are just that - side vignettes that can be optionally skipped. Companions are major characters who are with you the whole/most of the game and need a reason to be there.

@LordCrash
It IS always a possibility I'm completely wrong, not even remotely close to what will be, and that I totally didn't understand how things will be. I still believe the... ah, for a lack of better words let's say "procedural aspect" ( but let's agree immediately THIS is an insult to the writer's work and by no mean my intention ) of the conversations will turn out great as, in my theory of the premades, the writers will actually write the characters by choosing what they'll say in each given situation and how they'll react.

It depends on the angle we'll approach the subject. Let's imagine for a second that they will work just as any cRPG companions with their own will and thought process and personnality. It's only when you start thinking about how all the things they say may actually be deconstructed to work in MP that they'll loose value. Maximilian the redhead warrior dwarf who despises Elfs because he is a Dwarf may very well have a different reaction in MP because the player will not choose [race] as a reaction but [redhead] or [warrior].

Ah, gosh, it's complicated =)
I fully agree that we all come from very different place regarding cRPGs and all have different personnal experience that lead us to prefer this or that in a party based RPGs. I may just be actually very, VERY harsh with companions. As I said I sadly didn't really play a game in which they really mattered, so I'm biased toward thinking they are mostly useless and irrelevant - or at best likable, but still pretty random. I want them to tie with the story, with the ongoing events, to matter. I maintain that DA:O had characters better tied up to the story vs, say, Mass Effect 2 ( especially 2 ).
So either matter, either serve a purpose, or don't stay in my way asking me to retake your castle when I'm trying to save my friend's life ( hi, Nalia! )

Interesting characters are created when they have to obey different rules that contradict each other: they need to find a personality and lifestyle that does allow them to combine both aspects.

A monk who is stuck in his phallic or teenage phase (i.e. his main strive is narcissistic supremacy and group dynamics) becomes a politician and ruthless traitor.
When Gwynne wants to pray for her lover, a monk would agree spiritually, a narcissist would dismiss her opinon but this one special bastard would make up an excuse ("free him from worldly matters" or smth). The most problematic aspect is that tags do not even add up, they coexist and your companions will switch between unrelated aspects.
It would not really make sense if "narcissist" would override "monk" and these *placeholder texts* will make it hard to figure out how this person came to the conclusion *items are free to grab*.

That is why I think, in favour of single player experience, we need a lot of content behind "Gwynne"-tags and tie them to "player decision" tags, basically doubling the amount of writing for origins.

I like the way you exposed things. I believe however that whenever a character got tags that seem to contradict each other, our favorite writers will have preselected some to act as the overall "Gwynne" persona over the game, and will have done so in such a way as to avoid inconsistencies. It's probably not going to be procedurally or randomly chosen, or else yes, indeed, the characters won't be consistent throughout the game and just feel like some bad AIs.

The inclusion of Love&Hate will however complicate things, and i guess the writers are going to have to add more lines to match the current relation you have with a specific character. Either a weighted system will kick in or it will still be entirely pre-decided by the writers, I have no idea yet.

OR maybe, after all, the named, premade characters who will act as companions will ALL have their very own set of dialogues and I've been completely wrong from the start. Suits me fine too, really !

At any rate, the game seems to be able to provide a solution to create our own full party for whoever wants to do so. It's another way of playing that even the ol' BG permitted, after all. And it can give replayability. Heck, we are waiting for DOS:EE just because we want to play as a team of double stealth mages ( which may not work as well as we think anymore because of the whole Enhanced thing )

Well, that's why I think that SP has to work differently in DOS 2 than MP. If Larian wants to maintain them in one thing SP is - and I hate to say that - already doomed and only an inferior (emergency) version of MP for people without real friends.

I get it that it's complicated for Larian. They want this game to be even more co-op centered than DOS which will make the SP mode naturally worse by literally erasing all traditional premade companions. I mean, they enhance on the character traits you chould choose from in DOS for your second char (like loyal, bold, aggressive,...) by fleshing that out in (hopefully) well written origin stories. But that literally erase every traditional companions from DOS 2 while you still had two of them in DOS (though already way less impactful and interactive than those in old Bioware games).

I don't know but I have the slight feeling that Swen and Larian don't get what party CRPGs are all about for many people in SP. It's not just "playing PnP with yourself", actually not at all. Playing a game like BG2 solo was no decision based on lacking the friends but a conscient decision to have a narrative and emotional experience that is only mechanically(!) based on PnP, but not narratively. The origin of emotions in PnP MP is completely different to the origin of emotions in SP CRPGs. And this has a HUGE effect on game design of course. Let's take (narrative) choice & consequence, the bare bone of every good RPG. This works quite differently in MP and SP. As I've said before, in MP a decision or choice is much more about the interaction with your friends. "What does the group want and what's my stance in that?" Hence, choice situations are designed according to that process of player interaction (humor for example often works much better here than serious topics). In SP, on the opposite, narrative choice has a quite different range of options because such choices don't depend on others but only on you. That's why SP RPGs are often "serious", offering you difficult moral choice situations that challenge your ethics, mind and emotions on a whole different level than it would while playing with real people, having a real life chat all the time. A lot of that has of course to do with immersion and player psychology stuff. But there are numerous reasons why SP RPGs work differently than PnP sessions or MP/co-op experiences.
Making the SP just a copy of the MP (with "intelligent" bots) is imo the completely wrong way to make a good SP RPG. I mean, there is a good reason why so many people complained about the narrative in DOS. It was not because the writing was all bad but mostly because the whole game was designed for MP from the start, with SP being an afterthought that was 95% based on the MP experience. And it shows, because the narrative offers too little meaningful content for SP-only people. And I'm very doubtful that Larian actually got the problem "right". Increasing the writing staff doesn't solve the problem if the design for SP stays the same - or gets even worse, with now all four companions being "intelligent bots", originally created to be taken over by real people in MP. I mean, that goes well beyond just companion design, but about the whole narrative. I know that it's hard for Larian but they should maybe stop telling people that this game is made for SP as well - because it isn't, at least not primarily - and they only create a lot of expectations in players, especially those who don't know every detail of the envisioned design (and maybe even get fooled when Swen tells them that the narrative will be so much better this time by having a bigger writing team...). But sure, given the fact that >80% of their customers only played the first DOS in SP there is a significant dissonance between what Larian envisions for DOS 2 and what the vast majority of their fans want...


But you're still in that black or white mode, either "irrelevant" or "meaningful". There is a whole range between. And of course companions are useful in a traditional party RPG because they help you in each and every fight, even without having a personal quest tied to it. That's why they are actually called companion instead of just NPC. So whatever you say, they are never useless for gameplay, and consequently, for the narrative. You can even see it like that: Nalia joined your little party and helped you saving your sister's life (which she does in each and every enemy encounter you face!) not only because she was bored to death. She hoped that a capable group of adventures could be able to help her in return as well. One hand washes the other. You help her reclaiming her castle and in return, she stays with you until the very end, risking her life for your ass numerous times. Isn't that a small price to take? I mean, it's kind of weird that you claim that companions should be believable persons tied to the overall narrative and when they have actual goals you criticize their whole design just because you can't leave your selfish view?
And then again, companions are much, much more than just their personal quest and I don't know why you try to reduce them to that. They give context to each and every decision you make. But of course we might even see narrative itself in a whole different picture. For me, good stories are not so much about the plot, but primarily about well written characters and their relationships and interactions with both other characters and the world. That's the core of every good story (no matter the medium, works the same way for novels or movies) and that's why well written companions can enhance a narrative so much. Interesting characters have their own meaning and value just by being interesting. They don't have to enhance the plot for having value, not at all.

Yeah, I thought about mentioning that. But that type of person is a real person with a personality.

