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 was making a point and being over-critical. You understand then things happening just because the plot needs them to is usually a bad thing. I agree the pace at which these things occurs distracts from why they occur. This is fine. However the more the plot involves "stuff happening because the plot needs it to" or the over reliance on the plot mcguffin (tadpole) to explain "stuff" the less interesting the plot becomes. My experience with writers that use this methodology is they will continue to do so. I already feel hamstrung into decisions I would not normally take because "reasons". Nothing feels like a choice to me, maybe it is me.

I have 4000 hours in path of exile and couldn't tell you anything about the lore or story, I love the game. I have no idea why the bosses are bosses or why "exile" is relevant because I lost interest in the story very early. In contrast the Witcher 3 was magnificent storytelling.

That being said I very much like BG 3 and is party why I am so critical sometimes. Games rarely involve a great story and fantasitc gameplay. BG 3 has the potential to have both.

Well said, and much appreciated that you make this point.

Yup, this is a HUGE source of my fear about the game as well. I won't ever use empty-suit mercs. I won't use evil-aligned party members, especially my first several times playing the game, with "evil-aligned" being determined by me regardless of how Larian may try to spin their characters. And I will only play with a mod that allows a party of six. So am I going to have five companions-- and fully fleshed-out companions at that--who are NOT evil-aligned in any way? I highly doubt it at this time.

Buzzwords? Like "rose tinted glass", "BG3 feels like Baldur's Gate"?

How many CRPGs don't have a day/night cycle? How many CRPGs have a world with virtually zero local fauna and inhabitants? What are the chances of having a Druid Grove, a Selune Temple and a Lich Crypt so close together?

We are lucky that the Nautiloid didn't crash north, otherwise we wouldn't have any Early Access content.

Strangely it tends to rub people the wrong way if you claim something they like is bad, not just as your opinion, but as an objective fact. If I said I didn’t care much for BG 1 & 2, I could expect fans of the originals to tell me they think I’m wrong. If I said the story, characters and gameplay are objectively a bag of shite, what do you think the reaction would be?

The description of the characters was about how these people might all have been together (TBD), which you appeared to object to. And wouldn’t explaining this in a prologue mean having even more plot “rammed down your throat all at once”?

Yes, it’s your opinion. I have no problem with your opinion, and don’t even disagree with all of it. Still an opinion though.

In my opinion the actual game doesn’t do that bad a job of revealing the start of the origin characters stories. It happens over several night’s rest. The problem for me is that we know this already from what was released prior to starting the game. Descriptions on the wiki etc could have been vaguer, but it’s a bit late now.

Yeah I feel you. It is a main reason why I want to roll for attributes introduced sooner. While I prefer chaotic alligned characters than good/evil purely because I may decide to help someone.... but you know what? Not in the mood go away. The current crop of companions all seem lawful/neutral except Astarion who is pretty funny at times. Any character that follows duty and honour around a cause is lawful. Lae'zel, SH are lawful evil imo, Gale is neural good, Wyll is a prat and Astarion chaotic neutral.

Chaotic evil are too much trouble. I hate Paladins as they are just as likely to throw handbags at you for not acting EXACTLY the way they demand. Allignment is a positive gameplay element too harshly removed. Astarion is the only character I would likely take but I like playing rouges soooo pfft. Otherwise I would use the others to experiment on to learn more about the tadpole or kill them and nick all their stuff. I wouldn't help the druids or the goblins, I would however find a way to profit from the situation.

I hate Minsc he always pulled a shitty on me in BG2. Jaheria was always a good choice not too demanding. I agree all the character in BG1&2 seemed real enough and all reacted according to a set of values based on allignment. If you stolen something all the lawful characters would eventually freak out in some way. Chaotic neural all the way.

The point buy system in the character creation locks you into race/class paradigms which i don't like. Humans have no special features like nightvision or weapons so the fact you can "stat" into anything is irrelevant. No reason to make a human class if you can get preferred stat and weapon prof anyway right? If you can roll stats 2 or 3 18-19's in con and dex goes a long way to make up for it.

No. Buzzwords like... the game used to be immersion-centric! And now it completely disregards immersion!

So the game once upon a time was nothing but immersion.

Now it has zero immersion. Doesn't even care about immersion, no less. Totally disregards it.

Is it possible to just say it would be nice to have a day/night cycle without the exaggerated drama?

