What game are you currently playing?

[Antimatter]

Thanks for sharing the source.

First of all, the video is from August 30, and there were patches already addressing many of Act 3 "glitches".

The first part of the video is about an NPC that got stuck due to a bug. Not that great, but it was a bug. Another bug happened when he tried to loot the place - it registered as a theft (due to the bug). In the words of Gale, that "must be avoided". It's just a bug.

Then he mentions a bug with the dialogue flow - I believe these issues were fixed and mentioned in the patch notes.

He proceeds with a situation regarding the quest flow - well, yes, in a complex RPG for 300 hours, there are certain cases when it's unclear you should do quest Y before quest X, it doesn't happen too often, but yes, you might stumble upon such a situation, and might reload a bit of content.

The last section before the spoiler part was about the game's difficulty and him mentioning it was too much. Well, he played on Normal, and judging by the video of a fight vs Giths, he played poorly. If anything, BG3 difficulty could get some increase.

In the spoiler part, he says it's intended for you to use the Illithid powers. While there are indeed - in the version of the game that was released - no consequences for NOT using them (and I criticized that a lot), it's NOT intended to use them. If anything, designers intended to put those consequences, but that content was cut (which is a bigger topic - I put a link in the BG3 thread about the details). So it's not about an intention - it's about the last-minute decision to change something about content that resulted in the tweaked approach towards Illithid powers. There is no "acknowledgment" of the player being 100% good and not using the powers not because of the intentional design, but because of the development cut a few months before the release.

Just as anything else in this game, everything, including this Illithid power situation, is for the player to decide. Nothing comes as a "preferable" option. It's your story and your choices.

As for Act 2 ending with the Mindflayer, there is a choice for the player to kill the Mindflayer if you really want to. From what you should have learned about the Mindflayer until then, you - as a good person - shouldn't be using an approach "I see a mindflayer - I kill it". Sorry, but it's not a good way to behave. "I don't negotiate with goblins" is a rather bold and hardly justified approach - it's very fanatic. It's true though, that if you kill the Mindflayer, it's a game over there. Similar to you resisting the arrest in the Candlekeep in BG1 because those dudes are wrong and you didn't kill Rieltar - you get a game-over screen.

The reality of it is that it's not the point of the game to make a choice: the Mindflayer or some other guy. This choice will happen at the end of Act 3. And you as the player will have MUCH more information at that point, much more knowledge and background about the Mindflayer and everything. It's not the choice for Act 2. And definitely, at that stage, you don't have ANY means to release the person the streamer mentioned - in Act 3 you'll learn you need a very powerful artifact for that. So it's ... exactly the situation when the streamer doesn't tell you the whole story.

And then he discussed the Act 3 ending. Yes, then when you actually have the artifact and release the person, this person now becomes your weapon against the Absolute, not the Mindflayer. That's why you don't die there (I haven't played until this stage, but it's not spoilery for me as it's obvious from what I've seen in the game). It does make sense, unlike what the streamer says, because it's exactly the person who can protect you.

 

[BelgarathMTH]

@Antimatter , Thank you for taking the time to watch and respond to the video's points. It sounds like a lot of the streamer's problems were bugs that have since been patched, as you say, and that his objections to the end of Act 2 may have come from misreading the situation, or from a misunderstanding.

 

[Cahir]

@BelgarathMTH I've watched a movie, a couple of comments from my side:

(Non spoiler section first)

• He mentioned a slew of bugs in act 3. As @Antimatter mentioned, this may have been truth when this guy played the game, but Larian have fixed literally hundreds of bugs, and my experience of act 3 is that I encountered only one bug that gave me pause, but turned out it was just a journal bug, that showed me I learn certain passphrase when in fact I didn't. Other than that, this was a surprisingly bugless experience, given the scale of this game. So basically, if you start BG3 in current state, it's really a seamless experience. Even performance is improved dramatically and believe me, I know, I have a first-hand experience of act 1 now, when I started my second run. The game plays much smoother than before any of the major patches.
• Regarding difficulty - I agree with @Antimatter that difficulty could be cranked up a bit. I played on Tactician and I feared I'll be in a big trouble, the same way I was playing DOS2. It turns out, it wasn't bad at all. In fact, I didn't have much trouble while fighting in act 1 and 2 (with few exceptions that were more challenging), but in act 3 difficulty seemed to spike significantly. My main gripe is more that the difficulty is not spread evenly through the game. Even in act 3 alone, some fights (that supposed to be hard) went surprisingly easy for me and other encounters turned out to be really hard. The thing is that encounter design is one of the best I've seen in crpgs. The set-up, environment, enemy placement and AI... all that is really great. So, I think the only way to increase the difficulty would be to add more enemies to the fray. I learned the most difficult fights were the ones with 10+ number of enemies.

