#(i will die on the hill playing origin characters is unnecessary filler and they should've just stuck with one pc)

[maleficore]

FINALLY SOMEONE FUCKING SAID IT. AND YOU WORDED MY THOUGHTS SO PERFECTLY TOO.

On a first run you really feel like a kid in a theme park going WOOOOW 👁️👁️ but then after the second run, third, it stops having that effect because you look deeper and there's just.. nothing. I give Astarion girlies a lot of grief for analysing every fucking twitch of his eyelid and treating headcanons as dogma, but there's really not enough canon material to have fun with. In a lot of places shit is so shallow if you don't read into everything like a maniac.

I too have a 1000+ hours in the game and on each subsequent playthrough after you've discovered more and more of the AHA! stuff that makes replayability in any way fun, things begin to fall flat. Especially with how unwilling the game is to make your choices actually matter. Approval doesn't mean shit with how easy it is to gain it without even trying and how hard it is to lose unless you actively do. Unless things are directly related to their quest Companions won't challenge you in any way or leave, even if you commit heinous fucking acts (it's especially jarring with Wyll. Oh yeah let's just let the gnome slaves die, who cares. Definitely not the Blade of Frontiers!)

At this point I only play as a challenge because combat can get so random, it's the only part of the game that doesn't stop being fun. You just gotta crank up the difficulty once you get better at it. Solo tactician, honour mode, solo honour mode etc. The in-game story matters fuck all to me now. It's way better in my head so why even bother, I've already seen everything there is to see.

I'm dabbling in playing through the original Baldur's Gate games on the side and now THAT is writing. I'm not gonna lie, there are moments where BG3 feels like a sims game next to it. Which is kind of obvious when you look at how the fandom playerbase interacts with the game at large. It's a 60$ oc maker and dating sim with combat mechanics at this point and the devs are fully embracing it more and more with each patch. I keep close to the lore speculation/headcanon crowd, but that side of the fandom is SO big you literally cannot escape it. It's not that it's a wrong way to play, you've paid for the game you can do what you like with it, but that is NOT what devs of a crpg should be aiming for their game to be.

And the thing in general is... You can give the player a lot of freedom and still have stakes, consequences, different endings, but to achieve that you have to not be afraid of upsetting your players. Larian seems allergic to that. They rewrote a LOT of the story last minute because of player feedback in EA (again... Wyll my darling, I'm so sorry for what was done to you) and continue to do so even now AFTER RELEASE. I don't know why people enjoy playing an 18+ game and being treated by it like they're fucking 5 years old and can't handle being upset or something not catering to them, but it seems that is where we're at now as a society and every form of storytelling suffers as a result.

Baldur's Gate 3's biggest writing flaw is the fact that they were so obsessed with accounting for every single player choice that they spread themselves out too thin, and ended up telling a half-baked story because of it.

Rather than giving characters long, thoughtful, UNIQUE scenes that enhanced specific companions' arcs and the overall story, or hell, actually gave you DIFFERENT DIALOGUE later on, they focused on making a story so general and loose that it could account for every possible way a player might interact with it...

And as a result?

It's so diluted with flavors that you cannot tell what the fuck you're tasting anymore.

It's mellow and weak, because it has to be mellow and weak in order for everyone to love the taste...but the result is.

You love nothing. It's surface-level and shallow, and you're forced to do the fanfic and analysis work for it, to account for its milquetoast, non-committal narrative shrugging. That's why the fandom is so big and fun and diverse.

It's a nothing cake, almost like a Disney project designed by marketing executives, trying to appeal to every demographic imaginable.

And some of you like that sort of thing.

But I look at it and say...it's a cake with layers of potential, but none of the decoration, none of the finesse, lacking daring decisions or inventive baker flourishing.

There I said it. Take me to church and beat me with a bible.