Perceptions of Kova's Personality

To hear your impressions of Kova's Personality and your Sentiments about him Think of it as the reverse of an "Ask" thread - instead I'm asking the Player to describe his impression of my NPC. By the way, it is likely that opinions may differ to varying extents, so it is probably a good idea to type your own views and opinions before reading the other Notes in this thread

For the details I hope you will include in this thread, the General Details will be...

- KKRomance Value - either 1 or 2

check the Global Variable "KKRomance", and put it's value down here.
If your KKRomance value is still 0, it's probably a good idea to wait till it's either 1 or 2 before commenting on this thread, but if you want to comment still, that's cool
If you want to quicken the interaction between them in the Beta, it's probably best to use Ctrl-I.
Alternatively, if you don't want to look up the Variable
Stage 1 begins when Kova thanks Kiyone for believing in him
Stage 2 begins when they agree to be friends

- Personality Description

This basically is YOUR Description of the NPC, based on what you perceive. There can be more than one Description, to capture how differently you perceive Kova as you get to know him better.

- Sentiments

This basically is your Feelings/Views towards the NPC. You can have a few different Sentiments corresponding to each Personality, but it'd be nice to have an overall idea of how you feel towards Kova and how you'd compare your Feelings for him with your feelings for Kiyone, if you wish to compare.

from Minarvia

I guess I classify myself as a "dumb player" in that I definately play for fun and I don't know the ins and outs of all the Rules and such. I enjoy mods for the great characters and the interactions. That said, I'm in a game with Kova and Kiyone and so far I'm really enjoying it. I, like Silk, adore Kova. He seems so "real" and I like that his bitterness is letting up and he seems to be definately growing as an individual. Kiyone is growing, too, but she tends to go over my head at times. What I mean is, sometimes he dialogs actually confuse me a little and I have to read them several times to be sure I've caught her meaning. (And I don't usually see myself as lacking in the vocalbulary department!) The only thing I find a little annoying with her is how she sometimes "steps" on my pc's lines. I don't like when any mod character butts in and takes charge of the conversation (the one with Mook, for instance) and I've wished I could slap her. But that is minor, really. Overall I'm enjoying them both and I can't wait to see the resolution of the story.

Kova has so much going for him in that I love how he starts as justifiably bitter, but willing to hang on and trust a little and believe that he may at last find vindication. He is as abrasive to Kiyone as she is to him, yet he never shuts her out completely and listens to her and has faith in her decisions. I admire that. I also find myself wishing to know even more of his past with the Cowled Wizards and the Shadow Thieves. Maybe that is yet to come for me in my game. I hope so!

Well K&K's conversations sometimes also go over my head.

Many a time I've written their banters only to stop and ask myself, what exactly are they saying to each other? It seems to be a disjointed tirade of rejoinders (oxymoron?). I go back and read it over, and voila.. I see what they're saying to each other beneath the obvious. This is weird, considering that *I* am the one writing the mod! It's as if they're talking to each other of their own accord - my fingers are just the tool to record it.

Kova's conversations are on surface, easy to comprehend, but they are probably at least as layered as Kiyone's are.

This is so perfect, now that I think of it. The layered dialogs, I mean. The story here is that there is more to things than is at first apparent. That their dialogs are in such a style just reflects the story that they are part of!

I wrote several novella type stories in college, and I know what you mean about your fingers working. My characters took on a life of their own and the story just...came. They were almost independent of me. What a high! I'm just glad that your story HERE is one we can all enjoy in a game that we all enjoy.

Kova's voice reflects his personality (to me, anyway) in that he sounds soft-spoken, and a little mysterious. And he IS mysterious and as a thief and fugitive he must be soft and unobtrusive or else get captured. And sometimes he sounds a little...well...snooty! And at first he and Kiyone are aloof to each other and that tone of his fits perfectly. I just love this mod. Really! I only regret that on my new install they don't talk to Edwin. He has been in my party from day 1 and I have done much of SOA with my new game and Kova never had his "talk" with me about Edwin, even. Oh, well, minor point. It may come later. But I'll stop writing now and I think I am straying too far from the topic. Sorry!

