u/WhisperingOracle

As other people have mentioned, Imoen has sadly always been an afterthought. She wasn't originally supposed to be a character in BG1 at all, and they only added her last minute when they realized there was no early-game Thief option for Good-aligned players (Montaron has Thief multiclass, but you may not want to recruit him if you're going with Jaheira and Khalid). But because she was added last minute, she's nowhere near as interactive as she should be, and doesn't really have a ton of interaction with your main character, even though she should.

By the time they started working on BG2, they planned to just kill her off in the early game to establish dramatic tension (because they didn't view her as an important or interesting character), but during development they started to realize just how popular Imoen was, so they quickly changed things so she'd stay around... but again, because they hadn't planned on her being in the game other than the prologue, they kind of had to scramble to make her an actual companion, and she still winds up being missing for most of the game and lacking in interactivity because of it.

It really isn't until Throne of Bhaal that they sort of start treating her like an actual character, but even then she's generally overshadowed by other companions, including romance partners who presumably have far more robust interactions by that point.

This kind of disdain is mirrored in how the Baldur's Gate novelizations treat her, but since those are utter trash and everyone on Earth should pretend they never existed, we shall ignore that.

Which is a shame, because I've always found Imoen to be the most interesting and meaningful character in all of Baldur's Gate (at least in potential). Even aside from discussions about whether or not she should have been a potential love interest, the fact that she's your childhood friend means she should have had a huge impact on the story... and she simply doesn't. The fact that Melissa Disney does a really good job of voicing her lines only makes her more of a missed opportunity. Of course, mods exist to give her a much larger role (and potentially add her as a romance partner), but mileage will always vary for that sort of thing depending on who the writer is and how much their style clashes with the original game (and the lack of VA work also hurts to some degree).

I think WotC has always kind of missed the boat with BG1/BG2 though. Between the novels, comics, and adventure modules they kind of screwed up the canonicity even before Larian came along to give characters like Jaheira, Viconia, and Sarevok the worst possible versions of their possible endings in the original games. So much so that I flat out refuse to use the version of Gorion's Ward presented in Murder in Baldur's Gate, or the entire set-up at the start of that adventure. That is NOT how events played out in my Faerun, and that will never be how events played out in my Faerun (I'm just glad Larian mostly avoided ever really describing Gorion's Ward for that exact reason - though I'd probably have enjoyed it even more if they'd done a KotOR 2/Witcher 3 sort of mechanic, where you could literally describe your version of Gorion's Ward via dialogue).

Oh, I relate.

I didn't have the Internet at all when I was growing up. The World Wide Web wasn't even invented until I was in high school, and my first online experiences were Telnetting into a local BBS as a junior.

It wasn't until I was in college that I started visiting actual websites, and YouTube didn't exist until I was nearly 30.

Hearing pretty much anyone say that they grew up watching anything online always makes me feel old.

If it helps, I was already in my mid-30s when that video came out. And I didn't actually start watching Yogscast content until I was 40.

I'm older than both Simon and Lewis. I think Pyrion is the only Yog who is actually older than me.

"Who's BlueXephos?"

Yeah, that was pretty much the first conversation I had with my guildmates once one of us got it. It was like, "Why show it in the picture with a hood if it doesn't come with a hood?"

Doesn't help that it kind of looks lame without it. So something that could have been really cool has basically just become meh at best. It's an incredibly underwhelming event - and I say that as one of the people who haven't been super-frustrated by how buggy it apparently is.

Though my one guildmate hypothesized that maybe the quest chain eventually has an enemy boss (with the implication that the plague is manufactured and someone is deliberately spreading it) who wears the hooded mask (meaning that's a picture of them), and that when you beat them the hooded version of the mask drops as a reward. Though that might just be wishful thinking on their part.

The answer is "Yes."

I'm on the PS5, and it's sort of worked fine for me. By which I mean it was bugged as shit, but I could at least still complete the objectives.

When the event started I went looking for her in Pinnacle Station, and she wasn't there. Then I went back a second time and she appeared. One of my guildmates couldn't get her to show up in the first two trading posts they went to to look for her, and only found her on their third try.

Since then she's appeared every time I've looked for her, but her tent has never appeared for me any time other than the first (which is the only reason I know she's supposed to have a tent), and she has literally never had a blood purifier with her (which she's apparently supposed to). The only way I can turn in blood is by flying to Arrakeen and back.

Well, aside from any other considerations, the problem there is that Circuit Gloves are made out of a material I currently have no access to, using a schematic I cannot buy, using a machine I cannot build.

Not every player is an endgame PvPer.

Yeah, but then I'd have the alternate problem of overly chonky gloves and/or boots that don't fit the visual aesthetic of the rest of my outfit. And unlike "Hide Helmet", there's no "Hide Gloves" option.

Part of the reason why I picked the helmet slot for heavy armor in the first place was because it wouldn't matter what it looked like if I could just make it invisible.

It's also worth noting that a lot of special sets like the Mentat, Bene Gesserit, Swordmaster, and Planetologist are only light armor as well, so switching anything to heavy means you can't wear those either. Trooper is the only one that defaults to heavy (for obvious thematic reasons).

Well, we've got a long way to go, and a short time to get there.