The thing I mentioned is just the preset personality choosing the response that they prioritize, which in this situation, produces opposing results. It does not come across as a real person who ratted the thief out for amusement.

This was a problem in PoE. You could have a reputation for being honest and deceptive at the same time. So a person loked you in one moment because you are honest, but in the next moment she hates you because you are deceptive. This felt like this person in scizophrene, not me.
I agree that tags alone are not enough to create a good character.

One thing that bugs me with hearing that you escape with 3 others that are created in comparison from your choice in the jail cells, what if I want 4 human mages? So I can role play that?

I for one am a big fan of them asking you how many players you want, and taking it from there.. That increases my individual experience, and allows for lots of replay ability

I get lost in these walls of text, but here are some thoughts:

- I agree with (lacrymas?) that companions are most memorable when they are involved in the main story. I will remember Kreia, Kaelyn and Safyia forever. From BG2 I will remember Imoen most. From those companions, who are not part of the main story I remember those most, who had most conversation with me. From PST I liked Dakkon most. Endless discussions about the unbroken circle of Zerphimon and other things. I hardly remember the story and companions from mass effect 1+2 (I played only these 2) or similar games. I consider them good action games with more story than most other action games, but not RPG.

- It looks like it is considered normal that there is the main story and most side quests (including those from companions) are optional stuff that is almost never connected to it. I do not like this. The world should appear as one whole thing and not as several islands who exist next to each other without influencing one another.

-But complete isolated things are still better than things connected the wrong way. I mean ME2 style, where solving a companion quest determines if somebody gets shot hours later.

- According to (Dr. Koin?) classification, I am single player, completeonist, min/maxer, full party. When you have a good char, fights are easy so you can focus on the story. I wish I could role play more, but too often story choices affect gameplay too much (Hallo D:OS1 dialogue perks.)

- I liked about D:OS1 that the game did not hold your hand too much. You had the task to solve a murder in the beginning, but there was no arrow pointing to the next step (I mean literally on the screen.) You had to talk to people, dig up graves and search for evidence yourself and there where several ways to do it. In my first game I found the criminal accidentally by bashing some doors.

-

Like I mentioned way back when the thread started, when a person joins your SP game that doesn't necessarily mean that they get to choose dialogue options for the character they are controlling. They might not be involved in the dialogue at all. That completely eliminates the bipolar disorder that will occur otherwise. That is actually a way more SP oriented design than MP. I admit that it's weird for Larian to make a cRPG with a MP focus and that's why I think that won't be the case. Although I don't think D:OS is actually a cRPG in the most "pure" sense, because your stats don't matter in the dialogue (I think? I don't remember having skill checks in dialogue, but I may be wrong) so you aren't actually "role-playing", because you are playing as yourself and what YOU would choose, and it's not dependent on what your character is and can do. Role-playing is not defined by what *you* choose to say or do, but what your character can say and can do. It's a very fine line and there is nothing wrong with both approaches, it depends on what the premise of the game is. D:OS leans towards self-insertion rather than role-playing though.

You are also confusing choice and consequence (C&C) with moral choices which aren't the same thing. Moral choices are a cop-out to stick in the back-of-the-box blurb. C&C are organic reactions to your presence within the game. For example - in Fallout 1 if you started blabbering to random strangers that you are from a vault which contains valuable pre-war tech and is in the mountains, bandits started invading the vault (duh). It's not about whether you should spare this kitten or ritually sacrifice this baby. It can be that if there are actual reactions to your actions. These choices aren't forced upon you BY dialogue (save or kill Rachni Queen), but are a product OF dialogue/choices if that makes sense :p If you don't mention to anybody that you are from a vault, bandits never attack because they don't know of its existence. Spec Ops: The Line of all things had a very simplistic but great example of this. There is this crowd of people who are hanging your friends and you need to do something about it, a civilian is hitting you repeatedly. So what do you do? There are no forced dialogue choices. The first thing that comes to mind is shooting the civilian who is wailing on you, but you can also shoot at the air to disperse them. You could ALSO shoot the rope your friends are hanging from. The game doesn't tell you that you have choices at all. Admittedly the consequences are almost non-existent, but that's why I said it's simplistic. It's a useful example of how to approach choice without forcing it from a dialogue option.

Companions having actual goals is perfectly fine, but the issue for me is that their goal sometimes - often - dissonate to some extent with the actual plot of the game. My issue with Nalia is that her quest comes very soon in the game, and you'd undertake a long trip in order to retake her castle when you clearly are trying to save your friend and you probably don't have all the time in the world to do so. As a person she's okay I guess, but I think she is badly introduced.
In movies or books, the supporting cast is rarely here just for the sake of being here. The hero/es won't commit to a sidequest or adventure that brings nothing to their greater goal, because they just don't have time. They won't take a character with them "for free" : this character will ultimately serve a purpose. There are almost no "irrelevant", to stay in the black and white zone, supporting characters in Lord of the Rings - they all have a role to play at some point.
ME2, in all its faults, tried to tie everyone to the plot : the logic behind the personal missions for each companion was to get their loyalty. It was very badly done because it was awfully mathematic in design and deeply forced, but at least the "good" idea ( as in, what I expect from a companion ) was here. They all had a part to play ( although the suicide mission itself was also badly designed, but this is something else ).

So yeah essentially I want more from my companions than just "oh thanks you saved my cat trapped in a tree rather than rush to the burning orphanage to save children - little suckers can wait anyway - so I'll come with you now and maybe we'll have a romance down the road 'kay?"
Obviously I'm caricaturing, but as Lacrymas said, I want them to be something else than placeholders. Either they have something important for the plot, they will sacrifice themselves for the hero, they will be key to comforting the hero in their darkest hour, they will betray them someway down the road... They will *influence* the plot in any manner at some point.

(disclaimer : I liked Garrus a lot and I found all ME1/3 companions to be very charismatic overall, yet they only ponctually serve a purpose in the story. Joker, a NPC, I felt brought more to the story than Tali. However I liked them, which goes to say that I'm not opposed to companions as sidekicks rather than protagonists : I just think they could be much, much more. Besides, ME "cheats". The very cinematical premiscices of the game make them even more likable imho as we are closer to them in almost every every regards )

@Dr. Koin, the Nalia example is just ludonarrative dissonance :p Don't look at Baldur's Gate for examples of good writing. Making characters matter but are also optional can be done, I call it "obfuscated relevancy". If you don't speak to Kaelyn at all for the entire game, you wouldn't know that it was her army that was waiting for you at the Fugue Plane. Talking to characters reveals more information about what is going on than would otherwise be apparent. You wouldn't learn anything of Nihilus if you don't speak to Visas or Kreia. But you would gain the whole picture in DA:O whether you speak to the companions or or not. Morrigan always offers you the choice at the end. Bishop from NWN was a weirdly coherent example - he betrays you at one point in the story regardless of your interest in him. He cites different reasons for this depending on your relationship with him, but ultimately always betrays you. (this isn't an example of obfuscated relevancy though, just a good character moment) That is GOOD, it shows that a character has their own interests and goals that may not align with yours and you have no way to change them.

'Tis a pity none of the game people seem to hold in high regard I seem to have played... I played a lot of cRPGs but it looks like I always played the wrong one !
So yeah not surprising I'd think DA:O is the 'best' since that's the only one in which I felt characters mattered :p

And yet you happily support Larian in their endeavour to make the "companions" much, much less...

Edit:
And I want to add that the writing in DA:O is MUCH worse than the one in BG2, no matter if we speak about companions or the overall narrative. It's worse in every single element. It still hurts that DA:O is worse than BG2 in pretty much every single element overall, not only narrative-wise...

