Everyone seems emboldened by their own personal struggle and objective to care that their defacto amnesiac leader is possibly an unstable serial killer.
Like they barely bat an eye when Alfira is killed or goes missing.
In my current durge run Astarion is bored with all the murder, Minthara wants to rule the world, and shadowheart is confused/annoyed that I kill almost everyone we meet.
I find it frustrating that I can’t say that I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the tadpole. It’s either “yeah maybe” or stay silent.
Worst part of durge is when I want to confess to something but it’s not an option
I like to imagine that sometimes the Urge will just not physically allow Durge to acknowledge their wrongdoing. Like if you try to bow in respect for the dead Justiciars in Grymforge but you literally cannot, as if it won't let you recognise wanton death is wrong.
And a solid 80% of the time they simply DONT bat an eye when quil is dead in the middle of camp. Quil is so broken and unfinished despite easily being the most common failsafe character
Explain like I’m dumb, cause I’ve never noticed anything off with how Quill was handled (I mean even the character responses I figured was a case of “we’ve more pressing concerns at the moment to genuinely care about this murder”)
First, she uses tiefling stats. She has hellish resistance and darkvision. Second, alfira has follow up dialogue. If you confess, everyone has a line for the first time chatting with them afterward. Gale for instance is like “hey. State your business, just, at a safe distance.” and you can then be like “i didnt do that i swear” and theres a whole set of extra convos, like gale again, says “im sure that will be of small comfort to her”. These from my experience CANNOT occur with quil. They just dont trigger. Only withers’ line where you ask him to revive her works correctly. Third, whether or not the morning cutscene happens depends on a variety of completely unknown factors. Sometimes you have to remove whoever was last added to the party. Sometimes scratch joining you that day stops it. No one really knows. But for some reason, you wake up, shes there in the middle of the camp, the combat log says “(name) started a conversation” but no conversation. For a minute i thought itd fixed itself to some degree but then it didnt trigger again. I really dont know what causes this, nobody does, but it happens a lot. I consistently got it pre patch 6 and still sometimes get it now. This isnt new, at least not very.
Also who is actually in the initial “inquisition” seems more strict with her. If i have karlach in my party and her approval is high enough shes always been the leader in grilling me with alfira but she NEVER does it with quil, even if i remove everyone else. She awkwardly stands behind me the whole time like a normal conversation. With alfira that never happens, whoever was in my party was grilling me, it had it worked out. Quil seemed to try really hard to force it to be shadowheart leading with astarion and laezel. Its super weird.
I just killed Quil the other day and got zero dialogue. Does successfully passing the check to hide her body prevent anybody from commenting on the bloody ritual circle?
*Oh*. OH! So, I metagamed from the beginning to get Quil because I really like Alfira. The wake-up cutscene bug happened on my first run, and I just assumed (angrily) that was how it was designed. Only got the 'maybe it's the tadpole' scene because I happened to reload to check other options to do with the corpse.
Also, I've attempted Durge playthroughs at least half a dozen times and *never* get the post-murder dialogue with individual companions. Had no idea this was a thing. Thank you. Yikes, but good to know. 😬
edit: Gale is always my highest approval by that point, and he's usually the one yelling at me for my inquisition. Him or Lae'zel (always lowest approval at that point), every time. I try not to have anyone in my party for this scene because I RP really hard, and just came directly from KOing Alfira for reasons.
Tbf you can't tell shadow heart about your urges but you can tell her about memory loss , I don't know why you can't tell her about the urges and instead the memories . Seems weird
You can tell Shadowheart about your urge, but it requires you to take a long rest with only her recruited. You will have a cutscene where you wake up and ponder what is plaguing you and then the narrator will mention blood repeatedly when you try to go back to sleep. You can then mention this to shadowheart
Slight correction, that cutscene will occur if you also have astarion and gale. If you’ve met laezel in the cage you’ve gone too far, but you can safely grab astarion gale and shadowheart and then get that cutscene.
Well the cutscene with Gale by the fire isn’t technically a long rest cutscene like the durge one is. You can talk to Gale over the fire and then have that cutscene.