To be fair, you still have to technically "pay" to maintain a larger base, in that you need to keep power generation running to keep the shields up, to keep the sandstorms out, and to keep the base from degrading.

It's more of a maintenance cost than a tax, but it does still require you to invest resources into keeping the base active, and the "cost" does go up as you expand.

Doing that kind of sucks because it's pretty much impossible to get the two halves to connect, unless you're doing a lot of ridiculous shenanigans involving building an entire fief, deleting the console, then recreating a new fief slightly off-center that theoretically contains most of the original fief, but with enough overlap for the edge to become part of the new secondary fief.

Shenanigans only made worse by the time pressure from having to dodge sandstorms, and the fact that the build tool/camera angles are absolute crap when you're trying to gauge exactly where a box will go (I would kill for the ability to switch to an overhead build view).

Using two neighboring fiefs to form a singular build works way better if you're building more of a compound than a single building. Or if you can use terrain tricks to create the illusion of continuity (like having a base cut into the side of a cliff or stone pillar, then having your second base come back out on the other side, so it looks like the base has been cut into the stone - though that has the disadvantage of still not being actually connected for purposes of walking around inside).

I've just spent the whole time fighting my Minecraft-ingrained instincts to just build towers.

Though I suppose a skyscraper is just a really tall cube...

East bound (and down).

If you think that's bad, try having a playstyle where you wear a nearly full set of light armor, except for the helmet.

I usually wear a heavy helmet for the little bit of extra armor it nets me (while still keeping the significant dash and blade mitigation boosts).

From my perspective, it almost kind of feels like the sole purpose of the plague doctor mask is to taunt me specifically.

My first thought in this game is that I was sad that you're limited to only three bases, because I would have liked the idea of setting up at least one rest stop in every region with water, fuel, repair tools and wire, and other minor necessities that could make life easier.

But I do understand why they limit you, because otherwise a lot of people would just monopolize entire servers and squeeze everyone else out.

I've been planning to build a base like this across the Rift somewhere in the middle, potentially with the added idea of having a shaft that runs down so you can theoretically climb out if you're near the bottom. But I've been trying to figure out the logistics of it, as well as finding a place where it looks like there's enough support to actually fully bridge the gap without having the middle of the bridge caving in. Some parts of the gap look wider than others.

I was also considering adding a sort of rest stop area onto it, where free water and fuel cells are available (in limited supply, to discourage asshats from just stealing everything). I have something set up like that in the Hagga Basin South already and it seems to work well, though I was worried it'd be more likely for troublemakers to be a problem farther north.

Half the time it doesn't even need to be red. I swear it's aggro'd on me multiple times when the bar was still orange and I'd completely stopped moving to try and settle it down.

Not on Xbox, but on the PS5 earlier today I was dropping down into the Hagga Rift on my bike, and I basically got slammed through the ground into the negative space behind the map, and was just floating in the void completely unable to move.

I was afraid I was going to have to quit out and probably die in the process, but fortunately exiting the bike popped me back into positive space, and I just fell the rest of the way to the bottom of the rift on foot. Then I was able to use the vehicle recall to pull my bike back to me.

There's also a code for it in the box if you buy the physical disc version.

Or have it like Mass Effect, where you are in dress uniform or casual outfits when you're on your ship, but switch into your combat gear when you drop into hot zones where you know you're going to be fighting.

Then you could introduce an entirely new aspect to things where players get to craft or buy "casual" outfit parts and color swatches the same way they do their combat gear, so everyone can try to create their own unique and interesting looks, and one-up each other in the most deadly PvP battles of all - the War of High Fashions.

They're mostly there for the roleplayers.

My nephew and I basically started wearing them whenever we went to Arrakeen for no other reason than because we found it amusing. We both did it without knowing the other was doing it at first, and we had a good laugh about it once we realized we were both doing it.

Since then we've also occasionally gone there at the same time with other friends and we all just sat down at a table in the bar and chatted over headphones while essentially pretending to be NPCs.

I feel like this isn't true, if only because the way I drive means I should be exploding every 5 minutes or so if the bike was taking collision damage.

I've definitely been told that the bikes don't take collision damage, only slow durability decay over time due to constant use. Though I acknowledge that the person who told me that might have been wrong/confused/lying.

In my personal experience (and because of my own personal preferences), I generally tend to argue that the good guys tend to have more interesting and satisfying storylines (especially in games, where the writers/devs rarely do "evil" well), but the bad guys almost always have the far better looking outfits and gear. And evil generally tends to have the "cool" factor.

It's like, sure, I'll root for Luke Skywalker and everybody loves Han (especially when he shoots first), but the stand-out cool character was always Vader.

Currently the group of friends I'm running with are Atreides-aligned but mostly using Harkonnen vehicle skins (with palette swaps). And are leaning towards using the Hark set for building bases.

My impression is that the entire Landsraad aspect of the game doesn't even matter all that much unless you're planning on engaging with the PvP. While lots of us are fully content to just live in Hagga forever and just stick to PvE exclusively.

Though to be fair, I'm also a newer player and I'm definitely nowhere near the endgame yet (I'm mostly moving into Aluminum tier now and getting sucked into base-building), so maybe it suddenly becomes relevant at some point.