(Spoiler section incoming)

• Regarding the "impossible choice" in act 2, if you think about in one-dimensional way as "killing mindflayer = death, not killing = living", without taking into account all the facts and understanding, why killing him means game over, then yeah, this may seem like an issue. But playing this game like that ruins 90% of the fun. This is a perfect game to roleplay a character, but roleplay not in the sense "I like evil, I play a mindlessly evil character all the time, or I play lawful good and kill everything that I know may have a word "evil" in alignment, without giving it a second thought", but in the sense of acting based on the game events and other character actions or assessing all intel and how it could affect your character actions. This is not the type of "game over" when you are surprised to see that some random dialogue choice resulted in death, and you don't exactly realise why, but a conscious decision that you will be warned many times before not to take. Of course, you don't need to trust the words of character that gave you this warning, but this doesn't mean it was not sound. Also, he said he doesn't like the fact that he was put into the position of "embrace the dark side, or you will die". Again, if you think about mindflayer = dark side, without thinking about the context and the story, then yeah, it's an impossible choice. But what if this mindflayer is not bad? Just, what if? Another thing that made me puzzled is how the heck this guy knows what is canonically compliant and what it isn't? I mean, the canon is what you choose it to be. Heck, I DIDN'T embrace the dark side, and the game played FANTASTIC all the way to the end.
• Regarding the usage of illithid powers - it's hard for me to judge that fully, because I didn't use them at all. And I haven't felt my character is gimped in any way. I simply refused to use them (in the sense of unlocking the illithid powers skill tree) and I only used the illithid themed dialogue response only a couple of times in the game. I'm currently playing the game for the second time as the Dark Urge and I intend to utilize those powers heavily, to see how it plays. I will be able to assess this point more, when I embrace this possibility. But yeah, you can completely skip this part, if you feel it's repulsing and still have all the fun from BG3. I do think, this is a rather unnecessary addition to the game, I'd rather Larian to explore more of the story consequences of using illithid powers rather than giving players a new gameplay toys. On the other hand, why should you benefit from not using illithid powers? And how should you benefit? By having a non-illithid skill tree instead? That would be as far-fatched as giving players the illitid skill tree in the first place. The guy complains the game does not acknowledge you don't use illithid powers. But how people other than your companions should know you even were presented with this possibility? It's not common knowledge. So how should the world reward you with not using those powers, if they couldn't know you were tempted to do so.
• Regarding the end of act 3, you have a choice to save person Antimatter mentioned or help the mindflayer. There is a choice. I helped this guy, but only because I cared about one particular character in my team, not because helping this particular mindflayer was repulsive. And I'm pretty sure you can help this particular mindflayer without turning into a one yourself. To be honest, neither choice feels particularly "good" or "evil", again giving all the knowledge of the matter in hand. The game gives you enough hints to avoid turning into a squid or to experience a particularly bad ending that will result in your death or the death of your companions. As I wrote in my previous post, none of my companions died, even if there were quite a lot of moments they could (not talking about dying in combat).

 

[BelgarathMTH]

@Antimatter, thank you so much for taking the time to examine my source and to give such a detailed, fair, and balanced response. You've definitely started me on a path to being eventually willing to try the game for myself. It's still a bit pricey for my budget, but it won't always be. (Hello, Santa Claus, are you there? It's me, Todd. )

One of your points is especially striking to me - I *love* the idea of making a choice for Good for its own sake, when there's absolutely no reward for doing so, and every reward you can imagine for starting down the Dark path. That's the core of my personal morality and ethical philosophy, and the source and channel of my connection to "God", if there is such a thing in real life.

