Eh, I don’t really care. In that I don’t feel like the game was lacking for real estate and I don’t care enough about game development to go back and wave statements back at the devs. If others feel lied to in some way than I’m not going to tell them that they’re wrong, I just can’t muster the energy to give a shit. Did I get my $60 worth? Yes, several times over. Will I be happy if they expand upon it for later games or to re-run the ending cinematics? Sure.
I guess I feel like I did while playing Cyberpunk 2077 – a bunch of people mad about this and that because they’d been following the hype train while I was just bopping around and having a good time.
As for Karlach
Minority opinion, I guess, but I actually liked that she didn’t have a magic wand, fix your problems, ending. Going into it knowing that people were all ruffled about there not being a ‘happy fix’ made her moments more poignant because I knew that I wasn’t going to quest or loot my way out of this and she was truly fucked over by Gortash.
Had I expected that I could just throw another pile of Infernal Iron at Dammon and get her right as rain, it wouldn’t have resonated nearly as much.
Fully agree. The whole point is that she knows what’s coming and she’s just so happy that her story is ending with friends and meaning and purpose. It’s great that way.
Playing a drow noble this time and it does feel different from my gnome charlatan. No more having to talk my way around goblins; now I just stroll up to them and they start bowing and hoping I won’t hunt them for sport.
My favorite moment of emergent storytelling was last night, near the end of Act 2:
We’d just killed the necromancer, and Shadowheart was getting ready to kill the Aasimar, when my bard tried to persuade her not to. It all came down to a single crucial persuasion check. Of course as a bard I have a billion bonuses, and I threw in Friends just to be safe–but then I saw that I could also add Guidance and Eagle’s Splendor.
The only source of those spells in my party?
Shadowheart.
The last magic Shadowheart ever performed as a cleric of Shar was to whisper a prayer to help me persuade her to abandon her goddess and her destiny.
I think I know a bit of what happens here. I have a warlock as my main. I click on TAB to see party inventory and I look in the fighter’s inventory. It says I don’t have prof in armor, which makes sense because my warlock is selected. So, I select my fighter but it still says no prof in armor. I have to click on the new person a few times before it actually selects them and applies their proficiencies to their own inventory but also party view.
This also happens in stores a lot. I’m buying for my fighter but they aren’t proficient in a long sword?? What?? Oh, it’s thinking I’m on my main so I have to click the fighter a few times.
Help me out here, I’m barely into act 2 and I still dont have a good grasp of what the hell is going on. A feeling compounded by what I call “Quest bleed”. Thats when your companion or an NPC makes mention of stuff that didnt happen. This also happened a lot in Fallout 4. “Thanks for helping me against the Brotherhood…”…Uhm I never did that synth dude.
Example: I’m breaking Nere out, because people are saying hes trapped and its one of the first things I see when i get to that area. A couple of my companions mention “We just want his head”…the fuh are you talking about?? I mean…I looked it up, and figured out why they said that, but I never talked to anyone about it.
So I’m asking are your experiences similar to mine at this point in the game? Just got to the shadow lands rest area. We’re going to the tower to get info about removing the tadpoles. Not quite sure what The Absolute is but its very dangerous. True Souls are Tadpole carriers who have been changed by The Absolute? And our Guardian? Still cant fully trust them. But they seem to be on our side. Don’t really know what theyre doing though. Fighting on the Astral Plane?? I dunno.
I just let Nere get poisoned. His fight was too tough and I never ran into the whole mutiny thing.
If you never got asked by the myconids to kill Nere then that’s probably a bug - they have tags on all the dialogue lines (so for example, “we only want his head” would have a tag that only allows the line to play if you got that quest from the Myconids) but they’re still working out some quirks in what plays when. If you have a save file from just before the line plays you could file a bug report.[/spoiler]
As to your other questions - Act 1 is the part of the story where you stumble into the bad guys’ plot. Act 2 is the part when you investigate the plot and learn more. The climax of Act 2 should answer almost all of your questions about what is happening, and if you do enough digging around you can actually learn everything a bit early - though it won’t change much in Act 2.
I last saved in the campsite before you fully enter Act 3. There are still a bunch of unanswered questions but it really does feel like I’m fully in the “stop the bad guys” phase now.
My first playthrough is with a warlock and I have no idea what my alignment is. Or how it would be defined. In general, I have tried to be loyal to the NPCs I chose (Shadowheart, Lae’zel, and Gale, although Gale annoys the crap out of me). It could easily be argued I’m evil for some of the things I have done. I worked with the Zhentarim without going against them. I helped the cultists who lost their cell leader. I lost Jaheira at some point and didn’t notice. I forced the goblin who tried to send his pet into the darkness to go instead. I betrayed the drider after saying I would help them. I ended up killing the owner of the magic shop in Baldur’s Gate rather than help. In fact, at the moment, the only one I’m not planning to betray and keep my word is the demon. I ended up befriending and then killing the owlbear cub. I’m all over the place.
As for the game, I feel like I have missed a lot. It does mean the next play through will have a lot of content I didn’t see. For example, I have no idea where the hag is or the myconoids. I’m sure I have missed a lot more in Act 1 since I never found Wyll. At least, I think that’s his name!
I do think, for all of its branching, there are some really tough fights and I’m wondering if I have missed some tricks. I finished the steel guardian factory technically but the guy who was supposed to help me destroy it died. I have no idea if I can even progress now or if I have to go back and redo that mission and save him. I found the fight with the master steel guardian to be extremely tough and I have level twelve characters. I am not min/maxed by any means but it still seems really tough. It annoys me I can’t just destroy the machine, that I need that NPC of Gond.
I’m enjoying myself, even when I redo fights. I must have done the Iron Throne jail five or six times to save as many as I could.
I know DND is based on a four person party but I would love DLC or a patch that let me take six (the old standard party size) or as many as I want, since the game has shown me it can handle big fights with a lot of combatants. It makes no sense to me that I’m trying to save the world, or at least the city, have found lots of people that want to help me, but leave most of them behind in camp!
Well, I am now level six and I think I am ready to move on to what I assume is the end of Act I (or at least I am told to be sure I tie up loose ends before going). I just made one final stop to beat the hell out of that hag. Because F that hag.
So my bard got his ass teleported to Chult, where he had to fight ravenous bands of dinosaurs all by himself. I came across a pair of dinos going after a cat, but accidentally killed the cat when throwing a grenade at them. Alas!
I have a spoiler question about the end(?) of Act I: Are the entrances in the Grymforge and the Mountain Pass mutually exclusive from each other? If you take one are you locking yourself out of quests etc. that would then become unavailable because you went one way vs the other or are they just two ways to enter the same space?