Thursday, July 29, 2010

More conversation snippets. Hopefully not one dimensional.

The first got some positive feedback, so here are snippets from two other companions.

The first is from Mu'tasin, a half orc cleric who works as a bodyguard. Mu'tasin likes gold and women. He's quite straightforward, prone to plain speaking. He does have an honor code that's the result of his clan upbringing.

The second is from The Tortured King. I can't reveal more than he is a fighter companion without spoiling things with him, but he's awesome to write for.

From the previous snippets, the first was from Carcarin, a Calishite (from Calimshan) human wizard. Like most Calishites, she's haughty and very politically minded. She's also highly educated and often condescending, which tends to show in her conversations (see the second one from her for instance).

The second one from the previous post was Kvas, the gnome rogue who is your childhood friend and first companion. Kvas enjoys others pain and misfortune. He has a bloodthirsty streak and enjoys taunting others if you let him speak. Despite all this, he cares very much for his mother (who is neutral at worst) and sister (who is innocent and obviously good aligned), whom you meet in Neverwinter. You can see that he cares in the last snippet of his.

Some of the companions are pretty much pure evil and fairly one dimensional. But I've tried to give others more depth. It was a conscious decision to not have influence systems nor will anyone leave you because they disapprove of something. But if you ask them they may not be happy with things you do and will voice their displeasure. Just as the player is given the opportunity to say they don't believe in something like slavery and refuse to do quests related to that, some companions have evil things they do not like and do not want to participate in. Being evil doesn't mean you can't have an ethical code or other objections to things. Carcarin, for instance, hates it if you work with an npc that lives in a sewer among rats, it's disgusting and unsanitary.

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Conversation snippets

One of the features of PoE is the ability to ask your companions their opinions about each other and any quest in the game and get a line or two of their opinion depending on the quest status. This is entirely for flavor and is to help give them personality. Here are some samples from two of the possible companions (there are no real spoilers). This isn't enabled in the downloadable campaign yet, it probably will be in my next update.

Each companion has a couple thousand words of convo depending on how "wordy" they are. While the majority of the conversations are written, getting them matched up with the conditionals required is time consuming even working from a skeleton convo that has most conditionals already in it.
You have to actually right-click talk to them for this. So if you prefer silent companions you don't have to engage in conversation. Companions will sometimes interrupt regular conversations you have, and you can let them speak for you at times. They also have barkstring one liners for flavor as you explore.

Monday, July 12, 2010

Looks like another short break

My wife, who has been ill and in her home country for treatments the past few months, indicated she is going to be there indefinitely for treatment as there has been little improvement. Her illness is very tough on me and leaves me exhausted. So another break until my mood improves and I get more energy. When I get down I just feel like sleeping constantly.

In good news, the Eastern Faerun OM module is virtually finished. Just need to add some more "flavor text" and make sure the content I added there works since I added two quests to it. Western Faerun just needs some content added, but all the areas are in place. And the stronghold needs a bit more filling out.  That's pretty much it for the campaign though. Everything else is all tested and final and ready. For anyone interersted, everything's up on the wiki, or at least will be later today when the upload finishes (my home internet has been incredibly slow for some reason).

wiki:
http://pathofevil.wikia.com/wiki/Path_of_Evil_Neverwinter_Nights_2_campaign_Wiki