They don’t have a controlling share on Larian, but they don’t own an insignificant amount of it. I wouldn’t say it is noticeable. Doesn’t have MTX, which I’m sure they would’ve loved.
It’s a situation similar to Epic. The controlling shares are in the hands of the CEO, Swen Vincke in this case. But at least Tencent only owns 30% of Larian, which is better than 49% of Epic, even if the end result is effectively no different.
The amount of money that was dropped on the making of the game is a clue but unpopular opinion? Who’s a fan of tencent anyway?
For those who don’t have the context Tencent is a huge Chinese company that has many investments in games. They are the type that plays it silently usually invest and they do let the people do their thing then take their share. But the problem is two fold first of all you cannot start saying much abou the ccp tencent wouldn’t send you to jail but would pull the plung of the funding. Secondly any client info that ends in Tencent hands is potentially viewable by the ccp. There’s no need of a Snowden to tell you that, the government made it law so if you buy the game your data goes to China.
My thing about china getting my data is ‘so what?’ I live in the United States. Every major corporation will sell my data to the government, and no warrant is necessary. The fuck is China going to do to me? Send some of their secret police to my house? Fucking TIGHT. I can tell them to fuck off and eat my ass.
Yea you can tell them that but the more china as on you and other citizen of where you live the better they can make the propaganda and influence election and other fun thing like that sure they can do it without all the data but it will be less efficient
It’s not super fleshed out, but it also isn’t time consuming. Like if you are talking to your companions regularly, we are talking about selecting a couple of extra dialogue options here and there.
I’m talking about the time the developer put into the whole thing. The coding, the animation, the VO… all the time could have been put to better more useful things.
I killed him after he tried to bite me. I felt a little bit guilty and replayed that part but letting him draw a little blood from me. He killed me and the next day acted like nothing had happened, like he didn’t know why I was dead. Fuck that guy, reloaded the save where I killed him.
Isn’t it laughably easy to mod? I’m okay with them saying “this is what we balanced for, anything else is on you”, though it should be like those divinity “prepackaged mods” like the zoomy boots
If they went any higher they’d have to make some encounters even larger and lengthier for balance, and some of those encounters already feel like they go on forever 💀
I installed the 16-member party Mod and took all the origin characters (except urge) around for a while. Combat became a chore. Probably the biggest grievance is they’d block each other’s movement, but it just took REALLY long to do combat with them all present.
Seriously, though. In the last act, Baldur’s Gate was so huge and took so long to explore that it destroyed the momentum of the overall story. (The evil army is invading! Oh wait, they are now hiding underground doing nothing, so that you can take your time exploring the city).
In terms of pacing and stakes, it would have made much more sense for the PCs to have gone to Baldur’s Gate earlier in the game to do all the “adventurers faffing around” stuff, then revisited the city during the endgame. Though it would have clashed with their “each act is one set of maps” setup.
Instead, in the last act we have Gortash, supposed 5D chess player, centering all his plans on the PCs flipping to his side. Then he sits back and lets them wander all over the city, undermining him. Ultimately, when they don’t take up his offer, his backup plan is “whelp, guess I’ll die”.
Maybe the excuse is that the Elder Brain was making him stupid…
I find all the party members insufferable. I change their classes almost immediately for better synergy or I switch them out for the soulless NPC’s Withers has. Ironically, I’ve been D&D 5E Dungeon Master numerous times and I find the party members to be absolutely authentic characters real people would play. Good work Larian, ya made the characters so table top believable that I want to find a new group to play with.
I loved the character design because I hated the characters too: Lae’zel was a close minded warrior, Shadowheart a smartass, Gael Mr nice guy not so nice when you do something he doesn’t approve, Astarion the vampire rapist… Etc.
But then I kept on playing and I realized they were really deep characters. Lae’zel was indoctrinated super hard, but she’s smart and can recognize when things don’t make sense, even if she totally believes those things. Shadowheart has been lying to everyone, including herself, and putting a mask on; but she’s a really sweet woman. Astarion was abused in every possible way for centuries, and being a total asshole is his way to cope.
My point is, yeah, the characters are flawed and can come across as dicks, but many real people do too until you understand their circumstances. Not saying that what they do is justified, just that they are interesting characters and redeemable from my PoV.
I feel like a lot of characters were just standard RPG archetypes with maybe a wrinkle added in. Like Wyll is the classic “Warlock that makes the deal for the right reasons” and the wrinkle is that he has dad issues.
Compare him to one of my favorite RPG companions. Classic elf wizard nerd with an abusive father that made him hit the books and hit him also… but because of his childhood trauma his soul’s past life, a foul mouthed woman from a long time ago awoke within him and sometimes he dissociates and she takes control because she wants him to be assertive… which, along with his fears of animancy, caused him to have an obsession with control, and why he accepted to join the baddies some time before you meet him.
You can tell Act 3 had the least amount of polish put into it. Act 1 and 2 feel very carefully and intentionally designed. You can tell they planned everything out. Act 3 feels like it was rushed and they had to make a lot of compromises.
The pacing is the most obvious thing but there’s also stuff like why is Gortash, the literal ruler of the city, being sworn into power in a random fort in the lower city instead of you know… the actual castle?
Act 1 is a great sandbox and the most D&D like experience as a result.
Act 2 is the strongest story and writing, much more focused and tightly built. Some cool D&D like dungeoneering/puzzles to boot.
Act 3 is what happens when you don’t leave enough time and energy to wrap it all up. It tried to be as expansive (more even) as Act 1 and they couldn’t keep up with the writing. They also should’ve done away with the entire section before you actually enter the city. Talk about a momentum killer.
It's weird, but I suspect that Act 2 and Act 3 were swapped originally. It makes more sense to have Act 2 be where you go to Baldur's Gate, learn more about your companions, resolve their personal stories, explore a large open map, and THEN move on to the big confrontation against the Absolute at the tower.
From a story perspective it's really weird how you confront the Absolute and then go on to sort of aimlessly do all that other stuff in Baldur's Gate. It makes more sense if the story acts are swapped, imo.
Gale’s “bad” ending is actually the best ending in the game.
Who cares that he doesn’t get character growth, he disappointed a cat and an old man, HE’S A GOD! Seriously, nothing else matters. So what if Ao is going to make him earn his spot on the pantheon? He’s immortal, he has literally forever to do it. Sure professor Gale is fun and more chill, but he’s still mortal. In six months Gale does what Vlaakith has been attempting for centuries. I don’t know how you can be disappointed in someone for successfully becoming a god
The game is good despite DND 5e’s rules, not because of them.
Unfortunately, DND is mega popular. Many people have never played anything else. Many people have never even played it. So any discussion about it has a “of course 15 strength is +2, isn’t that just how RPGs work?” segment where you have to establish that DND is in fact weird.
Hard agree the ruleset is the mayor shackle to the game. I think the DnD part also includes the whole lore of the forgotten realms which is the incredible foundation in which the game could bloom tho. I’m not saying larian can’t create fantastic worlds and I’m looking forward to the next games, but the lore aspect of the DnD license is mayorly beneficial to the game
I hate multiplayer in pretty much any game where there’s a lot of menuing. And being able to wander off? There’s a reason you don’t split the party IRL and it holds here. Having a shopping session also is boring IRL and it is here, too. Oh, there was important plot stuff happening? I didn’t know the other person was in a conversation.
You can do this and also listen to conversations you aren’t present for from the active character portraits without changing settings. There’s even a prompt for ongoing conversations to join in on them as a listener remotely.
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