Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General What Makes Good RPG Writing?

🐻🐻🐻

May I guess that what you want is... the lack of writing about your character ? More branching (quests/dialogs lines) but 0 background and character development ?

I’m not sure whether what I want is even possible. Though I don’t think it’s lack of background or development, but rather lack of imposed story about my custom character’s family and history. So I want there to be writing about my character but I want options from which I can pick, and the ability to select “none of the above” where they don’t apply. And because I recognise that there are limits to the number of options that can be offered and how rich they can be, yes I think you’re right I’d want more branching and responsiveness to who my character shows themselves to be within the game, given it couldn’t rely on some specific pre-assumed relationship of my custom character to the plot to drive their motivation and role in it.

The trick, I guess, would be to give enough in-game content to hang my head canon on to feel satisfying without adding unreasonable development overheads. But it feels as though the game at least could do far more in this direction than we’ve seen in Early Access. One of my bugbears, for example, is how little curiosity companions and NPCs often show about RPG protagonists, who are always asking questions but not being asked them in return. In BG3, it feels like having our character being quizzed by people they meet over the course of the game and giving us options to reply would be one way to start building up a picture of who our character was before they were kidnapped, and then be able to provide at least some basic reactivity to that. At the moment, it does feel too much as though our character has sprung fully formed from an illithid pod, and we don’t even get much opportunity to talk about where they’re from, why they were wherever they were when they were kidnapped, who they were with and whether they’re worried about them, and whether they have family and where.

Character development in RPGs seems to be for NPCs only. I suppose it's difficult to write around a player character who changes, but I think it has more to do with low expectations regarding the average players willingness to roleplay in their game.

There should be more of a back and forth between the characters in Baldur's Gate 3, especially if you're playing an origin character. They can't be curious about your character because that would mean taking into account all the interesting permutations that would entail. I wish they considered this more of a core aspect of RPG games but alas.

Roleplaying means dedication and feedback.
I wish the game as a branch like system that when you kill people the options becomes more dark maybe neutral at best.
Its silly that you be a Dark Lord of Death and Decay and the Game ignores you "development" and bring up the good choices like like the past never happened.

This is something I wonder about, and really hope Larian will experiment with. How many reasonably generic options would there need to be and what’s the basic amount of reactivity to them that would be sufficient to give the illusion that the game recognised our head canon of who our custom character is? It feels as though it should be possible to take some significant strides in this direction without a disproportionate amount of effort. After all, there’s the character class and background to base options on, as well as the obvious questions that I mentioned in my thread above.

Perhaps having the opportunity to tell the game parts of our character’s story would set expectations about how the game responds to it that it would be impossible to meet. But until proved otherwise by experience, I’m going to continue to feel that it would still be better to be able to express it, even if the game couldn’t really do much with the information. And at the very least it might prompt more folk to think about who their custom character is and to roleplay that, rather than expecting the game to tell them and be disappointed when it doesn’t.

It really depends on the person. For many, choosing between stormcloaks or imperials and in Skyrim is already enough reactivity for that lol.

I think it would be the opposite. I think that the game giving us options of what we can tell it actually sets just the right expectations for what it's capable of allowing. Pillars of Eternity had a haracter right at the beginning ask us who we were and why we were travelling. I think that helped set my expectation of what ort of things the game would allow and was capable of handling.

Considering what an important pillar of roleplaying customizing your character is, I feel like putting more time and effort into making the world more and more capable of handling it should be more important when making crpgs. As much work as goes into classes and combat abilities, more even, considering they take up probably more of the gameplay.
I'm never not disappointed when I reach so quickly limits of the worlds ability to react to the choices I've made about my character, and delighted when really arcane combinations lead to unique story beats.

Ngl seeing how I played through BG1 and never touched it again while I absolutely molested the poor BG2 over the years ....I'm kinda waiting for BG4 when it comes to high expectations.
If BG3 ends up being " decent" as a continuation and very good as a game that's more or less all I want from it.

But I'm digressing ^^


" I’m going to continue to feel that it would still be better to be able to express it, even if the game couldn’t really do much with the information."

It's more or less how BG2 did it when it comes to that particular aspect and it worked liked a charm for the 1st playthrough. While I liked the idea I'm under the impression the superficiality of it makes it something that feels obsolete at best nowadays. Thing is we're discussing conveying the player's character identity through dialogue options while there is way more to that than dialogues.

Do not forget the origins system is in place though. While it's main purpose is to adress the issue of "player's identity " in multiplayer ( and is kinda perfect in that regard) it also means YOU as the player can be shadowheart or gale or whatever. At least in theory but I'm assuming Larian will move their origin system from DOS2 to BG3. And since it's the case you should be able to create your custom character class + choose an origin background as your " anchor " to the game's world.
It should be good enought for a satisfying playthrough in theory. As long as some kind of customization is retained.
It doesn't look like we will get it the way it worked in DOS2 though.


======================================================================================================================
Here's the thing, the origin system is dope in creating an identity for all players in multiplayer but it comes with a set of limitations when it comes to customization.

It made a lot of sense in DOS2 where your " class" was 100% detached from character creation and the story. Choosing an origin character did lock you out of race selection though( if i remember correctly? I think i do.)
In BG3 it seems origins characters are still here but ....their race AND their class is anchored in the world ( and it should considering a class function in D&D in someone's life).

Soooo....did origins characters just go 100% non-customizable? Can we imagine shadowheart as a dwarf barbarian ? Or just as a barbarian as a matter of fact? Gale has to be a wizard by default too.

Unless I'm missing a crucial part of the puzzle( and I most likely miss a lot of them ;P ) it might seem like this identity issue will stay with us post release.

It might get adressed through later choices and our " identity" will be defined by our allegiance to the absolute through Mintara( be it fake or real) or druid ( through Halsim).
Meaning those dialogues proposed by Red Queen might really be the best solution to save the day if this origin system isn't getting massively rewamped( it most likely is since it is unavailable for two years).