Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Realizing BG3s full potential : A masterpiece

Realizing BG3s full potential: a masterpiece

I am going to be blunt here.

This game, is still not finished, this game is so close to being a masterpiece,but Act 3 has a sharp increase in bugs and the story grows more inconsistent the further you go. It honestly feels like act 3 is still in EA and I found myself rushing increasingly towards the end due to inconsistencies, bugs and tediousness.
AND I FEEL ENTITLED TO GIVE MY FEEDBACK AS PART OF EARLY ACCESS.
SPOILER WARNING
WALL OF TEXT WARNING



Let me just say, this game is great, it truly is up until the end of act 2, I would give it almost a 9/10 (maybe 8.5/10). So let me briefly list all the things this game does great:
- Characters/companions: The characters are amazing, some of the more deep and believable ones I have seen in a video game. Masterfully done, for the most part, I will get to why. Maybe the best.
- Story: Story is great up until act 3.
- Combat: Honestly , even though I was in the tactical/pause camp. I honestly enjoyed the combat more than I thought I would, however, I both enjoyed and didnt enjoy it at times. I will get to that.
- Level design: Amazing mostly etc temple of shar, baldurs gate city, camps
- Voice acting: Great. 99% of the time.
- Spell effects/vocals: Great, spell chants, effects, everything.
- Cinematics : Great, etc, bhaals entrance, first scene with orin, kethric, Gortash and the elder brain, intro cinematic



Now, since I give the game a 8.5 out of 10, let me tell you why. Because it is ALMOST 10/10.
The game is brilliant, except for just 3 things.



1. Companion interaction ( - 1 ): Honestly, this alone drags the game down a whole 1 point by itself. Companion/character interaction 1 on 1 with MC is masterful, plain and simple. However in 85 hours, I can not, almost, remember a single instance where the companions of the party talked to EACH OTHER. OR where the companions contribute to quest dialogue in any meaningful way.

I am serious. Apart from Shadowheart and Laezel exhange when you get Laezel out of the cage by the beach. And the 20 sec banter while you run around, I can not think of a single instance IN THE ENTIRE GAME where companions talk to each other. It is honestly on such a ridiculous level that the game drops an entire point because it almost feels like companions are not even there during quests, and they have NO relationship with each other.

Two crowning moments of this were in act 3. Karlach is dying after last battle. Party runs up to her and Wyll says something along the lines of " I can not watch someone I love die like this". Wyll , bro, you havent said a single word to her the entire game apart from when we met her for 5 mins.

The other one was in the temple of bhaal. I am being murdered my bhaal. My romance shadowheart is standing behind me, not saying a word. Seconds later, I am dead on the ground. Still, shadowheart is standing behind me, or somewhere.. Not saying a word, not running up to me, not holding me, not crying, nothing, it is RIDICULOUS. Did no one in Larian play this scene out for themselves??? It is like we are not in a relationship at all.

Honestly I dont know if this is bugged or what, because act 3 is bugged far beyond act 1-2. But I honestly feel like at times the relationship between characters is completely void. And I feel like maybe this part is gone from the game to put focus on origin characters, which I dont care about anyway...

How to improve:
- Scenes where companions talk?
- Group talks by the fire.
- When someone "approves" let them say it vocally, instead of a lazy text.
- Improve the feel of the party dynamic. Let me play lanceboard vs gale. Let me do push ups with Laezel, let me go for walks in the night with shadowheart and so on. CAN THE GROUP DO SOMETHING TOGETHER AS A GROUP OF FRIENDS WOULD??? Play cards? Watch the stars together? Drunk dance off? Tricking contest? (masseffect 3 actually did some of this stuff really well) JUST SOMETHING ..




2. Combat ( -0.25), now for the most part, combat is completely fine and interesting. However where this changes is mostly in act 3, where you get these insanely large mobs, where I sit almost for like 2 min straight just watching my party get hammered or watching people dashing around. Or the AI thinking.

Combat needs an overhaul, to pick up the pacing of it. That is honestly all it needs.

How to improve: A few suggestions here could be:
- to simply move more characters at once.
- Speed up AI.
- Let me for instance double click characters for two auto attacks in a row, instead of clicing once, waiting for animation... then clicking again.
Maybe I ll think of more. Because in act 3, my god is it tedious, as you walk from quest to quest, and end up in large scale battle after large scale battle. And if you need to reload because you were unprepared, my god...





3. Story inconsistency,(pacing of story)(consequences in story?) (- 0.25.)

Act 3 man... You find out who the emperor is. I continue to not trust him. Finally I get him to confess. I tell him I will never trust him. He tells me he will show me his thoughts. Turns out he was mindcontroling stelmane and all the others like a proper mindflayer all along. I tell him " so finally the mask drops". I thought this was great. Until he just continues acting the benevolent part from there until I side with Orpheus. WHAT!?!?!

