BG3 - Butt kicking for goodness!

[Hawke64]

5 hours ago, PK htiw klaw eriF said:

The new patch dropped a new epilogue, which is another party in the campsite several months after. No really big additions or spoilers, but it leaned pretty hard on the prospect for a future adventure. Personally I'd be cool with Baldur's Gate 3: Descent into Avernus...Again, but we'll just have to wait and see what happens.

Quote

Main Highlights

• Epilogue: An entirely new section at the end of the game after the defeat of the (spoiler) that aims to provide a well-deserved sense of closure with your allies.
• Two new play modes: Honour Mode and Custom Mode.
• Many performance improvements, particularly in Act III.
• Added dynamic resolution for PS5.
• Players playing on machines with low VRAM/RAM should see improved performance.
• The game is now available in Korean!
• While at camp, you can now access and manage the inventories of companions who aren't in your active party.
• Added a brand new fight in Ramazith’s Tower if (spoiler)
• Orin’s outfit now drops as loot and is wearable by anyone. We also gave it a suitably disgusting description and name.

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1086940/view/3897365207669538742

• Minthara will still appear at Moonrise Towers if she was knocked out in Act I.

https://baldursgate3.game/news/patch-5-now-live_99

Edited December 2, 2023 by Hawke64
[] turned out to affect formatting. I might update the game after the current playthrough and a backup. This guide (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3029018792) also suggests to create another Windows user to be on the safe side.

[Wormerine]

I have no interest in ironman mode, but it seems Honor mode added some extra things on top (legendary abilities for bosses, some changes to ruleset to limit certain exploits). If roumors last night were correct, there is no way to recreate this difficulty, minus ironman mode, through custom mode. Apparently, though you can start in Honor mode and switch off perma-save by switching to custom - I don't know if it keeps other changes as well.

Larian forum is down again, so I can't say if there has been any further updates.

Eitherway, good update. I am tempted to reinstal BG3 and see a more proper ending to my campaign. Keep updates coming Larian.

[Humanoid]

Ironman feels a bit arbitrary in a game like this, because (I'm assuming) it's game over if your active party of four dies, but totally fine if three die and a fourth gets away and pays to resurrect the other three at camp. But for most of the game you have two other characters at camp anyway, who could easily pay to resurrect the four active members who did die.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

3 hours ago, Wormerine said:

I am tempted to reinstal BG3 and see a more proper ending to my campaign. Keep updates coming Larian.

Eh, I don't know if it's worth that. You could get much of the same experience looking it up on YouTube.

The Ironman mode thing sucks, I think one thing PoE definitely did right was separating that from its normal difficulty setting. Quite a few fights in BG3 could use some additional challenge and it'd be nice to get that without the one save thing.

8 hours ago, Humanoid said:

Some of the potential endings are pretty notable in how much scope they've seemingly been given to change the established Forgotten Realms lore. So why not conquer Hell itself?

I wouldn't go as far as to say conquering all of the Hells, but the Hells do have a very large presence in the game and a big share of the unfinished business after the end. Not sure how that'd work with all of the (new) endings, but they could always change the endgame to be a transition to the hypothetical new adventure or something.

[Hawke64]

Act 3. Used a summon to kill the rock-wielding boss, then proceeded to investigate a fireworks shop.

The only door I noticed initially was firstly, invincible (literally - no health bar, no option to attack), secondly, in a clear view of the guards. So, I entered through the roof and the store owners confirmed that they were indeed up to no good. Since only the MC could use that route and there were 10+ foes, I reloaded and got the party on the roof of the building next to the store. The party had alchemist's fire and opened the assault with it. The foes were shooting back through the windows and balconies (it was a 3-story building), as the Door proved to be an insurmountable obstacle for them as well and they certainly did not have the key. Several minutes later, the party was victorious and the evil-doers dead. But when I tried to loot my hard-earned corpses, a Flaming Fist very unwisely interrupted it. So, another battle, more corpses, more loot. At that point, I discovered an unlocked door to the fireworks building and entered. Another Flaming Fist spawned underground and threatened the party. He was defeated, but a squad of them appeared, so after battle that I fast-travelled away - the quest was completed, the loot probably was not that important, and it likely could go forever. I suppose, it was the same in BG1/2, but with the turn-based combat, the infinite guards seem less appealing.

