I am in love

this is beautiful

went from "who walks around with AC11 oh right it's the guy who's always rubbing his nose against the floor"

to THIS PERFECT ENSEMBLE

the thumbnail did NOT do it justice

haaaaa I love, and I'm glad you're playing this finally

oh yeah, I started playing it back in like November but I find the control scheme really frustrating and tbh don't have many nice things to say about most of the characters so that didn't feel particularly plurk-appropriate

I'M ASSUMING IT WILL GO TO ENJOYABLE PLACES but I've basically been calling it reverse persona 5 I really loved PLAYING P5 but the story made a lot of infuriating choices (the meeting of the Fuck You, Akechi, Association meets Thursdays). But then I played it like three times in a row because it was FUN as long as I skipped all the cutscenes.

And Baldur's Gate is giving me the opposite feel. it feels like there's a lot of really rich storytelling to uncover and I want it but actually playing the game is antithetical to games I enjoy playing

I can get the cool story about the mindfuck creatures but I have to swallow it down with a lot of medicine and 0 sugar

and, at least for the first couple of weeks I was playing when I was flipping tables about the control scheme, there was a lot of "well you're just playing it wrong" alongside "but you can do aaaaanyyyyyyyythiiiing"

it's less miserable now that I've gained a few levels and can have an encounter without getting immediately murdered by everything

(turn down the difficulty), says my shoulder-shikki, to which I say NO. NORMAL IS THE DEVELOPER-INTENDED ROUTE. A GAME SHOULD BE PLAYABLE WITHOUT MODS OR PUTTING IT ON BABY MODE.

tldr this is generally not the conversation plurk wants to have about BG so I didn't bother bringing it here

BUT WYLL IN THIS FINERY

you are my people for that

honestly the controls are kind of a pain in the ass as is the gameplay itself if you're not experienced with D&D

and so many of the characters are designed to annoy the piss out of you in act 1 lmao

I mean I'm very familiar with D&D but the game doesn't do a good job of explaining how to translate it into the mechanics of like. doing video game thongs

like one of the first challenges I had was right outside of the crash site when there's this elaborate temple that is obviously supposed to have some kind of encounter in it, but I couldn't figure out how to trigger it

so I tried all the normal game things. I turned on all the candles and I tried to pray at the statues and I shoved my face into every corridor in case a texture looked like a wall but was supposed to be something else

found nothing and left

then later on I come back to clear out parts of the map that were still in shroud and found a trap door outside that led to a whole basement crypt

but even after having the encounter, I couldn't find a way for the basement to connect to the temple I'd tried exploring

just these little things that are supposed to be obvious that weren't- and since the game is SO open world that it doesn't always give directions, it was really upsetting for me

minimoffs and necrofancy have both been incredibly supportive while I was furious and shouting

especially since my system kind of struggles to run it so sometimes models just didn't load in

(this was probably an optimization thing tbh - it stopped happening after an update a while back)

but we had some laughs about how stealthy astarion was sometimes.

nods solemnly

also this BARD-ASS OUTFIT, nice look, Wyllyam

RIGHT????

it gives a bonus to performance so it's definitely BARD SHIT

but he'd already been wearing the hat and it just felt like the ensemble found itself with that outfit

I've got a dumb wizard hat on Gale rn and I hope there is a hideous brown wizard robe to shove him in

If it's not already hideously brown you can DYE IT to be hideously brown

see why doesn't the game lead with THIS shit

I just want to walk into a clothing shop and pick out COSTUMES and all the traders I've seen are like "what if we offered the same leather vest everyone else has"

wait does this mean I can dye Gale's stupid hat purple

that could also work

gdi now I need to google this OTHER mechanic the game didn't bother teaching me how to do

"how to make pretty clothes bg3"

yeah honestly it took me a bit of fucking around and googling even given my familiarity with D&D so I feel u

and it used to just straight up crash my computer about half the time

I'm also playing on controller so it's like. tried to talk to that dude stole from him instead so now he wants to murder me

you can find dyes when going through boxes

or buy them from merchants

there is definitely purple, i dyed my cleric's armor with it

and then when you select it you just pick the thing you want to dye and bam, done

oh yeah I have a bunch of them and it just never occurred to me that I could just. Do things with it

