Episode 11: Baldur's Gate 3, Act 1

We begin the absolute behemoth masterpiece by Larian Studios, Baldur's Gate 3.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
All right. Boulders Gate, 3.

(00:04):
It was released in 2023 by larian Studios.
After six years of development time, I looked up a couple of
interesting facts about this game, almost exclusively on
Wikipedia because I'm a Wiki Warrior Fun fact, number one
Larry and requested from Wizardsof the Coast to make Baldur's
Gate 3 during their product production of the vanity one,

(00:25):
but was his of the coast sightedtheir inexperience as a reason
not to which I thought was pretty funny shortly before the
release of Divinity. 2 larion was to make Baldur's Gate 3.
The development of the game was affected obviously by covid, but
all, so the invasion of Ukraine LED Larry and to shut down their
Saint Petersburg office, which Ithought was pretty interesting.

(00:47):
I remember when that happened Aswell.
Since baldi's Gate 3 takes placea century after Boulders gate 2,
Larry and worked with Wizards ofthe Coast to make a campaign
module to fill in the gap of time.
For the setting eventually becoming descent into avernus
which shares tie-ins with baldi's Gate, 3 via the tiefling
else Arielle after its dissent and the repeated mention of

(01:10):
zariel. So, for such a specialty, if you
keep hearing all these things, talk about Ultra and you're
like, what the fuck is that? It's because it was the coast
made a campaign module, like four years ago.
That was supposed to be a simultaneous release with this
game that did not happen. I will say that as a, like

(01:31):
certified and stamped, like boomer, this game actually does
a really good job of standing alone from the original Boulder.
Skate Trilogy, I thought like the fast-forwarding 100 years
and still finding ways to do like some fan servicing stuff.
I think they did a really fucking good job.
Yeah, I agree. The first two that yeah they do

(01:55):
a great job of you not eating you know those things yeah you
really don't. There's like almost no context.
There's all necessary yeah for sure like all the fanservice is
not necessary for the enjoyment at all.
Yeah I don't even know it happened in act 1 At all.
There's there's not many. They're mostly in two and three.

(02:15):
This is actually three. Yeah, so that's a lot of like
winks and nods. If only a couple things that
like a sense to Greater plot points But just to make sure I
mention it right off the bat I'msure Thomas and Ben are already
aware but I just want to like throw it out there just to make
sure we will only be discussing act 1 today that means anything

(02:39):
that occurs within and around the novel and crash site the
underdark grymforge and the mountain pass.
We'll have to be particularly cautious Act, 2 and onward
spoilers, but we can discuss anything in that range.
Even if someone else didn't experience it.
For example, sesh played table and I always click to have while
Thomas and then play Dark urge. So all act one darker plot

(03:00):
points are valid discussion topics.
I wrote that down, but sesh are you okay with Darkness being
spoiled? Yeah, I don't care at all about
like different route stuff. Like if anything that's just
more, that's a like, that's a cool thing.
I was looking for a little bit more of a bummer, but even that
like, I'm not gonna be super sad.
It's been when Ben says something, you shouldn't say.

(03:22):
Yeah, I just wanted to make surebut it is mostly like the Act 2
and onwards that I definitely. Yeah.
And for me, it's gonna be prettyeasy with the darker stuff
because I played through this game twice, but it's been a long
time and neither of those playthroughs were darker and
that's somehow managed to avoid pretty much all darker spoilers

(03:44):
aside from like the one that's very obvious if you played the
original Builders gate games. So I won't even be able to
discuss the latest stuff. Okay, well, that being said,
let's just jump right into gameplay.
I have some questions written down for sure.
If you guys have anything that you want to start off with go

(04:05):
for it, otherwise I do have somequestions we can start with.
I do have to commend them, at least for the controller, the
console side of it. But they've designed for like,
how players they interact with the game world and combat is
extremely accessible to the point where I got my sister to
play this game. And it's like she like Like the

(04:31):
type of gamer. She is the one that played like
monkeys Island like Monkey Island and like Full Throttle
like day of the tentacle that goes there her that's like the
bulk river game experience, which I guess when you think
about it from like a really abstract view is not much
different from Boulders Gate 3. Yeah.
The fact that there's come back but the fact that they Were able

(04:54):
to also do with a controller setup as well.
And in some like I would say that I greatly prefer the
controller set up. They did like the fact that they
made it like this. In the fact that they made it
like so easily. Enjoyable by so many different
people. It's like pretty commendable and

(05:16):
very rare to see Yeah, I've onlyplayed on mouse and keyboard so
far, but I want to go to controller specifically, just
because of how much, like, praise that you guys have given
to controller because I still just don't believe that a game
like this could control. Well, I'm most people, but after
playing it I was a keyboard. I was like, well, they didn't
make it for this so it's really the controllers good.

(05:37):
Yeah. That's gonna save that for the
next section, but for sure, I wish I had started this game on
controller because like, I also just played it on mouse keyboard
but it is so fucking annoying. Yeah, it's it's kind of funny
for me like, I feel like I have a pretty unique story of exactly
why I got in the baldies Gate 3,because this game came out like

(05:59):
right around the time that Cass and I started dating and what
basically happened is that it came out, she would come over to
my place, all the goddamn time. At that point, just because she
also wanted to play Baldur's Gate 3 Um, and she had, I think
she had an Xbox or something that she was playing it on and

(06:19):
her apartment. And there was one point where
she was over at my place. It was like, 10 p.m. we both
wanted to play, but we had to goback to her place because she
had to work in the morning. So, I was like, oh, okay, I
guess I'm gonna pack up my PC and I'm gonna bring it over to
your place and I'm gonna just stay over at your place with my
PC and you know, TV to play instead of my monitor and we're

(06:40):
both gonna play ball, just Gate 3.
And that's all the reason why I started using controller is
because I with the setup that I had at her place, I couldn't use
keyboard and mouse and so I was very fucking happy with the
controller setup for that reason.
That's fucking sick. Yeah, for me, it was the reason
why I played the game because um, I guess to go like old way

(07:05):
back in time. I actually supported this game
on like Early Access or Kickstart where the folk but I
never played it even once. And that's at first it's because
I was just very anti Larry and Iwas a long history between me
and Larry and that is not very positive in.
I just didn't even consider playing this game until not only

(07:29):
after it came out with the controller update where it was
released on consoles, I think, Ican't remember how long after
the PC released but it was definitely was not, simultaneous
release. It took the controller or like
the console release and Thomas convinced me that the game was
good for me to like, actually finally play the game for the
first time. Yeah.

(07:50):
Actually, I remember, I mean youand I were on the same page,
right? Both very like Big original
trilogy Boomers who saw the Larry and was making the third
game and it was just kind of like little because it looked
exactly like, divinity original sin too.
And yeah. I I just don't even want to
play. Oh, I'll mention something

(08:12):
towards the end of this. But yeah, I have good memories
of A finishing this game like really quickly.
I fucking it out on this game when it came out and afterwards.
I was like, telling Ben, how good, I thought it was and
having to convince him that. Yeah, I know it's Larry, but
it's good promise me or I promise you and I think there

(08:35):
are a couple nights where you were just playing it.
I was like, dude, I'm just coming over.
I'm just gonna watch you play onyour fucking PlayStation or
whatever and, you know, I think I just like drove over there
after work and I was playing Baldur's Gate to on my work
laptop over remote access while watching you play.
Brothers, Gate 3 on your PS5. Yeah, I remember that.
It was really frustrating because that was like the like
the game was out for like, a couple of months, I guess.

(08:58):
But like there were like legitimate guide makers yet.
So anytime you want to look something up about this game, it
was always like this fucking AI slot.
That was like wrong like the time it was a horrible time to
play this game. But that like particular method
of playing the game where it's like, you and a friend or in my
case, me and cast playing at thesame time, it's so cool because

(09:20):
especially when like you have very different place styles from
the person you're playing with. You're just gonna see them
approach a scenario and have a completely different fucking
outcome from yours. That was always a really cool
experience, it's just seeing that side by side. yeah, to me
it's really similar to Like watching someone play long for

(09:45):
the first time, where like you have preconceived notions about
the game because you've already played it and you know what your
approach was, but then watching other people's like, fucking
cognition Wheels, turn and trying to like, suss out the
ways that they're approaching a puzzle is just like, honestly,
super fucking fun. Yeah, that's an interesting

(10:07):
comparison because I feel the same with outer wilds and
despite being in a Time Loop that game has a similar quality
where like they could just come to a planet like five minutes
later and have a completely different experience than you.
Even if it was the same Planet you went to Oh, I'm going
through his Metro Venia. It's a nurse.
Yeah. It's also an immersive system.

(10:28):
It's everything. All those get three is the every
game. Oh, racing game.
Jumping into the gameplay here, a little bit in my opinion.
I think the gameplay of this game is fucking just dropped it.
Incredible like some of the bestshit that's been crafted in the

(10:48):
last 20 years. I think the only more adaptation
of 5e is a game that only been and I have played, I think which
is Celestial. Yeah.
But that game has a lot of issues in other regards.
So I actually think that they did a really great job in this
game of taking what fifth edition built and modifying,

(11:11):
some things to make it a little more palatable, but also keeping
the like core roleplay elements kind of like right there in tow
like, for anyone who's played dungeons of dragons.
Like, it's it's actually fuckinginsane to me that they managed
to craft a faithful experience to that.
Just because of how by Design open-ended dungeons dragons is,

(11:34):
it's it's fucking crazy to me that.
The scheme is what it is. Like wild being faithful to
those mechanics. Yeah.
Yeah. Come.
I remember when I was playing through this game?
The first time I think my markedupon this movie we were like
talking about it amongst us but like I remember thinking that
like because of so much emphasison like the environment in the

(11:55):
things in the ways, you can interact with the environment
and other living creatures in the game. like its It's the
closest you can get to like having like the Chris Smith
fantasy of life doing like the most like retarded like Superman
and like, you could actually tryto do it and like sometimes it

(12:17):
works but usually everything just explodes.
Yeah, that's the beauty of this game, right?
It's like, I don't think there's, there's never been
another game where you can have an idea and as long as it's like
legal within the framework of the rules, that idea will do
something. Yeah.

(12:38):
And I think like because I played tabletop five for the
last. I don't even know how long like
four or five years or so regularly.
Um and I think the most fun thatI have in this game doesn't even
actually come from the combat stuff.
It has come from when I took oneof the characters that I played

(13:01):
and tabletop and made them in this game and role played them
in this game and it was so much fucking fun every single time
because the slew of options thatthis game gives you from
character creation to roleplay to dialogue, to whatever.
It's just so wide that Uh, you know, we might get into a later

(13:21):
but like, yeah, maybe you can't go like crazy deep.
Like you can in something like Wrath of the righteous, but you
can do fucking anything and that's awesome.
Yeah, I'm curious. So obviously three of us here
are like, big Dungeons and Dragons nerds going back like
fucking years. But I'm curious what your

(13:43):
experience was like with this game, Jordan.
Because like, I remember when this game came out in the first
week or so. Like if you weren't familiar
with Dungeons & Dragons rules, alot of people were like saying
that the game was too hard, evenon like, Explorer mode and
people were like super fucking like on The Struggle Bus with
it. So I'm really curious, how act
one went for you. In terms of like difficulty and

(14:04):
just, I guess the overall experience.
Uh, yeah. I have like no idea how to
interface with D&D combat at all, like in the game does I
think does an absolutely dog shit job of like telling you.
Like you basically just need to come in with a background of D&D
or else like you're just fuckinglost.
I don't even tells you like whata long rest is or anything.
So and like for me it's like, ohyeah.
Long rest are a thing. Like, I like, it was basically

(14:25):
just trying to, like piece together.
What I know from D&D which is like very, very, very little and
I just think it does a terrible job.
But like basically showing the player how to Play the game and
basically, how to play Dungeons & Dragons.
So, for the beginning, like I didn't like it at all for, like,
probably the first like, 10 hours, just like, didn't enjoy
it, because it was just, like, just felt like XCOM was like, I
felt like I was playing like Xbox on like a harder difficulty

(14:46):
because I'm trying to kill like level two goblins, but I have
like a 55% hit chance. So like they're hitting me for
two damage and I'm just missing for like four turns around.
It's like, in this combat just fucking in please, I ended up
turning the game down to explorejust because I think it was more
fun to fucking hit things and like not have to deal with all
the fucking like bulshit that, Idon't know how to interface
with. And I actually had a lot of
other time which I switched it. I'm not even gonna lie, I

(15:08):
actually kind of feel that like on a spiritual level because
like I was I mean I was like super high with no sinking these
thoughts and about to express but I was like just thinking
about how It was when I was messing around with like the
karmic dice setting to see. Like if it really was effective
or not in the entire time, I wassinging like, there's just

(15:28):
something about like, jrpgs werelike, It's kind of like
deterministic we're like you're going to take damage and listen
you like apply a blind debuff and it's just kind of just
knowing those just gonna happen and I just kind of appreciate
like the Bruce Smith and like the pace of that kind of
gameplay versus the well and this is all.
So 100% silver that I do to makesure that the best possible

(15:51):
outcomes in D&D combat. And I on top of that, I think
was actually a mistake to let people save during combat in
this game. If I were to make the game, I
wouldn't do that because I thinkit leads to just the general
gameplay that I am guilty of I agree.
I didn't even know that you could say in combat for the
first couple hours, like I didn't even occur to me that

(16:12):
they would allow you to do that because it just felt like
something that wouldn't be allowed and then when I found
that out, I was like oh that's weird.
Yeah. You can save her and everything,
you know, in the middle of dialogue.
Yeah I learned that one too. andI think that experience that you
had of, like, just trading misses with something and being
frustrated by that is definitelya broader problem with 5e, which

(16:33):
I guess does have to be applied to this game because, like, to
draw an example, Like what are everyone's or like a lot of
people's favorite spells? First level magic Missile.
Yeah, of course, it always hits the third level Fireball.
Yeah, they can pass the save butthey're always gonna take
damage, no matter what and I that it is like a very past.

(16:58):
Fail system is specially in Baldur's Gate, 3 compared to
tabletop. Because for example if I'm
playing tabletop and I'm doing askill check I like in my head as
the DM I might have in mind thatthis check is a DC 15 or
whatever like they have to roll 50 or higher to pass it but if

(17:19):
they roll like a 13 or a 14 and it makes sense for the
character. I still could like decide in the
moment to have them succeed in one way or another, but because
of how this game works, like with skill checks, just as an
example, they never really have a partial success that I can
think. Yeah.
Agree. And yeah, to your kind of

(17:41):
broader Point. Jordan, I think a lot of the
criticism that people had cominginto this game is that they
don't explain fuck all to do with dungeons of dragons.
Like, I maybe I turned off tutorials somewhere, I don't
know, but I don't even know where you could go into the game
to even understand like how rolling to hit works.

(18:03):
Like it's got to exist somewherehere, but I don't know where
that would be. I could tell you that every time
I attack with Carla and she's about to hit and it's says,
like, do you want to do a Relentless attack?
You need to hit or whatever. I'm like, I don't know what that
means. Do nothing, I have no idea what
that means. You should no idea.
I sometimes have a click. Yes, it felt like I still missed

(18:24):
that. Like I don't know what the fuk
happened. So but eventually I was just
like whatever. I'm not gonna explain it here,
but I will say, if you just Google like five East to hit
rules, it's it's a lot simpler than you might think.
Oh, they just don't ya at all. Yeah, they don't know.
Oddly enough, the most complex gameplay systems in this game
are things that Larry and added from 5e, which is pretty funny

(18:48):
to me, like damaged writers are the thing and thinking of when I
say that damage, what? Damage writers, it's not a
thing, an automotive, I think like at all, but it's, it's,
it's, it's hard to explain. But basically if you have a
source of damage that adds a D6.So, for example, there's a, an
item you can get an act one called the spell sparkler.

(19:10):
That gives you lightning chargeswhen you have lightning charges,
you deal with these six of like damage when you hit with a spell
or whatever that D6 that it doesis considered a damaged writer.
So I believe how damaged writerswork is anything that affects
your like, say, you're just doing an Eldritch blast.
You're like a Firebolt at something.

(19:32):
That's going to roll a 1D 10, plus your charisma modifier.
If you have the Ultras invitation for warlocks, if you
cast an Elders blast, and you have spells part where it's
adding that D6 of lightning damage, but because it's a
damaged righter, it's adding, your charisma twice.
What the fuck? I didn't.
It's very confused how it works.Oh, okay.

(19:55):
Now so here's the thing because,like, I'm playing with The
Honorable rule set, so I know that damned writers are removed.
But that's literally the extent that I knew about, it's like
that's superficial vocabulary that was removed, but hearing
that explanation. I finally understand, like, what
and then, and then they, they, there's no like real limit to

(20:17):
them, they stack with each other.
So I believe you can have a damaged Rider crop from another
damage Rider and it's just fucking bananas.
Yeah. I think, I think honor mode
launched with damaged writers and like with them, there's like
tons of like infinite damage combos, I think or like infinite
turn combos it's it's looking crazy.

(20:39):
But in any case yeah I I definitely don't think that the
game teaches you this stuff verywell but I might have turned
tutorials off when I started. So I don't remember.
I have to tell you should Oh, that sucks.
Yeah, I don't think I definitelydidn't turn him off the first
time I played the game. And people, I remember reading
people's complaints that they were, that they didn't explain

(20:59):
D&D rules to people who aren't coming in with that foundation.
And yeah, like I said, the firsttime I didn't turn tutorials
off. And I could tell, I was like,
yeah, these it makes sense that these people are fucking
struggling. Yeah.
So the the first question I wantto ask you guys kind of in
relation to. This is regarding the action
economy and Ben and Thomas. I would kind of appreciate if

(21:21):
you guys approached it from the perspective of others crpgs
you've played like, you know, comparing to Baldur's Gate one
and two with whatever the fuck combat system, they have and
whether the action economy of 5efixes that.
And from sash, I'd be curious. Just since you haven't really
played a lot of crpgs with heavycombat like this, if any what
you're feeling on, it are and tobe clear.
When I say action economy, it means that I'm referring to the

(21:46):
fundamental limitation of your combat turns, as action bonus
action movement, and basically nothing else outside of things.
They give you like two bonus actions or two actions or
whatever. Yeah.
What do you guys like it? Do you feel like it's too
limiting? How do you feel about?
you go first been Oh sure. Oh I personally really enjoy it.

(22:12):
fuck, maybe you should go first because those things about a
couple things, maybe mostly because we bought when you
mentioned like older crpgs and then you brought up or maybe, I
always started thinking in my head about Boulders, give one
and two, and I just think about the old Boomer opinion that I
have that real time with pause was basically just like a

(22:33):
post-birth abortion like it's just shouldn't exist, really Oh
the real talk though because like that's like that's a
problem with Baldur's Gate 1 and2 that Baldur's Gate 3 solved
which is that was how they had to like gamify it, right?
Like it was the only way to takethe rule set for like second

(22:56):
edition or advanced Dungeons & Dragons at the time and actually
turn it into something that would convert itself into a
video game was real time with pause and I am going to do all
of you. The favor of not explaining
exactly how a quote action economy would work in like the
older here. Pgs like the infinity engine

(23:17):
games that were on the two evil set.
Because You wouldn't like it. Let's just say that.
And so, Compared to that 5e is like fucking like Heavenly
because I could Edition is so complicated, especially when you

(23:37):
start getting into the nitty-gritty of the actual,
like, action economy, and like trying to take multiple attacks
per turn. Now, that is like much like 5th
edition doing that, in the oldergames is like the absolute.
Most powerful thing that you cando like any extra action that
you can take or any extra attackthat you can take is like a huge

(23:59):
Force multiplier on everything that you can do in a turn much
like five e but it's it's so much more streamlined and easy
to understand in fifth edition like to me, fifth edition feels
much more modernized in the way that something like looks like a
good comparison been. I'm thinking of comparing it to

(24:21):
something almost like like Shadow run, like the newer show.
Yeah, no, I agree with that. It's Way more interesting than
that system. Yeah, for sure.
I think maybe where fifth edition goes, a tiny bit.
Wrong is when you kind of get into, like the Nitty Gritty
aspects of like what is or isn'ta bonus action?

(24:42):
And what you can or can't do with a bonus action, I think
that they kind of get bogged down in some unnecessary
complexity there. But as far as like, actually
playing it and actually like playing out a turn, it feels so
much better in fifth edition then pretty much everything

(25:03):
honestly. Yeah and like this to give some
credit to the accessibility and this encroaches a little bit on
UI but I think it's it's so important for like a maybe like
learning for newer players that I feel like it should be
mentioned in gameplay and that when I was teaching my sister,
how to play this game. Like it was so much easier for

(25:25):
me, not to explain it. Using the Dungeons and Dragons
rules but like explaining it to her like using like, the color
coding that they used in the game where like the main actions
all use like that. Was that they blue color and
bonus actions are the orange color.
So that's the way I explained. It was, like, you see these,
like circles down here. If these circles, if these

(25:47):
colored circles are there, then you can do One of those actions
per one of those circles and youjust do that until you run out.
and that's basically how it got her to learn, how to play the
game like kind of legitimately Yeah, I think that in a way is
the best like nonverbal communication that they do in
this game, because it's like thesame for class resources, like

(26:09):
Source or spell points, have that blue rectangle thing. and,
It's the kind of thing where every now and then I would
accidentally use a bonus action without using it, like, jump for
example, because I'm controller.It's, it's bound up on the
d-pad. So I would just accidentally use
my bonus action when I started playing, but then I saw that it

(26:32):
wasn't there in the bottom, and then, you can look at the action
be like, okay, looks it uses theorange triangle this kind of
makes sense. But what did you think so was
the specifics that you asked me?um, just since you don't have
Very much experience with like crpgs and obviously 5e.

(26:55):
What did you think of the combatsystem?
Specifically related to the action economy which is the
delineation of turns based on action bonus action movement
Yeah. It was really confusing at first
to like not know like because again I don't think they even
tell you like what an action or a bonus action even is.
And if they did then I somehow missed it.
But I don't think I did and it'sjust like which ones in action

(27:17):
you have like hover over shit. And then like, I didn't realize
that like jumping was even a fucking thing for like a while
and so like I wouldn't even lookto jump or like I still don't
use like all the blue actions. Like I don't Dash or anything
like that. Just from like forget that
they're there. I kind of like movement being
like his own separate action andeverything, like, everything
feels good. It's just like, there's so much
there that I feel like, if you know, all the systems, it's

(27:39):
probably fucking fantastic. But like, it's very like
overwhelming and like, Specifically.
I don't really like spell slots being tied to like long, rests
and long rest being tied behind,like can knock out, like, some
side quests that you can do or something.
Like, so, that kind of, is that just basically gives me anxiety
of, like, I don't want a long rest fucking ever so I don't
want to cast these spells on basically, just saving up 40,

(27:59):
Mega luxurious for like because I don't know when I should be
using them or anything. So I think that that's not
really like your question, but Ithink it's like an extension of
your question. But in terms of just like, yeah,
all the actions work. I think it's fantastic.
Oh, did you? I'm curious, did you lock
yourself out by any side quests by long resting?
I don't know. I didn't love us a lot.

(28:21):
I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure there are only
There might be more than this, but the two major quests in act
1 that are affected by long. Rests are What was the first one
I was gonna say harpies? Well actually didn't know the
heartbeats were, but I know for sure.

(28:43):
If you, when you get to the grymforge and you hear about
near being stuck behind the rockwall, long resting can affect
that, he can just literally fucking die back there.
Was the other? That one's a good one?
No, you Counselor is the other one in the burning building.

(29:03):
If you get there, you talk to them and then you long rest, she
will die. Oh yeah.
But that's, I don't know. That's I guess that those count.
Totally, but it also counts if you just wait there for, like,
literally like two minutes. Like in real time.
Oh really? Yeah, I think I think that timer
starts once you bust the door down, right?
Yeah. Yeah, I could be wrong but I

(29:26):
think if you just like talk to the people about her being stuck
there, without buzzing the door down and your long rest, I think
that will still kill her. You'll get back around those
counts. That one makes sense.
It makes sense. If you hit a flag and then you
long rest, that that flag looks like expires.
But if I like long last and thenthat advances the world time
passed when you could interact with things is what I didn't

(29:46):
like. Yeah, I think and I think they
did this intentionally so it might be an interesting
discussion. I feel like one of the biggest
mistakes that act one makes, is it imposes?
What feels like an artificial time limit on you so many times
that makes you not want to Long rest and it actually doesn't

(30:07):
react in the vast majority of those circumstances.
The two major ones that I'm thinking of is the tadpole
constantly. Yeah, if you're playing table,
you're constantly going to be reminded the other fucking
tadpole in your head and you need to find a Healer and you're
going to fucking die. If you don't find a Healer but
you can long rest a million times and talking about.
Yeah. For more reasons.
And the second one is I believe,once you get to the Druid Grove,

(30:31):
no amount of long resting actually causes the oh the
ritual, ritual of finish. There might be like one
particular flag that you have tohit like cargo with the shadow.
Druids maybe I don't remember, but You'll hear it several times
and long resting usually won't affect.
It how does how does Gales like magical items suckering work?

(30:54):
Is that like just check points um kind of its like it happens
three times and then it moves onto the next part of his quest
line and you don't have to do with it anymore.
That's what it seemed like. Yeah.
Yeah, I didn't know if that was another thing where it was,
like, trying to impose this, like, tension on you.
That doesn't actually exist. So it sounds like it is, I mean

(31:17):
I feel like I'm long rested so infrequently that I missed out
on content, from not long resting.
Yeah, that that's the you actually punished, if you don't
rest enough in this game, because there are a lot of like,
certain things that only triggerfrom long dress and you can miss
a lot of those. If you just try to like mid Max,
sure. Yes, resting.
Yeah. Now we like in this conversation
that I probably missed a shitload because I only long

(31:39):
rested maybe four times and it'sactually It's actually pretty
fucked up, too, because there are way more long rests
cutscenes. Then you think, oh, there are
all kinds of fucking triggers for it, like, like the best,
don't know about there. There is one for if you long
rest, as soon as you get to the beach without talking to

(32:03):
shadowheart, That's fine. I never there was a cutscene
specifically for if you long rest at that point, that doesn't
make any fucking sense. That's crazy.
I didn't know that. Yeah, my opinion is don't be
afraid to Long rest honest. Yeah, like when when it's
obvious that long resting is a bad idea, the game does a good
job of communicating. Yeah.

