Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback BG3 Directions Don't Align

First off, I think pointing out discrepencies as you have done has value. As you said, if it’s a mistake, might as well let Larian know.

Unrelated, I have strong opinions about the following quote, which I will lay out for the sake of argument.
It’s a poor sort of painter who paints only what they can see.

Art is about emotional connection with the audience rather than fidelity to some meaningless details. I feel as though you’re saying MC Escher would be better if he adhered to plausible geometry, Picasso to classical perspective or VanGogh to realistic brush strokes.

The point isn’t to talk about painting technique, but to highlight the fact there’s more at play than pure accuracy when communicating with an audience.

Saying drow statues can be found south of the outpost leads the player to check the southern ledge, and to find a drow statue. Once they’re there, they’ll keep on going and find the rest of the statues mostly to the west of the outpost.

So yeah, it’s weird in hindsight, but who cares? Game gave player directions to encounter, player found encounter, success!

It’s like the inn that burns for days after the goblins ostensibly sacked it. It makes no sense in hindsight, but that doesn’t matter to the experience.

Let the painter paint a crooked path, if that makes for a better composition.

It most certainly does. Fire don't randomly spring up form nowhere on drenched boards. Fires burn out or are put out. Having the perpetually burning inn that burns and is still burning every time you pass it for all time, which refuses to be doused and whose fires spontaneously re-ignite from thoroughly wet floors with no fire around them anywhere absolutely DOES matter to the experience. It makes it a BAD experience, completely lacking in setting immersion, which constantly reminds you that it is a video game every few seconds.

The people who don't pay attention to setting immersion aren't going to notice whether the directions as described match up with the physical directions required - they're just playing a video game, so it WON'T really matter to their experience of the game one way or the other. To the people who do pay attention to these things, who prefer to be immersed in the story and the setting and not pulled out of it by gamey elements that regularly break that immersion... it WILL matter to their game experience.

If you have two groups of people, one of which WON'T mind either way, and one of which WILL, then you HAVE got an option that makes both parties happy - and you should do it that way, or in this case, fix the issue.

If you're arguing that the crooked path makes for a better composition in this analogy - and it's a rough analogy, so let's not talk about the evocative and emotive qualities of subjective art - you're going to have to justify that giving mis-matched directions is better for the game and the game experience overall than giving accurate ones.

You can say that by saying south, the player will look south first, and find the path - but that's a non-argument, or rather, it's a false fork; it implying that the situation is a binary choice and it's not. We could say "We found drow statues west of here" and actively mislead players, and HOPE that they find the path that leads them to the WEST, and that they don't notice this, because we DECIDED to build the pathway that leads there from the south first... A problem that we, the designers of this situation created in the first place, let's not forget that...

Or, we could say something like: "We found a collection of petrified drow to the west of here. I wouldn't normally be too worried by this, given the terrain, but unfortunately the pathway just south of our gates leads directly to them - or, more importantly, from there directly back here. This is a concern."

Now you're NOT misleading players, giving the CORRECT directions AND pointing them towards the actual pathway... So no, the crooked path does not make for better composition.

Yes, but there literally is no south on the map from the Outpost. It is literally the southeast corner of the map. So that's my point. It doesn't lead you to find the encounter. It gives you wrong directions. The southern are of the Outpost is back up. It is the western ledge that leads you to the first Drow.

And I'm sorry if the paint analogy doesn't work either. I'm thinking like Great British Bakeoff. If there are two contestants who do super awesome, but one is more accurate in their bake, who is the winner? The more accurate one.

My point is that if you find faults, you should fix them. I was just trying to give an analogy to help make that clear. Pick whatever analogy you like. I'm an IT guy. My job is to literally tell IT professionals if and when I find a problem. It's what I do. Find a problem. Tell the IT gurus. They appreciate it and fix it. System now works better and business folks are happy. Yay.

https://www.belloflostsouls.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/faerunmap.jpg

Faerun is a big place...

Edit: So, you stood at the SE corner of the current area map, and something south of that is problematic, or "could be a mistake"? Is Amn a mistake? What about Athkatla? Wait, that can't be right, can it? I mean, that's the setting for BG 2, it can't be problematic, despite the fact that it's much further south than you can actually travel on this tiny area map. If you click to zoom that map, and scroll all the way to the top, Baldur's Gate is about 1/3 of the way down the coast from the Northern edge of the map. It's just about at the Northern edge of the Moonshae Islands, which must also be problematic, since we can't travel there either, right?

I call it like I see it.