Edit2:
You also completely ignore my point that every game companions has in imminent point for the overall narrative just by "being there to help the PC". Is there better content possible? Of course. I never said BG2 had perfect companions. But it did A LOT of things right in respect to companions, stuff that was rarely done ever after again (mainly due to the fact that pretty much all modern games, Bioware ones included, are infected by voice-overitis...). I fear Larian will not built upon the good things about companions, it will just ignore them. Maybe they'll write a better inclusion of them into the main narrative - but that's not all that is needed for perfect companions. If they don't feel like real persons, if they don't have an emotional impact, they're ultimately useless to me and I feel indeed like I just used some random henchmen with a random backstory to help me in combat. But that's not what companions are all about for me. They have to be real persons within the context of the immersive experience, not PnP bots in SP.

There are only 3 very highly regarded RPGs in terms of narrative though. Planescape Torment, Mask of the Betrayer and KotOR2. That's it. Those are the "golden three" that are the fountain of all our hopes :p The other classic RPGs like the BG series, Fallout 1 and 2, Arcanum, VtMB etc; have other strengths.

Your hopes, mate, your hopes. And I never talked about the plot in the first place here, actually...


Yeah, like companions...

Come oooon =) I don't want Larian to make mindless automatons out of the companions, it's quite the contrary : I hope they will feel like they are MORE than companions scattered here and there with a random backstory just because the hero need a party.
At first I was only here speaking for those who aren't interested *at all* in scripted companions and are wondering whether it will be possible to take full control of them. I can understand the thought process and defend it as much as I can support a damn good writing of the companions. it's all about perspective and I can support both, and everything is leading me to believe it should be possible to have both in DOS2 =) My very own bias is toward being able to lead such a fully customized party but that doesn't exclude well written characters - again based on what I got from the various videos.

Agreed, the overall writing of DA:O is not that good. I only referenced it as the only game I knew where characters were more than potential romances or sidequests.

Actually, I think that what we all see as important in a character are actually only PARTS of a good character. A good character need to feel human and coherent, but also have a role in the story they are a part of. You, LC, from what I gather, value the human part, the organic feeling, the credibility of a character in his actions and reactions. I ( and potentially LAcrymas ) want them to tie nicely in the story, play their part, justify their existence storywise.
I think it all boils down to that.
And I think that thanks to the way they at Larian are approaching things, they should get at least a decent result at mixing those aspects. Focusing both on traits and the greater place in the story, they should be able to deliver us companions/characters that should organically integrate in the plot while still retaining their very own personnality born from their origin story and "experience" ( the combination of talent, "class", traits, maybe even more ).

Lacrymas, you said that D:OS1 was no RPG because your interaction with other chars is not based on your char (stats, skills). In that case, up to 90% of the games we talk about (in a forum about a supposed to be RPG ) are not RPGs at all (like BG1+2).

At some point I defined RPG as stat based world interaction. I admid that I was thinking mostly about combat mechanics, though I did not say it.

I don't disagree with that one, not at all. But from what I gathered so far from the vision for DOS 2 (and the solid information we have on how DOS 1 played out) there will be some severe shortcomings to that above definition of "characters that feel human and coherent". I fear that my side of the companions (like you quite fittingly outlined above) will either be inferior to already existing CRPGs or don't exist at all (mostly to basic design vision, favoring co-op MP). But to explain that in more detail I might first have to point out what a "human and coherent" companion actually means for me aka the requirements to make one believable and lifelike:

1) Predefined race, gender, look/face and voice.
2) Predefined occuption/job/skillset.
3) Own convictions, goals and genda.
4) Believable backstory/origin.
5) Believable and lifelike behaviour, following own agenda.

What does that mean for the companions in game? What are they supposed to do?

1) Only following the PC if its in their own interest.
2) Voicing their opinion about PC's actions.
3) Getting in personal relationships with PC and other companions, including conducting dialogues within quests or outside of that.
4) Taking more "drastic" measures if PC acts completely and severly against their convictions like leaving the party or turning against the character.
5) Being able to become part of the narrative outside of their "companion job" (like turning against the player at a certain point or being killed/kidnapped/..., see BG2 for reference/example).
6) Conducting ambient chat (a lot of the party atmosphere in BG stemmed from that one alone imo)

I don't see how Larian's "companions" for DOS are ever supposed to act that way. That's also pretty much impossible since you obviously can't exchange them. They start with you and stay with you until the very end with no chance to dismiss them (or them leaving you) and just trying to find a new companion. That severly limits the depth and range of possible relationships and interactions between companions and the companions and the PC. So Larian indeed probably tie every companion (which means all THREE, not more) to the main narrative (which is good for what you want) while taking away much of what made traditional companions all great in the first place. I mean in DOS you could already change your real companions quite a bit, making a paladin a rogue or a mage a warrior or whatever. That already harms the believability of said companion, making him a mere gameplay tool instead of a narratively-driven real person. What's the different to DOS2? In DOS2 everything besides the origin story will probably become aritrary in respect to companions. And even their origin story is limited by the simple reason that you have to stick with them no matter what and that no matter what you do they will always support you. How is that - in all honstely - more believably tied to the main narrative and how is that supposed to create more believable companions? I mean you criticize companions of BG2 not to be too closely tied to the main story although they are quite reactive to what you do in the game (simply based on D&D's afflictions system of course) with all the expectable consequences. Nothing of that will be true for DOS2 if SP will be like MP, just with "origin story bots".

So please forgive me, if I don't think that Larian will combine different aspects of companion design. They only try to improve your "2nd character in DOS1", so to say with giving him an origin story (instead of the player roleplaying everything himself or giving him certain traits), scrapping the real companions you had there (at least if I understood their design vision in the correct way). I don't see how that what I want is served here - like at all, I'm afraid.

Yeah, *technically* they aren't, but like I said, both approaches are valid. There was a big hoo-haa over what constitutes a "true" RPG around 10-15 years ago. It all came down to menu-driven combat though. One is Role-playing RPG (confusing, I know, that's why it's a stupid name) and the other one is Self-insertion RPG. The Fallouts, Planescape Torment, Age of Decadence, Arcanum, the KotORs and, arguably, NWN2 (it's a stretch though) are Role-playing RPGs, while D:OS, DivDiv, Baldur's Gate, DA:O etc. are self-insertion RPGs. DA:O has Persuade but it's token. VtMB, Deus Ex, System Shock 2 are action-RPGs, while the Witchers are action games with RPG elements.

I don't know why you think we'll be stuck with the 3 companions we escape from. They might just be in our party, while the others make their own party and escape and we find them later on.

Well, I don't know for sure, but isn't that supposed how MP works? I mean if every companion can at every time be taken over by a real person by drop-in MP isn't that companion automatically always the same person.

Just think about following situation. A group of four real persons start a campaign in DOS 2 together: each of those is creating their own character. Then, after some time one of the four has no time to play and the rest of them continue with an "AI bot companion". Do you really think it's possible that the people are then able to dispose that character then, replacing him by a new, random/predefined one? I guess the missing player will be delighted to find out that the character he created is gone... Same scenario with one player starting alone though, having his game open for drop-in MP.

That's also the reason why I'm so heavily opposed to the idea of drop-in/drop-out MP, even if you want to play the game completely alone, from beginning to end. The game is still riffled by the same basic design no matter what, at least in DOS 1. The only thing Larian changed for that was that they enabled predefined traits for the "AI bot" that was called your "2nd main character" at release. And all they plan for DOS 2 is to replace these predefined traits with a fully fledged out origin story aka backstory. The rest will very likely just work the same like in DOS 1, now with four PCs that can bcome AI bots if you play alone (which doesn't make them real companions in any strech of the traditional sense of the word in traditional CRPG design).

So maybe I'm all wrong but then again I'd be very curious to know how SP was supposed to work, given the still existing possibility of drop-in/drop-out MP. With the existing basic design of DOS 1 multiple companions for DOS 2 is imo pretty much impossible...

