Ignite your sabers

[jedi3112]

Originally posted by Burrie

Mmm, that's an interesting thought with only subquests being closed off. From what I've heard, certain subquests will only be open to those who are Light Side users and those who use the Dark Side.

 

That's what I've heard too, but since you can go from Darkside to Lightside so if you go good again you can still do those quests and I think that if you go bad after accepting a good only quest you can still complete it without turning good again.

 

 

Having only played Baldur's Gate I for a short while, I am not familiar with either game.

 

Well I have played both, also not very long, but long enough to know that if you donate money to the church your bad deeds are forgiven entirely (just as long as you donate enough money). I think it would be bettter if you are judged by your actions so I won't use the bribe thing if I want to go light again I would just do good things.

 

 

A quick note on something that I recently learned. Apparantly, your alignment will *NOT* be based on the Force Powers you use during combat. Your Force Alignment will only shift due to your actions in certain event(the often-mentioned poisining the waters method), and the conversation choses you make.

 

 

However the effectiveness of the force powers is based on whether you're Dark or Light (and possibly how Dark or Light), but it will be possible to Force Choke baddies and that won't push you more towards the Darkside (sounds a bit like being a good Sith). Altough it wouldn't be as effective as using Dark while being Dark. But I think I would still do this.

[Frosty_V2.1]

From what I've heard, certain subquests will only be open to those who are Light Side users and those who use the Dark Side.

That sounds good to me, it is a good way to do make a better experience playing it the next time, I hope they havel made a few exclusive quests depending on what character class you play as.

(Refering to BG II)When I mentioned the checks in scripting I was meaning your reputation score, killing civilians didn't have a direct effect on other NPCs, rather it lowered your Party's reputation score significantly so you might not be "good" enough to do a quest.

Well a friend has brought it to my attension that I was wrong on this pointI was actually thinking about mods for the game . There are actually only 2 cases I can think of that it has an effect in the 'official game', one is to do with being too good or too bad to have various NPCs join your party(so you couldn't do their personal sub-quest). Although your rep did affect NPC interaction and quest giver reactions, particularly on the price of buying items at shops. In that game you and your party are a group of adventurers(Suppose you could say mercenaries for hire) so as long as you get the job done they will pay you, so I guess morality didn't affect it in that manner as much.

It's kinda difficult to go into detail about this stuff without typing even more lol..

I suppose it could work, seeing as how there are lots of "neutral" characters in these kind of worlds. Mayhaps it'll work the same in Knights of the Old Republic. Still, I wonder if it really works... in SW, there tend to be two sides "Good/Light" and "Bad/Dark".

..now that I think about it, it's a bit more muddled to compare with KOTOR, but the case may still be that in many missions, how you get the job done doesn't matter so long as it gets done.

Having only played Baldur's Gate I for a short while, I am not familiar with either game. In that case, I am curious, who exactly does it work with the main plot? Is it set up in a way that no matter what you do, you'll always be on the road towards the end game? Or could you really get into situations in which it would be impossible to finish the game?

Abit more detail in the next para-but first: In BG series the plot always revolves around the player's character who is the figure head of a group of "adventurers"(which is your party). You don't have to have anyone in your party to complete the main story arcs. Many BG II players have "solo'd" the game and still do from some of the threads I've seen on the BG II forum.

 

Well the main plot(which is related to what you find out at the end of BG I, though you don't have to have played it to understand) isn't a mission someone gave you, but a mission to save your sister Imoen, or depending on if you want to be bad, get revenge on this guy that captured and tortured you and gain power from him(or you could be neutralish). The NPCs you recruit to your party agree to help you and some have personal obligation to do so because you have helped them in their subquest or other reasons, even stuff as simple as because they like adventuring. If the party's reputation was too good or too bad for the various NPCs, they could get angry and eventually leave your party. There were also some combos of NPCs which caused infighting and they could possibly come to blows. Really you could be dropping/swapping/losing party members much of the game.

Ok, getting to the point ..The main plot revolves around the PC: You, only. Imoen, your sister has an important part in the plot, also your choice of the 4 romances is affected by the plot and the other joinable NPCs have stuff to say and give insight and humour into many situations, so it is best to have them along to get the 'big picture' but that is entirely up to you.

If you got a really low reputation in that game(which is actually quite difficult to do), you could get teh 'bounty' on your party so that could get you killed whenever you enter a civiilsed area..needless to say being dead doesn't help you to get quests (or go where you need to go). In that situation you would have to raise your reputation with the big donations mentioned by Jedi3112, that would pretty much be all you could do at that point to try and continue along the plot.

