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Super Duper TL:DR - The dialouge and story are broken simply because Larian seems to put them in a lower priority than the gameplay, and not necessarily because of bad writing or EA bugs. If you want to read more but not everything, I would recommend part 2. If you want address the gameplay Vs story argument, please read appendices number 2.Original ThreadTL:DR for the original post: just the broad strokes, for more detail, read through the original post: Disclaimers- I love Bg3 and aware of the fact it is just an EA. but based on how DOS2 turned to be, I think the Issue I'm Addressing will not be taken care of unless we demand it to be. The gameplay is more important argument - while some of you might think so, I disagree and have reasons to believe most BG and even most DND players think like me. For more details about that, please refer to appendices number 2. Short Intro and TL:DRAfter my initial post on the matter, I slowly came to understand my problem with the storytelling of DOS2 and (seemingly) BG3. As I gained more understanding, I think it's important to define the problem as articularly and accurately as possible, to improve the discussion, and to be able to ask Larian for specific and practical solutions. I thank everyone who took part in the previous discussion and hope this one would be a productive discussion as well. after the first discussion I realized I tend to ramble too much, so this time I will try to keep things short and to the point. if you are feeling tired of my rambling, you can skip to part 2.
TLDR: part 1 is a general example and a presentation of the problem
part 2: the problem defined as best as I could
part 3: why I don't think it's a bug
Epilogue - how to move foreward One of the more common examples people use when arguing that the companions in this game suck comes from the first encounter with Astarion. During this encounter, Astarion tries to threaten your MC with a knife, and depending on your dialogue choices he could do so quite violently. The problem is that during this encounter most players have at least one companion in their party if not more, and all the companions just stand silently and watch. This led many to the (rather sensible) conclusion your companions are a bunch of psychotic dicks. I, however, think it is a problem with the game. The game simply doesn't acknowledge the fact you have companions with you, and ignores them completely, like they are not there. In other words, there seems to be a problem with the way the game handles Event flags. So whether you survived all the previous raving or you came here just to hear the gist, here it is - Larian doesn't seem to care about the story, or at least doesn't seem to care about the story enough for a game at this scale. I don't think it's (necessarily) bad writing, I don't think it's a bug issue (more on that later), I think that Larian simply prefers to give us as many RP choices as possible no matter how much harm it (potentially) creates for the story's cohesiveness and immersion. I mentioned flag event earlier and now I'm gonna talk about why it's important here, why it is nearly impossible to make it work here, and most importantly, why I don't think Larian is even interested in making it work, or at the very least puts it in a very low priority. In a well-designed RPG, the way the world reacts to you depends on many event flags. Some of them are things you set in character creation like race class and stats, but the important ones for our discussion are your choices. And the more choices a game provides you, the harder it is for the designers to account for all of them. At this point, I'll recommend you read the appendices for some examples of bad flag event settings, but simply put if Larian wanted to account for all the possible choices the player makes and have them being reflected by the story, they don't seem to want to do it. This creates hilarious (or horrifying, depends on who you ask) situations where characters acting strangely and don't react to things you did even they supposed to directly affect them. The opposite is also true, and sometimes characters would treat you like you did something you didn't do, maybe because what you did do is not an option the developers have predicted. This leaves you with a lot of NPC's that live in their own "private quest bubble", and only react to very specific things you do, and ignore the others as if they didn't happen. The discussion about whether the story and characters of bg3 are any good is important but is not the issue here. If the event flag work is that sloppy, even a bg2 wouldn't be allowed to flourish if on every encounter you have with an NPC the story forgets where are we in the story, or doesn't even react to it.
