Yeah it's a bad answer, but to be fair to him, it's a mind-blowingly stupid question in the first place. This clearly seems to be his first time interacting with BG3 fans. He wasn't prepared for the near-absolute void of understanding anything about fantasy or role-playing games that one always encounters.
2 months ago
Anonymous
You can literally get to the Underdark from a cellar and staircase in Waterdeep. Not any dumber then using a ladder from inside a cave, or casting featherfall and jumping into a whole in the ground.
2 months ago
Anonymous
>You can literally get to the Underdark from a cellar and staircase in Waterdeep
Yes, but how deep is this staircase? What's the compressive strength and shear modulus of the stone it's made out of? This is a rickety-ass bullshit ladder we are talking about here. Like Metal Gear Solid trolling-the-player style.
2 months ago
Anonymous
No, you can't.
You get to undermountain, possibly the biggest most expansive dungeon in all of faerun, and on the SIXTH underground level of that dungeon, easily two miles underground depending on how much you hype up the scale, there are some connections to a certain part of the underdark
Compare that to ONE FRICKING LADDER
2 months ago
Anonymous
>one fricking ladder
Surely there are parts of the Underdark that are closer to the surface. If it is a straight tunnel down, surely we can assume that the ladder is made up of smaller sections.
2 months ago
Anonymous
Yes this mentality is why modern fantasy creators. They look for the flimsiest excuse to do the laziest thing possible and fans will lap it up so long as there are more cutscenes with freak homosex.
2 months ago
Anonymous
If only things could stay just the way there were in your childhood.
2 months ago
Anonymous
>fallacy
Also why are you choosing this of all hills to die on?
Nevermind, I know why, it's because you don't even think. For you, replying is a hindbrain reflex.
how else would you reach it ? what matters is the scale
the underdark is several miles below ground, getting there should be a long journey
I do not believe in a several miles long ladder
No, you can't.
You get to undermountain, possibly the biggest most expansive dungeon in all of faerun, and on the SIXTH underground level of that dungeon, easily two miles underground depending on how much you hype up the scale, there are some connections to a certain part of the underdark
Compare that to ONE FRICKING LADDER
What people aren't getting about the ladder is that it's a joke. Larian intended it as a joke. You get a little cutscene of your character going down the ladder, stopping and looking down, sighing, then continuing to climb.
Larian think it's hilarious. The devs think they are really, really funny. When you realise this, the bad decisions in BG3 make more sense. And become even more annoying.
Yeah, Larian jokes a lot. That's actually a criticism, not an excuse or reason. Their jokes aren't even good, and it was one of the main reasons that people were skeptical about their ability to do BGIII, and they didn't disappoint the naysayers.
BioWare did stupid humor too, like the golden pantaloons and Boo the miniature giant space hamster. Larian's execution is more along the lines of "get it? get it?" after a bad job, and follows Hollywood trends of over-explaining stuff for a dumb audience.
Every CRPG dev studio is inhabited by 40+ year old boomers who lived in the 90s TTRPG era where monty python jokes were the height of comedy. I honestly just tune out the shitty references in any RPG by this point.
1. Larian picked the illithid tadpole as the main hook of the story...
And then did everything to work around it.
- They dropped any serious threat and time pressure mid-development. Which leaves some awkward leftovers from the original idea. Like sinister lines when you use the tadpole.
It also pretty much turned Raphael into an useless bum who has nothing to offer, despite all the self-hype.
- It really tries to turn MULTIPLE EVIL ALIEN BRAIN WORMS into something seductive. Like vampirism or being a child of a dark deity.
Sorry, it simply doesn't work. It's much closer to a xenomorph parasite, than vampirism.
Furthermore...
It also creates this esoteric mess with "is it still you when you turn into an illithid"?
Well, the game never decides.
You can roleplay it any way you want.
That's with your meta knowledge of what the tadpoles do in the end
I felt pressured not to use the tadpoles because of the writing, because it said a part of my brain gets eaten every time I used the power.
>we can all agree that some of the writing in it is really goddamn bad, right?
No we cannot because zoomers cannot stomach criticism.
Here is how it works: >I like it therefore it is good because otherwise I wouldn't like it >I hate it therefore its shit and irredeemable.
They do not understand that you can like flawed things.
Or that you can play a good game and still don't like it because it simply aint to your taste.
I think BG3 has good aspects, the way they incorporated 5E works well even when Im missing things like Readying an action.
Jaheira is very well written. In fact as soon as I met her it felt like I was playing BG3 again. Her characterization is on point and even her expanded background fits her.
Which makes it all the more mind-boggling that all the other writing is so atrociously bad.
>Larian picked the illithid tadpole as the main hook of the story...
Oh its so much worse, its like someone did a speedrun through BG2 and then they brainstormed about memberberries and decided to throw them all into the pot and it created this tasteless grey gruel-plot that somehow has all elements from BG2 mixed together into its main-plot.
Why are there Illithid-Nautiloids zipping about when Spelljammers explicitly cannot work in Toril's Crystal-sphere since Netheril was around?
How does this groomed ElderBrain even have access to so many when the -Realmspace-Illithids lost the ability to create them when they were cut off from the Illithid-Empire?
Why are all the other gods sitting with their thumbs up their asses when faced with a threat that clearly involves them (souls getting fricked, ergo less worshipers, ergo less power)?
Why is there a ruined Temple of Lathander with the FRICKING BLOOD OF LATHANDER hidden deep within yet the Church of Lathander never declared a holy war on the Gith or tried to get the temple back from the Gith in all those years? The Church of Lathander literally is one of the largest faiths in the realms.
Why isnt Baldurs Gate or the Lords Alliance bothered by the existence of the Shadowscar being right next to Baldurs Gate for decades?
Compare that with how Cormyr or Sembia reacted to one of their cities getting nuked by the Shades and how they were both surrounded by respective armies and quarantined.
Why is MyChemicalRomance-man portrayed as this scheming mastermind when all he did to become a Grand Duke is merely due to Mindflayer influence? Did the Flaming Fists simply not learn since the incident a century ago when Key-Figures in the city were replaced by Doppelgangers?
Why is Sarevok even in the game?
Why is Viconia in the game?
Both literally serve zero purpose apart from "HEY I MEMBER!"
Why does Viconia look older than Jaheira despite Jaheira being a Half-Elf near the end of her lifespan and Viconia being fairly young for a Drow in Bg2?
Why is Minsc in the game?
Why did he go from "dumb but competent Berserker that got hit too many times on his head" to "literal drooling moron who despite heaving experience in sniffing out evil gets tricked over and over again"?
>Why does Viconia look older than Jaheira despite Jaheira being a Half-Elf near the end of her lifespan and Viconia being fairly young for a Drow in Bg2?
Viconia looks 40ish. Jaheira 60 or 70.
>Why is MyChemicalRomance-man portrayed as this scheming mastermind >MyChemicalRomance-man
Lmao, this unironically made me laugh
Why they went with that design is beyond me, i cant take him seriously as an antagonist
I like BG3, I like some of the character development, many of the scenes are great but yes the overall narrative is a fail of incongruent events. There are only certain CE or CN psychos that would seriously consider filling their head with brain eating larvae for power. Perhaps an LE that is absolutely desperate, but the game doesn't do enough to sell you on this particular desperation esp. when the main driver of the story is not turning into a flayer.
It also just suffers from too much donut steel multiplied by the tadpoles. It would have been far better to give you one (1) sympathetic ally that was infected by the tadpole and that is his or her main gimmick instead of layering it over all the outrageous backstories of the other companions. The tadpole infections for powering up could have even been kept intact this way from perhaps an offer from the ally after they fall from grace if you push them in that direction.
I think your post is fundamentally flawed.
You seem stuck into thinking there is only one correct way to build a narrative and i dont think i can agree with that.
I honestly dont care if the writers thought of B or A or even C, what i care about is if the story itself was good.
Now that depends on how do you define a good story.
Based on my personal experience with stories (all mediums) the good story needs few things to appeal to me.
1- It needs interesting premise.
2- It needs to be plausible and when i say that i dont mean the dumb stuff above, no i mean things like avoiding obvious plot holes, obvious contradictions, less reliance on contrived writing, less reliance on plot armor, plot advancing in a way that makes sense.
3- Worldbuilding (fleshing the world and its history)
4- Context (themes, ideas, what does it try to say)
5- Backstory
6- Catharsis
7- Development
8- Characters
9- Pacing
Storytelling should take those aspects and make them interesting and engaging to me, you can have whatever method you want for that.
Storytelling can take different forms, in films you can tell a story via symbolism or subtle cinematography and acting.
Now in games the story can take a backseat for other aspects, thats not to say story means nothing, but in my opinion i dont think it should take too much value out of the game development, there is a reason the most well written games are barely games and/or suffer from compensation in game design.
In the same sense, i have grown to apprecaite different type of cinematic experiences, i used to be stuck in my own ways, watching and valuing films only based on their plots, but now i have grown to see that even cinema and filmmaking is not just about telling a story.
Dont want this to get confused, i still love a good story-driven film, i like Network for example, its a great movie, but at the same time i like Mullholland Drive, and i also like Andrei Rublev.
>enumerated writing tips
All good, but also D&D really suffers from getting away from Laws of Magic. They did much better during the Weave and Times of Troubles when they used lore to literally change the PnP rules of magic away from 2nd Ed and also used that to create peak FR. Magic is too ambiguous now in spite of all the PNP rule window dressing, there is no unifying logic behind it anymore. There is not much in the way of real cost that doesn't get handwaved by lore. Religion is barely there in terms of player requirements, same as warlock patron demands.
I thought the tadpoles were a good morivator to move the plot for the first 20-30 hours of the game. I spent 90% of my first week trying to figure out how to remove them, but the fear wears off especially when nothing bad happens to you. It would have been something if after random long rests the tadpole debuffed your constitution, wisdom, intelligence, etc, forcing you to come up with strategies. There's zero drawbacks to taking the illythid powers. If you have all your party members commune with the astral tadpole in act 3, then it becomes extremely boring as everyone can fly, get a ton of bonus actions and suffer jackshit.
>It really tries to turn MULTIPLE EVIL ALIEN BRAIN WORMS into something seductive.
Well i found the idea pretty hot myself, then again parasites, mind control and identity death are my fetishes. But i'm glad belgians tried to pander to my tastes at least once
>It really tries to turn MULTIPLE EVIL ALIEN BRAIN WORMS into something seductive
They tried to do this and it was actually fairly clever by having the player design their seductress themselves. "Who do you dream of at night?" Then they shot themselves in the foot by rewriting it to be fricking Balduran what the frick?
Also made the "down, down, down by the river" song meaningless in the release version.
This was a problem right from the first teaser they released though. They went on a huge press tour trying to explain that it doesn't conform to the lore for some serious story reasons. This was simply never true. The reason they did it was because they thought that it would look cool in a trailer if ceremorphosis happened in seconds.
Every time that a studio starts to make excuses like this you know that it's a red flag. It was a red flag back then, and it ended up being worse in the release.
The other huge red flag is when studios try to bring back finished stories and talk about trying to keep what makes it iconic bla bla bla. You just know that they would have been better off making their own series.
It would have been better if they just ignored most of the stuff instead of trying to make it all make sense and weaving in "iconic" references.
>They went on a huge press tour trying to explain that it doesn't conform to the lore for some serious story reasons.
Why are you just making things up lol
2. Juvenile overbloat of "awesome" and "epic".
- Intro is the obvious example.
- Three companions were super awesome, untill recently they got depowered for reasons.
- Why is Emberor Balduran (kind of)? Was one legendary character in your pocket not enough?
- Obviously, the brain planned everything.
- And regular Elder brain is not epic enough for this game. It turns into Nether Brain, which threatens the universe... Of course it does.
>Obviously, the brain planned everything.
The bad guys in almost every game are the ones who planned everything. That's why they're the bad guy.
>And regular Elder brain is not epic enough for this game. It turns into Nether Brain, which threatens the universe... Of course it does.
A regular elder brain has a challenge rating of like 14. That's a joke to kill with a party of level 12s.
There's a difference between "a bad guy with a plan" and "your unlikely journey was part of my perfect plan!".
One step away from some shounen "bad guy planned main characters conception two decades ago".
Never actually took him with me. Just kept him around to flirt with Myzora. He disapproved, but I set her up with a sweet gig as advisor to Baldurs Gate politics.
Kinda wanna do a playthrough to see how much of a simp Wyll can turn into.
>Some of the writing in literally every game is really bad. There's no game in the world where every single line is amazing
This is true, but it’s missing the point. I agree that most games have mediocre writing, and games with great writing are quite rare. However, certain games have extremely bad writing, which is immersion breaking and shatters your suspension of disbelief, and I agree that bg3 is one such game. “Mediocre or average” is far better than “terrible”
I agree with this, i dont think games should be heavy resources into polishing writing, games dont need to be abstractly written, complex and philosophical, there are better medium to do that.
What writing needs to mostly do is:
1- Be engaging
2- Be simple and avoid as much errors as possible
3- Be a great excuse for the player to play the game.
4- In case of RPG; the writing should be reactive to the player as much as its possible without obviously shattering the narrative structure.
5- It should provide decent lore and worldbuilding to flesh out the world in case its fictional.
Writing dont need to explore various themes of human psychology or deep political theories or quantum physics, this shit is not necessary and doesnt make the game flawed.
At the same time some people put too much value into "muh story" when it comes to games, i disagree, i used to do that at a younger age i wanted to feel smart for playing games, but now the most important things to me are game design, gameplay, level design, immersion and the whole overall package.
When it comes to RPG i value engaging characters/party more than main plots.
Even the most appreciated stories in games are mediocre compared to their peers in film/books, its just something i find highly overhyped and unnecessary takes a lot of dicourse in games.
As long as the main plot provides good excuse for the player to engage with the game's world and explore and act within it, i think that qualifies it as serviceable, bonus points if its well written and avoids horrid stupid shit, this is why i consider Witcher 3 an excellent game narratively, it has more than enough. I still remember how some haters tried to compare it to the works of Shakespear lmfao. haters get really desperate when they want to tear down a game they dont like. clinging to hilarious nitpicks.
>1- Be engaging >2- Be simple and avoid as much errors as possible >3- Be a great excuse for the player to play the game. >4- In case of RPG; the writing should be reactive to the player as much as its possible without obviously shattering the narrative structure. >5- It should provide decent lore and worldbuilding to flesh out the world in case its fictional.
You are missing the point so hard its not even funny.
The reason Millenial-Tier-Writing is so shit is because they cannot write. This is not hyperbole on my part.
When you write a story you start with point A and see where the characters and the plot takes you and eventually you reach the climax of the story which point B.
Millenial-Writers however got this shit all backwards.
They think to themselves "Wouldn't it be cool if this or that happened at point B?" and so they instead think how they can arrive at point B without even having a point A.
>When it comes to RPG i value engaging characters/party more than main plots.
The reason for that being is that plot has become an afterthought.
Even a basic-b***h Goldbox-Dungeoncrawler had a straightforward plot that worked in service of the gameplay.
Why are we here? Because there is something weird going on beneath Waterdeep and Khelben Blackstaff hired us to check it out.
What are the stakes? Apparently a powerful Beholder has been amassing Allies to assault Waterdeep.
I think your post is fundamentally flawed.
You seem stuck into thinking there is only one correct way to build a narrative and i dont think i can agree with that.
I honestly dont care if the writers thought of B or A or even C, what i care about is if the story itself was good.
Now that depends on how do you define a good story.
Based on my personal experience with stories (all mediums) the good story needs few things to appeal to me.
1- It needs interesting premise.
2- It needs to be plausible and when i say that i dont mean the dumb stuff above, no i mean things like avoiding obvious plot holes, obvious contradictions, less reliance on contrived writing, less reliance on plot armor, plot advancing in a way that makes sense.
3- Worldbuilding (fleshing the world and its history)
4- Context (themes, ideas, what does it try to say)
5- Backstory
6- Catharsis
7- Development
8- Characters
9- Pacing
Storytelling should take those aspects and make them interesting and engaging to me, you can have whatever method you want for that.
Storytelling can take different forms, in films you can tell a story via symbolism or subtle cinematography and acting.
Now in games the story can take a backseat for other aspects, thats not to say story means nothing, but in my opinion i dont think it should take too much value out of the game development, there is a reason the most well written games are barely games and/or suffer from compensation in game design.
In the same sense, i have grown to apprecaite different type of cinematic experiences, i used to be stuck in my own ways, watching and valuing films only based on their plots, but now i have grown to see that even cinema and filmmaking is not just about telling a story.
Dont want this to get confused, i still love a good story-driven film, i like Network for example, its a great movie, but at the same time i like Mullholland Drive, and i also like Andrei Rublev.
To expand on that, because i feel i went offtopic with films and books here.
When it comes to games, writing can become a broad thing, cause games unlike books and films and tv shows/anime they can divide writing into pieces.
For example you have:
1- The Main Quest: the main quest is the technically the "plot", it should be the driving force when it comes to story-driven games, but it doesnt have to be the sole focus, in a game like Witcher, the main quest is the thing that drives you to advance your journey but its never the main focus, i think RPGs especially tend to be better when they follow this route. on the contrary action/adventure games (story driven ones) like Alan Wake and The Last of Us should drop all their budget here.
2- The Side Quest: the side quests are every quest that is optional and not needed to finish the game, treat them as short stories, again they dont need to be complicated or deep, they just need to provide a good mini-story that ties well into the world, characters, gameplay and ofcourse its own premise.
3- Dialogue: This can carry a game sometimes, a good dialogue means good engagement, if the lines and the exchange of words feels natural or entertaining enough then thats a good sign, a good dialogue will info dump you but at the same time it will do it in a way that hooks you in. This can be enhanced further with voice acting, cutscenes and animations, all which helps bring the whole thing to life.
