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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 9535520" data-attributes="member: 18">That's the key issue though.Almost all of them in DAO.You say that, and I'm sure, to you, these wild blood-soaked decisions or really obviously silly "DONT DO THIS" signposted decisions do make the game "feel more important" and "deeper" even when you don't take them, but the cold reality is, for me, they do the exact opposite. They seem so stupid and unreasonable that they are actively anti-immersive and pull me out of the game to be shocked how bad, cheap, and tawdry the writing is. It's why I find DAO very hard to replay. That's absolutely an issue in BG3 - people act like the writing is flawless, but it trips over its own dick a bunch of times, and it was much, much worse in Early Access before the writers got screamed at so much they dialled back the constant downers and ridiculous forced lose/lose situations.Not by choice, and it's obviously not "evil". Regrettable? Sure - but that's part of what makes DA2 good - there are decisions which are regrettable, but not psycho evil stuff or just dunce cap stuff. But those elves chose death because they chose stupidity, not listening, and bigotry. Plus the only reason they even fight to the last is "it's a videogame and we didn't program in running away". So presenting it as an "evil choice" and using it to hold up the extremely weak argument that DA2 is full of blood-soaked lunacy like BG3 offers is just not helpful and undermines your own point. DA2 is a game I'm extremely familiar with, and your description was so inaccurate I couldn't even square it with what happens in the game until someone guessed what you meant.No.DAO does. DA2 does not. DAO has an awful lot of really trashy shock value/edgelord material in it, like the rape poem, which is just staggeringly sophomoric, that people try and pretend is big and serious and mature, but is really mostly just pulp and a lot of it is pretty misogynistic or bordering on that despite 3/7 of the writing team being female.BG3's stuff is at least distinctly less misogynist than DAO tends towards, and often is more genuine of a choice - most of the evil choices in DAO are just objectively dumb, whereas in BG3 there are some like that, but there are also a lot which are pretty selfish in a more functional way. In EA, especially early EA, a lot more choices were just lose/lose or just dumb, which was a bit more like DAO.Yeah and this is a key issue that people ignore. BG3's options, whilst even more blood-soaked, mostly aren't as universally presented as failures. Some are - the Mayrina one mentioned is a pure failure - you have nothing to gain from helping the hag that you can't get from bullying her - and messing with her gives you a lot more rewards over the game. But a lot of others are actually a different path, which one origin in the game actively supports. DA2's different options give it more real story-based replayability (imho) than DAO in part because of this - it doesn't have just a bunch of fail states - it has some actual choices/consequences which then play out in the story in ways that aren't just "I screwed up" but more "damn this world/damn Kirkwall!". This is reflected in DA2 taking a different approach to companions to DAO - DA2 doesn't have them leave, in general, when you piss them off, but they gain Rivalry with you rather than Friendship so you have a very different but valid relationship. In DAO you just spam them with gifts (including a ton from paid DLC!) and they'll deal with anything - your only way to get rid of them is to pointlessly, insanely murder them for no good reason, or intentionally withhold gifts to let them leave.I'd also point out that BG3 has a different attitude to being able to kill characters/NPCs in general, in that it always has that as a possibility at all times, whereas in DAO it's confected, manufactured, and only possible when the game wants it to be possible.ALL THAT SAID!!!I think this is missing the point.I think the issue is not really that DAV doesn't have blood-soaked insanity for edgelords.There is instead a real but smaller issue where you can't be as mean or as righteous as it feels like you should be at times, because Rook is a fairly narrowly-bounded character. I am pretty sure that at least some of this is because they don't want to let you being incredibly crappy to the companions, because if they did, it the bigots would be absolutely getting off on being horrible to or murdering Taash. Like, they didn't want to make it "bully/murder non-binary teen with the game's permission" simulator.</blockquote>

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