listen it's very. even when playing gale's romance I am guaranteed several solid cutscenes of Astarion talking about his life, his perceptions of things, his ideas; the bite scene, the after that, the talking about your companions blood, the proposition, all the little conversations about being a vampire + how to become a vampire + what life was like that have several dialogue options. whereas these same "stock" conversations with the other companions tend to have ONE, maybe two dialogues with choices following if that much (for example, with Karlach it tends to be 1. ask question 2. she answers and it ends). there's a solid foundation of pacing and work put into astarion's storyline that even without his romance, his presence WILL be felt unless you just straight up never speak to him. which is to say, that THAT writing is really good! but if they couldn't uphold that same standard of effort and time across the board and ensure all the companions have some measure of equality, theeeeeen... something shouldve been done there to make sure it was at least somewhat equal. it also sucks that gale/wyll/lae'zel/shadowheart were all received ""poorly"" in contrast to astarion during EA (or received harsher critique anyways). I still believe there was a lot of solid character work and richness to their EA personalities that I dont know totally carried over in rewrites--decreasing the amount of conflict, lessening the "flaws" of these characters--contrary to what larian says about staying true to their core ideas in some places. so it sucks that you can see how with that effort and focus, astarion's storyline really is really well done for the kind of game that it is, and no one is saying bg3 is wanting for stuff to do, but there is a clear gap in effort and time put into the other companions when they absolutely deserved just as much time and effort as astarion, and the thing is. the writer confirmed it! confirmed that more time was put into him. like cmon man
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do you have any particular thoughts regarding marcille being a half-elf? its interesting to me considering the fact that she seems self-conscious about being a half-elf, but denies it when its brought up
i remember marcille looking visibly uncomfortable over laios simply asking her how old she is, which i think the only reason she might feel nervous about this is because it might reveal her as a half-elf to him.
she's never corrected anybody whose called her an elf either.
never mind the circumstances of the reveal, in which thistle goes on about how half-elves are inferior and accusing her of wanting to become full blooded elf, she seemed particularly upset like he struck a nerve-
i wish the half-elf thing was built upon more. also, underrated marcille line:
okay so i revisited this sequence just to make sure I could back myself up and it's just... man. there's a lot going on.
the first reaction we get from Marcille is this huge panel that takes up half of the page
she is viscerally affected. flushing to the tips of her ears with the intensity of it. and we see it again, a few pages later
so it might seem like she's embarrassed about it and lying to herself, but... I really think it's just that Thistle is accidentally hitting sore spots. If you really look at what he says to get these reactions
"you'll live out your entire life [...] and die that way too"
"a hundred years from now, nobody will be there"
Hear me out. I think, if he stuck to harping on about her inferiority without bringing up how terrifyingly long-lived she is, she wouldn't have been as bothered. But right now, Thistle is accidentally hitting all the marks on Marcille's deepest fears-- and this is after the Winged Lion promised her that her dreams could come true in an extremely vulnerable moment, so it also hits her slightly guilty conscience as well.
I do truly believe that Marcille isn't bothered about being a half-elf the way that people assume she'd be bothered by it. To her, the biggest problem with being a half-elf is that it's isolating.
On one hand, it's not hard to imagine why she'd distance herself from elves in the west. A lot of them can clock her as a half-elf on sight, unlike other races, and therefore she's always branded with this weird stigma of being Othered -- I would even say that she considers herself lucky for being born outside of elven culture instead of having to grow up in it. I mean, just... look at the way elves talk about her.
Skipping past the uncomfortable implication of what 'not tolerating the existence' of half-elves would actually entail, this is incredibly fucking annoying. You can see why she wouldn't want to be around elves much. You see a lot of Marcille reacting badly here, but honestly, almost all of it can be attributed to her freaking out that her bluff completely failed. She's honestly more paying attention to Izutsumi's footsteps and trying to coordinate an opportunity to escape.
And in the end, you see her built-up frustration at being asked if she wants to be a full-blooded elf like 2-3 times in a row.
