Episode 13: Baldur's Gate 3, Act 2

We are now halfway through the mammoth that is Baldur's Gate 3.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
This week we played Baldur's Gate Three Act 2.
We are roughly halfway through this absolute fucking behemoth
of a game. This time around, I did not make
the intro like I did for the first one because quite frankly,
we had a four hour episode for Act 1 and I think that Act 2 is

(00:20):
going to be just as long even without stuff like that.
So I'm absolutely 100% prepared to jump straight into gameplay
because the thing that has been itching the back of my mind
since 2-3 weeks or whatever since the last time we talked
about this game. Sesh.
Did you fuck around with new builds?
How did it go? So yeah, I'm still on like poopy

(00:41):
difficulty. So I don't, I can't do like
cross builds or whatever the fuck and I don't really want to
either because that sounds exhausting to figure out.
I basically only switched shadowheart into monk, which is you
have more fun than having just like a paladin and a cleric walk
around and just like buff people.
So I never just kind of jump around and knock people over and

(01:02):
shit and fuck them up. And yeah, it's, it's, it's a
little bit better, but I wouldn't, it's not like life
changing shit for me again, because I think I'm just on
explorer difficulty and shit. There is baby mode regardless.
That is fair. That's fair question.
Do I want to start with? I mean, does anyone else have

(01:22):
something like super strong theywant to start with?
I have a couple things, but if you guys have something you can
start. Kind of strong.
I think the thing I was looking at it's maybe more narrative,
even though I wrote it under gameplay.
I have one like that too. It might be the same one.

(01:42):
I think it just kind of works holistically for like the whole
game almost. But yeah, sorry Ben.
Yeah, I'm playing kind of boringwhere I'm kind of just playing
stuff that I'm used to and I don't know, it's a lot of
options out because let's see, am I doing anything Do I did
make a Druid on I've made lays onto a Druid, but I only used it

(02:05):
literally once, so I can't really count that.
Tavern Brawler Warlock, which isnot original.
Yeah, I'm pretty much just doinglike what everyone else has done
a billion times. But I like it, so I don't know.
It's comforting for me. Yeah, I'm, I'm in a different
boat. I'm I like intentionally

(02:26):
building stuff that I've never played before, even though most
of it is like heinously overpowered because both
playthroughs I did before this, I just kind of winged it did
whatever. But yeah, and this one I'm
playing Tavern brawler. Dirge Minthara is just going to
be straight up like divine smitespamming Paladin.

(02:49):
Astarian is like a sort of bardsdual hand crossbow.
Pee Pew. Pew.
Pew. Pew.
Guy and Lazelle is just like a what's it called eldritch.
I keep on to say Void Night because there's some other game
I was playing with void It's. Eldritch Night.
It's eldritch night, yeah, but Iconstantly want to call it void
night. But yeah, I think I might just
make her just straight up 12 void night.

(03:13):
Yeah, I the only swap that I made from the last act was I
changed my tab from a fucking Oathbreaker paladin to a
eldritch night. I think with one dip in warlock
to have Charisma be my main set because it's my main character.
So I want Charisma to be my mainset.

(03:35):
But yeah, I, I largely did that because I heard elder tonight
was really strong and it soundedreally fun and I already had a
blade singer wizard doing shadowblade things.
So, you know, double dipping on the resonant stone psychic
vulnerability. It's good times.
You know, I will say like of allthe bills that I chose, like all

(03:55):
of them I chose for like power scaling purposes because I
started the game on honor mode and I like immediately lost it.
But everyone talks about how broken school of swords or
whatever it is school of swords barred with hand crossbow is.
And I'm going to be honest, I feel like a staring is my
weakest ass bitch. Like I don't know what it is.

(04:18):
He just does not like. As much as people talk about how
broken that build is, it is not reflected in what he is
currently doing. I mean, do you want me to tell
you? Cuz that was definitely the
strongest build that I ever had.Yeah, like what did you do?
Cuz like I've got like your gears, hand crossbow and near
misser on him. So I figured I've got like the

(04:40):
two best in slot up to the end of act 2 but he just she just
doesn't like do anything other than like attack and do like
mobile flourish or whatever. I don't want 100% remember what
his damage output was like. I feel like it was generally
pretty good as long as you're solike.

(05:02):
I think one of the big things you want to do is get the
sharpshooter feet on him becauseit'll apply to all the hand
crossbow attacks, including bonus actions.
And then you get something to mitigate the penalty.
So like something like risky ring is going to like fucking
double your two hit chance or some shit like that, which helps
your I I mean that alone is a ton of DPR, right?

(05:25):
Like that's minimum 10 per hit and you're doing what, like 5 or
6 per round assuming those hit, which they should with risky
ring. And the big thing that makes
that thing overpowered is, and Idon't fully remember if this
unlocks until Act 3, but there'sa helm you can get, I think it's

(05:47):
called Helm of Arcane Acuity. And Act 2, which makes it so
every single one of your weapon attacks raises your spell save
DC, which means that you will everything will be failing your
roles, every single thing. It doesn't matter, even if as
legendary resistance, it doesn'tmatter.
And then the big thing with thatis using Hypnotic Pattern and
you go into fights and everything is hypnotized every

(06:08):
single time. OK, that makes sense.
It's not too far off of what I'mdoing.
It's just, I guess it's just that the relative damage output
from everyone else, save for maybe Menthara who again, is
divine smiting everything, but she makes up for like less

(06:29):
damage than that with like a boatload of fucking utility.
But like Tavern Brawler is obscene and even Lazel as
eldritch knight just like walking up to things and going
booming blade Attack Attack is is still out putting like a fuck
ton of damage every turn. Yeah, I mean.

(06:50):
There are. Many, many different builds.
Sorry about the clicking, I willtry to stop doing that.
It's very habitual. But in any case, I feel like
unless you guys really want to talk about builds, I want to
talk about some of the like mechanical stuff to the
narrative which I'm putting under gameplay.

(07:11):
We can talk about the narrative if you want, but for example I
kind of want to talk about Shadow Hearts decision
surrounding the Night Song and how that works mechanically if
you guys think it's appropriate here.
Yeah, yeah, good. It's systematic, but it's also
super lenient because I think that like a, they also have like

(07:31):
kind of like a fail safe. Well, maybe fail safe is the
wrong word, but if you really feel strongly about the choice
you want to make, you can kind of like override the systems,
you know what I mean? You can kind of just force her
to do what you want, unless that's not the case, but I think
it is right. Well technically you could
always force it because I believe you could just take

(07:54):
control of Shadowheart and then walk into the cutscene and then
you make the decision. Yeah, I didn't even think of
that. But I meant like if you do it
normally where you don't do that, like I'm not sure does she
like ever disagree with you if you choose one of like the
strictly good and evil choices? Yes, that's part of why I wanted

(08:15):
to talk about it, because I think the like back end of how
that decision works is really cool.
And I don't know like everythingabout it because it's like
pretty fucking complicated. But there are like four or five
different factors that go into whether or not she decides to
kill the Night Song. Number one is it's affected by

(08:40):
approval. If your approval is at least
like 40 or 50, I think she'll pretty much always go with
whatever you say to do in the cutscene.
And if her approval is super high, then generally if you tell
her just do her own thing, typically she's going to spare
the night Song. But that particular aspect is
affected by what good and evil choices you've made.

(09:03):
Like I think if you purge the Grove, she is significantly more
likely to kill the night Song aslong as her approval isn't like
super high. There are also certain triggers
that I don't know off the top ofmy head that make it
significantly more likely that she spares the night Song.
Like yeah, I think there's threemajor factors like I was talking

(09:28):
about. I don't remember what they all
are, but I believe one of them is whether or not you give her
the noble stock and it like cures her amnesia.
You get a cutscene of her past and I think that makes it like
significantly more likely she spares the night song.
But then there's also decisions around like whether or not you
support her char worship and then those get like inverted

(09:48):
whether or not she approves of you.
So like if you approve of her char worship, meaning she would
be more likely to kill the nightsong, but she disapproves of
you, then she's more likely to spare the night song.
Would like all of these different things coming into
play from act one and two. Mechanically is fucking crazy to
me that all of that is in there.Yeah, So I will say that in my

(10:12):
game I have been like the most heinously, comically evil thing
to ever walk the rune. And I was curious because like
in every other playthrough I've just like let her decide for
herself and both times she endedup sparing the night song.

(10:33):
And I was curious if what you'resaying was even true because I
was like, does does she just always spare the night song?
If you need to decide she does not.
Yeah, and so even though I am like so fucking evil.
And I think her approval is likedecently.
High with me. She still wanted to spare the
night song. I was like, no, I'm killing this
bitch, Reload. That's funny.

(10:55):
What is her approval of your high?
It it's not like super high because I'm like maxing out
Menthara Nastarian, which every so often will like piss off
shadow heart. But it's not like low.
It's it's like, I think it's above 40.
I think more importantly, how dark, how down are you with

(11:18):
Char? I think I supported her with,
like all I I've at least been like, inquisitive about it.
I haven't, like, admonished her for it.
What I can definitely tell you is I think I had a couple like
an evil playthrough or two. Where?
For whatever. Reason she just fucking hated me
and all of those ones are when she killed the Night Song.

(11:42):
Yeah, I'm not sure because what happened in my playthrough was I
just told her to fucking do it. Didn't give her a chance.
That was what I did after I reloaded.
After I reloaded and I was like,she was like fucking like
vacillating about it. And I was just like, no, just
just kill this bitch. And she just fucking drove that
spear right through her fucking stomach.

(12:03):
What what happened in yours sesh?
I actually just spared her if she if she kills her like does
she stay dead? Does like that spear have like
some super properties that like kills her?
Oh. Yeah, oh dude, yeah.
It becomes so much worse. Than that it's so much worse
than that. Because this is kind of related
to another question that I wanted to ask.

(12:24):
If you let her kill the night song, everyone at Last light in
dies. Every single.
Person. So that's not necessarily true,
because they could already be dead.
They were already dead. Michael through I fucking I
fucking murked all of them. But if you kill him, then like
the. No.

(12:44):
Well, you could. You could just manually kill
them. No, I mean, if you kill the
Night Song, well, how does that cascade?
Because that has something to dowith like, the Night Song and
Isabel. Or yeah, the the the idea is
Isabel is protecting Last Light.Isabel is getting her powers
from the Night Song from. Soluna.
Yeah, OK, I never knew that because this is the first time I
ever did where I ever killed theNight Song and Isabel was

(13:07):
already dead, which is the otherway.
You can purge Last Light super fast as you kill her because
she's the one creating that shield, so the shield's gone and
everyone dies. You know what was crazy in my
playthrough is when you have thewhole like showdown with like
when you first, when I first gotto the end, I basically I talked
to Jahira. Jahira said to go talk to Isabel

(13:29):
and then what's his face? Flaming Fisk.
Marcus was up there and I thought I killed Isabel.
I literally punched her to deathand I watched her HP go to 0 and
I thought she was dead and I thought Marcus flew off with her
corpse but she actually survivedbut she got like kidnapped and
so obviously I then genocided everyone in last sight in and

(13:54):
then after I thought she was dead.
Or maybe she really is. Dead.
She was dead. Yeah, she ends up yeah.
And then I was like, oh, wait, she's got like the fucking like
green eyes and shit. So maybe she just was dead.
Yeah, if if you give her to Catherick, then I don't exactly
know what he does to her, but she just gets like totally mind

(14:16):
controlled from the whole the whole situation.
Yeah, it actually made me feel bad when she was like.
Yes, Daddy, everything you say is true.
I was like, oh, that's uncomfortable.
Yeah. And like part of the question,
sorry. You said that to Catherick.
Yeah, she's in the last fight, like before you fight Merkel.

(14:37):
She's a part of that whole. Encounter only if you go the
evil way, because you, you didn't see that, because you I
assume you're doing good playthrough and Isabel's alive.
What if? What if they capture Isabel?
Is it the same thing like if youfailed that encounter?
That's a good question. I I yeah, I believe so.
Like if you try to protect her. And I think this actually

(15:00):
happened on my first playthroughbut I saved scums.
I think I saved scum in my firstplaythrough but I saw what
happened. Like Marcus will try to kill her
and knock her out and take her body and I'm pretty sure it
plays out these same ways if youjust give her to him.

(15:21):
Yeah, so we're. Getting emceed.
I can tell you I think because in my first playthrough, I I
must have like fucked up royallybecause everyone at last light
in pretty much, well, most people died there because Isabel
gets kidnapped. And then I think after she gets
kidnapped, this is this is from a good playthrough or I was

(15:43):
playing a good playthrough. She is.
I think she's in the last fight with Merkel and she's like kind
of like bound or something like she's like incapacitated or like
held personed basically. And you can just keep her alive
during the fight and like Night Song shows up and does shit and

(16:03):
blah blah blah. But she, I think she's in the
arena during the Merkel fight. Does that result in everybody in
last night and dies, you said? Yeah cuz she got kidnapped which
removed the shield which meant Idid not save all of the T flames
the first time I played the game.
Yeah, but that's that's part of what I wanted to ask surrounding

(16:27):
the stakes of the Night Song andthe Isabel fight.
It is very easy and a good playthrough for everyone at Last
Light End to die. That means I believe.
I could be wrong about this. But I think you can't finish
Carlax's quest. Like fucking I think Mole can
die. No, Mole doesn't die there.

(16:48):
But like you have a ton of NPCS that just get absolutely bodied.
You lose Jahira, all of this shit and it can happen multiple
times. Do you guys, how do you guys
like that amount of stakes from semi binary decisions that can
happen? I mean, I think that this is a

(17:08):
game built upon a foundation of like impactful decisions and
like I just described what happened to my first
playthrough, which is a fuck tonof people at last light and
died. And yeah, I think what's his
name? Dameron or whatever the black.
Yeah, he died as fuck. So I never got to finish
Carlac's quest. So Carlac did not have a very
graceful ending in my first playthrough, let's just say.

(17:32):
But I never really like thought I'll about it because it's like
there's consequences for your actions and I wasn't able to say
visible and those were the consequences.
I. Think it would only be an issue
if you couldn't save, like if you couldn't load saves on the
fly. Like if honor mode was forced on
your first. But I think the fact that like

(17:56):
you basically have to like let something like that happen, I
think, I think it's fine, but there's that much like choice
and branching and everything do.You guys think that this game
has saves coming in mind becauseof things like that?
Yeah, the fact that they let yousave and load during combat and
dialogue, I think is indicative of that.

(18:16):
And I'm kind of lukewarm on the whole thing because, and this
isn't just from this game, but it's like on the CRPG as a whole
where if you talk to like a CRPGfan, they'll often see how
choice and consequence is like the most important thing.
But I feel like the way, becauseyou can save scum like choice
and consequence doesn't actuallyexist.

(18:37):
You just have choice. So it's always like, I don't
know, like, I don't feel strongly enough to say that,
like, it should be like some like Dark Souls, where basically
your choices are always permanent.
Just got to live with it. I think it's either or.
And the way that they did it here, I think it is good to err
on the side of just being lenient because the game's so

(18:59):
fucking long and like, there's so many, like, interconnected
systems that can just just go awry.
And yeah, I guess ultimately it is for the best that you can
just save scum. Yeah.
Oh well, it is what it is. I mean, I'm just glad that even

(19:19):
with saves coming in mind for a lot of those major decisions
that like a lot of those decisions still echo down
through the rest of the game. Like, it may not be something
that you realize, like saving a particular NPC or like maybe you
wanted to kill a particular NPC,but saves coming doesn't really

(19:39):
become an option. So like for example, on my first
playthrough, I didn't really understand that at the end of
the act you were going to just straight up assault Moonrise
towers and anyone there that youhadn't already killed is going
to be there. So I didn't kill anybody going

(20:02):
into the assault on Moonrise. And that combat was so fucking
hard as a result. Like I can't even describe how
difficult it was. It was insane.
I even, I think I lowered it to explore and it was still
difficult. But now every single one of my
playthroughs is like. OK, I'm, I'm going in there.
I'm getting the Knowles to eat the lady.

(20:25):
I'm going to kill these people in the cellar.
I'm going to go into, what's hername, the half work lady.
I'm going to go in there. Yeah, I'm going to go into her
office, cast Hold Person on her outside of combat because it
doesn't aggro to combat if she fails to save or if she passes
the save rather. And then I'm just going to kill
her. And then I don't have to deal

(20:47):
with Flame Shield when I get to that encounter.
And that's just the only reason I'm bringing that up is because
it's an example where like savescoming doesn't really work in a
first playthrough because you don't know about these things.
And I think that that's really cool.
Yeah, that's very much a case oflike a min maxed like subsequent
playthrough, because that's whatI did in every playthrough that

(21:08):
wasn't my very first one. Before I do the point of no
return a gauntlet of char. There are 0 people left alive in
Moonrise Towers except for Catholic because you can't kill
them. But it's funny 'cause you can
get to the top the rooftop and kill all of his guards too, so
that he's literally the only person in the tower when you get
there at the. Yeah, I wish I knew all of what

(21:30):
you guys are saying because my order of operations was as
dirge. I showed up, Carnus escorted me
to Moonrise Towers. I like did everything that I
could do in there. I recruited Menthara, and then I
went to Last Slide in. I talked to Jahira, I did

(21:50):
everything I could in there. I immediately murdered every
single one of them. And then from there I went to
the Gauntlet of Shar, and I did not realize that my actions in
the Gauntlet of Char were going to echo into eternity, meaning
it was me versus everyone in Moonrise Towers.
So I had to come up with some clever shit because those guards

(22:15):
on honor mode are no fucking joke when they divine smite you,
that shit is going to do like 60damage.
Sometimes it is. Fucking.
Nuts. So because it's honor mode, a
lot of them I think have RadiantRetort, which is a huge boner
killer. I fucking hate.
That shit. So I literally, I fucking just
stealthed past as much shit as Icould, like the fucking all

(22:40):
seeing eye things like became myleast favorite enemy in the
entire game as I was just tryingto like jump behind guards in
hide mode to fucking get up to Catherick's fucking arena up
top. And I just prayed to God that
because I couldn't remember whathappens after you beat Catholic
the first time, I was like, please don't make me have to go
back down through Moonrise Towers because I, I couldn't

(23:01):
remember you had to go into the fucking dungeon to get to get
back down to the fucking mind flayer part.
But yeah, when you don't have anarmy from last night in backing
you up in Moonrise Towers, that shit sucks.
Yeah, and I don't know if eitherof you guys did this for the
evil side of things. Did either of you give the Night

(23:23):
Song to Balthazar? Because last slide in was
already purged before I thought to buff his or.
But I did read about that and itmade me realize that even in an
evil play through, there's like a lot of different ways that
they give you to be evil. Yeah, it's crazy.
Surprised. Me.
Yeah, I like that. Yeah, that decision where I was

(23:46):
in my first evil play through. Like I said, evil make evil
face. I'm a black Dragonborn
necromancer. I am power to any cost, maximal
evil at all times. So I see another necromancer in
Balthazar and I'm like, Oh yeah,we homies, we chill.
I'm going to give you the Night Song.
That's cool, you better give me something in return.
And then he fucking locks me up.And like that it just takes you
into the pods, into the mind player colony.

(24:09):
I don't remember exactly how that cutscene goes down, but you
just end up down there, I think without having to fight
Catherick at all. And that was the best way that
like it was my favorite RP moment in any of my playthroughs
because that happens. And the this entire time playing
through act one and two, I'm like, man, how is this game

(24:29):
going to make me hate the cult of the absolute if I'm just this
hyper evil dude that will like use them as much as they want to
use me? Oh, they imprisoned me after I
gave them what they wanted. They're fucking they're getting
incinerated. They are dying.
And I thought that was a really clever from like AI mean, that's
kind of narrative. But I still think it's just
really cool that they put it in.When you do that, where does

(24:50):
Balthazar end up ultimately? Like where do you kill him,
fight him, whatever? It was so long ago.
It's either you either don't fight him, which was weird, or
you fight him in the room that you're locked in the pod and I I
don't fully remember. God cuz if he was, if you were

(25:13):
playing on honor mode and he wasin that Merkel fight, it would
be fucked up. That would be insanity.
That's something that I learned.Is this an honor mode thing
where basically at least, and I noticed this with both of our
specifically because what I usedto do in every other playthrough
is that I would use the susser dagger from act one to just

(25:33):
silence him and just kill him. But I don't know if it's just
both of our or if it's every boss but they just on their turn
just immediately like cleanse any debuffs.
Is that like an honor mode thingor is that just him?
They're they're failing the saves when you do that stuff.
No, no, they like he definitely gets silenced but then it

(25:55):
becomes his turn and then it shows like the word silenced
above his head and then like crosses out showing that the
that it is expiring and then he cast spells.
For a lot of them it's because of legendary actions, which are
like additional reactions that are specific to Honor mode.
That's what a lot of them are. Yeah, I think that's what

(26:16):
happens. This is honor mode so I don't
think you can. No, no, no, no.
I'm saying so like is the legendary action that they purge
or are you saying that legendaryactions are like immune to
silence? I think that might be one of his
actions is just to. Purge off shit.
Just ignore whatever you're doing.
I gotcha. I think yeah, I think Balthazar

(26:37):
specifically is he like goes incorporeal and immune to shit
and something something. But yeah, his is very obnoxious.
Yeah, my Balthazar fight was pretty funny because that guy, I
don't know what the hell happened with his AI, but it it
went like absolutely dumb fuck supreme and he just walked up to

(27:00):
my Tavern Brawler and tried to stab me.
That didn't work. And then he just got fucking
obliterated in one turn. Dude I love when the AI does
stupid shit like that. Like like when it can basically
exactly what you said. That didn't happen to me with
bald. I forgot what fight it was, it
might have been the like the Isabelle fight because I had to
reload it because Isabelle got killed like immediately because
she got swarmed. And then like the second fight

(27:22):
the main guy just did something stupid as fuck and he just got
fucking completely murked. I was really scared in my
playthrough with the Isabelle fight because a lot of times she
can just, I I think she can justcast Sanctuary on herself.
And if she decides not to do that, you're not going to have a
good time. Those people just get bodied.

(27:42):
Yeah. I think the first fight she
didn't do that and just got sworn by the little guys and
died. And then the second fight if she
casted it and then like suddenlyshe just like wasn't dying and I
was like huh that's weird. But then also that the main guy
did dumb shit. So I just until right now.
I figured that's why that fight went so easy the second time.
Yeah, I feel like there is a pretty drastic variance in the
end result depending on the how how intelligent the AI decides

(28:05):
to be. Oh, without a doubt.
It's fucking crazy that it's not.
There's not some level like normalization to it.
Yeah, I'm like, there's a lot ofsolo playthroughs, right?
Like you don't have any commands, you just play with one
character and pretty much all ofthem just abuse stealth and how
stealth works with AI. So like you shoot someone from

(28:26):
stealth at Max range and then goinvisible and they forget that
you existed. Like you're playing Thief and
you just keep doing that for every encounter.
Yeah, I want to give a quick shout out to how fucked up honor
mode is, by the way, because I was thinking all the way through
Act two, I was like, man, if I hadn't lost my playthrough on so

(28:49):
guys named the observer, the beholder in the Underdark, like,
I would have been good. I'd have been OK.
I would have like lived through the crash, which I had thought I
would have lost it there. Like I would have been cruising
until I got to the first Catholic fight.
So like I said before, I got really lucky navigating the

(29:11):
Moonrise towers because like literally everyone was still
there. And I just had to like, stealth
my way up. And then I just fucking like,
fucking nuke down Radija. Radija, whatever the hell her
name is, the necromancer up there.
And then I was like, all right, well, let's go fight Catherick.
I click on the fucking staircasethat goes up.

(29:32):
You have the little cut scene with Catherick.
And I was like, all right, it's time to mow this fucker down.
The first thing that happens in that fight is Carnus comes up
behind me. I was like, what the fuck is he
doing here? And then he just multi attacks
and immediately kills like whatever fucking party member he
decides he wants to multi attackon.