Another thing that could possibly screw the main plot is if you attack an essential plot-NPC or their friends near them, in which case all of them will go hostile permanently..the same goes for other quest givers..though there is only one situation I can think of at the mo that would screw the main plot, and this is at a swing point in the story where you have to chose between 2 factions...seems the QA team was pretty thorough

 

I also tried someting like this in Neverwinter Nights this morning , well I attacked this 'friendly' mercenary with Aribeth and Aarin Gend(2 story important characters) nearby and of course they went hostile, probably screwing the game(however you can always load up your last auto-save so, meh). This made sense to me, while it would screw things up, you do know that that will happen if your char was to do that. Consequences for actions rather than outright not letting you do something is better in IMHO.

Actually, the recent demo showed that each character(or Jedi, I'm not sure) has an alignment of his own. Bastilla was shown to be of the Light Side, whilst the main PC was obviously Dark.

Oops again, yea, all NPCs having preset 'moral'-alignments is the norm.

As for Jedi having changing/dynamic alignment, I could understand that, particularly for Bastilla, but wouldn't it be tied to how you direct the Party anyway? For non-Jedi party members having a dynamic/changing alignment I don't think would happen unless it is part of the story

I disagree on the "telling Bastilla to go kill them", because in essence, you are actually RPing 10 different characters. Mind you, you won't have complete control of 9 of them. The video already showed that you can only speak as your own character(probably the reason why he's the only one whom can have Persuasion as a Force Power), and the other PCs can sometimes interact. In any case, to get back to my original point, you are responsible for RPing each of the characters, I don't really see your main PC as leading them.

Hmm, well I am sort of 'sitting on the fence with 2 legs swung over a side' about this.

While it is true that you:

*Control them, like moving them about the game world

*Choosing targets for them and make them use what feats or skills you want whenever

*Get them to talk to some NPCs, choosing what they say in that case

*Choose what skills and feats they get when they level up

...

But then again you aren't really RPing them because part of RPing a character is developing who they are as a person as well as selecting their skills and feats, or selecting what they are attacking:

*You aren't controlling what they say when they interject in your conversations

*They may disagree with you

*They respond how they want when you talk to them

*You can't roleplay, for instance, HK-47 as a good obedient soldier droid, instead of the -psychotic mercenary droid that would just as soon say he is stolen property than help you-, that he is.

*(Refering to BG II)When you control your party in battle your Char doesn't get affected by 'morale failure' because he/she is you, but the Party members can, they can get too scared to continue fighting because they are injured badly or because other party members are dead.

[edit]To be honest I would rather not see 'morale failure' like I described above, in KOTOR partly because it wouldn't make sense(most likely for a Jedi at least) and it would kinda screw your party of 3 if it got to the point where it would kick in.

 

Another thing that gave me the impression of the player character as the leader of the group from the selection sounds of various party members and also probably because of the RTS style mouse control of those games. I guess the interface does make a fair difference in the way you percieve things, because yea, it sure don't seem like you are 'commanding' anyone in the videos showing the X-Box interface.

-Here are some examples of a Baldur's Gate II NPC sounds, of...(eh? no attachments) "Mazzy Fentan's" (who is a halfling[like a hobbit] knight, Incidently:) voiced by Jennifer Hale aka Bastilla):

Selection sound 1: "How may I assist"

Selection sound 3: "The group needs me?"

What she says when you do an 'action' with her: "Fair enough my friend"

'Action' 3: "Very well"

'Action' 6: "In Avoreen's name(her god/deity) it will be done"

'Action' 9: "One word about size and you can forget it"

Mazzy getting angry because party is being bad: "I trust that this current..direction we're on will not continue"

Mazzy getting more angry for the same reason: "I'm warning you, as a defender of the right, I will not tolerate this sort of behaviour"

However the effectiveness of the force powers is based on whether you're Dark or Light (and possibly how Dark or Light), but it will be possible to Force Choke baddies and that won't push you more towards the Darkside (sounds a bit like being a good Sith). Altough it wouldn't be as effective as using Dark while being Dark. But I think I would still do this.

Whoever thought of doing that made a very good compromise IMO. Hopefully there will be some powerful exclusive light and Dark force powers too

 

[edit]Back to lightsaber on/off again, since they took they time to make the 'auto switch saber on when hostile is nearby' it will probably still be in there seeing as there doesn't seem to be any reason to take it out of the game.

 

[edit]Oh and sorry for the really long post