Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Spacetime considerations on BG's flawed (non-)implementation of time and distance

With several comments of 'this has been discussed before' I want to say that I think the OP was well-thought out and well-articulated. This 'time and space' problem has no perfect solution, and Larian had their reasons to make the choices they did. They're not exactly the choices I would have made, either in general or specifically in terms of a Baldur's Gate installment, and I agree that 'time and space' immersivity has suffered somewhat.

No doubt it was well thought out. We’re just noting the deja vu of it all.

I'd like to get back to these elements and their effects. With regard to being hand-crafted, you really notice the quality of location design, it's probably the most noticeably outstanding feature of BG3 as far as we know it as yet. And this has been Larian's strength for quite a while - I recall being impressed by Ego Draconis in that regard. So if that means maps need to be smaller because making a large map that way is too expensive, and that in turn means things have to be close to each other, I'd say that's an acceptable tradeoff.

What I do *not* understand is why you would intentionally make time and distance as irrelevant as possible, especially if you go beyond local maps. And it was intentionally. You don't make a game like this and end up with this level of "time and distance are irrelevant" accidentally. Also, it is close to impossible to implement plausible causality without timing. As that example at Waukeen's Rest clearly shows. Time is the directlon of causality, and we do NOT have a non-timed event here. It's just that the time is clocked by the player's long rests. Which is nothing more than a clock in that regard because the player's rests have nothing to do with what happens at Waukeen's Rest. They are used as an independent measure of time, a backdrop to place events against, just like the other games' in-world clocks. Only that it's much too rough, and too dependent on player behaviour, to result in plausible causality.

It's also a lot more coherent with Larian's vision of creating something rare, rather than something that is a clone of 30 other games released every year.

Larian's decision to make tightly packed, detailed and interconnected maps, doesn't exactly absolve them from issues that arise from storytelling. This is not either/or situation. You can have a tightly pack map, and tell a story in it that feels natural in it. That BG3 doesn't have time cycle or passing time isn't in itself a problem - it is that they put things that grind against what players sees and interacts with, that creates the dissonance.

Waukeen stands as an easiest example of immersion breaking - easily noticable once player looks through the looking glass in the druid grove, forever burning throughout 20-40h of leasure exploration of act1 area. It's not a problem, that "ahh the building is burning" triggers when player gets close. The problem is that player is made aware that the building is on fire hours before he is likely to reach it, it will still be "just set on fire" after player spend days(?) extermination Goblins who supposively just set in on fire, characters around WR will always pretend it was just caught on fire, and after the even is done the WR will still and always be on fire, when you backtrack to the location later to meet the Z.

Compare it to burning house from PoEWhiteMarch. The event happens right after the battle with enemies was concluded. I don't think it is timed per say, but if you leave the area no one inside will be saved, and ashes will remain of the building. It triggers in a way that feels natural and urgent, there aren't many distarctions that will prevent players from engaging with the event, and there will be consequences to engaging/not engaging with the event.

Couple things that would make WR better:
1) don't show it to the player before they get close to it
2) have the place "burn out" after the event is completed
3) decouple spreading of the fire from Goblin raid - the WR still was raded, but spreading of the fire should be tied to something that happens when player arrives at the scene. Mayhaps a structure damaged during raid collapses starting the fire. Maybe Flaming Fists do something while trying to get inside that causes the fire. Something that would make it less obvious that things have been frozen in time, waiting for PC to show up.

None of this would resolve the basic problem: that once arrived, you can spend an unlimited number of hours doing something else, and then come back to find the situation unchanged, as long as you do not take a long rest, while spending 30 seconds to take a long rest will immediately make this fail.

And this is exclusively the result of attempting to make up for the lack of in-world time by using a clock based on the player's long rests. This idea of an "alternative" event clock overlooks that *every* clock is an event clock, so really, why not implement proper in-world time in the first place since it is clearly needed?

With regard to maps and the placement of story events, you're right, but I can forgive that more easily than a global trivialization of time and distance.

True, it doesn't solve the basic problem but it would at least address part of it.

Does Waukeen's Rest actually "fail" if you take a long rest?