That's only your very own definition, not more not less.

For me personally, RPGs are all about choices and decisions, which includes both narrative and gameplay ones. I know the tendency of many to reduce that all to combat but I don't agree at all with that. In many RPGs narrative decisions are as important or even more important than combat (with Witcher being the best example). That's also the reason why Witcher is imo more an RPG than many others on your list - and a reason why DOS fell short for many in terms of being a fully fledged out RPG.

It looks like you are fishing for reasons to be contrarian :p RPGs aren't about the story, nor C&C (Spec Ops: the Line had a marvelous story and choices, yet it's a third-person shooter), it's the menu-driven combat that separates RPGs from other genres. That's what they are, genres aren't what we personally define them as - a sonata is always a sonata and an FPS is always an FPS, regardless if you think that it's a minuet and a turn-based strategy :p It was defined like 15 years ago. Yes, the name is stupid, yes it should've been changed, but it stuck, so we get to deal with the consequences.

Even CoD : Black Ops 2 had choices and consequences ( for a CoD game it was even impressive. For any other game it wasn't :p ) where one thing you decided to do at one point in the game could turn against you way later in the campaign ( way later being, erm, no more than 6 hours since the game is hardly any longer ). There even were multiple endings. In a Call of Duty game. yes, shocking!

And yes since the MP mode implies you start the game with 4 chars meant to be played by a specific player, I doubt there will be any chance of swapping during the course of the game. Meeting the other escapees is a possibility, but I strongly doubt they will be able to join the party. They will at best act as NPCs. Just like in Seiken Densetsu 3, where you would occasionally meet the characters you didn't pick doing their own quests or just chilling.

And while I'm aiming at playing the game coop, I am not convinced by drop-in drop-out either. I mean, either it means you're dropping in the game of someone else and potentially "ruining it", or the friend you decided to play the full campaign will somehow continue his session without you, which sounds a bit moronic =) Fortunately, if someone doesn't want his game ruined by undesired drop-ins, he should be able to create his game as solo/private/something. Dunno how it went for DOS1 in this regard.

It looks like you're still going on selling your own opinion as facts. Honstely, I'm getting tired of that. It seems like you can't deal with differing opinions, nor do you try to understand the reasoning of other people...




Of course RPGs are about the story. DOS without a story and C&C is simply a strategy/tactical game. Deus Ex without a story or C&C is simply an FPS/stealth game.

(And Spec Ops: The Line is indeed a hybrid of various genres, like many games nowadays.)

Excluding narrative topics from the definition of RPGs is imo completely pointless. It's of course possible that you're not interesting in them. They're imo still essential to define the genre.


By whom? You? Great. It's nice that you try to compare everything to music, but the comparison is pointless here. And I've been in MANY discussion about what the core of RPGs is in the past 20 years and it was never ultimately defined by anybody, sorry. But sure, I don't want to take away your definition. You can have yours, I have mine. In the end it's just a classifiction to describe various elements/systems of a game, nothing more, so the whole discussion is pretty much completely theoretical anyway (and therefore without much real value)...


@Dr Koin
That answer of Swen in the AMA might please you: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3lz39o/we_are_larian_studios_developers_of_divinity/cvak0ri

If that's what they are going for, they seems to be trying to reinvent the wheel, but going in a completely different direction and it looks more like a stick. I still think the companions are just going to be like every other RPG ever and we'll be able to swap them. The people you are playing with are going to be able to choose which character they want when the opportunity presents itself like the camp in DA:O.

I don't know. I asked multiple times during the KS how many companions will there be to choose from (while Larian staff was present!) and I never got an answer to that, not even telling me that they don't know yet. That might be coincidential but it could also be that they found the question stupid because there are only four characters no matter what. Either you control them yourself or other players do so.

If there are really a bunch of real companions to choose from I'd like to have that actually confirmed by somebody at Larian...

Edit: Swen said on the AMA that you'll be able to "recruit" companions in SP: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3lz39o/we_are_larian_studios_developers_of_divinity/cvao1es
Honestly, I'm curious how that should work. I mean you start with four (meaningful) characters in MP. So there are no additional companions if you play the game together from start to end. But in SP there is? I have no idea how that is supposed to work, given the fact that players can always hop in, taking over one character and given the fact that you had to start in SP with four characters as well (which are then less meaningful because you can exchange them for others)? A lot of open questions imo...

Here you go - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Role-playing_video_game#Character_actions_and_abilities

I'm not really an authority to define anything, so it's a moot point to supply my own definition :p

There is no authority to define video games genres - AT ALL (it's not like there is a DIN/EN norm for it...). Wikipedia is surely not such an authority neither. In the end, there are ONLY personal opinions and definitions about that one and that's the point.

Did you check out the sources? They were pretty reputable and professionally written. I don't trust wikipedia if they have bad/no sources :p There are actually papers and books written on the subject of game design and genres, just like for everything else, so it's not like nobody knows what they are talking about.

Thanks for the previous link, somehow I missed that during the AMA ! Well that settles it for people wanting to RP the full party. Nice!

I don't know who told me that but, as I mentionned earlier, they are aiming for at least 1 origin story per writer. If Origin Stories are indeed the basis on which they make the companions/characters, you would have 7 ( 8-1) companions.

@DrKoin
I have no idea how they want to pull that off from a narrative point of view. Also why to look for new companions if each and every one of them

- has the same basic goal like you,
- can't turn against you,
- can be freely developed in terms of skills ans traits?

The only reason I could think of is to explore all origin stories in multiple playthroughs because that's pretty much the only thing that differentiates them if I understood the concept correctly.

They already said in one of the KS updates that companions in SP won't be able to turn against the player. They can only voice their opinion and be angry with you - and that's about it. So much to the depth of narratie roleplaying and party interaction in SP...

The way DOS 2 is envisioned only favors the MP imo. To make the SP really a lot stronger and richer they had to detach it completely from the MP which is pretty much against their goal of hop-in/hop-off MP. You could by the way disable the MP in DOS which basically only made you invisble in the lobby. The game design was 100% the same though.

Sorry Lacrymas, your definition of RPG is completely arbitrary.

This is the most importent sentence of the wiki (regarding this topic):
"Although some single-player role-playing games give the player an avatar that is largely predefined for the sake of telling a specific story, many role-playing games make use of a character creation screen."

The artice does not divide RPGs in 2 different groups.
There is simply the fact that different games have different freedom in character creation.

There is no difference between arcanum, fallout (RPG RPGs according to you) and D:OS1 (Self insert RPG according to you). You can freely create your char(s) in a system without classes. They have a background (airship crash survivor, Vault dweller, source hunter) and a goal (save the world).

In PST you are limited to a male human who starts as fighter and has no dump stats, but you have still many different ways to play him.

I consider the terms "RPG", Action adventure", "FPS" and so on are abstract concepts that will never be difined precisely (There will always be people who find arguments against a specific definition). Each real game exist in a continuum and follows some of these concepts more or less. Most games have elements of several of these concepts. Some games (like deus ex) are so hybrid, that pushing it into one genre will never describe the game completely.

From my point of view, D:OS is as much RPG as a game can be.

Soulbringer, VtMR, Anachronox and most JRPGs don't have a character creation screen and are RPGs. Fallout 3 does have a character creation screen and it isn't an RPG. I don't know what you people have against menu-driven combat.

Fallout 3 is not a RPG? Yeah... right...

I have nothing against menu driven combat. Nobody ever said he is against menu driven combat.

All I say is this: " The amount of freedom you have in character creation (from none in JRPGs to absolute freedom in games like arcanum, fallout and Larian games) is not enough to determine if a game is an RPG or not."

