Author Topic: Your tongue may as well be forked.  (Read 8977 times)

Offline SixOfSpades

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Your tongue may as well be forked.
« on: January 26, 2009, 06:57:16 PM »
I trust nothing you say. I'm taking the portal beneath Spellhold instead.

Yes, folks, I'm starting this thread because I don't have an idea, I only have an idea for an idea! I suggest that we try to think of an alternative destination for the portal that nobody has gone through for the past 7 years. Now, because Irenicus & Bodhi chose to go through it, it must exit somewhere relatively close/convenient to Ust Natha, but it could still offer the player a viable alternative to visiting the Sahuagin City (and the powerful items & big chunks of quest EXP contained therein). New map area? Almost certainly. But what sort of place would it be?
Another of Irenicus's secret laboratories, perhaps constructed before his fall, and revisited now because it also contains a portal that leads to the Underdark?
Some kind of magical nexus, like Ice Island from BG1, that he visited in order to obtain something that would enable him to steal Adalon's eggs?
Some relatively isolated place on the surface of mainland Faerun, visited simply because a surface entrance to the Underdark is nearby?
Irenicus works with (a few) Rakshasa during Chapters 6/7 . . . might we visit a headquarters of these Rakshasa (even though they don't work well together)?
Do Githyanki wizards disrupt the portal's magic and yank the party out of the ether prematurely, in order to win back the Silver Blade, and the party has to (a) beat the Gith and (b) "reboot" the portal to get to where they were originally headed?

Related bit of weirdness: Suppose that, in this new destination, the party is able to obtain the blade of the Wave Halberd. As players, we all know that this would create a logical impossibility (barring things like time travel & whatnot), as the blade would have to be in two places at the same time. But as characters, anyone who obtains one copy of the Wave Blade could have no knowledge of the existence of the other Wave Blade, so the only incongruity would come from out-of-character knowledge. The mind-screwiness of this poser amuses me, and I would be inclined to favor the two blades, because I like messing with people's heads. :)

Offline Daulmakan

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Re: Your tongue may as well be forked.
« Reply #1 on: January 26, 2009, 07:30:02 PM »
Portal? What portal?  ;D

Offline Kulyok

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Re: Your tongue may as well be forked.
« Reply #2 on: January 27, 2009, 12:52:47 AM »
This plan has a fundamental flaw: you are planning to reward characters who are going through this portal and are NOT going through Sahuagin city. Meaning that they will get two different storylines, two different adventures, two different rewards. My opinion is that there should be a way to experience all major quests and not to miss one(exception: stronghold quests, NPC quests, and even then it's possible to see them all - BG2 Tweaks and rotating party members, for example).

Offline DavidW

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Re: Your tongue may as well be forked.
« Reply #3 on: January 27, 2009, 05:03:21 AM »
This plan has a fundamental flaw: you are planning to reward characters who are going through this portal and are NOT going through Sahuagin city. Meaning that they will get two different storylines, two different adventures, two different rewards. My opinion is that there should be a way to experience all major quests and not to miss one(exception: stronghold quests, NPC quests, and even then it's possible to see them all - BG2 Tweaks and rotating party members, for example).

... although to be fair, that was a really annoying feature of that part of the game. On Hannah and my first playthrough we agonised about which way to go and eventually decided the underdark sounded more interesting. It was very annoying to discover - much later - that we'd just made the "wrong" choice, and missed out on content with no compensation.

However, that was then. Everyone knows about the Sahuagin city now, so it's not really an argument against your point in this day and age.

Offline Kulyok

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Re: Your tongue may as well be forked.
« Reply #4 on: January 27, 2009, 05:22:26 AM »
I totally agree, yes. Game designers could have given us a clue about it, via dialogue or otherwise.

I was lucky, because I liked Saemon(there's a character in my book, whose name is Saemon, and let's say... he and Mr Havarian are not completely different), so I decided to go with him. "If I have wronged you in some fashion, I am dreadfully sorry!", heh.


Offline jastey

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Re: Your tongue may as well be forked.
« Reply #5 on: January 27, 2009, 12:03:09 PM »
I like this idea of an idea. Especially since now everyone knows the Sahuagin city path, Something New would be really cool.

