Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion Big spoilers, cut content and feelings after 2 playthroughs

Interesting! Yes, this wouldn't be surprising as it felt very strange where Gortash's coronation was held and then that he just remained there for the rest of the game.

Yeah.

Because I love the complexity of the characters, and how much is available, I'm hesitant to say 'it was a bad idea to make this game so big', (in fact, I don't really want to say that at all), because I am really glad they went for complexity. Story is what I play games for and in some ways I do even wish it were bigger lol (the endings/companion quests). Having a game that feels so story heavy feels like a gift to me. But at some point you do kinda have to ask, 'with the way games work, is this *size* of choice really feasible from like a technical perspective?'.

To me, the story is wonderful (or at the very least has massive potential), but the system they built the story on top of was perhaps not prioritized as much as the story itself.

Thank you very much, so I was still right that the city was simply cut off
In any case, now it remains only to wait and see what Larian will do. I hope success will encourage them to finalize everything.

There must be some massive cut content and revisions near release date. The rest of the game just feels worse than the final version of Early Access Act 1. Even Act 1 is just worse than the Early Access version. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a great game, but it feels like there was a better game in some hidden cabinet somewhere else, but maybe that’s just the hope talking.

There definitely seems to have been a point in Early Access where they started drastically scaling back features. Paladin Deities getting hastily stripped out shortly before the release of the class, Minsc getting stripped of Origin character status and shove back from an Act I recruit all the way to Act III. But there seems to have been some particularly drastic stuff going on right before release. A lot of stuff getting hyped right up until release. Pretty sure Minthara was still getting hyped up as a romance option in the last one or two videos from Larian, only to get almost all of that cut by release day....quite a lot of content if the determiners are accurate.

Lots of big stuff. Lots of small stuff got removed. Honestly I have to say I enjoyed EA Act I more than release Act I. Narratively, the character interactions, etc, just the amount of content that's now lost.

I am starting to feel that despite the long EA and development time that BG III was more than a little rushed out the door to meet a date near the end of development. Why else would stuff like the districts of BG or the Minthara romance still be getting talked about by the devs right before release?

I feel like either there was a mandate from on-high, like Wizards saw the stuff with Daisy and the generally darker tone and said they didn't want a DnD game like that, or that Larian got spooked by certain feedback from playtesters. It'd be one thing to massage content in a certain direction, which is sort of what they did with Shadowheart, for example, but this was basically a wholesale removal of vast swathes of pre-existing content. It's big changes to core pillars of their narrative which are questionable enough (Daisy) but also a lot of smaller things that appear to do little else but eliminate 'bad' consequences (such as being recognized by the corpse of Mind Flayer on the beach, getting a debuff from letting Volo jab you in the eye, etc.) that reflect a more sweeping change of mandate from 'choice and consequence' to 'sweeping heroic power fantasy.' How do you get so far into the creative process, only to do something so drastic at the last minute?

I suspect a comparison between EA Act 1 and Release Act 1 would be enlightening, and disheartening. Larian is lucky that they got a bunch of good will prior to release such as game developers doing the whole 'don't hold us to that standard' thing (and, indeed, Larian deserves a lot of it) because I suspect had this been a Bioware or Obsidian or CDProjekt release, people would be working themselves into a frenzy about false advertising and broken promises and cut content and whatever else.

edit: I mentioned in another thread that it feels like Larian decided that, given how people only tend to play big RPGs once (if that), then shooting for an 8/10 crowdpleaser is a safer bet than maybe a 9/10 game with a darker, melancholic edge. But again, how do you get so far into development that it's such an abrupt change so late in the process?

I don't even plan to buy biovar games until all the DLCs come out for honesty, after DLC DAI became a little better.But I don't expect anything from DAD, if she's still alive at all.
I agree, larian totally deserves high marks. Including I believe that maybe they will be able to get GOTY. But EA also really wins in release.
In fact, I would be quite calm if Larian just said "content will be". I would be happy even if it was paid DLC.

There was such a moment. A little later, they already announced that they would not block the party.

The worst thing is, whatever the developers are, much remains in the dark. Even in this situation, we are aware of the cut content. But no one will tell us clearly - yes, we will finalize it or not, you will not have too many changes I believe in Larian, but still it would be easier for me to know for sure whether to wait for the quality of EA or just give up this hope

Here's a very subtle change on Larian's part that demonstrates the change in narrative and loss of reactivity. I saw this mentioned on another forum but don't recall it seeing mentioned much otherwise, but at some point during early access (prior to release, I'm reasonably sure) the first usage of the tadpole powers went from somewhere past the druid grove (I believe you'd encounter the Absolute cultists or the goblin camp where you'd get the first choice to use it) to aboard the nautiloid. Instead of having your first exposure to the power within you involving taking control of someone's mind, even if they were a goblin, your first exposure involves freeing someone from captivity. Notably, needing to use the illithid power to use Mind Flayer machinery is never really brought up again.

I imagine this drastically reduced the amount of people who were doing 'no power' playthroughs. I believe barbarians and wizards can still bypass it with a skill check, but everyone else would need to use the tadpole.

I did the 'no power' playthrough because I believed that there would be sizable consequences to the story if you did use them, ( I have also sort of heard this is not the case, which is disappointing, so I just pretend like that is the case and still don't use them). I played a warlock and you can also by-pass the first power exposure with a skill check there as a warlock too, but I think I remember in EA when you meet those three people in Act I, with the character that ends up dying, the situation was very different after you clicked on the dead body than it is now. Even having approval rating effects with the other companions and you could or something. (not sure if I need a spoiler tag for that but I'll just put one anyway.)

