Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback My Feedback and Suggestions

So I've put a bit of time in, about 24 hours, and so far I'm pretty impressed with everything I've seen and experienced. This game kinda feels like Divinity and Knights of the Old Republic had a baby and that baby grew up to be a DM. It's obviously a little rough around the edges, and I'm so sad I have to wait longer to experience the entirety of the campaign, but let's get to that feedback. These are just my first thoughts, largely focused on the cinematic experiences and dialogue, but a few other things thrown in the mix. I'll have more later as it comes together in my head.

Cinematics and Dialogue

I'm a little torn here. On the one hand, the cinematics are nice and add an interesting angle to a game that contains so much dialogue and interaction and truly gives this game its own identity in how conversations are presented. On the other hand, I really preferred the minimalist approach of D:OS2 that didn't rely on cinematics to tell an engaging story. The narration in D:OS2 was so fantastic, and so well articulated, that it was all I needed. Cinematics can take you out of it a bit and can be a bit jarring, as well as cumbersome when there isn't much the NPC has to say. So perhaps this is a great advancement for Baldur's Gate, but I do hope the future of Divinity isn't so focused on cinematics and stays true to its own style.

But this isn't meant to be D:OS3 feedback, so to focus on the cinematic storytelling. The first bit of feedback I have is related to multiplayer. I found it a bit jarring that when we're all watching a cinematic and I need to roll on something, I don't have the ability to delegate that roll to someone more capable. Since this is a party RPG, it kind of makes sense to not just utilize the person who initiates dialogue. Pathfinder did this well, and especially in a MP environment, it would feel quite a bit better to be able to choose who is doing a roll. It would also make dialogue feel a lot more interactive in the MP environment, instead of just being a spectator. I don't think we necessarily need to be able to change who is in control of a conversation, but where appropriate we should allow other party members to contribute to it. Expanding upon this, the first Divinity had an interesting mechanic that I wish Larian had stuck with: the ability to rock paper scissors when a decision is being made and there is a disagreement. Perhaps it took a bit too long at times, perhaps there are better ways to do it, but something that adds more interactivity between party members during meaningful decisions would be a lot of fun.

To add on to that, show dice rolls for spectators in MP. It's incredibly anti-climactic to just see a big pause and not even see the result. I don't think I even need to really explain this one.

For cinematics and dialogue in general, this is going to be a controversial one, but here we go. I get that right now, the main character does not have voice lines in most of the game because this is probably still a work in progress. I personally hate the voiced protagonist when it comes to custom characters because it takes away from the immersion of imagining who this character is. I actually love the goofy silent gestures that occur right now, I think if cleaned up a bit this would be absolutely perfect. It gives me hardcore KOTOR vibes and I love it. I know a decision has been made to have a voiced protagonist, but putting a little bit of extra time and work into creating voice-less scenes for those who would prefer that would go such a long way to keeping the experience immersive. I suspect this is a long shot, but I hope it's something that is considered. It's also a preference that I see differs wildly form person to person, so I think it would be worth it.

Now to get into spoilery territory.



Combat

First off, I'm really digging the new initiative system. Taking turns simultaneously is a great change, it makes comboing attacks a lot more possible and keeps combat a bit more fluid than before. In multiplayer, this is especially good. In single player, it does have some weirdness to it. For example, when portraits in the turn order cross multiple rows, it can be a bit easy to miss so if you hit spacebar and end your turn, you lose that turn. I have noticed sometimes if I hit spacebar, it'll take me to the party member that hasn't done anything with their turn yet. I suggest implementing something like this so you have to manually end each characters turn that shares the initiative with you.

In regards to combat speed, I have noticed that when it works smoothly, it definitely seems to provide a faster experience than Divinity. I get that optimization is likely the cause of enemy turns getting stuck or taking a long time so I won't get into that. What I will get into is how the size of some battles means your 4 party size is going to be spending a lot of time waiting regardless. I'm not sure if it's a technical limitation or something that's planned, but using the combined initiative turn orders for enemies would go a long way to speeding things up. I'm sure you've thought about this already, but figured I'd throw it out there. Also, Hotfix 2 seemed to address most of my combat lag issues, so I can tell this has been a focus of your team and I appreciate the work you've so quickly put into addressing those issues.

DnD 5e - Rules and Implementation

I'll start off by saying I don't know 5e very well, I know 2nd and 3rd a lot better. So I'm not completely sure what is right and what isn't in terms of the rules and mechanics. But I feel like it's very watered down right now, the tooltips don't explain much, and overall the system feels quite lackluster in comparison. That might just be 5e, it might be an incomplete implementation of 5e that can be explained by early access, or it could be Larians interpretation of 5e. I'm not sure. I do dig things from a gameplay perspective like the jumps and shoves being available to everyone (it kind of makes sense that everyone can shove, since you know... we have arms) but I also understand the whole identity aspect of it and how it detracts from certain classes to give it to everyone. I'm not sure what the solutions are here, and my own lack of experience with 5e doesn't help, but I am a little underwhelmed by several things I've come across. I'll likely go more in-depth with this once I've had more time with it.

Misc.


-There is no cleanup of corpses at camp, which leads to what appears to be some uncomfortable sleeping



-Character creation should show all spells/feats (when they're added)/whatever you get for each level as you level up in the creation screen. Perhaps this is planned and it's too early, just a thought

-Exporting a character from the character creation screen would be fantastic, especially as these options for classes, races, etc. grow. I know I'll be playing many campaigns with friends, so having the ability to quickly import would be pretty handy. Not a gamebreaker of course, but perhaps a nice to have.

-Resting. I know a lot of feedback has been given in this regard, and I agree with it to some extent. I understand that this has likely been an internal discussion and I think I even remember reading about it in the AMA that there are intentions to restrict this to some degree and I totally agree on that. I'm not sure what the solution is since you wouldn't want to create a scenario where a player has to restart their game because they messed up their rests, and perhaps the auto/quick saves have filled up so you can't just go back a save or two. I'm not sure what the solution is, but perhaps simply not allowing long rests if you're inside a location would make sense? It would result in minimal punishment but still dissuade someone from walking all the way outside (if they even can). It wouldn't change anything for the outside encounters, but I can't actually think of a solution that wouldn't have potentially disastrous consequences. Then again I'm not a brilliant Larian game designer so perhaps you guys have something in mind.