#or Casavir even though he IS my boy

[brin-guivera]

Game BF’s - Romance in Gaming

I was just thinking to myself earlier about games that allow you to romance companions or NPC’s. 

The very first time I discovered romance was possible in a game (as in, the player can choose who to romance - not part of the over-arching plot) was the first Knights of the Old Republic from BioWare.

I romanced one Carth Onasi and never really looked back after that. Unfortunately, the sequel didn’t really allow for romance. It was a bit of a rushed game - flawed but definitely had a lot of potential, alas Obsidian (who developed the sequel) are not really fond of romance in games and romance arcs were not fully developed. That didn’t stop me from shipping my Exile with bad boy Atton Rand.

I never played the first Neverwinter Nights but I did play the second game. My character much preferred the antisocial malcontent Bishop over saintly Casavir (seriously, I blame my youth for that preference - although Casavir still doesn’t appeal even now...) Though Bishop wasn’t technically a romance (although there was definitely hints of it in the main game) it didn’t stop my character from pining - even when a certain betrayal occurred... Again though, this is Obsidian and romance is not a priority.

We then move on to Dragon Age (my favourite fantasy game). The first time I played DA: Origins, Alistair was my bae (I have romanced all the available characters but he remains my favourite from the first entry). He is such a sweet dork!

Dragon Age 2 is my favourite game of the series (unpopular opinion I know, but I stand by my choice!) I honestly cannot romance anyone but Fenris. I’ve tried (and failed!) so many times. Fenris is just... I can’t explain it. The voice, the backstory, it’s just too hard to romance anyone else.

Lastly, Dragon Age Inquisition. I romanced Cullen when I first played this game (as I had been wanting to do so since he appeared in the first game!) However, I then gave the Solas romance a whirl... and loved it even more. Oh the angst, the sweet, sweet angst! I’m a sucker for it.

Mass Effect is probably the game that set the romance standard for me (as well as being one of my favourite all-time RPGs). The only male love interest in the first game was Kaidan. It was a sweet romance and I did like it overall but my favourite romance option has to be Garrus Vakarian - who finally (FINALLY!) became an option in the second game. Garrus is my favourite ever romance (well, tied with Fenris from DA2). 

BioWare games kinda set the standard for romancing characters with your PC but many other games have also included some fun romances.

Fallout 4 had romance options (even though they were a little thin on material). I particularly enjoyed the MacCready character and his romance was kinda sweet although there wasn’t a heck of a lot of actual content.

I really liked romancing Andrew in The Technomancer with my Zachariah (a set main character but there were still multiple options for him). Andrew was my favourite companion and romance.

I also really enjoyed the Kurt romance in GreedFall. I wasn’t expecting to (I thought Vasco was going to steal my De Sardet’s attention) but that loyal master of arms snuck into her affections!

Honestly, I’m not really sure what the point of this rambling is (except to wax poetic about my favourite gaming love interests haha!) but there you have it - a list of my favourite romances in some of my favourite games.

*EDIT* Argh, forgot Mass Effect Andromeda!! (though I think many people do!! or at least, would prefer to lol!!) I couldn’t actually pick a favourite LI from that game - I liked Liam, Jaal, and Reyes about the same!!

[annakie]

An Annotated Mass Effect Playthrough, Part Seven

List of Posts: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Wherein we... talk to the crew. I didn’t quite make it off the ship.

Still, a lot of words.

Aka the nearly All-Gif update.

Didn’t get a chance to play ME at all this week, so I’m going to spend a few hours this weekend (double-checking to make sure screenshotting works :p) and have some real updates later.

So making it back to the ship from Therum, it’s time to talk to the crew.  I maybe could have gone and talked to them after getting on the ship after the Citadel, but they don’t really have any unique lines then so, I usually wait til now to go chat.

First, let’s talk to Liara.

The thing that sucks about talking to Liara (or Kaidan, or Ashley, if you don’t want to romance them) is, you know, the accidental romance.  Making “picking the Paragon-place choices = romance by default with NO WARNING” design was very Not Good.  They fixed this in later games, well moreso in Dragon Age games than ME, (and Andromeda is done very well for this) but still.  In ME3, the BackOff mod does a great job of making romance dialog more obvious and intentional.  

