Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Why did Larian promote cut content?

I am starting to wonder what happened at Larian. Not long ago, a few months at most they still promoted locations as explorable and hyped them up which are not found in the game (or just for one very short scene). And while in the last panel from hell there was still a dragonborn hireling he too was cut.

So what happened? I find it hard to believe that Larian didn't know the extend of content they could deliver so close to release.

What happened is ps5 and Xbox could not handle the load and frankly watch the last 'from hell's to see even PC struggled

You don't believe Larian could be so unaware = imo you have not followed their other games then

Larian does a lot right as a dev team but testing isn't one

The Larian Final Act Curse strikes again.

They cut so much, and not just from the third act. Something really odd happened late in the development for this game and it sent ripples through the core of the story. More than that, what they didn't outright cut, they basically shifted away from dangerous consequences to heroic power fantasy. I still enjoyed the game but found that it really wasn't what was in early access whatsoever.

I was wondering how do I get to Ramazith's tower the usual way to explore other levels. I guess you don't, then?

There are many threads all around internet about this and I have not read them all. What I would like to know has theen been any post release interviews asking questions about content cuts in general or more speciffic?

Consoles holding the PC back, shock.

Should have really just left it in and let console players struggle.

How exactly do consoles handle Waukeens Rest when even my 3080 Ti spits out 30-40 FPS with all that fire lol.

So, I guess what I should deduce from this thread is that there is NOT an Upper City as a playable area?
That would explain why going through the lower one was taking this much time.

I have yet to finish the game (and I'm no particular rush to do it, either) but one thing I can say about Act 3 from what I've seen so far is that if anything I'm fining myself wishing that if was a lot LESS city-centric.
I kinda expected/hoped for the structure to be closer to "You have the city as central hub and you go to a series of adventures in the peripheral regions" rather than "You'll spend the overwhelming makority of the act into the city itself and its (fairly dull) sewers.
I know there are a couple of possible exceptions (Iron Throne, House of Hope, etc) but so far I'm finding the (lack of) variety of the final act a bit tiring.


Also, speaking of cut/changed content... I can't be the only one that expected the "Hag" thing to play out very differently in Act 3.

Wow you guys are funny. Part of game development includes cutting content usually due to limits like time, expense, and yes downgrades due to technological limits.

The consoles have specs well above the minimum required for BG3. Suggesting they cut content due to consoles for this game seems pretty far fetched don't you think?

You need to remember the average PC player is not using a 3070 or 4070.

I understand the urge to find a scapegoat though and console peasants seem to be the go to for some I suppose.

Definitely sympathetic to this view and all, but between the discussions of said locations recently, the six years of development, and the 150M dollars, I’m thinking it’s probably tech constraints more than the other two.

I don't think it's tech constraints. I feel like something happened behind the scenes that ended up with a lot of material cut. I'm thinking it was either the long rest/camp event system remaining pretty clunky and therefore changes were made to reduce the possibility of players missing things/bugs impacting things/events misfiring. You can see this with Raphael who went from sauntering into your camp one evening to showing up randomly around the goblin village. It would also explain why Daisy was simplified into a benevolent being and there being no true 'no tadpole/powers' run. It could also have been that there was a mandate to change the tone of the game away from something dark and consequential to something more shallow and heroic. They didn't just cut content, they removed a lot what was in there (and changed a lot of what was left in.)

Except that you dont usually promote the content you cut in big press releases.
That shows that the decision to cut them was made very late, maybe less than a month before release and is directly responsible for the lower quality of act 3 as questlines had to be hastely rewritten.

And I wonder if that was necessary because of technical limitations or because Larian rushed the game to beat starfield.

The city has too much content as it is. Large segments that hold you back from progressing the main quest, at a point where you're expecting a climax in the story.

The sewers and bank robbery parts especially started being too much for me and I lost interest a bit. And the Minsc scenes were not good.

Its very interesting to see the conflicting opinions that either the game has too much content or not enough content.

Additional content does require more development time, something a lot of people seem to miss is how much longer would they have wanted to wait for more content?

Oftentimes games that need to spend too long in development, or get delayed a lot end up not only not selling as well, but can even bankrupt the studio (See Ascaron Studios with Sacred 2 as an example).

