In a hypothetical sequel...

[ArgleBargle]

So it was canon Karen? Though honestly, it made the most sense thematically for it to be her. As long as we can get our pine on a bit in the storyline I'll be okay.

[jack1974]

Well the summary was: wouldn't make sense to have the SAME characters of the first game as romance. I mean, already resetting the skills is always weird in RPGs (you finish 1st game as living God and in the sequel you start up as harmless wimp haha) but showing again the fall in love with Myrth, Rei, etc as Aleema told me by email can't work (it would be the same game! ).
So we're trying to find a way to let the character choose who romanced (based on possible romances), and the old characters would be present in the game but definitely not all romanceable again. I can understand as a writer that is really hard to come up with "falling in love" dialogues all over again for the SAME characters (for new ones, that's not a problem).
We're currently thinking what to do for old romances - if to allow the player to still romance and get a CG scene for ALL the old characters, SOME of them or NONE - in this last case you start with the old romance but as you play the game / story you can break up and fall in love with one of the new ones.

But I'm not thinking to allow CG scenes for all old romances, because there would be a lot of work to do... a new CG for the 12 old romances + new ones would mean something like 20 CG images

Well I'd never thought it would be so hard

[wildcard]

So I guess I'm right to assume that Saren/Elenor will be the main character again?
Otherwise I'd think it would make sense to have a new character with being able to choose who was the hero of the last game and who was romanced by the hero and have the new hero be an aquaintance of the hero and thus get the 'old' hero and some of his teammates as party members.
It would also allow the new character to romance all characters not romanced by the 'hero'. Or romance the hero if you choose that no one was romanced :3
Just throwing out an idea :3

[jack1974]

Yes you play as Saren/Elenor but this time (due to events happening early in the story) you'll be the main character in all ways (not an henchman of Loren anymore). The problem of using a new character with old romances was that you'd have to start the romances again from zero with the same characters and as Aleema told me it would be hard to write, and I also think not really much fun to play. So we're thinking about a way to balance this, by allowing to continue 1 romance from previous game, have some of the old characters but with just standard dialogues in the camp talk and the new ones which will be fully romanceable, so you get to know them more and maybe romance them.

[DoctorMario911]

So let me get this cause m alittle confused. You're saying that your gonna have one old character be romanable? Or it gonna be too much like the first one?

If im correct i have an idea. When choose if u are Saren/Elenor. How bout you have the most romanced person on the two different characters? Like if on Saren ,Loren is the most and On Elenor, Rei is the most

[jack1974]

Current idea is: in beginning you choose who you romanced (any character from first game). Then there will be a custom intro based on that, but from the old character only a few (the most popular) will actually lead to a full romance with CG in the sequel. Of course there will be the new ones which will have full romance too, and other old characters could still show up during some scenes / cameos or even in the party but they will just do standard non-romance talk.

[DoctorMario911]

Okay that makes more sense to me. And it a great idea so far...

[MarSel]

Did you scrap the idea of have both Saren and Elenor together in the sequel? I loved that idea would have been so cool

[jack1974]

Well while anything can change from now until next year, yes I don't think will go with that idea since could be confusing while writing and don't want to make life harder than already is for Aleema

[ArgleBargle]

I suppose you could make it something small and easter eggy. Like, if you're Saren then Elenor is a shopkeep in the citadel and vice versa, maybe with a couple lines of dialogue about their situation.

Yeah the old romances thing is tricky. You've either got to write scenes both for blossoming relationships and old ones, which is almost double the work even if you use the same scene setting (two versions of watching the stars at night etc) or write scenes and interactions in such a way that they work for both with minimal changes, which is pretty hard and risks coming off poorly. I guess you could do, old characters cannot be romanced unless you pick them for being romanced from the first game, that would eliminate some writing since there'd only be a need to write continuations for the old characters. Or make up a plot reason for the PC to have broken up and gone away in between the games, so now they are either romancing anew or rekindling the old flame, which could draw from the same tropes.

And then, if we romanced someone in the first, are we then locked into them even if the grass looks greener with new/different people?

Times like this, I'm glad all I have to do is sit back and buy the games