Part Three - A Bug or Design Philosophy?- about the question of whether this would be fixed in the main releasethe gist of this chapter in a short exgange I had in this forum:It is a big problem I made it my main goal to get Larian to fix. In short, I feel like Larian gives you choices but don't care about making them work Sounds just like a fairly typical scripting bug, actually. It is a bug only if there is a conversation that is not triggered. I doubt such a conversation exists. The short answer for this chapter's title is probably not. The little less short answer is that I don't know for sure, but based on several factors I don't believe it is. The reason I don't think it's a bug issue is based on my experience with dos2, the comparison between ea dos2 and the full game, and Larian's comments about the ea so far. Playing through Fort Joy (the first act of Divinity: Original SIn 2)is a very telling experience for anyone trying to predict how the final BG3 product will look like. for starters, you have an option to just teleport away by doing a rather simple quest, thus skipping all the important story bits of the fort. In a game that cares about its own story, I would think skipping such a huge chunk of the plot would have dire consequences, but nada, the story moves on. and even in the Fort itself, nothing seems to blend together into a comprehensive and cohesive narrative, and you are left with a giant mass. Even some supposedly easy to fix story bits can't seem to work unless you do them in a very particular way. The best example is Sebile, the red prince and the dreamer. In order to advance their plot, you need to first talk to the dreamer, then recruit Sebile, and then talk to him again so she can kill him. If you try to bring both party members to the dreamer, one of them randomly step up and talk to him, while the other stares at the ceiling. it's particularly jarring in case Seblie is the one who goes to talk to him, and then murders him while the prince just stands like a doofus and only make a short comment after the fact. If Bioware was directing the scene, you can bet your ass that all the possibilities were accounted for, and each one of them had other interesting dynamics. Sebile's quest line in this game is also responsible to Shehila, a character that is a walking talking plot hole, and no matter what you do, she always shows up out of nowhere. Shehila is such a good example since she embodies everything that is wrong with Larian's style of story telling - in each act you encounter her in a different place, where she acts and does the exect same things no matter what you did in previous acts. There are many more examples, but in order to find them, I have to play DOS2 again. Unfortunately, once I realized most of my choices has little effect on the story if at all, and even the illusion of choice doesn't exist since sometimes the game outright disregards my choices, I found that it's much harder to complete this game, and his replay value dropped substantially. The important part is the comparison between the game in EA and the full experience. I wondered how is it possible that a game with a very successful ea comes out, and still have so many of these bugs? I went and checked, and based on this Reddit article I found out that the only major change they did from a story perspective apparently was to change The Red Prince's personality. Yay. Again, the problem is not necessarily incompetence on Larian's part (although it's surely part of it), the problem seem to be that Larian doesn't seem to think there is anything wrong with the situation as it is now. Sure, the Astarion bit I mentioned in chapter 1 will probably be addressed because of the huge backlash it got, but personally I think the backlash is not big enough and a bit misplaced. all the examples in the appendices are treated as a separate scripting problem, but I think they are just a symptom of the main issue I described so far. Larian might fix some of them, but fixing each one of them demands a lot of work, not only in scripting and flag eventing, but also writing and line recording, which If I'm right and it's not a scripting bug but a lack of script, it doesn't seem like something Larian cares about too much. There are three main ways I see us move forward. I'll list them here by order of probability, from the most probable to the least one.
1. nothing new under the son - The game's story and events will remain largely the same. Larian will add some dialogue line here and there, probably to account for the issues that are reported the most. I think I'll delve more deeply into the "story vs gameplay" argument in the appendices, but here I'll just say that at least for me, If this is the case it's hard for me to see this game becomes anything more than what it is in its current state - harmless fun. perhaps the only difference is the status shift - instead of "harmless fun with potential for more" just "harmless fun". Nothing wrong with it, but I'll always see it as a missed opportunity in that case.
2. damage control - Maybe Larian will get their shit together, realize that the Story is important too, and will do more extensive work on the script (writing) and scripting (coding). It is the best outcome, and might make this game the legend it has to be. it is also the most costly and hard option. it means that larian would have to really test the game, see and try to address the choices players make, and make these choices worthwhile narratively. after that, they will have to write and record the relevant dialogue and insert it to the game. it's hard, but I do believe that in this case it is merely a question of motivation. If the people in Larian will want to do it, they could.