Theres always room for additional content with expansions, but Larian seem to be a company thats not interested in releasing expansions, don't forget that both BG1 and 2 had expansions that not only added more content but also raised the level caps.

I'm still in act 2 so haven't yet reached the city, but one thing I've often seen is some complaints that act 2 and 3 are too small and not as big as act 1, which from what I have found is only true if you choose to skip a lot of the content and exploring the areas fully. It is very easy to miss a lot of content in this game if you don't explore everything, and a lot of players seem to make that error.

My concern is less that there is too much or too little content but that this cut just before release lowered the quality of the remaining cintent as there was not enough time to compensate for the less of an entire district and modify all quests and story for it. So what remains is a hastily cobbled together compromise with lots of cut corners.

And my question is why this cut happened this late in the first place. Or why Fafner which was seen in the last Panel from Hell got replaced? What prompted the decision to make this change this late?

There can never be too much content. Just content that is poorly placed or ill-designed. In an Assassin's Creed game, the excess of content isn't bad because it's more content; it's bad because it's not fun content.

^This.

The content was in early access or otherwise in the files. Larian probably burned more time in creating an entirely new dream visitor than just completing Daisy. And when they were rebuilding core sections of the game, they weren't polishing elements that needed it (especially in the later acts.)

Yeah... I think it's the FAKEST problem of them all, in every damn RPG where it keeps getting mentioned.
I genuinely don't give a shit about being "pressed into REAL urgency" especially if the terms of said urgency aren't clarified enough and I need to be kept second-guessing on the deadline for every secondary event.

My ACTUAL problem with Act 3 so far is of a very different nature: I'm finding it very lacking in terms of variety.

I'm not fond at all of the idea that "I reached the city and now I'll spend most of my time here, between streets, shops and sewers".
I would have vastly preferred if the city itself was treated more like your central hub and you were offered the chance to visit several peripheral regions in the wilderness around the city for various subplots.

I think Act II needs more content, I would have really liked to see it . For transition content getting you to the city, it's a little sparse on content compared to the other acts.

Speaking of "more content" I can't help but wonder to what happened to the claim Swen Vincke made that Act 2 was going to be "the largest portion of the game by a wide margin".
...That doesn't seem even remotely true, does it?

And to be clear, I'm not exactly unhappy with how big BG3 turned out to be, I'm just saying.

If you explore everything in Act 2 it is very large. If you just do the main quest and skip everything else its small.

Your choice on how to play.

What was cut:

And its not all. In this time i looking for more information

And at first glance it may seem that there is a lot of content. But I checked the full list of quests, and I will say that this is just an illusion.

Thanks, this doesn't even remotely begin to answer my question!

Where are you getting this info from?
It sounds VERY plausible, to be clear, but also a bit too specific to be just a wild guess.
And few things you are mentioning (i.e. Raven Queen) I'm not even sure what were supposed to be.

Sounds like typical Larian. They made act 1 spectacular, and I think it's so good because of early access they were able to polish it up quite a bit but act 2 and 3 have not had player feedback. I think they will eventually keep adding and fixing both the acts in the future

I missed some dialogues, but from the 2nd time the game went almost completely. 90-95% I think. Skipping some small quests

Time
Act 1 25 hours with gith cresh
Act 2 15 hours full map
Act 3 40 hours. But not because of the huge number of quests, but because of the long search and running around. 2nd time I think it will not take more than 25 hours and I often moved away from the PC without leaving the game

datamine EA
There are theories, but there are also lines that were in the dialogues. This is correct information, everything is very similar to what we received and what was cut.
I think if I have the patience, I will find more information, most likely I will make a video on the topic of the cut content.
Maybe I can translate the text and post an extended topic here. In writing, of course.

It’s also not true. I explored every inch of that map, and before Moonrise started at the perimeter, made the way around, and gradually moved toward the center looking for more content. I went in every cave and hole, opened every door, lock picked and broke into everything I could. Act 2 is SPARSE. I resolved every quest one could resolve in Act 2.

Datamined from the early access files. A particularly major alteration was the Guardian, where seemingly the original dream visitor, Daisy, was in fact and there was a lot more reactivity for, say, a no powers run.

Oh, I know very well it's not true because I also played Act as I always do in these games: as a completionist half-obsessed about doing everything I can.

