Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion Why are there hardly any consequences? *Spoiler*

After thinking about it one mayor problem with this game is that for some reason Larian seem to have decided in the last minute (from a software developer view, so 1 year or less before release) to do major rewrites to the story to remove consequences. Evidence for the short notice is the artbook which does not contain the Emperor or Guardian, but does contain Daisy and how many dialogues and even quests in the game reference

It seems to me that it was decided that there must not be long term consequences for your actions, only short term, immediately obvious consequences which are clearly telegraphed.
Hence no more Daisy who could seduce you to her/the absolutes side or
And this decision makes the game way, way, worse. Not only does it make the story more boring, the last minute nature of that changes also meant many dialogues and quests were left in the game which now do not fit anymore with what happens, creating a rather disjointed experience.
Its a real shame that Larian devalued what was on the track to become a real masterpiece with such decisions.

Well, I both agree and disagree with you.

I agree that the main plot revolving around the tadpole and ceremorphosis is terribly underwhelming and all over the place. There are remnants of a better plot and the consequences everywhere and it makes it worse.

Having said that, everything else you are free to handle or mishandle as you see fit. They weren't afraid of letting you fail but soldier on. It's only the main plot that is devoid of choice.

Don't do the quest to help the Tieflings / stop the ritual? They're doomed and you'll never see them again.
Fail the strength rolls to get Gale of the portal? You will go through the game without him.
Stake Astarion? That kills him. Permanently.
Don't intervene between Shadow and Lae'Zel? One of them dies. Again, permanently.
Allow a Hag to operate on you? Say goodbye to your pretty face [for some reason this isn't the case for Volo's surgery though]
Fail to Guard Isobel? All of the Harpers die.
Kill Mizora? Wyll's a goner.

Easily the biggest issue with the game. It's so different than what was sold to us in early access.

"embrace or reject" tadpole always seemed like a hokey concept to me. The game hinting on us gradually becomeing mindflayer, but that's not something that the game could deliver on.

I would encourage you to not delve to be on "what could have been". I suspect the version you invision existed mostly in your imagination.

I would agree that if embracing tadpole brings no meaningful consequences, than that is rather lame. Personally I didn't use them at all (didn't even unlock the tadpole menu)

The problem is the story revolves around 'abuse tadpoles with risks or not' and in the conclusion it is, 'welp, if you take the tadpole it's a free upgrade anyway'. This is 'setting the expectation too high and the result is too low' writing problem.

The game hardly has any consequences for sure. You can always recruit people with Withers, so even if you stake Asterion, give Shadowheart to Shar, chop off Gale's arm, take Karlach's head or whatever, you can still recruit companions with Withers.

Sure, you can massacre the tiefling, but again, it makes the 'set the bar too high' problem. What is the consequences? Almost nothing except you may kill Dammon and piss of Karlach, but in the end, if you do not dominate the brain, congratulation you are Baldur Gate's hero now, even though you massacre everyone in the city, the grove and on the cursed island.

The game is advertised as 17000 endings, but for me, it only has 3: Gale explosion, hero of BG by rejecting Netherbrain, and conquer BG with 'in X name'. The other 17000 are just derivations. The choices that lead to the ending are also... right at the end as well, so there is absolutely no consequence.

Now let's take a look at Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous.


-> Half of these are: companions leave the party permanently. Jesus, this is CRPG, every CRPG does this. This is not special. It is a requirement for every single CRPG that your companion may leave you permanently, either death or they leave by themselves, or you kick them out. In the old BG games, Jaheira and her husband Khalid will leave you if you reject them, and that's it, you lose your companions, just like you reject Gale.
-> Most Harpers die whether you kill Isobel or not. It's just about whether they die in Cursed Island or die later by Orin.
-> Say goodbye to my pretty face, Tiefling dead, or Harpers die, etc. Do these have any effect on the ending? Does Baldur Gate's citizen resent you because you killed their Harper? No. Is Emerald Grove even mentioned in the ending to show us about the Druid and Tiefling situation? No. Nothing.
-> Volo has been mentioned a lot and is an important character who links to Mystra. I let him explode with the Absolute group and nobody mentioned him later on. Mystra should have told Gale about Volo after they meet in Astral Plane, but again, nothing.

Orin does not kill Harpers from Last Light Inn. She kills the Harper cell in BG, which is separate. Remember, the Harpers stayed at Moonrise to help rebuilding/reclamation efforts. It is however pretty lame that the main point of interactive quests for Jaheira comes to a screeching halt at this dead end besides a very late recruiting of Minsc. Who by the way was done so dirty, he has no agency whatsoever, is made some comic loser who was fighting, got knocked out and tadpoled, and that was the extent of his story after you recruit him. You literally get no companion quest for him at all. The last interaction you can have is with Jaheira's children if you bring him.

Then, zero development. He should have been recruitable from Act 1 or Act 2. The martial roster of companions is literally all female, would be nice to have a stereotypical barbarian looking male to use in the roster. The writing for men in this game has serious problems to begin with, Wyll sorta being the more decent in terms of competence, but they're literally all fumbling weirdo goofs while the women are assertive, serious veterans. A single competent male character that's not comic relief would be nice. Wyll was sort of rewritten more in that direction, but he's still made out a fool with little agency. Gale's entire catastrophe is over being a lovesick, overconfident simp for Mystra, Halsin could have had potential and was just destroyed by the the goofy bestiality and poly meme writing that really ruins the high fantasy feel of the game. Astarion is a sociopathic perfumed ponce who struggles with even obtaining basic sustenance. None of the men are to be taken seriously in this game. This tiresome writing trope needs to die already.

I completely agree. It's one of the things that stuck with me after beating the game and left me feeling a little let down by the ending.

