Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Does everything need to be turned up to 11?

I don't quite understand why people seem to want to impose realistic expectations on a fantasy game? It's a fantasy story - OF COURSE it's going to be dramatic, epic and sometimes over the top. It wouldn't be interesting to play otherwise.

Brutaly honest?
In the end nothing would change ... :-/

People who didnt read the books, would never complain since they would not even notice that something is off.
And people who did read the books, would have "yet another" topic to complain about ... but there is many of them allready, so that hardly can be called a change.

Because in any form of engaging writing or design, contrast is an important feature. Things that are epic, dramatic or unusual can ONLY really be so when they are at least made to feel as though they are surrounded by things that are not. - That's not to say that we need to have hours of walking, or dozens of menial side-quests about helping farmers herd their spooked cows, not at all (though a few might be okay here and there) but more importantly, the world we exist in needs to feel like there is far more day-to-day and common mundanity as a backdrop into which the epic, dramatic and unusual events crash, otherwise they fail to feel meaningful, impactful, and/or the audience can't really connect with any one of them. The dragon terrorising an area of farmland cannot really feel special, epic or unusual if it is only one of a dozen different similarly fantastical events all happening within a mile of one another and all at once.

This is quite literally story telling 101; a lesson that current BG3 design seems to have never learned.

I'll stand as my own case in point here: this game, so far, really has no wow-factor for me. Everything is exactly the same brand of shock and awe factor, everywhere I go, and for every major event, with nothing in between, and so it all simply ends up feeling like 'more of the same' to me. What's that, there was a spectator in that flask? Of course there was... alongside everything else, that's pretty standard fare... we even saw another one already not ten minutes ago... ho-hum... next...

Idk. It does make the world seem very small to not have more normal npcs about just living their lives. But damn…am I glad I don’t have to pick some farmer 20 flowers or chop down 25 trees for a random lumberjack, etc.

Well put. I'm having a very hard time getting into this game because it's all fireworks all the time. I'm not seeing anything that resembles a real world in it for all of the drama to be inflicted upon.

And no, we don't have to go run boring quests for the farmers. We don't even have to talk to the farmers - I just want for there to be some farmers. I want to see evidence of a rich, populated world inhabited by people with lives; and then I want to see the various ways in which the crazy events of the game have impacted those lives (i.e. more than just killing all of the people that are just trying to go about their day). BG3 just feels like someone took all of the crazy things and dumped them into a box together - the backdrop of a living world never made it into the box.

It is interesting when you go into the Prancing Pony and everyone is normal except for the one dangerous-looking fellow in the corner. Who is he? What does he want? Why does he seem so interested in a group of hobbits?

If you go into the Prancing Pony and the bartender is a half-kobold Oathbreaker paladin who has been polymorphed into a giant frog, and she is serving drinks to a roudy group of Dragonborn bard/monks, and there is a group of trolls performing a human sacrifice in one corner of the room when suddenly a portal to the abyss opens and fey start pouring out into the tavern, and before you can say "what were fey doing in the abyss?" a purple polka dot skeletal dragon lich bursts through the wall and starts eating everyone... well, that doesn't actually make the story richer and more interesting for a lot of people. It just makes it campy.

There is only one reaction that suits this scenario.

“ I feel like I'm Han Solo, and you're Chewie, and she's Ben Kenobi, and we're in that f***ed-up bar.” —-Jay

Devs nowadays are very afraid of letting player’s attention go, thus they strive to bombard him with an unstoppable fire show. I don’t have anything against this trend as soon as I am not really into this kind of entertainment. But please when you revive such title as BG be respectful to its foundations.

I feel like we as gamers have lost the ability to communicate without resorting to making hyperbolic (exaggerated) statements.

However, I get what you guys are talking about, there is a lack of "white space" in the game. That is areas where nothing is really going on, also called "framing areas" without which it gives the impression of things being piled on top of one another.

Now compare this to CD project Red's The Witcher 3. There was a LOT going on in Velen, more than ACT I of this game, but it was also spread out over a MUCH larger area with lots of open "framing space" and there were regulars joe-shmoe peasants roaming about being murdered in various ways, but sometimes just staying out of the way and farming.

I mean, not to be snarky, but that is just the style Larian employs. It was like that in both DOS games. As a stylistic choice it has its upsides and downsides. On the upside it reduces travel time, all areas are important so there is no confusion about where you should be careful and when you can goof-off, the dungeon construction and how different areas tie into each other feels more organic. The underdark has 4 entrances from the topside that correspond in physical distance to the areas undergrounds. On the downside it feels a little claustrophobic at times. Where are the random peasants to terrify? Where did Mayrina and her imbecile brothers even come from?

There is a telescope on the druid grove, they can't see the blighted village and what's going on there? They should at that distance. Yet the mercenary band just walked right up to the front door, no plan, got slaughtered/captured? Amateurs.

This is the You generation of D&D, I think 5e actually eased the gas on this when it started, but has since kind of gone full-bore into it again, such as Descent into Avernus with its hotrods and punching gods in the nose (and plot being possibly incorporated into BG3).