(32:24):
And there's one more thing. Um, you do not have to use food
to rest like you could just Rest.
How does that work? Well, you can do that but it
won't regenerate your short rest.
It won't regenerate you but it will trigger cutscenes.
Yeah, exactly. Okay.
If you like the reason you don'twant to throw us because it's

(32:47):
using resources. So that's why I just want to let
you know that they just without using them.
I just didn't want to basically what's that said is 100% true.
Like the game basically feels like it's telling you like time
time time and it's like long rest makes time go by, so don't
do that. But then to know that it's the
opposite of like, hey long rest to get access to more content,

(33:07):
is kind of frustrating. Yeah, that's why I bring it up.
It's it's very strange that theyjust have so many fucking
triggers for that. In act one.
And then they just have so many fucking characters telling you
to hurry the fuk up. Yeah.
And it's so weird because there's actually like an in-game
mechanic that they do sometimes like they have like you force,

(33:29):
forcibly rest and it's like justdo that a little bit more often
and it's not a problem anymore. Yeah, exactly.
Like every now and then I'll usefast travel to go from like the
underdark to the mountain pass and something.
My characters are full health. And I'm like, Why?
Yeah, because they, I think theycould, that's technically like,
you do a long rest in between like, traveling such a long

(33:52):
distance or something? Yeah, that's crazy.
What does that cost food? Is that like a life?
I think it's free. Yeah, I think it's free because
it'd be kind of fucked up. Yeah.
It's like my 40 every time you did that and you just weren't
told about 80 or no. How did you guys?

(34:14):
How did you guys feel about the classes in some classes?
You feel like they were pretty unique played differently enough
for me from each other to stand up.
A very much so. um, so so Yeah. I mean, I feel like I feel like
the classes in this game are like super, super fucking unique

(34:34):
and stand on their own big time,like playing a, martial class is
so different from playing a wizard, which is so different
from playing a rogue. And I think the subclasses do a
really good job of delineating between that as well.
At least the ones I'm familiar with, I don't think I've touched
any of the newer ones although I'm thinking about.

(34:55):
Respecting someone into a swashbuckler road because it
sounds kind of sweet. But no, I think everything I
think everything stands on its own super well in this game.
Yeah, and there's also so many like things that you can do, if
you have like, knowledge of likethe five East systems, like
yeah, like lizzo. Every time I use her, I always
try to find a way to make her, some kind of spellcaster,

(35:18):
because I know that the gift Yankee race just naturally has
They have proficiency for wearing medium armor, just by
virtue of being that race. So it's just like a cool like
mid maxing, you can do that. Like it's sometimes break a
virgin, which is something that I always like, it's a criticism
that I love you against this andmore more, so, Third Edition.

(35:40):
But for some reason, I've grown more like tolerant of it.
I've kind of like that immersionbreaking by like being able to
like min-max. All these weird traits that like
if you're telling a normal Storyabout like a regular Fantasy
character. They wouldn't Like you wouldn't
be like a fucking Rogue that also like guys look that also

(36:05):
like acted as a clearer for likea couple of months and then you
became a barbarian, you know what I mean?
Like just like like this weird. Like, multiclassing thing that
is, I find sometimes just tasteful but I just get over it
by just controlling my own multiclassing, I guess and just
let people do whatever they want.
Yeah I mean like for me my shadow heart right now is like

(36:26):
I'm basically just biting my time until I can recruit the
next companion that I want in mycore party so I just have her
set up as like an ultra healer so she's just like she's like
something ridiculous. She's like two cleric too, Druid
to Paladin or something stupid. Like basically just like a heal
and buff bot that makes absolutely no fucking sense to

(36:49):
your character actually disagreewith that.
Like Just from the perspective of Shadow heart for future lore
reasons. But I think that all those can
apply to her character and Drew it.
I don't know about that. Yeah.
Fuck. You guys are talking about with
multiclassing. Oh, that's oh God Explorer.

(37:11):
They I think they turn off multi-class thing.
Really? I didn't know what the fuck you
talking about for the eight hours that I played.
Not on Explorer. I wouldn't worry about it too
much if you're already feeling overwhelmed.
But basically, you can level up like any of the character
classes like independently? Like I think a common one is
what like 10 Warrior Two Rogue or something like that because

(37:32):
if you get two levels in Rogue it gives you access to an extra
attack basically. So there's just like a lot of
like small little ways you can dip into other classes to kind
of min max stuff. But like I said, I I wouldn't
worry about it unless you want to start like Googling builds or
some shit because it's over it gets over quick if you don't

(37:52):
already kind of know everything.Yeah that's good.
Yeah I think it's actually a good thing that they turned it
off for Explorer because like ifyou don't know what you're doing
you could really fuk up your character and just it's just you
just look at unusable character.I mean, there's an achievement
for getting to the end of the game with one.

(38:12):
Oh yeah trades. Yeah.
I don't know, people like legitimately do that because
like what there's the next pointto like, just get that
achievement which involves not actually doing the challenge?
Yeah. So is it just like when you go
to level four and to level five it's that's like you can pick to

(38:35):
be Paladin instead of what you are or whatever.
Like basically the way it works is every single time you level,
you are taking an additional level and any class of your
choosing. Oh is it going to the next level
of the class you already have? So if you have the second level
fighter you'll level up to levelthree.
Now you're a third level fighterbut in set of going into third

(38:55):
level fighter, you can be a second level fighter.
With a first level of Rogue, meaning you would get I believe
broke its sneak attack at level one, but you wouldn't get the
third level fighter features putyour level three as a character.
Yeah, like you're hit points andstuff.
Okay. Skill that makes sense.
It sounds fucking super cool. It's like you're deep in the

(39:16):
systems on like multiple places or if you just they're super
familiar with the NBA. You want to do crazy shit so it
sounds fucking sick. I will say I don't want to face
with it. My first playthrough, I don't
think I dipped into anything other than maybe two.
Or whatever level of Rogue givesyou access to extra attack.
I think it's too. It might be three but I pretty
much just went like 12 12 10 2 or something, just because I

(39:38):
didn't want to have to think about it.
So it's it's not something that's necessary and I think the
game actually kind of hides the fact that you can do it a little
bit like you got to click and kind of a weird spot when you
level up that isn't necessarily super intuitive.
If you didn't already know you could do it.
Yeah. Definitely hit at the point
where I didn't know because yeah.

(39:59):
Like I forgot this is probably something like 8 to 10 hours of
playing on the normal difficultyand didn't even know those even.
Yeah, they don't need to talk toan NPC or something.
Yeah, I know for a fact that I'mpretty sure they do not give you
a tutorial for that at all. Literally at all.
Yeah. Kind of like the Thomas was
saying though. I think this game does do a

(40:20):
really good job, I mean 5e as well but it's a three does a
really good job of just making those 12th level characters.
Feel fucking great light like legitimately someone will ask
man, like on Reddit or whatever.Someone will ask.
How should I build my fighter really don't know?
Like what subclass did. I should go.
And the vast majority of responses will be just go to 12
levels fighter. It's very good.

(40:42):
It's all the max. Yeah, that's a level cap in the
game. Yeah.
Um but yeah like 12 Wizard fucking awesome.
Like once you get access to likethe highest level spells it gets
and you got a bunch of spell slots like yeah. 12th level
Wizards in this game, feel extremely fun.
That's the only reason why I want to keep Gail around because

(41:03):
fucking Wizards. I didn't know I could switch my
other characters and be with it.Yeah.
So here's another thing. Um, you know about Withers right
in your camp and how he can respect your class I thought he
only recipe. Yeah, you said you can also pay
him 100 gold to respect and you could just flick which character
you want. So while you're in the camp,
just switched to like any character.

(41:24):
So you don't, you're not just restricted, just respecting your
main character. Um you go talk to where there's
give him 100 gold. You do the respect and you can
also pickpocket him and if you fail the pickpocket he will not
get mad and you could just keep doing it over and over again.
So you get your money back. So it's free do not get in the

(41:44):
habit of doing that with regularNPCs.
The withers is very good. Yeah, I think with others is
currently sitting on a pile of like 3,000 gold from me right
now. So Can you respect everything
about a character? Yes.
Well not sure. Where in appearance.
You cannot respect that. You can for you.

(42:06):
You can feel. You're in the mirror magic
mirror you can respect your appearance but yeah.
Just just for your table. I think, right?
I don't think. Yeah.
And you can't change race or gender.
You can only change like The Superficial features like hair
and stuff. Can you change stats of your
companions? That's all about that.
Yes, in the, if you do the respect with Withers, you can

(42:27):
change. Yeah.
Wizard and then fucking yeah. Oh yeah.
Up. As soon as I can.
Exactly, I mean, like a very common.
Oh, that's for a lot of people is a star in into barred because
he has the best lines for vicious Mom.
I'm sorry. I was, I know, I know this
technically narrative but I haveto bring it up.
One of my favorite parts of Darker is I respect Gayle from

(42:51):
Wizard into oh Tombstone like just yeah, literally The moment
that that portal open and his hand came out.
I was like, no, you're saying their budget, then I had a hand
and nothing else. The difference between that and
my first playthrough is I was just constantly embarrassing

(43:12):
Gail as much as I possibly could.
Until I just Murdered him at theend of the game basically.
Oh yeah. So Jordan, we were talking about
like, before this whole thing, whether or not you should play
darker and my reasoning for trying to steer you away from
darker. And why I thought you would hate
it, is that I'm trying to think.There's there's one compulsory

(43:36):
action and act one. There might be more, but there's
one for sure. And that is the first night that
alfira stays in your Camp. You fucking murder her In Cold
Blood, that nice cause. Yeah.
It's just like, yeah, it's just a kind of a part of the darker
storyline. And I was like, Jordan would
fucking hate this. And that is one of the most

(43:59):
difficult possible Force deaths to avoid.
If you're playing darker, I actually don't think it's
possible to avoid it without some, like, serious Grant game
breaking shit. And it's also kind of cool with
elfira because if you if it's like say you kill Althea alpha
or you like knock her out, If you knock her out and then you

(44:22):
progress to the point where she would join your camp and you
would be for some murder her. It's not Alpha that comes to
your Camp, it's someone else entirely that you were then all
of forced to murder. It's it's like some random
fucking Dragonborn character. and that's actually, we might
talk about a more narrative but that's a very common thing where
like Zevlor, for example, is a pretty important character in

(44:44):
act 1 and following. If he dies and act one, there
are characters that will replacehim in the narrative and there's
like, a whole, like, fucking daisy chain of characters that
will do that. If it happens, guys, who's out
for you. She was The Bard that was like,
you. Well, you could either like, be
Condor or make fun of her for being bad at being a Bard and

(45:07):
that's about her character and yeah, in the in the Druid Grove,
did you do the did you do the harpies Quest like did you kill
the heartbeats? I remember killing harpies those
like one of the first things that did I don't know if there's
a harpy Quest. I think there's only one
encounter with harpies and yeah.So yeah, I did that with the

(45:28):
kid. That was lured into the water.
Yeah. Yeah.
So near that spot like in between the Druid Grove and
where that spot is, there's a tiefling Bard who's just kind of
sitting there playing tunes and you can interact with her and
she's kind of like a sweetheart character like you don't recruit
her into your party but she doesjoin your camp.

(45:49):
So get her through late. Did you intern know?
She only joins her camp in the darker story.
Lunch. Oh really right?
Yeah, yeah. I mean I'm pretty sure if you
save all the tiefling she'll still pop up in Act 2.
Yeah, you'll see your neck too. We're not by saving all the
teeth wings. I mean, killing the Gotham.

(46:10):
Camp. Well today I learned I
Philadelphia joins you and regular playthroughs, too.
Oh yeah. She's just a very well known
side character because of that forced murder Isis in the dark
Earth Play throughout 76? Yeah.
It's like yeah, so I was talkingabout like, why didn't I get
this? Yeah, they made a very strong

(46:31):
desire for her to be like The Bard companion because there
isn't like, yeah, that's what I was like, fuck.
But I was the Park. Yeah, she was like, I get the
sense that she was meant to be acompanion and they just kind of,
like, ran out of time or budget or something, to be honest was
there. No bark companion.
Know. That's right?
No, there's no Bard companion. Is there any other missing one?

(46:56):
Like there's technically. No sorcerer companion, unless
you can't darker. Sorcerer or not wizard.
There's a different classes. They cast bills differently.
I'm trying to think and I'm trying to think without like
saying names does Rangers stuff.Oh no.
Never mind. Yeah, there's a six wisdom

(47:19):
Ranger. Don't worry, as I don't think
you've missed anyone except for technically Astorian since you
booted in the fuck out. Like I didn't I gotta be just
left. He didn't leave.
Yeah, he got escorted off the premises.
Gail almost did Tom. He's lucky, he didn't know you

(47:40):
could respect other people in the Wizards or I would have
found out. He had a bomb on him.
He would have been gone too. So, I'm curious as kind of a
discussion point. I wanted to touch on, what did
you guys think of the NADA Lloydas like, a tutorial slash kind
of tone Setter for me? I'll keep this off.

(48:05):
Like, as far as tutorials go, I thought it was like palatable
mostly because it's super short.And if you know, like, where to
go and what to do, it's only gonna take you, like honestly,
like five minutes to get to the whole fucking thing, but I think
it definitely feels a lot more stale in comparison to something
like Chateau arenas, for example.

(48:26):
But that might be kind of a hot take because Chateau arenac is a
super fucking long but I think it does.
I really good job of like setting the tone.
Where is the not allowed feels alittle bit like disjointed,
because like the fucking Mason scene, is so incredibly
different from the rest of the game outside of it.
Yeah, like pure spectacle. Yeah, so I grew with that, that

(48:49):
last that letter part were so. Shut to Renee's, the rest of
Boulders gay too better. As opposed to, like the fucking,
like, action scenes that you're introduced.
Yeah, I'll just get three in therest of the game is well, not
too much like that, but I definitely prefer the intro to
three way more than two to the point where when I played to
you, I usually just use the mod to skip.

(49:11):
That one, where is like in threeI'm like Like it's for one.
The most important thing that you mentioned is that it's
short. That's like the biggest thing
about it that I like and number two I like that.
If, you know a little bit more about the game, there's like
this little Situation that you get excited about doing which is
if, you know about it, you get that that dude that can be in

(49:34):
the drop is fiery sword, so you can like just pick it up and
beat them with it and then you just start the game with a cool
like really strong two-handed, fiery sword, that it just looks
cool and feels cool to use. Yeah there's achievement for
that. I think pretty sure.
Yeah, the when they did the whole like, open opening action

(49:55):
sequence thing, I was like, what, what did I sign up for
with this game? Because this is not what I
thought it was gonna be and thenit never did that again to the
portal. I got about that until you guys
are talking about it. So yeah, what's the point?
Are you, what are you referencing specifically?
When he said like in the beginning where like all the
fucking dude? Like it's basically like a Game
of Thrones battle scene with thenovel in like the fucking Dragon

(50:16):
shit that show up. And you're like, what the fuck?
And then just like, it's like this huge, like Grand setting of
like what just feels like it's about to be some insane action
game where I'm gonna like try tobring the ring back to Mordor.
And then basically after you getoff the Nautilus, it's like, oh
this is, this is what I was expecting to play.
Not some fucking like crazy ass like fucking City Siege kind of

(50:36):
game. I think that's interesting as
Thomas asked the question. I was thinking it feels like a
pretty terrible tutorial in the sense that it's almost
non-existent. But other than like, I guess
it's like kind of linear. It gives you some Force
narrative options that have consequences then and there like
with us for example, but I thinkit does a fucking Stellar job at

(51:00):
setting the tone like I don't know how much of it will make
sense until we get like towards the end of that too and get into
act three but trying to figure out how to say this without
spoilers, but this game goes forgrandiose shit, often.

(51:21):
And I think that nothing sets that better than the intro of
the game. If that makes sense, like
fucking mind players and mind, flayer warship, fighting dragons
and gets young fucking sick. I'm in there very good hook but
I think Sasha is kind of correctthat the pivot of that to just

(51:42):
like being little level one. Shitor on the beaches kind of
jarring. Yeah, for sure.
That's what I was saying to that.
Yeah, we're crazy was was disjointed because yeah, it
definitely, it definitely feels that way.
I think like in a vacuum, it's super cool for sure.
But yes, it's a very lahren intro.
Let's just say that. Like, Larry and game starts this

(52:02):
way. Oh my God, the fact that it
started on that beach. I was like, this is what PTSD
you looks like. You literally starts almost the
exact same as this game. I will say, I think, as soon as
you get out of the emerald Groveenvironments, which is like the
goblin Camp George Groves stuff,like once you get into the
underdark grymforge mountain pass, it's starts to feel a lot

(52:25):
more. Like what the what the nautiloid
sets up for you? Do agree with that session.
Um, it's definitely more than the emerald stuff, but it's
still like Nothing feels as fucking epic even like one tenth
of his epic. Was what they showed me in the
beginning. Like even when you run into Oh,

(52:46):
the guy with the dragon his name, I can't remember on the
tables. Yeah.
Even when you run into that guy you're like this is gonna be
epic. He just flies away and it's
like, okay, it was an epic at all.
So like I still don't think thatthere's that level of Epic that
they match, but definitely like the settings kind of match a
little bit more as you do like specifically like room.
Forged for sure. You did.
Yeah, to be fair to that specific setting dragons and

(53:11):
Dungeons and Dragons are obnoxiously powerful.
So if that Dragon stayed to jointhat fight, you, you would have
been like, it's a 10-0 matchup, that's not gonna happen.
I thought I was gonna have to figure out a way to not do
combat with them, but then he flew away.
And I was like, that doesn't make any fuck.
It said. It's like thematically like in
narratively. I thought that was dumb as fuk,
but oh, did you have with you? Know, she goes like a few.

(53:34):
Like that might have affected that that experience.
Maybe, I'm not sure. Every single gets junkie
encounter is very different withOutlaw that it's hard to even
like compare just She was okay. Yeah, she was like their like
that's one. Like I don't know if you could
find her again before that, but that's like the first time I

(53:55):
find her out there being off thenautical or whatever.
Was, was that encounter with that guy with the dragon?
And she shows up there, if you don't find it beforehand, I
didn't know that. Yeah.
Did you did you never find her in the cage?
Know. I don't know what you're talking
about. Oh I don't know that no fucking
idea. So yeah.
So I just to be clear like it's like to the on your way to the

(54:16):
mountain pass. It's that encounter with that
fuckhead with the red dragon, right?
Yeah. She was just there talking to
him and then she's like shut thefuk up.
I got this and then I was like you shot the fuk up.
I got this. That's crazy and I never had her
before that. That's funny.
She's just like near that Monastery where you get with
her, she's kind of near there. Like she goes caged up.

(54:38):
And she's just getting Harris bylike two, dudes, who since I'm
darker judges unceremoniously murdered and let her out of the
cage. Well, what am I don't know how
Actually has one of my one of myfavorite single lines from
Lazelle, which is when she's in the cage and she's like yelling
at you to let her out. And one of the dialogue options,
you can say, is only, if you sayplease and she just goes, never.

(55:00):
Yeah. That was great.
That was great, one of my favorite, it's very lizelle
session. So you did the the crash, right?
The big monastery. The big Monastery.
Can you tell me what happened init?
It had all the gift yongki in there.
You may have found if you don't have lazella, don't know how

(55:22):
much you would have done but it has the save this where you try
to have the tadpole removed. It's just a big ass Monastery.
Like you would remember by the word.
You don't think so. Do you speak to a gigantic
goddess? Hell.
Oh yeah. Not.
I feel like you did Thomas did in his first place through.

(55:42):
Oh yeah. Did you go did you get to the
underdog or through the mouth? Okay, so did you go to the
mouth? No, okay.
Yeah. Okay.
So, I should go back. You know, but he can't.
Wait, wait, wait after he could go back to the mountain.

(56:05):
Pass specifically, I thought I could go back one area in
active. Yeah, but the I don't think that
the NPCs are there any? Oh, okay.
I didn't think it could get backthe mountain pass at all.
I might be wrong though. I don't know about you, I can go
to service. This is a minor spoiler.
I'm gonna try to keep it like zero spoiler but in Act 2 you

(56:26):
can go back to the actual areas but it's you know how like you
have an issue with long rest, breaking of quest lines.
Sure, if you go back to act one from Act 2, you're going to have
a cataclysmic effect on certain questlines.
Really, yes. I can't say anymore without

(56:50):
spoilers. Well so the only reason I was
gonna bring this up and just to kind of facilitate what we were
talking about, with the tone of the novel is, I think, kind of
supporting that point but kind of disagreeing with it is that
the only other time that I thinkthe game sets that kind of Epic
tone and when you get the blood of little sander from the

(57:11):
monastery, if you guys know whatI'm talking about, you know, I
put a video of it, if you destroying it with a laser, I do
think that You should maybe search.
I I feel like you should look upwhat happens in the crush,
because I feel like there's eventhough it's optional, which is
really weird. I feel like some really
important stories of this. There, it seems like it.

(57:34):
I will say, I, I did the exact same thing.
You did, like I totally missed the crash in my first
playthrough and I didn't really feel like I had any like gaps
because I and I've gone back anddone it since so talking to.
I think it it works with withoutit.
Yeah, for sure. Yeah.
I mean, it's super fucking cool to talk to, you know, who.

(57:56):
But yeah, it's not important. It's all so talking to the dream
Garden I mean, that's A very, I mean, do you care about what we
say? Like if we just say, what
happened? Nothing special.
No, it's already like one thing and like, I won't, if I can't
experience it anyway that So, basically, what happens, if you

(58:19):
go to the crash, then you talk to lazelle's like fucking god,
queen flakus that she mentions all fucking time.
She like speaks to you and like an astral projection kind of
thing. And blackest asks, you or tells
you I guess because she's a fucking god Queen, she tells you
to kill your dream Guardian. So you so you go into the actual

(58:42):
prism you can either Try to killthe dream guardian or not kill
the dream guardian. And I guess I'll just say If you
try to kill the dream Guardian it doesn't work dream, Guardian
still sticks around and you knowthere's a lot of like weird
dialogue options there that I won't get into.
But that's basically what happens and then you leave and
then you murder all the fucking gives you for reasons but yeah,

(59:07):
I think Ben is bringing it up because it might be important
context for the dream, Guardian later, but I think it works
without Oh no. I find that very strange.
I feel like it's a lot but that's just me personally like
to the main storyline. Maybe we can talk about a little
more later when we get into the narrative if we want to just

(59:28):
yeah. And yeah again I I just think
that the Epic tone that it's sets when you set off the like
fucking light drill or whatever,the fuck it is with the blood of
little sander and then the entire Monastery collapses and
your like trying to escape and abunch of your characters will
die if you don't cast feather fall on them.

(59:48):
I think that's beautiful. Like guy permanently.
They died, but they're like, souls are right there and you
can resize them. Oh, okay.
And I think, and, and any of them, if you like if a character
dies somewhere, and you forget where their soul is because
they, like jumped off at fuckingcliff or whatever, with those
Congress limited. Yeah.

(01:00:09):
Do their items come back with them.
If you do that with Wizards, I assume they do.
I think so. I'm pretty sure they do, yeah,
for sure. On any case you guys have
anything else you want to talk about with gameplay or do?
We want to roll on to the next section?
I have so much. I could talk about that.
I mean, it's a piggyback more onTom's.
Previous question of like it being a tutorial, I think.

(01:00:31):
Like the opening tutorial is super sick in the way that like
it ties, all the characters together and not so much as
being a tutorial, but I think like the opening and being on
the Lord is way better than if you just walk up on the beach.
Yeah if you just woke up on the beach at some point I feel like
the game would have this like weird Final Fantasy, 8 plot
twist to it. That would be very jarring and
weird. I mean you roll on the not only.

