88. Mindflayers and Githyanki

On this episode of Total Pebble Knockdown:

• It’s time to talk about Baldur’s Gate 3. Alex has been playing Larian’s new CRPG and has some thoughts on what the game does right in addressing central problems that have plagued the genre. So, we will be discussing pacing, combat and inventory management.

• Recently, a Polygon article suggested that we should accept save-scumming as the best way to play RPGs after playing Baldur’s Gate 3. Josh Sawyer had an interesting response to it. Now, we’ll discuss save scumming in the current landscape of gaming and perhaps admit to cases where we have done it ourselves.

  Baldur’s Gate 3 players are save scumming, which I always do in RPGs - Polygon    

  Josh Sawyer on X: "Counterpoint: if designers do not like save scumming (not a given), they should design their mechanics to not incentivize save scumming."

• On the last episode, Nathan mentioned how much he likes Metroidvania titles, although he has a very mixed opinion on Souls-Likes games. However, there are some big similarities between the two. So, maybe we should discuss the reason they are different and why that matters.