So, yeah, that wasn't even remotely a honest answer to my question, let alone a pertinent one.

How many hours did it take you to complete each act?

I'm 22 hours into act 2 and barely finished it yet, act 1 takes about 30 hours on average?

Act 2 isn't just the shadow place, its gith creche as well, theres 2 maps for act 2, same as act 1, just that they're in different places.

An interesting thing to note re: the cut Githyanki creche stuff is how Voss shows up afterward with some unexplained injuries to his face, and his red dragon does not appear and its absence is not noted (until it shows up at the very end of the game for a very brief cameo in Act 3.)

Also, not quite cut content, but I suspect there was once a greater use for soul coins rather than giving Karlach a power-up. I've seen some speculation that they were related to Withers. Bit grim to have coins containing a soul exist to give Karlach some mild fire damage.

Act 2 is definitely the smallest Act no doubt about it. The Gith Crèche is actually still part of Act 1 and can be completed alongside Grymforge before entering the Shadowlands. You can check your game achievement for completing Act 1 which describes entering Act 2 as entering the shadowlands.

Just wow. Rooky numbers compared to BG2's 100 to 300 hours (with no cinematics nor turn base combat!).
No wonder speed runners finished BG3 in less than 10 minutes. (To put this into perspective, it took speed runners 23 years to get BG2's best speedrun down to around 20 minutes.
In another year I am expecting BG3 runs to go down to less than 3 minute. 1 minute for each act

Just shows solid game design versus shit swiss cheese game design full of gaps and shortcuts.

This. Gith Crèche is Act 1. Act 2 is Shadows only. I’ll check my hours later and update.

I thought I remembered Larian saying that act 3 was the longest act, not act 2. Which so far feels like that's true mostly. Though I didn't do Underdark and mountain pass (and I think I missed a lot of the mountain pass anyway) so not sure.

Larian, including Sven, said a lot which turned out to be fake. Like

It is such a shame that Larian failed so hard.

I think failed is a bit harsh. What we do have is excellent when it works. They came up short in certain aspects of a vision.

No, I think failed is aporipriate considering that those cuts were made very shortly before release and in some cases likely not promoted by outside factors but likely because Larian wanted people to use the tadpole system for more powers and also otherwise not "burden" the player with bad consequences.

And if I remember right Sven still pretended there are consequences for tadpole use after they changed them to a powerup system and they knew there were none.

Lol i wouldn’t know… I never used the tadpole or the powers.

Judging by my steam time, I spent no more than 18 hours in Act 2, and no more than 57 hours in Act 1. A lot of that time was spent reloading to see different outcomes and returning to areas I had already been to see if I missed something.

I did everything on the "Act 2 Checklist" on the subreddit, including things that were not listed on the Act 2 Checklist like the "Cursed Fishing Shack" (being vague on purpose). I'm not going to list other things that I did that were not on the checklist because of spoilers. All told, 3 of those 18 hours I probably spent backtracking and checking for secrets. I concur with someone else in the thread who said that Act 2 is realistically 15 hours of content. It is underwhelming because Act 1 is more than 3 times its size in choices and character development and exploration and diverse locations.

To clarify any confusion in the thread, the game defines Act 2 as solely the Shadow-Cursed Lands.

EDIT: Independent of the time I spent on each act with my backtracking and reloading, if I were to guess how much content there is if a perfectly efficient player were doing a quick 100% run of each Act, I'd say Act 1 is 30-40 hours of solid and highly reactive content, while Act 2 is 10-15 of swiss cheese content that is barely reactive, except for 2-3 events.

Fascinating thread. Someone seems to be going through the files and has apparently found a whole folder of what appears to be unimplemented ending stuff: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1toM2E_7-cpiCvpvXQMjKt_Brh2ChhL2o

Also: https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/15umpxk/to_those_disappointed_in_the_endings/

Cut, bugged, or what?

Larian really released this game with an unfinished ending huh? disappointing. Guess they really wanted it out before starfield. Larian when are you going to learn to make a solid final act?

Well to avoid spoilers I will talk in the most generic way possible.
In my humble opinion the game should had been split in 4 acts, act 3 feels there is tons of stories going on at the same time and some of them are not concluded properly. Stuff that should had more time in the spotlight to do proper justice and be presented in this final act. While could use the extra act to unload the load and let people have time to enjoy Baldurs Gate city.

