Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback BG III: The party of frustrating and dysfunctional misfits

Now I agree there are many aspects that I definitely feel like the game is a sequel to DoS. However, in this regard I think a lot of the items people seem to point out are just engine/gameworld/interaction related stuff that have been directly carried over from DoS2 to speed up deployment. These are more surface details and don't really have anything to do with BG'ness, so to speak. Since we are quite a ways off from release I think there's not too much concern regarding a lot of these as I'm sure they are looking at the feedback very seriously. Many things like the combat balance (spells/hp values/surfaces) should be easy enough to adjust.

The harder part will be, is what I think I resonate most with, is the broken party system. Of all the things in the game this is what makes me think I'm playing DoS and it's definitely also the most frustrating. Here are my issues, in no particular order of severity (all need to be fixed).

• You find all, except one, of your companions straight off the bat and they are all also playable characters with backstories. When I was thinking about BG3, for some reason I remembered The Red Prince being in it. This sucks. I always thought it was cool to find new party members along the story. Even ones that you may not realize the first time you meet them. Also need mercs! What if I don't like any of the possible party members, but I need a cleric, so if I'm not playing one I need to take Cut-Myself-Emoheart. For a moment I thought Halsin was going to join the party, and I was really excited about it! Camp site advisor! He gets to hang out with Lazael and Astarion all day. I'm sure by A3 you find him swinging from one of the trees in camp.
• The way you meet them is also super lame. Like such that it makes me even question their competence. Lazael is caught in a cage, Shadowheart can't pick a lock (also clearly lying about killing all those brain thingies), Astarion... you can approach him head on, so that's all I gotta say about that one. Gale is just waiting inside the waypoint plane or whatever. The only companion that feels cool to meet is Wyll. Coincidentally he is also the best companion - good natured with a dark side that are both visible, already had a bit of history with the environment and the other inhabitants of the zone, is a defender and fighting instructor. All the other companions seem brain damaged and their predicaments of being cast out/sent on mission but need memory wiped type of thing suddenly makes sense in this context.
• Party members reactions in dialogue are incongruent with player choices in open-world environment and resting system. For example, Lazael is a massive jerk, she cares nothing except to ASAP get to the creche and fix this problem. There are many dialogue options where she judges the effort to be a waste of time. This fits her. However, if you are simply spending days and nights long resting running, combing the wilds every nook and cranny, etc., she says nothing. IMO the player should begin losing opinion after a certain amount of long rests or actions such as never talking to the NPC in the grove with the info, or if you are exploring and doing quests in a different direction from the creche. Otherwise her entire character is completely undermined and you are only in the party with her in dialogue. Like b*tch please, we just snaked all through the swamp, up and down cliffs, a whole bunch of other tangential 'time wasting' roaming, and you never had a SINGLE comment - or more importantly - any opinion shift of my PC! Every single playthrough I've had with her in my party I've thought that she should have left ages ago if she had any self respect. What a wimp, I knew she's super weak and can't hack it on her own. Powerful Gith Warrior my a**! Anyways, companions need more compelling and immersive reactions to the player's choices in the game besides dialogue. Also can those companions left at the camp NOT change opinion from dialogue choices? Which one of my 3 companions is that one that literally tells everything said in conversation over the day to those left at camp? Most of them don't even like or trust each other.
• Romancing before A1 even complete and also when it's available when, from my perspective, I've just been acting compassionately, not romantically. Is everyone in the party such an abused wretch that the first sentient being to treat them with compassion has them fall in love? Granted we had 122 nights together before we found Halsin, but mostly I was petting and playing fetch with Scratch. OK, some members are a bit more obvious than others. Nevertheless, it's just so quick that it feels more like Larian is a madam lining up her selection and asking which one you'd like to bang.
• Would be nice to be able to switch characters mid dialogue with options like: - Hey Wyll, why don't you take this one. - Zael, show this idiot what they're dealing with. This would be such a refreshing way to do party dialogue where the PC leader can at will include companions organically, instead of rolling checks simply based on highest party skill level, or when companion has a direct interest like quest based. This would be equally nice if a companion other than PC initiated dialogue and the companion could quickly defer to PC with something like: - Hey, PC, I think this person here wants to talk with you / You should talk to PC instead. This would drastically reduce the tedium of beginning dialogue with the "wrong" character and be forced to do the whole thing with that character, as if no one else exists.
  