Yes, and no. I doubt players would be likely to come close to the location, and not engage NPCs - at which point the event triggers. There aren't really any distractions in that area that would distract players from engaging with the event. As such I think the amount of players who would come to WR, see that it's on fire and decide to move on and return later should be minimal. Of course, you could treat players decision to leave after getting the glimpse of the location as a roleplaying choice and set up appropriate triggers: If the game supports it, you could make it so that if the player after coming close enough to the WR, leaves the vacinity, than the WR switches to burn out state, the key NPCs inside are dead. That would of course, require new interactions with soldiers in front of WR. You would want to be careful with that, though - you wouldn't want players to pass nearby the WR, not get that the place is on fire and than return and get yelled at for not helping.

The point I am trying to make, is that if they want Larian could make things feel much better, than they have been in EA. You don't need to implement an actual ticking clock to create a feeling of time passing, or have an events that feel urgent. Maybe they did made it better for 1.0. One can hope.

Some people die in the fire who you might have saved and IIRC, you got a task to save someone there who is part of the "Rescue the Grand Duke" quest, but her death won't make the quest fail. So whether this is a failure or not depends on your character. It won't cut off any story arcs as far I can tell.

Well, that's slight improvement over how it was in the early days at least...

It's not nearly enough, but at least it isn't as ridiculous as "go to WR, see that it's on fire, take a long rest and then do the quest as if nothing happened". I really wish there were more quests we could actually fail and/or events that would happen at certain points even if the player wasn't there and we'd have to deal with the aftermath then.

I didn't know it was different in earlier versions. More evidence for my hypothesis that they didn't plan for this, but that they are using the long rest clock as a stopgap replacement for real in-world time because they made a decision about not having in-world time long ago which they can't rescind without rebuilding fundamental parts of the game, and did not recognize at the time that there are situations where having no time prevents you from implementing plausible causality. Or for some really incomprehensible reason, they were so dedicated to having no time that they rather implemented this immersion-breaking mechanism.

Also, I agree about having more timed events. Pathfinder:KIngmaker felt so much more real because of this. To make most events like this, though, would require more of a predetermined path through the game world, since otherwise too many events would be missed by random chance.

I think the camp system and the fast travel teleport system are still bigger offenders in making the BG3 world feel like a theme park.

In my first playthrough, I jumped in the hole in the phase spider lair. Found myself in the Underdark and it was exciting and amazing. UNTIL... I clicked on the map and realized I can just freely teleport to any fast travel spot on the surface. The party had no idea where they were or how to get out. That was a massive, massive immersion killer for me. Larian make it possible to stumble on such a location, then pull the rug from under their own adventure completely.

I agree, fast travel must be restricted

I'm not sure about "bigger", but the fast travel system is certainly a big contributor. It only comes last in my OP by accident. Having said that, I'm reasonably certain you could make a mod that switches fast travel off, but not one that implements in-world time. Heck, we might even get an off switch in a patch as a way to customize difficulty if enough people complain about it.

You CAN make same same system in BG2 and it could still work, but the 'story' would need some minor tweaking. You need a reason to explore and be given generous amount of time, with posibllities to extend it.

It's weird (but once again not exactly surprising) how many comments in this thread are opposing a suggestion that NO ONE really made, like "having big and empty seamless open worlds" or "cloning dozens of other games that play all the same".

For the record, Shadow of the Colossus had a big, empty, seamless open world and it was brilliant. Now, it was 2005, but still brilliant.

Yeah, weird. Perhaps I should've mentioned that the game which, in my opinion, did this best was Pillars of Eternity 2. A game which was most definitely not a copy of anything except being a party-based, story-driven, isometric CRPG. It did not map story time to world time 1:1 as Kingmaker did, but maintained a consistent world time with regard to travel, and it felt more natural to move around the world in that game than in any other game of its kind. It also got a lot of other stuff right. Just too bad that the nominal main story almost did not exist and the real main story was a bog-standard faction fight. It *was* very good, but not good enough for a great game.

Instead of portals, it would be nice if there was an icon on your map representing the party and the time that passed fast travelling to your location of choice. The teleportation shit comes from DOS and is immersion breaking.