Rainer/Silke (possible spoilers)

[loveshorsesgirl]

I just completed the game- (already? great game)

 

I played as a female (for obvious reasons, look at my username) and, after a bit of fangirling, managed to be able to kiss Rainer. So, if you join the Rebels, after the first time Rainer talks to you then, does his dialogue have an opportunity to change again? I kissed him every time I saw him- but that's pretty much the extent of the interaction. Don't really talk to him that much, either, even though I'd really love to. Is there any way that anybody has found to change the diologe after that? I'd absolutely LOVE to see more relationship-type stuff in the game, or games in the future.

[eaintree]

Who is Rainer? No clue. Playing as male.

[stranger]

Rainer is the male scout, Silke is the female scout.

[loveshorsesgirl]

Rainer is the male scout, Silke is the female scout.

 

Exactly. Thanks for answering! And sorry for not making that more clear in the first place. My bad!

Also... I found Rainer very cute throughout the entire game. Anyone else?

[Valdain the King]

Exactly. Thanks for answering! And sorry for not making that more clear in the first place. My bad!

Also... I found Rainer very cute throughout the entire game. Anyone else?

 

Any scout is cute guy or girl.

[Lilith]

I suspect the romance subplot in Avadon 2 was a kind of experiment to see whether it'd be well-received by players. So far, some people have liked it and people who don't like it are mostly just ignoring its existence, so the overall reception has been positive. So there's a chance you might see more romance options in future games. No promises, though; I don't design these games, I just play them.

[Weird Heather]

In my experience, romance in role playing games has typically been contrived and/or underdeveloped, since it is seldom central to the story and is often added as an afterthought (and such story lines are frequently partially abandoned when the developer decides to prematurely release the game, i.e. Neverwinter Nights 2). I haven't yet seen the romance options with Rainer (since I didn't join the rebels), but from what I have heard so far it doesn't seem to become a major part of the story. The only genres of game I have played so far with well-developed romance stories are Japanese-style visual novels (in which romance is a convention of the genre) and some text adventures. I think it would be nice to see a role playing game with a romance as a major part of the story; it would be a nice change from the usual beat-up-the-monsters-and-destroy-the-evil-wizard-or-other-evil-threat type of story that dominates the genre. If the elements of romance in Avadon 2 are well received, maybe if we are lucky, there will be a better developed romance in Avadon 3 or some other future Spiderweb game, and maybe it will be central to the story.

[eaintree]

I think my fave video game romance ever is in Jade Empire. It wasn't integral to the plot, but JE created a story in which *everything* that happened, even the romance, somehow seemed to unfold very naturally and logically, so it didn't feel like an afterthought.

 

JE also had one of the all-time memorable YouTube vids: [media]

[/media]

[Student of Trinity]

I'm only early in the game — so please, no specific spoilers — but I happen to be a straight male playing with a female PC. My daughter was sitting beside me when I made my character, and wanted me to make a girl. I mention this personal detail only because it may be relevant to the point I want to raise, which is:

 

I don't see how this romance can get off the ground, because Rainer seems to be such a wimp, and my PC is already quite the heroine. She hasn't decided anything politically yet, but it sure seems as though she must be able to do a lot better than that guy.

 

So my questions are 1) Does Rainer/Silke somehow turn out later to be more impressive, or 2) Is the whole premise of this relationship supposed to be that Cute + Weak = Attractive? And then if so, 3) Does this only seem like a problem for me because Rainer is male and men are supposed to be more than cute and helpless while for women that's somehow just fine?

 

I'm really wondering whether this venture into romance by Spiderweb is something that only seems to work by very sexist standards. But loveshorsesgirl evidently tolerates it okay. Am I seeing this wrong?

[Lilith]

The scout never really struck me as weak or helpless, just a little less lucky than the PC (and with a different, less combat-focused skillset). Buuut while I'm also playing a female PC, I immediately used the cheat code to replace Rainer with Silke. Their dialogue's nearly identical, but maybe the way that dialogue comes across is different? I don't pretend to be above letting stereotypes influence my thinking, even if I try to escape them.

