Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Pillars of Eternity after Baldur's Gate3 [spoilers for both titles]

Almighty YouTube algorithm recommended me this video (oh, how well it knows me). While it mostly focuses on some strenghts of PoEs over BG3, I think it is pretty fair to both games. I think it does a well job in not trying to punch BG3 down, but highlighting that in some aspects it could do better. Not agree with everything (I think combat comparison is more nuanced than the video suggests with solid strengths and weaknesses on both sides) but it does a great job in highlighting some things that I really missed in BG3. While the video talks mostly about PoE, and things the esseyist thinks are worth learing from, there is a pretty chunky bit on Baldur's Gate3 alone near the end.

What a coincidence.
I was watching this a couple of days ago.

Algorithm has us figured out. Larian forums must have been fed to AI

In my defense I watch a lot of retrospectives, in general.
It's almost a recurring hobby of mine.

Anyway, as a bonus: what a coincidance:

Hey @Wormerine, would you be willing to write up a short summary of its main points? Please, pretty please?

Somewhat related but Sawyer did another Q&A and mentions making PoE 3 (21:40) as well as a few other things (Which was subsequently published by PCGamer).

But on the thread topic, I find that aside from his take on BG3's themes, I agree with the vid and also makes me want to pick up the pace for my PoE 1 playthrough too.
Which, fwiw, for that firstish playtrough perspective he doesn't have, I do find it to be very rough (possibly morso because I've chosen to play on Hard, so possible skill issue... but still);
Definitely very dry, the slow and somewhat off pacing, the combat being abit of a mixed bag and the rather subdued soundtrack doesn't help either.

I might try later today.

Edit. It will be low in detail as I don't have time to rewarch the video right now.


Video Intro
00:00:00-00:02:50 -

Discussing openings of both games
00:02:50- 00:11:22- Slow to reveal, understated hook that allows for freeform exploration by the player, the other having stronger hook of which urgency can clash with gameplay. Also impressions from a 2nd playthrough - PoE1 being tightly written and well forshadows what is to come, while BG3 has some inconsistencies with later events.


Lore
00:11:22-00:22:20 Comparing the settings - both try to make familiar feel fresh in a different way - PoE building a new setting with some interesting things hidden behind a venieer of familiarity, BG3 using a familiar setting and exploring some more exotic aspects of it, with own creations (act2) with in it. Some prasise, some criticism of BG3 (mainly the Emperor). Discusses gods in both games, which I think is a bit unfair, as Gods are important in PoE story in the way they are not in BG3. However, he argues that Gods in BG3 end up overshadowing/replacing villains that could be more interesting on their own (like Kethric), so I think criticising them is far in its own right.


Roleplaying Mechanics
00:22:20-00:26:22 - More or less gushing over PoE's disposition system. There is more, but the point is "dispositions are cool and should be explored further".


Companions
00:26:22-00:41:18 - Personalities vs narrative depth. PoE companions have relatively little to say, BG3 companions have a lot of fresh interactions throughout the title. At the end he suggests that romances might be limit range of companions that we are getting. Bring Durance as an example of a companion we would not get if he had to be romancable.


Gameplay
00:41:18-00:44:45 Baldur's Gate is just better


Themes and Story
00:44:45-00:57:47 - PoE

00:57:47-01:02:18 - Baldur's Gate3 villains

01:02:18-01:05:35 - Baldur's Gate 3 act2

01:05:35-01:13:24 A discussion of reaccuring theme of Nature vs nurture in couple of the sidestories in BG3. [but I do think the esseyist is just a too deeper of a thinker for BG3. I would be surprised if there was an intentional thematic throughline there]

01:13:24-01:15:21 - reoccuring character in BG3


Conclusion
01:15:21-END

Oh, man, I do love PoE soundtrack. It’s probably the video game OST I tend to come back the most. Main theme is lovely, with a nice arc and growing instrumentation.

