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Approval

One major issue with our multiplayer stories was with approval.

Every non-player character has an approval rating of the protagonist.

What we learned in this playthrough is that each player character in multiplayer BG3 has a separate approval rating.

By far the biggest adjustments of a character’s approval come during the cutscenes. A cutscene will involve at most a single player character. Any nearby non-player characters have the potential to react to the player character’s choices.

In playthrough 1/14, by our mutual intention, it was Real Angela’s character Fey who was the protagonist in most of the cutscenes. While it’s possible for a non-player character to disapprove of a protagonist’s actions, by and large the game is set up so that the companions’ approval of the protagonist will tend to increase.

The net result was that Fey’s approval rating for all the characters got higher and higher as the game went on. Bellandria’s approval rating remained close to zero, as she was rarely the protagonist in any of the cutscenes.

There were two main consequences of this.

Because Real Angela did not care for Astarion, Gale, Shadowheart, or Lae’zel, they usually did not accompany the party on adventures. In particular, Astarion’s approval rating of Fey was low.

This had a dramatic effect when the party went on Astarion’s key personal quest. Bellandria was a Rogue, so there’d been little reason to have Astarion accompany the group prior to that quest.

Astarion’s approval rating of Fey was basically zero. When Fey essentially ordered Astarion to make a key decision that he did not like, he obeyed her…

…but he was furious.

He destroyed a key magic item, condemned thousands to eternal imprisonment, and abruptly left the party. He took all the magic items he’d been carrying with him.

Needless to say, this did not sit well with Real Angela. Her real-world human approval rating of Astarion, Gale, Shadowheart, and Lae’zel, none too high to begin with, took a severe hit.

For my part, as a result of repeated playthroughs, I had a stronger familiarity with the characters’ stories and motivations. After all, I’d had playthroughs in which I’d romanced all of them, and I’d played as all of them. I’d hoped that Real Angela could appreciate them in the same way.

I had to decide whether to make excuses for Astarion’s behavior, or whether to let Real Angela form her own opinions. Finally, I settled for pointing out that if Astarion’s approval of Fey had been higher, he would have accepted her choices with better grace.

The second consequence of the approval ratings was in Bellandria’s love life.

At the start of the playthrough, Real Angela decided that Fey would romance Karlach. I asked if it were all right with her if Bellandria romanced Shadowheart.

This was a compromise on my part. I’d just romanced Minthara in playthrough 13, and Shadowheart in playthrough 12. All other things being equal, I would have picked Lae’zel.

However, I knew that Real Angela would be playing a Barbarian, and that Karlach would be accompanying us in some kind of melee role (in fact, Real Angela had Karlach be an Open-Hand Monk). If Lae’zel accompanied us too, that would make three melee fighters in a party, which was a bit too much.

Real Angela agreed that Bellandria could romance Shadowheart. We each could have the sex scenes associated with our respective beauxs. But there was a problem with that plan.

While Shadowheart’s approval rating of Fey was high, her approval rating of Bellandria was near zero. It was then we realized that because Fey took the lead in all the cutscenes, there was no real chance for Bellandria’s approval rating to get high enough to initiate a Shadowheart romance.

Once we understood what was going on, Real Angela was willing to let Bellandria take point in some of the cutscenes. But it was too little, too late.

Although I’m being overly-dramatic about this for the sake of the blog post, the reality was that this was Real Angela’s playthrough, not mine. Under other circumstances, with two players who were both familiar with the game, we might have taken turns stepping forward and participating in cutscenes. Who knows? That might happen in some other playthrough.

In the end, Real Angela consented that Bellandria could establish a relationship with Minthara. This meant that she let Bellandria take the lead in some key cutscenes that I knew would result in major increases in Minthara’s approval.

I hadn’t romanced Minthara in two consecutive playthroughs since playthrough 5. So be it.

So we have the final mainstream party for playthrough 1/14:

Cutscenes

Another major issue with our multiplayer game had to do with cutscenes.

Part of this relates to approval, as I said earlier: Character approval depends on who is making the decisions during cutscenes.

Another part has to do with who has control over when a cutscene plays and how the other player(s) view it.

You may have noticed that a large number of screenshots in this write-up have the words “Stop Listening” at the bottom. That’s because Real Angela initiated the majority of the cutscenes in the game. These scenes were automatically shown to me as well. I had the option to stop watching… well, “Stop Listening” if I wished.

In general, we wanted to see each other’s cutscenes. As I’ve said many times before, it’s the variations in the game’s storyline that has kept me interested through 14 playthroughs. It was the same with Real Angela’s playthrough: I saw scenes and lines I’d never seen before, as a result of Real Angela’s choices.

We chose to play the game this way. There’s an option in the game (in Options->Accessibility) to enable/disable whether you share your cutscenes with anyone else playing with you. We made sure that option was turned on for both us.

If we’re being honest, part of that was so we could see other’s relationship scenes. Real Angela didn’t care if I saw a nude digital image of a nude digital Fey making love to a nude digital Karlach. What’s more interesting, again as I’ve said in the past, are the kissing sequences. Real Angela had observations about Karlach’s kisses that I’d not noticed before, and she had the chance to see what it’s like to kiss Minthara.

However, every once a while the game would “glitch” and not show the other player’s cutscene. Since cutscenes don’t repeat within a given playthrough, this could be frustrating if the scene was particularly interesting. There were times when one of us was forced to dictate what was going, or read the list of response options out loud so the other would know what was going on.

Another troublesome aspect was when the game became too enthusiastic in sharing cutscenes. In particular, as the host, when Real Angela instigated a cutscene, it would be shown to me as well. When I instigated a cutscene, Real Angela’s gameplay was not interrupted. She would have no idea that I was watching a cutscene unless I told her.

More than once I’d say something like, “Sorry, but this character started to talk to me when I meant for them to talk to you. Please come over so you can see this exchange.” She would bring Fey to Bellandria and click on a “Listen” button.

This might irritate Real Angela if she was doing something else, like searching an area for herbs to use for Alchemy.

However, Real Angela got her revenge, and much more. As I said, when she spoke to a character the game would display the scene to me–

Uh, where was I? Oh, yes. I might be trying to do something–

As I was saying, I’d start to do something and–

I’d be trying to do something complex like–

–like respecing my character–

–respeccing my character. I’d be in the middle–

–middle of some involved sequence–

–sequence of button presses–

–presses, only to be interrupted–

–interrupted as Real Angela talked to a–

–another character in–

–in the crowd. When I was–

–was doing something that–

–something that she couldn’t–

–couldn’t join, she would–

–she would go to–

–go to groups of–

–groups of characters to–

–to see what each–

–what each of them–

–of them had to say. It was–

–It was a reasonable thing–

–thing to do, but it–

–it interrupted me–

–interruptedmeeverysingletime!

Once again, I’m exaggerating for the sake of the blog post. Real Angela would pause in her interviews if I asked her to. But I was reluctant to do that. Real Angela was doing what I’ve done: appreciating the level of detail that Larian gave even to incidental characters.

(If you’re sharp-eyed, you’ll observe that there’s no “Stop Listening” subtitle in the pictures I used for the above joke. That’s because I restored a game save from playthrough 12 to take the screenshots. I hope I’m not in trouble from using an image from another playthrough.)

As I said, one of my jobs as a guide was to be patient. The purpose of this playthrough was for Real Angela to enjoy herself. I had to respect that.

But it did get frustrating sometimes!

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