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alias_sqbrMasterpost
So! Spoilery initial thoughts on what Cam refers to as "the bear sex game".
Content note: body horror, references to sex with (sentient!) bears that my character is not thus far having.
I had been thinking about playing this for a while, since it was giving me very strong Dragon Age vibes (big, good quality fantasy rpg with romances, branching story etc) But my original plan was to wait until the hype had died down and more people had finished it and could give their feelings on the game overall, and maybe the price had gone down from nearly ninety Australian dollars.
But people kept making it sound so fun.
me: I hear bg3 is good.
cam: Yeah I'm not into fantasy myself but everyone keeps talking about it!
me: Oh did they also see the bear sex vid? A bunch of people I follow saw it and got all excited.
cam: The...what?
Me: I guess we move in different circles.
Pia: I'm enjoying it! I went from "i see it and i don't care" to "everyone is having fun except meeeeee"
Me: Yeah, I know a bunch of people into dragon age and/or monsterfucking who were like 'you can play a bisexual elf dude having sex with a bear'.
Pia: akfjdsa i missed that part. The part I heard was that you can let a vampire suck your blood.
Me: Yeah they were excited about that too.
Me to non-binary friend: Pia says the non-binary inclusion in bg3 is good!
friend: Yeah, I'm playing it myself and having a lot of fun!
Me: I am edging closer and closer to buying it...
friend: You can have sex with a bear!
Me: See, some people understand me.
Cam: I don't judge! As long as you don't want me to dress as a bear, I'm used to your weird romance choices.
Me: Would you rather dress as a bear or Fenris?
Cam: A BEAR. Fucking Fenris, I can't believe you romanced that asshole, he was so mean to my Merrill >:(
(Dragon Age 2 came out in 2011 and Cam is still bitter)
And, well, my ranger does have bonuses for communicating with and handling animals...
I was going to try and link the bear sex vid but was worried about spoilers and the kinds of things one might encounter when googling 'bear sex vid', so you'll have to use your imagination.
I haven't actually met the sex-able bear character Gale yet, another ranger who apparently spends most of the time as a normal looking half-elf dude. But I'm enjoying being a ranger anyway. EDIT: Apparently the bear is someone else! Also Gale is a human wizard!!
My understanding of Teiflings, based largely on Dimension 20: Fantasy High and the paragraph blurb in the character creator, is that they are the children of big scary hell demons and some more human-ish person, and are often looked down upon as Scary and Evil and have Tragic Mixed Race angst (D&D is alllll about the Fantasy Racism and Tragic Mixed Race angst from what I can tell) So I thought it would be fun to play this Tav as a slightly sad but very compassionate person who has responded to being judged for their nature by refusing to judge anyone for their nature, even when they are covered in blaring Evil Fantasy Creature red flags. Being a ranger works well for this, since they are In Touch With Nature, can befriend animals etc. And it's more suited to my "hit things with a big stick until it dies" combat technique than something like bard.
I hear ranger has some useful rogue-ish mechanics, which I hope includes being able to learn to unlock chests. I'm not usually good at most rogue fighting mechanics but locked chests taunt me.
You get to choose your background, so I picked "hero to the people", someone who goes around helping the helpless. I haven't noticed this affect anything yet.
The game starts with you in a cage on an Evil Living Ship (the walls are made of it's meat and instead of doors it has 'sphincters'), run by cthulu-esque mindflayers, who create more mindflayers by putting little worms in peoples head which take a few days to finish the transformation. Just after you've had a little worm put in your head, the ship crashes, and you escape into the burning ship.
The start of the game is then you wandering around the largely empty ship figuring out the game controls, looting corpses, and encountering companions.
The first main companion you meet is Lae'zel, a green skinned tiny-nosed Githyanki. All I know about the Githyanki thus far is that they are green skinned, tiny-nosed, and appear to ride dragons. She's very coldly pragmatic and survival focussed and thus rolled with the fact that Tav had already made an earlier friend...
See, I was exploring, and I came across a guy twitching in a chair. Walking to look at him I realised the top of his skull was missing. A voice calls for help and you realise it's the brain, a minion of the mindflayers asking to be freed from "this husk", eg the twitching, crying man.