Some people say the evil path in Baldur's Gate One and Two has few or no rewards. I don't see it. I think those people have a much looser and/or rationalized definition of "evil" than I do.

I never get the Mace of Disruption because I won't rob people's inn rooms. I never get Crom Faer because I refuse to make a sacrifice on a demonic altar to get the necessary belt. There are many quests in Baldur's Gate City I will never complete because I'd have to break and enter random homes to get them. Or be a lackey for the Baldur's Gate City Thieves' Guild. Etc., etc. I get no benefit whatsoever in-game for making those decisions, and I lose lots of opportunities and power gain. I do it simply because I perceive it as Right, and it brings me joy and peace to always do the best I can to choose Right and not Wrong - even in a game.

 

[Cahir]

Some people say the evil path in Baldur's Gate One and Two has few or no rewards. I don't see it. I think those people have a much looser and/or rationalized definition of "evil" than I do.

I never get the Mace of Disruption because I won't rob people's inn rooms. I never get Crom Faer because I refuse to make a sacrifice on a demonic altar to get the necessary belt. There are many quests in Baldur's Gate City I will never complete because I'd have to break and enter random homes to get them. Or be a lackey for the Baldur's Gate City Thieves' Guild. Etc., etc. I get no benefit whatsoever in-game for making those decisions, and I lose lots of opportunities and power gain. I do it simply because I perceive it as Right, and it brings me joy and peace to always do the best I can to choose Right and not Wrong - even in a game.

All right, before I go any further, let me start by saying I do want to convince you to play BG3, because I consider it as an absolute masterpiece of a game (even if not flawless), but I also do want to be honest and informative of what you can expect while playing this game. So, having said that.

If you really want to experience this game and have a blast, you need to go above of judging characters (especially potential companions) by the first look, things like race or the deity they pray for. If you can get past the fact that Astarion is a vampire spawn (so, evil tainted creature), Lae'zel is githyanki (a race that is inclined to be evil), Karlach is a tiefling (so, also a race tainted with Infernal influence), Shadowheart is a follower of Shar (so, an evil deity) and Wyll is a warlock (so, he had to sign the pact with powerful infernal creature to get his powers) you will learn none of those characters are really evil. Not in a way Montaron, Xzar, Korgan or even Edwin are. Yes, this may sound shocking given how much effort Larian put to persuade people to try to go evil rout during the Early Access, but I say this with full conviction. But let's dissect this a tiny bit, without spoiling much. I'll try to give you a bit of perspective about companions, that could be perceived as evil at a first glance, but in fact are not:

• Astarion is a victim, a tormented creature bound to do evil things for his master - he is suffering, practically begging for help, while hiding under the irritating presence he shows you to meet him. He wants revenge, and he's willing to do bad things to have it, but you can also persuade him to not do any of those bad things, you can persuade him to be a better person. And this seems to be a theme for almost all joinable companions in the game. You can influence their behaviour a lot.
• Wyll had his reasons to sign a pact with an evil being, to get his warlock powers, but those reasons were not evil. He got himself caught in a difficult spot and will do an awful much to untangle from this. But this awful much doesn't need to be anything evil. He can be saved using a good-old heroic ways. Or he can be doomed, depending on how you play.
• Karlach, ah, a sweet Karlach. Even being a tiefling, coming straight from Avernus, I'd say she is the most good-aligned character in the game, even considering druid characters, Halsin and Jaheira. She is in a grave, life-threatening position, but she wants to live. Badly. She wants to live, love and be loved. Simple as that. And it's heartbreaking and heart-warming at the same time, watching her to fight for those things. Before patch 2 she didn't have a proper closure, which caused a lot of backlash towards Larian. And I don't think she could be saved initially. But after the patch, she got a closure, and I can say with full conscience, it was one of the most enjoyable moments in the whole game. BUT, this was just one of the outcomes, her ending can be completely different - devastating. Again, as I said in previous posts, Larian offers an unprecedented level of freedom in how you shape the story. An unreal level of freedom, if you ask me.
• Lae'zel, my fierce warrior. Well, she is githyanki and she acts like githyanki. She is one of her kind, to the core. Which means, you want to kill her on sight, because she is intimidating, cocky and blunt. BUT, she definitely is not a fanatic, she is surprisingly reasonable and not above taking a truce with whom she considers an enemy. If you establish a good relationship with her, she turns into a fiercely loyal companion. I'm not saying she is completely good, but she's nothing like regular githyanki, who loathes primates (Prime Material inhabitants) and are generally violent people. She and Astarion were the two companions that completely surprised me during the game. Positively surprised.
• Shadowheart. You learn pretty quickly that she is a follower of Shar, which alone can be disqualifying for the good-aligned party. But if you play with her in the team a tiny bit, you learn there's something off about her. He speaks Shar's truths, but (at least to me) she doesn't sound convincing. She approves some actions, you would think Shar follower would not approve and approve others that you would totally expect she will do so. It's confusing, but not without merit. I'll tell only that you as a player has a fundamental influence of how her story ends and who does she become. Just before, some of those grave choices require passing a high DC rolls (which may be off-puting to some).

