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big mean giraffe posted:So weird to see a ton of references pop up to this really recently. Great show though, glad people are discovering it. The character has had a revival because Matthew Holness has started actually writing Garth Merenghi novels.
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Nov 8, 2023 14:48
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yeough arned hee were.... buddies, weren't yeough?
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Nov 8, 2023 15:20
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Playing Kaze and the Wild Masks this week, which is mostly good - a throwback 2D platformer very much going for Donkey Kong Country 2's playstyle in particular. Great, exactly what I want in a game. Except the bosses, so many of these games get them wrong. At two in, it's reminding me very much of DKC Returns. They're just long waves of bullets or enemies to dodge before you even get a chance at doing a point of damage. Rinse, repeat, over and over. Even when they're not tough, they're just an unfun slog. Really brings the game down whenever you're heading towards the end of a world and you know there's some frustrating tedium in your way before you can get to the next set of levels.
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Nov 8, 2023 18:18
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Morrowind's Tribunal expansion is...very odd. The closest thing I can compare it to is like if an MMO was shutting down and they put out one last expansion that was just a sloppy mishmash of whatever in-development ideas they had lying around unreleased. I doubt I can be concise on this because there's just so much individual stuff to cover. You've been warned. First, there's your wonky entrance point into the expansion. Infamously, installing the expansion causes Dark Brotherhood ninjas to infinitely ambush you every single time you rest. I guess this wasn't as big a deal back when the question of "when should the expansion start relative to the main game" could be answered by "when the player goes to the store and buys the disc" but between the expansion also coming with a bunch of vital improvements and fixes to the main game (being able to see enemy HP bars and having a mostly-functional quest log: innovations exclusive to this expansion pack!) and nowadays everything being bundled into one big GotY edition, this causes a big problem. Either you're getting constantly harassed by assassins at level 1 in a way that defies all story logic, or you're being fed an infinite supply of free poo poo to use or sell as you see fit and unbalance the early game. So I've got a mod that changes it so you only become a target for assassination after making a big political play in the main quest. However, this creates a new problem, as the expansion is full of dumb, goofy, mundane side quests that make way more sense for a low to mid level character than a legendary hero fresh off murdering a demigod. (Another thing the mod fixes is making it so that stopping the infinite assassin ambushes only requires you doing the most basic entry level quest step into the expansion stuff, rather than needing to go all the way there and get entangled with it.) Secondly, in a somewhat familiar pattern to other Bethesda expansion content, they didn't really have a handle on how to mechanically balance them. Like, at all. So by default every single entity in both expacks is arbitrarily 20 levels higher than the kind of stuff you saw in the base game. Even civilian NPCs and shopkeeps and stuff. Because obviously expansions are for high level characters that have already completed the main game, right? Combined with some really dreadful, padded out encounters this makes the combat an absolute slog. The stat-driven nature of Morrowind just doesn't make trying to expand on its combat work very well at all. Naturally, I grabbed the mod that drags the level ranges down to sensible levels. As for the content itself, well, here's the most mixed bag of stuff ever: The expansion centers around the city of Mournhold, the capital of Morrowind and also the home turf of the Tribunal temple and its patron, the living god Almalexia. The city very much feels like a prototype for Oblivion's Imperial City. A ring of districts around a central palace, a mostly-empty statue pavilion, a shopping district with lots of discrete split level shops lined up in a row, a residential district, etc. Oh, and levitation is out and out banned there. Because, as would go on to become a series staple, Mournhold is just an island floating in the void of its own cell. (In fact, it actually doesn't exist anywhere in the game world at all, it's effectively in its own pocket dimension on the technical side of things.) There's no open space to explore in this expansion whatsoever! Instead, once again reminding me of Oblivion, you spend a lot of time exploring downwards through endless interminable sewer mazes and a few stray ruins of "Old Mournhold" that ultimately have very little going on. The story feels pretty disjointed. I haven't finished it in full yet, but I know the loose details. I guess it's possible some nuance will pop up at the 11th hour and turn me around on it, but I doubt it. So, those nasty Dark Brotherhood attacks...who exactly is trying to have you bumped off? You can follow this line of investigation only to discover it leads right up to the King of Morrowind himself, Helseth. You are then told by his chief of staff "Yup, the King didn't like your face and thought you were a threat. What am I going to do about it? Nothing, because he's my boss and literally the fuckin' King. What you are going to do about it? Also not a drat thing. Deal with it." And so that plot hook instantly dissolves into nothing.  