#dont read npc dialogue?

[jasper-crow]

Week 1 impressions of TotK

(No spoilers)

It feels...... Overtunned.

Like combat is punishing, not quite hard I don't think, but very very very punishing. I have about 10 hearts now and 20 armor score total and I'm still getting one shot by quite a few things if I go in swinging.

But the window for things like flurry rush and deflection has been pretty substantially increased. And the game keeps throwing stuff to make fire, ice, lightning, smoke, confusion, all kinds of crazy stuff at me. It very very clearly wants me to be using all the tools in the kit to make combat easier.

I can tell that once I fall into the groove the game wants me to be in I'll have a wonderful time, but anytime I stray outside of that groove and try to brute force my way through a problem the game decides to wear my skin as a new suit.

Which is..... Fine? I guess? I think it's going to turn a lot of people off. And I think it's much much much worse for new players to start on that BotW. The game clearly wants me to be doing stuff in a particular way, and it's very clearly designed to meat grinder you out of your BotW habits. But it feels very very unforgiving about that.

I guess to summarize my feelings so far I'd say it feels like that game world or book or story or other creative project that you have spent so much time and effort and blood and tears on, that it's now almost difficult for others to understand. It's the project you needed to stop working on about 6 months or a year before you did. It's a good game that has been so tightly wound that it's going to have some people bounce off it.

[mantisgodsdomain]

We ought to write more Pokemon fic some time. We want to recreate the Pokemon Manners/Human Manners cheat sheet that we made a few years ago we think that this site would like the Sliding Scale Of Politeness When Greeting A New Pokemon You've Never Met Before.

[astyrra]

persona 3 fans:

if i read the manga/watch the movies now and then play reload when it comes out, is that a decent way to experience persona 3?

[merethicera]

the dude whose content i tend to recommend as a better alternative to pat's unhinged rambling put out a new video in his 3 part skyrim series and he has bad stormcloak takes too

(i dont feel like being eloquent so im just gonna ramble in the tags)

[dawnleaf37]

also theres this npc in world // zero in the first area that says "im gonna grow up to be a summoner just like my dad" and in the new 10th area you can actually find him with a summon next to him and he says like "i became a summoner, just like my dad! he was the very best..." and i kid you not i nearly cried

[helpmelilithcaughtme]

Imma be honest, ZaelxCalista doesn't come ANYWHERE CLOSE to ZaelxMina, they're so damn cute. I'll gladly take Calista in place of Zael

[welovetesvkaidan]

OPINIONS ON KAIDAN EE/IF???

My honest reaction:

in all seriousness, if you wanna hear me yap about it, more under the cut

warning like, genuinely a ginormous yap, like a HUMUNGOUS, sleep-deprived yap,,, im cursed to be obsessed with skyrim + modded followers instead of touching grass

I think a lot of this is probably gonna be the same thing other people have said, so im sorry

if you feel i'm gonna be bringing up redundant points and get mad at me😓dont read

I haven't experienced and thus won't talk about the versions of EE and IF that are now separate mods from each other. I don't know anything about that.

if they're better now yayyy but this is about pre-separation

I should preface this with the fact that I've played through Skyrim 3 times with different stages of Kaidan EE/IF:

The initial Dawnguard + fixes/miscs mod

Kaidan EE/IF versions before extensive faction/NPC dialogue for Kaidan

EE/IF w/ NPC Dialogue (AKA Fratpack)

I was also part of the two different discords that were purged and created during these intervals. i don't even know if there is a discord currently?

anyway, that is to say that I have experienced the mod and it's behind-the-scenes progress, extensively so I have a pretty good idea of what I liked and didn't like

That being said, I will introduce probably my biggest problems with it: Tonal whiplash

Okay, well the most common complaint is ofc that a lot of the writing is out of character - and I agree. But it's not just ooc on paper, it's his voice too. I swear, it is very jarring hearing hushed, mild og Kaidan 2 voicelines, and then being deafened by EE Kaidan SCREAMING in my ear ALL.THE.TIME. (like... why are you yelling at me rn jeez)

Seriously. I'm not sure why they didn't just re-record everything from the original mod instead of adding more and more contradicting lines on top of the originals. It definitely could have been a standalone mod, and sometimes it almost feels like it is - because he is just so different.

My most infamous moment in my last playthrough with him happened after we defeated the dragon at Kynesgrove. His og Kaidan 2 dialogue played first, in it he shows interest and is cordial about Delphine ("I wouldn't mind prodding her mind" or whatver dialogue), THEN immediately after his Kaidan EE/IF dialogue will play, in which he walks up to Delphine and STARTS YELLING AT HER AND INSULTING HER - like they argue for quite a bit wtf. And it's like, listen, I have my thoughts about Delphine, but whether or not it was okay to yell at her isn't the problem. It would be fine - IF he hadn't just calmly told me he thought she was okay.

It is sooo confusing how he contradicts himself :(

I mean, yeah, fragments of who he is are still there, I can tell it's Kaidan, but he's warped to fit a different character. Like a con-artist Kaidan.

Anyway, besides the contradictions, it also feels out of character because of his established backstory.

Let's go over it: He's an orphan, lost his only connection to his family(his guardian) to drugs, fell into substances himself, joined a violent cult, had to escape said cult, came clean from his addictions, has been traveling Tamriel bounty-hunting, got brutally attacked by the Thalmor, rescued by mere chance. Do you honestly mean to tell me this man would be yelling, pissing, drinking, lewding, and joking his ass off?? After all that???? NO - or maybe not these levels of extreme. (maybe some other dude might, but Kaidan's characterization insists he is a brooding, keeps-to-himself man, even though he never acts like it anymore)

That man should be tired, and he did feel like he was tired in the original. He was more brooding then than he is now, usually silent, but could still have an edge of comedy/wittiness, he was smart, he had been through a lot!

In that regard, EE/IF Kaidan felt like... we are experiencing Kaidan 10 years in the past - like a Kaidan in his early 20s when he was still a drunkard low-key terrible person. He is just so energetic, always yapping - GOD he talks a lot now. ugh but most of the time it wasn't about anything, it was either inside-jokes, meta jokes, and only occasionally did we get things that added to the experience.

For example, I think most of us who have played Kaidan 2 remember at least one specific line he has said while exploring. What comes to mind for me is either "Can you smell the magicka in the air too? Smells like a rainless thunderstorm." or "Watch for the mammoth with the carvings on their tusks, that's how the giants mark their herd." Alright, both pretty nice small talk for characterization (he IS smart) and worldbuilding.

Tbh i can't really remember any iconic lines from the additions of EE/IF Kaidan... the only two lines that stood out for me were: the "elevenses" line from the clip above (started bumping into him every time he was about to say this so he would stfu... total tonal dissonance), and one he said while I looted Lucky Lorenz ("poor sod wasn't as lucky as his namesake would have you believe!") kai HOW do you know this man, and his nickname, who told you that??? (idc about it that much but its like the only other added line i remember)

I thought that maybe his ooc-iness might have been caused due to the collaborative approach of the mod, I think the mod authors created their own perfect Kaidan - and that's good for them! It takes a shit ton of work (Ik cuz i was there!!) But I think the original essence was lost with each addition. It might have been lack of direction for the voice acting too, a lot of the lines might have hit better if they weren't borderline screamed.