(29:54):
So it's like, I would have been OK on him.
Oh no I would not. This would have fucking murdered
me. Who's Carnus that fucking?
Rider that has a Lantern if you want to get.
Oh yeah, got it, got it, got it.Yeah, and he spawns in that
fucking fight with Catherick like he.
Just shows up, kill him. Yeah, if you don't cause 'cause

(30:14):
I didn't kill him in my playthrough, 'cause he escorted
me to Moonrise Towers, 'cause I'm on his.
Yeah, yeah, it's a important. Thing that sesh.
Wouldn't know if you if you get to act 2 through the mountain
pass then instead of the first people you find being the
Harpers like you saw the first people you find is a group of
absolutists and you summon the drieder and it the carnus and it

(30:40):
just escorts you to moonrise. Interesting, 'cause yeah, like I
ran into that guy and killed thefuck out of him.
I killed him anyway. I killed them anyway because
that but the his late the the Lantern buff that you get from
freeing the fairy is just too good.
So I I broke character for that one thing and I'll do literally
one good thing because it was just too much quality of life

(31:01):
not to do it. Oh yeah, that's actually that's
actually a complaint I have about Act 2 is I wish that I
wish that they had given you a better solution to the shadow
curse because to me the Lantern was just fucking annoying
because if people fall out of the AOE, it's like inter turn
based mode. God fucking dammit.
I just have to exit and move them back where they need to be.

(31:23):
I wish that I mean, if I could scope creep the biggest scoped
game of all fucking time. I wish that you could just like
I wish that there was a request line to cure the shadow curse.
But barring that, I wish that like even the blessing of
Solunae doesn't like always do what I wish it would do.
To me that's like the most annoying thing about act 2 by

(31:44):
far is just literally navigatingthe fucking surface.
Wait, do you know about the ferry?
The ferry. Yeah, so if you kill Karnis, you
get, if you kill Karnis, you canget his Lantern.
And you realize that like something is alive in it.
And if you free it, the fairy will be like, OK, I'll just cast
this blessing on you and you canjust ignore the curse entirely.

(32:07):
And that's what I do in every playthrough.
Is that not the same thing as the blessing of Salune?
That. No, no, that's that's his bolt.
You got shit. Isabel is nothing compared to
the. Fairy, I didn't know you.
I knew that there was like a fairy inside of there, but I
didn't. I just equipped the fucking
Lantern and walked around. You say yeah, if you're freer.
I think she's also like a fucking awesome character.
She's like fucking sassy and funny.

(32:27):
Yeah, you like, start examining the Lantern and it's like like a
Faye Pixie that you can't see and.
Oh me, Oh my, won't you please free me from my?
Prison. And it's like rhyming in every
single one of your hands. And then once you actually get
her out of the Lantern, she's like.
Oh, finally, you let me out of that stinking pit.

(32:48):
Yeah, she talked about how she was smelling her own farts
forever. Yeah, that's great.
That's fucking awesome. Shit, I wish I knew about that.
It is. It is something like, I
absolutely love that that's in the game, but from like a broad
scope. Now that I've played this game
like 7 times, I appreciate that it's in the game because it

(33:08):
trivializes the shadow curse, but I also don't have to engage
with the shadow curse at all, which is kind of equally lame.
I'm not sure I'm conflicted. No, that shit sucks dude.
It's good to not have to interact with that.
Yeah, I mean, I can tell you I don't, I don't even know it's
Tom's like, woes at all. Because like, the first thing I
did when I was down there basically was fucking like, free

(33:29):
that bitch from the Lantern, then, yeah, just never even
thought about it ever again. Yeah, man, that shit is so
fucking annoying because like, if you don't immediately have a
way to get back into like a light.
Because like, what I had to do initially was I had Shadowheart
cast like produce flame or some shit, and I just had to stand
around this tiny little flame that Shadowheart was carrying in

(33:51):
her hand, which was fucking annoying as hell, by the way.
So, well, I guess I know what I'm doing in every subsequent
playthrough from now on. Yeah, I think in my first
playthrough, I didn't have any light source.
I, I forget exactly how it went,but I didn't have any light
source. So I or I didn't have any like

(34:12):
spell that could produce a lightsource.
But I had a torch in my inventory, which has like like a
fucking meter of aura that it gives light around.
So I'm just like barely coasting, walking through,
tiptoeing through the shadow curves.
And like, I start walking a bit and then a couple minutes later

(34:32):
I realized, wait, why are there only three people next to me?
Oh God, fucking Shadow Heart is all the way back there and she's
stuck in the curse shit. That's something oh wait, hold
on me. Not just me and it's just shadow
heart. She would always just randomly
get stuck and I would have to manually control her and like
move her back to like where the party is.

(34:54):
For me that's been fucking Asterian in my playthrough.
Like just gets fucking confused and lost and like doesn't jump
over something or whatever. A lot of times the jumping has
to do with their strength. Score Yeah, I knew that.
You know, I will say one thing with this, with this fairy thing
is first of all, I just feel dumb because like the game just

(35:17):
straight up tells you like there's something inside of the
but I just never like bothered to check.
But secondly, I carried it on myTavern brawler because, I mean,
it's the face of the party, so it's just who I was controlling.
But when I would get into combatwith that thing, I wouldn't
unequip it because if I unequipped it, I was going to
fucking die to the shadow curse.So I was just beating things to

(35:39):
death with the Lantern. And part of me wishes that
beating things to death with theLantern would have broken it and
broken the fairy free. Oh, that would be nice.
Actually, that'd be pretty cool.But that.
Would be good for. Oh Jesus Christ again.
Well, another tip for Thomas forfuture playthroughs.
Instead of equipping it, I believe you can equip it to

(36:00):
like, I forget what it's called.It's like a side slot.
Yeah, it's just attached to yourhip.
I thought I could. Do that, but for some reason it
wasn't working unless it was like in my actual melee weapons
slot. It was really weird because I I
could have sworn in in previous playthroughs I did what you're
talking about. But I don't know, maybe I must
have clicked something wrong or some shit, I don't know.
I could be wrong too, maybe Tavern Brawler is just weird and

(36:23):
it defaults to that slot if you don't have a weapon equipped, so
I'm not sure. Damn, that's like my biggest
complaint about act 2 and it's just that I'm a dumbass.
I wouldn't say that you're a dumbass, because I would have
well, I'll talk about it in narrative because it's it's a
part of a story I want to tell. Is that whole like a freeing the
fairy thing. So never mind.

(36:45):
Well, I mean, I I kind. Of a dumbass because it does,
like you said, say like literally there's something
it's. Not that, yeah, no, it
absolutely, it absolutely tells you.
Like I know that it tells you. I can remember when it tells me.
I just didn't think to investigate further.
Yeah, I think in my first playthrough I just assumed it
was some kind of like war thing or whatever.
I didn't even realize you could interact with it from the
inventory. But I I mean, I think that your

(37:07):
broader complaint about Act 2 isstill fair.
Like I don't understand why the aura on the Lantern is so
fucking miniscule. It's just annoying when you get
the quest to get the thing. Why is it doing this?
Yeah, I think there's there's a couple things about Act 2 that
are a little bit annoying. Like one being I wish I could
fuck in lift the curse and like like I remember the first time I

(37:30):
you leave or I left act 2 and it's like the your tab says
something to the effect of like.I wish we could have solved the
shadow curse before we left here.
And that made me think like, wait, can I?
No, you. You fucking can't.
Well, you can, just not from a gameplay perspective.
Yeah, yeah. That's what I mean and that

(37:51):
annoys me. Yeah, it's more of just like an
ending slide than anything. Yeah, that part, yeah, 'cause
again, I, I know that like the Night Song or Allen or whatever
her name is will like fucking fly through the air like Mewtwo
or whatever and fucking like bring the light back.
But that does not solve the problem I have, which is not

(38:14):
knowing I could have a fairy that would solve all of my woes.
Yeah, I I never really understood why after freeing
Alan, it doesn't at least like cure the easy parts of the
shadow curse and make the hard part of the shadow curse and
Raith when the easy part, you know, like downgrade everything.
I thought that's what she was doing when she was flying across

(38:34):
the sky. And then like when I went to
leave, it was like, which we could have done to do the shadow
curse. And I was like, ah, shit.
And then I had to go back and dothe stupid quest which kind of
like fucked with the game's logic of like what it thought
was done and shit. I think I have this this memory
from when I first played the Game 2 where I had a similar
situation as Thomas. I didn't know about the fairy.
I had a monk from my main character and I had the Lantern

(38:58):
on my monk because it's my main character.
And after you free the night song, if I'm remembering
correctly, it ports you like directly outside of moonrise
next to that fast travel point and or you can just like port
there from the gauntlet of char or whatever.
And I thought it was so fucking lame.
I just read the night song. I watched this quest of her

(39:18):
literally restoring light back and then I'm outside of moonrise
towers and oh turn base mode. You're in the bad group.
Yep. Yeah, I think that's stupid for
sure. I have a question for you guys.
What do you think of like narrative or characters or
whatever, notwithstanding the side quests in Act 2 versus Act

(39:41):
One? Do you count the the three
thorns as a side quest? Sure.
For the purpose of the discussion.
Because I, I fucking love all three of those.
I absolutely love those guys. I, I will go out of my way to do
those. Not even just for the
experience. The experience helps just

(40:02):
because I really like all their cutscenes.
What are the three thorns? It's the.
Oh, it's the really. Fat the other guy.
Yeah. OK, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I got you, Doctor. I didn't realize.
So right now that those are all storms.
Yeah. The doctor I got to kill himself
by just like clicking dialogue options.
Yeah, I've done that. I've never actually fought that

(40:24):
guy. I've done that every time I've
gone in the House of Healing or whatever.
Yeah, I didn't even say it was coming.
I just like clicked that one andthen it was like a 18 check, but
I have +8 the Charisma so then it just like passed it easily
and then I was like oh he's justfucking dead now.
OK, I. I have a follow up question for
that, but I want to get through Thomas's question first.

(40:46):
Yeah. So again, just like the overall
like frequency and quality of the side question Act 2 versus
Act One, I will say I think Act One like shits on Act 2 as far
as like the overall just qualityof the actual like distraction
content. The critical path in Act 2 is a

(41:06):
lot better, but the side quests in Act one are so much better
IMO. Yeah, like what even?
What even are the side quests inAct 2?
Like I can think of a couple small ones.
I mean, the big one I guess is freeing all the prisoners from
Moonrise. That one's really cool.
But there's like what other oneseven are there?

(41:27):
Well, I didn't experience in this playthrough 'cause I'm
evil, but if you help Hells in cleanse the the curse right?
That's a side quest. Yeah, yeah, that one's pretty.
Good, there's the gnomes in the dungeon.
Oh, I like that one for a different reason, because I use
that as an excuse to get to lastlight in and to get more people

(41:51):
there so that more people can die.
I just, I just want to say without future spoilers, the
fucking AI for those prisoners and Moonrise is so God damn dumb
because the way I did it is I just killed all of the guards
that are like in the basement area.
And then you can hit the lever that frees all of them instead

(42:13):
of like passing him a hammer andhe digs open the back wall.
And for whatever reason, they are so insane that instead of
like going through the Rockwall to where this ship where they
can just sail straight to last light is, they run out of their
prisons. And they don't go out through
the main door, which would be hilarious.
But they go out through the sidedoor where all of the other

(42:35):
guards are like where it's outside and there's a little
port and they all just run through there and it starts
combat. And I go out there.
I'm like. Guys, what the fuck are you?
Doing but. I can say I had the best outcome
to that, and this is the reason why I said without spoilers,
because the only person that died when that happened to me
was Wolburn, so we're good. That's.
Funny if you don't. So like if they do that and then

(42:59):
you didn't go outside with them,would they just die?
Think so, yes. I'm pretty sure, yeah.
That's fucked up. Because yeah, for me, I killed
the warden and everybody on the floor, but then I didn't know
the lever you were talking about.
So then I gave them the hammer and then, yeah, they they went
out the back and everything. But like the game didn't.
I feel like I've like did shit and like, I don't think you're

(43:22):
supposed to kill all the guards and then let them get out the
back. Because like, I think then the
guards are supposed to be like pissed when you let them out,
like when you when they get out and you're supposed to fight the
guards then, but they didn't. So like it was just kind of like
a weird sequencing of like I thought I broke the game for a
little bit because I fast travelto last laid in after I did that
and they weren't there, but thenI went back and I think that
they just didn't go to the boat yet or something.

(43:42):
So then I had a fast travel back.
Yeah, 'cause I think the intended way is that you can
actually just go on the boat with them.
Oh yeah, I didn't do that. Yeah, and then you're like the
emissary to help bring them intolast light, even though they
like just escaped the absolute and could be infected or
whatever. Yeah, no, for me, they were just
back. And then also like Wolbrin was
broken because like I talked to him and he's like, talk to me

(44:04):
when we're back at last light inand he's sitting at a fucking
table at last light in. So I was like, OK, I think I
broke the quest. Yeah.
Sounds. Pretty broken.
I think there are a couple bugs related to that.
Blade said. Like anyone that you free from
moonrise towers and comes back through that method on the boat.
Because I remember my sister hadthe same issue not with Wolburn
but with the the T fling that gives you the really good

(44:26):
reward. Alfira, like, for some reason
she just the flag to like, make her give you the roar, which is
never flipped. She would just keep on saying,
like, did you save my friendship?
Yeah, they're right there. Well, well some something I
noticed in this playthrough. Are you sure you saved the one

(44:46):
that she wanted you to save? Did it?
Like did any of them die? Well, this was a long time ago,
this playthrough that I'm talking about, but I think that
eventually what happened was like, so when they get off the
boat, like depending on their pathing, you might have to like
manually pick up people and likethrow them in the direction of

(45:08):
the end. It's so that they go to the
right spot and and trigger the flag.
And the only reason I ask because I, I think it's just
another cool example like what Iwas describing where only
Wolverine died. Like it was really interesting
to me that, you know, there's like four or five different
quests that lead you to free theprisoners and Moonrise and they
can all be affected depending onif like just Wolburn dies or if

(45:32):
Alfira's lady dies. Like I think, I think those
quests might just get marked as failed or they don't get
followed up on in act three. That's just another cool example
of like both reactivity and justa lot of depth to those
individual encounters. Yeah, you, you indeed.
I don't know if it like fails until you get to the MV act, but
you cannot complete them. Yeah, like I could see that

(45:56):
being frustrating, but I think it's also really cool that it
rewards or punishes you for either being careful or not
being. Careful, yeah it's not the worst
because you still get the partial rewards from the people
you did save, you just don't getlike the full HP reward from the
quest being crossed off in your journal.

(46:17):
I kind of want to ask here instead of in the awards, what
was your guys's favorite encounter like?
Combat encounter? I'm including the forms with
this. Just like anything.
Yeah, like my favorite combat was actually, I think I only did
it my first playthrough, but I think the showdown with

(46:38):
Balthazar and the shadow fell isreally cool if you do that.
I've never seen that because I've always killed him the
moment I've met him, but I do know that can fight there.
You could fight him in the shadow fell.
What, like he just like, gets inthere?
I literally, I literally only ever fought him in the shadow
fell. That's crazy.
I I was killed. It's just, I don't know why, but

(46:58):
every time, in every play through I've ever done, every
time I've met him, he just givesoff that aura of being like,
this is some guy that I should just kill now.
Yeah. I want.
I want this. Fucking Bell.
I get that Bell every fucking. Time.
No, unfortunately the bell goes away after you kill him and his
brother, who's standing right there anyway.
Have you? Did you?

(47:19):
I meant to do this on this playthrough and I just totally
forgot because you have to do itbefore you have dialogue with
him I think. But have you ever looted the
mommy dearest potion and then talked to him?
There's like a potion behind himon a bookshelf that will give
you unique dialogue options where you can start
interrogating him about his family.

(47:40):
I did not know this. He does not.
This is it does not make him happy.
You guys might know this one, but you can do the same thing
for Catherick. Oh, I do that if you sneak into
his room and you find like his diary or like something better
from his wife. Yep, just like, you know,
following the pattern of all theother forms that you find

(48:01):
throughout Wraithwin, if you find that journal, you can just
tell Catherick to unalive himself.
And he does it. Which actually, Yeah.
And it actually makes the final encounter way fucking harder
because that's where it happens.He just is like, no, I give up,
you defeated me. But he jumps into the pit to
kill himself, which immediately turns him into the avatar of

(48:22):
Merkel. So now you have to deal with the
avatar of Merkel and the Mind player, and you have to free
Night Song all the all the same instead of separating it.
Out yeah, to tie it back to yourfavorite your question of or
your pseudo word of favorite encounter that the Merkel fight
was my favorite encounter even though I lowered the difficulty.
But I really did like the honor mechanics.

(48:43):
I just thought it was overtuned where like he just heals himself
way too damn much and I know that like you're supposed to
bring I don't know if you're expected to, but obviously you
need something like bone chill or arrows of ill matter
something that has an effect that says like you're the target
can't heal this turn. But it was so annoying because
like I would have my Bard shoot the arrow of ill matter it hits

(49:06):
it says he cannot heal, he's chilled or whatever.
By the way that he in in horror mode he emanates in order that
says you can't heal, which is the worst thing ever.
But that's besides the point. The problem is that effect, that
anti healing effect on him lastsuntil his turn.
So let's say the Bard shoots himwith arrow, he cannot heal for

(49:30):
like the next like 10 people that go.
So you can hit him a bunch of times.
But if he has his turn and thereare those necromite minions that
have their turns after him, his turn is like the beginning of
the expiration of that effect. So those necromites afterwards
will heal him and then he goes back to full health.

(49:51):
And that's the point where I waslike, yeah, I'm just going to
lower the difficulty. So I liked what they did.
I liked that challenge that. I know that there's lots of
people that would find even thatvery easy, but for me, like
that, that was like the breakingpoint.
And I was like, yeah, I got. What were the difficulty?
For me, the hard part of that fight with that, that's also my
favorite encounter by the way, because I just think it's just

(50:13):
so fucking cool. But the healing was annoying,
but I felt like I was doing a pretty good job just kind of
like sustaining in that fight because I was still using like
Omega healer Shadow Heart who could like just kind of keep
things going. The thing that was fucking

(50:33):
annoying for me was that I had such a problem damaging him.
I don't know if it's because of his damage resistances or what.
The only person who was doing any damage was my tab, who
eventually just said fuck it andwent Slayer for him and was just
going to fucking town. But he would fucking frighten my
Tav literally every turn. Every fucking turn.

(50:55):
He was just casting like the Gaze of gayness or whatever that
would frighten Tav. And like it was 'cause I could
deal with a lot of the necromites, 'cause I just had
hysteria and fucking Pew pewing all the eggs every turn.
But it was just the fact I couldn't fucking damage him
because no one did anything other than Tav.
And Tav was fucking scared shitless in Slayer form every

(51:16):
fucking turn. Yeah, I saved Scummed a lot.
And what it would normally do isthat he would normally do that
like that wide swipe attack to hit as many people as possible.
So what I tried to do was like Isplit everybody off anyone that
was melee. I kind of hit the Cardinals, you
know what I mean? So like that way, like if he
does his AOE swipe, he could only hit like a maximum of two

(51:39):
people. But even then, like, he would
always do that gaze attack that you're talking about right
after. And like, I would try to save
Skunk so that he would target 'cause like, 'cause he would do
it twice. He would do it once on his turn
as part of like his normal attack, and also once per turn.
And this was probably a legendary action.
Anyone who attacks him at all will automatically receive a

(52:02):
gaze. But it only happened once a
turn. So I'd always use like a summon
like a skeleton Archer to bait that attack so that he wouldn't
cast his gaze on someone actually useful.
Even then I still had to lower the difficulty.
Yeah, I mean, I was doing like this, a similar thing where I
was baiting that one, but he still uses it on his turn and
with 100% effectiveness. He was casting it on my monk

(52:26):
every turn, who was the only onewho could do damage.
Wellman Thoris sat there like poking with the fucking sharp
plus 3 spear for like 3 damage every turn because I don't think
that guy takes any damage from piercing.
What was your favorite session I.
Think it's probably just the Merkel fight, if for no reason
other than I thought the rest ofthe fights were nothingness.

(52:50):
The only other one that was pretty cool.
The only other one that would belike like a notable 1 is where
you fought the kid and mommy anddaddy because I thought it was
cool. Like the flavor of the mommy and
daddy shadows a. Complete scrap of that.
I think you guys would have a different opinion of of this if
you fought Balthazar in The Shadow Fell, because I think

(53:12):
that fight's really cool. Oh yeah, because I just fought
him literally the first time yourun into a basically where I was
just like, I can't let you do that, Star Fox.
And I just fucking killed him onthe spot.
Yeah, man, that's crazy. Like I never, I've never done
that in any playthrough. I've always found him in the.
Shadow fell the same person. I've read about.
It since I do something, it's like, oh, I did that.
Too. Yeah, also, like even though

(53:34):
I've never seen him in the Shadowville, I've read about it.
And what I read, I don't know ifthis is like been patched out or
prevented in auto mode. But usually what I read is that
people would just like have a warlock and then they would just
use Eldridge Blast with repelling modifier and just
launch him off the the thing, launch him off the rock and he
just dies instantly. I don't, I didn't think he died
if you pushed him off the edge. I thought he comes back.

(53:56):
Maybe I'm crazy, but there's like, there's like a million
fucking skeletons in that fight though that you absolutely can
push into the oblivion. Yeah, it might not work on honor
mode doing that because I think is legendary action gives him
flying I think. Yeah, that was definitely the
case in micro play through wherelike I didn't fight Balthazar

(54:16):
when I saw him. You get down to the night Song.
He fucking teleports in 'cause he's an assholes like hey, give
me the night song. I'm like no, fuck you.
And he's like no, fuck you. Someone's a million skeletons
and some of them are those like giant skeletons that have really
high strength. You have really high strength,
you're really good at shoving, and that combat on my first play
through was very difficult because all those big guys were

(54:38):
just shoving all of my party members off.
Yeah, that's like, that's like all they do.
It's really annoying. They were doing that in my fight
too. In fact, that's how that's how
Shadowhart died in my fight. Was getting fucking shoved into
the oblivion. So if does he show up like
before you interact with the night song?
Yeah, you have to, like, basically tell him like, get the

(54:58):
fuck out of here. Like, like, literally.
Shadowhart is like, no dude, this isn't, this is my fucking
destiny, get the fuck out of here.
And that's what starts the fight.
Gotcha. I think last thing I want to ask
for gameplay, cause we've kind of skirted around it where
there's a whole lot of unalivingyou can do in this act.

(55:20):
There's a three thorn, well, thefour thorns actually, and your
gear, and I might be missing someone, but that's a lot of
really big combats that you can just straight up skip.
How do you guys feel about that?I like it a lot.
I like it a lot because it it's all about like the immersive
simness to me, and the fact thatyou can do that is awesome.

(55:43):
Yeah, I think in any game that has like such a high focus on
like many multiple outcomes, having one that is like dialogue
based is always something that Ithink games like this should
strive for. And like literally free renting
everyone into telling them to fucking suicide themselves is

(56:05):
awesome. Yeah.
I also like that the game does provide you the tools to proceed
on the main quest. Like if you kill like a critical
NPC, like usually they'll drop like a document on them that
will give you like the importantinformation you need to continue
on the critical path. You can also like speak to dead
their corpse and there's basically there's they're

(56:26):
probably because there are so many different permutations of
the thing. There's probably some way to
like soft lock or hard lock yourprogress, but I can't think of
it off the top of my head. Yeah, I think that's like the
cool part of the game where like, there's all these
permutations and like, shit, you, you never really like get
locked out of forward progression.

(56:46):
Yeah, I, I think I agree with you guys.
Like, it does feel really fucking good when you manage to
get all this experience and rewards and stuff just through
dialogue. But like in the back of my head,
like playing it a lot. I, I just, every single time I
go through Act 2, I'm gonna do the same thing.
I'm not gonna do any of these combats 'cause why would I?