The central conflict is trying to play at something I actually wanted more of - Helseth is very much in the pocket of the Imperials and is more than glad to welcome their influence into Morrowind. Meanwhile Almalexia and her Tribunal church aren't exactly happy about this. Add in some murky details about how, exactly, the old king of Morrowind died and Almalexia going a little cuckoo and you've got a powderkeg of resentment stewing in Mournhold. Except...that's...basically it. This situation will sort-of resolve itself by the end of the expansion, but not through your character really doing anything to fix things. In fact, it's basically made clear that legendary hero or not, you're way too unimportant to be able to do anything about this. The quest design gestures towards being a pick your faction affair, but in actuality the main plot is strictly in the hands of the temple and concerns Almalexia, but you get the opportunity to do a bunch of pro-Helseth stuff on the side. Because you're just so invested in the dude who tried to have you murdered. Granted, maybe your Nerevarine really is an Imperial stooge just making a grab for power so you're cool with kissing Helseth's rear end, but the whole Dark Brotherhood thing puts a bit of a damper on that? Despite its clunkiness and limitations, the main game does such a good job of building up the Dagoth Ur crisis up and your rise as the Nerevarine. Then you get to Mournhold and a character brushes it off as "that Dagoth Ur business" and otherwise all you get is Almalexia acknowledging you as Nerevarine. And like, I get that "realistically" you're just some nobody folk hero who rose up and killed some naked weirdo in a volcano and all that stuff to outsiders surely must be an exaggeration. And both Almalexia and Helseth have good reason to see your character as a problem that needs dealing with. But I just wish my character had some actual agency in the story. In a broader sense, it's also just tying up a bunch of loose ends. Almalexia and Sotha Sil, the other two members of the Tribunal of living gods, never got any coverage in the main game due to development limitations, so here they are hastily jammed into a short expansion story. For whatever you want to say of ESO, credit for that game letting you pal around with all three members of the Tribunal more or less equally. Helseth and his mother Barenziah were big players back in Daggerfall, so their prominence here is paying off on those plot events and feels like you're walking through history being made. But at the cost of feeling like I'm just a spectator or maybe the occasional useful idiot. Meanwhile, what are you doing outside these political tensions and intrigue between high power level NPCs? Goofy, mundane bullshit and jokey jokes. Play bouncer for the local tavern, find a lady a date, help the mentally-challenged Nord find his wizard buddy so he can tell him the story about the rabbits again, be forced into acting as understudy in a play... These aren't terrible side quests, per se, but they don't match at all with the level of importance the main plot carries, nor your character's assumed level of power. The jokey jokes are the worst, though, because they're very loudly winking and fourth wall-bending. Help a guy literally named Detritus complete his collection of clutter objects and become the Champion of Clutter. A naked Nord scolds you for assuming he's in trouble and ran afoul of some witch (something that happens like three times in the main game), he's just hot and took his clothes off to cool down. A completely inconsequential side quest to find the blacksmith a new apprentice when the old one just walks off, which basically plays itself out, is nothing more than an excuse for the new apprentice to spout off a lengthy bunch of anachronistic-sounding exposition about how he's down on his luck due to the downfall of the pillow making trade, which is all a reference to an obscure, bordering on easter egg subplot from the main game. It's stuff that would be right at home in the Shivering Isles (some even having direct parallels), but here it just feels like dumb filler and tonally clashes with the main plot. The combat is in a similar situation. For lack of being able to make interesting encounters, they mostly just went with quantity. When you kick open the door of the Dark Brotherhood HQ, you cut down like 30 loving assassins. When you're tasked with dismantling a looming goblin army beneath Mournhold, you cut through dozens and dozens of goblins (another Oblivion staple!) and their war hounds in order to kill two of their war chiefs and their two...high elf...trainers? (This is allegedly all the work of King Helseth, but this plot point also goes literally nowhere and it's never mentioned again after its quest, AFAIK. ) This is a boring slog even with their stats tamped down to manageable levels. I can't imagine putting up with this in vanilla. The highest number of enemies I can remember encountering in the base game is like...10-20, but spread out over an entire fortress dungeon. Versus being swarmed by waves of disposable assassins.But then on the flipside, they threw in some appropriately ludicrous "last thing you do in a playthrough" endgame challenges. A wood elf con artist who, after you tell him to buzz off, rolls