Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion Big spoilers, cut content and feelings after 2 playthroughs

I haven't experienced such mixed feelings in a long time. On the one hand, this is the best story I've seen in the gaming industry. On the other hand, I am very disappointed.

This will be a very big post. And I want to apologize for my English

To begin with, I will say that the fears began after the refusal of the limited party after the act 1. On the one hand, this was good news. but I began to fear that they lacked content.
Apparently it turned out to be true.
I can sometimes be wrong about official statements, I have been following the game and the news for a long time, and I can confuse fan theories with real promises

I wanted to go through the game at least 2 times on the good path of Tav and Dark Urge, and I eventually did it. My party -Astarion always Shadowheart Karlach. The rest have been replaced from time to time.

The music is also cut off. Larian says about its composition for each companion


Now in order
Act 1


-Lots of cut dialogue.
-- The entire top of the map is filled with activities. In Grimforge This Activity was getting less in EA. This is both the content of the camp and the plot. I thought that content would be added after the release, but no.
-Nautiloid - I may be wrong, but Larian it seems that we were promised to increase it and put our comrades there, In the end even cut off the deck
- Characters no longer care about their items (Necromancy of Thay, Artifact)
-

I actually like the new interactions, but I don't understand why they cut the old ones.
When I played EA, I saw replay value. I spent 300 hours there without even touching the evil walkthrough, and always bumping into little new pieces.

-In crèche wary more content is cut off.



Act 2
I like the atmosphere and the plot, the interaction of companions.But this is insanely small for Tav, A little more for Dark Urge.
But I would like more disclosure of Ketrik, not only in writing.
And Larian also said act 2 is the biggest, but But it takes no more than 15 hours with some dialogue skipped. Act 1 fast run is 20 hours, skipping all dialogue.... In addition, the Moon Towers were announced as Act1. The city began with act 2. But now we ourselves see how everything has become...

Starting from Act 2, our decisions are ineffective.
There are almost no scenes with characters, only small comments, but they almost do not interact with each other and it will go into the 3rd act


Act 3

It looks big and confusing, But time accumulates not because of the plot, but because you run everywhere. This is not the saturation of the 1st half of act 1. There aren't really that many quests.

If you have lost half of your companions, the act will be even shorter, same with NPC. I won’t even talk about the endings, this has already been said many times.


Companion, romance

Some have almost no personal quest. Those who are connected to the main story are not so important to her.
After completing the personal quest, we have no continuation in the romance.
Astarion spoiler
All companion interactions reduced to one sentence in the camp. And there are almost no events in the camp. In total, there are 2 romantic scenes per act per companion. Larian bragged about their romantic branch but it is not much different from other games... No, I really like the companion, they are very catchy, but even in the Astarion branch there are a lot of holes.
I'm not talking about Mintar and Karlakh.





And most importantly in act 3
I'm not sure, but I think Larian was talking about the upper city a couple of months ago. That there will be quests and we will be able to walk there

Yes, TT TT

Other people have been saying this example too elsewhere, but there used to be a dialogue you could get with Astarion after but I and it seems like no one else can get it to pop anymore... I could've sworn when I played on launch it worked, but now I'm second guessing? Maybe it was cut with a patch? Idk but there are lots of instances like this where dialogue was cut and I can't really understand why they decided too, but I miss it.

Well, I chose to be a good guy and I never made it to act 3. Literally no ending. Straight to credits. Game over and restart. Probably won't even try a second play through. Never even get to see Baldurs Gate. Dumb. Really dumb.

This dialog did not work for me before the patch and now too.
Maybe this is a bug, of course.
However, this does not change the huge cut-off part

But alas, I can't not play. But I can't put into words how sad I feel in the third act.

Well, I was absolutely positively glad for my ending. Now I don't have to participate in allowing death to reign. That's their choice they kept me from BG. Not my problem.

Woah, if you don't mind, how did this happen? That sucks.

Well, ask Mystra. Apparently she doesn't care and neither does the developers.

Yes, it appears that something happened during development that caused Larian to flinch away from a more genuine sense of choice and consequence. Notably, Gale's magic hunger is reduced to any three magic items instead of three major ones. But there are a lot of smaller oddities, too. The one that stuck out to me is the Mind Flayer corpse that Dror Razglin communicates with -- in early access, if could and would recognise you if you killed it on the beach. Now, the narrator goes "This is not any Mind Flayer you recognise, but maybe it can identify you?" I just got a message from a friend who did not play EA asking me what the point of that scene was.

Between the Daisy changes I outlined in another thread and all these small elements, it is clear Larian had a really big shift in narrative tone at some point and all the interesting material was cut and replaced for something more typically heroic. It's a real shame. I genuinely don't understand why they'd change so much. This isn't unimplemented content, this is implemented content that was altered which involves a lot more work than just not finishing something.

I completely forgot about Daisy's changes. I think I've come to terms with it. I liked old Daisy. But in general, I do not think the new one is too bad, but it is completely different.
Most of all, I was most likely upset by what happens to the companions.
I see datamine at 15 o'clock at Astarion, But I rummaged through the entire YouTube and pierced everything possible myself, the game simply does not have these 15 hours. I think SH Lae
similar....


