I actually find those types of voice lines really cringey
but maybe that's just me. I'd like to see more party banter and group discussions, but I get super annoyed with those kinds of lines like in the WotR video.
Yeah, like I said, it's an extremely minor example and not everyone's cup of tea. I still prefer it to the complete silence of the BG3 companions so far, though. The purpose of the video is mostly to demonstrate that it's a a possible avenue to building up characterization for a character.
I was also deliberately trying to trigger as many voice lines as possible at the start of the video precisely to demonstrate this point - you hear them rather infrequently during normal gameplay otherwise (and especially not as often in RTwP compared to turn-based).
For example, one of the characters in my party presents herself as a noblewoman who has taken some fencing classes with a rapier. Her combat voice lines are your very first clue that something is REALLY off about her, aside from the fact that she also happens to be a Druid for reasons you don't yet know and doesn't act like any you'd ever know either.
There's also voice lines that everyone has upon dropping to critical HP, but I didn't let things get to that point for a reason.
I would record the actual party banter that occasionally occurs during certain events (which is far more critical to my point), but it potentially veers straight into spoiler territory. Maybe I'll find an acceptable example somewhere later. I don't think I'd be able to come up with anything appropriate within the next day - it appears all of my save files right now are literally right before or past a certain point of no return involving a 1-2 hour mega-dungeon that I have to commit to finishing. And I want to avoid making another recording in there, since it's personally my favorite dungeon in every cRPG I've ever played for a huge variety of rather spoilery reasons. Not quite as much as FFXIV end of Shadowbringers spoilers level, but I'd say the atmosphere is basically a similar level of quality by cRPG standards.
Thanks for the comparrison, Saito; your videos are always helpful tools.
Edit: Watching the rest of that video, I find myself really wishing that they had follow-up barks as well... contextual one-twos, you know? Like, you go into stealth a the end, and the comment comes out "they'll never see me coming", and then immediately get spotted and go into combat. I'd really like it if there was a follow up "They saw me coming..." when things like that happen.
That would be so awesome. "I'll chop your head off!" ...one second later... "Or he'll chop your head off. That works too."
Or have a rivalry between two companions who would shout out incrementing numbers during one battle each time they scored a kill. Or have a character who doesn't like another make a pithy comment each time they heal them.
They could be extra fancy and have lighthearted banter when everyone had at least 80% health, and have the mood turn more somber as health started dropping, and vengeful rage barks whenever someone in the party died.
This is a pretty solid point. And as I said earlier with BG3 having the potential to go the extra mile by having dialogue for certain characters tailored to certain enemy types, BG3 could try something like this too. Because I don't think I've heard of any cRPG really going all out on this category.
Amusingly enough,
Solasta of all things actually DOES have voice lines from other party members when a different party member takes a critical hit or drops to critical HP/performs a critical miss or a critical hit. There's even voice lines for a party member getting detected in stealth too, which can be done by the character who got detected or another party member calling them out for it.
Aside: If I play P:WotR, can I play a halfling who rides her wolf companion? Because that would really be a major stack up for it, for me personally....
WotR has mounted combat implemented, though I haven't tinkered with it much because it was infamously broken (as in, of the bug-filled variety) for a pretty long time until recently.
Warning: additional off-topic mild companion build sperging below-
If you keep Seelah (the Paladin and the game's primary tank) single-classed, she can be built for mounted combat somewhat early in the game, or focus more on improving her single target damage through weapon enhancing abilities. Mounted combat is generally the more favored choice, because it lets her ignore her massive movement speed weakness and run to wherever she needs to go to wreck/intercept an enemy going for your back line. And there is a lot of shit that tries to go for your back line/hard target your main character first in WotR, compared to Kingmaker. Which is why my backliner Eldritch Archer still uses defensive spells like Shield.
We think her tiger thing is supposed to be a horse like what you'd normally expect from a Paladin, but it's been over an entire year of testing by this point and it's stayed the same, so... One could argue it's still fitting for her, because she doesn't really behave like your typical Paladin either. I think you can ride stuff like bears and maybe even wyverns too, but you have to pick specific classes and/or archetypes for that kind of thing. Despite an entire year's worth of testing, I still don't know enough about Pathfinder's absurd class variety to really elaborate in this category. Apparently my character firing spells through his bow is pretty tame compared to the kind of shit I've heard others building for.
(On the topic of stuff going for your back line, it's probably worth mentioning something else interesting I've noted from this most recent beta phase. You know how in BG3, enemies seem to hard target whoever has the lowest AC? Kingmaker had the opposite problem in that everything went after your front line because ranged enemies/back line ambushes were extremely rare. WotR has a bigger mix of tactics, one of which involves things like enemy archers switching targets to whoever attempted to attack them/inflicted the most damage against them previously. It's pretty interesting AI behavior.)
WotR's companions have very atypical combat roles, even when compared to the Kingmaker companions. Kingmaker companions played things rather straight in regards to their combat roles, while the WotR companions appear to be deliberately designed so that you can build them in multiple directions even if you keep them single-classed. I described Seelah up there, who most people either go the shield wall or the mobile mounted bruiser route with.
The druid Camelia who wields a rapier and buckler can act as a support caster/buff bot, but she can be easily built as a tank too, along with inflicting respectable melee damage with her weapon enchant abilities later on. Ember can be built for buff/healing support, but is more than capable of being a scary ass fire blaster, and can occasionally shut down enemies using her single target slumber ability that nothing in the game aside from swarms are outright immune to. Lann has a completely novel build that I've never seen in any other cRPG to date - he is a TANK ARCHER, potentially capable of stacking as much AC as the actual tanks, and gets easy access to feats that denies opportunity attacks against him and lets him perform opportunity attacks with his bow. When he's not blocking off melee attackers ambushing your back line, he even gets a personal dimension door that lets him warp to enemy spellcasters in the enemy back line, threaten them all with opportunity attacks, and then once he's done with them he'll turn around and wreck the enemy front line from behind.
