Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback No Wildlife

You know, after some thought, it would be weird if you encountered and wildlife outside the grove in Act 1. Massive flying ship crashes. Mind flayers and intellect devourers and goblins and gnolls. Yeah. Bambi and Thumper might not stick around.

Should, at least, be vultures or something. 😏

Yes, but if that happened what would Astarion feed on?! /s

Lol...Like the boar, a few stragglers?

I believe i have seen some birds. O_o
But maybe im misstaken it with other game

Wildlife, a village, anything resembling a normal, believable setting in Forgotten Realms? Impossible. If it isn't a flying ship phasing through dimensions or a temple giant statues built over a lake of flowing lava, Larian ain't about that.

Yeah, I would love for some believable, immersive backdrop, like... a farm... with farmers... and a village, with a tavern... but a Baldur's Gate game would never have that right?

Yeah something grounded, ordinary-life-ish would be great for making the world feel alive instead of a quest-battle routine.

Replaying BG1 this summer reminded me just how much wildlife was in the wilderness maps. And birdsong. Rain. Nighttime. The joy of finding a tavern in a walled settlement after travelling for days. It’s funny how such small touches make a game world believable.

Sometimes I wonder if Larian have a bunch of excitable 12 year olds writing their games. Because I cannot fathom why they dispensed with so much of what made the previous games such a success.

Wouldnt it kinda destroy the whole idea of "being in middle of nowhere"? O_o

I mean it hardly can still be called wilderness if you have village with tavern and farms all around.

Well it certainly is equally weird to have a goblin army searching without success for a grove full of demonoid refugees and druids only 10 minutes walking from them in the middle of nowhere ?
I'm sorry, you already brought up the middle of nowhere argument, i don't buy it, the map is full of well maintained roads with groups of NPC's placed ridiculously close to eachother. Perhaps in theory the map could be middle of nowhere, but as there is an awful lot of people populating the middle of nowhere, I don't really see why the map would be exactly that. By what definition is it middle of nowhere ? By the definition of - the map has some serious shortcomings - let's brush aside issues with unrealistic plot devices like that tadpole ? Not sure about you but I wouldn't define a place with so many roads and different armed groups meeting there as 'nowhere' , middle of nowhere I would expect wildlife, farms, occasional traveler, hermits, hunters, and vast spaces of emptiness. Quite the opposite of the current map I would say....

That is the problem ... its not "10 minues walking" ...
There is logicaly some transcription between ingame map and the world itself.

GM4HIM claims that he found some evidence in diaries and books, that Halsin is gone for quite some time (not sure how much, but it was either month, or few months) ...

> You can run through whole area in less than hour ... do you expect Halsin and Aradin party to explore whole Temple of Selune 1440 times? O_o

Tieflings litteraly tells you that Baldur's Gate is 10days traveling away.

> If you would expect this map being 1:1 to the actual world ...
You get from the Beach to Waukeen's Rest in less than 20 minutes ... concidering that is at least 1/4 of the way to Baldur's Gate acording to map we were given ... that would mean that Baldur's Gate is actualy aproximately 1,5 Hour away from the Grove. -_-

Its not argument, its what NPCs tells us ...
You know, those people who are suppose to live there, created by the same people who created this whole map, and decided what will be around there.
What higher autority you want, if not creators word?

Well the only people who were "populating it" are druids, goblins, people from tollhouse and people from Waukeens rest ... oh and a Hag.
Everyone else just "happened to be here now"

Dunno ... i didnt come with this, Larian did ... ask them.
In my understanding, for place that have "no big city nearby" is "middle of nowhere" quite fitting.

"So many different armed groups" means what exactly?
As far as i know, the only "armed group" that we can meet is flaming fist ...
> single group was in Waukeen's Rest, where they accompany a duke that was here for reasons so far unknown ...
> and single group was guarding bridge leading to Baldur's Gate ... quite common deed for military companies ...

What else "armed group" we meet?
You mean Aradin and his band? Adventurers, he said it himself.
You mean Paladins in Tollhouse? They are there for quest, hunting Karlach ... so in fact also adventurers.
You mean Tiefling refugees? That is exactly what they are ... refugees, on their own way to the city.