Its an excellent game but you notice the quality drop in ACT 3 and the ending.

My theory is during the 3 years of early access, Larian was just busy adding things instead of play testing and have everything makes sense. I think they realized towards the end that they might have added more things than they could handle. Act 1 is near perfect because it's the start and transitioning all those choices to the final acts is probably a cluster of work. This game is going to take a long time to make perfect, Im seeing Cyberpunk 2077 here. I played Cyberpunk in 2023 and the game was fantastic so this is what I am seeing here.

The fact that we were able to play early access for more that 3 years and datamine all of it is an anomaly in the video game world. The truth is that we usually don't get to see how a game is evolving during development. Games usually change a lot behind the scene, a lot of content is often left behind. So I wouldn't blame Larian for not including things they didn't formally announced. However the most important part is that the end product is coherent in its presentation, and it seems that BG3 is suffering from these phantom pains. From what I heard from some sources, development is a bit of a chaotic process at Larian and new features are added to the to-do list without warning. I guess the ambitions outgrew the scope so much that they had to scramble to wrap up the game, especially with pressure from both covid and Starfield. At least they are planning multiple big patches, so they are aware that some parts of the game could use some work.

Well, if 2 months before the release we are told about the City and the novels, about the fact that the 2nd act is the biggest, it is strange to turn a blind eye to this. The game has enough problems without cut data

For those of you defending Larian's apparent decision to release early ahead of Starfield while cutting swaths of BG3 Act 3 and most of the endings, it's that sort of acquiescence that gets us incomplete games.

We'll never know what a BG3 delayed until the Christmas holidays would have looked like.

If you put hundreds of hours into experiencing a story it's reasonable to expect narrative consistency and closure in the second half.

I don't understand people who are against adding content that makes the story better. And yes, if you do not talk about mistakes, no one will correct them

This reddit thread is full of comments along the same lines as the negative steam reviews:

"The ending and act 3 in general was massively disappointing"

"Glad to have read this. just finished and super disappointed"

https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGat...se_disappointed_in_the_endings/?sort=new

...

I suppose that's all we can really do when we dump hours into something we're emotionally attached to only to feel empty in the end. Seek support groups, commiserate.

Your hub idea is a really good shout, I wish the game had spent more time in that area. As it stands, we spend more time in the sewers than we do actually in the city it's self, due to the lack of things to actually do there.

My review so far for BG3 is a 5/10. You will be able to watch it in a few days after I finished processing it on YouTube it's 1.4 hours long. The cut content is one of the reasons I heavily cut score points from bg3. As I score on points, out of 13. The glitches, piss poor Vulcan support, the constant file repairs, incomplete origins for 4 of the origins. Lack of reactivity for backgrounds.

Still enjoyed Divinitys Gate 3. Did not enjoy bg3

@AusarViled your rating sounds similar to how I would rate it, I'd be more generous maybe 6/10 or 7/10 because fixing Act 3 and the endings will make it a timeless classic.

Meanwhile IGN gives it 10/10 and PC Gamer 97/100. O.o

If BG3 is a 5/10, then most of modern gaming is a 0/10, maybe even dipping into the negatives.

I haven’t finished yet, but so far I would give it a 10/10! At worst if the ending is very bad, I would give it a 9/10. No game is 100% perfect, but I would give it this score because it is one of the best games I have played!

Just finished - the end was definitely *not* polished (and included broken conversation logic) - I tried different endings, in one

The visuals in the last post game cinematics were of low quality (compared to earlier), and it seems you only visit the lower city in BG - I was expecting to be allowed into upper city at some point, but after defeating the game I don't think you can return. If you only look at Lower Baldu's gate it is not that large - certainly the comparisons to the scale of Novigrad in the Witcher 3 are not warranted. That was also rendered in higher detail too. And had a day/night cycle.

*Overall*, the game was fun and enjoyable but there are quite a few design (incl UI, mechanics and inconsistent stories) and visual issues which mean that for me mean this is not a 10/10 title. I can't help but think that reviewers scoring it as such did not actually play through to the end (or they don't really care about Faerun, baldur's gate as a D&D game - perhaps seeing this as a successor to DOS2). That said, I clocked in at 110 hours for a fairly complete playthrough (if you included EA this is about +200 hours) - so I certainly got my money's worth.