Liara’s dialog choices I feel like are even LESS obviously flirting I feel like than Ash and Kaidan’s.  Honestly with Liara’s most of the lines can be read and even said aloud as friendship then BOOM, all of a sudden she wants a threesome.  I choose middle dialog options whenever possible with Liara just to avoid this.  I’m not interested, never have been, don’t want Kaidan to think he has any competition.  But seriously, it’s poor game design here that you literally have to be a jerk to a companion at some points to avoid having them think you want to bang.   God, half of the reason I’d love a remaster would be to hopefully fix shit like this to avoid some of the pitfalls.  

I hate that some people use this as a reason to dislike these characters more.  And I’ll admit, in my early days as a ME fan, I held it against Liara, too, until I realized how dumb that is.  I especially hate it when you get to the “confrontation scene” and people use Kaidan not wanting to be in a threesome as a reason to dislike him more?  It’s not a bad thing to want to be monogamous?  (And of course, it’s not a bad thing to NOT want to be, assuming everyone is open and OK about it.)

I just prefer to not get that scene at all now, and to avoid “leading anyone on” accidentally etc.  My Shepard knows early on what she wants, and sticks with him all the way through.

I was going to talk more here about my feelings about Liara in general but uh, I guess I’ll do that later.  This is already really long.

Here’s a great post about how to avoid romancing Kaidan while being rude as little as possible to him.  

Well since he’s right outside the medbay anyway, let’s go talk to the LT.  

Have I mentioned how much I hate the orange glow?  

So anyway, I thought maybe I’d talk here a little bit about Why Kaidan?

I will point out here that I am mostly a hetero woman, so my choices in video game romances lean towards men first, though I’m also very cool with doing non-m/f romances in games, and often do on subsequent playthroughs of games I love, but that’s almost never gonna be my primary romance.

I’d already mentioned my love for Carth Onasi, one of the most hated companions in video games, If You’re A Guy.

By today’s standards, even the Carth romance isn’t that great.  But at the time, it was the greatest romance I’d experienced in video games.  There were a few others that were really good -- Valen Shadowbreath in Neverwinter Nights: Horde of the Underdark was the other really great one, but we also got nightmare fuel like Anomen in Baldur’s Gate (though that gets better with mods + the final BG expansion) or just under-written characters or romances like Casavir in NWN2 (who was much better with mods) or hell, either of your choices in KotOR2 imho.  But I used to play KotOR over and over for many reasons, such as holy shit a Star Wars game(!!) and one where you can actually be a female main character AND has that great Bioware storytelling... but a big reason was Carth.  

A funny thing about Carth Onasi... if you play a male main character, you have a very different experience with Carth than if you play a woman.  And even I can agree that hoo boy Carth gets tiresome quick if you play a male, as a female you at least get to flirt and that calms him down and evens him out a lot. But the one time I tried playing as a male, I didn’t make it off Taris because.. yeouch I could actually see what the guys playing were so mad about.

But hey, that voice.  Raphael Sbarge, I love that voice.  So like I said early on in these posts, I immediately knew I was going to romance Kaidan the very second I confirmed he was romancable, before I even ran back into the ship and met anyone on the crew aside from Joker and Kaidan.

And... that only got confirmed more and more as I went through ME for the first time.  The character is smart, and capable, and respected you, and never questioned your command, but made his feelings pretty clear along the way.  He could be a little doofy but in an adorable way with some of the things he said, honestly there was almost never anything I didn’t love about this character.

I realized some time ago that I have a thing for the Paladin archetype personally. 

This is Casavir, from Neverwinter Nights 2, and in NWN2, there are two romance options for women.  An under-written Lawful Good Paladin in his late 30′s who is willing to buck his superiors to do what he thinks is right but also places you on a pedestal and holds back all his emotions.  He’s a romance option. Or....

Bishop, a chaotic evil ranger who insults you a lot, threatens to rape an NPC under your protection, and ultimately betrays you.  

