Blog

Scratch

Real Angela loves dogs. One of her closest and dearest friends is Hodor, a floppy dog who’s mostly folds.

As we approached the location where a player could meet Scratch for the first time, I went into all-out overly-dramatic mode: “This is it. The most important quest in the game. Nothing is more important, not even defeating the Evil Boss at the end. If you fail at this, Hodor will never speak to you again.”

Even with this warning, Fey failed at this the first time she met Scratch. Real Angela had to reload the game to succeed at it. (However, Hodor still hasn’t spoken to her again.)

From that point forward, Real Angela became extremely protective of Scratch, even though he was a digital dog in a digital game.

When Scratch is adventuring with the party, he’s like any Familiar within the game: He doesn’t have many Hit Points, but if he’s “killed” he can be summoned again after a Short Rest. He’s effectively immortal… while adventuring.

However, as I described in an earlier blog post, it is possible for him to be permanently killed during the game. Real Angela remembered that.

Feel free to put in your write up, by the way, Real Angela’s number one priority: do not let me make any decisions where the camp animals die, spoilers be damned.

I was careful to warn Real Angela if it were possible that a series of decisions might lead to our team being attacked while in camp. She was fiercely defensive of Scratch and any other potential animal companions.

To demonstrate this, consider the Hyena.

If players encounters him, he’s being led to his death by goblins. Since it’s possible that the Hyena will be told to attack the party later, a player might decide to let the Goblins work their will.

Not Real Angela. When she understood what was going on, she reloaded the game, and made sure the taunting goblin was the one who died instead.

She encouraged the Hyena to escape, and actually followed the Hyena to make sure he made it to safety.

Fey the Half-Drow Barbarian would murder humanoids with great glee. But she would try to protect any furry creature, even the rats who attacked her.

This had an influence on me outside of playthrough 1/14. Real Angela knew I was doing an Evil playthrough at the same time we were playing together. She warned me:

If you harm Scratch in that playthrough, I will think less of you as a human being!

Look, Evil playthrough. I thought the concept was fairly obvious. Of course Sandalwood was planning to find some suitably amusing fate for Scratch.

This was not only because it was in-character for Sandalwood, but because I wanted to hear Neil Newbon‘s excellent voice acting as Astarion mourns Scratch’s fate.

This was another instance of a character in one playthrough influencing the fate of a character in another one. Scratch survived to the end of playthrough 13. I even posted pictures to prove it.

However, if I do a Dark Urge playthrough…

Doggies!

To acknowledge Real Angela’s love of canines, here are screenshots of every dog in the game:

There are wolves in the game, but I didn’t get screenshots of them. Fey tried to talk with all of them, even those that were about to attack her. Being a dog-lover has certain obligations.

The owlbear

As I mentioned in my essay about the origin of Arctic Druid Angela as a character, her destiny began when she was effective in a difficult encounter roughly 1/3rd of the way through playthrough 8.

Once Real Angela had experienced the encounter (which was tricky for us, even in Explorer Difficulty), I went into detail about Arctic Druid Angela’s role in playthrough 8. Once she heard the story, Real Angela re-dubbed her namesake “Fat-ass Owlbear Angela.”

That set a new goal for Real Angela: she wanted to see a Druid drink an Elixir of the Colossus, transform into an Owlbear, and have someone cast an Enlarge spell on them. Then the mega-sized Owlbear would use Crushing Flight to mash some opponents.

We didn’t have a Druid in our group at the time. I volunteered to respec Minthara into an Arctic Druid, exactly as Druid Angela had been. Real Angela finally got to see the Fat-ass Owlbear that was the birth of her fictional counterpart.

After Real Angela decided to pursue a relationship with Halsin in addition to Karlach, she wanted to use him as the “Fat-ass Owlbear.” She had him and Karlach alternate as her partner in the party.

I kept Minthara by my side, but respecced her into a Evocation Wizard. That let her keep the “Arctic” adjective, and provided the party with area-of-effect spells. (Real Angela had not yet mastered spellcasting, and was not inclined to have Halsin cast Cold spells; he never was a full-fledged Arctic Druid.)

The Druid Owlbear form is generally regarded as the most powerful of all the Druid Wild Shapes. However, as she was going through the list of possible forms, Real Angela couldn’t help but notice that one of those shapes was a Dilophosaurus. In other words:

Real Angela could not decide which of these forms she liked better.

I will take a page from Real Angela: Why not both? Which leads us to…

Thrones

I always try to include this shot from all my playthroughs:

Let’s go back to my post on the photo mode introduced in BG3 Patch 8.

As I set up those shots for the photo-mode essay, playthrough 1/14 was nearing its end. I took a few special shots of Real Angela’s favorite characters, even though they were from a different playthrough.

Hugs

Let’s look some screenshots of physical activity that Real Angela will find less interesting than doggies.

Multiplayer lessons

Playthrough 1/14 was the first time I played BG3 in multiplayer mode. Indeed, apart from World of Warcraft, I can’t remember playing any multiplayer computer game before.

Part of the challenge for me was being patient. I don’t mean with Real Angela, I mean with the game: I had to fight the urge to rush things. I wanted to let Real Angela enjoy the game at her own pace, not the one I’d become accustomed to after 13 playthroughs.

Part of the challenge for Real Angela, apart for the game-imposed challenges like understanding the user interface and dealing with game system, was dealing with me as a guide. I was often enigmatic, refusing to answer questions directly, because I wanted her to enjoy the surprises and experience the game in her own way.

This is a multi-part essay. Here are links to all the parts:

• Part 1 – Fey and Bellandria
• Part 2 – Characters
• Part 3 – Hugs and Doggies
• Part 4 – Approvals and Interruptions
• Part 5 – Problems and Plans