Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion Lack of Replayability?

As of now there seem to only be two endings, well three if you include you just die. You control the netherbrain for nefarious purposes only, or you kill it and save the day. BG2 had alteast 3 endings plus what happeend to all the npcs you had and had stronghold quests for each class so there was more replaybaility.

Dragons Age Origins has so much its incredible, be king kill yourself dont kill yourself have a kid did you save a village or not. And lot of that I think was presented in the end reminding you of what you did and the consequences of it.

Am I just missing something from the ending here in BG3. Everyone says you have all these choices but none of them truly affect the world Maybe if there some recap like fallout serious listing your journey it would help in that respect. Or do you find them in the premade origins none of which I find appealing. Except maybe shadow heart.

Take in mind I love the game, but the ending seems so blah. I want something inbetween Saviour of the world or the Architect of its Demise.

While there could be more options at the end, particularly various shades of being a bit evil, there are a lot more than 2 endings in what’s shown.

And I’ll never really understand why people need a recap of the choices they made. You know what you did, right?

its more about the consequences of those actions, compared with past games, there seems like your actions had more consequences then what happens in here and its nice to be able to read a re cap of what what you did or see it.

It's not a recap, it's about closure. And the endings are not more than 2. You dominate the brain or you get it to turn off. The rest is window dressing. And the worst part is that the window dressing has barely any variation. Someone has to go octopus or eat brains. That's it.

There's a lot more than 3 endings...there are endings exclusive to the origin characters too...take Gale for example...he has something like 3 or 4 endings you can only see if you play as him. And there are a lot more very major permutations on the main 3 endings just related to your character depending several factors.

Just some fairly generic descriptions:

Not to mention there are a lot of secrets and plot twists you probably couldn't get in a couple playthroughs...like uncovering the real identity of the guardian(yeah he has a name and not an insignificant one at that), then there are at least two main story related plot twists you can only see if you play as the dark urge, and so on. This game will need at LEAST a dozen playthroughs, bare minimum, just to see all the important stuff.

Call it what you want, I still know what choices I made, and I’ve met most of the people those choices affected afterwards to see how they are getting on.

I ended my game in a relationship with a reformed Sharrian, not as a soulless monster, which seems to be a fairly significant difference. Other characters are off to do various things based on decisions made in the game.

As I said, the endings aren’t perfect. There’s plenty of room for improvement, but there’s no need to exaggerate.

But are you going to replay the game entirely just to see those changes? The bulk of the game will almost certainly play the same. Compare that to The Witcher 2, where depending on who you sided with Humans or Elves, you saw entirely different content. I did all companion sub-quests and almost all sub-quests - I doubt I'd have a radically different experience on another playthrough. I think Larian's "thousands of ending"s (or whatever huge figure they trotted out), was a silly thing to say which then opened them up to criticism. And related to endings/paths - as so many have pointed out, some major things, like using/not using the tadpole, had barely any impact at the end. For such a critical element, that is really unforgivable.

I’m not against a recap, I know lots of people want it, and that’s fine. I’m just saying that for me, the fact we don’t get one doesn’t invalidate the decisions I made.

I agree, the main story has two langely different conclusions:

1. dominate the brain

2. destroy the Brain

But to be honest, what else is there? Can you give me examples of further possible and logical conclusions to this story? I really can't think of any that would make much sense or are satisfying:

3. Deciding you don't want to fight the Elder Brain and instead leave Baldur's Gate? Role credits?

4. Freeing the elder Brain form the Crown of Karsus and letting it return to its original Mind Flayer colony?


I think 1 & 2 are the only logical conlusions to the story and yes, the rest is window dressing, but that's where all the flavor is. For example, it felt great to fight alongside Orpheus, especially because I romanced Lae'Zel.

The ending is 3 minutes, of a 100 hour playthrough. There are near endless possibilities for the other 99 hours and 57 minutes play out based on choices made. I don't ever remember finishing a game and being so excited to start a new playthrough.

How about:


I don’t think it’s as bad as some are saying, and I don’t agree with all the reasons people say they don’t like it, but I think there is room for improvement.

I feel you. Not having any interesting ending to look forward to on my evil playthrough severely dampens my motivation to continue playing this character. Sorry, but I neither want to be
These choices just aren't appealing to me.

Sure, but all your suggestions are still:

I sort of agree - I think there are a lot of variations if you multiply, but when your character behaves consistently choices often boil down to:

1) Good
2) Pragmatic evil
3) Psychopathic evil

And of these I think you can only really act on 2) from late in Act 2. Allying with the goblins does only make sense for psychopathic evil IMO.

I am on my second playthrough and I notice that I am doing a lot of things the same way, as I usually play good. Origins seem to impact too little to be worth a replay on their own.

In contrasts, I think games like WotR allowed more gameplay and story variations within alignment - Azata and Angel are both good, but play quite differently. Especially since story choices impact more on gameplay here - while BG 3 has decided to have zero consequences if you go all-you-can-eat on tadpoles.

This is one of the things that bother me, as well. People at my camp made such a fuss about how crazy it is to even consider consuming more tadpoles (and my character did agree), so I avoided them, because I was certain that something bad would happen as the game progressed, like that I'd become (partly) mindflayer, that I'd lose my soul or something like that.

The fact that NOTHING happens whatsoever is really baffeling. Why shouldn't you, on a second playthrough, consume all of the tadpoles?

I feel there is alot of replayability for seeing more content, but without an ending that resolves anything and with so much of the content being arbitrary RNG. There is alot of replayability but the dearth of resolutions and certainty that difference choices will actually lead to experiencing the different consequences in companion dialogue, wains desire to replay it despite the replayability? does that make sense?

As for tadpoles, I've seen in screenshots the people who eat all the tadpoles have weird faces and nah

I don't think the weird faces come from tadpole consumption. At some point, .

So AFAIK, you could eat all the tadpoles with zero consequences.

oh yeah, I stomped on that

I had a vague notion when I started reloading saves to see what the other outcomes for certain story beats would look like and there's really not much there. Replaying the game reveals how little replayability there actually is. Your choice effectively boils down to "Do I want to do a quest the right way or the evil way?"

There are a few exceptions where you get to see events from a new angle but it's very sparse and usually punishes you in some way.