Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion Minsc recruitment, isnt done well.

Anyway, for Minsc, the way they introduce him is pretty cool I must admit. But recruiting him later on requires the player to know something the game doesn't explicitly tell you (which runs contrary to the very intuitive nature of BG3 for the most part). If you don't know about the passive (non-lethal damage), you may only ever end up unaliving the guy and not know why. Then of course you forget to turn off that passive and start leaving all these unconscious enemies lying about everywhere in future fights like I did.

They should have done Minsc the same way they did Viconia (I agree with another poster on this), where (If Minsc HP <=0, change hp total to 1, until dialogue occurs). For some reason Larian didn't do that here.

As for Act 3 being a mess @avahZ Darkwood

It's more a pacing issue I think. Act 1 introduces you to the world, describes the stakes (What's called in story terms Exposition). Act 2 brings you up against the stakes (what's called Rising Action in story terms). Act 3 should be (Climax and Denouement). Instead, the urgency is lost. It's almost like 'Hey, there's a big army coming toward us but we'll still mill about in the street like nothing's the matter.' Rising Action is gone.

What should have happened here is the City should have been on lockdown initially, and when you first arrive you should be sent through a processing line before even getting into Rivington, with a large group of guards and soldiers arrayed in case skirmishers show up. Keep the urgency up as you progress toward that climactic battle and the player has to skulk around the City secretly building alliances and when the Foundry gets destroyed, people can start coming out of their homes and packing up to leave etc. Instead the battle is more 'Get to it when you get to it.' A way to look at this would be what life in London was like during the Blitz in WW2.

(Remember, the Dead Three's plan was: Thorm marches the army to Baldur's Gate, Orin sows chaos in the City, and Gortash saves the City and therefore wins the peoples' trust. The idea here is Gortash uses that trust to make the City a prison and the Steel Watch are the jailers. Baldurians trade freedom for security, and then they are basically lambs to all be tadpoled. So all of the 'defending soldiers' and such would be for show but would be necessary for people to believe there's an actual threat. People should be under martial law, unable to leave the City once they come into it etc. And there should be curfews. Again, to keep the pacing of the story. I realize this conflicts with Larian's vision of having a living, breathing city. In this case, because of the cool storyline weaved by the Larian authors, they can't have the cake and eat it too. It needs to be one or the other (living city or narrative tension in Act 3).

I understand what Larian chose in Act 3. They wanted to create a simulated City with life breathed into it (which they did with unswerving ability). Unfortunately it jars the tone of the story as a result. Especially with (for example) the army of the Absolute coming, and you're on a rooftop trying to find a flying cat that's eating courier pigeons.

Now, if they wanted to include this rooftop story AND have it contribute to the tension, the premise would be more like this. In the courier offices Gortash insisted on replacing all of the pigeons with a special breed of pigeons that 'he' bred to be faster. In reality, those pigeons only fly the mail to Gortash who then reads it to try and find traitors, and cut off Baldur's Gate from the world. The Tressym is an annoyance though as it's eating Gortash' pigeons, so Gortash's clerk asks you to find out what's stopping the mail. When you find the Tressym, it tells you it's really hungry because the other pigeons have more meat on their bones than Goratsh' breed, but are locked away in a holding area nearby. So you take all the mail the Tressym has collected from Gortash' pigeons, and bring it to the real ones who agree to help you after you fight to rescue them. The mail is then to flight with the letters along with additional messages for help that you, Tav, write to neighboring cities. This would gain you an ally based on who reads your note, thwart Gortash, and drive the main storyline at the same time. It's the random missions in Act 3 that detract from the tension. Everything should contribute to driving the story forward in some way..