up in ebony gear and tries to kill you. He's got an inflated Luck stat, so he's inexplicably and generically Better than you. One side quest unleashes a super dangerous lich queen upon the world, who is programmed to scale to your level. But said scripting is infamous for being turbo broken and even working correctly seems to result in her having silly amounts of HP. Her only form of offense is spamming a nuke spell that does three different types of damage and will generally 1-2 shot any character that isn't fully decked out in anti-magic gear. And then, finally, in a very Lord British sort of way you have Helseth himself. Thanks to his special ring he's 100% immune to all magic and has crazy high health regen on top of wearing solid armor and is surrounded by a retinue of body guards. If you can manage to overcome those odds, the game is basically over, because that ring is effectively god mode. But of course, he also only steps out of his private quarters after you finish the expansion's main quest, which also involves fighting Almalexia. (Also I'm fairly certain his death is non-canon anyway, so again, very Lord British.) There's also this odd "Black Dart Gang" subplot where everyone's terrified of these killers living in the sewers who specialize in impossible to survive mega-lethal poisoned throwing darts. But uh, there's a quest that points you to a secret switch that will flood their hideout and drown all but one of them. I think technically, not accounting for resistances/health regen, the poison is pretty silly strong but then why is it in the hands of some random assholes in a sewer? You'd think the Dark Brotherhood would be interested. Or the people upset with King Helseth. Who the hell are these guys? Then there's the random plugin-tier experimental stuff they threw in on top. Buy minor pets that follow you around and help in combat, then watch them die instantly to the overtuned enemies or just get in your way. Buy a literal pack rat with all of the same limitations, but also acts as a container for all your poo poo. Hire an honest to goodness mercenary and have him fight alongside you...with again all of the issues and struggles related to "helpful" NPCs just like in Oblivion. I guess in his case it's mildly interesting that he works on a budget system - he comes stocked with 500 gold of gear and you pay him 250 for two weeks of fighting. You can give him better gear, have him old onto stuff, etc. but if you try to empty his inventory down past 750 gold of stuff he gets pissed. It's all extra moot though because thanks to Mournhold existing in a pocket dimension, you enter and exit the expansion strictly via scripted teleportation, which leaves all followers behind. (You can, of course, with trickery and glitches bypass that, but also who cares?) Were you upset that there's barely any complete sets of medium armor in the entire base game? Good news, Adamantium armor is here! Go find the ore, then have the blacksmith process it into shiny new gear. Oh, uh, oops, the ore is found deep in those interminable sewers, doesn't respawn, has a random chance whether you get any from harvesting a particular node, and is also inexplicably the heaviest ore in the entire game. Assuming everything goes well, you get to make...two whole pieces of gear out of what ore is (theoretically) available. Also pick wisely, because certain pieces exist out in the game world for the taking and others never, ever appear at all ever. Tellingly, there's an entire separate plugin that just lets you loving buy the stuff and this half-baked make your own armor concept would then be repeated wholesale in Bloodmoon with the Stalhrim ore/gear where it works much, much better. Finally there's the museum. I'm a sucker for this sort of thing, but the implementation sucks. You can either sell off your priceless unique artifacts from across the main game (and some extra ones from the expansion itself) or donate them, so they can live on a shelf for the rest of the game. The concept of a "display model" doesn't exist here, something that really helps make the similar Skyrim museum mod work. Now, technically, the items aren't permanently lost - you can be a real rear end in a top hat and get the money and then just steal the item right back. But there's simply no way to have a complete collection AND keep the items for your personal use. The money isn't even that worth it. The museum payouts cap at 30k which to be fair is a lot, but it's an Elder Scrolls game, you can make infinite money an hour into the game if you know what you're doing and after a certain point money is largely irrelevant anyway. If you're doing this at endgame, you absolutely have no use for the money. They also hosed up because part of the expansion main quest requires you to donate a few artifacts to convince the curator to give up an artifact in trade, but it's possible (if not necessarily likely) for you to have already sold her every possible artifact. Whoops. A few of the artifacts are also extremely missable. Forex, one inexplicably comes from that "find the lady a date" side quest, but only if you pick the right guy for her, and then even still there's an invisible random chance for the date to go poorly and you don't get poo poo. Also, while the curator does give a little backstory on each artifact, it was a missed opportunity to not have her throw out some vague hints towards the location of the more obscure ones. Many of them are just sitting around in random dungeons in Vvardenfell and you'd only stumble across them by dumb luck.