4- Worldbuilding/Lore
A lot of games put their main focus here, like The Elder Scrolls series or Dark Souls and its just as fine, this provides context to the world and makes it feel believable, its produces better immersion, does it need to be perfect? no, but as long as it can give you material to draw from and immerse you into the timeline it should be fine.
5- Characters
Nowadays this is my favorite part of RPGs, i think a good cast can elevate a game way beyond a good plot.
>5- Characters >Nowadays this is my favorite part of RPGs, i think a good cast can elevate a game way beyond a good plot.
Now that you mention it, characters have often been the reason I keep playing to the end. And the main story is only interesting in the ways that it affects the characters.
2 months ago
Anonymous
I agree with that!
I think all things considered BG3 has solid writing, definitely a step up from Divinity games where it was an after-thought, here i can feel there is an actual genuine attempt at crafting a narrative, Larian has never been about writing, they just dont have that much talented writers imo, but thats okay, and i was surprised (positively) with the worked they did with BG3, i expected way way worse. They always had good qualtiies to make characters but they never made them memorable, i remember i liked Fane and Lohse and Red Prince were decent, but the rest were below average.
Here its a massive improvement to me, at least 5 or 6 characters are pretty good in this game. for variety of reasons.
I think that most talented RPG writers are now retired, even amongst JRPGs, i think CDPR has good writers in modern devs, Obsidian has some, and thats it.
I still think Planescape is the best written RPG, even post Disco Elysium.
2 months ago
Anonymous
>I think all things considered BG3 has solid writing, definitely a step up from Divinity games where it was an after-thought, here i can feel there is an actual genuine attempt at crafting a narrative, Larian has never been about writing, they just dont have that much talented writers imo
I had the opposite response, personally. I agree with you about Larian having shitty writers and about DOS series having mediocre writing as an afterthought. But I found that preferable to bg3 specifically because the writing was mediocre but it didn’t get in the way or pretend like it was some amazing narrative game with deep characters. Trying to do so in bg3 highlighted their failings, and I found its quality so bad that it was frequently immersion breaking and cringe inducing
People often underestimate the importance of production values, the 5 things i wrote about can still be polished, you polish them with presentation like cutscenes, character animations and voice overs.
example, when i first played BG3 i ignored Astarion, at the first encounter i found him a bit cringy for my tastes so i decided to keep him in camp, in my 2nd playthrough and after i heard so much praise i decided to have him in my party, it also helps that he approves of evil things so that was a good excuse, by the end of the game he became one of my favorite characters, while his story itself is decent enough and you can develop his character in a solid way, all of that wasn't the main appeal to me, instead it was the phenomenal performance by his actor, when you have an excellent performance like that it just elevates the whole thing.
On the contrary Wyll is another good and interesting character but because his actor was below average, i simply failed to relate to him in the same way and at the end he got benched way more often, because his lines or his performance were not engaging me.
This shows me that presentation matters, and it can elevate a story above another even when the other one is better written.
This same thing goes for Cutscenes, why do you think people value Silent Hill 2? because the direction is clever.
tldr because i wrote too much; Story in games is not that important, you can focus on it for nitpicks but that won't do much because there are other dimensions to this, and they matter whether some people like to admit it or not.
As i said, i dont think games should prioritize stories above all, even RPGs, as long as it does what i said earlier it should be enough for me, bonus depth in writing is welcome and i appreciate it, but its not the thing that i build my enjoyment upon.
I can only think of few games that have genuine good stories, thats why when i say this game has good story i always mean it in video game standards.
>5- Characters >Nowadays this is my favorite part of RPGs, i think a good cast can elevate a game way beyond a good plot.
Now that you mention it, characters have often been the reason I keep playing to the end. And the main story is only interesting in the ways that it affects the characters.
People often underestimate the importance of production values, the 5 things i wrote about can still be polished, you polish them with presentation like cutscenes, character animations and voice overs.
example, when i first played BG3 i ignored Astarion, at the first encounter i found him a bit cringy for my tastes so i decided to keep him in camp, in my 2nd playthrough and after i heard so much praise i decided to have him in my party, it also helps that he approves of evil things so that was a good excuse, by the end of the game he became one of my favorite characters, while his story itself is decent enough and you can develop his character in a solid way, all of that wasn't the main appeal to me, instead it was the phenomenal performance by his actor, when you have an excellent performance like that it just elevates the whole thing.
On the contrary Wyll is another good and interesting character but because his actor was below average, i simply failed to relate to him in the same way and at the end he got benched way more often, because his lines or his performance were not engaging me.
This shows me that presentation matters, and it can elevate a story above another even when the other one is better written.
This same thing goes for Cutscenes, why do you think people value Silent Hill 2? because the direction is clever.
tldr because i wrote too much; Story in games is not that important, you can focus on it for nitpicks but that won't do much because there are other dimensions to this, and they matter whether some people like to admit it or not.
As i said, i dont think games should prioritize stories above all, even RPGs, as long as it does what i said earlier it should be enough for me, bonus depth in writing is welcome and i appreciate it, but its not the thing that i build my enjoyment upon.
I can only think of few games that have genuine good stories, thats why when i say this game has good story i always mean it in video game standards.
I always hated the focus on characters in RPG's because it diminishes the importance of player character and feels too selfish. In RPG the writer should write the story and you should write the character. Other characters must serve as an extension of your characters roleplaying capabilities, to provide certain reactions and encourage to choose different paths. When the game writes both the story and the characters it always feels like a DND session where DM inserts his Mary Sue into your party and makes the plot revolve around her.
1 month ago
Anonymous
Blame bioware, they basically started the trend of party members being little more than an extra sword to bring along.
To expand on that, because i feel i went offtopic with films and books here.
When it comes to games, writing can become a broad thing, cause games unlike books and films and tv shows/anime they can divide writing into pieces.
For example you have:
1- The Main Quest: the main quest is the technically the "plot", it should be the driving force when it comes to story-driven games, but it doesnt have to be the sole focus, in a game like Witcher, the main quest is the thing that drives you to advance your journey but its never the main focus, i think RPGs especially tend to be better when they follow this route. on the contrary action/adventure games (story driven ones) like Alan Wake and The Last of Us should drop all their budget here.
2- The Side Quest: the side quests are every quest that is optional and not needed to finish the game, treat them as short stories, again they dont need to be complicated or deep, they just need to provide a good mini-story that ties well into the world, characters, gameplay and ofcourse its own premise.
3- Dialogue: This can carry a game sometimes, a good dialogue means good engagement, if the lines and the exchange of words feels natural or entertaining enough then thats a good sign, a good dialogue will info dump you but at the same time it will do it in a way that hooks you in. This can be enhanced further with voice acting, cutscenes and animations, all which helps bring the whole thing to life.
4- Worldbuilding/Lore
A lot of games put their main focus here, like The Elder Scrolls series or Dark Souls and its just as fine, this provides context to the world and makes it feel believable, its produces better immersion, does it need to be perfect? no, but as long as it can give you material to draw from and immerse you into the timeline it should be fine.
5- Characters
Nowadays this is my favorite part of RPGs, i think a good cast can elevate a game way beyond a good plot.
People often underestimate the importance of production values, the 5 things i wrote about can still be polished, you polish them with presentation like cutscenes, character animations and voice overs.
example, when i first played BG3 i ignored Astarion, at the first encounter i found him a bit cringy for my tastes so i decided to keep him in camp, in my 2nd playthrough and after i heard so much praise i decided to have him in my party, it also helps that he approves of evil things so that was a good excuse, by the end of the game he became one of my favorite characters, while his story itself is decent enough and you can develop his character in a solid way, all of that wasn't the main appeal to me, instead it was the phenomenal performance by his actor, when you have an excellent performance like that it just elevates the whole thing.
On the contrary Wyll is another good and interesting character but because his actor was below average, i simply failed to relate to him in the same way and at the end he got benched way more often, because his lines or his performance were not engaging me.
This shows me that presentation matters, and it can elevate a story above another even when the other one is better written.
This same thing goes for Cutscenes, why do you think people value Silent Hill 2? because the direction is clever.
tldr because i wrote too much; Story in games is not that important, you can focus on it for nitpicks but that won't do much because there are other dimensions to this, and they matter whether some people like to admit it or not.
As i said, i dont think games should prioritize stories above all, even RPGs, as long as it does what i said earlier it should be enough for me, bonus depth in writing is welcome and i appreciate it, but its not the thing that i build my enjoyment upon.
I can only think of few games that have genuine good stories, thats why when i say this game has good story i always mean it in video game standards.
You too. It was a thought-provoking read. You made some very good points that are helpful for designing/writing a game. One example being side quests, and tying them to the world, characters, or lore. A fetch quest becomes more rewarding, when it leads to character development, or something similar. Great stuff, hope to see more sometime.
To expand on that, because i feel i went offtopic with films and books here.
When it comes to games, writing can become a broad thing, cause games unlike books and films and tv shows/anime they can divide writing into pieces.
For example you have:
1- The Main Quest: the main quest is the technically the "plot", it should be the driving force when it comes to story-driven games, but it doesnt have to be the sole focus, in a game like Witcher, the main quest is the thing that drives you to advance your journey but its never the main focus, i think RPGs especially tend to be better when they follow this route. on the contrary action/adventure games (story driven ones) like Alan Wake and The Last of Us should drop all their budget here.
2- The Side Quest: the side quests are every quest that is optional and not needed to finish the game, treat them as short stories, again they dont need to be complicated or deep, they just need to provide a good mini-story that ties well into the world, characters, gameplay and ofcourse its own premise.
3- Dialogue: This can carry a game sometimes, a good dialogue means good engagement, if the lines and the exchange of words feels natural or entertaining enough then thats a good sign, a good dialogue will info dump you but at the same time it will do it in a way that hooks you in. This can be enhanced further with voice acting, cutscenes and animations, all which helps bring the whole thing to life.
4- Worldbuilding/Lore
A lot of games put their main focus here, like The Elder Scrolls series or Dark Souls and its just as fine, this provides context to the world and makes it feel believable, its produces better immersion, does it need to be perfect? no, but as long as it can give you material to draw from and immerse you into the timeline it should be fine.
5- Characters
Nowadays this is my favorite part of RPGs, i think a good cast can elevate a game way beyond a good plot.
>I think your post is fundamentally flawed. >I honestly dont care if the writers thought of B or A or even C, what i care about is if the story itself was good.
Its your post that is fundamentally flawed.
You notice that there is a problem with the writing nowadays and then you go and claim that you don't care as long as the story is good.
You missed the point again because you do not understand that you cannot have a good story without having those basics down and understanding why the fundamentals are so important.
You cannot have a good story without understanding what makes the story work and your "personal experience" is exactly the same issue Millenial Writing has.
You can have as much experience as you want if you do not understand the very basics you will more often get a story that is bad than a one that is good.
>Storytelling should take those aspects and make them interesting and engaging to me, you can have whatever method you want for that.
And its failing to do that, instead we get Marvel-slop.
All the things you mentioned are like windows-dressing and frosting on a cake.
Its like building a nice looking car with a broken engine; Yeah its nice too look at from afar but its not doing the thing its supposed to do, you know, driving.
Look at pic related.
I guarantee you that this is how the plot in BG3 came to be.
I think your post is fundamentally flawed.
You seem stuck into thinking there is only one correct way to build a narrative and i dont think i can agree with that.
I honestly dont care if the writers thought of B or A or even C, what i care about is if the story itself was good.
Now that depends on how do you define a good story.
Based on my personal experience with stories (all mediums) the good story needs few things to appeal to me.
1- It needs interesting premise.
2- It needs to be plausible and when i say that i dont mean the dumb stuff above, no i mean things like avoiding obvious plot holes, obvious contradictions, less reliance on contrived writing, less reliance on plot armor, plot advancing in a way that makes sense.
3- Worldbuilding (fleshing the world and its history)
4- Context (themes, ideas, what does it try to say)
5- Backstory
6- Catharsis
7- Development
8- Characters
9- Pacing
Storytelling should take those aspects and make them interesting and engaging to me, you can have whatever method you want for that.
Storytelling can take different forms, in films you can tell a story via symbolism or subtle cinematography and acting.
Now in games the story can take a backseat for other aspects, thats not to say story means nothing, but in my opinion i dont think it should take too much value out of the game development, there is a reason the most well written games are barely games and/or suffer from compensation in game design.
In the same sense, i have grown to apprecaite different type of cinematic experiences, i used to be stuck in my own ways, watching and valuing films only based on their plots, but now i have grown to see that even cinema and filmmaking is not just about telling a story.
Dont want this to get confused, i still love a good story-driven film, i like Network for example, its a great movie, but at the same time i like Mullholland Drive, and i also like Andrei Rublev.
Games should go back to being like GoldBox-dungeoncrawler, though, games at that time didnt waste your time with pointless moronic dialogue.
The fun was in the game, pure and simple.
Like what?
Please name a party-based CRPG made in the last 15 years that qualifies as having a straightforward story that doesn't get bogged down with dialog and cutscenes?
Also, not that it matters but that anon is mislabeling Eye of the Beholder a GoldBox game. EoB is a first-person real-time blobber made by SSI, with a very minimalist story. Actual Gold Box games typically had more storytelling than EoB.
2 months ago
Anonymous
I don't know, I'm not into autism games. I'm sure you could just play old dungeon crawlers, Factorio, and Sims.
2 months ago
Anonymous
So you're an idiot and clueless. Par for the course in BG3 threads.
2 months ago
Anonymous
Ok how about KotC2?
2 months ago
Anonymous
Wasteland 3?
2 months ago
Anonymous
Not usually into post-apocalyptic settings, and although it does look combat heavy I also see a lot of dialog scenes with cringe uncanny valley 3D animations and multiple-choice bullshit.
Ok how about KotC2?
OK so we have one post-apocalyptic game that barely qualifies and one low-budget indie throwback game from kickstarter that still costs $45. That counts as 'plenty'?
For the hardcore real-time dungeon crawler fans there are the Grimrock games and those technically are within my 15 year window but Grimrock 2 was still 9 years ago now.
Not nearly enough.
I pray everyday for a Dungeon crawler that mixes first person crawling in the underworld with skirmish-like combat with free roaming in the overworld, mimmicking the playstyle of OD&D, of megadungeons surrounded by this "grindable" wilderness.
One day my wish will come true, im sure.
Unfortunately, most RPGs nowadays try to be dating sims with stats, so this wish might take a while.
2 months ago
Anonymous
That could be a good project, to make it yourself. Have you ever thought about it?
2 months ago
Anonymous
I wish, though Im not well versed in video game development. Besides, I have a common average demanding life that doesnt allow me many leisure hours to develop passion projects of my own.
Ive made a tabletop prototype that I solo tested a few times, but turning into a video game Is another story. Hopefully one day ill have the time, but Id a need a good simple engine to work with as well..
2 months ago
Anonymous
Yeah it might require time. Although it could work out if there's a suitable template engine where you could quickly prototype your game, like RPGMaker or something.
>I'm a moronic child and games need to be simple a dumb so that I would enjoy them
You do realize that BG3 is a game made for people like you? Majority of BG3 fans say that writing is garbage and they skip it for the sake of "muh combat", which is 80% of the game. Or are you so mentally challenged that you didn't figure out how to skip dialogues?
80% of the game is walking around boring pointless dialogue from dialogue interrupted by the ocasional shit combat.
But somehow a storytroony like you thinks such a piece of garbage is adequate for someone who enjoys dungeons crawlers.
I get that these sorts of dialogue-heavy games are ways for trans people like you to feel validated, but shit dating sims with stats are boring garbage and definetely not RPGs.
2 months ago
Anonymous
>ocasional shit combat.
So you don't like CRPGs? Then go play something else you moron.
2 months ago
Anonymous
I like good games, Wizardry 7 is a great crpg for once.
2 months ago
Anonymous
Did you think BG3 is like wizardry
2 months ago
Anonymous
Isn't the OP's pic from Wizardry? Because all I see are a bunch of frickin' clowns
2 months ago
Anonymous
Are you 12?
2 months ago
Anonymous
No? What the frick is this conclusion.
What Im saying os that dating sim RPGs are moronic and that the gold standard set by games like Wizardry 7 should come back
2 months ago
Anonymous
Dungeon crawlers will come back when companies realize just how much money there is to be made with them.
In the meanwhile you should probably avoid dating sim rpgs.
2 months ago
Anonymous
>I don't like CRPGs and I want to play Dungeon Crawlers! >Why don't I like Baldur's Gate 3?
You're a fricking genius dude.
2 months ago
Anonymous
Look, I just commented that CRPGs of a certain sort are deserving of a comeback.
Your troonkind personally burtthurt by my opinion decided to call me a moron. Are you trying to roleplay your Chaotic Evil dark elf girl here as well?
Dungeon crawlers will come back when companies realize just how much money there is to be made with them.
In the meanwhile you should probably avoid dating sim rpgs.
>Millenial-Writers however got this shit all backwards. >They think to themselves "Wouldn't it be cool if this or that happened at point B?" and so they instead think how they can arrive at point B without even having a point A.
This is how “science” works now, btw. Ideology is a hell of a drug.
>Some of the writing in literally every game is really bad. There's no game in the world where every single line is amazing
This is true, but it’s missing the point. I agree that most games have mediocre writing, and games with great writing are quite rare. However, certain games have extremely bad writing, which is immersion breaking and shatters your suspension of disbelief, and I agree that bg3 is one such game. “Mediocre or average” is far better than “terrible”
I agree with this, i dont think games should be heavy resources into polishing writing, games dont need to be abstractly written, complex and philosophical, there are better medium to do that.