Big spoilers for an ending route and ending:

I expected "number of tadpoles monched" to at least increase the DC of the "resist partial ceramorphosis" check, but narp.

Very much agree with everything, and very tired of things being broken because of a misunderstood concept of diversity.

I enjoy the builds and playing different classes and some of the origin character stories are excellent, and the voice acting is very good, but getting into Act 3 it falls apart really fast. As pointed out all over these forums the direction most assuredly changed pretty late in development and they were unable to come up with anything cohesive by release deadline so like several big releases over the past few years (c.f. New World) parts of the end product are laughably bad.

This is the current state of the gaming industry though and as long we keep buying crap that's what we'll keep getting.

I agree. I just finished my first playthrough. During the Act 1 and 2 I admired how many decisions I was given and thought, wow, I wonder what kind of story arch I end up if I do this or that. I genuinely thought that if I take a side with one group or another, that would result into a different storyline to follow and that during the next playthrough I could try another path and experience something very different. When the Act 3 was coming closer to the end it started to dawn on me that those decisions actually didn't matter. At all. That it only affects who are alive in the end and if they are your allies or not, but that you are going down the exact same main storyline anohow. And you know, I would have been perfectly fine with that (because often when you put all your effort into one storyline you can polish it to a perfection, which is a great reason for not having multiple storylines), if only I would have known that beforehand. Like, uh, why was I told that the game has insane amount of decisions that lead to different kind of endings when it just doesn't? Why wasn't I instead told that I get to experience one awesome storyline, which I can flurish with roleplaying side stories? I would have wanted to know what to expect.

The story about the tadpoles was a let-down to me. It's presented as something very important and very meaningful. Starting from the very first minute of the game you are constantly told that it's your option to use them or not. All the characters around you seem to have opinion on the matter. It's depicted as something that would enhance you, but would come with a consequence later on. I decided to not use them (I used the first one just to see what it unlocked), and during rest of the game whenever I talked to any of the companions I saw those lines which I could use to persuate them to start using them, too. So, yeah, I was pretty sure that it's important decision. But it wasn't. It didn't affect the storyline at all. So why was it there?

I did notice that it seemed like casters were men and martials were women (although arguably Astarion is in between, I don't think it's out of pocket to multiclass him as a fighter and he can be a real heavy hitter in melee). And Shadowheart isn't really a martial.

But that being said, the rest of your post seems really weird to me. Like if anything Gale seems more like a Mary Sue character (So good at magic that his girlfriend was the goddess of magic herself! Pals around with Elminster!) and as far as "incompetence" goes he's the first companion to notice that something is off about your tadpoles besides Lae'zel, who knows from explicit experience. And Astarion's whole thing is that he was a vampire spawn that just managed to break free from his master. Like I don't know what your point about him is? Halsin I don't know how he is since I think he's boring and I just don't like him.

I also don't think the women are all "serious, assertive veterans." Even the one that would qualify most for that (Lae'Zel) has her goofball moments (watch how overdramatic she is when she describes the gory details of mind flayer transformation). (And speaking of Lae'zel, she is also a far bigger simp for Vlaakith than Gale is for Mystra, at least in the first half of the game.) Shadowheart is probably the most emotionally even-keeled of the women but she comes across more as an increasingly-in-denial brainwashing victim. Karlach is a huge softie for someone who's spent years fighting in hell.

It seems to me that all the characters have moments of competency and silliness regardless of gender. If you wanted to pick one out, Astarion is probably leaning more towards the comic relief side for the men, while Karlach is for the women. (Although I think Astarion is funnier.) But what baffles me even more is that you think Minsc would fix this. Minsc's whole THING is being a comic relief character, and yes this extends to the originals too if you have not played them.

Typical Larian tbh. They can make insanely well the first acts of their games. but once it reaches the last act they just don't know how or don't have time to finish it in the same quality. To this day even with DOS2 DE, I don't like the last 2 acts even with all the fixes and changes tbh. At least here I have a small hope that they will make the 3rd act better in time seeing how colossal heights the game has reached. At least I hope so.
Overhaul is a fantastic game. but when I reach the last moments again I just stop and start a new game because there's no point in the endings, any of them. Especially if you romance certain characters.

And a friend of mine finished the game today, he just asked me. That's it? The ending is Just this?

Yeah, Larian is notorious for this, I had the exact same problem with DOS2.

Although my diagnosis is a little different. I think Larian does fantastic first acts in terms of GAMEPLAY, but the plot is almost always bad or runs into problems early on. Plot problems just get ignored because the gameplay is so fun. Later on, due to I dunno, inadequate testing or whatever, the gameplay begins to fall apart, and that's when all the problems with the plot that people ignored start getting noticed.

Well, that and it's easy to set up what looks like an engaging plot, and much harder to write a compelling conclusion to that plot. Hence the whole 'mystery box' trope.

By the way the main story has a lot of inconsistency here and there, it is quite clear they did do substantial rewrites.

After all that constant yammering about choice and consequence.. Where is it ??

And don't get me started on the Emperor..

Considering that the Emperor is not even in the artbook but Daisy is it looks like he was a very late addition/rewrite to the game which explains why it is so sloppy. That was probably the point Larian decided not to have consequences, removed Daisy and made the plans for tadpole powerups.

I do not use the word cringe lightly but

The lack of long-term consequences is definitely noteworthy (and disappointing) to me. Choosing to feed the tadpole (or not) is treated as being a very important decision, but it ends up having no real impact down the line. Same goes for pretty much every other choice that you'd expect to come back to bite you in the ass - even leaving the hag alive, for instance, doesn't matter because she comes back anyways.

I really don't understand the rationale here - long term (and unknown) consequences of early decisions is a hallmark of most of the best CRPGs, and it seems like this sort of thing was present at some point in the development...so why remove it?