I used to always try for the best outcome but with this have it seems like half of the time a failure also leads to an amazing consequence and story.
Like this from act one in the Underdark:
spoiler
I had to find a hidden gnome that could supply me with gunpowder, but she was so much on edge that she lit up the barrel of gunpowder and blew up the whole room, leaving half of my party dead. A suicide gnome bomber. I couldn’t convince her that I was not an enemy. Reloaded just to see if I could successfully do it, but much preferred the first outcome of the dice roll, so had to reload and try 6 times until I failed again. What a game!
Glad to hear it’s enjoyable to fail in BG3. I haven’t played it yet due to lack of free time. But when I played Disco Elysium, there I had so much time wasted on reloading to roll again non-recoverable rolls. In DE they were often just cutting you of from enjoying the moment.
Disco Elysium is a game about constant failures. It’s a central theme in the game. Save scumming in that game, it feels like it would lessen the impact of the story.
While I agree, DE does have a couple of moments where it breaks its own design principle of “fail forward”. Not so much when it comes to progressing the main story, but that isn’t really the point of the game anyway.
The vast majority of rolls in DE are totally fine to fail, however (and failure sometimes results in a superior outcome!).
DE IS a bit touch and go in the beginning though. Especially if you have a character without a ton of starting Morale. I lost of a good chunk of game time because I wandered into the pawn shop, realized that I had pawned my gun during a bender, and lost the game because my character just gave up on life. I had to avoid that line of discussion completely to make progress.
That’s true, and doubly so if you chose to start with a 1 in Health and/or Morale. Pretty soon you’ll have enough healing items to not care about damage to either, though.
I failed the notorious late-game Shivers check twice. Though I do sometimes wonder if I should have just savescummed it the second time, if I had, I never would have found one of the most memorable parts of the game for me (the phone call).
Yeah, that check is actually a great example of failure being a favorable outcome since that bit of content is great (I’m assuming you refer to a certain radio station).
I completely missed it on my first playthrough since I did every possible bit of side content before progressing the main story, so I had like ten bonuses to that check.
I found most failed rolls in DE made me enjoy the moment more, sometimes even moreso than a success. Especially with non-recoverable red checks. The only times I save scummed were when I kept failing a white check I had a really high chance on, or when I really wanted to see both outcomes on a red check. The only required checks in the game give you hundreds of bonuses if you explore the area around them first.
When it comes to save scumming for a more perfect route, I always like to let my first run in a game play out however it does, because that’s my one chance to experience the game at face value, so suffering only makes it better. Then I make my second run a perfectionist run for the catharsis.
I think you have your games backwards lol. 99% of checks in BG3 have no interesting failure states. They almost all lead to combat or less content overall. Whereas disco Elysium actually has tons checks that are enjoyable or interesting to fail.