Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Dank Crypt(Overgrown Ruins) vs. Fort Joy Prison

And vice versa.
100%, exactly my point.

Well those were obviously just examples i picked bcs they are easy ... i see no reason to spend hours and hours trying to create some supercomplex character that could go this path, since people would still just say they dont like something about them.
The point was ... you create your characters ... you want them to do *X* ... then you find out some way for them to do it.

And if you dont ... well, i gues then i asume this kind of play was not ment for you. :-/
It sucks i get it, but thats just how it is ...
If you complain about being hungry and someone offers you an apple, dont complain that you wanted hotdog ... either you are hungry and therefore eat an apple, or you are not really. :-/

I just dont like when people claim there is no valid option ... thats simply not true, there is many perfectly valid options, they just dont like them ... but that dont erase their existence.

And you dont like it?
I quite honestly do ... a lot ... nothing is certain, you can be as confused or dedicated as you want and its all perfectly valid.
Thats why i said to Niara that we all are making asumptions.

*Ethel.
Nettie is that Dwarf Druid ... Halsin's apprentice.

Anyway that questline actualy starts in the Grove, where she sells her "lotions and potions" ... you can tell her after some dialogue that you have tadpole, and she offers you her help ... if you accept, she invites you to her home in the forest where she went to "prepare things".
Meeting her and those two guys are basicaly middle of that quest.

I dont really think they do ...
I mean, i obvously dont see into head of Larian writers, but concidering everything we have ... it seems to me like Larian dont really want to push us to anything ... they offer us options and let us play however we want.

Same model you can see with Long Rests ... it could be much more restrictive, easily ... but instead they decided to let us pick when and where we want to rest.

My point here is that I don't think that within the game, misunderstanding the evidence we've given really is a valid, accounted for way to play. I'll go into way down below.


I have played lots of crpgs (not most of them, but a lot, especially newer ones) and have never run into this issue in those. In Pillars of Eternity, I had no trouble playing as a depressed monk in self-imposed exile as punishment for crimes she committed in an effort to liberate her citystate from tyrannical rule. I even wrote in-character journal entries for her where she reflected on the events of the game while also considering her past and how that colored her. I was even able to give her an arc of eventually rising above her past trauma, forgiving herself, and regaining her sense of purpose. That was my second playthrough. In my first, before I understood the full breadth of the game, I played a scholar who over the course of her game comes to realize the dark corners of the world and by the end of the story establishes herself as a spymaster to take care of her new home. In WotR I played as a tiefling who overcomes her anger and the trauma of past oppression to become a literal angel and prevent others from suffering as she did. But in Baldurs Gate 3 I can't find a satisfying way to play as a character who takes the tadpole threat seriously. Please, give me the complex character path that allows me to engage with the story and not miss out on companion interaction, story stuff and all the things that make a game like this interesting without also playing a dumb, or smug, or reckless character. I am inviting you to, because I clearly need guidance and I don't like disliking things. I paid for this game, I want to enjoy it.


Again, I don't think that playing a character dedicated to the tadpole before anything else is truly a valid, supported idea. Again, I'll get to it below.


Thanks for clearing that up actually. I feel like I've heard Aunt Nettie elsewhere, I'm probbably gonna be wrackig my brain on that for a while.


This is where I get into "I don't think rushing along is actually a valid way that Larian wants us play" stuff that I'd been hinting at above. Larian clearly wants to push us to rest less, and the proof of that is one glaring thing; the party banter system. If we want to engage with our party, we HAVE to take long rests and ignore the threat of the tadpole. Otherwise we are simply locking ourselves out of that content. And if we miss it in this part of the game, then based on how other games work (which is a valid metric to measure with because this is a part of a pre-existing genre and medium with its own conventions and tropes, and I don't think Larian has given us a reason to give them the benefit of the doubt that they're trying to do something super unique) we're likely gonna not see those plotlines develop in later acts.

Companion interaction is a big part of a crpg like this, and ideally you're gonna want players to want to spend time with those characters. They could have not tied companion scenes and long rests the way they have, but they did. It's a choice they made, and they made it for a reason. As a result, if you initially take the urgency of the tadpole seriously, you miss out on scenes that should on paper be things you want to see. Ultimately, where you see Larian trying to give players freedom, I just see bad writing. And Larian has given me know reason to think better of them and give them the benefit of the doubt. In fact they've provided several other instances of bad writing that make me more inclined to include this under that umbrella. To name a few; their failure to provide a breadth of dialogue options for our characters, something you've complained about several times; the fact that our created character is typically treated as just a rube for other characters to show off their characterization against; the seeming fact they don't seem to care about world building or providing the players with context; their permutation madness to try and make the mystery box work; and Astarion's bite scene if you let him drink too long and actually drain you. All instances of bad writing that leave me unwilling to give them grace on this issue.

