Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion Is the Story Really All That?

So I've played this game since launch and have overall enjoyed it. Much has been said about the story problems of act 3 but I have a position that will probably be far more controversial. I don't think the main story of this game really works at any point.

That's not to say there aren't good stories in the game or that there aren't good moments, but I don't think the actual main plot of this game ever hangs together as a cohesive whole. There are holes and confusions at nearly every turn, and when there aren't, then it's because the "main" plot is only string to justify going around places .

Starting in act 1 we have a bombastic opening sequence. We see all the weird space stuff and immediately establish the threat of the tadpole. A threat that is hyped up to be super important but that immediately starts to slowly Peter out until you're expected to just not worry about it. What's the actual plot of this act? It's trying to find a healer. Every attempt you try fails and you're eventually funneled to Moonrise towers. Okay, fine. But that's not a plot or a story, that's a goal. You could say that the druid and goblin conflict are the main story of act 1, but they don't connect to the larger plot itself. You learn some clues about the larger plot, but the STORY doesn't really develop much. And beyond that, despite for most of act 1 having no real idea of the benefits of the tadpole we are given the ability to embrace tadpole powers that run entirely counter to the point of act 1. Bit also, probably roughly halfway through we get told that trying to remove the tadpole will kill us, so we really lose any motivation to try and remove it through the ways laid out in the act. Though maybe you don't trust who tells us so it's not the worst.

Then the druid conflict concludes one way or another (though you could just skip all that and progress if you wanted to anyway) and you have to choose a path to moonrise. Only... you don't actually have to choose, and if you care about companion stories you're going to go to both areas anyway.

Then you make it Moonrise, which is probably the strongest area in term of main plot and story. Your goal?

So yeah, that's wh I think the story and plot of this game never at any point comes together and works. Nothing is really cohesive, nothing is ever leading neatly into the next thing. The threads, even the individual strong ones, never seem to work together.

Yes, the story is just average and it is not even told very well because as you noticed it flip flops a lot and even goes against the game mechanics.

Well, isn't it the general consensus now?

- I hate that I am forced to run around with no option to remove the tadpole for 90 hours. This is the most baffling to me( if we are all going to RP to the best of our ability, NO ONE, would stop until they find a way to remove that thing).
- Then you are forced into being under the Emperors control for 90 hours, with no choice, despite all the bragging about choice and consequence.

These two are enough to kill all desire I have for a replay.

You see threads of a potential great plot all over the place, but seemingly some incredibly weird design choices pulls it apart rather than making it all come together. The main story needs a rework, I am not going to come back if this is what I can expect from now. This is an RPG, them RP and main story is the most important thing.

I think if you sum up the story in 2 or 3 sentences it sounds like an incredible premise for a story, but the execution is insanely incoherent.

Things that need fixing:
- We need to be able to remove the tadpole at the end of act 1, at the very least in the start of act 2. Like you said, at some point we are just expected to not care about it anymore, which is just insane.
- You are absolutely right about the absolute reveal. This needs to be fixed.
- It needs to be an option to ditch the Emperor. We are allowed to kill all our companions but this guy is forced on us? I just cannot understand.
- No consequence for snorting tadpoles
- Act 3 is all over the place with everything (bugs, plot triggers absent, story non-sensical)
- I don't get how sometimes the pacing of the story is 10 hours between each segments, the game never lets me get invested. I have seen Gortash 3 times this game, how am I supposed to care? Same with the Dark urge, I had like 4-5 story segments in 90 hours, and now it is over? Already?

But honestly I have a giant compendium in a thread in the suggestion and feedback section (so I'm just going to stop here for now), I suggest some of you guys that hang out in the story section check it out, because you make some really good points. I would add some of them but they are spread out over multiple threads.

Yes, I heartily agree, and I am glad to see other people with these sentiments. I have seen a lot of people who seem to have concluded that the plot is TOTALLY AMAZING until it runs into some problems in act 3, but I have always thought it was really weak right from the outset - which is actually in line with Larians other games. It's just that the very fun and polished gameplay in act 1 leads people to gloss over the weakness in the plot. (And actually, in terms of overall plot, I believe BG3 is a significant step BACKWARDS for Larian. DOS2 had some problems with the plot, but they weren't nearly so bad. They made the companions much more likable in BG3, though.)