 

If you're still early enough in the game that you haven't reunited with them after the part where you're separated for a while, I guess I can see how you got that impression about the scout, since it's possible to spend quite a bit of the game actively searching for them while they are, as far as you know, passively being searched for. If that's the position you're in, I'd just ask you to keep in mind that you don't actually know yet what they've been doing while you were looking for them.

[Edgwyn]

In the first encounter, Silke/Rainer trained the PC in woodcraft and fighting and sacrificed herself/himself so that the PC could escape, so I am really missing out on what is wrong with her/his's womanhood/manhood. Those do not seem like weak characteristics to me, and she/he also directs the PC's actions in the first encounter. Is she/he supposed to grunt a lot and beat her/his chest? That said, I believe that Silke/Rainer shows independence the second time you meet her/him. I have not gotten to the third encounter yet.

[eaintree]

One of the first things you learn about the scout is that they have a talent for moving silently, which makes sense in light of the path they take after you separate from them in the first part of the game.

[Student of Trinity]

I've met Rainer a second time after the first zone, having done some searching, and heard his story about what he was doing in the meantime. It doesn't sound evil, just ineffectual. Practically ineffective, and morally lukewarm. Whereas my PC, whatever she's going to do, is going to make a difference. Rainer doesn't seem to be in her league.

 

Maybe this just means I'm going to be a nightmare when my daughters start dating. Note to self: watch out for this.

[Edgwyn]

I think that a lot of us will be nightmares when our daughters start dating. With any sort of RPG you are playing the 99th percentile human being. Finding a 99th percentile match would be difficult. While Silke/Rainer are not 99th percentile, they have displayed resiliency and self-sacrifice and certainly do more than the farmers or townspeople that your PC could fall in love with. I think that Jeff wisely avoided the easiest possible way of doing his first computer romance which would be the damsel/mansel in distress gets rescued by the PC and falls in love. The closest to equals that our PCs have are their fellow Hands and a relationship there would be awkward.

The King's Quest series of 1980s computer games were among the earliest that I remember with any sort of romance to them, and it was very much of the rescue the damsel in distress kind until the fourth one in the series where the PC was female.

[eaintree]

I've met Rainer a second time after the first zone, having done some searching, and heard his story about what he was doing in the meantime. It doesn't sound evil, just ineffectual. Practically ineffective, and morally lukewarm. Whereas my PC, whatever she's going to do, is going to make a difference. Rainer doesn't seem to be in her league.

 

You can fill in the gaps with your imagination, much as you have to do while reading any good comic book.

 

If that doesn't suffice, then don't sleep with the dude, hm?

[Randomizer]

Maybe this just means I'm going to be a nightmare when my daughters start dating. Note to self: watch out for this.

When the boyfriends come over just talked to them politely while cleaning your weapon collection. Honing the edge of a blade and testing the sharpness will get the point across.

[eaintree]

Sorry to spoil, but there are a dozen full-screen shots of NFSW erotica when you get hot with the scout, later. They thought of your character all the time when they were in chains and being horsewhipped as a slave. They can't wait to find out how much damage you can do in a single round. Silke porn is already all over Google.

[Student of Trinity]

You can fill in the gaps with your imagination, much as you have to do while reading any good comic book.

 

You can do that? Dang. No wonder I never got into comic books. All I could think was, How can these people even see, with all these big white balloons in front of their heads all the time?

[Lilith]

I've met Rainer a second time after the first zone, having done some searching, and heard his story about what he was doing in the meantime. It doesn't sound evil, just ineffectual. Practically ineffective, and morally lukewarm. Whereas my PC, whatever she's going to do, is going to make a difference. Rainer doesn't seem to be in her league.

 

Maybe this just means I'm going to be a nightmare when my daughters start dating. Note to self: watch out for this.