And Tav just...can't resist a call for help from a little Creature. They figured out how to get the brain (which refers to itself as "Us") out safely (for the brain), ignored all the "are you sure you don't just want to kill this thing?" prompts and and chose not to take the option to disable it to make it more controllable. The man was presumably already effectively dead, so it's not murder, right?? The little brain pops out legs and tentacles and is very grateful, saying we are Friends now, since we are both The Same (eg, minions of the mindflayers) It then insisted on going towards the helm to Help, but since that turned out to be where Tav needed to get to anyway that was fine!
And so I spent the rest of this section of the game with a little squishy tentacled brain following around, helping with fights.
The next companion you meet is Shadowheart, a human cleric, trapped in a cage. I spent some time trying to figure out how to free her, which mostly involved smashing things and becoming covered in unhelpfully poisonous fluids, eventually I gave up and looted the next room which had the key to her cage hooray. Thus far she seems a bit more Good than Lae'zel but still kinda distant and very vocally Fantasy Racist against Githyanki (but not Tielfings so far)
There's a big fight and the ship crashes and you're all free. I wandered a pretty beach looting dead fishermen and then we encountered Sexy Bisexual Evil Elf Vampire Astarion from the bear sex vid and much thirsty fanart. He immediately tried to trick and stab me, which I have heard can end in a sexy knife fight but of course Tav instead went "Aw, I get trying to stab me, you've had a tough day. Let's be friends :)" which got me points with Shadowheart but not Astarion. My understanding is that Astarion is evil enough not to vibe with Nice characters, so we probably won't get along, but that's ok. I think this Tav is more into girls anyway.
We lost Lae'zel and Us in the crash, I am pretty sure Lae'zel is coming back but I don't know about brain friend ;_;
We encountered a dying Mindflayer and it took both me and Tav a second to realise the intense compassion they were feeling was mind control and kill it. It didn't feel entirely OOC for Tav to feel sorry for it...
Wandering further we encountered a scared wild boar who Tav bent down to commune with before encouraging it to run free. It felt very Disney princex.
I've heard the game described as relentlessly horny but noone's expressed interest at all thus far. Which is fine! I'm not sure Tav has the competence to navigate romance successfully anyway. Maybe they can just make (PLATONIC) friends with animals, I hear you get a (NON ROMANCEABLE) dog. And anyway, they haven't met the bear yet ;)
I have avoided looking into the game much but here's portraits of all the companions plus links to more info if you're less worried about spoilers than me.
Pia said all the companions (that he's met, anyway) also have brain slugs and there's a lot of talk of needing to get help RIGHT NOW or you'll DIE IN DAYS which you can of course entirely ignore to wander around collecting crafting resources and helping save cats from trees etc. Though long rests do progress time which can affect things, I think.
I am VERY tired this morning which is why I am lying down writing this rather than playing, but hopefully I will perk up enough to sit up and play some more later.
So! Spoilery initial thoughts on what Cam refers to as "the bear sex game".
Content note: body horror, references to sex with (sentient!) bears that my character is not thus far having.
I had been thinking about playing this for a while, since it was giving me very strong Dragon Age vibes (big, good quality fantasy rpg with romances, branching story etc) But my original plan was to wait until the hype had died down and more people had finished it and could give their feelings on the game overall, and maybe the price had gone down from nearly ninety Australian dollars.
But people kept making it sound so fun.
me: I hear bg3 is good.
cam: Yeah I'm not into fantasy myself but everyone keeps talking about it!
me: Oh did they also see the bear sex vid? A bunch of people I follow saw it and got all excited.
cam: The...what?
Me: I guess we move in different circles.
Pia: I'm enjoying it! I went from "i see it and i don't care" to "everyone is having fun except meeeeee"
Me: Yeah, I know a bunch of people into dragon age and/or monsterfucking who were like 'you can play a bisexual elf dude having sex with a bear'.
Pia: akfjdsa i missed that part. The part I heard was that you can let a vampire suck your blood.
Me: Yeah they were excited about that too.
Me to non-binary friend: Pia says the non-binary inclusion in bg3 is good!
friend: Yeah, I'm playing it myself and having a lot of fun!