(01:00:52):
Yeah, yeah. Exactly.
Yeah, it's definitely better with it than without for sure.
Yeah. So um I'm curious what you guys
think about this take. So I famously hate, open World
Games, right? And to me, this game is like an

(01:01:14):
idealized version of what I think an open world game should
be so like, like, rather than making me run around and like,
accomplishing absolutely fuck all in.
Order to pad the game length, I feel like this game, it does a
few things. Number one, it's got a lot of
weight like fast travel points. So it cuts down on that travel

(01:01:34):
time but at the same time it's also still jam packed with
content in a way. Yeah, that's still like makes it
conducive to a dozens of hours long experience like no matter
no matter where you walk in thisgame, something's gonna happen
and unlike most IE 95 plus percent of open world games like

(01:01:56):
there isn't just a bunch of are like between you and the next
thing happening and To me that feels like a super core part of
Larry's design, like their design philosophy between like
this game and also Divinity original sin where they love to

(01:02:16):
put you on the critical path. And then just put a fuk ton of
distractions. IE side quests, like along the
way. And so, one thing I'm curious
about is, if you guys find that to be like, overwhelming it at
times, or do you feel like it kind of like, empowers your

(01:02:36):
sense of exploration? I'm not sure if I call this an
open world game though, but I guess I can see why.
I think of him more like, it's more Hub.
Base. So again this is like the the
point I'm trying to make is I wish open world games were like
this, I definitionally, is this an open world game?
I mean, not really if you could travel between the acts maybe

(01:03:00):
but this is like what I want to open world game to be which is
take something like the map of Grand Theft Auto 5 where people
one of fucking jizz all over thegoddamn floor because they made
like fucking 200 and 200 200 250by 200 mile grid of Los Angeles
where 90% of that space is fucking useless and then just

(01:03:23):
compress it down into something where like, there's always
something happening around everycorner and it's not just like
wasted fucking time. Even the parts of that like the
lease is when you just like walksomewhere and then suddenly
you're in like a random encounter that doesn't matter at
all. I think that's like a little
Patty. I think that's the only Patty
stuff the game does though. I think that it's a really heavy

(01:03:47):
because I feel like each encounter is kind of handcrafted
words like pretty novel and dark.
Oh yeah, it happens. A lot of the underdark.
There's yeah, you're right timeswhere it happens.
Notably, like the Jordan, you didn't even do this one because
it's in the mountain pass but like that death prophet in

(01:04:08):
counter, which is a fucking painin the ass, by the way.
And there's a there's a bunch ofthem and both the underdark and
the Grim Fords, like just off the top of my head and guitars
bullet. The Electric Slide leading up to
that like all those fights in that they all feel like there's

(01:04:29):
more effort put into their design than just like trash bags
and she compared to something like refill righteous where that
is. Yeah, he couldn't be of what
you're complaining about, where that's bad.
It's pretty awesome. Yeah, he's fucking egregious
goddess. Combat Encounters in that game.
Got so tedious. Yeah, I'm really using it to

(01:04:50):
like this thing its Praises. Like that's the only part that
feels Patty like and like I would just hate when you would
walk up and then it would be like the initiative rolls would
happen in them in a fight. I'd be like what the fuck?
But when you walk up and then you talk to somebody and then
that could lead to a fight felt so much better but yeah, it's
yeah, I actually happened. yeah,very much felt like For every

(01:05:10):
like, like quote unquote, randomcombat encounter like that.
There were like, oh yeah. Interesting.
Like social encounters, that could be combat or whatever else
like that. Yeah, there's so far is it was
so much. It was so much.
The one of her when it didn't have, it would be like phuc.
Yea, rather than just like this gonna be oh, most the time if
you like go down a hallway or something and that hallway is

(01:05:33):
like miraculously empty. It's just because of like a
former consequence that made sure not be there.
Yeah, I was actually curious. How did you feel going from like
the first few? Combats, the first time you
reached the Grove, and there's like that Siege from the
goblins. And then when you see the
initiative roles and you see like 20 goblets like how did you

(01:05:57):
with that like overwhelming? Like how did you feel?
So like, yeah. So when I got to that part, I
was like sure these guys are gonna be posting, right?
Because this feels like kind of like, where the game was
railroading me towards. But when you fuck up the goblin,
like the goblin camp, and then you go outside, and then there's
like, 30 that hits you. I was like, is there any way I
can avoid this fight? And later, I learned I think you

(01:06:18):
just passed travel away, but I didn't even know the Fast Travel
was the thing. Like free God point.
I just bought To be fair. I usually like when I do that,
when I do the good playthrough of fighting the goblin Campbell,
I usually all just killed them all for the experience.
Yeah, I do it. I'm pretty sure like every

(01:06:38):
single of my playthroughs after the first, like, probably after
the second one, every single Goblin camp.
And all of those playthroughs has been.
I try to stealth kill one of theleaders.
I end up like triggering the karma system, so that the entire
Goblin campaign hates me. I finished killing the leader.
I fast travel out. Okay, no problem.

(01:07:00):
I do some other shit. I forget that I agree the entire
Goblin camp but you can still fast travel to the one right
outside. The goblin camp.
And I immediately start combat with all of them right after my
fast travel. And I'm not rested and I have no
slots. So many Pokemon Yeah, if it

(01:07:20):
feels intimidated and anything, if it's just annoying, when
you're like, oh these motherfukers are going to have
to like move one by one. Like it's it's basically like
the torment problem every now and then.
But luckily this game sometimes,if they all want to do the same
action, they all do. The same action at the same
fucking time. Yeah, I wonder what triggers
that cause like it only happens usually with like the smaller
minion type that you like Dash. That's yeah.
Think if it's just like a big group of the same enemy and

(01:07:43):
they're all just gonna move is when it does it.
I think. What is way way worse to me is
when this happened to my second plate through, when I was
playing in evil character and I was playing a necromancer
wizard. So I had like a million fucking
summons, the lady towards the end of the game because you get
this like grimoire that lets yousummon, like, six zombies.

(01:08:04):
And it was like super overpowered.
The only time I truly, that was when I had to control every
single, fucking one of those zombies.
Yeah, yeah, that's funny becausethey actually nerfed that but
the Nerf actually improves it because you don't have to
control them anymore. It's a buff.
Um, going back to a gameplay thing.

(01:08:26):
There is something that pissed me off that I would not have
found out until this playthroughbecause not only is this the
first time I'm playing evil but it's also the first time I'm
using Drew and I wanted to make lae'zel Druid, literally just
the cheese one fight and then also just the experience with
Druid is like and I actually love Drew especially like wild
shape like like as a mechanic like there's so many cool things

(01:08:48):
you can do. With all the different shapes,
they all have utility, but one problem that the wild shape has
is that um, The Druids hitbox conforms like the size of the
animal, which can be pretty big and it makes it difficult to
click on the enemy if you want to attack them.
It's so yeah. No, I had Nelson before for that

(01:09:09):
exact reason when he was a true when he was there for like fuck
and he was like I want to be pissed at me.
Yeah there's a lot of examples of that because it like it won't
ask you for confirmation. If you accidentally highlight a
number, for example, happens allthe time.
Yeah. Like I actually think maybe

(01:09:29):
Maybe one of my bigger complaints of this game is, how
punishing this Clips are and howeasy it is to miss click, okay.
Yeah, I bought the ground so many times dude, especially like
in the Nautilus. I'm not so many goddamn times.
Like, there's I've done the amount of times that I've missed
clicked a Firebolt on those little instant fly around
because they're so fucking small.
Oh, It's kind of silly that theywouldn't add a confirmation of

(01:09:55):
like, are you sure you want to do this?
This seems done. so, I don't like, I don't think this would
be possible in a controller UI, but in keyboard and mouse, can
you not select the enemy portraits in like the timeline
bar and you can okay because that that was I need to see if

(01:10:16):
you can do that with controller because that would just solve.
My problem. Kinda everybody do that.
I can't remember. I can't remember if you can just
like select an ability and then click the timeline bar, but you
can definitely like hover over it and see like, who is who and
I'm pretty sure. That you can click an ability
from there. I can't, I'm not 100% but I feel

(01:10:36):
very counterintuitive but it'd be cool if it works.
Oh sorry. You can go.
Speaking of the timeline bar, Jordan, do you remember the pro
tip that I gave you about it? That the game also does not
switch between like what characters can active on the
same time or whatever. Yeah, I went through like the
vast majority. I think most people when the

(01:10:56):
game came out the vast majority of the game not realizing that
you could do that and it's like a it's like a big fucking thing.
I think that's mentioned something earlier that is like
critically important that they don't highlight, which is
jumping to get around everywhere.
Yeah I actually even though jumping in this game is like

(01:11:18):
really like fucking tedious and a variety of ways.
I actually love the fucking verticality in this game.
Yeah. Because oh yeah.
To me, I think that a lot of theverticality in this game comes
from like Lessons Learned From Divinity, original sin 2 because
that game's combating counters are so.

(01:11:40):
So so fucking similar to Boulders Gate 3 like there's
tons of verticality. There's a lot of complex
environments and those environments are really good at
creating these occasionally likedifficult scenarios, just with
regards to like movement and setup and all that shit and they
did and do a really good job of creating like really unique

(01:12:04):
combat Encounters in a way. That is like it relies a lot
more on the environment and what's around you like in the
battlefield and what's above andbelow you rather than like the
by and large kind of normal way that crpgs work where it's just
kind of like flat tactical scenarios or whatever.

(01:12:26):
Yeah, and something I wanted to bring up a little bit.
I would like to move on to the next section soon, but I did
want to bring up like some of the emergent gameplay stuff.
I'm thinking of like how you cancast create water on people and
it'll make lightning do more damage or you can Chuck
explosive barrels at people or like greases flammable and

(01:12:46):
there's a lot of like like when you fight the woods for example
and you have to use fire on them.
Did you guys think this game? Did that emergent gameplay
stuff? Well, where like, oh, this is a
spell that would make sense to do bonus damage to this thing or
whatever. You think this game.
Did that pretty well? Or has done pretty well since

(01:13:07):
we're only back one. I would say, I would say that
they did Will and specifically in comparison to Divinity
original sin, too. I think that they did way better
than that game because I remember, Being really
frustrated in that game where like it felt like the floor was
lava literally like all the fucking time in every attack.
Every enemy did just created more lava on the floor.

(01:13:28):
It was so annoying. That game, whereas in this game,
it's way more toned down but it's still exists to the point
where like, after I played Baldur's Gate 3 and I play like
any other game where you were just like exploration.
If I see patches of fire or likeyou like Embers on the floor, I
don't try to step on them. I just don't even if I'm not

(01:13:48):
playing Bulger to get through. Just, I don't want to
accidentally take like one pointof damage even if that mechanic
is likely actually exist in those Embers don't actually
damage. You.
Yeah, that actually agree with your point about Divinity.
Original sin, too. So like when I said that they
like took lessons learned. That's like specifically the
lesson now, granted. I think that game is like, much

(01:14:11):
more like designed around kind of like that.
Like interplay between the different like elements and like
shit on the ground but it's, it would have sucked fucking this
game if they tried to do that. I didn't really interact with
kind of what Seth is saying, youknow, because kind of, I play,
they don't really have that, like, creative mind when it

(01:14:33):
comes to these kind of games. So, Yeah, I don't the the only
thing like that I even like ran into was like in freeing near
like from I think that's his name the fucking asshole and
grymforge or whatever I was throwing.
A smoke powder bomb on the like the ground and the ground would

(01:14:54):
be fire behind and then when near and as the asshole would
run out they'd run on the fire and then the whole place would
aggro to me and so I was like, what the fuck am I doing wrong.
But then I had to throw the bomblike up on the wall.
So it didn't leave shit on the ground which I thought was
annoying more than anything. Or some of the poor.
We have to like blow up those rocks.
Because yeah, same thing happened.
It pissed me off. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. Because like I pooped the rocks

(01:15:15):
and I was like, yeah, something for me to run in and then
everyone agreed. Yeah.
Exactly. Like what do something wrong?
Yeah. And I guess I do.
So I had to reload. Yeah.
I reloaded like three times to figure out what the fuck was
happening. And then I was like, oh this
fucking dumbass who's like running out.
He's running into the Embers andthen they think, since I created
the empress, the whole place just gets busy, you was going as
fuck. Yeah it's definitely a thing

(01:15:37):
that can happen on account of like the weird interplay of
different mechanics. Yeah.
Which is also my honor mode can be quite frustrating at times.
Oh yeah. Speaking of yeah.
That sucks. Where did you lose your honor
mode? Playthrough bent.
Wait, did you do on our mode? Know I, I did not.

(01:16:00):
I did, I did a tactician With Honor rule set from the
beginning with Seth. Did you start honor mode?
So I thought someone started with me.
Are you still? Are you still going?
Oh, hell no. I was very overconfident when I
went to Ethel. That's funny.
Yeah. What happened to me was I knew I

(01:16:23):
wasn't going to get through on her mode unscathed, like I just
don't have the game knowledge todo it, like I just knew that
going in, but I still wanted to try.
And as soon as I got to the underdark and I stepped outside
of where you meet Rafael and I forgot where the Observer is,
and it aggroed. I just, I just died.

(01:16:43):
Like if fucking one shot, I think half my party, including
my monk. Like before I even took a game
action, the thing just like totally fucked me up.
Oh, that's that bulshit legendary.
Yeah, it was insane. It was so hard to be.
Is that the thing in the underdark or whatever?
Spectator or whatever the eyeball?

(01:17:04):
Yeah. Yeah.
So in honor mode, it gets this Legend, every boss basically
gets like a new legendary attackand this one in particular.
Punished people that took lots of actions, which generally if
you're trying to min-max, your gameplay, you're taking a lot of
actions. So you just kind of get
obliterated. You want a quick?

(01:17:26):
Pause on before we keep talking?I was gonna wait until we move
on just for the sake of like ease of editing, but I mean we
could just like very briefly since session do honor mode.
Just briefly talk about some of the other mode mechanics is.
I think they're kind of cool. Yeah.
The bullet is so fucked up in honor mode.

(01:17:48):
You what is it? You have to do at least 20
damage to it, to do any damage to it and as a, like 100
temporary hit points Shield? Yeah, I think it's fucked up.
You just kill that. It's oh yeah.
You have basically have certain character builds.
We like, how do you keep it in the battle?

(01:18:09):
Um, I don't think you have to kill it.
But you never actually have to fight it.
You could just let it just keep going.
What would it stick around? If you like, you can't do damage
to it, it would be like oh, you guys suck and then it wouldn't
because every time like I would hit it once and it would just
leave and be like how the fuck you kill this thing?
My experience was that it would always shortly run away after I

(01:18:30):
killed the shield. I'm not sure what actually
triggers it. I think it's probably help them
which is my guess. Probably I I'm pretty sure I
never actually like fucked around with this.
I know you can kill it. Like I think it has some AI that
triggers it to run away and sometimes it doesn't.
So I think I'm my first play through actually I killed it.
Never ran away from me. Oh you did kill it.
Yeah I killed. It was only because like I think

(01:18:51):
I got to it was either like a little five or six or whatever
and then Carla was just fucking truck city and then so it was
fucking it was hit, once it wouldn't got a crit and then
second attack and then got the bonus action so she literally
like 80 damage in one third. Yeah, speaking of that, how did
you feel about like kind of likethe power Spike that you when
that you get when you get to like four and five more more so

(01:19:12):
five, So because I'm playing with Gail shadowheart, my main
character is a paladin and then carlac is a Berserker.
The other characters feel like they don't do fucking anything.
And then car like feels like she's the final boss of
everything ever and just kills everything.
Yeah, and did you, especially when you got that extra attack,
right. It's like that.
Yeah. It's just feels like fucking

(01:19:33):
between that and then. What is it?
Like, great weapon Mastery. Oh yeah.
I see people like talk about like how great the other
subclasses are. I feel like that one is
obviously the fucking best one. It's working or specifically the
one that says like it's just like you need a 19 to roll a
critical. I feel like that one subclass is

(01:19:54):
just better than all the other ones I have.
Like, all the different, the buildings just get me.
The 19 crit. It's literally a little bit more
out of it. Yeah.
I mean the power I can I could see like the powers like being
you should feel pretty good for gay too.
But I feel like car like just does so much for me and doesn't
require like spell slots or anything that yeah, like she
just fucking just absolutely destroys fucking everything.

(01:20:16):
Oh, I think a lot of the like, especially Marshall or half
martial classes subclasses, theytend to have a lot more power
imbalance, in my opinion than stuff, like just straight
Fighters straight Barbarian and like, with spellcasters as
another example, spellcasters are like, very Linear typically

(01:20:36):
and how powerful they are going to feel.
Like if you hadn't picked up sessions on every odd level that
you get the next spell slot. So like, that's the one.
Yeah. Like one, three, five, seven,
nine eleven is when you get yournext level of spell slots.
And so they always feel very powerful when you hit that next
level. But there's some.

(01:20:58):
Yeah, there is something weird with the Marshalls, especially
if you're doing multi-class builds where at least in my
experience, I always have one character that just felt
entirely useless while everyone else was one shopping every
yeah. I mean for me it feels up and
then I have one character that feels like the end of the and
then the other three characters are basically just The
Supporting Cast, for that one character.

(01:21:19):
Yeah, which can definitely be a thing like like concentration as
a mechanic. You know I mean you can only
have one concentration spell. And oftentimes the best way to
spend your concentration is haste on fighter.
Exactly? It's interesting.
I've always been Pro martial Supremacy in all crpgs.

(01:21:39):
I thought it's so much more efficient for beating the game
than, like, doing all this, like, fucking like spellcaster.
Yeah, calculus. I'm like, that's cool and all.
And I like the idea of like, thelike, it's like, super powerful
Mage fantasy, but like, I'll like, when I'm playing through
these games, I just want one of those guys, and I need like
three dudes with axes. Just like, just kill everybody

(01:22:03):
or in this game, two people withaxes, and one person with two
hand, crossbows, that's that I want to do.
I maximum killing power. Well, you can't forget about
the, The Tavern brawler open hand monk, because that is our
fantasy, right? Yeah.
And that. Okay, never mind.
This is The Narrative of let's talk about her, but I haven't

(01:22:24):
respect yet on certain churches of those waiting for Menthol or
the ones like my final like party composition.
So, I, I don't have yet, even though I plan on also
Counterpoint to Marshall's filling, the, like, power
fantasy is thrown a ball Mages in that game or the sickest

(01:22:45):
fucking shit. Oh, the power fantasy is
amazing. I don't think there's any power
fantasy with Marshalls at all. I just like, I like that.
Yes, resistance. I guess a way of rephrasing that
is, I think like, I guess it's kind of tedious in that game,
but God damn. Are they fun to play when like

(01:23:05):
shit's going off? And you're just like, sitting
there slanging fucking 9th levelspells for like and that's why I
like having like my Dei token sorcerer but they're not the
main person, my partner. I mean this this game definitely
has or at least had that I'm gonna mention this even though
it's a late game build because it got nerfed not like into the

(01:23:28):
ground. Like you could still do it and
it would be fine. But I'm just gonna mention one
of my favorite bills that I everhad in this game.
And that is the storm. Sorcerer Tempest cleric where
with a certain combination of abilities, you will one shot
every single thing on the screenand some things that you can't
see with double cast, Shane lightning.
You can no longer double cast, chain lightning but Oh man, that

(01:23:51):
was fun there but it's really exactly.
So, never mind my, the build that I played the first time was
just a thing. It was 10 and it was a fucking
ranged Warrior. So I just used a bow and I just
like straight fucking normal. Attacked, like, six times around

(01:24:11):
and everything. Everything just died.
It just fucking melted to my warrior.
Just left clicking on everything.
What was the monk skill that yousaid said?
Because I think I'm gonna respect Shadow Hearts to be that
you should. I was just about to say, you
should definitely consider monk because Monk was traditionally
very weak in 5e. It was fixed in 5.5 for the most

(01:24:34):
part, but I think they definitely did some like work to
make it feel much more powerful in this game.
And what you want to do is take a month, they're going to go
open hand, you can kind of go, whatever subclass, but open hand
is slightly better than all the other ones and you want it to be
a strength. Monk typically, they are
dexterity, but you want to go strength and you're gonna take
Tavern brawler, which adds your strength modifier to your own

(01:24:58):
armed attacks, which is what youdo is unlock.
And the reason I was actually going to suggest don't sleep on
monk to sesh is because of the wind is probably the most fun
ability in any D&D game ever been.
I don't know if you fucked around with it too much, but
just go ahead and read the text on step of the window.
If you haven't fucked around with monk too much, it removes

(01:25:20):
the bonus cost or the bonus action cost of jump.
That means you can jump as many times as you want in one turn
the way jumping Works in this game is the the movement that
jump uses always uses. I use I use metric.
It always uses three meters of movement but the length of your

(01:25:43):
jump, scales with strength. So if you have A Tavern brawler
monk that has 20 strength and you activate step of the wind
you are jumping across the entire map in one turn.
It's amazing. It's very fun.
I never knew about this but I played Tavern brawler without
that like Forbidden Knowledge and it was still fucking broken.

(01:26:04):
Yeah, just so much damage. Yeah, it'll do like 500 damage.
A turn like without batting an eye in the late game.
Noted. Yeah, you've had your struggle
and act one session. Now you unlock the op shit?
Just the fact that I could change classes is like fucking
mind blowing because I would I was basically sit here just

(01:26:25):
being like what am I gonna get amonk when we get a bar, what I'm
gonna get you know I could just I always I had that whole time.
Yeah dude just looking just looking respect man just
experiment because the gold costis also effectively zero.
Yeah yeah. Steal it back but so much gold.
Anyway. Yeah.
Um, for Carla specifically, she is a pretty good build, but you

(01:26:47):
might, depending on what you didand act, when you might have
already skipped or sold these items, but there's this, there's
this weapon called The ReturningPike that you can throw and just
come back to you and don't remember my soul that, I might
have kept that. If you, if you don't have a
returning weapon, I believe the path of the giant subclass gives

(01:27:09):
you a returning weapon at six level.
Oh, I didn't know that. And what am I doing with the
returning weapons? Um, it's basically there's like
this bill that people do with car.
Like it's like a throw-in build.I guess that's what they call
it. Sure.
Because there's also a ring, youconnect one that says, like it's
all the Ring of flinging where you just do an extra.

(01:27:29):
It's like an extra damage modifier for when you throw an
item. Yeah, I think I have that.
Yeah. And then the results.
So something in the Barbarian class feature, maybe, like, one
of the subclasses that all, so, like facilitates Throwing shoot
and it's just it's a it's a build that's very powerful that
people like you Zone, Carla specifically.

(01:27:52):
I feel like for like, know what to say builds are?
Because I like I usually like never experiment with anything
crazy like that or like I haven't even interactive with
like the Alchemy system at all. So it's just constant like you.
Oh yeah. By no means isn't necessary for
like enjoying car like like the first.
Yeah, I didn't know about that. All I just gave her the fucking
two-handed, whatever. The best two-handed thing I had.

(01:28:13):
And then I just clicked on the enemy and yeah, that was just
the one thing I'll mention is Just be careful of some of these
builds because some of them are absolutely game-breaking like
that. Oh, yeah, the storm sorcerer.
When I mentioned, I did not haveto interact with any combat from
the back, half back to onwards, so just be careful with that

(01:28:35):
stuff for sure, but if you want just like, if you want, just
like a secret tech for builds ingeneral, you're almost never
incorrect. Going three levels of rogue
Thief almost never is that incorrect.
What is I give you extra bonus action?
Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah.

(01:28:57):
So that's what I was saying earlier is like you just you dip
into Rogue and that's like that's like a very common thing
at least when I was playing the game initially to just go like
nine levels in some classes and then three in Rogue.
I've been saying too because I couldn't remember his two or
three. But yeah, that third action for
just the cost of three levels islike fucking crazy.
Yeah, I think the the two, most common tips are three levels

(01:29:21):
into Rogue for the extra bonus action, two levels in to Fighter
for Accenture because it's very good.
And as of the most recent path, one level into warlock for
hexblade, because pretty much any martial class can benefit
from Making their main sappy Charisma does.

(01:29:41):
All of that shit still work in non-auto mode because I know
that they removed like just taking a bajillion turns and
honor mode. And in terms of what, I'm not
sure like all the ones I mentioned are like, not like
crazy op. They're just very good dips.
Well, I mean, I'm what I'm saying is you can't go three
Rogue Two fighter like like it does not let you do that, right?

(01:30:06):
Like you can only take one action to turn or something.
action surge is very unique and what it does it will always let
you take care of, okay, maybe it's the Warlock one then that
you can't dip because someone was telling me this and okay,
Yes. So, like the extra Tech, you got
a level five for certain classes, those do not stack and

(01:30:27):
honor mode. Okay?
Yeah, that's what I was wondering.
Well, we're kind of just build yapping at this point.
I just have to talk in the text channels.
Later, do you guys want to talk more about gameplay or do you
want to move on to do? Yeah, I'll just close by saying
that the game is a modern engineering Marvel and that's

(01:30:48):
all that I'll say. This shit should be the fucking
7th wonder of the world. Yeah, I truly just to wrap up my
thoughts on it. I think it's incredible.
How like it may not even be the most cohesive stuff, but it just
all Works together in the most spectacular ways to allow for

(01:31:09):
complete and total freedom in combat.
That's great. It does immersive Sims way
better than actual ever, even dream of being in the crazy.
I mean, that like, completely genuinely this game completely
shits on, like all those immersive Sims.
The craziest thing to me about this game, too.
Is like there's no Superfluous or unnecessary content.

(01:31:31):
Like everything has a purpose, like, even if it's just kind of
like a one-off comedic side bit,because you're talking to a
squirrel or whatever or like random NPCs without a dialogue
tree that are just like making their bed in the drude grover,
or whatever, like everything is doing something and everything
leads to something. And those things can be, so

(01:31:53):
wildly different based on small choices that you make.
So yeah, like I guess a modern engineering Marvel this fucking
game. A great example of that before
we move on is my boy barcus route who becomes a lot of
people's favorite character. He is the The Gnome, the Deep,
the Deep Dome that is tied to the windmill.

(01:32:15):
That just so happens. You can get in your party and
just shows up regularly throughout the game.
Yeah, and he won't be showing upanything.
Flying from that, wouldn't know?Yeah.
Yeah. Well we'll talk about that later
in the text Channel. Maybe send such that video if
you didn't see it, but let's move on to Art audio UI because

(01:32:37):
how is an hour and 40 minutes ofgame discussion that will
probably will have even more to talk about in the next ACT we
got two more episodes of this shit.
So I just want to ask since we're like, you know, we're
pretty deep into the lifecycle of this game.
We're basically at the end of the like support of this game,
quote unquote, they won't be doing any major patches.

(01:32:58):
I'm just curious specially for sesh.
Did you guys have any like, hugebugs effects?
Your experience or like alter your perception of the game in
any way? So, I mean, I I had like a crash
when I first opened the save menu, which is weird, which I
didn't really, which didn't really bother me a couple times

(01:33:20):
NPCs wouldn't render in cutscenes, which made it really
weird, but that was like, only like early on for me.
Like specifically. Like yeah, we're just like the
camera would just switch and then there would be no one in
the frame and they would just besomeone talking and so that was
kind of like jarring, but not terrible.
The worst thing for me is if I go sometimes I go up a ladder
but then I teleport down the latter but then I click the

(01:33:41):
latter because I think I'm at the bottom, but that I'm
actually at the top and then it teleports me back to the top of
the ladder. And then I walked down.
And this has happened to me likefour times and it's really
fucked up. I've done that too.
Yeah, for me the first time I played this game after release
was kind of a mess because I hada PC that was kind of like
treading water for the like requirements of this game and on

(01:34:05):
release the game had like tremendous tremendously, bad
memory leak problems. So, I was having to restart this
game every like, fucking 45 minutes to an hour, it was
really annoying and I was also like saying, like crazy, so when
I would have to reload and take fucking forever, but the

(01:34:26):
difference between The game on release and the game.
Now, it's crazy. I think I ran into one bug and I
ran into it today and I was like, oh, which was I pressed my
quick save button and I got like, error, 804 could not save
and I was like, what the fuck does that mean?
And then I just like clicked on the ground like five feet away
and pressed that five again and it worked fine.
Another than that. I ever hear Yeah, so I also have

(01:34:49):
to go there because I remember when I first played this game,
they were so many fucking bugs and also, I had to play the
game. I had the, rebuy, the game on
the PS5, to actually complete itbecause my computer did not have
enough memory, like, certain like such that, it was just like
that, but like way worse and like, the cutscenes just
wouldn't load, it would take literally five minutes.
Gosh. And it would just be just in the

(01:35:11):
loading screen. So I just had the and it's
because I only had gigs of memory, which I mean, that's my
fault for just not buying a new computer and like 10 years, but
I still had to play in the fucking PS5 and It's crazy
because Dean deck actually just had more RAM than the PCI I had
at the time and ran on. Yeah.

