Originally Posted by Gray Ghost
Where you and I differ is that I don't really think that the writing starts from a good place. I think that from the start of the game the foundations set by the writing were bad, and that the ultimate outcome we got was pretty much inevitable based on that. If the writing seemed good initially, then it's just because it's still starting small, planting the inocuous seeds that will grow into what problems we see down the line.

And even if what you were saying is the case, I am very hesitant to put a poor game down to lack of effort by the creators. From everything I've read and watched and learned about game development, it's a difficult, complicated job there comes a point where sometimes sacrifices in quality HAVE to be made in order to actually get the game to ship. I clearly am not inclined to give Larian a lot of grace on this game, but unless I hear it from someone on the team, I won't believe that the poor writing is a result of "taking the easy route." That makes it sound like at some point they decided to just stop putting in effort when what I expect happened is that soemwhere along the line, poor planning meant that they had no other choice but to let things fall to the wayside because that was the only way to actually finish the game, not because they just didn't want to put the work into it.
Okay, not to comment directly on Ixal's opinion, I do have to make the note that BG3's main story is LITERALLY a rehash of Baldur Gate 1's story. In that, the PC starts off investigating an iron shortage only to discover that it's being artificially created by someone agitating for war in order to gain political power in the region only to then discover that the end goal for getting that power is in service to the cult of the Dead Three and the PC is a Bhaalspawn. Just replace iron with tadpoles and add a (poorly executed) EXTRA twist after the war for political power on behalf of the Dead Three with a Bhaalspawn PC reveal to include the Netherbrain nonsense and voila. BG3.

While writing can be difficult, the vibe check set for telling if fanfiction is going to be terrible is that rehashes canon with some OC DONUT STEEL characters whose purpose is bloating the main story with their own pretentious backstories using name recognition to get an audience writing an original story wouldn't.

The fact that the above could be said about BG3 says enough, I think.

Last edited by Rahaya; 20/10/23 03:45 AM.