Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback This doesn't feel like a Baldur's Gate game (or D&D)

I agree with OP. Honestly, if we wanted BG3 to be a Baldur's Gate game worthy of the name, that ship has sailed the moment Wizards decided to give the rights to Larian, a game company that is very clearly afraid to even PEEK out of their comfort zone. Now the best we can hope for is a good Larian RPG, but the fact they went for the name just as a cashgrab without respect for either the Infinity Engine games or D&D in general will keep stinging me quite a bit, even if BG3 turns out to be a good game. Getting strong Fallout 3/4 vibes here... Maybe we can hope for something like New Vegas, made by someone else, who actually likes/respects the originals?

If I were an optimist, I'd say there is still some hope for BG3 becoming closer to 5e D&D (but to me, that's not nearly as important), but no hope at all that they will even attempt to change BG3 to feel (at least a bit more) like an actual Baldur's Gate game. Many of Larian's game (and world) design decisions go literally exactly the opposite way.

This has probably been posted a few times before, but:

The 20+yo games manage to give me a 9999x more faithful impression of an actual living and breathing world that keeps existing even when the player character is not there, with characters whose existence, motivations and interests are not defined only by their relation to the player. This is my main problem with BG3: Static, theme-parky locations where everything is mashed close together (for convenience?) and time simply doesn't exist; player-centric characters (and player-sexual companions, but whatever...) written/scripted in such a way that it's clear when their sole purpose is to provide the player with dialogue(s) and/or quest(s) and/or a cutscene or two; locations where almost every inch has to have some kind of purpose _to the player_...

I want (way more) bedrooms/bathrooms/toilets/latrines/useless store rooms - though, funnily enough, we sure DO get lots of useless/empty containers, almost on the other extreme end of the spectrum. I want to believe locations where people live were actually designed for people to live in and I want the game to give me the impression that people there actually do _live_. Yes, if you design a game world in such a manner, there will inevitably be some lost convenience and "wasted time" - but if the world you create is living and believable, then it's actually not a waste of time at all. 20+yo (Infinity Engine games, Fallout 1 & 2...) games were able to pull that off pretty well, I wonder what would happen if someone actually embraced this kind of world design with today's technologies. For a game that calls itself Baldur's Gate 3, a believable living world should have been an obligatory MUST HAVE in the pre-development/planning phases, instead we get a theme park "world" design that gets called out even by people that don't care about the originals, that's just sad...

Everything else (shitty controls, questionable combat, occasional cringy writing - the originals weren't completely without fault in this regard either) I can get over, but not this weird feeling that the whole BG3 world is in a snow globe.

I admit, if you back away from D&D, I had fun with Grymforge. It was a fun level. I enjoyed the fights, the puzzles, etc.

That said, story-wise, when you dig in, the whole game is like, "What the crap is this?"

There is literally no explanation at all as to why you're even fighting an Adamantine Golem when you are creating an item at the forge. Why? What's the story explanation for that? He's the guardian of the forge? Um. Shouldn't he, then, appear prior to you even getting to the forge to use it? And why do lava mephits pop up afterwards? It just makes no sense. There's literally no logic to it.

Now, if they had something where you are messing around and you hit a wrong switch or pulled a wrong lever, suddenly, the guardian of the forge springs out to attack you because you are obviously not the owners of the facility, or you'd know how to use it correctly, that's one thing, but you activate the forge and suddenly out pops an Adamantine Golem? ???

And yeah, I remember in BG2 encountering an Adamantine Golem. You couldn't kill the fricker! I had to have my character hasted, rush in, steal the loot, and rush out before that thing could get me. I must have reloaded that golem encounter a million times trying a million ways to kill those golems. I could kill them all but the Adamantine Golem.

They're supposed to be immensely tough at levels like 16 or something. Or is that an Iron Golem? I can't remember off the top of my head. Either way, they're supposed to be for WAY higher level than level 4 or even 6 or 7.

And that's the point, isn't it?

