Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Cinematics and Characters

That's interesting, thank you. Then I suppose a lot of the problem is baked in, and the issue is with FR as a whole. Similarly, I get annoyed with the D20 system being too random and overriding character builds (where "super strong" will still routinely fail to lift things), but what can they do if this is a DnD game? So I guess the point is still valid criticism just useless as feedback.

I did like BG1+2, I just don't consider them sacred.

There are other criticisms of the evil path that it goes from 0>mass murder, no one tries to convince you, offer you much that's concrete (if I"m going to hell, at least appeal to my greed) etc. making it seem like a random side thing rather than part of the main path - but I've read all of that here before, so I'm sure you're familiar with them

Well the whole thing about evil is that it either comes about due to ignorance, or being forced by the environment, or an internalized virtue that is pushed so far that it becomes a vice.
Drow worship Lolth because if they didn't they would be hunted down by their fellow drow.
Duergar worship Ladaguer because they have a chip on their shoulder and they hate Moradin. They probably have some built in resentment because Moradin didn't save them from the illithids and they think that Moradin justly deserves to be scorned.
People worship Shar because they are too dumb to solve their problems so they just want to "heal via forgetting".
Alternatively people worship Shar because they are ignorant about what they actually want or they are confused. Really, why else would anyone want to go to the Shar's realm in their afterlife?
I mean I fail to see how one could make an evil choice in the light of perfect knowledge about the state of affairs. I think people who worship an evil deity, believe that what they do is actually good and righteous. Evil is rarely conscious or unashamed of itself.

I disagree on that point.


First, I'd say that in DnD, or perhaps just in the Forgotten Realms specifically, there is some amount of canonicity ("some sources say so"), some amount of Game Master's and players' freedom, and some amount of the writing/world building not being exactly top notch to begin with (with many things being fairly laughable in my opinion). I vaguely remember reading (probably more in commentary articles about WotC decision to gradually abandon alignments) that Good/Neutral/Evil used to be essential properties of creatures : you don't become or stop being evil or do evil acts, you usually are evil, and your creature sheet says so. Fortunately, such stupid writing is being phased out. I also remember reading in a source book that there are various ways to understand and interpret evil in the FR.

So I don't agree with the general statement that "in the FR, Evil = [something]". For better or worse, the FR is written by many hands, much like many of the American comic books, and every writer, GM, or video game studio has some freedom and can have their take on this and that. Notably what qualifies as being evil.

As a matter of fact, a couple of months ago, I was spending way too much time on the Forgotten Realms Wiki researching some people (half-orcs to be precise), and I was somewhat surprised by the number of them classified as evil, especially when the article about them didn't strike me as "OMG, evil, so clear". If there's any canon to accept in the FR, I feel that evil is a label that is pretty generously applied. Evil is casual.

On top of that, I'd add that my understanding of the cosmology of the FR is that Overlord Ao is only concerned by deities sticking to their portfolios and all portfolios being filled some deities. That means evil is bound to be a lasting and thriving part of the world. Evil characters aren't there just to be villains for noble heroes to vanquish and evil deities aren't there just for their evil plans to be thwarted.

Basically, and I'm realising what I'm about to write as I'm writing this conclusion : the FR does evil a lot better than Star Wars.
And I should probably add/remind : this is my view, and I feel the FR isn't a world that lends itself too well to a single canon and single interpretation.


Second, to rebound on some more specific poins
- Selling your soul to devil : ... yeah, definitely not a smart moove. Also not necessarily evil. (I'm often amazed, and I'm not saying it's necessarily good, by how the FR writers can take inspiration from a single story from our world and build a whole system out of it.)
- Worshipping an evil deity : certainly preferable to worshipping no deity. Barring Shar who apparently sometimes forgets some of her own, you definitely want to have one deity recognising you as a faithful. Many evil deities have a very respectably-sized cult. It might well be that a third of the FR mortals worship an evil deity.
- Evil organisations : depends on what we mean by burnt to the ground, but the Zhentarim seems to be well alive. If you're a good fighter, you might want to work for them as caravan guard instead of having no job. The Red Wizards seem to be doing just fine in Thay.


Anyway, I have written way too much (and still have a video to watch). I hope that didn't derail the original discussion too much. In short, my point was that the writing of evil need not be simplistic and ridiculous "because it's FR". To reconnect with (half of) the OP's topics, it would certainly be appreciated if some aspects of the writing could be improved from poor to anything better than poor. There may be too many constraints already (choices that led to animation and voice acting being produced that Larian will not want to throw away), and these currently-poor aspects might not reach excellent, but good-enough or good would be great.

Thanks for the video analysis. I didn't think I would enjoy it as much as I did

I guess many cinematics will be still work in progress, so there is a ton of polish happening - or more at least there is the chance for more polish. Like the gate scene doesn't seem to have any ambient sound or music to emphasize the dramatic. These are things that I would expect to be improved or added. But at the same time, I don't think these are the problematic areas of the game when it comes to cinematics and writing. I guess my expectations are very low in this regard, I don't see Larian being able to keep up with The Witcher 3 anyhow.

