Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Thoughts after year away from EA

After playing through the OC of NWN 2 after years away from the game, I got the itch to go back to BG3. Overall I can tell the game has made quite a bit of progress. I am providing the good, the bad, and the ugly of the game below:

The Good:

- Facial animations are greatly improved and do a better job of capturing emotion.

- Enemy turns seem to go quicker than before.

- Shadowheart isn’t so much of a raging bitch anymore.

- The UI is considerably better.

- AI seems a bit better.

- More classes to try out.

- More realism: better resting mechanic, no healing from food, barrels are still useful but you can only carry a small number. Shoving and pushing seem better balanced. Thank you Larian for making these changes.


The Bad:

- The camera is just awful atm. I actually think it is worse than in NWN2, which is saying a lot. Areas like Dror Ragzin are difficult to navigate because you can’t see the top rafters. This makes using abilities like misty step impossible because of the camera view. I also feel like we need to be able to zoom out more so we can use the camera center lock efficiently. I know we can use the keyboard to shift the camera, but it is combersome.

- There is a noticeable lag time between ending one characters turn before the next turn. It seems unnecessary and it adds up over a long battle.

- Still wish there was a day/night cycle and random monster encounters to add variability to the game, but I recognize this is personal preference.

The Ugly:

The romances are still awful. In the the scene with the Tieflings after saving Halsin, Astarian is like hey let’s go bump uglies. Being a straight dude that plays my character the way I would in that situation, I have three options to say no. Two are basically absolutely not or I’d rather do an animal and the third is maybe another time. Declining his sexual advances costs influence. How about the more polite answer of, I would like to keep our relationship as professional or friends. Also, why am I being propositioned by companions when I have not made any overtures toward them. Honestly I have a brain eating parasite in my brain and I am covered in goblin gore and wounds. I have f-all interest in engaging in carnal activities with anyone. Stop trying to shoehorn me into a romance.

I am not sure if I would call the camera worse then in NWN2, but verticality is something unique to BG3, and it is something that camera doesn’t seem equipped to handle. Some way to manually control the height would be welcome.

"Declining his sexual advances costs influence." If the influence results in romance potential and you dont want a romance...why would you care if you lost some?
"Also, why am I being propositioned by companions when I have not made any overtures toward them." If you are male, perhaps you are not used to it. Happens to women all the time. And some males. I am male and I have been "propositioned" by both genders without making overtures and at times when I wasn't thinking I was attractive either. <shrug>

Sorry dude, we just got done slaughtering a goblin village. We are mucked up in gore with a brain eating slug in our head. No one is wanting sex in that condition. In any case, you are missing the point. My issue is I have two douche bag responses (basically telling him to pound sand) or one weak equivocation (maybe we can bang later). How about a not my cup of tea or I would rather stay friends. If some coworker were to ask me if I wanted to have sex (regardless of gender), I wouldn’t say eww your gross or over react with an absolutely not! I would say something like, I value our professional relationship and would prefer to keep it that way. Not only is the relationship pushed upon me when I am focused on getting this tadpole out of my head, but the responses I have make me either a jerk or wet lettuce. It needs better writing.

That's not exactly a good defence for it, though, is it? Unless Larian wants to make some statement about sexual harassment.

For myself the issue with the sequence is simple: companions lining up and stating verbally if I gained enough reputation with them to have an option to sleep with them breaks the verisimilitude of the situation.

The Good
It's a beautiful, fun and engaging game. It's obvious to me that each patch, they are working on improving the game : the cinematics, the UI, the combat system, and so on. And I'm sure they're not stopping there.

I like what they are doing with the CC. This patch, all hairstyles were made available to all races and genders. Hope to see more things like that. Highlights were a nice surprise. I didn't' think I needed them and yet now I can't imagine not having them.


The Bad
While the game is getting more and more beautiful each patch...and while I'm not too bothered by certain areas being brighter (I can hear people typing in disagreement already)...please allow characters to have dark hairs (brown, black or even dark red, dark green and so on) and dark clothings.

Even rogues can't wear black anymore.


I'm not too annoyed with being proposed s*x after that. It fits the character.
But I do agree that, sometimes (usually not, I'll admit), we are prompted with options that are very black and white. For instance, either you're a full on j*rk or you are an overly teddybear-like person.



The Ugly
As mentioned, at length and on several occasions in previous threads (so I'm not going to go to far down the rabbit hole here)...The dialogue system with our companions is...not good. But it could be improved (sharing this video again and also this thread). Dialogues with our companions shouldn't be so easy to miss. Neither should they require to know when to "long rest" or even to abuse "long rest".

..of all the things that need fixing in this game I think the Romance system is pretty far down there.

+1


I fully understand. But at the same time, I find it funny. To me, it's a quirk of the game I can enjoy.

No, just no. That's just annoying and nothing else. Even Jrpgs are moving away from random encounters. Not to mention random encounters just encourages more resting, since players just need to preserve more resources in case of an attack.

At the very least, let my character have the option to say "wtf are you talking about? I don't even know you." or "lol, look at you thinking you had a chance". If the companions are allowed to be snarky assholes, let me be a snarky asshole.

The Witcher 3 is probably the greatest CRPG of our era and it has random encounters. The random encounters can be a few kobolds or a couple of wolves, but as it stands the world feels dead after you clear a region. My opinion. You are entitled to yours.

I definitely wouldn't gategorize it as cRPG. An RPG/Action game hybrid perhaps? An open-world action game with light RPG elements - that would be my pick. And I specifically remember the dead feeling of the witcher3 world once authored quests were completed .

My main gripe with the game is , I've just fell from a ship , have no idea where I am but I already have a "base camp" to send stuff to from my inventory. I think that at some stage whether you wake Shadow Heart up or not that you should pass a spot in your travels and get a verbal comment or something saying that this looks like a good place ( like when you 1st actually long rest and get the cut scene )