Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Misconception Destroyed - Map is abstract distance

I'm confused as to why everyone thinks it's so open world. It's a hub game. It's just a big hub. You still explore the whole map and then there are map exits that will take you to the next map. That is clear when you try to take the mountain pass.

So it is just like BG1 and 2 except the map location take much longer to explore. Just like with the previous games, you can explore whatever area of the map location you want whenever you want.

The problem is that unlike those games, Larian has multiple timed events from a story perspective, but they don't follow through with it in the mechanics. The ritual will just keep going forever if you don't stop it. You could literally ignore them, travel to the underdark, sleep for weeks, come back and they act like it's only been an hour.

So again, it's not the map. It's the story elements that are janky. Lots of people keep viewing like an open world map, but if it was then you'd be able to get to Baldur's without pulling up a transition world map, or you'd be able to, at the end of EA, travel to Moonrise via raft without a cutscene.

And it's highly unlikely they're going to let you return to the grove in Act 2 and 3. So again, not open world. It's one big location map in a hub game.

Sandbox is probably more accurate than open world.

The Witcher 3 is considered as an open world game but there are more than 1 "hub/area" in The Witcher 3.

Just like TW3, BG3 is closer to an open world than a game with hubs like BG1/2 despite the fact that many basic things does not look real in this world - distance, time, scale of some area ("forest", "swamp"), ...

No matter the fancies you wants for the story it won't ever be coherent with such a theme park map.
This map is only designed to enhance the gameplay at the expense of the story and the immersion into the world.

I guess it's totally intended even if I personnaly don't like it at all.

IMO the map design is severely lacking and feels too constrictive with no open expanses to explore, in the sense that you can't cross an a large area in whichever direction you choose; exploration feels like you are railroaded into a selection of paths (not even taking into account the ridiculous proximity of everything). I also can't recall a single battle that took place on an a flat plain.

Sandbox has a different meaning and it's not even exclusive with "open world".
In fact, it just defines a specific flavor of it.

Sorry, I was not clear what I meant. Walking from Druids Grove to Goblin Camp is done as in an open world game. But the short distances, simple paths, and lack of time passing feel totally unrealistic and together does not jive with the story at all. I consider these two areas two distinct hubs (as the only thing connecting them is our movement…not the game world…or Minthara is just an idiot) and the way in which we travel between them (walking a few minutes) messes with the immersion for me. Its not a dealbreaker…i can suspend my disbelief for the sake of playing the game. But i am not a huge fan of it.

True. A lot of this is ultimately semantics as technology progresses and most AAA can be considered some form of 'open world'. When I think of open world--in the purest sense of the term--I think of something like Skyrim or Breath of the Wild, where you can basically go anywhere once the tutorial is complete and finish the game as quickly as you like. Sandbox is giving you the creativity to finish tasks/quests within a bound set of parameters. Most true open world games have sandbox elements but not all sandbox style games are true open world. Due to having an act structure, BG3 can't really be considered an orthodox open world game.

Where BG3 differs from a lot of hub worlds is that it connects several different biomes within the same map, while other hub worlds would have them separated to let them load in properly. Which also creates a sense of scale through non-diegetic elements.


We have a saying in lit analysis circles that goes along these lines: "The film teaches you how to watch it." I think if the game does a better job teaching the theme park map and the way it functions within the quests and overarching narrative to the player, the immersion aspect won't be an issue. Or, at least, less of an issue, even for people who don't care for that type of design.

Unfortunately the game is so far in development that this will not change.

Another one of Larian design choices that perpetuates with DOS2 success.

Also little hope for backtracking as they said before.

Now I know why I'm having flashbacks to all those Empire timeline debates I've had.

It's a good point, a lot of the trouble seems to stem from how we're all making up our own answers to what's going on. We have a lot of questions about the structure of the game, how does time work, how directly does the map relate to space, and how does that interplay with time, before and during our participation, but Larian so far has avoided definitive answers most of these questions.

