My game is bugged, in... a lot of ways. Noteably in this case, Gale knows everything I do.
I first triggered the artefact scene on day 1. He said "he's been watching me" pointed out how I stopped the fight between that human and Zevlor. And confessed his crimes just like that
I thought that's how it works now, but apparently not?
Anyway, Gale is very, very glitched! My entire companion progression seems wonky, but not omniscient wizard wonky
I think the scene normally kicks in when you first rest at some specific approval level - maybe medium? Or high? But given his approval can easily jump from neutral to very high on a wander through the druid grove with him, it’s possible to miss triggering the scene by just not resting at the appropriate approval level.
It looks as though there is (now?) some contingency programming to trigger the scenes even at very high approval, but the logic of when this happens is unclear and the pacing still wonky.
Hopefully once Larian have the full release to play with, they’ll make it possible to spread this companion content out more rather than having to cram so much in before the party or lose it, given the party could easily happen after just two or three days. I don’t need companion interactions to come quite so thick and fast, and what we have early in EA feels like a pace it would be hard to keep up through the whole game. We already see companion interactions die down dramatically after the party if we’ve maximised them before it. I do expect Larian to add new interactions in this post-party period for full release, but would also be more than happy if they also adjusted some of the current ones so they could happen on a free night later in the game. In principle, I’m happy with forcing us to pace companion interactions to one major one per rest rather than spending ages in camp to run through different interactions one night and then have deadly silence on other nights. But I do think that approach should be limited to interactions that feasibly could have a variation appear at any point in the story, rather than ones that are timebound and will not happen at all once other plot points have been reached.
EDIT: Again testing something else, I had reason to load my save before the party at level 4 with no Gale quest progression. This time, I triggered the romance with Wyll, and didn't talk to Gale at all so he never offered his bedtime story. Then over the next few nights I got his deer stew, Mystra and loss scenes (and was able to "share an intimate moment" with him, despite having romanced Wyll), but I then rested a fair few more times but he never offered the bedtime story so perhaps that only comes at the party, or perhaps there is or will be another trigger later. This makes me think that the romance arc still might work but over a longer period come the full release if we don't spam rest early, but that there are still some bugs in the conversation triggers, such as the one that had Gale tell me his bedtime story as though he'd previously told me of his problem even though he hadn't (possibly because I'd had him read the Necromancy of Thay).
