Immersion? Not found.

[mYi Aspartem]

Tried to RP in my first playthrough of the game and not heavily meta-game the mechanics of the video game.

But had to find out, that if I go more-or-less directly to the Githyanki patrol, I'll face a bunch of Lv 5 enemies at level 3 unrested. I tried to get through that encounter without a fight, but couldn't manage to do it.

So... the game tells me time is really urgent and that every hour wasted could result in my death via transformation, but if I actually manage to pull through to the main objective without resting I'm greeted by unavoidable insta-death.

I'm aware this is EA, but the first act looks pretty well put together already. The ludonarrative dissonance in this title is just insane.

Why would you go lie down for 8 hours every couple fights, if Lae'zel & the game make it crystal clear that time is the most important factor. It's the Witcher 3 problem all over again but even worse: "We have to find Ciri, but first lets play Gwent for 3 weeks".

It kinda works in an ARPG, but BG3 is steppin' into big footsteps and I am expecting an RPG, not a game that rips you out of your immersion every 3 steps.

This single-handedly kills my motivation to continue this game, which is a shame. It seems to have a lot of potential. Guess i'll bury it in my library until it is fully released.

[Aldain]

Ok the latter 3 I can agree with being doable in PnP, but what kind of DM would let somebody eat a pig head in the middle of combat?

[Admod, the Equivocal]

Originally posted by Aldain:

Ok the latter 3 I can agree with being doable in PnP, but what kind of DM would let somebody eat a pig head in the middle of combat?

A fight starts. You roll initiative. 1st round, your normal mates start fighting and doing things. Your turn comes up. You start eating. You were hungry before the fight. Like hell the enemy gonna stop you from filling your stomach. Perfectly good chaotic stupid character there. Happens all the time in Dnd.

[Aldain]

I mean I guess...Just seems like you'd be a huge target for getting steamrolled.

But I guess I underestimate the power of Chaotic Stupid alignments...

[Mathalis]

Originally posted by alanc9:

Originally posted by Dreadstone:

Once again, I ask you: are you playing as a Githyanki?

Because if you are, then that would be justifiable by RP.

If you are playing as any other race, then the Githyanki would not be inclined to help you, unless they planned to enslave you immediately afterward. They're not going to allow three outsiders to waltz into their creche and then leave with that information.

********************************

From a RP standpoint, I never would've invited the Gityanki into my party in the first place. Kill the Vampire just for GP.

I'm not really comfortable with saying that the only correct RP decisions is to mistrust Lae'zel.

I think a lot of people are confusing RP and immersion. The OP was talking about immersion inot the world and lore. So far, I just do not get into the story either. I don't really care about my character. I don't really know why I was on that ship or what my life was before. Now look at solasta, they are filled with bugs. I can only play it for about 20 minutes before I hard crash, but I already care more about the characters I made just because of the initial introduction around a tables in a tavern. They each used a story to get to know the party and blended that with a tutorial. It is very well introduced. Now they can hit me with something and I'll care. Immersion is not always about statistically breaking down how races work within the lore. Its the feeling, and I don't feel it either.

[Mathalis]

Originally posted by Space Dog:

I find the comical gameplay to be more immersion breaking than the fake urgency in the beginning of the story.

- Eating pigs heads in combat.

- Shoving and jumping ridiculous distances.

- Jumping back and forth over an enemy to backstab every turn.

- Throwing huge boom boom barrels down from magic pockets.


The fast travel rune teleportation system that exists so clearly for the player's convenience rather than anyone in Faerun breaks the fourth wall. It didn't have to be an actual teleportation system that doesn't make sense - it could have simply been a fast travel system that moves you without explanation so you can imagine they traveled normally. Or quickly move a party icon on a map.

The fast teleport back to your pocket dimension camp - same thing. It's like they would rather get rid of the D&D resting system completely than make something meaningful out of it. It kills immersion when you can press a button to go to camp even when you are in a location you can't get out of. And the ease of it kills any feeling of exploration excitement and danger.