Then the party ventured forth to the House of Grief, carried Mother Superior out of the hall, and shot her down while she was trying to talk to the MC. Got a very nice +3 shield and a very pretty robe, which, unfortunately, was combat gear, instead of camp attire. Thus, it was given to the only wizard in the party. I somehow hoped that I would be able to access Cazador's palace from the sewers entrance, but it was not interactive, so the party went in through the guard tower as expected. The cleric was able to defeat the vampire lord and his party single-handedly (everything was dying either to Daylight or Spirit Guardians), though on the lowest difficulty.

I guess, ~10-15 hours left - only the quests depending on Gortash, Raphael, and the end-game.

I remember the bosses in Solasta having Legendary actions on normal difficulty. Curious why it was limited only to the Ironman one in Larian's game.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

49 minutes ago, Hawke64 said:

I somehow hoped that I would be able to access Cazador's palace from the sewers entrance, but it was not interactive, so the party went in through the guard tower as expected

That was honestly a bummer.

49 minutes ago, Hawke64 said:

I remember the bosses in Solasta having Legendary actions on normal difficulty. Curious why it was limited only to the Ironman one in Larian's game

In my experience Legendary Actions are among the most unpopular boss mechanics in pnp. For the most part Larian-brew has been a marked improvement over 5e (and where it isn't is mostly stuff they didn't do, like giving Sorcerer's more spells based on subclass) so I'd assume that Larian cut them for that reason. I don't think the pnp Legendary stuff would be good, but a lot of bosses need something.

[Humanoid]

I'm not a fan of Legendary Actions in principle either, though I sort of get why they exist to even up the action economy when encounter designers insist on designing an "epic" fight against one big bad who thinks fighting 1 vs 6 is a smart thing to do. But I think it's more reasonable to not design fights in that way in the first place, and Larian seemingly agrees judging from how they've approached their boss design where the boss never truly fights alone. (Granted I haven't seen any of the Act 3 bosses yet)

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

11 hours ago, Humanoid said:

I'm not a fan of Legendary Actions in principle either, though I sort of get why they exist to even up the action economy when encounter designers insist on designing an "epic" fight against one big bad who thinks fighting 1 vs 6 is a smart thing to do. But I think it's more reasonable to not design fights in that way in the first place, and Larian seemingly agrees judging from how they've approached their boss design where the boss never truly fights alone. (Granted I haven't seen any of the Act 3 bosses yet)

I think that just giving bosses the ability to act more on their turn (or with reactions) and resist types of cc is better than legendary stuff as implemented in 5e. In my experience it just ends up complicating play or not getting utilized.

From what I can remember, there are only two cases of bosses fighting alone. Auntie Ethel in act 1 (though she does bust out illusions that act as additional enemies) and something pretty spoiler heavy in act 3. For the most part encounter design is pretty solid, but the last fights in the game are absolutely (lmao) flooded with enemies that isn't as fun to play.

[Hawke64]

I generally prefer to have one powerful boss rather than a crowd-vs-crowd encounter, especially with turn-based combat systems. It makes them more unique and memorable.

[InsaneCommander]

 

[Wormerine]

7 hours ago, InsaneCommander said:

Honestly, Bateman is a perfect BG3 protagonist. Just another narcissist psychopath into the mix. (wait, was BG3's original title Seven Psychopaths, but it was already taken?!)

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

On 12/4/2023 at 2:19 PM, Hawke64 said:

I generally prefer to have one powerful boss rather than a crowd-vs-crowd encounter, especially with turn-based combat systems. It makes them more unique and memorable.

I would love to see more party vs party encounters myself, thematically I enjoy the idea of a clash between groups of similar power and skills. I'm struggling to think of a game that did it well, maybe PoE and BG2? It's been a while for them.

That said I'm not opposed to a single powerful boss on principle, slaying the big dragon or demon or whatever is a fantasy staple for a reason. The problem with that in BG3 is that mechanically 5e's meta leans toward multiple enemies being much more of a threat than a single powerful one due to the stats scaling relatively slowly and capping relatively low. So this means your big bad dragon that you've built the campaign around will probably get it's ass handed to it going 1 v 4+ with a decently component and geared party (for reference), which isn't particularly fun and part of the reason I stopped playing 5e as pnp [insert rant about Pathfinder 2e's better design].

