Baldur's Gate 3

I went ahead and splurged on Baldur’s Gate 3, paying the full price for a new game known to be buggy. I just couldn’t resist. I had been playing Pathfinder recently but it’s just not working for me.

I wasn’t originally planning to, but I got sucked into the Githyanki plot line because of how the more Lae’zel tries, the worse it gets for her. It’s gotten to the point where her own kin try to kill her on sight and she still believes she can win the queen’s favor. It’s not entirely implausible, thinking in-universe, because of how the queen also took it merely as a sign of strength how the party had killed dozens of Githyanki to get to speak to her. Anyway, I didn’t mind antagonising the “Guardian” just so that Lae’zel could not blame me for her own misfortune.

It reminded me of a similar pattern in Larion’s earlier game Divinity Original Sin 2, where there’s a questline seemingly to support the elf Saheila, yet if you follow it you actually end up antagonising and killing her (turns out she will thank you for it, having been blind to the truth. Heh). I think I have a beginner writer tendency to create external conflicts and then solve those through proper actions of the protagonists. Better drama follows when the protagonists do the right thing and that causes things to get worse. The drama is then in how far are they willing to carry it, and will the justice win before they break. At the critical moment the heroes realize their own flaw which keeps them from succeeding, and that moment of the finally try is also the moment when things finally go their way.

Playing the game the whole day, pretty much. This has probably the best voice acting of any game I’ve played before. In a way it even exceeds the Japanese industry’s talents because Japanese voices all have a certain unreal quality to them. This game has voice acting that feels alive, makes the characters very unique. Just met this NPC called Balthazar who makes delicious sounds — and it’s great how he moves his hands as part of the speech. Almost all the player characters are also great, at least the ones I’m playing with.

Before starting the game I thought the most player characters seemed like they would be boring. Actually their personalities weren’t that much outside the parameters I estimated, but besides the voice acting, the number of meaningful decisions and even dice rolls in the beginning was great. I really started paying attention after seeing stuff like a party member immediately leaving when I read his thoughts and failed a dice roll to conceal it, or another outright attacked for the same thing — I really thought I might die when Astarion came to suck my blood in the night, or that I was gonna lose at least one companion when Shadowheart and Lae’zel were clashing.

Knowing you can only keep a party of four, I didn’t mind much losing the “extras”. Gale left after I tried reading his thoughts, Wyll after I sided with the goblins. Karlach I killed to trade her head for a sword I used maybe for an hour — that’s what you get for calling me a fuckhead. I now have five members after I recruited Minthara. I’ll probably switch out Shadowheart as I never felt like I learned to use her class well (I’m choosing playing without respecs/multiclassing on the first time). But I just stumbled upon her personal quest main dungeon, so for now it’s Lae’zel sitting on the bench.

Playing Baldur’s Gate. Too gripping, staying up way too late.

Learned that my coworker is also currently playing the game and we chatted a bit about RPG games and stuff. I’m not sure if I should get too friendly with coworkers since this business we are in is quite serious. On the other hand I got a good friend from a previous company by opening up about my interest in anime. I think it’s a bit different since everyone my age plays games. Except my boss.

There’s two things I hate with passion in these CRPGs: Traps and puzzles. This game is not only fond of both, but likes to combine them, grrr. Traps are annoying because they require so much micromanagement (companions will frequently run into them even after they are spotted, and jumping over them also gets a bit tedious), and ultimately they are always just something you can literally see on the ground, or guess from failed perception rolls (a bit odd the game shows those). Puzzles are always the same in these games — press buttons in correct order which can be figured out by reading some books in the previous room. The variants only serve to increase the tedium: Instead of pressing buttons you might be required to stand on them or cast spells on them. Instead of reading books you might need to look at the walls or broken statues, one of which has been carried to a different room by looters.

I listened to some podcast where a designer of Icewind Dale explained why these games have traps in the first place. Unfortunately I forgot why — it wasn’t so that the rogue classes have something to do. Might find out by googling…

The Underdark discovery was pretty cool, partly because I actually failed at it. Apparently there are something like 4 different ways to access the place, but they are all slightly tricky and I missed them all without realizing I was missing something. I think large places difficult to discover feel like really special rewards. Because really you are playing the game for the sake of playing, so more stuff to play is the greatest reward. I think I read Underdark is actually non-optional, but it still counts because you can discover it earlier if you are thorough.

Finally finished the game. Very solid experience. Although I think the “options” one can take are actually not much more varied than in other modern RPGs. This game just makes the cool thing you want to do to be the default outcome, and the other options cleverly merge into it so that there isn’t actually that big of a difference. Still, I should definitely play once more to see the “good” paths — now I did the “evil” playthrough first. And I’m delighted this game allowed such and did it really well too. Anyway, I’d say I’ll wait until they release some DLC but could be there will never be one — the studio developing this is a bit different I guess.

I think the game could most benefit from “randomization”. There were lots of cool items in the middle and late game that I never bothered to use because I got them so late. Looks like mods can patch that, I’ll be sure to try them on next playthroughs.

Bought and played Baldur’s Gate 1 a bit out of nostalgia. It was pretty terrible to be honest. Still, not time entirely wasted, bad games have things to teach too.