Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback BG3 Trying to be too many things

I don’t think they tried to do too much! I think Larian’s ambition is one of the factors contributing to making BG3 so great!

I enjoyed Disco Elysium, but it is a game with a fixed protagonist and only 1 companion, which is fine for a game from a small indie company, but is not what I would want BG3 to be. There aren’t many companies making AAA party-based rpgs, so I was really happy to get BG3!

Good thread with lots of valid constructive criticism.

My two penneth:

As I've said before: Larian talk a good game.

I find it telling that after only 3 weeks as more people finish the full game more criticism and disappointment is appearing.

Larian have conducted a major box-ticking exercise. There is all the pronoun and gender hokum as well as the racial diversity. In addition we have the name-dropping from the world of Faerun - everything from Jaheira and Minsc to Volo and Elminster to the pantheon of divinities to the variety of creatures from the bestiary. I'm only at the start of Act 2 (I'm in the inn) but already I've lost count of the number of divinities that are involved and have come across all sorts of creatures who are there for the sake of being there. For example: why are there a bunch of ghouls, a ghast and the two undead guys wandering around outside the monastery in broad daylight?


It is not a bad game but it's not a great game either.

I disagree that they were trying to be too many things. Or do too many things, either way. I'm not sure that argument has been laid out very well yet.

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There are some things I'm still developing my feedback about, specifically and most importantly in relation to Act 3. Where the threads of plots culminate and reach fruition, or don't. (Mol is an excellent example.)

But those issues have nothing to do with how many things the game has attempted to be. At least, not from my point of view.

I tend to agree with Icelyn above. Larian's ambition is to be commended.

Yeah, my appreciation for BG3 fluctuates whenever I put it aside AAAs or indies/AAs.

At this point it is unlikely to make it high on my “best RPGs of all times” list, but it is still far more interesting than your average trend chasing AAA affair.

Yes, there can be no doubt about this at all, both that the game tries to do and claim too much but also that in trying to do so it often fails.

But, trying to be all these different things at the same time is exactly what PCGamer gave it a 97 score for, isn't it? It's what many people want these days, as evidenced by many of the comments right here in this thread. And that is fine. But it's not my thing. I'd much rather a cRPG developer give me a small-scope game in which the few things that they try to do they do very well. My only concern is that we don't have every other cRPG studio out there trying to do this same thing as what Larian has chosen to do, and instead that they will continue to make small-scope cRPGs that do their few things very well.

I'm completely with you in wanting more party-based RPGs. The game being party-based is my #1 most important criteria. But I don't care at all about the AAA elements, and am more than happy, thrilled even, to have my party-based cRPG be a AA game without all the AAA elements, even if that means it doesn't sell as much as a game like BG3.

Thank you to all my fellow regular posters for engaging with this— I’ve been very interested in hearing the diversity of your opinions.

On the matter of ambition: when the initial BG3 controversy broke out, I was one of the people saying that ambition ought to be encouraged, and that bigger dreams make for better games. I still believe this. What I am noting is that the ambition is spent “horizontally” i.e. across many different visions and ways to accomplish the game, rather than “vertically” I.e. providing depth and consequence to a smaller number of features or ways of playing. Ambition, in my opinion, is always good, but there are different ways to apply it that come with their own unique trade-offs.

I think there is strain between the part of the game that can be played like a multiplayer immersive sim, and the part of the game that can be played like a semi-linear party-based single player RPG. There are so many ways the quests and stories can be “resolved” that I feel the game hesitates to give you emotional investment at certain points. This game has to be everything to everyone.

My favorite way to play this game has been as a single player RPG focused on my companions and their interactions with my PC, each other, and the world. That’s the kind of game I like, but it seems that’s only a narrow sliver of what this game is. Now, I imagine there are people who prefer the immersive sim, multiplayer party type experience. Instead of committing to one vision, Larian spread its resources across many.

This is it exactly! Very well put! And while in an ideal world one could have both horizontal and vertical ambition in one game, I am extremely skeptical this can be successfully pulled off. I'm certain that Larian/Swen and also the diehard BG3 fans here will insist this is what BG3 does, and does successfully. I of course respectfully but profoundly disagree. And so, if it *has* to be one or the other and not both, then I very strongly come down on the side of vertical over horizontal ambition.

Yeah, I would agree with you here on the horizontal point. I also think that the writing, story, and narrative flow of the game should have been nailed down at least a year ago. The fact that they were re-writing characters, introducing new ones, changing a central plot character as far as June 2023 is kind of nuts. I've never heard of that. That might have been the 'crisis' they were mentioning some months ago. Changing such things obviously has a pretty significant ripple effect throughout the game. I've also noticed a major shift in tone, like Gale in EA, as was mentioned, making a deal with Raphael. There was an overall more morose and darker tone to the companions that was, for some reason, scrapped. And sure, it is their vision to do with it as they will, but it was just a little strange to me that they decided to change so many details so late in the game, which obviously had them scrambling to then remove references to all of these cut moments and/or re-write others to account for the changes.

Obviously some references are still in the game that don't account for these changes, and, as such, it begins to reveal this patchwork of plots within the game due to these re-writes. The graveyard in the files of cut content is likely a testament to all of these changes, if they were cut a long time ago, they likely would have been purged from the files, but given that the cut content is so massive, it seems to indicate that the changes were fast and furious and probably not all accounted for or adequately cleaned out for the sake of story and narrative fidelity.

