Bg3 Hot Take Edition

[u/Feeling-Classroom729]

I'm feeling spicy and I want to hear some of your hot takes about the game. Perhaps, I'll see the game from a fresh perspective and/or learn something new.

There's no limit to the hot takes you can share.

I'll go first.

Despite Araj's negative reputation, I think she's one of the best merchants in the game. In act 2, she carries the risky ring and the ring of free action, which is already amazing. But she also offers unique elixirs in act 2. In act 3, she sells sanguine explosives, which is basically a level 4 fireball that you can buy for less than 20 gold. Getting the unstable blood condition from her in act 3, can also be powerful if you build around it. The +2 to strength is super powerful if you're willing to torture Astarion, but even without that, she's still an amazing npc. She's a little pushy with Astarion, but she ultimately accepts his no. So, I don't stay mad at her.

I don't think completing a "good run" automatically makes your character good aligned. Basing your decisions around not making your favorite npcs sad is not a sound moral compass. I think there are more morally neutral people out there than people are willing to admit. It isn't a bad thing to be morally neutral. Jaheira is canonically true neutral in the older games, and people love her.

[u/shesstilllost]

Ketheric Thorm is overrated as villain. He's incredibly common- man faces perfectly normal hardship- and decides he hates his God for not kowtowing to his wishes. He still had his wealth, the people he led, and the love and adoration of those around him. If we had gotten a full story of his decent into madness, okay. If we had clearly gotten the story of the gods all refusing to raise his daughter, okay. But all we see is that he was a old wealthy elf who lost his wife and daughter, and decided to burn the world for it. It's a story we see so often that I can't be moved by it anymore. It doesn't even make sense in the Forgotten Realms because resurrection magic is so common. The atmosphere of Act 2 is great, I love Isobel and Aylin, I would have loved to know more about Melodia, but all that makes Ketheric Thorm compelling his his voice actor.

The companions are compelling characters but I would not want to actually play a real game of DnD with them save for Wyll, Gale and Halsin. The others would really need a good session zero for me to feel safe playing with them as a table. Astarion's player would suck all the air out of the room trying to be the Main Character, as well as Shadowheart.

[u/Individual_Soft_9373 → u/shesstilllost]

The cast has done multiple live D&D sessions, mostly at cons. It's generally Astarion, Lae'zel, Wyll, and Karlach.

They are AMAZING, and Astarion is a delight to watch live. Neil is also the only one who actually played before the game, and he's very helpful to his fellow players. He's a delightful heel, and in one session they actually got Astarion the character to feel his real feelings for a bit.

There's one that has the whole cast, which is where we get Shadowheart being "God's favorite princess" because that's what her actor referred to her as. She temporarily adopted an imp named Bing-Bong. 😆 Her and Lae'zel played off each other the whole time, to great effect, as did Astarion and Gale.

[u/IntelligentLife3451 → u/Individual_Soft_9373]

Sam Béart also has played DnD. They mentioned in a few interviews they had to drop out of their group because BG3 recording sessions messed with their player schedule.

However, Devora Wilde absolutely has not and in those sessions it shows, but she’s clearly having fun

I don’t believe Theo Solomon has either, but seeing him play Wyll in these games has actually made me like him more as an actor because he gives the character some more personality rather than TM Hero

[u/sskoog → u/IntelligentLife3451]

Theo's live-play stream (which is sparse/intermittent) is absolutely hilarious -- he starts as a monk, and sees a magic hand-axe in the Druid merchant's inventory, which he absolutely drools over, so he sells most of his party's posessions (including weapons) to buy the hand-axe. Then he gets pasted for several fights, either TPK-wiping or just narrowly surviving, until someone finally points out to him that his partymembers don't have weapons (and, in some cases, no armor), and are feebly trying to fist-punch enemies.

As of the last time I watched, no one had pointed out that said hand-axe probably wasn't a very good choice for a monk; ironically, this is the one character who *would\* be better served by bare-handed punching attacks.

Overall, a very good, humble, learning-to-play-D&D experience.