Shadowheart: Damn Thing It Has To Open, Surely. It Has To Do Something.

Shadowheart: Damn thing… it has to open, surely. It has to do something.

Narrator: Shadowheart's attention is consumed by a strange box that she turns over in her hands.

Narrator: Intelligence (Arcana) The box is inscribed with glyphs similar to those used by the githyanki.

PC: A githyanki artefact. How did you come by that?

Narrator: In an instant, Shadowheart hides the box from view.

Shadowheart: It's nothing, trust me. Beautiful evening, isn't it?

PC: Why're you so kin to dodge questions about that thing?

Shadowheart: You deserve honesty more than most… but please, don't ask.

PC: Not much of an answer. I'd hoped for more openness.

Shadowheart: I'm sorry. I can't give you that. Not right now.

Never had this one before. I wonder if it's something new.

UPD. Turned out it isn't. And here I was hoping for a new content…

AI Young Emiel Regis

Created in Stable Diffusion by @alphagravy. Alterations in PS by me (filters, masking and airbrush).

bg3 / reductress articles - part 2

(part 1 here)

We were robbed

man the ending of BG3 was kinda... rough, ngl. Like, not the fights and stuff, that was about what I expected, but the cutscenes post final battle were... something.

HEAVY SPOILERS for Baldur's Gate 3 ending under the cut

listen man, I can respect not giving everyone a perfectly happy ending, but Karlach's fate felt unfair. It felt like there had been a way to save her in development, but it got scrapped somewhere in the process. why even have the quest with Dammon and the infernal iron if all you can do is delay the inevitable.

Astarion's wasn't much better. If you tell him not to use the ritual to ascend, he just. stays a vampire spawn forever then?? the whole 'oh I can stand in the sunlight' bit was just for laughs?? I was horrified tbh.

Gale's romance scene was... fine. Like, perfectly servicable, sure, but choosing what to do with the crown was his literal companion quest! and you don't even get to see it resolved, he just SAYS what he'll do with it. PLEASE.

Shadowheart had one (1) appearance and one (1) line of dialogue in my ending and that was a quip about Astarion's sad fate. Thanks.

No mention of the Emperor after killing the netherbrain with Orpheus. Really? He's just dead, apparently. Nvm that it was like... the original founder of the city. No no, just dead, don't even see him die if you didn't kill him during the fight.

NO EPILOGUE AT ALL COME ON MAN. I would've taken poorly written SLIDES over nothing at all.

The post-credit scene with Withers feels... so, so redundant? Like, why is he waxing poetic about foes who weren't even the stars of the show? It really felt like a version of that scene should've come earlier, maybe around the start of act 3.

There's a ton of other little stuff that I would've loved to see resolved, but those were my main gripes. It just felt veeeery rushed right at the end there which is pretty disappointing, considering how entirely excellent the rest of the game is. Like, I don't want games to be these infinite projects that studios revisit and expand on (in anything other than expansions) bc they didn't get it quite right the first time around, bc that shit isn't sustainable, but man.