(57:07):
But at the same time, like all of them have legendary actions.
It just sucks that it feels likeI'm losing out on all of this
content, you know? Like it could be that one of
those fights is the best one. I.
Think it should be like harder to access somehow but I don't
know how you do that with safes coming.
I think the only person I've never actually fought an act to
is the doctor. I've fought, I've done all the

(57:28):
other fights at least once. I did the doctor once and he is
he he's. He's hard.
Yeah, he's fucking hard. That's why I never fight him
because I tried to fight him once and I was like fuck that.
I think the easiest one is the the Gold Lady.
She's not that bad at all. Oh yeah, she's really easy I.
Think gives you a million gold. It's great.

(57:50):
Oh yeah, this was. Actually the first time, so the
first time I like totally bypassed the crash.
So like I never interacted with like any of the Githyanki stuff,
and the second time I somehow never triggered this fight.
So this was the playthrough where I learned that going to
Baldur's Gate or like going to Act 3, there's apparently a gift
Yankee fight that triggers on the fucking pathway there.

(58:16):
And is that fight. Like I'm curious what happens
because I absolutely fucking mind fucked them, but the
legendary action on the boss in that fight looked really fucking
hard. So like, what is what does that
fight like when you're not just Tavern brawling them to death in
one turn? I mean I it took me multiple

(58:38):
turns. I don't really remember what the
legendary action was. I think that they might have
cast like Counter Spill but likeoutside of that it was like a
normal fight. I didn't know that you could not
fight it though, since I thoughtit was just always on the way of
the critical path. I didn't know you could avoid it
too. Yeah, I don't know.
I don't know how I did it. I figured the first time I
didn't get it because I didn't go to the crash, so they didn't

(59:00):
know what the fuck they were looking for, right?
But. Oh wait, no, that makes.
Sense the second time, I don't know how the hell I didn't see
it because I did do the crash and I did not see that fight at
all. When you say they get Yankee, do
you mean like the encounter where they show up and they like
try to go free whatever's name is from the emperor's grasp?
No, that's. That's.

(59:22):
The beginning of Arc, Yeah, thisis the one at the like, I don't,
I don't know if it's triggered at the end of Act 2, but it says
you're walking to the like Balder's Gate, like camp or
whatever worms rest, I think. And it's, it's like 4 or five
Git Yankee or something and they're like on a bridge or some
shit. Yeah, so if you didn't go to the

(59:45):
crush, you didn't, and you didn't meet Vos, he might have
not given you like this psionic detector, which like rings
whenever gift Yankee are about to ambush you.
Because that's like the the first time it happens, it starts
vibrating or ringing and you're like, oh shit, they're coming.
And then they come, and then youfight them.
So wait, there's like a a fight with Gift Yankee before you get
the worm's rest? And there's a fight with Gift

(01:00:06):
Yankee as you get the worm's rest.
Yes. Yes.
Oh OK, I only did the worm the restroom because I didn't go to
the crash so I have no idea whatthe other one is.
Oh yeah. OK.
Yeah, that makes sense. But yeah, I think even aside
from legendary action, I'm pretty positive that every get
Yankee encounter in this game isthe hardest encounter in every
act. Yeah I thought that too until I

(01:00:28):
did this one in act 2 and I fucking butt blasted because the
one in act 3 is like that. Might have been the hardest
fight in the whole game for me the first time.
I think one of the hardest partsabout that encounter, the
Gettyanki encounter in Act 2, isthat a lot of times you're going
to go there not knowing an encounter is there right after

(01:00:48):
you finished fighting Catherix or you're not going to think the
long rest. If you don't know about that and
you run into it, that must suck.So I guess I said that this
legendary action looked hard, but I think it just reads hard.
I didn't actually see the effect, but it says once per
round. When a humanoid dies, the Chirai
can spend a legendary action to sacrifice its sacrifice its soul

(01:01:10):
to Vlaketh in return for great power.
Once three souls have been sacrificed, the Chirai takes on
Vlaketh's undying aspect. And I just just like I read that
as soon as I entered the encounter I was like Nah you,
you gotta die. You gotta die right now.
Yeah, I don't think I thought atall because it is probably what
happens in like a lot of the combats I have where the Tavern

(01:01:32):
Brawler does Stunning Fist and then I see the word stunned and
then that it's over. Basically that guy and that guy
that guy did who had the legendary action.
All right, here's what that here's what this does because I
clicked it on the wiki. The Scion of the Lich Queen has
its armor class increased by three.
Whatever. All of its ability scores
increased by 6. Huh.

(01:01:53):
That's a lot. And fires 6 beams when casting
Eldritch Blast. Jesus.
I'm pretty sure that's a one shot.
Oh yeah, that that is just you lose.
OK, actual last question for thegameplay section.
Then we can move on to our audioUI and we can keep this one

(01:02:14):
short. I just want to get vibes, how do
you guys feel about your currentpower level in relation to the
difficulty? Outside of Merkel, I am
overwhelmingly powerful. Outside of Carnus showing up in
the Catherick fight, I felt pretty much unstoppable, but in

(01:02:36):
that fight I felt very much stoppable.
Yeah, I mean, I'm on Explorer sothe whole game's a fucking
complete joke, like 2 shot Catherick or something
ridiculous. And Merkel.
It didn't take more than one turn.
I'm. Gonna be honest with you on
Tactician, it's not that much. Pretty much the same thing.
I don't necessarily agree with that.

(01:02:56):
I don't know, maybe. You might need a safe scum more,
but you can blow them up. Yeah, I think I'd blow them up
anyway, but I think there might be a chance where they kill me.
Right now there's no chance thatanything kills me because you
just have so much fucking health.
I guess maybe it's just. The honor, the honor mode rule
set is what like ramps the difficulty up.
I feel like they did, I feel like they did a really good job
with balancing it because like I'm just playing, I'm just

(01:03:18):
playing like 4 overpowered classes and like those, those
fucking legendary actions like they've.
They fucking they even. The odds, that is, for damn
sure. Yeah.
That's not cool. Auto mode.
Auto mode definitely goes hard, but I don't think the benefits
that the monsters get from tactician in particular are to

(01:03:40):
be underestimated. Like I think they get something
like like somewhere between 5:00and 7:00 AC bonus and just from
being on tactician compared to Explorer which is.
A lot like I I I feel like tactician is like not that much
easier. Oh no, I thought it was way
easier than Otter mode at least,but I feel like that's just the

(01:04:00):
an extreme comparison. I switched the chance to hit.
The chance to hit was fucking annoying.
And I think that that's directlytied to AC, right?
I don't know if shoot him with D&D.
Yeah. Yeah, that's correct.
Yeah. So that's that's the only reason
why I switched because like, it just felt fucking awesome.
Yeah, like This is why like everyone says like take Grand

(01:04:20):
Weapon Master, take Sharpshooterand I'm like motherfucker, I
already have like a. Fucking 40. 5% to hit.
If I fucking turn on sharpshooter it's going to be
like 3%. What the fuck are you talking
about? OK, enough for the gameplay
though. We have talked that to death as
expected, and that's OK. Moving on to Art Audio UII.

(01:04:42):
Got the first question. Go ahead.
Who did it better? Oh, that's good stuff.
Sorry, go. Keep going.
What game is that on the right that's.
Starbot 64. That's the final loss.
And Ross. That's fucking Andrew.
That's great. Incredible.

(01:05:06):
I'm gonna have that staring at me for the rest of the second.
OK. How did you guys feel about
Because we, we talked about thisa little bit in act one.
How did you guys feel about the tonal shift going from act one
in the Emerald Grove environs tothe Shadow Cursed Lands and just
the absolute swap into like likeactual just straight up horror?

(01:05:29):
Like if you're going through theGrim Forge, your very first like
encounter with people is literally just a cutscene that
that is just like straight out of a horror movie.
It's not that scary, but it is out of a horror movie and that
kind of keeps up through Raithwind Village and everything
else. How did you guys feel about that
pivot? Part of me feels like a lot of

(01:05:50):
the purpose of the Underdark is to kind of soften the transition
into act 2. Because I feel like if you
didn't have the majority of what's presented to you in the
Underdark, like let's just say for all intents and purposes you
have the surface of act one and you have Grim Forge.
And no, like rest of the underdark, the transition into

(01:06:12):
act 2 would feel so jarring tonally, narratively, fucking
all of it. But I feel like having the
underdark as kind of like a a way of softening the butter a
little bit makes it a lot less jarring than it would have been
otherwise. I personally don't like the

(01:06:32):
whole like the whole act takes place and basically like a is.
Is it the underdark or is it just like underdark?
Ass underdark? No, it's like you're talking
about the shadow crystallines. Yes.
No, no, you are like you are outin the open world.
It's just a very large swath of land that was cursed literally
by Char. Yeah, yeah.

(01:06:52):
Yeah, I just didn't know if it was like part of the Underdark
and like what makes the Underdark the Underdark or
anything like that From like just the lack of knowing the
Lord. Yeah, the Under the Underdark's
like a cave. It's like an underground cave.
A very like like vast and expansive.
It's kind of like the underground of Elding Ring to
make a comparison. It's just a very broad and
encompassing like flora and fauna place.

(01:07:15):
Yeah, yeah. I mean, so for me, I like I'm
biased, but I don't really like like kind of like darkness kind
of areas. And so the fact that like the
whole act took place kind of there was kind of like man to
me. And when it when it is kind of
areas like this, I like it when it's more like supernatural,
like crazy shit going on, which besides big brain over there,
like it's there. It was just kind of like
typical, like gothic horror kindof vibes, which, yeah, not not

(01:07:36):
my favorite. Ben.
I didn't mind it too much, like it might be because I've played
this game so many times, but it's kind of just there and I
expected. I will say that I do like the
gauntlet Shard though, like a lot a lot more than I do the

(01:07:58):
outside areas because when you're outside in the shadow
curse lanes, I think the parts that the only parts that I
really like are the last light in in Moonrise Towers.
I'm not the biggest fan of Raithwind Town and I'm less of a
fan of the the open area where the curse is mostly concentrated

(01:08:20):
outside of a few things. Actually, no, that's not true.
There's like certain combats that I really don't like in that
area. But I guess that's more of game
playing design. So if we're just talking about
like the way it looks, I do think that those outdoor areas
are a little seamy. I guess I'll I'll put Raifu in
town above the, I don't know what you want to call it, like
the open main area. Forgotten battlefield, I think

(01:08:42):
it's. Yeah, Forgotten Battlefield.
Yeah, that one is a little too seamy for me.
Just like all around. Oh yeah.
But at the same time, I don't really know 'cause you can't
really put something that looks too out of place in a place like
that with the narrative that they're telling.
So I feel like they did the bestthat they could with what they
got. Yeah, I will say Act 2, like

(01:09:04):
visually and tonally is is definitely my least favorite.
Like basically for the reason you guys are talking about,
because I, I don't like navigating things that are just
dark, dark things that are dark and force me to like, again,
remember, I don't know about this fucking fairy thing.
Things that are dark and force me to like stand close together

(01:09:28):
so that I can't really like explore with like a degree of
freedom that I really want to. I I don't mind the actual gothic
horror setting. I just, I don't think that I
don't think that they nailed it in act 2, but moonrise and last
light in and the gauntlet of char are like the highlights of
the fucking game. So everything outside of the

(01:09:51):
open world dish parts is is super good.
Yeah, I think I agree with you guys more than I thought I would
like Forgotten Battlefield. It's definitely like I I found
myself multiple times getting lost exploring that area and
it's not because I want to. It's because like the whole area
looks pretty samey and not nearly as many like outlying

(01:10:15):
objects as the other acts. I think that would give you a
sense of place or purpose to where you're wandering around.
And the ones that do exist, likefor example, I don't know if any
of you guys found a little like shack of Quotoa, the fish people
that pop out and attack you. But like, as someone who loves
Lovecraft, I really wish that that was landed on and you just
like had this little shadow overInnsmouth style encounter, but

(01:10:42):
oh, it's just fish people and they attack you all right.
Yeah, yeah. I feel like maybe a point of
contention I would have with Act2 is the fact that it is so
focused on the critical path in a way that Act 1 isn't that it's
sort of neglects to do some of that like world building that is

(01:11:04):
like very important to a game like this.
So like there's so many like random encounters and like
random shit going on and none ofit's really fleshed out or like
characterized in a really great way, even though like the
overall quality of the ACT is still super high.
I I I wish that there was just more distraction content that

(01:11:24):
was as high quality as it is in Acts 1 and 3.
Yeah, it's like you were saying earlier when you started talking
about side quests. I could hardly remember any.
Yeah. Exactly.
There's there's so there's so few of them and what is there is
just kind of like kind of eh. Yeah, hard agreed.

(01:11:47):
But again, the, the, the critical path of Act 2 is like
fucking incredible, especially in comparison to act one where
I, I struggle to define exactly what the critical path is in act
one, But in Act 2 it's, it's a lot more linear and it's super,
super, super high quality for sure.

(01:12:08):
Yeah, I mean, like you guys weresaying, Gauntlet or Char is
definitely go to despite all of this.
I think it's a really interesting decision, like both
artistically and narratively to include the gauntlet of Shar in
this because, yeah, I mean, it'sa dark Shar is not a good
person, so it's not going to be the happiest of places.

(01:12:28):
But I think it's really interesting that they included
this elegant reprieve from the rest of the act in this like
underground mausoleum where it'slike, you know, it's rundown,
but you still see all these statues.
The music is really like soft and kind of haunting.
And it's. It's it's really good.

(01:12:49):
I kind of wonder what someone's experience of the Colonel Shar
would be like without Shadowheart if they're doing it
for the first time. But I've never experience that
I'd and I've never even like looked up what happens other
than the fact that she gets mad.Yeah, like I, I, I didn't even
plan on including shadow heart in my, like, main party, but I

(01:13:11):
still was like, I'm in far. I'd go home.
We're bringing in shadow. Yeah.
It doesn't feel right to not have shadow heart in there.
And it's so much more like narratively compelling.
Yeah, I'm like, I like, I'm especially looking at it through
the first playthrough perspective of like Shadow Heart
gives you all of the lore for the Gauntlet of Shar.

(01:13:34):
How would you feel about this place if you didn't have Shadow
Heart? That's a that's a tough one.
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, Shadow Heart just
straight up leads your party if you kill the Night Song without
her. Yeah, and I feel like when when
my first play through. Oh yeah, Shadow Heart will leave
you and the Gauntlet of Shar forlike a bunch of different
reasons, including if you don't go to get the spear in the

(01:13:58):
library. I think she'll she'll even like
become hostile if you're just like, Nah, we don't need that.
Let's. Go yeah, that rules.
Yeah, I didn't even know about any of that.
But but yeah, I feel like especially if you're like
romancing shark or shark fuckingShadow Heart because I was in my
first playthrough and I feel like a lot of the scenes with

(01:14:20):
her and the night song in a goodplaythrough like specifically
are like some of the absolute best parts of the entire game
IMO are. You talking like shadow heart
interacting with the night song?Yeah, like trying to like, come
to grips with her faith and likewho she is as a person.

(01:14:41):
And then just being like, now fuck it, we we going good now.
It's like, really, really. It's much better than it is on
an evil playthrough, I'll just say that.
Yeah, 'cause you on an evil playthrough you get the same
spiel, but you're like, I don't care, just kill her anyway.
You do get a really. You do get a.
You do get a really nice spear though.

(01:15:02):
That fucking spear you. Get when?
She fucking kills the night. Song is crazy.
So this is what I wanted to mention this this is technically
gameplay I guess, but I think I'm going to shoehorn it into
art. So this is something that I only
experienced this time because I've never done an evil
playthrough. But if you appease char and you
killed the night song, I didn't know that she gives you like a

(01:15:25):
fuck ton of loot. And this is important because
when it comes to heavy armor, getting even one more choice,
which is what she gives you, another choice of heavy armor
that's I had so much to transmog, like I'd be one more,
yeah, one more skin. Every fucking piece of gear that
I got for that I was just looking at, it was just like,

(01:15:46):
holy shit. And I just immediately equipped
all of it to Menthara. So Menthara just looks like the
world's like most godly char worshipping part just this year
of all fucking time. Yeah, this was something I
wanted to ask since we were pretty critical of how the
transmog looked in act one especially Sesh.
Do you feel like the transmog inthis act made-up for how

(01:16:10):
relatively poor it was in act one?
I didn't really get any gear that I I equipped it that maybe
like stick with it. Like I don't know if I just
missed a bunch of shit or something.
But like I feel like the shit that I got like at the end of
Act 1 was like strong enough. And then in Act 2 I feel like I
didn't get anything for like formy classes and fucking.
What's her name is just run around in your panties because

(01:16:31):
she's a fucking Tavern brawler. It's having a bronze monk.
So it's fucking just kind of awkward when she's doing all
these serious scenes and she's got bra and panties on and her
ass is out. But.
I feel like there's a ton of gear that looks fucking awesome
in that too. Like you, I mean, I granted a
lot of it. You don't get into lay.
Like Catherick's armor looks fucking sick as fuck.

(01:16:51):
I don't have anybody that wears heavy armor.
That's your problem. Oh.
Yeah. Yeah, it's all light medium.
Yeah, all the plate armor looks fucking amazing.
Yeah, all of it. All of it looks so good.
I believe it full. Bummer they don't have any kind
of like transmox system outside of mods.

(01:17:13):
Yeah, it's really surprising to me that they don't, to be honest
with you. And.
They even have the mirror right there to do it.
But yeah, I feel like I feel like even an act to a lot of the
armor isn't like I pop in. But once you start getting like
the overpowered items in Act Three, things take a turn for

(01:17:35):
the better. For sure.
I think the main thing is just like the helmet slot, like I
wish you could kind of go like you could.
Can you hide individual pieces? Or Oh yeah, the first the first
thing I do is hide everyone's helmet as soon as I equip 1.
OK, so I need to find that setting then because yeah, every
time I would turn it off and fucking.
Are you keyboard mouse? Yeah.

(01:17:55):
So if you go into like when you press tab and you go into like
the equipment menu, if you just hover over the helmet slot, then
there will be a little like button that kind of shows up in
like the top left above the the helmet slot.
You just click it a couple of times and it'll disappear.
Yeah, 'cause like between Carlaxhelmet and then who's the other

(01:18:16):
one that bugs me might have beenShadow Hearts helmet.
I was just like, no, I can't do this.
So yeah, they all bugged me, yeah.
Some of them look, yeah. I mean there's a couple cool
ones. Like one of my favorite like
lore transmog feeling ones, evenif it's not very good, is
getting Shadow Hard and full Dark Justice year plate with the
spirit. It looks so good.
Yeah, it looks awesome. And like there's, I forget the

(01:18:40):
name of the like Rogues hood. Yeah.
That's exactly what I was going.To say it looks so sick but I
have it equipped on Astarian andit's so weird to have Astarian
saying all of these like sassy sexy 1 liners while he's covered
in this fucking like dark brotherhood cowl.
It's the same thing for me, except until I got Jahir, I was

(01:19:01):
using GAIL and he had that hood on it.
It was just so fucking weird to hear that fucking.
Like. Fruity motherfucker and stuff.
The fucking. The fucking.
Frat bro yeah. Yeah, once Jahira showed up, he
got cut immediately. Holy shit, you have Jahira
recruit in your main party? That's kind of sick.

(01:19:21):
That's kind of sick. I feel like I never hear of
anyone doing or having Jahira intheir main.
I thought she was fucking awesome, so every time I would
talk to her I would just be likeyou.
Should come with me. You should come with me.
Jahira is fucking BAE bro. I, I don't know how much you
know about these games, but Jahira is like one of the main
like mainline characters from the first two games.
So when she showed up in this game, I was like, oh shit.

(01:19:45):
I. Know some?
Know much other than like basically what the game tells
you of like Carlack just being like oh.
Shit. I have a fangirl.
Yeah. She is pretty much like the only
character from the original games.
Playable. Yeah, playable.

(01:20:05):
We'll talk. We'll talk about this more
later. But yeah, she also, I mean, I'm
not going to step. Back.
Yeah, we don't. Yeah, we don't.
Yeah. But yeah, like when she showed
up it was a real like, fanservicing my heart fluttered
moment because she's one of the fucking sweetest characters from
the original trilogy, even though she's kind of a cheating
bitch, but that's OK. Is I like the Thea come for all

(01:20:28):
that and. Her.
Yeah, I do. I do too.
I think it's great. Is she the same voice actor?
No, that's no Oh. No.
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, there's a story about
this. They tried to get the original
voice actor. She went literally missing no
one. Knows where the Finder.
Went. Yeah, I forgot about that.
No one knows where she is. They they wanted to get her and

(01:20:49):
they couldn't find her. Yeah, she just vanished off the
face of the fucking planet. What the fuck, she an American?
From such a big game too. Holy moly.
I'm not sure, but whoever they found to replace her, she sounds
exactly like her, so yeah. She sounds, she sounds the exact
same, like to the point it's kind of crazy actually, because

(01:21:12):
she's got that like weird accent.
I don't even know how it would describe her accent.
It doesn't sound like anything of earthly origin.
I mean, to me it just sounds like like Ireland, Gaelic kind
of that kind of area. It's definitely got like, it's
definitely Irish with A twist. Yeah, exactly.

(01:21:33):
I want to briefly talk about theperformances, just kind of
update from the last act becauseobviously we gushed about it in
the previous act, but this is going to be the time to talk
about our boy. You all know him, we all love
him. JK Simmons, Catherine voice
actor is so good. We love JK Simmons.

(01:21:53):
All right, I'm gonna be a detractor here really quick,
Okay, This has nothing to do with JK Simmons himself.
It has to do with whatever equipment I feel like they
recorded his lines on. Sounds really like muddy.
I don't know if it's, I don't know if it's just me, but it's
like his, the actual quality of his recordings just sounds like

(01:22:15):
a little bit like tinny and underwater in like a weird way
that is not at all the way that every other character is.
It's it's really strange and like listening to his voice
lines, it really bugged me because like you can hear that
it's just like a, it's like a lower bit rate or something.
It's, it's hard to describe the performance itself, amazing, but

(01:22:40):
the audio quality is just like really fucking bizarrely.
Bad. It makes me wonder if there's a
lot of other games that came outaround this time that were like
right around the time the voice acting became mostly like work
from home, send in the files andstuff.
And it wouldn't surprise me if he was a result of that, since
voice acting isn't his main gig.Yeah, I think I'd so I think

(01:23:03):
maybe I'd like agree with Tom, but only because when Catherick
first showed up, I was just like, why is this dude bumbling?
So I think, I think it was probably just like the cause,
like the for when he was first showing up and shit, I was like,
this guy's gonna be like throw away or something.
But then like, as you interact with him more, it's like, oh,
this guy's fucking awesome. Yeah, his introduction.
What? I don't know if this is an
introductor introduction, but like that part where he cast

(01:23:28):
judgement on the people, Yeah, like the goblin, like that scene
is so. Oh no, I love that scene.
Yeah, I mean, like his performance because like, like,
again, let's focus on the performance here since we're
going to do a lot of Catholic talking the next section and in
the question, like the way he performs that scene is so good.

(01:23:48):
And I feel like there's a lot ofways that you could play that
scene, which is why I really want to give him credit for it
because there's a lot going on with this character, you know,
like he's been like more or lessbackstabbed by two different
gods, and now he's serving a third one.
And he's just like a fucking broken husk shell of a man In
the performance of like that component where it's just an

(01:24:12):
undead general that is like still powerful, but like kind of
melancholic comes through so strongly with his performance.
Oh my Lord. Especially in the introduction
scene. Yeah.
I mean, I don't think I can finda fault in the performance at
all other than I feel like there's maybe sometimes where JK

(01:24:34):
Simmons was reading the lines a little bit.
Like there are a couple times where it felt like he was
phoning it in a little bit. But also, I think in a way that
is appropriate for just kind of how flat the character itself
is. Yeah.
But yeah, no, just he was, he's he's fucking JK Simmons.