I am sure that there are some games with complex character creation and nobody would dare to call them RPG. (though I do not have an example at the moment )

by the way: I started my gaming career with the snes. I think secret of mana was my first RPG. I have played many JRPGs and I liked many of them. Anarchronox has one of the best stories and characters in gaming history. It had the story that was most fun for me (together with "Sam and Max hit the Road"). At least if you like insane nonsense

I meant it as a definitional differentiation of RPGs, not as a system of combat :p

Back to SP in DOS2 now though, guys? I think the definition of RPGs is a topic for another thread if there is really something left to discuss on the topic...

How can we even discuss SP when we aren't even clear on what an RPG is? I didn't think this was so hard or so confusing. You don't say why you don't agree with me, you just say "just cuz", that's not an argument. I back up my arguments with logic, history and sources, not wishful thinking :p We have to get at the bottom of this, otherwise all discussion regarding RPGs is moot. D:OS is an RPG. Why? Because of menu-driven combat. Fallout 3 isn't an RPG. Why? Because you control the actions of the character directly. Simple. Effective. Clear. I guess the confusion comes from the fusion of genres? Genres like Action-RPGs and Action games with RPG elements exist for a reason. It's not because people were confused and were simply drooling on their keyboard, somehow managing to form words. There are even books published about game genres and game design, so that would've been a lot of drool :p

RPG - a game where you assume the role of a character in a fictional setting. There done. Let's move on.

Why not? People think differently about many topics and that there is not one golden rule to everything...


Logic? I must have missed that. Pretty much your whole point is based on what others think about the topic (hence the link to wiki). It's just one big argument of authority. And you're not even interested in what other people think here. You only want them to think like you and accept your opinion - that you just took over by different people (who wrote a book about it, or two). At least that's how pretty much everything you write here appears to me, sorry...


Ahem, no. Actually the very opposite is true. Discussion is only possible when there are different opinions and views. If everyone thinks the very same on every topic there is nothing to discuss left. You can very well talk about SP in DOS, no matter if you see the game personally as an RPG or not. It's completely unimportant anyway because the label "RPG" is only used to described certain elements. It has no meaning beyond that. It has in particular no meaning for game designers. You can very well discuss certain design elements without ever using the term RPG at all.


Your confusion comes from the simple point that other people have different definitions if you ask me...


Yeah, there is a reason: people trying to describe their game in as few words as possible which is the sole reason for genres to exist in the first place. Over time that can of course raise certain expectations within players, but - surprisingly - quite different ones, especially (and I agree with you on that one) since games included more and more elements of once different genres. Still, it's only a mere description. I don't even see the value in talking about that so much at all. I'd rather return to discussing the concept for SP in DOS 2...


There is a book about everything, whether it has any point or not. I don't see the point. (Edit: I mean the genres, not game design in general here. There is a lot to be said about game design.)


Can we now go back to SP, please? I mean, we won't ever agree on the definition of RPGs anyway. There is no point in discussing that any longer.

There is no use reasoning with Lacrymas.

That means every game ever.

Actually, I don't care to discuss this anymore. It seems clear to me that most of you simply don't understand what a genre is, how it is formed and what is its purpose. Even though I am a teacher in real life, I simply don't have the years required to explain everything that needs to be explained from the very beginning, so it's pretty moot. Continue your SP discussion.

We do not care what a genre is, neither the genre RPG nor any other.

We want to find out how to improve the SP experience of D:OS2.

Oh well...





This. So much this.

You missed my point.



Thank you.

...This thread is very schizophrenic.

The thread topic is literally about wanting to make more than one character and wanting to roleplay them, why is any of this other trash in here? Seriously, let's revisit it


Why are we arguing about what is and isn't an rpg? I may love many of them but JRPGs aren't RPGs

As to the topic I am clearly on record of being immensely in favor of the option to make and roleplay as many or as few of the characters in my party as I so desire, be it just 1, 2, 3, or 4. This is a pretty clear cut desire to me and seeing as how Larian is writing MP dialogue anyway it should be pathetically easy to implement not to mention they already fucking did it for DivOS.

Raith, please remember the law of Madscientist: (just invented by myself. I need to copyright it )

"Every sufficiently long thread will go off topic at some point."

In the obsidian forums somebody announced that chris will work for Larian on D:OS2 and we ended up in a discussion if KotoR2 fits to the SW universe. (please no comments on this topic here)

KOTOR 2 doesn't fit into Star Wars, it is shit tier fan fiction and a blight on the franchise worse even than the prequels

Well, seems like I started quite the debate process on MP versus SP experiences and RPGs in generel with this thread of mine . Some very interesting points here so far.

My conclusion from the thread is that preferences vary and that there are arguments for each preference, so to "conclude" wishes for Larian as a developer:

Single Player experience whishes:
- Some people would like a setup where 1 main character is created, and the game has X number of predetermined companions with detailed backstories and interaction during the game. Just be sure to introduces several potential companions, so one can choose the classes, races, and origin stories one wants to experience
- Other people would like full control of all 4 party members, this includes having full control of attributes, skills, origin stories etc. from the start. For this to work it is accepted that the automated interaction is disabled just as if another physical player was controlling the party member (basically it is 4-player co-op where just one player happens to control all party members)

One players preference of one method over the other shouldn't have to exclude the one not preferred in the game for other players enjoyment. My biggest recommendation to Larian is to include both options, the first sounds like what they are actually implementing, but the second should be rather easy to implement as it essentially is 4-player co-op with just 1 player creating and controlling all party members.
This gives the most freedom to play the game as you want. I could easily see myself playing the first option after I have finished the game with my preferred option, the secondary.

Multiplayer thought / question:
How does 2 player co-op work, I wonder, or even 3-player co-op? Are we talking 2 party members created and then the game introduces the remaining 2 as predetermined companions (with interactive dialogue etc.), and how will that even work if the 2 physical players differ in action? My head is starting to spin with all these options

I disagree, that the Source Hunters didn't get any depth over of the course of the game. I would even say, that they got more personality than an Commander Shepard over the course of 3 games for example and that with a simple trick: every decision I took, they earned an point on an personality aspect so after I while I played them as the characters they were. Not only because of roleplaying aspects, but because the gamemechanics supported this kind of characters they were.

For me this is part of actual roleplaying: Not only choosing an answer but also staying in-character. In ME people I know often choose an answer not because it fitted Shepards personality, but they wanted the approval of their companions, so Shepard stayed a blank and didn't became a fully realised character.

In Original Sin I know now, that my righteous and law-abiding Knight is a vegetarian (because it would be cruel to eat somebody you can talk with) and that he is without fear and that my female Wizard isn't above stealing for the greater good, while being suspicious because the game rewarded me for their decisions.

So the system worked in SP, although I would have liked some more automatism during conversation. But if they balance this out in the sequel, this could work even better. But I have to agree, that it depends on the quality of the actual dialogues in the game. Harebrained Studios showed how much personality you could give an player character with just a few words, to mention a more modern example.

I just want the option to create and control as many or as few members of the party as I want with companions handling the rest, it doesn't need to be an all or nothing thing it should be to where you can make and control 1, 2, 3, or even all 4 characters in the party. Making it either 1 or 4 is stupid since that's not how the MP is, it isn't just 1 player or 4 players.

Also I would hardly call what "points" have been brought forth to be particularly interesting, it's basically been.

"I would like the option to create and control multiple members of my party like in DivOS"
"I don't want to RP multiple characters, I would like companions"
"Well that's cool and all, but it would be an option and not mandatory"
"I don't want to RP multiple characters, I would like companions"
"...Are you just going to keep repeating the same thing over and over again? You haven't brought up any reason why I shouldn't get what I want and what I want isn't mutually exclusive to what you want, you are just being kinda childish."
"I DUN WANNA RP MULTIPLE CHARACTERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Bit of an exaggeration but I have seen nothing in this thread that says that those of us that want this shouldn't get it, it really just seems like the people that are bizarrely against it think that it would force them to do it as well.

