Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Interaction between long rest and story/companion cutscene triggers should be revamped

Since the start of EA many players reported not being able to properly trigger companion specific scenes when taking a long rest (e.g. Weave scene from Gale, Astarion star scene, Wyll's scenes, etc.); A lot of save scumming, long rest spamming, and excessive experimentation was required from players in past patches as the game seems to only trigger companion scenes under very particular situations which made a big chunk of the origin character stories severely miss-able.

Having to manage your every move in the game even to the smallest detail just to experience the companion side stories impacts/breaks immersion; It causes unnecessary stress to the players whose enjoyment lie in connecting with the origin characters' stories and maximizing their experience of the campaign.

Here are my specific suggestions to further fix the gaps in this area of the game as the current patch has yet to properly address the elusiveness of story/companion camp scenes:


1) The devs should explore revamping the long rest functionality and how it affects the BG3 story as it is possible to complete Act 1 by only long resting a couple of times. In order to avoid missing major story beats, it might be better if the game would require the player to set up camp at specific points in the campaign to allow critical narrative points points to trigger, as well as relevant companion scenes before they are locked out.

2) The devs should lessen scene locks in the game; Companion scenes should only lock out from players if they made major story decisions that narratively halted the development of the origin characters; Larian should also lessen time based locks and other very strict prerequisites to trigger a companion scene unless the story really requires it.

3) Regarding dialogue options during a companion scene - it would be good quality of life change if the game can indicate to the player which of them would act as a "player decision option" for the conversation that would ultimately end the scene and prevent further inquiries with the companion; This feature is pretty common in recent massive rpgs wherein game devs highlight major dialogue decision options in another color (usually yellow) to contrast them from the general ones that would not end the conversation (usually in standard white text). This distinction would allow the player to make a more informed choice when doing companion quest conversations as some responses may serve as potential lock points for future quests/scenes.

4) Have companions talk to to us in the over-world/give us a notification if they have something to tell us at camp so players do not miss their side stories/missions; Larian can also indicate in the player's quest journal when a companion wants to talk to us at camp as an added measure of security.

5) Remove scene priority between companions during long rest . We can have 1 scene per companion per night at camp. This would avoid having companion scenes "conflict" with each other and bug-out during a standard long rest.

6) Removal of scene priority should also apply to the "exclamation mark discussions" the origin characters give-out after the player makes a quest decision in the over-world; There should be no issue in having all three active companions in your party comment on your quest decision as they were present when it was made. It would also be a good quality of life change if the devs made the exclamation points on top of the companions' heads more visible; Right now they are easy to miss because of the current design.

7) Remove the relationship level locks wherein companions scenes can become miss-able if a party member's approval level goes up too quickly before taking a long rest (Looking at you Gale!); Companion approval ratings can erratically change in a play-through based on the multitude of quest decisions being done by the player so they shouldn't be gated in this way. The player shouldn't have to micromanage relationship levels and then excessively camp just to make sure they get all the story scenes for a particular party member. Scenes for a specific companion should be queue-able in the chronological order they were made to be experienced in so long as the necessary prerequisites have been previously attained by the player.


It is also worth noting that there are still a large number of lip sync problems for certain companion scenes in the current patch; Our party members' mouths do not move during every other sentence in a cutscene. It would be good for the devs to take a look at this problem as well when they go back to investigate the scene trigger bugs/problems.

I welcome anyone from the community to share additional thoughts/suggestions in relation to this topic so Larian can know how to best address this issue before the game ships out of early access.