Interesting opening post Lord Crash. Good points made.
By coincidence, I'm currently replaying BG2 and the excellence of it shines through as well as it ever did. The story is engaging, or should I say the almost endless array of possible stories are engaging. I care about the characters, who all have distinct personalities. I don't feel that I just have a certain number of tanks, spell-casters, healers etc in my party but a group of individuals with different hopes, fears, character quirks, backstories etc. I'm perfectly happy to include a less than perfect combatant in the party and do what might look like 'wasting time' protecting them if it suits the role playing mood. Whatever the 'magic ingredient' is that makes me want to replay a game (sometimes multiple times) is there in abundance with BG2.
It's harder than it might seem for me to pin down exactly what that 'magic ingredient' is though. Some seemingly unpromising games totally hooked me in, and yet some big titles unexpectedly got old and were abandoned before I'd even completed a single run through. Mostly, the Larian games I've played were engaging enough for me to play more than once (although Beyond Divinity struck me as a crock, alas, so the quality of DOS isn't an automatic sure bet).
I played an early Apha build of DOS back in February and it was certainly interesting to do, but painfully obvious that the writing was still mostly generic stereotype "place-holder" lines which were presumably not intended to be in the final work. To be honest, most of it was embarrassingly bad. In fact it was so far off the mark that it was quite a relief to get to the end of the limited area that was available at the time. The characters were so flat that I can't recall the names of any of them, including the two that you play. I found it impossible to give even the smallest of damns about whatever the hell was supposed to be going on - or who was copping it or dishing it out. I've definitely not missed replaying it since.
But that's probably pretty much what you should expect from an Alpha build I suppose, something pretty rough. So I shall remain "guardedly optimistic" about the final build in June
Since then I've downloaded the upgrades, in the hope of avoiding having to get a really massive chunk at the finish, but not played any of it. By the time it's ready for release it should be a very different game than the one I played - at least I hope so.
I have my fingers crossed that the trials of developing an engine that they've always wanted to build haven't distracted Larian from putting some really compelling writing in there too. Something with style, atmosphere and engagement and not just more generic drivel with the usual cast of orcs, skeletons, zombies, idiotic aristocrats, greedy traders, cardboard copy townspeople, evil wizards, etc etc (are there any original characters or enemies in DOS yet, or is it all still a cast of what's now become rather tired stereotyped cliches?).
What do others think about the progress of the writing to date? Are they getting there yet?
Alternatively, if you don't really care about the story provided you get.. oh, maybe plenty of exciting action, or a good variety of customisable characters to play, or whatever you enjoy... then can you describe what it is that floats your boat, and say whether DOS looks like doing the job or not?
I'd really like to believe that on June 20th Larian will serve up something really classy and not just an attempt that was diminished by being overambitious and then running out of time and money to do the job properly. Based on what you've seen to date can I remain optimistic?
