So, I've been enjoying the game so far but I had this one fight in act 2 that I feel has some problems and I think I'm not alone. By the way, small Spoilers for act 2 here. It is the fight to prevent Isobel from being kidnapped.
When you get to the Last Light Inn, you are very quickly directed to talk to Isobel so that she can cast a spell on you to protect from the shadow curse. Since you are directed to do this so soon, I went and did that before going back to the wilderness. You are then surprised by
an attack from flying bad guys coming in to kidnap her. Now the enemies here, even Marcus, are not that hard to fight, they're mostly in line with other encounters before that. No, my main problem is that Isobel getting knocked out (all the enemies focus her) triggers an immediate cutscene which ends the fight here and there and transitions to another cutscene where all the NPCs at the inn but one are turned undead and attack you.
Here is a fight that you do not expect at all and so are not prepared for on your first playthrough, and there are no warnings or context cues to indicate that the loss condition is not "Isobel gets kidnapped" but "Isobel gets knocked out", and then if you fail it is followed by rather massive and honestly disproportional consequences. The game doesn't even wait to the end of the turn to give you a chance to heal her up or give you an option to prevent the enemies from taking her away, your characters are all transported to the outside entrance of the building downstairs and the enemy character just gets to waltz away with no issue while carrying her, hell, he could be doing a little dance while he's at it, you can't do anything but watch.
And this is my main issue with the fight, the loss condition being triggered immediately removes all player agency for what happens next. I know it can be unfair to compare a tabletop RPG to a videogame but its hard no to do it here because I know that, in a tabletop game with a reasonable DM, Isobel getting knocked out would result in the following events:
*one of the winged horrors or Marcus knocks out Isobel*
*The DM narrates Marcus picking up Isobel, he orders the winged horrors to attack you and attemps to make his escape*
Marcus disengages and starts running for the exit, the fight CONTINUES, and in the following turns the players have to fight the winged horrors and prevent them from leaving with Isobel.
Now in a normal DnD game I suppose the encounter would only really end once Marcus has flown away out of range. I suppose there would also be a timer counting down the barrier disolving, or maybe some DMs would have it happen immediately. This gets a bit complex a game that is already done I guess. I just think if the loss condition was something like "The enemy manages to exit the barrier while holding Isobel" instead of her getting knocked out, it would not feel so jarring, like you're being railroaded.
