mod that silences Nalia until you want to speak with her?

[Lemernis]

Is there a mod out that that includes a component to keep Nalia at bay until you're ready to speak with her? I will eventually take her quest, but I'm tired of being accosted by her every time the party sets foot in the Copper Coronet.

[berelinde]

You can always just send her on ahead. She'll wait patiently at the stockade until you decide to go collect her.

[Kulyok]

I got tired of the girl, too, when I was testing quests in the Copper Coronet. I usually either CTRL-Y'ed her, or, if Debug Mode was off, I chose the last option - she immediately says "Very well, it'll be as if I never met you" and leaves me be.

[Lemernis]

When I select the "I don't have time to speak with you right now option" she does say something like "very well, it will be as if we never met." But she evidently means it literally! She appears right at the entrance every time, making the same plea. It's like she quite literally has no short term memory.

[cmorgan]

That is because the code sets her value to NumTimesTalkedTo(0),

 

literally starting her whole sequence over truly as it it had never happened.

 

Efficient, but probably more of a shortcut than a true build.

[berelinde]

I'm telling ya, all you have to do is say "Yes, we'll help, go wait for us there," and you're rid of her.

[cmorgan]

I agree

[Gabrielle]

LOLZ! I would welcome such a mod. I have to use that annoying twit until I get Imoen. Keeping her mouth shut would be a big bonus.

[Guest John]

I grow annoyed of her, too It wouldn't be so bad if she just didn't jump into the fighting at Copper Coronet. I want to have the option to do her quest but can't if she gets killed.

 

Sometimes, I agree to her task and let her wait at the Keep, in which case my PC feels guilty about letting her stew (he's almost always CG). More often I've found the least troubling way to handle her is to let CHARNAME lead her into the corner of the room west of Lehtinan and tell her we have no time to help her at the moment. Then, she stands there out of the way and out of sight not jumping into battle, and I can agree to help her later.

 

John

[Lemernis]

I'm telling ya, all you have to do is say "Yes, we'll help, go wait for us there," and you're rid of her.

 

I know, but often I will not get around to her particular quest for many weeks (game time). It works against a sense of realism to the game if I offer to help her when I know I'm not actually anywhere near ready to do it. That's mostly where I'm coming from.

[Ayce]

This discussion thread brings up an issue that I see occur frequently, but never really get any direct attention....................................

 

That is to say, I see a lot of people bumping heads (or at least scratching there heads) over what I see as two fundamentally different point of view................

 

On viewpoint, I like to call it aesthetic, places a lot of importance on the story-telling/expositional aspect of the game. Hence Lemernis' concern with "making

haste" to Castle D'arnise and then taking weeks of game time to get around to it. That just doesn't make for good storytelling. Aesthetics want the sequence of their characters actions to make sense, to flow logically and aesthetically from one decision to another.

 

I notice a lot of people scratch their heads and wonder what the big deal is, I mean get Nalia to give the quest and go to her keep when you feel like it. I call this point of view pragmatic (not to put any labels on anyone, just for discussion purposes and all). Pragmatics tend to place more importance on meeting and completing the various challenges the game has to offer and don't really care if the way they did it makes for good storytelling or not, their just trying to complete the game in whatever way works best for them.

 

I'm not trying to push one viewpoint as better or worse than the other, I'm just hoping people will read this and understand better where other IE gamers are coming from.

 

_______________________________________________________________

 

That said, I'd like to offer aesthtics (as one myself) some other thoughts to consider...............................

 

Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate II are really not "aesthetic" friendly, I would argue that a case can be made that the programmers come from more of a pragmatic point of view. The same can definitely be said of the Elder Scrolls series. These games tend to leave a lot the story telling development to your imagination and personal editing.

 

I read one review of Baldur's Gate that makes this point very well (sorry, I can't find the link right now, I'll finish this post then post the link later). He basically says that "your character end up looking like a jerk, either because you keep refusing people in need in order to stay focused on you objective to rescue Imoen or because you leave Imoen languishing in misery while you explore the nation of Amn and collect your various role-playing rewards."

 

While I love the gameplay and character development (especially with all the customization now available), I agree with that criticism and it is my biggest complaint with Baldur's Gate II. The spawning of the various quests is sloppy and unaestheic (is that a word?). Every time you undertake a quest, you can't help but stumble over three more, and then another three, and so on..............

 

So once I played as far as chapter 5 my first time through the game, I went back and developed three solid character ideas I wanted to run through the game. I then spent a few hours examing the various quests looking at which quest spawned which other quests and which NPCs (if any) they depended on. I then developed an "adventure path" for each of these characters taking into account their differing motivations and interests.

 

Let me tell you, it wasn't easy. I've started my first character and still found myself forced to "ignore" a number of story elements that were thrown in my character's path and didn't exactly jive with where I was trying to go with the charcter in question. It's just not easy to develop a clear, meaningful adventure path given that the inherent design of the quests is so entangled.

 

My point, fellow aesthetics, is that, like I said, BG2 just isn't inherently "aesthetic" friendly and we may just have to settling for ignoring certain game elements which don't work with our story concept and "pretend" the story is developing as we would like. Modding out all of the knots in this tangled game design may not really be worth it.

 

_______________________________________________________________

 

Also, again, I would hope that both aesthetics and pragmatics (or whatever you want to call yoursevles) will understand each other a little better after reading this post.

 

Ayce

[BigRob]

Nalia's quest is probably the worst example of that, since in terms of story, you are a bit of a bastard if you just wander off and leave her for weeks, since the castle is under attack right now. I know I tend to do Nalia's quest first up if I'm playing good aligned. At least with some of the other quests the sense of urgency isn't quite so high, and you can legitimately leave them for later in the face of more urgent requests (Trademeet is under siege, so still OK for a bit and Imnesvale has had people go missing and might be under attack, so there's some confusion there).

[Ayce]

Here is the game review link I mentioned above (and had to relocate), he's a bit on the brash side, but he does make some good points................

 

Read for yourself and decide..........

 

 

http://www.caltrops.com/review0009.php

[Lemernis]

Tbh, I found it so (unecessarily) obnoxious in tone that I didn't bother after the opening "Fuck You."

[Ayce]

Can't argue with that, but like I said does raise some valid points..................