I haven't decided on my character for my first playthrough yet, though. I want to pick one who I think would naturally talk to everyone and explore everywhere, so I can see as much of the game as possible without sacrificing roleplay, but beyond that I'm still dithering!
Yes, a difficult choice. And I can see the appeal of having a very explorative first playthrough. But wouldn't that leave less to be experienced in subsequent playthroughs? Perhaps it is possible to have several truly unique playthroughs, if one walks a narrow path (and abstains from spending time on forums).
I think it would be a totally valid choice to go for a number of differently incomplete playthroughs, and I suspect that’s what I’ll mainly be doing after the first. But while playing and replaying early access has largely cured me of the completionist tendency I’ve typically displayed playing cRPGs previously I can’t quite let go of it entirely! I certainly won’t be forcing myself to do everything but I want to get a good idea of what’s there and find as much as I can for myself before I see it talked about. Abstaining from the forum probably isn’t an option for me
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Judging by EA there’ll be plenty of stuff to still discover in subsequent runs as a result of choosing different ways of approaching tasks, how we interact with NPCs and so on. Quite apart from the random element introduced by passing/failing dice rolls on different playthroughs! It’s all this minor reactivity (as well as experiencing different classes and races) that is going to add to replayability for me. Obviously there’ll be some bigger choices, too, but I personally don’t really need (or particularly want) massively branching paths … though that’s another topic that we’ve definitely discussed elsewhere.