But as far as game philosophy goes, we live in an age where there is no story that doesn't have the world ending in the first act.

One answer to the OPs question. Where are all the normal people?

Dead. They lived in Moonhaven and were all killed. There were also some who were fishermen down by the river. Also dead. The Intellect Devourers killed them. There were some at the tollhouse and at Waukeens Rest. Also dead. Killed by Drow or Gnolls. The only surviving, somewhat normal people are those in the Druids Grove. That's all you get in EA.

That said, it actually makes sense, you know. A bunch of crazy people were infected by Ghaik. Your party is filled with special people who were infected for a special reason. Some crazy stuff is going on with a usurping new Goddess called the Absolute. She is having her minions purge normal people from the land. She is killing off the followers of other gods. Selunes people loved in Moonhaven. She wants the Grove destroyed to kill off Silvanus' followers. There was a person by the river, now dead, who served Umberlee, cause he had a book about her. Even the goblins who serve Moglobiat are being killed off. Over and over again, servants of the other gods are found slaughtered by a new Goddess who wants supremacy.

So, naturally, only the special people, the heroes, are surviving.

I think if the movies made all of Middle-Earth fit into the size of Disneyland, they would get some flak from more than just hardcore fans of the books. Picture the battle of Gondor with only room for about a dozen orcs outside the gates, with Rivendell, Moria, Rohan and Mt. Doom all in the same shot.

The best part would be when they light the signal fires to request aid from Rohan, and the signal fires are spaced 10 feet apart, with the final destination within shouting distance. The riders of Rohan wouldn't have enough space to get to a full gallop before they were at the Gates of Gondor.

Have you guys been to New Zealand? :P I'm not saying because they used it as the setting for LOTR's Middle-Earth (and many other fantasy movies). In NZ you can travel for 15-30 minutes and find yourself in a completely different, unique-looking landscape. I also did not believe these "theme park" movie and game settings for many years, until I went to New Zealand. And now I know.

Yeah I rather agree with this actually.
Any normal people - farmers, fishermen, etc - might have fled from all this craziness. Whole cities being taken into Hell and back, a Nautiloid ship crashing on the shore, goblins attacking left right and centre, caravans being attacked by gnolls... yeah if I was Joe Average NPC, I'd run away, too. In fact the thought of "where are all the normal folks" didn't cross my mind while playing, given what has happened in the intro and what I learned while playing & asking questions.

The most "normal", peaceful place so far is the Druid Grove. And it has its own issues.

Also, I found BG3 refreshing in that you don't have to start off doing "kill 10 rats" type quests before the story gets going. You crash land, grab companions, then your first quest is a good ol' dungeon crawl, before things start to really get crazy.

I DO agree that the landscape feels a little too squished together... BUT... I also wouldn't want the landscape to stretch on for miles of sameness, punctuated by the occasional random encounter fight. With BG3's combat system, fighting random mobs every so often would become extremely tedious. I appreciate the attention the world designers and artists have put into the BG3 landscape, just as it is. I would want a LITTLE more of it in Act 1 between the quest areas... but not too much!

My husband pulled me into playing BG1 with him recently. He then went "exploring" and dragged me along (while I was learning the decades-old clunky interface) through an entire side area where there was maybe only one monster. Nothing happened. I was bored. The game says "you've travelled for 10 hours" and arrived to the city we were going to, exhausted. It may have felt like good game design at the time, but by today's standards, it doesn't work... for me anyway. (Don't get me wrong, I enjoy hiking, bushwalking, bird-watching in real life, and would spend HOURS in the forest doing absolutely nothing if I could. But in game? I want my adventures action-packed, thanks. And with LOTS of cutscenes and character conversations. )

We have to name it “A New Zealand argument”

Landscape diversity has little to do with theme-park issue where all events are in the 1 min walk distance.

I agree with these sentiments. Another thing that occurred to me is that while NZ probably made sense to shoot the films, LotR was drawn heavily from Nordic mythology and as a half Scandi myself, a casual walk though some old Swedish forest gives far more of a LotR feel than NZ does, in my opinion. The work of Swedish artist John Bauer on Scandi fairy tales is wonderfully evocative. In some respects Ralph Bakshi's animated version of LotR, while unfinished and flawed, for me does a wonderful job of conveying the fantasy elements of Middle Earth. Anyway I'm going off topic again, sorry!

BG3 definitely needs some balancing in the world design, there's simply too much epic and not enough mundane.

And you know what?
That is absolutely true!

Larian should immediately add a 20-minute long unskippable cutscene between each location, where the camera will rotate frantically around our heroes marching through a forest, meadow, along a mountain ridge, or along a path.
This will be a much better game! Can you feel the fun allready?

What was that one phrase? When everyone is special, no one is?

Worth pointing out that one of the DOS2 endings basically consisted of your party unironically invoking this exact principle, by sharing with the world the very thing that made them so powerful to begin with so that everyone would be better equipped to fight off the incoming threat (as opposed to the party permanently sealing it away entirely but also losing their powers in the process).

No, this is not a good way to design a game.