[Hawke64]

Finished the playthrough and updated the game. While I like the low-poly style in general, I would prefer it to be consistent. Other than that, the epilogue party is present. The new difficulties seem to be selectable for the new runs only.

Spoiler

Very hoot, indeed. Haven't updated the GPU drivers, so will do that and verify the files again. 132GB, the miracle of optimisation and user-friendliness. /s

Spoilers for Wyll's quest.

Spoiler

Tried to petrify Mizora and was successful, but, unfortunately, it did not prevent her from appearing on the underwater prison. I would say that the change of pace in the mission was refreshing, but it also was annoying, even though none of the NPCs got stuck. Additionally, I have finally experienced the dragon search quest and I am glad that it was optional - firstly, I doubt that I would have found the chandelier's to shock without the quest marker (because the camera angle does not exactly encourage looking at the small details); secondly, the trials were not possible to bypass or I did not notice how (I had the Knock spell, but could not target the door to proceed); thirdly, the "dialogue" with the dragon was surprisingly non-interactive - the wyrm was talking to the Emperor and I did not notice any option to avoid the battle after interacting with the body. Lastly, how the heck the resident mindflayer can be a legendary Faerun lore figure and when exactly did he manage to found the city and travel to the Moonrise Towers when an illithid colony was sitting there? Like, why use an established character for a lol-so-random campaign?

 

Edited December 6, 2023 by Hawke64

[Deadly_Nightshade]

Baldur's Gate III performed as expected at The Game Awards and walked away with six awards out of nine nominations including Game of the Year.

 

Everything they won:

Players' Voice

Best Multiplayer Game

Best RPG

Best Community Support

Best Performance (Neil Newbon)

Game of the Year

[Hawke64]

33 minutes ago, Deadly_Nightshade said:

Baldur's Gate III performed as expected at The Game Awards and walked away with six awards out of nine nominations including Game of the Year.

 

Everything they won:

Players' Voice

Best Multiplayer Game

Best RPG

Best Community Support

Best Performance (Neil Newbon)

Game of the Year

Thank you for the information. I am happy to see a DRM-/MTX-/DLC-free game to get those awards.

---

Regarding my playthroughs, played the epilogues for the existing characters, though the Dark Urge bug persisted, so currently trying to finish the run without the bug. Discovered that (spoilers for Orin's questline):

Spoiler

After defeating Orin, the "*gasps* You are a Bhaalspawn!" scene triggered and the PC could explain to the companion who had just seen them rejecting Bhaal that they were indeed a Bhaalspawn.

Also now Orin does notice summons trying to kill her, but, fortunately, she is still possible to thunderwave into the nearest chasm. Though, the battle itself is rather challenging for a level 6 party - the PC had 50HP and each cultist was hitting twice per round for ~20HP per hit, while starting under Sanctuary and going to Invisibility after. I am happy to share that Thunderwave did not care whether about either spell.

On another note, the Bhaalists throw coins for bardic performance. I am unsure why.

Quote

"I found it greatly disturbing to scroll through my cartoon's halfing selection of genitalias." - Wormerine

Now they jiggle, by the way. Discovered when failing to respec a hireling and having to go through all visual customisation options (I do not know why these two different aspects requiring different NPCs were somehow connected). For the future reference, pressing "Random" populates all the fields and allows to close the customisation window and successfully respec the character.

---

The epilogues include the dialogues with the companions (animated and all), short newspaper (Baldur's Mouth) headers for some of the quest outcomes, and the letters from the surviving NPCs (some are generic, some depend on the player's choices). The latest point to trigger the epilogues is final decision above the city. Otherwise, the unpatched scene will play out.

Also, for some reason, Wyll called the gith PC "Lae'zel" in the epilogue.

[Sven_]

Close to the end, but I'm actually considering whether downloading a  30GB just for the epilogue is worth it (you need a whopping 150GB or so of free SSD space also). 

Fun game, but seeing as it's got a reception as if it were a contender for THE greatest game of all time (regardless of platform, era or genre), I also think it's a bit oversold. You know why? Because mainstream audiences haven't actually gotten a taste in some case ever of a truly RPG. If you're coming from semi-interactive Hollywood action movies a la the Witcher with barely any choice (dialogue, character) and super linear quests that literally solve themselves (witcher senses...) -- this is an altogether new world opening up for you. I mean, the big studios in like the past two decades have tried anything to aggressively hide they're actually in the business of making RPGs either way.

