Hexxat's quests. How to redone them.
BartTP
Member Posts: 19
First of all, I'm playing BG 2 EE for the first time. I love Neera and loved her quest in BG1, liked her part in BG2. I had much of fun playing SoD. Thank you, BeamDog, and give us more!
But I have to say it. I'm very forgiving player, I can soak up a lot, but my God, there's some serious bad writing in Hexxat's quests (and low quality voice acting and sound). If you want her to be a black lesbian vampire - fine, it's your call as a maker. But please, cut off all of the talking in her quests. It's bad, I mean - REALLY bad. Just make Hexxat a tomb raider, we totally don't need to talk with monks, ghosts and other tomb inhabitants. We totally don't need to help them fight mind flayers (not to mention they are easily capable of killing them without our help). The whole talking part is very, very exaggerated and totally unnecessary. If it can't be done right, just throw it away. Pretty please!
Also, the way the party transports to the tombs is kinda lame. There's a lot of free space on the map, just squeeze those tombs anywhere, make a little above ground location, give Cabrina the keys, lock it up for good and there, you got it. No need for some cheesy strange teleportation things. M'kay?
But I have to say it. I'm very forgiving player, I can soak up a lot, but my God, there's some serious bad writing in Hexxat's quests (and low quality voice acting and sound). If you want her to be a black lesbian vampire - fine, it's your call as a maker. But please, cut off all of the talking in her quests. It's bad, I mean - REALLY bad. Just make Hexxat a tomb raider, we totally don't need to talk with monks, ghosts and other tomb inhabitants. We totally don't need to help them fight mind flayers (not to mention they are easily capable of killing them without our help). The whole talking part is very, very exaggerated and totally unnecessary. If it can't be done right, just throw it away. Pretty please!
Also, the way the party transports to the tombs is kinda lame. There's a lot of free space on the map, just squeeze those tombs anywhere, make a little above ground location, give Cabrina the keys, lock it up for good and there, you got it. No need for some cheesy strange teleportation things. M'kay?
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Comments
But I gotta agree the writing is... not that good.
OR we could just change some names, more fitting Faerun. It would change absolutely nothing.
Maybe I said it wrong. I meant that the way the teleporation goes feels bad, man. You have to go to cementary for reason unknown, make some kind of tomb walking that sounds just horribly, and so on.
But it'd be best of all if she wasn't so buggy and dull. A vampire with 18 charisma should not be boring. I haven't taken her through the whole game yet, but I have done her ghostly monk quest and it bugged out... most of ghosts stayed neutral even after I attacked, so it was just free XP.
This is the second time I've tried her and it's the second time something has bugged. My first attempt she died and wouldn't come back no matter how much I waited or tried to raise her. In my current game she dies just fine, but the problem is she barely talks. I rescued her on day 4... and it's now day 43 and this is all she has said to me.
HER: "You sure you want to do this?"
ME: "Do what, Hexxat?"
HER: "I've seen the way you look at me. I know that look well."
ME: "I don't know what you're talking about."
HER: "I guess I was mistaken. A pity."
Is that really all it takes to kill the friendship/romance and recieve her silent treatment? We just killed Bodhi and wiped out all the vampires and Hexxat said nothing, which didn't seem right. So I checked her dialog file and it seems she does have alot to say, but she just doesn't say it!
*sigh*
You see, anyone can say anything about anything. But if you don't try to argue your point in any way and don't give specific examples of what you mean, the opinion is essentially useless. It's just noise with no signal.
Whole quest gives an impression of fan-made mod. The second quest is better (I like the motive of putting a hand into statue's mouth, lol), but again - the smalltalk between two statues or ghosts (I can't remember) at the beginning is absolutely horrid in every way and completely unnecessary.
Seriously, guys - sometimes the less, the better.
And I repeat - I love BeamDog's Baldurs', will continue to support all it's games with my money, but still, Hexxat's as a NPC and her quest diverge from the rest good work BeamDog made.
Hexxat's quest was rather uninspired and a bit lack luster in content. Here we are essentially tomb raiding and the ghost monks in the first tomb are willing to make a deal with me to get rid of mind flayers. That is odd on several levels - 1) they are ghost why are they afraid of mind flayers? Can ghosts even be level or INT drained? 2) They are very capable of fighting them on their own - I got hit by one of the monks and went bye bye - quivering palm directed at you by high level monks can be so annoying 3) as guardians they really should not be making deals with tomb raiders even if we do help - they should say something like, "sorry but you are also not leaving here" after beating the mind flayers and make us fight - guardians are not meant to turn their back on their job.
While the 2nd quest - more of the same - although some interesting quirks with the statue that gains a 1000 pounds but really what horribly guardians - another set of guardians that don't guard anything - did they all go to the same school for lack luster guardians that rather just stand all day rather than do their job!
As guardians go the monks and the "witches" from Hexxat's quests are some of the worse guardians in the game - they don't go hostile unless you actually fight them and are totally unwilling to do their job - the worse guardians in the game has to be those from dead god in the unseeing eye quest but at least they have an excuse for being so apathetic to their job - the guardians here in Hexxat's quest should be more guardians rather than door keepers/butler opening the door and really doing nothing else.
