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Mailer posted:I kind of knew this would be the case and abandoned the game after a few hours when it released until the long easter weekend. In a truly unhealthy burst of playing video games it only took 39 hours to beat... act 1. Granted a lot of that was reading about how not to screw myself out of storylines. Stay tuned for my 2025 review of act 2. I wanted to love DoS2 but I bounced off the mechanics. BG3 is a lot more accessible to me for some reason and I love it. I also spend a hilarious amount of time researching the game versus playing the game. I get a kind of analysis paralysis because I don’t think I’ll ever have time to replay the game. So I want to try and enjoy as much of the story as possible on the first run through. It’s funny because I’m trying to research good builds and ways to experience fun story beats while also trying to avoid spoilers. I can dodge bullets.
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Apr 2, 2024 18:38
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OzFactor posted:I have questions about the timeline of the astral prism. I am terrible at playing all the way through games but I have played deep into act 3 several times and I still do not have answers to these questions so I must be missing things. so it's laid out in bits and pieces all over the place spoilers obvi the prism was held by the Githyanki. Then in the Shar temple you can find notes about learning of the absolute plot and I think Shar comes up with the idea to steal it because it will be important. They create a team to go get it, of which only Shadowheart survives. She is picked up by the Illithids and put on the ship with the prism. I don't know if it was then or before but the Emperor forces his way inside, unknowingly doing the bidding of the elder brain. After that it's as the game depicts.
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Apr 2, 2024 18:39
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I kind of figured the elder brain was just making that up. Oh yeah man this was definitely all my plan all along, no cope here no sir
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Apr 2, 2024 18:47
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Shard posted:so it's laid out in bits and pieces all over the place The nether brain orchestrating all the events behind the scenes made the story worse and more confusing and it would have been better for there to have been things even a giant flying brain can't just magically predict. Looking back and comparing it with other CRPGs I've played, my biggest critique of BG3 is its lack of real themes or meaning in its story. Pillars of Eternity dealt with the death of God and the disconnect between the medieval world and modernity, plus colonialism and cultural conflicts in the sequel. BG2 and Throne of Bhaal interrogate the RPG murderhobo and adventure format by making even the best intentioned adventuring ultimately serve the Lord of Murder. Siege of Dragonspear came close to interrogating the paladin archetype and the nature of both religious and military duty before fumbling in the last 30 minutes and pulling Icewind Dale's final boss out of its rear end (Caelar Argent should have absolutely been the final boss, and to have become the final boss without ever falling from Lawful Good). And I think this ties into my earlier post about the game's spectacle and production values sometimes working against it and a cheaper production with less corporate support could have had more to say since it wouldn't have had 200 million dollars riding on it. Woolie Wool fucked around with this message at 20:16 on Apr 2, 2024 |
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Apr 2, 2024 19:40
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BG3 definitely seems like its themes are heavily geared more towards character study and found family rather than taking a larger and stickier philosophical issue, naming it The Eidolon of Free Will or something, putting it into a suit of Adamantine Demon Plate, and saying "defeat him to destroy the onslaught of chaos at the cost of never knowing if the mortal realm has true agency of any kind." I haven't beaten Act 3 yet, though I'm pretty close I think. I suppose other themes I'm seeing are the breaking or perpetuating cycles of violence and trauma, the allure of ambition, the way hubris dehumanizes you, and the terror of trusting when you have imperfect information. Questions as well of "do you use your enemy's tactics to rob the already brainwashed of their free will even further if it serves your ultimate goals, and the only real consequence is that it is morally and ethically dubious to do so?"
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Apr 2, 2024 20:34
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I don't know how you can look at like six characters' 15+ hour storylines all centered around the perpetuation and internalization of trauma, the rejection of orthodoxy and the hollowness of revenge and think "hmm nothing to see here," but that's just me.
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Apr 2, 2024 20:40
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The game in final analysis is extremely good at making you hallucinate a better story than is actually being told.exquisite tea posted:I don't know how you can look at like six characters' 15+ hour storylines all centered around the perpetuation and internalization of trauma, the rejection of orthodoxy and the hollowness of revenge and think "hmm nothing to see here," but that's just me. None of that matters when the plot totally shits the bed in the final sequence.
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Apr 2, 2024 20:42
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SlimGoodbody posted:the terror of trusting when you have imperfect information. This is me, every dialogue, terrified that I may miss a cool story beat
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Apr 2, 2024 20:43
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The hollowness of revenge is a platitude for conquerors on their death bed.
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Apr 2, 2024 20:46
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Black Noise posted:The hollowness of revenge is a platitude for conquerors on their death bed. You can't deny that Ascended Astarion is living his best life.