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Nov 8, 2023 18:35
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bruh
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Nov 8, 2023 18:37
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I enjoyed reading your morrowind mega post, friend
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Nov 8, 2023 18:50
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Two other random complaints from the main game, which I otherwise haven't talked about in a while because I'm largely enjoying myself and just vibing with it: - There's a romance quest that is exclusive to male characters only, which is pretty lame. - As part of becoming a big wig in one of the Great Houses, you're tasked with building a stronghold. But it ends up being a completely pointless and vestigial-feeling part of the game. I guess it makes a little more sense for Telvanni mages to want their own mushroom tower or for Hlaalu types to host dinner parties in their own lavish estate, but Redorans get...a small fort compound in the middle of nowhere. Completing the process involves attracting people to live there by...getting single ladies to come over so the men have potential wives.  The stronghold does literally nothing. You later get sent to raid what would have been your stronghold if you had picked the other two Houses, but that's it. There's no Hearthfire-esque resource collection and building and customization rabbit hole to go down, there's no grand scale warring between the three factions, hell not even a proper quest to defend it from swarms of cliff racers or whatever where you actually DO something, you just get to bask in the majesty of having a base. Y'know, over there. That you don't even really properly own and have no reason to ever go back to...
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Nov 8, 2023 19:14
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Meowywitch posted:I enjoyed reading your morrowind mega post, friend think this means you have coprus, op
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Nov 8, 2023 19:15
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Meowywitch posted:I enjoyed reading your morrowind mega post, friend
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Nov 8, 2023 20:11
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big mean giraffe posted:So weird to see a ton of references pop up to this really recently. Great show though, glad people are discovering it. One of the episodes in the season that just finished of Lower Decks is "Parth Ferengi's Heart Place.” I kind of just stared slack-jawed at my screen when I saw it. Even for Lower Decks it felt obscure.
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Nov 8, 2023 20:14
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Arivia posted:One of the episodes in the season that just finished of Lower Decks is "Parth Ferengi's Heart Place.” I kind of just stared slack-jawed at my screen when I saw it. Even for Lower Decks it felt obscure. I was very sad that the Star Trek podcast I listen to didn't get that reference, but also didn't want to become the kind of listener who sends in one of the million "actually," explanatory emails that they probably shuffle right to the trash folder 
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Nov 8, 2023 20:46
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John Murdoch posted:The story feels pretty disjointed. I haven't finished it in full yet, but I know the loose details. I guess it's possible some nuance will pop up at the 11th hour and turn me around on it, but I doubt it. So, those nasty Dark Brotherhood attacks...who exactly is trying to have you bumped off? You can follow this line of investigation only to discover it leads right up to the King of Morrowind himself, Helseth. You are then told by his chief of staff "Yup, the King didn't like your face and thought you were a threat. What am I going to do about it? Nothing, because he's my boss and literally the fuckin' King. What you are going to do about it? Also not a drat thing. Deal with it." And so that plot hook instantly dissolves into nothing. It turns out I did get some details wrong...but only insomuch that this gets even sillier. Helseth does appear in the flesh before the end of the expack, and he's got a personal assignment just for you! Someone is plotting to kill his mother, so could you go stand guard for her? In this exact spot, at this exact time? All by yourself? Cue yet more Dark Brotherhood goons traipsing in to attempt to kill you, obviously once again at Helseth's command. And once again this is brushed off as being perfectly reasonable paranoia. Shame the Brotherhood isn't as reliable as it used to be. But anyway, since you just can't seem to die, can you do him a favor and spy on Almalexia? Not sure why he's so paranoid given his crazy protections, but okay, sure Bethesda, you've thoroughly convinced me that this royal rear end in a top hat needs to have a chat with my warhammer. While I'm here, a neat bit: A new flavor of unrest in Mournhold is a doomsday cult that's lost all faith in the Tribunal and are doing the whole ritualistic suicide routine in preparation for the apocalypse. What's got them so spooked? Daedra are going to erupt from the gates of Oblivion at any moment and burn the world to ash! Oh, well...I mean... John Murdoch has a new favorite as of 01:34 on Nov 9, 2023 |
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Nov 9, 2023 01:27
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Captain Hygiene posted:I was very sad that the Star Trek podcast I listen to didn't get that reference, but also didn't want to become the kind of listener who sends in one of the million "actually," explanatory emails that they probably shuffle right to the trash folder I've been listening to one too (maybe the same one, Greatest Trek/Generation), and I only just now got the joke of that title, because they pronounced it with entirely different cadence.
