Sister Vigilante

On 1/14/2021 at 2:30 AM, Guest Magpie said:

Hello just to heap on some praise in 2021, I remember enjoying the angelo romance mod when i played like a decade ago and i'm now doing a replay and of course this was the first mod I went to download again

Aww, that's great to hear! ^_^ Thanks so much, and I hope you're enjoying the mod once again.

Angelo: EE?  It's a thought, to be sure. Given that my main reservation is with the whole Sawara plot, my advice for such an experience might just be not to go see him. As for any tweaks to the bulk of the dialogue, it's an odd truth, at least it seems to me, that writers don't necessarily get better as they get older. I'm not sure I could recapture the feel of the mod if I were to go back to it. That temptation to revisit the past has, I think, without naming names, worked to the detriment of several major franchises recently, let alone my silly little fan mod. I am very flattered that someone would ask, though 

Haha, well, I can't remember what I might have said in the past, but there are certainly a few things.

I was young to be voicing Angelo--I was 20 and he's what, pushing 50?--and in spite of the stellar job Kulyok did smoothing out the audio, it does obviously leave something to be desired. But I'm not sure it would have been possible to find somebody else, so that may have been unavoidable.

I'm not crazy about the whole plot with Sawara; it's very trope-heavy and makes Angelo seem a bit more important than someone like him really should be, and this includes its extension into ToB. I spent a semester abroad in Japan shortly after finishing Angelo, which I was looking forward to the whole time I was writing him, and it definitely shows 

I was also quite pleased with the character and could be a bit precious with him, and while I don't think he's as egregious an offender as some mod NPCs, it is still probably the case that he gets the better of others a bit more than he should, that the other NPCs are nicer to him than they should be especially given his history, and that the PC doesn't have enough options to criticize him (many of the ones which are there may have been ones that Kulyok suggested I put in).

That being said, I still like the core romance a lot, and some of the talks--especially the later ones--remain among my favorite things that I've written. Also still very happy with the stuff with Sarevok, and a lot of the jokes still make me chuckle. On the whole, he still feels like a real person to me, which I suppose is the highest self-serving compliment I could pay him/me.

Anyway, I hope none of that pierces the suspension of disbelief too much! It is fun for me to talk about and remember, though; and thank you for asking,

Best,

SV

Thanks so much, Bertle! ^_^ This is really nice to hear. Angelo is indeed crazy old, as is his author by now, but I'm extremely glad that people are still enjoying it,

Best,

SV

On 11/23/2019 at 10:04 PM, Arthas said:

Camdawg thanks for your work.

 

 

@Sister Vigilanteany chance for crossmod content ?

With any particular NPC? Nothing is in the works at the moment, but as I do still check in here every now and then, it's far from impossible ^_^ 

Heya! Mod author here, who does still check this forum e-e-every now and again, just dropping in to say a) really glad you enjoyed it! and b) big thanks to Truman for answering the question, as it's been so long I don't know if I'm capable any longer of fielding any mod-related questions myself, haha--although I do think I remember about the gem, as that came up several times before; apologies for making it so confusing,

Best,

SV

If you want, I can set it up to install these two if the player installs Enkida's Angelo portrait. Mind you, I'm still trying to find time to do mod updates, but I swear that it WILL happen by Christmas.

Sure, sounds good. As for the tenft1s.bmp, I'm not sure, but I'm guessing it's not Angelo, because Suu and Sawara are the only other custom portraits (though I'm not sure Xan has any, at that)

Nice ^_^

Yeah, I should probably get around to that. I'll put it on the ol' to-do list

We'd certainly appreciate the standard three sizes (not sure I know how to do it myself, honestly) and if I can get a portrait gallery together, I'll be sure to add them.

Thanks! I don't think you guys need to rank portraits, everyone has different tastes after all. It would be nice if all of them were available on the same G3 page, though. The links in the readmes go sometimes to defunct sites, and there are only 3 (I think) portraits available on G3, 2 of which are almost copies of each other. I'm kinda not kidding in that I wouldn't have bothered at all to make mine if I had seen some of the really great later contributions in this thread first!

 

But to that end a quick question - do you guys want me to provide the appropriate 3 gamesizes here or do you do that yourselves? cheers! :-)

Hey, another great portrait!

We've had so many I find them difficult to rank, but this does feel especially close to the look of the other NPC portraits.

Oh, someone else had actually mentioned this too me, but I kept forgetting to post about it! Thanks so much It really is a great portrait.

Might want to have a look at the lovely portrait MiLeah has made for Angelo over at Petals & Thorns - here

Thanks so much, Peachplums! Show of hands, who else thinks this is awesome?

http://peachplums.deviantart.com/art/Amaeko-Suu-220965694

 

 

I made a fanart of Suu <3

Thanks, Jab!

I should say, an additional explanation the mod offers for Angelo's BGI behavior is that he was drugged off his skull for most of it. I can't pretend it's a 100% faithful importation even so. When I made the mod, I hadn't played BGI in ages; and on playing it recently, I believe the old Angelo actually had a really thick Italian accent. Which I might have tried to emulate if I had remembered!