(01:24:57):
What else is there to say? Do we know how long like it they
had him in the booth for? I'm not sure.
Because I know Jennifer English did shit over 4 years and I feel
like JK Simmons was the Charlie Cox of this game and that he did
it in an afternoon. Yeah, yeah.
I mean, it's also. A case where it's also a case

(01:25:18):
where he just didn't have that many lines to actually record.
Exactly that too, yeah. Yeah, I feel like that's
honestly like maybe one of my. I guess this is more of a
narrative thing, so I'll hold off for now.
Actually, it's maybe more of a third question thing, but yeah,
yeah, we don't have to we. Don't have to linger on

(01:25:39):
Catherine too much, but. I also thought like Isabel and
the Night Song had great performances and like their I
like their their like interactions and everything that
they do. I think like, yeah, I don't
think there's like a bad performance in this game fucking
still. Yeah, I think particularly I,
I'm not quite gonna put this in narrative, I don't think it is.
But I think the combination of the Night Song's performance and

(01:26:02):
the way she is written is a very, very, very enthralling
combination. I agree.
Yeah, I think like the kind of triumvirate between Isabel
Shadowheart in The Night Song and kind of the way that, I
mean, Act 2 is like their act, right?

(01:26:23):
And all three of them just absolutely fucking crush it
like. Yeah.
Shadow Heart in particular deserves major shout outs.
She is so fucking good in act 2 it's like it's like jaw-dropping
how fucking good her performanceis, especially in the whole
night song scene. So fucking good.

(01:26:45):
Yeah, I was I was thinking in myhead as you were saying that
that like she almost almost, mind you, almost deceives you ha
ha. And act one into thinking that
like her performance isn't goingto get like crazy stellar.
But then when the story is actually about her, then it just
completely flips everything on its.
Head and you see. The child the shadow heart never

(01:27:05):
got to be in all of. This.
Yep, yeah, every time. That like Shadow heart's just
good throughout the whole thing.But whenever you are focused on
her narratively or like during her quest line, God, does
Jennifer English seriously knockit out of the fucking park?
Like, big time. There's I, I can't remember

(01:27:26):
exactly when she says it, but there's one point.
Wait. Oh, it's it's when you first get
to the night song and the night song starts to be like you,
child of Saluna or whatever. And shadow heart just goes what
that performance of that what islike a top 10 performance of all
time? Oh my God, it's, it's one word.
But the way she says it is so fucking good.

(01:27:49):
One thing that one thing I wouldactually recommend at some point
is like when you do another playthrough, don't let her come
to the conclusion of what she wants to do with the Night Song.
Like naturally try and like coerce her.
And as you do that, she will getangrier and angrier and angrier.

(01:28:09):
And it actually makes the performance even better because
she just gets so fucking pissed at you trying to like decide her
like destiny for her. And the voice lines get
delivered with this fucking likeacid that is not really present
anywhere else in her performance.

(01:28:30):
And it's it's so fucking good. So fucking good.
Also shout out to another performance that only Ben and I
got, I think, which is Menthara.God damn she is.
Fucking oh, me too. Yep, Menthara's incredible.
Menthara's performance in Act 2 when you get to Moonrise and

(01:28:50):
she's like in front of the fucking Inquisition is so good.
Yeah, there's the line that she says when they're like dragging
her away, that's like she's likeshouting help me or something
like that. And it's like the only time
where she actually is like, vulnerable and scared and oh,
it's haunting is there? Anywhere to get her on a good

(01:29:14):
playthrough? Yes.
You can but you have to do some like shit and act like knock her
out. Like you have to like do non
lethal attack knock her out, complete the whole like goblin.
Basically you just kill everybody in the goblin fortress
while she's knocked out and thenyou go to act 2.

(01:29:35):
Then she's just like a homie. Now she's like, oh, thanks for
safe with me. Well, yeah.
Like you you knock her out so she's not dead and the idea is
after you long rest then she just retreats back to moonrise
and then they get mad at her forlike failing the mission and she
joins your party after you save her.
They actually still get mad at her even if she's successful in
her mission. So they're they're mad at her no

(01:29:57):
matter what. That's.
Kind of late. Yeah, I didn't know if we were
doing the award for like best performance right now, but if
since we brought up Mintara, that is what I put down.
There's like one line she does. It's it's at the end where she
does like that aura farming, where she sits in Cutler's
throne after. But all that Hulk, like, as good

(01:30:21):
as that conversation was, there's one Part 1 to point out
where it's close to the end. And it kind of like butts up
with like the romance portion ofit, kind of where she's like,
she talks about how she was likemind controlled, but then she's
like, wait a minute earlier backin act one, like I didn't have
control my actions. What was your excuse for killing

(01:30:44):
everybody in the Grove? And then I answered back with
something like, really, it's because you're hot.
And she accepts it. She's like, yeah, that makes
sense. And I fucking cracked off.
Yeah, no, that's, that's part ofthe reason I just fucking love
Menthara as a character because she'll like, ask you incredibly
direct questions like that. Like, and like in my place here,

(01:31:04):
she asked me a series of like 3 different questions of like,
like basically like that. Why didn't you kill me at the
Grove? That showed weakness and like a
female drought culture is just so fucking sick and getting to
have a character like Mentara inyour party because of that is so
fucking good. There is a reason why a

(01:31:24):
character who will not yet be named is the best character from
Boulder Skate 2, and it's because she is a female drought.
Yeah, like one of the. Top.
What'd you say, Virgo? I think you told me about that
character forever ago. Is that the character that they
like they fucked up with, like the Canon ending that they gave
her from that game or something?Or is that someone else?
Maybe. Yeah, it is.

(01:31:45):
OK, cool. I can't.
I can't remember the details so it literally doesn't matter.
Yeah, as long as you don't know where that character is, it
doesn't really matter too so. Also yes Menthara absolutely
like subtle goat in this act even though like if if I had to
pick a best performance it wouldbe Shadow heart.
But also another performance which will certainly not be the

(01:32:09):
last time it gets shouted out isfucking Asterian because this
was the first time I saw all of the stuff with Astarian and your
gear and it is really good. Really.
Fucking. Good.
That her gear guy, that's the red demon, like the Raphael
counterpart guy, right? Yeah, that guy owns.

(01:32:30):
Yeah, he's great. He's fucking dead as shit in my
play through, but he's great. He.
Killed himself. Weird how?
Weird how you ended up with yourown crossbow bolt in your head.
That's. Fucking.
Crazy bro. But no, yeah, it like your
opinion of Assyrian's performance is only going to
increase up until the end of thestory and the game.

(01:32:52):
I'm really pissed, just really quick.
I'm really pissed because I definitely fucked up his romance
because he has not made any sortof romantic gesture towards me
at all. And I'm sort of wondering if
it's because, well, A, it might be because I banged Menthara
after the the the druid Grove, but also B, I'm wondering if

(01:33:14):
there's like a certain amount oflike just overtly evil dirt shit
that will stop people from sleeping with you because no
character has made romantic likeimpasses at me.
Mentioned yeah, because like, yeah, Shadow Hard didn't either.
And like, I was about to complain about that.
I didn't know if that was something that was actually a
problem with the Axe writing because I was like, I didn't see

(01:33:37):
anything romantic wise for Syrian or Menthora in.
That yeah same here I I installed a polymod because I
thought maybe I fucked it up andI was like too far down the
menthora path for like everyone to want to like bang me even
though all I did was fuck her after the the celebration.
But like literally no one like Lazelle isn't flirting with me.

(01:33:57):
Which is weird because Lazelle flirts with me in every fucking
playthrough I've ever had. No Shadow Heart coming on to me,
no Astarian coming on to me. Like no one gives a shit and I'm
wondering if I'm just too fucking evil.
Yeah. Well, the.
Character's really psychopathic,right?
So that would make sense. I don't think.
Good question. There's there's some psychos for

(01:34:22):
sure, it just depends on the path you want to take.
Sure. I I don't think there's any like
actual sex scenes. You can get an Act 2 for what
that's worth like from anyone. But Thomas did, I thought.
I thought so maybe GAIL, can yousee?
Surely, surely Shadow Heart fucks you and actually.

(01:34:45):
No, Carl act does right? She definitely.
I thought, no, I thought that was Act 3.
No, it's. Actually I remember the scene
visiting. Too She like it's got to be Act
2. It's like after you do the thing
with Damon. Oh, no, yeah.
Probably could touch you and then she like her fire turns
blue, right. Like I'm not making this.
Yeah, I mean I. Think you're right, and I think
you're right in any case, Thomas, did you get the scene

(01:35:07):
with Assyrian where he just wants to hold hands?
Nope, he never showed me his scars.
I like when I first walked up tothe gauntlet of Char and Rafael
was like. Oh, you haven't showed them your
scars? He like disappears his fucking
shirt and Astarian is like. Oh, you fucker.
So yeah, not the. Not knowing about it scars is

(01:35:30):
kind of a big thing too 'cause you can get that from his
romance and act one in a really cool way too.
So you're definitely missing it.I I.
I I think that there's just something with like the mega
evil dirge playthrough that is just like completely boning me
or something because like I havebeen following like guides and
shit and I just never got any scenes after.

(01:35:51):
I would rest like none of them. Right.
And that there aren't scenes andalso the hand holding scene.
I I'm not sure if that's actually part of his romance.
I think that's part of the the quote UN quote failure state you
get from the arage side question.
Well like even in act 2 what I was reading is as long as
Hysterians, what is it favor, reputation, whatever with you

(01:36:17):
approval. Approval is at least I think
what I read was 60 when you first go into act 2 then it will
still play scenes that would normally play in act one and you
can continue on with the romancepath.
But I never got any of those scenes and my approval with him
is is like maxed basically and was when I went into act 2.

(01:36:39):
I know it's not as as simple as people say because I fucked up
the Carlack one where I was liketrying to not to and but then
and like I did the thing with Damon, like she would only hug
me. And then when I looked it up,
people were like, you're fucked.And I was like, oh, am I?
And I installed no romance monomator a partner through
fucking debunk commands. I think just for the sake of

(01:37:00):
pacing, let's just go ahead and say that as we're talking about
these romances, we are in narrative.
Narrative. Yeah.
Can I just ask real quick about music?
Like were there any songs for you guys in act 2 specifically
that are like standout bangers? Nah, Act 2's Nangers.
OK, yeah, the only song. I can even think of was the
combat song and I think it's just because of how many times
it plays. Yeah, I mean, all the combat

(01:37:21):
songs are really good, period. I really really really like the
song in Gauntlet of Shark, but Iwouldn't describe it as a
banger. Yeah, I think, I think that
there's definitely like they, they pulled back a little bit on
the music in Act 2 for like aesthetic purposes, I guess.
Because yeah, I, I agree. Like I was even thinking about

(01:37:43):
it earlier today. I was like, can I even think of
a song? From Act 2.
I can only think of the combat theme and I even I don't even
know that's a combat. Therefore that's a act 2 song.
That might be that. It might also be the same combat
theme as in the Under Dark. I wouldn't even know.
Yeah, the only one that I distinctly remember, and it's
definitely Act 2, is called a sharathon.
Which, yeah, the Gauntlet of Sharathon is awesome.

(01:38:05):
It's like a fucking Diablo 2 song.
Yeah, for sure. OK, We can go to narrative now.
Yeah, I mean, I think that's something that's interesting
about this game is the romance is like, I don't know how much
we talked about it in the last episode, but like it is
legitimately difficult to romance some of these
characters, Asterian especially,because it's it's just really

(01:38:26):
difficult to interpret like whatis going to get approval from
some of these characters? Because like with Shadow Heart,
for example, like you would think she's a Shar worshipper
and like make a lot of assumptions around that that you
would get approval from. But then, you know, like she
hates wolves, but she likes animals.
And there's like all kinds of small things like that that can

(01:38:48):
earn or lose you approval beforeyou even know about them, which
is hard. But yeah, it's just really
difficult. And Thomas, I think with the
Astarian thing, now you kind of understand why Cass restarted
her entire Act one because she wanted to romance Astarian.
Yeah, and I mean, like I said, Iwas literally following like a
guide to make sure that I was like doing it right and like,

(01:39:09):
yeah, I don't know, something something along the way got
fucked up. And I think it was probably
literally just picking Menthara at the fucking celebration
because I was like, I don't see this Broads tits.
We'll go back to Astarian afterwards.
I think, yeah, I think that's kind of a thing that that all
those guys and things don't callout.
Like, I think you kind of have to like, commit to one person
pretty early on because I feel like that's why I fucked up

(01:39:31):
Carlack. I don't.
Every decision. Yeah, because.
It's just making sure that it says Carlack does approves at
the top. Yeah, and I mean, maybe that's
true now, but like, back when I played originally, that was the
opposite of true. Where like, everyone every night
was like, hey, you want to fuck?Like, like you could not long
rest without one of the characters coming up to you and

(01:39:51):
being like, you know, get that? So I, I think part of the hard
thing now is that like after they changed all of that stuff
is that if you sleep with someone like Menthara and act
one, then that'll like softly turn off some of the triggers
for the other characters. But the problem is that if you

(01:40:12):
hard commit to 1 character, thenat least the characters that are
OK with polyamory you can still romance.
But if you don't go all in on one character, then it's not
going to trigger the polyamory, right?
The game still thinks that you're romancing someone else,
but it's not high enough to trigger polyamory.

(01:40:33):
Yeah, yeah. I mean to go behind the scenes,
there's like 2 flags, there's a dating flag and there's a
partner flag and you can only have one partner.
Yeah, because I know that Astarian's cool with you banging
other chicks in the beginning, but later on, yeah, he's like,
Nope. Yeah.
Which is why I thought it. Which is why I thought it was OK
to fuck Menthara. Exactly.

(01:40:53):
Well depends on what you mean byOK with it, because you can
still have a 5 some in act threewith him.
What the hell? Who's the five, the twins and
the brothel? Oh, did you say?
Did you say Act 3? Yeah.
So I thought you said act. 1 AndI was like who?
And that makes more sense. Yeah, with the T.

(01:41:14):
And and you can make your 5th house.
And so it's a fivesome with a bear.
Oh, that's hilarious. Wait, will he be a bear in the
sex scene? I think that that is the only
example where they actually black out the sex scene.
That's funny, had to draw the line somewhere.
The line is drawn in beastiality.

(01:41:36):
Yeah, no bear Dicks. I'm no, I mean, you can still
fuck a bear with the full scene in act one.
Don't you guys remember the fucking?
The yeah, yeah, the fucking cancel culture crowd getting
really upset that you could fucka bear.
I remember. I don't.
I've never put house in my partyso I've never actually seen the

(01:41:57):
scene. I've only heard about it from
like Marketing. Why is he a bear?
Would you fuck? 'Cause he you can.
Just choose to, yeah. I mean, he's a druid.
Yeah, why not? Why not like a Jaguar?
Jaguar seems a lot sexy. Bear got big Dick.
What do you call what do you call a big hairy masculine gay
dude? Yeah, I guess this is not for
me, I guess. Yeah, there you go.

(01:42:19):
I. Think I'd rather fuck a Jaguar,
a cougar form, whatever it is. OK, so getting away from gay sex
narratively, I feel actually like very conflicted about this
part of the game, strangely enough, because I feel like act

(01:42:41):
2 serves as a really good bridgefrom act 2 to Act 3, but I also
feel like Act 2 is paced very fucking poorly.
Agreed. And some of that, I think, is
just mostly to do with the fact that Act 2 is kind of trying to
solve Act one's sins, because I don't think Act one does a good

(01:43:04):
job of laying, like, the foundation for the narrative.
And then by the time you get to Act 2, it's just like this huge
Lord dump of like, hey, here's the brain, here's the dead 3,
and we're marching off the Balder's gate.
OK, bye. It's just like all very sudden
and like very kind of out of nowhere.
And I think Act Three kind of makes up for it.

(01:43:26):
OK, well, I don't want to get out of scope, but like like I
said, I feel like it's just really jarring.
And I don't, I think that's mostly because they just didn't
do a good job of setting all of what they come up with and act
you up very well. Yeah.
I mean, a lot of that is why I asked my second question.

(01:43:46):
So I'm wondering what you'll have to say for that.
But like part of the part of thequestion I wanted to ask you
guys in here surrounding that ishow did you feel about the
introduction of the two other? Actually all three major
villains are introduced in this act, but they like wait for to
introduce Oren and Gortash. Do you guys feel like that was a
mistake? Should they have introduced all

(01:44:07):
three of these sooner to like help solve some of the problems
Thomas is describing? Like I I do feel like there is a
meandering this to the plot up until this point and it leaves
me with questions. I'm not sure because like my
issues with like those 3 specifically is kind of fixed in
this current playthrough with like the additional dirge

(01:44:29):
context. I will say that the additional
dirge context helps out or an inGortash more than this Catholic,
but Catholic also needed help a lot less than those two
characters. So that's kind of like my
general sense about those guys. Yeah.
And just to sorry just to be clear with the question, I don't
want to get too much into the oren and gortash stuff.

(01:44:51):
I'm just asking like we now knowwho the three major villains are
at the end of Act 2. Do we think that should have
happened sooner? I think it's yes.
I'm kind of OK with it as is, but I'd have to see it in
another form to like really havea a better answer.

(01:45:11):
I think they should have at least alluded to them on the
Nautiloid. Maybe not just like, hey, my
name's Oren, hey, my name's Gortash, Hey, my name's
Catherick, we're the dead 3. But at least like show their
face or. Something so I do.
Well, they're. In act one, in one of the long,
not longer scenes, but if you. Well, I mean, I think it's
mandatory to see the scene, but when you.

(01:45:32):
When you approach the. Goblin camp Yeah, when you walk
too close to the goblin camp, you get assaulted by the
Absolute. And then the absolute like
introduces you in like a dreamscape to the To the Dead 3
and they describe Gortash as a handsome young man which always.
Yeah, oh right, he's a fucking old grizzled looking dipshit.

(01:45:55):
Yeah, so I forgot about question2 and I just, I basically said
my answer to it. But one thing I will say is that
playing Dirge, I am really coming to understand why I have
heard the opinion that Dirge wasmeant to be like the canonical

(01:46:16):
playthrough. Because I do feel like there's a
lot of like through lines there that do make some of the plot
aspects make a lot more sense. But I I also understand why they
didn't just like, force the Dirge like the whole story just
because there's some unpalatableshit that's forced upon you.

(01:46:39):
But I do think that the stuff that is introduced during a Dark
Urge playthrough is actually it does a really good job of
fleshing out the narrative in a way that is making me appreciate
it a lot more than I did in playthroughs past.
I'm actually like, I know some of the stuff you're referencing
from Act 3, but can you give some examples of that?

(01:46:59):
Both because I don't know what you're referring to in Act 2 and
so sesh is kind of looped in on the dirt stuff.
Yeah, so when I was talking about it, I was talking
explicitly about only Act 2. And when I say Act 2, I consider
that cutscene at the very, very,very end part of Act 2 where
it's Gortash and Oren with the painting.
You know what I'm talking about.Is that Act 2 or is that Act 3?

(01:47:23):
I would call it Act 3, but it's kind of semantic.
Yeah. OK.
In that case, I won't talk aboutit because like I said, is
because it is. In when does it show up?
It's like at the very, very end of Act 2 like.
It's the very first cut scene right after you like hit the
button to go to ball this game. Yeah, that's Act 2.
Still, the game triggers over toAct 3 after all the worm dress

(01:47:44):
stuff. That's when you get the
achievement. So that's Act 2.
Oh, that's weird. That's.
Weird, I I saw. Too.
I saw that cut scene and as soonas I got into worms rest I
immediately pressed F5 and quit the game.
So. Yeah, me too.
Assuming I'm assuming by worm dress you guys mean Rivington,
right? Whatever that thing is when you
first go into Act three, yeah. It's called at the top right or

(01:48:07):
whatever. It's this worm dress.
It's where. You get the Is that the camp
ship? With the Emperor, yeah.
OK. That's the little OK.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
And I also. Place, Yeah.
I kind of find it. Hard to answer your question
because I am extrapolating basedon things I know from Act 3 and
I don't want to do that so. Yeah, that's fair.

(01:48:31):
We can. We don't need to talk about it
now. Maybe that's an Act 3?
Question yeah cuz like with the with Oren Gortash and Catherick
being like the chosen of their various gods, I can see the
writing on the wall let's. Well, like I, I guess I'm I'm

(01:48:55):
looking for like super broad scope.
Is it a mistake to not know who your primary antagonists are
until the second act of a trilogy?
Yes, I think. So yeah, I agree that it's a
mistake in that the only thing that they ever mentioned him is
like what Ben said. Like they it's like you get like
this weird vision and then you see like 3 shadow figures and

(01:49:16):
it's super vague and then like that shit gets flushed for the
next 15 hours of experience and like they never even try to
build on that or anything. So it just goes from nothing to
something. Versus like?
Jaws, where the first the whole first half of the movie is not
seeing the shark, but everybody's talking about it.
So I'm I'm going to stop talkingabout this so that I do have
stuff to talk about in question 2 because I do have some more to
add to the conversation, but then I would have nothing for

(01:49:41):
question 2. Yeah, maybe let's Yeah, Let's
just skip around this question. I might have only got a little
too early on it. Did you guys all like Jakira's
introduction? I'm mostly asking this for Ben
and Thomas as boomers. But Seth, you said you really
like Jakira. What was it about that made you
like her? I think she's just like kind of

(01:50:02):
funny and like kind of like a hard ass but not like annoying
about it. Can I ask, did you know that she
was from the original Boulders Gate games?
Yeah, like I I so I didn't know like directly.
I didn't, I wasn't like, oh, that's Jahira from Boulders Gate
too. But again, like since I have
Carlack, she basically like tells you like the second that
she shows, she shows up like before then I think, I think she

(01:50:23):
even talks about Jahira like in act one or something where she
says like Jahira is one of her inspirations or some shit.
But yeah, so like, I know because of Carlack, but and then
I assumed that she was from a previous game because of like
the way that they talk about her.
Yeah, you can go first then. Yeah, I love her introduction
because it it tells you everything you need to know

(01:50:45):
about her, even if you don't know her from the previous
games, like how she's like cautious and wary.
And it's like all the way through.
She's very meticulous with your interrogation when you first get
there. And I do want to give a shout
out to like the way that they designed the good and evil
playthroughs, because I rememberevery time I did a good
playthrough, I felt like Marcus just comes out of fucking

(01:51:09):
nowhere, right? But like when I played the new
playthrough, he comes less out of nowhere and he had the actual
reason to be there. And that's what I I would have
never known if I'd never did a evil playthrough.
But going back to Jahira, like it still goes on.
Like even after you've earned her trust, she invites you
inside and then she makes you drink the wine and it's, it's
just like she's very consistent.All in her dialogue is fucking

(01:51:31):
great. Her voice acting is great.
And also there's like one part that cracked me up.
I I think this is Act 2. It's wait, no, it's just like a
when you talk to her in camp. Never mind, I'm not going to
elaborate. It's because I think it is a
camp conversation, which means it's not act 2.
Yeah, I think Ben pretty much nails it.

(01:51:51):
I think they they they, they didnot do Jahira dirty in this
game. I feel like they stuck very well
to who Jahira is from Boulder skate one and two which is an
extremely intelligent, calculating but very kind
hearted person who is just capable of getting shit done and

(01:52:17):
that comes across as Jahira fromlike the moment she opens her
mouth in her introduction. So I think they they did they of
all of the returning characters they did her by far the best
IMO. Yeah, I think I'm going to
approach it a little bit differently since, like, from
the tabletop perspective, since that's like my finesse compared

(01:52:43):
to your guys's experience with Baldur's Gate one and two.
Like, whenever I'm playing a tabletop campaign, you know, one
of the first things you have to work on is like, what factions
are going to be in your campaign?
Are you going to make your own? Are you going to use the
official ones? Because the Harpers are the
Harpers and the Zantarum are official, like canonized
factions in the game. And every single time I read a

(01:53:05):
single thing about the Harpers in any official material, I just
start falling asleep at the page.
Oh my God, they're so fucking boring.
And then you start raving about the Zentarum and it's like, oh,
Black network, they got the serpent thing, they got pass
phrases, they got like all this shit going on with Manchoon,
who's not even in this game. It's like, oh man, all that
shits awesome. But but despite all of that,

(01:53:29):
Jahira really does bring you into the cause of the Harpers.
Like she feels like what a leader is supposed to be.
And I truly, truly, truly think that the Harpers as a faction in
this game would I, I wouldn't even remember their name right
now if it wasn't for Jahira. She's she's that good at
instantiating them as an important group in this game.

