Amongst others I’m currently playing Baldur’s Gate 3 in coop mode.
I absolutely love it (I’m also a huge fan of Dragon Age Origins, so no surprise here).
I just wish cut scenes wouldn’t just start playing as soon as one of the players walks into them. Especially since the game is so dense with content (we are still relatively at the beginning though, maybe that changes later on).
I know with most dialogs everybody has the option to listen, but often you’re still going to miss the beginning of the conversation. A “wait for other players” button or something like that would be great.
Right now my mind is being blown away by Baldur’s Gate 3. It’s not the type of game I’d get into since I tried Divinity Original Sin 2 and couldn’t get more than 6 hours into it without feeling like I was stupid. I am bad at the combat system, but it more than makes up for it in Baldur’s Gate when you learn more about the Lore and character development. Their writing reminds me of Witcher 3, and that’s probably the last great single player game I’ve played recently aside from Elden Ring.
Because of scheduling conflicts, I wasn’t able to continue my coop playthrough with a friend until today, so I started a solo campaign, and put in about 40 hours last week.
Because I’ve only seen people falling over themselves, talking about how this game is the second coming of Christ, here a few relatively minor issues I have with it.
The camera is terrible. There’s constantly something in the way and the game isn’t smart enough to know that I don’t really want to move to the stalactite thirty meters above me, just because it was in my way in the middle of the screen. Cramped spaces are probably the worst, walls everywhere, and you have to do constant 180s with the camera to see every corner.
I usually don’t mind inventory management, but I hate it in this game. I’m definitely to blame as well, since I just pick up everything, but it’s always such a pain to organize through everything. The sorting options aren’t that good, and sometimes stuff feels completely random. Also, (unless I’m missing something) why can’t you access the inventory of your companions, that aren’t in your party?
Why is the pathing still ass in this game, it’s the third one Larian made in this style. My characters just love walking into traps (that I’ve discovered) or shit on the ground. It’s just really fun to micromanage four characters, just so they can get safely through a few mines or don’t take a 50 cm shortcut through a patch of fire. I think Divinity had at least an option to pause the game, when you found a trap, so you might have a chance to change the course, but this is missing in this game.
Lastly, I wish your companions were more involved, when you have a conversation with someone. I could be deciding the fate of the world with my choices, but Astarion is just T-posing behind me (not literally, but you get what I mean). At least an occasional line when the “X character approves / disapproves” notification pops up would be nice.
I still have a great time and enjoy the game, but some of these things have existed since the D:OS games, so it’s a shame they still aren’t improved.
I definitely agree about your companions chiming in on conversations. Maybe I've just been spoiled by games like Mass Effect and the like, but the lack of input seems like an obvious problem to me.
Even BG2 had more interjections from your party members than BG3 I think, and I get that it was mostly text but still, that was 23 years ago. In BG3 someone sometimes adds a comment at the beginning or end of a conversation, but it seems like they rarely if ever butt in in the middle.
The whole “X Approves/Y Disapproves” definitely feels a little telling, not showing and I wish they would comment on what’s going on instead, even if it was only recycling a handful of general comments from a pool.
Playing through BG2 now, the interjections are rare and don't really budge the flow of the conversation in any direction. It's a very small amount of color to inform you of their personalities.
Oh it was definitely rare that an interjection would actually change the outcome of the dialogues, but that color and flavor you mentioned does a lot to make characters feel more alive. Same goes for the way party members just randomly start conversations when walking around in BG2.
Worth noting I always play with the Gibberlings Fixpack installed. IIRC the vanilla game is really sensitive about party members having to be physically close to the talking NPC to interject into dialogues.
Been going through Borderlands 3. The general planet trotting is a weird way to introduce new environments instead of just saying Pandora has more than one climate. Shooting is entertaining, and the twins are somewhat amusing villains - though the story does retread the old trap of “Oh no, the big bad villains just killed [powerful named character], we can’t stop them!” too often for a game where I will only get bigger guns.
Played a little bit of Death’s Door. Its a good isometric action game and the way the world was crafted stands out very well. There’s something about the way everything looks, and how enemies stay dead after you defeated them, which makes the whole landscape eerie and unpleasant, even if overall the game doesn’t seem to be quite depressing.
Picked up Guardians of the Galaxy again, with the intent of finishing it off for real. The game is surprisingly very good, but also quite slow. They clearly wanted to give a lot of time for characters’ back and forth, which isn’t bad given that the game spends a significant amount of effort making them likable and investing in their growth but it also makes the game as chatty as your average RPG but with less interactions. Looks fantastic and has surprisingly good writing.
Considering giving Original Sin 2 a retry given all the current Larian hype.
I really loved the system used in Firewatch. It was similar to the Telltale system where you have a set of dialogue options, a limited time to respond, and silence is a valid option, but the game didn’t “pause” to let you choose. You could continue walking around and explore your surroundings during these conversations, which is very nice in a game about walking around in the woods. It also took into account context from earlier conversations to make later ones feel more specific and personal.
The developers gave a great talk about the dialogue system in GDC17: youtu.be/wj-2vbiyHnI
Well, I, like many many, others am playing Baldur’s gate.
But, honestly, I still find time for ol’ trusty falconBMS. (It’s a tiny but very loyal playerbase, thinking about starting a page for it on lemmy somewhere)
the witcher 3 is great It shows short sentences but Geralt doesn’t exactly say that and usually develops a little more. If you are impatient, you can choose a simple sentence and skip the talking without losing the general meaning. You can also listen to the whole thing.
I recently enjoyed playing yet another zombie survivors and it was a blast, cheap and at least a weeks worth of grinding to unlock all the goodies. Also you only need the WASD keys so you should be set with your broken arm.
The dialogues are super fluid and dynamic. You can interrupt people and even steer conversations towards other topics with your choices. Conversations are in realtime. Dialogues feel so natural, you really should look it up if game dialogue design is something you find interesting.
The ‘Thought-Bubbles’ do have a bit of a weird timing. I have to have chosen what to answer before the others are done talking most of the time. It’s not always optimal. The voice acting, though, is out of this world.
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