Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Undermining systemic freedom through rigid reactivity

PoE is a bit different beast, as it doesn't offer nearly as much freedom. PoE2 offers freedom when it comes to how you interact with the enviroment. On top of that areas are clearly designed to be their own individual bubbles - that said, yeah game does a pretty good job in having lines and responses set up for whatever path players take.

I feel Larian design is closer to Fallout1 or 2 - with quest being far less structured - us getting objectives, rather then quest threads to follow. NPCs and items are always present rather then spawning when quests demand it. Games actively encourage and reward thinking outside of the box. While PoE2 has, lets say pickpocketing, it's usualy useless, unless quests decite to use it is. Also things like day and light cicle are ususaly irrelevant, unless quest is scripted to use it. Larian's world is more consistant and more systemic. You have more reasons to take things into your own hands, because it seems like a logical thing to do, rather then waiting for story line to develop.

Overall, BG3 feels more directed then D:OS2 was - and personally I think it works better. Constantly, in D:OS2 I would find solutions to quests I never started, and the whole thing felt chaotic and wrong. I didn't have nearly as many issues in BG3 so far. The idol was one that popped up, another was combat with drow lady, which I am not quite sure if it was intended or not - I feel like I broke something, but I am not sure what. But it could work as intended.

Still, the Idol situation worried me - the game didn't recognise the action of stealing the Idol, meaning whenever the disappearance of Idol is recognised is not tied to it's location - which I think is dangerous. There more quests are designed that way, the bigger chance of players will do something devs didn't account for. Ideally, if you do something in an unintended way or order, the game should be set up to still recognise and roll with that. Of course, the more defined story and characters are, the trickier it is to keep reactions believable. Therefore, companies like Bioware or Pillars stick to more rigid scripts with handcrafted solutions - which can be a problem in itself. I know there is at least one quest in PoE2 where choices on offer felt rather arbitrary.