Okay, at some point while playing I got so tired of his constant himbo chit-chatter that I tried tuning him out and bringing other npcs from vanilla skyrim as followers. Problem: even without kaidan on your party, everything starts being about kaidan. Because the extension made it so that Kaidan either has history with/character interactions and development with different NPCs from the base game.

The main poor sods that traveled with me:

Erik the Slayer: Apparently was Kaidan's childhood friend, got inspired by Kaidan to become an adventurer. Least egregious in my opinion, they say sweet things to each other. I swear, Kaidan yells more at me than he ever did at Erik.

The Companions: dumb, dumber, and dumbest basically.. This part of EE/IF was also known as "The Fratpack" and y e a h they pretty much had Vilkas, Kaidan, and Farkas acting like immature frat boys all the time. Just,, absulutely taking away all the maturity out of these GROWN ASS MEN. im sorry, i guess i dont get the appeal. I liked it when they didn't behave like teens (Aela im so sorry, you deserved better than being part of this)

Lydia: All she does is simp for him, ALL.THE.TIME. You think she's about to have a meaningful thing to say? nope, she's checking out Kaidan's ass. Think she'll have a deep convo with another npc about one another? nope! she wants them to tell her all about Kaidan. Both the Companions and Erik will either talk down to her or have to deal with her thirst for Kaidan. i had to start leaving her home.

They also suffered from the same tonal whiplash as Kaidan, unfortunately

additionally, the mod added an "early flirt switch" - you could basically toggle Kaidan to start showing romantic affection for the Dragonborn before the amulet of mara., the interactions were good on paper, but everytime he stammered and stumbled over his words it was written in such an unnatural way... pls people don't talk like fanfics lol !!!

I did like that he gave me flowers, my inventory got full of them - but then he noticed how many flowers I had in my inventory and judged me for "picking everything i see" ugh dude you gave them to me, but also even if you hadnt... mind your business lol

Another addition was a feature that basically made it so NPCs could potentially throw flirtatious comments at Kaidan and the Dragonborn (Bishop flashbacks😨)

You can't do anything to defend Kaidan from those comments, but he WILL take it upon himself to defend your honor infront of any men, women, jarls, or criminals that even so much as find you attractive (THIS INCLUDES FARKAS AND VILKAS BTW :( ) by being rude, forthcoming, AND violent. so yea, you can guess the target audience

speaking of which, he definitely comes on too strong on you once you start the romance, and it left a bad taste in my mouth. I specifically picked the "go slow" option for the romance, and the next day or two it was him constantly complaining about having to go slow under his breath, how he wanted to do anything but slow rn... and like just, wow. :/ yikeees lmao

Maybe this is the result of "i can fix him" romance ideals? im sorry but I liked him when he was down to earth

Bonus? He comes with a campsite now, which has to be magic because its ginormous and he somehow lugs it around despite it also coming with a whole ass furnace (fine fine i'll hold my disbelief)

anyway I do like it, its basically a player house you can take anywhere (so long as kai is with you ig) also you can have a cat in there

I like that there is an MCM, I like that the MCM lets you get through the quest stages in case you get stuck

I like that he can guide you places, usually he gets stuck in a tree or rock but its the thought that counts

I think if the mod had continued in the vein as its original iteration when it was just audio/bug fixes and included these qol features it would have been better than it is now.

But it seems maybe i'm just not the target audience, and as a young woman I'm really confused as who the target audience is 😓

okay im srry rant over

if anyone else wants me to yap about other kaidan skyrim things also ask or join in cuz i like yapping about skyrim and kaidan to people!!!

[juni-ravenhall]

we played the quest now and mostly its just like. all these recent quests are at the quality as if a child wrote them but that feels like an insult to child authors. imagine if any other game at this price point (!) put out main story updates at this quality and this playtime per month(s).....

more specific commentary under here

the dark riders still dont feel like actual villains or threats to me at all, due to the rushed and stupid way they were introduced after their design updates, combined with how bad the writing is. i feel like im just chewing on a tasteless gum when i play this. but thats an insult to gum. its very nothing. its neither dramatic nor funny nor meaningful in any way.

the writing and timing is so bad that nothing holds any real dramatic weight. i didnt feel anything about maya getting zapped - i assume shes fine tho??? - obviously yes its harmful to choose to hurt the lesbians rather than literally anyone else and its worth criticising bc ppl need to stop making oppressed characters suffer more than the not-oppressed, but also just the whole thing is handled so badly that i can barely even care bc its so fucking stupid that nothing holds any weight. at this point anything any of the charas says and does just feels completely empty.

like you could just have mr sands collapse to the ground from a heart attack in the middle of the dialogue and sabine say "lol loser" and it wouldnt even feel especially out of place in the current quality of writing and storytelling.

it was fun to see darko and sands again just because we have more relation to darko as a villain than any of the dark riders. the same way i am way more interested in ms drake or mr anwir (rip i guess) than i am in the dark riders bc they were sooo badly included in the story and then suddenly now theyre everywhere and talk all the time as if we know them and as if theyve been a consistent villain. i am way more interested in any other npc than in the dark riders, i have more emotional connection to ed field than i have to katja. bc they were not written into the story properly. this is a continuous frustration i have reading any main story updates.

anyway the erissa race was just.... fine. this is supposed to be a kind of mini boss moment in other games. however, due to my horse not being fed (a system that sse designed) i rode quite slow which in itself takes away drama, but also, the race just felt really.... nothing, again. its not bad... its just nothing. the floating objects in the forest were cool, and the yarn stuff is cute (tho i dont feel anything about this design bc again she and her design is just thrown at me with no buildup - like - a character having a theme that you build up a connection to, is not happening here), but it doesnt feel like an important race or like a mini boss, its just.... ok i went here and now i went there. why tho. how did this matter.

it wasnt a difficult enough race in any way that it felt like challenging gameplay (mini boss fight) and ive said before, yes sure there are 8yo players who never played a game before and need it to be relatively easy - but this can be achieved in other ways than forcing *all* players to play a really dumb easy race, and its also not consistent throughout the game - sometimes a race is randomly kinda hard, other times its something you could do blindfolded, but without any consistent relation to where when and why the race takes place.

normally in games, battles/races/whatever would get more and more challenging as the story goes on, as levels go up, as new mechanics get introduced, as player skill and experience grows.

but yeah i just really hate the story quests at this point. theyre empty. theyre badly written. they are forgettable and dont hold the dramatic weight theyre supposed to. they feel random and disconnected from the rest of the game we played until a couple years ago. the characters and stuff are just handled so badly. the story and lore is confusing and hard to understand. its a mess.

all of this would be fine if sso was a game you play for free. it would be fine if it was a game that cost 10 dollars. it would be fine if it had microtransactions that were like, 1-3 dollars here and there, not 30 dollars here and there to afford two items or one horse or whatever.

i wouldnt judge it so harshly for this bad quality in the story quests (the writing, the storytelling and lore, the characters, the gameplay, the animations, the models and designs, the feeling of making progress as a player....) if the game was overall as cheap as its quests are.