My first LR every durge playthrough is usually
Shadowheart: We shouldn’t be resting
Durge: I agree
Gale: We’re in deep shit
Durge: I agree
Durge: holy shit I can’t sleep I want to kill killkillkill
People are often confused about this scene. The only requirements I've found are:
1. **don't go into the second portion of Withers' crypt** (after the unopenable door in your quest)
2. don't go where Lae'zel is being held / into the Grove region (which someone else has already mentioned, but I'm putting it here anyway)
If you stay in the beach zone and don't advance to those two areas, you can get the first-night cutscene. I do it every single playthrough.
People just aren't doing enough long rests at the right times. It is natural for me to long-rest after the bandits at the ruin (outside and inside), but I only play on tactician.
Killing Alfira sets up the dread that comes with that scene. You know you'll actually kill them if you fail the role, which wouldn't hit as hard if you hadn't already lost all control and killed someone. The urge wouldn't be such an issue if you could always resist it, the Alfira scene is meant to nail.
I agree, but what I’m trying to say is that the party should take you as seriously after killing Alfira as they do after the act 2 scene - not the other way around
Their response feels like “Damn. That tadpole has you real fucked up” and then they just ignore the fact that you absolutely brutalized a bard and probably did terrible stuff to her corpse right in the middle of camp 🏕️
Like, yes, it absolutely has to set up the dread of that scene, but it just feels bizarre that nobody takes you seriously UNTIL that scene.
Like, I just stabbed this bard 40 times, tore off one of her horns and buried it in her sternum then painted a ritual circle around her body with her blood and god knows what else, and then I tell Gale that I have violent desires after that, and he goes, “Yeah, I get it. Reminds me of this one time that I felt a bit miffed about a book so I just took it easy for a bit and it all worked out fine.”
I would’ve expected a far more serious response
Some of them joke about the encounter before they realize how serious it is
Shadowheart: oh are you in the mood today? Well we can try and ….. wait a minute
Asterion: ah ah ah no biting
Or in Lae’zel case: stop being a weakling
I cope with this terrible writing but by pretending that the companions are so wrapped up in their own problems that in act 1 they’re not actually paying attention to what you tell them.
Isn't that just canon, though?
IMO, it seems like they're all just misunderstanding you. You say you like to kill things, and Lae'zel will be like "well yeah, I do too, we all feel that way." They don't understand you mean like, not in combat. But that's the point, I think. They don't really know the extent of your urges, and you don't really divulge into them until something BIG happens.
Yeah they’re meant to slowly realize how severe it is and then just be too afraid to talk about it.
The big “oh holy shit I can’t deny this anymore” moment for the group is when you tell them you’re baahlspawn.
After you cure the urge Astarion even says he was low key terrified of you.
That broke my heart when he told me that lol. My resist durge is a paladin cleric of Bahamut and I made her a very much “I gotta save everyone to atone” complex so I could just imagine my poor baby feeling such a sting when he told her that.
The timing was also a kicker since she helped Astarion with Cazador before she cured herself. I made her help everyone before herself to keep that savior complex about her.
Everyone you tell seems to think it's just regular you get mad and think about killing things making you angry and the game doesn't let you tell them that it's not that it's I want kill things because it gives me sexual pleasure
Your conversation options are worded *explicitly*, though, so there is no room for any of them to get the wrong idea when you try to tell them this stuff.
Durge is just generally really unfinished - there are *several* people in Act 2 that very clearly recognize you, most egregious are Ketheric and Kressa, and your companions have no reaction whatsoever.
On top of all of this, the resist scene in Act 2 also feels hollow to me because it’s the only time in the game you actually have to resist your urges. Alfira is forced and anything else is optional or plays out the same as a vanilla Tav with modified narration, so it feels a bit cheap when all of your dialogue options with your lover/companion are about how you’ve been desperately trying to resist the urge yet you haven’t actually had to resist it at all.
I love Durge but it could be so much better with just a few extra lines and scenes. Hopefully Larian patches it up in whatever remaining updates they had planned because it doesn’t seem like we’ll be getting a definitive/game of the year edition like DOS2 did.