This map conjecture is just another outgrowth of not having a time system in place, just like our questions on how camping works.

Yeah. I take it back. The map as is, it is not fine.

The Harpies on the east bank. Why the druids letting them nest there? They've obviously been there awhile. Druids would not let them nest so close to their borders.

Owlbear cave just beyond the grove's western border. Again, why would the druids let it live? No. They'd hunt that sucker down to ensure the wildlife was protected.

Crazy Hah bog just south of the forest. She seems pretty well established there. Gosh the druids of the Emerald Grove suck for letting her dwell there practically on their doorstep.

Ettercaps prowling the forest, and phase spiders, and they do nothing about it. Do they never leave the grove except for Halsin? Wait, no. Findal left. Brave man!

And why do they call it a forest? It is the smallest "forest" ever. I remember my first playthrough, Ethel said to meet her at the edge of the forest and I kept hunting around for it wondering where the forest was.

Yeah, the more I think about it, the less it makes sense. I'd rather have smaller exploring maps and then have hub gates take me to each of these places, as if they are hours away. As beautiful as the map is to me, it just doesn't make sense all smashed together.

So here's what I'm thinking they should do with the map. I think that they should split up the map into several smaller map locations all connected by some hub gateway. So everything from the beach through the nautiloid to where you meet Lae'zel should be one map location. Then you should have a hub gate. When you access the hub gate it tells you that you travel for several hours.

The second map location would then be the Grove. You would include everything up to the forest. There should be a hub gate near where you meet Alfira that takes you to another map location that is down by the river where you fight the harpies. That map location should be something like 30 minutes from the Grove or something like that. Another hub gate would lead you to the forest with Moonhaven and so forth that would be roughly an hour away. They could build more upon this area and make it a true forest instead of like a grove and a village.

Then a gateway takes you north to Risen Road, and the game tells you about an hour has passed to get there. Now you have Waukeen's Rest, the gnolls, the toll house and the gith encounter all in one map.

Another gateway takes you south to the bog area. This is only a 20 minute journey. There you meet Ethel and the boys on the edge of the bog, and the whole map location is the bog, the Hag's house, etc.

Finally, there's a gateway to the Temple Area map location. That includes everything beyond the bridge leading out of the Moonhaven.

Something like this would make so much more sense.

I thought about this too a few monthes ago but I'm not sure it would have been better. A big map is cool but the problem is that everything is far too condensed.

Now I'm more in favor of a big central hub connected to smaller area.

In exemple the actual swamp could be a part of "the forest" but at the border of the map there is a path that open the worldmap ("you must gather your party..."), allowing you to click on the swamp icon and leading you to a different and smaller map with a swamp and ethel's lair.

Same with the grove and the goblins camp while the "central hub" would still have the size of the actual act 1 map.

The map would have been bigger but not so much.
It would have been a great compromise IMO to create a sword coast that looks "real" without so much things on a small surface (a druid camp, a goblins camp, a swamp, a forest, an isolated inn, a village, an outpost,...)

But anyway nothing will change. We'll have to deal with it.

Talking about timed quests, i think the map is also pretty lackluster from that point of view. It should be way more stream-lined than it is, with the swamp and the paladins positioned in-between grove and temple/patrol, considering how much it's drilled into our brains that we've got no time to waste. It felt stupid and immersion breaking that half the time i was going the opposite way of where i was supposed to, for exploration sake, and it routinely took away any semblance of urgency the game tried to build.

One of my biggest fears is that they’ll implement a day/night cycle but keep all of the timed quests bound by NPC triggers. That has the potential to be incredibly jarring.


I always thought the harpies nesting so close was a clue that Kagha was aligned with the shadow druids. I’m not sure it would make sense for Alfira and the tiefling boy to be much further away from camp. There’s also a discussion about more and more monsters moving into the area recently if memory serves, that’s partly why they want to perform the Rite of Thorns. If one aspect of that were to change they’d probably have to rework the entire encounter.


