Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General romance in game - a doubt???

First things first: I have said several times that romance in Original Sin does no in my opinion need to mean sex.

As for preoccupation with sex, sure....certain as gravity, it's one of the most sought out activities in life....but when it comes to this issue there are two kinds of people in the world: those who have it and liars. Attraction is beyond human control, it happens regardless of whether you think it shouldn't or attempts to control it, no matter what you think or do it is there regardless of what you think of yourself or what you do about it. Why do you think the rate of divorce is so insanely high? Because most people haven't the slightest clue why they wanted to marry a certain person and haven't the slightest clue why that feeling that brought them together is gone.....sure you can rationalize and place blame on all sorts of things but that's not it, at most it may be a small part of the reason why things changed the blame is almost always two sided.

But you really shouldn't be a hypocrite and recognize that if you want to start pointing the finger to anyone as being preoccupied with sex you have got to start with Larian. And please spare me the nonsense of "Well, that's totally not what they meant." because you as well as everyone else here knows that's a lie.

Yall must understand that Larian is promising a lot of stuff they don't really care about, as long as it makes them sell stuff. There's nothing like a good lie to start your day.
Don't expect anything, that way, you won't be disapointed.

Well, that would have saved us 10+ pages of speculation ;P

And of course, romance does not mean sex.... but a well written romance incorporates it anyway (often not as goal, but rather as mid-point) since anyone claiming the 2 things are not somehow related must be another species altogether.

It's just a fact that romance is part of character development for an rpg, while sex scenes and fan-service is part of PLAYER reward. These things serve fundamentally different goals. But a well made game might conjoin them together neatly and create what meme land knows as "waifu" characters. And the goal for a writer in an rpg should at all times be to create characters that people care about (something I think Larian isn't very good at to put it lightly, I literally can't remember anyone from DKS except Belegar!)

Tali and Garret are good examples how to do character writing (even if cliché), which is why I often cringe when I read "we won't make bioware style romances" because bioware is the only AAA dev that actually attempted them to begin with. And not just that, but gay and lesbian romances / alien too.


But in the end, in D:OS native campaign I am not sure I even want romance.. we'll see whether that would work when we play it. (I am not against it though!)

Personally, I could care less if there is romance. There are so many things this game provides that was non-existent in the market for 10+ years that getting upset over romances is a bit childish. If it is such a problem for some of you, then ask for a refund (or don't buy it). If not, then shut up and move along. This incessant whining and feigned wrong doing accusations are ridiculous. Piss or get off the pot people... ie shut up or move along.

your mother must be really happy with how polite you are...

also things are not so simple as you wish them to be.

Your father must be ashamed of how naive and thin skinned you are...

What is complex about it?

From what I have read, they planned on having a bit more depth, but then they pulled back a bit for various reasons. Romance exists, but in a "Non-Bioware" fashion. This means chances are the romance will be slight and not focused on to any extent (cut scenes and major interaction focuses).

So, you either accept such... or you do not, but coming here and throwing tantrums and accusing Larian of betraying people?

It is teenage drama. Sheesh.

thank you for sharing your opinion and your insight and showing us again your politeness with your words.

now that you are satisfied with indulging your own ego... back to the main topic.

no official word out yet about the conflicting info posted here. of course devs must be really running crazy around with the release date so close. would be nice to get an input from them about it before the game release date but otherwise we will know after the game is released.

Maybe someone will ask on the livestream that's going on now.

that would be nice. shame that i cant watch it now.

if anyone here is watching and is also curious about this topic please try to get an answer from them and share it with us after. thanks.

They are going over the editor now, but at the end there is supposed to be a Q&A.

We can hope...

Well really no Q&A session at all. You'd think just answering a few hot topics from the boards would be nice.

Oh well.

It wasn't intended to be quite that literal. It was a joke about a guy reading things into a series of ink blots.



"You're the one who keeps showing me the dirty pictures!"

Just because you see 'obvious' meanings in things doesn't mean that everyone else necessarily does, or that they are intended.

The tracking of affinity and affection between the main characters is IMO a relatively minor feature, which should improve character development and replayability. Romance was said to be one possibility, after some kind of choice, if the characters liked each other enough. It was never in and of itself a major feature of the game. There is no grand conspiracy to trick people looking for RPGs focused on romance into buying D:OS. If Larian thought there was a huge market for that, they would explicitly promote romance as a feature and actually bring it up without having to be asked, not release artwork featuring red lipstick and have the characters holding hands (explicitly stating that that is not romantic) as some kind of subliminal trick.

Where is this tracking of A&A anyway? I found some other stuff, but even though I had my characters agree with each other all the time the two seemed to be on opposite ends of each spectrum. Also it looked like some of these things gave bonuses, which I really don't like as now it seems I'll be making choices to get the right bonuses as opposed to just RPing my characters.

Did you expect to role play and min/max stats equally? What is the point of role playing then? It kind of defeats the entire point don't you think? It is like a person playing a Paladin in D&D and then complaining that they will lose favor with their God if they steal from someone.

Basically you can't have your cake and eat it too.

AFAIK there are no consequences for affinity and affection during the beta; it should effect the ending of the game, and may influence how dialogue progresses later in the game.

Well no, that's not what I meant exactly. To be honest I don't understand the mechanics behind it yet, so I don't know how or if it will affect game-play choices.

But there is the issue I have that if doing something a certain way gives a bonus in something my character needs, then there must be someone that thinks the type of character I'm playing needs to be doing that. But who is making that decision? What is it based on? Again I really need some details on the mechanics of it all. Maybe if we ever get a manual it will be clarified what is actually going on there.

But where is it? Can it not be seen anywhere?

No, it is not shown in-game.

Heh? That is pretty stupid.

I will have to play with the paper on which I will write every increase and decrease...

Why game can not do it instead me?