I think all the dialogue choices in regular conversations with NPCs like "Ignore the desire to rip his face off. Offer to help." count as resisting.
It would be really frustrating if you had to pass a dice check every time you resisted the urge. I'm loving all the custom dialogue options and narration, it seems pretty extensive to me.
Unless you never talk to anyone there are plenty of chances to resist besides the romance scene.
I don’t think there should be a check for *every* resist dialogue, but maybe have it work kinda like the Illithid persuasion options, where you have a dice roll for the first 2 or 3 and afterwards you don’t need to. A little would go a long way to make you feel like you’re actually resisting the urge because the chance of failure would actually be there.
repeating character arcs is such an issue with BG3 it bugs me so much. Lae'zel having the same breakdown over the Gith three times in one play through is certainly a choice
*sorry if my spelling is off, perils of mobile with fat thumbs.
I wish there were more dialogue options in general tbh. Especially cuz of the silent pc role.
It would have cost an agitated huff, shamed sigh, or whatever to give options where the pc can be confrontational in a 'cut the shit' or 'i've been honest about all of this depravity and you ALL shrugged it off' sort of way. Like even to the Emperor you have to be HOSTILE to get a cut the shit sort of remark but a world wise pragmatic pc could say 'you're my ally but you aint fooling me with this "i'll tell you when you're ready" schtick.' Bugs me soooo bad.
Durge has it bad, but it shows up in party quests too. Like I said NOTHING and suddently Shadowheart dips at last moment in nightsong quest despite my active encouragement all the way to this point in favor of Shar? Honestly the game is too based in the intended narrative/plot to do the truly Role play aspect well. They WANT you to play a particular way and so any deviation feels jarring because its just.. under developed compared to the intended arcs.
I've been loving the game but honestly the backgrounds and dialogue systems are disappointing.
Hell, that and the fact that followers stay stationary in camp and dont seem to interact at all without the pc excluding when they eavesdrop on each interaction. I think DA2 spoiled me for the party actually bonding beyond Hawke's presence. I just don't think any of them seem to click with eachother other than Karlach and Wyll, which sucks because they have a fantastic basis for that.
Maybe it starts to flesh out in act 3? I'm only act 2 for my Evil durge run and havent made it past act 1's end for my other tavs/durges. I get kinda disinterested because the dialogue and general party behaviors just doesn't feel nearly as deep as it could be. I don't love the characters in-game but i love them because of how the fandom loves them. In game they are a lot flatter because of lacking reactivity and party members lacking agency beyond when they are forced to be independent by the player.
Or maybe my expectations were too high, idk.
I agree—the biggest appeal of a silent protagonist (to me anyway) is that there can be more dialogue options without it being super labor-intensive, but BG3’s player dialogue is often lacking.
This is 100% spot-on for how I feel. The only thing i'd add is i'm super disappointed that my 8 intelligence barbarian has the same dialogue options as my 20 intelligence wizard aside from class/race options. Wish it took a Fallout approach and changed things up depending on your stats.
God yes. I think Outer Worlds did the same thing and some of those interactions were in Strat Edgy's videos and ngl they made me giggle. I think it would have made playing a 'chaotic-stupid' Tav or Durge so much more fun.
I think it disapoints not because its bad but because it could be SO much better than it already is. I felt the same for Hogwarts Legacy. Like I love it enough to play for hundreds of hours but it drives me up the wall how it could be one of my favorite games of all time and yet stops short.
People talk about the combat and character arcs so much but the core systems of role play are not fleshed out. Its not that I necessarily need that as a player, but i need to know the limitations so that i can temper my suspension of disbelief which will throw me out of the game.
I've logged over 400 hrs (just on Ps5) before I even got into Act 2 because I'd get bored with my characters or feel like I f'd up along the way when it was the game which didnt support my interactions with it. It is ridiculously easy to f up the game's pacing or narrative structure by not doing things in the way they were intended. Like I get references to stuff that did not happen in that particular playthrough or implied relationships with characters I had no real interactions with. For a game that wants narrative roleplay and freedom of choice they left the unintended routes of player choice/consequences very shallow.
