Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback My thoughts as d&d player/dm and BG1-2 fan

I also prefer smaller areas like in BG1 and BG2 and travel between them on a map that gives a nice scale to the geography.

And let me be clear, the area design in BG3 is absolutely stunning visually. But the Goblin Camp, Blighted Village, Druid Grove and even the Putrid Bog have no distance between them at all. The magical rune teleportation system makes even less sense because of this.

Larian are cutting too many corners where immersion is concerned. Do they fully understand this? The convenient yet illogical distances and gamey gameplay eat at the immersion of Faerun. Everything seems to be about the gameplay only, which won't cut it in an adult RPG.

Yep, it's absurd that the goblin camp is like a 5-minute walk from the grove. And they don't know where the grove is, WAT?

They know where it is because there are goblins the first time you come to the grove. They found it, but it looks like Minthara's scout are even more stupid as they should be.

We have:
A group of goblins, which chased those mercs and came to the grove that way. They didn't know where exactly they are going and since we killed them they couldn't tell anyone.
A group of goblin scouts that's totally stuck in the tunnel under the grove. Because of traps and our possible involvement. If I'm not mistaken the goblin which talks to Minthara even refers to some scouts that did not return.
If we check the map on her table we can see that she had an idea about the grove position, she had problems with pinpointing the entrance.
And here we probably coming to more level-design, than narration itself problem: the entrance should be hidden better. Put some trees, bushes, maybe an illusion and that's it.

Yes, maybe the goblins were lost after the chase. There are at least 2 different paths between the grove and the blighted villages.
These goblins at the grove were killed because they stupidly attacked.
Door, archers, wall,... That's something they saw and a few trees or bushes wouldn't change that... They weren't ambushed and they would have died even if we weren't here.

It would have been more consistent if they (or a few of them) flee to inform their leaders and if someone at the door asked us to chase them.

We could have found them resting somewhere between these 2 locations... and here we could have had the choice to kill them to first meet the druids/refugees or to hear them telling us something about "the true souls" and meet the goblins leader and minthara.

The sense of scale in traveling around is pretty abstracted for sure. It certainly would be nice if important places were farther apart, with more traveling involved. The journey is part of the thing that makes it an adventure.

On the other hand, Larian's games are packed full of surprises and hidden stuff. I find myself slowing way, way down when exploring new areas, because I know there are probably hidden areas, mysteries to be solved, things to find, just about everywhere.

It's a matter of balance and perspective, I guess, and what sorts of games a person is used to playing. Larian has it's own, unique "speed" of exploration if one is to get the most out of the game.

And it's a slow, careful crawl.