 

If you've only met once after the reunion, you still don't have the whole story yet. Once you do have the whole story, it may or may not improve your opinion of them: I'm just telling you there is more story to be had on that front.

[Kordanor]

I just checked the forums to see whether I actually have to support the rebels to not miss out on the relationship with silke...

 

Not very happy that this path is limited. I mean the player character still has hardly any reason for not supporting Black Fortess or at least the Pact and Avadon. Why should the character suddenly decide "Oh, well, I will just also join the guys I fought till now!"

 

That said, You also can only get the achievement of "Kissing Silke" when joining the rebels.

Don't see any achievements however which you can't get as a rebel, am I right?

[Randomizer]

There's an endgame medal for staying loyal to Avadon.

 

You can't get all the medals with one play through.

[Edgwyn]

I do believe that there were more reasons in Avadon 1 to rebel than in Avadon 2. I saved the game right before the point where you have to make the decision with Silke. I then ignored

Why should the character suddenly decide "Oh, well, I will just also join the guys I fought till now!"

and instead chose the path of a player who wants to get all of the medals available on Normal and a character who is thinking with the wrong portion of his anatomy and killed my allies and joined the rebels. I did think that Silke's concerns she expresses after the fight were well done, nobody trusts a traitor. After receiving the medal, I opened up my saved game and proceeded to kill all of the rebels with Commander Odil at my side. I found killing all of the rebels a lot more satisfactory then betraying my oath for a kiss. I have proceeded through the game as a loyalist. I have not yet decided if that means loyalty to the Pact as opposed to loyalty to Redbeard.

[Kordanor]

Yub, sounds good. Will do the same.

[Lilith]

Also, playing as a loyalist I honestly didn't feel like I was missing out on anything. The final meeting with the scout on the loyalist path is actually kinda touching in its own sad way, especially if you remained friendly toward them throughout the game.

 

I've got a backup save from just before the decision, so I can always go back to that for the achievement.

 

I feel like the main misstep with the romance was giving the player too little time to get to know the scout before they're captured. The player character and the scout have known each other for a while at the beginning of the game, and it's played out like your relationship was on the verge of becoming intimate before the scout's capture put a big ol' roadblock in the way, but we as players only get to follow the scout around for one area so we aren't really put in the same situation as our character. If the scout had been a loyal ally to the player character for more of the game, it might make deciding whether to stay loyal to them or to Avadon more of a difficult decision.

[mikeprichard]

I feel like the main misstep with the romance was giving the player too little time to get to know the scout before they're captured. The player character and the scout have known each other for a while at the beginning of the game, and it's played out like your relationship was on the verge of becoming intimate before the scout's capture put a big ol' roadblock in the way, but we as players only get to follow the scout around for one area so we aren't really put in the same situation as our character. If the scout had been a loyal ally to the player character for more of the game, it might make deciding whether to stay loyal to them or to Avadon more of a difficult decision.

 

Exactly. The whole thing seems pretty tacked-on, as you don't have much time to actually interact/develop a relationship with the scout in-game. I appreciate that Jeff is trying something new, and he obviously doesn't have a AAA budget to throw around, but the way the "romance" was implemented, I don't think it adds anything to the game.

[Lilith]

Exactly. The whole thing seems pretty tacked-on, as you don't have much time to actually interact/develop a relationship with the scout in-game. I appreciate that Jeff is trying something new, and he obviously doesn't have a AAA budget to throw around, but the way the "romance" was implemented, I don't think it adds anything to the game.

 

Not to name any names, but this isn't something an AAA budget necessarily helps with.

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Edited June 27, 2023 by ...

[Lilith]

sea, is there anything about Avadon 2 that you actually like? I mean, you apparently enjoyed the demo enough to pay money for the full game, but every post of yours has been a complaint.

[mikeprichard]

 

 

Not to name any names, but this isn't something an AAA budget necessarily helps with.

 

Ha, no argument there.

[eaintree]

You mean BioWare? Yeah, BioWare suck at it too.