What writing needs to mostly do is:
1- Be engaging
2- Be simple and avoid as much errors as possible
3- Be a great excuse for the player to play the game.
4- In case of RPG; the writing should be reactive to the player as much as its possible without obviously shattering the narrative structure.
5- It should provide decent lore and worldbuilding to flesh out the world in case its fictional.
Writing dont need to explore various themes of human psychology or deep political theories or quantum physics, this shit is not necessary and doesnt make the game flawed.
At the same time some people put too much value into "muh story" when it comes to games, i disagree, i used to do that at a younger age i wanted to feel smart for playing games, but now the most important things to me are game design, gameplay, level design, immersion and the whole overall package.
When it comes to RPG i value engaging characters/party more than main plots.
Even the most appreciated stories in games are mediocre compared to their peers in film/books, its just something i find highly overhyped and unnecessary takes a lot of dicourse in games.
As long as the main plot provides good excuse for the player to engage with the game's world and explore and act within it, i think that qualifies it as serviceable, bonus points if its well written and avoids horrid stupid shit, this is why i consider Witcher 3 an excellent game narratively, it has more than enough. I still remember how some haters tried to compare it to the works of Shakespear lmfao. haters get really desperate when they want to tear down a game they dont like. clinging to hilarious nitpicks.
>Wow look at me I'm so grown up and well-adjusted for reading books, being cultured is so routine and effortless for me >Video games have shit stories am I right fellas? I'm totally part of the ingroup right? Don't mistake me for one of those GAMERS, uh yeah I play video games but not like them I have higher standards lol I secretly hate everything I play >N-no I don't only read Ganker charts recommended by pseudointellectuals, I swear, I would totally not fail any test in an introductory humanities class
The middle guy you posted is right, though and not pseudointellectual at all. No matter what you think about writing in videogames, anyone who defends BG3 on its writing is moronic. Not just some kind of average "videogamer has never read books" meme, but actual fricking brain damage from whatever media you have wasted your life consuming that renders you unable to perceive its awfulness.
And the bottom guy made a legitimately thoughtful post about the nature of writing in a videogame >tl;dr
you're a moron doing a lazy copypasta of a shitty greentext reaction from the actual pseud thread here
they are both pseud threads >And the bottom guy made a legitimately thoughtful post
case in point, you're a pseud if you think that person namedropping tarkovsky and lynch like an angsty teen was making a "thoughtful post". it frankly reads like someone who has no exposure to humanities academia spaghetting their views online, this website in particular seems to invite a lot of armchair intellectualizing from amateurs, Ganker in particular
frankly as i get older i have the opposite progression that these people claim (both in this thread and the one you linked): gameplay interests me less and story interests me more. you can try the "well go read a book then" meme but it won't work, books (i have read many being a philosophy major, although admittedly mostly non-fiction) and movies (and i have seen many - tarantino, bresson, lynch, miyazaki, carpenter, kurosawa, bergman, tarkovsky, spielberg, chaplin, wachowskis, lean, curtiz, scorsese, scott, ming-liang, malick, polanski, mambety, marker, coppola, kar wai, fleming, lee, welles, lucas, kubrick, miller, godard, mankiewicz, rossellini, hitchwiener - to name the "respected" directors i have seen, before someone tries to pull the you have low standards due to underexposure card) just don't cut it. i think there's only a couple movies i've seen that match the feelings i got from my favorite video game stories. interactivity adds a layer to the experience that is very hard to match with other mediums. but if you take out the story, all you're left with is toys. there's a reason adults don't play with toys; i've found the appeal of gameplay alone has long dwindled, i just get bored in no-story games these days, dopamine rushes aren't as effective as they used to be. but if you use that gameplay to immerse a player into a world and invest them in a story or - in the better cases - a character, then you get something really special. i find this video summarizes my views well: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XIx7Ot5Mq2Q
You are the biggest pseud in this thread lmao. >you think that person namedropping tarkovsky and lynch like an angsty teen was making a "thoughtful post"
Nobody ITT namedropped Tarkovsky or Lynch. Sounds like you are off your meds and hallucinating.
If you can't intelligently converse about writing as it actually relates to videogames or even the proper context in ths thread, it doesn't really matter what you claim to have read. You may as well have dumped all those books into a woodchipper for all your post quality demonstrates.
>Nobody ITT namedropped Tarkovsky or Lynch.
they mention andrei rublev and mullholland drive for literally no reason here:
I think your post is fundamentally flawed.
You seem stuck into thinking there is only one correct way to build a narrative and i dont think i can agree with that.
I honestly dont care if the writers thought of B or A or even C, what i care about is if the story itself was good.
Now that depends on how do you define a good story.
Based on my personal experience with stories (all mediums) the good story needs few things to appeal to me.
1- It needs interesting premise.
2- It needs to be plausible and when i say that i dont mean the dumb stuff above, no i mean things like avoiding obvious plot holes, obvious contradictions, less reliance on contrived writing, less reliance on plot armor, plot advancing in a way that makes sense.
3- Worldbuilding (fleshing the world and its history)
4- Context (themes, ideas, what does it try to say)
5- Backstory
6- Catharsis
7- Development
8- Characters
9- Pacing
Storytelling should take those aspects and make them interesting and engaging to me, you can have whatever method you want for that.
Storytelling can take different forms, in films you can tell a story via symbolism or subtle cinematography and acting.
Now in games the story can take a backseat for other aspects, thats not to say story means nothing, but in my opinion i dont think it should take too much value out of the game development, there is a reason the most well written games are barely games and/or suffer from compensation in game design.
In the same sense, i have grown to apprecaite different type of cinematic experiences, i used to be stuck in my own ways, watching and valuing films only based on their plots, but now i have grown to see that even cinema and filmmaking is not just about telling a story.
Dont want this to get confused, i still love a good story-driven film, i like Network for example, its a great movie, but at the same time i like Mullholland Drive, and i also like Andrei Rublev.
>If you can't intelligently converse about writing as it actually relates to videogames or even the proper context in ths thread, it doesn't really matter what you claim to have read.
i recommend you read the rest of my post, where i do that >You are the biggest pseud in this thread lmao.
sorry formal training scares you. i recommend investigating the literature on this topic, it'll make you feel less insecure. here's some places to start:
https://philpapers.org/rec/KANWGA
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315210377-4/videogame-ontology-constitutive-rules-algorithms-shelby-moser
https://academic.oup.com/jaac/article/75/2/181/5981219
https://www.jstor.org/stable/44510494
https://www.routledge.com/The-Aesthetics-of-Videogames/Robson-Tavinor/p/book/9780367591946
https://www.wiley.com/en-us/The+Art+of+Videogames-p-9781405187886
hopefully it'll also teach you humility so that you don't call your intellectual betters "pseuds" when they call out actual pseuds, presumably ones who you were agreement with with or were one of
2 months ago
Anonymous
>i recommend you read the rest of my post, where i do that
No, you didn't comment on any games at all and certainly not the game that is the topic of the thread: Baldur's Gate 3. You just made rambling generalizations jerking off your own personal feelings that nobody gives a shit about. You don't even know what it means to discuss a game or its writing.
yeah it's you. take your own advice
You are just moronic and have no idea what you're talking about. Go back to playing BG3 it's made specifically for braindeads like you.
2 months ago
Anonymous
sorry reading more than one paragraph upset you. it gets easier with time, i promise
1 month ago
Anonymous
Comment on an actual game or suck my dick.
1 month ago
Anonymous
you and the posts we were discussing didn't talk about specific games either, it was a broad strokes discussion
1 month ago
Anonymous
No, not true. The first post you referenced was obviously meant as bg3 apology and the second post (response to that) was explicitly about bg3. The 3rd post you quoted is more generic but you didn't actually respond to anything in it directly you just started shitting out greentext sarcasm like an illiterate moron.
Seriously, just shut the frick up you clearly have of value to add. You barely even seem to comprehend the thread much less any of the books you claim to have read.
1 month ago
Anonymous
>The first post you referenced was obviously meant as bg3 apology
bg3 specifically is not mentioned anywhere in that post. here, i'll go through all the references to video games in it: >literally every game >no game in the world
the first is referring to the set containing every video game (which yes would include bg3, but it's not specifically about it) and the 2nd is an empty set
i do not know how you came to the conclusion that it's a "bg3 apology", it doesn't contradict the OP in any way >second post (response to that) was explicitly about bg3.
sort of. i'll go through it with you again: >most games
this is a set containing the set containing all games divided by two plus an undefined natural number of games. not necessarily bg3 >games with great writing
not bg3 by your own admission >However, certain games have extremely bad writing, which is immersion breaking and shatters your suspension of disbelief, and I agree that bg3 is one such game.
this is referring to a set of games that explicitly includes bg3, but it's talking about the set and not really bg3 >You just made rambling generalizations jerking off your own personal feelings that nobody gives a shit about.
that's what those other posts look like to me. "video games with (what i feel is) terrible writing feel worse to me than video games with (what i feel is) mediocre writing)
those posts weren't even remotely interesting additions to the discussion, it was just people blurting out their personal assessment of the state of the medium (which i disagreed with, apparently that's "off topic" even though they're the ones who started that topic) with zero evidence >illiterate moron.
now that's projection >You barely even seem to comprehend the thread
ditto >much less any of the books you claim to have read.
at least i read books lmao!
You are the biggest pseud in this thread lmao. >you think that person namedropping tarkovsky and lynch like an angsty teen was making a "thoughtful post"
Nobody ITT namedropped Tarkovsky or Lynch. Sounds like you are off your meds and hallucinating.
If you can't intelligently converse about writing as it actually relates to videogames or even the proper context in ths thread, it doesn't really matter what you claim to have read. You may as well have dumped all those books into a woodchipper for all your post quality demonstrates.
>Nobody ITT namedropped Tarkovsky or Lynch.
they mention andrei rublev and mullholland drive for literally no reason here: [...] >If you can't intelligently converse about writing as it actually relates to videogames or even the proper context in ths thread, it doesn't really matter what you claim to have read.
i recommend you read the rest of my post, where i do that >You are the biggest pseud in this thread lmao.
sorry formal training scares you. i recommend investigating the literature on this topic, it'll make you feel less insecure. here's some places to start:
https://philpapers.org/rec/KANWGA
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315210377-4/videogame-ontology-constitutive-rules-algorithms-shelby-moser
https://academic.oup.com/jaac/article/75/2/181/5981219
https://www.jstor.org/stable/44510494
https://www.routledge.com/The-Aesthetics-of-Videogames/Robson-Tavinor/p/book/9780367591946
https://www.wiley.com/en-us/The+Art+of+Videogames-p-9781405187886
hopefully it'll also teach you humility so that you don't call your intellectual betters "pseuds" when they call out actual pseuds, presumably ones who you were agreement with with or were one of
You are both pseuds and you should have a nice day.
Like I said before - the main hook of the story is crap.
They took an established gimmick - the tadpole - and worked against it and around it.
This is insane.
This is like making Aliens game and getting more facehuggers on your head actually makes you stronger.
>But we can all agree that some of the writing in it is really goddamn bad
No, I would define bad writing as something so grating it makes me not want to play the game, but overall I feel it was an improvement over BG2. Its definitely not good writing, but its servicable.
Act 3 really feels worse than Act 1 and 2. There are just so many plot lines finishing up at once that the whole act feels rushed. And then they introduce a lot of new shit, like Orin, Gortash, Minsc and Sarevok.
And somebody - PLEASE - explain to me why Balduran is a gay squid now.
I honestly want to know what was happening in writers head?
- Did they think more Balduran will make the game more Baldur's Gate?
- Did they think one legendary bloke in your pocket was not enough?
I "try" every single RPG there is but I refuse to download this, I can tell its bad from the screenshots, but after playing DoS 2 through the start of act 3, with insufferably glacial turn-based combat, I will never pay a Larian game again
I don't think the story is that amazing compared to other RPGs in general, but the way it's written feels exactly like how the plot of a DnD campaign would go so I think it accomplishes its purpose. Random asspulls of some god or creature feel pretty on par for the IP
But it has bikini armor which is banned from Japanese console game since July 2022, the bloody summer by Kishida and Sweet baby after Abe has passed away.
CRPGs have fone down the same Path real tabletop games have.
They became storygames, linear, narrated, in which the purpose is to tell a movie-like story and not to exploration and delve into Dungeons. That is why writing has become so deplorablr. Are there even dungeons in BG3? Long, expansive ones, I mean.
>Intro is about mind flayers >game immediately does a 180 and suddenly is all about "the absolute" and the "elder brain" >tadpoles and mind flayers take a total backseat and arent relevant until act 3
If you set up a villain in the intro you should stick to that villain, this game was obviously rewritten multiple times by multiple people so its just convoluted mess
Usually I just assume every rpg has mediocre writing and stop noticing it, bg3 is possibly the first rpg I can think of where the writing was immersion-breakingly bad, and actively harmed suspension of disbelief. They fricked up bad, that was a very low hurdle to avoid stumbling over.
I mean, it's Larian, the paragon of lulsodumb writing, what else did you expect. They are Bethesda-tier level of bad, but unlike Bethesda who has given up decades ago, they actually think their writing is good and clever.
>BG3 is an enormous improvement over DOS2 in the writing department.
This is simply not true, it is far, far worse, and dos2 already had mostly mediocre writing to begin with.
>This is simply not true
All of the dialogue responses are formated like they are written by some 00s era *holds up spork and glomps you* XD scene girl and most of the quests seemingly just randomly exist to be completed by accident as you loop around the map stealing everything and murderhoboing. DOS2 is an atrociously bad game and BG3 improves on it in every way that actually matters. I don't think I could recommend DOS2 to anyone. I would prefer the people that enjoy it simply be rounded up in camps and separated from the rest of society.
Reminder that people crying about bg3 are in a constant state of asshurt and constantly reporting opposition. Any assertion they are debating on fair grounds is simply a lie.
1 month ago
Anonymous
>Reminder that people crying about bg3 are in a constant state of asshurt and constantly reporting opposition. Any assertion they are debating on fair grounds is simply a lie.
This is an inversion of the truth. I've seen dozens of debates on BG3 on this board, and consistently, the defenders of BG3 exhibit extreme levels of intellectual dishonesty and emotional overreaction to any perceived criticism of the game they're invested in, regardless of how nuanced or balanced it is. It's always the same shit: >[ignores 90% of the presented points, focuses on the perceived weakest ones] >you only hate the game because trannies and Black folk lol >look how well it sold, that means it's good >bg2 was worse >you only think [strawman argument] >name 69,420 better RPGs. you can't.
etc, ad nauseum.
I've literally only seen one (1) intellectually honest BG3 fan on this board, and even if I disagreed with some of his conclusions, I respected him for not being a lying sack of shit.
1 month ago
Anonymous
Let's think about your behavior logically. Regardless of whether you believe you are right (you're not), posting this over and over and screeching about the same things in every single bg3 thread has gotten you absolutely nowhere. A reasonable intelligent person would change up strategies. You constantly complained about dos2 being better, and now we have an active dos2 playthrough going that is demonstrating that it is clearly not. Can't argue with that. Next you'll post about how much you love paladins and don't have time to play games due to your imaginary kids.
1 month ago
Anonymous
>Regardless of whether you believe you are right (you're not)
Unlike you, I distinguish between my subjective opinions (which I acknowledge as such) from objective facts. >A reasonable intelligent person would change up strategies.
This is what a dishonest sophist would do, because you don't view discussion as ultimately oriented towards approaching the truth, you view it as a rhetorical contest in which you "win" by disingenuously flinging whatever you think will stick at the wall, and abandoning what you think won't. >You constantly complained about dos2 being better
Negative. It's an okay game but not great. I've consistently held that BG3 is worse, and I find its tonal shift from DOS2 to be jarring and indicative of ~~*outside financial influence*~~. >and now we have an active dos2 playthrough going that is demonstrating that it is clearly not
Your subjective opinion. >Next you'll post about how much you love paladins and don't have time to play games due to your imaginary kids.
Please take your meds, schizo-kun.
1 month ago
Anonymous
>This is what a dishonest sophist would do
So you'd consider yourself an honest sophist I suppose lol. Looks like you've deleted another post that makes fun of you. Funny how that works out. This is your spineless janny, folks. A mentally ill moron that spams the same stupid shit every single day.
1 month ago
Anonymous
I think its simple.
Agree with him - you are honest
Disagree with him - you are dishonest
1 month ago
Anonymous
>read a post literally stating that he respects people he disagrees with as long as they aren't lying Black folk, and decrying the lying Black folk that infest this board >HURRRR YOU ONLY THINK PEOPLE ARE HONEST IF THEY AGREE WITH YOU, AND YOU ONLY THINK PEOPLE ARE LYING BECAUSE THEY DISAGREE WITH YOU
This is what the absolutely atrocious level of discourse on this board has done to your brain.
The rest of this shit is one samegayging Black person crying that I'm the janny. Absolutely mindbroken.
1 month ago
Anonymous
>This is your spineless janny, folks. A mentally ill moron that spams the same stupid shit every single day.
Absolutely abhorrent. I bet the whole mental breakdown today was due to the asshurt over the dos2 thread. Starting to make sense now. How do we get rid of this homosexual?
1 month ago
Anonymous
>Looks like you've deleted another post that makes fun of you.
Jesus christ he really did. Holy shit, what is wrong with this place? It was literally just a post pointing out he was repeating himself. Not even remotely against the rules. What the frick.
1 month ago
Anonymous
>Let's think about your behavior logically.
Here's the logic I see
1. Fact: BG3 only appeals to morons.
2. Fact: morons can't debate, they just spam low-effort opinions and shitposts
3. Therefore: Attacking BG3 means he's always going to be arguing with morons.
4. Fact: morons cannot learn or improve
5. Therefore, a zerg of tards can easily out-post him with low-effort spam. He cannot keep up and nothing will ever change anyway.
