I think Absolute is mentioned too often and with too big of a focus, while actually not telling anything. For now, it is nothing more than something pulling the strings. Normally a game would engage us in smaller local conflict and present a compelling foil, only to than reveal there is more to it. BG3 screams from the rooftop that Absolute is behind everything, without creating any tangible connection with the Absolute. I don’t care about Absolute (naming characters is important and “Absolute” sounds… weak?) and even worse, I don’t care about characters we encounter in act1 as they are presented as little more than Absolute’s pawns.
Exactly this.
Gaunter O'Dimm is a nicely ironic name, for example, for the character he is. Bhaal has menance as a ‘sound’.
The Absolute is like something a six year old kid would come up with, as they’ve developed neither sensory intelligence nor a sense of irony. So just go with the literal option.
It’s simple-minded stuff, and I could only take it seriously – in a ‘pretend’ way – if it was a child who came up with it. But these are adult writers.
The ‘mustache twirly’ side-villians – Minthara, Raphael and co. – likewise seem to be the stuff of children’s fiction. Each theatrically announces their nefariousness from the get-go.
Kefka worked as a good theatrical villian, because he genuinely was a malicious character, mean-spirted and narcissitic and brilliantly repellent.
Anyways, you’re basically banking on the same writers who wrote DOS:2, which likewise had an absence of a proper villian all-throughout. Only at the very last minute did
turn up, out of the blue, with no development up to that point. And they expect you to be somehow fired up for his death?
The same pattern is emerging here: hold off revealing the villian as much as possible – in fact, leave it to the final minutes of the game. That way, we don’t have to actually develop them in any meaningful way.
They don’t even need to properly introduce The Absolute in Act One. Even a sidekick villian could work if given the right lines. But there’s no one, really, except a few ‘cult bosses’ who have very few lines or presence or even any relatable motive.
Sarevok and Irenicus presented a real mystery – read: you get a taste for their strange behaviours from the first seconds of the game, and are left wondering throughout the rest of the game. The Absolute just seems like a generic evil god – it literally has its own ‘evil cult’ and so on. Cliché stuff so far. If they want to keep it under wraps for later chapters, that’s perfectly fine, but they’ve done nothing to make it seem anything other than a limp stereotype.
