Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Lack of Forgotten Realms Ambiance / Depth

As the game mechanics are so much different from it's predecessors, to justify the name you really have to embrace the setting. And not only of BG1, but mostly BG2, which was the last entry and surely more popular. So just a few hints here and there surely would not cut the mustard. So locations, characters, items, stories, quests, lore etc. need to be revisited and retold. Otherwise you can not really call it BG3, if there is little continuation or connection to the previous stories. There is also SoD now, I suppose, although I do not know if any of this is canon.

Right now I feel like a random decent RPG when playing the game. I would put mostly down to the first act, although I have to say, with apparently only three acts and these huge maps, I do not know if we will see a whole lot of things that would remind the players of the places they visited 20 years ago.

I regret they chose to name this game "Baldurs Gate III", it gives an impression that it is a sequel to BG1 and BG2. It is not really that. When I saw the announcement I thought "Oh, Cool. They are doing another D&D game in the Baldurs Gate area." and not "Wow my Bhaalspawn is coming back." I hate that they give these games 1 and 2, etc. It should have been called: Dungeons and Dragons: Forgotten Realms - Rise of the Illithid or something.

Does the game feel like it is in the Forgotten Realms? To me, yeah so far so good. Does it look Realms like? Underdark was awesome. IS the area we crash in well described? Not that I can find. From what I know we are somewhere along the north side of the Chionthar between Elturel and Baldurs Gate. Map shows it being green, hills and plains looking with some scattered vertical relief. Does the starting area look like that? Yeah pretty much. So it looks like forgotten realms. What about the gear we have found, does that resemble artwork for the realms? Pretty much and swords look like swords and not WOW huge things, so that is cool.

Is there lore for the area/setting to be found? Yes. I have several books that talk about gods, etc. all set within the forgotten realms. The crypt we go into at the beginning was a church of Jergal. So the lore is there, and it looks like the realms. As we are in the first act, levels 1-4, have we met any famous people yet? I met Volo so far.

So that leaves us with what is it about BG1 and BG2 that are absolutely VITAL to making a game feel like the realms? What do you HAVE to put in your tabletop sessions to make sure your players know they are in the Realms? Because when I have read the sourcebooks there is little to no mention of them. (memory not that good, I do not remember any mention, but could be some). No do not get me wrong, those games are awesome. They got me into playing computer games. I enjoyed BG2 more than BG1, but loved both. Irenicus was an awesome villain. I did not care for IWD as there was no party banter and the voices in my head refused to play along and entertain me with ad lib banter. Neverwinter Nights was awesome, I spent untold hours playing both the OCs and Persistant worlds, mostly hard core rule servers. NWN2 is also a favorite game of mine, along with all of its expansions. BUT to say that I would HAVE to put stuff from ANY of those games into a Tabletop game to make it feel like the realms is ludicrous. So why then does a new game have to?

Now for the setting of this game. I believe it is somewhere around 1492ish. Baldurs Gate 1 & 2 took place over 130 years ago. Any human involved is gone, in 130 years much of what happened would be totally unreliable information, passed on from those who knew over and over until it has changed almost beyond what it was. Some could say the Bhaalspawn was a demon sent from beyond to punish the unfaithful, appearing on High Harvest to take bad children to the underworld. Others may say how the Bhaalspawn came to deliver the faithful from the corrupt Cyric, etc. It has become myth by now.

Unpopular opinion incoming, but nothing. BG/2 did a fairly decent job of wrapping up their stories, and what wasn't was covered elsewhere in the timeline. At this point, 100 years later, and given we're not actually in Baldur's Gate, or Athkatla at the time, there's not much that could tie it directly to either one. We're not playing the same character, for obvious reasons, nor are we supplementing that with making one of the surviving NPCs from those games the protagonist here, so that level of attachment isn't there either. What we don't know is "Who's on the table for later". I mean, I met Minsc and Boo in the Neverwinter MMO. But even with their addition, Neverwinter looked a whole lot different than it did in NWN. Then there's those games, which I'm not sure where they fell in the timeline, not to mention the console games between then and now. So a whole lot has changed over that century.