Anyway, I don't remember exactly how it went as I stopped playing EA about a year ago, but I do remember that it felt better to me somehow than what we have now. And the tadpoles did feel like there were more stakes, less incentive to use them than currently, at least to me. Personally, even though the stakes seem to be gone, I wouldn't use them so my character doesn't use them, but I wish there was more of an in-game reason for me making that choice. It feels weird the 'power but no consequence thing.

As far as I am aware, there are no consequences to going full-bore on the powers, and there's no real reactivity to not using them beyond the Emperor insisting 'but you must.' Basically, if you don't use them, you miss out on cool power-ups.

You're correct about that scene from EA. It was very different -- after killing the cultist, a tadpole crawls out of the corpse and you had to pass two really tough checks to crush it as it resisted you with its psionic powers. It was basically the introduction to the idea that even the tadpoles were a really worrying threat and weren't just harmless bugs, they were potent psychic creatures. I know people did not like how difficult it was to crush them (myself included) but it felt very deliberate.

As it is, the scene is odd. It's like your introduction to the idea of absorbing powers through other the memories and psychic presence that the tadpole evidently consumes and stores (???) but this doesn't ever really come up (there are no plot revelations from, say, consuming Disciple Z'rell's tadpole, for example) and while the game presents it as a magical function, the game's UI presents it as consuming tadpoles so they take up more space in your brain. I'm pretty sure the ability of the tadpole to hijack your body to make you consume another one doesn't ever come up again, and raises big questions as to who and what was behind it. Was it the tadpole, or The Emperor? If it was the latter, why doesn't it go anywhere? If The Emperor was able to protect us from the effects of the tadpole, why did it still happen? It's also very easy to sequence break -- if you walk into Nettie's sanctum, the Guardian will tell you to pluck the tadpole off the table, even if you've never met the Guardian yet.

The most biggest problem its no end it all, and it feels awful in this large game, also act 3, main bosses who is not really bosses and etc etc etc

Don't wanna create false hope about it, but :

- Don't forget the initial release was supposed to be August 31st. That could explain some cuts (not all of them but some of them which's still something).

- They've announced a 1st major update "which will feature a gigantic list of tweaks and changes" by their own words. Feels like this is not only a huge patch of hotfixes and game engine fixes, but certainly some questlines additions.
That also means they will be other major updates "We have a roadmap for hotfixes and patches".

- Larian did more or less the same thing with D:OS2. It was released in 2017 with a perceptible lack of content, and even more of end content. Then only a year later in 2018 with the console release, they were able to : rework their game engine to be better, hotfix most of the bugs and soft-locks, AND add 150k words of new dialogues with 130k of them recorded. If you want a scale, a standard Microsoft Word page is around 500 words. Divinity : Original Sin 1 was also released in 2014 then enhanced a year later with a lot of technical improvements and 350k new recorded words of dialogues.

Difference between Divinity : Original Sin and D:OS Enhanced Edition
Difference between Divinity : Original Sin 2 and D:OS 2 Definitive Edition

BG3 already use a brand new game engine. And it's in their habit to cares a lot about the player's feedbacks. Even more with a 3 years long early access. I'm pretty sure we will have decanted script additions over the months, as the Baldur's Gate fanbase and potential player base is without doubt way bigger than Divinity.


The September 6th will be the first test about what kind of improvements we can expect on this game.

See, I am sort of waiting to see if this will happen, not really playing through the game a second time, just sort of hanging out in Act I again waiting to see what Larian is going to do. And while this does get my hopes up a little, it does also make me kind of nervous when I hear the word 'changes' specifically. Maybe I should just trust the process, but the word 'changes' reminds me that Larian has the power to do complete rewrites/overhauls of characters like they did with Wyll and that does worry me. I do want changes to the companions in the form of like better endings for Karlach, more companion questing, the ability to redeem Astarion/get a "good" ending if you or the ability to help him find a cure if you don't. But seeing what happened as they got spooked by criticism before or whatever happened here, and how they cut content or change content, and not knowing if/how they will/might do it again, makes me nervous. I don't want *different* Astarion or whoever else, I want more content for them/better endings.

And sort of with the radio silence on if/what changes may/are coming, it just sort of feels like 'well, *am* I still going to like this game if/when that happens?'. If all of that makes sense.

A game is rarely worse after a change. Even more with Larian that just improve their games the way they're supposed to be improved. If I take D:OS as an example, all the story improvements they made helped make the story more cohesive and gave more depth to the characters, without changing the characters by themselves, just by improving their backstory and their questline in the game.

Honestly I’m more for the “Give us the cut content” movement than the “Justice for Karlach” movement because I think the former will probably fix the latter.

Also change Gale’s condition to requiring high quality magic items, not just any.

Yeah, I'm just a worrier by nature. Also, BG3 is basically my first Larian game, as in I played the prologue and a little bit of Act I of DOS2 Definitive with friends while this was in EA, so I don't know how DOS was when it came out, and don't really have prior experience with Larian to fall back on to kind of gauge how they might handle the game moving forward. But you're right, games are rarely worse after change.

While not universally or consistently, Larian tends to address player feedback in some capacity.

Agree. Karlach deserves a major improvement but that's not the only story involved. The fact she's a companion and an OC character put her in the spotlights way more than any other quests.

She's a bit like the spearhead to highlight the scriptwriting shortcomings of the game. And the fact that she's written as an endearing character, that she's played particularly well by her VA, and that a barbarian is always appreciated in a squad, all of this greatly amplifies its impact for many players (including me).
The first "objective feedbacks" freed from the "magic of discovery" about the weakness of act 3 in particular, came through the Justice For Karlach movement, then highlighted by requests for feedback from Larian in stride.
Then everyone agree there is much more to do with barely everything in act 3, and some improvements in act 1&2 like Minthara, Karlach, Astarion, Gortash... to polish this game and wait for Larian to give it the complete and memorable look it's supposed to have.