Even though I ended up a big PoE fan my first playthrough took a long time. Individual adventures aren’t always most riveting, and there is a lot of reading rather than experiencing. I found a lot of its stories frustratingly unresolved on completion. There was a narrative payoff that the game was going towards and once I got there I was fully satisfied. Second playthrough was very rewarding as I was reading with interest every interaction, and every lore tidbit that I could find.

Though after multiple playthroughs, I find the middle act (Defience Bay and investigation) to just not be great. It’s spread so very thin, and plot progression really slows down. I mean not nearly as bad as the narrative black whole of half act1 and 2 in BG3, but it’s side adventures are more engaging, even if somewhat disposable in the big picture narrative.

I don’t remember combat being though in PoEs outside the Master Below. That was the encounter that forced me to sit down and learn the systems.

I agree about the companions and romance limiting their range. People want pretty companions like Astarion and Shadowheart to romance, but if romance is off the table, a Durance becomes interesting. We have Jaheira and Minsc as great examples in BG3, but no one as unique as Durance. It would have been better, if romances weren't the forefront of BG3 companions. We have topics over topics discussing AA kissing animation or Shadowheart liking Halsin, but very little discussions about the personality or character of them or others.

Personally, I don't think the problem lies in romancable comanions themselves, or that romancable companions can't be interesting. It is just that if every RPG game makes every companion romancable, that greatly limits a potential range of your companions. While I understand that characters like Wynne or Stren don't generate as much "engagement" as shaggable cast of Dragon Age, I do think they are an important part of the puzzle.

Though Varric is widely considered one of the most beloved and popular companions in all of DA and he isn't romanceable.
And I don't mean, no romances at all. The characters in BG3 are very interesting, it just seems, people engage differntly with them. Sten is a great character, Wynne too. But people are focused on Morrigan and Alistair. I like a mixture out of both.

The issue isn't in every companion being romancable. It's the focus on "Romance = Sex".

Thus, every companion being romancable, means every companion must be sexy so you can have a hot sex scene because that's all that most games make their romance system about. Get approval receive sex.

Romance isn't entirely about sex. But that's as deep as any game really goes.

It's somewhat refreshing in Rogue Trader where you have a character like Yrliet whom finds you (And humans in general) utterly repulsive. Yet you can have a romance with her, one that exists based off a spiritual connection. 2 kindred souls coming together to find solace with each other. It's not about sex, but about having a deep connection.

A game can have a diverse cast AND have everyone romancable, if romances aren't all just the same old shallow sex focused systems.

I totally agree about that. As I said, seeing a lot of the discussions in this forum lately about certain kisses made me think. Is that really all, people want from a RPG this days? The perfect pixel sex?
I think the diversity of the BG 3 cast suffered a lot from them having to be 'bangable'. I guess, it was thought, that gnomes, halflings, dragonborns etc. don't fall under that category,so no Helia the halfling werewolf bard, but a buff elf, whose whole thing is sex in act 3. I exaggerate of course, but not that much I guess.
I would have liked a bit more diversity in cast and handling romance and friendship.

I believe another significant reason romance received such a strong focus in the community is that the game's main plot isn't particularly compelling. Some of the writing in Act 3 lacks coherence, and the Emperor's character and his final decision are quite underwhelming. Additionally, Orin and Gortash are relatively weak as nearly final villains, especially when compared to Ketheric. Finishing Act 2 and completing the quest of your romantic companion can feel like a satisfying endpoint, without necessarily having to finish the entire game.

Larian also intentionally emphasizes the romance element of the game.

Regarding all of this, I think bringing up Dragon Age is quite apt. Ignoring the fact that the upcoming game now has a romanceable dwarven companion AND a romanceable companion who has to be around 60 and looks it, showing that devs can be brave about who they present as romances (though I don't think romanceable dwarves are a brave thing) there's more that can be gleaned from how the two games handle romances and how the audiences react to them.

