Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion Congratulations BG3 on Best Storytelling Award

Quick reminder that everyone is entitled to hold and express their views on the game, and given we'll have different tastes and priorities it's guaranteed that we're never all going to agree, and that's fine. I'd just ask that people try not to take negative views of a game they love personally, but at the same time that if you do have negative views about the game talk about those rather than the "fanbase", among which many of us here will include ourselves. That way, hopefully, we can have an interesting, friendly discussion about our different views.

(Personally, while there are still a number of things that I can't make sense of, I am blown away by the complexity and depth of the storytelling in BG3, and the way that there's so much to discover about the various interlocking strands that relate to events both 100+ years ago and the near past and present day. But then I'm a glass-half-full sort of person, and will tend to focus on what is there rather than what's not. In my view, the storytelling award was well deserved, but of course I can appreciate that for many reasons others will take a different view. And in some cases, I can even agree with their reasons, they just don't have the same priority for me. And I always find it interesting to hear different perspectives.)

I will say that the narrative quality of the main story and companion reactivity declines in act 3. But it declines from the amazing act 1&2 to your average run of the mill rpg. While some of the side content in act 3 remains excellent. So the game definitely takes a dip towards the end, which is a damn shame. But it doesn't spoil the rest of the game for me. On average, with everything considered I still find the story great.

To me the origin characters really carry the story and the character writers and voice actors really deserve a lot of the credit for the awards. For me they managed to create the illusion that my character was as much a part of their story as they were part of mine. There are always areas where you could have asked for more in terms of interaction and reactivity. I tend to fill in the blanks with my own headcanon, so I am not too bothered about things that are missing.

Their aim with everything for act 3 was perhaps a bit too ambitious and they couldn’t really pull everything off, but I’d rather they aimed for the stars and came up somewhat short than not having that ambition. I got pretty much everything I could ask for in a story-driven crpg with freedom to play any character I want and explore the story and world in any way I want.

I can see how early access of a game can create expectations.

Just to show how different people are: I tried to get interested in Disco Elysium but haven't managed it. For one thing I strongly prefer a fantasy settingn and making my own character. The description of Torment convinced me I wouldn't enjoy it that much and I like a good power fantasy if I'm honest. To each their own.

I haven't played an evil playthrough and probably won't so I can't comment on that beyond saying I would expect unpleasant consquences to come from endless malice or slaughter of innocents.

Just so we're all on the same page nomainations are accepted from the public and the shortlist created by The Golden Joystick Awards panel is voted on by the public; those interested enough to participate in the process. The winner is not determined by resident experts to demonstrate their personal praise or to support public opinion. It is public opinion.

This is the view I usually see. All things being equal to the extent all things are ever equal, openly discussing places where improvment can still be made (and setting asdie hype surrounding any another game) BG 3 is the game players love and as Ecc2ca said the one they keep coming back to.

Congrats. Awesome to see a great crpg win big.

This is what I would have said about my own perespective but I likely wouldn't have expressed it as well.

The freedom of choice in handing any given situation from psychotic to sophisticated is great. The companions I've spent time with are unique in my experience and whilst I would like more interactions with them and more story about them the writers and actors do an incredible job bringing them to life.

Even though the game is in an unfinished state and I'm disappointed in Larian for that, I feel the award is deserved, there is no other good game released this year so that might've helped a bit.

Praise:

Without spoilers. Or at least I'm only teasing the edges of spoiling the story. My favorite part was Shadowheart followed by Lae'zel.

Shadowheart's final choice did feel tragic. Whoever wrote that was a Forgotten Realms fan who really did understand the lore on Selune and Shar. The choice felt very Sharran.

I didn't expect to like Lae'zel as much as I did. But I'm a sucker for crisis of faith stories and I thought her story worked well.

The Cats. Love the cats.

Books. I loved the books. Some were clever and some were delightfully naughty. "Yoshimo is willing" indeed

Critique

Like Niara it's hard to say whether it deserved the award because you have omit so much to come a decision. Yes, if you disregard the end game, it's railroaded penultimate choice and the fact that you only have the illusion of choice in that instance. Yes, if you disregard the main plot, the fact that one of the major villains was a non entity, that the Wyll rewrite left Wyll with nothing to say . . . then? Then you have a really good game. But, ye gods, that's asking a great deal.

I couldn't vote because I had not opinions on the other games and it wouldn't allow me to vote for a voice actor and not make a decision about the game.