Me: I am edging closer and closer to buying it...
friend: You can have sex with a bear!
Me: See, some people understand me.
Cam: I don't judge! As long as you don't want me to dress as a bear, I'm used to your weird romance choices.
Me: Would you rather dress as a bear or Fenris?
Cam: A BEAR. Fucking Fenris, I can't believe you romanced that asshole, he was so mean to my Merrill >:(
(Dragon Age 2 came out in 2011 and Cam is still bitter)
And, well, my ranger does have bonuses for communicating with and handling animals...
I was going to try and link the bear sex vid but was worried about spoilers and the kinds of things one might encounter when googling 'bear sex vid', so you'll have to use your imagination.
I haven't actually met the sex-able bear character Gale yet, another ranger who apparently spends most of the time as a normal looking half-elf dude. But I'm enjoying being a ranger anyway. EDIT: Apparently the bear is someone else! Also Gale is a human wizard!!
My understanding of Teiflings, based largely on Dimension 20: Fantasy High and the paragraph blurb in the character creator, is that they are the children of big scary hell demons and some more human-ish person, and are often looked down upon as Scary and Evil and have Tragic Mixed Race angst (D&D is alllll about the Fantasy Racism and Tragic Mixed Race angst from what I can tell) So I thought it would be fun to play this Tav as a slightly sad but very compassionate person who has responded to being judged for their nature by refusing to judge anyone for their nature, even when they are covered in blaring Evil Fantasy Creature red flags. Being a ranger works well for this, since they are In Touch With Nature, can befriend animals etc. And it's more suited to my "hit things with a big stick until it dies" combat technique than something like bard.
I hear ranger has some useful rogue-ish mechanics, which I hope includes being able to learn to unlock chests. I'm not usually good at most rogue fighting mechanics but locked chests taunt me.
You get to choose your background, so I picked "hero to the people", someone who goes around helping the helpless. I haven't noticed this affect anything yet.
The game starts with you in a cage on an Evil Living Ship (the walls are made of it's meat and instead of doors it has 'sphincters'), run by cthulu-esque mindflayers, who create more mindflayers by putting little worms in peoples head which take a few days to finish the transformation. Just after you've had a little worm put in your head, the ship crashes, and you escape into the burning ship.
The start of the game is then you wandering around the largely empty ship figuring out the game controls, looting corpses, and encountering companions.
The first main companion you meet is Lae'zel, a green skinned tiny-nosed Githyanki. All I know about the Githyanki thus far is that they are green skinned, tiny-nosed, and appear to ride dragons. She's very coldly pragmatic and survival focussed and thus rolled with the fact that Tav had already made an earlier friend...
See, I was exploring, and I came across a guy twitching in a chair. Walking to look at him I realised the top of his skull was missing. A voice calls for help and you realise it's the brain, a minion of the mindflayers asking to be freed from "this husk", eg the twitching, crying man.
And Tav just...can't resist a call for help from a little Creature. They figured out how to get the brain (which refers to itself as "Us") out safely (for the brain), ignored all the "are you sure you don't just want to kill this thing?" prompts and and chose not to take the option to disable it to make it more controllable. The man was presumably already effectively dead, so it's not murder, right?? The little brain pops out legs and tentacles and is very grateful, saying we are Friends now, since we are both The Same (eg, minions of the mindflayers) It then insisted on going towards the helm to Help, but since that turned out to be where Tav needed to get to anyway that was fine!
And so I spent the rest of this section of the game with a little squishy tentacled brain following around, helping with fights.
The next companion you meet is Shadowheart, a human cleric, trapped in a cage. I spent some time trying to figure out how to free her, which mostly involved smashing things and becoming covered in unhelpfully poisonous fluids, eventually I gave up and looted the next room which had the key to her cage hooray. Thus far she seems a bit more Good than Lae'zel but still kinda distant and very vocally Fantasy Racist against Githyanki (but not Tielfings so far)
There's a big fight and the ship crashes and you're all free. I wandered a pretty beach looting dead fishermen and then we encountered Sexy Bisexual Evil Elf Vampire Astarion from the bear sex vid and much thirsty fanart. He immediately tried to trick and stab me, which I have heard can end in a sexy knife fight but of course Tav instead went "Aw, I get trying to stab me, you've had a tough day. Let's be friends :)" which got me points with Shadowheart but not Astarion. My understanding is that Astarion is evil enough not to vibe with Nice characters, so we probably won't get along, but that's ok. I think this Tav is more into girls anyway.
