Yeah I also thought that felt abrupt. Like people always say just rip the Band-Aid off and such, but honestly I could maybe have done with some more foot dragging here lol. Some kiss and make it better. Just kinda playing things up, but I guess they saw that as the time for clean breaks.
I weirdly feel like a team that was slightly less ambitious (I can't even hear myself say some of this stuff lol) but just more consistent the scope/scale? And responsive to the mix and match feedback on stuff like custom characterization.
I think this game could have probably have 500 hours standard instead of 200, just with some Dwarf voices and more avatars and more character and monster art lol. The encounter design for the setpiece momentsm those are all great, if it had some detours into the more random dungeon crawler stuff and scale up difficulty modes. Party of 6 doesn't mean I need a whole new angle, just like more monsters and boss monsters, in some side areas that can be ignored if the player isn't into that, and some way to drop XP totals so it harmonizes. Like just building out the MM to include the stuff they missed, so it's more all purpose.
I keep thinking about how much fun it would be if we could dress our Zombies and Skeletons, or choose custom familiar colors and animal companion riffs. Like so much mileage just out of a thing like that.
I know there will be mods that can achieve something along these lines, but not sure about the area design or what I think would be needed which is the little vignette banter moments to make it hum. The areas and the combat is arcade-ish, like that's what it reminds me of, which isn't the worst thing ever since honour mode is sorta like playing that one quarter, but I also think there are other ways into the endless game. Things like hirelings or MP too, where perfect Meta knowledge works against the replay, whereas in the grand campaign solo it's more things like little achievements and excuses to try different combinations or builds, but still hitting the familiar story beats. I think it had room to grow, but really what I would have loved would be to see them go all crazy with the theater gang and motion capture a bunch of cool new stuff for the custom Tav. Like for customizable emotes and animations, portraits and that sort of stuff just to keep pushing the envelope on what a cool D&D char creator might be. I don't think NWN levels of modding are really ever going to be on the table so I know I'm pipe dreaming a bit here. Like I'm sure there's a wall to hit on that stuff without a new expansion type thing so the engine can get big updates. I just feel like they wouldn't pawn that off though, cause probably they'd just be building the next engine for their next game, instead for like the freebie toolset or DM mode type things.
I don't even remember where I started here, oh wait now I remember. So just the idea that even if you can't do Alien again, maybe Aliens would suffice? Like if they could just get enough of the same talent on board. I mean not everything can be a T2, even though that's always the hope for a level up, but you bring back a couple fan favs and mix the bag. I could see it, or how it might have been. I guess we'll have to see what all really comes across the line in Sept when those tools drop.
