New characters in BG2
daz1805
Member Posts: 6
What do people think of the new characters in BG2? Who's your favourite and why?
I like Hexxat, she's a really good thief and a vampire
I like Hexxat, she's a really good thief and a vampire
3
Comments
Wilson is next, just because I love the idea of a bear NPC as you go through Spellhold, trying to prove your sanity. He has his weaknesses, but he's at least a better conversationalist than Cernd or Anomen.
And I do like Hexxat. Two of the biggest knocks against he original BG2 were lack of evil thief and lack of romance options for female PCs. She answered both of those issues. Her quest is interesting; not the least was the plot twist when you recruit her. Plus I found her to be quite useful. Not the best NPC, but pretty good.
Neera is annoying; she reminds me too much of someone I dated years ago to be unbiased.
And I found Dorn to be too one-dimensional in BG2. It's all "Gahrrr, Evillll!" Sigh, fine. I have never finished his BG2 quest.
The prime example is the intrusive way Neera is brought into bg2.. and the exceedingly crap voice acting in that scene, the child who sounds more like a over-acted goblin with some kind of sound filter, and the red wizard woman.. it's just.. it's not even fairy-tale level of narrating, you know the cheesy and simply bad kind.. it's just horrendously bad and of such a lower quality than the rest of the game that the experience is jarring and actually a little.. stressful. I can not make it go away fast enough.
You know it's bad when the game draws you in with immersion, and then all of a sudden.. someone adds a new piece to the play, but the new addition is played out by people who sound like they are rehearsing the scene with one another, still learning their lines and figuring out how to play the characters.
I really like what they've done to the engine, hats off for the enhancement of the original.
But the new content.. ehh, might as well have dropped that.
Furthermore, I don't see why she had to be placed on a direct collision course with Red Wizards. Doesn't Edwin already tick the Red Wizard box? Why was the game considered to be lacking in this department?
Beyond that, Neera is written as a Sorcerer, not a Wild Mage: Wild Mages still require study and a certain degree of discipline, they just incorporate chaos into their design. From all interactions I've seen of Neera, her magic seems practically to exist by accident.
Hexxat, similarly, is hard to avoid. And why anybody thought that the thing missing from the greatest sword & spell style RPG game of all time was lesbian vampires is utterly beyond me.
I am fond of Dorn; and of Wilson, certainly, although Rasaad never had any appeal for me.
I take umbrage with the incompatibility of the new NPCs with so many of the originals. Whilst Edwin, Viconia and Korgan cannot be reconciled to a party containing 1 of the Good-aligned NPCs in the original (Minsc, Keldorn, and Aerie respectively), there's still plenty of flexibility to compose different parties across multiple playthroughs. Dorn and Hexxat are made to be intolerable in many party compositions in a way that jars with the malleability of the original cast.
Laze?
And although the originals cannot be reconciled easily with each other, you can with some micromanagement struggle through with them together in some cases.
I have taken Edwin and Minsc through to the end of TOB, not through design but because the fight between them broke out in the Underdark so had to micromanage and ended up just keeping going.
The Neera quest is the most annoying in BG2, not only for the interruption when you first meet her but because there's no way to access the RW in Athkatla without her. You can take on the Twisted Rune, the Guarded Compound but for some reason you can't open the door in the promenade. Now that's immersion breaking as well as never seeing any RW in the promenade. Where do they do their shopping, buy toilet roll? It should have become an option for any party to have some interaction there. Otherwise, put it somewhere else.
Edited to add.
How many times are we told Amn and Athkatla is magic phobic anyway with the Cowled wizards yet there's a RW enclave?
Lazy, lazy design.
Dorn probably my least favourite. Not quite sure why - maybe I just find him a bit predictable.
Especially Neera and using RW again.
Hexaat again was lazy, using a tired, dated trope of "lesbian vampires" to make her "special". Ingrid Pitt in the old Hammer Horror films pretty much used that up.