Overall, I think the game is great, and I loved every bit of it (except for serious performance issues in the later stages of ACT 3). However, I cannot help but see everything that doesn't work story wise. The story in itself isn't great and the more I think about it, the worse it gets for me. I work as a developmental editor for novel writers and I think part of my issues lie there, because I can't simply turn of my work brain and enjoy something for what it is. Well, I could in this case when I first played it because it was just fun to explore everything, but as soon as I was done, work brain took over and the plot sort of fell apart. There's so much potential, and I kind of feel like the build up (ACT 1) is good, but the longer this goes on the more it crackles and crumbles. By the end, very little make sense and all your choices really didn't matter, and you didn't really get the story that was promised to you at the start of ACT 1.

Well.

Act 3 needs a complete overhaul. The main story needs rewrites here and there, which are completely doable btw if they intended to release a definitive edition next year. Now you already have the framework. And millions of players playtesting.. Like stated above I think if you sum up the story it sounds like an incredible premise for a story. Unfortunately the plot does not come together, but drifts apart.

I don' t agree that the plot is bad from the onset, I do agree that it rapidly starts becoming more frustrating with the reveal of the Emperor.

Excellent thread and comments. My only addition to the dicussion would be that for me none of this is in any way surprising. It's what I've anticipated from three years ago.

The base story is a "good" DM plot line. The various sub plots, some are very well done and others feel a bit forced. The various character relationships feel forced early on. Up until Act 3 the storyline progresses pretty well however in Act 3 things begin to feel forced and rushed.

I think my personal biggest gripe is the way the Tadpole storyline and game mechanics are tied together. There is no real reason to not use the Tadpole. There is no penalty for letting it dig deeper in your head and no reward for fighting it. This to me is a MAJOR part of the storyline, especially as your introduced to the game and is just basically cast aside by the end of the 1st Act.

The choice to turn the tadpole that kicked off the entire story and ties the player into the greater themes of the game into a red herring only to have its narrative role supplanted by a a MacGuffin in the form of the astral prism that has no connection to the player character sure was baffling to me.

The central premise of the story was established with the very first reveal trailer and it's that you are going to turn into a mindflayer with all its soul-destroying body horror implications. That is what makes the story interesting and unique and it's what the plot should focus on. The game tries to do this in Act 1 because your ceremorphosis still functions as a golden thread that ties most of the side content back into the main story about you and your special tadpole.

My expactation playing the EA was that the main story would take more of a center stage as you progress into Act 2 and try to find out more about the nature of your tadpole, your role in these events and what you can do to avert the threat to both yourself and the sword coast.

What happens instead is that you get a dream visit telling you that everything you did in Act 1 was basically a waste of your time and you should put more tadpoles into your eyesocket instead of worrying about the story you've played up until that point. The looming threat of ceremorphosis, the moral dilemma of using the tadpole, the pursuit of removing your parasite - none of that really matters anymore even though it was supposed to be your main force driving your actions.

Suddenly, the game is no longer about this very personal struggle about saving your soul but more of a generic heroic fantasy "save the world" type scenario with all the baggage that comes with it. The problems with this narrative shift don't immediately manifest themselves in Act 2 however since the story of that act functions more as a sort of self-contained intermezzo that is interesting enough in its own right (with Ketheric Thorm being probably the closest thing the game has to a charismatic antagonist).

I think enough was said about Act 3 already but suffice to say, this is where the chickens really come home to roost. With the player character being bereft of their personal motivation, all of the side content you do in Act 3 (although being of similar quality) ends up feeling aimless and without purpose. Whereas Act 1 tried to tie the side missions into the main story, Act 3 does the exact opposite. Not only is there no golden thread connecting all these loose story ends with the main story, they actively weaken the main plot just by existing due to their bad integration. Act 3 creates a perplexing situation in which the urgency of the main plot actively hampers your ability to take the side content seriously while the act of playing through the side content undermines the severity of the main plot.

That being said, I don't know how you would even begin to "fix" it. They basically killed what made the story interesting at the end of Act 1 when the game decided it was no longer about turning into a mindflayer (until the last hour of the game where it suddenly remembers its premise). Shit is cooked.

I overall agree, but couple point:

I don't think "plot" is that important in cRPGs. Plot tends to be a static think that drives players forward. I would even say that usually best RPG stories have basic plots that inform objectives but don't define the journey. Both Fallout1&2 plots revolve around finding a McGuffin. Fallout New Vegas plot goes "find guy who shot you" and "resolve local conflict". Planescape Torment could be summarised as "find a way to die". Entire Disco Elysium revolves around solving a murder.

There are of course RPGs with more linear elaborate plots, but BG3 plot vaguely boilind down to an overarching objective per plot isn't in itself a problem.

