Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Deference to the Player Feels Unearned

I was about to defend the various team-mates as being very well-written characters whose personalities develop in interesting ways (such as Cassandra being secretly fangirly about Varric's trash novels) but yeah, there does seem to be a general lack of authority and objection to aimless meandering about and timewasting. Having said that, aimless meandering about and timewasting is My Favourite Gaming Mechanic On The Citadel™ so I would just get annoyed if they were endlessly snarky about it.


I like inane side-quests! I will defend Oblivion's The Potato Snatcher 'til my dying breath and all that; even Morrowind's "go next door and buy me a plate, beeyatch" that I invariably complain about. But Inquisition somehow got it really badly wrong. I love open worlds (even if it's only open-ish) and the Hinterlands is somewhere I just enjoined being, but it's all just really unmemorable somehow. And I can't see exactly why. Maybe it is that lack of focus. I felt Andromeda had the same problem: Mass Effect with more space to play around in should've been awesome. Okay, I know there are other problems with Andromeda, which I variously agree with or not, but that failure to realise what should've been a memorable open world in much the same way that Inquisition failed to do seems like it could be indicative of a more fundamental problem. Which could just be that Bioware Doesn't Do Open Worlds, I suppose.

In this case, it sorta becomes a weigh of the costs of doing so. Does it really build the story? I mean the time taken to script these is time not spent making something awesome like a falling through the sky and killing the big bad as he teleports through the planes etc, etc. Which comes full circle back to the trope angle Ash was talking about. Not that I don't disagree with you, but something has to give and take priority.

I assume that Act 1 is now basically done, barring cut scene fixing up etc, otherwise I don't think they would have been confident enough with it for Early Access? To be honest, this is the first time I've backed Larian, so I have no real idea about their workflow or policies etc.

My point being is that if Act 1 has been finalized to a high standard (say 90%+) then I don't think they will go about and redoing the character introductions. After all, it's not just scripting it, there's the actual writing and presumably voice work to be recorded as well. So it might just be snowball in Baator's chance of it happening.

I do think it would be an excellent sense of world building to have the companions realise that the MC is the best (Tiefling) for the job though.

Having characters with motives and behavior that make sense would definitely build the story for me. I 1000% would rather have some well-thought-out characters that I actually care about than a falling through the sky and killing the big bad as he teleports through the planes. Ask just about anyone who watched Game of Thrones whether they would rather have the well-written dialogue of Season 2 bringing out the genius of Peter Dinklage and Charles Dance, or something awesome like big-budget dragons of Season 8 knocking over entire cities with their super-mega-powerful CGI fire breath, at the expense of good storytelling.

If something has to give, let it be falling through the sky and killing the big bad as he teleports through the planes that gives, and not the possibility of being invested in the characters that gives.