Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback BG3 and the Forgotten Realms

Recently i read a steam review saying the game was good but that it dosent feel like the forgotten realms so they cant recommend this game.
personally i feel Larian have done a great job portraying the forgotten realms especially for just ACT1, some examples:

Finding the Zhentarim Hideout was pretty cool
Thayan Cellar was cool especially the Szass Tam reference
Seluns temple
Druid grove and Silvanus reference
all the little lore books you find everywhere
Some conversations - Shadowheart talking about shar and selune, goblin who was imprisoned for following the old goblin god rather than the absolute
And the Underdark - coolest place ever

What about you guys, do you feel your in the forgotten realms? if not what would you add?

Druid outside the forest next to a beach and next to a village.
Underdark in which surfaces lvl 3 characters don't die.
Dipping a non magical sword into non magical fire to create a magical fire sword.
Jumping everytime as a part of combats.
OP random goblins
Small map with many different locations (no exploration)
...

I guess it's a matter of opinion, but references doesn't mean consistency and immersion to me.
According to me BG3 offer.a custom map with FR references, not a journey in the FR.

What is the goal of the people who don't like the game that continue to post on here? There are some that I see who are unhappy with it but still provide constructive feedback to try and help the game grow to satisfy their wants. Then there are others who just want to say negative things and talk about how bad everything is.

Do you think you are going to convince people who like the game to stop liking it? Much like the ones who herald the game, they will apparently never get you to enjoy what has been provided. Continuing to linger is simply toxic and unproductive.

As far to the OP, I am not overly researched in old forgotten realms references. My first interaction was pools of radiance gold box edition. It is hard to translate those games to this one's world. I also played NWN, but if anything it comes across like a generic fantasy setting.

What I do like is references to historical events like the druids and the harpers, or the camp fire at the top of the mountain outside the druid grove that has a harper cache in it.

I only recently started playing bg1 and I noticed a fan favorite is minsc and his hamster. Only then did I get the reference to the space hamster in the book of creatures found in the druid grove. Honestly I feel minsc and boo are over rated and too slapstick for me, but I know a lot of people love them. That and the one character that randomly screams "stop touching me" in a high pitched annoying voice....makes me want to mute the game.

Feels like FR to me - it’s D&D which pretty much makes it that way - a lot of effort has gone into It & as you say we are only at the start of a long journey.

The devs packed in a LOT of Forgotten Realms into Act 1. We've got goblins, gnolls, hags, mind flayers, Githyanki, drow, myconids, warp spiders, and so much more. I get a strong vibe that the developers were incredibly excited to be working in the Forgotten Realms and wanted to include as much of it as they could into their game.

I picked up a bone enchanted with the power of the demon Yeenoghu that gave me regenerative powers every time I struck someone but filled me with bloodlust that built up whenever I failed to hit something.

If that isn't the most Forgotten Realms thing then I don't know what is.

I have liked the stuff so far. Criticism that boils down to "well, this isn't how I think it should be" or "this isn't my idea of the concept/property" are always a bit amusing in the way its kind of purist/gatekeepy and arbiter of validity by self assignment. like Maximuus says in this thread, its opinion.

Seems like missed quite a few interesting things, i definitely agree this is very FR

It's not a "bone" and to my knowledge it's the only +2 weapon in the game thus far.

As for the OT... In the last 25 years I've DMed D&D (WHFRP, VtM, Ars Magica, and Pathfinder 1st and 2nd ed too btw). Since the original release I've been a huge fan of the Baldur's Gate series. Personally I think BG3 does a decent job at capturing the Sword Coast essence (not the Forgotten Realms... what you can experience in the Moonsea or down in Halruaa is pretty different from what you can experience when adventuring in the wilderness between Beregost and Nashkell...).

The cooks packed in a LOT off Birthday Cake ingredients into this. We've got flour, eggs, sugar, milk, butter, vanilla extract, baking soda, baking powder, icing, and so much more. I get a strong vibe that the developers were incredibly excited to be working on a Birthday Cake and wanted to include as much of as they could in their recipe.


