Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Annoyances/Complaint aside, does anyone else feel that BG3 is an insane leap from DOS:2?

I... really kind of don't, no.

D:OS2 was its own thing, and it went to 11 doing that thing, and it did it well, more or less. I wasn't trying to be something it wasn't, and while it had plenty of problems, just the fact that it was its own thing, using its own system, meant that it was still pretty fun to play. The writing, where it was actually complete (because the end stages of the game simply weren't, Act 4 was DoA and stayed that way for most of the game's lifespan, and so on...), was of a better quality than we see here; I'm not talking the story itself, which was pretty hot garbage, but the actual calibre of the written parts that made up the interactions of the game. In BG3 those same interactions feel exponentially more childish and poorly constructed, with little to no soul or flavour - this is likely because they're all cut right down to one or two sentences in order to be crammed into the subtitles of a cinematic cutscene, rather than being actually written to convey story and information.

The world feels the same - even down to the little tricks that one developed to manage the object interaction system that D:OS2 had for moving and stacking stuff as well as targeting and pathing; vets of D:OS2 will have a much easier time manipulating objects and managing things in their surroundings like that because they've already learned all of the ways in which the system was touchy about things or was fiddly with - and it all still is in this new game too, identically so.

BG3 does not feel like its own thing - it feels like it is one thing, but is trying to be something else, and thus is really not doing very well at being either of them.

And, at this point, I'm jaded and cynical enough that I'm of the opinion that they are going to run out of time and money and deliver a two-thirds finished game with Act 1 seeming mostly polished, Act 2 being buggy as hell with quests failing to fire properly or not able to be finished correctly, things occurring with no sense or triggering where they aren't meant to, and generally a lot of things not hooking up properly... and then a mostly untested third act which feels empty because it received the least time and effort, and a fourth act which falls apart in most categories, and feels rushed and unfinished... Again. I say again, because that's what they did last time, and their process shows no indication of them doing differently this time.

I have set my bar very low at this stage, in the distant hope that I can be pleasantly surprised.