 

Bioware made Jade Empire, which I posted about earlier in this thread. Nothing about that game sucks.

 

The Avadon romance isn't Anna Karenina, it's a video game. Various aspects of A2 don't thrill me, but I had no problem with the romance. It's fine. Didn't find it pandering. Chill out.

[Edgwyn]

I feel like the main misstep with the romance was giving the player too little time to get to know the scout before they're captured. The player character and the scout have known each other for a while at the beginning of the game, and it's played out like your relationship was on the verge of becoming intimate before the scout's capture put a big ol' roadblock in the way, but we as players only get to follow the scout around for one area so we aren't really put in the same situation as our character. If the scout had been a loyal ally to the player character for more of the game, it might make deciding whether to stay loyal to them or to Avadon more of a difficult decision.

 

Another way to have adjusted this would be to have had Silke/Rainer take up employment with Avadon (not necessarily as a hand, but as a courier or spy) after she/he escapes. (I am happy that Silke/Rainer escaped on their own, otherwise everyone would be beating Jeff up for the Damsel/Mansel in distress) That would have allowed for more interaction (imagine Silke/Rainer popping up in various maps with information or clues, like the Wayfarer) throughout the game instead of forcing the rebellion decision so early. Then the Silke/Rainer to kiss or not to kiss moment could be based on the player's choice in the end game.

 

As to

Jeff's entire method of motivating the player to care about the rebels is to basically tell the player "hey this guy/girl might have feelings for you, so obviously you should care about this character and want to back him/her at every opportunity".

we do the exact same thing with the hands, but nobody seems to have much of a problem with it. Sure, Khalida, lets go kill the town mayor, anything to ensure your loyalty to me in case I decide to try to off Redbeard in the end game. Actually, I used Khalida a lot, but did not use Alcander and Yannick hardly at all. I did see my character as having more of an emotional attachment to Silke/Rainer then several of the Hands.

[mouton]

I suspect the romance subplot in Avadon 2 was a kind of experiment to see whether it'd be well-received by players. So far, some people have liked it and people who don't like it are mostly just ignoring its existence, so the overall reception has been positive. So there's a chance you might see more romance options in future games. No promises, though; I don't design these games, I just play them.

The best part is the whole gender thing that Jeff cares about - no matter if male or female, they have the very same dialogue. And yet, people react quite differently, lol. I play a female tinkermage and was quite surprised when some other forum poster said Silke was "coming onto him", when I simply saw Rainer as friendly

[Fredwin]

I thought it was handled fairly well. It's not a huge part of the game, but you technically have more dialogue with the scout than any other NPC except maybe Protus and Redbeard. I had agreed to help the scout but the scene that takes place right after that forced me to change my mind, wasn't having that at all.

[Student of Trinity]

And yet, people react quite differently.

Yes, this is what got me interested in this whole thing. I'm really not sure, myself, whether I would have judged Silke as severely as I instinctively seemed to judge Rainer. Maybe, but I wonder.

 

I can't really find out, now, because I've thought about it too much. But it's a really interesting experience. There could be some cool studies done this way, I think.

 

In fact the whole medium of graphically modest CRPGs like Jeff's might an interesting one for psychological studies. It's low-budget, compared to film. There are fewer variables to control, precisely because the test vehicle is so much simpler. You don't have to worry so much about discovering, after three months of taking data, that some prop in the background is cuing some of your subjects and skewing their responses. Yet it's richer than just having your subjects read text and then answer multiple choice questions. Getting your subjects involved in a game, even a bit, would make them less self-conscious about taking your test. You could run a short test in a web browser as a free online game, and let in-game choices be your questionnaire. If you wanted you could run a few supervised in-person pilot trials, to get an estimate of things like correlations between player choices and player gender, then go online for scale, collecting voluntary information from subjects. Online people might lie about their personal details but you could compare statistics with your supervised smaller samples to try to get a handle on this.