Cool video, being a stranger in a strange land is one of the reasons Baldur's Gate was so impactful for me when I played it, that and its cavalcade of interesting npcs.

I wonder how this video would play in the threads about playersexual npcs. A game not giving you everything is a good thing for a story, its world, and its characters.

I don't necessarily hate the concept of player-sexuality, though IMHO in an actual Baldur's Gate-like or Fallout-like game, it would feel VERY out of place. In a Larian RPG - which BG3 is - it kinda makes sense (though it sure highlights how badly written/programmed the romances currently are). It's just one more reason (and a very tiny one in comparison to other) why the BG3 world doesn't feel alive or believable at all.

There is something very telling about the times we live in (at least as far as 1st world is concerned) in this current game design trend where everything revolves around the player and handling players everything they want on a silver platter.

I partially disagree.

Yes seems strange to see a beholder at lvl 4 encounter, or the underdark...

But sincerely i feel happy to not pass my lvl 1 and 2 killing rats,.
Lvl 3 killing skeletons and kobolds,
Then start the real game at lvl 4- 5 (consider i played many d&d games, best one was newerwinter nights on line with human DMs)

And fortunately the game is really different from DOS2.
I can t play no more dos 2 ( i stopped at lvl 7 in act 1) now that bg3 is playable.

I really enjoy bg3. The only thing i dont like is the super OP shove action.

The risk is: act2 and 3 will be so super like act1????

Lets seeee.

+1 from me, I have same concerns

Not a beholder, its a spectator. Beholder has a CR of 13-14 and would delete 4 x level 4 characters in half a round and have enough time to make a bru and take dump afterwards. A spectator has a CR of 3 which means 4 x level 3 characters would find the monster moderately tough. CR 14 means the same, 4 x level 14 characters would find ONE beholder pretty tough. Imo beholders are tougher than CR13-14 generally. Even vs one beholder 4 level 14 characters would likely lose 2 permanently.

Two beholders vs 4 x level 14 characters would likely get disintigrated and blown to bits by the end of the first round. Bare in mind 1 level 14 sorcerer etc. would delete 4 level 4 characters in a single spell.

Nothing is stopping a level 1 character going to the underdark I just wouldn't expect to see them again. I don't have an issue with the underdark so early as the world exists it doesn't simply exist for the player to interact (or shouldn't at least). To my understanding though the underdark is a MASSIVE underworld that interconnects like the surface worlds but underground. Therefore the underdark would stretch as one large interconnecting map with different factions of drow, illithids, beholder nests etc. spread all over the joint.

EDIT: I think just commented on the wrong thread, derp.

+1

I don’t know about that - there has been multiple issues raised (lack of clarity when it comes to chain of events, lack of tonal consistency, lack of necessary set up and explanation, ineffective reveals, small segmented map design not supporting the story etc. etc.) that do point to some pretty transparent issues.

Unless you mean it’s a good story by computer game standard - a medium in which the story and writing are in general 2d class citizens. But by standards of an RPG, which tend to write on the quality of writing and storytelling over everything else, I find it quite underwhelming. Definitely not a game I would recommend to play “for the story”.

I am glad you are enjoying the game though.

What a surprise! Raggy doesn't like what everyone is saying in regards to changing the game to make it better.

Look, it's not about nostalgia. It's about proper encounters for variety and so that you ACTUALLY defeat the monsters you are fighting. You aren't just defeating an enemy that is called a certain monster and who looks like a certain monster.

Let me put this in a different way. It's like a kid wanting to be an NBA Allstar. "I want to be like Michael Jordan!" Then, a talent scout comes along and says, "Hey kid! You wanna be like Michael Jordan?"

"Yes!" says the kid.

The talent scout then takes the kid to a basketball court with nets that come up to the kid's chin and are so wide the kid would have a hard time missing the shot. The kid is also facing toddlers as his opponents, and those toddlers are hardly skilled at the game.

"Do you feel like Michael Jordan yet?" asks the talent scout.

"I sure do!" says the kid. "I'm a super star!"