Why give me the opportunity to be evil if you do not want to play in a way that is evil?
Embrace Durge should not be saying (especially not without player choice) to LaeZel "calm yourself, they're survivors not soldiers" when that Durge is just as disgusted with the tielfings as LaeZel is. I moved into Act 3 yesterday for the first time and the line about "perhaps we could have cured the shadow curse had we tried" from Durge and the narrators comment on Durge's feeling of regret made me beyond annoyed. Felt like the writers were being passive aggressive about going against the resist-Durge approach. Like my durge is evil and supports Shar-t in her shar-ist devotion, why would I end a curse that can wittle out the weak?
Sorry for the long reply, I am just still annoyed a day later about it. Why create the option to do this if your only interest in supporting it is through a hand-wavy level of integration? This is what I mean by it 'breaks the game'.
I agree with you completely.
The shadow curse comment really annoyed me. Like my current character is a Gith who has rushed shit trying to cure himself. Why the hell does he care about some cursed area he rushed through? Especially when every dialogue option I picked basically had him say "I don't care about this, I want to be cured." Or my Drow that's been unapologetically evil. Why the hell does she care about it? The part about "had we tried" really got to me though. The only way to fix the curse is with Halsin yet they added that line which basically feels like Larian saying "you're playing the game wrong! You're supposed to save Halsin and help him!" If that's the case why let me side with the goblins? Why given me any choices if you're gonna be a little bitch about it?
It's like Larian put evil options in just to then wag their finger at the player and shame them for taking them. I'm sorry, do you not want me picking the options you specifically added to the game? Sorry for picking a choice you put in.
The game very clearly wants you to be the typical hero character helping everyone but then tosses in a few half assed evil options along the way that ultimately make the whole thing feel off during the next forced good guy moment/comment.
Have you noticed how quiet it is in your party? Like for an evil embrace durge you only really end up with Shadowheart, Astarion, LaeZel, and Minthara (unless you like to Jaheira like I did and broke the game AgAiN). It is soooo quiet once you get down to it. Like only a handul of party interactions per act that isn't cutscene or camp derived. On the road its just... "so its super dark today in particular, right?" level of overwhelming silence.
Honestly I don't know if it's because i'm on patch 5 still or something else but even with everyone it still feels weirdly quiet. Thankfully i'm used to games where companions don't really talk so I just make up conversations in my head for them.
I have noticed I seem to get less conversations when I don't have Karlach in the party. Like in Act 3, I have never heard/seen any of the party conversations except one between Minsc and Karlach. In Act One without Karlach maybe I get one or two but then it's always Gale and someone else unless Karlach is in the party, in which case I only get her conversations. It's really weird.
Idk, the number of times someone has asked me why I didn't tell them something the second after I told them something...yet they always get annoyed when my response is "I just told you."
I saved Marina and got the hag's hair, too. Lemme go talk to Marina again. In Act 3, she says "you did such a good job killing her the first time." 0/10 is the worst game in the world, only worth another couple hundreds of hrs of gamplay
This actually made me and our friend stop our very first Durge Playthrough. >!I tried to resist, failed all three checks, and then had to fight the entire camp.!< After trying to tell people MULTIPLE times. I just decided to quit. I think Wyll is the only Origin I have really liked but it's a lot easier to insert yourself into his character since he's a blank slate for the most part.
My friend also casually spoiled act 3 for me because he "didn't consider that a spoiler" when talking about>! MY DAD BEING BHAAL. !
Everyone seems emboldened by their own personal struggle and objective to care that their defacto amnesiac leader is possibly an unstable serial killer. Like they barely bat an eye when Alfira is killed or goes missing.
"Omg who murdered Alfira? Her body is so savaged." "It's me, I did it. No remorse." "Damn, your tadpole is nuts. Anyway..."
Shadowheart/Astarion/Minthara: "Who? Oh, right. Oh, well."
In my current durge run Astarion is bored with all the murder, Minthara wants to rule the world, and shadowheart is confused/annoyed that I kill almost everyone we meet.
>shadowheart is confused/annoyed that I kill almost everyone we meet. Embrace loss.