"Hi we're id Soft and from now on we're not in the business of making these boring shooters anymore. We're attempting something more modern for the modern sophisticated gaming audience, try it!"

Absolutely ridiculous. There's an astonishing amount of work put into cinematics not breaking, and also a lot of interactivity -- as an example, I once disguised my char via a spell and got a completely different dialogue and quest progression when doing so... they also naturally needed to cover that players would finish the game entirelly solo and still cinematics still working out. Speaking of which, I actually this is a bit of a dead end, but more on that in the spoiler tag.


Still, this doesn't feel like THE BIG RPG TO RULE THEM ALL. It actually feels like a game that picks up from the early 2000s had they never happened. Rather than the the crap that's actually happened (until crowdfunding, digital distrubtion et all) saved the day, that is. At least on the lower budget front. The only excuse I make for bigger studios is that they saw almost the entire RPG industry collapsing before: Origin, SSI, New World Computing, Sir-Tech, Troika, Interplay, Looking Glass, Bethesda pior to Morrowind almost too... Still with Bioware I'm wondering whether they would actually have made anything much RPG by their own choice, considering that it was Interplay to sign them for their engine -- and encouraging them to do a D&D game with it, being the license holder then. Considering that they did a Mech game before, later MDK 2 and by all accounts something more RTS-/MMORPG-like until Interplay came along, I can easily see a parallel universe where they never did anything remotedly resembling Ultima/GoldBox era games etc. at all. In other words: Chasing market trends from day 1, rather than being credited for revitalizing a struggling genre.

There's no excuses from now on either way, as far as I'm concerned. And yes, I'm kinda grumpy, sorry.  Not expecting anybody to do a wave of isometric D&D-likes or anything. But at least something resembling a RPG, rather than aggressively trying to hide it. Also not going into semantics. But there's fully reason contemporary audiences consider games such as Assassin's Creed or Red Dead Redemption as RPGs. At this pace, Doom 2043 is gonna belong to the family just as well. And nobody's gonna object to it, except the chosen few getting tired of big budget games playing increasingly alike. 

So, about cinematics being a dead end.

 

There's obviously a few systems placed in the game in an attempt to emulate the moment to moment improvisation of the table-top. Lines Of Sight. Physics. Light. Dark. AI. Spells. Etctera. But eventually, you can't make a cinematic for every possible action the player takes.

The final release doesn't let you do this anymore, but I "broke" one of their early cutscenes in EA. It's in the crypt at the starting area. There's a bunch of undead that rise when you push a lever. I picked up those undead and threw them into a fireball trap nearby. THEN I pulled the lever... This worked insofar as that the undead were toasted when they rose. In the movie.mpg aka staged cutscene beforehand however, they were clearly shown rising in their usual place. Naturally so. It's a movie somebody had staged beforehand. I could have thrown those undead someplace else. Anywhere else. The movie would have always shown them rising in the place I picked them up from. Larian's solution to this was to limit your agency. You cannot touch these guys anymore without the cutscene being triggered and them rising immediately. This is a simple example. But one that shows the dilemma.

There's absolutely a reason why fully cinematic games are ususually far less open and oft have a fixed protagonist to begin with.

Edited December 15, 2023 by Sven_

[Wormerine]

On 12/15/2023 at 5:30 AM, Sven_ said:

Fun game, but seeing as it's got a reception as if it were a contender for THE greatest game of all time (regardless of platform, era or genre), I also think it's a bit oversold. You know why? Because mainstream audiences haven't actually gotten a taste in some case ever of a truly RPG.

I agree, but I also wouldn't discount an achievement that is making a mass appeal RPG. There is also the thing of Larian being independed studio making such a shiny AAA game, with their own creative stamp on it. That what I wish AAA would be, rather than suit driven cash shop.

Just the other day I got a message from a coleague of mine about cRPG recommendions as he is wrapping up BG3. It's not exactly new to him - he owns quite a few of the classics, including original BGs, and just bounced of each of them rather hard. We even tried D:OS2 in coop, and he got fairly quickly bored of it. So BG3 did something right.

 

The movie would have always shown them rising in the place I picked them up from. Larian's solution to this was to limit your agency. You cannot touch these guys anymore without the cutscene being triggered and them rising immediately. This is a simple example. But one that shows the dilemma.