Is the kid really earning the title of NBA Superstar? Absolutely not. Someone has completely dumbed the game down to give the kid the ability to FEEL like a superstar without actually having to do much to BE a superstar.

That's how I feel about BG3. We're fighting imps and intellect devourers and phase spiders and gnolls and githyanki and hobgoblin warlords and Nightsister Drow (Minthara) who are supposed to be elite drow warriors, and ogres and hags and red caps and wood woads and mud mephits and AN ADAMANTINE GOLEM, and bulettes and minotaurs and so on and so forth, but they are all so dumbed down and nerfed that we aren't REALLY fighting these creatures. We're PRETENDING to fight them because it feels good and we want everyone to be able to win the trophy.

I want Larian to remove the kid gloves and let us play the game right, building encounters appropriately so we can ACTUALLY be heroes in a D&D Baldur's Gate world. If you want to keep the party size at 4, then you limit the difficulty level of the monsters you can fight. So, you can't fight intellect devourers with only 2 level 1 characters (your MC and Shadowheart). No, if you want to fight intellect devourers, even severely injured ones, you need at least a party of 4 + Shadowheart for you to even stand a chance.

You want to face a phase spider matriarch + 2 phase spiders and up to 18 baby phase spiders? At least a party of 6 would be advised and at least level 4 or 5. Don't even allow the players to go down there until they meet these requirements or they're going to die.

Don't allow the githyanki fight until they are at least at party of 4 and level 5 or 6, or party of 6 at level 4 or 5.

Over and over again, that's the bottom line. The game doesn't feel like D&D because the encounters are designed to be WAY over the heads of the party you can have at the time you encounter these monsters. So, the monsters are babied down so we can actually beat them so we FEEL like we are so super awesome.

I do like to point out that the Act 1 can turn out to be a bit different as well.

On the official website the following can be found:


So they even planned to cram in a lot of stuff in a small space for us, to do game testing.

I do not fully agree with this critique, but there is one theme in this thread that I definitely agree with. It is that the game starts off far too fantastical... from the opening cinematic to the opening ship sequence. Once you hit the beach I tend to think that is more of what an RPG should start like. I tend to think it would have been a better approach to have been someone wandering about or in the local town where this mind flayer ship crashed who goes to investigate it and battles the infected people (or I guess chooses to join them if there was a realistic evil path to get to that point via the promise of power and such). It would have been fun to figure out the mystery of the ship and what is going on with these people as opposed to starting on the ship and being one of the infected. But I am kind of a sucker for the 'regular person' becomes a hero type of story.

The above was one of my main critiques of Pathfinder: WOTR as well. Within no time you are flung into this huge, epic situation and it felt very forced from a story perspective.

The other thing that I tend to agree with a bit is that the companions are too 'epic'. I think this is one of the issues with having all companions be origin characters. I think origin characters are a good idea and interesting, but not every companion has to have some crazy story around them. Some of them can be more regular people... or develop alongside your character. For example I think the Tiefling from the Druid Camp who talks about meeting you for a drink in Baldur's Gate would be a great companion option. She can be strong, powerful and have things to say... but she doesn't have to be some legendary vampire, a superwizard or an otherworldly being. You could just learn about her history, what she was doing at the camp, why she would want to come with you, etc.

But I will say I have been playing CRPGs for many years, all of the way back to BG and BG2. This game definitely feels like those games to me, just the evolution of those games rather than a copy and paste of them. Obviously things won't be the exact same since a different developer is working on them... but I very much enjoy the world and after the beginning of the game nothing has felt over the top or out of place.

Huh, not really? I really don't think "Act 1 in the actual released game will be much larger / less dense" is the correct take - but I would LOVE to be wrong. Although there are other issues with the world building, not just the lack of space between locations.

Pretty much the opposite of who Larian are as developers. Giving players options and freedom are core values of how they design games. I suspect that if they were acting as a DM hosting a tabletop game they would choose to make it as creative and free flowing as possible and would homebrew or fudge to make it a fun and memorable experience. You have to remember Larian are first and foremost creative entertainment artists, they're not bureaucrats obsessed with rules and procedures. So far their instincts and designs have been pretty darn successful as evidenced by sales of their various products. I think anyone expecting them to make the game more limited and restrictive will be disappointed.