I also agree with people who say that there are problems with antagonists. Something is not right with Gortash


And yes, I forgot that the amount of blood in the game has decreased.

I guess some complaints just stuck? People are usually less likely to advocate for something if they like it (because, what's to say hh? It's good.), but people who don't like something will be more likely to speak up (because, how else can you get it to change?). I think you're right, and at some point, Larian must have gotten spooked and when those changes clashed with the goal they were working towards you get this.

Or, maybe it was just too much. The game is so big is even hard to tell sometimes what's a bug and what's a feature because there is so much you can do/so many different ways things can go.

The mind flayer thing is weird to be cut though, and I do sort of miss when the companions were more prickly to start out. I miss the missing dialogue I remember being there. I'm usually in favor of more options versus different options when it comes to implementing things, but of course, at some point, you would have to pick one or the other with some things.

edit: this all sounds fairly disparaging, but I do really love the game, and I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing for people to complain that they want *more* of your game (to a certain point of course). At least to me, it feels like people are saying, 'hey, this was really good to a certain point, give me more of that' (story, romance, dialogue, or whatever else). I could definitely be wrong though, but it doesn't seem like the primary issue is hating the game.

Yeah, the antagonists are surprisingly not that prominent in the story. Apparently datamined content placed Orin at the creche, and it is interesting how minimal the Pass is compared to the Underdark. My theory is that the Daisy as Absolute hypothesis is true and, if that was the case, I feel that is the sort or alteration that would end up with minimising the role of the Chosen as you'd presume it would affect their roles in the storyline.

roles in the game did really disappoint me. After the fight with the end boss of Act II I was really let down that their fights felt like mini-boss fights at most When I did see the end boss of Act II, that fight felt so awesome to me. So the other two were sort of like, why was his so cool? And they were just kinda mini-bosses? Especially with their roles in the narrative.

In fact, I complain precisely because I love this game.
It is extremely difficult for me to write in English and I have just registered . I just hope that if this topic is brought up, Larian will be able to listen.
If there are enough of us, of course

Actually I really see the concept of DU as a good walkthrough + romance Astarion - something perfect but very underdeveloped in places.However, I agree after Act 2 Orin and Gortash are more like mini-bosses

From what I read half of the city in BG3 was cut, together with quests and endings. Would be very disappointing if that is true.

I wouldn't be surprised if this were true. In act III when you get into the city itself The voice appears and says you aren't ready. 'This is fine', I thought. So, I went and beat the bosses it told me to, but then the game was like 'time for the final fight', and then after the final fight, there was just nothing else.

BG *was* big, but with how much Larian talked it up, it was still fairly smaller than I expected it to be.

To comment on above, I really just need to play DU. I've been so wishy-washy about it from things I've heard, but Astarion + DU with more Orin sounds like it would be so fun imo. Definitely would play to try to curb some of that killer instinct though lol.

Actually DU and Ast are very funny and touching. I can’t say that there is much more content, but it is much more interesting

I just wanted to return to this comment after giving it some thought. This could be the reason, too. Anyone who played EA knows how odd the interactions could be upon long resting, with sections playing out of sequence or skipping over important elements. If Daisy was a more involved character, and if there were more options such as refusing illithid powers versus accepting them, then that could be a huge issue given it'd be dependent on long resting to make sense of it. I'm no DnD expert, I've never played 5E, but I was generally not needing to long rest often on normal difficulty and, by Act 2, I was outright making myself long rest so as not to miss anything.

In that sense, stripping out the more complex character for a more simple one that operates much more under the assumption that the player will accept their help and therefore powers, makes sense. It's one less variable to track, one less event to risk getting stuck in the long rest queue. And I know from my playthrough recently, I was getting events what felt well out of sequence (such as Lae'zel confronting Shadowheart about the Prism... after we went to the creche, where it's very obviously supposed to happen before you know it's a Gith artifact and before it's ended up in your possession.) One of the biggest disappointments I had with release was that the long rest event system was still so janky.

This is pretty much what happened to Raphael, for example. He used to walk into your camp one long rest and do his spiel. Now, he just... pops out of nowhere at a few locations (the harper cache near the grove, the broken bridge north of the village, and I think the path south out of the village) basically to ensure you meet him before the end of Act 1. Of course, this is strange because it does not appear that he can actually do anything with Gale now, and it appears to be a way of giving you an ally who can break you out of Gut's cell (if you haven't met the Guardian who will otherwise do it.)


If there were substantial changes to the game's narrative and tone, then I'd definitely assume that's part of the reason why the endings are so rough. I'm not sure the inner city was cut, but there's definitely something strange there with how you can't go into the inner city because the Brain is apparently there... only for it to be deep within the undercity.

In A PCGamer Interview, which references the PC Gaming Show, the upper city was still specifically pointed out as a district in the game

https://www.pcgamer.com/baldurs-gate-3-dev-diary-city-reveal-pcgs-2023/

And some companions don't seem to have any endings at all?