Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Character Motivation

I'd consider permanent stat or ability loss to be meaningful ... A binary win-lose seems much less interesting to me than increasing risk of possible impairment--with neither the number of required uses or the nature of the impairment being fixed, so that even on subsequent playthroughs you're uncertain what the long-term consequences of your choices may be.

<shrug> It's opinion either way. But stat/ability loss is, to me, extremely minimal. After all, it is something you can easily make up for with spells or items. That as the trade-off for the kind of power you get from the tadpole is very uneven. That would be a no-brainer that using the tadpole is the ONLY way to go.

Lookout, Blackguard on the loose!

Please tell me that this gorgeous pun was intentional.

Glad someone got it.

A mystery really motivates me such as what the OP mentioned in their post. Or like in BG2 when you wake up in Irenicus's dungeon and you're trying to work out who this guy is, what's happened, why you're locked up, what all these people in jars are doing etc. Then you finally get out of his hideout and then he disappears!

And then you get so much fun sidequests to do, that you forget about Imoen and Irenicus completely, until you recruit a new companion, and your PC says: "but you should know that my priority is to track down an evil wizard and rescue my friend!"... oh yeah, that was a thing. I supposed I had enough money to pay the thief guy like 10 hours ago. Whatever, what are other quests I can do...

At least, that was my first BG2 experience.

I've got to agree with that, there's just so much to do and see you get lost in it. And then when you do have the money, it's like ''one more quest'', ''yeah but I wanna do x, y and z first''. Is immersing the right word, to describe it? Its pretty immersing and it's good that it doesn't force you to rush after Irenicus. You can do it all at your own pace.

I actually always saw it as a weak point - I think the only "big" picture issue I can indentify with BG2 (there are smaller things which I think aren't as good as they could be, but I don't think they hurt the overall experience). This lack of urgency and distraction goes against the narrative and your character motivation. From narrative perspecitve the side jobs are only there to get money to pay for saving Imoen, and it doesn't make sense for the the Bhaal Spawn to be a freelance adventurer for longer then he needs - no matter if his motivation is care for Imoen or revenge. It makes even less sense if you save up sidequests for after the underdark.

I thought Witcher3 got around that problem nicely, but giving player excuses to not progress the story "Hey, Ciri is safe for now, and if you rescue her the hell will break loose. So you know, make sure you are prepared for it first wink, wink".

Interesting that you say that. I personally do like the lack of urgency, the benefits are freedom and more replay-ability but I do agree with you. It is a weak point. I disagree on the Bhaalspawn freelancer part, if the Bhaalspawn is evil and doesn't care about saving Imoen or going after or getting anything from Irenicus, then I can see the Bhaalspawn sticking around gaining more power money, powerful items and more benefits.

I do have a question for you, most people prefer SOA to Throne of Bhaal because TOB rushes you and forces you to go about the Bhaalspawn saga. Whereas Shadows of amn has a lot of freedom. What are your thoughts on TOB? Do you like the story/narrative and how they went about it?

I might be wrong, but as far as I remember, when you recruit new companion your options are more or less: "But you should know that my real objective is saving my friend" or "But you should know that my real objective is getting revange on an evil Wizard". I don't remember there being a neutral option "at the moment I am just doing stuff". Getting to Spellhold is our protagonist objective, even if we get distracted from it (I think intro is short enough for new players to forget about it. That what happened to me on my first playthrough). I see it as imposed limitation on player - just as it is assumed that Shepard wants to stop reapers, Geralt wants to save Ciri, PC in Kingmaker cares for his kingdom. Though it is true that PC has no reason to think Imeon or Jon are going anywhere, and so he can take his time. I generally struggle playing evil characters in Bioware games (there is not enough logical explanation nor incentive for being evil). Still, I think there is a disconnect between what narrative wants you to care for, and what the game makes you care for. Still, it is a small sin compared to other RPG, like Pillars or Kingmaker.

As to ToB, yeah I don't like it. It has "Return of the Jedi" syndrome - not great, but well concludes our protagonist story, so it's essencial. ToB biggest problem is big story, contained in an expansion - there is too much happening for it to have proper time to breathe. It also dips into cosmic stuff, which to me who is unfamiliar with FR universe, and even less so at that time as it was my first FR game was rather difficult to relate. Too many straight up exposition dumps (and now a ghost of Gorion with tell you all the backstory), too many Bhaalspawn I never care for to kill, and an underdeveloped villain. It's also all too "high level for me" with planes, superduper monsters. Big stakes and yet rather underwhelming.

I like it when the main plot progresses even if my PC is not directly involved. That gives a sense of being in a living world ... where Narlen Darkwalk and Gorpel Hind and Drizzt are out there doing their own things whilst my PC is trying to gain enough experience to be able to go after the main objective. I would love to see recurring random appearances by familiar characters in BG III. In fact, you could set them up with a sort of "Mad Lib" set of dialogs, where certain dialog words are randomly determined from a list. "Whoa, I just got back from a (dragon) lair and you'll never guess what we found! It was a (ring) once possessed by the late (queen) of (etc.)..."

And then when the main plot requires action from my PC, there are many ways to deliver the notice. BG I used the dream sequences quite a bit, and BG II had a lot of messengers running around Amn trying to find me. And of course sometimes Elminster would show up with advice. Those are all great devices to pull the PC back into the main storyline.