I would say you are spot on when it comes to writing. Nothing there I could add.

The biggest eye opener in your video though was when you mentioned that these camera cuts to the player do make sense once you put Larian's origin characters in that spot. I wasn't thinking too much about it, just seeing it a WIP oddness, but you hit the nail on the head. These horrible cutscenes would immediately make sense if they had Shadowheart and the others instead of the player character in there acting their personality so that the player gets to watch them and learn more about them.


So thank you again for this. I don't know if Larian is even bothering to read feedback here, but at least I got an interesting insight

Yes I would like to see some more support for that option. I think the connections are there -- you have three different ways to learn that power is based in Moonrise Towers but there isn't a conversation where you can spell out what must be going through your mind. And this supports the OP position that full voice acting is inferior to wall of text because it doesn't allow for editing.

I think the motivations for following the evil path are pretty clear but a conversation where evil players say what they are thinking would help.

Well that was certainly well put together! Nicely done

I enjoyed how you came with "this feedback is also available as a video" like we don't all fully expect inane tubecam rambling with the bar set below the knees, and then immediatey broke out the fucking documentary samurai swords once I clicked through to view hehe.

Talk about taking a AAA approach to the suggestions forum. Yeah, please make more of these!

I vote that guy be our new director of critical fan feedback!

Perhaps in short-film form they'll actually break through somehow to the plane of Devs, or maybe at least start to dispell the defeaning sphere of silence we've be treated so far lol

Anyhow, again, well done. I found it amusing and insightful. Looking forward to the combat deep cuts when you get around to part 2

Best Elk

Just wanted to say I only avoiding responding to this excellent post because, like you, I fear I was hijacking the OP's thread. So we'll continue in another thread and I'll briefly say -- I think whether you consider FR a default good setting depends on whether you are focusing the rules or the canonical novels and such.

Anyway, this video made me want to take a class in documentary film making.

Brilliant. On point.

Repeating myself for the xxxth time, Larian did not need to do FULL CINEMATIC DIALOGUES. Its not working and will be BG3s complete undoing. That budget should of gone into great storytelling, lore, tons of NPCs, battle mechanics and immersion.
A year before release and that level of cringy cinematics, there is no way in hell Larian can rescue that boat.

Also big nod for Disco Elysium, in my opinion the REAL evolution in rpg and the greatest game to come out in the last decade.

Seriously great video. Get some more content out 10k subs in no time

I was pleasantly surprised by the professional quality of the video, and I'd encourage anyone who has skimmed the thread but not looked at it to do so. It's a half hour that I do not feel was at all misspent, even though I had already read the points in text.

At a personal level, I enjoyed watching the video, and there was only one point where I found myself having a strong reaction of disagreement - and that was on the assertion that players instinctively make characters they want, or would want, to fuck, and that we watch those characters then, with anticipation... I feel it does your otherwise very grounded and pragmatic video a disservice to assert such a large assumption as truth; it's certainly not the case for players who are like me, for example - who make characters that they wish to drop into the headspace and mindset of, and to play as... possibly with a view to pursuing a character they would find appealing, in the cases if and where general horniess is a part of it.

That said, the point you makes surrounding that, regarding why their depictions of the player character are awkward and poorly handled, all track just as accurately and are just as legitimate and valid without that assumption, and even for cases of players like me, where it's not the motivating factor.

Didn't agree with every single thing, but you've brought up a lot of very good points.

Like cinematics: they aren't inherently good or bad. They were very good in TW3 (and appropriate for the type of the game it is), but in BG3 their quality doesn't justify their existence. Perhaps this will change, but that's A LOT of work...

And the overacting. The theatrics. It's so bad. And you included a great example: the female tiefling emoting with her hands(?) - very characteristic for someone who tries to act too much. That in addition to custom character pantomime. I've said it before, but imo the solution is to either implement a demeanor system or just reduce custom character screen time by 90% or so.

Also a good point (as someone else here noted) on how the game is designed to be played with origins as protagonists and how the protagonist shots make sense in this context. It's rather disheartening after Larian repeatedly stated custom characters are very important to them. Especially that it's just one symptom of a larger problem - and this is said by someone who is pretty neutral on the topic of origins.

Half-agreed on companions: I prefer characters that are somehow "special" (not Mary Sues or chosen ones, just something interesting about them) and I'm not a fan of "Average Joe in Scenario A, B and C". However, I detest melodrama and YA, so fully agreed on that front. Larian seems to have gone the way of melodrama=good writing (a pet peeve of mine). That said, I think every companion could work, just take their "college kids show" parts away. I also wouldn't expect a character to be from the place we're exploring; we're all strangers here and that's imo a valid approach as well.