Yes there are indeed roads ... there is many roads in the world, and many of them is leading through places that can be called "middle of Nowhere" ... dunno if you ever have ben in USA ... but if you open Google Maps and check there, you can see that they have litteral dozens of kilometers between cities, where litteraly nothing is builded ...
That is exactly that kind of place we are in, in this game ... yes, there is a road lading to civilisation ... and thats it.

Fun facts ...

Wildlife:
Im rally not sure if im not misstaken here ... but i believe i have seen spiders, fishes, birds and boars ... that all sounds like wildlife to me. O_o

Farms:
Waukeen's Rest is obviously some kind of lodging house, its not exactly "farm" but concidering that they have barns and their own lifestock ... something close ... and they certainly have tavern there!

Its just not so friendly and open as we would expect ... who can blame them, after they just were raided by Goblins and Drow.

Occasional traveler:
I mean, the High Road is quite litteraly sow with what remained of them.
Its not exactly great idea to "occasionaly travel" through place where wild Gnolls and Goblins rave.

Also there are Marina Brothers.

Hermits:
You mean like litteraly every druid in the grove? O_o

Hunters:
I can recall some tiefling woman with really sharp tongue that refuses anyone company.
I know its not "exactly" what hunter means ... but it seems close enough. :P

Vast spaces of emptiness:
Those are exactly those parts of map that were cut out, since nothing is more fun than for 3 hours looking at your character how its running through the woods and litteraly nothing is happening.

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It seems to me that you have all you wanted ... where is the problem?

"How can you be the 'Lone Rangers' if there's three of you?"

You're absolutely right about it being the middle of nowhere. That's the whole point.

There are ruins about in the middle of nowhere, and monsters, like the hag and the band of goblins that's currently being kept together by three powerful leaders.

Other than that, there's an old grove of druids. They're unsocial. Many of them long to retreat from the world entirely, to be encased inside a wall of vines and thorns.

*

Regarding the roads... roads often go through the middle of nowhere to get from somewhere to somewhere else. That's how roads work. And these roads are pretty rough. Bridge destroyed, toll house overrun.

*

There's a small oasis where community tried to establish itself. A place of rest for weary travelers in the middle of nowhere. It got burned down.

Out here, things are wild.

*

The map is obviously condensed.

Yes, if you timed the walk from the grove to the goblin camp--without stopping along the way--it might be a couple minutes. And yes, it's vaguely funny to point out that the goblin camp is closer to the druid grove than the gas station is from your house.

But we all know better. There's an implied distance here, and getting from point A to point B so fast is really a matter of our convenience. If it weren't the case, then there'd be even more complaints about that.

*

The problem some people are really having is that they never got the chance to feel grounded.

It's not that the middle of nowhere *should* have farmland and taverns behind walls. It's that they want farmland and taverns, to feel grounded and connected to humanity.

Out here, there be goblins and hags. There are tiefling refugees, which hint of humanity, but ultimately aren't human. Not with their horns and tails, and besides, let's face it, the tieflings are anything but grounded. They only serve to reinforce our feeling that nothing's stable.

The druids are antisocial, wild and magical, and not at all suitable for grounding purposes.

So. It's natural that someone might want a farm. That someone might want a small plot about established neighbors feuding with each other. Some sense of normalcy amidst the chaos, because maybe it's that normalcy that the PC is truly fighting for, underneath all the flavor and fluff and background notes.

Do we know better? Everything we see seems to scale, from temples to houses to chairs to cups. Distances are measured precisely during combat, down to the decimeter. Considering how detailed the world is, why should we assume the space between landmarks is abstracted and condensed? The world feels small because it is.

I don’t think it’s just a convenience thing. Larian’s design philosophy seems to be to maximise content density. The flip side of this is that the world is distorted to cater to the player, creating a theme park feel.

BG1 had big wilderness maps between cities and crossing them felt to me like experiencing a vast world rather than just a chore. Occasionally intruding on wildlife gave the impression that the world didn’t exist for my benefit. Wolves in the forest didn’t have to tie into the plot, they were just predators in their natural habitat.

By contrast, most of the wildlife in BG3 are there for specific reasons. The two boars you see are part of dialogues and nothing else. The birds have things to hide, the cows have clues to give, the rats are secretly evil. Larian can’t make a squirrel without giving it a feisty personality.

