Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion Opinions on the main plot writing?

I really liked the main story! Made me curious from the first moment.


But a point I really don't understand and like:

I've been in the same state of denial until I read the recent interview with the lead writers. I, too, thought noway this is the actual ending and the reason for it clearly must be time pressure.

Turns out, there is no reason.

The main plot in my opinion had a great premise but crappy execution. The idea of needing to rush to find a cure before becoming a monster is a compelling reason to move forward. However, shortly into the game, Larian abandons the sense of urgency to make you chase side quests like a dog distracted by a yard full of squirrels. By the time you hit Act Three the only sense of urgency you have is to see what you can find in the brothel.

If they had kept that sense of urgency and made taking a bunch of long rests penalize you, then the plot might have held together better. At first, even Asteron is questioning why everything you do distracts from finding a cure but he quickly goes along with the scavenger hunt approach. You have a party full of people with a ticking time bomb in their heads and yet none of them really seem worried about hurrying forward after about an hour of gameplay?

The main plot is flawed, that much is clear, but I still enjoyed it. It's a little bit of a classic good vs evil story with a recurring theme of how power can shape you for better or worse... A lot of railroading too, despite the freedom of choice. I don't expect Larian to improve on this because the fans seem to focus on the stories of the companions instead haha.

Honestly the game would be far better if tthey had actually leaned into making the main plot secondary and focused on the side stories. Kingmaker does that, keeping its main villain serving as a thread connecting various plotlines rather than having them constantly be front and centre and confronting them being the main goal. The side stories are generally compelling, as are the little world events you can stumble onto, they just clash with how important the main quest is supposed to be. Larian did not play to their strengths here.

Also, I think people focus on the companion stories so much specifically because the main plot is so weak. They end up not emotionally connecting to it, it's the companions they feel invested in and want to see improved. Which honestly, I think is fair. The main plot doesn't give us a lot to feel emotionally invested in.

The first time I've played I'be found the main story confusing, and some things didn't make sense to me. After second playthrough, I just think it is badly written. My guess this is the result of the big rewrite and switching from Daisy to the guardian, but also how the tadpoles impacted rhe story.

The irony is that the same issue, which players complained about Daisy in the EA, remains: the guardian is just as obvious with their insistence to use the tadpole powers.

I fully agree. The game was probably designed around the idea of the player choosing one of the origin characters, Tav feels like an afterthought. But even with an origin character you have the problem of "competing narratives", like you are playing gale and it still would feel like, but the main character is someone else. Guess they were surprised by the numbers they are seeing. And act 3 is a mess, there is no other way of saying it. Act 3 is the equivalent of an unsupervised child in a candy store, too much of everything.

An unsupervised child in a candy store is the perfect way to describe Larian's writing style, not just in act 3 but throughout the game.

I think that from the very beginning the plot is just non-functional, pretty much. I'd say that from the openning cinematic, the plot was broken. If you asked me, to redo the plot from the ground up, the first major change would be to the beginning of the story. Instead of knowing we're tadpoled, we should have started by waking up in some randome settlement with no understanding of how we got there. Maybe being nursed to health by someone, maybe we were found in the wilderness. We could remember who we were, just have a blank space in our memory of how we got to where we were, as well as perhaps a chunk of time before our arrivial. Then act 1 would be exploring the town, doing adventures there and in the surrounding area, actually getting a feeling of being anchored in the setting and having a bit of agency in what's going on. As the story progresses we hear about the cult of the absolute and start having strange moments, hints at our altered abilities due to being tadpoled. We meet a couple of our would-be companions and things develop from there as we eventually discover that we've been tadpoled and what that means. Now instead of knowing we're on a ticking clock right away, it's something we discover later, and that creates a proper sense of escalation, but even then, by the time we discover it, it's been long enough that we know our change is weird and we don't feel quite as much pressure to rush, but we do still feel pressure. But we also aren't entirely aimless because we have the mystery of our lost memories to provide intrigue.

This plot could even still lead us to Moonrise and the shadow-cursed lands. Imagine if the town was far enough from the shadow curse to still be able to thrive, but close enough that stray undead from there were still an occasional problem. Like they had to be careful because they don't go more than a couple of months withouot dealing with some stray undead, and the location of the curse means that trade with Baldur's Gate, a city that could otherwise help them and make them more prosperous, is difficult to the point of generally being impractical. Just like that, the shadow-curse actually feels like something that hs impact on the world, not just a bizarrely isolated thing that's within reasonable travelling distance from a major city yet is entirely unmentioned within the city itself.

True! Without the companion stories, the game would feel empty. I think the main plot could use a lot of work, particularly with the 3 "main villains"... Ketheric is wonderful, but the other two not so much haha, but I blame the timeframe in which they appear too. Act 3 is a mess and where I most often restart my playthrough.

@GreyGhost


Pithy, succinct, perfect. That's it, isn't it?

I really enjoyed Shadowheart's story. And Lae'zel's growth as a character. And Astarian's wit. And the books! And the cats. But the thing I didn't enjoy? The main story. That's just not any good.

@rodeolifant

Brilliant. I literally lol'ed.

@Ido58


Good point, fair point. But there are railroad moments. And every game has them - but it's clear that the authors wrote a story for Gale and modified it for Tav. But the mod didn't work. Sure, Netherese artifacts can only be countered by Netherese artifacts. The Karsite weave can only be brought down by the Karsite weave. It get that. I like that. But what I don't like? Big brains need mind flayers. It seems sloppy. Poorly thought out. A bad use of the lore.

