The Morning After

08 Oct 2020

I realized that I really needed to read the manual, so I started and within a couple of pages was reminded of the auto-pause feature.

I haven’t started things up again but that will be a major hook. I’ll also likely roll up a new character and probably focus on making it easy to get through the game rather than try to aim for any specific role-playing experience.

The promise of character creation, that it will enable role play, I think is somewhat false. In this case, and I think in pretty much all modern computer RPGs, character creation modifies play style and difficulty. Smolder the Sorcerer will be relegated to the digital dust bin and I’ll min/max a little and take a fighter. A big burly tank type, though I think it’s a little inaccurate to think about it in the context of that archetype.

The tank, dps, heals, control archetypes have to have existed before I learned about them while playing World of Warcraft but I’m not sure how heavily integrated the notions of them were in Dungeons and Dragons, 4th Edition (which I think is the core rulesset for BG2 but I’ll have to confirm). Discussion of those playstyles wasn’t anything I remember from playing pen and paper RPGs in the 90s.

There was not a whole lot of meta discussion of that sort in my play group that I recall, a lot of it was more about specs and damage and not very much in the way of tactical discussions, how to work together etc and those factors make a massive difference in games like this.

I’m still interested in playing and will definitely have at least one more session but it seems unlikely to me that I am going to get stuck in the game all the way through to the end.