In my opinion, that’s what’s missing from Act I: wildlife for its own sake. Not just encounters disguised as frogs.

Too much wildlife is unbelievable. If I go to the woods, I likely won't meet a single deer.

But birds, insects, the occasional deer or squirrel in the wild, or something. That would be good.

Well. Personally, I feel like it's obvious that the distance *between* locations is meant to be condensed for convenience.

That said, I understand where you're coming from. I feel like the stretches between could all be a little bigger, and it would be nice to confront random encounters that didn't necessarily have anything to do with the story at large. I won't say those are bad ideas.

I just have trouble seeing the maps stretched at this point to allow for that. And as far as animals go, with the ability to speak with animals, more has to go into random encounters with wolves than just avoid or confront. The wolves would have the chance to talk, and that would mean voice work--because Larian is doing voice work for every exchange of dialogue. Considerations like that leave me feeling like choices were made, and I find myself understanding of those choices.

I mean, I'd love everything Larian is doing and then more besides. I'd love vast stretches of wilderness with random wildlife and bandits and traveling merchants. But then I think about the amount of content I've already seen and it hits me that this is just Act 1. Imagine, how much more is to come?

At the end of the day, I'm impressed with a lot that they've done, and I try to be understanding of the things I don't think will get done, because of time, budget, choices, and visions.

Agreed. I wouldn’t hang around a forum for a game I didn’t like. I also don’t expect the map to change significantly.

I still think there’s a way to add of touch of life at a reasonable development cost. I’m picturing a handfull of rabbits scattered about who run away when you show up. That would require a rabbit model to be made, but the models for the familiars could be reused. There could be crabs on the beach, and small spiders in dark places.

For conversation, the filler animals could all use the same narrator line (“he doesn’t want to talk to you”). I think that that line already exists in game. For combat, I’d avoid making AI by giving the wildlife 1 hp. For general behaviour, I’d have the animals mill about in a pattern, much like the rats, and run away to a fixed point when the player gets too close.

It’s not literally free for Larian, but the cost to benefit ratio seems good to me.

Bcs of this map:


We know that on the right side, there is Baldur's Gate city ...
That zoomed frame kinda mess with our measuers yes ... but even presuming its in the farest rim, it still leave us with the expression that space between landmarks is abstract.

Proof:
Tieflings litteraly tells us that travel to Baldur's Gate will take at least 10 days ...
Therefore we follow the road and separate it to 10 aproximately simmilar segments ...
We get to conclusion that only walk from the Grove to the Blighted Willage takes at least 1 day ... from the Grove to Waukeen's rest at least 2 days ... etc.
In game tho get from the Grove to Waukeen's rest takes aproximately 2 minutes.
It also explains why our characters so often starts to cry for rest so often ... since while we traveled for only few minutes, they actualy travel for LOT AND LOT more.
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It would be better tho for narrative reasons if we would have just small hubs (containing only surrounding of specific landmark) and short traveling animation between them ... and i still believe that IF (and i doubt that) Larian would REALLY and i mean REALLY REALLY want ... this change would still be possible!
They would just need to draw a line between certain hubs ... make skybox aproximately twice as big and add some filling (like threes or hills, etc) in between them. :-/
Then create some traveling animation between those hubs ... and places where this would be starting.

Not sure how well this would work in multiplayer tho. :-/

Oh come on… That map is stylized at best and BS at worst. It has no scale indicator, for one thing, and the relative positions of the landmarks doesn’t correspond to what we know to be true in game.

We already have an accurate in game map. The overgrown ruins are not located between the grove and the blighted village. The grove and the toll house are far closer than the grove is to the overgrown ruins. The tea house is closer to Selune’s temple than it is to the fishing village.

I think the hand drawn map is meant to be reminiscent of BG1 & 2’s travel maps. It’s designed for flavor rather than assessing travel distances.

This seems more like matter of thrust ...

Is the actual world looking exactly as we know from ingame, even if that makes inconsistencies, plot holes and and unanswearable questions ... and the map that was created is just inacurate?

Or is the actual world looking exactly as we know from the map, even if that would mean that ingame world is not exactly acurate but was forced to look like this bcs game limitations?