In the end, I'm left with what lore we do get, which isn't a trivial amount, considering we're barely scratching the surface of the game, and the overall environments. I'm not disappointed. What trepidations I do have will be addressed after release, and I get a chance to play the entire game, instead of basing my opinion on it's overall feel on a third of it.

It's post Descent to Avernus which was started in 1494 according to FR wiki.

+1 to robertthebard. BG1 never actually set foot in Baldur's Gate until WELL into the game. BG2's main connection to Baldur's Gate was a continuation of the characters story from BG1, not a connection to Baldur's Gate itself. BG3 is a tale involving an entire NEW protagonist and set of characters, that we know will at some point have us set foot in Baldur's Gate.

I have no problem seeing this as carrying on the stories, tales and lore of Baldur's Gate and it's region. Even with just a partial, alpha test environment, the game presents us with a ton of lore derived from the Forgotten Realms, the Sword Coast and Baldur's Gate. The fact that some of the events we are presented with do not jibe with past lore is the entire point of the tale. If Illithids and Zhents and Shar and the other potential foes were merely repeating past plots, schemes and behaviors, what would be the point? A tale calls for some form of growth, whether in the protagonist, their companions, their enemies, the cultures or all of the above. Here, some odd things are happening. Tadpoles, Illithids etc. are NOT acting as they have in the past, and thereby hangs the tale. And as we have only been provided a taste of that tale, I don't see how anyone can complaint at this point that the plot isn't D&D, or FR or BG - but is DoS; or is sub-standard or incorrect FR.

If folks judged Star Trek based solely on the pilot episode, we might not have 50+ years of TV, books, movies, comics and so on spread before us. And if you don't care for Star Trek, feel free to substitute with any such comparable cultural phenomenon.

I'm not sure people who are talking here think this, or if it's just my impression.
But

I get a feeling many of you think Forgotten Realms is a setting unique to the Baldur's Gate series? You do know Neverwinter Nights, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter etc.

Forgotten Realms is the biggest and one of the oldest DnD official campaign settings, which is why Baldur's Gate was set in that realm.

It's also a setting that's progressed a lot since BG1 and BG2 came out.

I get the original post was talking about what he liked from the original games and equate that to the Forgotten Realms, but it's more about "how a story is told" not "how stories should be told in the Forgotten Realms". To me that's more about personal preference than what "Forgotten Realms is all about"

Heck so far we are introduced to something going on between Shar and Selune. We have met Druids worshiping Silvanus, who has taken in refugees from Eltured the City that got pulled into Avernus. We are also being pulled into a plot where Mind Flayer tadpoles no longer work as expected.

Only argument I have heard, that I personally don't really agree with, is that we are experiencing too much "not for lvl 1 characters" things in the opening sequence. But honestly, this isn't too far from any other "you are trapped in a dungeon and need to escape" style opening. It's a story telling device setting up the plot.

As for the "deeper stuff", I think we have only scratched the surface. I really recommend joining the Absolute if you want more of a taste of things to come I think. To me this feels like Forgotten Realms.

Yeah you are not wrong. It is set in the Forgotten Realms, like many other games before. Still Neverwinter Nights and Icewind Dale did make some nods here and there to the other games set in the series, but they played in different times and/or regions, hence the different name according to their setting.

It is also safe to assume that many players of BG1 and 2 have never played or read anything else in this setting, I sure never did. It was just an RPG to me at that time so that is all that I know of the setting and the lore. Therefore I associate the city of Baldur's Gate and the name directly with the story that unfolded in these games, this includes locations, characters, items etc.. So now we have a game that is distinctly and deliberately called Baldur's Gate 3. So I am expecting not a game that shares the same setting like Neverwinter Nights, or the gameplay like Icewind Dale, or the spiritual successor like PoE, but a real successor to the games. Now I do not need a continuation of the story, as the arc seemed finished, but a game that is clearly defined by the events of the story and the BG1+2 game itself. At this moment in time there is nothing really. It is just a Forgotten Realms RPG.
I am assuming there will be more things that are added, I just do not think it is enough to put a town (Baldur's Gate) in and a character (Minsc), to justify the Baldur's Gate 3 name.

I disagree with all of it. Funny how different folk are, right?

Very nice rebuttal I agree with you.

