So, I've been kinda saying it on other posts, but I'm laying it out here in a brand new one.
In the Great British Bakeoff (love that show), the judges sometimes make the bakers create Illusion Cakes. The concept of the Illusion Cake is to make something look like something else, but it's really a cake. So, in one episode, someone made their cakes look like hamburgers, french fries (chips in England, I believe), ice cream, etc. The cake tastes amazing, but at the end of the day, it was cake, not hamburgers and such.
That is how I feel about Baldur's Gate 3 right now, and I know I'm not alone. Baldur's Gate LOOKS like a D&D 5e Game set in the world of Forgotten Realms, but it doesn't taste or smell like a D&D 5e game set in the world of Forgotten Realms. It is a beautiful game and as fun as heck. I've never played a game THIS much. I almost never replay a game more than once. I didn't even replay Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 more than once. I could barely get through them once. It's too much work for me. I don't have endless hours to throw at any game, so for me to play 500+ hours, I must really really love this game.
I also really love cake, but if I see something that looks like a hamburger, and I bite into it and it tastes like cake, that's gonna mess with me. It might be fun at first, but at the end of the day I want cakes to look and taste like cakes and hamburgers to look and taste like hamburgers. (I'm getting hungry now.)
My point is that Baldur's Gate 3 is messing with me. It's like it WANTS to be a D&D 5e Baldur's Gate sequel game, but there are just so many elements that aren't D&D 5e Baldur's Gate. Again, I'm not alone in this because there are many who say it is more like DOS 1 and 2 than Baldur's Gate 1 and 2. Why is it so much like DOS and not BG1 and 2? Because it strays so much from D&D, and there are too many elements from the first two games that are missing.
What could they do to make hamburgers taste and smell like hamburgers? Cook with hamburger meat and not cake. What I mean is, they need to do things that tie players into the originals from a feeling perspective. How do they do this?
1. Proper D&D 5e stats for monsters and enemies. This is absolutely essential to the feel. You can make them injured so they have less health. You can do all sorts of things to make them easier or harder to kill, but you need to at least give them their proper abilities, resistances, vulnerabilities, etc. Example: What makes a phase spider a phase spider is Ethereal Jaunt. They should be phasing into the Ethereal Plane, moving up on their enemies in ways their enemies can't see, and then phasing into the Material Plane and ninja assassinating the characters. Then, as a Bonus Action, they bounce back into the Ethereal Plane. So, every time a phase spider Ethereal Jaunts into the Material Plane to attack, they use their Bonus action and can't Ethereal Jaunt back. So you get an entire round before it can Ethereal Jaunt again to peg it before it escapes into the Ethereal Plane and does it all over again. They don't teleport like they all know an extreme form of Misty Step and bounce around game maps willy nilly acting like they can go anywhere and do anything no matter where you hide or how far you go to get away from them. Part of the whole fun of facing phase spiders is you have to try to guess and predict where they're going. You have to try to lure some away into traps and get them to try to attack your tanks while your squishies keep away and peg them as soon as they appear. It's all about strategy, but you can't do those strategies if they aren't even acting like phase spiders. Imps don't have resistance, intellect devourers don't do Devour Intellect, their most signature move, Sword Spiders don't Pounce on their prey, I still haven't seen a Minotaur do their signature Charge attack, but they sure like to Hulk Smash Leap everywhere, Wood Woads, Mud Mephits... Over and over again, most monsters don't do the things that they're supposed to, and they're nerfed in order to make the game work for a party of 4 at the levels Larian is limiting us to.
2. Proper base 5e rules. The more homebrew, the more you negate certain base elements of 5e that make different abilities and classes unique and fun. Rogue fast hands is virtually meaningless if everyone can drink a potion as a Bonus action. Cunning Action is pointless if everyone can hide as a Bonus. These are just 2 examples.
