Rasaad's BG2 quest so weak, it leaves me with not much faith for Dragonspear
Ygramul
Member Posts: 1,060
Just finished Rasaad's quest and even without bugs I find it abysmal compared to the rest of SoA writing & quests.
Here are some issues:
(None are bugs!)
0. Rasaad voice -- acting is fine, but there is a sound engineering problem that makes him sound like a tin kettle
1. Bad writing -- dialog choices break suspension of disbelief and nowhere nearly as witty as the writer may have imagined himself to be
2. No challenge -- it's a cake walk; a well played party has no challenge to face here; even the last fight has nothing to offer (and no rewards for the fight; see the next item)
3. disproportionate rewards -- I talk a bunch of hooey to four people at the temple and get four powerful items, not to mention some other easy to collect items earlier?! This is like some terrible pay-to-win DLC then?! Some of those items are far too awesome to collect so easily this early in the game (a Mirror Image ring; a "Beholder" Helmet with 9 CC charges PER DAY; a True Seeing gem -- easily TOB grade items, obtained with no challenge). And then the last fight gives you almost nothing.
4. Terrible resolution -- Rasaad just leaves?! I have no chance to negotiate?! No resolution or continuation to the romance even though I haven't even talked to the Shadow Thieves yet?! Is this a joke?! (I don't care if there is a dialog tree that could have led to another resolution; the writing is very opaque and weird; and I don't reload.)
In a way I am relieved that I no longer need to put up with Rasaad and can continue with the original BG2 NPCs.
This, combined with the terrible quest design of Neera (there is not even a Wild Magic zone; and again no challenge) and the abysmal writing of Hexxat that I had seen in some earlier playtroughs gives me very little faith in Beamdog's ability to pull off a well-written RPG by themselves.
I will buy Dragonspear only if many people I respect on this board try it first and vouch for me to have been wrong on this point.
Here are some issues:
(None are bugs!)
0. Rasaad voice -- acting is fine, but there is a sound engineering problem that makes him sound like a tin kettle
1. Bad writing -- dialog choices break suspension of disbelief and nowhere nearly as witty as the writer may have imagined himself to be
2. No challenge -- it's a cake walk; a well played party has no challenge to face here; even the last fight has nothing to offer (and no rewards for the fight; see the next item)
3. disproportionate rewards -- I talk a bunch of hooey to four people at the temple and get four powerful items, not to mention some other easy to collect items earlier?! This is like some terrible pay-to-win DLC then?! Some of those items are far too awesome to collect so easily this early in the game (a Mirror Image ring; a "Beholder" Helmet with 9 CC charges PER DAY; a True Seeing gem -- easily TOB grade items, obtained with no challenge). And then the last fight gives you almost nothing.
4. Terrible resolution -- Rasaad just leaves?! I have no chance to negotiate?! No resolution or continuation to the romance even though I haven't even talked to the Shadow Thieves yet?! Is this a joke?! (I don't care if there is a dialog tree that could have led to another resolution; the writing is very opaque and weird; and I don't reload.)
In a way I am relieved that I no longer need to put up with Rasaad and can continue with the original BG2 NPCs.
This, combined with the terrible quest design of Neera (there is not even a Wild Magic zone; and again no challenge) and the abysmal writing of Hexxat that I had seen in some earlier playtroughs gives me very little faith in Beamdog's ability to pull off a well-written RPG by themselves.
I will buy Dragonspear only if many people I respect on this board try it first and vouch for me to have been wrong on this point.
4
Comments
November 25, 2015.
Respect.
I hope someone will bother having an actual opinion.
Sometimes it works - for example, when I was approached by the monks that Rasaad punched out in Trademeet it gave me the option of saying something like "a concussion is pretty damning evidence" and I thought that it was something Bioware could have written back in the day. Clever, but not over the top.
Then there are other times where my guy has the option of going full-Jan Janssen and starting a long-winded rant about nothing. These are the ones that I had an issue with since they were way too frequent. It's fine when you're talking to Minsc and all he understands is valiant gibberish but when talking to intelligent characters it just takes you out of the game.
That being said, I think the characters themselves are mostly well written. I've beaten the game with both Rasaad and Neera at the same time and they were a lot of fun, and Hexxat seemed interesting the one time I decided I wanted a single-class Thief in my party. Dorn's a little over the top for my tastes but that's as far as my experience with him goes.
I also agree about the sound engineering, it does sound like the characters are a bit echo-y sometimes.
I have faith in you guys though, as long as you stay true to BG's roots I'll be buying Siege of Dragonspear the day it drops.
If that's the case, it sounds even worse than the original voices. This really needs to be fixed.
@sparrow13x
Regarding the quality of the writing, I agree. See picture below; the last paragraph is what really nails it. I knew I'd have a use for it again, thank you @Ignatius_J_Reilly.