[springacres]

The best part is the whole gender thing that Jeff cares about - no matter if male or female, they have the very same dialogue. And yet, people react quite differently, lol. I play a female tinkermage and was quite surprised when some other forum poster said Silke was "coming onto him", when I simply saw Rainer as friendly

I didn't understand where they got that impression at all. The only line of dialogue I saw that I thought could be interpreted that way, came across to me as the scout having a crush on my character but not wanting to come out and admit it for fear of rejection. Hence the "I wouldn't mind" instead of, say, "I would like it if we could patrol together."

[mouton]

I didn't understand where they got that impression at all. The only line of dialogue I saw that I thought could be interpreted that way, came across to me as the scout having a crush on my character but not wanting to come out and admit it for fear of rejection. Hence the "I wouldn't mind" instead of, say, "I would like it if we could patrol together."

Easy. In our culture, males tend to be more forward, while females tend to be more circumspect. Thus, a reasonably neutral utterance by Rainer could be read as "coming on" when used by Silke. A textbook example of our gender encoding.

[springacres]

I guess I didn't think about cultural differences playing into people's interpretations of the scout's behavior. Good point.

[Edgwyn]

The other part of this is that many of the people commenting in this forum were anticipating a romance and so were looking for "coming on" and so were biased to interpret "I would like it if we could patrol together" as "I would like it if we could patrol together because I want to have 2.1 kids with you" without even considering the possibility of "I would like it if we could patrol together because you are more competent than the last five people I had to train."

 

To get a truly fair view of the Silke/Rainer interaction, we would need to hear from people who had no idea that there was going to be a romance option in the game and see how many of them even noticed that she/he was open to the possibility of a relationship/hitting on the PC.

[springacres]

"I would like it if we could patrol together because you are more competent than the last five people I had to train."

 

This made me giggle.

 

Seriously, though, it doesn't seem like many of them were even open to the possibility that the scout was just interested in getting to know the PC better. But then, like I said before, I read it as "this character kind of likes/has a crush on my character and wants to know if my character feels the same way about them" and approached it from that angle.

 

(In all fairness, I've put my own characters in similar situations before when they were shy about admitting their feelings, so I was also reading with that in mind to help me consider where the scout might be coming from.)

[Fredwin]

The other part of this is that many of the people commenting in this forum were anticipating a romance and so were looking for "coming on" and so were biased to interpret "I would like it if we could patrol together" as "I would like it if we could patrol together because I want to have 2.1 kids with you" without even considering the possibility of "I would like it if we could patrol together because you are more competent than the last five people I had to train."

 

To get a truly fair view of the Silke/Rainer interaction, we would need to hear from people who had no idea that there was going to be a romance option in the game and see how many of them even noticed that she/he was open to the possibility of a relationship/hitting on the PC.

 

I didn't know about a romance going into the game, but I picked up on it when there was a lot of 'blushing' in the dialogue, that was a dead giveaway.

[springacres]

I'd heard rumors ages ago, but the blushing was the dead giveaway for me too.

[Edgwyn]

The blushing was indeed a dead giveaway, and it was certainly not subtle. I just do not think that it was extreme as some of the other posters to this forum have stated. I think that had the exact same dialogue played out in real life, some folks would have missed the fact that Silke/Rainer was interested in them.

[Alberich]

Also, playing as a loyalist I honestly didn't feel like I was missing out on anything. The final meeting with the scout on the loyalist path is actually kinda touching in its own sad way, especially if you remained friendly toward them throughout the game...

 

I feel like the main misstep with the romance was giving the player too little time to get to know the scout before they're captured. The player character and the scout have known each other for a while at the beginning of the game, and it's played out like your relationship was on the verge of becoming intimate before the scout's capture put a big ol' roadblock in the way, but we as players only get to follow the scout around for one area so we aren't really put in the same situation as our character. If the scout had been a loyal ally to the player character for more of the game, it might make deciding whether to stay loyal to them or to Avadon more of a difficult decision.

 

I agree with this wholly.

