Wormerine

Ok, just got that screenshot, and it is too good not to share:

I always dislike when goblins in the BV surrender. I think it comes down to it being usually the first area after the grove, and after a lenghty period of time of talking, I am itching for some fight.

I posted a screenshot of him on the first page of this thread - you can judge for yourself. It would say not hot, unless you are very into aging halfings.

Yes, there is the party, in which companions verbally state if you gained enough reputation to get a cuddle. Believe it or not, but this is better that it was in EA. Unfortunately, problems don’t stop after that. Companions don’t take no for an answer and romance with Gale and Wyll still seemed to progress, even though I said no to them during the party. I think Laez might have too, but surprisingly enough she was delicate about it another that it didn’t bother. Both Wyll and Gale though got what seemed like a start of a romantic encounter where my PC was getting all starry eyed, until I said no, and got sad puppy eyes from both blokes. I suspect the issue is that in spite of what Larian claimed there isn’t much non-romance content (not that here is much romance content to begin with). Karlach and Astarion were the only companions that didn’t hit on my PC during the party, and frankly they have been barely preset in act2 - even though Karlach is a permanent member of my party. I will be honest, maybe in different playthroughs companions will show drastically different sides, but so far after act1 they feel very underwhelming - I don’t feel the presence of amount of work that supportively went into it. It would be fine if we got a lot of them, but companion cast seems very underwhelming to me so far - both in the size and narrative depth/consistency of the ensamble. I also have a feeling that decision to not kill off companions haven’t been done early, and the way characters behave when they didn’t witness something feels very off at times.

Yes, I am referring to class dialogue options. It’s been a minxed thing for bard. There were some good ones etc. I know this or can do this because I am a bard, but there has been also some odd ones.

I will agree - and I find it problematic in BG3 due to how much the game defines for you. I had to work really hard to create a character I want to play with what the game gives me. Even so, it’s rather bland as quite often bard specific lines the game gives me don’t line up with how I want to roleplay. That isn’t issue that’s limited to bards - each class comes with pre-selected personality. I found sorcerers lines to be really insufferable in EA. I much prefers PoE1&2’s chanters to bards (as well as its implementation of race/class reactivity).

I would say it is a fair representation of being an artist - they should balance it as it is balanced in real life - underpay bards for everything. “Well, I would pay you with this artefact if you were a worrier, but why won’t you do this quest for me for an exposure? No? Well, you clearly aren’t passionate enough about your job”. I do think bard is good to the point of being boring. I haven’t lost many checks and those that I did and cared about, could easily reroll using inspiration. I am out of inspiration - I burned all of it to convince

I don’t think it is BG3 specific - I think that if game reaches wide enough audience, it will attract some individuals not willing to accept any slight against the game. And speaking of slights - Halsin got ousted from my party for a very silly reason. Hotbar still autoadds abilities whenever they are acquired. It’s been annoying - remove weapon skills => switch to torch, and switch back => weapons skills get shoved back into the hotbar. Annoying but I can work around that. What I am not willing to deal with is every Druid spell getting readded to the hotbar after using wildshape. Now when I am writing it, I suppose it would be enough to keep the spells on the hotbar out of sight (it respects whatever arrangement of spells was made before shapeshifting). Still annoying.

Nah, DLCs are solid. The Spacer’s Choice edition… that’s truly not the best choice.

Right? I was never a fan of underdark and grimforge - I hoped those areas were just unfinished in EA, but it wasn’t the case. I suppose those are Larian’s version of dungeons, but I find their combat design too sloppy to make for a satisfying gameplay. Someone said earlier that story picks up at the end of act2. I am about 15 hours into act2 and I am pretty much where I was after rescuing Halsin - reach the tower. Not much new from companions - they feel much closer to D:OS2 now. Each of them seems to have a story beat in the act (and granted, one of them was pretty awesome), but they are much, much quieter now, and their responses feel more formulaic.

If I saved using hotfix4 yesterday, that solves my question whenever I should buy Shadow Gambit, or not

I actually quite like the plot - but the set up isn’t very obvious (good!) but it will be revealed in time what is really going on. It does come together eventually. DLCs are solid. If you are enjoying the base game that much, they are definitely worth picking up. They are in-campaign expansions, so you want to play them before you wrap up current play through.