We lost Lae'zel and Us in the crash, I am pretty sure Lae'zel is coming back but I don't know about brain friend ;_;
We encountered a dying Mindflayer and it took both me and Tav a second to realise the intense compassion they were feeling was mind control and kill it. It didn't feel entirely OOC for Tav to feel sorry for it...
Wandering further we encountered a scared wild boar who Tav bent down to commune with before encouraging it to run free. It felt very Disney princex.
I've heard the game described as relentlessly horny but noone's expressed interest at all thus far. Which is fine! I'm not sure Tav has the competence to navigate romance successfully anyway. Maybe they can just make (PLATONIC) friends with animals, I hear you get a (NON ROMANCEABLE) dog. And anyway, they haven't met the bear yet ;)
I have avoided looking into the game much but here's portraits of all the companions plus links to more info if you're less worried about spoilers than me.
Pia said all the companions (that he's met, anyway) also have brain slugs and there's a lot of talk of needing to get help RIGHT NOW or you'll DIE IN DAYS which you can of course entirely ignore to wander around collecting crafting resources and helping save cats from trees etc. Though long rests do progress time which can affect things, I think.
I am VERY tired this morning which is why I am lying down writing this rather than playing, but hopefully I will perk up enough to sit up and play some more later.
no subject
Date: 2023-08-13 04:21 am (UTC)sex with (sentient!) bears that my character is not thus far having.
Not yet, huh?
me: Oh did they also see the bear sex vid? A bunch of people I follow saw it and got all excited.
cam: The...what?
Me: I guess we move in different circles.
LMAO
The body horror ship sounds a lot of fun! And also omg, TAV. The brain friend! I'm surprised rescuing the brain (I can't believe I wrote that) didn't backfire horribly on you, and kudos to you for roleplaying even when BRAINS.
there's a lot of talk of needing to get help RIGHT NOW or you'll DIE IN DAYS which you can of course entirely ignore to wander around collecting crafting resources and helping save cats from trees etc.
Obviously none of those things take time!
no subject
Date: 2023-08-15 10:04 am (UTC)I am still sad brain friend never showed up again. But maybe they are hiding out there somewhere in the wilderness...
no subject
Date: 2023-08-15 08:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-08-13 05:05 pm (UTC)Cam: A BEAR. Fucking Fenris, I can't believe you romanced that asshole, he was so mean to my Merrill >:(
I lol'd at this.
Pia said all the companions (that he's met, anyway) also have brain slugs and there's a lot of talk of needing to get help RIGHT NOW or you'll DIE IN DAYS which you can of course entirely ignore to wander around collecting crafting resources and helping save cats from trees etc.
... and at this. Oh video games.
I'm not likely to play this but I have been curious, so I appreciate the writeups!
no subject
Date: 2023-08-14 02:52 am (UTC)Glad you are vicariously enjoying it :)
no subject
Date: 2023-08-13 08:16 pm (UTC)Just as a note, I saw an interview about some quests being relatively time-sensitive (a bit like ME2 & 3 can be at times). Some people thought the quests were bugged, and the devs were like ... no, there are just consequences to ignoring them for too long. I don't think it's super strict, but I thought you might want to know that it can happen!
no subject
Date: 2023-08-14 02:51 am (UTC)Thank you, that's good to know!
no subject
Date: 2023-08-13 09:00 pm (UTC)I'm still waiting for an eventual sale + bug flattening + more reports from people who have played the entire game but I'm sure I'm going to pick this up eventually, and since I don't care too much about spoilers I've been enjoying hearing about people's runs. I hope your Ranger gets to help all the people and doesn't get too stabbed in the back or mind wormed.
no subject
Date: 2023-08-14 02:51 am (UTC)I am continuing to have fun though it turns out I'm not a Ranger and just didn't notice >.>