SOD: An Appreciation

Contemplative_Hamster

I am on my second or third playthrough. This time witha good party. Trying out new NPC combinations. And you know what? I keep finding new stuff. New (FUNNY!) interactions - between Mkhiin and Dynaheir, and Mkhiin and Corwin, for instance.

There are many new, small quests that I missed last time - found four in the past hour. New twists to quests I completed in earlier games. The quests themselves are so much more complex than the FedEx quests of BG1 and BG2. I have issues with bits and bobs (and these have been covered endlessly by other forumites), but overall it's very enjoyable indeed.

So cheers, Beamdog, you did a good job.

Zaghoul

I enjoy having the chance to have more non-combative interactions with humanoid races such as goblins, half-orcs, and ogres, myself. Being able to form alliances with them is a particularly nice bonus (the undead to for that matter).

robertmarkbram

Corwin and M'Khiin are among my all time favourites. Corwin has the highest xp percentage in my party and I truly enjoy her story so far (just reached chapter 11). M'Khiin is hands down the most enjoyable character for her dialogue and little character driven mechanics like when you try to remove a weapon from her without swapping it for something else, she refuses with: "M'Khiin's not letting that go, not without getting something in exchange". I rarely direct her in combat and let her script choose, often summoning spirits, which seems such a well done character driven choice.

megamike15

Zaghoul wrote: »

I enjoy having the chance to have more non-combative interactions with humanoid races such as goblins, half-orcs, and ogres, myself. Being able to form alliances with them is a particularly nice bonus (the undead to for that matter).

neverwinter night's expansions still holds the honor of having you actually talk to khbolds and not just killing them.

Gatekeep3r

I only did one SoD run so far. I really liked it (and want to thank Beamdog for reviving a grand old lady like Baldur's Gate so elegantly). The only thing I disliked a bit was the dialogue. The original dialogues were more elaborate. I've had many a conversation with three options: good, neutral and evil. The evil option is always pretty funny, though.

I rarely play evil (mostly neutral), but during my playthrough I RP'ed a charname that got extremely conceited after being dubbed the Hero of Baldur's Gate (movie star with an attitude-style).

Zaghoul wrote: »

I enjoy having the chance to have more non-combative interactions with humanoid races such as goblins, half-orcs, and ogres, myself. Being able to form alliances with them is a particularly nice bonus (the undead to for that matter).

Agreed, but then they would really have to add languages to character generation (like in D&D tabletop). If you create a character that can speak, say, Undercommon, it makes sense they would be able to have less violent interactions with kobolds. The way it is now, every time there's an interaction like that, the monster happens to be able to speak Common, which is pretty weird for creatures with 9 INT.

BuffaloSolider95

Just recently got done with my first playthrough, and I loved it, with only a few minor things that I think needed fixing. Well, except Glint. I just can't with him. I know he's supposed to be intentionally annoying and that's supposed to be funny or endearing, but I just found him plain old annoying, and ditched him as soon as I could. If I was playing an evil character I would have just killed him. A few other minor character voices seemed incredibly wooden, like they were reading the script-word-by-word for the first time and didn't really know how to inflect properly. But overall, it was a great experience and addition to the BG saga. I wish I had the creativity or commitment to carry out a project like this on a limited budget like they did. Kudos to the development team.

Gatekeep3r

Agree about the wooden voices. When you compare them to the original ones, they are terrible. I fondly remember hearing the superb voice acting for the first time in BG2.

JuliusBorisov

Gatekeep3r wrote: »

I only did one SoD run so far. I really liked it (and want to thank Beamdog for reviving a grand old lady like Baldur's Gate so elegantly). The only thing I disliked a bit was the dialogue. The original dialogues were more elaborate. I've had many a conversation with three options: good, neutral and evil. The evil option is always pretty funny, though.

As the original writer (and one of the final writers) on SoD said, this is absolutely and regrettably true. They also tended to be shorter than many of the responses in previous BG installments. This was a design choice; the idea was that the player would be able to see all available responses no matter what size screen they were playing on, so the writers were (with exceptions that were frequently fought long and hard for) limited in both the number of responses and the number of sentences/characters each response could contain. Compared to the original games where you had, most of the time, a lot of options, and none so linear.

Raduziel

Funny thing is that Beamdog made this choice and then changed the dialogue UI which makes lots of answers unable to be read or even selected.

I don't know if it happens only with me though.

Humanoid_Taifun

@Raduziel It happens to me too sometimes.