As for Gale, Halsin Jaheira, Minsc (why, oh why, he can be recruited so late), I'm pretty sure you won't find evil in them, even at the first glance. And then there's Minthara, a one truly evil soul from the bunch. I specifically didn't mention her, because recruiting her requires to kill or antagonize a bunch of good folks, so this option is definitely a no-go to you.

To summarize, this lengthy post, you really need to get past your initial judgement (which can be negative in many of the above cases) and try to learn those companions, because I assure you, any of those guys and gals can be a "good" guy. But, if you expect them all to be "crystal good", without even a tint of evil, then you simply won't enjoy BG3, which I truly and honestly would be saddened to hear.

 

[Xzarloxara]

@BelgarathMTH I also cannot bring myself to play evil options in games like this, and I certainly have no complaints. I have only gotten through most of act 1 and I can say that there are already plenty of options for doing good in BG3. Plenty of people in the game are in trouble and can be helped out. While you cannot always save everyone you can still help out and save a lot of people who are in genuine need. You can even avoid some fights entirely if you are skilled at diplomacy or persuasion.

As far as the companions go, none of them are perfect saints, as has already been stated, but many of them indeed seem to be genuinely nice people that prefer doing good. I especially like Gale and Wyll so far. Karlach seems quite nice too. Even if you don't like any of the main characters or companions, you have the option to recruit hirelings which don't really have any personality at all.

BG3 really is a great game and I think your worries are somewhat unfounded. There is plenty of good that can be done in the game and the companions aren't as bad as many people say they are.

 

[O_Bruce]

I am going to play BG3, sooner or later, but I will be honest with you guys. Ever since the early access, from what I heard about companions and romances, let's say I am more or less convinced these are people I wouldn't like hanging around IRL. Most likely, not even one of them. The fact all of them are potentially romantically interested with anything remotely resembling humanoid, without hints of individual preferences makes me think of them as less of a fully realized characters than they should be.

I am hoping to be wrong, but time will tell.

 

[BelgarathMTH]

Thank you all again for all the insightful feedback and suggestions.

@Antimatter , I didn't mean to derail this thread topic with a BG3 discussion. I mean, it kind of fits "What I'm playing now" for a lot of people, but I'm not sure if it's really on-topic. Would it be good to maybe split out the last few posts starting with my first post where I asked about BG3, and make it its own thread in the BG3 sub-forum? Maybe call it "Help me want to play BG3", or something like that.

 

[Cahir]

I am going to play BG3, sooner or later, but I will be honest with you guys. Ever since the early access, from what I heard about companions and romances, let's say I am more or less convinced these are people I wouldn't like hanging around IRL. Most likely, not even one of them. The fact all of them are potentially romantically interested with anything remotely resembling humanoid, without hints of individual preferences makes me think of them as less of a fully realized characters than they should be.

I am hoping to be wrong, but time will tell.

Let me honest with you in return @O_Bruce, judging companions and romances based on others opinions, without experiencing this content by yourself, will give you a false picture of their personalities and how romance will play out. I've seen many inaccurate opinions about BG3 in the past, that paint a bad and unwarranted picture of the game.