Yes, that is a conflict of interest. If your game revolves around giving player so much systemic freedom, having a scripted handmade components might not be the most efficient design - at best you have to invest in producing a variety of such content to cover various player actions, and you are still bound to not account for some. Alas, I think too many people associate in-game movies with "good games" these day to not make it a must for a high budget production.

[Sven_]

Baldur's Gate got released just 25 years ago today. Completing a hat-trick of PC releases unheard of until today: Grim Fandango, Thief, Baldur's Gate. Man, the end of 1998 was the gift that kept on giving.

And yet, this almost never happened. Bioware originally intended to do more typical Bioware things: chasing market trends, rather than saving dying genres. It was Obsidian Entertainment's now CEO who pushed for a deal with history. It's easy to imagine a parallel universe in which Feargus Urquhart slipped in the shower, broke his ankle, called in sick. One in which people never got a taste of BG to begin with.

What are they playing instead of BG3 these days over there?

 

Muzyka, Zeschuk, and Yip sent an early version of the demo to Feargus Urquhart at Interplay. Urquhart had risen even higher to the helm of Interplay’s RPG division, Black Isle Studios. Urquhart had trouble grasping Battleground Infinity because he wasn’t sure what BioWare intended it to be. Did they think they could deliver on a game the scale of a proper MMORPG? Because to Urquhart, it was more like a real-time strategy game: top-down, isometric view; numerous characters running amok on a battlefield.

[...]“Something went off in my head,” Urquhart recalled. “I took this party-based [concept] and called them up and said, ‘What if we made this a D&D game?’ They said, ‘That would be really cool.’”

Urquhart went to his boss at the time and showed him Battleground Infinity. The manager gave him a get-outta-town look. The manager ended his meeting with Urquhart with the ultimate dismissal: Battleground Infinity was stupid. Urquhart dug his feet in. "It was one of those times when I said, ‘That's not good enough. No. It's not stupid.’

[...], Urquhart and Chris Parker, the producer Urquhart assigned to the project, were two of the only developers within Interplay who believed in BioWare’s chances. Interplay’s UK division didn’t even bother forecasting sales. Anything connected to Dungeons & Dragons was doomed to fail.

Beneath a Starless Sky: Pillars of Eternity and the Infinity Engine Era of RPGs | Shacknews

On 12/16/2023 at 10:29 PM, Wormerine said:

Just the other day I got a message from a coleague of mine about cRPG recommendions as he is wrapping up BG3. It's not exactly new to him - he owns quite a few of the classics, including original BGs, and just bounced of each of them rather hard. We even tried D:OS2 in coop, and he got fairly quickly bored of it. So BG3 did something right

 

Oh yeah. In the context of its time, BG1 was pretty easy on the eye too. The first major promotional material focused on all that for reason.  As to cinematics: For as long as they aren't seen like the first movies, I think games haven't reached their full storytelling potential yet. Movies too initially borrowed from what was already there (stage play, theatre...), and look fairly dated and stilted now because of it. The crucial bit is: Movies are static mediums that borrowed from static mediums. Games are interactive and when going fully-on cinematic are borrowing from something static...
 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

I haven't played the game properly in a while, but I've had multiple people I would have not expected to mention the game to me bring it up. For better or worse BG3 seems to have broken through in ways that few other games, let alone rpgs, have. Honestly it's kind of incredible to see everyone from occultist zoomers to thrice-divorced almost-boomers play this ****ing game. Probably the closest to seeing Star Wars: A New Hope on release that we'll get.

I'd say the only games I've heard anything remotely similar for in 2023 are Alan Wake 2 and Tears of the Kingdom, both of which appear to be honest to goodness masterpieces to me, but they're still on a smaller scale than BG3. Which says a lot in the latter case because Legend of Zelda is a juggernaut. I guess BG3 won't see anyone trap the netherbrain in a fruit stall though.

[Sven_]

Yeah, it's a bit weird. You can't actually plan for that. Sometimes stuff happens. Sure, D&D is comparably big itself now (still didn't keep the movie from underperforming). I still don't understand for instance why the first Dishonored was such a surprise (semi-) hit back then -- and then nothing much for Arkane but underperformances. I guess the animated first trailer helped, which really sold the pillars of the game (even though the visual style in the final game is a bit different).  But still...   (Arkane seem no different).
 

Quote

When a game is successful, it's a miracle.

