Baldur's Gate 3 So Far
Feb. 3rd, 2024 11:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
got_quietDuring the Snowflake Challenge I was thinking of linking to my old Anidb account, which is largely unused, but then I went and looked it up, and read the reviews that high school me had left on a few things, many, many years ago, and decided no, let's not show this to people.
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Anyway, Snowflake Madness is over, so it's time to start making posts about Baldur's Gate 3. The below is going to be spoilerific, so here is the more spoiler free reaction first. The game is very good but almost too long, The choices and relationships are also excellent, especially for a mainstream RPG, but I am maybe a little spoiled by Visual Novels and still think that they do a better job with some of the elements of narrative.
I've been playing without too much save scumming. A couple times a sequence has felt a little unfair, or the consequences of certain choices did not seem properly clarified, but for the most part, I have rolled with the very many punches that have come my Tav's way, and it's worked out.
And his guardian. I didn't realize I was making his hair quite that red. But they're a good looking pair anyway.
My Tav's a human fighter, career grave robber and small time enforcer operating on the outskirts of Balder's Gate. He's not an evil guy, per se, but I am playing him as someone with an extremely small "us" circle as opposed to the "them" that he doesn't mind fucking over. Once he likes someone he's willing to literally commit murder for them, but he won't go out of his way to be mean, but he's also not going to try super hard to help those in need either.
My faves have been Astarion, Gale, and Lae'zel, in no particular order. Astarion was the early bird, so to speak, so he got Tav's worm. This made Gale very sad and me sad by proxy so I'm fighting the urge to roll a Tav to romance Gale now.
The spoilery part:
So far I'm I think mid way through the second act? There was no clear indication that I'm in a new act and my waypoints for the first act are available so maybe I'm still in the first, actually. Jesus this game is long.
The crash site went relatively well. Tav was more than happy to beat his bloody way through a horde of goblins, so that's what he did. Whenever indulgence in violence is morally excused he's there with bells on. Of course the grove folk didn't know that was his motive and he was happy to let them assume he was acting for their benefit.
He has regularly gotten into some deep shit due to a compulsion to listen to the voice in his head (not the tadpole) to just go ahead and lick the thing, or take the thing, or put the thing on. Very dangerous sealed bottle? Break the seal and pop it open, obviously! Creepy mask in a very dangerous magic place? Just put it on. Raise a corpse for some ungrateful woman? Fuck it why not? Spooky necromancy book? Wonder what it says! It goes without saying that's he's stuffing tadpoles up his nose as fast as he can find them. (When he's not sharing one with his bae Astarion that is. Gale also gets a few, as a treat.)
Luckily for him, he also has an extremely high constitution. His only major talent is taking a bashing. My combat tactics, when it goes right, is having Tav goad the shit out of everyone and then my heavy hitter Astarion comes up and surprise attacks them for half their HP. Now that I've got some levels on me this plan is going very well most of the time, but I know I am underutilizing a lot of the utility spells in the rest of my party.
Attempts at persuasion have gone very badly for him, generally, though he did miraculously manage to convince Lae'zel to get out of that stupid machine with a Nat 20 vs a 30 difficulty score. That and drinking the tavern keeper into an explosion has been his two greatest accomplishments so far. He fails almost every Charisma check that comes his way.
He's also led by the dick. After the glade had been saved as a somewhat unintended consequence of Tav going loot crazy and murdering a church full of Absolute worshipers, Astarion was like, let's fuck, and Tav immediately was like, yes, let's. If he had known that literally everyone in camp was going to preposition him that night maybe he would have kept his options open, but he has his particular sense of honor and taking back a booty call is a step over the line. And although he was very much willing to bang Gale or Halsin at any moment he was absolutely not going to stop banging Astarion to do it.
And then that monster hunter showed up and was like, I'm looking for a vampire, which was the moment in which Tav realized it was time to commit and the he was, in fact, willing to murder a likely totally decent person for his man. I only yesterday got to the point where Astarion tells you that his intention was to play you but he caught feelings. I alllllmost decided to hard roleplay it and make Tav upset enough to tell him to fuck off, but instead he decided that he didn't even care, he just wanted Astarion by his side. I forsee him making more and more dubious choices as he lets Astarion do whatever Astarion wants.
A the moment Tav is creeping around Moonrise tower. The funny thing is, he's only there because he can't find that fucking Sussur tree anywhere and is now combing the shadowlands inch by inch to find it. He's avoided going in to see Thorm completely because he has nothing to say to the man, and kind of accidentally saved the Gnomes and Tieflings again by looking at the situation and figuring, well, he's in the neighborhood so why not.
