#LET ME PUT HIM IN MORE PRETTY OUTFITS LARIAN!!!

[arsene-ee]

Can we talk about how both Preston Garvey and Wyll Ravengard are pretty much the characters that get treated the worst by their respective fandom? (Also Ik I'm being incredibly Biased here because I love both of them dearly)

Cuz like both tend to be called incredibly bland and are often times just overlooked. While both of them are incredibly complex character (as complex as a bethesda character can get in Preston's case)

Preston is consitently the butt of the same boring ass Joke. "hAhA aNoThEr SeTtLeMeNt NeEdS yOuR hElP, hAhA sO FuNnY" and yes I get it the line is incredibly repetitive, but every characters' dialouge gets repetitive with time as well. The reason this line is so repetitive is that Preston is pretty much the only Questgiver for the Minutemen for a huge part of the game, while other factions like the Railroad (and I assume the BoS) have multiple characters that give you quests. Lorewise Preston being the only quest giver for the minutemen makes sense due to him being like one of the few survivors and all (and the other characters wouldn't really make sense as quest givers, well maybe sturges but he's busy hammering the walls).

Preston has so much interesting lore if you take the time to listen to him, He feels so much survivor's guilt about what happened in Quincy. HE BELIVES HE DESERVES DEATH FOR GODS SAKE.

And I'm still so upset about how he's treated by the fandom, although I do mainly blame bethesda's lazy ass writing. (Also let's not forget that X6-88 is often completely ignored)

Now to Wyll, the love of my life, my babygirl. Wyll was extremly neglected by Larian's writing with him only having about 8.5h of content according to this reddit post. which probably has a lot to do with the fact that he was rewritten very close to release. Wyll is not boring, Wyll is not bland, Larian just didn't want to do him justice compared to other characters (Cough Cough Astarion Cough Cough 12.75h of Content Cough Cough) due to the response to him in EA being low. And let's not forget that up until Patch 7 his dialouge was bugged (apparently), it shouldn't have taken this long to fix it, but Larian was probably busy Animating the 1000000th Astarion cutscene (And don't even get me started on the racist white guy). Wyll didn't even get his own outfit like the rest of the Party (well Lae'zel is wearing Typical gith armor but you rarely encounter them, I recall like 3 or 4 times you actually wearing that armor) Wyll got the basic ass Warlock outfit, and yes it might make sense if you put it as "Well Wyll doesn't have anything anymore, he probably bought or got what was quickly available" well yes but then Astarion should wear some rags or something or at least more plain clothes cuz Cazador most likely would not pay for his clothes to get fixed or get fancy clothes for him, it was just Larian neglecting Wyll again.

And just like Preston Wyll is an incredibly complex character if you take your time to get to know him. His pact causes him pain (mostly mentally n all that) it got him disowned yet he doesn't regret taking it. Wyll was a menace of a Child, almost accidentally robbing a bank, reading smut when he was too young to read such content and then during the game reciting that shit in public. He is incredibly corny and he is proud of that and he fucking fangirls over Minsc. Wyll doesn't even hate his father for disowning him (I'm not saying Wyll should hate or forgive his father, I believe their relationship is incredibly complex), he only speaks rather fondly of him. (also if I see one more person stating Wyll is a Tiefling/Modding Wyll to look like a tiefling I wyll throw hands, he is not a tiefling he is touched by the hells. Same goes for the damn bloodstone eye mod, it's not supposed to be a bloodstone bbg lies about it). Wyll has been under Mizora's close watch for 7 years of course he wants to take romance slow.

Unfortunatley in both offical art and fanwork Wyll tends to be replaced by Halsin or straight up forgotten and in the offical art he does appear in he is often just glued to Mizora (yes I get that a Warlock pact is Binding blah blah) like in the offical art book where every character's alternate design is shown, just not Wyll instead it's Mizora. And I hate it, yes someone may percieve him as bland/boring when they just put him in camp and just don't interact with him, hell if that was a reason to call a character boring I could call Astarion boring but I'm not.

I understand that "good" characters might not be everyone's cup of tea but holy fuck it sucks so much that all the characters I like are just ignored.

