Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Spacetime considerations on BG's flawed (non-)implementation of time and distance

I could have used a bit more systems in the world map to make the map feel more alive, and would welcome at least few more open sky locations, but otherwise, yeah Deadfire did that rather well.

I started but didn’t finish POE2. As you said it had very little main story, which is an issue that the large, empty open-world games also often have. Is POE2 really a story-driven game if it has almost no main story?

I also wasn’t interested in the factions, and the character relationship system was a mess. In its favor as far as I remember/played, it didn’t have timed quests, which I hate.

For me if it is space & exploration vs strong plot, quests & characters, I always pick strong plot, quests & characters! This is also what BG3 picked, which is why I like it so much!

You know what's weird? That they placed the fast travel portals everywhere, but there is no one where you would want it most: in the druid grove. So the most common reason for players to temporarily not care about breaking immersion - getting back to the merchant hub to sell and buy stuff because they're overloaded with loot - is not very well supported.

Also in general, I don't mind teleporting the party if the teleporter mechanism exists in-world (as in Kingmaker). If it's just a gameplay shortcut in order to not have to spend player time for travelling, in-world time should pass accordingly.

I’m with Icelyn on this. I don’t mind, and in fact actually see as a plus, BG3’s stylised approach to location and time. I think it suits what I see it as, which is a kind of simulator for table-top D&D that brings our adventures to life on screen, rather than an attempt to be a realistic fantasy game. I’m sure that there are some changes that could address issues that others have with it without introducing things that would make my experience worse, like multiple timed quests, which I hated in Kingmaker, or boring treks through pretty scenery with nothing much to do, but personally I’m perfectly fine with the approach Larian have taken.

But POE 2 is NOT a "large open world". It's your typical network of interconnected small locations you can reach out from a world map.


It IS absolutely story-driven (not that this would be automatically a plus, anyway). It's just that very little of that story is "the main plot" and a lot of it is about (quite sizeable) tangent stories.

ME2 is a bunch of tangentially connected stories all in service of recruiting people for a vague suicide mission that only occurs in the endgame, and people consider it a narrative masterpiece.

I think Kingmaker is actually the gold standard for this metric.
The way they managed world traversal and time passing is probably the best compromise of reasonably economic implementations that give you the necessary illusion of consistency and depth.
Day/night cycle, seasons passing, a detailed camping and resting system that probably didn't cost a fraction of the artificial and immersion-breaking mess BG3 uses, party load and speed of travels having a big impact, possibility to unlock a few valuable teleporters progressing with the story, "timed questlines" but with timers generous enough to raraly be an issue for any barely-competent player. etc, etc.

Not that the game was without flaws (not even close), but the foundations of the system were exceptional.
In fact I'm surprised that part of it was replaced by a WORSE system in Wrath of the Righteous.

*Looks at the table where our last tabletop session took place* A pile of rulebooks. A large notebook with notes about characters and in-world dates and some rough hand-drawn location sketches. A case with 36d6 and a dice cup. Some pens. A map of the continent with important cities marked. A map of the planet. A list of star systems with coordinates. No tactical maps. Exact in-world time is rarely important but in-world location most definitely is. Just saying that tabletop adventures are as different as video games. Perhaps even more so. IMO a game set within one location can get away with what you call a stylized approach, but a game with an epic scope? We'll see how this works in BG3's full version.

I'm absolutely in the same camp.

Still I find the OP and many more posts like this on the forum to be incredibly valuable and informative, as they show how flaws and glitches in the game mechanics can leak into storytelling by allowing for nonsensical actions/events or by breaking immersion.

Agreed on both counts. It's a game that encourages exploration and I think it has the best kind of story for a crpg, one that actually encourages and makes sense to include sidequests in. I find that it's paced in such a way that the various diversions you take don't feel as jarring as they sometimes can in other games. On top of that, every island has a story to it and really feels hand-crafted. Unlike BG3, it actually makes sense to take diversions and explore in Deadfire. (I think Deadfire is a superior game to BG3 in pretty much every respect. The only place I think BG3 outdoes it is sheer quantity, which isn't nothing in a game.)


I don't think it's a question of one or the other. Many, many other games have done better jobs with this topic than BG3 and still had wildly praised stories, plot and characters. If Larian really is as good as people claim they are, they could have done a better job than they have.

