Impressive review. Very well said and our experiences of WotR seemed to mirror one another. I have few points of disagreement on the Emperor and Durge but I'll save those comments for other threads.
Thank you very much! Reading back over the thread, I can see that closing it was discussed a few times, but I'm very glad that it stayed open. As someone who has played CRPGs going back over 20 years, WotR and BG3 are the most impressive games I have played over the last few years, and I think comparing them can be very useful. I'd be interested in discussing the Emperor and Durge in more detail elsewhere, definitely.
You captured my feelings about the relationships in the game perfectly. Yes, Daeran was the first time I felt like a toon was pandering me. And somehow I was able to forgive all of his (many) flaws because he was so very entertaining and so useful in the party.
It's comforting that my feelings here are not unique!
As a woman who generally plays female characters romancing male characters, my experience in most RPGs with romance is that my character ends up with the good-aligned male romantic lead. He is almost always a character who I like very much, but who is not liked by a certain subsection of loud male players. Those players will describe the male romantic lead as "boring and whiny," boast about never using him in their party (or killing him if they get the opportunity), complain if he ever seems to take part of the spotlight, etc. These complaints sound the same from one RPG to the next, regardless of the actual differences between the male romantic leads. Meanwhile, these players will be playing male characters who romance female characters, and be absolutely full of praise for how wonderful their romance is. Romancing Daeran made me wonder if part of the experience that those players enjoyed was a sense of being pandered to (given that the female romantic leads often get a lot more content), and whether I was now getting to enjoy a taste of that. It was also refreshing in the sense that none of the usual suspects could credibly complain about Daeran being boring or whiny, because of how entertaining he is.
And your point about wish fulfillment was spot on. It's a bit embarrassing to admit but the fantasy of becoming the embodiment of freedom, love and nature struck a chord with me whereas becoming an evil, slimy-skinned monster was no where on my wish list. And BG3 did nothing to put it there!
I do hope the BG3 devs do something to eliminate the railroaded "damp squib" moments at the end. I felt like they were going for tragic, heroic sacrifice and just didn't work.
Yes, I think we're on the same page here.
I feel like "wish fulfilment" can be seen as dirty words by many. "Oh, you just want a fantasy to pander to you! How low! What about fine art?" But art and wish-fulfilment don't have to be at odds. Every work makes a promise in its initial self-presentation. We then ask if the promise was fulfilled in its conclusion. This doesn't mean that writers can't play with tropes, create surprising twists, and subvert expectations. All those things can be achieved successfully, without betraying the work's initial promise, if the deepest underlying values within the promise continue to be heeded and/or interrogated in an interesting way.
As a highly generalised example: a work may present itself as speaking to a specific yearning that is initially presented as good. It can then question what is at work in that yearning, and maybe point out some inconsistencies and problematic dynamics. But just leaving it there isn't satisfying. We get catharsis when the work ultimately "redeems" whatever underlying good can still be found in the initial yearning after all the interrogation, rather than simply saying "well you shouldn't have wanted that, have this instead."
Without going into so much detail that it would be explicitly spoilery (but I'm happy to discuss it further in some other, more appropriate thread), I feel like the lyrics of the soundtrack's song "I Want to Live" speak beautifully about many of the themes in BG3. It's not wrong to want to live, to long for all the things we can do in the future if we make it through our struggles. Yet I felt as if, after almost a whole game of clearly saying "it's good to live," the very end of BG3 decided to move in a sideways direction. It didn't fully drop the "living is good" theme, but it half endorsed that and half endorsed something else. It also presented the something else as heroic and self-denying, even in a scenario where you may have been trying to make heroic, self-denying choices
precisely contrary to that something else for the whole game. And it presented that something as necessary, while not making a sufficiently strong case for its necessity. For me, that was a fumble that made BG3's ending less satisfying than it could have been.
None of this is to underestimate how challenging it is to write a satisfying ending. However, I think that WotR can offer some good pointers on how to do it. There are many final states in which WotR can end, from the destructive to the redemptive, from the triumphantly victorious to the nobly self-sacrificing, from upholding the status quo to subverting it, and more. In writing some of the wicked endings, I don't think any endorsement of those behaviours is implied - but the promise offered in making wicked options available is fulfilled.
I've run a lot of tabletop RPGs over the years. At the outset of a campaign, I always try to have a clear sense of what specific fantasy I'm putting on the table. That's not because the most important thing to me is the integrity of the world I'm presenting. That
is important. But the
most important thing to me is the quality of the experience for my players. I can only keep the promise I'm making to them if I know what it is.
Anyway, thanks for the discussion. Perhaps we will take up some of these points again in other threads!