3. Restrict the raging player - too much choice that doesn't mean anything is not worth it. the most coherent part of the game from a narrative point of view is the tutorial area, where you can only move forward. I'm not saying make the game linear, but either address the fact the player is doing things out of order, or don't let him do it. Even Baldur's Gate 1, which was anything but linear, had certain places blocked for you until you reached a certain stage in the game (like the city itself for instance). the situation in BG is built like you have access to chapter 3 of BG1 before you arrived Neeshkal. How can you build a narrative around the goblin threat if you can go to their fort and kill all of them before reaching the druid grove? again, you could try to address it (option 2 in this part), but as long as you have so much freedom to do whatever you want, it is very hard to create a story that is not all over the place.
I would love to hear your thoughts and ideas as well.
Appendices1. bad flag event examplesthe first one might be a bug but it fits the MO- during my fourth or fifth playthrough (I love the character creator sue me) I failed (again) in the persuasion check when trying to convince Khaga not to kill the tiefling girl. This time I decided in a kind of psychotic fit to kill Khaga on the spot. As I expected, all the druids in the room turned hostile, and I killed them all. But surprisingly, everyone else wasn't hostile. Not only. The rest of the camp and the druids outside were not hostile, even Nettie who was in a nearby room talked to me as if nothing wrong. Same is true for everyone at camp. I had to look very hard for someone to acknowledge what I did and in the end I talked to Zavlor and found out that if you push him hard enough ( be aggressive in your dialogue choices) he will ask you to kill Khaga. Of course the problem was that she was already dead. Example two, which is much worse - this time I didn't want to take shadowheart with me through the whole game, so shortly after recruiting Layzel I asked shadowheart to go back to camp. She was still a bit pissed I recruited Layzel and threatened me she won't wait in camp. To my surprise, when I went to camp she was indeed missing. I later encountered her in the druid grove. The problem is that during our conversation in the grove, half of the time she acted like she is still mad at me and in the other half she acted like we never met. This example is worse because there is nothing game breaking I did here, but still the game didn't acknowledged my choices even though it offered them to me. If I never played dos2 I would think this is simply a bug or unrefined dialogue, but now it's seems to like Larian just doesn't care for these things. Other examples, some of the things I found, other from users around the web: Me not trying to break the game but breaking it anyway: More on the druid grove another choice that seems to be something the game might expect you to do - as I entered the grove the guard tries to stop me. I ignore them and then choose the attack option. This creates a lot of chaos. Initially, I thought I had to fight only several guards but then I noticed many of the NPC's are leaving the grove area towards the camp (among them, khaga, Nettie, the tiefling bard and others). After I finished off the guards I went to the tiefling camp to see what's going on. There was a big battle between the tieflings and the remaining druids, all the tieflings were at my side against the druids. For reasons unknown Rath, the druid fought at my side against the others. After the battle was over I went to Zavlor to try to figure out what the hell happened. Now this is the important part - Zevlor wasn't very clear, only said it had to be done and steered the conversation to the goblin threat. I went back to the grove to try to understand why Rath, with which I never talked before fought with me in the battle. Rath was standing and blocking the entrance to the grove. He also didn't have any explanations but curiously he said: "we won". How did you win if all the druids but you are dead? Wtf.
Then I came back to my camp and gale is complaining to me about something that happened with the druids.