Most people who played NWN2 seemed to prefer the CE Ranger.  I loved the paladin so much I wrote fix-it fic that I never have gotten around to publishing anywhere to retcon his terrible dumb ending.

There’s a fan-made romance mod that helps with the romances in this game, though I dislike a lot of what they did, ultimately I always use it.

In Dragon Age?

Ah yeah, the Templar-Warden.  Love him.  He does have that “Oh I’m so young and experienced tee-hee” thing going on that isn’t my favorite, (at this point mostly because I’m actually in my mid-40′s so uh, I’m just Old) but otherwise, yeah, love Alistair.

Dragon Age 2, I mean I usually romance Anders but... I’m not real excited about either him or Fenris, or even either of the ladies, though I have done Isabella’s romance (as well as Fenris’) and enjoyed it.  I’d probably romance Avaline (or Varric!), if she were an option.  But yeah, Anders mostly because he IS trying to do what’s right, even if he... well.  You know.  

But Dragon Age Inquisition?

Give me that Blackwall-angst.  That stoic guy trying to be a Warden who comes undone for you.  You’d think I’d go for Cullen, but hey this game gave us two paladin archetypes, though one is merely pretending, he still atones and becomes what he was trying to be, one way or another, if you let him.  I picked this paladin archtype first because I did not like Cullen based on interactions with him in DA1 & 2.  I like him well enough in DA:I but Blackwall is my guy here.

Out of all the many, many companions in SWTOR, who’s my fave?

If Aric Jorgan isn’t a Paladin-type I don’t know who is, especially since any romanceable Jedi are uh, all your female padawans (don’t get me started) until Lana (also female) comes along. 

Hell, in a very long-running 4e D&D game I played from around 2009 to 2014 where my character fell in love with our party leader’s son, married him and fought the final boss 4 months pregnant with our twins.  That character’s husband... was a paladin.  I mean look at this art my friend picked out for his character’s son:

I mean dang, who (of those who are attracted to men of this type) wouldn’t?

I always pick the Paladin.  The guy who is gonna Do What’s Right no matter what it costs him, the guy who’s gonna be loyal, the guy who may bottle up his emotions or keep them under control all the time but ultimately does what it takes to get the girl... that’s my fave.  And that’s Kaidan.

I will also say my second fave archetype is rogue-with-a-heart-of-gold, and that’s more of a Garrus or Varric (if only he were a choice!!! :( ) type.. aka my second choice in these games.

Well that was a lot more words on that subject than I meant to do, so I’m going to just say real quick here that what I love about this first conversation with Kaidan is that he’s already no dummy, he knows something is up, and warns you about it.

We’ll save talk about his backstory for another day.

Let’s head downstairs.

Yay for sped-up elevators!  What used to take like 20 seconds now takes like, four.

URDNOT WREX.

This another place where Shepard starts out just sticking their foot in their mouths completely.  I feel like this is something the game definitely has problems with here.  Shepard should know a lot more about the Genophage, like they should have about say, Spectres, even if the player doesn’t. So basically every response you can give to Wrex about the genophage and what his people are going through sounds really insensitive.  Comparing the relatively minor First Contact War with the entire galaxy more or less uniting to keep the Krogan from taking over after the Rachni war seems pretty dumb, and also like something Shepard should already know.

Loredumping on the Krogans a bunch with Wrex is necessary, but  I think it could have been done better.  Though I think there are a lot of questions about the Krogan and the Genophage that ultimately are important but go unanswered. I’m going to be honest, because generally I want my companions to be happy and ultimately I want the happiest ending I can get, I usually cure the genophage and leave Wrex in charge.  But also I don’t think that ends up with the happiest ending for the galaxy.  Everything about the genophage is terrible, how it works, how it was administered, what it’s done to the Krogan as a people, but let’s be honest, the galaxy will also be in huge trouble just from a resources perspective if each krogan woman can have hundreds (or even just dozens) of babies a year, who are gonna all live a thousand years.  There’s got to be a compromise that, eventually, hopefully Wrex works out if he’s alive at the end of ME3 or the council figures out with Wreav or whoever.  