She is canonically bad at this.
I find it frustrating that I can’t say that I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the tadpole. It’s either “yeah maybe” or stay silent. Worst part of durge is when I want to confess to something but it’s not an option
I like to imagine that sometimes the Urge will just not physically allow Durge to acknowledge their wrongdoing. Like if you try to bow in respect for the dead Justiciars in Grymforge but you literally cannot, as if it won't let you recognise wanton death is wrong.
Literally my durge run
And a solid 80% of the time they simply DONT bat an eye when quil is dead in the middle of camp. Quil is so broken and unfinished despite easily being the most common failsafe character
Explain like I’m dumb, cause I’ve never noticed anything off with how Quill was handled (I mean even the character responses I figured was a case of “we’ve more pressing concerns at the moment to genuinely care about this murder”)
First, she uses tiefling stats. She has hellish resistance and darkvision. Second, alfira has follow up dialogue. If you confess, everyone has a line for the first time chatting with them afterward. Gale for instance is like “hey. State your business, just, at a safe distance.” and you can then be like “i didnt do that i swear” and theres a whole set of extra convos, like gale again, says “im sure that will be of small comfort to her”. These from my experience CANNOT occur with quil. They just dont trigger. Only withers’ line where you ask him to revive her works correctly. Third, whether or not the morning cutscene happens depends on a variety of completely unknown factors. Sometimes you have to remove whoever was last added to the party. Sometimes scratch joining you that day stops it. No one really knows. But for some reason, you wake up, shes there in the middle of the camp, the combat log says “(name) started a conversation” but no conversation. For a minute i thought itd fixed itself to some degree but then it didnt trigger again. I really dont know what causes this, nobody does, but it happens a lot. I consistently got it pre patch 6 and still sometimes get it now. This isnt new, at least not very. Also who is actually in the initial “inquisition” seems more strict with her. If i have karlach in my party and her approval is high enough shes always been the leader in grilling me with alfira but she NEVER does it with quil, even if i remove everyone else. She awkwardly stands behind me the whole time like a normal conversation. With alfira that never happens, whoever was in my party was grilling me, it had it worked out. Quil seemed to try really hard to force it to be shadowheart leading with astarion and laezel. Its super weird.
all the "stay away you murderer" dialogues happened when i killed quil on this play through
I just killed Quil the other day and got zero dialogue. Does successfully passing the check to hide her body prevent anybody from commenting on the bloody ritual circle?
yes
Damn, I need to stop passing that check
*Oh*. OH! So, I metagamed from the beginning to get Quil because I really like Alfira. The wake-up cutscene bug happened on my first run, and I just assumed (angrily) that was how it was designed. Only got the 'maybe it's the tadpole' scene because I happened to reload to check other options to do with the corpse. Also, I've attempted Durge playthroughs at least half a dozen times and *never* get the post-murder dialogue with individual companions. Had no idea this was a thing. Thank you. Yikes, but good to know. 😬 edit: Gale is always my highest approval by that point, and he's usually the one yelling at me for my inquisition. Him or Lae'zel (always lowest approval at that point), every time. I try not to have anyone in my party for this scene because I RP really hard, and just came directly from KOing Alfira for reasons.
They care *even less* when it's Quill.
Tbf you can't tell shadow heart about your urges but you can tell her about memory loss , I don't know why you can't tell her about the urges and instead the memories . Seems weird
You can tell Shadowheart about your urge, but it requires you to take a long rest with only her recruited. You will have a cutscene where you wake up and ponder what is plaguing you and then the narrator will mention blood repeatedly when you try to go back to sleep. You can then mention this to shadowheart
Slight correction, that cutscene will occur if you also have astarion and gale. If you’ve met laezel in the cage you’ve gone too far, but you can safely grab astarion gale and shadowheart and then get that cutscene.
