Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback [SPOILERS] Thoughts about the story after "No return point" in ACT 3

Disclaimer- I hope fantastic people from Larian will read this and maybe consider expanding ending of the game

Finally after more then 90h of playing, I have reached the "No return point" and was really excited to see if my decisions will bring the hoped result. And... unfortunately I was really disappointed. For now I do not see any option that "My ending" will be the one that is satisfying for me so I wanted to share my thoughts about what would be great if could be expanded.
To give a bigger view on my playthrough, I was really trying to role play and make decisions that would be consistent with my beliefs- "experimentation" and "checking the other options" was left for other characters. If I could describe the choices that I made I would compare them to "Paragon" (just like in Mass Effect series)- doing everything to help everyone, and give all my companions "in my opinion" best possible endings. That included helping the githyanki revolt under Orpheus leadership. I was really determined to save him and convinced him to help fight the Elder Brain next to the Emperor. I even took Lae'zel to the final party, for her to be a part of this. And what I got completely destroyed me in some way.

Firstly, I could not persuade an alliance between those two sides. The Emperor just drops me and joins the enemy. In some way this shows I and the companions were just the pawns in his masterplan, but on other hand the whole game he was against the Absolut and was doing everything to defeat it. This move was completely out of character for him. I should be able to convince him to give at least try for this alliance to be even possible, and then same to convince the Prince that we should at this moment work together. He is just "I join the Elder Brain, see ya punk".

The above makes the next thing very irritating. Because we "lose" a Mindflayer ally, now someone needs to become one. In my playthrough, I just had the one initial tadpole, I didn't injected more and didn't wanted to "evolve" into Illith. And now I am still pushed to become or let the Orpheus transform (which I do not want). Of course we can say this is the beauty of it, that we need to make the hard decisions like in real life, but the Alliance between Emperor and Githyanki should be an option, maybe available behind very strict requirements (do not still the Egg, do not have more the X tadpoles injected). Other thing is why we can not agree that Gale sacrifice himself and no-one needs to become Illith? Why I can not try to persuade Orpheus to trust him?

And the last one that really made me mad- Lae'zel. I think this was the biggest disappointment of this whole ingame scene. On the whole course of the game there were several situations were I could just kill her/let her be killed, and then I would not have this dilemma in the first place. Instead I stayed true to my character and pushed for good ending for her too. She was so focused to save the Prince, to revolt against Vlakith, if needed to die for him, and all she says after him making the decision to become Mindflayer is "No My Prince don't do it!". Really???? No "Let me do it"????? Nothing??? She should say something, offer herself, not just stand there and observe. In case of assimilating the Prince, she opposes the decisions and wants to fight with us, but here she is submissive and really says/do nothing? Why? She should have at least a declaration that she is ready to do it for her Prince, after which we "decide" to agree to that or persuade her to let Orpheus/us do it. After that I checked and know that only Karlach offers herself as she is dying, but I think that aside of her, at least few characters should come with the same proposition (for example Wyll, if he signs another contract with Mizora).

I really love this game, I was not this engaged in a story and characters for a loooooong time, since probably Mass Effect and Dragon Age. And because of that for sure this is my first run from the multiple to come. However, this ending feels like "choose the beam color". I would love to see more options how to handle the final dilemma. It would be great if this could be explored and extended to really give players reach this point were they will be satisfy with the result. There should be an option to get this "Happy Ending", at least closed by the some of decisions that need to be made and passed throw checks.

Well, Sophie.

The general consensus is that act 3 is rushed. Which is why we got the railroaded nonsensical plot point of choose X squid. All we can do is voice our dissatisfaction and hope Larian comes out with something more coherent.

For me, I mainly play RPGs for story and RP. Since the game in its current form is lacking in the story department, and RP is severly limited, I will not come back for the next game is this is what I can expect. We all loved act 1-2, which is why we are way too forgiving regarding the state of the entire game as a whole. Imo.