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Nov 9, 2023 01:46
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Cleretic posted:I've been listening to one too (maybe the same one, Greatest Trek/Generation), and I only just now got the joke of that title, because they pronounced it with entirely different cadence. Yep, that was it. It just surprised me a bit with all the references they pull, I figured at least one of them would've watched Darkplace.
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Nov 9, 2023 02:04
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Captain Hygiene posted:Yep, that was it. It just surprised me a bit with all the references they pull, I figured at least one of them would've watched Darkplace. In fairness, it's not really a reference that flows into the episode itself. Nothing about the episode really evokes Garth Merenghi or his source material, it's just a really long-shot pun. Also, a largely unrelated thing that isn't exactly actively dragging down Baldur's Gate 3, but I think is making it fail at its intended angle for me: As of early act 2, they have completely failed to make me actually trust the Dream Visitor, to the point where I don't think they actually realize how untrustworthy this character is. This is a character that turns up in your dreams after you've had a mindflayer parasite shoved in your head, whose main pitch is 'actually it's good that this parasite that all scientific understanding says is going to horribly murder you is in your brain, you should totally give in to its power so that we can fight this weird nebulous foe you only barely have any evidence of'. If I recall correctly it's Lae'zel that fully rejects this proposal, and I feel like that's meant to just be reflective of the fact Lae'zel is very distrustful of any solution that isn't the one she knows, but the problem here is that she's exactly right to not buy this out of nowhere. But I don't think the game actually expects me to consider the Dream Visitor an untrustworthy liar... which means they never wrote in a way to convince me in the first place, because they never thought it'd be needed. Which means that everything around the Dream Visitor kinda falls flat at what I'm pretty sure they're trying to swing for; they're supposed to be a friend, and I ABSOLUTELY don't buy that. Cleretic has a new favorite as of 02:54 on Nov 9, 2023 |
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Nov 9, 2023 02:51
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I'm pretty sure that's intentional. I don't trust them, and they'll even acknowledge why it makes sense you don't trust them
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Nov 9, 2023 03:13
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Yeah, I think that is a valid and possibly intended read on the character. I think Act 3 has some concrete evidence that they aren't being wholly truthful. And at the very ending you can choose to side against them/betray them and they get rather nasty in a way that makes you feel validated.