Now, about your concerns, let me describe how I feel about romance and why I think some of your concerns have merit (although I think our concerns are just subjective matter in the end).

• There was a serious issue with incorrect romance triggers in early release builds, that resulted in various companions offered sex even in situations where you didn't grow enough relationship with them. This was very awkward. Fortunately, turning down their approaches made them give up. But more importantly, one of the patches fixed those bad triggers and this bug is now gone. Recently I started the second run with drow Dark Urge and I can confirm this bug is gone, I haven't had a single sexual offer from my companions so far, which is good, given that I haven't grown enough relationship with any of them yet.
• I'm not unsympathetic with your concerns about companions willing to romance characters that look completely alien (like dragonborn or githyanki in most cases), especially if there is no dialogue difference between them romancing someone from their own race and one of those "beastly" races. I'm personally leaning towards giving a player some sort of race/gender romance restrictions myself, but an equally acceptable solution would be just giving more romance dialogue options for more unusual race/race romance combinations, something to make eg. Shadowheart romancing dragonborn more believable. Another option could be to tag a romance dialogue options, so a player who plays a "beastly" race could avoid the awkward situations of having a sex encounter with a more humanlike companion (if of course this is bothersome for them). I realise that restricting romances to specific race and gender would lock a lot of players of experiencing romance option, so I wouldn't really ask for such feature, but some actions to make such romances more believable would be welcomed.
• I've experienced only one romance so far, with Shadowhert, and I have a completely different issue with it. The problem for me is that the romance content was spread too thin across the game. It could basically be squeezed in 15-20 minutes. The result was that there were a huge portion of time when there was no romance progress at all. The flow of the relationship was not very good. I'd like to also refute the quite common claim that nudity and sex is the main selling point of BG3. There is no more nudity and sex than eg. in Dragon Age: Origins (the game released in 2009) and in fact, if you skip all the sexcapades the game has to offer and focus only romancing with one companion, you may be disappointed. I've had just one sex scene with Shadowheart, and it wasn't even close to hardcore. I think those claims come from the simple fact that the game shows you a static view of genitals, which is not common in computer gaming. And I mean static view, because you won't see any of such details during sexual encounter, those are directed in a surprisingly sensible (for some even too sensible) way. You won't find this falsely claimed horniness in BG3.

 

[Antimatter]

Would it be good to maybe split out the last few posts starting with my first post where I asked about BG3, and make it its own thread in the BG3 sub-forum? Maybe call it "Help me want to play BG3", or something like that.

It's ok for the discussion to stay here, don't worry.

I am going to play BG3, sooner or later, but I will be honest with you guys. Ever since the early access, from what I heard about companions and romances, let's say I am more or less convinced these are people I wouldn't like hanging around IRL. Most likely, not even one of them. The fact all of them are potentially romantically interested with anything remotely resembling humanoid, without hints of individual preferences makes me think of them as less of a fully realized characters than they should be.

I am hoping to be wrong, but time will tell.

I have to agree with @Cahir here. Almost all BG3 companions could be my best friends in RL, they're well-written and feel real. Probably still not on the level of Cyberpunk 2077 characters such as Judy or Panam, but very close.

We probably need to create "Let's debunk BG3 myths" or "BG3 Mythbusters" threads though. Too much info, too much buzz around this game led to all sorts of opinions circulating everywhere. And NO single YT video, no single review, no single post can actually explain the game to you as if you were really playing the game yourself. It is fair for my and Cahir's posts as well, I realize that. Lots of media outlets had thousands of clicks for BG3 bear sex scene posts and whatnot, about companions being horny, about sex being everywhere etc etc.

It's not like that, like, totally, though, in the game. There was a bug with the relationship progressing to sex too quickly in the release version (as you can probably tell at this point, the game had many bugs, but the issue is that the game is so vast and complex that even these bugs, sometimes major ones, didn't hamper the overall impression of the game). Now this bug is fixed.