I carry around so much junk that has no purpose

lmao i keep all the letters and stuff

that i find in people's things

idk someone might want them in baldur's gate

SAME

I'm carrying around every love letter I've pulled off every corpse

aron was the only merchant i found for a while so he wound up with just ... so many goblin weapons

that he was clearly not selling to other people

the heavy stuff has to go but other stuff can stick around for a while

eventually shikki told me to only bother looking at weapons and armor that were highlighted and that fully saved my life

yeah i should probably do that but i usually just push stuff off on my tanks

that one merchant kept all the bullshit I gave him and then I couldn't parse his inventory for the stuff I wanted to buy T_T

oh I guess since we're talking I should mention where I am? currently doing the last third of the goblin camp

fucking the bear is one of the reasons I bought this game and I feel like that's on a horizon so I'm looking forward to that

but the druid racism in this game is staggering so I'm not letting him walk around with me and I hope he still likes me enough for a one night stand

Halsin will be down to clown so long as you're nice to him and oh yeah if you're just doing goblin camp you're still in the annoying part

I nearly lost my mind doing the goddamn goblin camp

it does get easier and better but act one is just a slog the first time!

it's like when FF13 first came out and people were like "the first 30 hours such but then it gets REALLY GOOD"

*suck

the in-game clock says I'm at 57 hours but at least 15 of those hours were just the game being open while I was doing other things

I heard the goblin camp was story progression so I saved it for last(?? is it last??)

it is story progression and yes there are things that it affects going forward

it's just hard the first time

I spent like 80 hours on my first run and so much of that was cursing the game out and reloading

the story is glorious but man the learning curve

hahaha oh THE RELOADING

I want to be a shonen protag who fights nonlethally and makes friends with defeated foes

and let me tell you this game does NOT like that idea

I get it. I shot fire in your face. hard to do that nonlethally

BUT I PRESS THE BUTTON SAYING DON'T KILL PEOPLE

yeah sadly the game does lean a little toward encouraging murder hobo behavior

spent like two hours today trying to find a way to not have to murder a pair of six year olds

eventually I just put them to sleep and let the bear eat them

RIP those kids

"play however you want" unless you like to play the kind of D&D where you tie people up and interrogate them

I also miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight have caused a logic problem for myself? It let me leave Minthara alive so SHE'S just passed out and naked because I took all her stuff and that let the goblin quest check her off as "defeated" but all the NPCs are still acting like she's alive enough to talk to

and now I have a quest that says "the goblins are defeated yay" but also a quest that says "help minthara raid the tieflings" and I don't think I'm supposed to have both of those active at the same time

unless she's about to show up with her boobs out wielding a sword for vengeance or something

I mean. I could be into that

yeah you can technically leave her alive

and then she'll show up later

or she'll show up after you long rest to get your HP up

I think I'm just going to reset and fast travel the fuck out of this suddenly massively hostile camp

(hope Halsin doesn't keep waiting for me there >>)

YEP super glitched, can't resolve anything with Zevlin

and now we play the game of reviving different saves until I find the one that isn't broken

thank you, bg3, you always know how to get me to put you down for a few weeks

oh noooo rude

haha YEAH SEE this is why I haven't been plurking about it

seems rude to just come in and tell people that I want to punt this beloved game out the window

but she likes to try my patience

LET ME LOVE YOU, you awful tease

it is a very very sharp learning curve but it pays off in later acts. act 1 tho, I hated all the dudes except Wyll and the game wouldn't goddamn run

I was playing it way back upon first release tho

not the early one thank fuck but initial release was so crashy

"I hated all the dudes except Wyll" omg it me

Astarion is trying too hard, Gale won't shut up, and the narrative keeps trying to tell me Shadowheart is canon waifu but I refuse to have her in my party because I don't want to hear what she thinks about literally anything

I will just go without a healer I do not care

Wyll is in charge of talking to animals, Karlach is there for warm hugs and to hit things, Gale rounds out my party because he can make a cloud of knives happen and I have no complaints about that end

when I know a fight is about to happen, I will often swap out Wyll for Lae just because Wyll is always dead and Lae is also very good at hitting things

