Originally Posted by Gray Ghost
I've said many times both on and off the forums that Larian seems to be very good at character writing and at least in this game, very much fails at main plot writing. The Emperor is interesting in that he's where character and main plot intersect. You've made a very interesting, well-written argument here. Maybe it's because of my general frustrations with the game (unlike you I have found it to be the most disappointing gameplay experience I've ever had. Not the worst, just the most disappointing) or my general feelings with him as a character but I just cannot bring myself to view the emperor with any degree of grace or accept his words as anything more than manipulation, even though I do factually see the validity of the various points you make here. Maybe it's just that by the time he's properly introduced and we start to see more of him I was already emotionally checked out of the game so his nuances fell flat.

That having been said, I feel like the Emperor is one of those situations where the character's nuance is kind of an accident, a result of inconsistencies working in Larian's favor (at least to the opinion of some like you).The various inconsistencies and issues indicate to me that there was just a general disunity in the writer's room and they were just trying to get him to work for his function, which is primarily a mechanical story function. I think you see that in the Balduran reveal because it's very meaningless in the context of the game. Balduran isn't a meaningful figure in the game's story. It's not like he was brought up repeatedly as a person to be admired or anything like that. He's just a guy who founded an important city. He was presumably a famous adventurer but aside from founding the city, how many of his deeds to we actually hear about throughout the game? Making the emperor Balduran doesn't make any themes stronger, it's just a name that's meant to be a big reveal but is probably not going to mean anything significant to the majority of the players. To me that indicates that they felt the Emperor wasn't working and were trying to scrounge up something to improve him and made that very blatant, lackluster attempt.

I suspect that making the Dream Guardian into Balduran wasn't the original direction. There is that basement in the third act where you find the katana there are journals that suggest a different direction for that character was at least toyed with at some point, if I remember correctly. I would guess the Emperor was a composite of two characters turned into one.

CDPR was compelled to release CP2077 'as was' out of fears it wouldn't be profitable and they needed to cut their losses and make whatever they could off it, in defense of those interests the development process had already been lengthened by 2 years and new generations of gfx chipsets were on the horizon even as a new set was just being released so there was a legitimate fear it could have hit the market looking dated if they had waited for a stable product. I suspect this game was in a similar position, especially after 3 years in EA which focused entirely upon the first act. Ultimately I found the writing of both games lackluster and I don't think this game in particular would have been much improved even if they'd been given another five years to finish cooking. Part of the magic of the original Baldur's Gate sequel lie in the enthusiasm of the development team, I can't remember which but one of them had decided to read all of the Forgotten Realm novels to get a feel for the setting and the sort of story that they should be telling. As a result you had a lot of inspired design choices: from romances to faction alignment to having bases of operation that reflected your class and lore accurate cameos and references, much of what they did was completely new and all of it worked as a game and for the fans because it was what they themselves wanted to see in the game as fans having a genuine appreciation for the source material. By contrast I am not even sure anyone at Larian even played the original titles. Anyway, that is all a long way of saying I agree the entire narrative is a mess the Emperor is just part of it.

Don't get me wrong, Larian did some things very well. Obviously they took heavy inspiration from the artwork of DnD. The encounters are varied and richly textured, enemies employ varied skills, abilities, and attacks so encounters never begin to feel like a grind, the environments work and have great contrast so you can't confuse any two areas. Visually speaking this is an incredibly rich game and some effort was made toward making combat as dynamic as possible which is unfortunately undermined by the fact that 5th Edition DnD is simplistic and rather uninteresting. I don't say any of this because I want to take the piss out of Larian, obviously they felt compelling gameplay trumped compelling narrative which makes a certain sense since this is a video game and general literacy hasn't been as low as it is now in the US since 1870 (1 in 5 adults considered to have a low level of literacy).

Last edited by DistantStranger; 10/03/24 06:29 AM.