Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous vs BG3

Not only that, but with all the various difficulty levels, just increase/decrease to your own level of engagement. Its fantastic. I've finished it once, but I've created dozen's of characters, played a bit, tried stuff, tweaked things, redone it, etc etc.

If Owlcat releases DLC and supports the game, I could see myself playing it for years.

I know nothing about this other game WoTR, but technically its Larian that started conversation on that by going woke. The Woke culture , at least in the United States is a small fringe group with a loud whiny voice. It has no place in video games or in D&D at all. And why do we put up with such a small fringe group arrogantly trying to dictate to us what is right and wrong? I have other posts on this subject. People label it a "Social Issue " that not supporting them in this fringe group hurts there feelings, which puts me in a no win situation because from how i was taught all sin is the same , murder is the same as a white lie in Gods eyes , so that leaves me the choice stand up and not except it which may bring hurt feels OR keep quiet which in its self is a lie and risks salvation. You all can label it a "social issue" if you want, to me its a salvation issue. Secondly no one has the right to try to force others to support a cause they don't believe in. Matter of fact you might call me a Gay / Transgender phobic or something like that , but isn't true, you have to believe something exists to be phobic of it. My point of view there is God would never make someone born with sin, so i don't believe anyone is born gay or transgender. Nor do i believe God ever makes mistakes. That doesn't mean they are aware of the fact they chose to be that way, it could be something subconscious and so they believe it was from birth, but i do believe instead transgender /gay is a choice, not something inherited by birth.

That was a fascinating post, if something of a non sequitur with the thread. I’d love to discuss it in private. DM me if you’re interested.

Sure nice to have focus/specialization feats for weapons that are either barely present (like slings) or don't exist at all (like whips). There's little point in having hundreds of options if many of them either don't work or are so suboptimal on any difficulty higher than "normal" (not even the "challenging" one which is "true" to the core rules!) that you're better off not using them at all rather than suffer through it. That's not good balance, that's a jumbled mess which is thrown together without thought of how it translates into the game from the ruleset and whether or not the game is designed to accomodate it. Who'd in their right mind pick most of the divine domains that are on offer, for example? Would you rather, um, throw your weapon at the enemy several times between rests using your spellcasting ability to hit... or have stronger healing spells, be better at dealing with undead/outsiders, have a quick and cheap way to remove fatigue from the party?

I'm all for lots of options in an RPG, myself. But there's a difference between a carefully prepared multi-course meal and a pile of uncooked food as tall as the room it's in you are expected to dive into.

I doubt it. Writing in WotR is just mediocre; the "epicness" comes from high levels and bloated numbers. Every mythic path is written according to the rule "stay in your lane". If you late game switch to another path, your allies will abandon you, because angels can't fight alongside a gold dragon who happened to save them a chapter before.

On the evil path it is very visible how lacking the reactivity of the companions is. Here is my lich's pillar of skulls, blood still dripping, top head is that of a murdered guy your party has met before, and what is the reaction from the party paladin or good aligned cleric? Nothing.

If you follow the discussions on various forums, most of them are about combat and builds. Because this is where the focus of WotR is and that is the target audience of this game. This is quite opposite to games like PST or Arcanum, which had frankly terrible combat and focused on the story instead.

The game WotR reminded me of is the Throne of Bhaal expansion, where even the innkeeper has epic weapons for sale, so that you can hack & slash your way through hordes of enemies.

Yeah I LOVE the PoE games too, though for me 2 is better than 1 simply because of multiclassing. But at the same time, I didn't care for the naval/nautical part of that game. So for me, my top 3 right now are: P:WotR, PoE2, PoE1, though it's VERY close between them. But I'm also waiting for Black Geyser to be completed and leave EA, as that game has the potential to tip some scales for me.

Since we're basically using this thread as a general kitchen to talk about other cRPGs, I want to talk about a game I've been trying out for the past few days.

Dungeons of Naheulbeuk. I'd say it's a sort of mix between Solasta and DOS2 as far as combat mechanics go. Some people in other circles say that it is actually a better game than Solasta even in terms of combat design, if not overall. I doubted them, but with the sales going on now, I decided to pick it up and see for myself.