Edited to fix quotes

I'm so confused, are gray ghost and rag the same person?

No, I just messed up the quoting. Thanks for pointing that out, I'm gonna fix that up.

I have to agree with most of what Gray Ghost said here. There is a very real disconnect between the main personal plotline, the world plots/building and the game's mechanics.

Our intro is brutal and even if most people aren't going to know much about what just happened to us, that tadpole is certainly a big deal. The intro on the ship piles it on further with the pod scene, The change can be held off and remotely triggered...fantastic...do they need the pod...who knows. Before we leave the ship and actually start on the beach we know our tadpoles are not normal and hypothetically could trigger the change at any time. Nothing anyone can tell us so far in Act 1 is really new. Yes it is in stasis of some kind...we knew that when we woke up not mindflayers and didn't immediately change.

But to fully experience the game you really should take the time to explore everywhere. You know there is some kind of time limit on your tadpole issue, but time doesn't really exist in the game world(nearly everything/anything will wait for you) and is also endless cause you can and should be resting repeatedly for your companions.

@Gray Ghost I must ask however what is wrong with Astarion's bite scene?

The bite scene isn't related to the tadpole, but it's a really bizarre scene that can unfold. After a couple long rests and advances in story, you can have a scene where Astarion will try to feed on you in the night, revealing that he's a vampire. You can let him feed on you willingly at that point. If you stop him at the first opportunity, it's all fine. If you don't and try to stop him at the second opportunity, he'll drain you dry and kill you. However after that, the game keeps going and you can have another party member revive your character. If you do, then you can get a conversation with Astarion actually addressing that. And he is just a complete asshole, deflecting any sort of responsibility and basically just being like "well you're alive now, what's your problem?" And I don't thnk it works on any level.

Firstly, I don't think we should have the option of reviving our main character after it, it should be a non-standard game over where we have to reload. Secondly, if the point of the scene is to show Astarion in a more sympathetic light, then having him be an asshole after he KILLS us makes that fail. But cruically, if the point is actually to show him as a manipulator who is playingon our emotions to get what he wants, then having him be an asshole to us ALSO makes the scene fail at doing that, because it makes him seem like a stupid, petulant child. A manipulator would try and cover himself, try and say that he's sorry and that he truly could not control himself and it was out of his hands. And they would probably bolt as soon as they realize they can't talk themselves out of the situation. Astarion just sticks around and thinks we're gonna be fine with it, and the game kinda makes us be okay with it. And thirdly, the other party members should want to kill him for knowing that he's willing to kill members of the group. Lae'zel should be out to kill him right away, no questions asked.

Allready did in the past ...
Shame you forgot.

We have clearly different definitions of this ...
Since i see nothing constructive about repeating the same argument, sometimes even exactly same sentence, sometimes even twice in a row, to anything other side says. O_o

Just wanted to let you know that i actualy read the rest and wanted to respond on it, but because of the length of the post, I kept putting it off for later ...
Now i just wanted to clear my table ... but in the end, during writing the responce i noticed the circle, and decided not going to react on the rest any futher ...

I see there a way for my characters, i believe i described it well enough to be understandable ... if you refuse it, you refuse it ...
/shrug

---

You may notice that @ dont actualy tag anyone ... so i simply didnt know about your question.

This statement "even for you" tho makes me very sad ...
I must admit that i feel strong urge to say something like: Well, f* you too ...

I had some other coments, but they are no longer relevant after all.

Lae'zel - Dont recruit her to your party > when you reach Githyanki patrol, she will be there > they will kill her permanently > you can see tadpole.

Astarion - Pierce his heart with a stick during the scene when he try to drink you > that will kill him permanently > you can see tadpole.

Shadowheart - Refuse her joining your party in every single possible situation > she will attack you > you will kill her permanently > you can see tadpole. (This particular scene might be cut out now, last time i managed this was before Larian added scene where she reaches you at Goblin camp.)

+ there is datamined

//Edit:
Maybe if i dont get baned in next few days, and if i find the time, energy and most importantly will to play this again, i can screen some of that scene for you ...
But dont really want to make any promisses.