- I went with Karlach and wyll to Avernus, and my romance shadowheart? Who the hells knows man. No goodbye, no indication she came with or went anywhere else. I assumed I would be able to ask her to come with or just go with her. But nah. The scene is bugged or badly done. Just romanced a character for 85 hours Larian, no closure : D
In general the romance also stays at a complete standstill after the nude on the beach scene. Which I believe is at the start of act 3??

I reloaded and let Karlach die, guess what ? Narrator:"but one death still weighs heavily on your mind, Shadowheart". Me: WHAT?!?! But then 5 sec later I am talking to her like nothing happened. Ah amazing, no problem then...

Honestly, stuff like this does not happen in a finished game... Then they queue the outro with the most basic dialogue ever. "it is over. You have done it. You have saved Baldurs gate". Compared to some other dialogue in this game this is dialogue is as dry as wood.


- Now I love complex stories as much as all other RPG fans. But I really hate when designers try to take a character like a mindflayer who is inherently evil and try to present this as some blurred concept, wether this character is really evil or not. I am all for complex characters, but please live SOME black and white.
Remember thinking to myself "Are you a mindflayer"(the dialogue option in the first dream). nah this is stupid. I designed her, surely they would not nullify my effort to create this character? 50 hours later, ah well fk.
Not only is the character I spent effort creating gone. I had no agency over the story all along. Surprise Im a mindflayer. 20 hours later, surprise im Balduran. 10 hours later, ah you still dont trust me, I ll just go back to the thing I tried to escape at the first sight of hindrance... Come on.. This game is not finished.. I went to youtube to rewatch all the "Daisy" scenes after doing some reading online and seems the initial direction was better here. THIS WAS THE PERFECT DOUBLE BAIT LARIAN AND YOU DIDNT TAKE THE CHANCE TO MAKE IT SO

- I have a final concern here, and others who have multiple playthroughs may need to confirm this for me. Because Larian has been talking about all the choice and different endings. I hit the choke point in the astral realm. With Orpheus and the Emperor, no matter what I do, I have to turn someone into a mindflayer to progress. Wasnt the whole point of freeing Orpheus no one needed to become a mindflayer? Why on earth does Orpheus need to become a mindflayer to stop the Netherbrain when his very existence nullifies the greatest power of his enemy? To nullify telepathic connections? That alone would tip the scales of battle massively.
- Now I tried really hard to remove my tadpole as fast as possible but the opportunity somehow escaped me, can someone confirm, if I remove it, does the game still lead to this choke point? So much for different endings man... turn 3 different people into mindflayers.. wooow.. feels like a lie tbh..

- I also feel that sometimes there is literally 5-10 hours between story progression points, and for me that is a bit.. meh.. But it might feel like this because of the combat, or because some combat encounters like the githyanki patrol are gated by having a high enough level, leading me to have to go around questing more than I would like. idk.

How to improve: Give us actual choice for different endings?? Maybe the pace of the story will feel better with better pace of combat? Get consistency right please. If I romanced shadowheart she is not dead, for 10 seconds, then alive again. Multiple instances of this in act 3 (similar stuff)
- And as far as I am concerned not much choice that affects the story long term is present. Examples: I tried really hard to not use illithid powers, doesnt seem like it did anything.. I remember when I went to the House of Hope, when Karlach spoke, I thought to myself, oh shit, I shouldnt have brought her, everything went ... fine..?? I tried so hard thinking about consequences in this game as it was advertised as a game with consequence, but it doesnt seem like anything has consequence..??

AND THE FINAL STRAW, after 85 hours I kinda expect more of an epilogue than 5 min talking on the beach, but maybe that is just me But seriously, come on.. I was expecting maybe an hour honestly for a game this size with 3 YEARS in early access.
END RANT.
(sorry one more) - The reward for puzzle solving and exploration is just really meh most of the time. I dont think 40 gold in an urn is what people hope for after 1 hour of exploration or puzzle solving. I want story that no one else got. Lore reveal. Ability buffs. Insights. yeah...





- Some minor things dragging the game down :
- Multiclassing is really underwhelming. Tried making a kung fu barlock initially. But wait, unarmored defence doesnt stack.. ah well, i guess maybe warlock into sorc 3, fighter 2 , pal 2, for attack per round and eldritch spam, ah but wait, you dont get feats. Why does nothing stack? That is half the fun. this might be dnd 5e but others have to confirm. In that case not Larians fault. But when you are homebrewing a bit anyway why not put some of the earlier dnd multiclassing back in.. idk..

- I played the dark urge, and after reading "the haunted one" "A wicked moment, person, or thing that cannot be slain by sword or spell haunts your mind and flickers in your peripheral vision. You carry it wherever your adventure takes you - or perhaps it carries you." I really thought it would be something more ancient, and more "haunting" than what we got. Another bhaalspawn..?? I did not see any flickering in peripheral, I did not see any "haunting", I did not see anything I carried with me. So yeah...