The issue I have is generally those plot light titles that I mentioned tend to give players a lot of narrative urgency - define the character, their relation to characters they meet, how we solve problems that arise are narratively impactful on our character. BG3 (and Larian games in general) offer really cool systemic freedom, but actions we take rarely have narrative importance. There is reactivity, but that reactivity tends to set the narrative back to pre-determined outcome rather than react to our action in a thematic or narrative sense. There are choices with narrative impact, but those are few, and personally I found them shallow and uninteresting.

Than there is an issue of quality of those overarching objective, and if they gel into cohesive whole. Due to EA a lot have been said about conflict between the urgency of the tadpole and relaxed exploration. Personally, I found act2 the weakest - mostly because it revolved around a backstory for a character we don't really get to interact with. If there was an interesting decision to be made regarding Thorm, perhaps it would feel less like a waste of time to me.

I actually thought act3 works the best - yes it seems to take a sharp turn from previous acts, and especially ending seems to suffer from it. But I thought it worked the best. We are in posession of one of the stones, so enemies can't proceed without it, and our goal is to gather allies and get a hold on other two stones. While not ideal, it is still best balance between urgency and reasons to stall that the game had.

What kills the game for me, is that it lacks thematic core. Originals, while very simple and basic, and a clear throughline of embracing or resisting evil within you. BG3 plays with the same concept - in form of embracing or rejecting the tadpole, but it is not always there, and in the end it doesn't matter, and I am not sure why would one ever feel tempted to embrace it. I think Emperor is there to do just that, but I don't think he helps in selling the idea and comes way too late into the story. To me BG3 feels like a compilation of various different ideas - like they have thrown bunch of ideas together, but not with enough case as to how they will fit together.

Narrative is just isn't strong point of Larian's development process - that's why I believe D:OS1 who simple didn't care to tell a coherent plot is still their best RPG. They can have a staggering amount of voiced content, and cinematics, but I just don't think it is a very good content. The most fun I had with BG3 was playing around with systemic sandbox, and the most frustrated I was when I tried to connect with the narrative. It is fine to do your own thing. For the last two games, I feel Larian is trying to pursue the complete opposite of what their design is good at.

This is an odd point to make. Every plot can be boiled down to a soundbite if you're glib enough; it doesn't mean it's a bad plot or even a SIMPLE plot. All of those games you named have various plot points along the way to the "goal" you summarized them as, and they're presented much more coherently than the plot in BG3 is.

I think plot doesn't matter that much, either, when it comes to cRPGs. Well....it depends. If you have solid gameplay, the plot can kind of be glossed over. And gameplay can mean something as simple as "an interesting world to explore." I mean, there's entire genres where that's the big joke: Open world games where you get some main plot and then you ignore it for 99 percent of your playtime just because you have fun exploring. If what you want is *exploration*, I agree that act1 and act3 are actually the strongest with act 2 feeling relatively narrow. If what you want is *fun combat*, act 1 is probably the best. Act 2 I do agree is weird. I kept waiting for a point in the plot where we'd sit down and have a long conversation with Ketheric, or work directly for him during our infiltration, but it never came. Usually I do enjoy exploration, and I think I could have enjoyed exploring act 3, even if I think both the plot and the combat had declined by then, if it wasn't for me running into a lot of performance issues and outright bugs.

This seems off, the essence of a great RPG is a solid storyline. That being said the storyline does not need to be on rails but it provides the base motivation for the game. A good plot and solid lore are the meat of a great RPG.

I suppose we would need to discuss what "plot" is - and to be honest I am not that deep into writing jargon to confidently argue about anything. I supposed I was criticising the use of the term, and frankly I probably shouldn't do that - I am in no position to do that.

I suppose I am just bitter after people claiming that Deadfire had short story, because one could do couple crit path missions and skil tenths of hours of quality content. (not that that game didn't have narrative issues, and specifically plot issues, that that's beside the point).

Regarding BG3 all I wanted to say, is that the fact that BG3 plot consists of couple overarching goals isn't a problem in itself, but I do think the game has major issues - both in the crit path goals, and worldbuilding and side content.

Something I also haven't mentioned is pacing - I felt it takes wayyyy too long between resolving tielfing/goblin conflict and finale of act2. Inbetween those two things the story is in limbo and I found myself getting really bored between those two points.

I actually liked deadfire myself, and felt bad that it was so shortchanged. IMO, still to this day the best implementation of a RTWP system. I do think of it as an example of "Plot doesn't have to be that important." The critical path is super short and the main narrative not that great. What it did have, though were a ton of sidequests thatyou could lose yourself in and not think all that much about the main plot.