I adored Shadowheart but I played my first run as Karlach

I'm sure she'd be less awful if I gave her more time, but in my playthrough she's like a cobweb at the end of camp that occasionally drops a lore dump on me because it's important for the game plot

like sorry for your tragic backstory friend but I'm just here because I need you to stop someone from bleeding out

"The truth is.... I'm from the goth clergy" yes that must be so hard for you do we have to talk about this now

12 days later and I was just informed that all the goblins develop telepathy and become hostile after you take out the third leader no matter how much you work to not kill anyone extra

doesn't matter if you create smoke clouds and operate in shadow

everyone knows and they want to murder you for it

I'm. Glad that this was developer-intended and not the massive glitch I thought it was.

definitely worth revisiting the same boss battle multiple times

so now I am still very stuck but with the understanding that the devs want me to be very stuck here.

me, stubbornly refusing to commit a whole goblin genocide

I feel like that's not a big ask and shouldn't break this open-world experience.

is it about trying to get into the underdark? because there are other options you can do.

iluvroadrunner6: no, it's much dumber than that

lol okay

I've got two ways into the underdark unlocked so THAT'S fine whenever the game tells me it's time to do that quest. I literally can't get out of the red dude's throne/ceremony room

you could fast travel out if the battle's done and Halsin's like okay gang let's bounce

yeahhhhh I tried that but I told halsin to hang out and wait for me because I was trying not to have to murder everyone on the way over there

ooooh gotcha so you have to go back and get him

and when I fast travel to thr druids, there's no option other than "halsin's kidnapped "

yeah I can't resolve the questline

idk I feel like this game everyone loves for being so accepting of player choice really doesn't want your choice to be "leave people alive"

I went asking around about potential options from people who know the game better than I do and someone was like "well you can poison the goblins and have an easy run?" and like!! that is still a genocide though???

so like 60% of this is that I'm being stubborn but also 40% of it is that the idea of having to have random encounters every 3 steps with people trying to stab my ankles is just really not fun?

yeah that's fair

I've slept so I'm not table-flipping angry anymore. I think next time I'll try to put some guards to sleep and see if I can creep around some corners

i took halsin into the big boss fight with the dude goblin lead and was able to leave a big chunk of the camp alive at first?

(i came back and fought them later to get into the underdark, but i hadn't explored my options then)

I was scared to bring halsin since he was like "I will murder everyone I see if you bring me with your party "

lmao it's not that bad

it's just that he immediately triggers the boss fights so you don't get the cut things

thaaaat makes sense

*cut scenes

so if you're trying to recruit minthara it's a problem, but otherwise you just have a bear

I am desperate to befriend this bear T_T

one of the reasons I picked this game up is to have carnal relations with this bear

lmaoooo

I feel like this HAS to be the way out, right? every other exit is this mass of red "THE FLOOR IS LAVA" and going through the top route here at least has guards that move around and aren't ALWAYS staring at you

tried hanging out with the spiders and SPIDERS WERE CHILL, goblins were everywhere and immediately smashed my face in

also couldn't get to the spiders without taking massive fall damage and that feels like also not the route

I was also told that I should be above level 4 at this point and this could also be contributing to why I keep getting my face smashed in

ninja'd myself into a problem I can't solve

there is a way down that doesn't, but you might have to go past the goblins you're trying not to kill. though fun story when i took halsin into that boss battle one of my attempts ended in him falling into the spider pit as a bear

and i couldn't figure out how to get him out

so every time it was his turn, i just flashed down to the bear, chillin with the spiders, unable to do anything

but yeah there's a ramp that gets to the spiders but it's got a gate in front of it

LOL shikki took me on an evil-sided speedrun through act 1 and there was some point where we were leading the goblin army when it triggered the spiders to come, but my system couldn't load that many characters at once and it would just flash to a blue screen with a bunch of spiders hanging out not moving

lmaoooo

I saw the ramp to get to the spiders back before everyone wanted to kill me, but isn't that out where the priestess was doing the brandings earlier?

