ceargaest

[tสƒรฆษ‘ฬฏrห ษฃรฆหst]

linguist & software engineer in Lenapehoking; jewish ancom trans woman.

since twitter's burning gonna try bringing my posts about language stuff and losing my shit over star wars and such here - hi!


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trainsfemme
@trainsfemme

I get the desire to have it be a grand adventure, but, and maybe it's just my preference of deep but narrow as opposed to wide but shallow games, this one city has so much to explore even just as a concept, a la disco Elysium or Prey or Dishonored or the new deus ex games. each of those has one smallish location that is super in depth with secret paths, stories, history, etc.

then the city could have been bigger, if you want to just transplant the area in, or richer, if you want to make the space there already is deeper.

like just off the top of my head you could have different Burroughs of the city as areas you explore or unlock or whatever with the poor ones being infested and you could see first hand and through gameplay the corruption and failure. Have there be quarters for different trades, a magicians quarter, an artificers district, etc. have an area which was once wealthy and had lots of wizards but something failed that lead to it being corrupted, and so all the rich fled and it's now a shanty town for the poor who get killed and slaughtered while trying to survive. layers of buildings on top of buildings, marble facades covered up by shacks hung to them by scaffolding.

And the game already has the best trope of city design - the inhabited bridge with houses on it. fuck yeah


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in reply to @trainsfemme's post:

I think if ALMOST EVERYTHING WAS THE SAME it would be so much better in terms of pacing:

Act 1: Rivington and Wyrm's Crossing, your party is level 8-10, slow build-up to ilithid invasion

Act 1.5: squids capture you, wiggle worm you, now you have a reason to be level 1 and absolutely terrible at everything. The devs pulled a Symphony of the Night on you. But crucially, it made you understand what the game could be even if you learn it now

Act 2: Druid's Grove, Goblin Fort, Monestary, Underdark, Shadow Cursed Lands

Act 3: Back at Baldur's Gate for the final act. Rivington circus now has a larger impact because you did the investigation before then, etc.

so among other things, you have context for all of the talk of Baldur's Gate throughout the game and the books you keep finding have a little more context, etc, just by shuffling mostly already there story elements

oh that would fuck hard. the only issue I could see is what would be your party before the squids capture you? if you meet them in the city in act 1 I suppose it could work, but you'd have to find some excuse for laezel to be there. if you meet them in the illithid ship as usual, then you'd have a party through the first act that is just gone for the rest of the game(though you'd reunite in act 3 I guess)

imo: they all die. or disappear or something. That way it lets you force a starter party that demonstrates the major systems of the game based on the player's starting class, so like wizard + cleric + fighter + rogue/ranger

then you don't even have to mess with the level curve of the characters you've already voice acted and given personal quests etc, it's following the same arc once you start building the party. Wyrm's rest and rivington are only complex after the absolute plot, so it'd basically be the prologue happening there instead of in the nauteloid, in exchange for streamlining the nauteloid plus moving bone man's encounter to the monestary in rivington instead of the crashsite