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My feelings about the companions:
Astarion: I can make him worse. Tav and Astarion are on similar wavelengths and I'm enjoying having a relationship with someone who's leaning a bit towards the evil side of the spectrum. I've seen a lot of posts and comments about Astarion's trauma, but the thing that I enjoy most about him is how he approves every time I'm a little nasty. I'm very much not interested in any sort of redemption plot line so I'm curious about how the romance is actually going to go. I want us to be assholes in love.
Gale: When I started my first run I assumed I'd be romancing Astarion because most of what I was seeing before I got the game was Astarion, but Gale sucker punched me with his very first introduction scene. I love a freaky nerd. And Gale is freaky. Whether it's his deadpan delivery when making note of truly ridiculous situations, or him sidling up to me and expressing his arousal after watching me slaughter an entire holdout's worth of Harpers, I am down bad for this wizard and almost save scummed to turn Astarion down when I got The Talk from Gale about having to choose between them. My Tav may have picked Astarion in the end, but he's ready to fight Mystra to keep Gale safe now.
Wyll: This poor guy. He shows up a little later in the game, does some hero shit, and then remains uninteresting for pretty much the entire first map. My interest was only piqued at the party, when I caught him brooding. Though I also thought it was odd that he was so mopy about having horns while at a party where almost everyone has horns. This may partially be my setting blindness, but when most of the game you're neck deep in the weirdest parts of DnD lore it's harder to hear Wyll say people will think him a monster and take him seriously. I've only had him in my party for maybe 15 minutes out of the entire play through, so my next run I'll have to spend more time with him.
Halsin: I'm going to ask Astarion's permission, but if he says yes I'm climbing that tree. He's just chilling in camp right now though, and may or may not be pleased with how this little Shadowlands adventure turns out because I am not solving this shit particularly fast...
Lae'zel: The protagonist of the story. If ladies were my thing I'd be falling over myself to romance Lae'zel. As it is she's third in line after Gale. I love characters that tell the PC to fuck of, this is their adventure, do what you're told. And I like zealots, which Lae'zel absolutely is. AND I like physical violence so really she's the whole package and if this first run doesn't exhaust me entirely there's a Gith Tav in my future to worship the ground she walks on.
Shadowheart: Unfortunately Shadowheart feels like the polar opposite of Lae'zel and so I'm not the fondest of her. She's fine, but I think the speed at which she comes to adore you was too much for me and led me to being more interested in shaking her off than anything. It also feels like she's immediately ready to share everything about herself. I hope her plotline leads to more interesting things, because speedrunning the approval over the course of a mere 3 in game days it felt like was way too fast.
Karlach: We are bros, but she's sort of like Wyll in that she's a good person and I am a villain fucker. I am curious about how her story is going to go though. As a character she's well written as someone with a lot of spiritual strength, which I like.
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Some choices made:
- Let Granny Ethel go for those sweet sweet scalp stats. Omnomnom. "Ressed" the dead husband and then let the wife walk away with him. Not my problem anymore.
- Left the egg in the Githyanki creche because it seemed too much like an asshole move to steal it. Then accidentally blew up the creche. Welp.
- Made safe passage for the Tieflings, but it seems like almost all of them died on the road. This is also not my fault. Surely there's a road /around/ the Shadowlands?! I'm only in here because I want to fuck Halsin and I think there's loot.
- Accidentally had my entire party hanging out on the roof when the fight at Last Light Inn started, meaning there was no way in hell that Priestess was getting saved. Ok, that was a bit my fault.
>I don't think I'm anywhere near the end of the game so please no spoilers for acts 2 and 3 in the comments! But I am curious to hear about other people's experience through the first act.
no subject
Date: 2024-02-05 07:41 pm (UTC)my tav is a hotblooded but ultimately neutral good/kind person who doesn't mind fucking around once in a while SO while her and astarion didn't get along at first, once she started doing funnily unhinged things it garnered his approval (plus it's fun going against him sometimes because he says the poutiest comments about it LOL)....
interesting you let ethel go, and hilarious with the halsin bits. he's too hot for life, i wish you could do something with him in act 1 BECAUSE HE'S HOT........... if astarion didn't exist, halsin would likely be my #1
and then of course, you have plenty of time and playthroughs to romance the other party members nyehehehe. are you interested at all in romancing anyone as an origin?
can't wait to hear what you think of the rest of the game when you get to that point~
no subject
Date: 2024-02-06 01:45 am (UTC)Astarion's pissy little comments when he's unhappy are amazing and I'm going to have to needle him a lot more in subsequent runs just to get some more of them.
My Tav has made it extremely clear to Halsin that he is ready and willing lol. It's a shame you can't have him as a companion for so long.
I played Divinity Original Sin II with an origin character and I enjoyed that a lot. I really like being able to RP with a set personality. So I probably will give an origin run a chance at some point. IDK, maybe I'll run Astarion to romance Gale...
Your icon is beautiful and very relevant btw!