Yeah, yeah, "the lady doth protest too much," and all. But we know Marcille. We know that she's a lot more embarrassed and horrendously unconvincing when she's being prodded about something she's actually self-conscious about.
Moving onto the flipside of things, it might seem weird that she "pretends" to be a full elf around other races, but it's not really that strange if you think about it. Again, people are weird about her being infertile or whatever, and a lots of them don't even know much about what sets half-elves apart from everyone else. I mean, look at how uncomfortable Laios is just asking her about it
and look at how exasperated and resigned she looks
And like... she's right. Where would that come up in normal conversation? Why would she go out of her way to tell them? She's functionally a normal elf to other races anyway -- got the ears, the abnormally long "childhood", and the huge mana capacity. Unless it's directly relevant or important for people to know, I don't think it's all that strange or indicative of insecurity that she prefers not to bother with it.
(This combined with her sense of being an "outsider" to elf culture also explains why she thinks elf superiority is embarrassing. She sees the way elves treat short-lived races from the "outsider" perspective nonetheless, and thinks it's obnoxious; especially more so because she usually has to play the elf around short-lived races and deal with the reputation of arrogance that elves have built up.)
The sad thing is, this all means that... she doesn't actually fit in anywhere. She doesn't like going out West much because of how elves treat her. But she's also an outsider in the continents she was born in, treated like this exotic long-lived alien choosing to live among short-lived races for some reason. She is always an outsider, the Other, no matter where she goes. Add in the fact that she'll live longer than literally anyone she knows, and it's honestly kind of heartbreaking.
And I think that's the crux of it. Marcille really doesn't act like she's at all self-conscious about being a half-elf because of any feelings of inferiority or being half-made or whatever. She considers herself a perfectly legitimate being and might even, in some ways, consider herself superior to normal elves because she's not blind with elf supremacy or whatever. (And whatever "elven biases" she displays, all of them are born more out of the fact that she's kind of bad at conceptualizing how other races age and mature compared to herself, not that she actually considers herself better or more mature simply for being an elf.)
I think that whatever self-consciousness Marcille has about being a half-elf is, instead, related to terror and loneliness. The reminder that it ensures she'll never truly belong anywhere for the rest of her very long life. The reminder that, in truth, even she's not actually sure how old she is by other races' standards (hence the discomfort when asked how old she is). She doesn't want to not be a half elf, or be a full elf or full tall-man-- in her ideal world, she's still a half-elf. She just gets to live out her life at the same pace with the people she loves and doesn't have to say goodbye again and again and again until she dies.
and one last very important panel, right after Mithrun tells her that all her desires would be devoured
In her ideal world, she's still a half-elf and reality magically starts marching at her pace. But failing that, the second best thing is that she's still a half-elf-- but one who is able to accept reality and let go of her fear.
(But the rest of the story pans out the way it does because, to Marcille, taking reality apart and reshaping it was less scary than simply and fully reconciling with it.)
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Fia is a Tarnished called to grace without having first experienced death, which may be something of a rarity.
Melina tells us some of Marika's words across 2 different churches, the Third Church and the Church of Pilgrimage:
My Lord, and thy warriors. I divest each of thee of thy grace.
With thine eyes dimmed, ye will be driven from the Lands Between. Ye will wage war in a land afar, where ye will live, and die.
Then, after thy death, I will give back what I once claimed.
Return to the Lands Between, wage war, and brandish the Elden Ring.
Grow strong in the face of death. Warriors of my lord. Lord Godfrey.
That indicates that Tarnished get their Grace back only after dying. The opening cinematic does a little to corroborate this. Hoarah Loux is impaled by arrows, the Dung Eater is being hung, and Gideon Ofnir is in his casket. Goldmask is a little more ambiguous, but given the others are dead, and the way he's sort of splayed out on the ground with his prayer book and other items in disarray around him, it seems like he could have fallen dead abruptly.
Fia is the only one that is unambiguously alive. She is sitting up, actively looking at the sight of Grace, and she tells us she was exiled from home for seeing it. So it's very interesting that she is very devoted to and at peace with death, when she may be one of the few Tarnished to never have died to begin with.