If this isn't a Birthday Cake I don't know what is.





Moral: Results do not simply lie with the ingredients but rather the manner in which they are combined.

I’ve many complaints about battle system in the game. Not looking like forgotten realms should look is not one of them.

Personally run into alot of dnd things that me smile. Like places that just have enough connection to the FR that they fit right in, yet also could stand on their own legs if the franchise wasent connected

Temple where you find Shadowheart, the abandoned village with necromancers lab, the goblin stronghold etc. All really well done areas imo.

This post pretty well encapsulates why some people are just never going to be happy with Baldur's Gate 3, so thanks for posting it.

The Forgotten Realms are a setting explicitly designed to accommodate what amounts to fanfiction. Every time you pick up a book or play a DnD game you're getting an ever so slightly different mixture of elements from the world based on the writer/DMs preferences and what sort of story they want to tell with it.

So by saying "It still isn't Forgotten Realms because the elements of the world were used didn't adhere strictly to my personal interpretation" is nothing but gatekeeping. It isn't a valid argument.

In fact, arguing that someone else's interpretation of Forgotten Realms is wrong goes against the very spirit of the IP.

Really ? Interpretation ?

I didn't remember that everything was so close when I read books in the FR. Usually travelling means something and take time.

It's not only about the chosen elements, it's also about the size of the map and the integration of those elements... the time you need to travel from a place to another, the fact that goblins can't find the grove even if you litteraly walk for 3min between these 2 locations.

The structure of the map has many consequences on immersion and that's not the only strange things...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I never read anywhere that druids were living on the shore completely oustide of forests. Nor had I ever read than weak characters could survive in the underdark and fight against many great danger there.
Nor that goblins had so many spellcasters in their ranks, nor that everyone has 20L of blood in their body, nor that dipping your common sword in common fire create a magical fire sword.
Did you ?

Maybe you have a mixture when you play D&D tabletop, I don't know because I don't play TT but please... Don't tell me that it is the feeling you have while reading books or the lore of the FR. According to me, books and the lore of the FR are the FR. What you experience in your custom campaign and the interpretation of your DM is not the FR.

There are many references in the game and that's awesome, but that's still a custom campaign, not a journey and a travel across the FR. Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 were. BG3 is a cool game in a FR settings.

You may like it or not, I'm glad if you like it... But the inconsistency of the created world is a fact. The map is way too dense and even time/night/meteo doesn't exist in Larian's vision of the FR...

Just think about other games that use this kind of "open world" I.E The Witcher 3. Just keep every point of interrests in TW3's map but imagine a map 10 times smaller : that's what BG3's (and DoS's) maps are.

Anyway as I said I'm glad if many of you like it. That's also a fact...
But according to me this world is all but immersive. I'll enjoy the game even if it is designed to be a FR fastfood... But fastfood is definitely not what I prefer.

Yes, interpretation. Because your post amounts to telling me I am wrong to feel like I'm in the Forgotten Realms. You compared it to me seeing a cookie and thinking it's a cake

EDIT: My bad, his interpretation. I didn't realize you were a different user when I replied.




This is a gameplay issue. All games are scaled down to some degree in order to facilitate player travel. You can't literally cross Skyrim in the amount of time you can in-game but I don't see people complaining it isn't Elder Scrolls.




There's an entire domain in the Circle of the Land subclass for coastal druids who specialize in sea travel. Not all druids focus only on forests in the Forgotten Realms.




Going into the Underdark represents a sharp increase in difficulty in the game already, and 4th level is not weak in DnD. A 4th level character is already a well established local hero.

Also if I wanted to make a campaign in the Underdark for a low level party there is literally no rule against that.




