Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback The PS5 interface needs more work.

So many menus, so much clicking different buttons, the radial menus are a chore. I have to click so many buttons to do the most simple tasks, menu, sub menu, menu. Its frustrating and annoying to play. I love this game so much, I'd prob give up on PS5 if I didn't play on PC first just to know how good it could be. Why not just make it more simple with a mouse style cursor and a hybrid PC interface. If anything give us some interface choices in the layout, I get that its difficult to port over to console but the current UI radial menu is not the way.

There will probably be many feedback threads related to the PS5 or controller vs M&K interfaces. Not sure which thread will end up being the thread, but might make sense for a sub-section on PS5 for feedback related to controls and such.

I have just restarted now playing with a controller to see what the difference is, since I have seen many posts floating around regarding the controller UI. This was never tested in the EA outside stadia I think, so it was a mystery. I forgot to try until just the other day. This is on a PC using an Xbox controller but I imagine the UI is the same on PS5. Having done so, I can say it is a rather different experience, for sure.

For casual movement and party movement management playing with a controller feels much smoother, but for interacting with the menus and sub-menus via radials within combat it feels more onerous. Stuff like spellbooks or inventory, lvl up and the like. I think the information is often displayed in a more coherent way under the controller UI, because of how it's broken up, but the actual point and click of it is more involved than I'd want. Z Axis control is removed pretty much entirely in favor of what amounts to 2 zoom default positions. Y Axis inversion isn't available since we don't actually control the pitch here. Basically we are either in Iso or a pseudo-drive view. I think the cinematic framing for the later is why we aren't really able to control the camera, loot pickups and constrainers are more proximity based etc. so it's probably by design, albiet one I don't really vibe on. Here it feels as though our own perspective or desire to control the POV as our character, is subordinated to the wishes of our DM auteur who plays director/cinematographer with our field of view, controls the framing of our approaches makes it so we can't see certain things (for heightened suspense I guess) though this can be pretty hard if, like me, you were hoping for a more standard orbital cam.

On the one hand I find playing with a controller more comfortable for anything relating to exploration movement and casual navigation (most of this is achieved by just making it so hard to manage more than 1 character at a time that I wouldn't even try here) but what I gain from that I lose on the backend through radial management and having to keep the thumbstick or buttons depressed for a much longer time than would be ergonomic for me. There's no lemming mode to continue walking forward unless given input to stop for example.

The drive-view is effectively a single player type of view where the rest of the party ambles like henchmen unless they're manually selected with a trigger/button. This is sort of what I expected, if not what I wanted. It basically works, after you've acquiesced to the reality that you're not really going to be scanning around the way you would with your head in a more immersive way, but more like you're looking down on articulated miniatures placed on a very elaborate table top model, in deep perspective. The feel here is more arcade or movie I guess. Not in a bad way per se, just what it gives off for me.

The HUD is stripped down quite a bit in controller mode, so there's no hotbar always up, the distribution of stuff on the screen is generally cleaner, although there are large elements which still get in the way. Like the mini, or the radials themselves...

These display right over the center of the screen and command much more visual attention than I would have hoped, as they really obstruct the field of view when overlaid. You can see here an example of the RT trigger radial and the RB radial.

Here are some visuals so the mouse and keyboard players can see how it's different.





When in conversation or casual exploration the screen looks more like this... rather less busy than the mouse and keyboard layout with the hotbar. Char sheet views and party views for stuff like inventory management are broken up more into rows.




I started with a martial cause I figured that would be easier to get a hang of the interface. When I loaded up my lvl 6 sorceress/bard from another save I found the experience somewhat overwhelming. Trying to manage an already full inventory or stacked spellbook just seemed too daunting for a quick transition. I think my spellbook had 6 radials up by default and another half dozen for scrolls and potions.










