I'm here to talk about the alternative, Larian studios. I'm not sure if it's factually true, but to me it feels like Larian has been around for a long time. They made many games, and played around with different genres for quite some time now. I admit I didn't play many of their games, but of those I did play, you can certainly get the Larian feel. You don't get it from their stories or characters, but from their (sometimes) crazy game mechanics ( and I mean it in the best possible way). I always play around with the idea of an imagined Larian's stuff meeting where they pich a game : "hey you know what would be cool? A main character that can turn into a dragon!".
I think you are wrong on this, the
Larian feel as you said, would be from the well thought out main story and quirky characters/encounters. Divine Divinity reinforces why for the characters and story, I didn't get that far into the game but all you have to do is interact with anyone from the first village to get it. DOS1 does the same, Wizard that likes turning into a cat, Willy the Wishing Well, extremely annoyed captain Aureus, Tullia that got her face bit from Bairdotr (bear daughter), Zig Zax period.
BG3 Spoilerthe bugbear and ogre in the shack event
DOS1 is in my opinion equal to DAO, this is when they hit the mark for me.
origin characters as companions is a bad idea - origin characters is a great idea that worked before. Companions are great. Mixing the two is not.
I'd agree with this but some people do like playing origin characters, why it keeps coming back.
We need more choices - I replay dragon age origins again now and I'm astonished by the amount of dialogue options you get in any meaningful encounter. I feel like right now bg3 is seriously lacking at this front, and relies too much on persuasion choices. I could complete Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 with 3 charisma points and never feel like I'm missing out on something. Persuasion should be an optional choice in a game of this kind, not a requirement.
I think the persuasion, intimidate, and bluff (
ya im blanking on last one lets call it bluff for now) destroys the dialog, this is equal to the good/bad choices slapped into mass effect an similar games. Your freedom of choice disappears because your going to choose whatever you think your character is. Example, my toon is a liar, my toon is a bully, etc.
This will probably never happen but if they removed the up front tags, hid the dialog rolls, and increased dialog, I think over all interactions would be better.
BTW nice post, was a good read.
