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.
I don't watch the live demo part of Panel from Hell series, only the discussion part. Anyway, in the scenario you give that's very possible in single or multi, either way it comes down to play style of the player/s.
I'm not going to argue similarities of DOS1, 2, or BG3. Pretty obvious BG3 has elements related to previous games the company has made. An they said previously they wanted to appease fans of there other games also, this is off the top of my head and I really dont want to bother looking this crap up.
True the structure of the story does flow no matter who does it, my previous statement still stands though. If it was multiplayer focused, we would have better multiplayer experience in dialog now instead of everyone except one taking a back seat.
The game supports single player or multi player, its going to do both.
Ya, custom characters got the shaft in DOS2 and it'll be the same for BG3. I was never a fan of this in the first place favoring DOS1 over 2. Played single player and multi on 2, both plays I did a custom and it felt like I was just playing the same character while there premades get personal story and unique dialog (unique dialog im not sure about, been forever since i played dos2).
It's like your playing D&D and the dm makes his own character for the party. An instead of taking a back seat he's in the forefront. I don't know if this is a good analogy or not but ill leave it in here anyway.
Its pretty stupid, like why bother making additional class or features for custom characters when really you just want your premade characters to be played.
