Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion Underdark question

So during our journey we hear more than once that shadow lands are so super-duper dangerous, that going trough underdark (from what I understand its an extremely dangerous place according to lore) is a good alternative, but correct me if Im wrong, the only difference between underdark and traight up go from 1st zone to act 2 if slightly longer path. I feel a bit decieved. Not from player pov as underdark is a lot of content and such, but from story logic.

Yes, it's all rather disappointing.

First of all Shadowcurse, outside one scripted story events, hardly makes an impression - and very quickly it stops being a thing alltogether. On top of that mountin pass enterace and underdark enterance are in the same map area - maybe there is an extra scripted "uuu, you chose an easy but dangerous path!" if you follow mountinpass, but it does seem like Halsin was just talking out of his ass. Ah yes, you should pass through underdark and an enemy fortress to enter shadow curse a bit to the east.

It seems to me like they were setting a much bigger choice that they turned away from. BG3 gives me this weird feeling like they were making it as they go along - building content from the beginning to the end. Which I don't think is how usually the games (or stories in general) are made.

Playing early access (I only played the OG ea, update 1/2 and 5) I ended up getting a totally different picture of act 2 opposed to what we ended up getting.

The narrative was building up these two paths/options for players to take. One les dangerous Underdark and the other, shadow cursed mountain pass.

My impression was that act 2 was going to be split between the player choosing either the Underdark (didn't expect Menzoberranzan but at least a drow outpost/town after the Grymforge) or the mountain pass (with this I expected a mountain village infected with some kind of a curse) and both would lead to the finale at Moonrise towers.

But what we ended up getting was the mushroom colony/grymforge vs the githyanki creche as act 1 intro into the act 2 and act 2 just being the shadowlands, rather disappointing. I might be wrong and this is all in my head but I really do think early access ended up painting a bigger picture that the one we ended up getting.

It is all rather frustrating to be honest, the game pulls you in with amazing things and then just falls flat on its face.

ps. There are still things that I love about the game but as much as it keeps pleasantly surprising me at the same time it ends up disappointing me.

I agree with what's been said but you do know that you can do the Underdark and the creche before moving into the pass for Act 2?

Yes, definitely do both! Plenty of gear to be had.