It is kinda funny though that here, I basically met Wrex at C-Sec, told him I’d help him with Fist, sent him to my ship, and basically just kidnapped him to go help with the rest of the mission.  He wanted to be here, right?  I can only assume I’m paying him a lot.

Ashley!

I do love Ashley Williams.

I’m not going to turn this into a “Is Ashley Racist” thinkpiece.  I’ve read a lot of both sides of this argument and no, I don’t think she is.  Some pieces of her attitude do need to be kicked up a bit, for sure.  She’s got about the same issues with aliens as most of the species of the galaxy have with each other, which sometimes isn’t great, but she’s far from supporting Terra Firma.

She’s smart, she’s funny, a hell of a shot, she’s being held back due to her family name.  I would love for if someday a Wilshenko OT3 were possible.  I’d do that in an instant.  I despise the fact that you can only keep Kaidan forever if you lose Ashley forever, though I don’t see that changing even in a remaster.  Please Bioware, for the super ultra remaster?

I know I need to do another run through the game with Ashley alive. I don’t remember too much of what happens in ME3 when she’s there.

I also love that her story is so much one of family.  From her stories of her sisters, to the point that it’s her own grandfather’s legacy that’s holding her back.  She’s so grounded, she reminds us that there are civilians out there we’re keeping safe, a whole world we rarely see, up in space and in the middle of so much military conflict.

GARRUS.

First of all, whew Garrus looks amazing in the lighting and with the textures with ALOT/MEUITM.  Very handsome.

Interestingly, Garrus does not really loredump on the turians.  We absorb a lot of what we find out about the turians more naturally.  Garrus is more all about C-Sec and the general politics of the Council, of Spectres, of C-Sec.  Gonna be honest, I expected C-sec to play into the game as a whole a lot more than it did based on Garrus’ talks about it.  I mean it was always there, but Bailey ends up being the face of C-Sec 

Garrus’ Law vs. I Do What I Want attitude is a nice way to do a non-goody-two-shoes companion story without having to go evil.  I love that Garrus’ story kinda mirrors our own as players, how are we going to get things done?  Shove a blaster in people’s faces, accept collateral damage, and do whatever it takes to get it done?  OR play by the rules, compromise, and see if that fixes things.

The thing is though, Mass Effect actually is great at giving us the illusion of choice without making a huge difference in the end.  Like I mentioned before... not bringing Garrus to ME1 makes little difference in how he acts in ME2 outside of a few lines of dialog.  Lots of things are like that, like pick Ash or Kaidan on Virmire, and yes one is always gone, but 80% of the content is basically the same from there on out for either character.

There are games out now that do that choice better.  Pathfinder: Kingmaker is one I can think of.  Or Tyranny.  Things you choose can alter the endings of those games drastically, locking entire paths out of the game.  

I used to think that was what I wanted.  Until I played Kingmaker and locked myself out of things I really wanted without realizing it.  I stopped playing the game, sad that my LI dumped me and wouldn’t come back without reloading many, many hours worth of game.  Despite enjoying the game overall, I still haven’t gone back.  When I do play again, I’ll probably keep a lot of tabs open of walkthroughs and tips on how to keep things going how I want.  Kind of defeating the purpose of the game.

Anyway, I got super off track again.  The point is, Garrus is the companion that gives us the most Choice in who he is.  Which is cool.  He illustrates our Paragon vs Renegade dilemma.  And it’s neat that it does make changes in some of the things he says in the future, but overall, his story doesn’t change much no matter what you do (Unless you, ya know, get him killed in ME2).

And therein lies a problem with Mass Effect, and video games as a whole.  It’s neat to see the little changes, but it’s rare for anything to be an actual Big Change, because... that’s a loooot of work for a developer and how much more money is all that going to cost him.

At some point in the future I’ll point out how lucky we are for what we did get, though.