The central hub in this scenario would probably be the blighted village, although I agree it’s highly unlikely anything changes.


People would complain that the map feels too linear if they did that. I think it works in its current state because you can effectively investigate three routes for the tadpole (Ethel/Githyanki/Goblins) and the paladins are along the route to the Githyanki patrol. Albeit easy to miss… I definitely was unaware of their existence my first few play throughs lol.

Oh well, you can sleep soundly.

They could have easily split the EA wilderness into just a couple more areas to create a proper feeling of distance. Even the overland map is already there.

E.g.

Map A: crash site, abandoned temple, Druid Grove
Map B: Blighted Village, Goblin fort, hag swamp
Map C: Waukeens Rest, Toll house, Mountain pass

Even just separating Map A from everything else would have accomplished this.

It does bother me how gamey Larian's games feel. It's gameplay convenience over immersion so hard that it's harmful for an RPG. The theme park area design that destroys all feeling of distance, traveling and scale.

The fast travel system that is an actual magical teleportation system in the game world that only the player uses. Why are they explaining a player convenience feature as a real game world teleportation event?? It just raises questions a strictly game mechanical fast travel system wouldn't. Why is no one else using the free teleport from Underdark to surface to wherever? Why are the runes literally everywhere within a few minutes of walking distance? Who needed a magical teleportation system to cover such meaningless distances and why? Why aren't Red Wizards and other factions all over the place trying to chip off the rocks with the teleport runes and use them for trade and mitary purposes? It's a self powering free teleport system with multiple access points which is enough to make a kingdom.

Larian don't have the answers. Immersion is their biggest downfall and it's a big deal in RPGs, unfortunately. I hope they learn to make immersive worlds that make sense and feel real rather than remind you at every turn that it's a game where things don't need to make sense. Even the later iterations of Dragon Age don't feel this gamey.

It feels like you're being shuttled around. Too bad...

I don't mind that at all. Having an entirely open world/sandbox is directionless and unimmersive as all hells, especially in this game where it makes perfect sense storywise to seek out the nearest large town for help. With a few choices for deviation along the way. There still is an astounding narrative dissonance between the apparent desperate race against time to find a cure and time obviously being completely irrelevant (even non-existent judging by the lack of day&nigh cycle) - and an open world exacerbates this. I wouldn't mind the game opening up a bit more at some point after arriving in Baldur's Gate though.


In general, I feel the free-roaming aspects of many roleplaying-esque games; from Mass Effect to Dragon Age: Inquisition to Assassin's Creed: Valhalla is some of the worst aspects of the games, and will for me serve as a reminder more isn't necessarily better. As a casual gamer I tend not to complete most games similarly to a significant majority of players. The time-wasting grindy filler elements and lack of direction is largely to blame.

Quote abbreviated for space. I’d counter that IMO being shunted around is the definition of immersion breaking in a D&D CRPG where the onus is on exploration, adventure and choice. In order to be immersive a game world has to have some tenets of the ‘real world’ to keep it believable and grounded. Having a game world where you are free to explore, within certain parameters of course (BG isn’t Skyrim after all), is one of the tenets of the BG series. Larian have seemingly dispensed with that and many other aspects which made them such legendary games.

It sounds like the free-roaming aspects of CRPGs don’t appeal to you when I’d imagine that is one of the major attractions for a lot of players. I don’t want to feel an invisible hand nudging me along while I play, or the sensation that I don’t really have as much choice as I did in previous BG games. In some respects, the reason I loved the old BG games was that they were a reflection of the real world in that life isn’t linear and ideally we have freedom to decide how, where and what to do/go.

+1 This is now my biggest gripe with the EA since patch 5 (before p5 it was combat). This bothers me even more than the toilet chain controls. It's especially glaring in the case of goblins being unable to find the grove. IT'S A ONE MINUTE STROLL!