I think they were right. The start was a bit rough, but after a couple levels, I can see where they were coming from. It doesn't follow true DnD rules, but something that seems rather close. It's damn good at what it does. The humor in that game is close to Larian fare, except a lot less memey and much more character-based, if that makes any sense. I've taken it to calling it a very French-style sort of DnD game.

It's worth noting that the game is balanced around a party of 8 characters, which I've found rather interesting. I've been finding it very fun.

It also has an interesting way of handling critical failures - instead of doing any sort of RNG manipulation, each critical failure instead contributes to a sort of fortune gauge that you can expend for additional actions, like giving the current party member an additional action, fully healing a selected party member, teleporting a party member anywhere on the combat field, or healing 6 random party members at once. There's also no permadeath, but once a party member goes down, you have 3 turns to heal them (or less if they're affected by DoT abilities or AoE attacks) before they're rendered out for the rest of the battle. And a downed party member receives less EXP at the end of combat if not healed back up.

For the record, I agree with most of this. I've been enjoying WotR well enough, but that mostly comes from playing around with builds and synergies and seeing how things that I came up with worked in actual combat, how the various numbers added up. There are some good moments here and there, but generally I find the writing mediocre at best - that goes for both the main plot and the companions. Other than Regill, whom majority of players agree to be the best written and best acted, I have the easiest time tolerating Camellia. The rest - I find them really forced, grating and unconvincing.

The one thing I think WotR does really well is its soundtrack.

It's been on point since Kingmaker, so it's unsurprising. Having different capital city themes based on your alignment combination was quite rad.

As for the characters, so long as none of them are Jaethal & Valerie levels of absolutely unbearable both in writing and in voice-over, it's definitely an improvement. Heck, the first game had Harrim, who, despite being proclaimed as a boring "whiner" by Linzi (who should really shut up), probably has the most entertaining and competently written dialogue and voice lines - perhaps exactly because they don't try going into grating pretentiousness (J&V) or attempts at crude humor (Regongar).

The music in WotR is amazing, one of the best game soundtracks that I've heard. I've been following the main composer on yt, I hope he gets more recognition, because he seems incredibly talented.

I have to strongly disagree on the writing part. Well at least I think Wotr is still leaps and bounds beyond BG3. And DOS2 writing I think is BETTER than current BG3. There basically is NO <<writing>> there, its all cinematic so...if you transcribed what all your companion says into text omg...Wotr seem like a masterpiece. Take ANY medium length dialogue in party... In a huge RPG the written word will always be, or have the POTENTIAL to be more interesting, its a no contest.

But yes, the <Storytelling> in BG3 is interesting, but the way people communicate; through cinematics, VERY strongly downgrades the writing in favor of visual emotions: Then what about BG3 SCREENPLAY then...?? To my eyes its still pretty stiff and mediocre= writing fail. Good story though.
Hence why I dislikes the overwhelming use of cinematics for dialogues in RPGs...Unless you have a CLEAR CUT hero, like Gerald in the Witcher, or commander Sheperd in Mass Effect. In that case its more focused and just works.

So in conclusion, I think BG3 should be more focused on YOU, the protagonist for its writing to succeed. I want my companions to ask me the <<tough>> questions : WHO ARE YOU? WHERE DO YOU COME FROM? WHAT DO YOU DO? Right now its more about all the companions...Larian should ASAP work on that side of the equation.


BG3 writing (romance part).

-I never saw myself as a hero, to be honest.
-You performed a great job. Take it in stride and have fun.
-Is it okay if I have fun? In my head, there’s a worm. I’m surrounded by fools, and the only thing I have to drink is vinegar-tasting wine.
-Relax, your troubles will still be there the next day.
-That means I have to make it through the night. And then there’s this party.
-Let’s wait till things calm down a little. We’ll locate each other when the rest have gone to sleep.
etc...

I laughed. Awkwardly.


