Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback [MAIN MENU] - It Deserves To Be Better

The Baldur's Gate 3 main menu does not bring the game nor the epic soundtrack justice, which I will address further below after a small walk through history;

DIVINITY: ORIGINAL SIN I

Larian loves beaches, people love beaches, everyone loves beaches and we even start the game on beaches.

The menu is rich with colors and atmosphere, plenty of interesting details to admire, with plenty of things to look forward to on the horizon. It gives a nice sense of freedom and longing for an adventure.


DIVINITY: ORIGINAL SIN II

Here we get an epic scenery of yet another beach with an amazingly grandiose divine statue of Lucian, overlooking Fort Joy in the background, where the soundtrack is accompanied by a wonderous feminine choir to emphasize divinity. Absolute perfection of a main menu. But that's not all...

Entering the subsequent menus sends us to the Arx Cathedral, where we get to see the beautifully crafted paintings of the Seven Gods and how the seven races came to be, thus indirectly introducing us to history.


BALDUR'S GATE III

And then we go from that... to a wall in a cave with skulls. Septa the Ineffable would be disappointed.


When I first started Baldur's Gate 3 way back when Early Access launched and entered the main menu, I was taken away by the epic soundtrack of the main menu.

It is the kind of moment that felt like when Gandalf and the fellowship enter Moria for the first time, where this epic grandiose scale of dwarven architecture envelops the viewers in awe. I felt that kind of sensation with the soundtrack, but not the menu. It is unfortunately bland and uninspiring because there is nothing to look at and I'm sorry to say, but a cave wall is not worthy of this theme. However more importantly, it does not satisfy Larian quality standard because it's not a beach.

So why have a smelly old dark cave wall with nothing worth looking at, when we can have something grandiose and inspiring that would make the mind wonder on what kind of adventure the player might be entering.

EXPECTATIONS

My personal favorite.

It's the city the game is named after. It's grand, it's inspiring, it's vast, it's lively with all the ships in the harbor and it makes the mind wonder. Accompany this with the main theme and it makes jaws hit the floor. There's so much to see and admire... and look there's even a beach.


Okay this one doesn't have a beach, but it does have the city and it is much more grandiose than a cave wall, with the Nautiloid grabbing people in the background which would fit the theme far more.


And here in Avernus, the devils take matters seriously and uphold the Larian quality standard. The sea is made out of blood and the beaches are made out of bone dust of the fallen.


Naturally these would all be rendered in-game and animated, but anything is better than a cave wall.

Indeed.
But maybe a better example would be comparing it also to the previous Baldur's gate games? I mean, Larian took the pain to get the IP... I am not feeling the continuity in that third game. They could of inserted the menu in a magical mindflayer highly detailed artifact, or used grotesque skin tissues with tatoos, a dusty tome of lore with maps...naaa, lets just use a common cave, fans will love it. Nothing else screams D&D Baldurs gate better than a damp dark cave lol. EPIC.
Puzzling choice. At least they got the logo right.

We do get a glimpse of a beach at the start of the sequence


But the sequence does land on a somewhat lackluster shot


Unless it's something that would be significant later :
- Why are there piles of bones there?
- Will we have more information on those rune (other than what Gale gives)?
- Is this the entrance to some important location we will have to visit?

Even then, it's not the most exiting view (and this is coming from someone who loves caves).

I like the alternatives you gave Crimsonrider. Especially the shots of Baldur's Gate. It would just make the most sense.

Also, nitpicking here, I think it's weird that the music starts so "late".
We get 4-5 seconds of the menu without music, then it starts when the beach appears but it feels like it didn't load in time.

It actually didn't cross my mind since I didn't play the previous BG games. But even so they're made by different companies so wouldn't do a lot of good comparing them. Seeing them now though I personally find that even worse as the point is to expand the scene, not narrow it. As imagine the main theme of BG3 with that kind of a 90s/early 2000s main menu.

Games today have moved past such basic and simple main menus. Today main menus are animated, practically rendered in real time and visually rich so it needs to be epic and fitting. I just don't see that with a 90s menu. They did have a lot of heart though, as a lot of early RPGs had that amazingly loud *clink* sound when clicking on menus ^^


True, it starts with a beach ^^

Naturally I'm just joking about the beach thing, I find it amusing that every Larian game starts with a beach, so I just run with it as a gag. Though even if it remained on that particular scene permanently it is still quite lackluster. The only thing of note is the tower in the distance, which may be Gale's city Waterdeep. To make it worthwhile the scene would have to move outside of the cave and show us the entire coastline, sea and city, rather than obscure it. Even the DOS1 outshines the BG3 main menu.

But compared to DOS2 which had such an amazing main menu, with plenty of foreshadowing, it's quite lackluster. I hope it's just a placeholder for Early Access.

Love these classic menus.
Would of loved something like this for BG3. Maybe have the camera start with a wide view cinematic of the city, then slowly zooms in this forgotten old artifact were you have the menu. Why not have the best of both worlds?
Yea I know, console gamers. smartphones. A bazillion devices BG3 needs to work on so...we get boring menus and easily resizable dull UI icons.

Hearthstone actually did an amazing modern take on such menus and it works on all devices, even mobile. Check it out, it's actually pretty cool because it's a card game, so the main menu simulates a tabletop view of a book laid on the table, that we open and read through ^^

I don't quite get current menu - what is it meant to represent. Perhaps it will make more sense with full release?

Or perhaps we will get a new main menu view - it is not uncommon for games leaving Early Access to change stuff like that to punctuate move from EA to 1.0.

At least it isn't Skyrim bad

I think the only thing it represents is possibly Waterdeep in the distance, before the scene ultimately moves itself into the cave and then it just looks like a generic cave from Divinity Original Sin 2

In fact, you could put this as a DOS2 menu and new players wouldn't be able to tell a difference.


True, but in Skyrim's defense at least the loading screens were phenomenal. I thoroughly enjoyed being able to rotate all the in-game models and observe the details while waiting for the game to load ^^

Without going into details I would just like to add that I agree firmly.

I think the menu is an important part of a game since it sets the mood for experience.

Unfortunately I find the neither the music nor the animation inspiring in BG3, and I just click my way quickly through it. There are many great sounds tracks in BG3, but the menu song is not one of them (imho).

Really hope that Larian can have another try at it before release.

Here's what the menu would look like with in-game Baldur's Gate. Now that looks like a Larian main menu.




Alternative version:

I love these concepts.

Although the title/crest BG3 thingy in the middle stood out like a sore thumb imo.

For the concepts in the original post I used a bit of drop shadow since the backgrounds are from the cinematics. Although in this one now I've hopefully made it better, has no shadow ^^

No, it's just the placement. In the middle. I can't really put my thumb into it, it's just seems... a bit off.

I think it would be better for the Logo/Crest thingy to be integrated with the menus, like it is on BG2. And full-on skeuomorphism on the button.


Agreed on the cinematic part of it.

Absolutely disagree with this kind of design. It's borderline crime against humanity this design, it's upsetting.

ps. sorry, don't meant to be mean.

I don't think there is anything wrong with current Main Menu background. It's pretty symbolic if you consider how the main theme of BG-games is darkness within you.

I like the current implementation as well.

Perhaps something like this then. Could add a backdrop banner behind the options too similarly to how DOS2 has it, but then I'd see less of the harbor. I kinda like this layout more than the current one.

It would be AWESOME to have such an epic main menu.

I have to admit that the current main menu does not really inspire great adventure and epic journey to me at all...