It's really too bad this mod hasn't gotten more press. It's a really nice story, witch develops at a slow pace but keeps the PC interested. Now to the subject at hand: Kova is certainly my favorite mod-NPC, maybe my favorite NPC including Biowares (toss up with Jahiera, the only really complicated NPC in the game). Kova's talent is survival, he's been in a hard spot for a long time and the PC (and Kiyone in her way) enter the picture at the last second so to speak and offer Kova one last desperate chance to escape. He takes that chance and he wants it to work (well maybe not with Kiyone at first), but at the same time he is continually takes steps to minimize the psychological damage that the undoing of that chance will entail (particularly if the PC sells him out). He's been sold short so many times that it takes time to trust with his head, but I think he trusts with his heart by instinct.

His moral dilemma (his head against his heart) regarding "evil" reminds me much of Huck's dilemma in Huckleberry Finn. He has been raised (by the thieves and wizards, for that matter) to believe that certain things are right, and he is still trying to convince himself that those things are proper, but in reality the battle is lost (and probably was ling ago). He can convince himself that evil is ok in the abstract, but in concrete instances with real people he can't really bring himself to it.

Kova is in many ways a very heroic person; he is brave without boasting, and has a certain moral courage that few other NPC's can match. The world is full of good NPC's, but most of them have had little scope for doing evil; Kova has made hard choices, not always right, but I don't envy him the position at all. His moral courage has been tested time-and-time again and mostly he has risen to the challenge (I personally don't believe anyone can *always* rise to the challenge, this includes Paladins, but to each there own). He's a bit like many or my PC's (nothing quite makes me sad like dilalog options that have an exclamation point), quiet and thoughtful (boy do I like an NPC who can speak without shouting; only Minsc should shout). I really can't help but like him.

Great mod, well written and wonderful character. I'll write my thoughts on Kiyone another day, she grew on me a lot, but I didn't like her much to start with.

-Longarm

Thank you Much appreciated and long awaited feedback (*grasps at feedback like a thirsty man out of a desert)

Meantime, if you are willing enough to help me more with BTL, please feel free to add me to your MSN You can find my MSN email in my BTL Readme.

Cheers and thanks Hope you enjoyed BTL as much as I did creating it!

I'm happy to know that I'm not the only one that becomes stupefied concerning Kova and Kiyone inter dialogues/chats.

It is the same when I read poetry, I have to read it more than 2 times to really get what they are talking about. The words by themselves make sense and each particular sentence makes sense, but put together, they're talking about something I don't really understand.

Kova acts very suspicious at first and is almost passively hostile to the PC and Kiyone, which I thought was amusing. You often get NPC characters that love to join your party, almost for the flimsiest of reasons. Loyalty to the PC is nice, but in game terms it doesn't really mean anything because they almost never turn hostile on you in a middle of a battle, and battles are the only thing that matters to me concerning loyalty as a player. I like Viconia's dialogue concerning her relationship with the PC precisely because of the loyalty issue with a complex character, but Kova and Kiyone and the mod itself takes the concept of loyalty farther I think. In that Kova is not actually directly loyal to the PC in the beginning. The feelings Kova has for the PC is developed over the entire course of the game. Like Planescape Torment, the ability to protect a character or the loyalty of a character to the PC must depend upon their availablity to fight with the player. Meaning anyone that has played Torment understands some of the tricks used to test the player's loyalty to certain party members, test the loyalty of certain party members to the PC, and so forth. In order to "test" such loyalty and personal relationships however, requires you to give up the character. It requires some kind of temptation, some kind of deal that says "give me her and I'll give you a game reward". Resisting that temptation cements a player's loyalty to the character more, because it actually matters in game terms and a game is what we are playing. Dialogue alone cannot connect us emotionally to characters we see and hear.

So that being said, Kova's relationship with the PC is entirely different from Kiyone's, and I loved that. It is a deal more than anything else, Kova brings new enemies, but I like new enemies. And if Kova prefers to have his enemies slaughtered by me, well I'm fine with that, more xp and loot for me! Kova's enemies became my enemies, and that is a very nice touch concerning how I view his character.

