If you've been following my Baldur's Gate 3 series of posts, at this point my nomenclature may be confusing. When I say "playthrough 3" or "playthrough 12", that's clear enough: It refers to my (Bill's) 3rd or 12th playthroughs of the game, respectively. The business with the slashes may not be obvious. The number before the slash…
Guess what, folks? I just rage-quit another game. You already know from the title of this essay that it was Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. If you've read my other reviews (such as they are), you know that when I typically rage-quit a game like Arkham Knight or Gollum, it's at the end of ever-more-unpleasant experience…
This is an unusual post for me. I'm writing a second essay about a game I did not like: Expedition 33. When I wrote my earlier essay, I was filled with inchoate rage. I was angry at the game and its designers. I designated some of the lead designers in the credits and wished different horrible fates…
When I first decided to play Baldur’s Gate 3 earlier this year, it was for a number of reasons. It had been a while since I played a solid video game. I was coming out of a mental health spiral and felt like I had some energy to put into fun again. But mostly, it was because…
While doing some bookkeeping work associated with my Baldur's Gate 3 blog posts, I came across a prediction from an anthropologist. Background that you'll already know if you read any of my BG3 posts in the past year: back in playthrough 8, I named a hireling after a friend of mine. The hireling was Arctic Druid Angela;…
Multiplayer technical problems Playthrough 1/14 was marked with a number of technical problems. I hope that by going over them, I can spare you from the same difficulties in your own multiplayer BG3 playthroughs. Here's the TL;DR version, if you want to skip this section and move on to the next: According to Larian, and our own…
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…
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…
The other characters When I play BG3, I play a role. In my first playthrough, I played Jank Halversen, a stereotypical slimy Bard. Assuming a role other than myself comes naturally to me, from years of playing table-top role-playing games, LARPs, and working at the NY Ren Faire. That's why I can indulge in the silly fantasy…
Note: I have received Angela's specific permission to use her name and images I've captured during our playthroughs in my blog posts. Another note: I originally wrote this as one long essay. As with playthrough 13, I've split it into multiple posts to hopefully make it easier to read. This Baldur's Gate 3 playthrough did not take…