Shepard didn't stay blank at all. What you seem to miss is that a party RPG is much about group dynamics, just like in real life. It's a typical reasoning in such situations to think about what the group or friends would do and how you could get their approval. If you act against the will of your friends, it's as much a deliberate decision than acting for the goodwill of your friends. I'd say this group dynamic is even essential for all group/party based RPGs and a defining difference to solo RPGs in which you only take the role of one character. In such games there is one element less to think about, specifically what your friends might think about you. It's a typical lone ranger approach. In a group RPG instead everything you do is a group approach, often with you at the center but with your friends/companions being essential parts of the adventure. You need them and often you want them to stay with you. That's actual roleplaying here and there and actually the opposite of a blank character. It makes some decisions even harder if you have to weight your own convictions and opinion on a topic against what might be the direct social consequence for your own character. Of course that element gets the stronger the better and deeper the respective consequences are. That's actually the reason why I hate the idea that your companions in DOS only tell you what they think, while they won't do anything beyond that no matter what. Sure, ME did the same and it wasn't perfect, no question. But DOS should build upon that and in no way cut back some of the most important narrative elements of a party based RPG...


There is not a single narrative reward for actions in DOS imo, especially not in respect to companions or your 2nd character. Simply because they don't have any real relationship at all beyond the situative minigame. Whether they are righteous or not makes no different for the interaction and relationship between character on a greater level which makes the system a lot worse than the one in typical Bioware games. It's just mathematics pressed into a number, ripped of any emotional impact. Of course much is imo a consequence of the game being made for co-op, where the core of the experience is the interaction with real players OUTSIDE the game. Such a systemic approach is perfect for that because it's main goal is not immersion and emotions based on character interactions but situative fun while you interact with your pals in real life.


The system don't worked very well in SP altogether imo. It worked great for MP but surely not for SP. The main problem of narrative in DOS is that it's almost exclusively seen from a systemical point of view. Everything in DOS is based on systems, and so is the narrative and especially the interactions with characters inside the game. It's indeed mimicing the functionality and feature set of a PnP while pretty much disregarding the aspect that people play SP RPGs often for very different reasons. That's why the love&hate stretch goals is so incredibly important for the SP aspect of DOS. Done in the right way, it could enhance the systemic approach of DOS with the emotional impact it deserves for the SP. Relationships between realistic and lifelike characters (that are MORE than values on a character screen) and a narrative that forces the player to make moral, emotional and multi-layered choices with consequences that enhance the immersion and impact of the choices are what SP RPGs are imo all about, beyond the combat aspect for course (which is pretty much the same for both MP and SP).


About "one PC + companions" vs. "4 PCs":

I don't agree at all that Larian will go for a traditional implementation for the former (think Bioware games), but Swen already communicated that the latter will be possible. But seriously, I don't know how both are supposed to work in the same "mode", in the same campaign, in the same narrative. They are different on many layers and one will always limit the other one in certain aspects (like already present in DOS btw). It's imo not true that both ways are easily and simultaneously doable for DOS 2, especially not if Larian will enable MP hop-in/hop-off even if you want to play the game completely in SP (I don't speak about the option to turn your visibility on the lobby off). A traditional SP party RPG with lifelike and realistically written companions will always suffer from that approach. So I'm happy for all of you who basically want to play a PnP session with yourself ("4 PCs") because that will be possible in DOS 2, according to Swen and based on how DOS worked. The real issue here is though that many people who expect a traditional SP party RPG will be severly disappointed, especially after Larian announced that the want to improve on the narrative that much...

@LordCrash

Good points but I have to disagree with the two first sentences



Shepard stayed blank because aside from one or two lines of dialogues, there were no signs of him beeing affected by the horrors around him or what happened to him. He could be an stonecold sociopath, that says things, because he knows that the people around him want to hear it (my personal interpretation of the character), not helped by his dead fish-eyes and his emotionless expression. And besides some few lines, there exists no group-dynamic. Everything is build around Commander Shepard, your companions have no life besides Shepard, who most of the time knows what to say, because there exists most of the time only two lines of dialogue (beeing a jerk or saying what they want to hear). You are Commander Shepard, you are the Center of the Universe. It helps for being self-indulgent, but it doesn't gives you a real character, not helped that there isn't any real personality in your lines.

A character where this worked better, was Mike Thorton in Alpha Protocol. You also has to choose, but he was always some kind of asshole, because every answer of him is writte n as one. You understand much better why his environment is reaction this way, because of this.

But Bioware - Games are most of the time a bad example for real-life group dynamics, because most of their characters are anything, but real. Well written, but not real. I can't lay my finger on what it is, but you always know, that they are just characters, not people. Maybe because most of the time, there is a definitive way, to resolve their quests and at the end of the game they want to kiss your butt, for being such an incredible person (while you look at them with your dead fisheyes).

I think it was better solved in Pillars of Eternity, because alrhough you learned some about your companions, most of the time they stayed for themselves and wanted to be alone. Don't know why, but that's sound a bit more realistic for me, when you put a bunch of misfits together and you have to kill at least two dozen monsters on a daily. After a long day, you want some time for yourself.

That game had also some personality mechanics, which helped you at some points and like in D:OS they helped, because they showed that there were consequences for your decisions.

What you say is true but sadly DOS was worse than that in single element of character interactions imo...

I fear you might missed an important point of mine: The question is not whether ME was perfect here (it wasn't, no question) but whether you build upon it or whether you just cut its relationship mechanics. And that's what DOS largely did. In no way is the SP epxerience in DOS in terms of character interactions, relationships and narrative better than anything(!) Bioware created for a SP game so far (DAI included, sadly). We can of course talk about the narrative and technical shortcomings (and honstely, many narrative shortcomings are just limited by budget and technical possiblities, not by skill) in Bioware games but that has no real value for DOS and DOS 2 imo, at least not if we think about ways how DOS could make it better or even just gets on par...

And you really want to compare technical stuff? Sorry, but it's pointless to talk about Shepard's facial expressions here, given the fact that you don't ever see a face in DOS...

There is an difference between creating lots and lots of text and sell this as "groupintercations" and creating really relationships and D:OS created at least a real relationship between the two source hunters. Who were the focus of the story and actually got some personality, even if this was over the mechanics. For blankslate-heroes, which we played, this was the perfect tool and to be honest, it worked because D:OS still stayed a game and not a mildly better B-Movie, who tried to manipulate us with cutscenes. But if you want to do this, than such details like face-expression has to work, otherwise it's not believable that anyone would follow your polygon-messiah.

I'm hammering on the relationship mechanics, because for the first time in an roleplaying, it had consequences for playing an character playing the way you wanted and not only making decision with your Avatar. This is a real difference, I think and one, which helped the game. Of course you had to use your imagination to give them all the depth you want, but well, that's why they were blankslate heroes and that's why it's still A GAME. You can argue if there was a real connection between the hunters and their companions, okay, but the relationship between the hunters was alright. But of course it could be even better and I hope this will be the case in D:OS 2.

No, that's wrong. D:OS created an ARTIFICIAL relationship between the two source hunters. It was not a relationship which felt real, mostly because it was constant throughout the entire game.

The Source Hunters really had two types of interactions: The pre-scripted bantering which happened back and forth about a world event, and the dialogue where the player and the AI personalities could pick a choice.

In my case, the first time through, I picked AI personalities which were opposing, and so O experienced seeing the SH's cleverly banter in a friendly manner in-between rabid arguing about what to do. The final disconnect was at the end, where after a game of the pre-scripted friendly clever banter, I was told that my source hunters spent the rest of their lives in a hate-filled battle to the death between them.

It was not a real relationship because there was no change at all in it. It was static from start to finish.

