Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous vs BG3

@Gray Ghost.

That IS really cool. I play WotR as an Aasimar paladin of Iomedae, not even realizing the game was about Iomedae. I've seen a few things like what you're saying, and it IS really awesome.

Example:. All of a sudden a blue haired woman is escorted into the Drezen command center. "Sir. Aasimar mages want to join the crusade. Because you are Aasimar, they were inspired to join your cause.". Yeah. That was a nice touch. Stuff like that is really cool in WotR.

Another example is that because I am a paladin of Iomedae, many people call me brother and have a great deal of respect for me, especially Selah. That's awesome too.

While I don't think the start scenario would necessarily need to be so drastically changed from what we currently have, I do like what you've set out and that would definitely be more to my tastes.



Oh yeah! I had vampires come to join my crusade because I was a dhampir! Also when I played as a tiefling, I asked Woljif a question about if he feels the pull of the abyss or something to that effect. If you ask as any other race, he tells you off, but as a tiefling, he'll give you an honest answer.

I enjoy talking about this stuff here. It's fun and refreshing to disect and unpack why I enjoy the game.

No tadpole? Then why did the mind flayers kidnap you? Why the Nautiloid?

Baldur's Gate games, always started with a feeling of being hunted, or being in danger because of what you are, and 3 just does something similar, albeit in a different manner. We still don't know what the story has in store for us, and what other... curious abilities we might have.

I don't think i would change anything.

The narrative problems i hear about here and there, existed in the older games, and in a lot of actual tabletop adventures as well.

If you try hard enough, you can deconsruct and dissassemble anything.

Oh no doubt! WotR is WAY better than Kingmaker, even though I like Kingmaker and am playing it presently as a Magus. Right now, I'm doing the Pit of a 100 trials - ahem. Sorry. Tenebres Depths. Geez. If ever there was an example of just constant fighting, it is this area. I must say, I don't enjoy it that much. It's a bit too grindy for my tastes.

But WotR has remained moving relatively well imo. (I haven't finished WotR yet.) I VERY much enjoy it. In WotR, I'm currently at Wintersun and finishing up the Herald of the Inheritor quests. Then I'm thinking of going to the Midnight Isles... or maybe I'll help finish Woljif's quest. Hmmm.

I'm REALLY looking forward to seeing how the Through the Ashes characters transfer into the Main Campaign. THAT is a really cool touch. I very much enjoyed that DLC, and I can't wait for more. I almost enjoyed the Through the Ashes more than the Main Campaign in Kenabres.

The DLC is good. The concept of the need to avoid threats is interesting, only Owlcat, as usual broke it
I don't know why the hell they decided to give us three mercenaries. It would be much better if we only control 3 characters.
Avoiding combat would be much more enjoyable if it weren't for the tragic pathfinding in this game.
The second area is the worst, full of narrow roads, which causes the characters to disturb each other.
Let's add that the characters cannot avoid dangerous areas, which means that they constantly receive unnecessary damage.
After all, the controls in bg3 are very good (usually) when it comes to avoiding danger.

Although I have to praise them for one thing, they limited themselves to only 2 puzzles.
They are still lame but there is progress anyway.
Maybe if it goes on like this, they will eventually give up and stop adding dubious quality content to their games.
I just wonder what a complete idiot came up with a puzzle in which a mistake causes the instant death of the entire team.

As for the characters in the main story, you are likely to be disappointed.

Wow. Our experiences are quite different. I was very happy with 3 mercs. I got to create 3 more characters for it. I also thought they were quite necessary for survival. Without them, my MC would surely have died.

I also totally disagree about the pathfinding. BG3 has an entire Megathread about their pathing and how bad their movement mechanics are. I never had a problem with Pathfinder.

And I have no idea what you mean by limiting to 2 puzzles. I also have no idea what you mean by the puzzle that causes instant death of the entire team. Even if there is one and I missed it, so what. It's like the old Choose Your Own Adventure books I used to read as a kid. One bad choice and The End. Just reload and choose again. If it makes sense to have the whole party die because of a bad choice, then I say good for them.

And, you know, you and I have totally different opinions on games, so I probably will love what happens when Through the Ashes characters return if you were disappointed.

I don't know if you've played DLC1 but the puzzles were even worse than in the base game and that's an achievement.

In DLC 2 it is better because they are more logical, there are fewer of them and they do not require you to run around the map several times.
I mean a puzzle with levers. There are 2 in the game, the first of them is still in 1 area.
The second is in area 3, in the basement where you find the looters.
It is this one that causes instant wipe. I really don't like this approach.