Like nothing ever happened in the original BG that broke immersion. No way, it was immersion-centric, don't ya know? (talk about rose tinted glasses, geez) As proclaimed by... who exactly?

And nothing, not a single thing, in the current game allows for immersion, because the designers decided they didn't want none of that stuff, making a point to actively disregard it.

I mean, seriously, listen to what's being said.

Do you want a day/night cycle? Yeah, sure. --Okay, cool, good feedback.

-versus-

The sky is falling and no one at Larian cares about immersion and the writing is crap and they only care about mechanics!!! --My goodness, do you not think this is overly dramatic?

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What are the chances of adventure locations being close together in a role playing game? Pretty good. It's even neater when there's an actual connection between those locations in the story, which there happens to be.

Amen. I acknowledge that it's a little presumptuous to assume we won't get a full roster of good aligned companions to choose from but I do have concerns that we will have a much more limited pool to choose from than the previous games, mostly because of the nonsense Origins system. I have always felt that one of the biggest attractions in the BG games was the sense of freedom and choice, so when I hear Larian will have a smaller number of companions and potentially lock the party after Act 1 it all of a sudden feels rather constrictive. I want the freedom to swap out my party members whenever I want and I'd like a large group from which to choose them.

Funnily enough, the one companion who I would have really liked to have permanently in BG3 was that Myconid who can join you temporarily. Ironically, for a game check full of super hero companions with exceptional backstories, here was someone who had a far more believable character. My memory fails me but wasn't he a deposed king or trying to usurp the current king...anyway, it at least felt relatable.

I don't understand the logic of saying it's neat that the locations are so close together because they are linked in the story? It's daft that everything is so condensed. Separate maps would have at least conveyed a sense of distance and scale. Again, that hyperbolic buzzword 'immersion'.

In many respects it's the small details that help to make a game world believable and grounded, especially when the setting is full of magic and monsters.

I like cheesy 80's horror movies, not because they have a good story or good acting, I just like them. Because you like something doesn't mean it is good. Because someone tells me these movies suck I don't get defensive about it, they are objectively bad, unnecessarily so in most cases. I am not going to deny the reality these movies are low budget trash with bit part B actors because I like them. I don't like them any less because most people see them as garbage.

Not everything is opinion. If it was "objective" wouldn't be a word. However, if admitting that holding the writing of BG 3 to a standard and therefore coming to, what I believe is an objective conclusion free of bias is indeed my opinion then so be it. I am not trying to be right, I am trying to be objective. Telling someone they are amazing when they are in fact shite does them no favors. Tough love, that's all.

I said the odds are good that adventuring locations are close together in a role playing game. Otherwise, the characters would be teleporting all over the world.

Forgotten Realms is a bit of a kitchen sink setting with ruins and pathways to the underdark and secret cults all over the place. You can't stumble around anywhere without running into a plot... because that's what the setting caters to... adventures and plot.

The phrase "even neater" is meant to imply that it's good that these locations which are close together happen to be tied together in the plot. They connect, which makes their proximity understandable.

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From what I'm gathering, I'm guessing you like transition maps? Probably because it gives you the sense that your characters have been walking for miles?

Fair enough, I suppose. I don't really need that kind of thing myself. I can accept that the map isn't entirely to scale and figure that my characters have been walking longer. It's not that big a deal to me.

Sort of like I can have my characters go into a city and accept that the city is technically larger than what I'm seeing. That the city has thousands and thousands of people within it, despite me only seeing the same few dozen meandering about.

The most games are capable of doing right now is giving across an impression of something real. I get the impression. I understand what's being said in the game, and I enter into it with an open mind, prepared to look for things to enjoy rather than looking for things to... not enjoy.

Maybe he is just not a typical specimen of his race and not only too proud but also an arrogant idiot. That is in no way lore or rulebreaking. We humans also have quite a lot of them, also in interesting positions where normal thinking people simply cannot understand how the hell they got there...

On the fact that larian needs to adhere more to the 5e ruleset i totally agree with you. Imo opinion too many homebrew rules can really ruin it. Shove/jump beeing a prime example. The kithrak behavior is a lore thing that does not sit well with you since it is idiotic behavior. Thats how i understood it.

Lorewise i am not sure if i can agree with you since "true D&D" lies a lot in the eye of the beholder. If you are as much a fan as i am you certainly have read novels too. Every author has his/her own perspective. There are some that i hate and others like and vice versa. I only hope that they do not contradict each other too much.