In conclusion, he should leave the morons to their semen-drenched circle-jerk and not post in BG3 threads anymore. And yes I know the anon you are talking about I recognize his style every time I see it.
1 month ago
Anonymous
Reddit has a lot more enlightened individuals. That might be more your speed. Maybe you can start your new janny career there.
1 month ago
Anonymous
Don't need to go to reddit. Just avoid BG3 threads because they are always full of morons.
1 month ago
Anonymous
I think you need to avoid all threads, bud.
1 month ago
Anonymous
You gotta find a new job dude, you are not welcome here.
I fricking hated the writing in BG3 but c'mon.
It's not ALL bad.
Larian throws a lot of random stuff at the wall and sometimes it works. They can succeed in smaller individual "set pieces".
Auntie Ethel is just a well done classic witch adventure. Nothing original, but it's just fun. A highlight of the game.
BG3 had like 5 writers (right?) and only one of them was decent. Literally a game written by a bunch of moron and that's good enough for BG3's illiterate audience.
The rampant eroticism at every turn is really off-putting. It feels like a game made by sex perverts on a leash. They couldn't go overboard, but the writing still drips with thinly veiled fetishist content that it feels dirty. I absolutely do not buy the excuse that every male character wanting to frick you just for saying hello to them was a "bug". Considering how the rest of the game is, it is perfectly consistent.
Modern fantasy is bumming of boners a song of dicks and asses inspired and cant go without a sloppy scat orgy every five minutes between the hysterically detailed torture scenes.
The game has extreme amounts of torture, slavery, animal cruelty, racism, gore, premeditated murder, etc, and you're whining about gay sex lol. Old Ganker would have loved this game.
>animal cruelty >Old Ganker would have loved this game.
Clearly no idea what you're talking about newbie. Old Ganker hated animal cruelty with a passion, it's never been cool. Call people Black folk as much as you want and harass moronic underage girls on the internet, but leave cats alone.
Anon, there was people cumming on birds and having sex with beached whales. Just frickin em right in the blowhole. You have no idea.
Ganker was and always has been filled with pedophiles and animal frickers. You only know about the former because you don't go into the spaces the latter hides.
The message that the developers have for you is that those things are okay sometimes but you must absolutely never be heckin’ racist xenophobic bigot who discriminates against innocent refugees, or to do a transphobia against a totally “valid” “woman”. Also, communism is good.
This completely jarring and disjointed contradiction is precisely what anons are complaining about when they say the game has tonally inconsistent and immersion-breaking bad writing. Hope this helps.
>you must absolutely never be heckin’ racist xenophobic bigot who discriminates against innocent refugees
Except there are detailed quest choices for doing just that.
>play Orc Paladin >homosexual bong voice >play Githyanki monk >homosexual bong voice >play Druegar spore druid >homosexual bong voice >play demon posessed Dragonborn sorcerer >homosexual bong voice >only four preset faces per race and the same dozen west coast Antifa haircuts
Wow so immersive and detailed, at least you can choose to have a kosher wiener or put a penis on your body type 1, thats what really matters after all
Hm.
Then tell me this.
Why is Balduran a squid now, even though the timeline makes no sense?
What was the point of it from writing perspective?
Did it make game more Baldur's Gate?
>pic
remind me of when I made wyll naked in my coop game so when the connection got bad, my friend made me dance with the gay naked Black person and recorded it or when I told him to kill himself(he went illithid) at the end and the emotional scene got ruined(improved) by a naked Black person in the background.
Good times
I thought BG3 was shit but if the modding tools are good, then I would be really excited to play a different campaign using its engine, not made by Larian, and ideally not using 5th ed rules (not sure how hardcoded they are into the engine)
i avoid anything that's set in D&D, D&D is obviously the lowest form of generic fantasy schlock. i (reluctantly) made an exception for planescape torment solely because it's famous for its narrative, but all i had to do with bg2 was boot it up and see the ungodly kitcschy character portraits during creation and that was that
i obviously meant D&D campaign settings like forgotten realms, planescape, dark sun, etc. which from what i can tell are all united in some sort of multiverse. i wouldn't know
Should they be anime girls?
ths is the extent of the grognard's imagination i guess
why would i? i've grown up. out of video games, only interactive storytelling interests me now. sorry not everyone wants to play with toys into their late 20s
D&D is mechanics. Nothing to do with "generic fantasy schlock".
You meant Forgotten Realms, which is the setting.
Planescape is set in... Planescape. Which is, kind of, semi-separate.
...
Forgotten Realms of 2ed D&D era was generic fantasy schlock. And I quite like that. It was a McDonalds slop inspired by classic fantasy literature and mythology.
What we have in BG3 with nuD&D is something else.
It feels like inspired by comic con larp.
Or twitch D&D session.
With a sprinkle of marvel capeshit,
>Or twitch D&D session.
It's this. The pacemakers of DnD culture are now twitch actors, who are probably 900% more likely to be narcicisstic than the average consumer. On top of that they also have to play two roles at once. Their characters and their stage persona. All while competing for attention with the other entertainers in the stream.
It all means that these streamers trend towards unique, loud, flamboyant characters and/or niche races. Heterochromia, vitiligio tieflings, birdmen warforged, etc.
Larian put some obnoxious stuff into BG3, especially in act 3, but a lot of it is simply modern DnD. I'd love to know how much of it was forced upon Larian by the suits at WotC.
Critical Role has literally broken the brains of everyone that hates it because it's the ultimate thing to point to as "this is where everything in D&D went wrong" even if they don't act that different from the homosexuals who went out larping on the weekends.
>Larian put some obnoxious stuff into BG3, especially in act 3, but a lot of it is simply modern DnD. I'd love to know how much of it was forced upon Larian by the suits at WotC.
I agree. I played the early access right when it came out and I really liked the game and had a lot of fun with it. When the release version came out I was like “what the frick, this sucks, it’s like a completely different game”. I’m almost certain the gnomes at WotC/Hasbro made them change shit to get ESG dollars.
And no Dungeons.
Because despite being Dungeon and dragons current tabletop sessions barely do any dungeons other that three room narrative + puzzle challenge sections that end in Boss fights.
>I'm literally deleting posts in the thread pointing out that I'm a moron, but I'm not a janny trust me bros >nevermind that the janny never deletes anything normally and just let's shit like rean posting go on for months on end, it's seriously not me. just trust me guys, the janny just really likes me.
>sus
Yup. It’s called a lying Black person deflecting by being a lying Black person. Got called out on his lies and he immediately pivots to >y-y-you just deleted a post disagreeing with you!
I didn’t see any post. Got a screenshot or an archive link? Doubt it. >y-y-you’re the janny! I bet you’re bumping all these threads of yours, too!
Simple, when you look like a fool, start screeching and pointing fingers to distract from your foolishness. It’s just one lying Black person samegayging, too. This is what happens when you don’t actually have an argument to present, just an absolute lack of shame.
He just gave you an example and you deleted it you disingenuous israelite Black person.
https://arch.b4k.co/vrpg/thread/3416973/#q3416973
Man look at this shit, unreal. /vrpg/s worst poster is its janny.
You realize that everyone here can instantly tell when you reply to yourself, right?
1 month ago
Anonymous
Who is everyone? That's my first post in the thread. I am looking at the link and I can see what you're doing. have a nice day. Ganker was made to get away from deranged mods. You are ruining this board.
1 month ago
Anonymous
>if I switch to my phone and take a screenshot the goyim will be fooled
1 month ago
Anonymous
Am I a samegay too?
1 month ago
Anonymous
No one is samegayging. You got caught redhanded. I learned a lot of very uncomfortable things about this place today. This board has some enormous problems.
1 month ago
Anonymous
>This board has some enormous problems.
Yeah, your posts
It's jarringly bad. Not even the ESG score shit they shoehorn in, its just the general understanding of forgotten realms, an already kind of corny and gay setting, being made to feel like some sort of interactive marvel movie with heckin funny one liners. Also, the shittiest companions of any party based rpg I can think of. Even dragon age inquisition had iron bro. There's not one companion I like in this shit.
It doesn't play very much like an isometric RPG. It's exploration and navigation is very similar to Divinity 2. The battles are turn based and not rtwp. I found it played overall very well. It's definitely worth one playthrough to experience the new standards BG3 set with characters. Astarions voice actor has changed the industry with his performance.
It plays nothing like either of them. The story is also way more "in your face" so you might like it, who knows.
Should I try BG3 if I didn't like Divinity OS 1 and 2 because they were hard, combat was moronic (pools of lava and shit every time, while I prefer hit exchange), also these games were flawed: example when you controlled a character without a pet friendo perk you couldn't jast walk away and talk selecting a char with the perk.
Bear's Gay 3 isn't hard whatsoever if you know how D&D works, 5e is super simple and Larian's homebrew version is complete baby mode to the point it gets boring.
I'd say give it a go, if you like it past Act 2 then keep playing, otherwise that's it.
BG2
PS:T
FF10
FF7
BG1 (little to no dialogue or quests)
IWD1 and 2 (literally mute generics with no personality)
1 month ago
Anonymous
>square tard thinking he's entitled to an opinion on anything
1 month ago
Anonymous
Stop trolling, dumbfrick.
1 month ago
Anonymous
He's kind of right though...
1 month ago
Anonymous
He said a game with mute NPCs has better NPCs than BG3. Clearly he's not serious.
>Astarions voice actor has changed the industry with his performance >against the talent that surpassed him two decades ago >being this much of a tourist
20 years ago didn't have the technology to make NPCs so lifelike.
1 month ago
Anonymous
>Stop trolling, dumbfrick.
100% serious.
>100% serious.
That's how shit BG3's party members are: games with mute generics that you create yourself are superior. >20 years ago didn't have the technology to make NPCs so lifelike.
David Warner (RIP) absolutely nailed Irenicus's voice acting, which is what that anon was referring to. By "lifelike" you mean graphical fidelity and motion-captured animations, in which sense BG3 is clearly excellent and superior, but in terms of voice acting it's merely mediocre (and we've had the technology for decades, it was primarily the shift in storage capacity from 1.44 MB floppies to 650 MB CD-ROMs that did it), and the key is the writing of the characters, which is absolutely abysmal, much like the game overall on that front.
1 month ago
Anonymous
I've been more immersed and engrossed in text MUDs from the 90s with zero graphics or sound at all. It's difficult to overstate how immersion-breakingly terrible BG3's characters and writing is. I can understand if someone says "I liked the game and had fun", even if I disagree, but I absolutely boggle at someone saying it has great characters and writing, unless they're a teenager and it's their first game and they have nothing else to compare it to.
The whole trend of "wow graphics such lifelike very immerse" is an absolute pox on the industry. This is what you're telling developers: just make soulless goyslop and chase graphics and muh movie game because that's what people want.
1 month ago
Anonymous
I think the overall quality of writing in BG3 was mixed, but rather bad. Main plot/tadpole/emperor/great plan is an awful AWFUL mess.
Companions are not as bad but "I used to be super epic but my powers were taken away" THREE TIMES is just juvenile. I do find *some* of them annoying.
AND
I also happen to like mostly-blank full party creation like IWD or Solasta. Making up my own story about them... It's like that... how do you call it... roleplaying...!
I really got attached to my IWD2 and Solasta dudes.
...
So... I'm not entirely sure that I would prefer IWD-style solution in BG3... but I can absolutely understand people who would prefer it.
>Astarions voice actor has changed the industry with his performance >against the talent that surpassed him two decades ago >being this much of a tourist
Baldur's Gate as a whole series had bad writing in general really but Act 1 had a brilliant plot hook which faltered around Act 2. However, i do love that Durge pretty much saved the story completely if you wanted a power trip as a bhaalspawn or as a redemption arc which makes the default Tav felt secondary and cobbled together. The asspull where Balduran had been manipulating you is a bummer though
What's a bigger piece of shitslop? BG3? Or shit like morrowind, gothic, vtmb, arcanum, etc.? Guess what, it's not the former and you're completely delusional if you think otherwise. You got people praising fricking shit like witcher 3, mass effect, NWN, wotr and dragon age here and b***hing about bg3, absolutely insane. Is bg3 the best game ever? Of course not, but it's better than anything YOU like and when people like me see what YOU, the normalBlack person like, it's perfectly obvious why well adjusted normalBlack folk that don't scream about israelites and trannies every 5 seconds fell in love with it, because it's objectively far better than what they've been exposed to. One early steam review that really stuck out to me was "after decades of trash, finally a decent meal".
In a decade people will be replaying BG and BG2 while BG3 will be deader than Renge's parents. Mark my words.
1 month ago
Anonymous
It's still breaking 100k players almost a year later. It's concurrent player count after a year is higher than dos2's all time peak. Think about the long term implications of this.
1 month ago
Anonymous
>the long term implications of this
More moronic kids flooding RPG discussion? Larian expanding? More mocap cutscenes in Obsidian's next game?
1 month ago
Anonymous
>More moronic kids flooding RPG discussion
Anyone who calls authority to age either is not old enough to know it doesn't matter or extremely dumb.
1 month ago
Anonymous
"more moronic kids flooding RPG discussion" is something that you cry about literally every single day on this very board
1 month ago
Anonymous
No I complain about moronic adults that don't play games any more corrupting the youth.
1 month ago
Anonymous
>No I complain about moronic adults that don't play games any more corrupting the youth.
I want you to look deep inside of your black, withered heart and reflect honestly about how you would respond to a zoomer coming onto this board and posting earnestly about a popular RPG that you think is a shit game.
A. >Cool, I can see what you enjoy about that game, I like [X, Y, Z] about it, too. But you know, I think it also has [I, J, K] flaws as well. It's a good introduction to the genre, but can I suggest you play [deeper RPG cut] so you can learn more about the history of the genre and get introduced to some new games that you haven't played before?
or
B. >Look at this utter slop. You're a moron that will never play anything but slop. You just roll around in the slop, like a pig in the mire. You've exposed yourself to be an utter tasteless moron. You probably don't even play games, you just post about them. Typical [developer name][disparaging insult]. You're what's ruining this board. Get the frick out and never come back. Why would I want you here? You're still going to be playing [shitty game] 20 years from now because you don't even like RPGs.
1 month ago
Anonymous
don't you complain about everything anyone else does with no real consistency of perspective? old man yells at clouds.jpg style?
1 month ago
Anonymous
If you played games instead of the same 5 things over and over you'd know I play and discuss a lot of games here. If you get the impression I merely complain you're probably sticking to one place and most likely the issue.
1 month ago
Anonymous
>automatic gainsaying
case in point.
1 month ago
Anonymous
Age brings wisdom to the intelligent through experience. It's absolutely a factor and to suggest it isn't is delusional. Regardless of my jokes, I really just want to know what you think are the long term implications of BG3's success.
1 month ago
Anonymous
>Age brings wisdom to the intelligent through experience
No, experience in a field brings wisdom in that field. An old person who doesn't play video games any more is certainly not wiser in that matter than a young person that does. This goes all the way back to Socratic Ignorance and the tendency of an experienced carpenter or fisherman thinking their wisdom is applicable to other areas of life, such as politics.
1 month ago
Anonymous
Your example is reductive and specific to a theory you created about anonymous people to justify your repetitive badgering. Some experience is transferable, such as how people and fads interact in the long term or how ideals are used to cyclically manipulate the ignorant.
1 month ago
Anonymous
>Your example is reductive
Counterpoint: No it's not. >Some experience is transferable
Bitching online for decades doesn't make you informed on video games or culture.
1 month ago
Anonymous
Playing video games for decades and seeing the ebb and flow and sometimes virtual extinction of genre does give you some perspective on how you can't extrapolate trends from a particular success.
See the trick is that people are more than what you see online. The assumption that they aren't is grasped by little men, with fragile psyches.
1 month ago
Anonymous
>trust me bro, I'm actually batman irl and I just conveniently stopped playing video games this year, I've played thousands before this
1 month ago
Anonymous
>a theory you created about anonymous people to justify your repetitive badgering
1 month ago
Anonymous
>See the trick is that people are more than what you see online. The assumption that they aren't is grasped by little men, with fragile psyches.
This is why he's so exhausting to talk to. He has created an elaborate mental model of what other people think and just projects that onto them and then responds to his own projections. It's like trying to have a discussion with a Markov chain chatbot. He's not here to discuss RPGs, he's here to peawiener and knock down strawmen, and on the multiple occasions I've seen him be flat out objectively wrong about a cut-and-dry factual matter, he has an absolutely autistic meltdown, because he can't be wrong, he's the main character.
I think it's quite telling that he'll respond to every other post in this thread except this one:
>No I complain about moronic adults that don't play games any more corrupting the youth.
I want you to look deep inside of your black, withered heart and reflect honestly about how you would respond to a zoomer coming onto this board and posting earnestly about a popular RPG that you think is a shit game.
A. >Cool, I can see what you enjoy about that game, I like [X, Y, Z] about it, too. But you know, I think it also has [I, J, K] flaws as well. It's a good introduction to the genre, but can I suggest you play [deeper RPG cut] so you can learn more about the history of the genre and get introduced to some new games that you haven't played before?
or
B. >Look at this utter slop. You're a moron that will never play anything but slop. You just roll around in the slop, like a pig in the mire. You've exposed yourself to be an utter tasteless moron. You probably don't even play games, you just post about them. Typical [developer name][disparaging insult]. You're what's ruining this board. Get the frick out and never come back. Why would I want you here? You're still going to be playing [shitty game] 20 years from now because you don't even like RPGs.
1 month ago
Anonymous
>I think it's quite telling that he'll respond to every other post in this thread except this one
I'd just play the game and shit on it like I always do. What kind of stupid question is that?
