ps. Just some random follow up thoughts, and a couple things I found particularly curious, mainly about my own viewing habits when it comes to this sort of stuff I suppose. First would just be how much I enjoyed it generally, cause that's never a given. I mean that a game might be as fun to watch as it is to play. There aren't all that many games which hold up like that for me, and of the ones that do they're almost always exclusively RPGs. To me this makes a certain sense, because there are particular movies and shows that I can return to, and watch and rewatch several times (classic adventure flicks from childhood, period dramas, or high fantasy films or sci fi for example) and others where I'm less inclined to do that (say sitcoms or pop comedies for me, or maybe like news or sports or current-eventy things from last year) where the returns are maybe diminishing. Sometimes games are similar to that for me, with some games just feeling timeless, whereas others feel more attached to the current moment in time somehow and a bit fleeting. Clearly BG is in that timeless classic category for me, where it just improves with age and never really loses that edge. Like hanging up the Xmas lights or eating comfort foods at some particular time of year, I'm always pretty into it.
Following on that last point, the second thing that surprised me in this case, was that the whole EE aspect didn't really bug me, or at least, not nearly as much as I thought it might. I'm a bit of a BG purists and probably an OG snob when it comes to the various enhancements, so of course I would probably have loved it even more if she was running BG1 off a ToSC CD like time travelling back to the late 1990s hehe, but there are practical considerations for ease of use there which make it understandable. Mia is an engineer and clearly a gamer since she was young, like to me that is immediately apparent, so I could totally picture her building a PC with an optical drive to do just that, but then I know it's a bit of a tall order. Battling the OBS dragon and just getting all the tech to work, I'm pretty sure there's some reassurance in being able to do all the various things with font scaling or UI tooltips and that sorta stuff, operating in the background and up to spec. Also I'm pretty sure the EEs were going on special too, like free to Steam it up with the whole saga for just a couple coppers on store credit, so that's pretty hard to argue with right there. Also I mean who even knew that this new voice set with the unfamiliar barks would grow on me so quickly? lol
I know it's one of the new EE default voices there, but whateva Gov, I can still get into it, because she makes it work so well on the fly! Kinda similar for me to watching that EE tutorial play out, compared to just Candlekeepin' it oldschool with the tutorial from 1998. I know the old one worked well enough for me at the time, but 20 some odd years out, I can see why they thought it might be a good idea for the crash course there. Am I a little nervous about EE NPCs intruding on my nostalgia? Well sure, but that's a trade off I am fully willing to indulge, just to hear all the other BG1 stuff narrated out with such gusto, and in all the many accents, by Mia Foo! It's the BG1 support narration I never knew I needed! But now I'm so hooked! lol
I had to take a timeout from Ranger danger in BG3 honours, Glinda Hamilton and Barnold the Badger are still chillin in the dugouts, cause I was having so much fun watching Isobel make those big plays in the BG1 VODs!
It's what I really wanted from BG3 honestly, just to have more of those BG connections and that sense of legacy carried over from the first BG games. The ones I fell in love with way back in the day. Of all the BG3 super stars, she really stepped up to the plate on that one and knocked it out the park. I was totally blown away!
I feel like she deserves her own Action Figure or Painted Mini for doing this. Like a Lens mini fig, with battle action quills! Magic stones and a sling, even though those don't exist in BG3 for some reason. The champions Belt! For me anyway. I love em all, obviously, but special place in the heart now for that one. Like over the Moon hehe. Had me firing up the old saga again for the first time in a while
