Remember the previous Panel from Hell?
There was a moment where a dramatic scene is supposed to play. The party encounters a gnome slave so desperate, that she is willing to blow herself and everyone else up.
Swen solved it by clicking on another character during dialogue, simply walking behind the gnome while she's stuck in a conversation, and then taking the bombs from her. The drama is now dead.
Is this scene more fun in singleplayer or coop?
What I'm trying to say with this is: If the game was singleplayer focused, then it would prioritize immersion over memes like these. The result is that the story integrity repeatedly gets hit with a sledgehammer.
Hell, the story and it's structure so far have so many parallels to DOS2.
- Awakening on a ship that is under attack
- Ending up on a beach
- Lack of a protagonist [Because if there was one we would have a central character pushing the story forward. This design exists solely to support coop. Any of the companions (or your coop partners) could take over the role of your custom character and the core of the story wouldn't change.]
- Larian's characters all have super special backstories and goals/ambitions beyond their interests in the main story while the custom character is just there
- Other people have your party's special abilities (sourcerer/tadpole) as well, but your party is actually double special (godwoken/chosen)
They might have put a little bit more thought into the story, but copy-pasting the design of their previous game shows that we are going to get a game that feels more like an MMO than a DnD CRPG. Even the way they design magical items (<50% health for bonuses for example) is an evidence that none of the leads at Larian have an intimate knowledge of DnD.
Unrelated:
What is the consensus in general about class specific dialogue choices. They seem stereotypical in most cases. Rogues get a "steal thing" dialogue choice once, while Barbs can smash things. Why can't a fighter steal or smash things as well? At most I'd accept an advantage on those rolls but they shouldn't be class restricted.
I wonder how many "seduce him/her" dialogue options will there be when bard releases. Eh, people will love it anyways so whatever.