Heeeey it’s Chief Engineer Greg Adams!  I wonder how many people don’t even know he has a first name?  Anyway, thank you for your one short conversation in which you explain how the Normandy works (honestly, great job with explaining this, Bioware, even if the science is ???) and like three sentences on who you are.  Wasted opportunity to give you an actual character.  Glad you like Tali, though!  See you in ME3.

TALI!

Okay, I will totally accept that Shepard doesn’t know much past the basics of quarian society.  That makes a lot more sense than Shepards not knowing much about asari.  

The quarians are so much more of an original creation I feel like than a lot of what we’ve seen in the galaxy so far.  Krogan?  Basically Klingons.  Turians?  Space Romans. Asari?  Twilek/Space Elves but ALL Hot Ladies.  Qarians feel like something new though.

I mean, I guess before they had to live in suits they were pretty normal, but their entire culture doesn’t feel like something we’ve seen everyplace before.  I mean I’ve seen space (g-slur)  but, eh not really.  

And Tali herself is such a good character.  I mean, she does suffer a little from being Very Important with her father being one of five admirals in a population of six million people but, I’ll allow it.  Nobody else on the crew has Very Important Parents.  I mean Garrus’ father is a little high up in the ranks but that’s a non-factor, Ash’s grandfather was but he’s dead and never seen, Wrex’s father is a chieftan but none of those is central to their current story or as big as this one. I mean, Spacer Shep’s own mother is a captain of a ship.  Tali herself in-game isn’t that sexualized -- most of that was the fandom’s doing.  She’s young but also confident and has her shit together.  

She shoulda been a same-sex romance in ME2/3 though, damnit!

Joker. Is. Amazing. And uh, also shoulda been a romance option. 

Hey first of all, how great was it that they put in disabled representation in this game.  I have read a few posts on how it could have been better, and definitely agree, but it’s also been so important to have say, Geordi LaForge as chief engineer of the Enterprise and also Joker here, in space, being awesome on spaceships.  And he really earns his the right to his bravado in calling himself the best pilot in the galaxy.  

Also?  Casting Seth Green was such a great choice.  I couldn’t imagine Joker as anyone else.  I mean this is Bioware so we expect, and definitely got, great voice acting (except for... ugh you know, we’ll get there in ME3) but honestly Seth Green was a particularly good choice.  I don’t care that he’s covered with sixteen layers of plot armor, he deserves it.

He’s the companion that we don’t ever get to take in the squad.  (I mean, except for that brief amazing moment in ME2)

I only wish in ME1 he had as much to say as in ME2/3.  At least he gets cool snarky lines after all the major missions.

One last thing before we get off the ship for awhile, I love that the crew is actually comprised of both men AND women in ME1.  With different hairstyles and faces, and even skin tones.  It’s nice to see they didn’t just reuse the same guy over and over for the nameless NPCs.  

Well, I guess they get names in ME2. :v

Anyway, I would like to point out, that there are seventeen nameless NPCs on the Normandy.

Then there’s Adams, Tali, Garrus, Wrex, Ashley, Kaidan, Chakwas, Liara, Pressley, and Joker.

That’s twenty-seven people and eight sleep pods.  Let’s remove the aliens, who couldn’t fit in a sleep pod (Garrus and Wrex), twenty-five people.  Are there people sleeping in the sleep pods now?  There must be, right?  Everyone can’t be awake when we’re on the ship just because we’re there?  How does that math add up?  Who is sleeping where, HOW DOES IT WORK!?  

Well, that’s their problem. I got my own bed.  Kaidan can share.

Also just... don’t get me started on how stupid this is.  I mean it’s nice having a shop on the ship but... the justification is terrible.  We all know it.  He was counted as one of the 17 nameless, btw.

Okay well, I was going to get off the ship this update but this is already stupid long and honestly I don’t have too much more content to post so, I’m gonna go actually play this game!

[singinrevelry]

Monte @personalmephistopheles tagged me to list 10 fav characters from 10 different things! Here we go!

