Gorion is old friends with Elminster. Does Elminster often pal around with 10th level wizards? (This is a genuine lore question, I dunno much about Elminster.)
Possibly. I mean, he has time to bug a level 1 dipshit running around the woods on the Sword Coast.
I still don't get how any of you can earnestly argue that, within the context of the setting, a powerful wizard getting ambushed and murdered by a gang of powerful brigands - which is all the PC knows at the time - is anywhere in the same league as extradimensional Cthulhu UFOs fighting dragon-riding aliens from the Prime to Avernus before striking devil pacts in the fucking Underdark five minutes later.
Do you even remember the Nashkel mines? Those kobolds had fire arrows! They rained death from afar! I still have PTSD about that trap-filled hell, party being cut into charred pieces!
Uh... pretty sure if we go back into the archives, you'll see that sort of discussion here from back in the day about BG1&2. You probably took part in some of them.
Well... ok. Is it that my perception check failed, or your bluff (jokes) check failed?
vibes.
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/knights-of-the-chalice-2-thread-augury-of-chaos.86951/I would buy this if there was an option to turn off "story," avoid all premade companions, all dialogue, and essentially just turns the game into a pure combat sim.
Same goes for the Pathfinder games too.
In fact, I'll be adding this feature in my next game. Why don't AA/AAA studios do the same?
Imagine being proud of the writing in any of these games.
I actually totally agree with you (well, outside of the optimism about writing/story) - I think it'll be fun and worthwhile. Whether or not it satisfactorily ties back to BG1&2 is something I'm curious about, but it's relatively irrelevant to me. Outside of that, I just want to see if there's something in the quality of the final game + sales reception that helps push bigger budget RPGs so the genre fully runs the gamut from small indie whatevers to big budget presentations along with all the graphical bells and whistles (and probably cinematic focus, because, really...).
No.
This isn't the argument. Yes, it's all high fantasy trash, but BG1 builds up to the high end of said high fantasy whereas BG3 throws you right into it in the opening cinematic. And no, BG2 isn't a counterargument, since it's carrying on with the same protagonist that you've already presumably spent 40 or more hours with, the narrative context is there.
I don't think that's the reason for it, I think it's just a more general trend of inflation in modern fiction. Larian went this route because they believe that's what the zoomer audience wants right out the gate lest they lose interest and scroll away on their TokTiks or whatever. And they may be right in that respect, I can get why they'd go for it, but that doesn't absolve the end result from being poor writing.
Actually, PFKM is how you do it right, at least in this respect. It's not that the writing in general is strong, the core conflict is quite rote when you come down to it, but the way the plot progresses from sellsword hireling to mythical king, from the contextually mundane to the supernatural, is excellent.
*I* didn't. That's just Rusty being his usual contrarian self.
My bad, this thread runs fast, got mixed up in all the moving parts.
Here you go, bud. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adderall
No, you're just all over the map. I agree with you that BG3 will probably be fun. I disagree with you that standard fantasy needs saving, cannot be done, and the only viable future is full of the Michael Bay ADHD simulators that you seem to crave. Try some meds, then go re-play BG1.
I tend to agree with you and I suspect it will always be that way. But it's why I find efforts to break out of it (e.g. BG3, DA:O, Mass Effect trilogy) to be interesting.
