Now for a dose of reality
Video games are not Barbie dolls.
When you start a playthrough, the game offers you a choice of which character you want to play: an Origin character or a character of your own design. That’s the character who’s supposed to be the protagonist of the story.
The game is not designed to switch protagonists in mid-stream. Why should it be? The initial protagonist was the player’s choice. BG3 is all about respecting the player’s choices.
Indeed, it could be argued that allowing any other character than the lead protagonist, as I described above, to be the focus of any cutscene was a questionable choice on Larian’s part. The majority of players want to see their characters play the active role in cutscenes, not the party member who happened to be standing closest to Earl Whatshisface when the Earl decided to speak.
If there were a mechanism to switch to a different protagonist, that would most likely lead to far more disappointed and confused players than it would please crazy fanfic writers like me.
Suppose a player clicked the “assign new leader” button by accident while playing Karlach, and suddenly Wyll became the central figure in all the scenes. This isn’t what the player wanted. If the player didn’t save the game incessantly (and there are reasons why that might not be practical), they might miss crucial parts of Karlach’s story until they realized they were looking at Wyll’s story instead. Or Lae’zel’s story.
Or a hireling’s story… and hirelings are not supposed to have stories of their own.
If you were take this to an extreme, if Larian accommodated my desire to make a hireling the focus of the story, why shouldn’t Scratch be? Or a summoned Dryad? Or a skeleton archer? There has to be a limit somewhere, or the game’s design becomes burdened with supporting too many choices of this sort, even silly ones.
What I’d hoped is that the game could handle a hireling at the forefront of the party because the game resources are already there. Game protagonists rarely speak. When they do (e.g., they read a sign out loud) the sound files exist for every potential voice in the game. Character models in cutscenes are generated dynamically anyway, to accommodate costumes and gear and such.
Indeed, Druid Angela could even have sex, provided she knew whom to ask.
However, in the end, it’s silly to expect that any other character than the player’s initial choice should be the focus of the game. The host of the game is the Hero. No other character is, even guests in a multi-player game. The Hero should always show up in the end.
Larian made the right decision, even if the idea is so blatantly obvious that it wasn’t a conscious decision on the part of the designers.
Sometimes Christie can’t fit into Barbie’s Dream House.
“Apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?”
My focus above on our failure with Druid Angela may give the impression that Real Angela and I were disappointed with playthrough 8’/2.5. Quite the opposite. We enjoyed ourselves.
We also both saw things that we’d never seen before in previous playthroughs.
For my part, I learned what it was like to host a game.
We both explored what it was like to betray a Moon Lesbian. Verdict: It was interesting to see… once. It’s not something that either one of us is likely to do in the future, even in an “evil” playthrough.
Real Angela and I had a debate about the most effective gear for a dual-wielding melee character. She liked to build a character with the highest possible chance for a critical hit. I favored using gear from a special vendor who was only visible if you performed an evil deed. When we tested my build, it turned out to be so effective that Real Angela shifted Astarion’s gear in her own playthrough to match my choice.
Because of our emphasis on “Kill Wyll”, we went through our encounters with just three characters: Galaxy Angela, Mor’lith, and either Lae’zel or Karlach. We had no problems with any battle. Essentially we proved our mastery of the game on Balanced difficulty.
Galaxy Angela proved her skill when she took on the Assassin Queen solo.
It turns out that there are benefits when you don’t have Speak with Animals.
The characters of Astarion and Shadowheart both have major story-resolution encounters in Act 3. For 8’/2.5, I chose to explore what happens if you don’t complete either one of their quests. The answer turned out to be: not much. You miss out out some climatic cutscenes and some very nice gear that, in the end, my characters did not need.
We watched several versions of potential game endings together, ones that involved choices that Real Angela would not be inclined to make.
I went through playthrough 8 before mods were added to BG3. I didn’t add any for 8’/2.5. As a result, I was able to earn a couple of game achievements that I could not gain in my other recent playthroughs, since the game doesn’t award achievements if you’ve activated any mods.
I use the 8’/2.5 game saves as a “toy box” for exploring photo mode. As I said, more on that in a future post.
What’s next?
It’s not clear whether Real Angela and I will ever play BG3 together again, given the technical problems and our approaches to the game at this point. If this was our last in Baldur’s Gate together, it was a nice way to wrap things up.
As for us as individual players, as I write this I’m on my playthrough 15 and Real Angela is on her playthrough 4.
Although I’m not going through playthough 15 with Real Angela, that doesn’t mean there’s no Angela in the playthrough.
Until I write up that adventure…
This is a multi-part essay. Here are links to all the parts:
- Part 1 – Druid Angela and Mor’lith
- Part 2 – Renewal
- Part 3 – Drama
- Part 4 – Reality