A compare Tav to WotR's commander. The commander also has a show down with the evil entity that has been manipulating her. And she can end the game sacrificing herself, convincing the BBEG to sacrifice herself, to become a god, to become a demon lord, an elder dragon, a living swarm of insects, and angel of vengence or an angel of mercy. The lands can restored, you can travel time and fix everything wrong with the world. You can lead the forces of Heaven in an assault on the Abyss. The worldwound is healed, closed, never existed, it has been expanded.

Those are very different endings. And you still get the cosmetic endings that BG3 advertises - did you romance X. How did that go? Did you kill figure Y? Is the queen alive? Is the happy couple still a happy couple . . .

I know the Larian CEO isn't reading this let's pretend he he is: Swen - can I call you Swen? - your game only has two endings. The interviewer was right, you are wrong.

And as GreyGhost has said there's really no comparing the plot of PoE1 to this one. I really felt like my decisions mattered in that game.

@kanisatha always enjoy reading your comments

@Zentu


Right, the search for a cure is a McGuffin but it's a not successful use of a McGuffin. Who tried to kill Brandon Stark is a fantastic McGuffin that's used well. By the time we find out who tried to kill him we no longer care. But I never stopped caring about the worm in Tav's brain even though the game acted as if I'd given up that line of inquiry.


@Rappeldrache

Agreed (partially). Good point. If we are going to have a mind flayer - and we shouldn't need one - why can't we ask the one who has never lied to us?

The main story is too convoluted. Did we really need the Elder Brain and Balduran? It would have been much more satisfying, if it would have been about getting rid of the three Chosen ones. Make Gortash and Orin more important.
As it is, I run out of steam after doing Auntie Ethel and Raphael, because they are my favourite encounters in act 3. I like the Minsc storyline and the underwater heist and after that, I mostly go through the motions. As a Durge, the Bhaal story is interesting, but everything after is just not my cup of tea anymore. Especially the Balduran reveal is too much.

I see this differently. I do think we need the mind flayers and the brain

I kind of agree, a plot by the Dead Three with the expected backstabbing and subterfuge would have been more than enough for a great storyline. The Chosen of each should have been amazing for boss fights. The additions of the Balduran seems really a bit forced and the Elder Brain the way it is portrayed is just way over the top.

I found the main plot too convoluted on my first play-through and have never been particularly emotionally engaged. Getting the tadpoles out never felt like a real option, so I never even tried too much. Upon replay the main plot feels the weakest along with the Emperor's role. It feels like the game was originally conceived around a Bhaalspawn/Dark Urge protagonist and was later shifted to fit custom Tav too. It doesn't help that Act 3 has way too much going on from small inconsequential quests to saving the world, and it doesn't give enough space for Orin and Gortash to breathe.

I would have cut large parts of the plot with the Netherbrain and the Emperor and added more character moments to Orin/Gortash and the Dead Three.

It would have honestly been a lot better if the Absolute were to turn out to just be a pseudo-deity existing solely from the belief of the cult's hivemind, with the actual prayers and power going right to the Dead Three (whose involvement couldn't have been less subtly foreshadowed from the start, what with the constant references to the Time of Troubles and Jergal and the emphasis on the three Chosen). Get rid of the Emperor too, bringing Daisy back as the manifestation of one's corruption not by the tadpole itself, but by the Netherese shadow magic powering it and used to keep the cult together (and Shar's opposition to them, mostly ignored in the plot as it is now, would make more sense as they are effectively stealing from her power source), and of the Crown (because what makes a great plot if not an arbitrary MacGuffin?).

The Netherbrain honestly rivals the main antagonist of Pathfinder: Kingmaker in terms of pettiness and proneness to tantrums. Plus, the intro implies that the illithids are going out of their way to expose themselves on account of dying out, and yet that isn't reflected in the actual story in any way.

I'm suddenly realizing something else about the story. It doesn't have a main villain, not really. And it makes sense in hindsight. Way back when they first revealed Kethric, they said he was a lieutenant of the main villain, like the other three chosen. And I think that's how they're written

Look at it this way; at the start of the game in act 1, our main enemy is the vague concept of the Absolute and its cult. But then Kethric becomes the main villain for act 2, but the Absolute is still above him. And then the reveal. The absolute is actually a lie, a tool, wielded by the chosen of the dead three to enact their masters plan. But... the dead three never take centre stage, and set 3 has the looming threat of the elder brain, which is the absolute, breaking free, something even the chosen are worried about, so we have to worry about that. And we kill yhe chosen before the end of the game and the final battle is against tbe brain, which is never an active presence in the story. So... who is the main, central antagonist?

Initially the dead three and later the Netherbrain, no?

Yo don't HAVE to kill all of the chosen.

Are they though, structurally? The dead three themselves are just distant entities, not characters we really deal with, beyond having brief exchanges with. We don't get a chance to feel anything towards them as antagonists. The netherbrain isn't really the central antagonist until the very end. Before that it's not a character, it's just a force of nature at best, but it takes focus from the chosen, who should technically be the central antagonists by virtue of being the most active antagonists. But we don't even know who they are until the end of act 2, at which point their big concern is the netherbrain that isn't even a character.

There's no focus, same as every other part of the main plot.

Lots of media have more distant/mysterious antagonists, so for me, it's not the biggest issue, it's that it's not well executed. Even if they are not as present, there should be some incentive for them to feel like antagonists.