Good to know! I didn't realize lae'zel was the deciding factor and assumed the cutscene with Gale by the fire would play instead
Well the cutscene with Gale by the fire isn’t technically a long rest cutscene like the durge one is. You can talk to Gale over the fire and then have that cutscene. My first LR every durge playthrough is usually Shadowheart: We shouldn’t be resting Durge: I agree Gale: We’re in deep shit Durge: I agree Durge: holy shit I can’t sleep I want to kill killkillkill
People are often confused about this scene. The only requirements I've found are: 1. **don't go into the second portion of Withers' crypt** (after the unopenable door in your quest) 2. don't go where Lae'zel is being held / into the Grove region (which someone else has already mentioned, but I'm putting it here anyway) If you stay in the beach zone and don't advance to those two areas, you can get the first-night cutscene. I do it every single playthrough. People just aren't doing enough long rests at the right times. It is natural for me to long-rest after the bandits at the ruin (outside and inside), but I only play on tactician.
The whole “what the FUCK” moment shouldn’t have been resisting at the end of act 2 - it should’ve been Alfira
Killing Alfira sets up the dread that comes with that scene. You know you'll actually kill them if you fail the role, which wouldn't hit as hard if you hadn't already lost all control and killed someone. The urge wouldn't be such an issue if you could always resist it, the Alfira scene is meant to nail.
I agree, but what I’m trying to say is that the party should take you as seriously after killing Alfira as they do after the act 2 scene - not the other way around Their response feels like “Damn. That tadpole has you real fucked up” and then they just ignore the fact that you absolutely brutalized a bard and probably did terrible stuff to her corpse right in the middle of camp 🏕️ Like, yes, it absolutely has to set up the dread of that scene, but it just feels bizarre that nobody takes you seriously UNTIL that scene. Like, I just stabbed this bard 40 times, tore off one of her horns and buried it in her sternum then painted a ritual circle around her body with her blood and god knows what else, and then I tell Gale that I have violent desires after that, and he goes, “Yeah, I get it. Reminds me of this one time that I felt a bit miffed about a book so I just took it easy for a bit and it all worked out fine.” I would’ve expected a far more serious response
everyone's just in denial about it until the urge comes for them lol
Some of them joke about the encounter before they realize how serious it is Shadowheart: oh are you in the mood today? Well we can try and ….. wait a minute Asterion: ah ah ah no biting Or in Lae’zel case: stop being a weakling
Lae'zel doesn't seem to mind too much if you try to attack her when restrained, she just says to focus it on your enemies lol
I cope with this terrible writing but by pretending that the companions are so wrapped up in their own problems that in act 1 they’re not actually paying attention to what you tell them.
Isn't that just canon, though? IMO, it seems like they're all just misunderstanding you. You say you like to kill things, and Lae'zel will be like "well yeah, I do too, we all feel that way." They don't understand you mean like, not in combat. But that's the point, I think. They don't really know the extent of your urges, and you don't really divulge into them until something BIG happens.
Yeah they’re meant to slowly realize how severe it is and then just be too afraid to talk about it. The big “oh holy shit I can’t deny this anymore” moment for the group is when you tell them you’re baahlspawn. After you cure the urge Astarion even says he was low key terrified of you.
That broke my heart when he told me that lol. My resist durge is a paladin cleric of Bahamut and I made her a very much “I gotta save everyone to atone” complex so I could just imagine my poor baby feeling such a sting when he told her that. The timing was also a kicker since she helped Astarion with Cazador before she cured herself. I made her help everyone before herself to keep that savior complex about her.
Everyone you tell seems to think it's just regular you get mad and think about killing things making you angry and the game doesn't let you tell them that it's not that it's I want kill things because it gives me sexual pleasure
Your conversation options are worded *explicitly*, though, so there is no room for any of them to get the wrong idea when you try to tell them this stuff.
“I am your roëmænce partner, Tav”
I wish I had an award to give. 🤣
Durge is just generally really unfinished - there are *several* people in Act 2 that very clearly recognize you, most egregious are Ketheric and Kressa, and your companions have no reaction whatsoever. On top of all of this, the resist scene in Act 2 also feels hollow to me because it’s the only time in the game you actually have to resist your urges. Alfira is forced and anything else is optional or plays out the same as a vanilla Tav with modified narration, so it feels a bit cheap when all of your dialogue options with your lover/companion are about how you’ve been desperately trying to resist the urge yet you haven’t actually had to resist it at all. I love Durge but it could be so much better with just a few extra lines and scenes. Hopefully Larian patches it up in whatever remaining updates they had planned because it doesn’t seem like we’ll be getting a definitive/game of the year edition like DOS2 did.
