Betwixt Christmas gift cash and Steam Family Sharing workaround shenanigans, the husband and I have finally started Baldur's Gate 3.
Went in basically blind except for knowing the names of the companions and the fact that Astarion is a vampire (couldn't miss that cultural osmosis).
We also came in on two different meta-levels as players.
He is very familiar with D&D, D&D-based games, computer games in general, and these sorts of games specifically. He's also that kind of person that plays things on Extreme Difficulty Mode for fun. He quits when something isn't challenging enough. His idea of relaxing, rewarding gameplay is ultra-hard-mode Elden Ring and Dark Souls.
I, on the other hand, am bad at games. Full stop. I have lost Wii Mario Kart to a 6 year old, repeatedly. I get hopelessly lost even when there's detailed maps, trackers, compasses, and flagged waypoints. I also panic in combat situations and have no strategic ability aside from "stand there, hit it, and hope it doesn't move." I'm more of a low-stakes visual novel sort of gamer. Stardew Valley is as intense as I get.
He is playing a Seldarine Drow warlock in a pact with an archfey. She's a noble with a ridiculously high Charisma score, a perfectly balanced spell loadout, and an even more balanced overall stat build. She's DPS without being totally squishy and helpless, and has advantage to almost everything. She also has an impeccable fashion sense and always looks put together, even when on death's door to a brain worm. Or, to put it in a way my husband would loathe, she got that drip.
I am playing a ginger himbo of a high elf fighter with -1 to Charisma and a -1000 to common sense. He's an impulsive maniac with, somehow, a +3 to intimidation despite being a truly gentle soul that believes every sob story he comes across. He's a sweaty, dusty, grubby little feral child (outlander background) with the world's messiest ponytail and greasepaint-turned-eyeliner that a 90s ex emo kid would be proud of. And that's him trying to look presentable. Despite having an impressive dexterity score, my natural disadvantage to dexterity (and Wisdom and Intelligence) as the player makes it so that this man bumbles his way into everything and only gets out by making horrifying threats he has absolutely no intention of following up on, or by being forced to stand his ground and take it on the jaw.
So this was going to be An Experience no matter what. And boy, it sure has been.
Thus far, we have:
Accidentally pacifism'd our way into every Goblin/Absolute aligned settlement we've encountered on the pure luck of husband's choice to play a Drow because he thought it would add an interesting dynamic. That interesting dynamic, he thought, would be difficulty. He thought being a Drow would make it harder because of the general hatred toward them. He's technically good-aligned, but, y'know, planet-of-hats racism means he was expecting it to work against him, which he likes because he likes when things are hard. Only now it's basically a free pass into all the areas we'd normally have to fight or sneak into. Great for our shared pacifist tendencies, but LOL
Lost a full hour of progress because my computer screen is tiny and bad at graphics and I hadn't learned all the controls yet, so while trying to investigate a hole in the floor of an abandoned church I tripped in face-first and got us into an unescapable, imminent-TPK situation, whereupon the game immediately autosaved for the first time since waking up on the beach. We have since learned to spam the quicksave button liberally.
Accepted a ton of mutually exclusive quests, half of which we have no intention of doing, just to try and get out of situations without combat, so now the mini map now looks like a cubist rendition of a simple sun drawing and I'm SO worried it's going to come crashing down and get us shanked in our sleep.
MET BEST BOY DOGGO I WILL DIE FOR SCRATCH 😭
Discovered husband's character is, build wise, a carbon-copy of Wyll. This was 100% unintentional and he's BIG mad about it LOL RIP
Impulsively pushed a button in a crypt without saving and woke up a bunch of skellies we weren't prepared for, but were somehow also saved by that same impulsivity because I had previously run around the entire area and looted every single skeleton no matter how useless it was to my character, so they all woke up without their weapons so HAH take that I TOLD YOU being a klepto would pay off
Immediately after this fortuitous stroke of fate, having learned exactly nothing, my impulsive maniac opened the shiny sarcophagus before consulting anyone or healing. Luckily it wasn't cursed or trapped or full of enemies (it was Withers, and I'm love), but I'm now not allowed to open or interact with anything bigger than a crate without announcing it first so husband has the chance to go NO WAIT LET ME SAVE FIRST
Sneaked into a secret underground passage, whereupon my husband sent his invisible'd familiar around to carefully scout the area, discovering the button that would turn off the overpowered guardian statue. My character then readied a crossbow shot to hit said button, but in trying to move out of the way of the other party members, stepped right into the statue's attack circle. I panicked, tried to move, but couldn't figure out how to unselect the attack I could no longer use, and tried to fix it by pausing. But all of that just resulted in me standing there, doing nothing, until I finally dropped dead. Luckily I passed my saving throws, and more luckily still, my husband managed to stop laughing long enough to eldritch blast the statue to pieces and come get me.
