The Beginning
Baldur's Gate II introduced romances to the CRPG mainstream. I was so confused and delighted when I understood what was happening, reading those awkward Aerie banters that grew more and more romantic as the game progressed. I was stoked to play again and again, discovering which characters got the same treatment.
I went online, searching to see if Nalia had a romance I'd somehow missed. This was my first exposure to mods, because the search results came up with the Nalia Romance mod. This opened the door to a whole 'nother world of possibilities. I was AMAZED you could put your own content in the game. And Imoen was, by far, my absolute favoritest character -- a character who'd been egregiously shafted in the banter department.
I wrote and coded The Imoen Romance mod for Shadows of Amn in the summer of 2003. Three months of obsessive typing, testing and music composing. I was a Spanish 18-year-old fresh out of high school, reeling from a weird, painful relationship with my former classmates. I dove into this project with the passion only an emotionally-fraught teenager can muster. I was intensely, enormously proud of my work when I posted it under the name of Lord Mirrabbo.
Unfortunately, my English was... not as keen. I believe it's not an exaggeration to say the writing in the mod was ATROCIOUS. If I were to read those lines again, the cringe would fatally sour my face forevermore. You can still find search results panning it as the worst thing to afflict humanity since AIDS! To this day, I'm baffled it found an audience.
But an audience it did find, and they would eagerly wait for the Throne of Bhaal portion. Development was well underway! But it was ambitious, so very ambitious. A dozen different romance paths. Tons, TONS of dialogue options. A whole new quest. Several long and complicated cutscenes. Over a hundred endings. It would take time, a long time...
Stuck in Purgatory
2003 passed. Then 2004. 2005. At first, updates were frequent and an alpha was released. As the years crawled by, activity slowed, then died. 2006, 07, the forums went down, the website disappeared, then reappeared, no explanations. By 2008, the forums were a wasteland of spam, and the webpage a collection of links left to gather dust. 2009 came and went, and the Imoen Romance mod remained in Purgatory.
What happened? In short, burnout after overextension. For instance: I spent months, MONTHS, working on a single conversation with 10 branching paths of 10 options each... for an argument in a chain of relationship fights you could have with Imoen. Maybe 1 person out of 1000 would ever see these arguments. No-one installs a romance mod to have multiple lovers' quarrels that include every cruelty under the sun. But I was determined to include the option to do so, and to hell with your insanely bloated scope.
Predictably, I got burned out doing this, and my interest waned over time. There was no end in sight and I grew far more interested in writing novels, which got the bulk of my creative work. In addition, the forums were a real drain of really stupid drama, it really was a cesspit of mental illness. So I distanced myself from that too.
But instead of owning up to it and actually making an announcement, I just waffled and ignored the problem. My first big passion project, mired in a rut of neglect, a source of guilt and shame instead of pride. And so the years kept passing by.
The TC Dale Resurrection, by TC Dale
2010 came... and there was news!
After fearing for the worst, T.C. Dale got in touch with Lord Mirrabbo and asked if the mod would ever be completed -- and if not, if he would be willing to transfer its "ownership" to someone else, and let that person try to complete it. It seemed like a shame to let such a great mod, with such a loyal fan base, just fade away into oblivion.
Lord Mirrabbo responded and stated that he, too, had been thinking the same thing. A deal was struck, and in late January of 2010, stewardship of the Imoen Romance mod, website, and forums was handed over to T.C. Dale.
T.C. quickly realized that the mod needed some new life -- and that she couldn't do it alone. The website was redesigned, the forums started up again. Kat Bella, a modder and composer widely respected in the modding community, signed on to help code and finish the mod.
And here we are today... still waiting, but with more hope than ever before.
There and Back Again, now with more Quirk Chungus
But THEN! For reasons, the project became again stuck in limbo for a bunch of years. Despair exerted a choke-hold upon what few fans remained. It was only much later, in 2014, that a hero shrouded in mystery emerged from the shadows to take up the holiests of quests and blah blah blah!
Vanatos, fantastic coder of legend, picked up every available scrap and finished the crap out of the half-functioning mod, finally putting together a final version of Imoen Romance 2.0 for Shadows of Amn. Encouraged by this development, Israel Barbuzano, AKA Israel Blargh! AKA El Blargho, alleged person and pretty OK dude, took up writing the ToB portion of the mod.
That's me, Lord Mirrabbo, many years and several novels later. The mod had been a thorn in my conscience all along. I had to see it finished, I had to. I wouldn't have been able to do it without Sarevok08 and Vanatos doing all the coding work. And so we marched on toward this story's long, belabored conclusion.
Now the mod is finally finished forever, to the great rejoicing of AT LEAST seven people!
