Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback My thoughts on the game.

Well here we are a month on after a ban and it's like déjà-vu all over again.

First I have to battle my way through Gateway Timeouts to actually get on the forum and then there is the latest patch which "clocks in at over 1000 fixes, tweaks and changes". As per usual the patch brings its own slew of problems. And of course Larian pulls its usual trick of making a virtue out of a necessity and presents it as if it is them being on the case. Credit where credit is due - the accessibility/colour blindness additions are a good thing.
EDIT: A week after the patch we get a hotfix to fix some of the problems caused by the patch which causes problems of its own.

For my part, I haven't been near the game for over a month since I got the game-breaking CTD in Rivington. I updated to Patch 4 yesterday but that didn't solve it. I jumped through several hoops today with a removal of all my mods and a complete uninstall and reinstall of the game followed by a reinstall of the mods and it seems to have worked as I can now at least move past the spot which was causing the CTDs. Whether it now CTDs elsewhere remains to be seen.
I have all the same mods now as I did a month ago - no more, no less. I haven't got the reshade installed now but I tried without the reshade a month ago with both DX11 and Vulkan so what actually did the trick remains unknown.

Meanwhile there are still people complaining that the game is too easy while doing nothing about making it more difficult and people still saying that increasing the party size ruins the game.
I see that the 'too easy' crowd are now getting exited about this new Foehammer achievement so they will be able to 'beat the game' on this new difficulty (even though they have done all the fights at least once before so they know what to expect).

On the plus side there are a few threads by people criticising various aspects of the game so perhaps the hype is starting to evaporate.
EDIT: The criticisms and complaints are growing more numerous day by day. Seems like the 'game of the decade' is struggling after three months.



The game itself.
I'll put the sections containing hyperlinks in spoilers to avoid a post 5 miles long.

Music
Music is highly subjective but there isn't any 'great' music in BG3. I have been replaying CK3 for a few weeks now and there are two tunes in that game, one a traditional Gaelic piece and the other Plainsong, which are hauntingly beautiful. Twelve years on and the music of Skyrim is still impressive.

DA:I

Character Creation
CC is basic at best. The number of head models and body shapes too limited. No way to alter eye, ears, mouths etc - poor in this day and age.
Even the layout isn't anything to write home about - Solasta and Nioh2 are much cleaner.
There are other things I could mention but the point is that CC isn't anything spectacular.

DA:I CC (Nine years ago!)

Aesthetics and Graphics.
Aesthetics is another subjective area but while I do not have any problems with the aesthetic I don't look at it and think 'wow'. There are a couple of highly contrived 'vistas' - one at the cable car outside the monastery where you look across the valley and the other at Wyrm's Crossing(?) where you again get to look out a the scene. Neither of them are anything to do with the story.
There are lots of great views in DA:I and most of them do involve the story. Some of the moonlit scenes in the desert made me want to go and meditate there.
The venerable Skyrim has some amazing views and scenery.

I thought the graphics were poor, at least originally. I just don't understand the reasoning behind the fuzzy/dusty, washed-out look. I used a reshade in EA and continued to do so in the full game. For me the vanilla graphics improved noticeably after either P1 or P2 for some reason. The patch Larian said was going to improve graphics (either P2 or P3) did improve things slightly but nowhere near as much.
I didn't pay much attention to the graphics after this latest patch and without the reshade so I'll see how that goes if i ever play the game again.

Voice acting.
I haven't been a fan of voice acting since Ribald Barterman.
There are two elements to this: the acting and the voices. The voices or accents are mostly subjective - I don't like the voices of Asterion, Gale, Wyll or even Karlach (and don't get me started on Halsin). The quality of the acting is largely dependent on the quality of the writing and this where it suffers in BG3. Lae'zel and Shadowheart are great characters because they both have good in-depth, well written backstories.
As an aside: Sister Sinda was one of my favourite characters "Are you poorly? Are you desperately poorly?". Just thinking about that voice cracks me up.

