Thanks for taking the time to share your opinions. Although I am by no means surrounded by sycophants and yes-men, the occasional almost-bitter rejoinder from Jason is about as close as we get to Sola-negativity around here, so your comments make for a pleasant change.
You did pick a very "demanding" character for your mod, expectations are high!
Yes. I'm almost tempted to publish an essay on the subject since it comes up so often. Suffice it to say that I long for the tabletop gaming of yore when all of the party members actually contributed. I believe that Bioware was lax in making all of their NPCs merely reactive.
Do you agree that a game where you would in total have to passively browse 5/6 of all dialogues (because the other 5 persons make their decisions by themselves) would be boring? BG´s designed to let the player handle the story interactively as far as possible...
However, you bring up a good point.
Imagine that I changed Solaufein so that he would only banter with party members after he had been with the group for, say, two days of game time or two hours of real-time, whichever came first? Would this seem more realistic to people?
No... that would be more boring, in fact. I suggest that there should open up a sort of "opportunity" for Soula to state his opinions. They must, to a certain extend, be asked for.
Example the mentioned Aerie-monologue: You could insert this dialogue at a moment, when Aerie does one of those insufferable whining dialogues (mostly the romance dialogues) and give the player an oppourtunity afterwards to say "Hey, thanks Soula." or "I believe Soula is basically right, Aerie, but do not forget you have friends[me]" --- voilà, now it´s a DIAlogue.
This example also applies for your statements about if or how the PC/player should have leadership over the group: Give the player/PC an opportunity to participate when others do banter.
However, your point is a good one -- I will add an "I already know about Eilistraee" option to that dialogue.
Well, I sorta wrote a bit too polemic there... I just wanted to suggest that Soula explains why and when and how *he* became involved with her: Was it when Paere was tortured him hearing the screams, or was it when she returned brainwashed, did Eilistrae appear to him then... and so on; it maybe in the dialogues later, though, I am not throu yet. Explaining a bit about Eilistrae is ok, but it should be in relation with some personal talk, so that the final phrase of Soulafein ("thanks for listening" or such) makes actually sense.
It may be a quote, but it's a quote out of context.
I think the context is irrelevant insofar that no IC would ever talk about "Baldurs Gate I", but about "earlier adventures in the north, near the city of Baldurs Gate".
Even if the PC just said "She is a priestess of Shar", that would probably be enough to dissuade Solaufein.
Good idea, but it´s not in the dialogues yet...
There is a difference between not being sure made the right decision (common for Solaufein) and asking that others pity you because something bad has befallen you (in my memory, non-existant for Solaufein).
Point taken. But I still have the feeling that there is a contradiction in the mentioned Aerie dialogue ... (I have to replay that one once more since I only read it twice)
If you dislike Solaufein, you may find Kelsey perfect for your tastes. I cannot say enough good things about him.
I´ll sure get to that guy once I fixed the compability propblem(v. other topic). I´ll sure try to give some constructive critcism there, too!
** OT (I´ll come to that later in the proper forum, but, ah,... I can´t hold it back right now...)**
I did one first dialogue with Kelsey, I was nearly jolted out of my shoes when Kelsey asked whether Imoen had a "boy-friend" (yep another partial but sufficant quote).
:blink:
Phu-lease chance that into something more adequate to the medieval setting, everything, but not "boy-friend", jeeez, thats by far too modern a language!!! As I read somewhere about Kelsey: All of a sudden, in my group amongst scarred rangers, mighty mages, grim fighters, there´s a college student...
!!! "admirer"... "love®" ... "partner" ... "in love with someone" BUT NOT "boy-friend" (*whine*...)
[!--EDIT|Kaylord|Nov 20 2002, 03:08 PM--]