Feminina O'Ladybrain posted: " Spoilers for the end of Baldur's Gate and the beginning of the expansion where you're prowling around in the crypts Sweet Naked Zeus that was hard. It wasn't even Saverok that was hard! Well, the really hard part. It was those two OTHER ass" Play First. Talk Later.
Spoilers for the end of Baldur's Gate and the beginning of the expansion where you're prowling around in the crypts
Butch:
Sweet Naked Zeus that was hard.
It wasn't even Saverok that was hard! Well, the really hard part. It was those two OTHER assholes. That one dude that kept, I don't know, blowing up or something? What was THAT? I think, though things happened quickly, when I finally "won" one of those guys was still alive. Dude's probably thinking "I should get to be the bad guy! Who's a henchman now?"
Anyway, finally won, watched the endgame cutscene, watched the credits mostly to say "Oh DUDE that guy went on to direct DA2!" and then got vortexed right into the sword coast expansion which made me say "AH! THIS is what I remember, what with the better graphics, the intraparty banter, the added details about the environment and the extreme level of creepy. Jaheira and Khalid finally flirting. Things like "This table has cards and tankards of ale that look like they were hastily abandoned." D&D shit, man! D&D SHIT!
And then I stopped and we'll come back to that later, right?
Creepy. Shit.
You don't happen to have Neera with you, do you?
Anyway, you win?
Feminina:
That was a pretty anticlimactic end, I have to say. Fight fight fight and then someone is dead and it's all fading away and the credits are rolling.
And then right into what I assumed was an expansion, although I barely did anything. I don't have Neera with me (though I have Dorn). My Imoen was replaced with Safana, that inappropriately seductive thief who, I hope, will keep her suggestive comments to a minimum, and I have Viconia, Quayle, and Alora the halfling thief. We're a weird bunch.
Butch:
Really? I kinda loved it. You kill the big, supreme bad guy, then you see his statue crumble and there's that big pull back with hundreds and hundreds of niches with statues and you realize that it's not just you, it's not just the big bad, it's hundreds and hundreds of bhaal's children out there. It was this "Oh, you think Saverok was significant? HA! He's just one of hundreds." Here you are, the big hero for getting rid of Saverok, but, in the grand scheme of the real baddie, Bhaal, he's just this one, insignificant face in a huge, huge crowd. Even the way they did it: Here's the mighty statue of the major baddie falling and it's major and...oh. Wait. It isn't.
I don't know. I thought it was both a great play on the You Accomplished Important Things game trope and one of the defter ways to set up sequels one has seen.
But yeah, here we are with nice details about the world, better graphics, isn't it nice? Yeah, I don't know why we ended up with Sefana. I could do without her. But yeah, there's Imoen. Off learning spells. Interesting.
And then there's Neera.
As you are aware, every time you click through your dudes they say stuff like "Nature's servant awaits" and all that. So now, Neera is saying all of the things she used to say when you did that, except now, every once in a while, she says "SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!" and, very rarely "Kill me......"
That's unusual.
We talked before about how different it was that the game let you romance Neera then sowed the seeds of mistrust AFTER you romanced her. We seem to have kicked it up a notch here, because this shit is weird and creepy.
Interesting.
Anyway, we playing this expansion or we moving on to Horizon?
And wait....
WAAAAAAIT.....
Did we finish a game....on the same day???????
Feminina:
I expect to see the Four Horsemen on the horizon any minute now.
But in the meantime, the expansion can't be that long, right? Maybe wrap it up and then break before moving on to BGII?
I wasn't feeling super great last night (something I ate, maybe) -- I must have blinked or zoned out and missed all the other statues. You're right, that's an interesting twist on 'accomplishment.'
Butch:
Yeah, man, you missed the whole pullback. It was very reminiscent of the last shot of Raiders of the Lost Ark, all that "And the thing you thought was so special is just in a sea of other special things."
It's also a wonderful subversion of the trope of the all powerful (or about to be all powerful) bad guy. Game starts with this Highlanderesque "There can be only one" cutscene with Saverok killing that guy, remember? Saying "I'll be the last?" Well, he obviously thought he had done enough, but then, you see all these statues, all these hundreds of others and you can't help but think that he was wrong, that he wasn't anywhere near as significant as he thought he was.
Man, your allergies must've been bad if you missed all this shit.
I'll play the expansion. I want to know what's up with Neera.
We NEVER finish on the same day. Shit, we get within, like, two weeks we're doing well.
Feminina:
I agree, this is strange and somewhat terrifying.
And that sounds really disturbing with Neera! I'll have to click on Dorn more often to see if he has anything going on.
Do you remember, do we have any chance in this to switch companions, or is this what we've got?
Butch:
I don't know about the companions. I'd rather not have Safana, and I would rather have all the stuff Imoen was carrying. I bet you, like me, begged Imoen to join. I also asked all around to see if anyone else there was willing to come along. We shall see.
The Neera thing was WEIRD. I was scrolling through, as one does getting "What Nature's Servant Ch-ch-ch whattya need" wall of sound as one does and then had to say "Wait, did someone say "Kill me?" They just threw it in there! I had to slowly, repeatedly, scroll through everyone until someone said it again. It took a while, too! Next many times I scrolled through she was just "Yup?"
Now, I am in uncharted territory. Didn't play this expansion. We're in this mission of discovery together.
Feminina:
Ah! Then we shall explore this new material while knowing nothing about it! Sounds good. We'll figure it out.
Super weird about Neera. I'll talk to her if I get a chance, see if she says anything to someone she's not dating.
But it all depends on whether or not we get to go aboveground at some point. I may never see her again.
Butch:
I am happy that we have the banter and the world details and the graphics. Major life improvements.
I guess I was misremembering when I thought a guy that is important in BG2 showed up in BG1. Said guy did not show up.
Even when we were playing games I actually played, details were foggy.
Also....
We talked about continuity before, and, in catching up on bloggage, I was reminded of something: Your Imoen ditched you. Right? You killed too many dudes, off she went.
Yet, I am guessing that there she was at the start of the expansion like nothing happened, right?
Discuss.
Feminina:
I bet you're right about Imoen being there like nothing happened, although actually she was with me at the end. After she left, I reloaded and avoided fighting the Flaming Fist, so I didn't lose her in the long run. I wasn't prepared to face the end without one of my Trio of Thieves, man!
Butch:
Ah. Never mind. Shame. Would've been nice to compare.
But yes, I believe she would be there. Plot points and all.
But then, the whole presence of the pervy thief makes no sense. I wasn't with her in the end. I spent about twelve seconds with her, if that. I might have not spent any time with her, as I might have gotten killed, reloaded, then said "Screw it, she's weird" and left. Was she supposed to be important?
Feminina:
No idea. I mean...she's a thief, so maybe they figure they took away a female thief, they'll give you a female thief back? Which, hello, not all female thieves are the same, game.
Or, to give them a little more credit, maybe she'll have some relevance to this specific story, and they would have swapped her in for someone else if we hadn't had Imoen with us at the end, because she needs to be here for some point to make sense.
We shall see, I guess.
Butch:
Wish they had given us a less annoying thief.
Maybe that's why Neera is all shut up shut up kill me.
Feminina:
Ha!
Poor Neera...
Butch:
You should be all "Hey Dorn, you know all those times when I was all 'Hey, don't kill party members?' Well, dude, this is your moment."
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