I thought the VA in Final Fantasy XVI was great - northern English accents (with dialect and idiom) plus good writing helped there. They also use swear words properly.
FF XVI voice cast

Companions.
With the exception of Lae'zel, Shadowheart and to a lesser extent Karlach, the companions in BG3 just don't do it for me.
One of the many things wrong with the companions for me is their builds. Lae'zel is probably the least broken in this regard.
Things such as not enough of them and the lack of variety have been addressed in many threads so I'll not bother with it.

Some examples of party banter from DA:I (and note the size of the game world and the variety of interior and exterior environments).

Romances aren't my thing in RPG/DnD games but the way they have been done in BG3 is another poor showing.
There are romances in the Dragon Age series which are there if you want them but they are never 'in your face' and once you express your lack of interest it is the end of it. This is pretty much the case in every other game I've played.

Cinematics
Far too many and far too many of those don't add anything except people stood talking. The person doing the speaking and the person being spoken to not being in the shot has been brought up in several threads.

There are lots of other areas which aren't great and have been mentioned elsewhere on the forum - the camping/resting system, the various interfaces, inventory management etc., etc.


Act 1
Starts off well enough with the 'find a cure for the tadpole' thing and the way it eventually begins leading you to 'find the Nightsong' but that's about it story-wise. The entire tiefling-druid thing serves no real purpose from a plot perspective and the Khaga-Shadow Druid thing even less so.
The biggest single thing is the goblin camp which is enjoyable enough. The Auntie/Hag part is plot-related but most of the rest of the overland map is just there for gaining XP.
The Underdark is mostly just there for because hey, it's BG so we have to have the Underdark. As others have said, Omuluum could have been an interesting character if he had been involved in the main story. Perhaps something similar could be said about the scholarly society his hobgoblin mate belongs to.
The Sharran Temple in the Underdark is far too large and complicated for no obvious reason other than to eat time.
The Lathander monastery is another pointless and overly large and complicated place that does nothing for the story.
The creche is alright but it is a bit naff how you can take on the gith one room at a time.

Act 2
I thought mostly dull and boring. Great graphics if you like grey. Reithwin was almost all pointless nonsense. The three Thorms had no connection to the main story and were just three freaks who were there for you to deal with.
The Gauntlet of Shar and the other stuff inside there were good - the puzzles, the fights and the advancing of the story.
Then it's Moonrise Towers and another overly large and complicated environment. After that first big fight at the gate, I was more upset that the Harper merchant had died than I was that Jaheira had gone full kamikazi at the start of the fight.

The whole Guardian, Orpheus, astral plane, surprise attack malarchy just left me wondering 'what was that all about?'. Why did the gith attack me when I was totally oblivious as to what was happening on the astral plane?
This is also the point where it becomes fairly obvious that your idea of choice and Larian's idea of choice are not the same thing.

Act 3 is where my game died and so I have only ever explored the right half of Rivington.


Even allowing for me not having done Act 3 BG3 is not a huge game by any standard I recognise. DA:I and FFXVI are both much larger.

So my verdict on BG3 is that is was 'okay'. Not bad and not good.
I have no great urge to start playing the game again. I never expected anything great from Larian and they didn't do anything great.



TW Pharaoh was declared dead on arrival so my next hope is Owlcat's Warhammer Rogue Trader which is releasing on Pearl Harbor day. I'm not sure that kind of steam-punk type thing is my thing but I like Owlcat's ruleset and mechanics so fingers crossed.
After that it is Dragon Age Dreadwolf if it ever sees light of day. I've lost track of where Crimson Desert is up to and I'm not sure it is going to be my type of game anyway.

I'm pretty much done with games as they are heading in the same direction as TV, films and every other media - dumbed-down pap for the masses where every game will look and feel like every other game.

BG3 dying on me and having to play CK3 which I don't really like (though there are enough mods to make it a goer) has left me more time for my real interests like the LBA collapse and ancient metaphysics. Luckily I stumbled across some fine material on both of these so I've been largely living in the past as it were.


Peace and health.