1 month ago
Anonymous
He couldn't honestly respond because it completely nailed his shtick.
1 month ago
Anonymous
Cool samegayging
1 month ago
Anonymous
What?
1 month ago
Anonymous
>game came out like six months ago >"almost a year later"
Why are they like this?
1 month ago
Anonymous
>FOMO morons and playing the shilled game
Who would have thought?
1 month ago
Anonymous
>the shilled game
Where is the live service DLC drip like what Assdivers 2 and Dragons Sugma has? What is retaining players? Hmm what a mystery. Surely it will be dead and forgotten in 10 years.
I didn't notice any bad writing, in fact its one of the best written rpgs i have played, way better than bioware and old infinity engine games.
the only games that were better written are planescape, witcher, disco elysium and betryal at krondor.
so its the 5th best written rpg of all time
Dribbles the Clown questline. Though iirc you could randomly get turned into clowns via Wild Magic (don't ever do this, Wild Magic loses its lolsorandum fun after an hour and makes fights insufferable the rest of the playthrough as it consistently fricks you over)
>edgy three trying to end all existence just to weaken the other Gods >none of the Gods care >Shar kinda does but only because she wants to out-edge the absolute >she is also kidnapping kids to "prove something" to her sister >Selune does nothing to help her followers or her own daughter who is used to power up Myrkuls Chosen, its up to some rando to safe "Shadowheart" and Aylin >Aylin is also an insane bulldyke who almost fricks everything up at Moonrise and goes out of her way to murder some megalomaniacal wizard even if aforementioned rando cools the whole situation down >Mystra fricks mortal men and has a nuke running around Faerun >her master plan to nuke the brain ends in the destruction of the world >Devils are enslaving peoples souls (Karlach and Gortash) without their agreement >Jergal directly intervening
Game should have just ended with a second time of troubles, what a fricking mess
>edgy three trying to end all existence
Is that what they were doing? I thought they were basically just trying to reach their old seats of power again. >Mystra fricks mortal men
Of all things to put against it, this is nothing new for her. Do I need to list how many people she's slept with?
Frick it, I'll post it anyway
Half of the wizarding world fricked Mystra. She's the biggest bawd in the entire pantheon, despite her portfolio having nothing to do with sex, love, or passion. Here are the KNOWN Chosen (aka fricktoys).
Alustriel Silverhand
Alvaerele Tasundrym
Amarune Whitewave
Araundras Othaun (Chosen of Mystryl)
Azuth
Dove Falconhand
Duethaea Lauraunfeir
Elminster Aumar
Embrae Aloevan of Ardeep
Gale Dekarios
Jalathleena
Kaylaar Allun
Khelben "Blackstaff" Arunsun
Laeral Silverhand
Larloch the Shadow King
Qilué Veladorn
Sammaster
Syluné Silverhand
Symrustar Auglamyr
Storm Silverhand
Taerele
Alassra Shentrantra Silverhand, "The Simbul"
It doesn't seem like original BG trilogy thread but I'll ask anyway.
How painful is it to dual Imoen at level 7 in BG1?
I have somehow ended up with a canonical party (Jaheira, Khalid, Minsc, Dynaheir, Imoen). MC is fighter/mage multi. I'm overall alright with this setup since all the roles are filled well. The party in general has no problems slicing through anything at this point.
But since I remember Imoen being dualed in BG2 I'm tempted to do that now for roleplay reasons and to maybe motivate myself to shake up the party somewhat, since dualing will require a thief, so one of the two pairs has to go. Otherwise I kinda feel I will not feel like changing anybody in the party until the end of the game, it works too well. Dualing her probably won't gain me anything in gameplay terms but I do think it could be fun.
I don't do BGT so it won't reflect on BG2 in any way. I'm playing BG1 for the second time but the first time was when I was still in school and I never finished it, so it's almost like the first playthrough.
I'm currently in Chapter 3 with most of the map explored besides the north-eastern corner and closed off locations.
The point is, will dualing Imoen be fun or is it just gonna be a pain and I shouldn't bother?
Dualing in general in BG1/2 is bad, multis are ultimately better at everything and dualing just gives you a shit character for a few levels for a slightly better one later. It doesn't really make sense as a mechanic in BG, its not something you'd do in the middle of a campaign, and fits better for a pregenerated character or something that occurs in between campaigns. At best it just leads to stupid shit like a fighter that can use wands because they took one level of mage and at worst its leads to stupid metagame shit like zerker/mage.
So, is dualing going to be boring, in case of level 7 Imoen?
Again, I'm just thinking of doing it for roleplay and fun reasons, since if Imoen is dual in BG2, she's probably into magic.
But I don't know if it's just going to be a slog instead. I do want to have fun while playing.
If you dual at 7 you will completely cripple the character and they'll be useless. Usually people dual charname at the start of bg2 and game the scroll exp system and that's about it. Don't do it unless you have a back up thief.
Provide examples.
you take a ladder
to the underdark
a ladder
How's that any dumber then any D&D campaign where you just access the Underdark from some random caves?
>How's that any dumber than any D&D campaign where you just access the Underdark from some random caves?
Really, anon? Really?
Great rebuttal.
Yeah it's a bad answer, but to be fair to him, it's a mind-blowingly stupid question in the first place. This clearly seems to be his first time interacting with BG3 fans. He wasn't prepared for the near-absolute void of understanding anything about fantasy or role-playing games that one always encounters.
You can literally get to the Underdark from a cellar and staircase in Waterdeep. Not any dumber then using a ladder from inside a cave, or casting featherfall and jumping into a whole in the ground.
>You can literally get to the Underdark from a cellar and staircase in Waterdeep
Yes, but how deep is this staircase? What's the compressive strength and shear modulus of the stone it's made out of? This is a rickety-ass bullshit ladder we are talking about here. Like Metal Gear Solid trolling-the-player style.
No, you can't.
You get to undermountain, possibly the biggest most expansive dungeon in all of faerun, and on the SIXTH underground level of that dungeon, easily two miles underground depending on how much you hype up the scale, there are some connections to a certain part of the underdark
Compare that to ONE FRICKING LADDER
>one fricking ladder
Surely there are parts of the Underdark that are closer to the surface. If it is a straight tunnel down, surely we can assume that the ladder is made up of smaller sections.
Yes this mentality is why modern fantasy creators. They look for the flimsiest excuse to do the laziest thing possible and fans will lap it up so long as there are more cutscenes with freak homosex.
If only things could stay just the way there were in your childhood.
>fallacy
Also why are you choosing this of all hills to die on?
Nevermind, I know why, it's because you don't even think. For you, replying is a hindbrain reflex.
how else would you reach it ? what matters is the scale
the underdark is several miles below ground, getting there should be a long journey
I do not believe in a several miles long ladder
magic ladder
>magic ladder
Sequel to Magic Carpet
BVLLFROG RISE VP
Magic Carpet already has a sequel.
Magic staircase?
Magic escalator?
Magic paternoster?
Magic Carpet [spoiler]2[/spoiler]
Bg1: magic missile
BG2: magic rope
BG3: magic ladder
Mfw
i think that probably people who haven't played dnd need to speak on how silly bg3 is or isn't
i played dnd, what now
>b-b-but this module
I don't play 5e official modules they all fricking suck
What people aren't getting about the ladder is that it's a joke. Larian intended it as a joke. You get a little cutscene of your character going down the ladder, stopping and looking down, sighing, then continuing to climb.
Larian think it's hilarious. The devs think they are really, really funny. When you realise this, the bad decisions in BG3 make more sense. And become even more annoying.
I'm just glad they toned it down enough to make it palatable. DOS2 was borderline unplayable.
Yeah, Larian jokes a lot. That's actually a criticism, not an excuse or reason. Their jokes aren't even good, and it was one of the main reasons that people were skeptical about their ability to do BGIII, and they didn't disappoint the naysayers.
BioWare did stupid humor too, like the golden pantaloons and Boo the miniature giant space hamster. Larian's execution is more along the lines of "get it? get it?" after a bad job, and follows Hollywood trends of over-explaining stuff for a dumb audience.
Every CRPG dev studio is inhabited by 40+ year old boomers who lived in the 90s TTRPG era where monty python jokes were the height of comedy. I honestly just tune out the shitty references in any RPG by this point.
I'm just glad you said Monty Python and not MST3k because there'd be like 20 replies of people saying "...well wasn't it?"
1. Larian picked the illithid tadpole as the main hook of the story...
And then did everything to work around it.
- They dropped any serious threat and time pressure mid-development. Which leaves some awkward leftovers from the original idea. Like sinister lines when you use the tadpole.
It also pretty much turned Raphael into an useless bum who has nothing to offer, despite all the self-hype.
- It really tries to turn MULTIPLE EVIL ALIEN BRAIN WORMS into something seductive. Like vampirism or being a child of a dark deity.
Sorry, it simply doesn't work. It's much closer to a xenomorph parasite, than vampirism.
Furthermore...
It also creates this esoteric mess with "is it still you when you turn into an illithid"?
Well, the game never decides.
You can roleplay it any way you want.
That's with your meta knowledge of what the tadpoles do in the end
I felt pressured not to use the tadpoles because of the writing, because it said a part of my brain gets eaten every time I used the power.
>we can all agree that some of the writing in it is really goddamn bad, right?
No we cannot because zoomers cannot stomach criticism.
Here is how it works:
>I like it therefore it is good because otherwise I wouldn't like it
>I hate it therefore its shit and irredeemable.
They do not understand that you can like flawed things.
Or that you can play a good game and still don't like it because it simply aint to your taste.
I think BG3 has good aspects, the way they incorporated 5E works well even when Im missing things like Readying an action.
Jaheira is very well written. In fact as soon as I met her it felt like I was playing BG3 again. Her characterization is on point and even her expanded background fits her.
Which makes it all the more mind-boggling that all the other writing is so atrociously bad.
>Larian picked the illithid tadpole as the main hook of the story...
Oh its so much worse, its like someone did a speedrun through BG2 and then they brainstormed about memberberries and decided to throw them all into the pot and it created this tasteless grey gruel-plot that somehow has all elements from BG2 mixed together into its main-plot.
Why are there Illithid-Nautiloids zipping about when Spelljammers explicitly cannot work in Toril's Crystal-sphere since Netheril was around?
How does this groomed ElderBrain even have access to so many when the -Realmspace-Illithids lost the ability to create them when they were cut off from the Illithid-Empire?
Why are all the other gods sitting with their thumbs up their asses when faced with a threat that clearly involves them (souls getting fricked, ergo less worshipers, ergo less power)?
Why is there a ruined Temple of Lathander with the FRICKING BLOOD OF LATHANDER hidden deep within yet the Church of Lathander never declared a holy war on the Gith or tried to get the temple back from the Gith in all those years? The Church of Lathander literally is one of the largest faiths in the realms.
Why isnt Baldurs Gate or the Lords Alliance bothered by the existence of the Shadowscar being right next to Baldurs Gate for decades?
Compare that with how Cormyr or Sembia reacted to one of their cities getting nuked by the Shades and how they were both surrounded by respective armies and quarantined.
Why is MyChemicalRomance-man portrayed as this scheming mastermind when all he did to become a Grand Duke is merely due to Mindflayer influence? Did the Flaming Fists simply not learn since the incident a century ago when Key-Figures in the city were replaced by Doppelgangers?
Why is Sarevok even in the game?
Why is Viconia in the game?
Both literally serve zero purpose apart from "HEY I MEMBER!"
Why does Viconia look older than Jaheira despite Jaheira being a Half-Elf near the end of her lifespan and Viconia being fairly young for a Drow in Bg2?
Why is Minsc in the game?
Why did he go from "dumb but competent Berserker that got hit too many times on his head" to "literal drooling moron who despite heaving experience in sniffing out evil gets tricked over and over again"?
>Why does Viconia look older than Jaheira despite Jaheira being a Half-Elf near the end of her lifespan and Viconia being fairly young for a Drow in Bg2?
Viconia looks 40ish. Jaheira 60 or 70.
>Viconia looks 40ish
Good lord...
Are you from UK?
>Viconia looks 40ish
Dude, I am 40ish and I look half her age.
>Why is MyChemicalRomance-man portrayed as this scheming mastermind
>MyChemicalRomance-man
Lmao, this unironically made me laugh
Why they went with that design is beyond me, i cant take him seriously as an antagonist
>MyChemicalRomance-man
I would've just called him a hobo, personally
I like BG3, I like some of the character development, many of the scenes are great but yes the overall narrative is a fail of incongruent events. There are only certain CE or CN psychos that would seriously consider filling their head with brain eating larvae for power. Perhaps an LE that is absolutely desperate, but the game doesn't do enough to sell you on this particular desperation esp. when the main driver of the story is not turning into a flayer.
It also just suffers from too much donut steel multiplied by the tadpoles. It would have been far better to give you one (1) sympathetic ally that was infected by the tadpole and that is his or her main gimmick instead of layering it over all the outrageous backstories of the other companions. The tadpole infections for powering up could have even been kept intact this way from perhaps an offer from the ally after they fall from grace if you push them in that direction.
>enumerated writing tips
All good, but also D&D really suffers from getting away from Laws of Magic. They did much better during the Weave and Times of Troubles when they used lore to literally change the PnP rules of magic away from 2nd Ed and also used that to create peak FR. Magic is too ambiguous now in spite of all the PNP rule window dressing, there is no unifying logic behind it anymore. There is not much in the way of real cost that doesn't get handwaved by lore. Religion is barely there in terms of player requirements, same as warlock patron demands.
I thought the tadpoles were a good morivator to move the plot for the first 20-30 hours of the game. I spent 90% of my first week trying to figure out how to remove them, but the fear wears off especially when nothing bad happens to you. It would have been something if after random long rests the tadpole debuffed your constitution, wisdom, intelligence, etc, forcing you to come up with strategies. There's zero drawbacks to taking the illythid powers. If you have all your party members commune with the astral tadpole in act 3, then it becomes extremely boring as everyone can fly, get a ton of bonus actions and suffer jackshit.
>BG2: using too much of Bhaalspawn powers is dangerous, don't turn into the slayer too often.
>BG3: shove as many tadpoles into your brain as you can to get cool superpowers.
>It really tries to turn MULTIPLE EVIL ALIEN BRAIN WORMS into something seductive.
Well i found the idea pretty hot myself, then again parasites, mind control and identity death are my fetishes. But i'm glad belgians tried to pander to my tastes at least once
>It really tries to turn MULTIPLE EVIL ALIEN BRAIN WORMS into something seductive
They tried to do this and it was actually fairly clever by having the player design their seductress themselves. "Who do you dream of at night?" Then they shot themselves in the foot by rewriting it to be fricking Balduran what the frick?
Also made the "down, down, down by the river" song meaningless in the release version.
>an useless
It's funny how it's always ESL homosexuals talking about writing.
meanwhile it's morons with literally nothing to say who nitpick typos and grammar
Sheesh, sorry for not being angloid, nigel.
This was a problem right from the first teaser they released though. They went on a huge press tour trying to explain that it doesn't conform to the lore for some serious story reasons. This was simply never true. The reason they did it was because they thought that it would look cool in a trailer if ceremorphosis happened in seconds.
Every time that a studio starts to make excuses like this you know that it's a red flag. It was a red flag back then, and it ended up being worse in the release.
The other huge red flag is when studios try to bring back finished stories and talk about trying to keep what makes it iconic bla bla bla. You just know that they would have been better off making their own series.
It would have been better if they just ignored most of the stuff instead of trying to make it all make sense and weaving in "iconic" references.
>They went on a huge press tour trying to explain that it doesn't conform to the lore for some serious story reasons.
Why are you just making things up lol
It was real in my mind.
Calm down bud, you have posts you need to delete right now
2. Juvenile overbloat of "awesome" and "epic".
- Intro is the obvious example.
- Three companions were super awesome, untill recently they got depowered for reasons.
- Why is Emberor Balduran (kind of)? Was one legendary character in your pocket not enough?
- Obviously, the brain planned everything.
- And regular Elder brain is not epic enough for this game. It turns into Nether Brain, which threatens the universe... Of course it does.
>Obviously, the brain planned everything.
The bad guys in almost every game are the ones who planned everything. That's why they're the bad guy.
>And regular Elder brain is not epic enough for this game. It turns into Nether Brain, which threatens the universe... Of course it does.
A regular elder brain has a challenge rating of like 14. That's a joke to kill with a party of level 12s.
There's a difference between "a bad guy with a plan" and "your unlikely journey was part of my perfect plan!".
One step away from some shounen "bad guy planned main characters conception two decades ago".
>- Three companions were super awesome, untill recently they got depowered for reasons.
That mage dude, Karlach and...Dark Urge?
Karlach is atrociously bad.
There's a reason she has shit endings and isn't on the cover.
Wyll was a big deal, summoning hellhounds at will.
He mentions his de-powering in dialogues. I don't blame you for not listening.
Never actually took him with me. Just kept him around to flirt with Myzora. He disapproved, but I set her up with a sweet gig as advisor to Baldurs Gate politics.
Kinda wanna do a playthrough to see how much of a simp Wyll can turn into.
Some of the writing in literally every game is really bad. There's no game in the world where every single line is amazing.
>Some of the writing in literally every game is really bad. There's no game in the world where every single line is amazing
This is true, but it’s missing the point. I agree that most games have mediocre writing, and games with great writing are quite rare. However, certain games have extremely bad writing, which is immersion breaking and shatters your suspension of disbelief, and I agree that bg3 is one such game. “Mediocre or average” is far better than “terrible”
Our definitions of terrible differ then. Go play The Thaumaturge. Now that's an immersion breaking game with it's dialogue lol.