3. Party size of 6. Yes, there's a whole separate Mega-Thread for this, but in this particular thread, the point is that Party size of 6 is a Signature Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 Party Size. Party Size 4 is DOS. Why do people feel like this is more of a DOS game? One of the reasons is that it is Party Size 4. If you want Baldur's Gate 3 to smell and taste like Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, you need to at least allow for a Party Size of 6. Why? Because one of the most awesome things about BG1 and 2 was that you met a TON of potential party members that you could have in your party. By the Hells! 6 was too limiting for me in those games. I was frustrated to no end because I wanted Minsc and Jaheira and Imoen and Aerie and Viconia and Mazzy and the thief guy who always said, "I can dance on the head of a pin" (can't remember his name for the life of me right now) and the monk guy and the paladin and just about every freaking character all in my party and I was limited to only 6. That's only 5 other characters because I had my custom made MC. That sucked. 4 is even more viciously limiting. I want to have ALL the origin characters in the party, and frankly, if they allow me to have Minthara and Karlach and Halsin and Zevlor and Elegis and Kagha and Rath and Nettie and whoever else they're going to allow us to have, 4 is going to feel SUPER UBER MONSTROUSLY LIMITING!
And as I've said in the Mega-thread, a party size of 6 would allow Larian to use proper D&D 5e stats without having to add or subtract any monsters from any encounters. The entire game would be perfectly balanced for a 6 party member size game with proper D&D 5e stats. So there wouldn't need to be nerfing of monster stats and stripping them of their signature moves or nothing. So combining both would only make for a truly authentic D&D 5e Baldur's Gate experience.
4. Random Encounters. Yes, a lot of people don't like Random Encounters. However, after playing Solasta again, I realized what I like about Random Encounters. Flavor. Variety. Immersion. I know, when you're on your way to fight the goblins at the goblin camp, the last thing you want to do is face some random encounter fighting a pack of wolves or a bear or whatever who pop up on you out of nowhere. However, what we have right now is a world that is DEVOID of life. The forest has no wild animals. Nothing is really and truly living or breathing. In BG1 and 2, you had animals hopping around, even if they didn't fight you, random fights that would spring up on you, and the world wasn't just waiting for you to spring the next cutscene. It was more living and breathing. Besides this, what most don't realize about Random Encounters is that they provide variety in the monsters you fight. There isn't much variety right now in BG3. When I roam in a forest, I might get attacked by a pack of wolves during one playthrough. The next time, I might run into giant spiders roaming the streets of Bogrot. The next time, I might encounter a group of kobolds when I'm roaming one of the dungeons or caves. One time, I might encounter a group of evil gnomes or bandits on the road or SOMETHING besides the same old encounters every time I replay the game. Yes, Random Encounters can be annoying, but when you don't have them, you also don't have variety in encounters. And again, the point is that Random Encounters was another element of the originals that is missing, and the more elements that are missing, the less it feels like the originals.
5. Day/Night. Yes, I'm repeating a lot of items that I've mentioned in the past, but aren't we all really just repeating everything that's been said for the last year? I won't go much into this, but Day/Night REALLY gave the originals the ambiance that is missing in BG3. The dark streets of Athkatla at night with vampires prowling about, the dark forest where you and the werewolf lady are fighting shadow wolves and other wildlife, the graveyard at night, even fighting the trolls in the dark or gnolls or spiders or all the plethora of other monsters that make D&D what D&D is (because having a variety of monsters is one of the absolute staples of D&D and what makes it fun), all of it is lost in the blaring, blazing light of day. I want to have zombies grab my characters' legs as I'm moving through the bog at night. Then they spring up out of the water as the horror music starts to play, and you can only see their eyeballs popping out of their heads in the pale moonlight. I want that gnoll scene at the toll house to be SO much scarier, which it could be at night, with the gruesome bodies all around . I want phase spiders and ettercaps roaming Bogrot at night pouncing at us from spidery webbed buildings with eerie, spooky music playing or off of rooftops. I want caves in the Underdark and where they should be without beaming rays of sunlight pouring down. Day/Night could be done so easily. Forget realtime clocks and so forth. Just implement a single button that switches it from Day to Night. Then, you want night to day, you Long Rest. Boom. Done. Yes, I'm aware intense coding is involved, but it would make this game a thousand times more fun.
This has gone on long enough, so I won't go into any of the other items I'm thinking of. The point is, Larian... Please, please please just hear me and think about this. If you get nothing else from this post, please at least get this. If you want this game to truly smell and taste like BG1 and 2 at all, and D&D at all, and not just look kinda like a D&D 5e Baldur's Gate sequel, but you want it to actually BE a Baldur's Gate sequel, then please consider implementing more of these things from the first games that would make it FEEL more like a D&D 5e Baldur's Gate sequel.