It's the perfect wave, the release window included. I think there's stuff to learn though. They didn't actually sell the game hugely prominently as CRPG as such, which carries the "weight" of being associated with fairly complex and complicated games (wether actually true or not). They took D&Ds promise of being able to do and play (almost) anything you wanted and ran with that as their tagline for everything. Naturally, every product needs something to sell it on rather than being "another RPG/shooter/Game." There's competition. And it's fierce.

 

But their communication seemed focused on that..... even that bear stuff going kinda viral wasn't just that bear. It was like: "You can do even this?" "Um, yeah." Being able to do almost anything is pretty big a promise, and an emotional one, for a game. And they had stuff to show off that suggested this wasn't just another typical sales ploy, but for realz. Naturally, by the time the ball was rolling,  awards included, everybody and their mom was interested to find out what this "Baulders Gates" fuss is about anyways.

I think that's also in parts where Obsidian went wrong with Pillars, at least when expecting a much bigger audience for Deadfire. Project Eternity was pitched largely on the promise of nostalgia. A new isometric party-based game by the makers from..... that's a strong emotional pitch. But how long can it last? Eventually, people may be saturated. Another game just bigger and better is just that. I'm not suggesting that the game needed to be completely changed but what's the hook? What should get me emotionally invested, considering that big, good games are plenty? Larian never pitched DOS purely on nostalgia. It pitched co-Op, it pitched world interactivity not hugely seen in the isometric RPG space since Ultima and turn-based combat was also something "fresh" again when nobody this side of XCom had much dared to touch it since Temple Of Elemental Evil. And with BG3 they never went purely nostalgia bait either.

Owlcat meanwhile were doing the very first Pathfinder adaptations, based on popular Adventure paths too. Not sure how Rogue Trader is doing since, but here too, the very prospect of the first Warhammer 40K RPG proper is already a pitch that goes beyond.

Edited December 22, 2023 by Sven_

[Sven_]

Double post. 

Edited December 22, 2023 by Sven_

[MrBrown]

 

[bugarup]

Are these game's original voice actors and do they chew scenery this bad in the game too?

[MrBrown]

4 hours ago, bugarup said:

Are these game's original voice actors and do they chew scenery this bad in the game too?

Yes, and most of them are a bit better in the game itself, IMO. The pale-elf vampire and the overtalky wizard are about the same.

[Bartimaeus]

The games that win industry awards are usually what a plurality of people actually spent time talking about, experiencing, and enjoying. They may not have been everyone's personal favorite game of the year, but that's not really what it's about: it's the games that are going to stand out in most people's minds as having been a 'big thing' for the year, that had some kind of tangible and positive effect on the collective gaming consciousness - while also hopefully setting a standard for other games to try to achieve for years to come. I have my own misgivings with Baldur's Gate III that makes it not particularly suited for my tastes, but in terms of being a creative vision with actual sincerity that clearly people genuinely enjoyed (versus just yet another samey sequel, or a committee-decided mass appeal construct, or an exploitative corporate cash-pump), it seems pretty easy to accept the game getting its flowers even if I must ignore that that the game wasn't quite to my liking.

Our media/entertainment is a 'victim' of its time and circumstances - for better and for worse. Films considered to be notably horrible failures at the time of their release are sometimes re-examined decades later and then re-labelled as brilliant masterpieces because of how the film industry and the way people see movies have evolved since then, and the opposite can obviously happen when someone tries to go back to watch some of the older 'greatest films of all time' without having experienced first-hand the circumstances surrounding those films when they released that made them into the major successes that people remember them as. At least some of the greatest games of yesteryear would well be naught but a fart in the wind if they were released for the first time today (even if they were given a new [current year]-appropriate coat of paint!). If you feel current 'great' games don't compare well to decades-old games, they may well not - at least in the ways that you personally value as being most important given how your own tastes developed from playing the games that you did and also when you did...but that might not be what other people currently care about given the circumstances that they have experienced.

None of us is special for not loving or liking something that most other people seem to, and nobody is trying to make you a victim of propaganda, conspiracy, or anything else when it happens: it's just not your thing, and that should be perfectly okay. Trying to fathom precisely why something does or doesn't work for you at the most base level is far too nebulous even at the best of times, never mind when it seems everyone is proclaiming something as being the "best" and "greatest" when you just can't seem to even vaguely understand it.

Edited December 23, 2023 by Bartimaeus