[where-is-caithe]

if you could put one of your characters into the gw2 canon, who would it be and how?

oh! Im assuming this means like. As an npc? I think Eon would be the most fun to throw in there. They'd be a fractal npc. Game-wise, low chance of encountering them in a fractal directly and would sometimes have jump puzzles to get to them. If encountered early in the fractal, they'd be there fighting the boss with you at the end.

story-wise, I think it would be pretty funny if they showed up during the SotO storyline to yell at the wizards for creating fractals on purpose. They'd be an npc you could interact with in Skywatch and theyd have a bunch of dialogue for people to read.

I dont know if any of my other characters would be easy to throw anywhere. They're too entrenched in their stories. Eon's very malleable.

[not-poignant]

salut pia!

ive been wondering? how do you handle/change modes when you’re writing across AUs/fics? i mean not only the personality/attribute changes (like role reversal with ef and gwyn) but also change in…oh how do i say this..when a character is a MC in one but side/minor in another? bc they are different devices to different stories, how do you keep an overview of how much you reveal, go into so as to not side track from the main story or change the “flow”. example: whenever theres mentions of gender identity and betas somethin somethin feeling like omegas somethin somethin comes up “casually” sirens go off in my head and then i realise wait faber is NOT the MC in this story this is not about him him but its a little bit about him him. and then i feel like im standing behind a glass wall looking from Utb/Utg to Utr screaming at faber but he is a NPC here so we dont know whats going on in his head. that scene with ef and him eating carrots?…. i would give my right foot and skin tone copic markers to be a fly on the wall in fabers POV (the timelines probably wont align for it to happen but would you ever consider sth like this?? a scene overlapp across stories i mean?)

i’ve mostly read within that universe but ive also read spoils where your characters have completely different..positions? roles? weight? than in rainbow. so yeah how do you keep it all “appropriate” or “fitting” for their roles in different stories. like a puppet master

cheers xx

Hi anon,

So this is going to be not very helpful, but I don't write this stuff down for the most part.

This is the stuff I find so easy that this is why this is my job, in a way. I don't have a list of 'different Efnisiens' to keep track of, or 'different Gwyns.' They become themselves within the story. If I read a chapter of the story I get back into it (actually often I just need to listen to a song or put on the right playlist). Every version of a character is kind of there right now. I know how each would respond to something, and how those things would be the same or vary based on life experiences and the question etc.

I don't do really much at all to change modes. I just...do. There is no overview. It's all in my head. I'd say some of this goes down to how long / how many years I've spent studying character and dialogue overall. But even when I was younger I found this pretty easy, and transplanting characters into different situations to see how they'd react similarly / differently was one of my favourite kinds of exercises even when I was a teenager.

Some of it is knowing focus. Faber's side story is interesting, for those who like Faber and/or Underline the Red, hints about his gender struggles are fascinating, but they can only ever be hints, because I'm mindful that many readers aren't interested in Faber except as a minor character, and haven't read Underline the Red.

The focus is always Efnisien and Gary. Other characters can have their own lives and motivations, but it won't be more than that in the main story. Though I can go into a bit more detail because of the length of the story which is really nice for building out side characters / ensemble cast.

As to crossover perspectives, I don't know! I know we'll see some of Faber's perspective of Efnisien arriving at Hillview in Underline the Red, but obviously things impact characters differently at different times, I don't know what will be most important by the time we get to Faber's side of things. I used to write alternative perspectives as side chapters for Fae Tales though, and that could be a lot of fun.

so yeah how do you keep it all “appropriate” or “fitting” for their roles in different stories.

I saw a video by Hank Green I think once where he said the reason sportspeople are so good at their sports is in part because they're physically often the best at that sport anyway. Like, ballerinas have a certain build, swimmers have a certain build, and any training they do works to support that and make them better, but they were 'built' out for those sports in the first place. Some people have yoga bodies. I have a swimming body and swimming shoulders.

And I feel like this is true sometimes with writing. I don't try to keep it appropriate or fitting, I just know that the ensemble characters can't matter as much as the main characters in the course of the story. That's what a story is. That's what a main character and an ensemble character is. I would say years of experience has made this part of writing mostly easy and fun for me, so I don't have to think or overthink about this stuff anymore. At worst I might think 'was that too much Faber? Eh, it's helping Efnisien, it's still important to the plot and his character arc.'

I'm 'built' for writing big worlds with big ensemble casts where all the characters are important but where the focus is only on a couple of main characters per story. I'm built for character-focused stories and seem to be very built for transplanting characters I love into different worlds (and different roles) to see how that changes things. I started wanting to write these kinds of worlds and characters when I was 10 years old, and had my first sprawling ensemble fantasy series started by the age of 11. By the age of 15 I had a 3 novel fantasy trilogy built out with about 20 significant characters, and it was ridiculous and silly but that was what I wanted to write.

And I guess you could say I haven't really changed, I've just gotten better at it. I hope to keep getting better at it! The challenge now is to figure out how to break down some of these skills so I can share them with others. But...I do think there's an element of 'this is just what I love, it's a special interest, I don't know how to convey that I have 30 years of special interest in reading, writing, and studying this thing across television, manga, manhwa, fanfiction, AUs, and fictional series.' There will be teachable skills in that, but I don't know how much osmosis / absorption / and being obsessed with entangled tapestries of stories makes up what I do.

In some ways it would be 'better' if I was built for more conventional storytelling. My bank account might like that more! BUT, I'm doing okay where I'm at, because I love it, and I try to share that with other people and see if I can tell stories that resonate with them too.

(There are aspects of what I do that are very hard for me - timelines, aspects of worldbuilding, pacing in the first arc, and so on, but the actual characterisation part, and creating multiple versions of the same character is as easy as breathing. I could give you four more different versions of Faber in an hour. Maybe even twenty minutes. It's not hyperbole, it's just...how I daydream, what I think about. And it's fun!)

I'm very very very lucky that other folks are willing to read the same characters across different narratives, because it's a very strange thing to do in writing outside of fanfiction, case in point being that we almost never see any other professional authors doing it with their original works. x.x

[elvenbeard]

3 hours into update 2.0.0....

I love it xD But also, I'm a little bit overwhelmed, but UUUURGGGHHH there are some real gems in there already 😩

So, I didn't start a new playthrough for time reasons and went right in with my post-ending save. There was some initial fuckery with my wardrobe outfits that seems fixed now though after unequipping everything and remaking the outfits xD Custom tattoo and scar mods work just fine though and I might test these next few days what other mods do :D I'm really happy about the tattoos though at least :3

Some Bugs

Also, someone desperately needs to send the NCPD some funds cause....