(01:35:32):
Well when just keep this in the back of your mind, Jordan when
we get to act three, if you can remember how like fucked up in
zombified, my PC was before I like upgraded.
It just just think about that asyou're strolling through act 3
is All. I'm gonna say, I swear I
remember you posted like a videoor maybe like you streamed while

(01:35:53):
you were trying to play it once or something.
It was just like super fucked upand like, artifact and crazy.
But I don't. That was you or that was your
you saying someone else had the same experience as you?
Yeah, that was like, that was something to do.
I don't know what that was, but it didn't have anything to do
with my PC because like, if I ifI captured video through OBS, at
worked fine, but when I tried through Discord, it was fucked

(01:36:15):
up. So I don't know.
Something was Squirrely, and I don't think I don't think that
was my PC. Gotcha, there is one technical
thing that started bugging me that it's only because I started
playing on PC, like he's actually my first legitimate PC
play through. So I'm experiencing certain
things, sort of first time like the cloud.
Save and the mods. The mods are amazing and I love
the fact that they propagate across different devices.

(01:36:37):
So when I play on the wrong guy,like the mods are all there.
So don't have to do any set up by savings are all through the
cloud save but Like I don't know, I think such, you talked
about this, the cloud save, it takes fucking forever, like and
it's okay kind of because like after you realize that, you can
still keep playing, but like, seeing that message up there,

(01:37:00):
forever, it just yeah. Feel like, like you can't turn
off the game like if you wanted to.
Yeah, the game. And you and your session, your
game session by Saving, like, most people do, then you have to
wait there for, like another minute.
Oh, it's Like, does this Cloud shit?
And it's just so weird because like, yeah, it's just know,
because it's something that's like I feel is over engineered,

(01:37:21):
because it's not just steam Cloud.
There's something else to work. It's using like, they're Larry
and pipelines Cloud. Yeah, because the steam Cloud
takes a while too, but it's likeone six, the time of what
Larry's time was, and I fucking turned it off like through the
Larry and shift for the exact reason, you said of, like, when
I want to close the game and then you're just sit there like
saving the cloud for like a minute and it's like, what the
fuck? So I turn that shit off because

(01:37:43):
it's insane. Look, in the first time someone,
I forget if it was you Jordan orbeen, like posted a screenshot
or something, and it had that message up there in the top
left. I was just, I think I said I was
like, man, I'm driving me crazy to see that message all the time
and literally, every video, every screenshot, every
everything that Ben is posted. Yeah, that's like you literally

(01:38:10):
just play with the fucking shit on permanently.
I do, and that is something you can, you can cue the quick
saves. So that's how that number keeps
incrementing. So, like when I get like, super
safe scummy, but like, I'm on, on a good gambling streak.
So I have multiple things going and, and I do enjoy that where
it actually cues them and it does save them all in order.

(01:38:32):
So, when you do get a bad role and have to reload, you do have
like your choice of which, whichpoint to go back to.
But you cannot quick load or youcannot load at all until the
until the quick save Cloud. Shoot is done.
So you still have the way. It makes safe coming like very,
very painful, like, way more painful than what you guys

(01:38:54):
already experienced, it's not gonna stop me but I will.
I will suffer through it and I'll Don't know I won't complain
about it because it is my choiceto do it.
I'm not gonna complain about anymore.
I mean the fact that it takes solong as well so that's just
insane. It's 15 megabyte files.
Dude, that should take me like two seconds.

(01:39:17):
Um, okay, so let's talk about some are an audio show.
We In my opinion, I think this game's fucking beautiful, but I
think we're really shines. The most is in its, uh, it's
mocap performances. Yeah.
Like the biggest negative that Ican say about the mocap is that

(01:39:37):
sometimes, it feels like people are a little bit, like, Bobble
heady like they're fucking necksor like on a swivel.
Yeah, for sure. I don't know if that's just like
how they set up their mocap or if the actors were just like
just sticky waiting. Yeah, wildly.
But that's like the only negative I have.
Because it's, and it's barely even a negative because it's

(01:39:59):
still looks fucking Chris. Yeah.
Look at performance is which, ifyou guys didn't know, all of
them were directed by the voice actor.
For a star in Neil newbon, and like, he has a lot of theatrical
background and shit and it fucking shows because like, if
you just look at every single character, they just have this

(01:40:21):
particular posture. That they stand in and their
body language is very palpable through the dialogue that they
have. And yeah it's I don't think I've
ever seen. Mocap in a game like this as
good as this like, yeah, you could say something.
Like, maybe last of us has really good mocap by comparison
or like Uncharted, but just the fact that they did that mocap

(01:40:45):
for everything in this game. Yeah.
Crazy. I mean, that's the thing that I
think is so nuts because, like, e33 has pretty good.
Mocap I think. But it's like six characters and
like, there's almost no one moving like this game has so
many more moving parts and like it's better than that which is
just insane. There's something after the
Super give credit to work again because back on release in the

(01:41:06):
technical state was in the news pretty an optimized.
But now, when I played the game,when I first installed the game
that ran on the wrong Ally, and I went into the graphics
settings, I just click on recommended, and I just expected
to, like, to set everything to look because it's a fucking
rock. I like it said everything.
The ultra it was like really? Yeah.
And with the frame generation? Yeah, it really, it just works

(01:41:29):
fine. And it's beautiful too.
It looks exactly the same as when I played on the PS5.
It's like extraordinary, like what they do.
Yeah, I don't think the game is like the peak of Graphics like,
I think it looks fine. And it's like, well stylized but
I'm not. Like holy fuck, look how good
this looks. But the thing that's super
impressive to me is how well it performs, like, no matter what.

(01:41:49):
Like, I don't think my game has gone beneath 240 FPS, no matter
what's been on the street, whichis insane.
Yeah, that's like a complete, like, Far Cry from this game
came out, like, Their performance patches were fucking
incredible and kind of the same thing they did with the OS 2,
but yeah. They they put a lot of fucking
work into this game in the past two years.

(01:42:11):
I mean, I'm just, I'm just curious for sesh to hoard a
bunch of explosive, barrels and explode.
Like, it doesn't come and see ifthat's still true.
I mean, I could check. I mean, yeah, I never know
you're doing it on purpose. I didn't know.
Yeah, and frame hitches at all, even a little bit, there are
some pictures, but it's been there.
It's specifically in cutscenes like the action packed

(01:42:34):
cutscenes. Sure.
There's a transition between scenes and maybe it's because I
still don't have enough RAM. But there's always a slight
hitch when they're like loading it in assets from one another, I
guess that if you don't have like a lot of RAM for sure.
I think I think the true test ofthis for me is gonna be when I
set off my room powder Barrel inthe middle of factory because

(01:42:56):
I'm that's how I roll it. I I think to back up a little
bit to the assets more specifically.
First of all I just think that this game it has an obscene
amount of assets and like yeah every uses them a couple like
here and there, you know, I'm thinking like Monsters and NPCs

(01:43:17):
specifically like but the fact that like look how In detail,
The Spectator is and that's justone random encounter in the
underdark. That's like pretty easily
missable. Yeah, like The Spectator model,
shows up in a couple other places but, you know, an average
players only gonna see one of them probably and it looks
fucking incredible. And the game is filled filled

(01:43:40):
with stuff like that. For just all of this different
side content that they couldn't have expected every player to
do. But like it's there, it's it's
fucking insane and like the quality of those assets, I'm
thinking like specifically on the nautiloid, oh my God,
everything in the novelty looks so fucking good.
And that feeling of like traveling through the fucking

(01:44:02):
Hells on this mind, flayer ship and you see the dragons in the
background and you can see the hell's in the background, hold
shit. That stuff looks good.
Oh yeah, one thing I want to specifically call out in that
regard is fucking gear like equipment on characters, like
all of us, so good and all of itlooks so good inside of the
cutscenes. Like, there's just, there's not

(01:44:24):
like an ounce of laziness that went into the modeling, a lot of
the equipment in this game and it looks amazing.
It's a bummer. They don't have transmog.
Because, yeah, like I, I want totransmog things, but it's since
like, it's not a thing. I'm like, fuck it.
So I just use like the camp transmog to, at least like kind
of normalize it for me, but I agree that like, it doesn't look
bad. I can at least promise you this

(01:44:46):
as a light spoiler by the end ofAct 2.
All of the best armor is also the best looking armor.
So you won't have to worry aboutthat too much.
I'll have to untoggle the camp every time I'd like to take the
camp gear every time I get new gear because, yeah, that's a
good point. I like having looked at my
character's outside of that campAire and like, five, six hours.
So they might look sick, but now, That's funny.

(01:45:08):
Thomas Lee. Yeah, you get a couple piece of
like a specialty, the plate armor in this game.
I think it looks so. So I think all the head gear
makes the characters look fucking stupid as hell.
But Oh yeah, I think a lot of like Thomas said, like a lot of
the gear, looks good and cutscenes and like objectively

(01:45:28):
as an asset. I get that's probably true.
But man a lot of the Act One stuff just does not for the
characters at all. There's a minor cruises.
There's a minor criticism. I have to love you that you just
brought up specifically with headgear with certain hairstyles
where like they can't render. Like all the hair.
Oh sure. Yeah.

(01:45:49):
It looks like, every character is kind of like a little
balding. Yeah, I Shot.
Ya as like this hat, where? Yeah, just looks.
She looks like she has a skullet.
It's kind of weird. And, and the other minor Chris
criticism. I have to live.
He gets his game's art direction.
Is that all teeth feeling, work?Same like, just real talk.

(01:46:10):
It's just how would. Yeah?
Well, I don't know what a team playing was going into this game
so when when like I first saw people, I was like, what the
fuck is that? And it's I think it's growing on
me just because I like Carlock as a character but at the
beginning I could be like I don't like this design.
It's so that's all of them. I don't think all of them look,
similar. I think a lot of, like, Rando

(01:46:32):
NPCs might, but I mean like zevlor looks really unique.
Carla looks really unique. I'll fear.
It looks really unique. I don't know if I agree with
that. No, I feel like a Zev looks
different for all the rest of itlooks.
Kind of save the video. For me, it's like, even they do
kind of look a little Sammy, butI like the way that it looks, so
it doesn't bother me. What does bother me and I'm
really glad that. There's not a lot of them is

(01:46:53):
fucking Dragonborn. Thank God.
They're not a lot of Dragonborn in PCS in this game because I do
not like fucking looking for andI'm so glad you could customize
the darker. Oh yeah, I would not want to
play the Dragon Ball. And yeah, so like this is more
related to art and so the character creation is pretty
fucking incredible. Like I'm a big fan of like

(01:47:16):
wrinkles and games all like putting wrinkles on characters
and like the wrinkles in the skin.
Specifically are very very good looking.
Like that's a character creator was like limited compared to
some of the other games I playedrecently.
I think it's limiting in comparison to like fucking
Korean games where? Yeah, there's a slider for

(01:47:37):
everything. Yeah, but I feel like it's fun
though because one of those games that have like those super
like modular character creators,I feel like it's way too easy to
make these fucking mutants and then like I just end up like
just clicking on reset to default.
Yeah, I mean, yeah, I seeing like the characters that
specifically, the one that Tom made, I was like, oh, that's

(01:47:57):
cool. And I tried to like, make me and
like it didn't I didn't have nearly the customization, like,
in the Korean game. Oh yeah.
Be like cheekbone higher, cheekbone, lower face, skinnier
all that shit. So it was kind of like,
basically, like if I picked an elf, like I kind of looked
almost the same if I picked X. I looked almost the same.
Yeah, good. I think I wish there was more
variation in like the actual facial structures that you could

(01:48:20):
make because I think they only have preset faces.
Right. Yeah.
Or it's very minimally. Yeah changeable.
Yeah. And I guess it's just for me
though. Like, I appreciate the
limitation because again like I said like in those other
character creators, it's just like too easy to make something
too ugly. And also for variety I haven't
looked too much into the Mazda, there's probably like a fuk to

(01:48:41):
them all. Yeah I was just about to say
like the one data point I have that I'm not actually But if you
go to the mod store, if you go there there are fucking
Millions. Yeah, like hair packs and face
packs and race packs and all that shit.
There's so much with it. Yeah, I didn't even think about
the fuk if I hadn't started an honor mode play through to

(01:49:03):
install the shit, there's so many miles, dude.
Yeah, I saw a bunch of like you,why months?
Specifically, That like just showing more information like I
can see the armor class of enemies like without having to
examine themselves and I think that's really cool.
A lot of the straight up experience as my first
experience. So I didn't want to thank that
with Mod, but there was a lot that I wanted to install like

(01:49:25):
that. Yeah, I had a lot of us but they
didn't have any for this for thesake of game.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
That's having my engine because all my playthroughs were on
Console. So I'm modding the fuck out of
this. As they're even been a dragon
ball or an NPC. By the way, I don't recall
seeing anybody, Dragonborn? There's not many, I only when I

(01:49:46):
so there is technically one and act one.
If you kill Alpha then you stillget the urge scene and the new
character that you murdered and set of Elf here as a Dragonborn
on the other one, I can think ofis an act 3.
Okay. Yeah, I can only think of that
31 because when you guys mentioned it, I forgot even
existed. Other than the fact that I saw
in the character creator for like three seconds and was like

(01:50:09):
that moved on. I mean I will sew Dragonborn.
I'm very glad they're in the game.
I'm surprised that they added them to the game.
But the reason I'm glad that they put them in is because when
I did my first evil playthrough as dirge, I I still wanted to
play a Dragonborn, but I didn't like the look of the white one.

(01:50:31):
And so I made a black Dragonbornwith red eyes and named him evil
medieval face and he looked menacing as far did not see.
None. None of the like intimate, like
sexual cutscenes looked good at all, but when he was just like
staring down a character that hewas about the murder.
I thought they looked very okay.so, um, I guess that would be

(01:50:58):
like, since been trying by UI mods.
I'm curious. So, we've got two keyboard mouse
players and Two controller players.
In my opinion, the keyboard mouse UI of this game is a
klusterfuk nightmare of dog shit.
Yep. Yeah, I I cannot even see him
looking at like I like, I watched streamers play this

(01:51:20):
game. I can't even, I can barely watch
them because they all play a keyboard mouse.
It looks like the worst game ever on my way.
It looks terrible. I hate it.
I love the buttons are all over the place, like I don't like
it's fucking so Fox. So, here's the thing, Jordan, I
discovered, I can't remember if I talked about this already, but
there's like options. If you go to the options menu

(01:51:42):
and go to the table, it's all the way to the right.
I think it's interface. I forget, there's checkboxes
there that say like Auto ads spells Auto add items Auto, add
this like to your bars. Uncheck that shit right now
because the problem the problem isn't that it automatically adds
everything because like yes thatmakes everything like super

(01:52:04):
fucking cluster. Fucking the problem is when it
adds things, it fucking moves all the skills around.
Yeah, so like I can't just like,I can't just be like, well, I
don't give a shit that I just added like, yeah, six new skills
because I'm just gonna click thesame one.
I've been using know, the motherfuker moved.
Exactly. I like lose track of what I even
have equipped because things move and then like I forget that
I have this spells because of moved it.

(01:52:24):
Yes, it's a nightmare. So, that's yeah, man.
It's like a Suck sucks. I mean, you'll have to remember
to like if yeah because I was mentioning it's it's really easy
to forget that an item you have as a usable ability if it
doesn't automatically add it. Oh yeah.
God the fucking it's like it's easier for me to do it just

(01:52:47):
because it's like how I started and I'm old and gay and don't
like feel like learning a new thing but my God is, is they,
they could have done better, let's just say that.
And it's weird because um, maybethis isn't a fair comparison but
I feel like the UI of divinity, original sin, 2 was fine, like
it wasn't great and it was very similar to Baldur's Gate 3, but

(01:53:09):
this one like it went backwards and the reason I say it's not
fair is probably just because there's so many more fucking
skills in this game than us too.But Yeah, shit sucks.
The thing that's confusing to meis like this game.
I think that really said the game didn't launch with controls
that true. Yeah, I how that crazy.

(01:53:30):
But I definitely played this on controller on my first
playthrough when I launched. What did early?
Oh, pretty sure that they did not have control support until
they release on consoles. Maybe I played it late.
I don't know. I might be wrong maybe but I'm
feeling like I'm not, if I'm wrong then I'm sorry.

(01:53:51):
But according to Jeopardy it didn't when it entered Early
Access, it would come later and it was added.
It was added at first, I think Tom was supposed to do it.
The Valyrian Studios text message.

(01:54:13):
Yeah, so yeah, they did. It wasn't there when they put it
in Early Access, but at some point they had a limited testing
and then full support when they did the 1.0 release which I
think is one of the consoles. Yeah, and I didn't think that
there was like a huge gap between this game coming out and
it was a couple of months, it's pretty sure.
I mean, if you're talking about Early Access at one point, oh,

(01:54:34):
that was like three years. Yeah, so if I was wrong about
that, I'm sorry guys, I don't know you're not wrong.
It didn't have control of support when it first showed up
in Early Access, I don't know about when it launched.
Yeah, but I was launched 1.0 I mean, in regardless, I'm just
glad that it does have it and the controller support is really
fucking good. Yeah.
I mean the point that I'm makingnoise like, how the fuck it.

(01:54:54):
Like, I don't understand how it wasn't there in the beginning
and people had to play this gamelike, on controller on keyboard
mouse. Only what it feels like it's
controllers designed because like, even something as simple
as. Like, going through a doorway,
is such is so fucking asinine inthis game like because the
camera just gets fucking lost and then I'm clicking on the
fucking wall and the characters don't know what's going on.
So it's like turn the camera. Like, it's so fucked up to just

(01:55:17):
go. Yeah.
And and kbm doesn't have the, like areas search.
The controllers has does it, I don't know.
That's the one thing that is what that's like on keyboard
mouse, you can literally hold down a button and it area looks
everything around you so you don't have to fucking song.
Click on. Okay we got damn treasure chest

(01:55:38):
in his stack of like nine. It's it's like almost even
better than that because you'll like you'll hold it it puts a
circle around you highlights. Everything and then it brings up
a menu with everything that's interactable.
So you if you if there's just like a million bodies over the
chest that you want to hold themand you can't click it because
you why? You can highlight everything.

(01:55:59):
And then like that's not a thingon keyboard mouse at all.
That's so crazy. That's a system that I can't do
that. Yeah, I really don't think it is
having to click on the bodies that are stacked on top of each
other makes me want to die. Yeah, only if there's like
There's like really easy. I think it's really easy to miss
shit without it too. Because like if the head honcho

(01:56:21):
boss man's body is stacked below.
Like five fucking Roots bodies, but he's the only one with loot
on him. How the fuck are you gonna click
that? So the body.
Just here's what you can do. If you hold down, alt it shows
all of the lootable things on screen and if you have not
looted something, it'll have an asterisk to it and I think you

(01:56:43):
can click that little like panelname.
Yeah, the name plate. I'll have to, I guess, at least
there's a alternative. When you say, what do you mean?
Like, like poor corpse of like, Daddy's digits and you can just
sucks ass. Yeah.

(01:57:04):
Like the area, the area loot is so nice.
Like, yeah, I wish that this game could like freely switch
between keyboard mouse and controller because it does not
do that seamlessly. Wait, because I would, I would
literally just fucking have a controller sitting in front of
my keyboard to hold down the area.
Wait, why does it do that scene?Was it you it's not know you

(01:57:26):
have to change it in a menu because the entire UI changes
between keyboard mouse and I never, I never change it in the
menu. I sometimes switch to.
Oh sometimes, I don't know. Yeah, I actually have the option
to turn it off the hot switchingwere, it actually does like, if
you if you're playing, can control and you press the button
on the keyboard, it will switch to the PC.

(01:57:47):
You want to turn that? Often accident, I don't know the
computer, but there is like a pause from the switch between
uis though. Yeah, that's why I turned it
off. Because not only that, but
there's like a hitch, a long hitch.
Like, for me, it was like three seconds where like, yeah, it's
reasonable for the table becauseit's literally like, yeah, it's

(01:58:08):
all the way again, for a completely different setup.
So, it's got, It's Gonna Take a little bit of process in time,
but also another thing to glaze controller and shit on kbm for
that. I remember every word
complaining about how bad, the camera is, I have never had a
camera problem, this game controller.
Like it's so bad. I think the camera it for

(01:58:32):
keeping him. Yeah.
Camera and kbm is like, oh yeah.The only thing I was gonna
highlight is that it more than Ithink a lot of other crpgs I've
played. It has a really nice.
I don't know what you call it like when you're inside a
building but you can see throughthe building like yeah, it's
right thing. Yeah, part of the camera is very

(01:58:53):
fucking good. On both KVM and controller.
Yeah. The shout out the Shader that
they used to do that because yeah, fucking all exactly.
Yeah. Yeah.
I think that's only a problem. Like I keep our mouths, like
you're trying to click somethingthat's like high up and then
like the wall like renders or unrendered based on like when
your characters. Yeah, that's that's why I like,
I think it's fucking so annoying.

(01:59:15):
I'm keyboard Mount ever hear what the fucking every now and
then I'll fire both the chandelier.
Yeah. Is this a problem for you guys?
Like you controller Gamers? Where Um, when I open my map and
I know that I have to move west,it takes me.
So fucking long until like Orient myself.
Like I rotate my camera to True North and it's like, okay I've

(01:59:36):
rotated and now I go this way. All right, it is, it is a
fucking process. Oh yeah.
The the blighted village is I I get turned around every single
fucking time. I have to like, face a direction
and then look at my map and realize.
Okay. And you need to 180 from this
direction. Yeah, I literally have to like
rotate my camera until I'm pointing North the entire time
and you can't rotate your cameraand control, right?

(01:59:58):
Like it's just over the back or whatever.
What do you mean you can rotate?Yeah.
So yeah, so you can rotate it plays just like how you expect
like a third person game would control I guess.
Like that kind of camera. Yeah, that's all because it's
crazy. I wouldn't expect a third person
camera angle to like freely rotate.
I thought it was just like fucking Gears of War or

(02:00:22):
something and dark souls are shit.
That's like a free rotation. I run like the only, I think the
only downside of the controller camera compared to kbm is, you
can't, like, tan the camera forward easily because it's the
camera. Yeah.
You talk like going to a targeting mode and shit.
Yeah. Almost panning around.

(02:00:43):
Doesn't even feel like a benefit.
Yeah, it's, it's a nuisance. It's literally it's something
that I have to do that. I wish I didn't have exactly
like I feel like I it was like alearning curve to learn the
camera and now like I'm pretty sick with it.
Like what Tom said and everything like go to two North
and you figure out where you arein the map while you're getting
the true north. And like I'm pretty quick with

(02:01:04):
it, but it was like a learning curve.
Yeah. For sure.
It didn't feel good. Yeah, this game feels like much
more. It was designed for the
controller and the kbm the big time.
Yeah. That's why it blows my mind that
they didn't have control of support from like jump because
it feels like the whole fucking game was designed around control

(02:01:25):
it. I'm surprised that you you went
with kbm after everyone, like, suck the controllers, dick.
I think, I even told you to playcontroller.
I don't know if you told me, butI definitely remember you guys
saying, like, it's so much better on control and I was, I
feel like I just A to me it's sonatural to play games like this
on keyboard mouse that I had to.And also I had to see why it

(02:01:46):
sucks. Like that's just accept like I
want to switch to controller andI'm meant to do that but I just
haven't yet. Yeah.
I mean if you did that for Act 2and then we can have you if you
do, do that, make sure to go into the options and they're
like a saying this is like resetthe tutorials.
You'll probably want to do that.Oh, sure.
I mean I feel like the game did fucking tell me anything anyway.

(02:02:08):
Yeah. But it's specifically to tell
you like what the cultural? What?
Yeah. Oh, there's one more question.
I wanted to ask in the art audioUI section.
It's, it's a little narrative e,but I do mean it more from like
a visual audio perspective. And the question I had was, how

(02:02:30):
did you guys feel about the tonal shifts between the emerald
Grove environs versus the underdark versus grymforge
versus Mountain Pass? Did you feel like the
transitions were seamless or didyou feel like they were like
disconnected from each other rather than actual League like
connected and part of the world?In my opinion, I think that that

(02:02:50):
stuff was done in act 1 very intentionally as probably a
selling point for Early Access. Is it bad?
No. But I do think that including
the underdark in the same area as act 1 is a little bit jarring
but on the flip side of that I don't know how I would have done

(02:03:12):
it because it doesn't feel rightto separate.
Them into different acts, but itis kind of strange that these
two like, very discreetly uniqueenvironments are in the same
act. But like I said, I think it was
literally just so the they could, like, showcase shit
during Early Access. yeah, I think I think it's super jarring

(02:03:34):
just because like there's no like the underdark you would
think that there would be like Guardians of the underdark.
Like not saying, like, for this specifically.
But just when you think about something in games like this,
you think there'd be like this, like long pathway or like, just
something that you need to go through or like this, like
trepidation of going down into it, going down into it.
But instead, you're just like there and now let's talked up.
So I think I think it definitelyis like pretty jarring.

(02:03:57):
I will say, I think there's two things that they kind of do
correct with it. Well, first of all, aside from
that, I think that the transition from underdark, the
grymforge is not nearly as evident as a transition from the
emerald Grove Park. Um, I'm really glad that I
believe with every access point to the underdark.
There's a small cutscene that plays as you go into it like

(02:04:20):
climbing down the ladder or whatever.
I think that's a really good wayof like marking that pivot even.
Yeah, it's like totally very strange and like alien when you
go down to the underdark, I think having the cutscene helps
with that for sure. And also I think that the
underdark specifically helps Bridge a little Gap in to act

(02:04:41):
two. That would otherwise feel way
more jarring. Like if you go if you go like
says she didn't do this, but if you go into Mountain, Pass
straight into act two, it's fucking crazy, how jarring that
it is. It's fucking wild that weird.
It is, yeah, that's fair. That's actually really good
point. it, I don't know all about password is, but yeah, I
think kind of just like a littlemore Maybe like, preparation for

(02:05:05):
what the, what the underdark really is for the player.
I guess, I don't know. Preparation through
presentation. Like you said, there is that
cutscene? And I think that cutscene exists
because they were probably like this is too jarring.
Let's have some kind of something to break this up,
right? But I don't think that they did
enough but I mean it's still like fine.
Like, it didn't really well. I was playing.
It's only when you brought it upwhere I was like yeah, wait a

(02:05:26):
minute. Yeah, honestly like I don't even
I don't really even consider it a negative at all and inspect it
and might even be a positive because there's death right?
There's definitely that moment, depending on your route into the
underdark, where you go down there and like this fucking
sprawling cave, Crystal Lee landscape, and it's definitely

(02:05:51):
kind of like a holy shit moment.That's true.
Yeah, and it also kind of avoids, I don't think this is a
spoiler but like, the entire setting of Act 2 starts to kind
to get old once you get towards the end of it, where you're kind
of glad they're out of the dark and gloomy place by the end of
it. I'm sick of it.