I agree with this, i dont think games should be heavy resources into polishing writing, games dont need to be abstractly written, complex and philosophical, there are better medium to do that.
What writing needs to mostly do is:
1- Be engaging
2- Be simple and avoid as much errors as possible
3- Be a great excuse for the player to play the game.
4- In case of RPG; the writing should be reactive to the player as much as its possible without obviously shattering the narrative structure.
5- It should provide decent lore and worldbuilding to flesh out the world in case its fictional.
Writing dont need to explore various themes of human psychology or deep political theories or quantum physics, this shit is not necessary and doesnt make the game flawed.
At the same time some people put too much value into "muh story" when it comes to games, i disagree, i used to do that at a younger age i wanted to feel smart for playing games, but now the most important things to me are game design, gameplay, level design, immersion and the whole overall package.
When it comes to RPG i value engaging characters/party more than main plots.
Even the most appreciated stories in games are mediocre compared to their peers in film/books, its just something i find highly overhyped and unnecessary takes a lot of dicourse in games.
As long as the main plot provides good excuse for the player to engage with the game's world and explore and act within it, i think that qualifies it as serviceable, bonus points if its well written and avoids horrid stupid shit, this is why i consider Witcher 3 an excellent game narratively, it has more than enough. I still remember how some haters tried to compare it to the works of Shakespear lmfao. haters get really desperate when they want to tear down a game they dont like. clinging to hilarious nitpicks.
>1- Be engaging
>2- Be simple and avoid as much errors as possible
>3- Be a great excuse for the player to play the game.
>4- In case of RPG; the writing should be reactive to the player as much as its possible without obviously shattering the narrative structure.
>5- It should provide decent lore and worldbuilding to flesh out the world in case its fictional.
You are missing the point so hard its not even funny.
The reason Millenial-Tier-Writing is so shit is because they cannot write. This is not hyperbole on my part.
When you write a story you start with point A and see where the characters and the plot takes you and eventually you reach the climax of the story which point B.
Millenial-Writers however got this shit all backwards.
They think to themselves "Wouldn't it be cool if this or that happened at point B?" and so they instead think how they can arrive at point B without even having a point A.
>When it comes to RPG i value engaging characters/party more than main plots.
The reason for that being is that plot has become an afterthought.
Even a basic-b***h Goldbox-Dungeoncrawler had a straightforward plot that worked in service of the gameplay.
Why are we here? Because there is something weird going on beneath Waterdeep and Khelben Blackstaff hired us to check it out.
What are the stakes? Apparently a powerful Beholder has been amassing Allies to assault Waterdeep.
And it works.
I think your post is fundamentally flawed.
You seem stuck into thinking there is only one correct way to build a narrative and i dont think i can agree with that.
I honestly dont care if the writers thought of B or A or even C, what i care about is if the story itself was good.
Now that depends on how do you define a good story.
Based on my personal experience with stories (all mediums) the good story needs few things to appeal to me.
1- It needs interesting premise.
2- It needs to be plausible and when i say that i dont mean the dumb stuff above, no i mean things like avoiding obvious plot holes, obvious contradictions, less reliance on contrived writing, less reliance on plot armor, plot advancing in a way that makes sense.
3- Worldbuilding (fleshing the world and its history)
4- Context (themes, ideas, what does it try to say)
5- Backstory
6- Catharsis
7- Development
8- Characters
9- Pacing
Storytelling should take those aspects and make them interesting and engaging to me, you can have whatever method you want for that.
Storytelling can take different forms, in films you can tell a story via symbolism or subtle cinematography and acting.
Now in games the story can take a backseat for other aspects, thats not to say story means nothing, but in my opinion i dont think it should take too much value out of the game development, there is a reason the most well written games are barely games and/or suffer from compensation in game design.
In the same sense, i have grown to apprecaite different type of cinematic experiences, i used to be stuck in my own ways, watching and valuing films only based on their plots, but now i have grown to see that even cinema and filmmaking is not just about telling a story.
Dont want this to get confused, i still love a good story-driven film, i like Network for example, its a great movie, but at the same time i like Mullholland Drive, and i also like Andrei Rublev.
To expand on that, because i feel i went offtopic with films and books here.
When it comes to games, writing can become a broad thing, cause games unlike books and films and tv shows/anime they can divide writing into pieces.
For example you have:
1- The Main Quest: the main quest is the technically the "plot", it should be the driving force when it comes to story-driven games, but it doesnt have to be the sole focus, in a game like Witcher, the main quest is the thing that drives you to advance your journey but its never the main focus, i think RPGs especially tend to be better when they follow this route. on the contrary action/adventure games (story driven ones) like Alan Wake and The Last of Us should drop all their budget here.
2- The Side Quest: the side quests are every quest that is optional and not needed to finish the game, treat them as short stories, again they dont need to be complicated or deep, they just need to provide a good mini-story that ties well into the world, characters, gameplay and ofcourse its own premise.
3- Dialogue: This can carry a game sometimes, a good dialogue means good engagement, if the lines and the exchange of words feels natural or entertaining enough then thats a good sign, a good dialogue will info dump you but at the same time it will do it in a way that hooks you in. This can be enhanced further with voice acting, cutscenes and animations, all which helps bring the whole thing to life.
4- Worldbuilding/Lore
A lot of games put their main focus here, like The Elder Scrolls series or Dark Souls and its just as fine, this provides context to the world and makes it feel believable, its produces better immersion, does it need to be perfect? no, but as long as it can give you material to draw from and immerse you into the timeline it should be fine.
5- Characters
Nowadays this is my favorite part of RPGs, i think a good cast can elevate a game way beyond a good plot.
>5- Characters
>Nowadays this is my favorite part of RPGs, i think a good cast can elevate a game way beyond a good plot.
Now that you mention it, characters have often been the reason I keep playing to the end. And the main story is only interesting in the ways that it affects the characters.
I agree with that!
I think all things considered BG3 has solid writing, definitely a step up from Divinity games where it was an after-thought, here i can feel there is an actual genuine attempt at crafting a narrative, Larian has never been about writing, they just dont have that much talented writers imo, but thats okay, and i was surprised (positively) with the worked they did with BG3, i expected way way worse. They always had good qualtiies to make characters but they never made them memorable, i remember i liked Fane and Lohse and Red Prince were decent, but the rest were below average.
Here its a massive improvement to me, at least 5 or 6 characters are pretty good in this game. for variety of reasons.
I think that most talented RPG writers are now retired, even amongst JRPGs, i think CDPR has good writers in modern devs, Obsidian has some, and thats it.
I still think Planescape is the best written RPG, even post Disco Elysium.
>I think all things considered BG3 has solid writing, definitely a step up from Divinity games where it was an after-thought, here i can feel there is an actual genuine attempt at crafting a narrative, Larian has never been about writing, they just dont have that much talented writers imo
I had the opposite response, personally. I agree with you about Larian having shitty writers and about DOS series having mediocre writing as an afterthought. But I found that preferable to bg3 specifically because the writing was mediocre but it didn’t get in the way or pretend like it was some amazing narrative game with deep characters. Trying to do so in bg3 highlighted their failings, and I found its quality so bad that it was frequently immersion breaking and cringe inducing
People often underestimate the importance of production values, the 5 things i wrote about can still be polished, you polish them with presentation like cutscenes, character animations and voice overs.
example, when i first played BG3 i ignored Astarion, at the first encounter i found him a bit cringy for my tastes so i decided to keep him in camp, in my 2nd playthrough and after i heard so much praise i decided to have him in my party, it also helps that he approves of evil things so that was a good excuse, by the end of the game he became one of my favorite characters, while his story itself is decent enough and you can develop his character in a solid way, all of that wasn't the main appeal to me, instead it was the phenomenal performance by his actor, when you have an excellent performance like that it just elevates the whole thing.
On the contrary Wyll is another good and interesting character but because his actor was below average, i simply failed to relate to him in the same way and at the end he got benched way more often, because his lines or his performance were not engaging me.
This shows me that presentation matters, and it can elevate a story above another even when the other one is better written.
This same thing goes for Cutscenes, why do you think people value Silent Hill 2? because the direction is clever.
tldr because i wrote too much; Story in games is not that important, you can focus on it for nitpicks but that won't do much because there are other dimensions to this, and they matter whether some people like to admit it or not.
As i said, i dont think games should prioritize stories above all, even RPGs, as long as it does what i said earlier it should be enough for me, bonus depth in writing is welcome and i appreciate it, but its not the thing that i build my enjoyment upon.
I can only think of few games that have genuine good stories, thats why when i say this game has good story i always mean it in video game standards.
I always hated the focus on characters in RPG's because it diminishes the importance of player character and feels too selfish. In RPG the writer should write the story and you should write the character. Other characters must serve as an extension of your characters roleplaying capabilities, to provide certain reactions and encourage to choose different paths. When the game writes both the story and the characters it always feels like a DND session where DM inserts his Mary Sue into your party and makes the plot revolve around her.
Blame bioware, they basically started the trend of party members being little more than an extra sword to bring along.
Enjoyed reading these. Thanks, anon
You are welcome, may you have a great day!
You too. It was a thought-provoking read. You made some very good points that are helpful for designing/writing a game. One example being side quests, and tying them to the world, characters, or lore. A fetch quest becomes more rewarding, when it leads to character development, or something similar. Great stuff, hope to see more sometime.
>I think your post is fundamentally flawed.
>I honestly dont care if the writers thought of B or A or even C, what i care about is if the story itself was good.
Its your post that is fundamentally flawed.
You notice that there is a problem with the writing nowadays and then you go and claim that you don't care as long as the story is good.
You missed the point again because you do not understand that you cannot have a good story without having those basics down and understanding why the fundamentals are so important.
You cannot have a good story without understanding what makes the story work and your "personal experience" is exactly the same issue Millenial Writing has.
You can have as much experience as you want if you do not understand the very basics you will more often get a story that is bad than a one that is good.
>Storytelling should take those aspects and make them interesting and engaging to me, you can have whatever method you want for that.
And its failing to do that, instead we get Marvel-slop.
All the things you mentioned are like windows-dressing and frosting on a cake.
Its like building a nice looking car with a broken engine; Yeah its nice too look at from afar but its not doing the thing its supposed to do, you know, driving.
Look at pic related.
I guarantee you that this is how the plot in BG3 came to be.
Have a (you) for "Welcome to NHK!".
>Mullholland Drive
that game has story though? haven't seen andrei rublev but if it's anything like stalker then it has story too
have sex
Dude I agree that the other guy is wrong but you are even worse. Millennial's can't write though I'll give you that.
Games should go back to being like GoldBox-dungeoncrawler, though, games at that time didnt waste your time with pointless moronic dialogue.
The fun was in the game, pure and simple.
Aren't there plenty of games like that already?
Like what?
Please name a party-based CRPG made in the last 15 years that qualifies as having a straightforward story that doesn't get bogged down with dialog and cutscenes?
Also, not that it matters but that anon is mislabeling Eye of the Beholder a GoldBox game. EoB is a first-person real-time blobber made by SSI, with a very minimalist story. Actual Gold Box games typically had more storytelling than EoB.
I don't know, I'm not into autism games. I'm sure you could just play old dungeon crawlers, Factorio, and Sims.
So you're an idiot and clueless. Par for the course in BG3 threads.
Ok how about KotC2?
Wasteland 3?
Not usually into post-apocalyptic settings, and although it does look combat heavy I also see a lot of dialog scenes with cringe uncanny valley 3D animations and multiple-choice bullshit.
OK so we have one post-apocalyptic game that barely qualifies and one low-budget indie throwback game from kickstarter that still costs $45. That counts as 'plenty'?
For the hardcore real-time dungeon crawler fans there are the Grimrock games and those technically are within my 15 year window but Grimrock 2 was still 9 years ago now.
Minecraft maybe?
Not a party-based CRPG.
Invite your friends!
Just stop
Not nearly enough.
I pray everyday for a Dungeon crawler that mixes first person crawling in the underworld with skirmish-like combat with free roaming in the overworld, mimmicking the playstyle of OD&D, of megadungeons surrounded by this "grindable" wilderness.
One day my wish will come true, im sure.
Unfortunately, most RPGs nowadays try to be dating sims with stats, so this wish might take a while.
That could be a good project, to make it yourself. Have you ever thought about it?
I wish, though Im not well versed in video game development. Besides, I have a common average demanding life that doesnt allow me many leisure hours to develop passion projects of my own.
Ive made a tabletop prototype that I solo tested a few times, but turning into a video game Is another story. Hopefully one day ill have the time, but Id a need a good simple engine to work with as well..
Yeah it might require time. Although it could work out if there's a suitable template engine where you could quickly prototype your game, like RPGMaker or something.
>I'm a moronic child and games need to be simple a dumb so that I would enjoy them
You do realize that BG3 is a game made for people like you? Majority of BG3 fans say that writing is garbage and they skip it for the sake of "muh combat", which is 80% of the game. Or are you so mentally challenged that you didn't figure out how to skip dialogues?
80% of the game is walking around boring pointless dialogue from dialogue interrupted by the ocasional shit combat.
But somehow a storytroony like you thinks such a piece of garbage is adequate for someone who enjoys dungeons crawlers.
I get that these sorts of dialogue-heavy games are ways for trans people like you to feel validated, but shit dating sims with stats are boring garbage and definetely not RPGs.
>ocasional shit combat.
So you don't like CRPGs? Then go play something else you moron.
I like good games, Wizardry 7 is a great crpg for once.
Did you think BG3 is like wizardry
Isn't the OP's pic from Wizardry? Because all I see are a bunch of frickin' clowns
Are you 12?
No? What the frick is this conclusion.
What Im saying os that dating sim RPGs are moronic and that the gold standard set by games like Wizardry 7 should come back
Dungeon crawlers will come back when companies realize just how much money there is to be made with them.
In the meanwhile you should probably avoid dating sim rpgs.
>I don't like CRPGs and I want to play Dungeon Crawlers!
>Why don't I like Baldur's Gate 3?
You're a fricking genius dude.
Look, I just commented that CRPGs of a certain sort are deserving of a comeback.
Your troonkind personally burtthurt by my opinion decided to call me a moron. Are you trying to roleplay your Chaotic Evil dark elf girl here as well?
Great advice thanks.
go to your fifa moronic games and never come back
Now you really incorporated your dark girl-elf Chaotic Evil character in your reply. Good job!
You should try out tactical games. XCOM, SWAT, the likes. You'll be a happier man that way.
No dungeons in these games, though
>Millenial-Writers however got this shit all backwards.
>They think to themselves "Wouldn't it be cool if this or that happened at point B?" and so they instead think how they can arrive at point B without even having a point A.
This is how “science” works now, btw. Ideology is a hell of a drug.
You forgot that the writers no longer appreciate player choice, so no matter what you do all paths need to lead to B.
then go and create a novel by yourself you stupid moron, fricking poser
>Even the most appreciated stories in games are mediocre compared to their peers in film/books,
give some examples
Wrong but you guys throw shitfits when it's mentioned.
>Wow look at me I'm so grown up and well-adjusted for reading books, being cultured is so routine and effortless for me
>Video games have shit stories am I right fellas? I'm totally part of the ingroup right? Don't mistake me for one of those GAMERS, uh yeah I play video games but not like them I have higher standards lol I secretly hate everything I play
>N-no I don't only read Ganker charts recommended by pseudointellectuals, I swear, I would totally not fail any test in an introductory humanities class
The middle guy you posted is right, though and not pseudointellectual at all. No matter what you think about writing in videogames, anyone who defends BG3 on its writing is moronic. Not just some kind of average "videogamer has never read books" meme, but actual fricking brain damage from whatever media you have wasted your life consuming that renders you unable to perceive its awfulness.
And the bottom guy made a legitimately thoughtful post about the nature of writing in a videogame
>tl;dr
you're a moron doing a lazy copypasta of a shitty greentext reaction from the actual pseud thread here
they are both pseud threads
>And the bottom guy made a legitimately thoughtful post
case in point, you're a pseud if you think that person namedropping tarkovsky and lynch like an angsty teen was making a "thoughtful post". it frankly reads like someone who has no exposure to humanities academia spaghetting their views online, this website in particular seems to invite a lot of armchair intellectualizing from amateurs, Ganker in particular
frankly as i get older i have the opposite progression that these people claim (both in this thread and the one you linked): gameplay interests me less and story interests me more. you can try the "well go read a book then" meme but it won't work, books (i have read many being a philosophy major, although admittedly mostly non-fiction) and movies (and i have seen many - tarantino, bresson, lynch, miyazaki, carpenter, kurosawa, bergman, tarkovsky, spielberg, chaplin, wachowskis, lean, curtiz, scorsese, scott, ming-liang, malick, polanski, mambety, marker, coppola, kar wai, fleming, lee, welles, lucas, kubrick, miller, godard, mankiewicz, rossellini, hitchwiener - to name the "respected" directors i have seen, before someone tries to pull the you have low standards due to underexposure card) just don't cut it. i think there's only a couple movies i've seen that match the feelings i got from my favorite video game stories. interactivity adds a layer to the experience that is very hard to match with other mediums. but if you take out the story, all you're left with is toys. there's a reason adults don't play with toys; i've found the appeal of gameplay alone has long dwindled, i just get bored in no-story games these days, dopamine rushes aren't as effective as they used to be. but if you use that gameplay to immerse a player into a world and invest them in a story or - in the better cases - a character, then you get something really special. i find this video summarizes my views well: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XIx7Ot5Mq2Q
You are the biggest pseud in this thread lmao.
>you think that person namedropping tarkovsky and lynch like an angsty teen was making a "thoughtful post"
Nobody ITT namedropped Tarkovsky or Lynch. Sounds like you are off your meds and hallucinating.
