Stealing Icelyn’s helpful colour coding …
1. What do you think of BG3?It’s become my favourite game. For all that it has flaws and issues that are well rehearsed on these forums and I agree with many though by no means all the criticisms that have been levelled at it, for me these are nowhere near sufficient to cancel out all the things that are brilliant about it, or its scale and ambition. And while it’s true that
less scale and ambition would have led to a more polished, cohesive experience, personally I think it’s the combination of all the elements of, eg, NPC characterisation, writing, gameplay, quest design and implementation of (a variation of) the D&D ruleset that make BG3 such a fantastic game. Trying to take anything out or cut it down would, I suspect, have a Jenga-like impact and make the game more ordinary and less impressive. But I also think getting it all to come together totally successfully and consistently was always going to be impossible. I’m still glad Larian tried, and love it for the flawed masterpiece I think it is, as well as for the game it clearly tried to be but couldn’t quite pull off. Perhaps when AI takes over the world it’ll create that perfect RPG, as I’m not sure it’s feasible for humans, especially given the economic constraints of game development!
2. Did you play from early access or did you wait until full release? I bought it on the first day of early access, mainly on the strength of the BG brand though I had watched the first Panel from Hell. IIRC I put in around 700 hours during early access, completing a full playthrough and maybe two for most of the major patches, then just playing around trying things out and providing feedback.
3. What did you find the most enjoyable? Cinematic dialogue, the companions, antagonists and lots of other NPCs, most of the voice acting and animation, lots of the story elements and smaller subplots (despite it not all coming together that well), the level of freedom to create our own custom character and have the game respond to them through, eg, class and race dialogue options, the fact that quests were generally different and engaging rather than boring fetch quests, the fact that so many quests ended up related to the main story or could be encountered fairly naturally as we explored, the fact that there were times I had to stop and scratch my head to work out how to complete a quest or solve a puzzle but I never had to resort to a walkthrough or guide (admittedly there were a small number of quests I didn’t complete as a result of my no-Googling policy), the different ambience of the various main maps and just the look and feel of the environments generally, getting to explore Baldur’s Gate city, the fact there were so often various different ways to approach a challenge, the fact there are so many fun systemics that can be used to solve problems and the satisfaction when they come together with the story and roleplay to make a satisfying story (admittedly they also sometimes go off the rails in an immersion-breaking way), the fact that Larian decided to be a permissive DM and let us do fun, silly things even though some players could potentially exploit them if they wanted, the peril and randomness of having a story partly determined by the roll of dice, the combat (despite some niggles) especially the hand-crafted combat making almost all encounters interesting and meaningful, the fact that so many NPCs are individuals rather than, eg, just random townspeople, goblins or shadows, the fact that we got to see the stories of some of the NPCs play out over the game (though admit some kind of petered out) … err, I could go on, but I’d better stop there!
4. What about the least enjoyable? The bugginess especially in act 3 and especially when it leads to wonky plot and character development (eg companions not responding correctly to what has gone before), the camera that too often makes what could be really fun verticality a complete pain, party inventory management (especially the fact that we can’t access inventories of companions not currently in the party without going through a cumbersome process of dismissing/recruiting companions), missed opportunities to bring our custom characters to life (eg more voiced lines, having opportunities for them to know NPCs or parts of the city), missed opportunities to have a real party adventure feel to the game (eg more companion comments and involvement in events/dialogue, more inter-companion scenes/dialogue in camp), the fact the epilogue felt brief and unsatisfying without giving us the opportunity to see NPCs we’d come to care about or even party members who weren’t with us at the end of the adventure and, in my case,
my PC died at the end of the game and no one, including her love interest, really seemed to care or comment on it!
elements of the overall plot not hanging together (or at least I still had many questions!) and some stories feeling unnaturally curtailed, the systemics sometimes leading to immersion breaking oddness (eg with “guards” and animal companions).
5. What would you like to see added? Any DLC, tweaks or extra features? Bug fixes of course, plus ideally tweaks to address the other stuff I said I wasn’t keen on. And I’d love any story DLC or expansions. Additional races/classes I’m sure I’d also enjoy, though frankly the core game gives me plenty to be getting on with there.
6. Do you use any mods? If so which and why? No mods yet. While Larian are still regularly releasing patches and updates I’ll stick with the vanilla game.
7. Do you play any other kind of D&D, Baldurs Gate or Forgotten Realm games/campaigns? I don’t play tabletop. I have played other cRPGs set in the FRs: both original BG games when they came out (and I’ve replayed them fairly often over the years), IWD, NWN 1&2 and Planescape: Torment. Until BG3 came along, though, my favourite fantasy RPG was Dragon Age: Origins.