If you look at Dragon Age discussion, yes romance is a big part of it. But for as horny as we fans are, if you look even a little deeper you see that in fan spaces things get a lot more complex. We talk more about character motivations and philosophies, why they are the way they are. Stuff I don't think would be worth getting into if you don't already know who I'm talking about. But for example, much digital ink has been spilled over Vivienne and her opinions about the Circle of magi, or Iron Bull and his loyalties and character arc. We get a lot of discussion about the nuance of certain conflicts within the setting, story beats within each game, discussion of the history of the setting and it's implications, mysteries within it, and the lore. So much about the lore and how things may work, and theorising. Lots and lots of theorizing. Meanwhile I dipped into the BG3 subreddit and there's hardly anything as substantial. And here on the forums the most active threads are about kissing animations. Though in fairness those are propelled by a handful of very active posters. But the most frequent discussions after those are more or less about fixing things the game got wrong or didn't live up to.

I think there's a couple reasons for this discrepancy between the games. One is, in all fairness, that DA:Ve is a proper sequel in a series that's been handled by the same team since the start, so there's been active planting and payoff going on there that BG3 doesn't have. People also have sequels to look forward to, and the setting also exists primarily beyond the game so they don't have full control over it to develop it and plant cool ideas. But even there, there's another layer. I really don't think Larian cared about the setting, and I feel that that shows in how everything is presented. The environment clearly got a lot of love, but the broader setting feels like it's kept at arm's length. They don't care to make the areas work together and feel cohesive. I'm playing BG1 and just finished the main campaign, I'm in the middle of siege of dragonspear now. And so far, the setting feels rich and invested in. The focus is clear but it still feels like there's a larger world that I'm part of. Sarevok's plan and the plan of the chosen are narratively kind of similar, both centre on using Baldur's Gate as the fulcrum for a plan at the scale of divinity. But where Sarevok's plan has a clear scope that makes sense, the scope for the chosen's plan simultaneously is focused only on Baldur's gate yet somehow will impact gods that hold dominion around the world. Going back to dragon age, the setting always feels integral to every game. The history of places often ties into plots going on there, or if not then we still get the history and it feels like part of somethign bigger. That's rarely the case in BG3.

And this brings us to what I feel is the main cause for the way romance gets focused on in each game. I think that BG3 is, with the exception of its character writing, very weak in its writing. And even then that writing strength is distributed unevenly. Karlach's writing? Brilliant. Her quest? Stumble upon a few pieces of ore and then fight a boss you probably were going to fight anyway. The main quest is held together with duct tape and string, with a setting that feels distant and hard to connect with if you don't already know it from other media. Meanwhile say what you will about Dragon age, but the stories have always been strong and the setting is rock solid and interesting in and of itself, with a level of love and care clearly put into crafting it. So yeah, when it comes to BG3, the best thing anyone has to latch onto are the characters and by extension, the romances. Whereas while characters have always been Bioware's strength, those characters still serve a story that is at the very least functional and pretty good on its own.

I guess I just prefer soundtracks from games like WOTR, RT, Cyberpunk or DAO; PoE is just tooooo quiet by comparison.

Otherwise, yeah Act 2 is abit thin. Sidequests using the "more than meets the eye" approach keeps things interesting atleast, although the only thing thats managed to perk my interests is when I managed to make Durance crack; But I've played through most of PoE 2.
Atleast I've hit Lvl 7 so I can see what White March is like. Edit: Not starting off great tbh.

For combat, I think my main issue is that there is no easy way to tell how much stronger mob packs or certain areas are compared to you unlike PoE 2 or being able to view their level or stats.
This kinda feeds into that pacing issue, similar to DOS/DOS2 where one path goes to equal level mobs while the other leads to far higher ones where you hit that wall and have to go back.

On the other hand, I find that I need to engage more with it's systems and think more tactically, both of which I never really needed to do in Pathfinder (Baring Uber bosses and on Daring difficulty).
Also, paralysis/stun inducing enemies shudder

Thankfully, PoE 2 seems to have improved on it so much that I think it's the best RTWP combat system.