And the worse thing about all of this, is we got no interesting or fascinating loot - just relatively normal stuff - the best thing - no I can't even remember anything good from these 2 tombs at all - you'd think a monk tomb would at least have something interesting and exotic but nope nothing you want or can't get anywhere else. Hey beamdog the tombs are in exotic locations give me interesting exotic loot don't give me standard stuff I can get at any tomb. It doesn't even have to be useful or powerful loot just interesting and different would be nice - e.g. a set of bamboo armor; some shurikens (classified as darts); some bracers for monks; a robe - something monk like - a one-handed throwing disk etc.
Hexxat romance:
And in addition to the quests - Hexxat romance line continues to be bugged a bit -- e.g. she left and returned just as suddenly when we reached rep 19 (bug rep when party reaches 19 and in romance) replaying the scene we did after completing all of her quests; then later during spellhold maze she actually leaves (even when in romance - between getting rep 19 and reaching spellhold at least 20days (game time) passed in which she had no trouble with 19 rep) -how the heck is she going to leave the maze its all locked up? (a rhetorical question since Imoen can leave the maze easily enough if she doesn't join). Of course she left Dragomirs tomb even when the door was locked (since I had not taken out the key thing); and nothing has happened in the romance in a long while - I am already into more than a 120 days game time and not a lot of romance really at all except for that one night (I think happened but it happened so fast in a quick dialogue I am not even sure now if it actually happened) and then nothing and no reaction afterwards.
So adjusting my rep and replayed everything and the next sort of romance thing is when my PC changes into the slayer during spellhold and tells Hexxat to run for it - which is the dialogue you get if you are romancing a NPC - but then nothing afterwards but a comment about PC changing and not leaving me because of this - such limited romance... sigh.
And another oddity is that while playing on core if Hexxat reaches -20HP (all from melee combat not magic) she is effectively dead even if the portrait is not gone - I rested twice and she can't be revived without a raise dead which is just odd - she is a vampire and she has not been staked and so should be able to revive on her own - so another inconsistency in the character/game in regards to her.
Overall her quests could have been done so much better than they way it was done. It certainly is not the worse NPC quests that misses its mark (including original NPC quests) but knowing what they should know about the NPC quests (old ones) they had an opportunity to make it much more interesting and entertaining especially with a vampire NPC who seems employed to raid tombs.
Also, it's not a bad idea to make a vampire tomb raider character, just make it deeper. She should make some comments like Safana in SoD when in dungeons, you know - make her like a vampire woman Indiana Jones type. That would be original and has so much potential. Now all she wants to do is leave the tomb she insisted to raid, just as soon, a she gets what she was after.
1. When meeting Edwin, he obviously knows her - and saying something like: "Charname, I see you kept that half-elf" AND THEN skips to original script that clearly points out Edwin forgot charname.
2. I've returned to Underdark tunnels with Neera after a while, but I've recruited her AFTER rescuing Imoen. But she said: "something tells me we're not in Brynnlaw anymore". HELLO girl, you never were in Brynnlaw with me!
But a question for you - why did you return to the underdark after leaving it?
For example - using Neera - she says in the underdark something about making her cast here in the city - yes we were in the underdark so really it doesn't matter - unless she is warning be against using her spell casting because she feels something odd in the weave.
I was actually hoping for more comments from NPCs when they go to the underdark but sadly not a lot of new dialogue/comments from them during this part - Jaheria as always says the majority of the comment in the underdark.
I usually play different party every quest - to make it more interesting .
A few other thoughts:
I think that there should be consequences for getting the str belt as it requires a sacrifice to a demon lord and surprisingly there is no back lash from this - although this should be totally an evil thing to do as you are sacrificing something (even a summon) to a demon; I mean if you can kill a bystander with no witnesses around and still get a rep hit then sacrificing to a demon should also have a negative consequence (if you have a paladin or lawful good npc this should make them leave or have them fall). Plus normally would anyone seeing the demon statue and instruction engraved on it to sacrifice to a demon lord - who in their right minds would actually do that knowing that demons are real and might appear - suicide by demon -- and even if you don't think that demons will materialize on this plane - means that you should have no pre-buffs or anything in place for this battle. Can you defeat them without any prebuffs, pre-planning or metagaming of any kind (and no use of HLA abilities or 9th level spell if you have them)?
And Clara shouldn't be a drooling wreck that just serves as a cheap placeholder. She should be an actual character that you can keep, even if she never has any other quests. They could have avoided all this by simply having Charleston Nib take Clara's place.
http://baldursgate.wikia.com/wiki/Charleston_Nib
Exploring all those tombs with him would have been so much better.
@magisensei
Good point about the sacrifice. Losing reputation from summoning a demon is actually a great idea for a mod. If changing into Slayer costs you 2 rep, then using Gate to summon a Pit Fiend should cost something aswell.