Wotr writing (romance part)

-Your powers are interesting form a theoretical point of view. You are an experiment started by Areelu Vorlesh, and terminating it before its is complete would be foolish, not to mention impolite.
-I have made my decision.
-Before you answer...Before your decision becomes final,..Look me in the eye. Please. <Arueshalaes voice is quiet, and her eyes full of sadness.>
Youve done so much for me. You helped me find my dreams and make peace with my nightmares. Desna showed me the path away from evil. But you were the one sho showed me the path toward good. I cant...I cant believe that after that your going to become a monster of the Abyss!! Back in the world of dreams, you told me that you LOVED me. I want you to know that I love you too! Let everyone know - mortals, demons, gods - I love you! <She offers you her hand> Free yourself from the Abyss. Ill help you!

I cried. And decided not to become a demon

Don't you badmouth Linzi, you! Linzi is adorable, it's a crime that she wasn't a romance option, and in our home game we're most certainly not going to let some arbitrary plot device fridge her. Hmph.

(All said in good humour, I promise ^.^)

And there is the difference in expectations where it comes to writing. I think that Arueshalae is a badly written fanservice character, and one of the reasons why WotR's writing is mediocre. She constantly tells the main character how she struggles against her demonic nature, yet those struggles are not reflected in the reality; your character is never in danger of her. Neither is she really: whenever she is about to die in battle, Desna intervenes to magically teleport her away. She is a demon, yet faces no persecution in your city that was just liberated from demons; the inquisition that persecutes even tieflings because of their heritage, is strangely absent here. She constantly talks about earning redemption herself, yet is codependent on the main character to the point where frankly I've thought it unhealthy. If this were a fanfiction, I'd say Arueshalae is a Mary Sue.

I don't care if she's fan service, she sounds nice, says nice things and isn't just sarcastic and edgy all of the time. I'll take her over any of the "realistic" characters Larian creates anyday.

WOTR not woke? Seriously Owlcat jumped the shark with their woke sermonizing - I stopped playing the game after 9 hours because it was just too cringeworthy. The story is NOT well written. It is shallow and uninspiring.

Initially, except for choice of character romancing BG3 was not terribly woke but it is creeping in. The romancing doesn't bother me because Larian lets you make you own choice. The gushy dialoge between the gnomes in the forge doesn't bother me either. It doesn't advance the plot but it doesn't distract from it either. What does bother me is Dammon and Rath no longer have muscular mesomorphic body types. Dammon looks positively anorectic. Its a wonder he can wield a hammer. What prompted this? Too much toxic masculinity?

Well said. And Larian's "realistic" characters are not actually realistic to begin with. They're a bunch of cliched, hipster, drama queens who I would never want to be around. Owlcat certainly has room to improve in the writing department, but at least they aren't giving me Larian writing. Larian's writing is the worst.

I’m not getting the WotR love. I bought it because everyone said it was great. Ugh.

Elves look strange and weird. The voice acting seems childish and cringey and perhaps over acted. The towns are beautiful but the same lame dialog for every npc? What is the point?

Characters speak paragraphs of dialog in bad need of editing.

I just don’t get it at all. It feels half-baked.

And personally, I like what people seem to consider wokeness.I like options.

Room for improvement is an understatement. Arueshalae is a demonic temptress who used to dine on souls human flesh (edit: got the cannibal romances confused. Now that is something I'd not expect to be writing about cRPGs...), but now is all shy and blushing and a trembling voice. But hey, she is nice to the main character, whom she is very dependent on, so that's good writing.

Even if Hulrun and the inqusition are present in the city, the same Hulrun who would persecute a tiefling if they so much as twitched, who has tried to murder Ember for beign a witch, there is no inquisition trying to persecute Arueshalae, who is a real demon. Neither is anyone in the city afraid of her, or even taking much notice, despite the fact that it's the middle of a demonic invasion.

It's not about realism, it's about consistency.

i'll take inconsistency over asshole companions anyday

Sure, but personal preferences don't make the writng a masterpiece (especially on the level of PST or Arcanum), which is what this discussion was about.