As a personal sentiment, however, I find most notable Kova's ethical dilemma situation. In his heart he says he feels a need to do good, yet the situation he has been brought up in requires him to do evil. Kova has walked a balance, but eventually he fell one way or the other, and in this case he fell during the village attack. In losing his balance, however, he obtained the help of a Bhaalspawn, and in return for trials and tribulations of the Bhaalspawn Saga, Kova obtained inner peace and harmony for he no longer needed to worry about the balance between good and evil. He could finally be what his heart told him was right, without fear of the law, due to powerful friends.

This like any underdog story about good triumphing over harsh and unbeatable odds, is a very powerful and enticing story for people like me. While Kiyone drew me to her strong sense of ethics right off, Kova only showed his true strength at the very end, and like Dakkon, that strength was truly powerful.

I want to congratulate Zyraen on the battle/ambush component of his mod. I really think that such hard battles (using Tactics mod) made me appreciate Kova and Kiyone more. Since after all, I could get rid of the hassles by just booting them from the party, or booting only Kova and keeping Kiyone through debug shortcuts. It was a temptation. But when I decided to keep Kova, I made the conscious choice to also face some of the frustrations that the battles put on my game play. So when Kova eventually says thanks for my efforts, I actually appreciated it more than if I had had no problems in game with him. This really brings out the role play in "Role Play Games" for me.

I didn't mention this before, but the Romance trigger was 2, but I think I missed out on a lot of the romance dialogue at the end game due to details I've already mentioned in another post. I had at least two reiterations of my recent BGII experience, because I spliced my Bag of holding (global variables were deleted) back into a new SOA game through the use of some mod tools. So I was able to replay Beyond the Law, but since there were still a lot of quests and NPCs to play through, it wasn't entirely consistent. Some stuff I say in the first reiteration, I didn't see in the second.

Edited by Ymarsakar, 25 June 2007 - 07:00 PM.

Ymsarkar : wow... thank you so much I would love to hear from you on MSN, glad you enjoyed BTL. Very grateful and hope you had as much fun, if not more fun, playing it, than I had writing / coding for it.

BTW, just wondering, did you see their wedding scenes? I was worried on some systems it may not fire...

Off the side note, about the iterations - there is a scripted part in BTL, when Romance trigger is 1, that has up to 4 segments, but only 3 will run with each playthrough. So don't worry It's intentional. If I had more time for all of this modding stuff I'd actually write more into the romance, so every runthrough has different conversations - more replay value

Edited by Zyraen, 26 June 2007 - 01:04 AM.

Ymsarkar : wow... thank you so much I would love to hear from you on MSN, glad you enjoyed BTL. Very grateful and hope you had as much fun, if not more fun, playing it, than I had writing / coding for it.

BTW, just wondering, did you see their wedding scenes? I was worried on some systems it may not fire...

Off the side note, about the iterations - there is a scripted part in BTL, when Romance trigger is 1, that has up to 4 segments, but only 3 will run with each playthrough. So don't worry It's intentional. If I had more time for all of this modding stuff I'd actually write more into the romance, so every runthrough has different conversations - more replay value

It actually didn't fire without actually teleporting to the AR, but this was probably due to something I did, not your mod. I spent 30% of my time in the two iterations uninstalling and reinstalling mods, because I was inexperienced and didn't have the Weidu Uninstall all program, or the knowledge to know to backup dialog and override. The entire first game and the second reiteration was me figuring out all the neat stuff people have added to SoA. Because the last time I played SoA was when it was released, with no mods. And then ToB, and that's it.

Your mod files are a lot easier to look through than say, the Imoen Romance Mod ; ) I swear that mod was designed requiring an insider's guide on the variables; the meaning of the variables.

bumpity doo da.
Can't help noticing someone else got more press overall lol.
Since the Ymarsakar commented on Kova, there's been 4 others commenting on Kiyone lol

Edited by Zyraen, 14 February 2011 - 09:33 PM.