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Nov 9, 2023 03:34
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Cleretic posted:Also, a largely unrelated thing that isn't exactly actively dragging down Baldur's Gate 3, but I think is making it fail at its intended angle for me: As of early act 2, they have completely failed to make me actually trust the Dream Visitor, to the point where I don't think they actually realize how untrustworthy this character is. I think they did a pretty good job of this, honestly. You begin, abducted, on an alien race's biological spaceship that's flying through an eternal warzone located in capital-H Hell. At some point the corpses and viscera of the victims that litter the place end, and the actual, literal guts of the ship begin. The first person you see has their brain grow appendages and crawl out of their open skull, then start talking to you through the telepathic powers you gained from the brain parasite that's living behind your eye. You escape with the help of a Cleric of Shar, the goddess of Darkness, Secrets, and Lies, who carries a mysterious + magical artifact that both protects you and speaks to you in assuring tones. Your other companion is another, different type of alien, whose race's explicit purpose/faith/creed is the genocide of your abductors' species. In order to escape you have to team up with your abductors long enough to stave off a Lord of Hell, and you crash the Giger-esque spaceship by mindmelding with it, wake up on a beach surrounded by blood and destruction, and meet the first person you feel like you can actually trust: a vampire who introduces himself by trying to drink your blood. There's at least four explicitly evil factions this artifact could've come from on this spaceship. Why trust it at all? bawk has a new favorite as of 07:41 on Nov 9, 2023 |
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Nov 9, 2023 06:27
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You trust it because it’s the only thing keeping you from being mind controlled and turned into a slave yourself.
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Nov 9, 2023 07:36
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Arivia posted:You trust it because it’s the only thing keeping you from being mind controlled and turned into a slave yourself. That doesn't swing for me, because the only one backing up the Dream Visitor on this is the Dream Visitor, and I have no reason to believe them. Even the rogue mindflayer doesn't give them credit. I dunno, maybe I'm just fundamentally not on the same page with Larian RE: how much I should be taking these people at their words, because I definitely don't feel like I've been given appropriate room to express that I don't believe them and need a bit more evidence than 'trust me bro'. bawk posted:and meet the first person you feel like you can actually trust: a vampire who introduces himself by trying to drink your blood. And I'm especially not on the same page as you, because I absolutely didn't trust that guy, to the point where my absolute favorite part of the game so far is that it let me kick him out of the party for attempted assault. That's not even me intentionally going for a backhanded compliment, most games would force you to stay with that guy despite his blatant untrustworthiness, I like that BG3 recognizes that hey, maybe that's crossing a line and I don't want that guy around!
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Nov 9, 2023 08:52
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No of course the dream visitor isn't trustworthy. that's the whole loving point. That's not a flaw in the writing. come the gently caress on cleretic
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Nov 9, 2023 09:53
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"But I don't think the game actually expects me to consider the Dream Visitor an untrustworthy liar" Yeah, it loving does!!!!!!!!!!!?!!
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Nov 9, 2023 09:55
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Like what are you even expecting at this point? Before you were bitching that you couldn't tell the goblin priest 'you expected me to fall into your trap but I didn't fall into my trap because I was aware that it was a trap', and now you're complaining the game doesn't let you say 'you, the Dream Visitor, are not trustworthy, to me, because I cannot know your true identity or motivations, and urging me to take more parasites is fundamentally untrustworthy, as it undermines my identity'? You want the game to give you every opportunity to say exactly what you think of every character at all times? Is that it?
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Nov 9, 2023 10:01
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It's Cleretic man.
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Nov 9, 2023 10:04
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Cleretic posted:That doesn't swing for me, because the only one backing up the Dream Visitor on this is the Dream Visitor, and I have no reason to believe them. Even the rogue mindflayer doesn't give them credit. I got my first cutscene where the artifact protected me from getting mind controlled on a big bridge to the south of the goblin camp in act 1. Like full on everyone got the hurty brains and it started glowing to resist the effects of the Absolute’s followers. Did that not happen for you or something? I’m not sure when you are in the game but there are other cutscenes and events that also show the artifact protecting you directly.
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Nov 9, 2023 10:31
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Just because the player character isn't turning to the camera and saying 'woah! this 'dream guardian' sure seems untrustworthy!' before eating a chili dog and spindashing away, doesn't mean that isn't the authorial intent
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Nov 9, 2023 10:31
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Cleretic posted:That doesn't swing for me, because the only one backing up the Dream Visitor on this is the Dream Visitor, and I have no reason to believe them. Even the rogue mindflayer doesn't give them credit. Throw the artifact away or break it.