I don't. And in fact, I think few people consider it a good game because of its storytelling. When ME2 came out in 2010, about the first thing I noticed about it was how our sense of location was lost, compared to ME1, because we were now teleported from the ship to "where we needed to be", as a developer post put it, rather than being able to land on a planet and find where we needed to go on our own. I summarized it with "ME1 had locations, ME2 has game levels". It was not the only signficant thing that was lost between ME1 and ME2. The roots of the ending debacle are here.

As a standalone game with focus on action gameplay and character stories, and no ambition to tell an overarching story and be more lore-consistent than absolutely necessary, ME2 would've been great. As a sequel to a more serious-minded SF RPG, set in a world with consistent lore that drove a story larger than one game could tell, it was a disaster.

The problem here is this: if a game does not feature significant exploration, then the absence of mechanisms that account for its presence is no problem. If we arrived at Waukeen's Rest and had no motivation to go somewhere else and explore before we deal with the fire, the problem with temporal consistency would not exist, and the "long rest clock" would work since nobody stays here standing around for an hour to watch the house burn down (though it would be cool if that was possible. And it can't be made possible without in-world time). If BG3 was just story and no exploration, things would work just fine as they are. That would, however, also mean that there are no stories we could find or not find, depending on where we go. Everything would be hooked to the main plot. A perfectly valid design, and possibly better for storytelling overall, but not what we expect from these games, right?

Meanwhile, if a game has significant exploration *and* a story that needs to be accounted for, then the game must do its part to deal with the inevitable priority clashes.

I love the Mass Effect trilogy! I consider ME2 to be a character-based game, and it has amazing characters!💕 It is also the middle part of a larger trilogy.

My preference would be to have no “long rest clock” or resting at all, but I guess they had to have resting because it is based on D&D.

For Waukeen’s Rest I always dealt with it when I was there, though, so it never came up as an issue for me. With no combat, there was no reason for me to rest.


The narrative structure of POE2 reminds me of the Fallout and Elder Scrolls games because of its lack of emphasis on the main story and its focus on exploring. BG3 reminds me more of Bioware games, especially Dragon Age with its focus on story and characters.

I don't know of what Fallout you are talking about. Probably not one of the good ones.

I know, right? Don't remind me. It's so disappointing.

Hey!
All 3 Dragon Age games are great!!!

Origins, Awakening and Witch hunt!

LOL +1

Probably not.😂😂😂 I didn’t finish either of the ones I tried, which were Fallout: New Vegas and Fallout 4.

That’s a plus for me that it reminds me of Dragon Age! Although, I think BG3 is even better than the Dragon Age games. It is Dragon Age evolved!😊🎉

In DAO we actually have a sense of location. So in this aspect (only this, mind you), rather Dragon Age devolved.

Yes, I have noticed this a well. I suspect the reason for it are possible changes to druid grove - like the place can be locked up. There could be additional story reasons for them to want spawn players in front of it, rather than inside.

Witcher3 did something similar with Baron's place - you couldn't fast travel inside of it.


I have to contest the "no main story" plot. Faction content IS main story. It contains important worldbuilding necessary for mandatory Eothas missions, and through it player make choices that reflect the underlying dilemma behind God's actions.

I won't argue Deadfire story has some issues - compartmentalization, better intertwining between Faction and Eothas subplots, story hook not incentivising PCs to engage with faction story content - but the game has sooo much main story. I don't think the fact that player isn't forced to do all of them makes them any less of "main story".


I think Fallout comparison is apt - Deadfire draws a lot of inspiration with New Vegas. Even Fallout1&2 structure is somewhat similar to Deadfires - though it did work a bit better due to crit path not being clearly communicated by the game, like it is in Deadfire. I don't think Deadfire comes together as well as those titles, which is the shame - as I think some individual elements in Deadfire (factions, reputation system, itemisation) are my favourite I have ever seen in an RPG.

Too bad you didn't click with New Vegas - it is probably my favourite 3d RPG.


I also like BG3 better than Dragon Ages - but outside presentation and some interface similarities (chain system, hotbar) I don't think games have much in common.

I can’t agree with this more. Dragon Age and BG3 have some superficial similarities, but the way you engage with the games are completely different.

Playing Dragon Age means selecting a path (a quest, a destination, what have you) and then playing through a very linear set of challenges, mostly revolving around several near identical combat encounters. Then you often make some sort of choice in dialogue at the end.

BG3 and DOS2 are far less linear. You are encourage to be creative in how you use abilities and systems to complete challenges. I wouldn’t say DA games are strictly on rails, but they are far more on rails than Larian’s games.