It's true you can see your genitals if you undress your character doll. You can do that for all party members. But the sad (for me personally) truth is that there is not enough sex in the game. A bit like in CP2077, it's sometimes all just smoke and mirrors. I wouldn't have minded more adult stuff because the game already has murders, blood, and everything. I too was romancing Shadowheart, and the first sex scene (and the only! and yes, not hardcore at all) happened after I spent 250 hours in the game (yes, I play slowly and try to see everything, that's why it took so long)... There are a lot of dialogues though, you get to know your companions. Shadowheart is also one of those people who don't rush this part, and need to get to know you really close. It felt very genuine and appropriate for her personality. Some others get it quicker, but it is always explained by their personality.

It's impossible to express what you as the player should be supposed to understand from 50, 100, 150 hours of playing the game, watching the companions, talking to them, and hearing them banter with other party members, in any stream or review. Game designers and writers created these stories, and worked on them for the player to gradually experience them, they didn't create them to be fully understandable in just 2 hours.

In the original BG2 game, dwarves as MC couldn't get any romance. If you created an elf, you couldn't romance Viconia. This always felt very restricting to me, very limiting, and very discriminating. In Skyrim, you couldn't romance some races depending on your race, sometimes it led to literally 1 option or no options at all. This felt bad, especially when I thought that these games were supposed to immerse me into their fantasy worlds.

That's why I will always appreciate game designers not walling the romance behind a certain race.

So I definitely hope as well that this initial impression you had, @O_Bruce, won't turn into reality.

 

[Cahir]

Since I'm replaying BG3, this will be more on-topic, and I really wanted to share my experience of playing the Dark Urge.

So, here's the plan I had for this run. I wanted to try the Dark Urge this time, but my plan for this character was that he starts as a noble paladin (a seldarine drow), who will struggle with his dark urges and fight them passionately, until he can't anymore and turn into an oathbreaker paladin). The main problem that laid down before me was that I knew I would have a lot of trouble of forcing myself to act violently or even in a brutal way. But choosing all the good-aligned options would contradict the idea of playing Dark Urge. While I struggled to find a good way of roleplaying Durge without forcing myself to do horrible things, one small event made me realised Larian designers are geniuses and gave me the exact idea how I'll do it. (Very minor spoiler ahead) While I was exploring Druid's Grove I stumbled upon a familiar squirrel with whom I remember was talking in my first run. While I tried to talk with it, the dark urge activated and my Durge kicked the poor thing to death. And then an epiphany came. That's it! I can use those urges as a turning points, a some sort of milestones to gradually plunge into a dark side.

I stopped playing and gave this notion a more time to process. Normally, I would not be happy that a game forces some unwanted behaviour that I cannot control in any way, but to my utmost surprise, this is the perfect way to roleplay the Dark Urge. Most people are (fortunately) goodhearted, so it's not uncommon they will have a lot of trouble acting violently towards innocent characters, so Larian designers needed to find a way to give the player a nudge to act accordingly to their origin. I think this is the perfect way, especially that it's as shocking to the character as it is to a player. My character literally roleplayed the emotion with me. This really was a surreal experience to me, we were one at this moment, we were both shocked and terrified what we have done. This is why I consider this second run already more exciting than the first one, not because I can play evil and "evil is sexy", but because I can relieve some unwanted emotions with my character. Not only me, but also companions were shocked about the event. Even Astarion was uneasy, seeing what happened, and he saw a lot of nasty things in his undead life.

During one of his interviews, Swen Vincke said something, that I thought was surprising at that time. He recommended to not play as the Durge First in your first playthrough, because it tastes better when you already know the story and can compare the outcomes. And you know what? He was 100% spot on, it does taste better. It's like totally new experience.

Now, here's a very important disclaimer. Please don't treat this post as my attempt to convince you to play as an evil character, let alone the Dark Urge who revels in violence and bloodshed. This is rather an attempt to appreciate fantastic work of Larian designers. If you ever wanted to try roleplaying an evil character, but the games you played did not offer a satisfactory experience, whether because the options didn't feel evil enough or the rewards were inferior to those you got from choosing a good route, BG3 is probably as close to perfect dark side experience as you can possibly get right now. And I really just scratched the surface, and didn't ever start using tadpoles.

 

[Antimatter]

I finished the Astarion questline in BG3 and I feel rewarded and justified in all my talks over the last few years that original Early Access companions in BG3 are not evil. Astarion's ending in my game is good and kind, it's the most positive thing a person could do in his situation.

