[suryong]

Because it is actually an RPG, there is actually choices there, even in Act 1 there are quite few major choices that have big ramifications in Act 2. Take something like Pillars of Eternity, it mostly had the illusion of choice and not much real reactivity, the npcs might say few different lines but it really did not matter much.

I am tired of the games that present you with illusion of choice but it actually doesn't matter. In BG3 you can actually be the evil character so that by itself lends the game at least for 2 playthroughs. Personally I am playing it through as Dark Urge first, and later going to do another run with good druid.

Also the graphics are really nice, almost everything is voice acted, companions have interesting stories. Story is already much better than divinity 2. I have 39 hours in now and I bought it at launch

[bigger_cheese]

I think you've hit the nail on the head here with the illusion of choice in some games it really feels like the story is on rails and your character had very little agency. Mass Effect series in particular I think is to blame for this the series became incredibly popular but the actual role playing elements were not really there - these games had a Hero/Villain slider and every conversation had basically 3 dialogue options, the edgy sarcastic reply, the goody two shoes reply or the neutral reply. You would arrive at same place on dialogue tree. The story proceeded the same way regardless of how you chose to act. Because of how popular Mass Effect was I think it had a warping effect on the genre.

Voice acting as well is another key thing I think easy to overlook but it helps a lot with the immersion and getting invested in the world. Pathfinder Wrath of Righteous was a fun game but lack of voice acting made it a slog to get through there were what felt like paragraphs of text to read through constantly. By mid way through the game I found myself skipping over a lot of it. Imagine if tabletop roleplaying the DM handed you a stack of paper to read every conversation instead of narrating what was happening - that was kind of how I felt.

[jncfhnb]

I’m curious to see if Baldur gate avoids this. It’s basically impossible imo. Act 2 is always Act 2.

But I can’t agree with your second statement. The problem with long boring text is not the lack of voice acting’s it’s the text itself. I’m not going to listen to some guy ramble about lore that seems unlikely to matter.