Eh, saying BG3 is far away from being palatable doesn't mean much when it's not a secret that you don't really like turn-based combat all that much. :P

I'm liking what the devs are doing with Shadowheart, but I hope they plan to give the other companions an equal amount of care. If not, she was already the obvious case of developer favorite even before the patch, and it will definitely come at the expense of the perception of the rest of the cast in the long run. Trying to force someone to be as iconic as Morrigan or Solas IMO isn't worth it if everyone forgets about characters like Sten and Vivienne as a consequence, and if it turns out that Shadowheart has to reluctantly backstab us later for whatever reason, half the community would probably expect it by then. Players aren't dumb.

She still doesn't hold a candle to any of the WotR companions though. And none of the companions probably ever will as long as Larian seemingly insists on the idea that we may have to commit to 3 of them in the end, thus limiting the overall potential for party interactions, because WotR has literally set the bar for party members to heights that I had never thought possible before. It's actually pretty fascinating the more I think about it, about how WotR's companions never feel like they're loudly fighting against each other for the player's attention the same way most other cRPGs do. If anything they complement each other extremely well, even though all of their backgrounds are so wildly different - they're arguably so interwoven in such indirect ways that any comparison to them may be considered a comparison to the entire cast at once.

Larian probably has a year to take notes from them once the game is out on that front, at least. There is a certain subtlety that the Pathfinder writers have seemingly mastered that is sorely missing from most of the rest of the gaming industry.

Last edited by Saito Hikari; 17/07/21 07:51 AM.