Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General What's you biggest fear about the final BG3 release?

This this this this this this


I want difficulty modes so everyone can play how they like - I'l' take the "please punish me if i make a single poor choice, I must strategize, take my time during my turns, and look at fights and dialogues and gameplay and character choices from every single order if i want a remote chance of winning, dying = permanent game over" difficulty.

I'm Not being sarcastic. i want the hardest mode to be dungeons and dragons where the DM is activerly doing everything they can to permanently kill my characters.

Also, i think they should make the weighted dice be toggled off my default. Make the defualt setting as much like dnd as possible, then have dificulty options people can choose to toggle on. I think it makes more sense for the default to be as DND based as possible. Not the reverse.

Very well said. I think this would be my greatest fear for how BG3 turns out as well. But then again, the game has so many issues right now that it is practically impossible to pick out just one thing that would bitterly disappoint me.

My biggest fear is that the dominant strat for all end of act bosses and most mini bosses will be to shove them into a pit.

Most everything else I might have issue with is mechanics, and I bought this game with the hope of modding the hell out of it anyway. I should be able to make all that as I like once the modding community has access to the full toolset.

My biggest fear will be, BG3 will be a huge success with all the Larian mechanics, solidifying that we will never have a fully licensed AAA D&D video game that tries to faithfully match tabletop rules. Solasta is great but it doesn't have the full D&D license and its budget is very limited.

My biggest fear is that Act 2 and 3 won't be as expansive and as fleshed out as act 1 is. I expect a lot less specific race/class interactions and actual consequences for our previous actions.
So, you know... the usual worries.

My expectations are curbed to be realistic, so I don't fear the release.

I do worry about the Larian's design philosophy though. Excessive item focus that leads to an ever increasing excessive item management mini-game, and excessive meta-gaming/internet search to uncover the bestest combos. Add to this excessive "mockbat" (overly complex mock combat/homebrew), the likely over-emphasis on the first act due to long early access development leading to a sense of anti-climax - and you have a recipe for casual gamers to discard the game mid-way. Like I did DOS2. Twice.

Biggest fear... I'll put it this way: that even the modders won't be able to turn this game into a worthy BG2 successor.

I mean, I expect that Shove would be nerfed to what it should be, and maybe even made a full Action. But, there is only so much modders can do. Spectacular, flashy cinematics is a poor substitute for a bland, uninspiring and shallow plot; will they be able to mod the plot? Highly unlikely.

Unfortunately, Larian's past credits only further move the scales in that direction.

It probably boils down to that. Precisely recognized.

1. Wizards continue to be able to learn any spell (Divine, Bard, Cantrips) from scrolls. I have a higher tolerance for homebrew than most - but something like this is class-identity destroying.

2. The overall story and setting is incoherent and falls apart in Acts 2 and 3. The plot hooks placed in Act 1 are not resolved in a satisfying manner.

3. Companion party lock, especially done in a manner that doesn't serve gameplay or story (i.e. DOS2). I'm okay with losing some companions because of my decisions, but not because they didn't happen to be in my party at the exact time some random meteors came by and suddenly I lose the ability to rez them.

4. Mechanics unbalanced in a way that isn't FUN. I.e. I'm okay with some deviations from 5E RAW, but if somethings continue to be broken and universally beneficial for everyone like BA Hide + Stealth - that just becomes a tax.

5. Loot/Progression mechanics breaking the system. This kind of happened with the end game of Solasta and I can easily see it happening in BG3 to an even more extreme extent. Shiny loot is definitely fun, but I don't want it to completely trivialize the game - i.e. being completely untouchable by the end game because of some very basic stacking and optimization.


Edited: and most importantly... throwing grease on your characters doesn't make them slick and shiny

I also worry about BG3 turning into some kind of modding hellscape, where I have to download a gang of mods and then apps to install those mods, just to try and stitch together features that could have been realized as part of the base game during EA. The idea of relying on a bunch of loosely affiliated tweaks or ultimate mod pack XYZ, in the immediate afterlife, just isn't something that I relish. I find that once a game is all cracked open like that and I have to define what the gameplay is going to be like from an endless list of mod options at the outset, that I become less invested in the overall experience. Being forced more into the role of ad hoc designer/DM when I'd rather just be a player, if that makes sense. Anytime the response to a given feature request is 'just wait for the modders' I get nervous. I played the vanilla BG games for years and years before ever trying to Mod them, so modding this sequel straight out the Gate just seems kinda weaksauce. I'm sure eventually BG3 will be all dialed, but I don't want to several more years for that to happen, since I've already been waiting a couple decades on this one.