I can't get there without triggering an encounter I can't survive

I can MAYBE get one character over there but then gale's tripping over his robe or something and can't keep up

you can decouple from the group? and then they'll chill and wait for you

if you think you might be able to get your sneakiest character to halsin

TO HALSIN is something that would require remembering where to go. Right now my goal is "to another screen"

I know if I go left that is where naked minthara wants to kill me

PROBABLY NOT THAT WAY

but also maybe that way? there's something up the ladder in that room but is that the way I came? DON'T THINK IT IS?

i've been up there but i don't remember. BUT I believe Halsin is down on the first floor in the back to the far right. right before the stairs that took you to minthara, i think?

like if you left him where you found him that's where he should be

I THINK that's where I'm trying to get to while crawling around in the rafters? I think. at the point of stuck-ness where I don't remember what the rest of this dungeon even looks like

LITERALLY ALWAYS GALE

lmao he is not a subtle wizard

ASTARION YOU HAVE ONE JOB. leap out of the fog and oneshot the one guy who can see you leaping out of the fog

IT IS A VERY SENSITIVE OPERATION and we will sit here reloading this save until you SUCCEED IN DOING THE COOL THING

but I so appreciate that he succeeded the stealth check so the goblin has no idea there's a vampire elf desperately trying to stab him

cool thing accomplished. felt badass. worth the 4 reloads to make it happen

nooooo halsin why are you acting like I didn't complete the quest

I did the things please let me experience progress T_T

I wonder if it's because I took a rest after I defeated minthara and now it wants me to take care of her again because she's awake and naked? do I need to go back to a save BEFORE the last time I rested and do all that progress again?

I can't figure out if I did something wrong or if I'm troubleshooting a very specific glitch

like judging on the reactions I've gotten from people, "I don't think committing a genocide is the solution to this attempted genocide" is the take I'm expected to have in this situation

but holy shit I did not expect to be THIS lacking in direction

this game is beloved and I don't understand why I'm having such a bad time playing it is it me am I broken

oooooh yeah if minthara is still there it didn't work

and you have to knock her out again. the trick is she has to think you're the enemy so if she never was hostile towards you then you have to try again

she thought I was the enemy when I was beating her up and then she woke up and forgot I guess

I'm hoping it's linked to her waking up after I've rested, that's the next trip into a past. which means beating up the red guy for a fourth time

I feel like this is a playtester experiment. the quest says it's completed but the game doesn't agree with the quest prompt so now I need to figure out where there's a disconnect

and the whole time everyone is like "it's just like d&d you can do whatever you waaaaaant" and I'm just in the middle of my villain origin story

I've decided that the big difference between this experience and d&d is the presence of a human dm

who will see you smashing your head into a tree and be like "uh and then you notice an axe on the ground to help you through this stupid thing you've decided to do"

like it's not even about principles at this point - the game feels broken in a way that I never see people mention it being broken

did you leave the room when you long rested?

because I knocked her out then left the room and did the long rest and that worked

also handling minthara in a non-lethal manner is a relatively new update in allowing you to recruit her

previously you had to sign up to genocide the tieflings/druids instead to get her in your party

so there might still be bugs

yeah, I didn't rest until after I busted Halsin out

because I wanted to see if I could immediately romance him and he was upset at the idea of going to camp so I shrugged and got the HP refresh >>

and yeah I was surprised that it decided Minthara was dead when I hadn't killed her but figured I could just take the W

apparently the W was a massive unexpected L

if the problem isn't shroedinger's minthara then idk this game is just broken

so as I come back to this plurk from february 17th, it is to report that the very moment when I received this delightfully stupid outfit was the moment my save broke

almost a month later, I was finally able to un-fuck my game by going back to the save before I long rested

so that minthara didn't have time to wake up and be both dead-and-alive

I worked VERY HARD to not commit a genocide and now all the tieflings are very excited about me killing every single goblin and I wish they'd stop doing that

it's weird

I killed LESS THAN TEN

and the ones that died were MOSTLY accidents

accidentally set fire to them and they didn't live through it oops

oh hey it's a known bug glad I got to experience it

it was the game being broken and that feels weirdly validating