It's entirely possible that we get a lot. It's also entirely possible that we don't get much at all. Given that the story arc for 1 and 2 has been neatly wrapped up, we could spend this entire game in the Shadowfell, and keep getting askance references, and I'd be fine with the name. All of the Dragon Age games have been centered around different parts of Thedas, with a different protagonist, and yet, they are all Dragon Age games. This may seem like an apples/oranges comparison, I thought so myself as I was typing it, but the parallel is that we are running in a game, in a realm that has a history that predates anything we've actually played in it, the same for Thedas, and we're plopped in at a, and I'm going to say random here for lack of a better term, random point in the timeline.

For Thedas we started in the 5th blight, but the game has a history that stretches out well before that, and here, we started with the Bhaalspawn saga, and moved forward in time. The only issue I have with the position of "some people may not have played anything but BG and BG 2" is that that doesn't nullify everything else that has happened in the FR in the interim. We may well end up with players that have never played either one of them. Canon novels, games and table top modules have happened between then and where we are now in the timeline. There's also the "more things will be added", and I'd like to add "where does the rest of the game take place?" to the mix. Along with that, who, as NPCs, play a prominent role in the rest of the story beyond what we're playing with here? The "where" may not even be as important as the "who". Again with my parallel to the Dragon Age series, where there is a common thread throughout that ties them all together, aside from just the setting. Where we're at right now doesn't actually lend itself to giving too much of that away, and it's a safe bet that that's why we are where we are.

So before I start thinking "this isn't a BG game", I'm going to play the rest of the game first. The bard in me says I don't want to judge the game based on what amounts to a really long teaser trailer. The part of me that sat in the theater and literally cried when Peter Jackson revealed Rivendell for the first time in Fellowship believes that there is plenty of time to tie this game to it's name. It also secretly hopes that I don't have to eat these words later, because that's not outside the world of possibility. However, given how much of the game we don't have, and have no real clues about, I'm willing to sit back and say "let's see where it goes before we throw it under the bus".

Ehh, I agree with those of you who say it's too early to judge the game, especially that we haven't got access to the entirety of act 1 (we can't explore the mountain pass where the gith creche is located and it's supposed to be one of 3 ways to reach the Moonrise Towers, so far we only got the Underdark as 1/3 ways to reach those damn towers). And it does feel like a FR game for sure, but it doesn't feel like a BG game tho.

In BG1, right out of the Candlekeep you meet Sarevok - your adversary, THE antagonist of the game, in BG2 you are awakened by Irenicus, THE main antagonist of that game, and in both these games you set out to explore what the hell is going on, why you are the one targeted and it all always leads to the main showdown between you and Sarevok/Irenicus. Some would say - your hatred/curiosity of Sarevok/Irenicus drive the main plot forward... there is nothing like that in BG3, you don't know how you were captured, you don't know why were you captured (was it just bad luck or is 'the Absolute' handpicking 'her' victims?), all you know is that mind flayers are responsible, later we discover they are working with something that calls itself ''the Absolute''. So there is some mystery about the plot, but we don't have this one figurehead to blame and hate. No, we have a whole bunch of them. Mind flayers, everyone working with them, the 'Absolute' - whatever that being even is.

And well, the main jarring thing to me is that at lvl 1 you fight intellect devourers, if I remember correctly, they aren't something you'd throw on lvl 1 adventurers in a classic D&D setting, unless you want people to die... In NWN1 just one of them messed up the entire district of the city, and you get to explore that problem in NWN1 around lvl 3-6. Not a goddamned lvl 1 character vs a bunch of intellect devourers. The game's pacing is a little bit weird if you ask me. And hopefully it will get addressed.

Edit: Fixed a bunch of typos/grammar errors.

The devourers in the wreckage can wreck you. Ironically, they wrecked the dev that was playing in one of the streams before EA too. If the one we can "recruit" is any indication, however, they are low CR for the type. Ideally, these probably wouldn't be out and about, but since the ship crashed, they're on their own far sooner than they might be otherwise.