Dorn: I really like Dorn's storyline in BG1EE and think that his quest is the best of the new NPCs in that game. He is badass and a really good tank for the low level game. As others have pointed out, he becomes almost unbearable in BG2. His low hit points and loss of powers make him lackluster as a fighter and unless you have a strictly evil party, he presents a huge problem for party unity.
Neera: IMO, Neera is a pain in butt early in BG1EE, but she really shines in SoD & BG2EE. Her quests are fun and challenging and she is a nutcase who doesn't ever shutup. Romancing her mirrors real life. Hell, I couldn't even bring myself to sell her mechanical bird to the strange collector in ToB out of fear of her reaction. Furthermore, I thought her ToB quest was extremely difficult, never did kill the final wizard. And Kazrah's Shield +4 with 50% electrical resistance is a nice item to have before the showdown with Draconis and Abazigal.
Rasaad: He's so squishy in BG1EE that I can't even have him in my party. His quests in BG2EE are good and you can't access Wilson the Bear without him, but his ToB quest vs Alogorth and the Shadow Dragon is top notch.
Hexxat: My problem with Hexxat isn't that she sucks in melee despite having a 20 strength. It isn't that she moves slower than every other vampire in the game. It isn't that she doesn't level drain her opponents. It isn't that she is useless in sunlight. And it isn't because she is incompatible with everyone who has a good alignment. My problem with her is that when she dies, I can't rely on her to autospawn after resting. I have no idea if it is a glitch or I'm doing something wrong, but it frustrates me to no end. That said, her bag of holding is invaluable early in the game, and her quests for L are decent. One of these days, I am going to figure out the correct dialogue path to keep her from curing her vampirism in ToB.
Wilson: Getting Wilson is tough because you wouldn't even know about him without Neera's quest and you need Rasaad's quest to find him. I hate that I can't armor my bear, but it actually turns out not to be a big deal. Wilson is the one character in the game who you can resurrect mid battle and lose nothing because he has no equipment. My biggest complaint is that if he is allowed to take healing potions, he should be allowed to take all potions. Speaking of potions, if you get Wilson, don't forget to take him back to Zaviak to get your reward.
I really don't understand the hostility towards the new NPC's, after all, they unlock the new content created in the games.
As for the storytelling aspect, well it horrible imo. SImply because it doesn't feel like it fits in and out of place. The voice acting is different because it was written by different people, even so your CHARNAME is spoken a lot different too with the dialogue options and it just doesn't feel right after all that hours you've spent with them until you've spoken to those characters. Like Neera feels out of place, the voice acting and the "nutcase" personality of her doesn't fit with the original BG2 NPCs. Rasaad's acting is good, but once again it feels out of place. The only acting that really fits in with the rest of BG2 NPCs is most likely dorn because he kinda does feel like he fits in with the group. And hexxat... she's just boring and uninteresting... so I dumped her after she killed clara. And it's also good to say that Dorn and Rasaad have decent voice acting so there is that.
The worst part of these NPCs.... is that some new NPCs have a stupid "cutscene" interaction that you usually cannot avoid... like seriously. And even so they always force this quest down upon you which feels like a huge burden. Like Clara/Hexxat, Neera and Dorn, they ask you to do something which is really lame and just annoying... like hexxat's quests I'm never going to touch but I'll see it right there in my journal log which is annoying for a completionist.
Like what the previous post said... beamdog did a fantastic job enchancing the BG series. But the new content is horrible from a storytelling aspect. It honestly makes me install a remove new NPCs mod just so I don't have to bother with the new content and the horrible/out of place NPC dialogue. And seeing how big storytelling is in this game... you just want to cringe when Neera makes a horrible joke to CHARNAME
I also like Hexxat's personality. I feel that it is convincing in how evil, yet deep inside also a tad vulnerable she turns out to be.
Dorn is of course very evil and a bit bland. But he does pull it off. Where else do you get to raid heaven
As for the others, I find Rasaad to be the best. In fact, I have nothing critical to say. His character is well written and consistent, and his quest (at least in SOA, I haven't used him in TOB) is good. His intro cut scene is short and bearable. As it happens I don't like Rasaad - he's too goody-two-shoes for me and really gets on my nerves - but that's completely subjective. I think he's a solid character.