I'm pretty sure what I'd want is more like a padmapper that works with a PC style interface using a series of hold trigger/tab type functions while quick switching with the D-pad similar to how jump is handled currently. I will say though, for all the stuff outside of combat, if I'm just trying to cruise from one end of the grove to the other, playing with a controller feels like it could be a potentially much more relaxing way to play this game. I kept it going for a few hours, but then switched back to the mouse so I could play my spellcaster. I may have to try again and build a new wizard or something, cause that'd be a truer test. Sorcerers are already supposed to be streamlined from having fewer spells to prepare and less reliance on scrolls, but it was too much for me to just plug in the controller and keep my other playthrough going. I guess I'm too used to it now. Although my understanding is that PS5 players would not have that option. I don't think it's unreasonable for console players to expect a port for the M&K UI since modern consoles support that.

For many people this would still be more affordable than upgrading a PC. I spent what like 65 bucks for BG3 when the EA launched? But tack on another grand in hardware upgrades ya know lol. Like BG3 is driving me to actually drop that dime for a change, who would have guessed! Rarely would I care this much about a new game. If it came to it, and console was the better fit for my budget, this would probably be the game that has me buying a mouse and keyboard for a PS5 (which I'd probably never use for anything else lol.) I'm curious how many other people are out there shopping around for new GPUs or laptop sales to play this game, or are considering picking up a new gen console from Sony just for this? I think cross-platform compatibility and Character import/export will be pretty major, not just for the saves, but for the interfaces and all that stuff too. I'm sure if I had a few extra people in the house who wanted to play along, the console version would also have made a lot of sense, and many people will probably swoop into it that way. Even if they got more of a PC background on BG, there's a lot of pluses to having a couple controllers at the the ready in the living room, so you'd like to see it really humming.

For me there is one annoying thing - affection bar. Why it's not like in PC version - progression bar but instead we just get "NEUTRAL" or "FRIENDLY"? With this we cannot determine how much affection points we need for the next affection level. Fix this ASAP pls !

All I gotta say is I understand the frustration, but I am SO GLAD they didn't just do what other games do and port over the UI to PC.

Can't tell you how annoying it is to have a console UI on a PC game.

I was a little annoyed before I even started the actual game as I tried to connect to the larian network and found that there was no option to just link my psn address, like most other games would do. This is a great way to encourage people to use insecure passwords.

Absolutely, I should change the name of the thread to be less extreme but I was tired last night. Basically I agree with you, the drive view is fine and I do somewhat like it better than the PC version. But overall the interface is too clunky and busy, at least give us options. For example, let us change the cursor style and size. I like the PC style pointed finger better, the PS5 version feels too large on the screen. There are so many small details in the game environment its difficult to pinpoint sometimes.

I'm just mostly really turned off by the radial menu's and party menu, I really feel like a hybrid version of the PC interface would be better.

I say this because the PS5 was only released for early access yesterday... When I get farther in the game and my spell/abilities grow it will be even more clunky and annoying.

Right now I'd give the PS5 version an 80/100 or 4 out of 5 stars. Just based on the UI and interface.

What I hate about controller UI is the same thing I hate about M&K UI - a sheer amount of maintanence needed to make it usable. M&K workload have been improved by adding drop down menus, but controller UI is OG EA bad. And it is even worse, due to how tedius it is to assign skills to radial menus with controller.

Maybe it would be more managable if I started playing with controller, rather than trying to organise lvl 10 character but after spending couple minutes on ONE CHARACTER, and not being done I just gave up on it and returned to K&M.

Radial menus should be autosorted (commons skills, spells from items, class skills, cantrips, lvl1-6 spells etc) - and even better have them branch out from a central radial menu, rather than having to switch between multiple radial menus.

Larian! HOTBARS ARE GOOD. But they are not a replacement for an actual interface.

That's what I think too, maybe it wouldn't be so bad if I started with the controller before PC. But overall the controller UI is very tedious and requires too much micromanagement even for a classic style RPG.