I had Angelo in my (mostly neutral) party in SoA and he was a fine guy. Not annoying, more-or-less a typical mercenary who always knows who is his boss (/chief).

I feel, that many modders have problems to make a normal NPC mod. Often you get a NPC, that knows half of the secrets of the game-plot and your Charname is just serving in their story. Which is I think horrible, though I know, that this is just a problem of an author being in love with his/her mod (which must be therefore all-important).

However Angelo didn't have that problem. Instead of having his own "powerful" story, he was just part of the original plot of the Charname/Bhaalspawn.

I can't say, that he is the best NPC mod ever or something similar (though he is probably the best among BG2 npc mods which I know). I can't say that I will always play with him. But I will always have him in mind, when I will think of my future party.

 

Few problems:

 

Voice - I had both him and Xan in the party. Which is of course a little bit confusing. I think, that the voice suits Xan better (and the voice acting is better in Xan mod as well). And well... I still prefer original voices of BG1/2 npcs. Probably with the exception of Keto (her voice was well done).

 

Dialogue with Xan - I think it was about the moonblade and it was repeating over and over again (every 30 minutes or so). That was a little bit annoying.

 

BG1 character - Personality of BG2 Angelo doesn't fit his predecessor. In BG1 he was a real villain (he could even execute one of your NPCs). In BG2 he is following orders without his own evil intentions (though he is no saint of course).

So I thought, yeah, that looks a lot like I imagine Angelo; then I read his little description below and thought, yep, that is Angelo Thanks!

Not Angelo-specific, but I saw this art at DeviantArt, and thought it could be Angelo-ish

Great stuff Thanks, Zavrian!

I wrote a couple BG2 fanfic one-shots on my DeviantArt account some time ago, highlighting various NPC mods. One of them featured Angelo and Tiax. I can't believe I forgot about it until now. Short, and to the point. http://arcalian.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d1fo4gf

Angelo rides again in Kateling's highly recommended story The Good Star over at fanfiction.net! Old soldiers never die.

You know, I really, really like this one, not least because I feel like it connects with BG1. This is a man I can see commanding the Flaming Fist.

Hi,

I'd love for Angelo to be included; details to follow

SV

My bad, he's half Peruvian

What do you kno-o-o-ow! I don't even know who that is, but he's a dead ringer. He even looks a bit Asian if I'm not mistaken. Off to wikipedia

Anyone else thinks he looks like Benjamin Bratt?

Been a long, long while since I've drawn Angelo. (Original poster is me. It feels like a long time ago, anyway. Also own a scanner now.)

 

Link. Gotta scroll down the page quite a bit, but that works out too, because there's a spoiler warning.

Awwwww

Let's see, that makes two versions of the [event] so far; which probably is my favorite scene in the mod. I wonder, now the Xan/Angelo crossmod stuff is out there, if anyone will endeavor to put the two in the same frame...

To point out the obvious, fortunely I can play a flamboyantly gay man. Between you and me I'd say we've got the extremes covered quite nicely.

Good to know, although Jason Compton also has that pretty well sown-up

Edit: Sewn-up. I forget how to speak the Engrish

Actually, looking around: DarthMordechai, who started those Gamespot threads (and seems as if he would kill some mod authors if he could get his hands on them) said elsewhere something like "surprisingly Angelo isn't complete s**t." I probably shouldn't be as proud of this as I am...It's like in Ust'Natha where the Demon Lord is looking around, and you have the option to (say nothing), and then it leaves.

Xan also escaped relatively unscathed. Congratulations, Kulyok!

To be fair (since I've read those "review" threads that contain only positive reviews), some people there complain about all the Japanese kitsch in the mod, which honestly I am a bit ashamed of now that I've been to Japan and back and (mostly)* cured my fetish. Some people also dislike the default portrait.

Edit: *said the guy with the leaping schoolgirl in his avatar

Hey, cool! Thanks for posting this!

I'm proud because the purpose of this thread seems to be taking a nail bat to every mod ever made. Even a few that are generally acclaimed get thrown in the sack (not that there's anything wrong with that per se).

I wonder if Sister Vigilante has seen the following brief comment on Angelo. It's posted over at GameSpot Forums:

 

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/baldursgate...273&page=22

 

"Angelo is so far the best of the npc mods that I've played through. Being male, never did the romance, and some of his little "sidequests" are dull as they just consist of mercs chasing you, though the difficulty isn't as bad as some of the other custom content usually featured in mods. His biggest sidequest was a bit...troublesome, difficult sorc, had to resort to cheesy trap tactics, most of the difficulty is from poor party placement though (you get ported in, and usually ended up unable to get my tanks up close to him) Might be the fact that he's not a romancable npc as those seem to be the ones that end up being terrible, had one or two chuckle worthy moments, couple of references to bg1 stuff so...check plus. A lil' overpowered but...you can usually make any mage like that, and his stats are okay."

Someone over at SHS might make an NPC named Akron! If he gets there first, you might have to change the name!

[p.s. good luck]