I gave it another shot because I really need something to play this weekend and the impressions are so positive. I'm enjoying it enough so far.
It's like a 5.5/10 on the woke-o-meter. Nothing overtly preachy yet and I haven't had any gay/queer stuff shoved in my face, but:
- seems like almost all the important characters are women
- 50% of the women have butch lesbian haircuts (which is a marked improvement over the 90% in the original)
- VERY heavy handed "capitalism is bad" message that oozes from almost every line of dialog
- millennial writing where everyone constantly makes wisecracks like they're too cool to take this nerdy game seriously
And Niles… I don't know if there's a name for this trope. He's got this super sympathetic "sweet black guy from the old south who perseveres despite being shit on by society" type character. Ernest, eager to please, deferential, your words of encouragement mean everything to him. It's like the writers wanted you to like him so badly, and you will feel like a piece of shit if you mistreat him.
Other random thoughts:
- I love how there are so many ways to solve each quest. Every single skill and trait unlocks options for solving different quests.
- it really pays to explore your environment. So many times you'll find some item or piece of information that unlocks some dialog or gives you a new way to solve a quest
- skill checks are really damn steep. You pretty much have to pick a few skills and focus on those, otherwise you'll never have enough points to pass the skill checks you encounter
- gun play feels better than the original
- the visual style really grew on me. It reminds me of the Emerald City from Wizard of Oz
- performance is ass, even on my 5090. I turned off hardware lumen because it's not worth the framerate hit
I'm very early but so far it feels like an evolutionary improvement over the first game.