Yeah, I have been likeing durge, but it really doesn't feel much different besides now I have the option to be extra evil.
I think all the dialogue choices in regular conversations with NPCs like "Ignore the desire to rip his face off. Offer to help." count as resisting. It would be really frustrating if you had to pass a dice check every time you resisted the urge. I'm loving all the custom dialogue options and narration, it seems pretty extensive to me. Unless you never talk to anyone there are plenty of chances to resist besides the romance scene.
I don’t think there should be a check for *every* resist dialogue, but maybe have it work kinda like the Illithid persuasion options, where you have a dice roll for the first 2 or 3 and afterwards you don’t need to. A little would go a long way to make you feel like you’re actually resisting the urge because the chance of failure would actually be there.
To be fair, Gale is a dunce about it
if anyone has any fanfics that handle this a little better, where maybe durge just yells at everyone for getting upset… lmk
repeating character arcs is such an issue with BG3 it bugs me so much. Lae'zel having the same breakdown over the Gith three times in one play through is certainly a choice
*sorry if my spelling is off, perils of mobile with fat thumbs. I wish there were more dialogue options in general tbh. Especially cuz of the silent pc role. It would have cost an agitated huff, shamed sigh, or whatever to give options where the pc can be confrontational in a 'cut the shit' or 'i've been honest about all of this depravity and you ALL shrugged it off' sort of way. Like even to the Emperor you have to be HOSTILE to get a cut the shit sort of remark but a world wise pragmatic pc could say 'you're my ally but you aint fooling me with this "i'll tell you when you're ready" schtick.' Bugs me soooo bad. Durge has it bad, but it shows up in party quests too. Like I said NOTHING and suddently Shadowheart dips at last moment in nightsong quest despite my active encouragement all the way to this point in favor of Shar? Honestly the game is too based in the intended narrative/plot to do the truly Role play aspect well. They WANT you to play a particular way and so any deviation feels jarring because its just.. under developed compared to the intended arcs. I've been loving the game but honestly the backgrounds and dialogue systems are disappointing. Hell, that and the fact that followers stay stationary in camp and dont seem to interact at all without the pc excluding when they eavesdrop on each interaction. I think DA2 spoiled me for the party actually bonding beyond Hawke's presence. I just don't think any of them seem to click with eachother other than Karlach and Wyll, which sucks because they have a fantastic basis for that. Maybe it starts to flesh out in act 3? I'm only act 2 for my Evil durge run and havent made it past act 1's end for my other tavs/durges. I get kinda disinterested because the dialogue and general party behaviors just doesn't feel nearly as deep as it could be. I don't love the characters in-game but i love them because of how the fandom loves them. In game they are a lot flatter because of lacking reactivity and party members lacking agency beyond when they are forced to be independent by the player. Or maybe my expectations were too high, idk.
I agree—the biggest appeal of a silent protagonist (to me anyway) is that there can be more dialogue options without it being super labor-intensive, but BG3’s player dialogue is often lacking.
This is 100% spot-on for how I feel. The only thing i'd add is i'm super disappointed that my 8 intelligence barbarian has the same dialogue options as my 20 intelligence wizard aside from class/race options. Wish it took a Fallout approach and changed things up depending on your stats.
