Well, no. I mean using other characters while one is in a conversation. During conversations, there are some buttons in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen. One of those will allow you to swap to another character. You will then be able to do whatever you wish with those characters while the original character is in their conversation.
If you wish to use a different character for a conversation, you can simply start the conversation with the given character.
I politely disagree. Baldur's Gate III teaches you absolutely nothing about its rules and systems. You are expected to discover the rules and systems on your own. Things like crowd control, the actual numerical advantages of height, and repositioning while in dialog are never explained.
It is the most frustrating aspect of Larian games, imo.
All consumers want it fast, want it cheap, want it good, want it on their machine, want it maintained in perpetuity, want it small, and want it to load quickly. Nevermind that a number of those are diametrically opposed ideals.
I'm not sure anyone is having an issue retaining employees. Top employees, perhaps, but for a lot of businesses you don't need very many brilliant (and expensive) employees. Any competent soul will do. On that score, I can assure you that the game industry has no shortage of folks looking to get in to the industry.
I know a handful of developers (read: far too many) who have been fired for vocally disagreeing with management.
I'm not sure what you're on about but he wasn't complaining about Spider-Man 2. He even said if a game is 1P, then he's fine with any settings a player wants.
His complaint was about competitive games and I think it's a fair complaint (albeit a bit off topic) I don't think it's in your (or anyone else's) purview to tell others what games are or aren't about nor how seriously they should take their games.
We have entire competitive (and, imo, friendly) communities centered around competition and the notion that the rules are the same for everyone.
As I see it, it's a confluence of things which have captured the zeitgeist:
Larian D:OS games have been very well received.
Baldur's Gate and the Infinity Engine games are beloved.
Final Fantasy XVI, the big JRPG for the year, is squarely an action game and some view that as off-kilter. Baldur's Gate 3, the big CRPG for the year, is squarely an RPG.
D&D is a big property and new D&D games often gain a fair bit of attention.
People seem to appreciate having no in-game purchases.
These five things, in my opinion, have pushed Baldur's Gate 3 to the front of media outlets and, in turn, to the forefront of conversations.
I'm a former game dev and I can tell you, at least from my experience, there was no golden age where developers and customers were treated fairly. It's the primary reason why I left. Hell, I once interviewed at a place that showed off how the offices had beds in them, as if that was a selling point.
That said, I'd probably be someone who you'd consider "doesn't care about the bad things these companies did." I'm just too fuckin' old to be mad about shit all of the time. If I was only going to patronize folks and companies who matched my own set of ideals and ethics, I would be more than just gameless. I would be homeless and penniless as well.
What I do is simply detach products and services from those who provide them. I can buy a thing from a person I find distasteful. I don't have to invite them out for a drink and I certainly don't have to avoid taking them to task for their poor or unethical behavior. Moreover, ethics and behavior are saleable. If someone comes around who offers something comparable to something from someone I find distasteful, then I can go patronize the new person instead. I have jumped ship from many service and product providers for that very reason. If you want my business, then you better ensure you're either the only person who can provide what I want or ensure you're the person I want to buy from.
Just to try the stave off an inquisition against multi-lingual support, the extreme filesize isn't because you're downloading different "language packs". The extreme filesize is because, for whatever reason, they decided to package up five entirely seperate copies of the game in five different languages. You are, in fact, downloading Fallout 3 in its entirety five times.
I couldn't get in to this game, myself. Granted, due to that, I've only played about an hour of it but this game felt much more like a Visual Novel than an RPG, to me. Stats seemed to have no bearing on anything other than what the narrative decided they have a bearing on. It was therefore, very difficult to figure out who my character was. Otherwise, you're just clicking on things and reading reams of text.
I get that they were trying to go for a more tabletop version of an RPG but without a DM, I find that near impossible to translate 1:1. I would have preferred a more Baldur's Gate approach to the game.
Not everything can be easily compressed to significantly smaller sizes. In fact, for any random arrangement of bytes, finding one that is compressable by any significant amount is rare.
Well, understand that it doesn't really play like a Souls game at all. That said, I'd probably just wait for the new one if you're excited for it. If not, either AC4 or AC5 would probably be the way to go. The early games didn't map camera movement to the right stick; so, I would avoid those as a newcomer.
AC4 plays a lot more "super robot-y" than the other games. AC5 has much smaller mechs by scale which makes terrain and cover much more important tactical considerations.
Nor I. Honestly, I'd rather have a wealth of options I can play and never do rather than having a giant fuckin' chore list for something that is not supposed to be a chore.
I don't have to "get through my backlog" because it's not a backlog. It's an option set.