Well I only come here every few weeks after playing exactly 1 hour of D:OS because I don't want to spoil my D:OS experience ;p
If that'd be all the time you'd give me on it to decide whether to buy it or not, currently I'd not buy it. The first hour of the game is... extremely bland.
Let me just make an insane thought experiment
..... Start of D:OS ....... #Setting
Burning village, dead bodies and magical caused damage everywhere. Source magic lingers in the air.... you awake unsure what happened, binge drinking in an inn happily with your partner the world exploded in a magical cataclysm and you blacked out. You look around, finding yourself trapped in what are the remnants of the INN, looks like the floor collapsed and you are trapped in the cellar... smoke fills the air but most of it seems to escape through cracks upwards...
..... Start of D:OS ....... #Gameplay
There are various tools and barrels of watered ale down here, fires blocking what appears to be stairs. The lifeless body of the maid that stood right next to your table a few meters away from you. Figure out how to douse the fire and build some kind of make-shift weapon to whack the debris out of the way. Of all things that survived the explosion, the door and it's lock still stood solid, despite scorch marks. Now if only you could find the key somewhere.... maybe behind some debris?
Would that not be a memorable start?
I am just saying..... if Larian wanted, the start of the game could teach all game-systems in just 1 scene and 1 room. Also, maybe this is where the quest to hunt down that source mage stems from. Maybe he killed already before.... and you were just in the area of effect? Motivation, hook, some revenge...
Also, you both survived that, so additionally that bonds the characters together and some dialog choices there may reflect starting dispositions. And mages could have handled this differently than warriors or rouges. Maybe the maid had a spell-scroll on her? ;P
Aside that, simple things would improve the game drastically on top of that
-Marking Quest Items and Craft Items
-When you "pick" a object in inventory, objects you can use it on are highlighted (takes a lot of the scariness out of the craft system)
-Once crafted, always known / crafted stuff needs to be logged somewhere
-better map notations, especially in the start town but in the case of that huge town, more hand holding.
