this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2023
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Baldur's Gate 3
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Baldur’s Gate 3 is a story-rich, party-based RPG set in the universe of Dungeons & Dragons, where your choices shape a tale of fellowship and betrayal, survival and sacrifice, and the lure of absolute power. (Website)
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I'm not happy that they still haven't figured out the "pick who initiates dialogue" problem. This has been a thing in Divinity: Original Sin 2, and continues to plague us into Baldur's Gate 3. It's really annoying to watch your party face Sorcerer or Bard sit in the background while the Barbarian gets to fumble all the dialogue checks with their 8 Charisma score just because they happened to be the first one to enter the room, or the one who was closest to the boss before they decided to plea for their life (looking at you, Hag...) There is also the dilemma of whether to pick the dialogue options you would pick or the ones the character speaking would. I would love to pet that puppy but Astarion happened to walk into the door first, so I guess I'll have to pick the option to kick it instead or break character.
I can agree with you if I put myself in a "min/max" mindset, where you're trying to get the best possible option in every situation - but in a roleplay sense, a tabletop sense, a story sense - it's far more interesting if more than one character engages in conversation with the world around them.
Having played loads of tabletop, emergent narrative often pits characters against challenges they're not well-equipped for - which drives the story in interesting directions. The Barb might have a higher chance of failure in persuasion checks, but does that really matter? I guess it comes to the higher level question of whether you'd reload a save if you failed a speech check - if so, I'd argue that it doesn't matter who talks if the player is just gonna reroll (as low rolls occasionally plague even the most erudite).
I'm happy for mods to have a fix for the "No one talks but me" crowd, but my thoughts are that Larian has thrown in so many contextual responsiveness for each character/race/class that it's honestly going to be interesting to see how different characters lead a conversation.
I kind of like the idea of "this person can be a liability if you let them talk to people". D:OS 2 did something like that where party members would ask to take over the conversation and do whatever they wanted with it, and I thought it definitely added to the immersion. I definitely don't think allowing you to magically control who's party to a conversation is an improvement over letting it happen organically.
Even ignoring the story element, from a pure gameplay perspective, I don't think getting a bad speaker trapped into a conversation is really different from having a glass cannon type character get caught out and killed because they can't take damage. It's part of your party construction.