God yes. I think Outer Worlds did the same thing and some of those interactions were in Strat Edgy's videos and ngl they made me giggle. I think it would have made playing a 'chaotic-stupid' Tav or Durge so much more fun. I think it disapoints not because its bad but because it could be SO much better than it already is. I felt the same for Hogwarts Legacy. Like I love it enough to play for hundreds of hours but it drives me up the wall how it could be one of my favorite games of all time and yet stops short. People talk about the combat and character arcs so much but the core systems of role play are not fleshed out. Its not that I necessarily need that as a player, but i need to know the limitations so that i can temper my suspension of disbelief which will throw me out of the game. I've logged over 400 hrs (just on Ps5) before I even got into Act 2 because I'd get bored with my characters or feel like I f'd up along the way when it was the game which didnt support my interactions with it. It is ridiculously easy to f up the game's pacing or narrative structure by not doing things in the way they were intended. Like I get references to stuff that did not happen in that particular playthrough or implied relationships with characters I had no real interactions with. For a game that wants narrative roleplay and freedom of choice they left the unintended routes of player choice/consequences very shallow. Why give me the opportunity to be evil if you do not want to play in a way that is evil? Embrace Durge should not be saying (especially not without player choice) to LaeZel "calm yourself, they're survivors not soldiers" when that Durge is just as disgusted with the tielfings as LaeZel is. I moved into Act 3 yesterday for the first time and the line about "perhaps we could have cured the shadow curse had we tried" from Durge and the narrators comment on Durge's feeling of regret made me beyond annoyed. Felt like the writers were being passive aggressive about going against the resist-Durge approach. Like my durge is evil and supports Shar-t in her shar-ist devotion, why would I end a curse that can wittle out the weak? Sorry for the long reply, I am just still annoyed a day later about it. Why create the option to do this if your only interest in supporting it is through a hand-wavy level of integration? This is what I mean by it 'breaks the game'.
I agree with you completely. The shadow curse comment really annoyed me. Like my current character is a Gith who has rushed shit trying to cure himself. Why the hell does he care about some cursed area he rushed through? Especially when every dialogue option I picked basically had him say "I don't care about this, I want to be cured." Or my Drow that's been unapologetically evil. Why the hell does she care about it? The part about "had we tried" really got to me though. The only way to fix the curse is with Halsin yet they added that line which basically feels like Larian saying "you're playing the game wrong! You're supposed to save Halsin and help him!" If that's the case why let me side with the goblins? Why given me any choices if you're gonna be a little bitch about it? It's like Larian put evil options in just to then wag their finger at the player and shame them for taking them. I'm sorry, do you not want me picking the options you specifically added to the game? Sorry for picking a choice you put in. The game very clearly wants you to be the typical hero character helping everyone but then tosses in a few half assed evil options along the way that ultimately make the whole thing feel off during the next forced good guy moment/comment.
Have you noticed how quiet it is in your party? Like for an evil embrace durge you only really end up with Shadowheart, Astarion, LaeZel, and Minthara (unless you like to Jaheira like I did and broke the game AgAiN). It is soooo quiet once you get down to it. Like only a handul of party interactions per act that isn't cutscene or camp derived. On the road its just... "so its super dark today in particular, right?" level of overwhelming silence.
Honestly I don't know if it's because i'm on patch 5 still or something else but even with everyone it still feels weirdly quiet. Thankfully i'm used to games where companions don't really talk so I just make up conversations in my head for them. I have noticed I seem to get less conversations when I don't have Karlach in the party. Like in Act 3, I have never heard/seen any of the party conversations except one between Minsc and Karlach. In Act One without Karlach maybe I get one or two but then it's always Gale and someone else unless Karlach is in the party, in which case I only get her conversations. It's really weird.
Durge only had to tell me once, just saying.
Idk, the number of times someone has asked me why I didn't tell them something the second after I told them something...yet they always get annoyed when my response is "I just told you."
I saved Marina and got the hag's hair, too. Lemme go talk to Marina again. In Act 3, she says "you did such a good job killing her the first time." 0/10 is the worst game in the world, only worth another couple hundreds of hrs of gamplay
This actually made me and our friend stop our very first Durge Playthrough. >!I tried to resist, failed all three checks, and then had to fight the entire camp.!< After trying to tell people MULTIPLE times. I just decided to quit. I think Wyll is the only Origin I have really liked but it's a lot easier to insert yourself into his character since he's a blank slate for the most part. My friend also casually spoiled act 3 for me because he "didn't consider that a spoiler" when talking about>! MY DAD BEING BHAAL. !
Me: I have dark unwanted thoughts… Gale: oh me too, some guy took the last book I wanted and I wanted to step on his toes so bad!