(01:53:53):
Yeah, I agree. I don't know too much about the
tabletop shit, but as far as what you're saying about her,
like being a leader and all thatshit, I think that that comes
across really well in this game.Like, like I said, they they
they do Jahira really well. Because next time we meet I'm
going to have a lot of boomer shit to complain about.
But Jahira, I have nothing to complain about whatsoever.

(01:54:16):
Did you guys have any other questions you wanted to ask her?
I had a question but I forgot it.
Was it Jahira related? It's something that Tom said
like a minute ago, but it's gone.
Well, I do want to follow up on the thing.
I do want to follow up on that. Wait, you could have done the
soundboard. Tom, my my voice is the

(01:54:39):
soundboard bitch. I wanted to follow up on one
thing that I mentioned when we talked about Act One, which is
the only example of a thing in the game that I saw Larian did
not anticipate the player doing.When you first get the Last
light in, Shahira figures out that you are infected because

(01:55:03):
she has the tadpole and it reacts to you, right?
And you'll pretty much always get that cutscene.
I think it's like a pretty closeto automatic trigger once you're
in Last Light in. However, you can stealth into
Last Light in and you can do Halson's quest before
interacting and getting that cutscene, and then you take

(01:55:26):
control of Halson once he's in your party and you walk into
Last Light in and Oh my God thisgame sucks.
The mindflayer parasite still reacts to Halson as a character
even though he doesn't have mind.
This game sucks. That's funny.
I thought you were going to say the opposite.
I thought you could say they hada fucking like a use case for
that and which I was going to shit all over the floor right
now, but. That that would have been

(01:55:48):
technically fucking absurd. Yeah, exactly.
I have AI have A to hear a question just out of curiosity.
I did not actually play with heras like a combat character at
any point in Boulder Skate 3. What did they make her default
class? This is just like a.
Some kind of druid? Yeah, curiosity question.

(01:56:09):
Yeah, she's just like a druid. She's like a druid fighter.
It's like a caster druid. At least that's what I'm doing.
Like she has like Ice Storm or whatever that shit's called.
Yeah, I think it's just Druid every time.
I I never really like attack with her, I just wild shape.
So I'm actually not sure, but I think it's just Druid.
She's she dual wields. I don't know if that changes.
Anything scimitars, yeah. But no, she's not a fighter

(01:56:30):
druid like she was in the original game.
She's just straight druid I think, unless you respect her.
OK, yeah, that was that was boomBoomer curious so.
The wiki just says Circle of Landrid.
Got it. So I get I remember my question
is what's is something that likesets there with like the lore
and everything of like a bunch of like the characters and

(01:56:51):
everything. I feel like this game doesn't
really like tell you what's going on with like the back
story of things unless you like you really go digging for it.
I don't know if that's just me and if I'm like looking in the
wrong places, but like, I don't really know what's going on with
like a lot of the characters if they don't just like say things
to you. When you say back story, what do
you mean? You know how like there's like
notes and shit in the game whereyou would think that's where

(01:57:11):
it's going to tell you a lot about like the world and stuff,
but then it's just like 3 lines of it being like daddy, thank
you for taking me to school, signed your daughter or
whatever. There's no like actually like
world setting or anything with kind of like the like
environmental kind of like emails and shit that you would
see in other games. You don't agree with that?
I think maybe you like, maybe they show up in specific places.

(01:57:34):
I'm not sure. But if you read a lot of like
the books, like the books specifically will give you a lot
of the world building. I mean, if you're just reading
like notes, right? Like think about what a note is.
It's going to be a fucking Christmas list from a nine year
old. But if you actually read a lot
of the books, especially in likethe Library in Char or in the

(01:57:55):
Gauntlet of Char and all that shit, that'll give you a ton of
background information. And like, I know I don't know
where they show up, but I know for a fact there's a bunch of
books that will just straight uptell you like the entire story
of what happens in Bulger's Gate1 and 2.
But there's like tons of world building that's done in the

(01:58:16):
background. This, This is why I was asking
because I wasn't sure if you meant like the actual like story
of the game or the plot of the game, or if you just meant like
that background radiation world building.
Because I feel like there's, there's a, there's like an
overwhelming amount of that stuff.
I think I don't realize my problem is keyboard mouse and
it's tough to figure out what you can move in an environment.

(01:58:36):
Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of like subtle things they
do too. Like there's a or, or like maybe
not, maybe subtle's not the right word, but like even like
more visual storytelling almost where like there's a grave you
can go to outside of the gauntlet char and you find the
wedding ring and you have to like find the matching wedding
ring or something like that. Like it tells you a lot about

(01:58:58):
the two people that were buried at these places.
But also, I mentioned another episode a while ago that I
forget what the game was, but itneeded a Catholic Thorm.
I think it was when we were talking about Torment, it needed
a Catholic Thorm that kind of ties all three acts together.
And the reason I said that is because even though Catholic is
only introduced in Act 2, you actually get a lot of

(01:59:20):
information about him if you read like the books and notes
like Thomas is talking about. Like there's a lot of notes in
Act One that like go into very great detail about Catherick's
worship of Soluna and like some more subtle stuff about like why
he abandoned Soluna and then took on Char and then abandoned

(01:59:42):
Char after he died and then tookon Merkel afterwards and like
stuff like that. I think it's really interesting.
You're kind of right that it might be a little bit too in the
background, but I think there isa lot there.
Yeah I think literally my problem is just that I'm on
keyboard mouse and look like area looting is fucking
impossible. Like I'd probably leave so much
shit on the ground and everything because holding down

(02:00:04):
alt doesn't show it and that's GG.
Well, I mean I will. Say, I will say though, like if
there's like a bookshelf or something, odds are there's
gonna be shit on there to read and odds are that's gonna fill
you in on some like some, some detail on something.
So like, there's a lot of bookshelves in the game and
there's a lot of books in the game.
And like like don't get me wrong, like I said, when I say

(02:00:26):
this stuff is subtle, I also mean that it is just hard to
find. Like there there are entire side
quests in this game that are hard to find, let alone a random
book and a random alcove and a random area you know?
Yeah, and that's what I'm sayingtoo, that it's like, it's kind
of overwhelming as well because like, there are a fuck ton of
books. And like, some books may like,
literally describe the entire first Baldur's Gate trilogy in

(02:00:47):
like, excruciating detail, setting up the entire Canon for
what led into Baldur's Gate 3. And then a lot of other books
are just going to like, fucking describe a recipe for cake or
some shit. Yeah, I feel like the books that
I'm thinking of right now are like fucking like alchemic books
that I found in like the fuckingtower and Act wanted shit where
it was just. I just told you like.
Yeah, well, and. Make a.

(02:01:08):
Shit and and those I think a lotof those like the reason why
those stick out is because I think since those are recipe
books, they add to your alchemical like index meaning
and also they show up when you press alt.
So they stick out like a sore thick.
Exactly. Whereas like a lot of the books
just sitting on shelves and shit, you just kind of got to
hover over them and then right click read or whatever.

(02:01:29):
The books on bookshelves don't show up with alt.
I don't think. So none of them, Yeah.
Oh. My.
God, oh it is so bad it's fucking crazy.
How did you even do the library in the Gauntlet of Char?
Which? Was the library.
The the where you get the spear.First time I played this game,
dude, this game took me I think like 90 hours to beat the first
time because I was very meticulous and I read

(02:01:51):
everything. Is it the library?
Just? Is that where you just jump over
the panels and pull the levers? No, the library was the one
where you had to find the book and insert it into the slot to
get the door to open. Yeah, with the librarian enemy
and like the little zombie dudesthat are wandering around in in
there. Why?
Don't I remember this at all? It's the room where you were.
You're silenced until you destroyed like the little ball

(02:02:13):
in the center of the room. Every single bookshelf was
trapped. Did you get this?
You have to do this right. Did you did?
You get the spear I. Had a spear.
She threw that shit away, yeah. No, no, not the one.
When you go down to the Night Song, did you have another spear
leading up to that that didn't have a cutscene?

(02:02:35):
Baby. I mean, what you guys?
It was a name. It was a.
Yeah, did you have to? Did you have to insert a book
into a pedestal? I don't remember doing that.
I'm gonna have to find this. What the fuck?
What the fuck, Spirit of Shadow?Heart throw away then.
No OK so this is the the spear that you get in that cutscene

(02:02:56):
I'm pretty sure or not sorry notin that cutscene.
The spear that you get in the library is a fake one.
It's not like the actual spear of night from Char's fucking
like that. When you get there, the spear of
night manifests in Shadow Heartshand as the true one.
Because this is like it's time. It's time to prove yourself.
I didn't know that well, what's the point of the library then?

(02:03:17):
I don't. I didn't.
Char is char, dude. What the fuck's the library?
I don't know what that is. It's not.
It's not. At all.
I mean, it's not a trial. Right, I'm confused because I
thought shadow heart will literally leave your party if
you don't do that like. In the in the Gauntlet of Char
there's three trials where you get the three orbs.
Yeah, I did that. There's a fourth one that's a

(02:03:40):
big library in the center of it.It's like you start at the top
and you go down. It's like a big auditorium
almost. At the middle of it is a big
black orb that silences the entire room 'cause you're in a
library, right? And there's like 5 or 6
skeletons that you fight. You walk around, you have to
press a button to open a big oldgate.
And then there's a bunch of likebooks, bookshelves, they're all

(02:04:00):
trapped. And to solve the puzzle, you
have to get the right book and put it into the pedestal.
Hey guys, I didn't do any of that.
That's crazy because like, I swear to God, when you when you
put in that. First Umbrel gem that like
activates the elevator. Shadow Heart just straight up
says like, hey, you know, I wantto become a dark justice here
and in order to do that there's a spear around here and I need

(02:04:22):
to go get it. And I thought if you just ignore
her and go on the elevator and just continue on, she will get
pissed and leave. I thought that that was like a
thing that happens. It might be like an approval
thing, like maybe if she like, maybe she feels more strongly
about that if she doesn't like you or whatever.

(02:04:43):
That's. Crazy.
All I know the the reason I saidthat I think that spear is fake
is because there are two different items that are the
Spears of night and there's the one you get in that room and
then there's a second one that is much more powerful if you
become a darkness this year. Well I thought the IT just like
levels up if you kill the night song right?

(02:05:04):
That's when it becomes like the plus 3 spear with the fucking
like blindy power buff thingy onit it.
Might replace it, I'm not sure. It I can tell you factually it
replaces it. OK, yeah, but you like get that
spear even if you didn't have the one in the room.
Yeah, yeah, that part I didn't know.

(02:05:24):
That's crazy. What the hell?
Mind blown bro. Still be finding new stuff every
time you play like I've I found the new shit in the mind flayer
colony this playthrough. OK, I have a Catherick Thorne
question which just dawned on metoday actually.
So I know that he worshipped Solune and then I know that

(02:05:47):
obviously he began worshipping Char because like, I mean, it's
kind of self-evident based on getting into the gauntlet of
Char. What was like the transition
from him going from Char worshipto Merkel worship?
Like, I mean, I know it was likewanting to resurrect his
daughter or whatever, but like what was like the motivation

(02:06:08):
behind each of those things? Like why leave Solune and then
why leave Char? I could have my timeline wrong
but I'm pretty sure he died and he was like resurrected as the
chosen of Merkel afterwards and his abandonment of char was less

(02:06:30):
to do with abandoning char and more to do with going to Merkel
because Merkel res his daughter.I thought that he, I thought
that he turned to Merkel to resurrect his daughter.
I didn't think that he died. I thought that the whole thing
was like Isabel died and he losthis shit and he was like well
fuck char it's Merkel time. Like that meme of the guy

(02:06:53):
looking back at the hotter girl or whatever and that was what
led to it. I didn't think he died it I just
I heard. Reviewed it and he died
apparently. Yeah, sure.
Per yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. If you read like I think there's
a bunch of like books and notes and shit hot and right when that
go over Riflin being very pissedoff at Catherick for the curse

(02:07:17):
that he unleashed upon the land.So they killed him, and then
he's resurrected by Merkel. So did Char curse the land just
because she was pissed at Catherick?
No, I like, I think part of the reason the curse came was
Catherick's worship of char. Like that's kind of intrinsic.
Oh, OK. I see.

(02:07:39):
And then it just lingered afterwards because she's a petty
bitch and she'd be like that. I think like, like I think like
part of it more specifically is Char kind of like reclaiming
that land as hers because the entire area where Selenite
followers just she was like, Nah, you guys are going to be
stuck in darkness now. Yeah, yeah.

(02:07:59):
I was just confused because likeit was only this playthrough
where I like actually managed toput together like wait, why is
there a char in like temple dedicated to Catherick when he's
a Merkel man? So I'm I'm slow on the uptake is
basically what I'm trying to say.
I just, I just couldn't. No, yeah.

(02:08:20):
Like I, I think it is something that like, you know, to bring it
back to like, criticisms of the narrative is like, I really like
the idea of Catherick being thislike jumping from God to God to
God. Night Song kind of calls him out
for it, but the way it's presented does leave a lot of

(02:08:40):
holes that are kind of difficultto follow as we are discussing
right now, you know? I think that there's a like
pragmatic reason for that, whichis if they want to explain all
of that shit, it required voice acting for this game.
That's fair. That makes sense.
OK. Anything else for narrative you

(02:09:01):
guys want to do or shall we go into the questions?
Questions work for me. Going.
To make sure that I pasted thesein the same order that I have
them in my notes, Yes. OK.
How does the? Suite of abilities, resources
and items affect your gameplay experience?

(02:09:22):
Are there too many options of varying quality, meaning
incredibly broken stuff that causes you not to use worse
stuff? Does a hit a sweet spot or do
you not care? Did your feelings on this change
between act one and two And why or why not?
Why don't we start with Ben? So speaking from a UX
perspective, it's probably superoverwhelming, probably more so

(02:09:45):
on keyboard and mouse and controller, the sheer amount of
things that you get an act to. That being said, I do generally
enjoy like all the different options even more so I feel like
there's like a couple of power spikes you have in this game.
The first one, which is an act one that I think is like level
5. I think that's like extra attack
for all your melees. You finally get an AOE spell for

(02:10:09):
your Wizards and stuff like that.
But in Act 2, like you start getting into like level 4 and
five, you get a lot more varied options.
Also your class kits, like one of the new ones that I'm doing
that I never did before was likeone of the new classes.
I think it's like shadow Sorcerer and I'm I'm definitely

(02:10:30):
under utilizing it, but like thethe the different amounts, like
strategies you can have just by having like a summon on your
sorcerer is pretty cool, even though I've never really used it
because it requires you. It requires, not requires, but
incentivizes you to use like different elements.
So they probably expect you to have like all the different
caring trips, but I just use Eldridge splash.

(02:10:52):
So it's really just an extra body to distract.
But even then, like you also geta lot more summons to which I
think also count as like additional resources that you
get in this act like you get us and actually that might be it,

(02:11:12):
but us is probably like one of the better ones.
I. Mean there are a lot of like
neutral party members who like all the Harpers and shit like
that. Well, not in my playthrough
because I think, you know, but yeah, in a normal place, yeah,
you do get those guys. I think holistically it can be a
problem to have like all these different things.

(02:11:35):
Not be necessarily because it's overwhelming, which can be
probably, but more so because I feel like it can upset the
balance of like the resource management.
Because in that one we already talked about how it was a
problem that you might not long rest enough to get a lot of the
really cool and sometimes in my opinion, critical cutscenes.

(02:11:55):
But in Act 2, like you just get so much more like that.
You just never need to rest. And also I kind of lied earlier
where I said I didn't try anything new in this
playthrough, but I have actuallynever played a Bard before.
So Mintharo is a, a Barden and Idon't really use the paladin
stuff all that much actually. But one thing I will say is the

(02:12:18):
Bard gets that ability that sayslike you basically get a third
short rest. And I just I've I've actually
had to like force myself to the long rest like repeatedly just
to make sure I got all the cutscenes because of like like
even in my other playthroughs without having used a Bard, it
was already a problem not resting ever.

(02:12:41):
But like that just amplified it.It made me like actively like go
against my natural senses of playing a game like this where I
want to min Max that kind of stuff where I'm just like, no, I
do need these cutscenes. I care about like certain
narrative beats. So I would just find the point
where I like basically this is kind of like a this is

(02:13:02):
absolutely like min maxing. But like, if you ever know that
you need to long rest, that's the time where you just rest
repeatedly right after that. Cause like the long rest is the
one that matters, the one that you use your food for.
And then you just do a bunch of like regular, not long rests the
the rest where you don't need toget all the cutscenes.
So that's what I did. And I feel like, I feel like I,

(02:13:27):
I mean, I didn't have to do that, but I did.
And it's and it's because like you just have so many resources
that you never need to rest ever.
Yeah, you saying that actually made me totally forget about
Song of Rest from Bards because this is my first playthrough in
a while not having one. And that thing absolutely just

(02:13:49):
fundamentally changes your like day-to-day resource management
in this game. And it's also really funny
comparing it to tabletop becausethat is absolutely just the most
useless ability bar none, and tabletop it is trash.
Yeah this is my first play through playing with a Bard and
yeah that ability is like fucking OP.

(02:14:11):
Not OP but like very nice convenience factor to it.
How about you, Thomas? So I think if you would have
asked me before this playthroughif there were like too many
abilities and it was overwhelming, I would have
absolutely said yes. But well, I think that maybe

(02:14:36):
that's true for certain, like caster classes, like like a
cleric maybe. In this playthrough, I actually
bothered to press the the the the K key on my keyboard and set
up all of my bars with abilitiesin like a very specific way that

(02:15:00):
catered to what I was doing withall of my characters.
And what I found was there's actually not that many abilities
on these fucking characters. Like now a big caveat to that
statement is the fact that I'm literally playing 4 Marshall
classes right now. Well, in a paladin I guess, but

(02:15:22):
like, it's pretty funny how I would have initially thought
that there's way too many abilities, it's way too
overwhelming, there's so much visual clutter.
And that's just because I never knew to turn off the auto add
skills and spells button in the fucking options because it just
adds them in this like haphazard, random fucking way

(02:15:44):
that just makes it so hard to parse out in the PC or in the
keyboard mouse UI. Like what all of this shit is.
So like once you actually kind of streamline your bars and set
them up and like kind of throw out all of like the useless
bullshit that you're never gonnacast because it just kind of
comes with the cleric territory or whatever.

(02:16:06):
There's really not that many. And it's really just a fault of
the way that they default set upthe keyboard mouse UI, which is
just the most dog water poopy butt shit on the planet.
Which says nothing to the fact that today something fucking
broke all of the work I put intobuilding those bars.

(02:16:27):
And I don't know why because literally all of my skills reset
and turned into gobbledygook again, which pissed me off
really bad, let's just say that.But overall, like I think a lot
of it is if you actually go through all of your abilities
and all of your spells and realize that you're really just
going to use a handful of these.There's really not that many

(02:16:49):
there. There you have access to a shit
load, but you're not casting nearly all of them.
And like, especially with like my monk, right?
The monk is pressing like 3 different buttons even though I
have 10, I'm barely pressing anyof those.
Same thing with Bard. Bard has a shit ton of spells.
I have like all of these different flourishes for melee

(02:17:10):
and range, but really at the endof the day I'm pressing like
four of these buttons. So I guess I settled on the fact
that maybe there are too many and maybe it is a little bit
overwhelming. But if you put a little bit of
time in it, just setting up yourbars the right way, it goes a
long way to giving you Peace of Mind in fighting with the shitty
keyboard mouse UI. Do you think that like kind of

(02:17:35):
having that struggle of managingall of it, but having more
options is better than having fewer options?
Restate that in a way that doesn't confuse me.
Would you rather, for your gameplay experience, have to
manage that UI so that you have more options, or would you

(02:17:57):
rather just have fewer options and not have to manage the UI
issues? No, I wouldn't want them to
flatten the complexity because like, even though like I have
access to a ton of shit and I'm only using a few of the shit, I
still put all of the shit on thebars.
I just put them in a way that's just kind of like a little more
out of sight, out of mind, but Iknow that it's there.

(02:18:21):
So if there's ever like some weird corner case where I want
to try something, I think it's important that they're there
because I again, I know that they're there and if I want to
try to do something with them, then it's good that I have
access to them. Gotcha.
How about you, Sir? So for your same question one

(02:18:41):
right? Yeah, the suite of abilities
that you. Have.
Yeah, for me, for me it's like still pretty overwhelming, but
like dropping GAIL so I don't have to deal with like going
through wizard spells was nice. And then also just playing on
the easy difficulty where basically all I have to do is
just like walk up and use one ability and everything and they
just all die. And a lot of times that's basic

(02:19:02):
attack helps a lot. And yeah, I just, I just think
there's like a huge learning curve if you don't have any like
the indie background or anythingfor this game.
But like luckily I think journalist difficulty like kind
of solves that issue quite a bit.
Would you say that some of that is like, like what are your

(02:19:22):
overall feelings on that? Is that hurting your experience,
or is it mitigated by the fact that it's reduced in complexity
because of the difficulties later?
I think, I don't think I wouldn't say it's hurting.
I wouldn't say I'm having a worse experience.
I would say I'm having a less engaged gameplay experience than
you guys are because the amount of like work that I would need
to put in to like engage with itwould like almost feels like the

(02:19:44):
amount of work that I need to put in, like the learning
Japanese. Like it feels like a like an
actual skill that I would need to learn in order to interface
with the game in a way that the game like wants you to in a way
that is like proficient and likemin Max basically.
And so, yeah, instead of doing that, I just ticked it down.
So I get like less of a gameplayexperience.
But like, I I like the the narrative and kind of everything

(02:20:04):
else going on enough that I don't think it's like a truly
worst experience overall. But I'm I'm sure you would say
it would be a far worse experience if it didn't give you
the explorer option and suddenlythe game is like Baldur's Gate
one and two or like fucking Wrath of the Righteous 3 E shit
like that. Yeah, I think it would be much
worse definitely from like ATV in perspective too, or just like

(02:20:24):
having to interface with the system that like, yeah,
basically just like beating my head against the wall into
figuring out or just Googling fucking builds or like good
items or something to like actually find rather than just
kind of vibe to the game. So I will say that to some
extent I do agree. But I think if you just kind of

(02:20:45):
spent like, I don't know, 45 minutes giving yourself like a
decent baseline for the rules of5th edition.
And like the way that the dice rules work and the way that
saves work and the way that armor class works.
And just kind of like the very like basic just umbrella.

(02:21:05):
The only real TDM is going to bejust literally reading the
spells to see what they do, which even I have to do.
Like I I cannot tell you exactlyhow many fucking damaged dice
you roll when you fucking cast fireball, for example.
And that's like one of the most basic spells there is.
I think it's like, I think it's 6D6, but I'm not even sure if
that's right. But like, yeah, exactly.