 

However, I will admit a part of me was hoping that, even as a loyalist, I would end up with a position of influence in Avadon, such that I could issue (or convince Redbeard to issue) an amnesty to rebels who came in from the cold, and thus bring Silke back to me. The fact that I couldn't do this -- and wanted my character to have a romance if possible -- put the PC on the same footing as the companions. I mean, each of them has the chance to do something Avadon won't like in order to carry out some personal goal. In this one, so do you. (I went so far as to return her satchel to her, though it felt wrong, but in the end I simply couldn't lead our old boss into an ambush or betray the Pact for her.)

[eaintree]

The other part of this is that many of the people commenting in this forum were anticipating a romance and so were looking for "coming on" and so were biased to interpret "I would like it if we could patrol together" as "I would like it if we could patrol together because I want to have 2.1 kids with you" without even considering the possibility of "I would like it if we could patrol together because you are more competent than the last five people I had to train."

 

To get a truly fair view of the Silke/Rainer interaction, we would need to hear from people who had no idea that there was going to be a romance option in the game and see how many of them even noticed that she/he was open to the possibility of a relationship/hitting on the PC.

 

If I had had no idea that there would be a romance option, I would have seen it from Silke's dialogue within the first two minutes of the game, because she acts like no NPC in any Spiderweb game ever made before this one. The pregnant pauses before anything much has been said beyond "yes, let's patrol together", the attitude that screams "desert nymph." A blind man would notice the vibes.

[ged]

I agree that the vibes were really obvious from the beginning. Also, I might not remember this correctly, but Silke abandons the Pact because she doesn't like the killing. Then she get's pressured to join the rebels, and all of a sudden she's trying to convince you to lead a bunch of Pact warriors who trust you into an ambush. I like the tough decision, but it makes her motives a little hard to understand. Is she just weak minded? Did she decide killing is okay again now that she is fighting for the Wyldrealm rebels? Maybe I missed something. But overall I guess I didn't find her very impressive, not enough to double cross Odil. Who by the way, was one of the more badass NPCs, in my opinion.

 

As a side note, Nathalie's character in Avadon 1 might be a better model for a romantic relationship. She starts as head strong and overconfident, though naive, only interested in if you can take her out on missions or not. Later she makes some remarks about your trustworthiness and prowess in battle. Or maybe I made that up. Anyways, it seems like a relationship like that could easily become romantic, and would feel a lot more exciting to me. Might have been nice to see a strong personality from Silke first, and then maybe she has some turning point where she starts liking you, yet still retains a strong personality. I might have joined the rebellion had I felt there was some momentum to the relationship.

[Lilith]

I agree that the vibes were really obvious from the beginning. Also, I might not remember this correctly, but Silke abandons the Pact because she doesn't like the killing. Then she get's pressured to join the rebels, and all of a sudden she's trying to convince you to lead a bunch of Pact warriors who trust you into an ambush. I like the tough decision, but it makes her motives a little hard to understand. Is she just weak minded? Did she decide killing is okay again now that she is fighting for the Wyldrealm rebels? Maybe I missed something. But overall I guess I didn't find her very impressive, not enough to double cross Odil. Who by the way, was one of the more badass NPCs, in my opinion.

 

Reading between the lines a little, Silke's objection was specifically to killing her own people; that is, the people of the Wyldrylm. Odil and his soldiers were mostly from the Kva, so I guess she was okay with killing them. It hardly paints a flattering picture of Silke, but it's at least consistent.

[springacres]

Actually, Odil was Kellem, but otherwise I agree with Lilith's reading of Silke/Rainer's character. Dedrik makes similar statements, although to his credit he seems more hesitant to kill when meeting certain enemies face-to-face.

[Alberich]

I think it would be more poignant -- and more realistic -- if Silke found you less attractive for abandoning your principles, the Pact, and Avadon for her sake, and more attractive for sticking with what you believe in, being strong and unyielding with the enemies of the Pact, while still sparing her. (In the former case, the background music could change to selections from Carmen...)