• The other part is just the player management of the party, which is honestly so cumbersome. There need to be formations. One for normal exploring and one when combat starts, as it is super annoying to keep in mind/track when to switch around characters. The way the party is chained also leads to so many awkward motions, e.g., where a sudden U-turn will mean that the rest of your party will still run into the poison, or what have you, in order to keep the directional movement of the formation. Honestly I don't even understand why this "chaining" exists, just let us select the whole party - visually depicted as all portraits highlighted (also hotkey for that) - or just click or hotkey (should be able to hotkey pairs and such) one or more we want to move individually - also respectively highlighted. What we have now adds this pointless mechanic for no other reason than to add awkward mouse dragging and frustration. There needs to be customizable rule sets for how each party member acts (ala PoE1+2).
• In combat turn orders must be much clearer and initiative rolls should also be visible. Moreover initiative should be re-rolled after every round of turns! Pretty sucky that a high dex character can roll low and then be last for the entire duration of combat, especially in long ones. It would also make the longer battles a bit more interesting and dynamic instead of rhythmic and predictable. Party members that are on the same turn need to be highlighted together in portrait and also optionally with a visual marker, like a soft pulsating ring around their base. Additionally to showing initiative roll and turn order, the portraits need to be differentiated better. Right now everything is reddish-grey and party needs visually to pop out a lot more.
• I know party size is a major grief for many people at the moment. I'd like to see more as well, but then I think there should be at least another 4 other companions if the party size would be 6. Otherwise it would just seem, weird I suppose. Another issue is that with 6 characters the management issues I listed above would be heavily multiplied and may even make the game borderline unplayable within the current system. Other than that I whole heartedly agree with the core reasoning surrounding this limited party size

That's all I've got regarding party right now. I'm sure I'll find other things as I play. Overall I'm having a blast with the game. Despite palette similarities the game looks gorgeous and runs pretty well too! This definitely has the potential to be one of the greatest RPG and PC D&D games of all time. Back when I was still pointing out to my mom which game I wanted and seeing her roll her eyes at the cover arts/titles, one of those games checking both eye rolling criteria, she bought for me was Divine Divinity. 2002, damn it's been a while. Anyways I'm really confident that Larian can pull it off because over these two decades they have demonstrated their love for RPG.

Sometimes I read posts where I think the person thinks Larian is appropriating D&D and BG for their own, and I just really can't see them as a studio that would do something like that, rather than give the setting the flavor and justice that it deserves. We are all fans of D&D here so I'm 100% sure that they are aware as everyone else that this setting is something that belongs to all of us and as such I think they're the type of people that are 100% listening to all the feedback regarding the feel of the game.

Generally I definitely agree with you. Specifically about what the community's priorities should be when providing feedback about the game. I have seen many complaints about general gameplay that even if Larian will never address, it would be modded into the game sooner or later (and if you take a short look at the mods that already exist even now you'll see it's probably sooner).

I'm much more worried about story and characters right now as well. However, i don't necessarily agree with all your points. I do think companions who are possibly the main character are a problem, but based on the popularity of the feature I doubt it's about to change. The characters themselves are good, and I'm not sure introduction is as important as you make it to be.

Please no. I understand what you are going for but in practice this would make Lae'Zel a character I would consistently shoot on sight. The approval system needs an overhaul for sure, but it needs to be nuanced and to measure positive and negative approval separately like in Tyanny / F:NV, but to be made even more punishing.

I'm on the fence whether or not I should embarrass myself by writing a diatribe on the value of monogamy or to just chalk this one up to poorly implemented design. Not only are all the characters playersexual but they all make advances on you at the same time. In my first playthrough I could have had a gay orgy with Wyll, Astarion and Gale if the game had that option. These moments need to be spread out more across the Act or even removed entirely in exchange for scenes like the one with Shadowheart.

Oh yes, I heard that one too. So many women are totally fangirling over Halsin, meanwhile I'm sitting here with an eyebrow raised so high I think it should pierce a hole in the roof. I like Halsin, but not like THAT.