Has your DM never thrown a goblin shaman or something at you? Goblins can absolutely take a level in Wizard. They can even be a PC race. Booyahg is their word for magic by the way, which is why the goblin casters have it in their title. It is actually a good example of Larian's attention to detail.




Forgotten Realms is a world made for DnD first. The books are extra source material.

Also this is yet again you insisting my view of the setting is wrong and yours is right. Gatekeeping.




They didn't directly adapt one of the pre-written DnD campaigns from the books so yes, this is a custom campaign. So were BG1 and BG2 by the way.




The thing is, most of what you said here is wrong about the Forgotten Realms lore. So I am not very impressed by your supposed knowledge and ability to declare what is and is not Forgotten Realms.

A gameplay issue many games find tricks to deal with, or at least assume that forests, plains, fields and "empty" expanses exist.

A goblin shaman yes. Didn't you notice that there at least 1 goblin shaman everytime you encounter goblins ?

"Most of what I said" but you only react about druids and the underdark^^
I should have talked about the fast travel TP but I guess it's also something you wouldn't have answer too.
Anyway you focus on a very limited number of exemple so I guess we're done.

FR or not, many things are not consistent.
Glad you don't see them or don't care.

I couldn't let the brilliance of this analogy to go unacknowledged. Good on you, sir.

The parts I've played so far feel very forgotten realms.

Shadowheart is a cleric of an evil deity. This is very forgotten realms to just have a character casually be evil like that.

You are in a world filled with tons of old ruins from ancient magical civilizations who worshipped now dead gods. This is extremely forgotten realms.

You start the game in an Illithid planes-hopping ship that's in bad shape due to something happening to most of the illithids onboard, then you get chased across several planes by githyanki riding on chromatic dragons. This is very forgotten realms, also very high fantasy- if anything it makes the actual gameplay (as far as I've gone) feel like low fantasy in comparison.

All of the deities and locations mentioned in the game are Forgotten realms. This honestly should be enough to make it feel like forgotten realms, but I can see how the fact that you're kind of in a small map could detract from this. The scope does seem a bit too zoomed in, but remember early access is just the first leg of the game.

Its a very different game from BG1 and 2, Icewind Dale, and Neverwinter Nights. It's combat movement and initiative systems do feel like DoS 2 and there's definitely some things that I think get overlooked in your average D&D game for balance reasons (fire, acid, and other surface effects I'm looking at you). Plus in the tabletop D&D flying, teleporting, and levitating really play a huge part in adding dimension to your battlefields and campaigns and it seems like this doesn't play well with the confines of an isomorphic 3rd person style game. Maybe this is why there's a disconnect from the feeling of forgotten realms that OP mentions?

The human who came up with the analogy can speak for himself but I didn't take it that way at all. He's saying the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Surely you've seen movie sequels that had every element but not the right chemistry, right?

Now the point isn't to ruin anyone's fun -- I'm having a blast. But to let devs need to know what needs to be changed. The game is fun but not quite BG and not quite FR yet -- but it can get there.

Part of the 'not FR' feeling comes from the lack of an overriding heroic narrative. So far we are on a self interest quest and we do good things in the hopes that our deaths may be prevented. I'm that in chapter 2 we get the chance to be heroes for the sake of being heroes. "Make way evil . . .

This is just one of those things that has to change for a game. Distance is not meant to be taken literally. It's just representative.

BG1 had big open, empty maps with lots of exploration. But it meant you just walked around for 10 minutes at a time without discovering much or even doing much fighting. Bioware was upfront about that being a mistake, and this was changed for the sequel. BG2 had packed maps where you only went a few steps to discover the next thing.

Books can gloss over distances. "They traveled for 2 days." And moments between the interesting stuff is filled with character moments and plot. In a video game distance is just filled with walking. That's boring.

At least we whine about the game, not about people.

And "whiners" are not haters, they are giving feedbacks so it can be a better in final product.

For me, this is a solid 8/10, and has potential to become 10/10 if only Larian listened more to these "whiners".