I do enjoy romances in my RPGs (when they're done well, at least), but I can live without them too. So no big problem there.

The only romances done right by Bioware were in Baldur's Gate 2 where you get a bunch of popup text dialogue periodically. Everything else after that seem to be blown up to supernova proportions.

Agreed, but since Pillars of Eternity is a spiritual succesor of that, not havin romances is merely because Chris Avelone can't do them properly, and he even said so. I can live with them not being there if the option is to have them but be crap or not having them but have everything else be awesome.

Mods are gonna add romance options anyway, assuming the game is moddable and any of the characters in any way interesting, haven't really read anything about that ;p (I am Backer, but haven't followed every single forum topic there)

Romance in SAGA class CRPG's needs to actually exist in some form, or the epilogues are gonna be one boring as hell read ;)
"Congrats you won after 20 years of battles, everyone else went home and forgot you, the end"

I just hope PoE is gonna have massive amounts of NPC to Player and NPC to NPC banter, or the game will feel as dead and souless as Icewind Dale did.... we'll see ,)

Nothing makes my eyes roll back in my head as quickly as a bullshit romance arc with polygon puppets.

I have never really understood what people have against optional romance plots. Every game I've played with romance plots have been pretty simple in how you can ignore them all together or steer the conversations towards neutral territory. Even the much berated Bioware titles are not nearly as pushy with the stuff some people make them out to be.

Paradox Interactive to publish Pillars of Eternity:

http://www.joystiq.com/2014/03/18/paradox-interactive-to-publish-obsidians-pillars-of-eternity/

Publisher will handle Marketing and Distribution of said game.

I love Paradox to death for their grand strategy games but I'm troubled by their insistence on steam lately. Hope it doesn't affect PE DRM-free delivery status or arrival on GOG.

Thats what I realized. Mabye this will also convince Paradox to release their games here on GOG as well.

So... what does this mean for the GOG version? Is Paradox coming aboard?

Hope it's not the other way around.

Anyways this looks really sweet:
http://media.obsidian.net/eternity/media/updates/0074/pe-backer-inn.jpg

The game's been long confirmed for GOG - it's in the right-hand panel of http://eternity.obsidian.net/ - so all should be well. It'll be interesting to see whether the listed publisher is Paradox or Obsidian.

Just read my update. I am now quite worried about Paradox Steam-only way and their absence here.
Hopefully they will either allow them to release it here too or maybe even to bring Paradox on board.

*sigh*.

Still deciding on what to get using my pledge. I went for $65 one but im wondering the difference between the retail box vs Collectors Ed box in higher tier?.