You're not going to tell me that how characters avoid threats is better in pathfinder ?.
In the case of pathfinder, they just ignore any dangers. No matter if it's a 1/3 way trap or a toxic cloud, they'll never even try to avoid it.
In the case of bg3, the characters at least try not to kill themselves.

The second area in this dlc is simply the worst of it all.
The whole area is built in such a way that the AI can't handle it.

Hmm. Again. Very different experiences.

In BG3, Shadowheart literally jumped into lava and died while following my MC. Wyll has run into vine traps. Gale won't jump unless I make him, so he gets left behind in multiple areas. Characters walk into Bibberbang or torchstalks. Granted it's EA, but it's certainly not been good by any means.

And I had a few minor issues with some poison clouds or something in Through the Ashes, but that was minor. For the most part, pathing was WAY better than BG3.

Interesting that we have different experiences on that.

The difference between WotR and BG3 with regards to pathing AI is that it is trivial to select one character in WotR and guide them through hazards, whereas you must deal with the toilet chain to do this in BG3. This is a strong win for WotR, not so much because they did something good, but rather because BG3 interface is absolutely awful.

I've found the pathing in WotR to be pretty much average for these sorts of games. Meanwhile BG3 is just worse in every aspect of controling the part. Even in instances where it's about average itself, I would argue that that's still bad because they put effort into coming up with a new control scheme that at its best only manages to match what other games are doing.

Toilet chain = Adapted for console controllers? Because lets be real, for total sales number probably 80% of gamers will play with a gamepad.

Simple as that I feel why Larian did this awful system. I cannot in the life of me see another reason why. Absolutely does not compare to click&drag control of single party members with the good ol mouse. Its precise, its fast. You here, there, there and there. 3 seconds DONE. Pinpoint precise. No AI issue.

I can't comprehend as to how people manage to get their characters to walk into lava and such in D:OS2 and BG3. D:OS1 did actually have some pathfinding issues when it came to avoiding dangerous surfaces, but as of D:OS2 everyone knows better than to walk into fire or something worse (lava, Deathfog). My only pathfinding issue both in D:OS2 and in BG3 is the ladder hopscotch. I really hope they actually fix it in time for the release. Since you have an unchain all hotkey now, using Larian's navigation has never been easier, and given the verticality and gridlessness of the environments the regular control scheme might be a bit too awkward.

While of Kingmaker I have a very distinct memory of characters running in circles in place trying to fit into formation, as if they couldn't ever get to the threshold at which the devs set Unity's navigation system (which is what they'd clearly used, as I was fresh out of dealing with it myself when I was playing through Kingmaker, and they even had the default error messages popping out here and there during the early days) to just snap them to a spot. Busy environments with a lot of furniture and rocks aren't handled all that well either, if I remember correctly, and trap triggers were wonky also. Using charge attack was a crapshoot too.

I don't how how it doesn't happen to you - maybe it has been 100% but it was still an issue couple patches ago.

I am pretty sure jump is often to blame in BG3 - sometimes characters won't quite make a jump across, or will walk a bit into the surface and then jump.

I mean some people claim that companions don't get lost anymore while chained, and it still happened to me regularly in patch8 (especially around stealthing all). It's better then it was before but still bothersome.

Yes, unchain all helps a lot, but it only goes as far as making navigating character 1 by 1 easier. It does nothing for group movement or grouping characters into smaller groups (like 2 and 2). I also dislike how chaining all often scrambles portrait order - at the very least I would like to see that fixed.

I don't see what control scheme would have to do with verticality and gridlessness - vertical control (or lack off) is awkwardly done as well, but that's a seperate issue. Mimimi's tactics games (Shadow Tactics - now free on EGS, Desperados3) have plenty of verticality and traditional control scheme and they play very well.

I will be honest - I just don't like the system. Controlling a group, by controlling one leader is just fundamentally counter intuitive to me. It will always act as an artifical barrier between imput I am allowed to make, and the result I want to achieve. Still, while charing the same awkwardness due to simialr control scheme (one leader - plus follwoers, people run into mines in W3 just as happily as companions in BG3 into traps), Wastelands3 grouping control is just far more efficient. My only complaint is that shift+LMB on portraits selects both characters and everyone inbetween rather then just those two I have selected. But still, how is it not straight up better then what BG3 has:

Well, here's how it happened. I had my MC jump across lava to try to reach a rock island. Shadowheart tried to follow and... "AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!". She died. It happened just like that. Now don't get me wrong. Stuff like that doesn't happen all the time, but it has happened. Also, let's be kind to Larian. It's EA. So of course stuff like that might happen. That's not the point. The point is, I've never had that kind of pathing issue with Pathfinder.

