I finished the game once.
Subsequent playthroughs I have stopped a couple of quests before it becomes a point of no return because I was so saddened by the railroading.
The emperer deciding to throw his toys out of the pram because we don't agree with him over Orpheus is utterly absurd. He hides, we talk, present the case to Orpheus for a temporary alliance. Orpheus is perfectly aware we need a mind flayer (although I don't get it at all) and if we don't have the Emperor he'll have to do it. Why on earth would he not agree? The Emperor didn't imprison him, that was Vlaakith 1, in fact he didn't even know about the prism till Gortash hoicked him away from Duke Tremayne and sent him back to the brain - which is all very recent.
Ok we killed his honour guard a few days ago - he can shout at us later.....
Having to have anyone change into a mind flayer for some ridiculous reason is painful.
Logically why do I even need a mindflayer? The reason presented to us in the game makes no sense. Orpheus already has the power to shut off its communications - that's the entire plot so far - so all we are really fighting is a big blob with a crown and no way to communicate with its minions.
So what it can think fast? So can we because we're a team and we can communicate with each other and by this time we are one big bunch of bad arsery.
Or we ask Omeluum - we freed him, he owes us one and he lives in the city.
Or we use Gale he doesn't have to turn into anything to set off a bomb - and neither does anyone else.
Choice has been taken away from us. In what should be the most important segment of the game we suddenly have little to no player agency. In other games this might not matter but this game so far has been full of meaningful choices and suddenly they are swept up into 3 or so railroaded, and all unpleasant, decisions.
So whatever you end up doing at this point makes little to no sense, either narratively or what we know of the characters involved, based on what came before it.
And it creates a massive dissonance and threw me right out of any form of belief in what I was doing.
This was exacerbated by the dock scenes which had to have been written by an office junior on the back of an envelope as they were devoid of any feeling while we watch Astarion become the butt of joke or Karlach burn to death/have to go Avernus.
Or we kill ourselves and no one gives a damn.
Others stand around making 'right guys, last one to the bar buys the round' type comments.
What???
No options to sort out Karlachs heart with the Gondians before we even got to this point - which seems absurd given building this sort of stuff is what they do.
Nothing to give Astarion some freedom to walk in the sun or be cured of vampirism in spite of all of this being possible in DnD5e
Nope - guys we have to have bittersweet - because happy endings would be unwelcome by the developers for 'reasons'.
But it doesn't work because players don't understand some of the decisions, they make no logical sense because all of us can see other more obvious routes , so everyone is left unsatisfied and slightly unhappy about it all.
And then because the entire ending sequence is rushed, its all a muddled and uncaring mess devoid of any soul when the rest of the game, especially Act 1 was chock full of it.
Final ending scenes based arouind some random statue that I took no notice of when in the city - I'm utterly clueless why thats supposed to be the most important thing I want to know about.
Yep ME3 ending - all its lacking are the colours.
None of it makes sense and for me I'll just not bother until either Larian or a modder sorts it out. As another poster said. In playing through this game it's now My Game, and like them I want options to work towards a happy ending for myself and those I care about (in my case Unascended Astarion but it applies to everyone and for everyone - more choice is necessary).
Last edited by Bethra; 09/10/23 10:26 PM.