Hexxat, I'm not fond of for reasons that have been covered extensively in this forum. At least there isn't a long cut scene in the Copper Coronet.
Neera: her cut scene in the bridge district is perhaps the most annoying thing ever in a video game. I was already bitter about the way they held a gem bag over your head with Neera in BG1, and this cut scene only adds to that. Other than that, I like the idea of Neera's character, but not the valley girl implementation. I'm not fond of wild mages as a class, but the idea of a character struggling to control spells is an interesting one. I also found her quest to be well done, if you can overlook the unlikeliness of a Red Wizard Enclave in a city that's controlled by Cowled Wizards. I haven't tried her in TOB.
Dorn: I loved him in BG1, but he's just too damn evil for me in BG2. I've never gotten beyond his introduction, and this coming from a guy who plays evil 80% of the time. I've heard that there are dialogue options to soften things, but I never managed to trigger them, and admittedly I only approached Dorn two times.
Overall, I think they tried a little too hard with the NPCs. But you know what? I'd like to see more of them, with lessons learned, of course. When the EEs came out I imagined they would add NPCs as DLC at regular intervals, and I would have loved to have seen this. They could charge, what, $5 for a character? This would be totally worth it to me. What do you guys think? Am I crazy? Maybe there's just no market for this, or they would have already done it. In any case, if they did decide to do it, first up on my wish list: Evil Thief, Take Two!
Edwin and the Nether Scroll.
How does that scenario work out when you have a bunch of high level RW camped up the road?
What mental gymnastics do we now have to perform to believe Edwin is concerned about the CW (so he sends you to kill him) and completely and utterly ignores the masses of much more powerful RW wandering about the place?
Eventhough they are hunting for him.
Edited to Add.
In BG if you have Edwin with you and you then meet Neera, after she teleports their leader away, the rest attack.
Edwin tells them to stand down pointing out that he is more senior and how dare they attack him. And they wander off.
Good scenario, makes sense in the game.
BG2, they just didn't bother.
Regardless of the reason behind the development of this. It still sticks out.
As for the cowled wizards and Red wizards..Well I think they could have worked out an arrangement. I mean there are a number of wizards in the slaver ring as well and yet they seem to operate without too much trouble.
I supposed I might take an issue with why the cowled wizards wouldn't be involved with the wild mages at all though. They were really intent on getting the planar sphere after all.
They should have given us something new. The RW can't be the only wizards interested in studying wild magic.
If the aim was to introduce a wild mage and the quest investigating the problems face by wild mages, there's a billion different ways to do that.
It's like Dr Who and the Daleks.
(Haven't watched the program since childhood so maybe getting this wrong.)
Why is it always the effing Daleks?
You tuck your chin in and put your head down. And to complete the look you stick one arm out straight as if it were emerging from your forehead. And keep the other close to your side. Then run around saying "exterminate, exterminate" in an "electronic" voice.
We also used to play being Nazis, pretty much the same way though.
Children have a lot of imagination.
Now that that's out of the way.
As they did choose to use RW in a game which has a long established invovement with RW through Edwin. There should have been the option to wipe out the Wild Mage Camp if you don't want to take Neera.
Either for the sheer hell of it or some attempt for Edwin to get back in favour with the RW.
Or there should have been the option to wipe out the RW enclave in an attempt to stop them hunting him.
Now, I quite understand that there were limitations imposed that didn't allow original content to be affected.
But knowing that in advance should have immediately stopped any development of a storyline that to be believable, does in fact affect original content.
And it affects it in two ways,
Firstly that the CW don't have a monopoly on the use of magic.
Secondly that you cannot reconcile the existance of a RW enclave with an original NPC and how that storyline ceases to make sense with it there, unless you completely ignore the new content.
(and lets not even get into how the CW don't turn up or how an outpost of a powerful, mage dominated society has no inkling or shows any interest in Irenicus whatsoever even when he's disintegrating people just outside their front door)
It would be interesting to know what happens if you have Edwin in party when you get the first Neera cutscene in the Bridge District.
Has anybody done that?