[quote=IrenicusBG3] So, in other words, they COULD have started BG3 with you being some nobody from some small village near Elturel. The Cult of the Absolute is some rumor spreading around the area. Who are they? What are they up to? You investigate because you're a mercenary or a cleric on a holy quest or whatever. As you go, you learn more and more about these fanatics. They're infected with something, but what?.
Yes, I think that would be one good idea. I don't necessarily think Larian's premise is bad, I just don't like how they conducted the narrative and everything is so explicit and escalates quickly.
I don't know if 'escalates' is the right word, for the same reasons people feel distant from Tav, there's is no real time spent to acclimate you to the setting, there's really no time spent to just inhabit the world before you're thrown off a cliff. (then pushed off a spaceship) But I might be a little optimistic in this regard, because I have to think there will be something that does this eventually, if for no other reason than to introduce the origin character you're playing as to us. I don't know, but if they expect to rely on telling us these things as we go, it'll require a very deft hand at incorporating exposition into the narrative, a narrative we have a lot of control over.
Yes. I agree with this. No real time spent acclimating. I remember my first question in my first playthrough. Where am I? Astarion doesn't know. SH doesn't know. The fishermen say, "Middle of nowhere" and I was immediately like, "Ball park please? Near Neverwinter, Tethyr, The Dales... Before you say anything else, at least give me some idea where I am. Oh, and BTW, I deduced there might be a settlement nearby. Could you tell me where? At least a general direction."
But no. Gale doesn't say, Lae'zel, Gimblebock, you can't ask Withers or Zevlor... Ah finally... A random Tiefling on the wall. At last, now I know. Tenday from BG between there and Elturel.
But...um...closest settlement? Anyone? I said at the beginning there must be one. Fresh water and all. They don't even really tell me where Risen Road actually is, and I don't ask. So, I found myself struggling to acclimate to everything. I remember that. I couldn't figure out who did what and when and where and why for the majority of the first playthrough. The entire story had to be discovered after playthrough after playthrough.
And, btw, I found out much after my first playthrough that a bulk of the story is in books. That was a huge shock. I'm used to games where the books are supplements. If you don't read them, no biggie. They're mostly about random things if you're interested. It's weird to me that you just so happen to find all these books that all seem to have something to do with your story, and unless you find them all, you may miss pieces of the puzzle. You have to really pour through them and analyze them to really get it.
My first playthrough, I thought Moonhaven WAS the settlement your character mentions on the beach, that it had recently been destroyed. I mostly ignored the books because I was like, "Meh. I should get the main story just from playing the game, and that's all I care about."
Foolish fool! Little did I know I would have to create my own timelines and try to piece it all together to really firmly grasp what I even theorize happened. Do I truly know yet? No. Just theories, but at least I've been able to mostly piece it together, after 500 hours of gameplay.
The point of all this is to say that it's definitely hard to acclimate at all to the setting. It takes a LOT of time and effort to truly know what's going one and where you are and when what happened, and many of us are STILL trying to figure stuff out. I know it's only EA and all, but DANG it's rough to figure out.
So yes, you hit the nail on the head for me. THAT is definitely how I feel. It is fun and stuff, but at the end of the playthrough, it truly leaves you wondering, "What the heck just happened? Why did I really do the things I did?"
