One other quick criticism, only because BG3 does kind of the exact same sort of thing, but I think the prologue pre-amble in WotR was a big missed opportunity for tutorial stuff and introducing the basics. Same as here, the prologue also can't be easily skipped to just advance to where the actual gameplay begins, like I'm sure most people already wish would be an option hehe.
Now that I've already played out the intro like 30 times (of course I'd roll 30 toons before settling on one I actually like lol) the opening festival fail is becoming a bit more stark.
The player is immediately subjected to a lot of dialog skipping, and a pair of pointless exercises that don't really teach them anything about the game's basic systems, just to advance to the Lord of Locusts kick off. There are like 100 NPCs dancing in place at the festival, each with nothing interesting to say. Then we get to raise a glass and throw a dart, and that's basically it? Instead of providing a place for the new player to figure out the controls, or to discover how things work with the various UI menus or with merchants or whatever, in an environment where all those things could be conveniently introduced in a low pressure situation, we just get a time sink. Candlekeep lite, where the player learns how to do absolutely nothing lol. It's too bad because there is a fair amount one might learn, before having a full party foisted on them and sent off into the dungeon.
I don't really understand why both these games failed to see the merits of letting the player do some initial window shopping at a merchant, you know like Winthrop, then visit a temple, learn how to hide, sneak, steal, see how combat works and the like. Kingmaker was pretty lackluster in this regard as well, but at least it had a flow to it. I guess they expect that people who buy this sequel have already learned this in the previous game (BG2 took a similar approach) but again, just feels like a missed op, especially since the game starts at lvl1 and isn't really a direct sequel like Kingmaker 2 or whatever. Anyone else feel this way?
Like it doesn't surprise me at all that D&D games don't capture a very large crossover audience, since the games always assume a lot of prior familiarity with D&D systems, instead of teaching the new player what they are and how they work. BG1 was one of the few examples of a D&D game that actually met the player wherever they were at, and did the requisite hand holding until the player felt they had their bearings. Skipping that whole first section was also very straightforward in BG1 once the player had had enough of it. I think newer games are maybe wary of copying that template and seeming too derivative or generic, when it actually worked pretty well. The WotC opener is equally generic, but doesn't really even try to do the new player set up intro to Dungeons and Dragons stuff. I appreciate the tooltips and the encyclopedia, those are clearly clutch, but I mean more of the basics and in how they are presented, so it's not like getting dropped into a maze, right before getting dropped into a maze, you know? lol