Now, what the hell happened here other than standard Larian's mess? I think at some stage, I don't if it happened when I chose to attack in the dialogue or at a later stage, the quest to kill Khaga triggered. But no context, no proper resolution, no nothing. And it all started from me choosing a dialogue line, so again, I didn't even try to break the game but it broke so easily. Wyll's drive to hunt the goblins - When you meet Wyll he is In the middle of a quest to hunt the goblins. there is a particular goblin he is looking for that can be found in the windmill. but if you remove him from the party after he tells you about it and before you meet said goblin, suddenly he doesn't care about him anymore. A comment by the Reddit user Plumppotato ( link)- Anyone else think the first interaction with Astarion feels, off? I think it's because by the time I meet him, I've usually already recruited Shadowheart and on my second playthrough, Gale. Which means they're both standing there while I rassle him on the ground with a knife to my neck, doing nothing. This could be fixed with either a simple move or a line of dialogue. Maybe having him be the first possible companion you meet, just after waking up on the beach, even sooner than Shadowheart. That way you're alone when he attempts to attack you. Or, by including a line where he says something along the lines of "stay back or I'll slit his/her/their throat!" If the game detects party members with you. Comment by Larian user cgexile titled "Karlach quest line": So I said I'd help her. I went to the group on the hill and they told me that she did all these horrible things. I went back to her and there is no option to basically have her explain her side of the story after what they told me. I only have the option to basically kill her or go back and kill them.
Feels weird like she needs to explain wtf they are talking about because their story was pretty wild and she said nothing about her mass murdering ways.
Edit: also I don't exactly want to wipe them out since they have a Trader there and I'd like to keep her around. Something that happened to me recently- in my who knows which playthrough of the game (I had many) I went for a crazy mage build with 8 int when my goal was to get the circlet that gives you 18 int as soon as possible. I tried to avoid the grove gate fight and head straight to the ogres but couldn't avoid the fight. After the fight, instead of going into the grove I moved on to fight the ogres and came back afterwards. But sadly it seems I successfully broke the game (again). When I entered the grove Zavlor was standing in the entrance alone and there was no way to interact with him.
The short answer is gameplay. After all, this is a video game, and although I strongly disagree with the notion that video games can't be a fertile ground for superb stories, this is an interactive medium, and as such, gameplay has a huge impact on the quality of the game. There are some things that one must keep in mind when having this discussion:
1. Gameplay is not just combat - people seem to forget it, but gameplay is not just combat mechanics, and in fact, every interactive aspect of the game is qualified as gameplay. That includes multiple choices in dialogue, things like the new dice mechanics in bg3 like perception checks and map design. Most of the best games I ever played had a strong connection between gameplay and story, and they were not two separate parts. It's not a must for a video game, and specifically I think of Japanese video games (Devil may cry, many jrpgs) that keep the story and gameplay Nas two separate entities. It could be beneficial for both players who care about the the story and those who don't, since players who care can view it and those who don't do not. But Bg3 is not one of those games.
2. Why people play Baldur's Gate - I talked about it at length in my previous post, but people play Baldur's Gate for many reasons. That's why people keep complaining BG3 doesn't "feel" like Baldur's Gate but when asked for specific reason why, has no conclusive answer (I've seen many different answers, from things like day/night circle, fun characters, RTwP, and more). For me, the main reason to play Baldur's Gate is the attention to details in the storytelling. It's hard to think of other things Bioware games had in common other than that. But since Knights of the old Republic until mass effect 3, there are not many other things Bioware games had in common. And I feel this is important.
To summarize, I'm sure there are BG players who skip all the dialogue and only play the game to create awesome builds and try to find new ways to solo the game. But even in this group, I don't think there are many people who don't care about the characters and stories at all. The only proof I have for it is a very limited comparison I did between how popular Baldur's Gate is and how popular is a game like Icwind Dale. Both have pretty much the exact combat mechanics, but one is regarded as the best RPG series of all times, and the other is a niche game that failed to compete Diablo 2.
In short, the story matters. Especially in a western RPG, where it is connected so tightly to gameplay. But that's just a kinda subjective opinion. If you disagree, more power to you, and you'll probably appreciate and enjoy BG3 much more than me.
Time played: 93 hours.
If you read through this whole post, you probably know by now that I'm a huge fan of story driven RPGs. Ever since I first played Knights of the old Republic, this genre has become the main genre of video games I played. I delved into Jrpgs, and I'm a huge fan of the devil may cry series, but that's about it. Ever since Kotor I've been following Bioware and like the rest of the western RPG community I'm very sad at this company's current state.