This must be one of the most touching stories for companions ever written, and that is me saying having Mass Effect and Dragon Age companions in mind.

And the quest has one final conclusion cutscene, it felt like a short movie that could be nominated for an indie cinema award. I wanted to literally get through the screen and hug Astarion.

Of course, now that I know how it ends, I will never be able to look at the character differently. A fresh new player might react to Astarion's introduction differently, but now when I know, I can double down on my previous opinion here. His story is about redemption, soul, and what truly defines who a person is.

P.S. It also helps that the actor (Neil Newbon) is an awesome person who streams BG3. He even gets all the other actors to play with him. And he actually plays the game really well. He nerds out, just like any of us. You can tell he really loves the game.

Check out this interview with Neil Newbon about Astarion - goes deeply personal about him there:

BG3: Neil Newbon Talks Astarion Being More Than a Pretty Face

Neil Newbon, the voice actor behind Astarion, talked with The Escapist about playing the character in Baldur's Gate 3 (BG3).

www.escapistmagazine.com

 

[m7600]

I'm currently playing Stranded Deep. Pretty fun game, I like it.

Spoiler

 

[Cahir]

I finished the Astarion questline in BG3 and I feel rewarded and justified in all my talks over the last few years that original Early Access companions in BG3 are not evil. Astarion's ending in my game is good and kind, it's the most positive thing a person could do in his situation.

This must be one of the most touching stories for companions ever written, and that is me saying having Mass Effect and Dragon Age companions in mind.

And the quest has one final conclusion cutscene, it felt like a short movie that could be nominated for an indie cinema award. I wanted to literally get through the screen and hug Astarion.

Of course, now that I know how it ends, I will never be able to look at the character differently. A fresh new player might react to Astarion's introduction differently, but now when I know, I can double down on my previous opinion here. His story is about redemption, soul, and what truly defines who a person is.

P.S. It also helps that the actor (Neil Newbon) is an awesome person who streams BG3. He even gets all the other actors to play with him. And he actually plays the game really well. He nerds out, just like any of us. You can tell he really loves the game.

Check out this interview with Neil Newbon about Astarion - goes deeply personal about him there:

BG3: Neil Newbon Talks Astarion Being More Than a Pretty Face

Neil Newbon, the voice actor behind Astarion, talked with The Escapist about playing the character in Baldur's Gate 3 (BG3).

www.escapistmagazine.com

Fully agree, Astarion and Lae'zel are two characters that evolved the most in my eyes throughout the game, starting from being irritating and not likeable, to becoming a flesh and blood character. I'm still not happy how they cut Astarion's content, which was apparent with Cazador's mansion, but his quest himself was really well done.

But when it comes to acting, all characters were fantastic, and this is truly a next level of quality.

 

[Antimatter]

I'm currently playing Stranded Deep. Pretty fun game, I like it.

Spoiler

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That's really great! Crafting/Survival games just have that feeling that you can play at your own pace and enjoy the views.

I played Stranded Deep a few years ago, liked it for all the island-hopping. One thing that felt weird is that it was difficult to find stones (boulders) for crafting, they were limited.

 

[Chronicler]

Bought Persona 5 for Switch. I'm an hour and a half into it and having a super good time. Haven't jived with a game like this since maybe highschool.

The story isn't afraid to get theatrical in flamboyant ways. I feel like a lot of modern games are all muted colours and stoic leads and stuff, where these Phantom Thieves seem to be intentionally incorporating showmanship into their heists and a villain just showed up wearing nothing but a King's Cape and Crown.

The Battle system is classic Turn Based fair, with mechanics based around figuring out the enemy's weakness and then capitalizing on it. But it looks like it probably gets pretty involved as it goes on. Right off the bat I'm noticing they're giving me weird elements like "curse" and some attacks cast from my hitpoints.

It's... surprisingly adult? Not necessarily in the sense that it seems emotionally mature or anything but there's been a lot of swears and a sexual assault scene and the game's barely started.

