Was a huge fan back in the late 80s and early 90s as a kid... saw the article headline and said to myself "Splinter... yeah it makes sense."

April? Really? Also wow, she looks like she's aged right along with me. I was about 8 when I became a fan and she was in her 20s then. I'm 46 now and she looks like she was about 65-70.

I guess they're no longer Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles are they? It's probably been 30 years since I've followed them, so this goes without saying but wow, a lot has changed over the years.

You know who is way younger than you believe? Viconia DeVir. Despite showing her as appearing to be in her 50s or 60s in human , Viconia is around 200 years old out of a 750 year life span. Viconia is still in the prime of her life. She should appear around 30.

Meanwhile Jaheira should appear as closer to 80 and is no longer fit for adventuring. Jaheira is right at the end of her lifespan.

I love BG3 to death, but they really messed up with Viconia clear across the board, and by depicting Jaheira as younger than she ought to have been.

Minsc and Jaheira were fantastically done. Sadly Larian didn't quite seem to understand Viconia very well since even in her Canon ending where she didn't die after turning away from Shar and marrying the Bhaalspawn, she still ended up turning against Shar, ing Drizzt's adventuring party and becoming blessed by Elisitraee a good god.

The idea that she's back running a cult of Shar is a difficult situation to explain. She could have backslid, sure, but thats not what appears to have happened. Moreover, the biggest problem with Viconia in bg3 is that she detests seeing people get manipulated for its why she turned against Lolth, and then later Shar as well, yet is in the process of pulling off the mother of all manipulations by trying to turn Shadowheart, and born and raised follower of Selune into a cleric of Shar.

I'm not saying it's not possible, but it sure needed a whole lot more explaining than what we got.

Ultimately, Viconia went from tied with Jaheira as my favorite BG character in the series following BG 1 and 2, to several notches below Minsc and Jaheira thanks to their portrayal in BG3.

They should be there, but definitely not the focus. Stories like ExoGeni and the Thorion which was the biological counterpart to what the reapers used to indoctrinate and create husks are incredibly compelling, as is what might be happening with the Leviathans the actual biological reapers.

On top of that, a very compelling storyline that was dropped was whatever it was that was going on with the star that hosted the planet Haestrom, where Tali's recruitment mission took place. The star was dying and no one knew why. Tali theorized that it might have to do with dark matter, but she didn't know. I think the astrophage theory is very, VERY interesting. That small nearly indestructible microbial life is swarming a star and feeding off it. The leviathans couldn't combat it, so turned themselves into reapers in order to "survive" and that's what kicked off the invasion cycles. But beating the reapers didn't solve the astrophage problem, and now biological life is still dealing with the same problem that existed all along.

Saying that Cerberus is and should be the main antagonist is both shortsighted and boring.

I thought the game was going to be set much further into the future to the point where only characters like Grunt and Liara would be alive? You know? Characters that live to be a thousand years old?

If that's true basically only the Thorion might be alive. Maybe Aria, not sure how old she is, but probably a fair bit older than Liara.

I grew up in the 80s and 90s reading the dragonlance books and have kept current with the core book up to the recently released Dragonlance Destinies trilogy. They've always been so much fun thanks to Tasslehoff Burrfoot, and intriguing thanks to characters like Raistlin, Sturm, Dalamar, & Tanis Half-Elven.

I would LOVE a TV show following the War of the Lance, but I think even more I would like a War of the Lance series of games that, like Icewind Dale did 20+ years ago borrowed the Baldurs Gate game engine and repurposed it to tell it's own story.

There is a TON of untapped potential in the Dragonlance IP, any way you look at it and deserves to be brought back to the new generation of fantasy genre fans.