Far from a 10/10 game. Though I would give it 10/10 just to annoy AAA game studios

Story, Dialogue and reactivity
Act 1 10/10
Act 2 7/10
Act 3 5/10

UI/Camera/Movement 4/10
Graphics 8.5/10
Gameplay/fun 9/10
Music 8/10
Sound design 10/10
Game mechanics & System 7/10
Stability/Bugs 7/10

I still wonder what happened, considering the cut things were promoted in June.

Either the decision to cut them was made after that which would be very last minute which raises the question why Larian still thought they could implement it or they were cut before that and Larian knowingly mislead people with their advertisement.

To be honest, I came away from the Baldur's Gate intro trailer in June thinking that we'd only get to visit the Lower City, so I was surprised to read we were getting other areas too. I'm still only at Wyrm's Crossing, but had always expected that if we were going to get to the Upper City it would just be the odd little bit of it, otherwise we'd have seen more of it in trailers. I guess I'll see if I was right soon!

There was one oddity in Community Update 19 that I noticed at the time, in that the Steam version referred to the city being made up of three seamless open worlds (which I think people might have assumed were the Lower City, Upper City and Outer City though I don't think that's stated), whereas the version here doesn't give that number. Until I've actually explored the city more, though, I'm not sure whether that quoted three looks justified, or whether to hypothesise it was included in error in the Steam update.

Your 100% correct. I have not rated any game in the past 6 years higher then a 3/10. Last game worth reviewing was Kingdom Come Deliverance. That one I gave a 5.8

I think the biggest problem with cut content is how it has impacted some of the main companion quest conclusions and other relevant main story plot points. Every game has cut content, maybe you are cutting side content to better polish up existing stuff, but when you start cutting critical content that resolves quests, or frames villains more appropriately, then it hurts companion stories and the main story itself.

There is evidence, through datamining, of cut content that specifically resolved companions currently/seemingly unsolvable quest chain.

There is evidence of cut content to the upper city where Gortash was supposed to be, thereby providing a de facto 'additional act', which would have chopped up the pacing of the game a bit more in Act 3 where it is all a jumbled mess of a million random side quests/busy work all while you are given a sense of urgency for the BBEG.

There is evidence of cut areas that would have resolved and built up a lot more framing to the main story (e.g. Avernus).

There is evidence of cut content specifically related to the actual epilogue for the game itself.

So it's not just cut content, as every game has cut content, it was cut content that specifically resolved currently existing quest chains in the game that are now rendered unfinished and unsatisfactory and literally make the game feel explicitly unfinished.

My personal theory is that so much was changed in the lead up to release, that they had to cut a lot of this other stuff to focus on the massive re-writes, e.g. Daisy/Guardian, Wyll's entire re-write, Karlach's and Halsin's inclusion into the game, etc. They have to pivot to these re-writes and trying to frame them in the existing story and had to let a lot of other stuff go, but that only served to make all of the late additions either feel unfinished, which they literally were, and/or create a lot of plot holes with late inclusions to the main plot that served to weaken the overall story itself. This isn't hard to believe because the
I can only hope we get a real revision to Act 3 and a restoration of at least some of the cut content to make the main story, and critical companion stories feel whole. I don't think this is that far fetched as we are in a very similar situation to when D:OS2 was released in terms of final act content/story and certain companion quest lines.

It won't happen but I would rather see a complete restoriation and not just adding cut content back because frankly all rewrites Larian did made the game worse.

I feel like it was the result of one or two things, maybe even both.

The first is that the long rest system is still so unreliable that it's difficult to tell when it's working as-intended. Certain events, such as Raphael's visit, were decoupled from it to ensure they happen by certain points in the story. It could be that Larian realized that between Daisy, the various ways of interacting with them, the various ways your companions could respond, the way it depended on using powers, etc. was just too much reactivity to put into a system that not only didn't function correctly put a player could conceivably play through up to the goblin camp without utilizing once. So, enter The Guardian: a bland, good guy character where there's no choice: powers are fine, feel free to use them. That gives Larian a lot more structure to build around, and a lot of reactivity they need to no longer account for.