Fortunately for us, we seem to live in a new crpg golden age, with a lot of indie companies trying their luck and two former small companies who became a huge success and are on the way to replace Bioware as the RPG king.
These two companies are of course CD Project Red and Larian. Both full of Bioware fans and both has games that at least parts of their mechanics are rooted in Bioware "mythology".
After the crazy (and we'll deserved) success of The Witcher 3, CD Project put their full weight behind their Cyberpunk project, which is great news for gamers and RPG fans alike, but less for me, since the one genre I absolutely loathe is first person shooters. My dislike of this genre is twofold - If I spend 40 minutes in the character creator, I want to be able to see my character in game. The more crucial reason is that I simply hate the first person perspective and find it extremely uncomfortable. But I really digress.
I'm here to talk about the alternative, Larian studios. I'm not sure if it's factually true, but to me it feels like Larian has been around for a long time. They made many games, and played around with different genres for quite some time now. I admit I didn't play many of their games, but of those I did play, you can certainly get the Larian feel. You don't get it from their stories or characters, but from their (sometimes) crazy game mechanics ( and I mean it in the best possible way). I always play around with the idea of an imagined Larian's stuff meeting where they pich a game : "hey you know what would be cool? A main character that can turn into a dragon!". In that regard they remind me of another company that dabbled in RPGs but mostly tried to innovate the medium - Lionhead.
Since Larian's last game (divinity Original Sin 2) was a relatively successful game (for good reason), wizards of the coast decided they deserve a shot at creating a successor to one of the best video game series ever made.
Until I first picked up the game I thought this is a perfect choice. I enjoyed Dos2 despite it's shortcomings, and I liked everything I saw from bg3. Even after picking the game the first few hours were great, the characters creator is awesome, the combat is a lot of fun, and the story is interesting, despite being a little basic at this point of early access.
I discussed my main issue with the game at length, but here are more general comments I have:
- the companions seem great. I don't understand the criticism against them, and think most of it is kinda unfair. So far the companions set great expectations.
- origin characters as companions is a bad idea - origin characters is a great idea that worked before. Companions are great. Mixing the two is not.
-technical praise - although it is an early access I still want to praise Larian on that aspect. People don't talk enough about the fact that aside from loading a save, there no loading screens at all in the EA. It was amazing in DOS2 and it's amazing here. The game performance are super uneven for me at least, but if dos2 is any indication, I'm sure the situation would be much better at release.
Graphics, animations, and bugs - all to be expected. I heard Larian hired people from Telltale for this aspect of the game, and if it's true, I trust them to give us great animations eventually, even if right now things are a bit clunky. The weirdest is actually Shadowheart. I'm not sure why shadowheart specifically has such a jarring animations, but if I had to guess I would say it's because she was featured in the demo we saw prior to the release, and they over animated her a little to show the engine's potential. Other than that, the character models are gorgeous and a huge step forward from dos2 cartoonish people.
-We need more choices - I replay dragon age origins again now and I'm astonished by the amount of dialogue options you get in any meaningful encounter. I feel like right now bg3 is seriously lacking at this front, and relies too much on persuasion choices. I could complete Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 with 3 charisma points and never feel like I'm missing out on something. Persuasion should be an optional choice in a game of this kind, not a requirement.
-Failing is not fun - the promotion of this game was terrible with spoilers and bad game demonstrations (I'm much more salty about the spoilers though). One of Larian's taglines was "we want to make failing fun. Well at least for now they failed miserably. It is related to my previous point, but the game is way too binary about its option for it to be fun to fail. Most times, failing leads to something bad like battle or a trap triggering and very rarely has an interesting outcome. This kind of game design practically promotes save scamming and cheats, since there are no actual benefits of falling, and what's worse is that is so much randomness involved.
To summarize, I think right now this game is harmless fun with enormous potential. Only true change in the way Larian does things would help to raise it into something more, perhaps a new legend.
Last edited by Abits; 24/10/20 11:16 AM.
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