Start the game, begin campaign. Completely inappropriate narrator explains to me all the worst parts of the previous game. 3 years of ruminating over all the things I didn't like about the first one flood back into me in one moment. I remember the reviews describe the things in the first game that were already bad (such as the narrative) are even worse in this game.
And I know other things that were bad (like companions) will be even worse since they don't even have Avellone contributing to them anymore. [Editor's note:
] I'm still listening to the narrator, wondering why it bothers me so much.
Then it hits me.
This game is trying to be SERIOUS. It's a fantasy game about dragons and wizards and litearlly a giant ♥♥♥♥ing god stomping around crushing people with his massive statue feet and it's trying to be solemn and serious and realistic. Images of playing the game flash before my mind. More obnoxious worldbuilding, with sentences filled with irrelevant proper nouns for people and places I don't give a ♥♥♥♥ about and that have nothing to do with the story. More idiotic preschool-level philosophy for morons about the nature of the gods (another area, incidentally, where Avellone's input is sorely missed: Guy isn't the next Hume or Kierkegaard or whoever but he knows how to tell these simple pop-philosophy stories well, unlike the current rabble of idiots writing for Obsidian, who apparently don't even realize that you can't prove a negative, e.g. that there are no gods). More terrible, badly-overwritten "quirky" companions so obviously insane that you wouldn't willingly get within 30 feet of one without your weapon drawn never mind keep them around in your party (or so uninteeresting and forgettable you'd rather recruit a merc so you can at least decide their stats), the only saving grace of which is the double-edged sword that there are hardly any of them to begin with; a double-edged sword in that if there were 20+ of them then most of them being ♥♥♥♥ wouldn't be the problem it becomes when you don't even have half of that.
But I was like, ah whatever. I can still just play through the game as a paladin, recruiting only mercenaries, and - and then it hit me, again. The game doesn't even have paladins. It doesn't even have ♥♥♥♥ing gods, we learn at the end of the first one. It just has ♥♥♥♥♥♥, dispassionate warrior-philosophers (*named* paladins so they can say they have them even though any moron recognizes that these aren't paladins at all) who feel so shoehorned in I'm confident saying that they are only there in order to tick the box of "classes nerds expect to be able to play as because they're in every other game".
Then I remembered no vancian casting and other stupid decisions they've proudly made in order to turn the game more into an MMO (why?) and make all the magic (the part that should feel most exciting and powerful) feel like boring, underpowered crap.
"Why am I playing this game", I asked myself, when 15 minutes in I was already sick of it?
And I realized I already didn't want to anymore.