But i like that you fight for what you think D&D should look like so that in the end we may get larian to change it so that most players find it agreeable.

Upon further thought, the whole mindflayer ship opening is quite possibly one of the worst ways to start a story. The entire plot is suddenly pigeonholed into an urgent quest to find a way to get rid of the mindflayers, which turns out to be false both narratively AND from a gameplay sense. It really messes with player expectations a lot.

I also think the mindflayer tadpole plot device is quite boring at this point. Seems to me like literally every other subplot in the game is a lot more interesting with more potential varied outcomes than the zero sum 'what the hell are these tadpoles and how do they factor into the big bad's plot' thing. I really think we should have gotten an opening phase showing us hints at all the other subplots before the mindflayer stuff happens and screws everything over sideways.

I only wonder if BG3 is putting too many eggs into everything being dark and mysterious, because we literally don't find any meaningful answers to anything in regards to the larger plot at our current point in the EA. I've said this before, stuff like this is why expectations in regards to the writing for people who are really into crackpot theorycrafting are sky high (like all the insane people guessing that Gale might be a reincarnation of someone who fought against Mystra or something). But to everyone else who prefers a more well rounded experience, it's not surprising that things feel a bit shallow.

And the higher you go, the steeper you crash if you fall. The writers of the Mass Effect series know that all too well.

At this point, I think it would be much better if the PC's didn't have the tadpoles in them at all. Get rid of the fake urgency completely. And most of all, get rid of the plot holes or far out explanations why the PC's tadpoles are "different". It's getting too messy to be a good story. I'm afraid I'm going to be seriously let down here. Already, looking for a cure three times, and failing every time is really annoying because they are prolonging the tadpole situation for whatever reason.

Even if the party didn't get tadpoled before the crash, we would still encounter the True Souls and start unraveling the mystery. There could easily be OTHER motivations for both good and evil parties to get involved in the plot. You could even have a good old betrayal or body snatchers moment when one of your trusted companions or followers turns out to be a True Soul, which is not possible when literally everyone has a tadpole and they're just working differently because. If Shadow Magic implies Shar has altered the PC's tadpoles, surely a divine intervention level event does not require Mind Flayer tadpoles to be inserted first. The foundation of this plot seems very shaky and I'm afraid god avatars are going to be casually popping up at level 5 when level 15 is more appropriate.

But I guess they wanted to add "fun powers" and gameplay is calling the shots over at Larian. I never used any of the tadpole powers anyway, considering the source and all the unknown. In the end, it's still a disgusting parasite in your brain and not giving us a way to remove it isn't cool.

While I don't necessarily disagree, and personally have a couple of gripes and criticisms of my own when it comes to storytelling, there's some arguments here that I just have to raise a hand at. Mainly the case of missing meaningful answers or solutions to removing the tadpole. I know at least I don't watch the first 20 minutes of a movie, pause it and start complaining about not having meaningful answers to some of the main mysteries of the movie already, or solutions to defeat the big bad. Like... What?

However 1varangian does make a fine point of a logical inconsistency of...


Logical inconsistencies and how a story is presented is usually where my passionate thoughts hide. Though I recognize I only have Act 1 of a "book", which in Larian's design approach is to lay the foundation of some of the main mysteries, while Act 2 explores them and Act 3 answers them. (Beginning, middle, end) - So I'm not ready to be all overdramatic and hyperbolic, and rather just say that I hope some of the points, like the quote of 1varangian has some satisfying/believable enough explanation later on, to make sense in hindsight as the party gets deeper into their adventures.