That vehicle doesn't look like it should be allowed in traffic (this happened twice, and I was cackling xDD honestly just a really funny little bug that's probably gonna get fixed somewhere down the line xD)

But yes... Man the new skills and perks and cyberware and EVERYTHING is so fucking cool, but also so fucking overwhelming when you're already level 42+ and have everything at your disposal all at once xD But I was so excited to see all the different new Kiroshi options and how cyberware is tied to skills like... damn. And the strongest quickhacks really need a fuckton of RAM... as they should. And I still need a fuckton of practise in terms of using them, but I'm really excited to get the hang of it all somewhere down the line :D

They didn't forget about the LIs!!!

But then this:

When I read this in the patch notes, I was so fucking excited xD Hell yeah, a good reason to go to the apartment apart from sorting through my inventory xD Some more Johnny interactions!

AND. A DREAM COME TRUE WITH ONE OF THE DIALOGUES!!!

I was always a bit sad that Johnny had no comments whatsoever on V's relationship with Kerry, when he did with some of the other LIs, so this already made my evening xDD and one of the big perks of jumping in with my post-ending save to already get to see and hear this now :DDD Not gonna spoil what he says but... yes XDD It fits, I figured. And I hope the other LIs get something similar because it's glorious xD

Vehicles and Radio

In regards to vehicle handling... I can definitely feel a difference with my go-to bike! Like, it still has its weaknesses, but also feels a lot more stable in other regards, less flimsy and "heavier" like they described it in the patch notes. I love it a lot. I didn't try vehicle combat yet, although I did get randomly attacked in the badlands by some NPCs once, which was very fun XD I almost had a heart-attack, but it did feel like something that could happen. Sadly didn't manage to get my revenge in time, but next time!!

I like the new radio stations, but didn't hear every song yet... but also, and I think some others already said that, they don't really add much new in terms of sound and genres. Nothing that isn't already there in some shape or form. But still nice to have something new to add to the rotation.

Leveldesign

And as I was driving around, I randomly stumbled right into Dogtown :DDD well, not quite but, damn, that was an impressive moment:

The faction of the guards was labelled as "Test" though xDD Close but, not quite... Figure that's also a little bug though.

Overall... I fucking love how they integrated it into Pacifica o.o It's insanely impressive, huge and rundown and maaaaaan.... I cannot wait to explore behind the walls!!

Also, random little thing... I feel like the clouds looked nicer? But that could be me not paying much attention/ rain being rare-ish in Night City.

Not Dogtown but North Oak, obviously. But... idk o.o The light shining through like that looked so fucking cool and realistic, but I really dont know if maybe this wasn't already part of the Pathtracing update and I just never noticed it like this before XD

And lastly... I discovered whose nooks they added to the Columbarium. Right in the feels.

Cannot wait to discover more little details as I go but URGH yeah. The tiny little Kerry convo already made it worth it for me XDD And Viktor <3 And the Autofixer shop is so cool! And aaahhh I cannot wait to see what's gonna come with PL :333

[damatically]

Dreamy Bubble event spoilers (the last bit abt Doyle and Serpent's interro)

Me finishing the event:

Man Doyle only appeared one event but i love him already 😭

Also THIS

THIS RIPS ME TO SHREDS but its so refreshing that they wrote acknowledging that people have limitations even in relationship...this event UGH... I WANT TO EAT THIS EVENT ITS SO GOOD...this is what i get for not playing for 2 months last year i missed on this stuff. I like its abt moving on and accepting that was it. 🥹

None angst fave part? This lol

Never change my daughter

Now lets talk abt the interro which uhm A LOT. Aisno never skimps on angst and info dump like man i gained more info than expected.

Also some cw: mentions of suicide and self harm

Also can we talk abt that Serpent's idea of happiness is heavily misguided?? And sometimes being unalive is her idea of "happiness" or literally else is correlated to pain if its not happiness 😭 like that was so messed up. Man the last file in her interro is her thinking she dont deserve happiness so she would cause harm to herself instead. I WANT TO SCREAM. Its not even a joke, I almost went flight or fight.

The horrible part of her life is ofc, how she was exploited in young age. Ik devs did not wrote it even more darker themes in her interro but i feel like its implied that npc dialogue that when she transfer to be entertainer for east-siders she was brought to do more f*tish related stuff against her will.

Reading this interrogation, reminds me of Lamia's. Lamia and Serpent are both exploited at the very young age bc of their unique appearances. Their methods of utilizing their power is similar too in story.

[commanderquinn]

meta: sam coe - post-campaign analysis

allllrighty i am officially post-campaign so time for first thoughts. since im still collecting my feelings/opinions on the main quest i dont want to go super into that. i wanna wait and consolidate into a deep dive on that one. BUT i am a fic writer with a fixation on socioeconomics, intergenerational trauma, and more specifically the phenomenon of atheists clinging to their religious parents morals because they haven't taken the time to evaluate their biases and the reasons they still hold them

translation: the silver spoon space cowboy is an interesting concept. poory executed in the case of starfield, sadly, but great framework for fandom to chop the head off of and bring to their own individual comfort interpretations.

this meta will include spoilers for the following:

-sam's questline and the npcs involved

-his romance

-cora, the safety storyline around her, and how she's the best part of the space game

-why bethesda was fucking stupid to turn the cowboys into cops when they have the perfect opportunity for not that. i went in hoping for retired/reformed army rangers fed up with war looking to defend their home from fascism given the "han solo simulator" marketing, but all i got was this lousy ass rendition of the texas rangers, which i for SURE did not want

-i WONT be going into detail about the main plot for this post, just fyi. i wanna save that, and sam's relation to it, for its own essay. id still recommend not reading meta's until you finish the game tho

-i miss obsidian's writing. this game made me want to play outer worlds for the 100th time. that will probably come up a lot

this is probably gonna sound more than a bit scattered and off the fucking plot for the first section, but bare with me, im making a point eventually i promise. gotta make sure we're all on the same page first.

now that ive done a majority of his content, it's clear what the intent was for sam and i applaud it. i like it when good hearts in bad systems spot the fundamental flaws and decide to abandon it entirely, or work to change it. i hate perfect characters. i hate characters that have no growth to find. sam is a great character for showing the awesome power of a perspective change. but damn. what a waste when you're talking about a format where a writer is constricted to:

-an exact conversation trigger (bethesda games have always relied on interrupt & player approach, and i didnt notice any variation on game engine front but i wont know until they release the ck so)

-word limit on all responses (yes, you can make long dialogues in engine. but those words still have to be f u n d e d from a dev standpoint. words are not free in video games. capitalism sucks for art.)

