Oh yes. Current dialogue scenes need to be untied from Long Rests. In other words, Gale's Mirror Image Dialogue, as I call it, shouldn't be thrown out the window if I don't Long Rest before I meet him. In other words, to see his Mirror Image Dialogue, you have to make sure that you pretty much Long Rest when the game's tutorial pops up and teaches you to Long Rest just after the Devourer Fight just after you meet Shadowheart.
That's not cool. Not only does the game NOT limit you on Long Rests, but it also promotes Long Resting frequently which is totally contrary to the story.
So they need to untie Dialogues from Long Rests so that Dialogues are triggered in some sort of order no matter when you Long Rest; whether frequently or infrequently, so that all players are able to trigger those cutscenes.
What I mean is, regardless of when you first Long Rest, you should get Shadowheart's "I'm not sure this is such a good idea," dialogue as long as she has joined the team. Then, the first time you Long Rest after meeting Gale, regardless of when you do it, you get his Mirror Image Dialogue. Then, regardless of when you Long Rest again, after this Mirror Image Dialogue, you should get Gale's "Go to Hell" Dialogue. Maybe even during this same Long Rest, you could then see Astarion creeping out of camp. In other words, multiple dialogue cutscenes could even be lumped into a single Long Rest, as long as it makes sense to do it, so that whether you Long Rest a lot or a little you still get all the dialogues.
So let's not get confused here. I realize that on the one hand I'm saying that dialogues should not be tied to Long Rest. Then, on the other, I'm saying that events should be tied to Long Rest. So let me clarify.
The difference between what I am saying in this post and what I have said in previous posts is that when it comes to Story-Driven Time Sensitive Events, THOSE should be tied to how frequent or infrequent you Long Rest. So, again, using the Druid Ritual as an example, if I dethrone Kahga in less than x number of days (say 2-4 or whatever Larian decides makes sense in terms of how long the Ritual of Thorns should realistically take) then I get some awesome weapon or armor as a reward for doing the quest with only a few Long Rests. Yay me! I'm rewarded for doing it in a very few days. If I don't dethrone Kahga in that amount of time, then I trigger a new cutscene based on the fact that I took more Long Rests than the Story-Driven Time Frame suggested that I had. Then, this new cutscene that is triggered, that I would not get if I completed the quest sooner, would give me a reason as to why the Druid Ritual is not completed yet. This new cutscene would buy me more Long Rests to use to complete the Kahga Dethroning before the Ritual is complete. Thus, I might not get as cool of a reward, but my reward is that I get additional story and cutscenes and maybe a cool item that is not as cool as the item I would have gotten if I had completed it faster. THAT's the kind of thing I mean.
Either that, or just limit the Long Rests like I just posted more recently with prerequisites that need to be met in order to actually Long Rest. I like that idea too. In that idea, people can Long Rest as much as they want to, but they have to meet certain conditions to do it. I like that idea almost more than Time Sensitive Events because in that suggestion characters won't let you Long Rest unless THEY feel they need it. So, if after a fight, you haven't hardly used any spell slots, Short Rests, you still have lots of HP, etc., the characters will be like, "What? Rest? Already? We've hardly begun our day. I still have a lot of fight left in me. Let's just keep going."
In that way, if you do get hit hard, unexpectedly, for a particular battle, then you can Long Rest without fear that something might go wrong from a story perspective. It should also help limit people from using Long Rests so much since they won't be able to unless they have enough food, have used enough short rests and spell slots and HP, and so forth, and everything should all kind of work out better...provided that what I just put in here about untying the dialogues so they can't be overwritten, is applied as well.
So I like both ideas. Either one would work for me.