I'm not against the tadpoles in theory. I'm not even against the tadpoles being special and it turning out that we don't need to really worry about changing, but I think the handling of all that isn't really that good at this point. And a big problem is that the game starts out by telling us how worried we should be about the tadpoles then walks it back in a bunch of indirect ways almost immediately, which hurts the experience because that urgency actively discourages exploration from an in-character perspective. I know in my first playthorugh I tried to rest as little as possible and went straight for the Gith patrol because I thought that was the main quest, I thought transforming was a real threat and I thought the druid grove stuff was just side content. As a result I missed out on a lot of companion content and genrally had a pretty poor first experience because my lack of resting made everything in the game harder on me. I've seen arguments made that the game gives a lot of hints that transforming isn't as much of a problem as it seems but I think that when the issue is touted as the first big threat of the game, hints aren't good enough. We're primed to be laser-focused on the tadpole problem by everything in the story, primed to be concerned about the ticking clock they present, all of that. I think that in the face of that, there should be some sort of cathartic confirmation that we don't have to worry about changing. Otherwise it's just a lot of built up tension that at best kinda fizzles. Even in the context of it all being a mystery, part of the fun of a mystery is that the story itself presents you with the answer and you can have the catharsis of "yes, this is what's going on, I understand now." Even if you can figure out the mystery ahead of time, if by the end of the book, the story doesn't actually give you the answer, it's not going to feel as satisfying unless the point is to not have an answer. And I know we're not at the end of the game's story or even the end of the game's first act, but if Larian wants us to behave as though the tadpoles aren't an issue, then they should at some point give us narrative permission to fully relax and confirm that "it's okay, you don't have to worry about this." Otherwise, what do they gain by not providing that?

The argument is more that the gross brain worms are not the mystery itself. It's not required to insert a tadpole in every PC's head to tell this story. It seems more like Larian wanted players to have more Bonus Actions and cool powers at low levels.

The third party that has altered the PC tadpoles and is working against the Mind Flayers could have done any number of other things. Whoever they are, they are putting blind faith in a clueless party to do whatever it is they need. It doesn't seem like a very good plan.

edit: It would make more sense the party would become the unwilling agents of the third party to infiltrate the Absolutes ranks. It would be a small redemption if they were in fact saving the whole introduction of this third party for the full release. But still I think this story has way too many elements way too early, because the devils and Jergal are also already introduced. It's hard to write a story that resonates well if the player is confused by too many factions and plotlines.

Agree completely and my first playthrough was almost identical to yours. It left me rather frustrated and then when I realized the urgency was not there I was a bit disappointed in the story. I also find it difficult to ever include Lae'zel in a party despite the need for a fighter because her character is completely driven to find her kin and thus should naturally lead to going straight for the Gith patrol. Logically I think Lae'zel would leave any party and strike out on her own if she thought they were planning on going to Ethel or Halsin. I find Lae'zel's character too one dimensional. Given the actual lack of urgency in getting rid of the tadpoles It might have made more sense to have Lae'zel written as a bit of an outcast among the Gith somewhat suspicious of Voss and his party and therefore not so driven to find them and more open to pursuing alternatives.

As it stands they only way I feel I can logically have Lae'zel in my party is to first head to the Gith as she wishes, then assume the lead in talking to Voss. It feels completely unrealistic that Lae'zel allows me to do this given that up until then she has been barking orders at me as if I'm a servant. It also seems odd that I would attempt to do this since up until now I've been following those orders. Even that solution is unsatisfying though as she still insists on heading to the Creche. How am I to logically resolve her coming back with us to explore any of the alternate paths? Realistically we should just part ways at his point (especially since I can't go to the creche in EA!) as she has abandoned me before. I therefore find it really hard to logically include her in my party so I have done playthroughs as a fighter myself, gone with a party of 3, or a party of 4 with no fighter.

This also brings up a further thought. I don't know where the Lae'zel character is supposed to appear after the Nautiloid crash but the story suggests she deliberately abandons us. Wouldn't it be more in keeping with how her character is written that she would slit our throats (and Shadowheart) before heading off?


I therefore think the Lae'zel character as currently written is seriously flawed.

Maybe give some hints and attitude from the companions. Let for example astarion and gale maybe say things like "you know in a certain way I feel not sooo bad having those tadpoles, etc." So that having tadpoles and using them is more like a personal choice, making life easier but in return getting more addicted to an alien Superpower. (And unknown consequences) So that it's like a trade off.

And companions like lae'zel are hardliners which won't use tadpole magic, and only want to hurry up, getting rid of tadpoles, not use their magic at all, and not being aroused by the imagined love interest thing (= game hard mode) while astarion on the other end of the spectrum is more like, let's chill. "Let's wait, see if it's really that bad or maybe useful, and let us use the power", in a " I don't care if the lovemaking is only a dream if it feels good, right?" - kind of way.. Etc.


In my eyes tadpoles and the broad spectrum of interesting characters combining alignment with choices and game difficulty in an immersive way is a genius move!

That is a very interesting idea.