Agreed...

Also, if one of the complaints is that the game isn't enough like D&D and the solution is to put a bunch of restrictions in on where people can go/what they can do... then that isn't like any D&D that I have ever played.

The nostalgia dream criticism has been levelled before, like 'get with the times! Don't you know you're too old to matter now? Just deal with it and move on! or hurry up and expire' hehe. So I'll respond to that again briefly. In short, it's probably correct, maybe that is what it is, but I'll elaborate a bit further just for the sake of conversation.

In virtually every area of actual life I'd consider myself highly progressive, meaning that I indulge the notion of progress as a positive force. I never buy into the argument that things were 'better before, in the good old days.' I know the 1950s were a trash nightmare for most people, and that any wish for a return on that count is indeed pretty misguided. Even from my own knowledge and direct experience, the 80s sucked compared to now in general terms. I feel that way pretty strongly in regard to real life, the general advancement of knowledge and also in politics, as well as most other arenas, but almost never with the arts.

For some strange reason, my attitude and general predisposition regarding the arts is the exact opposite. Inexplicably, I'm a stuffy curmudgeon on that count. I blame modernism in 20th century painting for doing this to me. Among other things, evaluating what happened in the 20th century in painting, how traditionalism was demoted in favor of the avant garde and the foundations derided, has shaped my views here in a puzzling way. I suppose because in my estimation the high water mark for visual poesis and visual representational language was achieved towards the end of the 19th century before the advent of photography and true mimesis arrived to kill it off. Basically we were cruising in the Rolls-Royce of painting and design, then made a hard left at WW1 and drove it straight off a cliff. 2000 years of knowledge and development that built on prior foundations was nixed and we climbed out the smoldering wreckage into a new wilderness with no compass to guide anymore. The world of anything goes, where art becomes philosophy with it's attendant aporia writ large. In no other disciplines has this occurred with such a stark about-face as it did in the visual arts and to a lesser extent the letters in the 20th century. They used to be a bit more like the sciences, building on previous knowledge and advancing incrementally with some deference to what came before, instead of throwing all that out the window in some kind of manic revolutionary fervor and desire for the new. Doing the undercut as it were. In the arts the countervailing narrative has ever been the dominant one. We almost never get a positive assessment of progress there. Just thinking how in Homer today 10 men couldn't lift that rock, whereas back in the day Achilles could handle it all by himself. Or in Hesiod, how there used to be a Golden Age, but now it's Iron, go figure. Or the sacred texts, how it used to be a beautiful garden free from woe but now we're all fallen and miserable hehe.

Then consider how we moved from a burn it all down, 'screw what our parents liked. We're on to the new shit now!' sort of mentality, to this strange situation where we now live in chameleon era, times unmoored from any sense of what's current. Unfixed in time, haunted by visions of the past constantly as the defining feature of the new millennium general aesthetic. You can see it in fashion especially. Curiously it grafts on to the general idea that people tend to hate whatever immediately preceded, whatever it was that their parents liked or who their parents were, but then have a sense of nostalgia (probably misguided) for whatever it was that their grandparents liked or who they were. We're slightly more forgiving of the grandparents and positive associations there. Taken further, a true love for what the great grandparents liked or who the great grandparents were (esp. since that last is too far removed for direct experience, so the impression is more pure flight of fantasy.) Perhaps also a general irritation with who's in charge currently that feeds into it all. I think this is how they can track trends and know in advance what each generational cohort will be into, vs what they'll reject in broader terms.

Since I think games are art, it doesn't surprise me that my views tack pretty similarly in the direction of conservation on that score. Maybe it's a failing of imagination, or just being stubborn. If I can see what's happening, be analytical about it, and yet nevertheless still see it in operation for myself. Maybe it's irrational, but we're also sort of irrational creatures when you get right down to it right? hehe



Enjoyed watching that!