As TRQ said, and as you say, ambition is good, I'm glad they were trying to shoot for the stars, but they should have landed on their moon a year or two years ago with a solidified vision and just iterated on that consistently across the board. Instead, it was probably, and here I am obviously speculating, a lot of narrative changes all the way in the lead up to release, which, as anyone knows, major changes to any piece of work under difficult time constraints is bound to create inconsistencies, errors, omissions, strangeness, etc.

I can absolutely see where you are coming from, and why some other players might decide that some of those trade-offs weren't justified. And if I felt Larian had totally dropped the ball on the elements I prioritise most - ie cinematic, party-based, character-driven RPG with lots of interesting story to uncover - then I might feel they were unjustified myself. But while I do think that the elements I most appreciate could have been even better if Larian had focused on them more, I still think they're up there with my favourite games. And I do not think I'd like the game as a whole more, and suspect I'd like it less, if it focused on those to the exclusion of other things it has that might not be so high priority for me, but which I still appreciate and I think make the game better than it would be without them.

I am not, for example, a fan of immersive sims or sandboxes. But the elements of immersive sim/sandbox in BG3 for me are a major source of fun, and enrich my ability to roleplay my character outside of dialogue in a way that I've never managed (and in fact it hadn't even really occurred to me to try) with other cRPGs. By adding these elements, BG3 has somehow totally changed how I think about roleplaying in cRPGs in a way that I now apply in other games, including BG1 & BG2 and has increased my enjoyment of those as well. Perhaps I was just slow on the uptake, but I still really appreciate it.

And while I still never have played BG3 multiplayer, it's perhaps the first game where I think perhaps, one day, I might. I have thought what I've seen of the multiplayer game looks fun, and a clever use of many of the same mechanics and tools to provide quite a different experience. Sure, there might be some compromises to make the game work in both modes, but to me that seems a small price to pay for a game that works as well as it does for both, compared to what would be involved in making two separate games. Which might not get made at all due to the smaller potential audience. And while the mechanics of multiplayer might have some cost, it also brings benefits to the singleplayer experience in terms of investment in the game to begin with and also replayability and longevity that will hopefully also increase the effort that Larian are willing to put into continuing to develop and improve the game.

Of course, that's just my call based on my own priorities and preferences, and my own imperfect understanding of the possibilities and limitations of game development. But personally, it's the very breadth of Larian's ambition that I find most impressive, and I'm willing to cut them a fair bit of slack for the fact that not everything has come off perfectly as a result. Particularly if they keep fixing, patching and enhancing what they've given us!

Haha! Good question. Has there been a game like that already? I feel that if we get a game that isn't wide and shallow, or narrow and deep, no one will complaint, so it won't be acknowledged. On the other hand, you create narrow but deep game and people will ask why it doesn't have X, Y and Z. Make a wide game, and people will complaint that X, Y and Z isn't deep enough, or doesn't gel with each other.

I know Larian have said they wont do a DLC but I think they would struggle if they were thinking about doing one. If you can defeat a bus load of gods at level 12 then what would represent a challenge for a level 12+ party?

Still reading through the comments but stopped here for a bit. NwN2 had a bland basic story, what was great about the game was the companion interactions (like dragon age 1) & community tools to make your own story. The first expansion did redeem the game though for campaign.

I think you would need to do the DLC as not so much an expansion but another game. Do a DLC that is just a new campaign, just the story needs to be done, the assets for the engine could stay the same. You again start at level 1 and then go through the new campaign. In this manner the game could have multiple "DLC" provided they can keep the story plots well done. Each could be stand alone and so less pressure for people to purchase any or all of them.

Yes indeed.

Tactical Adventures gave us Solasta CotM which did levels 1-12 then Lost Valley DLC which did levels 1-16 and had nothing to do with CotM then lastly Palace of Ice DLC which went from level 10-20 and was the culmination of the CotM campaign.

Maybe Larian could do a sort of "spin-off" DLC where you get to follow some sort of story based on an option you didn't take in the main game. Or some sort of tying up loose ends thing.

I feel that the real problem of CRPGs generally is the main plot. It is usually just a variation on a theme of "bad person seeks to take over or destroy the world". It's been done to death over the last 25 or so years.
Maybe "The Future of CRPGs" is the subject for another thread but there again, half the people on here don't seem to be able to move on from BG1.

I thought the plot of PST was excellent, and I know I'm not alone, it had absolutely nothing to do with BBEG taking over the world, it was a personal story of one man trying to understand himself and come to terms with the mistakes he has made. That was it. I know it's definitely an outlier in that department, but it shows it can be done, and done well. I do agree that you can have a heroic epic fantasy experience without Tolkienesque themes, perhaps some will disagree saying it must take or share some forms of the Hero's Journey, but I disagree, and we've been shown examples of cases that do not follow that pattern, albeit with a small sample size.

But yes, to your point, I do feel that cRPGs are hindered by their main plot and its predictability. I felt like BG3 was starting out with a bunch of tragic companions (perhaps too many being tragic?) trying to sort themselves out (get rid of tadpole), but that segued into fighting:

Almost. Max level in Solasta after all patches and DLC is 16.

Thanks, I've corrected my post. I play most games with mods so I often lose track of the vanilla game.

No idea what PST is, sorry. I don't doubt that a different plot could be done, it's more that I'm surprised that nobody has done it. I don't know if anyone here remembers a NWN1 called "Citadel"? IMO the best mod for any game I have ever played. DLC-sized with excellent writing, all original enemies, interesting companion and other characters, all set in a unique environment. It even featured some interesting philosophical concepts. Speaking of which . . .

Campbell's "Hero's Journey"/Monomyth stuff is nonsense as it has nothing to do with Jungian psycho-babble.