I agree with a lot of this. This is part of what I mean when I say it does not feel like Baldur's Gate to me. It's got all kinds of junk that gets between me and my enjoyment of the story.

[Aldain]

I will admit that Solasta's start is a bit more organic.

...If only the characters didn't look like potatoes I might have stuck with it, you wanna talk immersion breaking? That's what took me out of it.

[Mathalis]

Originally posted by Admod, the Equivocal:

Originally posted by Aldain:

Ok the latter 3 I can agree with being doable in PnP, but what kind of DM would let somebody eat a pig head in the middle of combat?

A fight starts. You roll initiative. 1st round, your normal mates start fighting and doing things. Your turn comes up. You start eating. You were hungry before the fight. Like hell the enemy gonna stop you from filling your stomach. Perfectly good chaotic stupid character there. Happens all the time in Dnd.

See, this kind of over the top nonsense it just helping the game at all. Just because something is possible in PnP does not mean it makes for a good RPG on a computer. It is just not immersive at all.

[Mathalis]

Originally posted by Aldain:

I will admit that Solasta's start is a bit more organic.

...If only the characters didn't look like potatoes I might have stuck with it, you wanna talk immersion breaking? That's what took me out of it.

The graphics suck to be sure. But graphics are the lowest priority for a good RPG. Story > Gameplay > graphics. A pretty turd is still ♥♥♥♥.

[Aldain]

I just hope the Solasta devs at least try to fix that aspect down the road.

The environments and even some of the monsters I've seen look solid, so I find it a bit odd that they dropped the ball with faces so hard.

[Mathalis]

Originally posted by Aldain:

I just hope the Solasta devs at least try to fix that aspect down the road.

The environments and even some of the monsters I've seen look solid, so I find it a bit odd that they dropped the ball with faces so hard.

The faces are bad, but the core concept of bring in characters in a small setting, giving some background and initial relationships for you to care, then pushing the bigger narrative is just spot on. Larian could stand to learn a few things from them in this case.

[Space Dog]

Originally posted by Admod, the Equivocal:

Originally posted by Space Dog:

I find the comical gameplay to be more immersion breaking than the fake urgency in the beginning of the story.

- Eating pigs heads in combat.

- Shoving and jumping ridiculous distances.

- Jumping back and forth over an enemy to backstab every turn.

- Throwing huge boom boom barrels down from magic pockets.

Bruh. You can do all that in pnp DnD.

Food doesn't heal in D&D.

Shove moves the target 5', not 50'. High jump is also around 5', not 15'.

You don't get advantage by moving behind someone every turn. 5e doesn't have facing. Even if you use the optional rule for it, you can change facing as a reaction so you can't cheese for free advantage 1v1.

Exploding oil barrels don't exist and barrels have realistic weight. You don't throw them.

What did you mean exactly?

[NixAhmose]

Originally posted by Mathalis:

The faces are bad, but the core concept of bring in characters in a small setting, giving some background and initial relationships for you to care, then pushing the bigger narrative is just spot on. Larian could stand to learn a few things from them in this case.

The fact that there was a big discussion board discussing whether or not Solasta should just ditch cutscenes entirely points towards it being a pretty bad narrative tool that's doing more to detract people from the experience rather than immerse them.While graphics aren't everything, the actual dialogue both mechanically and narratively is really bad.

Narratively speaking, while it does have some charm in a low-budget b-movie kind of way, not everyone is going to be interested in playing the equivilent of the room in terms of rpg games. You really have to be able to really forgive terribly written/voice acted lines in order to get any kind of genuine investment in Solasta's story.
Mechanically speaking, the story is also a mess because its just one awfully paced railroad with almost zero ability to role-play your characters. While you can give then specific personality traits the game will often have them act counter to those traits in order to fit them within the game's rigid 4 dialogue options. The biggest example of this was how the game kept forcing my lawful good extremely kind halfling paladin be the one who constantly wants to kill people on sight just because it needed someone to offer up the "lets kill the sad and kind ghost just for existing" option and none of my party's personality traits matched it. This not only took me out of the experience multiple times as my characters kept acting out of character, but it also eventually became extremely frustrating when it came to dialogue skill checks and it would have my uncharasmatic and cold ranger be the one with the persuasion check to try to end a encounter peacefully while my super charasmatic paladin would be the one who has the attack option. So not only were my characters being forced to act out of character, but the game was also forcing me to use characters with worse charisma skills to try to talk my way out of fights.