Get characters to walk into lava. Ha! Like I was trying. It just happens, and more frequently what happens is characters jump or walk into explosive stuff or tangle vines or they simply don't follow you and you leave them behind without knowing it.

Before starting I must say I deeply love both games.

I don't quite see how both experiences are comparable since BG3 is a more cinematic presentation while WoTR is a more classic 90s. Yes, they are both CRPGs, however, what they are trying to achieve is completely different.

WoTR is focused on delivering its complex systems and grand narrative. But the effort in each scene is a big wall of text that focuses on voiceovers and scene descriptions that appeal greatly to the player's imagination.

BG3 is a cinematic experience focusing on the involved characters and developing them emotionally and in empowering situations.

I intimidated a lot of folks in WoTR, but none of those moments came close to my barbarian intimidating Kagha to release the child. We can see the fear in her eyes.

I know that liberating Drezen, and getting your powers and powers are also really epic moments, including the game's superb music. However, the focus of WoTR is on the world and how you shape it and not on personal and character development besides the role of the commander.

I absolutely adore Mimimi's games on account of being a huge Commandos fan (with the first one being one of my first games, period), but they have a very high-up camera angle and you can't exactly use the characters' individual abilities while selecting a whole group, and each character only has five abilities total with standardized hotkeys. You still need to manually control the people you want to do specific things, and if you have people in the selection that aren't as mobile as others (Mugen in Shadow Tactics, Doc McCoy in Desperados 3), then there's a bit of wonkiness involved in it.

Again, I am not as much criticizing the control scheme as pointing out that there are obvious flaws both there and in BG3, but I guess it's all down to personal preference in the end. I never was much of a hater of the chain system, having seen much worse control schemes out there. KotOR is an example, where all the control you have is "follow me" or "stay still", combined with the Aurora jank, leading to characters getting stuck on corners and the like. And NWN2 was an actual nightmare, and remains one still even after they updates the controls in Storm of Zehir, with movement being awkward and floaty and characters feeling like they are unmoored from the terrain. Trying to control a party there, with no formations and it all moving in a blob, was an awful experience no matter which camera mode you pick.

I am still not sure, though how chain system is supposed to work better with verticality - as it is now we either have to have camera centered follow the character or otherwise it won't change verticality together with the character I am controlling - so it's by no means perfect - or at least for me camera is so zoomed in that moving by LMB tedious, so I either tend to hold LMB (which I find tiring) or use free camera, which doesn't work with verticality. I wish BG3 got controller support soon, as I think it will feel better to play that way.

If you think that camera centering is something that would be lost with RTS controls, that would t have to be the case. Wasteland2 clip I showed has a better party grouping selection, and still follows a leader. PoE2 which used Infinity Engine style control had smart camera which was a hybrid of both - allowing for free camera movement but snapping back to the party issued movement.

Every later BioWare game, really. The difference is that later BioWare games had barely any interactivity on the map, so not being able to control party members wasn't a factor, really.

NWN2 was clunky as hell. BG3 could be worse, but I also think it could be better. I am not sure of preference is a thing. I struggle to see what BG3 has party control wise, what Wasteland3 doesn't.

Kotor was fine because you didn't have things like jumping and climbing and lots of traps to maneuver through. Most traps you spotted and disabled right away so you weren't maneuvering through mine fields and stupid characters were easily triggering them.

I think one of the worst games control-wise IS NWN2, to be sure. They butchered the controls. Every time I try to play that game again I am constantly trying to adjust the control and camera settings. It really is a nightmare.

So yes. BG3 could be a LOT worse. No doubt. Also, it's gotten WAY better since EA started. I think Shadowheart jumped into lava on me in Patch 6 or 7. Since then, the worst pathing and such has been leaving companions behind and not realizing it.

As long as we are bitching about other games control systems... there is a special place in hell for the person who designed the party combat controls for Dragon Age Inquisition. I loved the first two, but I bounced off that hard because I couldn't make my guys do what I wanted them to.

Kotor didn't bug me because the combat was basically trivial once you get a half decent build going on Revan.

Today in Solasta clearly wasn't balanced for anything beyond the initial six released classes...

The newly released Warlock is making people realize how many instant death pits you can blast things into. Probably even more than in BG3. It's just way harder to shove things normally in Solasta, but Warlocks don't give a damn.