(02:21:28):
It's fucking AD 6. So like, I think once you just
have a really basic grasp of therules, then the rest just kind
of fills itself in like as you like.
Here's my process, right? Because like I said, I do not
know what every single spell does off the top of my head.
When I level up and I get accessto like a new level of spells,

(02:21:48):
like let's say I get like level 4, level 5 cleric spells or
whatever. I am not going to know what each
one of those do. What I'm going to do is I'm
going to hover over each of themand if the name sounds cool,
then I'm going to read them. I'm going to judge a book by its
cover. And if that skill sounds cool,
I'm going to fucking use it. I'm just going to, I'm going to
bend that skill to my will to make it do what I want it to do,

(02:22:10):
which is like kill the enemies or like whatever, right?
And I think that this is like a really good game at giving you
that power to just like leveragealmost anything in a way that
can like be productive for what you're trying to do in the game.
But like I said, if you don't have just like the general

(02:22:33):
background and just like the just the rule system as a whole,
that's I mean, that's just fucking impossible.
Because when you know the rules,you can just eyeball a spell and
be like, you know, if this save is like too high, this is dog
shit. If these damaged dice are too
low, it's dog shit. But again, if you don't know
what any of that means, then you're just going to be trying

(02:22:54):
to use like shit spells that just fucking suck.
But even with that you can stillmake them work in some way or
another most of the time. Unless you're trying to like
fucking acid spray everything todeath the whole game or
something. There, you, you just made me
think of something that actuallydoes frustrate me about like the
number of abilities. And it does have to be specific,

(02:23:17):
more so with spell casting, specifically concentration.
I don't like that there's so many of them when you really can
only use one by the nature of how the mechanic will work.
I. Think I think I think
concentration is actually a pretty bad mechanic IMO.
I feel like a lot of the especially the lower level
concentration spills are very low impact and when your

(02:23:39):
concentration is broken it fucksyou.
Up. I think it's kind of a problem
of the adaptation because I think when you have a much
broader range of choices in likeyou do in tabletop could like
you can just choose anything, you can make shut up if you want
to, then I think that issue is much less prominent.

(02:24:00):
But like concentration spells are typically going to be like
pretty flashy, pretty powerful, like spirit guardians, for
example. And obviously those are the ones
that they're going to want to bring into Baldur's Gate 3
because they're iconic, they're powerful, they're fun.
But that means that you have like, if you have like a 5050
like 50% concentration, 50% non concentration arrangement of

(02:24:21):
spells, then that's going to mean it's way too heavy on the
concentration side for exactly the reason you guys are saying.
I think that's a fair call out. I know.
Yeah, I agree with a lot of whatyou guys said.
I don't have a ton to add, but Ijust want to comment that I
think that, and this is, you know, kind of self-inflicted,
but I think that repeated honor mode playthroughs have led me to

(02:24:47):
feeling like part of the reason I put that bit in about varying
quality is because I feel like honor mode really forces you and
pigeon holes you into certain builds.
And like, yeah, there's some variety that you can do, but
like, you're going to struggle alittle more if you don't have a
tower problem. You're going to struggle a
little bit more if you don't have like a radiant or build and

(02:25:09):
like I said, kind of self-inflicted.
But I feel like when you push a game to its limits in terms of
difficulty, that's when you're going to see some of things
things pop out. And I just think that I don't
want to say that the game is unbalanced.
It probably is. But yeah, I just think when
you're on honor mode and you're forced into those playthroughs,
that kind of gets old after a while.

(02:25:31):
And I wish there was a little bit more build variety in terms
of like what was reasonable to do for things like, you know,
the Apostle of Merkel and shit like that.
Because I truly don't think I have ever beaten that boss
without a radiant or build, for what that's worth.
Yeah, I, yeah, I just felt like,and that's why I lowered the
difficulty because like after like 20 turns and he went back

(02:25:55):
to full health. I was like I I have a like a
fundamental problem with the builds I'm using for this
specific fight. Yeah, and a lot of good times
just cause of how the game for sometimes you get stuck in those
builds because of the items thatyou like.
Maybe you sold it to a vendor. Fucking ages now you can't get
it back and shit like that. Yeah, very true.

(02:26:20):
OK, go ahead and move on to question 2.
Wait, got to double check this is 1.
I have an order here. Yep, but the story now fully
underway. Do Acts 1 and 2 connect well to
each other narratively and artistically?
How did the wait for the narrative pay off?
Meaning how long the game waitedto tell you what the core

(02:26:40):
conflict would be affect your experience?
Consider connecting this back tothe tonal shift.
We discussed it. We discussed from the Nautiloid
to the Emerald Grove environs. I kind of shot myself in the
foot with this one and overwrotesome of these questions into the
narrative section, so if this one's a little bit shorter, it's
OK. But sesh, why don't you go ahead

(02:27:02):
and start? Yeah, I think the, I think it's
kind of feels like pretty disconnected.
Like I feel like Act One kind ofoperates like on its own almost
because like it could go basically anywhere from there
because of how like open-ended it basically is without like the
introduction of basically anything that comes in Act 2.
And so I think they feel like pretty, pretty like separate and

(02:27:23):
almost to the point of where like I don't give a fuck about
like the gortash and orange shityet.
And like our like, cuz the elderbrain means nothing to me,
right? Like the first time they said
elder brain was my first introduction to what an elder
brain even is. So I don't know if you guys have
like a oh shit, it's an elder brain moment like that I would
miss out on because of just not being familiar with the world or
anything. But yeah, that to me it was just

(02:27:43):
kind of like, OK, I guess I careabout this now.
I think just commenting on that,like even if you know what an
elder brain is, I think what exactly is going on with it is
pretty surprising. Like if if there are elephants,
there's going to be an elder brain that is like typically
understood if you play tabletop.But the thing that makes it the

(02:28:03):
like big scary monster that it is, is the thing that wouldn't
be in tabletop, which is the crown of Carsus that it has on
its head that they're using to manipulate it and shit.
So I think they still like have some unique stuff going on.
So you're not totally missing out.
Yeah, 'cause like an elder brainin fucking 5th edition is what,
like CR14 or something? It's not like some like wacky

(02:28:26):
crazy apocalyptic fucking monster but having the fucking
crown makes it this like world ender fucking thing.
Yeah, they're the kind of thing that you don't want anywhere
near your water supply. But you know, if they're often
BFE then you're probably good. Wait, so why is the crown the
problem? You might talk to GAIL a little

(02:28:48):
bit about it and learn more about it in Act 3, but it's just
like a super powerful artefact that both makes it a lot
stronger than it already is and also allows Catherine Corncor
attached to control it with those stones.
Yeah, they they talk about it atthe end of Act 2, but it's
basically like a crown that was made by the Netharis, who are

(02:29:10):
just like this ancient civilization who were like mega
super duper like attuned to magic.
And yeah, they put that shit on an elder brain and now they're
manipulating it. Got it.
Thomas, you want to go next? Yeah, unfortunately, I kind of

(02:29:35):
kind of shot my load a bit at the beginning of the narrative
section here because I forgot about the question, but I don't
have a ton to add to what I said.
But I guess I'll just kind of restate it, which is I, I think
they really should have laid more of a groundwork in Act One
for what was going to come in Act 2.

(02:29:59):
And I think I understand some ofthe reasons, like, again, from
like a production perspective for why they did it, which was
that I think they wanted to keepa certain amount of the overall
story of the game kind of hiddenwhile the game was in early
Access. And so like, I mean, if you

(02:30:22):
don't know, basically all early access was, was Act 1.
The entirety of Act One every step of the way is what early
Access was for this game. So I don't think they wanted to
lay out too many like obvious bread crumbs necessarily.
Or they at least wanted to like keep you guessing going into act
2, which is like the only way I can justify the lack of

(02:30:45):
foundation for act 2. But like I mentioned before,
like the fact that they don't clue you into anything about
what happens in Act 2 and then you go down into like underneath
moonrise Tower and this like fucking Oran like clown looking

(02:31:05):
bitch is there. This fucking like grizzled nerd
is there. And then Catherick is there.
And like it, it doesn't feel as much as of like a holy shit
reveal as much as it is like a who the fuck are these nerds and
why should I give a fuck, Which I think is a really like bad
reaction to like a big reveal for who the like main

(02:31:30):
triumvirate villain trio is. So again, just going from
nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing,
nothing Dead 3 Elder brain marching on Balder's gate go
yeah, was just like really abrupt and jarring, especially
given, you know, by the point that we get there, it's like 30

(02:31:50):
hours into a game, right? So I think a lot of that is just
pacing issues. I think even if they hadn't laid
any sort of foundation in Act one, but they like kicked it
into high gear immediately in Act 2, then it would have been a
little better. But they don't really do that

(02:32:12):
because like they don't really do that until everything that
happens with the Night Song. And that's like literally the
end of Act 2. So it's just pacing issues.
I think it's not wanting to giveyou too much in the early access
portion of the game. And it could have been made
better, let's just put it that way.

(02:32:35):
Agreed. No notes.
Well. Said.
That. Yeah, I have a lot written down.
I'm not sure if I answered this question the same way as
everyone else. I kind of concentrated
specifically on like the sequence of events from near the
end of Act one throughout Act 2.And I do think I guess speak a

(02:32:56):
little bit more positively aboutit.
I think that if this isn't that positive, it's because if you
are like a not necessarily a minMax, but let's say like it's
like your second or third playthrough and you kind of
already know everything. If you experience the game in
like a completionist way in in sort of like a linear way that

(02:33:16):
you guys were saying before about act two were like the
critical path. The linearity to it is like
really good. Is am I putting words in
people's mouths or is that kind of like the general sentiment
here? No I agree, I I do think Act 2
is good from a critical path perspective.
OK, well I'm going to throw a wrench into that.
I'm going to tell the story of my very first playthrough.

(02:33:40):
So in my very first playthrough,I went to the crash first before
the Underdark. I did the whole crash.
And you know how when you technically the Emerald Grove
and the crash or the Monastery, like two different areas that
are connect, like if you travel in between them, you're forced
into a long rest even if they don't tell you?

(02:34:03):
OK. So if you do that, if you do the
crush 1st and I went to travel back to act like the other act
one areas so I could go to the underdog, which I didn't go
through yet. You're forced into a long rest
and you get this cutscene with Voss and he like gives you all
this information and you end this cutscene with Lazal going

(02:34:25):
like, don't worry about everything.
We're going to go to Baldur's Gate and we're going to go find
Catholic form. And my question raft that was
like, who the fuck is Catholic form?
So I think due to like the open endedness of the systems like
and I feel like this will affectfirst time players a lot more.
You might get like a really fucked up sequence of like story

(02:34:49):
offense depending on how you go through it or like if you skip
something like if you skip the crash, I feel like, well, I feel
less strongly about it now, but I still feel like there's like a
lot of like, if not important, at least like really cool stuff
and information you learned there.
But let's move on to the rest ofthis, which is the rest of my

(02:35:09):
first playthrough going into Act2.
So this is right after. I do want to mention that the
fact that they give you that cutscene that is kind of like
mandatory where they say like goto Moonrise towers, find
Catholic Storm. I think you have to see that
cutscene. So at the bare minimum,
regardless of how broken your path to it was, you do go into

(02:35:31):
Act 2 with the information you need.
Go to moonrise towers, find Catholic storm.
When I first got into act two, the first thing I noticed was
the shadow curse and whatever I was thinking before, Not
important anymore. The most important thing was to
immediately go to Google. How do I fix this?
Because I'm going to uninstall the game unless I can fix this

(02:35:54):
fucking curse. So that led me down through this
whole rabbit hole where instead of going to Moonrise Towers,
instead of going to meet Catholic form, I went to Last
Light. I did the whole thing with the
drieder, I freed the ferry and then I still stuck around.
Last night I found about I foundout about Art Kolag in the whole
curse thing and that was very compelling to me.

(02:36:16):
So I just again, instead of going to Moonrise Towers,
instead of being Catholic, I didthe whole quest line with with
Oliver, all that. And then I ended up going to the
House of healing and I end up I go more north and I see Raphael
was like, oh, that guys, cool. He gives me this whole quest
line by going to cunt with a shark.

(02:36:36):
I do the whole cunt with a sharkand then I get that message
where it's like, if you proceed,this is the point of no return.
And then I was like, this is what I went into like text
message. That's I think that's how we
were talking about this game back then.
We were like texting each other and I was like, is this a point
of no return? I haven't gone to Moonrise
towers yet. And everyone's like, that's

(02:36:57):
literally the first thing you'resupposed to do is go to Moonrise
towers. So after I do the Gauntlet
Shore, I finally for the first time get to Raith Windtown to go
to Moonrise Towers. And then I start finding about
all about like Catholic's relatives.
But it was like a really weird experience for me.
Like I felt like Catholic was a lot less cool than me in that

(02:37:18):
place because while I was learning about his relatives and
his back story, in the back of my mind I already knew about
like the whole overarching like main story about like the
Gauntlet of Char. So I was like I was learning
about Catholic, but like I didn't know it was supposed to
be more important to me at the time.
So I guess to kind of summarize all that, I think that if you do

(02:37:41):
like a completionist kind of intended critical path through
the game, I think that the connective tissue between acts
one and two, it holds it pretty well.
But if you bumble around and do like all these these
self-inflicted problems, you canhave a very unique but not
necessarily good experience in Act 2.

(02:38:06):
Yeah, I never, I, I never quite considered getting in and doing
the Gauntlet of Char before evergoing to Moonrise.
That is very unique and like hardly even going to Wraithwin
Village. Like I can only imagine what the
look on my face would have been if I saw Balthazar with no
context of who he was or. Anything I I will give the

(02:38:27):
riders credit. They they account for that.
So I killed Balthazar and when Iwent to Moonrise towers role was
like gruelling bee like she asked me like no, I think I
brought up myself to her that I knew Balthazar.
She's like really she tries to like telepathically like send a
message to either him or someonethat like can communicate with
him, but since he's dead, she's like, oh, he's not like

(02:38:50):
returning my psychic call. I'll just take.
Your word for it? You're cool.
That's funny. Man, that's good stuff.
That's really interesting. So one thing I will say is that
I do think that the way that thegame kind of flip flops its
priorities between Acts 1 and 2 is pretty interesting.

(02:39:12):
And the way I was thinking aboutit, like the way you describe
your experience with Act 2, kindof like shoots what my thoughts
were in the foot because what I was thinking was like Act one, I
think the game, the game gives you like like a blank, a blank
page, right? And a lot of what you can do in

(02:39:33):
Act 1 is just like whatever the fuck you want to stumble on and
do. And then Act 2 is when it kind
of like zooms in and focuses way, way, way more on that
critical path. So like even though act one has
like some critical path items, Iwould struggle to define exactly
what the ACT one critical path is meant to be if there is even

(02:39:55):
meant to be 1. Whereas in act 2 it feels like
pretty clearly defined and it's funny to hear how how I thought
that was clearly defined. You managed to find a way to
circumvent that fucking entirelyit.
It all started with the Shadow curse.
It was a problem that needed immediate, immediate solving.

(02:40:20):
Well, I think it's still really interesting like because I
always think of act 2 as like super linear generally.
Like maybe that's because I tendto do a lot of the same things
like, you know, getting my ferrygoing to moonrise, killing the
easy people, go to Kaala Deshar,blah, blah, blah.
But I think that even though that linearity is still for

(02:40:42):
pretty firmly there, I think like the railroad into the
gauntlet of Shar is pretty firm.I still think it's really
interesting that there is so much dynamicism that broadly
changes that critical path. Like we talked earlier about the
Balthazar thing, that's a huge change.
And I just think that Thomas, stop distracting me with Chad.

(02:41:06):
I have that pulled up while I'm trying to talk.
Jesus. Yeah, that's all I have to say
now. I'm distracted.
Fuck you, Thomas. Yeah, I do think that like, for
what it's worth, I think it's it's a fine, it's a fine trade
off for my first play through tobe so fucking weird.

(02:41:27):
And for the games you just have like all these really open-ended
systems. Because I think that to prevent
something like my first play through his experience, you'd
have to put in like some guardrails, which they could
probably do it in a pretty like,immersive way.
But I think it just kind of likegoes against like the spirit of
like the design of the game thatI think it's fine that I can

(02:41:50):
just have a fucked up first playthrough and that's fine,
yeah. I think it makes it more
memorable. Yes, I think.
I think the only thing really that would like fix any issue
that I had is if so like they gothrough all of Act one talking

(02:42:10):
about the absolute, the absolute, the absolute, the
absolute. So I guess as I was like sitting
here listening and thinking likeI guess there is something of a
foundation because they are constantly shouting the
absolute's name. The problem is just that they
don't define what the absolute is until you see this big
fucking brain at the end of Act 2.

(02:42:31):
So I think if they would have just like found a way to more
clearly define or make what the absolute is or what it stands
for or who's behind it more of like a less of like a conceptual
thing that these cultists are talking about and more of an
actual threat. Then I think that would have
gone a long way to solving some of the problems of Act 2.

(02:42:55):
Yeah, like, I think just for example, not to like, tell them
specifically what they should have done, but for example, it
could have been interesting if you were like seeing illusory
images, almost like the dream guardian, illusory images of
what the absolute was. And it's like this, you know,
like monarchic, like almost Catholic looking like heavy

(02:43:15):
plated, intimidating figure of some kind.
And then the big reveal at the end of Act 2 is actually that
it's a big ass nether brain. Something like that to get you
hooked on some idea of what the absolute was I think would help
with a lot of what you guys are saying.
Yeah, because it's it's like theit's all, it's all mystery and
no meat. So it's like I, there's nothing

(02:43:37):
that really makes me feel like compelled to want to like
journey on in order to kill the absolute because like the whole
hook is like, I got to get this worm out of my brain.
And like my motivation is get worm out of brain.
My motivation is not, I need to stop the absolute because it's

(02:43:57):
going to March on Balder's gate.And so like that your entire
character's like impetus for existing.
I think the reason why it's so jarring is because all of a
sudden you don't give a shit about the tadpole.
You give a shit about stopping this big ass brain.
And the transition for that is not handled gracefully IMO.

(02:44:20):
Yeah, I agree. I think it's pretty heavy-handed
for when it just goes. You have to like self-serving to
now I'm the hero that the world needs.
Yeah, except I'm not, dude, because I'm already plotting
with Menthar to fucking kill allthese motherfuckers.
Yeah, I mean, at least in that sense, I like how immediately a
bunch of the characters like Hysterian react like, oh, but
think of what we could do with all that power.

(02:44:42):
I'm OK. You guys ready for question 3?
Yes, Queen. All right, I'm excited for this
one. I'm, I might take some notes on
this myself for the homebrew campaign that I'm building.

(02:45:02):
What makes a good villain? Do those qualities apply to
Catherick? Did you feel like the story
around him and his family workedwithin the broader story?
I think the only one we didn't start with was Thomas, so go
ahead. So I wish I would have sat with
this question longer than I did because I kind of just threw
together a response in like the 10 minutes leading up to when we

(02:45:24):
got here. But what I did kind of spit out
was like, as I was thinking about it, how do I phrase this?
When I think about what makes a good villain, I'm drawn less to
like these simple depictions of quote UN quote evil and more to

(02:45:46):
characters who feel like tragic or inevitable or deeply human in
some kind of way. So as I was going through this
question, I thought of I thoughtof three villains and I didn't
want to like pick something fromthe same medium.
So I picked 1 from TV and movies, 1 from a book and one

(02:46:07):
from video games. And so the three that I arrived
on were Ole Munk from Fargo, which is a funny pic.
That guy kind of embodies this. The the bad guy from the season
5 who has dinner with Keely at the end of the.
Oh yeah, yeah. So, so he like has this like

(02:46:31):
folkloric, like mythic quality to him where he's he's not just
a man, he's like this force of nature who is just wrapped up in
human flesh. And he's fucking terrifying
because he just has this like total lack of escapability.
Like like once that guy sets hiseyes on you, it's like he's just

(02:46:54):
gonna fucking run at you. And there's just not shit you
can do about it. But he's also very, very, very,
very deeply grounded in in humanizing and religion.
And like he's a very 3 dimensional villain.
And then the second one I thought about was was Nayur
Urskyotha from the second Apocalypse books who have

(02:47:16):
mentioned a million times over the course of my life to people
who have never read these books.But he's he's a lot harder to
pin down because what makes him compelling is that like, he is
the most violent fucking character in any book ever.
And obsession turns him into this monstrous figure.

(02:47:39):
But it's all this inner torment and cultural baggage that render
him this tragic figure and make him blur the lines between pro
and antagonist. And like, even as I sit here, if
you grilled me on do you, I think he's a good guy or bad
guy, It's like, I don't know. I mean, if you transported that

(02:47:59):
guy into our world, he'd definitely be a bad guy.
But in his own, that gets a little more complex, right?
And then the one I picked from video games.
And don't worry, this is not a spoiler because I don't think
his name is brought up a single time in Baldersgate 3 is John
Erinicus from Baldersgate 2, whois a man who is just so twisted
by loss and betrayal that he just turns into something cruel

(02:48:23):
and insanely powerful, but his pain is grounded again in
something very recognizably human.
And so in each of these cases, the villains menace is
inseparable from their tragedy, right?
Like they aren't just obstacles that are tacked on to a story.
They are centralized figures whoembody the story and like the

(02:48:49):
story of the plot's deepest themes, right.
So like when I think about the way that the three people that I
just mentioned, right, how they are so deeply, deeply, deeply
intertwined into their individual stories and plots and
themes. Bringing it back to Catherick.

(02:49:11):
Like I do. Think that Catherick is somewhat
fits into this mold of like a human tragic figure, right?
Like his daughter's death spirals him into this like grief
that leaves him vulnerable, and Merkel exploits that and binds
him into undead service or whatever, right?
But personally, the thing that kind of disconnects me from

(02:49:35):
elevating him to the level of the people I mentioned is that
I'm not entirely sure that he really drapes himself in the
themes of boulders Gate 3. This way.
Now I could be convinced becauseI don't really know that I
necessarily have pinned down with the themes of this game

(02:49:55):
story are to be honest so but but like 1 tragic character does
not thematics make right? But like I said, I could be
convinced. So either way, I do think that
he's a good villain, but I don'tnecessarily consider him like an
all timer. He obviously has a really,
really fantastic performance. He has a compelling motivation,

(02:50:17):
but I'm just not sure that he really gets like, I don't know
if he just, it might just be a matter of the fact he doesn't
really get the necessary screen or script time to flesh out that
3 dimensionality, 3 dimensionality.
That is what I think separates him from like the other names
that I mentioned and others I could think about as well. 2

(02:50:41):
super quick things. Number one, just touching on
what you briefly mentioned aboutthe themes of this game.
I agreed with you for a very long time, and I might still
agree with you on kind of the game meandering with its themes
a bit. However, once we get through act
three, I've actually been thinking the last couple days
about that exact question. Like what?

(02:51:02):
Yeah, we have it in our outline.What is this game about?
What are the themes? And I have a really big one that
I'm excited to talk to you guys about in the next act just
because I, I think I figured it out.
I think I did. I just wanted to mention that
'cause you mentioned the themingof this game.
The second thing is kind of likewhen I do mine at the end, I

(02:51:28):
kind of have like the qualities of a villain bullet pointed.
And I just afterwards want to ask you guys a little bit like,
did you think that what like your answer to this question?
Did you think that your answer to this question applies to the
bullet points that I have? Because I'm asking you guys this
selfishly for my own world building.
So I'm trying to get a little bit of something, something out

(02:51:49):
of this. So just kind of hang on to your
own answers. Just keep that in mind.
Ben, would you like to go next? Sure.
So I kind of thought of it like in two aspects, kind of like the
villains back story and the villains motivation.
So when it comes to like what qualities are good, I'm not too

(02:52:11):
picky when it comes to back story.
Like I've seen good examples of villains with sympathetic
backstories and bad ones, and I've seen good villains that are
just literally Hitler. So that part of it can be either
or. I think that Catholic, if we're
talking specifically about Catholic, I'd say they do try to

(02:52:32):
like paint them as Thomas said, as like a tragic kind of
sympathetic figure, maybe a little bit if you like get into
the nitty gritty of his back story.
And as to whether it's done well, I think that the general
consensus that it's done well, I'm pretty indifferent to
Catholic in general. And I do feel like it's part

(02:52:53):
partly because that first play forever had kind of like
tainting my opinion of him wherehe's kind of just there,
especially in a non dirge playthrough.
I'm going to give him extra points if you are dirge when you
first that that part in his likethrone room when you first meet

(02:53:14):
him. The additional context that you
get right away as Dirge I feel adds quite a bit to him and I
feel like, well, it's not hard to say that he's a good film
without detergent information tobe honest.
That's just my personal opinion.That being said.
But going moving on to a villains motivation, that one to

(02:53:37):
me is a lot more simple. Like if you want me to think
that your villain has a good motivation, then I think that
your existence as a protagonist has to be a problem for that
villains agenda. Where like your continued
existence is a problem for him and he needs to get rid of you
regardless of whether he's sympathetic or not.

