Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Mega-threads and Guides Day/Night Cycle

Please don't mention star wars, Disney is on a whole different level of genuine evilness. I also think Larian has the potential to improve and I'm really hoping they will surprise us all by the time of full release.
At the moment, however, it's not that the writing could be better or whatever, in the end our preferences remain subjective and as a for profit company I get that they should, perhaps not aim at, but surely consider 'the lowest common denominator' (e.g. a masterpiece like plansescape would probably find almost no audience amongst today's mainstream gaming audience I fear).

What bothers me is not the quality of the story's content as such, but that they explicitly chose to not only include, but put center stage certain things which should have simply never left the brainstorming table because these narrative elements really make BG3's shortcomings stand out. Their decision to have a vamp spawn and shar follower as central characters of the story in a game with no night-mode whatsoever is questionable in itself. IMO it would have been better to guide players' attention away from what the game and story lack (e.g. night itself, or the ability to roam in the dark), instead they chose to include that stuff anyway and stubbornly attempt to explain the inconsistencies and contradictions away. I just feel that for me this is totally unconvincing. 'Vamps in the sun ? Yes, but our Vamp spawn is a special one, you see, he doesn't mind daylight', 'Baddies that roam under the blistering sun instead of thieving in the night? No, you see, at night all the baddies go to bed really early because they really really need to get up early'. So yeah,what bothers me is not 'bad writing' in terms of themes, tropes, language used etc. (it's a fantasy game after all, not a nobel literature nominee) but all the clumsy executed 'excuses' their story needs in order to tell the story they want to tell because the game they are making doesn't allow for it.

So yeah, i feel a need to point that out. However cliché BG1/2 were (they were) in their story, at least the games didn't constantly need to throw BS at you to explain all their obvious limitations and inconsistencies in a totally unconvincing way. The worst is probably that all of this could have been simply avoided by not letting everyone at Larian have their thing included. You propose Vamp companion, sorry pal, no night in our game, good idea but not this time. It feels like they wanted to please everyone and as a consequence compromised too much instead of taking harsh decisions with the whole in mind (i.e. either make cuts to implement night, or cut the content that screams 'night-time needed').

I mean, you want us to go to camp and never walk around during the night ? Fine, but give me reason other than ' cinematics are tied to camp' 'our supposedly new (!) engine can't handle two light modes'. You wanna have teleportation portals conveniently placed around the map, fine but at least do the damn effort to tie them into the narrative, like add a little sidequest where we accidentally discover them or need to pursue a mad delinquent mage hopping trough these portals instead of having gale pop out as if he were a tutorial pop-up but otherwise totally ignore it in the universe you build. I mean, why the fuck doesn't gale simply tell everyone at the grove they could try escaping using the portals ? Why do our elf companions (who don't need sleep afaik) never complain about the party's apparently severe phobia of the night ? Why have Astarion bring to your attention that he , contrary to us and all other inhabitants of act 1, does in fact enjoy himself some good wandering around at night?

[end of rant]
ps: this is all in good faith Larian. No hate, I couldn't do it any better myself, but I think you can and should do better.