-multiple conversation branches that ALL have to circle back to the original topic (they have to follow a set pattern of establishing a subject, then the players possible responses to that subject, the npcs responses to those responses, AND provide a seamless, one dialogue tie-in path to the next branch. it sounds super easy until you're the shmuck writing it, and then it doesnt feel so easy anymore)

-get approximately two personal quests with, what was it, 12 motion scripted scenes? (im watching other peoples pts now so ill try to remember to count, but it was. hmm. lack luster imo. im not saying quantity is vital. im a bioware fanatic, i know the power of quality when its actually delivered. i didnt have any moment like that for sams quests and it was kind of crushing. ill get into it.)

-appeal to a wide enough audience to obtain profit by holding back eXtReMe ViEwS (id like to point out that there is, at this exact moment in time, an active pr campaign (and a few scattered gaming content creators) surrounding starfield talking about how pronouns are politics and should be left out of gaming. over a setting flag in a save file. you literally dont even have to press a button about it. like, you pick your characters body. masc bodys are auto assigned m pronouns. fem bodies are auto assigned f pronouns. you literally dont even have to SEE the button, and it never gets brought up. the only purpose it serves is so the game knows what voice lines to fire. that. is. it.)

im not going to humor the "thats dumb, bethesda makes political games" contribution to the argument.

i get straight people think they're being super helpful and witty on that one, but i think the world would collectively benefit from allies taking just a few extra seconds before standing on that soapbox to maybe consider that calling existence "politics" might be, gee idk, insulting. maybe more than a lil dehumanizing. maybe super easily solved by just NOT giving into their parents obsession with playing devils advocate. i think if maybe allies could shut the fuck up for a minute or two at a time and go look for voices of authority within the communities they're defending instead of trying to talk over them, that'd probably work out better. might help cut out the completely useless middle man their parents taught them to be when they drilled home "you have to respect everyone's opinion"

no the fuck you do not, actually. i, as someone on this earth attempting to be a compassionate person, owe people a chance at understanding. i do not, under any circumstance, owe someone any kind of respect WHATSOEVER if they cannot respect me as a human being. full stop. i dont owe it to them, i dont owe it to their religion, i dont owe it to the government they try to establish. i do not owe respect to people attempting to oppress me. i never have and i never will.

but remember. there is context to be found in the passing of time. yes, you need to tell grandma to stop being racist. no, you do not need to banish grandma to the nursing home if there's still a chance that she's willing to sit and listen. a chance that she'll empathize with social perspectives that the racist society she was raised in never allowed her to have. breathe and give grandma the chance. then send her to the home if she's still racist.

(yes that was an analogy for how i imagine a perspective conversation with jacob would go. i do not have high hopes of that man finding self awareness given. well. who he is as a person.)

now. if you've played through sam's content, you already know why im bringing all of that up, but lets put together a list of all the things that Make Sam Coe Who He Is before we wrap it all up in a pretty bow that hopefully reads a lot less scattered than this "yo society got some trauma actually" lead up ive dumped on you

quick interrupt just for me: i love that im back on tumblr where i dont really have to give all that much of a fuck about making sense. any audience i could find here is equally unhinged so mostly i just have to format it in a way that makes your brain not hurt. sorry if you dont have adhd <3

1: lets talk about cora's hair.

im going to make the race observation because its bothering me from a dev standpoint AND the gamer crowd is already starting to make cuck memes which sucks to see.

i get that this doesnt matter in a colonialism scifi future where a service like enhance exists and we're talking about two rangers that apparently went under cover regularly, but it matters in the context of how sam was handled in a 2020 era commercial, creative environment. im just going to MENTION that cora coe's biological mother (that jab was me not liking her as a person, not me giving a shit that she's white) is paler than pale, and sam does NOT look like some of his earlier promo images. bethesda as a company also has a very long history of making characters arguably tan to avoid this shit.

9/16 edit: was asked for source, heres the exact image im referencing, which is still his set image on the starfield wiki to date:

(im going to preemptively warn any white artists building the urge to argue over this: you DO NOT want to die on a hill about lighting for this one, fucking trust me. thats not what this conversation is, and if you dont understand that as a White Artist, you need to sit this one out until you understand the full weight of the conversation and the profound effect of media treating skin color like a rare diversity accessory. bethesda has a very very long history of this. their last major story title, fallout 4, (76 was a money grab made in the other studio and i barely want to call it a game) had a whopping total of two black characters in its main cast, and both of them acted in subservient roles so please. please please please just. stop trying to defend bethesda on this one. its dehumanizing, cowardly, and malicious in this day and age. i promise im not trying to bite anyones head off here, im just Old And Tired when it comes to suburbanites in fandom.)

i think having solomon be canonically black would have been a really important aspect. i think it would have given the opportunity to show white people why its fucked up that they get SO EXCITED to save war mementos (or in the case of starfield a nasa memento) and will go on and on about how vital it is to save that piece of history, but when you bring up memorializing the importance of race as it pertains to human history and cultural history/pride, they suddenly start getting Very Uncomfortable and throw out phrases like "what does it matter we're all human" while standing next to the gun their grandfather smuggled home from the war

there is no brightness slider on pc and i havent gone reshade tweaking so everything is still washed out on my end (dont worry, as an rtx user, imma be makin a rant post on that) b u t. cora coe has a pale as fuck mother and a vaguely tan father with blue eyes and straight hair, meanwhile my precious angel has a darker complexion and curls that look like they're closing in on the 3c range so like. im getting vibes that sammy boy mighta been whitewashed during game dev, and thats about as far into THAT topic as im gonna bother to venture for this post.

2: his dad

were we supposed to have more daddy issues content??? istg it feels like there was the initial map talk and then nothing. im not saying that i cant pull blood from a stone and give you an entire essay on that glimpse of family trauma just from a few lines of dialogue, but still. feels like thats maybe something that should have gotten more detail.

"no forgiveness between me and my old man. it's uh... coe tradition."

oh boy. oh boy oh boy oh boy. what a line to start his personal quest

before we go ANY FURTHER im gonna drop a reference to one of my favorite aaron sorkin scenes of all time. its from the movie he did about the chicago seven, and i think it fits VERY well when having a conversation about how sam is shaped by his father

unfortunately the exact scene i want to show isnt clipped anywhere easy i could find, so here's an article that talks about that scene specifically if you want more context but dont want to watch the whole movie. what we're really focused on is this:

which is a scene where a fictional account of bobby seale, the leader of the black panther party at the time of the chicago 7 trial, said that above quote to a fictional account of tom hayden while they were having a conversation about how the stakes of this trial are life and death for him as a black man, but little more than a family dispute and a dark spot on their records for the (all white) chicago 7.