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Apr 2, 2024 20:47
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one of the things the game likes to hammer on is 'isolationism and xenophobia are bad and leaders that promise security from otherized 'threats' are very bad', which is true, but it's kind of incidental to the whole worms-in-people's-brains schtick
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Apr 2, 2024 20:52
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exquisite tea posted:You can't deny that Ascended Astarion is living his best life. This depends on which Lae’zel ending you choose. If someone else makes the choice she flies off with some Prince to learn the ways of the comet. So now you’re a long distance military spouse. All my jokes about speed run Lae’zel being accurate for a soldier just boomeranged on me. But you get a dialogue option that is [Evil] [Evil] [Evil] [gently caress it we adventure] right at the end after the dock. You can go if there isn’t a prince around. But since there is no DLC the best ending imo is keep the egg ask her to stay. It’s like Karlach, Wyll, and whoever they partnered with fighting Zariel except the Gith are coming for us
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Apr 2, 2024 20:59
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In the latest patch you can get a Lae'zel ending where you, she, and Orpheus all ride off into space on dragons together to fight Vlaakith, which is pretty drat awesome
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Apr 2, 2024 21:11
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Black Noise posted:This depends on which Lae’zel ending you choose. If someone else makes the choice she flies off with some Prince to learn the ways of the comet. So now you’re a long distance military spouse. All my jokes about speed run Lae’zel being accurate for a soldier just boomeranged on me. But you get a dialogue option that is [Evil] [Evil] [Evil] [gently caress it we adventure] right at the end after the dock. you can also go if you're gith.
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Apr 2, 2024 21:12
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Docjowles posted:In the latest patch you can get a Lae'zel ending where you, she, and Orpheus all ride off into space on dragons together to fight Vlaakith, which is pretty drat awesome You could always get that, you just had to be a gith before.
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Apr 2, 2024 21:16
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Would disguise self work?
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Apr 2, 2024 21:19
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Didn't expect that if you let Astarion feed on you all the way to death at the very beginning of the game then there's dialogue accounting for if you're resurrected. Loving this co-op re-run, I just keep running into stuff I missed the first time around.
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Apr 2, 2024 21:19
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you can get the best ending re:the gith by turning orpheus into an illithid and having orpheus in displacer beast form when you beat the elder brain and he will be stuck in that form. he will be in that form throughout the docks scene and the game just kind of forgets about him, so i assume he wanders off to live life as a cat
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Apr 2, 2024 21:27
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That rules actually lmao, definitely doing that next time.
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Apr 2, 2024 21:28
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Big Bowie Bonanza posted:you can get the best ending re:the gith by turning orpheus into an illithid and having orpheus in displacer beast form when you beat the elder brain and he will be stuck in that form. he will be in that form throughout the docks scene and the game just kind of forgets about him, so i assume he wanders off to live life as a cat lmfao
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Apr 2, 2024 21:29
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mycot posted:Anyway I'm reminded of the exchange you can have with the mercenary trying to steal the githyanki egg and Lae'zel. The mercenary says the Society of Brilliance wanted the egg to prove an experiment that a Gith doesn't have to be inherently violent if raised out of that environment. Both the mercenary and Lae'zel are dismissive of the idea, but I'm pretty sure BG3 at least believes that is correct. Even Raph is kinda sorta implied to be a product of his environment. Have you played through to the lodge in Act 3 after giving the society the egg, because uh
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Apr 2, 2024 21:40
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Ratios and Tendency posted:Have you played through to the lodge in Act 3 after giving the society the egg, because uh I don't think I've ever successfully stolen the egg, no 
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Apr 2, 2024 21:45
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The Githzerai exist as proof that the Gith don't have to be evil. When the Gith freed themselves from the Illithids half of them decided to be a race of conquerers as the Githyanki while half decided to be isolationist psychic monks as the Githzerai. So it was literally a choice that then formed the two societies that serve to reinforce that behaviour in all future Gith. And even then, the Githyanki were likely much less violent and fascist before Vlaakith took over.
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Apr 2, 2024 21:55
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Apr 2, 2024 22:03
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Some of these are pretty funny
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Apr 2, 2024 22:09
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The Wicked ZOGA posted:one of the things the game likes to hammer on is 'isolationism and xenophobia are bad and leaders that promise security from otherized 'threats' are very bad', which is true, but it's kind of incidental to the whole worms-in-people's-brains schtick Yeah the thing with the games I compared it to was that the themes were the bedrock of those games' plot (or in the case of Dragonspear, were until the game suddenly took it all back). The big reveal about Iovara, Thaos, and the origin of the gods at Breith Eaman in Pillars was set up by nearly every beat of the main quest and many of the companion plotlines (especially Durance, who might be the best companion NPC in any RPG ever and the only cleric I've ever encountered who actually makes a believable priest), and drove home all the major themes of the game all at once. It was an absolutely masterful climax and ending. Meanwhile the ending of BG3, at least for me, was mostly just Withers doing his worst Gandalf impression and a celebration of how awesome I am, which...I guess?  The only really affecting moment was when I mercy killed Orpheus, which made me think about how selfish my decision was.