I backtracked to Mountian Pass area and enjoyed it quite a bit. Managed to recruit the first non origin companion, but I have some questions about whoever designed stat destributions:

Do they though? I can't speak for 1.0, but I replayed early access with every patch, and I never noticed much difference (again, aside from big good/bad path, which it seems you can switch back and forth throughout the playthrough, at least for now). Between team help inspiration point skill checks are mostly passable by any character regardless of their skill set, and I haven't really seen class/race options leading to unique outcomes. At best you might not have to take a roll for a skill check, but I dont' find those particularly valuable. There are some good bits - the quest to kill goblin leaders is fantastic, and there are some nice sidequests with neat follow ups like rescuing Z. from gnolls. Unless I am just not very perceptive, most quest, though are not very sprawling. There is plenty of ways to break quest progression and for the game to march forward - like pickpocketing item before a characters hands it to you. But while cute, those tend to be too meta to make them interesting to me.

I finally ventured outside Early Access are, met one of the legacy characters. Nothing to blow my socks off. I feel like Larian is struggling to write compelling characters, who aren't over the top like Astarion. Karlach, who seems to be the only semi normal in the party, is also a total bore. It's probably due to characters being as deep as a puddle. They still didn't evolve beyond a one minute intro that game gives you during the character creation. So far, even Minsc in BG2 had more going for him than any of this lot (not in terms of content, but in terms of narrative potential). I have been cooling off on the game. In my time with early access I generally enjoyed opening=>grove=>goblin camp, and after that my attention have been waning. Same is happening in this playthrough - I hoped things will picks up once I reach act2 but it still hasn't happened yet. I think lack of narrative drive is to blame. I am pursuing the same objective for about 20h. Narratively, nothing of note has happened in quite a while. I was wondering if writing got better in BG3 or I got desensitized to it- I think a little bit of both. I was getting along with act1 just fine, but act2 really feels off to me so far - like as if Larian have done act1 for Early Access, and now they are just making stuff up as they go along. It feels like the game is not going anywhere - just another chunk of content to go through. I am running into more and more issues with reactivity. Mostly small stuff, but some really odd ones, considering I feel like I am good boy and following paths set out by devs. The most recent example, is Gale crit. NPCs (oh gosh, Gales story somehow became even more idiotic) whom we met on a road, and sent him out to camp to chat with him later. Instead of being there, he appeared a new after I woke up, and the encounter played out as if we never met before, covering the same lines as before. Just... very weird, as in the first conversation "go to the camp and we will chat there" is an option, that the game gives you. People harp on how much choice the game gives you - and I am just not feeling it. I can't recall when was the last choice I made - outside the big good/bad path. Sure, I get a choice to murder everyone I meet, but that's not a real choice, is it. I also don't like that the game lacks guts to restrict content. I already traded off "speaking with animals" from my PC. It's a worthless skill to own, considering how easily it is acquired from other sources. It' a real shame, speak with dead/animals etc. could provide nice spins to individual playthroughts, but the game is incapable of rewarding those choices - instead it's choose to make everything available to everyone, making everything feel rather bland.

Yes, having full VO is nice, but unfortunately in Deadfire the quality of VO suffered. PoE1 had some outstanding voice content, PoE2 not so much, with some weak bits everyonce in a while. Understandable, considering how it got jammed into the production schedule, but unfortunate nonetheless. There are also some conversation trees that don't work terribly well with VO.

Still not feeling it, but at least looks more promising than the awful demo they released a while back. Oh, a Bad Rats sequel?

I did find Laez intro to be a bit over the top, but I do like Wylls. The swashbuckling feel of it fits the image he tries to craft for himself. Where's I can't imagine Laez timing her jump with a dragon just to make an impression on a thrall she wants to kill.

You mean Starfield? Skyfall? Sure. Just trying to guess how the game have sold, based on data they provided. The numbers they shared, just seem much lower than I expected considering the assumed success. Based on those @kanisatha might have been right.

Hmmm, the numbers here don’t seem very impressive. We don’t get an exact player count but we now how many origins were created and that sum is 7% of all characters created. Unless my estimate is off around 1,645,386 characters were created in total. Even if we assume no one created two characters (like I did), that would mean max of 1,6m players at most. That’s, significantly less than 2,5m of early access players.

Eh, you don’t. BG3 is more or less that but better. For the combat system I still would recommend D:OS1 over D:OS2.

Phew. Finally finished surface area of act1. Throwing is still as broken as it was in EA. Since I found returning spike, the game has been laughably easy. On top of doing full attack damage to begin with, if you attack from heigh enough they also stack crush damage (comes from items falling on creatures) on top - it seems to sometimes apply twice. She melts Ogres in one go. I consider abandoning the weapons, and frankly it's been making the encounters rather dull.

Well, yes. That would be entirely different system. Apparently those changable faces are pretty hard to pull off. Personally, I am happy with what Larian did. There is enough variation there for me to find something I like.