- Items for 2/3 of the game are a complete meh. I spent 2/3 of the game with 20k gold .. And then all of a sudden in act 3 it goes off the charts with amulet of greater health and helldusk armor etc. Feels, weird..

But honestly these three are just minor, and may just be me. So no deduction in points here.




The reason I write this is I read online,that Larian historically, release products with polished first halves, and unpolished last halves, and one year later release a deluxe edition with lots of new content. I so badly want to call this game a masterpiece, and it is so close, but you really have work ahead of you Larian. This rant is my attempt at contributing.

Sorry if it came across as a bit blunt. Despite all this the game is still an 8.5/10 , which stands testament to how good the other stuff is. And, potentially, in a years time, it will be a true 10/10. It could potentially stand on top of all other RPGs to date. And after seeing the effort you put in I REALLY want it to be the 10/10 MASTERPIECE it can be.



Curious if anyone felt the same, or have any different input. Apologies for typos and sentence structure, I wrote this in a single rushed effort before bed.

Characters/companions: Companions too few and too similar - Gale and Wyll under the control of Strong Woman; Shadowheart, Lae'zel and Karlach under the control of Strong Woman. Astarion limp lettuce. Leaving aside the cameo characters from BG1 and 2, many of the characters are just bizarre constructions for the sake of a bizarre construction (three of the Thorm family for example)
Story: Overly complicated and convoluted. Level design: Nothing special. Hinterlands flat with same climate; Shadow-Cursed lands flat with same climate, and with interiors mostly having either dark almost monochrome or the purple/magenta light of the Gauntlet dungeon. Not done Act 3.
Voice acting: Nothing special. Par for the course. Some noticeable repeats such as Lump and Yurgir.
Spell effects: Not something I take much notice of unless it forces itself into my attention
Cinematics: Far too many and most of them far too long.

Graphics: Average
Writing poor: Far too many modern words and phrases, e.g. 'good to know' and 'motherfucker'.

What games do you consider great in each regard? Just out of curiosity.

Though I found Wyll to be limp lettuce in EA I thought he was better done when he suffered a bit for his choices. Astarion felt flat indeed but I kept waiting for a deeper part of him to come out, but I sent him away after the bite incident as it felt like the only logical thing to do. So idk if he turned out to be more than limp lettuce after that. Liked the other ones, though Laezel died early in my playthrough haha.

In regards to your points:
Story ye act 3.. I feel like it starts with the first emperor encounter though.

Level design some of it is flat but I dont remember every level from every game I play so as long as a good chunk is memorable that is good enough.

Voice acting: I indeed felt the not so special voice acting in act 3 (Ansur)

Writing: At least Jergal doesnt say "motherfucker".

For the later levels itemization replaces spells/abilities basically for power.
To few levels.

My thoughts...
Characters/companions: Probably the best set Larian has come up with so far. I find them likable (well, pretty much except for Wyll, I just find him boring.) However...amazing? Ehhhh, I don't know if I'd say that.....Gale in particular strikes me as a total Mary Sue character, and he's pretty much only saved by his likable personality and his VA.
The thing is, I think it's less the companion writing itself - tbh, in my opinion, the companion writing NEVER has to be all that good. The important part of the companions is that they're fun to be around and talk to. Gale can have the dumbest most Mary-Sueish background (My girlfriend was the goddess of magic herself! I was so good at magic I was TOO good! My close friend Elminster himself has come to give me a quest to sacrifice myself to save the universe!) and he can be totally saved just by being likable. And I think part of what's missing from the companions is inter-companion relationships. There's some interactions, sure (Shadowheart and Lae'zel in particular) but for the most part it feels like they're just interacting with the MC.
(Also, who knows, maybe Gale's story has some turnaround later in the game that deconstructs the earlier premises. But playing as a wizard, I got really annoyed at how he overshadowed the MC wizard and have steadfastly ignored him ever since the end of act 1.)

Story: I am actually going to dissent here and say that right from the very start this story has problems.
Look, I'll be blunt. I think the way this game starts is really, really dumb. IN fact, the first time I saw the intro cinematic, my immediate reaction was "There's no way I'm buying this garbage."
Maybe it's just me, but....this is another bad habit I've noticed from Larian. They seem to think that cranking things up to being as "epic as possible, as quickly as possible" is a good way to make an intriguing plot. And it's like....no, to me, it feels terrible. Starting off the game on a nautiloid ship being chased by multiple dragons and teleporting to hell itself - it makes all those things feel *cheap*. And the thing is, it works in some weird settings (like the planescape setting, for example), but here it just feels really jarring and absurd that like, you go from HELL ITSELF to doing some low level goblin slaying TO HAVING AN ARCHDEVIL PERSONALLY APPROACH YOU TO MAKE A DEAL. I can't help but compare it to the original Baldur's Gates, which I thought were paced nicely. The first game started off relatively mundane; there was intrigue (who murdered your foster father? And why?). And there were signs and hints at the overarching, "epic" story along the way, but the connections to something larger didn't come until towards the end of the game. I can't help but feel that the story in BG3 would have just felt a bit better if it was a bit more *restrained*. It feels a little bit like they tried to cram as many "epic" concepts into the plot as possible (and at levels where in tabletop the characters wouldn't even be dealing with most of them!)