Fact = text says spectator and statues to the south
Fact = spectator and statues to the west according to the game map
Fact = cavern walls block any path south on the game map

Is it a mistake? Let's let Larian decide. If it is a mistake, I hope they fix it. Otherwise, that's just sloppy.

Hmm. I wonder how many other "mistakes" you have assumed. Again, the map we're discussing here is roughly 0.00000000000000000001% of the map of Faerun.

This isn't an open world game. It is divided into areas. Now, we currently have access to one area on the surface. This means that there is a border to the map, your "cavern walls", that exist to prevent going "off the map". I'm not sure why I would have to assume that a village couldn't be further south than we can currently go in favor of believing that Larian made a mistake. The "go here" when it should be "go there" is far from unique and does nothing to counter that the map we're on does not represent the whole of Faerun. I provided you with a map so that you could see how far south they could actually go, beyond the tiny little square you're actually on, but it was ignored, apparently. Maybe it's because it's inconvenient? Maybe it's "it's got to be a mistake", enough so that you created a thread, because you're bitter about something else? I know what my money's on.

I stand corrected. I looked at a map and you're right: there's nowhere to go from the Outpost but North and West. I didn't find the drow by "going South and finding the path". That's a fake memory I fabricated after the fact. Turns out, there's a quest marker indicating the drows' location. Then, because of the written directions, I assumed that I had gone South by going to the yellow icon.

So I'm with you: saying the drow are South is just wrong for no reason and should be corrected. Maybe just say "nearby" and not mention cardinal directions at all if there's going to be a minimap marker anyway.

Andrick does the same thing in his dialogue too. It's weird. He says that there's a goblin camp to the south of where you meet him and Ed and Brynna, but the goblin camp is west.

It's as if they originally intended the map to be flipped so what is currently west was once south.

If that's true, then the document Meerna's journal states that expedition 42 was to the northern quadrant. If south is west then north is east. Wouldn't that potentially mean expedition 42 is Decrepit Village?

Arandur was found at expedition 42, and if you search the map, you'll eventually find an arandur ring. So, it would make sense that "the northern quadrant" is actually "the Eastern quadrant" and arandur can be found in the collapsed mine shaft on the east side of the village. Also, talk to a duergar corpse and ask if he had anything valuable. He says no but mentions that the gnomes were digging in the rubble on the north side. So, north = east, and again, it fits. The gnomes were surely digging in the mineshaft because you can find their bodies there with duergar dead also.

So either they need to fix the game map or the texts/dialogues... Or so it seems.

Bard, it sounds like you are referencing a much larger area. This post appears to be discussing a bounded portion of the map - in the game - where, within the bounded (playable) area something is said to be "South" but it is actually "West".

I still think this thread is better off posted in Technical & Gameplay Problems but, unless the game is intentionally attempting to mislead the player, this does look like a good catch.

The first time I found the "Everburn Inn", I must admit I was a little confused as to the timeline. I thought maybe a band of goblins from outside the goblin encampment had just attacked the inn, but then realised it was a set-piece that was just waiting to be found. I agree it felt video-gamey, but, y'know, it's a video game. Once I had knocked the door down and started to find my way among the spreading flames, the larger context didn't matter any more. It was a thrilling experience in itself which contributed to my overall good impression of the game.

At least, that's my point of view, which you address later in your post:
I agree with you on the principle. From what I can see, though, Larian do not.

BG3 is full of gamey elements that stick out until you give up and stop thinking about them. They've been well documented on this very forum. It could be a stylistic choice meant to thematically underline the unreality of the story, but I've started to think that it's purely driven by game design. The more I played BG3, the more I accepted that it's a theme park built for my benefit rather than a coherent world.

I don't know if that's good or bad. One one hand, there are worst things for a game to be than "optimized for fun". On the other, I'm not sure the people in this forum are the target audience for BG3.

We're the kind of people who write hundreds, if not thousands of words on a single topic, mulling it over ad nauseam to make sense of it. Larian, by contrast, relies above all on "Rule of Cool", using ellipses, shortcuts and hand-waves to make the experience compelling. I don't know if those two visions can really mesh and keep in line with Larian's vision for a blockbuster adventure full of action and intrigue.

...I need to mull it over.

Ok. Seriously. Fezzerk. Goblin at the windmill. "Goblin camp is east of here."???

East?

Now the directions are REALLY jacked up. That's the opposite direction of the goblin camp. Either he was purposely lying or like everyone else in the game, he don't know directions.

I actually noticed this as well at the start of the game because I tried following the directions and it did not go to well. :| I thought it might be a matter of the map being a place-holder for a upgraded version, or perhaps the full release will have appropriate directions.

Seems like they obviously had another kind of map design when these lines were recorded...