(02:53:58):
And I think I don't know if theydid a good enough job to make
make sure that you knew in your mind that he is a big enough
problem that you have to take care of him because.
And he kind of like mentions it himself for like, he kind of
taunts you when you go down intothe mind.
Flare called me to fight him. He's like, you know, you could

(02:54:20):
have just fucking ran away, right?
You have the prism. So like when he said that was
like, he's kind of he's kind of right.
You know what I mean? So yeah, I think I think he's a
lukewarm villain, I guess. And he's kind of carried by the
performance, at least from the end.

(02:54:41):
I would say that if you were to describe him as good, or if I
were to describe him as good, itit would have to be with the
dirge stuff to accompany him. So I'm curious, I think your
takes pretty interesting. First of all, I had the same
thought when Catherick brings upthe prism, he's like, why didn't
you just fucking go? But one thing you said was that

(02:55:04):
and and tell me if I interpretedthis right, that for a villain
to be good in your eyes, the protagonist has to like get in
their way and not. Necessarily, but your existence
is a problem for him. Yeah, so here's a question,
right? Cuz like I also like like I feel

(02:55:27):
like when I was describing the villains that I liked, a lot of
it is just that they have like acertain amount of emotional
depth to them. But I also like villains that
are just abjectly and nonsensically fucking cruel,
just like top to bottom evil. Just absolutely no redeeming
qualities. Just absolutely just God awful.

(02:55:50):
And so this is a name that's come up before, which would be
AM from I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, who I think is a
good villain. But it's just like at no point
threatened, at no point even like tempts the idea of any sort
of like benevolent action or anysort of like emotional depth.

(02:56:13):
He's just a fucking evil bastardthe entire way through.
And like, I can think of other examples too, like Luca Blight
from Suikoden 2, who I think arelike really, really, really
fucking good villains but absolutely no redeeming
qualities. And I guess Luca Blight's not as
good an example as AM for. This but yeah, AM is really

(02:56:35):
good. AM kind of like like I never
even considered a villain. Like, and even though he's
obviously a fucking villain, butlike, you're right, we're like
in comparison to him, the protagonists are like literally
like amoeba, you know what I mean?
Yeah, yeah. Like they're just hopeless.
There's just nothing that they can or ever will do.
Yeah. I didn't think about that.

(02:56:56):
So yeah, I guess you're right. I guess I can't like absolutely
say that a villain needs what I described for motivation, but it
makes it a lot easier for my like my, my face value brain to
accept, you know? What?
No, Yeah, no, for sure. And I will say that like

(02:57:16):
villains, like AM are the exception, right?
Like there's it's it's not a, it's not a fun story to just see
all of your protagonists just get tortured the entire time,
right? Which is what I have no mouth
and I must scream literally is like there has to be some kind
of tension between the villain and the protagonist.
And when you don't have that, it's just like watching a Saw
movie without any sort of like redemptive ending, right.

(02:57:40):
So I don't know, I just thought that was like an interesting
thing to to to to point out because it's not like a quality
I'd ever thought of as being like intrinsically important to
like the protagonist villain tension, which it absolutely is.
I also wanted to ask because youmentioned the stuff surrounding
Dirge Ben, are you still? This might be more for Thomas,

(02:58:05):
but are you still of the opinionthat I might be putting words in
your mouth? But do you still feel like first
playthroughs should be Tav or doyou feel like Dirge is just
fundamentally better as like thethe main character?

(02:58:27):
If you it it, I feel like it definitively can't be a good one
because they're just so many people.
Like I think sesh is one of these people that and also I'm
kind of like one of these peoplewhere like an evil playthrough
is like pretty uncomfortable forme.
So like and not that because I've like, it's Full disclosure

(02:58:48):
and why I don't want to like elaborate too much as I've
already completed a dirge playthrough doing the good
version. So I kind of know what's going
to happen, what the context is, but it's like, how do I explain
this? I don't like.
I still can't recommend, even ifI think it's better.

(02:59:09):
I can't recommend Dirt as the first play through.
OK. I was just curious to follow up
on that. Maybe not.
I agree with just like before I get into the answer, like I
agree with Ben of like what he said of like, yeah, just doing
evil shit is just like uncomfortable to me, just like
in general. So yeah, I think I would have

(02:59:30):
like an actively bad experience if I was trying to do that,
unless like resist the urge likein the shoe, like basically have
like a complete switch. Yeah, I, I, I do mean like,
because like you can play a goodplay through is dirge.
I just mean like the way that Dirge ties into the main story
is kind of what I was getting at.
Yeah, and you can, you can. You can do a good dirge

(02:59:52):
playthrough, but it will still force you to do evil things.
Yeah. At least once.
But that's OK, Sash, go ahead. Yeah, so like for me personally,
like not talking about like whatmakes a good villain

(03:00:12):
objectively, but just like for me, what I like in villains is
kind of like almost when the villain is kind of like
self-contained in the main character and it's basically
just like a struggle of the maincharacter and stories more than
like an actual like entity with a back story.
Or if the character is used basically just as a way to build
the like the protagonist in liketheir fucking own it saga of

(03:00:33):
like overcoming something. So like, I don't.
So there's not really any games that I could think of that I've
played where I've been like, damn, the villains fucking
better than like the main character or like the characters
that I've been journeying with. Yeah.
So I think I think it's kind of just like a very simple, kind of
like not very complex thing withlike a villain relationship for
me. So I think and then that

(03:00:55):
respect, I think like Catholic is like a good character to
interface with, but I don't think he's necessarily a good
villain. And I think it's mostly because
it's going to kind of be like a little bit of Benedictia
Syndrome from like the fantasy 16 where like he's just kind of
there for a little bit. When he is there, he's really
good, but he's not really like the focus of anything.
So then he's just going to disappear and then be gone.
So I imagine like actor is goingto be almost nothing about

(03:01:16):
Catherick. So he's kind of just like this
bridge character that I don't think really did a whole lot,
but other than like he had like a very sick performance and like
bad ass fucking like combat and shit like that.
But like in terms like the overall like story and
everything, like, I don't, I don't think that he's really
going to play like an integral part compared to what's going to
come up in Act 3. So I have a question.

(03:01:40):
Go ahead. So I want to go back to what you
said originally and I want you to define this for me cuz cuz if
what you were saying is how I interpreted it, I want to
challenge you on it. And you said something to the
effect of like, you've never really, like, maybe connected is

(03:02:02):
the wrong word, but like, you never really gave a shit about a
villain who ended up like, beinggood or whatever, right?
Not like a villain that didn't turn good.
Like a villain that stayed a villain.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. OK.
So, so define that for me a little better because I was
trying to think of like, or I was thinking the way you said it
was like you wouldn't like maybewhen like the protagonist

(03:02:27):
becomes the villain, right. Is is kind of the way I was
interpreting or reading between lines?
I I don't have any instances of like where I can even think for
that happened to like comment onso I'm not sure.
I'm. Talking about are you talking

(03:02:48):
about Shadow Lord being the villain or or like him being the
villain in the broader story because of the shades?
I think both, I think like Near is the shadow Lord and also Near
is like summarily murdering the shades right?
Which does not make him a great person.
Yeah, him and the actual villains motivations are.

(03:03:08):
Identical one and one of the same, yeah.
Yeah, I think that's like a super complex story that I would
say is like a kind of one off thing though.
But that's kind of like the style of villains that I say
that like I like where it's likeyou don't really know what's
going on or things like that. And then they're basically like
an extension the main character or like some weird shit that's
going on there. It's kind of like the

(03:03:28):
preference. So like for me, like so like I
think like Undertale has a good villain where like ultimate,
like it's kind of like all up inthe air and then like in
genocide, like you're basically it like I think that that's cool
and then amore to not elaborate on that, but it's a really good
like the antagonist is like yourself kind of thing.
You're just trying to break out from yourself.
And then Expedition 33 is reallycool that like the villain is

(03:03:48):
like it's more of an antagonist than it is like a villain.
Yeah, like by the end you could make the argument that any of
the characters exactly expedition 33 of the villain.
But I think that was kind of like a a special news case
that's well, I think that that'slike a fair broad strokes of
like how this is how people do villains.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know for sure.
I think another example, and this game is not fresh in the

(03:04:12):
memory by any stretch, but the way that I remember the Shadow
of the Colossus ending is that like you go through most of the
story trying to like rescue yourgirlfriend or sister or whatever
the fuck she is. And then by the end of that
game, it's made pretty clear that like you are the invader of
this land, and by like freeing this person, you're basically
fucking like dooming said land. Yeah, I think that works really

(03:04:35):
well because you don't build up build up good personal
relationships with your main character or anything.
That's for Shadow of the Colossus specifically.
Like it's pretty like what the fuck ever.
So it's like a cool turn there because you don't have like the
biggest relationship you have inthat game is with your horse.
And yeah, but that game, you know, what the fuck happens to
that? So then you know, you're like
all your stakes are gone and everything.
So when that happens, it's more like, oh, that's cool.

(03:04:56):
You don't feel like you're like really betraying anything.
You feel like you're more like left with this kind of like
moral like, oh shit, that's crazy kind of situation rather
than like if you were with like opinions the whole time and then
at the end like you just kill all of them and you're like, I'm
the bad guy now would be like that doesn't feel good.
Yeah, I was. Just curious because it feels
like to me like what you what you described as liking in a
villain is like so polar opposite from what I like where

(03:05:17):
it sounds like you like you likevillains as like kind of a like
a like a. Protagonist Builder.
Yeah, like a Mac guffin. Almost exactly.
Like a Goku Vegeta? Or am I oversimplifying?
Vegeta is a bad to good guy, which I think like yeah, that's
not like what I I don't think that's a villain.

(03:05:38):
Isn't there like a term? That's you.
I don't remember what they're anti hero.
Yeah. Yeah.
Vegeta's an anti hero. Yeah, which I think those are
cool. I think.
I think like redemption, art changes and stuff like that are
cool. And like especially when it's
good to bad or even when it's bad to good, as long as you
don't feel like you betrayed what you were working towards
basically the whole time, then II like that too.
And it's really just case by case.
Yeah, I think Jordan is describing Vegeta like when

(03:06:00):
Vegeta was a bad guy, but then every subsequent Dragon Ball Z
bad guy after that, that makes Goku want to go to like Super
Saiyan 69. Yeah, basically.
They just, they make a villain just serve a purpose for like
the protagonist to breakthrough like a barrier basically.
Yeah. So like you don't you don't
value like the well, OK, I don'twant to, that sounds really

(03:06:21):
strong. But like, you don't value as
much the journey of the villain as much as you do the journey of
the protagonist, which is interesting to me.
I think a lot of that though, isjust because I haven't been
exposed to a lot of stories thatkind of have that right.
Like with Xeno Saga and whateverthe fuck that guy's name is, I
think he's another one. But I don't know enough about
two and three to know like what what the depth of that guy is.

(03:06:42):
But yeah, I think it's more thatI just don't have exposure to
those kind of stories to be ableto like resonate and even know
if I like them. Yeah.
I'm glad you guys are bringing up some of these examples and
kind of delineating between likevillain, antagonist, anti hero,
anti villain because that's a little bit of what I want to dig
into. I'm I'm going to paste this into

(03:07:04):
the chat for you guys reference soon, but I want to start first
by saying again, I'm glad you guys were bringing up the
villains like villain versus anti hero, for example, because
I am specifically talking about a villain.
I'm talking about, and I'm just spitballing these examples.
I'm talking about your Dark Knight jokers.
I'm talking about your howls from space Odyssey, like

(03:07:28):
characters that are just evil. They're not going to go through
redemption arc. They are there to be a villain,
right? And so I'll paste this for you
guys to have because again, onceI read these off, I want to just
like turn it into kind of an open discussion to, you know,
workshop it a little bit, like tell me where I'm wrong, tell me

(03:07:50):
what I could add, etcetera, etcetera, and how your answers
kind of relate to this. So I'll start with, I'll start
with, and I only wrote this likeliterally as we were talking.
So feel free to push back on this one immediately.
A good villain is an antagonist which drives the plot forward,
serves as a foil to the characters, and is something the

(03:08:12):
heroes build themselves towards bringing down.
I care less about this one, but do you guys feel like that's a
decent like definition of what agood villain is?
I feel like that's literally like word for word what Jordan
described so. Yeah, it's funny, I think.
I think another like personal character trait of a good
villain is specifically antagonizing the main character.

(03:08:35):
Like even if even if like the villain was once like a homie of
them and then they could constantly just be like hey
remember that time we were homies go fuck yourself kind of
thing. OK.
As long as we can agree on that.I'm more interested in the
qualities. I, I would, I would say also
that like in addition to that, because that's like a really
like broad umbrella for what a good villain is, but I also

(03:08:56):
think that a good villain can also, or like something a good
villain also does is humanize the conflict from a different
angle. Yeah.
Oh, like if you like, yeah, likea different sides of the
battlefield kind of thing. Right.
And like, obviously someone likethe fucking Joker isn't going to

(03:09:17):
necessarily do that because thatguy's just like, not so fucking.
And so when we talk about the qualities, I wrote these down,
but the way I've been thinking about this kind of as I've been
looking at it and as we've been talking about some of this stuff
is I think out of these three that I wrote, I think a good
villain has to have two of thesethree.
I think if they only have one, then they're going to be kind of

(03:09:40):
one note. It's not going to work.
They could even have all three, but they need at least two of
these three. I'll go ahead and read them.
A good villain has one empathetic motivations which
happened in their past. The past is long gone, however,
and the empathy serves only to draw a contrast between now and
then #2A villain. A good villain has despicable

(03:10:03):
actions in the now. This demonstrates the extent to
which they will go to accomplishtheir goals #3 a good villain
has a commitment to their diabolic plans.
A villain who relents on their plans may start as a villain but
becomes an antihero or goes through a redemption arc.
A villain who commits is to their core evil.

(03:10:23):
So when I talk about having two of these three, take the Joker
for example #2 and #3 despicableactions and a commitment to his
diabolic plans. That's the definition of him.
He's a great villain because he is down to his core, those two
things, actions and plans. But you know, if there's
countless villains out there, Catholic is an example of them

(03:10:44):
who have those empathetic motivations that happened in
their past. Like you can understand why he
turned away from Soluna and turnto worshipping Char and then to
Merkel and just feels like a pawn of the gods.
I think there's a million examples of that, so I won't go
into too many others. But like I said, I kind of want
to just open this up to you guys, see how you feel about
those qualities, could they be better, what should be added,

(03:11:09):
yada. Yada, but just for me, I think
point #1 isn't what makes a goodvillain, I think it what is what
makes a good character which might happen to be a villain.
I mean, I think the like the second sentence is what like
veers them into villain hood, right?
Which is like something bad happened to them in the past,
but the past was a long time ago, right?

(03:11:30):
And so like that contrast is just there to like kind of serve
as a motivation for how they ended up.
Like something bad happened to them.
They came across a fork in the road and they took the direction
that turned them into a piece ofshit, right?
So like yes, bad things happening to good or bad

(03:11:53):
characters is like sometimes an important part to flesh them
out, but the difference is the direction they took at that fork
in the road. Yeah, like, kind of like, Thomas
said, the the contrast is a veryimportant part.
Like a like any good character could just have empathetic
motivations. Take like Shadow Hearts back
story for example. But Shadow Hearts back story is

(03:12:15):
not necessarily, unless you're in an evil playthrough, being
used to draw contrast to who sheis now.
So here's a question I have for you.
How would you, how would you delineate between 2:00 and 3:00?
Because to me, two and three arekind of the same thing.
Like, yeah, they're saying, likeyou're saying that a villain
went from something tragic in their past.

(03:12:36):
They like cross that Rubicon at some point and now they do evil
shit and to me like despicable actions in the now sort of like
defines being committed to your like diabolic plans, right, Like
they're kind of one in the same.So I'm, I'm glad you asked that

(03:12:57):
because I'm kind of trying to keep this all wrapped around
Balder's Gate 3 for the sake of the podcast.
And I think that Catherick is a perfect example of not having #3
because that dude is an absoluteasshole.
But by the time you get to the end, especially like if you do
you know the off yourself situation, he's clearly not
committed. He doesn't care.

(03:13:18):
Like he is just there as a pawn of the gods, a husk of who he
was, and he just wants his dog back.
He doesn't really care about thediabolic plans, but he is taking
obviously despicable actions, right?
But doesn't he have his own commitment where he's going to
betray the other mother? Fuckers.

(03:13:39):
I mean, yeah, that is maybe that's hard.
He does say that, but I think. He said that straight up, yeah.
Just, I guess, just to be clear,says you know that he's dead,
right? Like dead dead.
No, yeah, but but he says like before you kill him and he, he
does the fucking villain monologue of like, here's all my
fucking plans. He literally, like, you could be
like, so you're going to betray them.
And he just goes, yeah, like, so, yeah.

(03:14:01):
Yeah, OK. Yeah, he does do that.
Which I thought was weird and funny and shit, where it's just
like, wow, he's doing like the trope of like literally telling
me what's going to happen, like his whole plans before he's
about to fucking die. But yeah.
And I thought that was weird. But I, I think he still has a
commitment to the plan. It's just not the plan that the
other two have. I guess that's fair.

(03:14:21):
I guess I'm just looking at like, like basically the reason
I wrote #3 is because I wanted to delineate between like a
character who's empathetic and is taking despicable actions.
Delineating between an antihero or anti villain and just a
straight up villain. I think that what makes you an

(03:14:44):
honest to goodness villain most of the time.
And like, like saying a villain is going to be not changing, not
flinching, saying on to your plans.
But you know, let's take Verso for example.
I don't know if I would say he has a commitment to his
diabolical plans. You know, he kind of flip flops
here and there in Acts 2 and three, but he takes diabolical

(03:15:07):
actions. He erases the entire painting,
right? Yeah, for sure.
So my question here is, did you want us to like propose more
bullet points to this? You can, it's up to you.
It's open. So one thing that I think I
would add is a good villain has like an aura of inevitability.

(03:15:36):
So like in two parts, one that the sense that a conflict with
them is totally unavoidable, whether that's because of like
their fucking power level or their ideological opposition or
their role in the story is Sinner or whatever.

(03:15:57):
And the second part being that if you as the protagonist or
protagonists don't intervene, then that villain will
accomplish their goals in order to like give some sense of like
stakes to the story, right? So like you, you are supposed to
be the person intervening and saving the world, right?

(03:16:17):
And without you, the villain would be successful.
I think is something that is a good way of of setting the
stakes basically. Yeah, that's fair.
I can think of a lot of villainsthat applies to.

(03:16:37):
Do you think that that's something that a good villain
always has to have? Like is there an example of like
basically, because I'm still thinking of that like 2 out of
three thing. Is this just fundamentally part
of what a good villain is, or are there good examples of
villains where they don't feel inevitable?

(03:17:00):
So I don't think like, here's the way I think about it, right?
Like if you have a villain, let's say something bad happened
to them. Let's say they're doing
something despicable. Now let's say they are committed
to their diabolic plan, but who gives a shit because a baby's
going to come along and haymakerthem and their plans are going
to get turned sideways. That's not a good villain.

(03:17:22):
But if the villain is cunning enough, strong enough, powerful
enough, whatever, that unless someone more cunning, more
powerful, stronger IEU, the protagonist comes along to like
fuck their plans up, that makes them far more compelling because
it gives you a sense of like mattering.

(03:17:42):
I'm talking about like as reading a story from like the
perspective of the protagonist and like giving a shit about the
stakes that the protagonist is involved in, right?
Like it makes you as the absorber of the story care more
because you know, if I fail thenthis world or this whatever,

(03:18:03):
this fucking neighborhood, this blade of grass, whatever,
whatever the target of that villain's ideology is, is
fucked. Yeah, yeah.
And correct me if I might be misunderstanding, but like what
I'm trying to clarify because I completely agree with you 100%,
but I'm trying to figure out if that belongs in the definition

(03:18:26):
of what a villain is like in thetop column, or if there are
villains that don't feel inevitable but are still good
villains. I struggle to think of like at
least like a capital V villain who is like not like morally
grey or whatever. That would not fit that mold.

(03:18:50):
Yeah. I'd be very open to hearing them
though. Yeah, I mean it's it's totally
OK if not like it, I'm still going to add it.
I'm just wondering if it's top section or bottom section.
What were you trying to say such?
I was just going to say I think a good villain has to have a
commitment to their diabolic plans.
Because if they're only despicable now, they're like
Shadow the Hedgehog, you know, like, they're not going to be
the main bad guy, but they mightbe a bad guy.

(03:19:13):
What do you say in response to the Verso example?
He's not the main bad guy. Benoit is the big bad guy.
Didn't we like describe him as avillain earlier or no?
You guys brought him up as a villain, but I don't think he's
I think so again, I think that game is like hyper complex and a
difficult one to use for like ifyou're just trying to get broad

(03:19:36):
strokes what a good villain is or has.
But yeah, I don't think Furzo isspecifically like a villain,
especially not for 99% of the game.
I guess like, like and this thisis like, again, totally open to

(03:19:57):
discussion. You might be right.
The example I'm thinking of right now is Darth Vader.
Darth Vader is a great villain. Maybe you could you could
probably say that yeah, he does have that commitment in the 1st
2 movies, but then in the third movie you straight up kills the
emperor, right? Would you still say that he has
a commitment to buy to die of all he's not the.
Villain anymore and the third movie is the thing when he does

(03:20:18):
that turn, he's no longer in like the villain category
because the Emperor is the villain of the third movie
basically. Sure, sure.
But I'm looking at like I I'm looking at like broad scope the
character as a whole. Like has these qualities, right?
So. So would an addendum be that
they are a villain while they have a commitment?

(03:20:40):
But then. Exactly because I'm reading they
lose that. Commitment.
Yeah, I see. With such a thing where if you
read it exactly as you've written it, it, it is mandatory.
Yeah, but. Like.
I think, sorry, go ahead. Like what I'm trying to say is
that once, like for example, in the Darth Vader example, once he
does that he's it's like Sash said, he's no longer the

(03:21:01):
villain. He's like a anti hero or anti
villain or whatever you want to call him.
So I would not prescribe him that quality as a character
period. I, it's three different movies.
So you could say, yeah, he's a villain in the first few movies
and then an anti villain or whatever in the third movie.
But the character as a whole is an anti villain because of his
final acts. So are we saying that these

(03:21:22):
qualities are not like fluid then?
What do you mean? So like, I mean, empathetic
motivations happening in the past, that's not exactly fluid
because that's just history, right?
But if we say that, you know, let's say we've got a villain
that adheres to two out of threeor three out of three of these,

(03:21:43):
but then flip flops like Darth Vader does and no longer has the
commitment to their diabolic plan primarily because of
empathetic motivations that happened in their past.
Are we saying that the qualitiesof this list of good villain
traits is fluid or not? Because the way you just
described it is like first two movies bad, third movie anti

(03:22:06):
villain makes it sound like theycan be fluid.
I would say they're fluid, but like I'm trying to look at it
through the context of the the broader story.
Like if like if I'm writing a story and I know exactly what's
going to happen with this character and I say no, he
betrays the emperor at the end. I don't have a villain in front

(03:22:26):
of me, I have an anti villain. So yes, they're fluid in terms
of like a movie that you're watching or a game that you're
playing. But when you're looking at the
character as a whole, I would not say it's fluid, if that
makes sense. Yeah, I I see what you're
saying. Like Darth Vader's going to be
on Villainpedia. You know what?
I mean, it's basically like, yeah, it's like what Ben said of

(03:22:47):
like you're a villain. I I think that commitment to
diabolical plans you need to have if you're the main villain,
and then if you ever don't have that, you're no longer the main
villain. You might be a bad guy, but
you're not the bad guy. Sure.
Yeah, like the emperor's. Yeah, yeah, like the emperor is
the guy with the commitment, right?
Right. Yeah.
So I guess the, the the other question is, is this is, are

(03:23:10):
these bullet points saying a good main villain or just a good
villain? Oh.
I guess I had. Main villain in mind, but yeah,
that's what I thought, right? Because like, yeah, if you drop
the main, it becomes way more complicated because they could
even like they could even help you out and still be the villain
kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
And like, this is again, why I'mbringing up the Darth Vader

(03:23:32):
example. Because if, like, if we're
saying he's not the main villainbut he's still a villain, then
two out of the three still applyto him.
And that would make him a good villain, even though he's not
the main villain. But that's a villain.
Yeah. Exactly, I think.
I think the commitment to diabolic lands as if you're is

(03:23:52):
is required if you're the main. Villain.
I mean, I think he I think he's a villain mostly because of the
second I, I mean, the first few bullet points explain it right?
The second bullet point he's taking despicable actions.
He cuts off Luke's hand. He kills what's his tits and
the. Stuff that you see in the.
Prequel is it? Yeah, I think, I think he's

(03:24:19):
definitely a good villain for sure.
Yeah, he's fucking Darth Vader. Of course he's a good villain.
But he's not like a cut and dry like.
Always the villain. Yeah.
OK. We don't have to belabor this
too much longer unless you guys have more you want to add to.
It no, I think it's an interesting debate.

