I am loving the changes to dice and the contextual campsites! The dice makes a huge difference for me and I think it’s much more fun and satisfying and the campsites are MUCH more immersive. I love these changes. And Scratch’s redesign is BEAUTIFUL! What a lovely boy.
Since playing EA from day one, however, I’m still very concerned about how cutscene triggers, sequence, and priority work. I feel like the current system needs an overhaul because it’s too easy to miss scenes and reloading, trying to get them is very tedious.
So, using my current playthrough as an example:
Astarion’s Cazador discussion played before the vampire reveal, making the dialogue at the pig and bite scene very odd. Once I got the bite scene his bear, mirror, and tasting party cutscenes triggered in rapid succession. But his stargazing scene, which usually plays early on, did not trigger at all. In fact, I have not been able to trigger the stargazing scene since patch 3. All of this makes the pacing feel off, and the order feels random. What would make sense to me is: pig, bite, (Raphael) - Caz, bear/tasting party, stargazing, tiefling/goblin party, mirror, scar etc. Perhaps each cutscene could have the previous cutscene as a requirement to play?
Furthermore, each discussion should act as relationship milestones, progressing the character relationship along enemy/rival/friendship/romance since approval ratings can fluctuate so much. It would be much more immersive, for example, if you had a character at high approval/friendship level, but then you do something they REALLY disagree with and it drops you down to hated/enemy instead of just a -10 or what have you approval drop. Likewise, maybe a character largely disapproves of you but then you do something meaningful to them and it puts you at friendship level (ex: having low approval with Astarion but saving him from the hunter.) This would be a much more immersive approach and would make cutscenes and events feel all the more impactful.
I have focused on Astarion because, so far in my current playthrough, he is the only companion whose scenes have triggered for me at all. I have received none of the non-scripted scenes with Gale despite having high approval, and this goes for Shadowheart and Wyll as well. I talk to all the companions regularly but I think this comes down to companion cutscene prioritization which sometimes seems arbitrary. If a trigger is met, the cutscene should play no matter what and not be cancelled because another character had priority for that rest and then missed entirely because a different cutscene triggered. And I don’t see any reason why we can’t see more than one companion’s cutscene per long rest since it’s the designated time for socializing and, especially now with long rest costs, long rests are encouraged to be taken less often. I know there is something to be said for not seeing everything to encourage replays but I feel like there’s enough dialogue variety to cover this without sacrificing character moments. And since this game has such great, well developed characters, I think it’s a shame to limit how much we get to interact with them per long rest. Perhaps short rests could have the option to go to a camp screen to get these dialogues/cutscenes as well?