I don't agree at all on that one. I'd even say the contrary is true. I could play a lot of RPGs how I wanted in the past (although I usually don't want to become the PC myself). Just think about Elder Scrolls or Fallout for what you describe here...

And which consequences do you mean? I don't think consequences of whatever sort were one of DOS' best elements...


It was not alright because there was ZERO emotion involved. The two source hunters were just two more or less numbers-based robots who only acted according to their mathematical foundations. They had zero sense of real characters for me and I never felt(!) that they had any meaningful relationship or connection throughout the game.

And I don't agree at all that it's my job to give characters depth and to fill blank slates (and I have actually a hard time in doing so...). That's the job of the game designer in a story-driven RPG, at least in the way I see them fit. But then again, that's maybe where we fundamentaly disagree with each other, based on how we want to play the game. It's the same old TES vs. Bioware discussion, whether you want to BE the hero (and fill the blanks with your own personality) or whether you want to experience a great narrative with well written characters, stories and reletionsship, GUIDING your PC throughout the experience. You want the game to be like TES, I want it to be like a Bioware game. Sadly, there is no way that we can have both I'm afraid...



(And I'm actually pretty sure that DOS 2 will be much more to your liking than to mine. I think it will pretty much suck on the same level DOS 1 sucked in relation to the narrative experience I wish to have, offering a blank slate type of game instead).

Whatever just ignore me.

I like the way of D:OS1 character creating. Two with my Ideas and two with there own story but if I have only one it is also ok. But I wan't to "Balance" all characters myself and I like the books with the extra points in D:OS and the demon's help in the vault.

I liked that as well, and would be glad if the possibility would be there again.


As for the overall discussion, my take on the companion topic is that we'll get to chose all of them in the prison (as all 4 are supposed to be Sourcerers). I'm not sure if I'm interpreting the available information correctly, though. At least I hope not.

For one, this would mean that whomever we pick at the beginning, we're stuck with them for the remainder of the game. In D:OS (and most other party based RPGs), I can swap out companions if the need arises or I get fed up with some of them. D:OS was already quite low on companion choices, and I ended up with only one and a hireling, but at least I had that choice.

If, in D:OS2, all available companions are those 3 that escape prison with me, I'd be pretty disappointed.


As for the concerns about the companion backstories, that is something I don't see as critical. To me, companion origins and elaborate backstories should go well together and I'd expect D:OS2 companions to be much richer and exciting than any of the D:OS crowd. I also would hope for longer and more involved companion quests. Honestly, I fail to see how a origin/race/class/gender combination would prevent writers to come up with complementing personality, backstory and character arc for that companion. I can't imagine that all this is left to the tag system alone with no specific writing tailored to each possible companion.

Sure, the available companions may be dictated by race and gender (which would already give us more choice than the meager 4 from D:OS), and instead of chosing the Mage from the Inn or the Archer from the Cage we'd have the Mage from Cell 1 (who happens to be a female Elf) or the Archer from Cell 4 (male Dwarf). Doesn't mean they have to be bland or more generic than Jahan or Bairdotr. In fact, I'd think with the number of writers working on D:OS2 they should be way more interesting instead.

I play Age of Decadence now and it is the best single player RPG so far (single player means without companions in this case). Some things to be learned from this:

- Ignore any alignment system (good vs evil, order vs chaos, . . .). You can also ignore most descriptors (I mean things like cruel, stoic, passionate, . . .). Choice and consequence is enough.
I said something like this before, but I give an example again:
Some people do not like. Maybe they attack you on sight or they send assassins after you. This is not because you have a reputation of being cruel or evil. They hate you because you slaughtered an entire town and they know some people from there.

- I like how the skill/stat system is used in AoD to allow several possible solutions for quests. But it is not perfect. This is the worst case: You build a char who focusses on talking. But you have one skill point less than needed in persuation to solve something peacefully. You do not have enough points to raise your skill so you are forced to fight a battle you cannot win. This can mean that you have to restart the game and change only a few skill points to get past this point. This is realistic (which is a main goal of AoD) but not always fun.
The best quest I had so far was the first one in D:OS1: Solve the murder. The game did not tell you what to do next step by step, you had several ways to approach it and several skill were useful to solve it (convince others to give you information, find hidden things, pickpocket, talk to animals, . . . ).
But most importantly, every char could solve it. Thogh some chars may have it easier than others, no char was unable to solve the quest because he did not have a specific skill.

- Of course, some things need to be different. D:OS2 will be a game where you cannot avoid combat completely the entire game. So even if a char puts some points into social skills, this should not prevent him from being useful in combat. But the game should reward you somehow if you chose to use your social skills (or thief/sneak skills) instead of just bashing everything in your way.

summary: Everybody (players and developers) should play AoD. Many good things can be learned from it. I do understand that many people will not like this game (very hard, If you do not have lots of experience with RPGs or you read guides, you will die a lot until you create a char that fits your play style and does not die every few minutes.

I guess if I can finish AoD with a combat focused char, D:OS will be a piece of cake. I found D:OS1 not very difficult. For me it was just right. You had to think about what you do in combat, but the main focus was exploration.

In theory, there could be safe havens in the world where you can meet other sourcerers, but they would need to be designed to fit the plot (potential replacements wouldn't be hanging around public places like bars or libraries).
I don't know how the Hall of Echoes is being implemented, though. If party members can be changed, whatever the reason you'll be able to enter and leave the HoE alive, it will need to be transferable or extendable. For example, you couldn't be specifically chosen by the gods, but you could acquire 4 talismans they created that only sourcerers can use, or something.

That's the obvious problem.

Though I do wonder if the limitation (to a fixed set of non-changeable companions picked at game start _and_ to a party full of Sourcerers) is somewhat misguided.

Sure, for the MP case, 4 characters that all start in prison seems the right thing to do, i.e. one for each player. And no player would expect to switch his "main" character during the game, so no alternative companions needed. Also, every player probably wants/needs to make use of the cool Source talent, as it is inherent to the main plot that each player might persue on his own in competitive mode.

But for SP? Does my party really have to be all Sourcerers? Why not pick somebody up along the way that may be sympathetic to my cause? Or another that's not so sympathetic, but good at hiding his distaste and following his own agenda? There are practically limitless possibilities here.

Come to think of it, this seeming fixation on a full SP party escaping from prison grows to be my biggest gripe right now. Lets hope that this is given some more consideration further down development.

I suppose it doesn't HAVE to be that way, but Larian wants to make use out of their new Source Point system and source skills, and those only are useful for Sourcerers. The main characters also have a story goal to get to Black Ring territory, and non-Sourcerers wouldn't share that goal.

I can't really see any good reason for someone who is not a Sourcerer and hates Sourcerers to be hanging out with a party of Sourcerers who are heading for the territory of the Cult of Mustache-Twirling Evilness (you must be this evil to apply).

That's certainly a point, as in D:OS all companions had the potential to learn every skill. OTOH, you'd rarely have 4 Marksmen, Hydrosophists or Scoundrels in your party. So, barring extra special sourcerer mechanics, not the whole party would end up becoming master sourcerers. Instead you'd strive to have a broad array of skills at your disposal, ideally by building upon the inherent skills of a companion you like or by picking your companion based on the skills that complement your party. So a potential companion would be useful even if unable to perform sourcery.


What reasons do the other prisoners have to head there? Why shouldn't they leave the player once they made it to safety and
return to their loved ones, or go into hiding, or start their own Evil Empire in a galaxy far, far away?

I say they'd have the exact same reasons that a non-Sourcerer would have: either it's something personal or they somehow feel attached or indebted to the player. The writers shouldn't have problems to come up with something that's plausible.