its a GREAT continuation of sorkin’s fascination around father son conflicts (he covered it a time or two during his writing days as west wings original creator, which is a great political show id strongly rec) and it really really works when used in comparison to those rebellion days sam had that he still flagellates over

sam was a privileged kid without a foundation of emotional support or a safe environment to vent to. he didnt have the words needed to communicate what he was feeling and thinking and experiencing. he didnt have the means to express himself in a way that wasn't immediately criticized by the people in his life. it doesnt take a degree in psych to figure out that sam first ran for the stars to run from his father. and it sounds like that was tradition

from the MOMENT YOU MEET HIM, jacob is full stop "my way or the highway" until you hit him with the good ol bethesda persuasion and his disposition pulls a 180 to hand you the next plot device

sam: "you know why im here."

jacob: "oh? and what's that? you come to your senses? realize where you ought to be for once?"

w o w

i wonder why sam never felt safe in his own home. i wonder why he doesnt feel safe leaving cora there. i wonder why that miserable fucking attitude and guilt has sam convinced that jacob will be the worst possible thing for his curious daughter's self esteem.

yes, grandparents sip a different kind of koolaid when it comes to their grandkids. no, that is not enough to protect that child from that much intergenerational trauma. sam's made a bad choice keeping cora in space, but he's made an EXCELLENT choice keeping her away from jacob.

forget "showing respect" to his son's choices, jacob won't give them the time of day. he brushes off constellation and wont go meet them for himself, he insists that cora being "in her family home" is the only priority (isnt THAT telling) and, as if that wasnt enough to prove he's incapable of empathy, the fact that he outright, direct fucking quote during that first scene with him, says to sam's face

"the only mistake im seeing here is you"

fuck anyone who walked away from that scene of a parent saying that to their own kid and had the response of "i dont understand why sam wont let jacob take care of cora." fuck you, genuinely from the bottom of my heart, if that was your reaction.

i looked for opportunities to get sam to talk about what the rest of those "30 plus years of experience with the man" really looked like after that. the fact that it was used as a plot device without any (from what I COULD FIND in my first pt, if i find any ill edit this) kind of dialogue discussion about that trauma around his father's behavior/mentality and the terrible influence it had is such a waste. chances are!!!!!! id fucking agree with him!!!!!!!!!! SO TELL THEM TO ME BETHESDA!!!!!! give me the chance to storm back into that house with the full story and let that geriatric fuck know why he will not be allowed back into my daughters life (yeah we're gonna be calling cora our daughter on this one bc, again, she's the best thing in the game) until he can learn to be a safe emotional environment for her

and THEN, at the end of the romance, the wrinkly mf drops a "hey can you go over sam's head and make the parenting decisions now" 20 minutes before your vows get exchanged in his living room (WE'RE GONNA TALK ABOUT THAT MESS OF A WEDDING LMAO ITS A LOT but im probably gonna save it for another sam post where i talk more in depth about why packing a complicated romance in that tightly just Dont Work). like wow. wowowowwow. if that doesnt perfectly sum up how he views the dusty's (shhh i really hope that name catches on pls i keep seeing ppl use captain instead its heartbreaking) role in the family now, and confirm how he's always viewed his own son, idk what does

3: lillian "i can abandon my kid and demand she be taken care of in the same breath" hart

i was originally going to go into hella detail on his relationship with his ex but honestly i think im just gonna leave a few paragraphs and not touch on her again bc its bad for my blood pressure.

okay, here's the deal. im biased in the sense that i had a mother with attachment issues and lets just say that his ex is worth about as much to me as a pile of dogshit. it'd be one thing if she had that moment of "oh. sam and cora bond really well and i dont fit" and decided to look at that and evaluate if she wanted to continue trying to be a parent.

but she didnt have a moment of reflection. she didnt talk to a therapist. she didnt have a discussion with sam. she went back to work and decided "oh well, my kid doesnt like me" and then left her daughter with an open wound and no shot at closure. which is just. wow. that's active abandonment. she WALKED OUT of cora's life because she couldn't stomach the idea that she didnt immediately win over her daughter without any effort to connect to her.

then she has the nerve to yell at sam for not doing the best for cora. like bitch, you cant even consistently answer the phone??? what are you on??? she's REPEATEDLY broken cora's heart with false promises, and clearly made no effort to truly atone for that given just HOW angry sam is ALL the times he brings it up.

and she does it all for what????? a beat cop reputation and some shiny medals????? like shut the fuck up with that righteous indignation piglet, you're killing smugglers under someone's made up authority to protect COMMERSE, not creating galactic peace. the idea that THAT SHIT is worth more to her than her own daughter having a mother who's around for all her life milestones is inFURIATING and id fucking deck her if i could.

the fact that there's zero chance to call her out other than one single "thats a pretty awful thing to say" option is a real cop out from bethesda. they realized they put a woman in a position where she could be really, truly yelled at for something like child care, and chickened out on following through with it so they wouldnt take any heat.

thats gross and should piss you the fuck off, by the way. that sure the fuck isnt what equality looks like by any measure. you don't empower women by acting like they're infallible creatures you cant call out for being flawed. and you sure as shit dont empower the next generation of women by forgiving their abusers.

4: cora's safety

which brings us to the big sticky: sam is a disaster and i DONT think that keeping cora on a combat-active spaceship is right. i think she'd be much better off living in constellation hq (aside from the main plot obvsly) with a constant open comm to her dad and the ability to bring her to outposts and secured sights.

the problem with the biomother's abandonment isnt the distance. its the lack of attempt to connect. its the lack of forming a bond. its the fact that she had zero desire to understand her child once she figured out her child didnt "love her the most" when thats literally not a thing. the problem was never the physical space, and it wouldnt have to be in sam's case, either.

he's a dad that's there for cora day in and day out, he just never got the chance to grow out of the panic stage of a parent worried the first fever is going to kill the baby. he didn't have his dad because he had to get out to protect himself, he doesnt have a mom because of how long she's been dead, and lillian checked the fuck out at an early stage apparently. so sam was left to be the nervous wreck trying to keep history from repeating itself. the man's flying blind in the face of all the combined generational trauma of himself, his father, and his ex, all while trying not to fuck up shaping a human life.

you're damn fucking right he keeps cora glued to his side, i legitimately do not think his own ptsd would allow him to do otherwise without someone like the dusty to come and and go "hey dude, maybe its time we read some emotional intelligence and trauma books so we can start getting cora into a stable environment for literally the first time in her life? also im going to teach her gun safety for my own sanity because you keep letting her walk all over you and its scaring the fuck out of me thinking my daughter is going to try to raid a pirate ship at 15 because no one taught you proper boundaries."