Yes, I remember that, but also in our current version of the game some of the devourers start at like half hp, some at 75%ish, so they are weakened, sure, I remember that the devourers on that stream had full hp, but still. I find the idea ridiculous from the lore perspective. Also, I dunno about you guys, but these devourers didn't cause me much trouble, even when I went solo as a wizard against them, tried sneaking on the ledge, they caught me, and still the entire fight was too easy. Sure, it's the beginning of the game, that fight is meant to be easy. But eh, why not replace the devourers with some human scavengers, or something. Like the fishers who are trying to save that mind flayer deeper in the ship.

I think it makes sense, all things considered. The fishermen were drawn there by that mind flayer. But the devourers were on the ship already. You can see several of them running around while you're heading for the helm, and I suspect that these are those. I don't know though, but it seems logical given the circumstances. Now maybe the circumstances may seem illogical, but it's the story we have, and the plotline they're working from.

Again, story wise, sure, there could be 100s of heavily nerfed intellect devourers roaming around, but I stand by my point: lore wise it makes no sense to come across more than 1, 2 would be pushing it, and not as early as lvl 1. Like they could've replaced these intellect devourers with mind controlled humans or whatever, and it would make much more sense than what we have now. I know, killing intellect devourers and seeing walking brains is much cooler than whatever I suggest... Also, don't you find it weird that Shadowheart somehow has 4 dead brains at her feet and 5th very close by but if you send her against those in the ship, she'll most likely go down? Ah, one of these little mysteries that will most likely never be explained.

I don't see that much differently than I see Jack's introduction in ME 2, which came up earlier somewhere. She's an absolute juggernaut of destruction, until we recruit her. Along with this are other things we don't know. How many of them came at her at once? If you can pull them one at a time, they're not all that hard to beat. If it's a swarm, yeah, kinda blows that up, but we just don't know. If I'm going to venture a guess, knowing what I know, I'd say one at a time is more likely, and what I know is that I can't see her beating 3 at once, let alone 4 or 5 of them, unlike what happened with Jack, where we actually see some of what she's presented to be. So I can't jump automatically to "it's improbable that she could beat them", because while I do believe it's improbable that she beat them all at once, I don't know how those devourers wound up dead. I presume, based on the dialog that she killed them, but the specifics aren't provided, or even hinted at, other than making an assumption that she killed them all at once simply because they're all dead, and she's not.

Its a bit weird to see Shadowheart surrounded by dead Intellect Devourers but I just assume they died by some other means, maybe a crash, since there are fisherfolk bodies scattered around as well. We are not shown that she fought them and she does not state so either, so...

Edit: fighting them later on yes, does suspend your disbelief, as a first level character you should be completely decimated.

Yep, I pointed out that my impression is just that of the first act or the part we played and there might be more, I mean Minsc is in the files. My point was that is the impression of the game not being BG3 is not incorrect, and quite a valid position. I also want to make it clear that the devs and the game right now seems quite capable of being a very good RPG.
I have only played the first DA, I skipped the second after 2 minutes of gameplay and I have also skipped Andromeda in the ME series. So, I can not comment on the continuity of the series. Although I daresay that, Andromeda would have likely fared better, if it made, apart from being less buggy, more nods to the original trilogy apart from just the races.
You could make the argument that the Fallout Series tells a different story everytime and so does TES, which I would agree with. However there at least Fallout 2 was a direct continuation of 1 and in TES each has a distinct name after the title (like Fallout NV), which hints at a different setting, yet the same world. The other two Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance games also had a different premise in the same setting, in that case Baldur's Gate is the core location.
I also do not want to belittle people who not only played the games, but read the extended universe, I just wanted to point out that likely most have just played both or only one of the predecessors without extensive additional knowledge. I bought it in the hope of the same feeling in-game as BG2. So far then I am currently not impressed. For me the game, right now, was "falsely advertised". I did not really look a lot up beforehand though, I mostly judged from the title.

It is implied in the dialogue with her that she did indeed kill them. Somehow. As a drow you can even compliment her on the carnage at her feet. And she thanks you even. So, I dunno, maybe aside from the wonder Gale we have another god's chosen at our disposal? At this point nothing will surprise me.

And yes, thank you for that edit. It's the point I've been trying to make.

Ahh I see. I haven't yet played a Drow, only Tieflings, so their dialogue is more generic at this point. Shadowheart points to the bodies but that's about it.
Larian does like their chosen don't they.