Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Lower City: too many walking NPCs

Yesterday I ran a quick little experiment to see if I could find any location in the Lower City where random walking NPCs wouldn't be all wandering into frame constantly.

I couldn't find a single back alleyway or empty veranda anywhere in the entire city, which wasn't immediately populated by random city folk trying to photobomb in on me. Just jostling my party around, interrupting my choice Companion banters with random NPC banters. Talking over each other like we were in a crowded restaurant.

The vibe I get going anywhere at all in the Lower City is sorta like smoke following me around a campfire. Just always right there, wherever I go. Except that in this case, instead of smoke in my eyes it's just a steady parade of people bantering into my ears hehe. Every little nook or out of the way parklet is already occupied by a dozen people speed walking. Or having a picnic, or arguing with their neighbors, or just muttering to themselves like crazy people about the latest headline in the Baldur's Mouth Gazette. Like I get that it's supposed to be all hustle and bustle in the City, but it's pretty ridiculous. You can cast fireball or cloudkill a thousand times, and there will still be a thousand NPCs walking around as soon as the dust settles. It's almost like they took the concept of Noober from BG1 and multiplied that by half the population of the city. I run away, they find me - there's just no escape! lol

Legit the only place I've found where these NPCs won't go, seems to be the Wine Tasting Festival after the murders have gone down. Or the Foundry after the big kabooms have already kaboomed. Like it's either that or you have to take it inside or up onto the roof to find any peace and quiet, like anywhere in Baldur's Gate. The sense of overwhelming scale is already achieved the second we hit the ground running in Rivington. I think it works well enough there, since the Circus is in town. There's a press of refugees bottle necking it by the bridge, so that makes sense I guess, but at least heading down towards the river I can catch some fresh air in Rivington. By the time we enter the Lower City though, the thrill of the crowd is pretty much gone, but there are no reprieves for the agoraphobic, least not on the surface. 

Having so many innocent bystanders to cover every square inch of ground plane in the Lower City also contributes to this feeling where the various city districts just kinda blur together. We see the same sorts of folks humming along and going about their business. The lighting and weather is always the same. The named NPCs that remain in place and stay stationary have their unique flavor per district sure, but I'm talking more about the roving crowds, and the continuous cacophonous banter-thon that they have going on. 

What I wouldn't give to see the City at Night! When all those morning joggers have long since gone to bed. Maybe they get replaced by actual thieves and bandits, or monsters with a different theme for each district? I mean that's really the problem I guess right there. I don't want to see Baldur's Gate at high noon when everyone is running their daily errands, but the 3 am version. Maybe Mods I suppose, but I just wish it was part of the vanilla thing here. If the Lower City alternated between being super busy during the day but less busy in the evening (owing to Steel Watch curfews or whatever) I think that would ease the sense of grind in Act III.

Not treating the City Itself like a very large dungeon at Night was bit of a missed opportunity. At the level cap sometimes I just want to battle it out vs bit monsters, but those always require puzzling around in Act III. Either it's a choice between a small isolated encounter with just a couple enemies vs raiding into some massive setpiece Boss fight for a companion quest. I feel like the game needs something in between. Especially coming out of Act II with all the shadows and skeleton warriors hiding around every corner. The Lower City streets could have been handled more like that, with bandits and cutthroats at night, or maybe flaming fist if that's the angle, but just something. The game needs more opportunities to try things out in some lower stakes encounters. Unlike with the Goblins in Act 1 or the Shadows and Cursed whatevers in Act II, in Act III we always have to talk our way into the fights, with a lot of leg work on that. Finding something to fight I mean. I don't want XP farms and procedurally generated stuff with no real flare, but just seems like the city at Night would have allowed for a way to do that stuff without it becoming too crazy. I mean the party is mostly at lvl 12 by this point, but that doesn't mean I always need to be fighting a Dragon or a Devil or a Big Bad. Like just give me some more goon squads here and there, so we can test out our latest class abilities or equipment that way, and stomp around a bit. Like without having to delve too deep to find a brawl. Anyway, just a thought. Some night life like that to help break things up would be nice.

ps. random asides... Part of the issue for me is that there's just no leaving the City once we arrive. The closest we can get to crickets chirping is doubling back to Rivington. The closest we get to a light rain is that camp down by the docks if we don't check in to a room at the Elfsong Tavern. I mean I miss the Hall of Wonders and such too, (although I'm pretty sure we battle through the ruins of the Upper City during our final ascent, so it's not like they didn't give us any Upper City at all), but I think I'd have taken some side area in an adjoining wilderness zone that just had a bunch of monsters running amok for a change of pace. Also, it's pretty hard to find any bones for animating the dead once we get to the Lower City. Like it makes me wish I'd just filled my camp chest with all those bone piles that Balthazar left for us in the Shadowfell hehe. You'd think with all those rando NPCs running around that I'd be able to have a Harryhausen skeleton warrior at a moments notice, but not really the case. Bloomridge Park and the Cemetery might have lead to some larger area extending beyond the walls. I don't know call it the Grand Duke's Hunting preserve or whatever. Just a place like that off in the cuts, for all those times when our inner Kivan needs a break from the urban spawl. Maybe it's just me, probably, but still!