(02:06:12):
I haven't even gone. Yeah, and I guess having like a
totally unique place, like the underdark was to the emerald
Grove is important for stuff like that.
Yeah, like I realize the way I was describing it earlier like
it's kind of framed, it negatively, but I don't think
it's a bad thing at all. I think, again, I think it might

(02:06:33):
have just been straight up, good, even if it was like just a
little bit, kind of disjoint, I guess.
There's also like a pretty good build-up, at least for the
intended entrance, to the underdark, which is through the
goblin Camp. I feel like there's a reasonable
amount of buildup for that, too.At least.
Oh, I just really forgot to, like, do.

(02:06:56):
I didn't even go that way at allthis place, which I normally do
because like it's the same usually when you do in the first
time, but this time I went like every other way except that one,
I accessed it. Through feather falling at the
phase spider camp or cave. I remember if you could still do
that, that's cool. Yeah, because normally the way I

(02:07:17):
did it the entire time or every time I played is going through
what Ben was talking about in the goblin camp.
And I didn't know how to get into that little, like, which
one to call it the fucked up house or the shrine.
And so, the way that they showedyou how to get in there is

(02:07:38):
pretty cool because they have one of those fucking minotaurs.
Go up to it and just get asked blasted by the fucking statues.
And I thought, oh yeah, that waslike a cool way of showing like
hey by the way, if you come up here.
And then once I got in there it was a little confusing for me
because I kept trying to figure out like how the fuck do I
trigger Raphael cuz like I know he's supposed to be here and I

(02:08:01):
still don't know what triggers and it was weird that you
mentioned that like it was in the dark because I've never had
him trigger there. I've always had him trigger
somewhere like on the surface really you're here.
I was walking things up. I got there, I fucked everything
up. Something I gotta cutscene with
him and I was like, what the fuck is this?
Now, that's crazy. That's not.
He was just in that one spot because it's the only.
Yeah, he's everywhere. He can even visit you and

(02:08:25):
camping on the triggers. I think it did some lose
research on it. A while ago and the trigger
where he can begin appearing to you is when you certain it, when
you How do I say this? When you try to cure the tadpole
in any way. So when you talk to Nettie and

(02:08:47):
she fails when you talk to Etheland she isn't able to pull it
out, any of those are a trigger for him to get appearing.
That makes sense in the context of.
Yeah. Conversation you have with them.
Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I think there's like a, if
you waited too long then he'll show up kind of thing too.
I think, I think that's what happened to me, because every
time someone was like, remove it, I was like, I trusted your

(02:09:07):
ass. So I think about just, oh, look
volatile because I mean some min-max thing but the The
quote-unquote rewards you get for letting him.
Fuk up your eye. Is pretty good.
Yeah, I mean it's not great unless you have what is it like
a high perception character? But I mean it's still, it's

(02:09:28):
better than not. Nothing that you get from the
other people. Just fuck you basically.
All right. Do you guys want to move over to
narrative? I want to shout out one thing
before we do that, which is thatthis game has the greatest
modern voice acting and, or the greatest voice acting in a
modern video game here. Not fucking close.

(02:09:52):
Not. I can think of anything that
comes close to this game Expedition 33 came out which
uncoincidentally has a lot of people from this.
Yeah. I I totally forgot to talk about
performances. Yeah, I mean that Neil newbon as
a Starion one best performance this year for goddamn reason
which especially Thomas will find out in act 3 because holy

(02:10:12):
shit. That dude is so fucking talented
especially as a Starion. Holy Family.
Jesus and also like the culturalimpact that this game has had
basically like made those guys careers like me and my sister,
we went to Magic cone here in Chicago, we went there like and
a lot of people went to it, not actually play Magic.

(02:10:35):
Like with the fuk, the Ben 2025,we went to see like the D&D like
like critical Royal like hosted cast with with the bg3 voice
actors like lays old was there carlex and will, and they were
there in like they just did likea D&D campaign and it was like
fucking amazing and everyone loved them.

(02:10:56):
And I mean their careers were basically like made by this
fucking game. You know what I mean?
I also want to shout out since Ithink none of you.
I think Ben is the only one playing with lizelle?
I think, lizel is kind of underrated for her performance.
Yes. She's the best character.
Like, yes, she, she's incrediblecharacter and just because seshu

(02:11:20):
you aren't going to do this and I'll type it in the chat so that
you can actually Google it without, you know, being able to
spell it look up the scene of Lazelle going into the zapiski
I've ever seen, and you can kindof tell that she was pregnant
while she was giving up performance, too.
It is an absolutely spectacular performance that is unrivaled by

(02:11:43):
anyone except you know, new Bond.
Yeah, 100% agree with the Liz ulti because I am playing with
her in my party. This place through because I'm
just unloading up on the evil people and I already played the
game with shadowheart. I'm so minus her and I almost

(02:12:03):
regretted not playing with lizelle and my first playthrough
and I think a big portion of that is because I straight up
missed the crash and I think if I had taken her into the crush
and got a little bit more like character building with her, she
she would have ultimately ended up in the first party.
I played the game through with because her performance is so
fucking good. Like that voice had to like

(02:12:25):
hurt. Like if she wasn't a
professional who she was doing, I feel like if I was trying to
do that voice but the end of theday, I would sound like a
fucking 80 year old three pack aday smoker, but she sounds so
fucking good. Okay.
Never seen this before. I've always gone.
It's really fucking good. I've always gone into the thief.
Like I forced the main characterinto their for midnight reasons.

(02:12:48):
Yeah, I like everything about itis good from like, what it means
to Lazelle to the performance to, like the role that you're
taking in either encouraging, her to do it, or trying to stop
her from doing it because it cankill area.
Like, oh God, it's such a good scene.
It. But yeah, I mean, performance is
in this game from Young Sonny, Jim to every bad guy.

(02:13:11):
All of them are fucking incredible.
There's a bad guy later. That is voiced by the same voice
actors and Lady as lady Demetrius and she's fucking
incredible, everyone. In this game is fucking great.
Like honestly, is there a game that up to the point that this
game came out was even close because like Expedition 33 is is
closed if not better honestly, but that's all.

(02:13:31):
So, two years later. I mean, that last was it, but
it's still not as good as this game.
It's closed. I think that balls get through
is more impressive because the cast its net wider as his true
for many qualities of the game. But yeah, What.
The Last of Us is pretty incredible.
I think the, the hand that I would be willing to extend to

(02:13:56):
last of us over this game is that it's, it's what like 10 or
15 years older. So, That that's pretty tight
because I guess it. Like, you could draw a pretty
much a straight line from Last of Us to this game.
Like this game probably wouldn'thave what it does without loss
of us, but I do think like, And maybe pound for pound Last of Us

(02:14:18):
is better just because it's likesuch a more like focused and
smaller cast. But I in my opinion that's a
point in Boulder skate. 3's favor.
Is that they have this massive ensemble cast and there's just
not a weak point in it anywhere.Exactly.
So I think it's better than the next position 33 because just
there's so many more people and they're all fucking good.
I just like 10 characters to talk.

(02:14:41):
I I think the one that also really needs to get highlighted
that it's it's obvious and everyone's first playthrough,
but the more playthroughs you have, the more absolutely
fucking obvious. It is and I think she won a
couple of Game Awards. Her best performance too as a
fucking narrator dude. Dude, narrator.

(02:15:02):
Oh guys, guys, you you truly don't know how good this fucking
narrator is until you do multiple playthroughs.
It's like I know more than everybody.
You know, why she is the voice of a character in The Righteous,
the best character. When he played.
Wenduag, yeah, she's been, oh wow.

(02:15:22):
Wow, that's a range. Yeah, yeah, it's incredible.
Yeah. The narrator is the first voice
actor in this game where I recognize, when when I was like,
she really good fucking performance?
Yeah, she's just standing. Yeah.
And also I know more than been because I knew that and in
addition to the fact that she isthe best voice acted character

(02:15:46):
in Divinity, original sin 2, which is malady.
She's fucking all that actually.I fuck you.
I I just think it's just so interesting.
Like I wish I could find this online easily but Like, there
will be one line that she had toperform.

(02:16:07):
For every single origin and like, the the line will vary
depending on what it is and whatthe context is, but that line
she will alter ever so slightly depending on who the characters.
So, like, if she's, if you're origin, character is a star in,
then she's going to be more Soldier, and she's going to
emphasize how sweet it is. But if you're playing table,

(02:16:29):
it's going to be like Authority.And it's going to be about the
like mine player or the mine player tadpole that you have in
your head and how that's like influencing you.
Like she manipulates her voice and all these like subtle or
not. So subtle ways sometimes that
just fit the bill. Got that perfect.
Yeah and shout out to her for every time she says the word of

(02:16:50):
authority because it's fucking sick.
Yeah. I don't think there's really
like a performance miss that I could think of there's yeah,
there's no there's no bad ones. There's maybe some of what is
there's ones that I don't like, but I think it's more.

(02:17:10):
The fact that I don't like the character like zevlor.
Like, I don't think the performance is bad.
I just don't care for the characters.
I, this is a hot thing for me, but I actually don't really love
Will's voice actor. I think I can't tell if I don't
basically the reasons that Tom just said, I don't know if you
like the fourth. Yeah, Will Will just fucking

(02:17:31):
white noise. He's like he's the only
companion that I just do not give a fuk about.
I think it's a pretty universally sure.
Yeah, the point that you made, Which I don't know, I guess
maybe is kind of a very light spoiler, but when you said that
will, is the only character who you don't have to have in your

(02:17:53):
party to do his companion Quest,does fucking hilarious.
Yeah. And I do genuinely believe They
the Dove's new events that this would be like, no one, no one
was gonna want to play him so we're just gonna like put his
character Quest like in front ofyou.
As probably a subjective, the rewrites that happened to his
character too. Yeah, too.

(02:18:15):
Yeah, because Carla was introduced like what was
developed like way late into thedevelopment cycle, right?
Yeah. And they totally rewrote will
cause will sounded like like waymore interesting character
before they rewrote him and alsoI know we're on the talk about
act one but I'm just gonna say now and Farah hype.
Oh my God is great. Oh, I'm so excited to get there

(02:18:37):
because like the prevailing sentiment, when I played the
game on launch was the like Evilplaythroughs weren't worth it
because the only thing that you get is Menara and Menara story
was so thin that she was like barely even a companion, really?
Jesus Christ. So, I'm I guess they must have

(02:18:58):
like, patched a bunch of stuff in and I'm pretty excited to see
what they did. Yeah, I think they they passed
in a lot more for her than they did for halls.
And who was also like, kind of the late added Canyon notable by
the fact that they're both only companions once you get back to.
But I'm just think as a character been far is great.
She's like, She's just like a much more driver version of

(02:19:20):
azarian that I don't know. I just like having her in my
party, she's a she's a good time.
Like special if you're Romancingor she'll just be like you and
me my love, we would ride into the sunset and Conquer kingdoms
together. I love him, sweetie.
Yeah. Also her sexy was way more like
involved in the other ones in myopinion, that's true.
Like yeah. It was significantly more going

(02:19:43):
on in Earth. Hey like 69 and shit.
Yeah. What the fuck?
Oh yeah. Oh, I think they have like
separate like sexy animations for like the, the short people
characters, too, which I thoughtwas like a funny.
Oh yeah, that's okay. They patched those in later
those warning launched the fucking added him in later.

(02:20:08):
It is good. Okay, yeah not much more he's
said about the performance because they're all good and
they will be in every single actuntil the end of time.
So we talked about the narrative, which I'm sure will
be a short discussion. I was just gonna say, the music
is sick, but there's only three songs that I could really think

(02:20:28):
about. Yeah.
So far, I meant to mention that actually, because I think the
soundtrack of this game is actually like really, really
good, but I don't feel like theydo a very good job of like
showcasing it agreed. Um, like there's a lot of good
songs but they don't really TheyDon't Really utilize them in a
way where they get, like a certain level of punching us.

(02:20:48):
Exactly the songs and sells are very pleasant.
I think they're just they're super background noise like they
don't try to like take control of a scene at all, but they're
all fucking sick. When you start listening to them
without a doubt. I I only disagree on the I only
disagree in the sense that I think the combat music is some
of the best combat music in any game.
And I think this game agree to the won.
Best soundtrack over Final Fantasy 16.
Actually 16 in this game is actually pretty close.

(02:21:12):
I actually fucking love 16. Sorry.
Go ahead. So I was just thinking about the
fact that like my sister bought the soundtrack on her phone like
iTunes, whatever. And she played it in the car
like literally Every time we were in a car for like a year so

(02:21:33):
I know like every song that's it, it's it's a pretty amazing
soundtrack and especially the combat themes, which yeah.
Some like when I look at the names of like what they named
them like certain certain trackslike that there's only one for
like the word knives in like nine knives or like yeah that's
a cool name for a great song andit's just like yeah it's some

(02:21:55):
they pump you up like crazy. Like some of those comments is
actually in the fact that like there's like two different
versions depending on like if you're owning in the fight and
it will sometimes switch. So yeah, different version when
you're getting fucked up, that'sreally cool.
And that's it, I don't know that.
Yeah, the only other game that I've seen do that is like
darkest dungeon. I'm sure there's others that's
only other notable and I think of Yeah, I want to shout out the

(02:22:19):
fucking like Lemo teeth that this game uses in a lot of
songs, like the little Harmony that you hear throughout like
basically the entire game, I think that shit is like a really
good fucking anchor for just like the overall mood of this
game. I think it is that the yes, is
that the down by the river one? Yeah.
Here. And there is one cool thing that

(02:22:41):
you could do. But it's like, like Arcane
knowledge basically, where you can trigger this a certain song,
playing if you stand like, behind the stereos tent and like
one of the camps and I wish thatwas like easier to access like
stuff like that, like little Easter eggs.
That's crazy. That's funny.
That's like some 1999 share where they put some crazy ass

(02:23:01):
content at the time, things thatmost players won't even fucking.
See that's that's seems crazy tome.
Because I've never actually seenor heard that probably have read
about, right? It's like it.
They always like mention. It's like you go stand behind
this 10 like the song starts playing and I've always wanted
to do it and I just never do because I always forget about it
until like right now when I remember, yeah, that's crazy.

(02:23:25):
And like you, I think it was only one, I'm sorry, let's move
on to narrative. I want to okay, just really
quick to say that a big reason why I like this game versus most
crpgs is that when you walk intoa room in most the RPGs it hits
you with the most like annoying fucking description of

(02:23:48):
everything that you can see in the fucking room.
And this game does the exact opposite of that.
I think it's fucking amazing. Like you mean like it never
really hits you with descriptions, right?
It's all just like kind of visual storytelling, right?
Yep. Versus in fucking fucking
torment. Where every time you interacted
with something to use, 47 adjectives to talk about it.

(02:24:10):
All right. The torment versus the game is
like, also not a fair. Yeah, and it's streams.
Yeah. And that's one of the biggest
strengths of this game. As of crbg is, like, its
production value is, like 10x all the other crpgs in that that
have ever been made and never will be made.
Like, you can take all the ones made in the future, bring them

(02:24:32):
back and they're still less thanthree because that's how That's
how different like the production value in the budget
was for like these games and like, it lets them do so much
like show, don't tell. Yeah.
Which is like, yeah. Usually what crops have to do
because of their limitations exactly, because like, um, what

(02:24:54):
Jordan is describing plays into what is probably the biggest
strength of this game in terms of how it managed to reach a
wide audience, which is that there isn't a shit ton of
exposition. There's like every so often the
narrator says a few sentences but there's not like these like
long paragraphs of. Exposition like everywhere you

(02:25:16):
go, which means that they were able to voice act 100% of the
fucking game and I think that that's a huge fucking deal.
I mean, I understand why the other games do it.
Like you guys said, like, you can't do that if you don't have
a shitload of money behind you, but still I just I think it's so
fucking sick that like, yeah, the narrator talks the things.

(02:25:37):
The narrator says, they aren't just like crazy.
Grandy always fucking like, nonsense of just like spewing it
everything. The character can see and
everything, it's just like a nice little context and then you
move on. I think ultimately for a game
like this, I think it is fair tokind of lowered its quality over
the other ones, because It's a legitimate strength, whether

(02:25:59):
it's like, yeah, verified or notlike it really hours above them.
Oh yeah. I mean, it's unavoidable.
You can't miss it. I mean, that's the joke.
I was like trying to make, is that like this game compared to
torment. I mean, it's like it's, it's
just fucking stupid. Like torment is the most
overwrought and ever made. Whereas, like, this thing is

(02:26:19):
really lean, which I think, actually, I got to be really
careful to keep my scope to act one here but it does like It
does kind of bite itself in the ass sometimes too, I think, but
that doesn't rear its head into much later on.
I'm surprised at how, like, succinct this game is.

(02:26:44):
Like in terms of the lines that are spoken everything.
Yeah, they just like it doesn't tell you too much like ever in
any aspect. Like it's always just kind of
like Here's what the characters are.
Here's what the characters are saying.
Here's what you're doing. Here's what.
Like it's it's never just like it doesn't tell me more than I
need to know and if anything it tells me like less but it
doesn't do it in an annoying way.
It doesn't know in a way like aninquisitive way.
Yeah, I think that's like a hugestrength of like D&D.

(02:27:08):
Those like you give your playerslike four seasons of context and
then you let them take over. Exactly.
Yeah. I think like one of my answers
to I think it was my first question kind of revolves around
that where it's I don't I don't know if I want to say it's
saying more with less, but if nothing else it's saying the
same amount with like 75% or 50%as much as a lot of those other

(02:27:32):
games. And that's definitely a feat in
storytelling for sure. Like, I can't tell you the
amount of lessons, I've learned from this game that I've applied
to my tabletop campaign, it's phuc.
Yea, infinite and like to Thomas's point, I that's why I
think this is the best adaptation of D&D, let alone 5e
ever done, maybe ever, because it is so good at replicating

(02:27:57):
that feeling of just presenting you these things or these
characters or these environmentsand letting you do with them,
what you Will so here's the thing, right?
Is that Larry and really leaned into their strengths, with The
Narrative of this game because the thing about Divinity, that

(02:28:18):
sucks is twofold. Number one, the World building
is an absolute fucking Trainwreck.
You would think that the video game series that one company and
one guy have been producing for 20 years, would have some lovely
adhesive and decent World. Building know.
That's a fucking train wreck andthen That they are not good at

(02:28:43):
writing like cohesive coherent stories.
Like my biggest complaint about Divinity, original sin 2 is that
it's just written really fuckingpoorly.
Like like the actual plot details, the actual story beats,
it's just it's not good. Like you play that game for two
reasons, which is the combat is fun, and the characters are
actually really compelling. And so for Boulders Gate 3, they

(02:29:06):
were able to just kind of vacuumup, a pre-established Canon IE
furun and they even though they it's not really like a direct
sequel to the original Boulder skate game.
So they still had some like story contacts that they could
go off of. And even though in my opinion,
the story of this game is prettythin.

(02:29:28):
What they did really well, againwas just lean into their
characters. Oh yeah, characters that they
have crafted. So Larry and was like, Taylor
Made to make a fucking game likethis because it throws out all
the things that they sucked ass at and like really honed in on
the stuff that they were good at. speaking of the character

(02:29:49):
specifically, I remember when the game first came out, when I
first played it, I remember one of the criticisms was that like
all of the main characters had like these very Fantastical
Origins that were like kind of like like to zany maybe for some
people and I think I did feel that way when I first came out,
but now that I've like replayed the games when we times, I
really do like how unique and Never mind.

(02:30:15):
I'm not going to elaborate how good the characters are?
No. Yeah, you're definitely correct.
And I mean, that's just another point of what I was saying, when
I felt like this game was just so good at replicating tabletop,
which is like, yeah, these characters are fucking zaney.
I think like one of the things me and cast talked about a lot
when this game came out, was it just feels like Larry and was a,

(02:30:38):
the definition of a yes. And DM because if you take some
of the character concepts for your comparison, for your
companions, in this game, and tried to apply them to tabletop,
you'd have to have some serious talks with your DM.
Like I want to be a vampire spawn and I want to kill.
I want to try to kill a party member when I meet them like,
slow down buddy. Let's write that in a little

(02:31:00):
bit. We're not in an evil campaign
just yet or like, I want to be asecret worshiper of sharp.
Wait, hold on, you know, Charlesabout, right?
Are you sure she's about, like, darkness and like hiding stuff,
right? She fucked his people.
Are you sure about this? but they just had the yes and DM
of Larry and that somehow tied all this together and such a
nice way and just allowed for somuch Freedom From The Players.

(02:31:24):
So good. speaking of freedom andspecifically for dark urge, I
love darker in the atom mechanical level because it lets
me legitimately role-play a min-max or like, I'm like this
psychopath like, charismatic murderer.
You know what I mean? I'm doing the quest legitimately

(02:31:44):
getting the people's good graces.
And then At the end of the ACT, I determined, who's important
will propagate forward? And if they're important, does
not propagate forward and back to their dead and they become
experience, they become summonable as a zombie from a
race. Yeah.
And again, that's why, that's why my favorite playthrough was

(02:32:04):
my evil plate through my entire like guiding Compass behind
every decision. Was power.
It any cost because that that isexactly what it is like in an
evil plate. There you might think that,
like, you just instantly murder all of the drude growth.
But no, let's, let's get in their good graces, let's side
with them and then fucking backstabbing with the right
moment and the game set that up.yeah, and the thing is like, um,

(02:32:27):
I've usually this is the first one I've ever done with evil
playthrough. In any video games, I usually
don't like it at all. Like I've played Mass Effect
multiple times that I've never done any playthrough.
I don't even know like I know what happens because I've read
about it but I've never done it and darker specifically.
This is not the first time I played darker.
The first time, I hated it. I did have the intention of

(02:32:50):
doing evil, but I there, like certain things that I just could
not stomach doing to certain characters.
That like I need later on. In this, I'm not gonna lie,
right? The point is like I actually
just went from an evil place, you're not immediately into like
being good and resistant to the urges and I thought that play

(02:33:12):
through was incredible. But now that I've had enough
time since that last playthroughand I'm not so, like,
emotionally connected to the characters, I think the evil
playthrough was very, very fun. And like I'm actually looking
forward to like there's certain characters like a lot of all the
teasing because spoiler I killedthem all that.

(02:33:33):
I realized that I won't have to hear their whining anymore for
the rest of the game. And it's like, yeah, it's like
the displacement is gonna be so different from my first one,
because so many people are dead now.
Yeah, I think for the, I think for the evil playthroughs, like,
yeah, it's, it's not quite as good as something like graph,

(02:33:54):
the righteous in terms of what it lets you do.
But I think that they kind of acknowledge that that wasn't the
scope of what they wanted to do.So they just turned every
opportunity into a power. Grab for you.
And I just think that's awesome.Yeah, I like it.
Tom. Are you doing darker resist?
The urge Know, I'm doing darker evil as fuk, okay?

(02:34:15):
Like, I gave me Arena to fuckingEthel and all that shit.
What do you guys think of the the goblin, man that shows up?
I can't remember his name. Fucking guy with the fucking
clown costume. Yeah he's like fizzled Dick's
butt. Fuck or something like that
Terrace fell or something like that.

(02:34:38):
That's it. Yeah yeah.
I don't know how I feel about him.
I can't see too much cuz I already I've played through the
whole thing so I know the storyline but he's I think he's
okay but he's I don't think he'slike a highlighter or anything
to me personally. Yes I think at this point he
showed up what twice I think maybe you only maybe only once

(02:35:00):
but I think twice yeah I think second time one for me the
second time he showed up he gaveme that fucking overpowered ass
cloak so I'm gonna say I fuckinglove him.
Oh yeah that okay for me in my mind that was the first and only
time but that is a second time. Yeah, I guess he.
Hmm. He probably is really good

(02:35:22):
character and I just need to like pay more attention.
So here's like that much, though, I guess.
But yeah, here's like in actual opinion, which is that I
actually like it a lot that he shows up because it adds a lot
of dynamism to darker that doesn't exist at all in the
other playthroughs and I think it's like kind of like weird and

(02:35:46):
wacky enough and builds up enough mystery for me that I'm
again, I don't know anything about X2 and three Dark Age
where this guy showing up and it's it's, it's it's doing a
good job of building up like the, who the fuck is this guy
thoughts in my head and wondering where it's going?
So at the very least it's it's compelling, you know, I actually

(02:36:09):
do know, I think about it, I do think he's pretty good and he's
he definitely adds a lot to the darker Place through.
I just wish she showed up a little more often, Maybe.
Although maybe not because when he does show, if it's usually
pretty impactful, so maybe not too much.
Maybe they maybe they did do it,right.
Yeah. After after act two, you might

(02:36:29):
wish that he shows up a little bit lit less just because it
happens. But yeah, no, I think he is like
pretty important for the darker playthrough just because he
Makes it a little kind of like Thomas was getting.
At it turns it into more of a mystery rather than just pure.
I'm murdering people and I'm in an amnesiac and I'm gonna murder

(02:36:49):
people for that reason. I think it adds a little bit of
mystery that, you know, makes you want to go into the next ACT
and everything and leaves you wanting a little bit more.
And to that end. I also wanted to ask sesh.
So I had some feelings on this on my first playthrough.
So I was curious about yours. How you felt about that like
driving element of the plot withthe finding the cure for the

(02:37:13):
tadpole, is in the like first big chunk of the game.
Did you feel like that was like a reasonable Like reasonably
enough interesting to keep you motivated in the main plot.
That really like I don't give a fuk about the fuk at that well,
in my head on his way. Like I don't I care more about
like, Shadow Hearts memories that she like can't access right

(02:37:38):
now or like getting the infernalengine out of car, lack much
more than I give a fuk about getting the tadpoles out of my
head. So I like I kind of liked, it
takes a backseat to the characters so that I can focus
on the characters and then just kind of go through whatever the
game wants me to take with rather than have to like focus
on this crazy narrative as well as those things.
So yeah I don't think it's good but I think it's good that it's

(02:37:59):
not good. Yeah I agree with what you said
which is another reason why I wish they didn't like highlight
the urgency of it. So highly like they could have.
Highlighted the fact that the actual prism is protecting you
like much really? Yeah, exactly.
Um but I I also think that they don't do a good job of

(02:38:19):
explaining what's going on with the tadpole but because like I
got this on my first playthroughlike once I was understanding
everything that it was really weird that like this super
powerful wizard Gail is with me and he's like doing all this
crazy magic shit even though we're fucking level one and like
vampire spawn and Shadow Hearts seems to be like a semi-high

(02:38:40):
ranking member of the Sharon church and I really feel like
the game does not do a good job of explaining that the tadpole
is dampening. The power of the people that it
sucked up only do that. Even kind of explains that is a
Starion and most people are gonna boot him out.
Yeah. Like isn't carlex.
Was, was that she like a super badass?