So the main story is a shambles but the rest is really good.

The Wyll situation seems especially tragic because I'm not sure what made Larian come to that decision. Was it based the feedback from the EA? Was the outline they had for his story really that bad?

I have no idea by what rubrik the award presents itself, but Baldur's Gate 3 is another situation where I think it's a better storyteller than a story. This is true of Video games in general, but as far as using the medium to tell a story, I liked making choices, and experimenting around how the world reacted to them; I liked a lot of the level design (like the mountain map and the Monastery) dungeons are after all the quintessential storytelling device in D&D, and I liked the characters. So even if the 'plot' didn't end up being very interesting, I would still consider it a good storyteller.

Actually bad story - good storytelling, is D&D to a tee. Larian doesn't have the excuse D&D does of being improvised, but I guess you could say its emulating a frail DM trying to add some gravitas to his horny friends on their killing spree.

Imo Wyll was partially because of feedback and partially because at the start of EA Larian said they started with the evil and ambigious companions to get more feedback on them and will add good companions later.

But then they ran out of time, scrapped Helia and pushed Minsc into act 3 to still have him for marketing purposes. So they rewrote Wyll and Shadowheart to be good (or at least to have a good option) instead of just having the unfinished Karlach.

I guess I'm already at the point with this game where I just want to know how the sausage was made. Being in the EA for so many years has made me too interested in the decisions and the process behind the end product I think

That is quite disheartening as many things introduced later were downgrades.

I'm very sorry Wyll is not as developed as others. Wyll anchors the story for me. He makes it serious but heroic and not grim and Karlach makes it fun even though her story is also quite serious. If they were evil in my playthroughs I think I would've put BG3 down in a week.

I don't think I would've played if the premise was all evil. I've had enough grim characters. Life is gritty enough.

The image of a DM trying to coax players back to a thoughtful narrative made me smile. It reminds me of a lot of the coverage of the game. I really like the detail in all the action areas and the fact that so much of the game is outdoors. A better story-teller than a story is a clever way to express that idea. BG3 is an incredible storyteller.

Consider this:

Alan Wake 2. Remedy Entertainment/Epic Games Publishing. (Narratively driven, Action Cinematic Video game)
Baldur's Gate 3. Larian Studios. (Computer Roleplaying Game)
Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty. CD Projekt Red. (Narratively driven, Action Adventure game with RPG elements)
Final Fantasy XVI. Square Enix. (Japanese-style "Roleplaying Game", Cinematic story telling)
Marvel's Spider-Man 2. Insomniac Games/SIE. (Action Hack and Slash, Cinematic storytelling).


I'm voting for Baldur's Gate 3.

It's no Disco Elysium or PST, but it's the best cRPG that has good (not great) storytelling, it's great that most of criticism levied against it is "scrapping bottom barrels", "reaching" and highly subjective.

There are objective issues with the narrative. I'll give a quick example basing on Wyll's story:

"Scraping the Barrel" certainly misrepresents the problems with the story of BG3. It had many plot holes, the execution is sloppy, it does not fit the mechanics (artificial time pressure), has uninteresting villains, swaps out the entire premise within seconds (tadpoles), has many lose ends that are not resolved and even if working perfectly is a generic save the world story, not any better that all other RPGs.

Lets say it how it is, fans blindly clicked on everything BG3 without regard what they even voted for.

Alan Wake II: Official Categorisation: Survival Horror
Baldur's Gate III: Official Categorisation: Role-Playing
Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty: Official Categorisation: Action Role-playing
Final Fantasy XVI: Official Categorisation: Action Role-playing
Marvel's Spider-Man 2: Official Categorisation: Action-Adventure

So... would you say that you feel that a game winning an award when it's pitted against other games that do not even match the award category, making it by default the only functional contender in that short list, is a legitimate award with meaning? Are you satisfied that it got put into vote for several categories against games that didn't match the category at all, eliminating any real chance of the golden child not winning most of its nominations?

I, for one, don't really consider that legitimate. Frankly, I think being asked to select the best RPG from a list of games, only two others of which share a Partial categorisation with the genre being selected for to begin with, when there are numerous other so-classified RPGs from 2023 to choose from, is extremely suspect. There were other games that it could have been put up against by the selectors, and the short list options that people were given to pick from often felt very... let's say... motivated, at least to me.