What a surprise! GM4Him doesn't like others questioning or not agreeing with him.

(Do you see how this mannerism is not productive? Please stop it.)

The key to being a good game creator/encounter builder, is to give players the freedom to choose where to go and such without utterly killing them by allowing them into a nest of monsters that are way too powerful for them to handle.

So, when I say, "Don't let them go into the phase spider nest until they're ready," I mean that Larian should create obstacles that increase the party's level prior to them getting to said encounter. So, although they might work their way directly towards the phase spider matriarch, they have to jump through enough hoops and obstacles, fighting lesser monsters and such, so that by the time they actually get to the phase spider matriarch, they are at an appropriate level.

Same with the Githyanki Patrol. Lae'zel is pushing players to get there almost constantly. So, what if the player goes there at a whopping level 2? They're pretty much dead. So, what is needed is a series of enemies and/or XP rewarding puzzles or quests in the player's path that increases their level so that by the time they get to the bridge they are appropriately leveled.

Immediately, there are those who think that if Larian were to go more strict D&D 5e that it means the game would be severely limited and restricted. There is SO much freedom in D&D 5e that Larian could use to make this game work better. They're just not using it. Instead, they're homebrewing everything and claiming it's because the game is too restrictive. It's not true.

The whole point of encounter building is to provide a bunch of lesser, baby monsters and quests that build you up levels so you can fight bigger and more terrible monsters. You don't throw big and awesome monsters at your characters when they are inappropriately leveled and then nerf all the monsters to make it work.

Here's an example using the phase spider Whispering Depths situation:

You are level 2. You leave the grove. You reach Moonhaven. If you're friendly with the goblins, you don't fight them. You go down into the well. You don't go far and are suddenly attacked by a Swarm of Spiders. That's challenge rating 1/2. 100 XP. You head towards the left path. You are attacked by 2 Swarms of Spiders. Another 200 XP. (Note: A Swarm of Spiders is a single enemy, mind you. It's not tons of enemies, so the battles would be short.)

You're leaving the left path and heading down another path. A Phase Spider attacks. Dang! CR 3, but it's worth 700 XP. That's a considerable boost. Maybe you're level 3 at this point. Round another bend, 2 more phase spiders. 1400 XP. That's significant for such low levels, but now you're getting close to level 4 already. Round another bend, face another couple of swarms of spiders and an ettercap. 650 XP.

Suddenly, the spider lair isn't so devoid of life. There are spiders everywhere, and you really feel like you are cleaning out a hive of them because you are facing a bunch of baby swarms of spiders peppered together with a few bigger ones here or there. By the time you get to mama, you're level 4. Now build your mama matriarch spider encounter around a party of 4 or 6 or whatever level 4 characters, and you're set.

THAT is how you build encounters. You don't give players the ability to go anywhere and fight level 6 bosses when they're only level 3. You have to put smaller encounters and puzzles in the way to boost the XP to BUILD your characters to the appropriate level BEFORE they get to them.

That is my point.

Ok ok. I'm sorry. You are right. Uncalled for.

I have to agree with a lot of things said here in regards of this not feeling like D&D. I have not played the original Baldur's Gate games (Nor do I have any desire to, AD&D and THAC0 just.. No more, thanks) so I cannot comment on how they feel in comparison to this. What I have played is various other cRPGs and they struck a very good balance of feeling like you are low level versus going up against extremely "Strong" Foes.

Recently while playing through BG3 I found myself stopping around the time I enter the Druid Grove where I ask myself "Why does this feel overwhelming? Why must everything be Do or Die? Why must there be a constant crisis to solve?" I've played to the grove three times and just don't want to continue. The story and concepts are at conflict with the mechanics and the pacing. It doesn't want to slow down, the story discourages you from stopping to rest, and yet you need to rest to get in pace with the gameplay which in turn shows the "You are unique and epic and strong!" or brings up the Absolute and things like that. I just find it hard to actually get connected to the world and the characters if everything is going super fast.