I agree. It probably makes performance worse too. Shouldn't be too hard to fix, probably?

Also, I know this is something some of my friends enjoy so it's probably down to people's taste (I might even be in a very small minority) but I don't like the amount of useless NPCs there are that you can talk to and get some random "Ohhh the weather is nice today isn't it" line.

In BG1/2 it was nice to have different populations of the streets at night.
Like those gangs of Astarions in the Alkathla marketplace ...

I'd have loved to see the city streets at night. I thought the cemetery had more potential too.
Something that really bothers me is that if you turn down the chatter volume of the surrounding NPCs (because they can get loud and overwhelming in the city), it also turns down the voice volume of your companions when they have any party banter. That makes it very easy to miss interesting conversations/interactions that they have, or not notice it until they're already halfway through talking.

I love this idea. Seeing the city at night, gittering stars and high dark buildings, exciting, full of opportunities and bandits.. yeah, I'd like that a lot..

... strolling through the cemetary under the stars, Astarion on your shoulder, the moon glistering on his fangs ..

@Buba I mean your fantasy is cool, but I was thinking more like hunting and gutting bandits and thieves on the streets, the blood glistering as it trickles down into the sewer, dripping on Orins head who grimace knowing I'm coming to get her.

It's an attractive idea, but what would you do with the houses ? Make them unpenetrable, (whidh would be immersion-breaking) or create a night-state for each one of them with inhabitants sleeping. That would be a big addition to the content.

I will take both.. : )

Currently we can't fast travel from camp at night, but maybe that might be a way to do it?

Like say where we have a more limited access to the city via discrete night maps or something similar. Perhaps each City district has a different evening map, but where we can't travel between these, so they don't need to be as massive and interconnected. Like we just pick a waypoint and roll with that zone. Some invisible boundaries at the edges, little Little Nemo style, to keep things somewhat contained.

Some of the houses could just keep all the same stuff happening, it would probably be more interesting with that ambiance in some spots. The art gallery, the doll house, stuff like that would be fun at night I bet. For the various merchants we might need some extra flavor on it though. Maybe the regular shopkeeps are asleep with options to loot or battle guards in those locations. Standard merchants could be replaced by some black market merchants in alternative locations. There could be some batman style antics on the rooftops probably as well.

The game has no real sense of time outside of the camp being set at night when long resting, so I'd just go with that idea. Essentially we tell the game when it's going to be night time by clicking the long rest button. When we do that we can night walk the area where we waypointed to camp from, if that makes sense.

That way it could be done using some of the familiar systems already in place, but they'd also have a way to keep the night time areas somewhat manageable in scale. Thinking mainly about mods now I guess, since I don't really expect this stuff to be forthcoming really. They said it was too hard to pull off, so there must be reasons, but maybe it's just the city itself is so large (being all interconnected the way it is with those seamless transitions between the city districts). If starting with just the 3 camp locations available to us in Act III, perhaps each of those could just connect to some exterior area location that are more self contained. Spots which we can see but can't access during the daytime. So for example the camp in Rivington might connect to that area beyond the main refugee encampment, down the hill where we can see some tents that can't be reached, but at night we can pay it a visit in the form of a newly created zone with evening themed stuff going on. That spot then serves as our way in to Rivington Nights, where the circus is all lit up, but otherwise it's mostly sleepy, with monsters on the prowl. We can't get to Wyrms Rock or back to Baldur's Gate because the draw bridges are drawn up, so when finish up our night time exploring we go back to camp via the route we came from initially. This would help to sort of fix the camp as an actual location in the world, even though it's not really and just being connected via an intermediate zone which locks off the area boundaries. For the City itself, a couple main zones. One by the Elfsong Tavern which connects us to one side of town, the other down by the Docks which connects to the other. So basically like Basilisk Gate vs Baldurs Gate options, or an uptown/downtown vibe. Just thinking of ways they could maybe use the same stuff. Might work