Lord Edmund Ruthven, the Greta Helsing novels

Jean Tannen, the Gentleman Bastards Sequence

Sand dan Glokta, the First Law Trilogy

Faramir, LOTR

Guinan, Star Trek Next Generation

Garak, Star Trek Deep Space Nine

Bertie Wooster, Jeeves and Wooster stories

Anne Lister, Gentleman Jack

Gann of Dreams, Mask of the Betrayer

Rasaad yn Bashir, Baldur’s Gate

[thedragonsteaparty]

Recently I was reminiscing with my other half about our favourite games, he has been very keen on launching his favourites at me (Portal, Final Fantasy, Stardew Valley, etc), all of which I’ve enjoyed (with the exception of FFVIII), while he hasn’t really tried ones that I like yet. He did download Dragon Age Inquisition but stopped playing literally when the intro was over. It hurts my soul that he did this but he didn’t like the gameplay, even though he didn’t see much of it or play for long enough to appreciate any character development or story… but I’m not bitter. I got to talking about Neverwinter Nights with him, a game which I may have mentioned occasionally in previous posts. He has never played it and I got a little carried away reminiscing about it. It’s about time that these games, both the first and second, have a post dedicated to them because it is easy to say that they (specifically the second one) are my favourite games of all time.

Let’s start at the beginning and I’ll set the scene. The year was 2002, potentially the summer, I was a mere child of 8 and I was watching my dad play his latest game: Neverwinter Nights. My previous favourite games to watch him play were Baldur’s Gate and Doom (those are the ones that stick most in my memory at least, Doom probably not for good reasons). Then BOOM along came NWN with its incredible story, wonderful characters, and – at the time – great graphics. I was hooked. I can’t remember specifically when I started playing NWN myself because I used to sort of have a go, often starting from the beginning over and over as I did with most ‘big’ games in my youth, one day though I did finish it properly, it was probably the first ever ‘adult’ game I ever finished and I was VERY proud. I then went on to play the expansion packs Hordes of the Underdark and Shadows of the Undrentide, which were also very good.

Check out those sweet 2002 graphics at work. Side note: I miss the use of artwork for character portraits.

Thinking about it, the reason NWN appealed to me at such a young age was probably the wonderful storytelling in the game and the engagement with the NPCs. NWN is based on Dungeons and Dragons, using the same fighting mechanism and the same Forgotten Realms world as a base, this is also most likely why it has such a great story. When I started playing D&D a couple of years ago I realised just how similar the two were. The text scrolling along the side of the screen in NWN for example helped me understand (sort of) how to play D&D quite quickly, or at least to improvise what I didn’t understand to create a playable game.

Unfortunately I don’t remember a huge amount of the first NWN, just that I enjoyed it immensely, I always thought the paladin Lady Aribeth de Tylmarande (pictured below in her awesome armour) was one of the coolest female video game characters ever (she looked so badass) and henchman Daelan Red Tiger was always my bro. When I come into possession of a gaming PC/Laptop I will be playing it again to relive some of my youth but until then I’ll have to make the rest of this post about NWN2.

Simply because I remember it more and spent A LOT of time on it, NWN2 will always be my favourite game. The magic of that game is just something I’ve never experienced with anything else. I connected so much to the characters (that sounds kind of sad but I really did, especially my bestie Khelgar), the story was brilliant, there are so many wonderful things added to it that give the whole world and the story so much depth, for example when you have to find each of the spirits that knew the Shadow King – the big bad guy – before he was corrupted by power and they tell you stories about what he was like before. It gives you such an unexpected connection to this creepy looking dude that you fight at the end and you feel sorry for him. Then there’s all those books that you can pick up and read but you don’t need – who writes those?! It’s actually someone’s job to write them! – If you want to you can learn about all the places, and about some of the characters, through books, NPCs and codices found in the game creating a whole history behind this world, solidifying it in your mind and making it seem almost like an exotic, medieval style country you’ve never been to but learned about in school or something.

