Stig79: Viconia being in it, despite telling you in BG2 she was living on a farm in that time-period?
Irenicus trying to frame you for murder so you can get executed - despite his main goal in BG2 is to steal your soul? He kind of screws up his own main goal if he succeeds at getting you executed....
Jaheira and Safana getting completely new personalities in SoD, but then reverts to their old personalities in BG2 again.
Irenicus sending you dreams like in BG2, even though it wasn't actually him who did it in BG2 - it was the Bhaal essence in you that gave you the dreams. Irenicus even says he never sent you dreams.
There are plenty more. Almost impossible to miss. Even the most positive reviews point them out.
krugos2: Plot-holes are to be expected in something as huge as these games and under different creative teams, Bg2 introduced quite a number of them, many I would say are way worse than those in SoD. As for the Beamdog expansion, I didn't encounter any that I would call "gigantic" or any that made the experience less enjoyable, just minor inconsistencies I didn't care about. The game is not without faults, that's for sure, and I have a list of things I didn't like (the NPC portraits being one of the worse things they did, but happily one of the easiest to fix) but to my gaming experience SoD makes some sense of the arbitrary choices of BG2, like the canon party and why Imoen is a mage when I always keep her as a thief.
As for the ones you mentioned:
1. I don't play with Viconia, so I didn't notice this in my game, I didn't remember what she tells you in SoA. But most NPCs that returned in BG2 were already problematic in terms of what you did wiith them in BG1. Why is this or that NPC alive if he/she died while in my party; some don't recognize you after spending months adventuring with you, stuff like that. While this is no excuse for Beamdog to introduce new inconsistencies in an expansion, it's something that doesn't bother me personally. I understand how it may bother others, though, and it's a valid criticism.
2. I don't see this as a plot-hole. The guy could have his reasons, perhaps he knew you were not going to be executed and set up your downfall and liberation through the forest so he could capture you when you were most vulnerable. Perhaps he didn't really need you, and could use other Bhaalspawn for his plan, there was no shortage of them, also, he tells you at some point he's trying to figure out who is better for his plan, you or Caelar, and she isn't even a Bhaalspawn.
3. I didn't play with Safana, so I can't talk about how different she is from her BG1 persona (her BG2 persona is no more than an aggravating cameo).
Jaheira, however, was in my party and her personality during SoD didn't clash with the character I've known all these years. What was so different about her that bothers people?
4. While I don't remember the dreams in detail, isn't it possible the Bhaal essence caused the dreams in SoD too instead of Irenicus? I'm just asking, I really don't remember if it is made clear in SoD that it is indeed Irenicus who caused the dreams, if so, it's a plot-hole that I missed completely. Because if it is only hinted, in BG2 was also hinted that Irenicus was responsible until the plot twist reveal, so maybe the dreams in SoD are an extension of those in BG2?
1. No it was not problematic at all. The game didn't let you import a world-state so the game offers a canon ending that BG2 uses. Viconia tells you she spent her time living on a farm near Beregost. She eventually killed the farmers and fled to Amn. Given that SoD ends a few weeks before BG2 starts....
2. No his reasons are crystal clear. You find his journal in BG2. He has been planning to steal YOUR soul for years.Trying to get you executed just ends up being completely moronic. Given that it is the main plot of BG2, this is a gigantic plot-hole.
3. Yes they are different. The lead writer even said so herself that she wanted to give them new personalities. Safana was nothing but a sex-object, and Jaheira was nothing but a "nagging wife". This, according to her, made them "poor representations of women".
Here is the exact quote from her “If there was something for the original Baldur’s Gate that just doesn’t mesh for modern day gamers like the sexism, [we tried to address that],” said writer Amber Scott. “In the original there’s a lot of jokes at women’s expense. Or if not a lot, there’s a couple, like Safana was just a sex object in BG 1, and Jaheira was the nagging wife and that was played for comedy. We were able to say like, ‘No, that’s not really the kind of story we want to make.’ In Siege of Dragonspear, Safana gets her own little storyline, she got a way better personality upgrade. If people don’t like that, then too bad.”
Basically she sees it as her duty to "fix" the sexism in the original game. Keeping the expansion in tune with the rest of the games doesn't even factor in. That is how you mess up a story.
4. No. Irenicus is doing it in SoD. Because the writer thought it was he who did it in BG2 as well. This is what happens when you let a social activist get full freedom of writing the middle chapter in a much loved franchise with complex characters.