The map is kind of hard to navigate. It feels very much like a real modern city. I had to get off the subway just to transfer to another subway. My immediate reaction is that the verisimilitude is actually a little off putting but maybe as I spend more time in the setting it'll grow on me.

 

[Urdnot_Wrex]

I had BG3 shelved for a while because I wanted to enjoy it when I can fully focus on everything. It's not the right game to unwind from stress after a long workday or something. I have made that mistake in the past, to overshadow the experience of a good game by rushing through parts or overlooking things, because I just wanted to continue it. Not going to happen now.

So what I did was immerse myself for quite some time in Elder Scrolls Online again, because I love the lore of that universe and the game is so rich with it, but at the same time the gameplay is fairly simple, there are daily quests etc and the regional story quests are more or less linear and can be put on halt and picked back up later any time, so that was a nice way to spend time even when my mind wasn't up to more.

Here's Felis'nocturnus, my Khajiit Nightblade, in her newest armour:

and another slightly older picture with her face uncovered

I played through the main storyline of the Aldmeri Dominion and the Coldharbour main quest. The latter has the charming and funny knight Cadwell, voiced very fittingly by John Cleese:

Also, without picture, the Prophet of the main storyline is voiced by the great and unforgettable Michael Gambon, mostly known for his role as Dumbledore, may he rest in peace.

I really like the reactivity of the game. Now that I have done a few important quests, when I travel to completely different regions, sometimes people comment on it. Like a guard in Rimmen, Elsweyr, whispering when I pass by "People say Lord Gareshi-ri freed Haven from pirates, but this one knows it was you" or a random soldier somewhere in Skyrim congratulating me for clearing out some dreadful dungeon etc.

Speaking of Skyrim, after meeting Lyris Titanborn in the main storyline and accidentally picking up a Prologue quest I decided to do the Greymoor chapter, which includes the regional stories of Western Skyrim and the Reach (Markarth DLC), which was a really nice experience. The story characters are well written and the areas look so nice, reminded me of playing Skyrim.
I had already made contact with House Ravenwatch in Rivenspire, but now I met more people of the family and was even included.

Fennorian was a companion in Western Skyrim, an adorable scholar and very funny in combination with the big and tough Lyris Titanborn, and then in the Reach of couse the great Count Verandis Ravenwatch himself, founder of the house.

Both areas, Western Skyrim and The Reach, have beautiful landscapes and interesting people, and yes, MMOs can have well-written characters and questlines.
The Summerset story for example already had an ending that made me cry, and after the Reach and the finale of that chapter, I felt at least the same, and when I was offered to carry the name of the house, I was really touched and now my five-clawed Nightblade proudly bears the title "of House Ravenwatch".
I think I'll eventually create a new character simply to be able to replay those storylines and interact with those people again.

I also upgraded my skills and gear enough to solo a few of the easier 4-man-group dungeons and will maybe get into more veteran stuff. I have joined a guild but I only chat a bit for advice and use the trader to sell some stuff, I'm too shy to join group events with strangers. Maybe later when I'm more familiar.

But right now I feel like playing in the Elder Scrolls world when I want to relax without having to use my brain too much. For this weekend I have the feeling it might be time to finally get back to Baldur's Gate 3, there are people waiting for me at my camp after all.

Here are some more postcards from ESO, first one is my smallest house starting to be prepared for New Life Festival:

And some impressions from the Blackreach, basically Tamriel's Underdark:

 

[m7600]

I'm currently playing Magic: The Gathering Arena. It's free to play, though it has some in-game purchases, but I'm not going to buy anything. I'm using my Steam account for this (which I almost never use), since I couldn't get the game to work on WINE or Lutris.

The game looks quite decent from what I've seen so far.

 

[Skatan]

Trying out D4 that is free to play on Steam until November 28. Just played an hour so far so it's great to have some more days to try it out since I've been on the fence about buying it for quite some time now. I hope to get some odd hours today and maybe tomorrow and then hopefully a longer session on saturday to get a real feel for the game.

 

[Urdnot_Wrex]

Hehe... Grace in Stray Gods calling her friend a nerd and reproaching her that real life isn't D&D when she gets excited about going into a mysterious forest with her, and the reply.

Also, talk about mood swings:

Conclusion:

Spoiler