I honestly tend to agree with you about all that, my issue is that a) people are praising the story a lot when I dint think it's deserved and b) even though I prefer plot light crpgs I feel like this is still a poor execution of the concept. This game has a lot of plot sort of... around. On the fringes, but when you try and lay it out together, it doesn't really work or mesh. I think I'd feel the same way you do about act 3 if it weren't for the kidnapping thing that ramps up the urgency to the max as far as I'm concerned. It also feels a bit too aimless. I'm all for the idea of gathering allies, but it doesn't really feel like all the quests are geared towards being that. They feel incohesive and like. "Just a bunch of stuff" at a stage where I feel like the game should be a bit more narratively focused and cohesive. I feel like act 3 needed some kind of core, a narrative throughline, something you could refer back to as you play to give you a bit more of a sense of grounding.

There is something extremely entertaining to me about people finally coming to a realization that maybe just maybe BG3 isn't some gift from god to the RPG world. And that this game is just another in a long list of just okay video games.

I do wish certain things that were explored in EA were left in its final version and other issues that arise from its poor plot/storytelling get fixed but who knows whether that will happen.

To me BG3 is the type of game that is 'quick fun' but the more you think about it, the deeper you delve into it the more irritating it becomes. And to be honest my suspension of disbelief has its limits.

"Finally"? You mean, after their first paythrough? And for a lot of people already familiar with Larian (like myself) they were likely skeptical going in.

But yeah, I mean I have bought this up in other places. I think that all the hype BG3 got has far more to do with what people WANT to be true than what actually IS true. A lot of people WANT there to be a "Fun little indie, sticking it to be the big corporate evil greedy men, showing these businessmen what a good game ACTUALLY is with their PASSION". So they project hopes, dreams and hype onto BG3 that the game doesn't actually deserve. "Revolutionary! Genre-defining! OMG!" A lot of people built up this narrative of how amazing BG3 was. When the reality is, it's not. BG3 is great fun in some places. When it shines, it really shines. But it is also a HUGELY flawed game. Very much like DOS1 and DOS2.

The mismatch between the drive to find a cure, and the drive to explore and linger in the acts came up a few times during the EA.

Putting a little more thought into the plotting of the game would have made things more cohesive, especially in the city, but by all appearances it looks like Larian ran out of time, and had to tie off as many dangling threads as they could, before having the game snatched away from them. This sort of thing happens with all games, but most games don't have years of early access and hype to count against them.

I've said elsewhere on this forum that the story suffers from a lack of essential npcs able to contribute to the plot. If you thinkabout it, the emperor is the only non-optional npc we interact with with any kind of regularity. Larian is trying to tell a really big story that needs more people in it to play parts. I think if the emperor and the villains weren't the only character that major plot points could rest on, they'd have had more freedom to make things work. I also think that act 3 suffers from a lack of central point. I think that part of why act 3 feels so disjointed is that it lacks a sort of central place to return to. I don't think camp really works because it feels so seperate from the rest of the world. I'm talking about a place like Last Light inn, where a bunch of merchants and friendly npcs are gathered. As it is now, we just slowly advance through the city, which doesn't really feel natural or how you navigate a city at all. it made sense in act 1 since you were out in the wild, it even makes sense in act 2 for the same reason, but I think a place on the map that you come back to that feels like a natural sort of home base would have gone a long way towards grounding things without changing the actual progression of events.

I agree. What I try to think is what people mostly compare it to.

Baldur's Gate3 is a AAA RPG, and I don't think many people stack it against small or AA projects. Most will stack them against what passes these days for big production RPG - recent Bioware output, Bethesda, recent AssCreed etc. In that crowd I think Baldru's Gate3 stand out well. There is of course CDPR - and while I thought Cyberpunk also has a lot of narrative issues, there is still consistancy, worldbuilding and tight character arcs that BG3 could only dream of. HOWEVER, aside from Bethesda none of those have interactivity and scope of BG3. So it is also tough to really put one against another.

That Baldur's Gate3 aimed to highly systemic, story driven, coop and singleplayer, adaptation of D&D but also mass market clicker not requiring much investment, and they succeeded and received super high critical and player acclaim is a staggering achievement. But the downside of doing everything, is that every single thing has glaring issues once you stare at it long enough. Get inversted in narrative, and you will see inconsistencies, and odd character behaviours. Pay attention to combat, and you will start noticing how unbalanced and exploitable the system is. Start pushing systemic reactivity, and you will clearly run into unimmersive absurdities.

Honestly, after 3 years in EA I am positively surprised how the thing came together - I was fearing the final result will be much messier. I do hope Larian will manage to improve the game even further before fully moving on to the next project.