this is the game i turned off comments for because i am Not here to get yelled at by sweaty-ass D&D shills and tiktok girlypops who love a problematic white man.
lemme be clear homie. 150 hours in this game. i have played it to hell and back (lol), and i loved a lot of it. but the shine starts wearing off around hour 120, especially as you start to notice that your interest always drops off at one specific point in the game. yes. it was act 3. you've heard everyone talk about it.
what larian did here whips, let's just get that absolutely clear. as far as the RPG landscape is concerned, they took a mold that was frankly mistreated as hell for a very long time (hi Bioware) and completely reshaped it. shit's rad. it's fun. it's awesome. half the appeal of it now is how much the cast seems to have loved working on it, and how communicative the devs have been about supporting it.
and like, the most i'm going to say about the story? act 3 tanks it for me. it just does. acts 1 and 2 were polished to such an insane degree that to go from that to the clown car of cliches and mixed messaging about the urgency of it all just gave me a bit of whiplash.
that's really all i'm going to say about story issues because i'm going to be That Guy and start talking about the queerness of this game. yes. we are going to talk about the romances. we are also going to talk about that genital slider.
larian took that RPG mold and reshaped it, but i think they maybe should've just broken it altogether. i've been a longtime believer that romances are handled pretty terribly in this vein of games and they shouldn't be in them as just more video game shit to min-max for achievements. if the romance isn't baked into the story itself, cut it. don't act like fanfiction and spotify playlists don't exist to fill in the blanks, bitch.
but back to the point, this game really, really makes romance a priority in such a strange way. having a romantic relationship isn't baked into the plot for tav, but you can't build friendships or to show your party members any amount of physical or verbal affection without it being not just romantic, but sexual.
i think it's such a bizarre choice. you can't cuddle karlach, who's in your corner from the word go, and who's been literally unable to touch anyone without hurting them for A While, without wanting to have sex with her? you can't goof off and dance with wyll without him asking you out the night after? i personally would die if i lived in a world where no platonic love existed, or was so unheard of that to have Big Fun and A Hug means y'all need to start planning your wedding yesterday. whack.
i also just couldn't stop thinking that all the romances were written with a savior complex in mind. besides astarion's added interactions in dark urge playthroughs, i couldn't really come up with anything specific that anyone else did for tav. it was kind of just always them helping the party members enough to date them. i understand that these kinds of games tend to be created for the savior complex shit, but we can surely do better, be a little more honest? but this part verges so hard into nitpicking that i, personally, would probably not include in a formal review. i just don't really care much for one-sided relationships in my life, and not in the media i consume unless it's in there for a reason.
my final queer nitpick is that i don't want anyone on this earth to go around their whole lives thinking that BG3 changed the fuckin game with queer rep. don't think i didn't notice that every single party member is cisgender, and don't think i didn't notice that if i played a transgender character, they would be mirroring my exact discomfort of being the only trans person in a room full of people because i would not find any other friend in my party who understood me in that way. this weeeird, weird burgeoning trend with mainstream RPGs where you get to mix and match pronouns and genitals feels like old navy's jank-ass gender-neutral clothing line. it's weak, it's pandering, and it's shallow. truly, i could not give a smaller shit if your game lets me choose pronouns or whether or not i decide i want to piss sitting or standing up this playthrough. i care about seeing characters like me who are literally just out here trying to vibe like everybody else. i don't know why that has to be such a huge ask, or why people don't seem to understand it when they are asked.
all in all, sure, play the D&D game. it helped me understand the 5e system more than any DM explaining it to me ever could. the voice acting is perfect. the voice actors are all suspiciously hot themselves. the mo-cap adds a sense of depth to characters that used to only exist in players' imaginations. it does shlocky fantasy pulp like no other. its memes are endlessly funny. it's a good game and i look forward to seeing how it influences future games in this genre. it's a good game. it's just not groundbreaking.
lemme be clear homie. 150 hours in this game. i have played it to hell and back (lol), and i loved a lot of it. but the shine starts wearing off around hour 120, especially as you start to notice that your interest always drops off at one specific point in the game. yes. it was act 3. you've heard everyone talk about it.
what larian did here whips, let's just get that absolutely clear. as far as the RPG landscape is concerned, they took a mold that was frankly mistreated as hell for a very long time (hi Bioware) and completely reshaped it. shit's rad. it's fun. it's awesome. half the appeal of it now is how much the cast seems to have loved working on it, and how communicative the devs have been about supporting it.
and like, the most i'm going to say about the story? act 3 tanks it for me. it just does. acts 1 and 2 were polished to such an insane degree that to go from that to the clown car of cliches and mixed messaging about the urgency of it all just gave me a bit of whiplash.
that's really all i'm going to say about story issues because i'm going to be That Guy and start talking about the queerness of this game. yes. we are going to talk about the romances. we are also going to talk about that genital slider.
larian took that RPG mold and reshaped it, but i think they maybe should've just broken it altogether. i've been a longtime believer that romances are handled pretty terribly in this vein of games and they shouldn't be in them as just more video game shit to min-max for achievements. if the romance isn't baked into the story itself, cut it. don't act like fanfiction and spotify playlists don't exist to fill in the blanks, bitch.
but back to the point, this game really, really makes romance a priority in such a strange way. having a romantic relationship isn't baked into the plot for tav, but you can't build friendships or to show your party members any amount of physical or verbal affection without it being not just romantic, but sexual.
i think it's such a bizarre choice. you can't cuddle karlach, who's in your corner from the word go, and who's been literally unable to touch anyone without hurting them for A While, without wanting to have sex with her? you can't goof off and dance with wyll without him asking you out the night after? i personally would die if i lived in a world where no platonic love existed, or was so unheard of that to have Big Fun and A Hug means y'all need to start planning your wedding yesterday. whack.
i also just couldn't stop thinking that all the romances were written with a savior complex in mind. besides astarion's added interactions in dark urge playthroughs, i couldn't really come up with anything specific that anyone else did for tav. it was kind of just always them helping the party members enough to date them. i understand that these kinds of games tend to be created for the savior complex shit, but we can surely do better, be a little more honest? but this part verges so hard into nitpicking that i, personally, would probably not include in a formal review. i just don't really care much for one-sided relationships in my life, and not in the media i consume unless it's in there for a reason.
my final queer nitpick is that i don't want anyone on this earth to go around their whole lives thinking that BG3 changed the fuckin game with queer rep. don't think i didn't notice that every single party member is cisgender, and don't think i didn't notice that if i played a transgender character, they would be mirroring my exact discomfort of being the only trans person in a room full of people because i would not find any other friend in my party who understood me in that way. this weeeird, weird burgeoning trend with mainstream RPGs where you get to mix and match pronouns and genitals feels like old navy's jank-ass gender-neutral clothing line. it's weak, it's pandering, and it's shallow. truly, i could not give a smaller shit if your game lets me choose pronouns or whether or not i decide i want to piss sitting or standing up this playthrough. i care about seeing characters like me who are literally just out here trying to vibe like everybody else. i don't know why that has to be such a huge ask, or why people don't seem to understand it when they are asked.
all in all, sure, play the D&D game. it helped me understand the 5e system more than any DM explaining it to me ever could. the voice acting is perfect. the voice actors are all suspiciously hot themselves. the mo-cap adds a sense of depth to characters that used to only exist in players' imaginations. it does shlocky fantasy pulp like no other. its memes are endlessly funny. it's a good game and i look forward to seeing how it influences future games in this genre. it's a good game. it's just not groundbreaking.