If you can't intelligently converse about writing as it actually relates to videogames or even the proper context in ths thread, it doesn't really matter what you claim to have read. You may as well have dumped all those books into a woodchipper for all your post quality demonstrates.
>Nobody ITT namedropped Tarkovsky or Lynch.
they mention andrei rublev and mullholland drive for literally no reason here:
>If you can't intelligently converse about writing as it actually relates to videogames or even the proper context in ths thread, it doesn't really matter what you claim to have read.
i recommend you read the rest of my post, where i do that
>You are the biggest pseud in this thread lmao.
sorry formal training scares you. i recommend investigating the literature on this topic, it'll make you feel less insecure. here's some places to start:
https://philpapers.org/rec/KANWGA
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315210377-4/videogame-ontology-constitutive-rules-algorithms-shelby-moser
https://academic.oup.com/jaac/article/75/2/181/5981219
https://www.jstor.org/stable/44510494
https://www.routledge.com/The-Aesthetics-of-Videogames/Robson-Tavinor/p/book/9780367591946
https://www.wiley.com/en-us/The+Art+of+Videogames-p-9781405187886
hopefully it'll also teach you humility so that you don't call your intellectual betters "pseuds" when they call out actual pseuds, presumably ones who you were agreement with with or were one of
>i recommend you read the rest of my post, where i do that
No, you didn't comment on any games at all and certainly not the game that is the topic of the thread: Baldur's Gate 3. You just made rambling generalizations jerking off your own personal feelings that nobody gives a shit about. You don't even know what it means to discuss a game or its writing.
You are just moronic and have no idea what you're talking about. Go back to playing BG3 it's made specifically for braindeads like you.
sorry reading more than one paragraph upset you. it gets easier with time, i promise
Comment on an actual game or suck my dick.
you and the posts we were discussing didn't talk about specific games either, it was a broad strokes discussion
No, not true. The first post you referenced was obviously meant as bg3 apology and the second post (response to that) was explicitly about bg3. The 3rd post you quoted is more generic but you didn't actually respond to anything in it directly you just started shitting out greentext sarcasm like an illiterate moron.
Seriously, just shut the frick up you clearly have of value to add. You barely even seem to comprehend the thread much less any of the books you claim to have read.
>The first post you referenced was obviously meant as bg3 apology
bg3 specifically is not mentioned anywhere in that post. here, i'll go through all the references to video games in it:
>literally every game
>no game in the world
the first is referring to the set containing every video game (which yes would include bg3, but it's not specifically about it) and the 2nd is an empty set
i do not know how you came to the conclusion that it's a "bg3 apology", it doesn't contradict the OP in any way
>second post (response to that) was explicitly about bg3.
sort of. i'll go through it with you again:
>most games
this is a set containing the set containing all games divided by two plus an undefined natural number of games. not necessarily bg3
>games with great writing
not bg3 by your own admission
>However, certain games have extremely bad writing, which is immersion breaking and shatters your suspension of disbelief, and I agree that bg3 is one such game.
this is referring to a set of games that explicitly includes bg3, but it's talking about the set and not really bg3
>You just made rambling generalizations jerking off your own personal feelings that nobody gives a shit about.
that's what those other posts look like to me. "video games with (what i feel is) terrible writing feel worse to me than video games with (what i feel is) mediocre writing)
those posts weren't even remotely interesting additions to the discussion, it was just people blurting out their personal assessment of the state of the medium (which i disagreed with, apparently that's "off topic" even though they're the ones who started that topic) with zero evidence
>illiterate moron.
now that's projection
>You barely even seem to comprehend the thread
ditto
>much less any of the books you claim to have read.
at least i read books lmao!
You are both pseuds and you should have a nice day.
No, only one. You shouldn't use terms you don't understand.
yeah it's you. take your own advice
The worst written RPG in history, shame people are allowed to make threads of it.
Wdym? Olease be more soecific anon
Like I said before - the main hook of the story is crap.
They took an established gimmick - the tadpole - and worked against it and around it.
This is insane.
This is like making Aliens game and getting more facehuggers on your head actually makes you stronger.
No, people here are too moronic to recognize how bad the writing is.
>But we can all agree that some of the writing in it is really goddamn bad
No, I would define bad writing as something so grating it makes me not want to play the game, but overall I feel it was an improvement over BG2. Its definitely not good writing, but its servicable.
Well, at least it's not Skyrim. I'm more annoyed by the general ugliness of all men and women. It's too realistic.
After the meme of Act 3 is le bad failed now a new meme appears, the writing is le bad.
lol so desperate.
Act 3 really feels worse than Act 1 and 2. There are just so many plot lines finishing up at once that the whole act feels rushed. And then they introduce a lot of new shit, like Orin, Gortash, Minsc and Sarevok.
Act 3 has better boss fights and side quests.
And somebody - PLEASE - explain to me why Balduran is a gay squid now.
I honestly want to know what was happening in writers head?
- Did they think more Balduran will make the game more Baldur's Gate?
- Did they think one legendary bloke in your pocket was not enough?
Kissing Clownheart
I "try" every single RPG there is but I refuse to download this, I can tell its bad from the screenshots, but after playing DoS 2 through the start of act 3, with insufferably glacial turn-based combat, I will never pay a Larian game again
I don't think the story is that amazing compared to other RPGs in general, but the way it's written feels exactly like how the plot of a DnD campaign would go so I think it accomplishes its purpose. Random asspulls of some god or creature feel pretty on par for the IP
But it has bikini armor which is banned from Japanese console game since July 2022, the bloody summer by Kishida and Sweet baby after Abe has passed away.
i like how you can wiggle the cursor finger in the loading screen if you click a few times
Every time i see anything about this game it fills me with deep levels of pity and disgust
modern fantasy creators are terrible
CRPGs have fone down the same Path real tabletop games have.
They became storygames, linear, narrated, in which the purpose is to tell a movie-like story and not to exploration and delve into Dungeons. That is why writing has become so deplorablr. Are there even dungeons in BG3? Long, expansive ones, I mean.
>BG3 thread
>fantasyslop apologism
It checks.
>Intro is about mind flayers
>game immediately does a 180 and suddenly is all about "the absolute" and the "elder brain"
>tadpoles and mind flayers take a total backseat and arent relevant until act 3
If you set up a villain in the intro you should stick to that villain, this game was obviously rewritten multiple times by multiple people so its just convoluted mess
Yeah. Like all the writing. All of it is bad.
Usually I just assume every rpg has mediocre writing and stop noticing it, bg3 is possibly the first rpg I can think of where the writing was immersion-breakingly bad, and actively harmed suspension of disbelief. They fricked up bad, that was a very low hurdle to avoid stumbling over.
I mean, it's Larian, the paragon of lulsodumb writing, what else did you expect. They are Bethesda-tier level of bad, but unlike Bethesda who has given up decades ago, they actually think their writing is good and clever.
BG3 is an enormous improvement over DOS2 in the writing department.
>BG3 is an enormous improvement over DOS2 in the writing department.
This is simply not true, it is far, far worse, and dos2 already had mostly mediocre writing to begin with.
>This is simply not true
All of the dialogue responses are formated like they are written by some 00s era *holds up spork and glomps you* XD scene girl and most of the quests seemingly just randomly exist to be completed by accident as you loop around the map stealing everything and murderhoboing. DOS2 is an atrociously bad game and BG3 improves on it in every way that actually matters. I don't think I could recommend DOS2 to anyone. I would prefer the people that enjoy it simply be rounded up in camps and separated from the rest of society.
>most sane bg3 enjoyer
>mahiro poster
>INT: 3
>CHA: 0
Opinion disregarded
Reminder that people crying about bg3 are in a constant state of asshurt and constantly reporting opposition. Any assertion they are debating on fair grounds is simply a lie.
>Reminder that people crying about bg3 are in a constant state of asshurt and constantly reporting opposition. Any assertion they are debating on fair grounds is simply a lie.
This is an inversion of the truth. I've seen dozens of debates on BG3 on this board, and consistently, the defenders of BG3 exhibit extreme levels of intellectual dishonesty and emotional overreaction to any perceived criticism of the game they're invested in, regardless of how nuanced or balanced it is. It's always the same shit:
>[ignores 90% of the presented points, focuses on the perceived weakest ones]
>you only hate the game because trannies and Black folk lol
>look how well it sold, that means it's good
>bg2 was worse
>you only think [strawman argument]
>name 69,420 better RPGs. you can't.
etc, ad nauseum.
I've literally only seen one (1) intellectually honest BG3 fan on this board, and even if I disagreed with some of his conclusions, I respected him for not being a lying sack of shit.
Let's think about your behavior logically. Regardless of whether you believe you are right (you're not), posting this over and over and screeching about the same things in every single bg3 thread has gotten you absolutely nowhere. A reasonable intelligent person would change up strategies. You constantly complained about dos2 being better, and now we have an active dos2 playthrough going that is demonstrating that it is clearly not. Can't argue with that. Next you'll post about how much you love paladins and don't have time to play games due to your imaginary kids.
>Regardless of whether you believe you are right (you're not)
Unlike you, I distinguish between my subjective opinions (which I acknowledge as such) from objective facts.
>A reasonable intelligent person would change up strategies.
This is what a dishonest sophist would do, because you don't view discussion as ultimately oriented towards approaching the truth, you view it as a rhetorical contest in which you "win" by disingenuously flinging whatever you think will stick at the wall, and abandoning what you think won't.
>You constantly complained about dos2 being better
Negative. It's an okay game but not great. I've consistently held that BG3 is worse, and I find its tonal shift from DOS2 to be jarring and indicative of ~~*outside financial influence*~~.
>and now we have an active dos2 playthrough going that is demonstrating that it is clearly not
Your subjective opinion.
>Next you'll post about how much you love paladins and don't have time to play games due to your imaginary kids.
Please take your meds, schizo-kun.
>This is what a dishonest sophist would do
So you'd consider yourself an honest sophist I suppose lol. Looks like you've deleted another post that makes fun of you. Funny how that works out. This is your spineless janny, folks. A mentally ill moron that spams the same stupid shit every single day.
I think its simple.
Agree with him - you are honest
Disagree with him - you are dishonest
>read a post literally stating that he respects people he disagrees with as long as they aren't lying Black folk, and decrying the lying Black folk that infest this board
>HURRRR YOU ONLY THINK PEOPLE ARE HONEST IF THEY AGREE WITH YOU, AND YOU ONLY THINK PEOPLE ARE LYING BECAUSE THEY DISAGREE WITH YOU
This is what the absolutely atrocious level of discourse on this board has done to your brain.
The rest of this shit is one samegayging Black person crying that I'm the janny. Absolutely mindbroken.
>This is your spineless janny, folks. A mentally ill moron that spams the same stupid shit every single day.
Absolutely abhorrent. I bet the whole mental breakdown today was due to the asshurt over the dos2 thread. Starting to make sense now. How do we get rid of this homosexual?
>Looks like you've deleted another post that makes fun of you.
Jesus christ he really did. Holy shit, what is wrong with this place? It was literally just a post pointing out he was repeating himself. Not even remotely against the rules. What the frick.
>Let's think about your behavior logically.
Here's the logic I see
1. Fact: BG3 only appeals to morons.
2. Fact: morons can't debate, they just spam low-effort opinions and shitposts
3. Therefore: Attacking BG3 means he's always going to be arguing with morons.
4. Fact: morons cannot learn or improve
5. Therefore, a zerg of tards can easily out-post him with low-effort spam. He cannot keep up and nothing will ever change anyway.
In conclusion, he should leave the morons to their semen-drenched circle-jerk and not post in BG3 threads anymore. And yes I know the anon you are talking about I recognize his style every time I see it.
Reddit has a lot more enlightened individuals. That might be more your speed. Maybe you can start your new janny career there.
Don't need to go to reddit. Just avoid BG3 threads because they are always full of morons.
I think you need to avoid all threads, bud.
You gotta find a new job dude, you are not welcome here.
Which isn't saying much and only shows how abysmally bad D:OS2 writing was.
I fricking hated the writing in BG3 but c'mon.
It's not ALL bad.
Larian throws a lot of random stuff at the wall and sometimes it works. They can succeed in smaller individual "set pieces".
Auntie Ethel is just a well done classic witch adventure. Nothing original, but it's just fun. A highlight of the game.
BG3 had like 5 writers (right?) and only one of them was decent. Literally a game written by a bunch of moron and that's good enough for BG3's illiterate audience.
>dressing Minsc like that.
I'm guessing all the homosexualry in that game was OK with you.
It's a metaphor.
I'm dressed like that right now.
The rampant eroticism at every turn is really off-putting. It feels like a game made by sex perverts on a leash. They couldn't go overboard, but the writing still drips with thinly veiled fetishist content that it feels dirty. I absolutely do not buy the excuse that every male character wanting to frick you just for saying hello to them was a "bug". Considering how the rest of the game is, it is perfectly consistent.
Modern fantasy is bumming of boners a song of dicks and asses inspired and cant go without a sloppy scat orgy every five minutes between the hysterically detailed torture scenes.
The game has extreme amounts of torture, slavery, animal cruelty, racism, gore, premeditated murder, etc, and you're whining about gay sex lol. Old Ganker would have loved this game.
>animal cruelty
>Old Ganker would have loved this game.
Clearly no idea what you're talking about newbie. Old Ganker hated animal cruelty with a passion, it's never been cool. Call people Black folk as much as you want and harass moronic underage girls on the internet, but leave cats alone.
Anon, there was people cumming on birds and having sex with beached whales. Just frickin em right in the blowhole. You have no idea.
Ganker was and always has been filled with pedophiles and animal frickers. You only know about the former because you don't go into the spaces the latter hides.
The message that the developers have for you is that those things are okay sometimes but you must absolutely never be heckin’ racist xenophobic bigot who discriminates against innocent refugees, or to do a transphobia against a totally “valid” “woman”. Also, communism is good.
This completely jarring and disjointed contradiction is precisely what anons are complaining about when they say the game has tonally inconsistent and immersion-breaking bad writing. Hope this helps.
>you must absolutely never be heckin’ racist xenophobic bigot who discriminates against innocent refugees
Except there are detailed quest choices for doing just that.
Yes, and the devs go out of their way to shame you for doing so, while they don’t for run of the mill ultraviolence. That’s the point, friend.
>they don’t for run of the mill ultraviolence
There is an entire origin where being violent is the bad ending.
>run of the mill ultraviolence
You mean gameplay?
>Old Ganker would have loved this game.
You have to be at least 18 to post here, you know that right?
Go talk to yourself in your shitty TES thread. This is a game for adults.
>play Orc Paladin
>homosexual bong voice
>play Githyanki monk
>homosexual bong voice
>play Druegar spore druid
>homosexual bong voice
>play demon posessed Dragonborn sorcerer
>homosexual bong voice
>only four preset faces per race and the same dozen west coast Antifa haircuts
Wow so immersive and detailed, at least you can choose to have a kosher wiener or put a penis on your body type 1, thats what really matters after all
British accents are infinitely better and more varied than your gay ass yankie doodle dandy yeehaw generic ass mutt accents.
Two things can both be bad at the same time.
Most; Most of the writing is bad. The game has some good ideas but the execution is absolutely inorganic and unfocused.
They are going to be hired to make the next Arcanum game
I can't agree, the writing is phenomenal, one of the best in the genre.
Hm.
Then tell me this.
Why is Balduran a squid now, even though the timeline makes no sense?
What was the point of it from writing perspective?
Did it make game more Baldur's Gate?
is there any reason why they refuse to nerf their blatantly OP homebrews like tavern brawler
>pic
remind me of when I made wyll naked in my coop game so when the connection got bad, my friend made me dance with the gay naked Black person and recorded it or when I told him to kill himself(he went illithid) at the end and the emotional scene got ruined(improved) by a naked Black person in the background.
Good times
It's pretty and I liked the gameplay but the narrative cohesion and relationship progress felt tighter in DAO.
I thought BG3 was shit but if the modding tools are good, then I would be really excited to play a different campaign using its engine, not made by Larian, and ideally not using 5th ed rules (not sure how hardcoded they are into the engine)
I dont think so.
Writing was excellent, easily gets 9/10.
>Shadowhearts tragic face off with her parents
>shoehorn a troony in there
Bravo Swen
i avoid anything that's set in D&D, D&D is obviously the lowest form of generic fantasy schlock. i (reluctantly) made an exception for planescape torment solely because it's famous for its narrative, but all i had to do with bg2 was boot it up and see the ungodly kitcschy character portraits during creation and that was that
DnD is a ruleset, not a setting. What are you talking about?
i obviously meant D&D campaign settings like forgotten realms, planescape, dark sun, etc. which from what i can tell are all united in some sort of multiverse. i wouldn't know
ths is the extent of the grognard's imagination i guess
Play real games for once storyshitter.
why would i? i've grown up. out of video games, only interactive storytelling interests me now. sorry not everyone wants to play with toys into their late 20s
You grow up and decide to play the most time wasting games possible? Some people really dont Value their time
>i've grown up. out of video games
So you only play the most commercial "products" now?
Should they be anime girls?
If so, boy, have I got the perfect game for him.
D&D is mechanics. Nothing to do with "generic fantasy schlock".
You meant Forgotten Realms, which is the setting.
Planescape is set in... Planescape. Which is, kind of, semi-separate.
...
Forgotten Realms of 2ed D&D era was generic fantasy schlock. And I quite like that. It was a McDonalds slop inspired by classic fantasy literature and mythology.
What we have in BG3 with nuD&D is something else.
It feels like inspired by comic con larp.
Or twitch D&D session.
With a sprinkle of marvel capeshit,
>Or twitch D&D session.
