You've already heard a lot about these features of the game, so count this as one more.
In both DoS games and in this EA one thing about how you handle the environment is very obvious.
Its always high noon. And there is no weather except sunny.
I cant understand why is that forced for whole games you make. Sure, some areas can be sunny and in permanent high noon. But why all of them?
If there was some actual benefit to that, some logical reason i could accept it, but obviously there cannot be. Not from internal logic of the setting and or the story, not from developing and technology angle.
I know you wont provide day and night cycles. I dont like that, especially in a BG game which has many nocturnal creatures - and Vampires - but Fine. Whatever. Dont.
But you could create areas and maps where the narrative happens during the night. You have night time in the camp.
More importantly, the usual daytime is not and does not need to be high noon sunny all the freaking time.
There should be different weather environmental effects, there should be clouds, some shade, some rain, some fog. Dust, smoke, early morning, sunsets, afternoons, evenings.
Right now there is a bit of rain happening when we get close to the blighted village. Thats good.
A sort of dark gloom falls over the swamp where the Hag is, and there is some beautiful dust and smoke in Waukeens rest.
Give us more. It all creates an atmosphere, makes specific places stand out as unique and it could provide some influence on the mechanics and the gameplay, make some companions skills more valuable, more valuable to the very idea of a band of adventurers. It gives the players a stronger sense of environmental diversity connected to their experience in the gameplay and some increased sense we are exploring different parts of the story, of the world.
Yes the internal areas are dark and the Underdark is also "dark". Thats not what im talking about.
I especially hope we wont be forced to spend all of our time in the Baldurs Gate in high noon sunny weather. That would be horrible.
And you still make a lot of surfaces way too bright, so i dread what the stone architecture of the city will look like.
Changing the gama setting doesnt help. It just makes things difficult to see at all. Weather and different times of the day would.
Also, the Environment design itself.
A lot of places look very gorgeous but the problem is that there is something literally around every corner of the map.
That drastically reduces the believability of the world and makes nature look artificial. It also reduces a sense of exploration - even if its a trick in other games, like it was in the original - that trick needs to be there. The players actually dont mind some walking through the forests, some pure "exploration" of the nature in between points of interest. I dont mean you should do the opposite extreme and create the "huge empty maps" but rather mix and match.
Also, despite increased possibilities of movement, verticality and jumping and teleporting - we are constrained into specific corridors in the nature. All the time.
Right now the area in the EA is basically just corridors leading straight from one event to another. It feels very railroaded and constrained. Hopefully its only the EA version but considering other DoS games...
You could also reduce the amounts of chests found in some "secret" corners of nature or other types of areas, sometimes even protected by traps and guards - that have 11 gold in them.