Seems to be, I guess thats why Sawyer feels like he's out of touch with modern RPG fans. Meanwhile, you've got the BG3 and Dragon Age subreddits (not to mention these forums) just fawning over these new characters, and then you even have games like Warframe adding in romances, just because they can (and because BG3 showed the way) and where you will be rewarded with a kiss.

If you didn't read the PCGamer article, they dragged up a quote from him in 2006:

I'm not sure if it's "All" people want from an RPG. But rather, some additional thing for an RPG.

From the moment the first character was well written, there have been people who want to connect to these characters. As is human nature.

But overall, video games have rarely done much in terms of enabling connections to characters. Hence why we're still stuck on essentially the system that DA:O popularized 15 years ago. With the only real evolution being... Now we have nudity!

With the complete lack of socialization development in the industry, people are left to salivate over what little there is. So BG3 with it's kissing options and sex scenes are very popular because it's so "New and different" to the past decade of fade to blacks (Or cringy dryhumping)

It's something that's kind of odd about the whole RPG genre... There's so much focus on things like stats and levels and experience and skills and all this other stuff that's entirely irrelevant to actual playing a role. With very little focus on what actually defines a character, which is how they interact with others. Dialogue options and actions impacting a players relationships with other characters is literally the core of role playing. Your character is not defined by their stat block, they're defined by how they act.

Yet it never really gets much of a look, either because they don't care to or because they intentionally cripple these aspects to pander to people who like "Blank Slate" characters that can't ever interact with the world or its characters because that would ruin their ability to pretend they're actually involved in their personal headcanon.

Perhaps somewhere down the line, a studio will produce a game worthy of the title of RPG. That will push the envelope in regards to player interactivity and how it affects characters within the game. But until then, we'll be stuck with people gushing over "OMG kisses" and "OMG DnD is the bestest ever system ever made!" and other such trivialities.

I totally agree with that statement.

@taril, you bring up such an excellent point. Developers have played around so much with systems and stats and points, trying so many variations of how you level up and develop skills and in some casesd how you do things out of combat but fundamentally the way rpgs handle social interactions haven't changed since BG1. You pick a dialogue option from a list, maybe some stat or another will influence it, maybe another option you picked from a box of options earlier will impact it, and that's it. It's very rare to have a game really experiment with the social aspect of things. At best they expand what's been there before, which is great as well, but I feel like social interaction in rpgs aren't really looked at as gameplay the same way combat is.

Also I just want to say that I think it's good that romance is in games and that people enjoy it and get excited about it. There's a frsutrating trend I find with people looking down on romance like it's inerior or inherently low brow, when it's really not. People like romance in their media. Just think about all the books and movies and tv shows that feature romance subplots. They aren't, or at least don't have to be, some cancer that takes away from the rest of the game. There can be good romance systems in games, bad romance systems, but that's down to execution, just like everything else. If a game with a robust romance system is bad, the romance system isn't why it's bad. The characters and romances are the best part of this game and personally I think if Larian hadn't focused on romances, then we'd have basically the same game, with maybe a few less bugs, a very slightly stronger story, but still overall not meaningfully better than what we have now. And people mocking games with strong romances for being "glorified dating simulators" just make me roll my eyes because that shouldn't be an insult. There are damn good dating simulators out there, some with great, engaging stories and ideas. I resent the idea of insulting a game by calling it a different genre that has its own fanbase that loves them just as much as we love rpgs. And on that note, if someone plays a game and the romances are their favorite part, that's fine. The romances are part of the game, they SHOULD be someone's favorite part. And them asking for the romances to be better or for more in following games isn't wrong of them. They're free to ask for what they want, same as every other fan.

Just think about how many of Pathfinders companions would have not been possible with Larians apparent requirements for "romance"ability and sexyness. Or only as secondary companion.