Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Long Rests, Health, and Death Mechanics

The point about using long rest and "The Camp" as a vehicle for story delivery is a good one, because I can certainly imagine how it might have been used differently with more gameplay elements, or similar to how Strongholds or a House might be used in some games.

One thing I definitely notice, is how the centralized base Camp has removed a proper place for stuff like Inns, which were stock feature of D&D campaigns. This has an impact on how the "town" environment is structured visually and on the mini map. So for example, rather than having inns or temples or barracks or shops, it feels like we just have various merchant NPCs kinda scattered about. Rather than having a shopfront or a wagon or a tent, that actually looks like a spot where merchants would be hocking their wares, we just have merchants standing on sidewalks pulling swords and armor out of their pockets I guess. Granted some of this comes from having all the action in the early game centered around a makeshift refugee settlement and a goblin camp (and where everything else is either overrun, or in ruins, or on fire) but I think it impacts the vibe for sure.

That brings up another thing I noticed, which isn't directly related but feels still somehow relevant... How all the named areas on the map are pretty generic.

Aside from Waukeen's Rest, which sounds like it might be an Inn of note, everywhere we go feels like it might just as well be located anywhere in Faerun, rather than in a specific place.

We have area names like Ravaged Beach, or Blighted Village, or Sunlit Wetlands for example. These don't sound like actual place-names but rather generic descriptions or impressions of the environment.

Like where are we exactly? "Well look around, seems like a Shattered Sanctum or a Defiled Temple or a Risen Road." But those don't have that sense of place in the same way that like Nashkell, or Beregost, or the Cloakwood Forrest do.

Part of the appeal of BG1/2 was that the games began in a specific place, Candlekeep, with other specific places looming large in the background, and where progressing through the game basically made the player feel like they were fleshing out a mental atlas or actually becoming acquainted with a real world (even if a fantastical one.) They do throw a few names at us in BG3, like Elturel or Menzoberranzan or I guess the Moonrise Towers. But NPCs don't seem to talk about the place where they're standing in the way that real people might, in a real place, with actual place-names.

I just don't feel like the game is building out the World of Faerun in a way that might serve as a point of reference to get a grasp on the broader geography or sense of place.
Like when Volo recounts these tales, is he just going to be drawing blanks for place-names?
Its going to sound like he made everything up and never actually visited.

Resting at Inns or in towns, you have things like signposts and pub rumor mills, and other nuance building elements, that you're just not going to get from a generic pocket plane camp. So it seems kind of unfortunate. BG1/2 used resting to advance aspects of the story as well, but it could happen anywhere and felt somehow more natural for that reason I think. Whereas here its kind of like, well "better head back to the camp, so we can hear the next part of the story." Its just kind of an odd narrative departure handling it that way. The idea that we can't travel and experience these environments at night also strikes me as a really bizarre choice for a D&D game.

They could still fix a lot of this stuff, its not like there is a hard release date they have to meet yet, and presumably EA was a nice payday that seemed to surpass their expectations. I'd be happy to wait while they figure out what they want to do with Time, or the resting mechanics, or having an actual Moon and Sun or even weather. I kind of expected it to be able to rain in Baldur's Gate sometimes for the clutch lightning strike, since they managed that in 1998. By 2020 I thought we'd be at like flash floods sometimes, or snow, or taking some of these environmental effects they already had in place for surfaces and using them that way, rather than as spells or bucket blasts, using them for dynamic environments over time.

Or if they want to break with real time completely, it would be cool if the whole campaign really leaned into it. With that integrated into the story, and making time part of the gameplay. More like BG terminator?

Like how cool would it be if Larian said, ok lets really lean into the sequential Time thing.

Instead of ignoring it, they could have done a badass temporal angle on all kinds of stuff.

Maybe that's what those netherese portals are really about?

Make this a more temporal campaign that plays with time in different ways, instead of just kind of eliminating it?

Then maybe they actually could find cool ways to link this story with the earlier BG stories?

Or like how cool would this campaign took place over several seasons. In the winter if water froze, and maybe we can cross Chionthir into different areas. Go all Zelda level with it, or Darkside of Xeen style. Returning to the same environment but experience it differently. Give the world itself an artistic sense of time, such that the same environment might change and have new ways to interact with it. Day or Night feels like it would be the first place to start. But winter and summer would be cool too.

That's just a riff, they probably wouldn't go for it. But I think that would be cool and fit the whole out from the Astral plane angle.

They could do much more with the prologue too that way, if the mind flayer worm was actually like a memory or time flaying worm. Things like origins or backgrounds could then be handled in specific tutorials, at the start where the flayer first puts the worm in your mind. As if you are living out the memory. This could be a way also to integrate the NPCs or companions in different ways too. Were we learn about that backgrounds through gameplay, rather than just cinematics or dialogue.

Once the worm is in your eye, after the first 10 seconds of the game, from that point on you could insert breaks in the game's temporal reality to explore different stuff and make Time really a part of the gameplay. Pillars used a similar device with ghosts, but its not as compelling as time travel to me.

Even just as a device for the EA, it would be cool. Like the idea that the environments or characters or whatever are split realities and the more we use the netherese portals the more the fabric of fearuns space time is deteriorating. So that we can get Bhaal back in on it? Franchises splitting chronology is always kind of fun, allows some freedom to explore or then dial it back if it goes off the rails. That's more planescape angle I guess, but the franchises have always been connected up BG and City of Doors. If we can go to the Underdark and be rolling with Gith from the get go, I'd like to see them try something ambitious like that. And really work up how that could be strung into the Camp and the dreams and whatever other game devices might be fun. I mean could EA Faerun pull a Majoras Mask on us for the EA? I'd buy in, but it would have to be set up more from outset. Like this is what's happening you're going to retreat the same environments over and over, bouncing across time and different pcs, while the story and dynamic environment is changing. Sorry just spitballing. Right now the camp does have a weird groundhogs day vibe to it heheh

Flash! Back at the Nautiloid! Again! But why? hehe