(02:39:03):
Yeah, yeah. And like hell also, Jill Gail is
literally fucking the goddess ofmagic.
Yeah. Yeah, like like carlex will and
Gail are should have so many more lines.
Just considering the like man. I'm a lot weaker than I used to
be what? Yeah, yeah.
That's a good point. That's a really good point.

(02:39:24):
Yeah. And also, this is related to
like, what you're talking about early recession about Like the
urgency. And how was?
Yeah, odd that like in the um how did you feel about when you
learned that you could eat tadpoles to become stronger?
Did you even want to do that? Did you know, I didn't do that

(02:39:45):
at all but they were like, yeah,what she was like Embrace this.
I was like, oh, fuck yourself. I didn't even consider it. wait,
what are your feelings on the dream Garden right now then
She's I like her. It's like a character.
I just don't want to do anythingwith the Deadpool.
Like I gave her a hug and everything, which she was like,
looking like she was stressed out.
And that was nice. That was like a nice little
interaction. Yeah. but in terms of like, you

(02:40:07):
know, Embrace these fucking Fucking mind player walking and
spawn whatever the fuck things Iwas like, not no, thanks.
That's good. If you do it, I feel like you
probably get strong as fuk. I probably some cool as shit.
I don't even know if that's likeits own playthrough or whatever
the fuck if you Embrace that shit you.
I mean did you look at the volunteers for it yet?
You can look at it without like Or do you have one to even?

(02:40:31):
Look at it. I'm not sure.
I have an interface with anything.
I will say that, my first playthrough I was good and I did
embrace the sucking of the tadpoles and it doesn't add so
much that you would regret not doing it.
I'll just say that. I think I'm already pocketed

(02:40:51):
this point, so I won't, but yeah, yeah, I was more bringing
it up for narrative purposes. When you learned that it was
something you could do. How did it make you feel about
the main story Quest? I think it's cool and that the
way you can interact with it forme personally, like usually like
a straightforward away from any kind of that, like, weird shit
that's going on, like a evil, like Sith side to get stronger.

(02:41:14):
Usually I'm like now fuck him. But I think, yeah, I mean just
like the the trees that this game let you go down and all the
decisions and everything is fucking mind blowing.
Like you can play as every campaign as like the main
character, right? Yeah.
Or else there's a few It's not like a different playthrough

(02:41:35):
than if you play his table and have the companion in your
party. The main plot points are all the
same but there are absolutely unique cutscenes for all of
them. Like for example, every single
time that you see Shadow Heart, Like Winston Payne at the thing
on her hand, that is a cut scene.
There is one thing to note and I've never done the origin play

(02:41:55):
through my sister and she told me that even in the car like
playthrough. Like I think there are a lot
less voice lines for your origincharacter.
Is that correct? Because I've never done it.
They don't speak as much. That is true.
Yeah, because you're just selecting their dialogue and the
one. Yeah, aren't voice but but you
said Carla hers. Her play through his fucking

(02:42:16):
hilarious. Oh my God.
She is the definition of just like breaking the fourth wall at
all times. It's a very funny playthrough.
Are they like full act when I doactually play through?
Yep. That's fucking like that to me
is so fucking mind blowing. Yeah, and again, like when I was
talking about the narrator voicechanges earlier, that's what I

(02:42:37):
was talking about like, every single Origin.
Place through has a unique narration for every single line.
It's crazy. Yeah.
That's like in fathomable like afirst-time Place through like I
could only Marvel of what that feels like, but I got even know
like, yeah, that's that's too much to try to fucking.

(02:42:59):
So yeah. And I'm also I got this feeling
very strongly after my second orthird playthrough and I could be
wrong about this but I'm like 99% confident that a lot of the
individual lines from Companionsand maybe the narrator two will
change depending on their level of approval towards you.
It might be the same line. There might be no difference in

(02:43:20):
consequences, but the performed line will change depending on if
they like you or not. That's crazy.
I've never do that. Actually, I'm just like
different lines like totally different lines but I didn't
know that they were like the same dialogue with different
like intonations and stuff. Yeah I I'm I'm pretty confident

(02:43:41):
that that's true. If someone finds out that I'm
fibbing, it probably. Yeah.
I'm fairly positive. That that's true.
It probably is concerning every single skimp assured.
It is true. That's crazy.
It's like yeah like a first playthrough.
Like doesn't even do justice to what this game is.
Yeah that's why I had to put like over 600 hours into it at
this point. Are you guys Romancing anyone?

(02:44:06):
The staring for me. I'm just doing, I'm technically
doing minora, but I installed like a polyamorous mod so I
don't have to worry about it. Nice.
Not very good. I'm just basically I'm doing all
of them but literally been sorryfor like the like the Keystone
cutscenes. Yeah, I did.

(02:44:29):
I so I was either between Shadowart and Carlock obviously, but
since like the first romance scene with Carla is like
inconsequential, like it doesn'tchange fucking anything.
I was like, whatever. I'll just go with Shadow heart
but I really wish I did it because it turns her into like a
high school girl when it comes to interacting with you, and I
fucking ate that. It's actually funny because
I've, this is the first time that Carla has ever been

(02:44:49):
interested in me and it's on theevil playthrough and that's how
I found out that like anytime you do anything evil.
She like, she usually loves thatshit like combat related.
Like if you basically like showed you want to fuck
something up. She's like, hell yeah.
I don't know. I've done so many good places
and she's never been interested in me ever.

(02:45:10):
And this is the first time ever I've ever seen any rope.
Shadowheart romance stuff. Oh yeah, she's still like that.
He mean. We've lost been he's dead.
What? Sorry.
Do you mean? Do you mean Shadow her only
response to evil things or do you mean Carla?
Oh heart. She surprised me with how much

(02:45:34):
evil should she like? Okay, yeah, no car like no car.
Like she's not in my party anymore because she can't I see
she will not tolerate evil shit.So yeah, I was really confused
when you yeah, an evil playthrough carlex, just not
there. Yes, super fucking evil like

(02:45:56):
just like naturally right? Yeah.
I think Shadow heart is the biggest example, where a
character's approval or disapprovals will change
depending on past decisions. So if you're like already going
down an evil route, she's going to be much more likely to
approve of evil decisions. Yeah.
Like basically the more you pushher in One Direction, the

(02:46:18):
martial say in that direction. That's cool.
Yeah. That's very cool.
That's a thing. Yeah, I I fucking Romancing her
with such a mistake. I'm still pissed about it.
Well, I will say there's like rewarding moments.
I don't think you'll hate it. A thrill sudden done.
I'm trying to like go interacting with her as much as

(02:46:38):
possible until she stops like, doing like this.
There's butterflies in my stomach thing.
Oh, that's what you meant by that.
That's funny. Yeah, it's fucking nuts.
Like she goes from. Yeah, like his borderline like
evil character. Then suddenly she's just like a
high school girl. Just like that time.
So much to be here. It's like fuck off.

(02:46:59):
Well, I think with Shadow heart like yeah, that is kind of
jarring but it's also kind of like who she is as a character,
as a result of being a cleric ofshowers, like she's very guarded
and defensive, but when she starts opening up, you know,
it's all open. Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, I think She's she's like traumatized little
hoe with kind of a heart of gold.

(02:47:21):
Yeah, that's how I feel about Shadow heart. it's probably
better to not romance or the first time I think so that you
could kind of see what it kind of a character she is and then
you could have that frame of reference for her but like to go
from I don't really like six hours in with this character and
then suddenly, she's like will do anything for you seemingly.
It's like that a lot of the characters, a lot of the

(02:47:41):
characters in this game. Come on, real fucking strong.
It's like it's kind of a criticism about it at first but
I think that was also related tobugs.
But yeah, I'm on, it was bad. Yeah, they the characters.
Come on. Very, very fucking yeah.
Yeah. Like I remember when I was
talking to my coworkers, I work.We were like a daily stand up
and it's when Baldur's Gate 3 was really popular and my

(02:48:05):
co-worker balance off the game because of fucking Gayle.
It was like, I am not for this and he told the game, dude,
that's what I was saying. When like I like, like when I
was talking about bullying Gayleso much in my first play through
that was why? Because I I think I like, I miss

(02:48:26):
understood one of the dialogue options that I accidentally
romance him and it cut me out ofRomancing car like and Act 1 and
I never forgave him for it. So actually on words, like took
off all of his clothes, I think I stuffed as many curses onto
him as I could. Oh, yeah.
Because there's all those the like bottles freezes that Ethel

(02:48:48):
has, I I fucking force fed all those fucking things.
So, pissed off that, That's funny.
I I did the exact same thing. My missile, The Bullying, where
I accidentally ended up like making out with him or
something. I was like, wait wait, that's
not what I want to do. Yeah, yeah.
And like he cut me out of romance and cart, like, I was so
mad. Are there certain points when

(02:49:09):
you can like romance people? Or is it like certain platforms
like points in the story when you get a chance?
Because that's what I thought itwas.
Uh, it's pretty functional. like, Like the the big one is
always at the after the goblin Camp when there's the party.
That's always yeah. Cutscene with each one like

(02:49:31):
that's staring for the first time you can talk to
shadowheart. I think that what the only part
that I've had were was like interfacing with romance and I'm
gonna I don't know if I'm missing something at this point
of where I am in the game, or ifthat's gonna happen again, like
to definitely missed some, you missed some probably from not
resting enough. Oh, that's crazy.

(02:49:52):
I mean, I mean, the, you're not gonna miss companion quests,
like, period Point Blank, I think, but a lot of those
companion quests are very, very,very, very reactive depending on
whether or not your Romancing, someone, especially a Starion
and Gayle Can I just other events and I could catch up.

(02:50:15):
Yes. I'm doing that.
Yeah, just don't like Just don'tuse your Camp resources.
Yeah. And I have fucking 900 of those
though. Because you only thing is, since
you moved to act 2, you might have lost out on some There's

(02:50:36):
one far Carl like and I feel like I couldn't do that until
so. Yeah, actually didn't move to
act two yet cuz I got to make sure I didn't fuk up my romance
with the Starion because yeah. Just at the post Goblin Camp, I
selected Menara just because I wanted to see the dialogue in
the cutscene and I, and, I'm pretty sure I can still romance
Starry in after this, but it hasn't been going well.

(02:50:58):
You might have fucked up. I swear, I looked it up before I
did it but I'll say I'll be if it doesn't interesting one
though. I mean, are you are you at least
like, do you know about a scars?I do the Joker.
You know what? I'm gonna the one thing I have

(02:51:19):
not interacted with on his dialogue tree.
Let yet is let him sue me again.So I'll just let him suck me
again. Maybe I'll give me there.
If you don't know about a scars,you want to miss out on some
stuff. But I think there's some old
things to it later. You just have to like basically
let him talk to Rafael whenever you get the chance.
Anyway, I was just curious. Why if I fucked up but it sounds

(02:51:43):
like I'm all right you get additional you, you get an
opportunity to fuck Carla. Yeah.
I think we're calling specifically, you might want to
look up. Hers is, how do I say this
without spoiling? I mean, the big thing is just

(02:52:05):
doing requests with the infernal.
Yeah. Yeah.
I guess what it means. There's like a lot of moving
parts to it compared to the other romance's.
Yeah, I could touch her now so that's why I'm like, I just got
to figure out how to fuck her. Okay.
Got you see, I think you're goodto go.
Long rest here. I come.
Anyways, sorry. Sorry to go up on that.

(02:52:27):
I mean, I I could gush about thestory of this game for a while
especially like as we get deeperinto act two and act three.
I only real criticism is, I justdon't find the tadpole plot,
particularly like, enthralling in act one like, yeah, moves
forward. It does its job, but I think
they could do a little bit better.
Is there anything you guys want to wrap up before we just jump

(02:52:49):
over to the questions? I mean, I agree.
I agree. Yeah, I'm good with everything.
Okay, go ahead and get into thisfirst question.
Do you get the feeling in act? One that this game sacrifices
narrative, depth for reactivity and slash or casting its net
wide. How did that affect your

(02:53:10):
experience? Why don't we start with Tom's?
So, I thought about this question and I feel like I like
flip-flop every time I think about it, but I actually think
that like it's not necessarily abig problem but maybe it is a
problem with act one that it serves more as like a super

(02:53:34):
broad way to set things up for later.
There's so many like threads that are introduced in act 1
that don't really like have a bow slapped on them until much
later on and given how long act one is.
It's like, it's pretty easy to feel disappointed with a lot of

(02:53:55):
the threads that start and act, one in a vacuum, like there are
some that do tie themselves up, like, kind of within act one
like Ethel and Coggins Quest andsome of the underdark stuff.
But I don't know it's tough for me because like I suppose that
overall the game's strengths really are in its reactivity and

(02:54:17):
not so much it's narrative depthor like Flavor in my opinion.
So like when the reactivity gives you ownership over the
story in a way that feels richerthan something like an
expedition 33, for example, it isn't a bad thing necessarily.
And if you're gonna have these, like millions of fucking

(02:54:40):
bifurcating routes through a story, that still needs to find
a way to reach like a shared Confluence later, it's probably
better to spread yourself like really wide in order to give
players a lot more meaningful choice.
So, Again it's hard to like wrapmy head around, how I feel about
it and act one specifically but I guess.

(02:55:01):
Well, it does come at the cost of like really digging deep into
a chisel narrative, which one doesn't do what they did.
Serves the game significantly better because it leans again
into the strengths of the game. I agree completely it's like oh
like a lot of that is what I wrote in my answer, just

(02:55:22):
paraphrase and you do it a lot more children.
We and I do like I wrote specifically that I thought that
the sacrifice was a strength because it just especially if
you're going into this like verylittle to no knowledge of D&D.
like the fact that there isn't like, some heavy narrative that

(02:55:43):
you have like process and you'rekind of just like giving this
playground to experiment, I feellike just being able to focus on
that and like, Having you might have to have faith that the
story. Like it's more involved.
And in my opinion it does without like elaborating, but
I'm I still think the fact that it's just It's, I think the

(02:56:09):
stock price for the increase, reactivity.
Is very much. It's very much the right
decision for design. Yeah, in my opinion.
Yeah, I was repeating what you guys because yeah, if there was
like this crazy narrative, I don't know you make a game like
this with all like the choices and everything that you would

(02:56:30):
have. Like that would really be like
the evolution of what like it's beating this game would be where
you could have like a completelydifferent fucking shit happens
based on like, insanity like that, but I don't think that
that's really like reasonable. So yeah, that I think that.
Yeah, they did it like perfectlyand focused on like just the
right things to tell the characters together.
Well enough. Well not being boring.

(02:56:51):
Yeah, I think they did a great job.
Yeah, sure. Earlier on in the channel today
I was thinking about this question.
It was what led me to like saying something about how I'm
really curious how like fucking Ai and shit will influence these
types of games. When you can just have some

(02:57:13):
fucking like AI generated narrative.
That's like chiseled into stone with like a bajillion.
Fucking choice is just because fucking Gippy is like capable of
doing a lot of the like heavy lifting.
Exactly Yeah, I agree with a lotof what you guys said.
I think there's two interesting points I heard in there.

(02:57:33):
I mean, several interesting points, but two that I can
remember consciously one was. It felt like they Sacrificed a
bit to make sure everything in act.
One was pretty cohesive. That makes a lot of suns to me.
And then what you said about like not like if you're not
familiar with the India, might be difficult and that can affect

(02:57:54):
your experience of things like Shadow Hearts, reveal of being a
shark worshiper. Like you don't know, Char is
that might not feel like a big deal since the game doesn't have
stuff like active time lore, which I think actually like
manifests very well in this game.
I think that the lack of active time War actually somehow works

(02:58:14):
really well. In my opinion, maybe we can talk
about that later. But what I wrote down is
actually a lot of what a big part of what I wrote down is
something we talked about earlier, which is the fact that
like so many lines from characters in this game are so
much shorter than the paragraphsof texts offered in other games

(02:58:35):
and act one. I think it gives off the
impression of the characters andplot a more simplified.
You don't get that sense of deepand complex motivations for the
villains of the goblin camp. For example.
But That being said, even an actone.
I think there are complex characters that are more than
just what their role is. I don't know if any of you guys

(02:58:56):
mess around with saza the goblin, if any of you even know
who that is, but that's an example of a character that you
would take on and in an evil playthrough but minars didn't
disdain towards her may still cause you to side the sausage
and that's like an interesting like isolated thing, that is
really only applicable for act one.
So yeah. Even though this game doesn't

(02:59:18):
have like the crazy complex, like moral decisions all the
time that go like super super deep, I think just has so many
of them that are serviceable that it's still functions very
well to get you introduced into the game.
Here. And with sizes specifically, I
had never really interacted withher until this playthrough

(02:59:39):
because of the evil playthrough and even doing that.
There were so many different decision points where you could
like, you mentioned, like, if you were back to good if
suddenly it got a little too uncomfortable and you're like
wait yeah. You know what I mean?
And I like that, like those options were there.
I feel a bunch of roles and saw that died.
Looking shot like a fucking animal in the cage.

(03:00:06):
She's yeah. Sauces one of those things where
I'm like man I can't believe I didn't find this in my first
play. Oh it's so funny.
Cool that it's in the game. Yeah, and also to speak on the
narrative reactivity of salsa, what I've usually didn't, the
other playthroughs is after she gets shot up and dies, you just
can't speak to dead on her and get the information you want.

(03:00:28):
Yeah. Is that the pictures like in?
She's like in a cage and then like, yeah, talk to lady out of
shooter. Oh yeah, that's one of the NPCs.
That was invisible for me. That's what the fuck.
Like yeah. It was just the bitch like
yelling and then the cage with the TalkBack.
Yeah that's like some Ram shit. I think I don't know.

(03:00:52):
Yeah. There's like a whole quest with
her. Where you escort like you free
her. You escort her out of the Grove.
You take her to the goblin camp.Like, yeah.
Let's go tell minora where the fucking Druids are, but then
manthara is like, no, you fucking suck, you can go die.
And she's like, well, It's a great little bit.
Yeah, and that point you can vouch for her or you could just

(03:01:13):
say like yeah she fucked up justkiller.
So, I'm curious about the stuff.I was typing in the Discord
channel. So he said that you didn't think
that this game needs active Time, Lord.
And initially, I was like, yeah.That's very fucking true.
And then I thought about it and I was like, well, that's just
because I'm like super fucking familiar with everything inside

(03:01:36):
of like the established Canon here.
So I'm curious for you, Jordan as someone who's not super
familiar with it. Like when you hear these names,
like, Char or fucking Lovie Atari, if you talk to that guy,
like when you see those names, are you like, who the fuck are
these people? What the fuck do I care?

(03:01:56):
Like, do you wish you could you do, wish you had active time?
Oh, yeah, absolutely, because yeah, basically, like, what's
that said with like, shadowheartworship sharp and it's like,
apparently that sounds like a big deal.
I still don't know if that's a big deal, like, I don't know, to
me, it's just like some kind of badly.
Oh, she's not good, that's all Iknow.
I don't know. Like the gravity of what that
really so, I would definitely benefit from them being like,

(03:02:21):
Even like what place names are or races or anything like that.
Because, like, I don't know whata deep link is all these like
words that Seth are saying, now,like, get Rocky or whatever, the
fuck, I have no idea what the fuck that is.
So I have like no whenever the game says something.
I'm like either, you'll tell me this eventually or wasn't
important enough for me to try to figure it out.
I will say there's like a lot ofstuff in this game is like
pretty self-contained where you don't need a lot of outside

(03:02:43):
context but like specifically the stuff you're talking about
with like the races and the various like gods and goddesses.
And there are a couple of locations.
I mean specifically the namesakefucking Baldur's Gate.
Yeah. Where I guess some of that stuff
is maybe filled in through like the various like books and

(03:03:04):
manuscripts and shit, you can pick up.
I don't know if you if you the kind of nerd that reads that
shit but I am but Yeah, I was thinking about that.
That's probably like it would have been a good thing to have
like some kind of fucking in game.
Yeah, it's like encyclopedia or some shit.
Yeah, like without that's I meanI I won't say that the addition

(03:03:25):
of it would help, I think specifically and maybe this is a
hot take. So I'm curious of your guys's
opinion. I think that if this game had
active time lore and I knew nothing about D&D.
I think I would have had a more frustrating experience trying to
understand everything rather than just kind of like accepting
it. Letting it move on and if the

(03:03:46):
game wants to explain it to me, it'll explain it to me.
So here's what I was thinking though because that was
initially. What I was thinking was man, if
someone was coming into this rawand didn't know any of these
words and there was active Time,Lord trying to info dump, like
it would get, it would get overwhelming, really, really,
really, really fast. And the game that's like,

(03:04:06):
Already really fucking over. But I think the solution to that
is like kind of obfuscating, active time, Lords itself, like
hiding it behind the button thatbrings up, like the old
dialogues and like having the rest of the righteous hover
mechanic in there or something or just like putting it and its
own okay, menu or something. Like like hide it a little bits

(03:04:29):
that you don't feel like compelled to do it.
Yeah, because what I would not want is like for me to
understand all this. Laura have to ignore all of the
amazing performances because I'mreading the lore right if it had
active Time. Lord.
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Yeah, but I think that way to doit for sure, but I think it is

(03:04:51):
like a tough problem to solve but I I would like if it was
like there in some capacity but I think they do a well enough
job. I just don't understand like the
gravity of some things like basically like Char.
Yeah, like that. But I mean like upset that I
don't understand it. The only thing I want to quickly
say, I'm sorry, I interrupted. I just want to put this say

(03:05:12):
that. I think some of it is
intentional because I think it just assumes that if you're not
engaging with that stuff, then you're just not interested in
it. And you don't need the
explanation because for the two examples that you gave up
specifically get the Anki, like,lizelle is a, she tells you all
you fucking want to know about Kitty.
If you ask her about it, right? And those spoilers but you're

(03:05:33):
about to find out a lot about sharp.
So, yeah, for sure. Yeah, like I agree with that
100% because like, like I said, the stuff that the game doesn't
provide context for is kind of few and far between, and it is
kind of like that extraneous stuff, like, who Char is, who
Blackthorne are like they explained enough to where like,

(03:05:55):
maintains the compelling plot. But it doesn't need to like,
give you a shit ton of info on these things.
Yeah, that makes sense. When you say, you don't know the
gravity of it, the gravity is not like insane by any stretch,
like she's like, shadowheart forexample, being a priestess.
Char like is that like not a cool thing?
Like, yeah, like but she's not like fucking Isis, you know?

(03:06:19):
Yeah, there's to the sharing things specifically.
I think that they actually did agood job of letting you
role-play as someone that doesn't know or doesn't care.
Like they give you the lines of like I don't care if you're
sharing. Just like, I don't even know
anything about. I don't care.
Yeah, those dialogue options in the game.
Yeah. We'll play that look like

(03:06:39):
legitimately. So I like the yeah for sure.
Yeah, that's a good point. You guys want to go the next
question? You sure.
All right, generally, what are your feelings on games that
require multiple playthroughs toexperience, all content, for
example, Infamous alignment, systems undertale, this game,

(03:07:00):
Etc. How do you feelings on those
games? Apply to Boulders Gate, 3, as of
that one, sir, with this one, such Um yeah, I mean I think I
think if the game is good then it's a good thing to put in and
at the game is bad. It's like the worst thing that
you could do. Because like yeah, if undertale

(03:07:22):
Stockton and then like you finished the game and then it's
like, hey, you fucked up and youneed to go back and do like,
basically the whole game again because you killed one enemy or
something like x amount of enemies, then it would be
fucking terrible experience. So I think it just really
depends on how good the game is specifically.
And I think this game is like a masterclass in that though to
the point of like I don't even put this game and like on tail

(03:07:43):
and like the same kind of vibe of like what it's going for
because this game gives us like complete different like
replayability from like completely different angles that
it's just like impossible to comprehend until you like have
played the game for hundreds of hours which is like the very
unique to this game because I don't know what else is even
like come close to this like with like a mass effect evil
players or something is like laughable compared about this

(03:08:04):
game does so yeah. yeah, I thinkthat's The player numbers for
this game, still to this day arepretty crazy.
Like, oh yeah, over and over again.
Like my sister played this game seven times, like straight up.
Just just seven times in a row. And it sounds gay to say this,

(03:08:26):
but I really think this game is like, the modern version of
Skyrim freely. Oh, it's so much what that I
just mean. Like what that game was at the
time. Yeah, you know what you're going
for was what you said. But I think it's yeah, yeah, it
made my head hurt but I understand.
And there's something like this game, really?

(03:08:48):
Yeah, I I hate games that advertise like on the back of
the box like a mass effect whereit's like you get to do two full
plays. Yeah one exactly with the blue
color with the red color, I hatethat shit so much and this game
is nothing like that this like everything there's like there's
so much like bespoke reactivity and also systemic reactivity

(03:09:09):
that like like, it's just You want to play the game again like
exactly? You don't know it yet.
That's that's the best way to put it.
Those other games like Basicallypresent that you have to play
the game. Again, this game is like, you
can do whatever you want, but ifyou play it again, know that
it's not gonna be the same game,but I think it's fucking notes.