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⸺ NIGHTBRINGER CARD LEVELING TOOL ⸺
I made a little something that you feed your card data into and then it spits out which sin and which card you should focus on for leveling
Below the cut is an explanation on to use it! If you have any more questions not already answered below, leave a comment on here or send me an ask! I'll do my best to help you once I have the time to
[last time this post was updated: April 7th 2024]
⸺
dedicated to @misc-obeyme because talking with them about card leveling inspired me to make this entire thing in the first place, as well as @impish-ivy and @dsimeon for testing it for me and for giving me some pointers on how to improve some things <3
Things covered below:
current team vs dream team
how to enter you card data
-> step by step guide
ranking & recommendation
CURRENT TEAM VS DREAM TEAM
CURRENT TEAM
your three strongest demon cards + your three strongest memory cards of each sin (aka your top 3!)
-> head to Contacts, filter for only one attribute and sort by strength to get your top 3 demon cards, then repeat for your memory cards. Rinse and repeat for every attribute
If one character shows up multiple times in your top 3 demon cards, only count his strongest card and ignore the rest!
DREAM TEAM
the cards you want to use in the long-run. Ideally they should all be either UR or UR+ cards
⸺
HOW TO ENTER YOUR CARD DATA
Head to the sheet called 'card data'. Here you'll find seven charts that are all colored differently depending on what sin they are for
First off, each chart is divided into the following sections:
[1] dream team demon cards
[2] dream team memory cards
[3] current team demon cards
[4] current team memory cards
Here's a quick run-down on all you need to know, but I'll also be going over it step by step a bit further below:
CARD
enter who the demon card is of, or any name you associate with your memory card
TOP 3?
if it's one of your three strongest cards, check the box;
you don't need to re-enter the relevant data below if this box is checked. If it's not, enter the card data of one of your current team cards below it
MAX SIN UP?
have you unlocked all of the Devil's Tree sin ups that you can get at your current skill level? If so, check the box
LEVEL
enter your card's level
SKILL
enter your card's skill level
STRENGTH
enter your card's overall strength;
sort by 'strenght' in Contacts to get this value
CARD, STRENGTH
same as above, this for your current team. Only enter the card data if needed
STEP BY STEP
1. Figure out what cards you want to use in the long run; In my case, that would be Lucifer, Satan and Asmodeus
2. Head to Contacts in the game, select an attribute and sort by 'strength' to determine your three strongest cards
3. Go to the correspinding chart on the spreadsheet. Pick the characters in your dream team from the drop-down menu. The order you enter them in doesn't matter
Check the box for 'top 3?' if they are also one of your three strongest cards. If not, enter the card from the current team below
Your chart should then look something like this:
4. If you have unlocked all the sin ups in the Devil's Tree that you can get with your current skill level, check this box
5. Enter the displayed overall card strength and the current skill level. Click on the card to see its level current level, and then enter that as well
6. Repeat the process for your memory cards
Once you're done, the chart should look something like this:
7. Repeat for all other attributes
8. Once you're done, head to the sheet 'rec & ranking'
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RANKING & RECOMMENDATION
RANKING
just a little ranking to show you how your sins are doing because I thought it'd be cool to have :]
Keep in mind that it can't properly display ties tho!
You'll have to enter all card data for it to work properly
RECOMMENDATION
The recommendation will tell you what order you should level your sins in, what cards you should level, what level and skill level to raise them to, and if you should work on its Devil's Tree first
But first, you need to configure the settings for your recommendation. You can choose
if you want demon and memory cards to be displayed seperately (overwritten only if you choose to display all sins)
how many sins should be displayed
if your current team should be factored into, or if it should be based purely on your dream team
Personally, I'd recommend going with seperated, display all sins (weakest to strongest), and to factor the current team in, but you can change it around to what best fits your needs
⸺
Again, if you have any questions or suggests, comment them on here. My asks are also always open, so you can also ask that way!
Anyway, best of luck with leveling your cards, everyone!!
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