So anyway, we're having the best time. I know we're late to the party, but it really is so good. I may have even teared up a little during the dream sequence with the psychedelic neon light guardian warriors. This is going to consume my brain for the next few months, and I'm happy to have paid for the privilege. 10/10, absolutely deserves that GOTY and the $60 price tag both.
No spoilers please, we're only level 3 and just encountering the Goblin Camp. (We've met everyone but Karlach, I believe.) But rest assured, as we learn and discover more I will come yelling and seeking those who will screech with me. Probably mostly about my new sons that I've acquired, namely the lying purple sadsack trash wizard with some horrifying kind of chronic illness and/or addiction, and the prettiest most specialist murder machine who definitely won't admit it but is definitely gonna need a hug when I finish breaking down those obviously performative emotional walls.
Also, Lae'zel scares me. Please stop yelling at me, you cranky fish woman, I'm trying my best here 😭
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Mizu, femininity, and fallen sparrows
In my last post about Mizu and Akemi, I feel like I came across as overly critical of Mizu given that Mizu is a woman who - in her own words - has to live as a man in order to go down the path of revenge.
If she is ever discovered to be female by the wrong person, she will not only be unable to complete her quest, but there's a good chance that she'll be arrested or killed.
So it makes complete sense for Mizu to distance herself as much as possible from any behavior that she feels like would make someone question her sex.
I felt so indignant toward Mizu on my first couple watchthroughs for this moment. Why couldn't Mizu bribe the woman and her child's way into the city too? If Mizu is presenting as a man, couldn't she claim to be the woman's escort?
However, this moment makes things pretty clear. Mizu knows all too well the plight of women in her society. She knows it so well that she cannot risk ever finding herself back in their position again. She helps in what little way she can - without drawing attention to herself.
Mizu is not a hero and she is not one to make of herself a martyr - she will not set herself on fire to keep others warm. There's room to argue that Mizu shouldn't prioritize her quest over people's lives, but given the collateral damage Mizu can live with in almost every episode of season 1, Mizu is simply not operating under that kind of morality at this point. ("You don't know what I've done to reach you," Mizu tells Fowler.)
And while I still feel like Mizu has an obvious and established blind spot when it comes to Akemi because of their differences in station, such that Mizu's judgment of Akemi and actions in episode 5 are the result of prejudice rather than the result of Mizu's caution, I also want to establish that Mizu is just as caged as Akemi is, despite her technically having more freedom while living as a man.
Mizu can hide her mixed race identity some of the time, and she can hide her sex almost all of the time, but being able to operate outside of her society's strict rules for women does not mean she cannot see their plight.
It does not mean she doesn't hurt for them.
Back to Mizu and collateral damage, remember that sparrow?
While Mizu is breaking into Boss Hamata's manse, she gets startled by a bird and kills it on reflex. She then cradles it in her hands - much more tenderly than we've seen Mizu treat almost anything up to this point in the season:
She then puts it in its nest, with its unhatched eggs. Almost like she's trying to make the death look natural. Or like an accident.
You see where I'm going with this.
When Mizu kills Kinuyo, Mizu lingers in the moment, holding the body tenderly:
And btw a lot of stuff about this show hit me hard, but this remains the biggest gut punch of them all for me, Mizu holding that poor girl's body close, GOD
When Mizu arranges the "scene of the crime," Kinuyo's body is delicate, birdlike. And Mizu is so shaken afterward that she gets sloppy. She's horrified at this kill to the point that she can't bring herself to take another innocent life - the boy who rats her out.
MIZU'S ONE MOMENT OF SOFTNESS AND MERCY, COMING ON THE HEELS OF HER NEEDING TO KILL A GIRL TO SPARE HER THE WORST FATE THAT THIS RIGID SOCIETY HAS TO OFFER WOMEN, AND TO SPARE A BROTHEL FULL OF INNOCENT WOMEN WHO ARE THE CASTOFFS OF SOCIETY, NEARLY RESULTS IN ALL OF THEIR DEATHS
No wonder Mizu is as stoic and cold as she is.
