Because in any form of engaging writing or design, contrast is an important feature. Things that are epic, dramatic or unusual can ONLY really be so when they are at least made to feel as though they are surrounded by things that are not. - That's not to say that we need to have hours of walking, or dozens of menial side-quests about helping farmers herd their spooked cows, not at all (though a few might be okay here and there) but more importantly, the world we exist in needs to feel like there is far more day-to-day and common mundanity as a backdrop into which the epic, dramatic and unusual events crash, otherwise they fail to feel meaningful, impactful, and/or the audience can't really connect with any one of them. The dragon terrorising an area of farmland cannot really feel special, epic or unusual if it is only one of a dozen different similarly fantastical events all happening within a mile of one another and all at once.
This is quite literally story telling 101; a lesson that current BG3 design seems to have never learned.
I'll stand as my own case in point here: this game, so far, really has no wow-factor for me. Everything is exactly the same brand of shock and awe factor, everywhere I go, and for every major event, with nothing in between, and so it all simply ends up feeling like 'more of the same' to me. What's that, there was a spectator in that flask? Of course there was... alongside everything else, that's pretty standard fare... we even saw another one already not ten minutes ago... ho-hum... next...
Well put. I'm having a very hard time getting into this game because it's all fireworks all the time. I'm not seeing anything that resembles a real world in it for all of the drama to be inflicted upon.
And no, we don't have to go run boring quests for the farmers. We don't even have to talk to the farmers - I just want for there to be some farmers. I want to see evidence of a rich, populated world inhabited by people with lives; and then I want to see the various ways in which the crazy events of the game have impacted those lives (i.e. more than just killing all of the people that are just trying to go about their day). BG3 just feels like someone took all of the crazy things and dumped them into a box together - the backdrop of a living world never made it into the box.