5: his morals

its been 30+ years and his father wont let go of arguing and micromanaging long enough to try to understand his son. lillian is a workaholic who believes her only inherit value is what she can provide to an organization that views living, breathing human beings as occasionally expendable while screaming about its pursuit of freedom and equality.

sam coe is a man who got told what he was supposed to be his entire life, tripped into drugs and crime in an angry, sheltered act of rebellion, and walked away from it all with a very skewed, very flawed interpretation of morality as a result.

lillian and his father are the clear moral compasses in his life. like yeah, sure, he'll talk about how cora is his driving force until he's blue in the face. and he's not lying!!! he's not even technically wrong. she is his active motivation day in and day out. but she is not his Morality. she hasn't developed enough as a person to be able to be that kind of beacon. she's a kid rushing herself through childhood because she thinks that will make her better and no one in her life recognizes it enough to stop it. she shouldnt have to be the moral guide for someone who's supposed to be guiding her

sam cant let go of the ranger envy. he couldnt stomach being around it, but he cant look at that discomfort long enough to identify why. he can walk into a bank and plain as day go "ah, don't you hate the smell of capitalism," but he can't bring himself to blink the stars out of his eyes long enough to ask why the rangers are so willing to put smugglers to death without trial. sam has enough awareness to identify the system is flawed, but he doesnt have the guts to really stare that down

he'll make cracks about walter having too much money and influence, but he wont actually mention how he and his wife are the root cause of an extraordinary amount of pain and suffering and perfectly avoidable manslaughter as a result of their business. i get that constellation runs as a dont as dont tell organization, but if sam's going to give me shit about nabbing a paper weight from a guy's desk, i think we should talk about how he doesnt display anger for walter's business practices.

sam coe, at his heart, is a dreamer who doesn't want to look too close at things. he was taught that some things just Are, and looking for too many answers will find you trouble. he's got the spirit of an explorer dampened by a lifetime spent under cops.

you can hear it in his voice whenever he talks about how proud he is of cora for being a goddamn prodigy. you can hear the wonder and the excitement there. you can hear the curious kid in him that probably got pushed out of the way while he was trying to shape himself into a Proper Coe

i think sam coe is a dreamer who was forcibly taught to fear learning as a child, and thats the real tragedy of him.

so let's start to tie our bow here.

sam is a man who, in a way that only a privillaged kid can, stumbled into neon's life of drugs and smuggling and self harm through destructive behavior with both eyes firmly shut.

he didn't fall into drugs after a lifetime of being submersed in the culture of it. he didnt take them because he grew up surrounded by people that just knew that's all life was ever going to hold. he didnt get into smuggling because he was starving. he didnt take on his first "criminal act" because there was a life and death battle going on somewhere in his life.

this man was drowning in guilt and shame centered around not "being a proper coe" by the time he was free of his father's control, by all accounts. you can hear how much self hatred he has over the memory of that time in his life. look, im not going to say that age and recovery doesnt come with regret, but he talks about it like degeneracy and something to be guilted about rather than just... living life. like so what you did some drugs?? so what you did a capitalism no no?????

corporations arent people. you shouldnt steal from them because itll put YOU at risk, but under no circumstance should anyone hold onto any guilt for stealing from them. money is fake and capitalism murders people every hour of the day. fuck the system, its fucking rigged, look out for you and yours while capitalism is stealing your natural resources and making private homesteading prosecutable (translation: in our actual, real life here, the government can throw you in jail for building a house without a permit. go look up at the sky and think about the moral journey humanity had to take to get us to that point, and then come talk to me about how i shouldnt encourage people to steal from corporations)

anyways back to the video game, as far as the "what if he was unknowingly smuggling something like organs or weapons" argument, there's no desire for me to defend it, tbh. i dont view crime as a personality brand the way cops do. someone being convicted of a crime doesnt make me see them as lesser, it makes me see them as a person who did a bad thing. i do bad shit all the time. we all do. we're human. sometimes there's an excuse for the behavior, and sometimes there isnt. that's not the end of the world. you own up to your actions, you apologize, and you put in the effort to make amends that fit the situation. end of story. the obvious exception to that being when someone you have victimized tells you to fuck off because they dont want your further involvement.

yes. yes there are people in the world that are genuine monsters that spend their time and energy looking for ways to do the cruelest shit imaginable to their fellow human beings. but those are fucking outliers, so no, im not going to let a conversation about morality be derailed by a fraction of a percent of the population

but people (like the rangers) who aren't ready to look at the whole picture of context, who would rather hyper focus on the unbending rule of the land, don't see that. they see a "type" of person once a crime has been committed rather than "a person who found themselves in this scenario"

sam was raised by cops. he fundamentally does not understand how biased his own view is. he'll sometimes make a vague mention of crime being a necessity, but you can hear how many strings are attached there just from the way he talks about it. he truly views crime as a black and white subject with exceptionally few slivers of grey to be found. you can hear the "law and order is what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom" in his voice whenever he talks about how the rangers are "good people" he just "didnt fit anymore" and it's heartbreaking

he'd be so much better off if he would take a moment to reevaluate his priorities and look a lot closer at that guilt he carries and why he carries it. i think it would even help him better connect with cora in the long run. it would for sure give him a better handle on why letting his daughter take on college courses this early in her life isnt something to brag about. its a bad sign that she's pushing herself to Be Something in the exact same way he used to. he just doesn't recognize it because her way is "healthy" by society's fucked up view of child prodigies

tl;dr

i don't need to fix sam coe. he's stubborn, traumatized, and sheltered, not broken.

give that man good enough head and i'm absolutely sure he could be talked into reading some -clutches pearls- marxist literature

[messmersflame]

ok i finally have the braincells so here's some of my criticisms/pointing out of .... questionable content in bg3 that i've personally come across. it may get a bit long. apologies for if it's difficult to read, i'm just trying to lay out my thoughts here. some things are also more serious than others.

The Dark Urge this one is relatively small, as playing the dialogue for the dark urge kind of hints at it, but i do think that it needs a MUCH clearer indication that it can be dark and probably disturbing/distressing to play as. and also that it should probably not be reccomended for a first run, as it does change things quite a bit.

sexuality and romance choice i think it would just be helpful if, when a party member hits on you or shows interest, that you are able to say 'i'm not into girls/guys/anything at all'. and that this specifically shuts down their comments. i have a friend that was disappointed that he couldn't say this to lae'zel, and got further uncomfortable when she kept on saying 'you will wonder what i taste like' when he's a gay guy trying to play a gay guy. it would also be uncomfortable for someone not interested in that aspect of the game/romance and sex in general, i would imagine. also related to this, and i do understand why every single romanceable character is bisexual as this just makes things a lot easier, but i do feel that there should be characters that just are not bi, even just among npcs. there's some npcs in same gendered relationships which is good, though i think there needed to just be more characters that clearly are not bi. (though given the dragon age modding scene's track record, i also get just wanting to avoid that outright.)

trangender characters you the player character can be trans and i love this. i do wish there was a way to have the more feminine frames with a flatter chest, and vice versa, though. i mean we have genital options, but no chest options...? (also no weight or further body shape options but i digress). i also think i noted maybe, two? npcs? that were transgender? and i feel that there really needs to be more trans and nonbinary npcs, specifically prominent ones and not relegated to background characters that you blink and miss (which one of the ones i found was). bg3 has given me as a player far more options to play a trans nonbinary character than any game ive played thus far, but there needs to be more beyond just the player themself in terms of trans rep.