That said, if Daisy was the Absolute and/or Orpheus, then this necessitates sweeping changes to the rest of the story. This could be why a lot of interactions with the Chosen were removed, because presumably having a link to their slaved Elder Brain would impact things there. The Mountain Pass is probably the biggest example of something that was outright cut, even though the game seems to put forward that the Underdark or the Pass should be exclusive to each other. Notably, Kithrak Voss still shows up in the state you'd expect him to be in if the datamined events happened -- injured and missing his dragon. Under the time pressure, Larian elected to cut with an excavator and not a scalpel.

The other possibility I think is that Larian simply decided that there was little point in focusing on content that wasn't a typical 'good guy' playthrough. They decided late in development that they wanted to shift the tone from moody and melancholic to epic heroism, and anything they couldn't retrofit was cut. You can see this in the change of even small things that were a sub-optimal outcome (stomping the Mind Flayer), to companions (Gale's magic hunger being drastically easier to fulfill), to choices no longer having downsides (Volo's eye surgery), and massive rewrites to eliminate moral ambiguity in questlines and plot points (Halsin killing Isobel, Nightsong being less upstanding, Gale making a deal with Raphael.) However, this makes the comments by Swen that there's so many paths that some people will never see all of it a pretty poor thing to say: there is very little strong reactivity in BG3, and the alternate paths are clearly signposted. If you're thorough in your good guy playthrough, you've seen everything but the obvious bad guy stuff. And the bad guy stuff is seemingly unfinished.

Wyll's rewrite is directly linked to the change in tone. He used to be a warning against accepting deals without knowing who or what was offering them, yet finding the powers he was granted to be very useful. This would not, at all, fit with the tone and feel of the Guardian, so, he had to get changed.

Very interesting write-up and ideas here. Yes, what you say does make a lot of sense in terms of how they chose to design it. To me though, it just seemed to make the plot:

Finally some "mainstream" press acknowledgement of act 3 issues from (ahem) Forbes:

"2. Act III Is A Total Mess
Crashes, screwed up quests, pacing issues and more make Act 3 a real slog to get through, and I’m a little surprised that so many reviewers have given this game a 10/10 with Act 3 in such rough shape. Frankly, it doesn’t seem that Baldur’s Gate 3 was actually ready for release (despite years spent in Early Access) and this was rushed out the door prior to getting the necessary polish."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2023/08/20/two-warnings-about-baldurs-gate-3-review-scores/

More evidence the endings were cut to meet the date. Nearly an hour of Withers ending audio courtesy of Noble





https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/15w8b3z/cut_withers_ending_audio_files/?rdt=53527

Yea, the game needed another 3~6 months for that last act. Its a mess and a slog.
"Reactivity" goes down the window.

By the way, from Community Update 22, end of Juli a few days before release talking about tadpoles.


and


Nothing of that is true and you can't tell me that 3 days before release consequences were still in the game and were removed after the update. So Larian knew fully well that what they promoted was not in the game.

Ps: And remember that the official reason for the earlier release date wasn't Starfield, but because the PC version was progressing so well...

Frankly, is that even of ANY relevance?

These are not the type of chances/cuts you make to your game to release ONE month earlier.

Except it looks like they were.

And for me its quite relevant to compare Larians marketing to the end product as it is imo relevant to Larians integrity and how much I can trust them.

A very recent community update they said "giving you a chance to explore the menacing roads of the Outer City, the opulent estates of the Upper City, and the dark alleys and pubs of the Lower City"
That was 12-6-2023. And while I could understand the communication about cutting the upper city being slightly slow, it shouldn't be 6 months slow. So it does seem large parts were cut very close to release. And if PC version was progressing so well, they could have spend some more effort polishing things. Like all the bugs and lose ends from quests, even in act 1. or example: try knocking out de brothers near Ethel's house and see how Mayrina reacts. Or the ending of that same quest where a paladin can chose between being a huge jerk or breaking their oath. And gameplay mechanic issues like dice rolls somethings giving a negative number when yoou skip the dice animation, ground effect spells locked at 12DC, eldritch blast randomly losing it's third hit (and probably many more).

So yes, I think claims of the PC version being "done" a month early is relevant when there is so much stuff in the game half baked.