Yeah, Dragon Age: Origins... I finished the game just once, and the ending was so ideal (for me) that I've decided to never touch it again. This is despite the fact I chose to sacrifice myself. But I remember that feeling of understanding of how your choices matter and how they shaped the game-world.

Unfortunately, BG3 went red/blue/green road.

I usually do not write posts like this on any forums, but because of the general opinion about Larian is that they really listen to the fanbase, I decided to share those thoughts. As a person that had experience working in gamedev, I understand that sometimes you can not do what you wanted in the planned timeline. However, I think in this case there were some changes made to the plot at the final lap of development, and for adjusting those changes to the general plot there was not enough time. Hopefully, they will react to the feedback of the whole community like with the previous ones.

Even with this ending, I believe this game deserves GOTY title, as Larian showed that games can be amazing without any microtransaction and not beeing "game as a serivice" . Probably this will not change the way of working of AAA studios, but maybe at least the number of released games with a game breaking bugs will be smaller.

Well, for me the way the story conducts itself after you meet the Emperor, and act 3, it just killed all desire to replay it.

Imo it is not GOTY worthy after the last act, but I think this game, if they ever finish it, has the potential to be more than a GOTY.

Interesting that you worked in game dev, anything we would be familiar with?

One hundred percent agree on this. Exactly same thoughts. Narratively it made NO sense for the empeoror to throw the baby out with the bath water. insane writing. and it made no sense to become one if you want a clean, good playthru. Perhaps you need to be an illithid to CONTROL the nether brain, not if you want to destroy it.

Agreed with this sentiment 100%.

In addition, I would argue that the idea that you need someone to become a mindflayer to defeat the Netherbrain, comes off as so contrived and nonsensical, it's as if it was put in just to force a final, dramatic choice on the player, even though it makes no sense given the context.

Honestly, Orpheus is one of the most powerful psychics in the setting, and his bloodline specifically has the ability to disrupt mindflayer psionics; you mean to tell me he doesn't have the power to go toe to toe with the brain? Why does he need to transform?

Or better yet, a player character who has never been psychic in their life, and has been a mindflayer for a grand total of five minutes can defeat the brain, but Orpheus can't because he's a gith?*

There's just so much wrong here, and it takes what should be a great moment for the player and poisons it.

*Edit: while this isn't 100% correct, since githyanki are psychic and the player can roll one, I think my intent is still clear

I really feel like 99% of people who say it's GOTY or even of the decade either haven't played it or are still in act 1.
Not saying it's impossible for people to think that, but just the shere level of the hype really comes across like that.
And often times people will even say it, sometimes they've only played like a few hours and already decided it's the most revolutionary and innovating game ever and game of the decade.

Imo BG3 felt like an old *unfinished* and rushed out old Bioware game like DA:O or ME1-2.
Like don't get me wrong I did enjoy it overall in spite of Act 3, but it's really not anything that hasn't been done before and the story is not as good I'd even say it's fairly weak for a RPG imho.
I do think BG3 has excellent character writing, not flawless or anything but the companions are great and feel a lot more '' human '' than they usually do and I also think this is why a lot of people think that the story is amazing too and they're kinda mistaking enjoying the characters for the actual story.

I think another issue with it too on replay is that it sorta makes a lot of it feel irrelevant, like most of the main plot for most of the game is '' wander around try to find a cure ''.
But when you know that's not really possible then it sorta makes it feel pointless, and then when the actual main plot kicks in it sorta just loses a lot of steam and starts sprinting through stuff.

I'd also say that the difficulty and combat is a huge issue for me on replay, I got insanely bored and just gave up on my second playthrough because every encounter felt like a slog that took too long and when there's no challenge it becomes a bit unbearable.
And knowing what's to come with the main plot I feel no drive to do anything regarding the main plot up until that.
It's not like I've never replayed RPG's before I've replayed DA:O and the ME games more times than I probably should I've lost count, but with BG3 I just had a total lack of motivation and everything '' new '' I wanted to see was basically just the fixed MInthara stuff I could just look up on Youtube.