The main difference between Preston Garvey and Wyll is that Prestion is the butt of a lame joke and at least is somewhat acknowledged within the fandom, while Wyll just tends to fall behind (Just like X6-88). Both of them are overshadowed by other characters in the game. Preston, Wyll and X6-88 are all pocs and all of them are overshadowed by/less popular than white/white read characters. it's honestly exhausting to see, especially for Baldur's Gate 3, when I see that Larian does indeed respond to fan complains in their content ("Fixing" Tav's expressions for Abuser Astarion kisses...dark romance has ruined fandom).

There is nothing much there can be done about Preston's lazy writing since fallout 4 is pretty much ancient by now (it's like 8 years old so almost a decade). But Baldur's Gate 3 has only turned one (1) year old recently and modern games get consistently updated, it would not be hard for Larian to just add more content for the characters that have less content and make the amount of content each character has kind of equal, hell I would write them the Wyll content for fucking free.

This casual racsim in fandom spaces, whether it's intended or not, is scary to see especially with the curent rise of right wing extremism in western countries (I'm mainly talking about germany here since that's what I can talk about, actually being from such a right wing extremist state).

[csphire]

BG3 Patch 4 woes

Update: *waves a white flag* Puts all my mods back into the game and most of the old saves. Even after removing the mods, reinstalling the game, and updating my graphics card the damn kiss still doesn't work. So. I. GIVE. UP!

I only have the kiss on Anna so, after weighing all the pros and cons, I'm just going to keep my mods and progress. Given Anna's game was started waaay back when the full game dropped, and all the patches she's been through, I wouldn't be surprised if perhaps the kiss only glitched with just her. Cautiously optimistic Larian will fix the kiss for everyone eventually. Until then I'm just going to just play and try to enjoy the rest of the game.

....

Previously:

(Just venting here. Feel free to ignore it.)

Yesterday, after I noticed we got hotfix for patch 4, I decided to load up my oldest save with Anna and tried to kiss Astarion. As usual, since patch 4 dropped, I got nothing. Frustrated, I changed Anna's hairstyle back to her old default one and tried to kiss him again. Nothing. I then created a new save and closed the game. After I removed all my mods I loaded up that new save and discovered I can't even click on anything now.

"Great, just fucking great!" I mutter to myself as I created another save after removing all the mods. I then shut down the game, booted it back up, and reloaded the "fresh save" in the hopes that would fix it.

Nope! Of course, it did not work. Again, I couldn't click on anything. I next tried to make a new game. I got the infamous half-a-dozen naked guys around the Dragonborn Durge chilling in the astral area bug. Never in my life have I been so disappointed at seeing so many pixel dicks at once.

So yeah, at this point, I'm pretty sure I've lost everything. Still, I try not to cry about it. Instead I look at it as a chance to start fresh. To widdle down all my Tav's and Durges I made to my top favorite five. Plus since I made a habit of taking lots of photos during character creation I figured, "Hey at least I can easily recreate them and this time avoid some of the mistakes I made in the past."

Silver lining and all, right? Before uninstalling, I did try to verify the integrity of the game's files, to no avail. So, I bit the bullet and reinstalled the game. I did back-up my old saves, but I doubt they will work even after the reinstall.

My only complaint is the waiting. It's been well over 15 hours, and the game has still not finished downloading. I'm currently at 61%. Yaaah for potatoe download speeds. If this reinstall doesn't work, I might cry then. As I'll have to uninstall again, dig into the folders, and make sure all files have been purged.

Due to this headache, I think I'm going to run a vanilla mod-free game for the foreseeable future, which sucks because at least two of my fav Tavs/Durges use mod heads.

Rest in peace my lovely favorite Tavs and Durges, at least for now. <3

Vincent: Mod head, hair, and gear. My grump Durge that I won't be able to recreate anytime soon. ;_;

Gustav: Mod hair and gear. I can recreate him, but I'll miss his lovely fluffy hair and fancy outfits.

Anna: Just mod hair with her and my oldest play through with the least amount of mods active. She also had the pre-patch 3 dye looks I will dearly miss. The one plus side is I can recreate her in my sleep since I've made her dozens of times over since EA. But she was the only playthrough I had in Act 3 with a repeatable kiss option.

Tav: Mod head and gear. My other playthrough I won't be able to recreate until BG3 updates slow down or at least stop breaking mods so damn hard.

"Dammon"

Dammit, okay for him... I might break down and install two mods-but only the two! One that unlocks his eyes for character creation and another that lets me turn any of the companions into him. My thirst is strong for Dammon. I need more of him in my game. This is not negotiable.