Combat: I love RTWP. I loved the originals being RTWP. I have since come to believe, however, over the years, that RTWP only works well in systems designed from the ground up to be RTWP. (With the best implementation I've seen for that being Deadfire.) DnD was NEVER a system designed from the ground up for RTWP. DnD should be turn-based. And at the early levels especially, this is VERY fun.
However, in later levels, the fun starts to fade because every combat becomes trivial. I've seen people blaming 5e itself for this. *This is absolutely not the fault of 5e, imo*. YES, at higher levels in 5e DnD it can be difficult to design challenging encounters for players.
*But a 12th level cap is absolutely fine, especially in a video game that does not attempt to implement some of the more problematic spells*. The great irony is that Larian decided to cap player's levels at 12 to avoid the problems of high-level DnD....and then went and shot themselves in the foot, by *introducing those exact same high level problems themselves* in the form of absurdly powerful items.

Level design: The environments look great. I think they did a great job of capturing what those old, painted backgrounds in the old-school CRPGs would look like in a modern 3d system. I like the degree to which verticality matters in combat. Do I think the map designs - as in the layout of the overall environments, the layouts of entire dungeons - are amazing? Eh...no. They're okay. One complaint I have is that the game overall feels a bit *small*. Part of the problem, when you spend so much energy crafting maps so every part of them has something to do, is that by the end you've actually only really explored a few maps in total. Honestly a minor complaint though.

Voice acting: They range from great to excellent. No complaints here.

Spell effects/vocals: I dunno. Nothing stood out to me as particularly bad, but nothing made me go "Wow!"

Cinematics : I went into detail above why I thought the intro cinematic to this game was, well, stupid. However, it LOOKS pretty good.

Characters/companions I dont know how indepth you read my OP because it is indeed a wall of text but, this is exactly what I said. All interaction is just MC to companion. Companions never contribute in dialogue. Never talk to each other. And it all makes the party dynamic feel incomplete. See example above with Wyll-Karlach, and MC- romanced Shadowheart. Honestly feels ridiculous for a modern RPG. So I agree with you there ofc.

I do really feel the characters were great and have a depth to them I havent seen since at least DA:O. Though I agree with you that this game sometimes try to cram too many fantastic stuff in at once. YOur gale, goddess romance example is a good example. Also at one point you have an emissary of an archdevil in camp. Simultaneously with daughter of a god. Some of our a bit too fantastic companions. And mc who is potentially a bhaalspawn. And more. So agreed on that point.

LEvel design: Well, I should have written it differently. I do feel some of them were amazing. And honestly is it necessary that every single level is amazing in a 100 hour game? No. I thought the Shar temple was amazing for example. Interestingly though I do agree that some areas are too small. But I also think that sometimes the levels just branch out and become unnecessarily big. Though I like the Shar temple alot. It is a good example of a level that becomes just too big. Because all the extra exploration you can do in the place just doesnt give you any satisfaction through rewards for said exploration. But yes, IT LOOKS, amazing.

Tbh at one point I just stopped digging up chests and clicking on stuff you got from percecption check because it is ALWAYS an apple, 20 gold and a dagger. Or something. No idea how they thought this would be interesting.

Combat: What do you think about the combat as it stands in BG3? Do you agree that it grows tedious with larger mobs? Now I dont want smaller mobs, for power fantasy reasons, but the combat needs to be sped up in some way. Imo.

Story: I think the story starts well. I like that the story starts with momentum, it worked in DA:O, why cant it here ? DA:O doesnt start as abrutply as BG3 but momentum scales up really fast within the first 2 hours. But as you said I also agree that the game tries to cram too many fantastical things in at once later.

Spell effects/vocals: Well, I suppose I am comparing it to DA:O and NWN 2, which are probably the two last "proper" RPGs I played. Haha. Certainly an upgrade from that.

It did feel a bit weird how many '' special '' people gathered in one place yeah.
I thought they'd do something more with that like everyone had been chosen for a reason but I don't think that was ever the case unless I totally missed something.
It's a little unbelievable lol.

Edit: Sorry for multi post, this forum is rly slow and gives an error quite frequently.
I think reloaded caused me to post multiple times.