The only thing Larian should take away from Solasta's story-telling is custom character personalities to use for dialogue animations and being able to create a custom party.

[Mathalis]

Originally posted by Diedkid:

Originally posted by Mathalis:

The faces are bad, but the core concept of bring in characters in a small setting, giving some background and initial relationships for you to care, then pushing the bigger narrative is just spot on. Larian could stand to learn a few things from them in this case.

The fact that there was a big discussion board discussing whether or not Solasta should just ditch cutscenes entirely points towards it being a pretty bad narrative tool that's doing more to detract people from the experience rather than immerse them.While graphics aren't everything, the actual dialogue both mechanically and narratively is really bad.

Narratively speaking, while it does have some charm in a low-budget b-movie kind of way, not everyone is going to be interested in playing the equivilent of the room in terms of rpg games. You really have to be able to really forgive terribly written/voice acted lines in order to get any kind of genuine investment in Solasta's story.
Mechanically speaking, the story is also a mess because its just one awfully paced railroad with almost zero ability to role-play your characters. While you can give then specific personality traits the game will often have them act counter to those traits in order to fit them within the game's rigid 4 dialogue options. The biggest example of this was how the game kept forcing my lawful good extremely kind halfling paladin be the one who constantly wants to kill people on sight just because it needed someone to offer up the "lets kill the sad and kind ghost just for existing" option and none of my party's personality traits matched it. This not only took me out of the experience multiple times as my characters kept acting out of character, but it also eventually became extremely frustrating when it came to dialogue skill checks and it would have my uncharasmatic and cold ranger be the one with the persuasion check to try to end a encounter peacefully while my super charasmatic paladin would be the one who has the attack option. So not only were my characters being forced to act out of character, but the game was also forcing me to use characters with worse charisma skills to try to talk my way out of fights.

The only thing Larian should take away from Solasta's story-telling is custom character personalities to use for dialogue animations and being able to create a custom party.

Yeah, it's got too many bugs for me to get very far and I can see what you are saying. I still like their opening structure much more. If Larian would add a opening background story, sort of like Dragon Age origins did with each race, or how Solasta is in a tavern, or how Fallout 4 did their opening family routine. There needs to be something that comes before being captured that gets the player into the world before blowing the world up around them or it does not have any affect at all.

[alanc9]

Originally posted by Space Dog:

You don't get advantage by moving behind someone every turn. 5e doesn't have facing. Even if you use the optional rule for it, you can change facing as a reaction so you can't cheese for free advantage 1v1.

I thought you got a bonus for this, not Advantage.

[Admod, the Equivocal]

Originally posted by Space Dog:

Originally posted by Admod, the Equivocal:

Bruh. You can do all that in pnp DnD.

Food doesn't heal in D&D.

Shove moves the target 5', not 50'. High jump is also around 5', not 15'.

You don't get advantage by moving behind someone every turn. 5e doesn't have facing. Even if you use the optional rule for it, you can change facing as a reaction so you can't cheese for free advantage 1v1.

Exploding oil barrels don't exist and barrels have realistic weight. You don't throw them.

What did you mean exactly?

Who said food heals? No one said that.

Shoving action needs improvement. Only legitimate counter-arguement. You CAN jump ridiculous amounts of space though.

Didn't say anything about having advantage. You seem to have problems with understanding words.

Exploding 'oil' barrels? Was this said too? You have a strange imagination, friend. Also, I'm 100% certain you can rig something up with oil in a barrel cause that does exist in DnD.