People, I don't know if I'm speaking a different language or what but let me make absolutely clear that I don't give a shit about the "cold reading" of what they said a month ago.
I'm telling you, these are NOT the type of changes you decide few weeks before a release just to release a bit earlier. This stuff was cut a long time ago. You wouldn't even be able to "readjust" a game with changes of this scope in barely weeks.

If that was not the case, the implication would also be that in a month or so the missing content could be fixed and reintegrated into the game. I can PROMISE you this won't be the case.
In fact I'd be shocked if most of the "cut content" will be back in a year or so for the "Definitive edition". Chances are most of what was cut at this point is just gone.

In fact, in would even argue that the decision to freeze features was made at least before the release date was announced (dec 08, 2022). In software development, if you have a deadline you have to stop moving things around to match it.

Calling a direct quite "cold reading" implies much more than you should be implying if you want to have these discussions in good faith. And there is not only cut content. Like I said a few posts up, there is also bugs and oversights that could have used that extra month of polish.

And when looking at stuff like Mol, Karlach and Astarion's quest, and pretty much the whole of Act 3, it seems very plausible there were significant cuts much later in production than any normal timeline would allow.

I never doubted or questioned that "there were cuts".
I'm just telling you that they can't be explained with "We are releasing a month earlier than expected".

I agree that it’s very unlikely that they made massive changes so close to release, but I’m sure Starfield was absolutely why they released early. Releasing at the same time would have meant a massive impact on PC sales and publicity, even if Starfield turns out to be underwhelming. If Bethesda have pulled off another Skyrim it would be a disaster not to get in first, or put it off for a really long time.

Yeah. I'm sure of it as well.
Nothing of what I argued so far contradicts it.

I also happen to think it was a VERY smart move on their part.

There are several different types of cuts and some are less relevant to the final game than others.

a) Things that may have been proposed or discussed at some point during development, but never got off the ground in any real sense.

b) Stuff that was implemented during Early Access, but then altered due to changes in scope or creative direction (ie: Daisy). I'd like to hear more about those changes through interviews with the developers, so that we can all better understand their decisions.

c) Content that was actively being worked on before the game came out, but was still unfinished and needed to be removed in practice for the sake of streamlining the product. I think this is what we will most likely see return in patches or even in a Definitive or Enhanced edition release.

d) Content that existed yet was very, very far from being ready and only remains present in the data files in a less than skeletal state.

e) Content that is in the game files and supposed to be accessible, but it's somehow accidentally locked out or buggy at the moment.

I've always been a great defender of this game. Played 200 hours the Early Access, wrote here in the forums, reported bugs/issues, gave ideas. Convinced all my friends to play it and now they think it is probably the best game they've ever played. There is just one problem... they haven't finished the game yet. I did, and I can tell you (SPOILERS AHEAD) that the endings were horrendous. [b][/b]

As someone said above the cut content affects the endings GREATLY and this is the main problem. Not the game itself, forget about the bugs or performance issues. These can be easily fixed in time. But the endings man, the frickin' endings are screwed and very few of what you did in the previous acts really matters. So much is missing you can't even wrap your head around and it is so obvious by the items in the game that you don't even need datamining to see it.

THIS is the main problem, the last 1/3 of the entire game screws up the entire experience.

So, @Larian Studios - please fix it. Fans will forgive you quickly. I'd even buy a DLC without even thinking about it for a second if it fixes the game.

Of course, if they could have fnished all the cut content in a month they would have likely done so. But that doesn't doens't change the point that the communication about those cuts is lackluster. That it looks like significant portions were cut way to close to launch. And that they should have used that 1 month extra to polish the loose ends caused those cuts and the bugs in the basic game mechanics. The PC version is in no shape or form in such a good state that releasing a month early was warranted. I would have greatly prefered delaying the game and release it fully finished. Larian is building a reputation of releasing games with half baked endings, that is something to avoid.

300 people can do more then 1 act in 1 month. You can make all of act 1, 2 in 1 month if work flow is done correctly. I made a 50 map pathfinder campaign [urgir, Mandev, custom city 4x size of bg3, level 16, the entirety of the land of mammoths, in less then 2 weeks myself using solasta game engine DM maker. People think it's hard... it's not. Only reason there is so much missing content is because the devs where lazy to complete it.

Whatever the reason for cutting content I'm absolutely livid that they would cut as much as they did including content they talked about recently and have the audacity to not address it publicly.