And no wonder Mizu has no patience for Akemi whatsoever right before the terrible reveal and the fight breaks out:
Speaking of Akemi - guess who else is compared to a bird!
The plumage is more colorful, a bit flashier. But a bird is a bird.
And, uh
Yeah.
I like to think that Mizu killing the sparrow is not only foreshadowing for what she must do to Kinuyo, but is also a representation of the choice she makes on Akemi's behalf. She decides to cage the bird because she believes the bird is "better off." Better off caged than... dead.
But because Mizu doesn't know Akemi or her situation, she of course doesn't realize that the bird is fated to die if it is caged and sent back home.
Mizu is clearly not happy, or pleased, or satisfied by allowing Akemi to be dragged back to her father:
But softness and mercy haven't gotten Mizu anywhere good, recently.
There is so much tragedy layered into Mizu's character, and it includes the things she has to witness and the choices she makes - or believes she has to make - involving women, when she herself can skirt around a lot of what her society throws at women. Although, I do believe that it comes at the cost of a part of Mizu's soul.
After all, I'm gonna be haunted for the rest of this show by Mizu's very first prayer in episode 1:
"LET" her die. Because as Ringo points out, she doesn't "know how" to die.
Kind of like another bird in this show:
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Have females changed?
Was chatting with one of the neighborhood kids this weekend while I was out puttering around in the yard. I don't know how this worked into the conversation but he blurted out how his dad says women complain more now than they used to. Then he added how his father said girls were friendlier when he was a kid. Is that right, he asked me? My first thought is "How did we get onto this topic?" I then, am thinking I don't want to tell some kid his father doesn't know what he's talking about. I looked around to make sure I didn't have my wife or daughter in range to hear anything I might say. I've watched enough Law & Order episodes to know how things work. One wrong comment to the wrong person and I'm living on Rikers Island. I said that I think women are still as friendly as they've ever been. I will agree that females do seem to complain more than when I was a teenager. He then asked me if I had ever had a group of women scare me before? I told him twice that I can remember. Both these times were when I was in High School. Once while writing an editorial for our school newspaper I mentioned how I thought the girls in our school could put a bit more effort into how they dressed for school. I can still remember as I walked the halls at the end of the day many of the female students yelling at me. The neighbor kid laughed and said you were a crazy man. I told him I know, I don't know what possessed me to write that editorial, but my advisor gave it the O.K. I was then asked what was the second time you were scared by girls? I told him how my Senior year the girls' basketball team got all worked up over gym privileges. The boys practiced ball in the New Gym and the Girls in the Old Gym right next door. (It had always been that way and everyone had been happy.) It was a cute little old gym that was perfect for the ladies. If you were really still I believe you could hear the echo's of the past school teams that had used that gymnasium. I don't know what brought this all on but the girls got all militant and scary toward us boys basketball team members. They loudly demanded the other gym. I remember once while in a class a few of those girls, which I guess some would call assertive or warring girls today started yelling at my buddy Mike, Jimmy and me while we're just sitting in class talking about puppies or helping out the elderly in our community. They were scary and I had nightmares about them for quite a while. Men can be obnoxious and jerkish, I'll admit that, but women that can be downright mean and scary. In the movies, the female bad person is always scarier than a male bad person. So the kid asked who got what gym? I told him it ended up being divided up, sort of like a North and South Korea thing. Us guys just wanted to get along and decided to be tolerant. The girls team got enough to be happy and moved on to some other issue to get worked up about. My neighbor kid thanked me for my insight and sharing. Before he left he said his family is thinking of getting a pet. Do I have any advice about that? I told him you can always go traditional with a cat or a dog. But I have read where Gorillas make get house pets, if you can keep them off the furniture. I'd be careful smacking one with a rolled up newspaper.
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Philza's ultimate: Envoy of the Empress. By activating his blaze charm, Phil becomes a temporary vessel for the Blaze Empress.
When Envoy of the Empress is active, Phil gains resistance to fire damage, a bonus to all attacks, and whenever one of Phil's attacks hits, there is a chance the target is ignited and dealt continuous damage.
Philza can forgo one of his attacks to increase his defense for a short time.
Blaze Lance allows Philza to make a ranged attack that deals a medium amount of fire damage and travels in a straight line. The lance can pass through and damage multiple enemies on its way to its target.
Eruption is a heavy attack that deals a large amount of fire damage in an arc, and leaves a lingering burning effect that damages those trapped inside it.
There we have it! The first variation of Phil's ultimate move. The next one will get posted tomorrow :D
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