(03:09:30):
Yeah, that's definitely good point.
How many times? so think my opinion differs from
you guys, only maybe slightly And that's only because I feel
kind of generally ambivalent about it, to be honest.
So like How do I do, how do I word this?

(03:09:50):
So like And my personal thoughtsare that.
I don't have any desire to play through, 110 hours of Wrath of
the righteous for a second time,just for like a slightly altered
experience when the option to like read a summary of those
differences and fill in the gapson my own as there.

(03:10:12):
And I feel like a game like thatis, can do to that.
So, like, I don't need to, like,actually go through the motions
of doing a swarm that walks playthrough to understand that.
Like, conceptually, it's cool asfuk from both the narrative and
gameplay standpoint because I already played through the game

(03:10:33):
as a lift so I can just kind of fill in the blanks without
having to actually go through and play through the second time
because usually I'm not going tolike I almost universally these
days will only play through a game one time.
Like this game is a very glaringexception to that but there's a
lot of games that I fucking Lovethat.

(03:10:53):
I just I have no desire to play through it a second time, even
if there are like different in the narrative, so, Honestly,
overall, I just really don't have a strong opinion on it,
like I can take it or leave it because again, the odds are
that, I'm only going to play through it once if I'm left to
my own devices because I don't really feel like I miss out on

(03:11:14):
just like youtubing or reading summaries of the rest of the
content. So there are some really fucking
notable exceptions here though. Undertale is one of them and
that's just because those playthroughs are so vastly
fucking different, right? Like it's almost like two
different games. It's not just like slight
variations on the choice and consequence and disco Elysium is

(03:11:39):
another one because there's justlike a lot of ways that the just
overall tone and Vibe of that game changes in ways that makes
it kind of a lot more stimulating.
And then there's near Thomas which like, yeah, but I guess
really. It's just a matter of exactly
how different the content is at the end of the day.

(03:12:00):
That would like Force me to, like, stay within that game like
gravitational, pull to actually want to go through it and spend
all that time doing it again. So if a game presents, me like a
totally, totally totally unique experience on a second
playthrough, then I'm more likely to do it.
Like, I'm on my third playthrough of this game, for
example, and which again, kind of violates those rules, disco

(03:12:23):
Elysium, I've played that game like four or five times now, but
nier automata. Despite what I just said, it's
still only played through that game, you know, a3e once.
So yeah, I don't know, like I said, I guess at the end of the
day, it's just a matter of how different the content is to pull
me back in. It's also I think what are you
sing to find their results? It's it's that plus the amount

(03:12:46):
of commitment to take to do a second play through like raft,
filled righteous. Fuck that.
Yeah, I don't want to do. I enjoyed the game the first
time but that's a fucking commitment and Golden Gate 3.
Even though it's a like 90 to 100 dollar game for me because I
100% did every time that I do play through.
Like it's I think it's just likeeasy enough to play that.

(03:13:10):
It's like it's doesn't feel likethat big of a deal.
Yeah, and I think I'm definitelywhere Thomas is that with a lot
of this stuff where it just absolutely depends on the level
of experience that's changing like the the point you made
about undertale functionally being a different game is
absolutely true. And like what's what's so

(03:13:33):
interesting to me about act 1 even though it's not my favorite
Act is that some things are justso tucked away that even if
they're interesting and I would do them like naturally.
If I found them, I won't find them until another playthrough
because my decisions would leaveme to exploring those areas that
I otherwise wouldn't have. So like for example, free
Sawzall, the intended, way of, getting her out of the Grove is
to take her through the little, like tunnel, that's behind the

(03:13:56):
jail cell and it's very easy notto find that in a regular
playthrough. But if you're freeing Sauza,
then you might do that. And the game is just so full of
things like that. And plus, you know, obviously
like narrative choices, the change romance is the change
that every It's just a fucking million games in one.
It's and that's not even talkingabout the combat because I think

(03:14:18):
the one of the biggest things comparing this game to wrap the
righteous and different playthroughs, is that like you
can just play a different God damn, like party composition a
different build every single time and like yeah, you can do
that on Route the righteous likeyes, but Maybe that's more for
your way that system than 5e. I don't know.
It the game is it records that game specifically requires way

(03:14:40):
to rigid like breakpoints of like armor class that you pretty
much? Unless you're playing on
journalists difficulty you pretty much have to met a game.
So yeah I can understand what you're saying.
Like you do feel like you're like shoehorned into certain
Builders like yeah, play Tavern brawler because it's fun as fuk
in Boulder's Gate 3. Yeah.
And also like I guess when I brought Wrath of the right, just

(03:15:04):
up what I was really referring to is like the gameplay editions
that the different Mythic paths in that game offer, me aren't as
significant as like some of the class subclass options, which
isn't a fair comparison. I know, because I'm comparing
the Mythic paths to classes which are also in the righteous
but That's just like the feelingI get in terms of like the role

(03:15:25):
play. That the game offers me?
Yeah, for sure. Because like that's basically
like what I was trying to conveyis that like even though like
breathe the righteous does have a lot of like very strong
reactivity. I think like the pull of it is
to like choose those Mythic paths and see how like the major
decisions that you make in that game would unfold in like I am

(03:15:48):
content with knowing the umbrella that those decisions
decisions are underneath, right?So like I know generally how the
plot is always going to play outand just seeing like those like
big shifts at the certain breakpoints of the story is like
I'm totally. Okay.
Was just like reading that on a Wiki or something, you know?

(03:16:09):
Yeah. Right. yeah, and that's just
such a different feeling than, like, every single cutscene
potentially has like a class option for dialogue and all
these kids through Yeah. Like in to your point about like
this game, feeling different, every time you play it like
this. I don't know how to pronounce
this fucking character's name. So bear with me but this is the

(03:16:30):
first playthrough where I found fucking Bogue or Bogue or
whatever. I didn't even know that that was
a thing until this playthrough when I just like stumbled on
their fucking cave and I was like, what the fuck is this?
And I wish I had known about it.I wish I'd known about it
beforehand because I would have taken Gales.
So like can feed him to I do mean ball.

(03:16:52):
Yes. Yeah.
Cool. Yeah.
Sorry. In the fuck.
Yeah. Like I don't know.
That was even a thing. And I just stumbled on it in
this game and then my third playthrough. and how fitting the
yeah, it's very fucking tucked away in hard to find but it's
like this very Like small section that you get to through

(03:17:19):
the underdark, that has a small Collective of quotes and
cultists and quotations are really fucking cool.
They're kind of like, Marine, what are they?
The Space Marines and Warhammer where their, their belief
creates their God and you stumble onto a collective of
them and the Ender because it's really funny.
Bam, it's not sick. I mean yeah that's like the cool

(03:17:41):
stuff, right? Like typically in a game where
you where I feel like I missed something it's like fuck but in
this game it's like I'm kind of expected to miss stuff and it's
kind of more cool to figure out like how can I possibly miss
that or how come but now I'm about what I'm not like
frustrated by them or just like God damn I was still more.
Yeah it's not it's not that likePersona feeling where like yeah
you feel like you missed something along a linear path.

(03:18:04):
It's like the fucking path in this game is so like fucking
tiny whiny fucked up good place looking chart shit that like you
just you have to accept right away that you're going to miss a
bunch of shit. Comparing.
It was like a good point. Yeah.
Because that game also has a lotof content but like you need to
fucking have a walk through opento exactly.
That's why he was terrible. Yeah, exactly.

(03:18:27):
Yes. And and honestly as much as I
love the Astorian romance that is the biggest part.
I just like about it is, I feel like I have to have a guide for
it. Yeah.
Yeah, I mean that's sucks for sure.
It's the same thing with like yeah, you like a deep cut but
Final Fantasy 10-2. Get like the 100% is like, why
why are we doing with this? Heard that I'm sure.

(03:18:49):
Never beat it though, but I'm lucky to be real.
So yeah, the way you get 100% islike, you need to do, all these
like, very specific fucking ass and I think things like, worse
than Persona or else you miss it, and even when you think you
do it everything, you still missit.
Oh, that's derail. play through it, after all this fucking

(03:19:11):
That's true. Uh guys ready to go to the next
question. Yeah, yeah.
I'm gonna warn you. My answers really long.
So call me as you see fit that'sall I'm just assuming.
I'm gonna have to spend an entire day editing this one
anyway, so it's fine. All right.
Was baldi's Gate, 3 successful in making you care about your

(03:19:34):
companions as you met them and learned more about them.
In act, 1 Thompson, what are qualities of companion?
Introductions that you love in these types of games.
I think the only one that didn'tstart with been so you can go
ahead and start, we'll save Thomas for Alaska's.
Yes. So I thought the companions were

(03:19:54):
the best part of that one because this we've kind of like
talked about earlier. They are pretty high point
compared to the main story whichkind of me and there's a bit
next one. And I guess it was like, what we
kind of like agreed upon which feels true.
Is that correct? I don't want to put words in
people's mouths. I say again, Yeah.

(03:20:16):
What was like? The characters are the character
highlights. Yeah, compared to the main
story. Oh yeah.
Yeah, I just wanted to make sureI didn't want to like put words
in people's mouths but you writeabout it.
Yeah. That's for qualities.
I enjoy and companion. Introductions it's definitely
like a case-by-case basis for mebut if I were to like try to
generalize it like I guess like the general qualities would be

(03:20:39):
stuff like having a director strong type, back to the main
story, which they actually do like as fantastic School of the
characters are they do like, They still are involved with the
main story like quite a bit likeeven with the tide pool, like
the characters himself like every character is involved in

(03:21:01):
some way, especially some more than others.
But like hazel is specially and show hard with relation to the,
The Relic and all the cutscenes related to that our main story.
But there are like the, the characters themselves service,
like a multiplier for like, how much I enjoy it.
You know what I mean? Oh, yeah, yeah. and yeah, um,

(03:21:30):
Yeah, that's about all I got. Uh, yeah.
Um I think the main thing about what I really like with the
companions in this game is that when they all show up that I can
think of, there's some level of agency that comes with the
characters. So like Shadow art shows up and
it's like with the artifact and then we'll, I don't fucking

(03:21:52):
remember and like Gail he comes in and like a cool way with the
fucking like just has the hand there and then like Carlock when
you get her she's like, hey I want to go fuc these people up.
You want to help me like so theyall come in and they're all like
kind of charming and they feel like they're characters that
like existed before that you like realize them.
And I think this game just does that like fantastically well and

(03:22:13):
I don't like have a lot of exposure to like other kind of
introductions other torment which I think it's like was
terrible. But yeah, throw that shit.
Yeah. I I just think this game does a
really good job of making you care about the characters
basically, like from the first second, Yeah.

(03:22:36):
Let's um, take over with his Thepoint.
Go ahead. I'm gonna super agree with.
So yeah, you are because what you said is basically what I'm
about to say in words. So I actually focused a lot more
on the second part of this question, which is what our

(03:22:59):
quality qualities of companion, introductions that you love in
these types of games. So like for me, I thought like
personally it was just kind of inherently obvious that this
game was successful in making you care about your companions
because I mean the game has a lot of notoriety for that.
So one thing in larian games that I noticed is that and we

(03:23:23):
kind of talked about this. I think a little bit earlier is
that their big on introducing, your party early and through
some Fordham of like action or in media res and this game's
absolutely no exception, right? So like pretty much every one of
your party members has somethinggoing on when you meet him like
Shadow Hearts trapped in a pod lizel was trying to break out of
the nautiloid. Of gales trapped in a portal,

(03:23:45):
asterion is like slinking off and puts a fucking dagger to
your throat. Will shows up during the Druid
Grove Goblin fight like so on and so forth.
Right? So I think that this is a
relatively effective way to characterize someone like right
off the bat without doing without doing too much legwork,
like right away. You can tell that lazelle's kind

(03:24:05):
of aggressive kind of a Maniac. You can tell that shadow heart
has like secrets to hide asterion is isn't above murder
or do an evil shit. Gales, a fucking goober and
Will's just kind of like generichero guy, but I think that this
quality alone, does a really good job of setting the stage
for them and act one. And like, the, the like we've

(03:24:29):
been saying before, like the whole tadpole MacGuffin thing,
like it helps move things along and provides like context for
them, and mostly just like theirGeneral attitude and their like,
demeanor towards the world. So, Like, as I got thinking more
about this, I I went through thevery painstaking process of
trying to select five of my favorite companions from five

(03:24:53):
different crpg Series. So the ones I chose were low
stuff from DS2 Fall From Grace, from Planes torment, which also
could have a very easily been back on.
But I settled on Fall From Grace.
Kim kitzur, Robbie viconia devirand arush from Wrath of the
righteous. And so, when I was like sitting

(03:25:14):
here looking at these five names, I was like there's
absolutely fucking nothing that ties these characters together
like in the way that they're introduced, so it was like,
really hard to find a commonality, but once I zoomed
out a little bit, I think what Inoticed is that in each of the

(03:25:35):
way that these characters are introduced, the player has the
chance to make a choice in a socially charged situation.
So like viconia when you meet her and Baldur's Gate 3, she is
a drow. And people do not like, oh yeah,
he said three but you yeah, Ballers gate too.

(03:25:58):
Yeah, she's literally in front of a fucking Lynch Mob.
Kim kits rugby is dealing with fucking Harry and his like
ridiculous, chaos, Madness. Arusha Lake comes to you.
In a dream begging you to help her resist being a demon loses
on the Shipwreck and Fall From Grace is like waxing
philosophically with you like inher brothel or whatever.

(03:26:20):
So like I think that an important component is just
establishing some sort of, like,contradictory plot thread or
tension through those choices right away as well.
So like not only is Losa inside of this like shipwreck and
everything is kind of like holy shit.

(03:26:41):
What's going on? But she's like a performer who
is like possessed by a demon Fall From Grace, is a succubus
who's fucking celibate again, can kids rug he's kind of like
the grounding Force for an agentof fucking pure chaos.
Viconia is a part of that evil race that a lot of people don't
believe deserve any sort of likesaving and Russia's a demon who

(03:27:06):
is looking for Redemption. So like right off the bat, they
communicate these things througha very, like, charged drama
where you have a choice, and maybe I'm just like a really big
fan of like Redemptive plot lines. or something and the fact
that like yeah, but It's it's a really tough question and

(03:27:30):
honestly I didn't really like arrive at a good or satisfying
conclusion at like what it is that like pulls me in to these
like gravitational forces for these characters that I really
like. But again I think like a really
good way of doing it is probablyjust a really good way of doing
it in any story just period, right?

(03:27:50):
Is like put a character in a dramatic situation.
Communicate what like the tension and that character's
personality is and then just kind of go from there, right?
So yeah, again, it kind of a long-winded way of saying the
same thing that Jordan said but It was a tough question.
Honestly, I love this question because maybe, yeah, really

(03:28:13):
hard. I mean, I agree with what you
said. I think I think that that's like
a key thing. Like All the companions in this
game except will when they show up.
I mean even will but I don't like them.
You were basically Facebook likea reason to give a shit
immediately when a lot of games don't give you a reason to give
a shit about characters. So you're just like, okay say
something funny or I don't like you Yeah, and like when, when I

(03:28:36):
was answering this, I kind of approached it in a similar way
to Thomas, but I, I just want tosay when I wrote this, I was
trying to write it through the perspective of my first, my very
first playthrough again, the onein which I booted out, the
majority of characters that fucking kicked out.
Sorry. And I think I Let zelle Die to

(03:28:56):
Kid Rock Voss instead of like joining that RP or something.
So I ended up just having like two or three companions by the
end of the game. So I actually wrote that.
I initially, I felt like it was not successful in making me care
about those characters and because again, first play
throughout the Syrian, never found Lazelle.

(03:29:18):
But if I had, I don't think I would have hung onto her if she
had tried to kill shadowheart. and, I think that the more I
thought about this and Thomas was talking, I realized It did
make me care about those characters.
Actually, like I felt strongly enough about the Astorian reveal

(03:29:39):
to be like, no, I don't want to fucking vampire in my camp and
in a way that that is caring about the character, it's just
you know, caring in the oppositedirection. and, Yeah, I very
much agree with what Thomas saidin terms of like each of these
needs a interesting like social Dynamic and specifically a

(03:30:01):
meaningful choice in order to beinteresting and make you care
about the character. And so it's kind of funny.
The example, I drew of a good one of this was from tides of
numenera, I felt personally, as I was playing through it, I've
really liked functionally, the decision that you make between
calluses and Allegan at the start of the game, because

(03:30:22):
you're functionally choosing between those two companions by
either, going to the cult of thechanging God or going to the
order of Truth. And I just think that, that as a
meaningful choice of what to do with, like the information of
you being a cast off is really interesting.
And I think that that does actually like apply very much to
each of the characters, or each of the companions in Baldur's

(03:30:44):
Gate 3, even if I didn't realizeit in the beginning, I don't
agree about the torment thing, like, giving you two companions
and then, basically saying like you get, one of them is like a
really fucking cool idea. Yeah.
Actually, that's what those are really good show.
I mean, the the tragedy of it being that those characters
fucking suck. But yeah, the introduction is

(03:31:06):
definitely really cool. Yeah, that's that's a that's a
point. Yeah, meaningful choices is
definitely where where it's at with companion.
Introductions and like, again, II've really reframed that a
staring at one after hearing what you had to say Thomas.
There's actually something that I just thought about that.
Like Because we've been talking a little bit about will write.

(03:31:26):
And I just thought about the fact that like, I never, Because
in the evil playthrough like youyou can kill Carla and he never
gets turned into a tiefling. And I just realized that like
I'm not going to experience because he already left because
I'm doing evil playthrough but like if I kept going with him,

(03:31:47):
And he goes through the rest of the game as a human.
Like, how does that change? Whoa, his story.
That's crazy. Yeah, that's I just never
thought about that until he justknow when you guys were talking
about character introduction. Yeah.
Like, that's his character introductions for how boring he
is. Like there's a lot of different
varying outcomes, including the fact that changes his race.

(03:32:07):
Yeah, that was a that was a big part of why I had will.
In my first playthrough is like say what you want about is like
overall character Arc. His like just general character
is like kind of boring, kind of lame whatever.
But that initial choice is a really interesting and cool.
Yeah. And also I think that evil

(03:32:31):
without spoiling too much later I think evil will origin play
through is actually really cool.But you could do all the origin
characters, good. And you've got dude, this game
is crazy. Yeah, of course, that's crazy.
Yeah, like the there, there's interms of like gameplay.
There's functionally. No difference between the Urgent

(03:32:51):
characters, you can make all thesame decisions.
It's just like I don't know how to describe it.
It's just, it's all just like reframed through the character
that you're playing, it's the same for dirt versus to have got
a really do agree that it's a modern engineering Marvel.
Like, I can't even think of all the different kind of places,
never mind. The fact that they made them.
Yeah, there's wait until you're done with this game and you find

(03:33:16):
out. Oh, yeah.
Weird subtle little things that can happen.
It's it's fucking crazy. It's crazy man.
Yeah, there's like Been like there were so many things that
you can try in this game. Were I think like Thomas you
mentioned this like weirdly maybe in Discord like in like a
passing conversation where it's just like you can try something

(03:33:36):
in this game and the result is that the devs thought of it and
that's and it's that way for like what 100% of things you do.
Yeah, it's it's fucking insane. There was like there's only one
example of that are one example of something where they didn't

(03:33:58):
think of it. And all of my time playing this
game that someone posted to readit where I was like, oh wow,
they actually didn't think of something and that was the first
time that I had seen that. After all of these years of
playing this game, it's fucking crazy.
I'll mention it later because it's active stuff.
Go true. Yeah, like I that's what I'm
saying. Like I don't even think, I think

(03:34:18):
this game is like impossible to like fathom for me like how sick
it is from like that perspectivelike on the first place through.
Yeah, it's just like Yeah, I'm experiencing things for the
first time, never mind. All these fucking insane,
permutations Autumn on a massivelevel.
Never mind like the micro level ones.
Yeah. So there's a reason you had all
these fucking Triple-A developers after.

(03:34:40):
Yeah, three came out who were like, do not expect us to make
this game? Yeah, we can't do this and like
what, like, seven years. I think six years.
Yeah, that's crazy. That's such a short amount of
time. It's in amount of time in silks
on. Yeah.
They might be saying that they might delay that is so song,

(03:35:06):
might be a game changer. I wasn't saying, I was, I was
hoping we're gonna get to September 3rd and they're like
way that next year. You might have to go hiding.
Oh, they got the whole Outback to hide in.
So yeah, I it's, it's been kind of interesting, like, seeing
sesh like Come to that slowly realization of just how fucking

(03:35:33):
deep the rabbit hole of this game goes and buddy.
We're not even an accident like three.
That's the crazy part man, like it's unfathomable.
Did you hear my prediction for like the ark?
I thought you're gonna go through in this game.
You were gonna you're gonna start off hating it by the end,
you're gonna love it. Um, so far, so far so good.
Yeah, I, I don't, I, yeah, I think it's true.

(03:35:56):
And I think the main issues thatI have in the game, I was gonna
say for the review, but it's just, I think this game's combat
is like dark souls and that it doesn't really shit job of
telling you how to play it, but once you know how to play it,
you think it's the best game ever.
Yeah, definitely. Yeah, five years really good.
At that. Where it's like a very simple
system that once you grasp it that fucking world is your

(03:36:17):
always. Exactly.
Yeah. And like for me, like I still
don't really have a grass of it.I have a better grass than I
did, it at our one, but still like an hour, 25, or whatever.
I'm at, I'm still like, Even like interacting with items or
anything is still like not something that my brain goes to
obvious. Yeah, just killed the guy it's
really interesting too because like that, that experience is

(03:36:38):
not like unique because like I said that was like a very common
criticism. I heard.
Yeah. People who didn't have
familiarity with D&D that the game was just too fucking hard.
If you didn't know what you're doing, I'm kind of surprised
that, like, through all the patches and stuff that they did
that they didn't actually put any sort of like, I don't know.
Tutorial issue anywhere? Yeah, it's really weird.

(03:37:00):
I will say the like fucking Explorer mode fucking homes like
a basically like all my problemsin like one click of a button.
Yeah, I've always been promotivejournalist mode and everything.
I love it. Yeah, I know I definitely could
see that. Because yeah, if you like,
because I was just like, I neverdied in combat but like things
that would happen would just be frustrating.

(03:37:21):
And then what I went to explore mode, I was like, it's gone.
There's no frustration anymore. Yeah.
And that's actually one of the big things that annoys me about
tacticians Slash honor mode, which is a lot of the
difficulty. Literally just comes from
enemies, have higher AC and theyhave higher to hit like right.
Okay. Well that's exactly.
That. Just means that's changed.

(03:37:43):
Its like it didn't take much butnow it's a fucking nightmare.
Well yeah, let's do reviews before we start to just kind of
rambling about the game. Really large here.
Well, we got to do awards first but, you know, four hours, one
of the awards, we have Awards. Yeah, you were four of them,
four. It's the summer.

(03:38:04):
And well, I'm picking these on the flood boys.
Say, I don't know, these were their lost.
Okay, we'll start with an easy one so that you guys can kind of
look over the best Dungeon one, which will probably take a
minute to read, but what was everyone's favorite companion?
I don't want to start. I put a stereo insofar but I
have a feeling that it will change.

(03:38:25):
Once I get the wife into the party, That's a big disappoint.
Sorry. I have to point that it's a big
disappointed. When I did not know that you
would not be able to play with minority yet.
Like it's actually really know it fucking teases you with both
her and house and where they're like, yeah, in your camp or

(03:38:45):
they're like, yeah. That like you, you know, you go
to the goblin, the, the party after the goblin camp with them
and it's like, yeah, bankman thorough Bank house and fuck.
Yeah. Wait till like two to have them
in your apartment. Yeah, it's weird.
The house of one was fucking weird because it's like all set
up like why not just fucking give him to me like I don't
know. yeah, I mean there's therewere development reasons for it

(03:39:08):
but suck Thomas. Um, I'm gonna pick act one in a
vacuum as a whole, not just likethrough my like current
playthrough. I think, my favorite companion
is probably shut off. I think the she does a really

(03:39:29):
good job of maintaining this like air of mystery and making
you wonder what the fuck this thing is that she's carrying it
around and why the Geth young. He wanted so much and Jennifer
English is a go. So shut up.
Of two facts. Such Yeah, it's Carl like not
closed for me. Like I think Shadow are kind of

(03:39:50):
competed a little bit until the whole Romancing thing, but I
don't know, Carla is like exactly what I want out of a
character. And that it's like,
lighthearted, but like badass and kind of funny and like
ragey, and yeah. Right around, fucking she's
perfect. She's also fucking great.
Yeah, I agree with you like normally, that would be my
answer is Carl. Like I can't use her in this one

(03:40:11):
because she's like, I fucking love Carla.
Like like her. Yeah, I'm not gonna elaborate
but I love Carla. Yeah, I I think like I'm kind of
just going off of I'm very, I'm very much trying to keep it to
act one only and like if I'm going off my first playthrough
like yeah, absolutely. Fucking car life.

(03:40:32):
Like, from minute fucking one, she's just so charismatic.
Yeah, exactly. You want to be friends with her
and it's great. But I think with this plate
through, I really started noticing just how good of a
character Liz Ellis. I'm gonna pick good choice.
She's like all like, as much as you guys are like acid or up on
was like, maybe I should recruited her.

(03:40:53):
Oh, well. I mean it is what it is.
It's it's like you know it's a home this content thing, you
know, it is yeah I'm not I'm nottoo, it's the same with like a
Starion, right? I had the basically like make a
point to go with my gut and not what you guys say of like him
being the best campaign. So yeah, that's kind of just
what I've been rolling. oh, Definitely like a little bummed

(03:41:15):
out that I don't have lizzo, butit's fine.
Do not have her at all. No, that's about the past when
she was there with like that to the dragon encounter, I was just
like, see it? Oh yeah, you didn't even do that
combat, huh? I know, I know I did the combat
like she was in the comment as, like, a NPC on my side.
Oh yeah. What happens to her?