I...never used the beholder helmet all that much, except for the AC bonus. Because I'd rather have my fighters swinging than using the charges.
Trueseeing gem? Really useful, but not game breaking in any way. That spell can be cast by so many characters that it becomes useful but not gamey.
And the last fight? It gives you amazing items!
Headband of the devout: Righteous magic: +10 HP, +3 strength, and maximum damage per hit! My monk PC was doing *43 damage per hit* with that item. That is insane!
Cloak of the Dark Moon: +2 AC! Which works on top of all other items. That is a superbly good item.
How could you possibly put the beholder helm above either of those? This is a problem why? I really liked this. It shows that not everything revolves around you, and if you convince him, he will move on with his life and do what is important to him. It's just like having Keldorn leave to be with his family. RP wise its good to have these things be able to happen. I applaud beamdog for this.
Don't hate on Neera. She had a great quest line. And there is an entire zone tainted by wild magic, so I have *no idea* what you are talking about.
I'll give you Hexxat though.
Beamdog has done a good job overall. I can't wait to see what they do with Dragonspear.
To me, they were a lot of fun. I really enjoyed his storyline, which was something of a surprise, since I before the release of BG2EE I had thought Rasaad's story would be the least interesting of all EE NPCs.
Also, I actually found trials in the Rasaad's quest to be quite difficult when I first went through them, especially the last one in the bright room.
As for the difficulty of his questline, that's relative. I happen to have found it quite challenging, particularly the end in ToB.
Lousy dialog design, if you ask me...
Hmmm.... I had a well built Dragon Disciple at that point. She wiped the floor with the Invisible Stalkers barely breaking a sweat. (And that was the hardest of the four fights.)
... but the challenges should better have been faced with a solo Rasaad - at least it should have been an option to do so.
And, again, the rewards were very unbalanced in my opinion.
However, I also remember why it was such a letdown:
During my brief visit last night [I had to reload due to a crashing dialog glitch; haven't had time try it again yet] I ran into Hobgoblins and Gnolls.
Seriously, Hobgoblins & Gnolls?!
In SOA?!
When Neera greets me as a lvl 12 mage?!
She could solo that zone with no sweat if she want to. Wild Magic or not.
(I think my last visit there, when BG2EE first came out, had me just stroll through there with hardly bothering to cast any spells.)
** That zone should have had Nishruu, Hakeshaar, Magic Golems, and a mad wild wizard or two!! **
Instead, I remember.... herding cats.
And being annoyed enough that I may skip the whole thing this time...
In any case, unless the Dorn and Hexxat quests or the TOB quests are really top notch to make up for all this, EE content appear to be underwhelming to me.
Also, there're gnolls and gibberlings on a map with one of the hardest dungeons in SoA - I mean Windspear Hills.
Putting such difficult enemies as Nishruu, Hakeshaar and Magic Golem into a location you can enter with a low-level party (not long after clearing the starting dungeon) would be wrong, to me.
If I recall correctly Wild Forest entirely misses that opportunity.
Again, Nishruu, Hakeshaar, Magic Golems etc. shoulda been there along other nasties that make you cringe:
"Do I risk to cast a spell to maybe get annihilated due to Wild Surge or definitely get annihilated if I don't?"
What kind of bothered me was how that temple place was willing too give four potent magical items to a random bunch of initiates. It has no reason to give the items to the party rather than to any other group of initiates, and I wouldn't imagine that this temple could possibly have the resources to give expensive magic items to all the initiates that join.
Overall, though, I liked Rasaad's quest. I don't know what to say about SoD because it's not out yet.
It seems that they were trying to parallel Rasaad's SoA quest with Keldorn's - you can convince him to stay, but I think that even if he leaves, you just need to talk to him again and you'll have the option to re-recruit him. Possibly silly in its own right, but at least you don't permanently lose a party member by completing their questline (*cough*hexxat*cough*)
As for SoD: you're absolutely correct that Beamdog's past input doesn't quite inspire as much confidence as they might have preferred. But you may also take into consideration that they're using different head writers this time around - I don't think Amber Scott was even at Beamdog back when BG2:EE was being written, Andrew Foley only wrote Hexxat's dialogue (not that that's much of an achievement, but still), and they have an unquantified amount of input from the legendary Chris Avellone.
Now, none of this guarantees that SoD will avoid the mistakes Beamdog made with the EEs. But the situation is different enough that it's impossible to predict what will happen. (I'd also avoid relying on opinions expressed on this specific board - bengoshi's just going to tell you that it's the best game ever and that Beamdog can do no wrong, Erg is going to sulk that arrows stack in groups of 80 rather than 40 or whatever, etc. As a rule, fan forums aren't the place to find level-headed reactions.)
Fascinating !
I think that my reactions were pretty level headed...
At least we agree on something: people can read my old posts and make their own mind.
See, I can be level headed too sometimes
You can't state opinions about events that had not happened