Besides, I doubt that players would walk up to a potential companion and go something like "Hey there, I'm this escaped Sourcerer on my way to the Cult of Mustache-Twirling Evilness and I want you for my party!". Instead it may start pretty innocently, through a random conversation or a small side quest perhaps, and by the time it is clear what you are and where you are going, it's too late to turn back.

All right, then think about this: In a world where being a Sourcerer is feared and hated and basically a death warrant on your head, what reason would the Sourcerers have for recruiting a powerful fighting companion of unknown allegiences?'

If they do not trust this companion enough to say that they are themselves a Sourcerer, why would they trust them enough to travel with them? Such a companion could become a threat or an enemy if the truth were to be discovered.

Until the events leading up to the game, though, sourcerers were the good guys (at least in recent history), fighting with and in the Divine Order against the Black Ring. It was only after the Black Ring was defeated and the Divine One absent (Rift Running; see the Beyond Divinity novella) that there was a change in leadership within the Divine Order and sourcery declared illegal. Even with sourcery having a history of being forbidden and seen as corrupt / dangerous, there would be some sympathy and support for sourcerers.

Not all soldiers for hire would care about the moral position of potential employers. If a job involves going against the Divine Order (which some might be inclined to do anyway, even if not being particularly sympathetic to sourcerers), it would just need a payoff corresponding to the danger.

Thanks Raze. I'm not that versed in the Divinity lore, but was also under the impression that persecution of Sourcerers was a recent thing at that point of time, and not everyone would hate them.

Even if this wasn't the case, there would be many ways for unsuspecting NPCs to become a companion: having the same short-term goal, or being in a bit of a predicament where the player helps out (I'm deliberately trying to generalize here, but specific examples for such situations should be easy to come up with).


So my point stands. From a narrative perspective, and with some restrictions (i.e., no source skill) also gameplay-wise, additional companions to replace the initial ones should be feasible. And I find this fairly essential if Larian wants to improve the companions over D:OS. What good will it do for SP if I have to lug around a companion I come to dislike (and I don't mean dislike in terms of the love-hate stretch goal, but on the meta level), just because he seemed a good choice initially. Should I have to restart mid-game, just to try a different one?

The only positive aspect I see in this is that this would make a good example for choice and consequences: you pick your party and then there's no turning back. I just don't think this is the kind of consequence players would cherish.

Actually ... this are good starting situations for a really good SP - Campaign. Stabbey already wrote some good points, why not-sourcerer-companions wouldn't work, but think about the drama in the group itself.

You could deepen the concepts of the Obsidian Games: A bunch of misfits, who can't stand each other but have to work together. Only this time there isn't a glorious leader around, who keeps them inline, so the other members of the group are the only friends you have left in a world, where you only can count on your own kind and maybe not even them.

This could be awesome, if the writers give their best.

There is no reason that all party members must be sourcerers.
I am sure there are many people in this world who do not like the divine order and/or have a very good reason to get away from them. Some people would surely think that it is better to join sourcerers than to fight/escape the divine order alone.

Just because somebody is not a sourcerer does not mean he is weak. (Many enemies, including bosses will be non sourcerers I guess.) It looks like your source powers depend also on your background and race. So a non sourcerer companion could do some things you cannot.

about obsidian: I played KotoR2 recently. The main char and several companions are force users and that is importent for the story. But you have also non force users in your party (people and droids) who can do some things you can not.

some random ideas for D:OS2 non sourcerer companions:
- A barbarien who has some special enrage abilities. He slaughtered many members of the divine order (there can be tons of reasons for that) and now he wants to get away.
- A cursed mage. She is able to see/hear things other cannot. Like visions from other places/worlds or see the past/future. Somebody has cursed her (or her ancestors) and her gift is driving her insane. She is not a sourcerer (I have no idea what the source is at all) but I am sure some fanatics do not like her as well.
- A fanatic heretic who hates the divine order. He is absolutely convinced that the gods do not exist and the divine order spreads only lies. Maybe he is a satanist (gains power from demons) or a nihilist (gains power from the void).

There can be tons of reasons why somebody joins sourcerers, even if sourcerers are hunted by the divine order.

PS: The cursed mage often has one vision that drives her crazy. Somebody in another dimension is staring at a flat object and pushes buttons on an alien machine and this way he controls her entire life. Her vision tells her to pull the plug to free herself, but she does not know what it means or how to do it

True, but in this case, it works quite well.




Yessss ... but the other faction is the Black Ring, Devilworshipers and Babyeaters. Many people would still consider the Divine Order the lesser evil. Or fleeing to another continent.



We know that, because we played non-sourcerers in the first game. And every skill they used, could be learned by everyone.



For example? Everyone still uses the same skill-set.




They had also a lot of them and not everyone was as deep, as they could have been. That's for me one major problem in games with a lot of companions. There often isn't enough time to flesh everyone out (see for example the otherwise very excellent Arcanum).



The last companion sounds like an origin, they mentioned in the playsession. All of them sound like extreme characters, I wouldn't want to have in my group, while fleeing to the land of the Black Ring. In a "realistic" story, I mean.

But that's the question isn't it? Are we going for a "realistic" (like the "grounded narrative" would suggest) story or still for a classic D&D - Campaign, where everyone meets in a tavern and I take "Basil Babyslayer - Bloodcrazy Halflingfighter" with me, because I think he is cool and I need a good fighter?

Although I have to say, I love the idea of the female wizard. You could build a whole campaign around this (looking for the pluck ).

Well, to me it currently looks like that everyone meets in prison and I take "Basil Babyslayer - Bloodcrazy Halflingfighter" with me, because I think he is cool and I need a good fighter. Only to find out later that his skill set does not fit my playstyle and I'd rather have "Caruso Cabbagepiercer - Crossbow champion" in the party.

In the classic case I return to the Inn and pick him up instead, in D:OS2 I restart the game. Which do you prefer?

Since all the Divinity-games had a free skill-system and we probably will get a chance to reset old skillpoints (like the demon in the D:OS), I don't really see a problem gameplaywise (not like more recent games like Age of Decadence, where you are really f***ed, if you chose one skill unwisely).

I already said my piece about possible conflicts in the prisoner group and I still think, that there is enough room for interesting conflicts in the group, but until then I just will wait how it will work out. It could be possible, that we just get an stock-character for each origin and then D:OS2 will be played as every CRPG since Ultima VII.

Still: What is more realistic? Travelling with persons you already knew from your days as a prisoner or a random Joe from the sidewald, who could be an agent or assassin? Doesn't help, that you could ask yourself about the other prisoners.

I know the option existed (and will likely be added again, as many people seem to cry if they cannot respec their characters at least once), but I usually avoid it. Simply doesn't feel right that Basil our muscular fighter with his backstory of singlehandedly beating a gang of trolls into pulp should suddenly be a nimble and agile marksman with otherwise unchanged origin.


No doubts here. I'm not saying that anything is wrong with a group of prisoners from a pure story perspective. There are endless backstories and possibilies for party interaction, regardless where you pick up your companions. From all the info we have, I'm confident that Larian will come up with handcrafted and elaborate story arcs for each companion. With multiple outcomes even, since we got the love & hate stretch goal.

I can only repeat myself: the narrative is not my concern at all. But for a good SP experience it takes a bit more than greatly written companions. They also need to fit in gameplay wise. And usually, party based RPGs allow picking the companions that fit to my gameplay style, and don't pin me down on my initial choice.


Well, in all prototype gameplay I watched, I did not see the players keep a low profile or show distrust to random NPCs. They were freely talking to them, doing their quests and errands, etc. ...

I don't see it as unrealistic or even far-fetched if one or two of those NPCs would turn out to be a potential companion.

Whether they turn out allies or enemies in the end is another thing entirely. Even your fellow prisoners may have a nasty surprise in store for you, depending on the way you treat them over the course of the game.

@ka1man

Fair points. I have nothing to add .