You do realize that Pathfinder maps require ZERO mocap and voice over?

Well, you actually can do the Creche in Act 2. In my playthrough Halsin strongly suggested finding a way through the underdark to avoid the Shadowcurse, which was utter nonsense in retrospect, because no mater which route you take, you don't avoid the Shadowcurse.

Anyway I skipped the mountain pass entirely and went straight to the Shadowlands via the underdark and then I travelled from the Shadowlands to the mountain pass and did the creche half way through Act 2.

If the achievements considered the crèche as part of Act 2 rather than Act 1, that is, if everything beyond EA but before Baldurs Gate was Act 2, I’d rate it more highly. Probably an 8/10 instead of a 7/10. Still think Act 1 is best at a 9.5/10.

I came here after reading the post on reddit about the cut content, I was rather annoyed at Larians statements not turning out to be true especially regarding Act 2's Length and the Upper City.

Some noteable things that were cut
- Avernus as an explorable zone
- Upper City
- Story content for Minthara, Halsin and Karlach, Karlach really drew the short straw
- Ethel's Covern were supposed to appear in Act 2 + 3
- Bhaal and Orin versus the Creche (You could choose sides)
- You could pick certain evil deities as a cleric and get unique dialogue options

That's just some of the stuff that was cut the list is much much longer and as someone mentioned on page 1 " The Larian final act curse strikes again " those of us who played DOS2 knew this already and it was eventually addressed with the DE so I'm hoping that they don't forget Avernus, Upper City and more content for the companions.

I would be extremely surprised if they added in Avernus. I suspect that was something which was cut early own before they actually built any maps or content for it.

I also think the Act 3 witch coven content simply got changed to having Ethel as a recurring character. I suspect this was originally going to be a sea hag lair before they changed rather than cut content.

I believe the Minthara content is actually just bugged and will be fixed with a patch. Hopefully the same can be said about all the epilogue stuff as there’s plenty of recorded dialogue for it.

That said by the sounds of it the Upper City was probably cut late in development and does affect the pacing of Act 3. I hope a definitive edition does give Orin and Gortash more time to do their things culminating in bigger battles and better pacing.

I was looking forward to meeting another hag (a more *powerful* hag) - seeing Ethel again was a major disappointment - especially after I'd killed her so convincingly. Like dead. Really toasted dead. I barely cracked a sweat the second time I killed her. After the big fight in Act 1, it was very anti-climatic. And a sea hag would have fit in well given BG is a port city, she as below a tavern etc. I think they simply didn't have time to do what they wanted, rather than Ethel v2.0 being their original intent. No new assets required etc.

I was expecting rest of her coven, at least the one mentioned in the letter...I'm more saddened by the descision to cut Avernus & soulcoins real purpose...it even feels like they planned for 4 Acts, 3rd act lower city,Orin + entrance to Avernus, 4th Act upper city, Gortash and conclusion.

Well, we can only hope they bring it all back in Definitve Edition...

The cutscenes and acting in this game is minimal. They use procedural cutscenes which means all they got to do is record emoting once and never again. They reuse it for many dialogue. Voice acting is not hard. Yes you can only do it in 4 hour segments due to exhaustion etc, but it's not hard. Designing maps is way way harder.

I don't think people should get so worked up by large cuts... I recently looked into the development history of Baldur's Gate 2, and guess what? same story, huge cuts of tons of content. in a large scale game such as this it is to be expected. for now, I think the focus should be only on making what is in the game working perfectly. If something was cut, it is probably for a good reason. and it might be used in the future if enough work was put into it already. even if Larian themselves won't do it, we might see something akin to KOTOR2 cut content mod.

but then again, I'm not sure things are this bad in this case, as far as I see, it's merely a matter of buggy flags. although I do wish some early choices would have more impact.

Imagine playing Bg3 with one part of the city to explore lol

Did Black Isle or Bioware say that the cut content would be in the game, a month or two before release? Only to let people find out it wasn't when they actually played the game? Did those cuts cause many bugs that weren't fixed before release? Did those cuts obviously cheapen the conclusions of the main quest and some of the longer sidequests?

The cuts to BG3 were obviously much more than the normal decisions that are made during development on what content should and shouldn't be in included. And I don't see why Larian should get a pass for that.