(03:41:38):
If you do that? Because a lot of that, she was,
oh, I'm I'm pretty sure you justfind her dead body and act too
but oh, I think I've seen that before.
I'll let you go next. I haven't seen her yet which
shows up next to or I guess I'lljust post with the channel.

(03:41:59):
All right, best Dungeon. We'll just keep going top to
bottom. We'll start with Ben, again,
dungeons include Ethel's, Lair under the well, grymforge Goblin
Camp, not Lloyd the monastery slash, and the Arcane Tower.
Um, in this playthrough I gotta say was the monastery slash

(03:42:19):
crush and that's because it's like one of those like really
just do it on a replay, but I'vealways read about a certain
outcome. You could have from that dungeon
so I did it and it was awesome. And it was also way easier
because something that I learnedway laid about this game is that
like even though like um, you know, like how there's different

(03:42:41):
ways to complete quests were theoutcomes can vary very, very
wildly, they do pretty good job of equalizing the amount of
experience you get like if you do, like, if you solve a dispute
that could be a battle between like a lot of people with like,
just using like deception or something, you will get the

(03:43:03):
experience that you would normally get for just killing
them all. Like, I think it's basically the
same amount of experience. Yeah.
So I thought that was really cool.
That, like, normally, when I go through the creation of play
through, I treat him more like an actual dungeon where I just
kill everyone for experience because they're all enemies.
They're red like them. But in this place through right

(03:43:23):
after getting the main like story cutscene stuff that I
wrote I recommend you look well no maybe not, you know forgive
that suggestion. Um after like the main story
stuff happens in the crush, I did the blood of the Thunder
thing but in Instead of putting the crust in, I just, I just let
it a nuke. The whole fucking building.

(03:43:45):
So I could see the special cutscene you get by having
Starion get trapped in there, get obliterated by a fucking
like holy laser beam. That's fine.
So, one of the best lines in theentire game, you know that owns
I can't do that or else he will really not want to romance. any

(03:44:08):
idea how much that's Dude, this is a hard choice for me.
The top three are Ethel's, lair,grymforge in the goblin camp.
And I'm actually gonna go maybe surprisingly, with Ethel's Lair,
because I really like the, like,overall horror Vibes of it, I

(03:44:33):
think the boss is really fuckingcool.
I think all the people that you can, like, liberate from like
her fucking witch. Shit is really fucking cool.
All the like goofy fake out potions.
After you kill her or cool. The fact that you can get her
hair and it rises a status cool.Everything's cool.

(03:44:54):
It's a nice little horror dungeon and it's nice and
Compact and it's very tight. Brother dungeons specifically
and this is a pro tip, you know,there's like vents that spew
guess. Mm-hmm.
If you don't want to go to the trouble of disarming them, you
can throw a rock into the middlestopping gas or you could throw

(03:45:15):
like like excess equipment like a sword onto it or like a rogue
and it'll stop the gas from spewing up.
I just ritual cast feather fall on everybody and jump to the
bottom. That's ever done that.
I think I should have done that.Is a lot easier with sorry.
Yeah we can. I just want to say I completely

(03:45:40):
forgot this until literally Thomas talking about it where
like the only time the game, I switched to knocking out people
and Ethel's Lair and then I didn't go back to that after I
killed that. So I don't know what the fuk
happened. That's the character.
You chose that's killed. What?
No, I killed that. But you know, like the people
that you like knock out on the way to her like, yeah.
Alright, check out that after she was like, they're doing.

(03:46:03):
They're doing better. I could do that.
That's right. Thomas asked that question.
Yeah, they're good. Yeah that's fine.
But yeah I know I was making sure that she died hella bad.
I didn't do any level of saving that bitch.
I just wanted to just clarify that at least in my playthrough

(03:46:24):
those people are infected. Not okay?
Yeah, I think I agree with Tom, on the top three.
I think for me, I think I like the goblin Camp, just because
it's like, To just fucking kill all of those motherfuckers.
I don't know. I was just kind of like badass
but I think yeah, obligated at those layers all really good.

(03:46:45):
You guys are making me think that I missed out on the best
Dungeon in the monastery, crash by not interacting with it at
all. You know what?
No, no, for me, it's specifically because of what I
did in this particular shirt as far as like, in terms of the
quality I think they're about the same as like.
Yeah, it's it's good but it's not like Yeah, I'm not telling
you to like, reload your shirt. Yeah.

(03:47:07):
Also I I think that like The particular thing that Ben is
talking about is also really fucking hard to find if you
don't know about it. So yeah, if you would find it, I
mean in between that and then just like going to like talking
like God or whatever the fuck also sick.
But yeah, to to piggyback off, Jordan here a little bit.

(03:47:29):
I fucking love the goblin Camp because It it really just feels
like you're walking into the middle of a giant party with a
bunch of like degens. Yeah.
Like the first thing that you see is them like terrorizing
fucking Volo and then you go inside and like the fucking cult

(03:47:50):
leader bitch and the levia target.
There's just like a lot going onand it's just a lot of really
fucking cool roleplay and go to it's it's yeah it's got so many
tiny little things in there. Like how many of you talk to the
Goblins? That was eating a dwarf over the
spit. Oh yeah.
You guys talk to that guy? Yeah.
Like it's so hard to find some of them just because there are

(03:48:14):
so many goblins, and like so many of them have unique
interactions like that. Like, he's roasting a dwarf over
the spit and you can like convince him to give you the
poem that he had in his pocket that like tells you were some
treasure is or some bullshit like that.
Like there's so many cool littlebits like that in there.
The lobbyists are guy. Yeah.

(03:48:35):
No. I love the goblin Camp.
I think like if you're really impressed me, I would probably
say it's the most well-designed dungeon out of all of these.
But I'm gonna go with the ArcaneTower because I was reading like
I was trying to read some of thelike books and pages and stuff a
little bit more. And I thinking Tower is really
nice. It's really sweet.
The Lord their Yeah, when you learn about what Loretta was

(03:48:59):
that name? Something like that.
Yeah, Lauren something. Yeah, I just like the idea of
like needing the password from her favorite poetry book to talk
to the robot. I really like.
That is like a It's like kind ofa reactive thing where you like,
have to read the book and that gives you the password.
I think that's cool. Yeah.

(03:49:21):
There's supposed to do. I killed the fuck out of that
guy was like, that's weird. I feel like I missed something.
Yeah, so another. So the thing about this
question, I guess specifically that I could say a trip to
dungeon so I considered them dungeon specifically in the
context of when you are purging them of life so forth.

(03:49:46):
I would say like the goblin Campis like heads and shoulders
above like all the other places.No.
I mean, it like I think what makes a really good dungeons
when it can be both like that's yeah, Apple's Lair or under the
well, because like, yeah, they're really good for that.
Like purging like dungeon crawling experience, but I think

(03:50:07):
what a sense, our King Tower in Goblin Camp, me is the fact that
like there are just so many fucking possibilities.
Special. Yeah.
And there are so many Secrets, like, in the Arcane Tower
specifically like, um, where um,what is it?
The, the stool you can break thestool and get the club of giant
Hill strength because oh yeah, yeah, just stuff like that is

(03:50:28):
just so cool for me. Definitely with Arcade Tower.
Yeah. That's something that you would
read about it. Yeah for sure or something.
Yeah I think our has just like so many tucked away.
It's very hard to find everything there.
Yeah, I don't even, I went there, I got like the flower.
I fucking the generator on. I killed that guy cuz yeah I

(03:50:49):
know the password and then I waslike, all right, I guess I'm
done here. Like, I feel like I missed the
whole point of the area. Know not too much.
There's actually I think you gotlike the baby.
Yeah, you get the gist of it. But there's the big guy that
makes up like it. I mean there is like like what I
think the area that I really like I don't know if you got
there but it's the Number exactly what unlocks that.

(03:51:12):
I think it's a button on the topfloor, where the robots are that
you press and unlocks the study,at the very bottom.
Did you get that room? Oh, I couldn't figure out how to
open that fucking wall because Isaw that you could go by the
wall but I was like how the fuckdo you open it?
Whatever. And I forgot about it until
right now that button doesn't show up unless you do the thing
with the dude that gives you thering.
That highlights that button. Okay.

(03:51:33):
So yeah, that's right because hekilled this.
Yeah that's hard one to find andyeah you get like a little bit
more lower. There's a lot of stuff down
there. Yeah.
Yeah. I don't know, it's just a lot of
like, small stuff around the Arcane tower that I think is
really cool. Anyway, no, I agree.
And yeah, the fucking the permutations of the goblin camp.
That is saying, like all the characters feel like real

(03:51:53):
characters, it's fucking nuts, and then you just kill them all,
and they're all gone. One thing I will say that I do
like the way that the turrets worked in the dungeon like those
Arcane turds. But I did not enjoy the
execution of like. Yeah, destroying them.
I thought that was. I thought that like, I didn't
Google it. I would have never figured out.
I would just have never done thedungeon.

(03:52:14):
I don't even know how you destroy him.
How do you destroy it? I just based mode and go punch
him. You have to like throw?
Well, I guess you could do that but you go, you know, that
flower that like turns off magic, you could throw it at
them and then because they're magically powered they shot off
and then you Oh, that's clever. And the anti-magic flowers can

(03:52:35):
do a whole lot that they can do a whole lot.
Okay. What was your favorite instance
of reactivity? Then My favorite one was in the
goblin camp. In this playthrough because I
was evil, I killed house in and when you do when you cast speak

(03:52:57):
with dead on him it like it actually gets you way closer to
finishing act one then like I could ever imagine like the
information he gives you, you can just go straight to act to
and I thought that was really cool that like, like it would
update the journal and that way just from like getting his

(03:53:18):
information sick. Thomas. just kind of boring
because I didn't really get to sit and think about it too much,
but I really like the way that the Holocaust at the Druid Grove

(03:53:38):
plays out because I spent all ofact 1 doing, every single quest
for these people and like being like a subtly evil fucker who
like like manipulated what's hername and to get in snake bitten
but still like on the surface being like like servicing these

(03:54:00):
people and helping them out and shit.
And that moment where after you do all of that and then you come
back to the Grove and you open up the door to let them in Thora
in and save ours. Like, what the fuck is was like
a really cool moment? Yeah, yeah, no damn, that is
actually like because when I wrote this answer about how soon

(03:54:21):
I wrote this like way earlier, way before I did any of that.
I just thought was really cool right when to have I just I just
penciled in my answer but that part you're talking about.
I never experienced and I never would have without the evil.
Playthrough, it was really cool.And also really hot because it
was Menorah like, like, she was like, told Patrick Lee talking

(03:54:41):
to you, like giving you orders the fuk, these overall you're
doing like the Trojan horse shit.
Jesus. Said.
Um yeah, this one's tough because it's been the same
reason. I'm like I just forgot that
there was Awards and so yeah. Hi guys.
I guess for me like, a funny answer is talking to the
fucking, I guess the spiders in the grymforge.

(03:55:05):
Yeah. Like yeah.
Just getting that. Oh yeah, yeah.
I just thought that was fucking hilarious and it feels like a
thing that like Most people Missbecause they're not gonna have
like I assume you need, talk with animals to yeah.
But yeah, I don't, I thought that was fucking awesome.
That's that's what I was really like to talk about animals.
Fucking this was like, made for me.
I fucking love to talk to animals.
Like, Yeah, it's it's really good.

(03:55:27):
Thomas and I were talking and spoilers about how there's a
fuck son of a good ones, basically, in every single act.
I mean, I just talk to the animals like the person like the
personifications, they give you so many of these animals.
Yeah, like spot. The fuk on even if that's
awesome. Oh yeah, the horny hog in the
groove? Horny.
Hog know. I don't think so.

(03:55:48):
Like I missed that one. So yeah, he's talked to the
weirdo on the floor. Oh yeah, yeah.
I mean no spoilers but I know heis because I got to him again.
Oh yeah. Okay, so you okay, yeah, I'm
basically about, I can go into the moon rise Tower.

(03:56:08):
Like, basically, anyone anytime I want to is where I am.
Yeah, I'm just gonna refuse my propensity to accidentally say.
Yeah, it's Seth, what's your favorite activity?
So I didn't I didn't do this oneparticularly because I'm not
doing an evil playthrough but I did read about it.
I thought it was fucking awesome.

(03:56:30):
So, I think even you guys that are doing the same stuff, I
don't know if you can, I don't know if you know, you can do
this, but the idol that The Druids are using to cast the
ritual of thorns or whatever it's called.
You can steal that idle, right? Did you did for the quest?
And if you get caught, it's a really fast way to get everybody

(03:56:51):
killed in the Grove. Yeah, very good very, very
quick. So you go, you give that to mole
mole reacts to it and everything, right?
If you pickpocket it off of moleafterwards, then when you talk
to her later, she will react to the fact that someone stole it
even though you completed the quest with her.
I never thought about doing that.
He's crazy. That's crazy.

(03:57:13):
I would have never thought of doing that, even though it's
obvious like after you say it's like yeah, I could just do it.
Yeah, that's insane. Wild, like they really has a
voice acted Mo caps. Fucking line of dialogue for it.
Yeah, and there's something similar in in grymforge, when
you To find that one that one gnome with the Rune powder

(03:57:35):
that's threatening the blow, everyone know.
Yeah. If you like a move it and like
just take it away from her and then like a switch back to the
character and dialogue, then they have like a special scene
where she's she realized that you basically felted her and she
basically has to capitulate whatever you say, damn, that's
insane. And and again that's one where

(03:57:56):
it's like you're in the cutscenewith their and a dynamically
changes when you affect the cutscene outside.
Yeah, that's another thing with the reactivity, there's so many
fucked up things you can do by locking.
NPCs and dialogue and then switching to a character that's
not in the dialogue and doing like a things, you shouldn't
really be getting away with. All right.

(03:58:20):
Everyone's favorite class subclass.
Um Warlock and I forget which subclass I'm using warlock.
I guess it's one. I don't think really matters.
I only use it as a splash but level two warlocks.
Specifically is my favorite class because it is the
intersection of God to your power and easy to play.

(03:58:43):
Because you need literally one can trip for the whole game and
that is ultra splashed and you don't need to do anything else.
It is such a good answer. I fucking love it.
It's so powerful. It's it's beyond God.
Like when I get the, you get theupgrade that the repelling blast
that make the like a pushes themaway like a decent amount and

(03:59:07):
just knock people off cliffs andstuff.
It's so good. Yeah fucking triple triple
Eldritch blast with fucking spell sparkler damage writers
and Thumbs. Monk God damn to have umbrellas

(03:59:33):
so fun to just absolutely fuck shit up while running around
freely and just punching the fuck out of shit I don't have I
don't have a deeper answer than that.
It's just fun to put shit. I'm fucking stoked to his back
into that another go for monk because they don't need weapons.

(03:59:54):
It's just easier to like, your the other.
Oh yeah. That's just like the best part
of monkey every game where you just like I already know fucking
weapons. And like I think more than any
other class in my opinion, monk has a lot more gear,
specifically intended for it that like would just yeah.
Otherwise yeah, for sure. Yeah, for me, I mean I just

(04:00:18):
think it's Berserker, right? Because I mean, I have like a
paladin, a wizard, and cleric, and those are kind of boring and
the Berserker goes around Carl like just goes and just fucking
mobs, the shit at everybody. So But I think it's probably
gonna be monk. Next time, we talk I think
berserk was my favorite of my first play through two, but I'm
trying to make all my characters.
Use the new subclasses that wereadded in the and Patch 8.

(04:00:43):
I think it was and oh my God. Blade singer.
Dude, blade singers. So fucking say.
It's it's stylish it's full flourish when you use it with a
casted Shadow Blade, only pops the fuk off like damage and I
don't even have a full like Billfor going yet.

(04:01:03):
Very fun, so close. I feel like the gameplay this
game, a lot more when I changed classes, I don't like railroaded
archetypes and it doesn't help at all that.
Like some of the choices, like, Shadow Hearts, original classes.
Fucking yes. What's the best?
I'm gonna give you the best decision.

(04:01:24):
You could possibly make other than making a Tavern brawler
mug, respect shadowheart to a light domain cleric.
Holy shit that shit's fun. Light domains.
And also really good in Act 2 because like in Shadow places.
Good. Got it.
All right. I was just gonna say that I'll

(04:01:47):
probably spend like two hours looking at all the classes.
Now, next time, over the game, all right, I think that is all
of our Awards. Why don't we move on to our
scores and wrap up this four-hour long episode?
I think I'm most curious about sessions for why don't you
start? Yeah, I mean, I think so the

(04:02:09):
only downside for me was like the gameplay, right?
Like I kind of a highlighted that and even so this is only a
fact, one obviously. So I wrote down the scores
specifically when I was done with act one because I think I,
I like the game more now than I did when I wrote this down.
But for me. Yeah it's a 8.5 where we're at
So good. I fucking fuck ahead.

(04:02:35):
On cynicism being, I'm fucking locked in.
Oh, damn right on the money. Thomas, if you have a monologue,
then why doesn't Ben go next? Sure, mine is a 10 out of 10

(04:02:55):
with an asterisks. So I love, I think this game is
fucking amazing. So when I first like, I judge
this game differently than I normally do, I started at a 10
out of 10, and then I subtractedto points for the cloud.
Save bulshit, and then I added two points for the mod support.
So it's another 10 with an asterisk.

(04:03:21):
Yeah. That's that's I think that was
easy for everyone. Yeah, I put it headed first and
that I was like, wait a second. Don't put it in.
Ted, go to 9:45. I could maybe maybe we should.
Maybe we should wait dead on answers heavier.
Yeah, I mean, we do it all for fun anyway.
Right. Yeah for sure.

(04:03:42):
Yeah. That's why I like, I didn't.
Yeah, it's not a big deal. So I feel like fractions are
just bulshit anyway. Like just having to guess for
them. That's kind of bullshit.
That's my yeah. I want V bucks for a dead on
Instagram. All right.
Did you did you want me to go stuff?
Yeah. My answer is long.

(04:04:04):
So, all right. You want me to go first?
Because go first, I think, I think that works better for
pasting just have Seth go because I might say as much and
then you could finish his own minds dramatic.
Yeah, okay. Yeah.
I mean, all those Gate 3 holds avery special place in my heart.
It's like the first game that meand Cass like truly bonded with,

(04:04:27):
and like played together and just socked together.
Like, I have very memorable experience as with it even
outside the game itself such as when I got to act 3 for the
first time and someone drove a car through cases, neighbor's
apartment. That was a pretty wild
experience, right in the middle of playing the greatest game of
all time. Yeah, that actually happened to
we have pictures. It was wild.

(04:04:48):
Oh yeah. It was fun.
Crazy old building Shook and everything.
But yeah, I mean, the game like Thomas says, is just an absolute
achievement of mankind. I can't believe that it exists.
And yet. And yet.

(04:05:08):
My my ever critical self refusesto give a 10 out of 10 for act
one. I will give them 9.5 for act one
because I feel like the difficulty curve is just a
little bit unbalanced. Like we've kind of talked about
I was not. Immediately in love with the
characters until I finish the game.

(04:05:30):
So if we are going act by act with these, I'm trying to be
objective with that. And I want to keep Act, One
slightly lower to commemorate mylove for the future Acts.
But yeah, spoiler. My next you ratings are all so
easy to guess. Yeah.

(04:05:53):
Same I guess. Like I give my wife.
I think we're probably gonna nail each other's the link.
It's basically. Can you guys guess where I'm at?
Yeah, pretty much. Yeah.
So Boulders gate holds what I'veseen.
Has maybe a level of incalculable influence over my

(04:06:17):
life. Um, I still remember being a
small child because I was like, I was nine years old, when
Boulders gate one came out. And I was on a family trip
somewhere in Florida at my grandparents house.
I was only just starting to likereally get into games.
Like I had a Super Nintendo and an N64 and I was like, just

(04:06:40):
starting to get into all this shit.
And I remember I was talking with my cool cousin like the one
who burns you a copy of the Deftones white pony album and
when you're 10 years old and then says, don't tell Grandma
who immediately just becomes thecoolest fucking person to exist
in your life. Um, and he showed me three games

(04:07:01):
on his computer. He showed me Diablo 1 Fallout 2
and Baldur's Gate, one that's crazy.
And so my family had only just bought a PC or was like in the
process of buying one. I forget.
But I remember the first trip that we took the Best, Buy after
that, and I fucking begged, my mom to buy me two games, Indiana

(04:07:23):
Jones in the infernal machine, sweet game, by the way, and
boulders gave one, and I was so fucking pumped to play them when
I got home. Until I found out that computers
apparently needed, these things called graphics cards and so my
mom probably still has the recollection of how pissed off

(04:07:45):
she was when we left our family PC with the fucking Geek Squad,
or whatever the hell, the like 1999 equivalent of, that was a
Best Buy as they like struggled to find a way to fit a fucking
Voodoo 3, graphics card into ourancient pre-made compact PCS
case. It took them a week by the way

(04:08:07):
to do that and so it was probably one of the longer weeks
of my entire life up to that point.
But eventually the PC made its way home and I was able to crack
open the fucking the packaging for Baldur's Gate one.
I cannot stress enough how fucking sick.
It is it has one of those thick ass fucking like instruction

(04:08:30):
booklets. It's got a fucking like a letter
opener type deal or like a letter that folds out to have
the fucking five discs at the original game, came on and the
fucking instruction manual was so sick because like, it needed
to have both the general game info.
And so have a printed rule set for fucking Advanced Dungeons

(04:08:52):
and Dragons like this thing was thick, right?
And I just, I cannot tell you how much I played that fucking
game. When I was a kid.
I was So, fuking bad at it as most kids probably were when
they were playing it, but I still have vivid memories of
every time. The game would prompt you to
switch a disc, like, when you get to the friendly arm in, you

(04:09:14):
switch to this too, you get to the Nash Kel Minds, you switch a
disc. 3 disc foreign cloak woulddisc five and ball just gate.
All of these memories are so completely seared into my brain,
but they are the progenitor memories of what became a
lifelong love of crpgs and from Boulders gate, one, I want to
fall out too. Then Diablo then planes and

(04:09:36):
Bowlers gate 2. The nice went down on and on and
on down the line of the various Infinity engine games and the
diaspora of content created by the black Isle protege's after
that. So Segwaying here into Boulders
Gate 3 Ben. And I talked about this early
but I wasn't excited for this game, prior to its release,

(04:09:56):
which may sound insane, given this whole diatribe, I just gave
you, but I actually thought the Divinity, original sin 2 was
pretty fucking overrated and like everything was so
convoluted. Everything was uninteresting.
But eventually I did like I got sick and I was in the fucking
hospital and I came home and I had time off from work.

(04:10:18):
I was like yeah, fuck it. I'm just gonna play Divinity 2
and I actually ended up liking it a lot to the point to where
it actually made me excited to play Baldur's Gate 3 and finish
it and then convince Ben that healso needed to play Baldur's
Gate 3 and I'm really fucking glad that I did.
So I really just like off the bat before we talk about this

(04:10:39):
game for another couple weeks. Like preface how important that
these games have been throughoutmy entire life because they are
truly foundational to my development.
As like a person who plays videogames for a God knows how many
hours a week. And those fucking 15 minutes

(04:11:00):
that my cousin spent showing me a few games on his PC just ended
up becoming this decade's long passion, slash Obsession slash
whatever. So I'm super excited to talk
about this game. I can't wait for us to be
through with it, by the end act,one has issues.
I wish that they did a better job of introducing the story and
making it more compelling. But this shit is still easy nine

(04:11:24):
out of 10. Think I nailed it, let's see.
Oh, nine out of 10 after all that.
Oh my God. Yeah, I was hoping it was good.
I'm gone. Oh, my powers are back.
I can't believe you went with a 9 after how much gushing this

(04:11:46):
happening in the channel to be fair.
That is gushing well. Okay.
This game is going to be 10 by the end.
Let's just say that but I think one is the weakest of the three
acts and it's purely because youguys know how much fucking
weight I put on like compelling and interesting stories and the
story of that one is not true. You're just yeah, sorry.

(04:12:09):
Yeah. It honestly, there's basically
just not a story until like, too, like, legitimately Yeah,
exactly. So yeah, again, it's pretty
anyone who's ever talked to me about this game.
It's gonna be obvious at the endof it.
It's a 10 out of 10 but Act, Oneitself is not Going to be a nine

(04:12:33):
and a half like me, but yeah. They I changed my mind halfway
through, while I was talking. Incredible.
All right, so we're doing and mezzo oh yeah.
Actually that are we, it's yeah,that's what we need to decide

(04:12:53):
right here. Because me, and Thomas at least
have plenty of time to play thisweekend and we're both pretty
confident. We could finish Act 2 in one
week, so it's more of the you questions such do you still want
to do an Intermezzo game to havetwo weeks?
Yeah, I would say. So do two weeks, I don't want to
have to, I don't want to like sour The Experience from trying

(04:13:14):
to like, because if I got to like, Friday and I have like, I
don't know, x amount of content still like, left on that like
Marathon through or something. Like, I don't know.
I think that was my experience alittle bit and I don't want to
be subject to that. Sort of two weeks would be
preferred. That's her.
So hello Charlotte episode 2 fornext week done.
Yo, that sounds good to me, works for me Coolio.

(04:13:35):
So let me just confirm, right? So we're gonna do two weeks for
act, two, three weeks for act 3,and just kind of play.
So long sort of, in between thatwhole option.
I'm assuming, I'm not gonna needthree weeks for act 3.
I will probably be in act 3. My guess is like about the
middle of next week. So act one is the longest Act 2

(04:14:01):
is much shorter than the other two and then act three is like
somewhere in the realm of act one.
Length ish, maybe. Yeah.
Probably about the same. Yeah.
I I it's my guess is there's sorry, no, you got no, just
because, like Act 3 has a ton ofshit.

(04:14:21):
But the vast majority of it is like very, very optional side
content. So, That's hard to listen.
Yeah the thing is those that allof the optional content in act 3
might as well be mandatory because all of it is so fucking
good. Even then, I feel like socials
far enough ahead that 322 is yeah, like the way to go.

(04:14:42):
Yeah, I think that's I think by two weeks from now, I'll have a
better idea of like where I am in the things and then yeah.
So just don't commit to either one just at least two weeks for
act three and then we'll just see as it gets closer.
What we want to do. Yeah no yeah, that sounds good
to me. Cool.
And that. So That's a wrap.