The reputation system in many RPGs is an attempt to flag for the game world ways you've decided to roleplay your character. Having it be a grid or axis is going to both incentivise you to game the the numbers in one direction, or pigeonhole you down one area of morality. The ways RPGs sometime track the manner in which you complete missions is superior in the respect that you probably aren't artificially choosing the style in which you complete a mission, but its usually only used to distinguish between a player who kills without compunction and one on doesn't.

I was hoping in BG3 the narrator would be utilized to flesh out your characters motivations to avoid the whole min/maxing of reputation. But, in true Baldur's Gate tradition, there really isn't a natural incentive to play evil beyond knowing there is content there for you, the player, to see. So, enumerating on Tav's motivations might not be as necessary as in a game where your actions and motivations have more ramifications on the story.

Just to shout out Dragon Age II again, Hawke's personality would change depending on the number of times you chose to respond in a certain way, you might not even notice it happening if you only play the game through once, and I thought it was a neat way to actualize your roleplay decisions.

Have a link to another time we talked about this.

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Romance and adventure often go hand in hand, I think Bioware really tapped into something by adding serious character arcs with romances to their games, instead of what happened a lot before with it being tacked on towards the end because it's a trope of the genre.

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I was surprised in the video when he says the second Act was the most thematically succesful, I thought for most of the people here (People who were likely to have played the first act so many times) the transition to the second act, and its story are were the game started to show its hand with regard to the type of storytelling we'd be getting. The setting was jarring for me, and the story seemed to expect more buyin from me too quickly; though I think infiltrating Moonrise was actually some of the most fun I had during the game.

Last edited by Sozz; 17/08/24 06:09 AM. Reason: Link!