party member racism as a romani person myself, i found myself relating to the tiefling group quite a lot. i dont expect larian to not include fantasy racism in the game, but playing as a tiefling and having a party member, lae'zel, call you and your kind 'cockroaches' with no way to chew her out for it, and just having no proper way to direclty combat the racism of your party members in general is. very uncomfortable. astarion also has some lines like this, and while he does eventually change his attitude, i havent been able to change or confront that with lae'zel. not good for someone youre meant to adventure with and trust.

the goblins and treatment of the way that the goblins are depicted and treated (while not wholly larian's fault since they didn't make the setting- still not an excuse tho) could have been handled better. there are a few instances where you can stand up for them as being people without condoning their actions, but overall they are treated as 'dirty uncivilised tribals' and i hope i dont need to explain why that kind of depiction is bad. they're background cronies of the bbeg, explicitly revealed to having been manipulated and controlled into serving the bbeg, and any exploration of actual goblin culture is treated as a joke.

murdering goblin kids specifically is okay apparently on the topic of the goblins- i was appaled when i realised that in order to free halsin, you have to kill two goblin kids. in fact, if you choose to attack the whole goblin camp, you kill more goblin kids. nobody bats an eye at this. yet, when you do the reverse and attack the grove where there are children that you can kill/cause the death of, this is explicity treated as a bad thing. it's just disgusting that goblin children being killed is not given the same treatment, just because they're goblins.

ableist abuse is fine when the person was abusive to you first in the underdark in act 1 (and later in act 3 if you helped them), there is a dwarven? couple, baelen and derryth bonecloak. baelen has gone missing, and you can find and rescue him. he clearly has some kind of neurological disability, and has difficulty with verbal communication and his memory. his wife, derryth, berates him and treats him as stupid for his disability. you can confront her about it in act 1, and later in act 3 go snooping and find out more information about their relationship- baelen, prior to whatever caused his disability, was an abusive and evil man who beat her and gave her the facial scar she has, among other abuses. of course this abuse is horrific, but this is then used to justify derryth's own abuse of the man, since he now is reliant on her for food ect. she basically says that she can treat a disabled man however she wants because at least she cares for his needs and he abused her anyways so it's payback. i do believe that his disability does not override or excuse what he did in the past and that she has every reason to still hate him, but this still does NOT excuse this treatment of him now that he is disabled and relies on her as a caregiver. becoming disabled is not a fucking punishment and it's disgusting that larian even chose to include this kind of thing in their game at ALL. it's also worsened by the fact that i see many people commenting on how they're going to just kill him because he deserves it, and it's 'doing him a favour since he's disabled now'. this is the kind of sentiment that larian are encouraging by having this narrative in their game and as a disabled person myself, and someone who has family and friends who literally act the way baelen does with his disability, it is not fucking okay.

twin drow sex workers i hope i don't need to explain why it's fucking gross and creepy that larian have two sex workers in act 3 be twins that regularly participate in sex with the same client at the same time, and the player is also able to do so. some party members, such as karlach, comment on how them being literally brother and sister is gross, so it's not as if larian are not self aware enough to see why it's not good to fetishise incest. but they put it in there anyways! for the player to indulge in! and it's depicted as sexy! being a survivor of incest csa, i was pretty shocked and appaled by that inclusion. they could have very easily just had the two be runaway lovers. there was literally no need for them to be made twins.

sexual slavery and abuse is sexy when it's halsin if you do actually sleep with the aforementioned drow along with halsin, he will have a new dialogue where he talks about being held prisoner in the underdark 'chained to the bed, somewhere between a prisoner, a guest, and a consort'. so, he was kept as a sex slave and just slave and captive in general by drow for a while. the player can say that's horrible, but halsin brushes this off and says it wasn't so bad. because apparently he liked being kept as a sex slave? this is just brainwashing and coercive rape, larian. considering how they handled astarion's sexual abuse and slavery, it was outright shocking to learn that halsin's own abuse is handled so poorly and in fact turned into some weird bdsm fetish instead.

[orbeater]

So crazy that people dont actively read the guard dialogue. You dont fly to the most obscure place in the castle to talk to an npc?

[ratcandy]

sometimes i wonder where the mushroomos sleep. like their doesnt seem to be any beds.

unless they sleep in here? i mean it is pretty big but it seems kind of weird to just use the vendor station tent. although given theres no other beds i guess it makes sense to sleep there. or maybe they dont need to sleep because they are shrooms. (but i mean besides the followers and the lamb you dont see anyone sleeping. all the vendor npcs seem to stay awake always) also what do they eat? i did have that headcanon they eat small invertebrates and decay but i do admit that its just my headcanon. ...so does sozo feed them? do they feed themselves? i guess all of this makes you wonder to what extent does sozo do cult leader duties. given his dialogue, he doesnt seem to care all that much about the mushroomos health and safety but he is a very unpredictable fellow so his treatment of the mushroomos is likely to be unstable and mostly based on his mood. also reading his follower form's mind read dialogue seems to hint that he is conflicted on how to feel about the mushroomos? idk (i wish i had the dialogue on hand but its not on the wiki, oh well). ill guess that he sometimes does cult leader stuff but not very consistently. like a coin flip everyday whether or not he decides to be nice or not

For the sleeping thing: I imagine they wouldn't have to? I mean they can as followers, but it might just be a choice thing. I guess it depends to what extent they're fully shroom and what extent they're like... not? I have no idea. Maybe they can sleep standing up for all we know. Maybe they bury themselves in the ground about it.

(As for NPCs staying awake I take that as just game nonsense, I doubt that's meant to be taken literal)

And on the eating side of things: Leaning into mushroom activity it would make the most sense for them to be eating decay, but that's extremely broad. They could be eating any sort of decay. It depends on what they're feeding off of specifically. For all we know it's wood they eat and they're some sort of wood rot, which would explain why the mushrooms in Anura grow the size of trees. They're just... eating the WHOLE tree as opposed to the inside. Or they're my morbid headcanon and they are made of corpses from the cultist activity. Who knows! But the answer to that question would dictate whether Sozo has to feed them or not.

'Cause if they're getting food themselves I don't think he'd need to do anything? He might not even know what they eat, either. Could've been in the process of studying that before the Horrors struck.

But then again in my own personal opinion I think Sozo's cult leader activities are very minimal. I don't think he's doing a lot of caring for the Mushroomos outside of brainwashing them (in some sort of twisted way keeping them "happy," even if they're perhaps faking it to appease him, as idk if menticide would work on guys who are in fact made of menticide), but I could be wrong? I just never really got the vibe he was doing much of . Anything cult leader-y. His leader status seems purely based on shroom head and unpredictability making him a threat the Mushroomos can't really do much about and are powerless to stop, so they just give in to what he says

I mean it's possible! Maybe! I just don't know what specifically he'd be doing. And my brain is emptying its cache as I am writing this, so my ideas stream has run dry , and now i am out of words