Yes, 100% I've been advocating the same changes whenever I could on these forums too. Imho, Larian should rewrite a lot of these characters and give them more depth, give the players a reason to really care, aside from 'oh, Shadowheart is cute, let's bang, mkay?'. I like the direction they're going with some of the characters, but the pacing is all wrong. Want us to have sexy time at the tiefling/gobbo party? Give us a good flirty time spread around act1, before the 'culmination' of the party so to speak.

Like snap, it's not even that hard - make these little cutscenes like the elusive stargazing scene (Astarion) or weave sharing scene (Gale) trigger organically, rather than having to jump through hoops to get these scenes to appear. I recently, on my 3rd playthrough, finally managed to trigger the entire chain of Gale's scenes, and holly molly, he's got a lot of content, makes me wonder why Astarion, Wyll and the ladies have none of that. I swear, if the finished game will still have all these messed up triggers for scenes, I'm gonna be real mad.

Overall, I quite agree with what OP has written, not everything, obviously. Especially the stuff about making Lae more of a... nasty person than she already is. Like legit, if that happened, I would keep her around only to trigger Astarion's stargazing scene, then it's off to the camp.

At the pace of romance I imagine they'll be dry humping the PC the moment they meet to stay level.



I can see why. I personally think that introducing and getting a possible companion in the way Halsin's quest unfolds is great. He is obviously someone important, knowledgable, and powerful. This is conveyed through the arc in the game world. When you find him you are seeking his help and when you wrap things up you like the character but there isn't any overt indication he wants to join you since he is independent and has responsibilities. If he were to join your party it would be extremely gratifying to have such a companion because you already know them in a sense. It was a situation where you both needed each other for help, unlike the other companions who would have surely perished in some embarrassing way without you (and also have the nerve to say that PC might not be useless). The background for those other companions/PC is in text and there is no in game impression to show you who they are. The worst offenders are stuck in embarassing situations, scold the PC, give a lot of 'tude. Are they supposed to be impressive/powerful independent characters? Because the impression you get of them is completely the opposite.


Yes, that's what I mean about his dark side. Also Lae and Shadow are not carefree, but their char desc, paint them as non-whiny headstrong do what I want types. This is another example of what I mean by conflicting character lore/desc and the version you experience in game.



Well, after the first playthrough I left her in the cage or killed her every time on subsequent playthroughs. Did two evil plays and still I think she is so annoying with pettiness and narcissism out of this world that no evil or good could put up with her. I understand why you would be against such a thing, and this is a personal peeve of mine. I just would love to see the consequences of who the companions are play out in game alongside the PC, in short I just want a much more reactive world to play in. Now my suggestion is not to put some insane restriction on time and actions and nor an immediate absolute reaction. Rather prodding and eventually bad reaction. TBH I just don't think it makes sense to even want to have good relation with a character, as you put it, you'd shoot on sight. That should be reflected in the game since taking a character like that out with you should mean you have to deal with that actual character and problems. Or do you take her along to those irrelevant side trails everywhere and when u do you turn to her, tell her u hate her guts and you've wanted to kill her since u met and blow a kiss and then continue?



Or you know, just could even consider delaying those to the later portion of the game where you have considerable investment in that companion? As it is right now, some of the characters go from wont-say-shit-even-if-you-tortured-me-at-a-blacksite attitude to spilling their inner most desires and secrets in about 10 conversations.

Oh hush! Think of the animal he could unleash!
I LOVED him as he's completely not what most of us were probably expecting under the "Archdruid" tag plus some of his correspondences in the library are pretty hillarious.

I actually kinda like our companions - even Lae'Zal while not my cup of tea is well written and consistent with what we know of the Gith.

I for one would have liked it if everyone organically joined the conversations that concerns them, without the need for PC making camp rounds, checking who else might have formed an opinion on something being discussed (and ofc they'll be discussing it solely with the PC)

Also (I hope this is because we don't have everything in the EA yet) the more we advance into the story the less input we get from companions, which is especially pronounced after the camp party.
And some banter + flirting wouldn't hurt either before "unleashing the animal" I agree.

No one has any thoughts on entering Underdark and attempting to take on Absoute's forces head on? Nothing about the Hag or Spider Queen and her implied disturbing backstory (from the journals)? Nothing from Gale on Arcane tower and it's contraptions?

What about any relationship development - I mean I'm in "exceptional" status with everyone but Lae'Zal and that doesn't unlock any additional dialogues?