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...it's just that life these days is pretty much Baldur's Gate 3. To the tune of I'm going to reach the 400 hours played mark by the end of next week.
So strap in or set your phasers on ignore, because this DW is probably going to be all BG3 all the time for the foreseeable future.
I adore this game for the story and the characters and the voice acting, and the production values, but especially for all the ways it captures and simulates an IRL DnD session. Playing my tiefling rogue "Tav" in BG3 is not appreciably different than playing the tiefling rogue character from Oldest Campaign Homebrew that my Tav is modeled on. OMG, the mechanics: the stealthing, the stealing, the lockpicking, the climbing surfaces for tactical or battle advantage. The "I'm going to try using this random object to fuck up this enemy/annoying NPC" possibilities, and the fact that they work. It's all there. I love it so much.
I love rogues as a class. I love specing them and deploying their skills and proficiencies and pwning combat and RP interactions, and I have been doing that to GREAT EFFECT for lo, nigh on 400 hours since February. It's just so much fun. And AFAICT the other classes are similarly well executed. I have learned quite a bit about how to play barbarians, and pure fighters and mages, from this game.
As far as knowing what I was getting into, I worked very hard not to spoil myself beyond the first 15 minutes of the initial PAX East gameplay reveal waaay back in January? February? of last year, and those efforts were successful. I knew about Shadowheart and Astarion from that, and had a veeery glancing understanding of some of the other origin characters thanks to the MtG set, but that was it.
So I was very pleased that my tiefling rogue-with-Baldurian-urchin background Tav fit so well into so much of the game. (One of the things I'd been worried about was the potential for the blank slate PC to feel hollow without a BG/BG2-type backstory to knit them into the plot. TBH, I think my TAV would feel a lot more hollow if I hadn't imported so much of her personality and backstory from her homebrew campaign cognate, and if tieflings hadn't featured so prominently in Chapter 1. But luckily I did and they do, and she has felt very much organically integrated into the story to me more than I'd anticipated she would. It was really nice to have so many tiefling-specific dialogue options (and even some pretty significant plot advancement opportunities) so early in the game.
I'd watched all the teasers and trailers, and those first 15 minutes of PAX East, so I knew about the opening on the nautiloid. But I was still unprepared for how much I was going to love it: Aeryn Sun—I mean, Lae'zel's—entrance scene is just so unbelievably badass. And then it was me and her battling our way through the ship, and then me and her and Shadowheart on the ravaged beach and holy crap, how cool was it to have a CRPG where all the party characters—all of them badasses, btw—for the first 4 or 5 hours of gameplay were female? Astarion and Wyll, who I encountered next, were both kind of blah by comparison.
I was absolutely unprepared for and DELIGHTED by Karlach. She is my GIRL. Yes. This is the sort of woman I want to be my best friend, and my girlfriend, and honestly I would like to be a Karlach-type person, and it is DELIGHTFUL to have her in the game. I am also preparing to be absolutely CRUSHED by where I think her character arc will probably end up, but we shall see. There have been one or two seemingly minor NPC interactions in Chapter 3 that I think might foreshadow some hope. I hope? But again, I'm preparing for the worst.
So there I was all set to make her my in-game romance (despite the looming potential for heartbreak), when along comes Astarion offering to do the party a favor and eat the mind flayer specimen I'd just looted from a boss after a big Chapter 1 battle. My tiefling rogue did not think this was a great idea and put her foot down, as she had to all previous tadpole-related proposals from all corners. To which Astarion responded that if she kept getting in the way of what he wanted he would go through her and that that was "just something for you to think about."
And, well.
CHALLENGE ACCEPTED, MOTHERFUCKER.
Because at that point there was no way I was going to end the game without him wrapped around my little finger, and I am happy to say I accomplished this handily.
And. It was an incredibly satisfying story. I spent the majority of Chapters 1 and 2 sort of watching this character hurtle toward annihilation for completely understandable reasons, making choices they hated in the moment, which I knew they were going to hate in the moment, wondering if I would have enough sway with them down the road to talk them out of stupidity when it really counted, and all the while suspecting on a meta level that these were all things the game really did not want me to do. And, gah, that storyline was so very satisfying and I really wish it had continued beyond the conclusion of his big Chapter 3 set piece, because there's still so much you could do with it.
I've currently completed about half of the origin characters' Chapter 3 story arcs and I am already emotionally mourning the end of the game, despite the fact that there's still quite a bit more to do. It's just so good! And it has pretty much been the source of creative, mental recreation for me for the past five months. I DON'T WANT IT TO END. It's so, so good.
