I feel like either there was a mandate from on-high, like Wizards saw the stuff with Daisy and the generally darker tone and said they didn't want a DnD game like that, or that Larian got spooked by certain feedback from playtesters. It'd be one thing to massage content in a certain direction, which is sort of what they did with Shadowheart, for example, but this was basically a wholesale removal of vast swathes of pre-existing content. It's big changes to core pillars of their narrative which are questionable enough (Daisy) but also a lot of smaller things that appear to do little else but eliminate 'bad' consequences (such as being recognized by the corpse of Mind Flayer on the beach, getting a debuff from letting Volo jab you in the eye, etc.) that reflect a more sweeping change of mandate from 'choice and consequence' to 'sweeping heroic power fantasy.' How do you get so far into the creative process, only to do something so drastic at the last minute?
I suspect a comparison between EA Act 1 and Release Act 1 would be enlightening, and disheartening. Larian is lucky that they got a bunch of good will prior to release such as game developers doing the whole 'don't hold us to that standard' thing (and, indeed, Larian deserves a lot of it) because I suspect had this been a Bioware or Obsidian or CDProjekt release, people would be working themselves into a frenzy about false advertising and broken promises and cut content and whatever else.
edit: I mentioned in another thread that it feels like Larian decided that, given how people only tend to play big RPGs once (if that), then shooting for an 8/10 crowdpleaser is a safer bet than maybe a 9/10 game with a darker, melancholic edge. But again, how do you get so far into development that it's such an abrupt change so late in the process?
Last edited by Milkfred; 16/08/23 02:16 AM.
