See, for my part, I assumed that when the entire premise was that Twitch would vote on things and control the adventure, and that that was what Larian advertised to hype their event, that that would actually be what would happen. I probably should have known better - after all, I can think of one other very prominent example where Larian advertised and hyped what they were doing as being a particular thing, and sold copies based on that promise, only to present something that was nothing of the sort. I guess I should have known better.
I was fairly sure that Twitch itself had rules about this though - that if you're advertising and presenting a stream with twitch choices content predicated on audience participation, and then actually put out something where the audience has no input, and it's largely false choices that don't affect anything, that's actually bad, by Twitch's own terms?
A lot of this had to be pre-produced, of course... they were running through a pre-set path and we all know that. The VFX for things like the book case opening, and other 'absolutely has to happen' things were all character agnostic and were made in advance, and that's fine. I was under the impression that for each of the major death points that required the use of VFX, I simple had made seven takes; it's not that much extra work to shoot seven different people reaching into a cabinet then falling over and writhing around a bit, and then overlaying the burning to death VFX onto each one in post, than it is to do it for one person - not a lot of extra time or work compared to the time and work required to set up everything else, create the VFX in the first place, and all of the other work they put into this project. Indeed, they had to have done this because of certain variables that Twitch DID have an obvious influence on; they absolutely have footage shots of Shadow stabbing seven different individual people with the orb at the end, and just played the correct one. That's all completely fine as well! It was Swen's attitude and behaviour personally that made the entire event unpalatable for me. He comes across as a bully, plain and simple - a particular type of high-school bully, but a bully all the same, and every time I see him in any media interacting with other people or talking about them, and not just on his own, that impression is only reaffirmed and strengthened. It's my personal opinion that he creates a bad look for Larian, when he is shown interacting with others, and should stick solely to addressing the audience on his own, so that the more disgusting elements of his personality never show through.
Of course, I would not wish to insult anyone or say that a person absolutely is a certain way - that would be unacceptable behaviour: this is simply feedback that I'm providing on my impression of how this came across to me, and the poor way that I feel this reflected, and continues to reflect, on Larian as a whole, if it continues.
