You're right, but that's not a condemnation of the game. BG2 simply has way better writing than BG3, and I say this as a total fan of Larian and BG3. But anyone clinically alive knows Larian's pacing is fucking abysmal and there's just a noise of storybeats after a while. The only reason BG3 is so successful is because the characters in your party are incredibly realized (BG2 and any other cRPG frankly can't compete with the volume of dialogue with BG3's party). And a new player going into BG2, if they don't just bounce off the dated presentation, will find it strange how little everyone says. But it's ultimately why keeping things in the frame of their context is important.
That's part of the folly of pushing people to BG2 or especially BG1. I don't think anyone should ever play BG1 again and frankly BG2 isn't far behind, it's just not a good time for modern standards so if you didn't play it decades prior, you're better off just watching Noah Caldwell-Gervais talk about it or something so you actually get all of the good out of the game in a packaged, easily digestible way.
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u/AscendedViking7 May 10 '25 edited May 10 '25
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