u/Larkmojo

I started DAI recently and stuck with it for a while, but the more I played, the more fed up I got with the dialogue until I just dropped it. I kept trying to push through thinking it might eventually click, but it never really did. For a moment I was just pushing myself to enjoy the dialogue and convince myself that it was good. Now I’m playing DAO and it’s like night and day, it became very clear that I didn't think DAI was that good at all.

DAO actually feels like I’m role-playing instead of just picking different tones for the same character. I can actually decide what kind of person my little guy is, and the game runs with it. I find myself talking to every NPC just because the conversations are actually interesting and it feels like I’m shaping my character through them. DAI dialogue just felt so bland in comparison. Brand-friendly, a bit Marvel-esque, has that early 2010s action/adventure movie vibe that I kinda hate. And the Inquisitor never really felt like mine, if that makes sense. More like I was steering a predefined character than actually building one, like trying hard to fit a square into a triangular hole.

DAO, just completely clicks with me it's so unique lol. It's like a blend of Pillars of eternity 2 and the quirkiness of Divinity Original Sin 2. Two of my favorite RPGs. It gives you that feeling that your character is something you define through choices, not something the game hands you.

It’s funny how I started DAI because it was more modern-looking, but that almost 20 years old clunky looking little game hooks me way more than DAI ever did.

That’s the closest way I can describe how I experience it. Not as a story, not as something built around lyrics or a clear message, but as something that exists before any of that locks into place. I’ve always been a visual listener. Music tends to turn into spaces for me automatically. With Kid A, the spaces becomes the whole experience.

It feels like being dropped into a post-futuristic, post-apocalyptic world. Cold, alien, mechanical, dark, in motion, not in an aggressive way, but in the sense that everything is already in motion before you arrive. You’re not a participant in it so much as an observer who doesn’t quite belong, trying to make sense of this world you were not meant to understand.

Sonically, there are hints of robots and artificial life everywhere, but not in a sci-fi movie kind of way, more like this world is inseparable from this machine-things, human connection feels like a half-memory. And the strange thing is that it never feels like it’s trying to communicate any of this. It doesn’t guide you toward interpretation. It just exists in that state, and you end up constructing the feeling of meaning afterwards, it's a cool little side effect of spending time inside it.

Some songs feel like different regions of this world being briefly revealed. Not any narrative progression, just movement through environments that feel like ages old before you arrived. One moment you’re In "Limbo", something like a disoriented, wavy ocean where nothing stays still long enough to orient yourself. In "Everything In Its Right Place" you are being introduced to this new alien world, and it feels like you're the alien, because everything its in fact in its right place in the album, except you (lol). You don't belong there. Another moment you’re in "The National Anthem", something like looking at collective in constant chaos, and revolt, but still being held together by something, like crazy and random horns being kept together by a constant grove, and then the lyrics hit "it's holding on" and you don't know if the lyrics are describing the sounds, the sounds are describing the lyrics, or they're both describing something. But it’s all so vague. Everything here is vague. I think the music speaks in abstract meaning, you either grasp it or you spend forever trying to pin it down and turn it into something concrete, but would be like trying to carve a cloud into stone.

Throughout it all, there are these background fragments, electronic textures, signals, crazy little robbot noises, spaceships sounds??? What does it all means? What's the relation to the lyrics?? It's not narratively important, just persistent. It’s painting something, like an abstract painting... actually just like the album cover. So I see so many people dissecting the lyrics, but I feel like Thom’s approach here is more like a scientist, merging certain words with certain sounds to see what kind of emotional impact they create. The lyrics were never meant to be read like a statement

And that’s what keeps bringing me back to this idea. Kid A doesn’t feel like it begins with meaning and expresses it. It feels like it exists first, fully formed as an atmosphere, and meaning only appears later, like an abstract form if you stay inside it long enough. Not a story being told, just a world you temporarily find yourself inside. Everything is abstract and in motion. That is what I always felt like, and this dark, abstract and alien world it paints for me everytime I listen and I just felt like writing about Kid A because I'm in love with it

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The hegemony just fractured, so I started trying to form alliances, but marriage doesn't give me any alliances anymore. Is this a bug?

Damn, why does the game hide companions in seemingly random spots with time limits, and not give any hint that those places even matter, just blending in like another random location out of dozens on the map? Just finished Act 2, did a ton of quests, and now I find out I’ve permanently missed Ekundayo and Jubilost. Now I’m actually considering reloading a save and redoing hours of grinding all over again... Seriously? whyyyyyyyy