LE Women marry Up

[bjlehto]

What I would like to see is an opportunity for women to marry up, rather than settling for the hired-help. Why can't we romance Hadvar, Ralof, Tulius (if you like that type), Brynjolf, Ulfric, or any other high-ranking man-of-means?

 

I would think it a natural progression to romance either Hadvar or Ralof--you did survive a life or death struggle, after all.

Game-makers (and modders), hear my cry!

 

There are mature women out here (I learned how to program in Basic when I was 13, there was no such thing as a hard drive, and played D&D with a crazy set of crystal dice and a portfolio of characters I'd drawn) who are rolling with technology and would like to romance someone we didn't have to raise up into a man first. Besides, how can I tell if he REALLY loves me if I pay his salary. How do I know he's not catching a little housecarl-tail on the side?

[GoodfellowGoodspring]

I think more spouse options in general should have been in the game, its very easy to add somebody as marriageable as it just involves adding a tag in the Creation Kit. As long as you finished any quests before doing getting married i don't see what would be the problem seeing as you wouldn't be interfering with active quest lines. Obviously scripting would be required if you wanted to make a quest out of it and have it work for immersion but you would never have spouse dialogue so you should prepare for short conversations and a cold bed :(

[bjlehto]

I think fewer and deeper companion characters would enhance the game. Let's face it, we are social creatures and it's lonely killing things on your own; even if you're not interested in the whole romance thing, having a companion with a back-story is so much more satisfying than watching animated porn--at least for me.

 

How about a companion character who asks about you? I've written tons of dialogue for gaming mods, and while the dialogue logic can get tricky and complex, it is not unreasonable. You will always have a limited number of responses from the NPC companion character, but if the character has a background, there really aren't that many responses (or inquiries) the NPC can have and remain in-character.

 

For example, say you're a mage and your companion is a tank. You come upon a quest or dungeon and you're really not sure how to approach it so you ask your companion for their assessment. With a class/skill check (something like mage/destruction) your companion might say, "I'll get their attention, and you come up from behind and work your magic on them." If the situation were reversed--you're the tank and you're companion's a mage, the response might be something like, "Hit 'em hard and I'll keep you alive."

 

I remember being so bummed in Oblivion when I had all of these houses and treasures to show and no one to share them with--a very empty victory, indeed.

 

I think the problem for the gaming manufacturers is that programming to this level of dialogue detail is probably as time consuming and buggy as working out the combat animation. Additionally, you need to balance out game play with the story line and dialogue time. Too much dialogue or story telling and players get bored; too little and you have an FSP.

 

I would like to challenge gamers who would like fewer and deeper companions to add to this thread and invite game developers to write for a more intelligent and mature audience.

[kryptopyr]

I fully agree with you on this. I don't really care about having lots of followers or multiple spouses. What I really do want is a single well-developed, competent companion to keep my character company and share in my adventures (as well as reap the rewards of all that loot). I play mostly thief characters, so Brynjolf is my first choice. To this end, I've been working to develop him as a customized follower. I'm currently working on a mod to make marriage to Brynjolf possible through a customized marriage quest. Along with this, I also plan to add more opportunities to interact with him as both a companion and spouse.

 

However, I think to really get the sort of depth you're talking about, it will require creating new characters rather than building on the vanilla ones. With the vanilla characters you're pretty limited to what voice options they have available. I've found this to be the single most challenging part of creating these mods. I don't have any experience doing voice editing, so this has been holding up my progress on the mod. If anyone with sound editing experience would like to work with me, I would really appreciate any help I could get.

 

@bjlehto

If you'd like to help with any of the writing or dialogue options for any of my mods, please PM me. Or feel free just to pass along any suggestions for things you'd like to see. This is an on-going project that I intend to continue working on, so while changes might not show up immediately, I'm always happy to get ideas for new features to incorporate into the mod.

[bjlehto]

Hey Krypto,

 

I'd love to help write dialog.

 

My suggestion is rather than try to extend an existing character, start with a fresh one. Folks who have already played the game have a certain idea of who Brynjolf is, and trying to keep that up is difficult. You'll always have people saying that your mod isn't right, yadda, yadda, yadda. However, if you create your own character, you don't have any expectations to live up to.

 

I was thinking a high-up in a thieves guild (or some such) who heard that things were going poorly for the guild in Rifton. This guy wants to come in and scope out the scene; see if he can take over the Rifton guild, That is, until he meets you. Then the would-be guild master is conflicted. Normally someone who looks out for his own best interests, he begins feeling the need to accompany you on your various quests. If he's not selected as a companion, let him ask why and explain why he should go--of course he says because he heard there's lots of loot where you're headed.

 

You can build this character's story around this internal struggle between caring only for himself and now finding out he cares about someone else. I know it's rather formula, but there's always ways to make it fresh. This also gives a reasonable explanation about why he isn't spending his time bumping off the Rifton guild members, although he'd gladly help you with those as well.

 

Your dialog with the character and choices you make can affect his feelings for you. However, you need to set up front the character's character. I would think if you were creating a Brynjolf-like NPC, he'd be lawful evil. Or he may start as chaotic evil and move toward lawful evil.

 

Now, you can bribe a friend or audition a VO actor. There are some really good ones out there. I had considered going to a local college and putting up a flyer in the performing arts building.

 

I haven't looked at the dialog system for Skyrim yet, but I did some modding in Morrowind and Oblivion so I can't imagine it would be too different.

[kryptopyr]

You'll always have people saying that your mod isn't right, yadda, yadda, yadda. However, if you create your own character, you don't have any expectations to live up to.

 

I'm fairly comfortable developing Brynjolf as I see fit (though I do value input from others as I'm developing my mods). I do want to maintain his original character, but I'm happy using my interpretation of who that character is. I also think that you'll run into critics no matter if you work on a new character or a vanilla one. No matter what you do, you'll get people who will complain that you should have done something different with the character, or developed him one way instead of another, etc. That being said, though, I do have an idea for another high-level thief character. He'll be part of a much larger series of quests that I'm hoping to do someday. However, I feel like I still have a lot to learn before I'd be confident tackling a mod of that size. So for now, I'm happy making adjustments to the existing characters. I also haven't decided if the character I'm planning to make will stick around at the end of the quest and be a potential long-term companion and marriable or if he'll leave again at the end of the quest.