Offline SixOfSpades

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Re: Your tongue may as well be forked.
« Reply #6 on: January 27, 2009, 04:43:44 PM »
This plan has a fundamental flaw: you are planning to reward characters who are going through this portal and are NOT going through Sahuagin city. Meaning that they will get two different storylines, two different adventures, two different rewards. My opinion is that there should be a way to experience all major quests and not to miss one.
Respectfully, I disagree. Doing all the major quests, just in a different order, seems awfully linear to me. In BG1, you could skip off-the-beaten-path places like Gullykin, or even the entire Balduran's Isle quest, if you felt that they were just too much bother. But in BG2, if you choose to ignore the Guarded Compound, or the Umar Hills, you're really screwing yourself over, so you are pretty much required to go everywhere & do everything, which is a sense of being railroaded that I don't like. I prefer the idea of actually choosing which road to follow, and an actual honest-to-gods branch in the path seems just the ticket. And let's face it: Sahuagin City is only what, 1% of the game? Being forced to choose between it and a quest of similar length/challenge/material rewards/EXP isn't going to make or break anybody, it's simply another interesting decision for the (powergaming) character to make: "Do I want to collect a couple of great Cloaks and a must-have item for Monks, or would I be better off grabbing (hypothetically) a pair of awesome Belts and a must-have item for Barbarians?"
Choice, even exclusive choice, is not a bad thing, and hardly new to the game: If you want the ruggedness and nobility of the Paladin, you can't have the naughty-boy rogueish charm of the Bard. You can't Grandmaster in Halberd & Crossbow if you also want to specialize in Dual-wielding Daggers & Clubs. If you want Korgan for your Tank, you can't keep Aerie. You cannot both redeem and not redeem Viconia. I'm of the opinion that anything that makes players actually ponder their next move (as opposed to simply running through the game like a meatgrinder) is an improvement, even if it means making the players choose what they're going to have to give up. For those who disagree, perhaps there could be an optional component that makes the exit tunnel from the Sahuagin City drop the party off at the start of New Quest, and vice versa, so the same linear-quests-just-in-a-different-order approach would be preserved.

There's also the aspect of difficulty to be considered: If the overall challenge rating of this quest were to be about halfway between the level of the original Sahuagin City and Weimer's "Improved" Sahuagin City, players could base their choice on what they felt their current party would be best capable of taking on. Also good for shared computers.

Offline J Beau

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Re: Your tongue may as well be forked.
« Reply #7 on: February 16, 2009, 06:59:04 AM »
Make the portal adventure a dead end. New adventure but it doesn't go through. You end up back where you started.

Offline nurgles_herald

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Re: Your tongue may as well be forked.
« Reply #8 on: February 16, 2009, 11:34:26 AM »
I vote with SixofSpades.
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Offline SixOfSpades

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Re: Your tongue may as well be forked.
« Reply #9 on: February 16, 2009, 01:53:08 PM »
I'm not going to make the portal a dead end because a) If it were, where the heck did Irenicus go, and b) it defeats the entire purpose of this mod idea. Currently, everyone goes with Saemon because to do otherwise means to outright skip a chunk of the game. I have no interest in making people make the exact same metagaming choice, just in the exact opposite direction.

Currently, I'm leaning toward the idea of Githyanki disrupting the portal's magic and dragging the party back down to the Prime Material--in fact, you get no further than the docks of Brynnlaw before the Gith are in your face, demanding the return of the Silver Sword. Even if you choose to give it to them, they get mad that you only have the blade, accuse you of breaking the sword, and attack you anyway. Enter Desharik and his buccaneer cohorts, enraged at these Githyanki "pirates" trying to "invade" his island, and a full-scale brawl ensues. If the pirates win and you haven't turned them hostile to you, you can keep Desharik from attacking you as well by telling him that, in Spellhold, you and Saemon were on opposing teams. Desharik missed his chance to gut Saemon properly (he either Dimension Doored away just in time, or stole Desharik's ship just as he does currently), so he'll let you go if you promise to kill him if you should ever see him again.
[Of course, the above is partially inspired by one of the game's unused files: A mosaic picture of a Githyanki apparently fighting a Pirate, thus making a nice counterpart to the existing Sahuagin vs. Pirate in the opposing path.]
Then, it's back up the hill to Spellhold, perhaps whacking a few more Gith inside, and you try the portal again. From here, you'll probably find yourself back in Irenicus's dungeon--the 1st level only, as the 2nd level has been "compromised" & given up for lost, and the portal by Jon's bedroom has been reconfigured to lead to the Underdark. There may be a couple of Rakshasa here, and I know that there are more than a few of you who would enjoy a second crack at Improved Ilyich at this stage in the game.

Offline the bigg

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Re: Your tongue may as well be forked.
« Reply #10 on: February 16, 2009, 02:08:52 PM »
Silver Sword.
Which you don't have if you take the portal - Saemon gives it to you right after you kill the pirates on Desharik's ship.
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Offline SixOfSpades

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Re: Your tongue may as well be forked.
« Reply #11 on: February 16, 2009, 04:31:59 PM »
I don't think so--I'm pretty sure he gives it to you no matter which route you take, it's just that he only gives it to you after you're fully committed to 1 of the 2 paths. (I get the impression that he knows damn well it's a booby prize.) Even if he doesn't give you the Blade if you choose to take the portal, he could easily be made to do so for this mod.

Offline Froberg

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Re: Your tongue may as well be forked.
« Reply #12 on: March 22, 2009, 03:09:12 PM »
While I certainly find the idea of returning to Iren's dungeon VERY VERY good, the Silver Sword idea is kind-of-whack. What's he gonna do, give it to you just before you threaten to kill him? :S

 

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