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Apr 2, 2024 22:12
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Docjowles posted:In the latest patch you can get a Lae'zel ending where you, she, and Orpheus all ride off into space on dragons together to fight Vlaakith, which is pretty drat awesome I was on that patch but due to how dialogue works in co-op you don’t always get that option. See the Durge suddenly felt very concerned about their fellow man and made the sacrifice then killed themselves. Since they made the choice the Prince talked to them and Lae’zeal talked about leaving behind a love to save her people. They didn’t account for that weird condition so Astarion had no say. It’s like how before if you played origin Gale you can’t convince Karlach to return because your scene triggered first so you are “gone” from the dock. So I’m assuming if I was to also fly off with her and the price I’d have to  or sacrifice someone else’s romance.
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Apr 2, 2024 22:32
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SlothBear posted:Nope. It would be awful to have to track all that crap, computer video games can do that with minimal additional cognitive load on us
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Apr 2, 2024 22:38
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Jay Rust posted:Some of these are pretty funny Laezel just rolling her eyes real hard as you save a child's life
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Apr 2, 2024 22:41
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That's why I love her.
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Apr 2, 2024 22:43
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If I do a Durge run and aim to enslave the Absolute to Bhaal are there any run-ending traps to watch out for? I have heard under certain conditions The Emperor will see your attempt to betray him at the last moment and enthrall you because he is holding the Netherstones and you're not and I'm sure Orpheus or Karlach wouldn't approve of me doing an Amelyssan either.
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Apr 2, 2024 23:00
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Martian posted:I gave my entire party Alert as their feat at lvl 4, this seems like the correct choice so far Alert and Lucky is so good to have on everyone.
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Apr 2, 2024 23:39
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exquisite tea posted:I don't know how you can look at like six characters' 15+ hour storylines all centered around the perpetuation and internalization of trauma, the rejection of orthodoxy and the hollowness of revenge and think "hmm nothing to see here," but that's just me.  I’ve beaten this game more than maybe anyone else who I’ve seen post here and half the time I have no idea what people are talking about when they criticize the plot. The Emperor is a total loving bastard and it tells you so explicitly. He killed his lover and best friend. He enslaved Stelmane. He does not give a poo poo about anything but staying alive another 10 seconds. Him also being a part of the Netherbrain’s plan is very funny and good because it shows that behind all that posturing about being a 12th dimensional chess playing pragmatist, he’s just a stupid, selfish rear end in a top hat. I’d say that’s one of the themes here - plotting, scheming, abusive, manipulative dicks aren’t nearly as effective as they think they are. See also: Gortash and Orin. I wouldn’t say there’s nothing I wouldn’t change, but this isn’t a place I see a weakness in the plotting.
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Apr 3, 2024 00:16
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Nephthys posted:The Githzerai exist as proof that the Gith don't have to be evil. When the Gith freed themselves from the Illithids half of them decided to be a race of conquerers as the Githyanki while half decided to be isolationist psychic monks as the Githzerai. So it was literally a choice that then formed the two societies that serve to reinforce that behaviour in all future Gith. iirc one of the gith slates you can find on one of the "off" platforms in the astral prism depicts a female figure and a devil or something, the implication being that vlaakith one was installed at their behest.
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Apr 3, 2024 00:17
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Finally got Halsin and that fight sure is a weird thing to still not be fixed. I'm assuming requiring that you don't do too well or it all breaks is a bug.Ornery and Hornery posted:I wanted to love DoS2 but I bounced off the mechanics. BG3 is a lot more accessible to me for some reason and I love it. Same on both counts. It is in no way unique to BG3, but I really wish game designers would knock it off with the complicated quest triggers. Doing B before A but not before C but also you need to talk to D but don't advance it to stage E pretty much ensures you're going to have to read extensive spoilers. I know the canned "But you'll want to immediately play this 150-hour game again anyway!" defense applies to a lot of people but it's definitely not my thing. I also wage a nonstop offensive against the fog of war on any map so that's probably a niche thing.
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Apr 3, 2024 00:28
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In most cases, the point of complicated quest triggers is so you DON'T have to go do things in a specific order. They have to assume that you are starting the quest at any arbitrary point in the middle because you accidentally stumbled over something, which is what makes it complicated. If there's some bottleneck where you have to do B before C or it fails to trigger, that simply means they didn't make it complicated enough.
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Apr 3, 2024 00:34
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lol
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Apr 3, 2024 00:34
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MariusLecter posted:Alert and Lucky is so good to have on everyone. Heck yeah love the powerful feats
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Apr 3, 2024 00:39
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Geekboy posted:
Hell the dead three think they have this amazing plot but it's so rear end that it falls apart by the middle of the game. Hell you could argue it falls apart the instant orin decided to stab her sibling
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Apr 3, 2024 00:43
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Kawabata posted:I'm sure this has come up in the thread before, but what's up with dice rolls? I know this is pretty well tread by now but gently caress this post is so funny. "I know the answer to this question but surely it doesn't apply to meeeee."
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