(03:24:40):
I feel like, I feel like good villains do have like
significantly more than that. And I also don't think that they
necessarily have to adhere to like A2 out of three rule or
whatever. I think that these are like
broad characteristics of something that can make a good
villain. But I don't think it's like

(03:25:01):
axiomatic, which I don't think is what you were trying to like
do necessarily, but. Yeah, I I was just trying to
like broad scope, think of as many villains as I could, and at
least when I wrote it down, I couldn't think of anywhere at
least two of these did not applyto a good villain.
That's all I was going for anyway.

(03:25:23):
Yeah, Declare, from my own viewpoint, I like antagonists
more than I like villains. Like I think Neuro Automata has
more of an antagonist than it does a villain and things like
that. Same with like Claire Obscura.
And so that's why I like I don'tit's and because like when I
think of like a good character, it's like a character that like

(03:25:45):
you like and like resonates withyou and shit like that, right,
Which is kind of hard to get with like a villain.
So it's like a different kind ofthing.
That's why for me villains just serve the protagonist to get
better. Sure.
All right. Do you guys want to move into
the awards before we wrap up this 2nd 4 hour episode with our

(03:26:06):
ratings? Yeah.
Yeah. We did these already, but we
can. I kind of like already said my
answers for these. Yeah.
I mean, we don't have to spend alot of time on it.
Is there any that you guys just wanted to touch on outside of
what we already brought up I guess?
One thing, yeah. Pretty much already.

(03:26:31):
No. I was just going to say we
pretty much already touched on best performance.
We didn't really touch on best in PCI.
Guess who's your guys's favoriteand act too.
Yeah, that's the only one I was going to answer because it was
the only one we didn't go through in at least detail.
And I put at Raphael because where he's placed, well, it's

(03:26:53):
kind of weird because in a good playthrough you see a little bit
more of him. I didn't see him at Last Light
because I'm doing evil playthrough because Mole's dead.
But I did see him near the gauntlet of Char and the way
that he acts as is like kind of like connective tissue between
the main quest and Asterian and shadow hearts, like personal

(03:27:15):
quests. Well, I guess more so Asterian.
I thought he was well placed. And it's Raphael.
He's like, I don't know, he's he's just the character that's
hard to hate. So in my opinion, well, hard to
hate. Like, he's easy to hate because
he's a villain, but he's hard tohate because he's cool.
I changed my best performance answer to Raphael.

(03:27:37):
That's for my my favorite NPC was definitely Night Song for
reasons I said earlier. Best performance?
Shadow heart? I want to say not close, but
that's not true. I can see that look cuz I never
did the Shadowheart romance but even like when you talk to her

(03:28:00):
in camp she has more lines in like everybody.
Yeah, it's crazy how many fucking.
Yeah. Jennifer English getting her
paycheck. Yeah, she said.
She like, was doing voice actingfor that game for four fucking
years. Like, you're just constantly
come back and do like, more and more recording.
Fucking nuts. Man that is insane.

(03:28:21):
Best in PCI struggle with that one.
I think I'm just going to copy Ben and say Rafael because
Rafael is fucking goaded and I have nothing to add to what Ben
said. For what it's worth, I
originally had Asterian written there but then I reread it and I
was like NPC non playable. Technically Asterian is playable

(03:28:43):
so that's why it changed. It's Rafael.
I I almost said Jahira because technically in my playthrough
she was not playable because shefucking died.
Somehow she's joined by sight, Which?
Yeah, she did the same thing for.
Me. She like, watched me like murder

(03:29:04):
Isabel and like kill all of these fucking people in the end.
And then all the shadows pop outand she's like, well OK, let's
talk about this afterwards. And she casts her fucking AOI
ice spell, kills a bunch of shit, and then dies.
And I was like, well, that problem took care of itself.

(03:29:25):
Should have speaked with dead totaunter afterwards.
Oh shit, I wish I did that. That would have been fucking
awesome. Do you guys have any like
categories here you wanted to do?
I mean, I think I agree with youwith like probably night Song is
the best MPC, especially just within like act 2 confines
because I don't think like Raphael doesn't get enough
screen time at least like compared to what I want him to

(03:29:46):
have. So yeah, I think I like the
night song to. Be fair, I think we can't say
Night Song because she did. I think Raphael gets some points
because of your gear to be fair.Yeah, that part's true.
I mean, yeah, he's definitely like there, right?
And he plays like chess with mole or no, not mole plays chess

(03:30:08):
with whatever he is Mole. They all fucking together.
Oh, Speaking of your gear sesh, did you actually figure out the
like? I don't want to say it's the
intended way, but the way to like solve his thing.
Solve his thing? Yeah, because he stabbed
himself. I, I think it's really cool, I
didn't know about this until like my fucking 3rd or 4th

(03:30:30):
playthrough, but there's a reason that his contract with
Raphael isn't fulfilled right 'cause like all the shit you
tell him, you're just like straight up lying to him.
It's not like that's not actually fulfilling his
contract. Raphael understood that he
wanted the darkness this year. He's dead.
And there is another darkness this year in the Gauntlet of
Char, and it's the Rats. Oh, that makes.

(03:30:53):
Sense the rats are just one guy too, right?
Yeah, yeah, he like fucking like, split his mind into all
the different rats. That shit was cool as fuck.
Oh oh, you did find that part though.
Yeah, I took because I talked toall the rats and stuff and I
don't remember if they tell you or like you figure it out, but
like, yeah, I know, I know that that's in my head.
And yeah, it's cool as fuck. Yeah, 'cause you do all the

(03:31:15):
speak with animal stuff. Yeah, if you had reversed those
interactions and you killed the rats and then talked to your
gear, you would have solved thiscontract.
Oh shit, that's crazy. Yeah, I've actually never done
that before. I've always just killed him.
Holy shit. And then he could just leave.
You get rewarded for it, and that's all I'll say because

(03:31:37):
yeah. There's because some shit goes
down, yeah. Yeah, I did learn something new
this playthrough by your gear. So like, I was always under the
impression that if you wanted todo that, that suicide kill, that
you'd have to pass that. I think it's like a what kind of
check is it? It's like investigation.
Or I don't remember. Yeah.
It's pretty hard. Charisma I think Christmas

(03:31:59):
involved because I. I'm 28.
I'm not I'm not talking about the check that you could you
roll for. There's like a passive check
like during the and in the upperleft corner if it says failed,
yeah then you have to save scum or you can't get that that
resolution to the quest. Except I found out in this
playthrough that if the character you engage that

(03:32:22):
cutscene with is a warlock, thenthe your date, your warlock,
your patron will literally just do it for you and convince
you're here to kill himself. He just bypass all that
bullshit. That's crazy.
And actually I can actually say this spoiler free too.
If you do the thing where you like complete your gears

(03:32:45):
contract or whatever, he joins your camp, I can say that.
What I did not know that I I didnot know that that's fucking.
I didn't know it either. What the hell?
It might be, it might be like temporarily.
I don't know how long it happensfor, but there are there is
definitely a time when he is in your camp.
Also I'm pissed that fucking blue titty devil lady didn't
join my camp when I wrested her from the pod.

(03:33:06):
Oh true, yeah, her not being a recruitable character is a
fucking L. No, you know what?
Tell she wasn't in in act 2 at all for the evil playthrough
because Will went away. She wasn't in that.
Part I in In my playthrough I amin the beginning of act three.
I have not seen Mizora once I. Didn't even think about that,

(03:33:28):
that kind of sucks. I was excited for her
interaction with the evil playthrough, but I don't know if
she's going to be there. That's funny.
I think evil playthrough where you tell Will to give in to all
of his temptations is pretty sick if you.
Yeah, but the but the OK, well, that's the problem.
She has to. She has to show up if you do the

(03:33:50):
Duke shit right I would assume. I would assume she shows up at
some point during all. Yeah, but but I don't think she
does not there. Will's not there, Yeah.
Really, she won't even show up to like fuck you at the end of
that quest. I don't.
I don't think so. That should be.
Wrong, but you'll. Find out.
Well, I guess she only. Does that because of the
contract or whatever? Yeah, that's fucking crazy.

(03:34:14):
Yeah, that's just wild. Wait, have any of you ever
actually killed Missouri in thatpod too?
I know what happens. Yeah, it's very bad for Will.
Yeah, very bad for Will, but youknow what?
You get a sick ass rapier out ofit so.
Wait, you do? I never knew that.
Yeah, just like burst into flames or something.
Oh yeah, he goes straight to fucking Avernus.

(03:34:35):
Yeah, he gets condemned to the Blood War as like a like a
literal like booger. Fuck, I could have done that.
Does that just happen like immediately?
Oh yeah, literally. Like if he's in camp, he's he's
gone. Next time you go to camp, he's
gone. Yeah, if he's if he's in your
party, there is no like cut backto gameplay.

(03:34:56):
It is a continuous cutscene and he is in hell now.
Damn, but you get to see him go to hell.
It's not like he just pooped. Yeah, that's the part.
It's like it's all worth it justso I can see that.
You just get. You just get this sound that
goes. Yeah, exactly.
OK, let's do. Our awards or sorry, not awards

(03:35:19):
ratings. Yeah.
Why don't we start with Sesh? I'm always curious.
What? Sesh's score.
Yeah. So for me, I mean, so a lot of
the things that I like about ActOne is still there in Act 2 and
that is Carlac and Shadowheart. And obviously Shadowheart got a
little bit of an expansion, but because of like the whole I
don't, I don't like like the fucking like the environment or

(03:35:41):
like anything like that. And like Catherick kind of was
cool, but like didn't really do a whole lot.
And then like I don't give a fuck about the villains.
I think I kind of had just like a lower overall experience.
And also I didn't like the I I the the Emperor's technically
act too, right? No.
Apparent. So I think he's technically Act
2, but I think we think of him as Act 3 because of where the
game is the live for actor. So I won't mention the answer to

(03:36:03):
that. But yeah, I just, I, I don't
like the setting or like anything like that.
And then like the side quests and everything were kind of bad.
But like the thing that I will say is the game is still like an
engineering marvel in terms of just like the paths and
everything, which is like fucking ridiculous.
But yeah, for me, I think there's definitely a little bit
of a step down from Act 1. So I'm at a 7 1/2.
Oh my God, fuck. Oh yeah, my God.

(03:36:25):
Damn it, I even guessed the. I even guessed the lowest and I
was still wrong. I definitely didn't expect it to
be that much lower. I thought an 8 would have been
reasonable, but. I I just thought it was like a
little like bland almost in terms of like story and stuff
because like, I don't know, it'syeah.
It's just kind of feels like because they didn't develop

(03:36:45):
anything in acting 1, I don't give a fuck in Act 2.
So I'm hoping in Act three they kind of fix that.
I mean, I'll, I'll kind of follow up with that because I, I
feel like it's hard to remember because it was so long ago, but
I feel like my first impression of Act 2 and my first
playthrough also wasn't good. Like there are a lot of those

(03:37:06):
frustrations that like Thomas was describing with the, the
Lantern and the shadow crews andit's kind of just annoying and
nothing else. And I don't know if like a lot
of the like tones and the way the story variations can play
out really functions that well in a first playthrough.

(03:37:26):
However, and this might just be because of the amount of times
I've played through Act one at this point, Act 2 is just so
much fun to me. Like, you know, you know how to
get through all these encounterseasily.
You know about the fairy, you can get through all of these
encounters by telling him to kill himself if you want, or you
can fight him if you feel like it.

(03:37:47):
I like I love Catherick as a villain.
I think that like the entire ending sequence, even if it is a
little bit out of nowhere is fucking awesome.
And just that like surprise on my face on my first playthrough
where I was like Oh my God, thisgame still isn't anywhere close
to done. There's like 3 more fucking
villains that we need to take out now of Jesus.
I think that like all of that and like obviously the quality

(03:38:12):
with the gauntlet of Char, all of everything with the
companions, that there's not a bad thing to say about the
companions. I think I, even though there are
those criticisms that I have from my first experience, I
think that over time, comparatively to act one, all of
those have just gone away from me.
And you get the player power in Act 2 and it's just pure fun to

(03:38:35):
me. It's like, you know, getting to
a playground and getting the swing set and you know, you just
get to have fun. And for that reason, you have
not swayed me away from a 10 outof 10.
I rated, I rated the same numberfor everybody because it's I

(03:38:55):
thought it was the safest #9.5 because Oh yeah, .5
differential. I just put that for everybody.
I mean obviously it failed for sesh but other?
Than that's the safest if you'reme because I don't have to vote
for me. That's fair.

(03:39:15):
Were you a 10? You were in a 10 in Act one
where you said. No, I was not.
OK, I wonder how much of that is, how much you fucking played
act one and kind of got numb to it.
I mean, that's probably fair. Why did I lower?
My score in act one, what was it?
I can't remember I. Don't remember either, but yeah.

(03:39:38):
I mean Act 3 is going to be a 10out of 10 too.
There you go. Anyway, it's it's just
impossible for me not to like I have too many like memories of
like me and Cass bonding over the game and shit like that.
It's just inescapeable. I definitely understand how you
could easily be a 10 for this game for sure.
There's just a lot of things that like aren't my vibe for,

(03:40:00):
especially with act 2. Like there's a lot of things
with act 2 that aren't the vibe of me.
And then just my lack of DNB experience, I think really like
holds me back from really likingsome of that wonder.
Yeah, I think that's not helping.
But I, I don't know, I feel likeI think we could absolutely be
wrong because I think we were all wrong about Act 2, clearly.
But I think Act 3 will click foryou.

(03:40:20):
But we'll see. I think so.
I could tell you just off of like the first hour and a half
is I've played, I definitely it's much better than Act 2.
Yeah, the city setting seems your thing.
Yeah, yeah. For sure you're out, Ben.
Yeah, similar to Seth, it's got to be a ton for me.
Like, like there are very few games.

(03:40:44):
Well, so how do I explain this? Like back when I was younger, I,
I used to be able to play like certain games, like over and
over and over and over again, like in an embarrassing fashion.
Like there's a game called Full throttle, which is like a Lucas
click and point adventure game. Me and my sisters used to
literally beat that game and then beat it again the next day.

(03:41:06):
And then like, we just beat it like once a day.
Like, no, whatever, do that. But we did it.
I can't do that like at 38 yearsof age, But like this game, this
is the fifth time I'm playing it.
Yeah, fifth time. And I still have as much fun as

(03:41:26):
I did the first time. And I feel like regardless of
like, regardless how many flaws I can point out, which we've
already have plenty of times through not just this podcast,
but the last one too. But like it, it doesn't matter.
It's like the fact that I can even play a game like this over
and over again and, and I still want to do it.

(03:41:49):
It's got to be a 10, just like yeah.
I agree with you and that I think this might be one of the
best multiple play through design games period and probably
will be for like the next 5 to 10 years until someone really
does some crazy shit. I think that's where the game
like super shines. Yeah, like I, I think that was

(03:42:10):
where I was where like, I was obviously wowed my first
playthrough, but it, it all of it really only clicks after your
first playthrough. And another one, which is, you
know, a lot to ask, you know, just just put 200 hours in the
game and then it's good. I promise.
Right. Like, yeah, Thomas, you're up.

(03:42:33):
Neck 2. He's a complex beast.
I think it's flawed in some ways, but it's funny because the
way that Act 2 is flawed is in ways that Act One is not flawed
in. And the areas that Act 2 excels

(03:42:56):
in is the ways that Act One is flawed in.
So they fit together really wellto kind of balance out each
other's like strengths and weaknesses.
And taken together, this is not my rating.
But taken together, I think actsone and two combined are easy 10
out of 10. But again, Act 2 in a vacuum is

(03:43:19):
a bit flawed. And while I think Act 2 is a
terrible bridge from Act one scope creep, it's an incredible
bridge into Act 3. So even though the pacing isn't
very good, it sets up what's to come very, very, very, very

(03:43:40):
well. There's some like annoying
aspects to it as well, but whereAct 2 is good it's fucking
great. So like Gauntlet of Char might
honestly be one of my favorite dungeons in any game ever
period. Full stop.
Doesn't matter what the fuck thegame is Gauntlet of Char it will
always be in the discussion for best dungeon in any RPG.

(03:44:04):
Everything that goes on at Last Light Inn and Moonrise Towers is
like just very, very engaging and it feels very like impactful
to the narrative in a way that really makes you feel the weight
of what is finally going on in the story.

(03:44:25):
Even though it takes a long ass time to get there.
And it kind of comes out of nowhere when it punches, it
punches fucking hard. All of the boss fights in Act 2,
which we I don't, we didn't talkat length about all of the boss
fights, but in my opinion, everysingle boss fight in Act 2,
fucking amazing. Doesn't matter who it is, where

(03:44:49):
it is, what the scenario was. Balthazar in the Shadow Fell is
a 10 out of 10 fight. Catherick on the roof of
Moonrise Tower is a 10 out of 10fight.
The Apostle Merkel fight 10 out of 10.
Even the fucking doctor, even though I never fought that guy
because the first time I tried, he whooped my ass and so I just
killed him through dialogues. Still, 10 out of 10.

(03:45:11):
Every boss fight is fucking unique.
It's really fun. And again, the Merkel fight is
so fucking awesome and it just kind of puts a bow on the entire
thing. So when I played this game the
first time, Act 2 was where thisgame really started to like, I
started to get it right. Like I liked Act one, but Act 2

(03:45:33):
is where I was like, oh OK, likethis game is is going to be this
right? So again, despite its flaws,
it's still so fucking good at what it's good at.
It's got to be a 9 1/2 or an 8.99 just to throw off your
guys. Guesses.
How did you go from 9 1/2 to 8.99?

(03:45:53):
I was like, wait a second. No, I'm kidding.
It's 9 1/2. Oh, did I nail it?
I think I nailed it. That was a hard one too.
Everyone nailed it. What the fuck?
I guess I watched the. Hardest one we just had.
Safest number to vote. Yeah, that's, that's, that's
just, that's just what you should vote for.
If like you think that the person really liked it, just go
9 1/2. I think we should do.

(03:46:14):
If it's a 10 and you guessed the10 then you get extra point.
I agree. I think that's actually that's
the only one. Every other direct doesn't
matter. It's only the ten that matters.
That's the 1:10 and 1:00. Yeah, like with Expedition 33, I
don't know if you guys would have put me on the 9 1/2 for
that. I, I would have had to have
thought about it longer than I did, which is every time I think

(03:46:37):
you guys think a game's super good, it's just slam 9 1/2, I
think. I think for the fun of it, ones
and 10s get you an extra point. Have we had a rather?
Hit. Yet hitting it directly gives
you an I was. 1 1/2 on logic bomb, so very close.
Oh my God, what would it take? Wait, what was the question?

(03:46:57):
Or do they have to go on? I do not.
I can't. I'm sure there's a game out
there I can think of that I would rate 1, but it's not
coming to me right now. Definitely I'm.
Just has to like finished. It just has to lack any and all,
like, conceivable merit. And I feel like there's very few
games that do that unless it's just like, I don't know, fucking

(03:47:23):
what's that guy that shot peoplein Chicago and then made a Duck
hunt game? That guy Rittenhouse.
Kyle. Yeah, Kyle Rittenhouse.
That guy's flash game might be aone out of 10.
I think any game I would rate a one out of 10 is the game that I
uninstalled. Yeah, that's what I was going to
say. Like E the only shot until

(03:47:43):
anything will be close to A1 is the intermezzle games.
That would be like, hey, play fucking a stage of this like
logic bombs because we didn't beat that game, right?
Or I guess it'd be a game that we would like fucking pull the
plug on. It'd be like, everybody hates
this, right? We could stop.
Yeah, true, man. I think based on Ben's criteria,
he might have the longest list of one out of 10 of all of us.

(03:48:03):
Multiplied by like who, Prince? Is a 1 out of 10 forbid.
Yeah, very true. It's funny because I bet a lot
of those games, if I genuinely gave them a chance, I'd probably
like them. Yes, it's just like what if you
don't get past that like entrance barrier?
It's just instant fucking one. My, my rationale, I genuinely do

(03:48:26):
have a rationale, is that if youfuck up something that like is
so obvious, yeah, I don't trust you to have made the rest of the
game. OK, you want to.
I don't know if this is related to that or not, but I've been
thinking about the comment you made about Blueprints's default
Unity font. As I've been playing Silk Song
and OK, I I've spent way too much time looking at this text

(03:48:48):
to verify. I don't think this is true.
However, all of the text that pops up in the cutscenes looks a
lot like Times New Roman, and that really fucking bugs me.
Let's see if I can find. Yeah, I'd have to see it to like
cast true judgement on it, it it.
Looks a lot like it. The one that didn't look like
Times New Roman was a capital U.Fucking silk slop.

(03:49:14):
Here, put it in silk slop. Is that the font?
That's just a general dialogue. Is that what you mean that?
Looks that looks like the boulders gave 3.
Font. No, I was thinking of it.
It's like the the like fucking text that pops up when you go
into like the spidery silk areasand it's like the thing

(03:49:37):
whispering to you or whatever the fuck, I think.
You mean like when you get a newpower and you talk to the doors?
I think so, yes. Yes, yes.
I don't think I have that, no. I think the game font fucking
owns. I don't know.
Not to get. On a different game, I'm I'm
only thinking about that specific font.
It just, I'm not even saying it looks bad.

(03:49:57):
I'm just like. Did you really?
It looks too vanilla. I don't think there's a chance
that it, oh, wait, no, is it this one?
Yes, really, I think that font looks fun, but that's.
Yeah, I think, I think that font's.
All I'm not, I'm not saying it looks bad, I'm just saying it
looks like Time's New Roman, like it might just be Time's New
Roman, and that would be really funny.

(03:50:20):
No, it's, it's not. It's not.
I don't. I'm pretty sure it's not.
That would be good stuff though.I think there'd be no way that
they would allow that to happen that'd.
Be so funny. Yeah, because the the logic
follows that they would have to like, manually choose science
and Roman. That's not a default setting,

(03:50:40):
You have to do that yourself. I'm sure it would, it would be
like a thematic thing like how an Undertale fucking like
Papyrus and Sans talk in their fonts right?
So there would have to be like some like stupid ass fucking
meaning for why they use Times in Roman specifically.
All right, well, let's go ahead.I burped in my clothes out.

(03:51:00):
Let's go ahead and call that an episode.
Gigi's. Wait, what?
Are we playing next week? That's a good question.
I thought we're doing 3? Yeah.
Right. Yeah, I.
Thought you were asking that so that Seth could do an outro.
Well, yeah, Seth do an outro. And that was Baldies Gate three
Act 2. Next week we'll be playing Hello

(03:51:22):
Charlotte Episode 3 as an Intermezzo game before we finish
up Act 3 of Baldies Gate 3. That's a lot of threes and I'm
glad you're here with us for them.