これで以上です。
So strap in or set your phasers on ignore, because this DW is probably going to be all BG3 all the time for the foreseeable future.
I adore this game for the story and the characters and the voice acting, and the production values, but especially for all the ways it captures and simulates an IRL DnD session. Playing my tiefling rogue "Tav" in BG3 is not appreciably different than playing the tiefling rogue character from Oldest Campaign Homebrew that my Tav is modeled on. OMG, the mechanics: the stealthing, the stealing, the lockpicking, the climbing surfaces for tactical or battle advantage. The "I'm going to try using this random object to fuck up this enemy/annoying NPC" possibilities, and the fact that they work. It's all there. I love it so much.
I love rogues as a class. I love specing them and deploying their skills and proficiencies and pwning combat and RP interactions, and I have been doing that to GREAT EFFECT for lo, nigh on 400 hours since February. It's just so much fun. And AFAICT the other classes are similarly well executed. I have learned quite a bit about how to play barbarians, and pure fighters and mages, from this game.
As far as knowing what I was getting into, I worked very hard not to spoil myself beyond the first 15 minutes of the initial PAX East gameplay reveal waaay back in January? February? of last year, and those efforts were successful. I knew about Shadowheart and Astarion from that, and had a veeery glancing understanding of some of the other origin characters thanks to the MtG set, but that was it.
So I was very pleased that my tiefling rogue-with-Baldurian-urchin background Tav fit so well into so much of the game. (One of the things I'd been worried about was the potential for the blank slate PC to feel hollow without a BG/BG2-type backstory to knit them into the plot. TBH, I think my TAV would feel a lot more hollow if I hadn't imported so much of her personality and backstory from her homebrew campaign cognate, and if tieflings hadn't featured so prominently in Chapter 1. But luckily I did and they do, and she has felt very much organically integrated into the story to me more than I'd anticipated she would. It was really nice to have so many tiefling-specific dialogue options (and even some pretty significant plot advancement opportunities) so early in the game.
I'd watched all the teasers and trailers, and those first 15 minutes of PAX East, so I knew about the opening on the nautiloid. But I was still unprepared for how much I was going to love it: Aeryn Sun—I mean, Lae'zel's—entrance scene is just so unbelievably badass. And then it was me and her battling our way through the ship, and then me and her and Shadowheart on the ravaged beach and holy crap, how cool was it to have a CRPG where all the party characters—all of them badasses, btw—for the first 4 or 5 hours of gameplay were female? Astarion and Wyll, who I encountered next, were both kind of blah by comparison.
I was absolutely unprepared for and DELIGHTED by Karlach. She is my GIRL. Yes. This is the sort of woman I want to be my best friend, and my girlfriend, and honestly I would like to be a Karlach-type person, and it is DELIGHTFUL to have her in the game. I am also preparing to be absolutely CRUSHED by where I think her character arc will probably end up, but we shall see. There have been one or two seemingly minor NPC interactions in Chapter 3 that I think might foreshadow some hope. I hope? But again, I'm preparing for the worst.
So there I was all set to make her my in-game romance (despite the looming potential for heartbreak), when along comes Astarion offering to do the party a favor and eat the mind flayer specimen I'd just looted from a boss after a big Chapter 1 battle. My tiefling rogue did not think this was a great idea and put her foot down, as she had to all previous tadpole-related proposals from all corners. To which Astarion responded that if she kept getting in the way of what he wanted he would go through her and that that was "just something for you to think about."
And, well.
CHALLENGE ACCEPTED, MOTHERFUCKER.
Because at that point there was no way I was going to end the game without him wrapped around my little finger, and I am happy to say I accomplished this handily.
And. It was an incredibly satisfying story. I spent the majority of Chapters 1 and 2 sort of watching this character hurtle toward annihilation for completely understandable reasons, making choices they hated in the moment, which I knew they were going to hate in the moment, wondering if I would have enough sway with them down the road to talk them out of stupidity when it really counted, and all the while suspecting on a meta level that these were all things the game really did not want me to do. And, gah, that storyline was so very satisfying and I really wish it had continued beyond the conclusion of his big Chapter 3 set piece, because there's still so much you could do with it.
I've currently completed about half of the origin characters' Chapter 3 story arcs and I am already emotionally mourning the end of the game, despite the fact that there's still quite a bit more to do. It's just so good! And it has pretty much been the source of creative, mental recreation for me for the past five months. I DON'T WANT IT TO END. It's so, so good.
これで以上です。
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