Regarding horny players: I don't see why close-ups would make any difference; also disagreed on the part Niara already commented on. Imo the reason BG3 playerbase is horny is because of how the game is most similar to DA, which includes a prominent dating sim minigame. There are people who mostly (or only) play DA games for the romance parts. And since Larian did "the same but more"... well. Then of course you have fetish characters (as you said) that line up for the PC (any PC, thay'll jump at whateer) as if the whole plot was speed dating... That's also another problem with the characters: they are all slutty, if I am to be blunt. All. Not just playboy Astarion, not just Lae'zel raised in a culture of one night stands. It's the stereotypical college kids again, this time it's the horny aspect to add to melodrama. (Ok, I'm not sure about Shadowheart. Perhaps she's less slutty. But she's still in the same "dating system".)

There's a part you've said quickly and didn't elaborate on, but I think it's worth mentioning: the problem with the characters is not that they're evil. You can have evil characters that work great as companions. Like most/all of BG2's evil companions. And even BG1's (cardboard as they were).

If companions stay as they are now, I'll likely go with custom party. Which is something I almost never do and one of the primary reasons I have yet to play IWD. (Btw, there's a mistake in your video: you have NWN as one of the games on Infinity Engine instead of IWD. I know, both have wintery things in the name, I got them mixed up at a couple occasions as well. :P )



Yep. I feel like they wanted to show off the shiny(?) cinematics, voice acting and all the stuff that will draw in modern/casual audience. And then dialogue/writing in general is going to suffer.



This is something I often see as a counterargument to feedback deemed "elitist": "it will never sell! most people like X and the game needs to sell well!". And this is, exactly, something to worry about for accountants. As a player, I'm going to suggest things that I think will make the game better - not necessarily "more marketable". By that "marketable" logic, BG3 should be a mobile game with tons of MTX. Or an MMO. Or, idk, a live-service looter shooter.

God I could go on forever about that game. I made a throwaway comment about it being related to my thesis, but honestly there's so much to go into. I just wish it came out a couple years earlier and maybe I could have got an easy chapter out of it instead of struggling through Hungarian poetry. I spend a lot of time in Central/Eastern Europe (lived in Budapest, girlfiend's Czech, done some EU docs in Poland/Romania, in the Balkans a lot) so the themes are always fresh.



Thanks, haha. Not so interested in subs thankfully - I would be sad if videos like this stopped being anything but quite fun to do - but hoping to do something on the camera because I'm interested in how game cameras work differently to film ones and hope I might actually be able to say something relatively original about it. Who knows.

Hit the nail on the head.
Sadly, all these issues is what is keeping me from enjoying the game. The single most frustrating thing in BG3.
Not much topics on the <incredible> cinematic dialogue quality...the cringe is real.

Poor Larian...playing with the devil (WOTC/Hasbro) will bite them back real hard. In my book they are as dangerous as EA.

To make the custom player characters more interactive in cinematic discussions, voice recognition could be added, and the character on screen could mouth the words as they are spoken. For reference, here is a Skyrim mod that adds speech recognition so that you can speak the dialogue lines aloud to select them:
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/16514

Also, there should be different sets of dialogue choices depending on the player characters race, alignment and IQ level. A LE drow wizard with an IQ of 18 should have different dialogue choices than a CN halforc barbarian with an IQ of 3.

This, while cool and logical, would cost too much (game will have fully voiced custom - several variations of voices for female and male and then another set for origins). They said there will be no background-specific dialogues, because there are too many permutations already. So I would not expect dialogues depending on int, wis or char and alignment. There are some lines with race tag tho.

If I'm not mistaken, the reason Swen gave for scrapping background dialogue was that it would need to shoehorn the player into a specific backstory. He gave the example of the writers asking "ok, but how did the character become a Folk Hero? what was the heroic feat?" etc. when tasked with making the dialogue options. (I still think this could work with some consideration, but that's besides the point.) I wouldn't necessarily take this as a sign that they're unwilling to add any more complexity (although it may be the case. we don't know).

A bit more on topic: I'd only expect dialogue choices depending on race, class, gender, prior events and character knowledge. I think those are (mostly?) implemented already. Backgrounds if we can persuade Larian that it's doable, but I wouldn't count on it.

As for ability scores - I'm pretty sure Larian is dead set on all checks and check-like things being determined by rolls. So no special super intelligent dialogue for Int>18, but you can attempt to decipher an ancient text and succeed with your Int 3 half-orc. (Not a fan of this approach, personally.)

As for alignment - Swen has stated that they won't lock any dialogue options depending on a PC's alignment.

Regarding facial expressions and body language i saw somewhere a suggestion that there could be options at character creation where you choose what type of person your character is and she/he would act accordingly during dialogue scenes, it would define if they smile a lot, they have a sad face in general or they constantly serious or just outright afraid of everything etc. as OP said they will never be able to cover all versions as thats impossible but they can try to give more layers to it (and maybe add a toggle if some people doesnt want to see these?). i imagine this would need a lot of tweaking to get it mostly right and it might be too much hassle to implement this at this point, but its an interesting idea