Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Map might feel too filled up,

Hello, people. So I went through the game and I'm currently in the last part of the EA. One of my concern is that the map are very condensed, very crowded with a lot of stuff. Every two steps, you have a subquest or an encounter . I suggest more map, with more empty space where you can walk in nature and explore.

In Baldurs gate 1 , map were usually vast, with only a few encounters in it, which made it feels special. You were basically exploring the map and fog of war, wary, and suddenly, thieves, bears, ogre, and monsters, or a sculptor doing a stone portrait of his love, a kobold mine, some basilisk, some stone statue. you were looking for these and going through every nook and crannies of the map.

At the moment I feel that the map , while its big, and has plenty of things to do, feels very packed up. I'd suggest more empty spaces, and maybe pack some quest in a second map where you reuse assets Just so that when you discovers something, its feel really special. This also lead to situation like the goblin living at one minute walk of the grove, and not knowing that the druid are there.

Last thing, I think it could be great to have a couple of big flat space in the map. A lot of the game feels like a corridor, you're always walking in a trail, surrounded by walls.

What do you think?

It's a difficult balance to strike between "overcrowded, feels like a set piece" and "empty, lots of space with nothing to do". But I do agree it should not feel like quests and content are jumping at the player. Makes it feel artificial.

Two ways I can think of to make a map that's spacious and not boring at the same time:
- traversal is fun in itself (better suited to other [sub]genres)
- the "empty" environment is interesting and/or pretty by itself

The latter, I think, could be used in BG3 (that is, if map is subject to change). With BG3 visuals, beautiful, visually interesting environments shouldn't be a problem and "empty" space is an opportunity for some (subtle!) environmental storytelling.

(Enemies being neighbours always annoys me in games. I know it's unreasonable to ask for realistic scale, but hearing "the kobolds live to the south of our village" and discovering that it's a shorter walk than to the other end of the village is just... very immersion-breaking. This is one advantage of worlds with divided maps - you tell the player "the travel took 2 hours" and suddenly the distance becomes very believable.)

It really does seem crowded. That, coupled with absence of concept of time, breaks immersion for me.


You actually yourself pointed out another solution
Dividing map in smaller pieces solve another problem. Now you have logical moments for long rests.

I find strange that there is only 500m between the village invaded by goblins and the druid grove BUT goblins have absolutely no idea where the druids are...

I agree that "exploration" is very limited.
The feeling of freedom and journey arround the sword coast you had in BG1 is missing. And that's even more when you look at the worldmap (I know, Larian love useless worldmap).

I'd love having way more smaller maps with travelling time between them. It's also another way to have different atmosphere, which is important according to me in a game that even don't have D/N cycle and meteo effect.

You're certainly not wrong about the map feeling a bit too densely packed, which definitely detracts from immersion. It doesn't really help that a large part of the map is taken up by the crashed Nautiloid either.

The distance between Moonhaven (the "Blighted Village") and the druid grove seems oddly short, which doesn't make sense at all. Considering druid groves would generally be located far away from settlements, it's just odd that the druids apparently had no issue with a village being built within such short distance.

I currently find travel to not be a pleasant endeavor.

The camera is very unreliable (edge panning) and deals poorly with elevation differences. Controlling the individual party members is a pain, especially when jumps are needed.

If/when traveling itself becomes more enjoyable, I would certainly appreciate creating more distance to travel.

Cam does need some polishing for sure.

+1 on more space between areas, additional road, forests, explorable abandoned areas, etc.

I really wish the maps were scaled a little larger too... or the models were smaller or something to justify longer range on spells/bow attacks. 60ft feels pathetic, every melee on the planet can dash and close that gap in one turn. This is a side effect of them shrinking the maps, you cant have 120ft Eldritch Blasts on maps this small... how is the AI supposed to tunnel vision your Wizard if they have the 5e range? hmm?

My main problem with "world navigation" (aside for, guess what? Once again the horrible the party controls) is that the camera is borrowing from DOS 2 the same bad tendency to "deform" things a lot.
You can notice it clearly when you have two creatures of the same size (i.e. two goblins) and they can look even four or five times bigger/smaller than the other according to how close/far from the camera they are.

A more "orthogonal" camera would prevent things from being so hard to keep in view and maintain coherent proportions. It would also prevent more elevated environmental details from "shooting" directly into your eyes covering view when rotating said camera around.

Just saying it for the sake of it, to be honest. I have very little confidence about Larian ever addressing this.

P.S. If this attempt to an explanation sounds particularly messy is just because a language barrier is preventing me from using the correct technical terminology for what I mean in English.
I apologize, but please make an effort to grasp the general sense of what I'm trying to express.