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Nov 9, 2023 10:38
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Arivia posted:I got my first cutscene where the artifact protected me from getting mind controlled on a big bridge to the south of the goblin camp in act 1. Like full on everyone got the hurty brains and it started glowing to resist the effects of the Absolute’s followers. Did that not happen for you or something? I’m not sure when you are in the game but there are other cutscenes and events that also show the artifact protecting you directly. I've gotten that scene, but I've just assumed that the external protection from Psychic Bullshit has been different from the internal protection from 'brain gets eat'. After all, the only quest that really went into length about the internal protection, with the rogue mindflayer (favorite NPC so far by the way), didn't bring up the magic d20 at any point.
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Nov 9, 2023 10:43
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... this is some "Friends the Game" level metahumor you're all pulling right now, right? Because you all sound batshit crazy. But seriously, is that stuff in BG3? Because I'll need to add it to my want list if so.
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Nov 9, 2023 12:55
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A particularly fun thing the game pulls is that it asks you to design your own guardian. Most people will create someone they'll find at least nominally attractive. They then show up as the Dream Visitor, including once in ... casual clothing. Personally, I looked at this big hunky tiefling I'd thought up and congratulated Larian on getting me to assemble my own torture rack and turn my own wheel. I wanted to believe the Dream Visitor, but they're literally created to appeal to me, and I know I have brainworms.
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Nov 9, 2023 13:06
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Lunar Suite posted:A particularly fun thing the game pulls is that it asks you to design your own guardian. Most people will create someone they'll find at least nominally attractive. yeah but could you tell them "hmm i am a bit suspicious of you" in dialog because otherwise what was even the point.
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Nov 9, 2023 13:13
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Lunar Suite posted:A particularly fun thing the game pulls is that it asks you to design your own guardian. Most people will create someone they'll find at least nominally attractive. I was sort of caught by surprise when asked to make the guardian, and just opted to base mine on the sister of the roleplaying character I was basing my player character on, because I could make her quickly. I can't really blame the game for the fact that made some of the dialog options in that one scene you mention a little weird, but it didn't exactly help.
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Nov 9, 2023 13:34
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Randalor posted:... this is some "Friends the Game" level metahumor you're all pulling right now, right? Because you all sound batshit crazy. But seriously, is that stuff in BG3? Because I'll need to add it to my want list if so. Literally the beginning of the game is you in a flying fleshship getting infected with a psychic parasite that threatens to turn your skull inside out and transform you into a squid person
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Nov 9, 2023 13:35
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Everything to do with the guardian is poo poo and hilariously bad writing. But that's mostly due to the devs being terrified of having tadpole consequences and their weird boner for The Emperor. For an untrustworthy character he sure has your back every step of the way and does exactly what you want. But then you tick the hmm actually I like Orpheus dialogue option and he was le evil all along time to join the thing I was fighting against the entire story
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Nov 9, 2023 14:01
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Yeah between the Tadpole Levelling Up Screen being basically a giant bouquet of red flags and the powers looking lame, I noped out of that immediately. You get +1 to one roll once a day! Now watch an animated wriggling parasite burrow into your character's brain, turning part of it deathly white and leaving a gaping hole. ....No.
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Nov 9, 2023 14:41
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While I understand where you're coming from, I feel like I have to point out that it isn't a +1 to one roll once per day. It's your proficiency bonus to your first roll with any character you meet. And you constantly meet new characters and may only need one roll, so sometimes it's doubling your modifier on a roll, or giving you a modifier when you normally wouldn't have one. One of the funniest brain worm moves is "Perilous Stakes." You're supposed to put it on an ally and then they'll be able to heal off any attacks they make, but the downside is they take double damage. The game lets you cast it on enemies, so the optional boss with 666 HP just melts.
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Nov 9, 2023 14:53
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There are a couple insane ones like the auto crit ability on a Paladin. Plus the one that auto kills on tadpole power count, which gets to like at 22hp or something
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Nov 9, 2023 14:54
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Oh yeah, love that one. Get two or more low and then when one pops, he explodes and pops his friends, who may also pop and kill their friends...
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Nov 9, 2023 14:59
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Cleretic posted:And I'm especially not on the same page as you, because I absolutely didn't trust that guy, to the point where my absolute favorite part of the game so far is that it let me kick him out of the party for attempted assault.
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Nov 9, 2023 15:26
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So having never played any baldurs gate is bg3 worth getting?
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Nov 9, 2023 15:48
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