It's this. The pacemakers of DnD culture are now twitch actors, who are probably 900% more likely to be narcicisstic than the average consumer. On top of that they also have to play two roles at once. Their characters and their stage persona. All while competing for attention with the other entertainers in the stream.
It all means that these streamers trend towards unique, loud, flamboyant characters and/or niche races. Heterochromia, vitiligio tieflings, birdmen warforged, etc.
Larian put some obnoxious stuff into BG3, especially in act 3, but a lot of it is simply modern DnD. I'd love to know how much of it was forced upon Larian by the suits at WotC.
Critical Role has literally broken the brains of everyone that hates it because it's the ultimate thing to point to as "this is where everything in D&D went wrong" even if they don't act that different from the homosexuals who went out larping on the weekends.
>Larian put some obnoxious stuff into BG3, especially in act 3, but a lot of it is simply modern DnD. I'd love to know how much of it was forced upon Larian by the suits at WotC.
I agree. I played the early access right when it came out and I really liked the game and had a lot of fun with it. When the release version came out I was like “what the frick, this sucks, it’s like a completely different game”. I’m almost certain the gnomes at WotC/Hasbro made them change shit to get ESG dollars.
And no Dungeons.
Because despite being Dungeon and dragons current tabletop sessions barely do any dungeons other that three room narrative + puzzle challenge sections that end in Boss fights.
>everyone that disagrees with me is le janny
Please, seek help. I'm not even kidding or memeing.
>I'm literally deleting posts in the thread pointing out that I'm a moron, but I'm not a janny trust me bros
>nevermind that the janny never deletes anything normally and just let's shit like rean posting go on for months on end, it's seriously not me. just trust me guys, the janny just really likes me.
sus
>sus
Yup. It’s called a lying Black person deflecting by being a lying Black person. Got called out on his lies and he immediately pivots to
>y-y-you just deleted a post disagreeing with you!
I didn’t see any post. Got a screenshot or an archive link? Doubt it.
>y-y-you’re the janny! I bet you’re bumping all these threads of yours, too!
Simple, when you look like a fool, start screeching and pointing fingers to distract from your foolishness. It’s just one lying Black person samegayging, too. This is what happens when you don’t actually have an argument to present, just an absolute lack of shame.
He just gave you an example and you deleted it you disingenuous israelite Black person.
https://arch.b4k.co/vrpg/thread/3416973/#q3416973
Man look at this shit, unreal. /vrpg/s worst poster is its janny.
I bet you deleted it yourself just to cry about it. Help, help, I’m being oppressed!
Man all those threads whining about bg3 were just one mentally ill janny? What in the hell? They really need to purge their staff here, it's overdue.
Doesn't work that way, you can see a ban record on the site Black person
You realize that everyone here can instantly tell when you reply to yourself, right?
Who is everyone? That's my first post in the thread. I am looking at the link and I can see what you're doing. have a nice day. Ganker was made to get away from deranged mods. You are ruining this board.
>if I switch to my phone and take a screenshot the goyim will be fooled
Am I a samegay too?
No one is samegayging. You got caught redhanded. I learned a lot of very uncomfortable things about this place today. This board has some enormous problems.
>This board has some enormous problems.
Yeah, your posts
It's jarringly bad. Not even the ESG score shit they shoehorn in, its just the general understanding of forgotten realms, an already kind of corny and gay setting, being made to feel like some sort of interactive marvel movie with heckin funny one liners. Also, the shittiest companions of any party based rpg I can think of. Even dragon age inquisition had iron bro. There's not one companion I like in this shit.
should I play this shit if I hate party based rpg's like baldurs gate 2 or shitlars of eternity
answer me asswipes
It plays nothing like either of them. The story is also way more "in your face" so you might like it, who knows.
It doesn't play very much like an isometric RPG. It's exploration and navigation is very similar to Divinity 2. The battles are turn based and not rtwp. I found it played overall very well. It's definitely worth one playthrough to experience the new standards BG3 set with characters. Astarions voice actor has changed the industry with his performance.
Should I try BG3 if I didn't like Divinity OS 1 and 2 because they were hard, combat was moronic (pools of lava and shit every time, while I prefer hit exchange), also these games were flawed: example when you controlled a character without a pet friendo perk you couldn't jast walk away and talk selecting a char with the perk.
Bear's Gay 3 isn't hard whatsoever if you know how D&D works, 5e is super simple and Larian's homebrew version is complete baby mode to the point it gets boring.
I'd say give it a go, if you like it past Act 2 then keep playing, otherwise that's it.
>Should I try BG3 if I didn't like Divinity OS 1 and 2
I hate DOS, so much I almost didn't play bg3. But I really like bg3.
>Astarions voice actor
He won an award. I would've given it to the guy who voiced Clive in FF XVI, but Astarion was good too.
>experience the new standards BG3 set with characters
Oh please.
What other game has better NPCs?
BG2
PS:T
FF10
FF7
BG1 (little to no dialogue or quests)
IWD1 and 2 (literally mute generics with no personality)
>square tard thinking he's entitled to an opinion on anything
Stop trolling, dumbfrick.
He's kind of right though...
He said a game with mute NPCs has better NPCs than BG3. Clearly he's not serious.
20 years ago didn't have the technology to make NPCs so lifelike.
>100% serious.
That's how shit BG3's party members are: games with mute generics that you create yourself are superior.
>20 years ago didn't have the technology to make NPCs so lifelike.
David Warner (RIP) absolutely nailed Irenicus's voice acting, which is what that anon was referring to. By "lifelike" you mean graphical fidelity and motion-captured animations, in which sense BG3 is clearly excellent and superior, but in terms of voice acting it's merely mediocre (and we've had the technology for decades, it was primarily the shift in storage capacity from 1.44 MB floppies to 650 MB CD-ROMs that did it), and the key is the writing of the characters, which is absolutely abysmal, much like the game overall on that front.
I've been more immersed and engrossed in text MUDs from the 90s with zero graphics or sound at all. It's difficult to overstate how immersion-breakingly terrible BG3's characters and writing is. I can understand if someone says "I liked the game and had fun", even if I disagree, but I absolutely boggle at someone saying it has great characters and writing, unless they're a teenager and it's their first game and they have nothing else to compare it to.
The whole trend of "wow graphics such lifelike very immerse" is an absolute pox on the industry. This is what you're telling developers: just make soulless goyslop and chase graphics and muh movie game because that's what people want.
I think the overall quality of writing in BG3 was mixed, but rather bad. Main plot/tadpole/emperor/great plan is an awful AWFUL mess.
Companions are not as bad but "I used to be super epic but my powers were taken away" THREE TIMES is just juvenile. I do find *some* of them annoying.
AND
I also happen to like mostly-blank full party creation like IWD or Solasta. Making up my own story about them... It's like that... how do you call it... roleplaying...!
I really got attached to my IWD2 and Solasta dudes.
...
So... I'm not entirely sure that I would prefer IWD-style solution in BG3... but I can absolutely understand people who would prefer it.
>Stop trolling, dumbfrick.
100% serious.
>Astarions voice actor has changed the industry with his performance
>against the talent that surpassed him two decades ago
>being this much of a tourist
Baldur's Gate as a whole series had bad writing in general really but Act 1 had a brilliant plot hook which faltered around Act 2. However, i do love that Durge pretty much saved the story completely if you wanted a power trip as a bhaalspawn or as a redemption arc which makes the default Tav felt secondary and cobbled together. The asspull where Balduran had been manipulating you is a bummer though
I have yet to meet a single person that has good taste in rpgs but dislikes bg3.
>I have yet to meet a single person that has good taste in rpgs
ditto
I'm just curious as to why every time I get under a bg3 haters skin they expose themselves as a shitslop gobbling moron.
>bg3 enjoyer accuses others of being shitslop gobbling morons
Like pottery
What's a bigger piece of shitslop? BG3? Or shit like morrowind, gothic, vtmb, arcanum, etc.? Guess what, it's not the former and you're completely delusional if you think otherwise. You got people praising fricking shit like witcher 3, mass effect, NWN, wotr and dragon age here and b***hing about bg3, absolutely insane. Is bg3 the best game ever? Of course not, but it's better than anything YOU like and when people like me see what YOU, the normalBlack person like, it's perfectly obvious why well adjusted normalBlack folk that don't scream about israelites and trannies every 5 seconds fell in love with it, because it's objectively far better than what they've been exposed to. One early steam review that really stuck out to me was "after decades of trash, finally a decent meal".
>he's mad on the internet about video games
Stay out of my way, loser.
In a decade people will be replaying BG and BG2 while BG3 will be deader than Renge's parents. Mark my words.
It's still breaking 100k players almost a year later. It's concurrent player count after a year is higher than dos2's all time peak. Think about the long term implications of this.
>the long term implications of this
More moronic kids flooding RPG discussion? Larian expanding? More mocap cutscenes in Obsidian's next game?
>More moronic kids flooding RPG discussion
Anyone who calls authority to age either is not old enough to know it doesn't matter or extremely dumb.
"more moronic kids flooding RPG discussion" is something that you cry about literally every single day on this very board
No I complain about moronic adults that don't play games any more corrupting the youth.
>No I complain about moronic adults that don't play games any more corrupting the youth.
I want you to look deep inside of your black, withered heart and reflect honestly about how you would respond to a zoomer coming onto this board and posting earnestly about a popular RPG that you think is a shit game.
A.
>Cool, I can see what you enjoy about that game, I like [X, Y, Z] about it, too. But you know, I think it also has [I, J, K] flaws as well. It's a good introduction to the genre, but can I suggest you play [deeper RPG cut] so you can learn more about the history of the genre and get introduced to some new games that you haven't played before?
or
B.
>Look at this utter slop. You're a moron that will never play anything but slop. You just roll around in the slop, like a pig in the mire. You've exposed yourself to be an utter tasteless moron. You probably don't even play games, you just post about them. Typical [developer name][disparaging insult]. You're what's ruining this board. Get the frick out and never come back. Why would I want you here? You're still going to be playing [shitty game] 20 years from now because you don't even like RPGs.
don't you complain about everything anyone else does with no real consistency of perspective? old man yells at clouds.jpg style?
If you played games instead of the same 5 things over and over you'd know I play and discuss a lot of games here. If you get the impression I merely complain you're probably sticking to one place and most likely the issue.
>automatic gainsaying
case in point.
Age brings wisdom to the intelligent through experience. It's absolutely a factor and to suggest it isn't is delusional. Regardless of my jokes, I really just want to know what you think are the long term implications of BG3's success.
>Age brings wisdom to the intelligent through experience
No, experience in a field brings wisdom in that field. An old person who doesn't play video games any more is certainly not wiser in that matter than a young person that does. This goes all the way back to Socratic Ignorance and the tendency of an experienced carpenter or fisherman thinking their wisdom is applicable to other areas of life, such as politics.
Your example is reductive and specific to a theory you created about anonymous people to justify your repetitive badgering. Some experience is transferable, such as how people and fads interact in the long term or how ideals are used to cyclically manipulate the ignorant.
>Your example is reductive
Counterpoint: No it's not.
>Some experience is transferable
Bitching online for decades doesn't make you informed on video games or culture.
Playing video games for decades and seeing the ebb and flow and sometimes virtual extinction of genre does give you some perspective on how you can't extrapolate trends from a particular success.
See the trick is that people are more than what you see online. The assumption that they aren't is grasped by little men, with fragile psyches.
>trust me bro, I'm actually batman irl and I just conveniently stopped playing video games this year, I've played thousands before this
>a theory you created about anonymous people to justify your repetitive badgering
>See the trick is that people are more than what you see online. The assumption that they aren't is grasped by little men, with fragile psyches.
This is why he's so exhausting to talk to. He has created an elaborate mental model of what other people think and just projects that onto them and then responds to his own projections. It's like trying to have a discussion with a Markov chain chatbot. He's not here to discuss RPGs, he's here to peawiener and knock down strawmen, and on the multiple occasions I've seen him be flat out objectively wrong about a cut-and-dry factual matter, he has an absolutely autistic meltdown, because he can't be wrong, he's the main character.
I think it's quite telling that he'll respond to every other post in this thread except this one:
>I think it's quite telling that he'll respond to every other post in this thread except this one
I'd just play the game and shit on it like I always do. What kind of stupid question is that?
He couldn't honestly respond because it completely nailed his shtick.
Cool samegayging
What?
>game came out like six months ago
>"almost a year later"
Why are they like this?
>FOMO morons and playing the shilled game
Who would have thought?
>the shilled game
Where is the live service DLC drip like what Assdivers 2 and Dragons Sugma has? What is retaining players? Hmm what a mystery. Surely it will be dead and forgotten in 10 years.
>well adjusted normalBlack folk
getting too obvious here, man. pull it back.
do you actually use the word "haters" regularly or is this a shitpost?
Yeah I can't believe people don't like a 5E D&D game with characters made for the Critical Role audience.
And no Dungeons.
>And no Dungeons.
I disliked BG3, but the gauntlet of Shar was a pretty good dungeon, so was the goblin fortress.
Act 3 is literally butchered to death and larian stopped working on a dlc.
I didn't notice any bad writing, in fact its one of the best written rpgs i have played, way better than bioware and old infinity engine games.
the only games that were better written are planescape, witcher, disco elysium and betryal at krondor.
so its the 5th best written rpg of all time
>witcher
lol
>I didn't notice any bad writing
Try turning your monitor on next time
>t. played it
seethe
Please, explain what Balduran being a gay squid adds to the experience.
Honest request.
he is not gay
right, he's pansexual.
Where does the clown thing come from? I see it posted a lot but I don't remember the ability to look like clowns at the carnival.
Dribbles the Clown questline. Though iirc you could randomly get turned into clowns via Wild Magic (don't ever do this, Wild Magic loses its lolsorandum fun after an hour and makes fights insufferable the rest of the playthrough as it consistently fricks you over)
>edgy three trying to end all existence just to weaken the other Gods
>none of the Gods care
>Shar kinda does but only because she wants to out-edge the absolute
>she is also kidnapping kids to "prove something" to her sister
>Selune does nothing to help her followers or her own daughter who is used to power up Myrkuls Chosen, its up to some rando to safe "Shadowheart" and Aylin
>Aylin is also an insane bulldyke who almost fricks everything up at Moonrise and goes out of her way to murder some megalomaniacal wizard even if aforementioned rando cools the whole situation down
>Mystra fricks mortal men and has a nuke running around Faerun
>her master plan to nuke the brain ends in the destruction of the world
>Devils are enslaving peoples souls (Karlach and Gortash) without their agreement
>Jergal directly intervening
Game should have just ended with a second time of troubles, what a fricking mess
>edgy three trying to end all existence
Is that what they were doing? I thought they were basically just trying to reach their old seats of power again.
>Mystra fricks mortal men
Of all things to put against it, this is nothing new for her. Do I need to list how many people she's slept with?
>Do I need to list how many people she's slept with?
Helm fricked her good.
Frick it, I'll post it anyway
Half of the wizarding world fricked Mystra. She's the biggest bawd in the entire pantheon, despite her portfolio having nothing to do with sex, love, or passion. Here are the KNOWN Chosen (aka fricktoys).
Alustriel Silverhand
Alvaerele Tasundrym
Amarune Whitewave
Araundras Othaun (Chosen of Mystryl)
Azuth
Dove Falconhand
Duethaea Lauraunfeir
Elminster Aumar
Embrae Aloevan of Ardeep
Gale Dekarios
Jalathleena
Kaylaar Allun
Khelben "Blackstaff" Arunsun
Laeral Silverhand
Larloch the Shadow King
Qilué Veladorn
Sammaster
Syluné Silverhand
Symrustar Auglamyr
Storm Silverhand
Taerele
Alassra Shentrantra Silverhand, "The Simbul"
How does one frick a goddess though?
When she can take a human female's form, it's not complicated
Game half-assed both Minthara (best waifu) and Gortash (best bro), so game is shit. Simple as.
It doesn't seem like original BG trilogy thread but I'll ask anyway.
How painful is it to dual Imoen at level 7 in BG1?
I have somehow ended up with a canonical party (Jaheira, Khalid, Minsc, Dynaheir, Imoen). MC is fighter/mage multi. I'm overall alright with this setup since all the roles are filled well. The party in general has no problems slicing through anything at this point.
But since I remember Imoen being dualed in BG2 I'm tempted to do that now for roleplay reasons and to maybe motivate myself to shake up the party somewhat, since dualing will require a thief, so one of the two pairs has to go. Otherwise I kinda feel I will not feel like changing anybody in the party until the end of the game, it works too well. Dualing her probably won't gain me anything in gameplay terms but I do think it could be fun.
I don't do BGT so it won't reflect on BG2 in any way. I'm playing BG1 for the second time but the first time was when I was still in school and I never finished it, so it's almost like the first playthrough.
I'm currently in Chapter 3 with most of the map explored besides the north-eastern corner and closed off locations.
The point is, will dualing Imoen be fun or is it just gonna be a pain and I shouldn't bother?
Dualing in general in BG1/2 is bad, multis are ultimately better at everything and dualing just gives you a shit character for a few levels for a slightly better one later. It doesn't really make sense as a mechanic in BG, its not something you'd do in the middle of a campaign, and fits better for a pregenerated character or something that occurs in between campaigns. At best it just leads to stupid shit like a fighter that can use wands because they took one level of mage and at worst its leads to stupid metagame shit like zerker/mage.
So, is dualing going to be boring, in case of level 7 Imoen?
Again, I'm just thinking of doing it for roleplay and fun reasons, since if Imoen is dual in BG2, she's probably into magic.
But I don't know if it's just going to be a slog instead. I do want to have fun while playing.
If you dual at 7 you will completely cripple the character and they'll be useless. Usually people dual charname at the start of bg2 and game the scroll exp system and that's about it. Don't do it unless you have a back up thief.