Broadly, I am afraid that the plot will not be up to snuff as we advance. Don't get me wrong, I love so many of the intricacies and variations that we can see with interactions and quests due to how Larian accounts for pretty much every way the player might screw around, but I worry that with all the time they set aside to fix things like the Shadowheart's box thing, or endless cinematic variations on how to resolve/sabotage the Tiefling Bard, Larian's in danger of losing the forest for the trees. Most of the problems I have with the narrative, the characters, the plot....are with the larger scope things. And Larian is promising a lot of larger-scope things. Most of our companions have these big, narrative-warping individual storylines involving gods, chosen etc. Gale being an archmage, an ex-chosen of Mystra, and on first-name basis with Halastar, or Karlach being the personal champion of an archdevil, one who apparently went toe-to-toe with Demon Lords. These are setting-defining movers and shakers. Or how the plot involves not one, but all three of the Dead three, plus the Devils of Avernus, plus Shar, plus Vlaakith, the Netherese, Spelljamming Mindflayers, etc. It's all a bit much, and while the game clearly wants the player to move on to 'fate of the Realms' style upper-level heroics, it's still struggling to find a balance between that and the fact that we are still stomping around the wilderness in what feels like a see saw between low-level heroics saving locals from goblin raiders to fighting an adamantine golem in a lava-filled arena in the depths of the underdark. Meanwhile evil players have been complaining since the launch of EA about the disparity in the quality and quantity of effort put into that content compared to more noble alternatives with no solution in sight. It feels like it lacks cohesive direction with a plot too big for its britches already halfway into Act I and I worry that it will unravel further as the game progresses.

I also have concerns about the effort being put into stuff like the MMO-style reward choice pop-ups, the proliferation of gimmicky and narrow build-focused item sets, the number and variation in companions, the entire character of Minsc, and how this game will fit in with the Original Saga. I'll not pretend otherwise, I'm playing this game in large part because of my love and nostalgia for the originals, and for the setting of the originals. BG III is set in a much changed and much-retconned setting (5e vs 2e) that I do not have nearly as much love for, and I am feeling that BG III is aiming to be a very different type of game, aimed at a different crowd, mostly capitalizing on the name recognition. Maybe it will be good, great even, but I am not as sure that it will feel like a true successor, spiritual or otherwise to the original games.

Larian's writing has always fallen short. I thought maybe with this bigger budget that the writing would improve but nope.

Really seems like there are a few consistent themes and points in this thread.

On a side note, going off of how the BG3 subreddit has wound back to the 'will party members die at the end of act 1' topic again, it sure does seem like that happening might sour the game for a lot of people. One can argue about how much people actually care about the lack of reactions, but I'm pretty sure we're all still here for the story and writing regardless of our thoughts on the combat system, and I have serious doubts that a party lock will be doing any favors to this game's writing.

https://old.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/wmzlfg/will_we_be_forced_to_leave_companions_to_die/

I am also pretty afraid of a party lock after act 1. What I worry most sbout is that I will be locked into a few companions, but then I accidentaly piss one of them off so much that they leave, and then I am forced to get a mercenary because the other companions have died (or whatever reason they give for the party lock).

This. Poor difficulty setting management, non 5e game breaking actions (e.g. help), broken itemization (e.g. that sword in the tutorial).

Second to this would be mixed writing (some parts seem really well thought e.g. necromancer book quest, some parts seem weak e.g. companions behaviour)

I honestly see Larian more or less recycling the DOS2 trope.

Those you don't pick are turned to mindflayers and you will fight them toward the end of the game. It seems obvious to me, which is reductive.

It wouldn't have much narrative impact beyond the shock value of the transformation as the Mind Flayers don't retain any memories or personality of the host creature they are born from.

Unless of course Larian conveniently ignore this part of the lore as well.

This