The Shadow King, bit of a tribute to Frank from Donnie Darko I always thought

SPOILER PARAGRAPH Another big thing was killing off Shandra halfway through the game. While she could be a little stuck up at first she grows on you and is set as a permanent companion, like your apprentice. I remember the first time I played through it and the death scene happened and all the companions expressing how they all felt about it (the gnome broke my heart, he was so upset) it was so unexpected as I’d never played anything that had killed off a main character before (this was 2006 so I was like 12 or 13 and hadn’t experienced as many games as I have now… but thinking about it I can’t think of a huge amount that do kill off main characters like that even now), I had tears in my eyes and had to take a moment to calm down.

MORE SPOILERS Then there was another new thing I had never come across in a game before – alternative endings. Before the final battle the Shadow King will try to persuade some of your companions over to his side, and it’s pretty much inevitable a couple will go, making you try to have them feel your glare through the screen as they swagger over to his side on a cloud of betrayal. I could never get enough influence over power-hungry Qara to have her not fight against me and the only way I ever got Bishop not to fight was by romancing him (more on that later). On top of that the Shadow King will also ask you if you want to join him, and you can! Despite trying to do an ‘evil’ play through I just can never be an evil character and never did that, I feel unnecessarily guilty about committing fictional evil acts. I’ve seen the bad ending though through the power of YouTube and it’s quite nasty in places. I’m glad I never did it or I would have been riddled with guilt.

On to what I mentioned before about romancing. This was the first game (lots of firsts here) I played where romancing was something that could add to the plot, or sub-plot. I almost always play as a female character and in NWN2 you have two love interests per gender. Both are heterosexual choices (the incredible display of Bioware’s sexually diverse characters didn’t arrive until 2009 when Dragon Age was released). As a female I had the choice between “he’s a bad boy but I can fix him!” Bishop the ranger, and “your holy aura of goodness and purity is blinding me” Casavir the paladin. I found this a bit unfair because Bishop was a total dick but was as fit as a bunch of 2006 pixels could get *swoon*. On the other hand you had Casavir, who was very nice but I thought he was boring and looked a little bit like he’d been beaten with a pixelated ugly stick (or maybe this is just my taste in men). I couldn’t shake the feeling they hadn’t meant to make him look quite like that. Pretty sure male characters got the best deal here with their choice being between pure, innocent Elanee the elf and the quirky, chaotic-but-not-evil Neeshka the tiefling. Seemed easier than the female’s choice of “you can either romance Satan or Jesus”. Despite my reserves about them I enjoyed the extra stories and side quests these romance options opened up, and the romance option was optional anyway so I didn’t have to stress about who to choose if I didn’t want to.

Bishop

Casavir

Perhaps I have been spoiled by the ‘golden age’ of RPGs because I am really struggling at the moment to find more RPGs of the same calibre of NWN, Baldur’s Gate, and Dragon Age. It seems like RPGs at the moment are either online, JRPGs, or they’re sort of from a first person perspective (The Witcher, Dark Souls, Skyrim…). While I enjoy those I don’t get as immersed in them as I do with my classic favourites, I never really feel like I am the character, I feel like I’ve been assigned a character to play. Sometimes I like that but I largely prefer having a character I can start from scratch with and mould their personality as I play through the game. On top of that I can’t really think of any characters from games recently where I’ve been emotionally invested in what happens to them and actually really like them. I suppose Borderlands comes pretty close, they have some good characters in there but as they don’t travel with you or fight with you – unless it’s part of a quest – it doesn’t really count. You could argue that you get that NPC relationship with JRPGs, playing through FFX at the moment I’d be pretty upset if something happened to one of my team but to be honest it wouldn’t hit me anywhere near as hard as if they killed off Varric in Dragon Age, for example (they don’t BTW in case you had a brief moment of panic, it was a hypothetical example).

Do you have any RPG recommendations for me? What are your favourite RPGs? Who else played Neverwinter Nights? Also, how cool would that NWN eye be as a tattoo? (Not thinking of getting one, just an observation…)

Nostalgia Moment: Neverwinter Nights (1 and 2) Recently I was reminiscing with my other half about our favourite games, he has been very keen on launching his favourites at me (Portal, Final Fantasy, Stardew Valley, etc), all of which I’ve enjoyed (with the exception of FFVIII), while he hasn’t really tried ones that I like yet.