Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion Anyone else just doesn't want to play the game past Act 2?

Major spoilers obviously


Act 1 is tremendous. Act 2 is more narrow but just as good in my opinion.
But Act 3 I just lose all drive.

The story just becomes more fragmented and wonky and the plot holes really start.
Ally with Orin. Ally with Gortash.
But careful one option cuts out major stories so really you need to ally with gortash... How do I know this? Because I finished the game already and I know the consequences of the first time I had to resort to reloading things because things weren't explained to me clearly. I am warned somebody is an imposter in my camp but no way to find them, I just have to ignore it until I do the trigger with long rests or the sewers. Which again I know with meta knowledge.
The ending is the false dichotomy between Orpheus and Emperor while I get no chance to make them work together or bring the other Mindflayer i painstakingly saved in Act 3.

Romances just stop.
Banters just stop.
And Minthara who seems always buggy or half finished doesn't have enough for me to really explore, especially since her "romance" is limited to Act 3 which is just bare bones not just for her but everyone.
Act 1 is great with all the flirting and intrigue, Act 2 hints at great things and then Act 3 just rushes it and we wait until the squid question... which feels totally hollow.

And its hollow not because the writing puts me in an impossible decision but because the pieces I have moved together refuse to work together. Its like those cheap dramas where the entire conflict arises because two characters don't have a simple conversation. Its just frustrating.

Act 1 and 2 feels like a story, you got a mystery, coming together of heroes, a lead up to the epic events and a boss fight worthy of a final boss. And then we stumble into Act 3 where the bosses (Orin and Gortash) are pale comparisons to the first boss, Emperor tells us if he stops supporting us we would instantly die but in third act he does abandon us (if you refuse him) and we don't die. It just makes no sense. so the sacrifice makes no sense.


Act 3 I think just needs a little overhaul, move somethings around so it would make more sense, so its more comprehensible and clarified.
I don't care if it needs to be a DLC. Honestly, its just the whole thing feels bad and wrong when compared to what came before...

TDLR It feels as though I am fighting against the game with meta knowledge rather than playing the curated path (with many branches) up to End of act 2.
From Act 1 to end of Act 2 everything felt natural, we went from one thing to another naturally. Having foresight was not necessary to not miss things or feel mislead to feeling false urgency, it felt like having read the book of a movie, I know whats coming but it doesn't ruin my enjoyment of it.
Act 3 feels like its somehow broken and only with my spoiler knowledge that I can correctly navigate. Otherwise I lose things or I am lost. It doesn't help that in Act 3 where there is supposed to be tons and tons of character development and conversation that there are less. Or it feels like its less.
I think Act 3 is great but the rush framing and the ending with the Squid question plot holes just brings everything else down. But there are solutions that don't require a complete rewrite either!

I have potential solutions that wouldn't require a complete Act 3 rewrite, just little tweeks and edits here or there.
Below I will put what suggestion and major annoyance I have:

I do have to agree to an extent with this. I find myself doing restarts quite often after doing the Rivington stuff in Act 3 because I prefer the earlier game.

I have thought about this as well. Act 3 has a lot of things that I want to deal with - all the little things, my companions' quests, breaking & entering - and the urgent thing that I should deal with - the main plot. This discrepancy between joyous meandering and dealing with the main plot could be relatively easily solved if you could destroy Gortash's social image before killing him in the same manner as you can destroy the Steel Watch. All the small things you can find about him or the general corruption in the city would lend themselves well to this. Not just stopping the press but taking it over would be cool. Edith: Or taking the opportunity to actually build Wyll up as a politician if you so desire. Poor Boy needs stuff to do anyway.

It doesn't solve the whole Emperor issue but I'll leave that one for others to discuss.

I would love more banter, especially banter that shows how the companions have grown together as friends. I would also love more of the banter to be included if you play an origin because some things get cut in that case. And cute little camp scenes whether romantic or friendly in nature would also be nice, I loved those in Act 1.

Yes, I have no interest in playing Act 3 at all. Its just so bad.

I've stopped a lot of runs in early Act III, but the new epilogue does provide some motivation to keep going and see "alternate" endings.

Yeah, I made an entire post about how dumb your choice when siding with Orpheus or The Emperor is.

For such an open game, having such a hard ultimatum feels extremely railroady. I mean even with the more limited alliances with either Gortash or Orin, there is at least some flexibility there.

Thats what Youtube is for. I rather complete my list of WotR mythics than finishing BG3.

Act 3 can be exhausting.

And if you already know how it goes, it's just... do the things you want to do, suffer through the rest and the final fights, see the epilogue.

Agreed. I'm on my 3rd replay - which does speak well of a game - but the deficits of act three are screaming at me right now.

I obviously ally with Gortash since failing to do so means that the steel watchers will attack.

And then I do the iron throne and foundry because I don't Wyll's dad or die or for Wyll's soul to be dammed. (but he just becomes the Blade of Avernus anyway and his Dad assumes he took the deal - neither of which makes any sense)

And then because I need to either just put Orin's captive out of my mind or rush to the temple and pass a persuasion check if I want to finish the side quests. And the 'meta' of that ruins any immersion.

A few days ago I started playing act 3 in earnest after 500+ hours of playing the game. I’ve been avoiding act 3 because I heard that the endings were really underdeveloped and bad, but now I’m feeling more motivated since they added an epilogue.

And I will say, there are some things that make act 3 harder to grapple with than the other two. It’s a huge sandbox with not much of a sense of direction. You have this massive sense of urgency, but also a bunch of side quests scattered around, and some of the best clothing, equipment, and generally cool stuff that you’ve seen through the whole game. So it seems like it wants you to rush to the end, yet there’s all kinds of things to incentivize you to not do that. So that’s been confusing.

The companion reactivity is also not good, as I’ve heard.
And maybe this sounds dumb, but it also lessens my enjoyment that the leveling stops at 12. Like, I believe in adventuring for adventuring’s sake, sure, but it does feel kind of weird to be getting huge amounts of experience when I already hit level 12 like 30,000 experience ago.

Edit: I also agree that act 3 is wildly underdeveloped in terms of party banter and camp scenes. It needs work.

I have my grievances with act 3, but there is a lot, I like, too. I mean House of Hope is great, Ethel is great, the underwater prison quest I like, Jaheiras quest to get Minsc (and having Jaheira as a companion) - stuff like that.

Don't rush. Florrick's thing is the only one that has a timer, from my own experience.

Absolutely, there are some really great sections in Act 3 the main problem is the framing around Orin/Gortash and Emperor/Orpheus which creates this confused narrative and pacing which then leads us to an ending that feels incredibly nonsensical and railroaded.
I think if this is fixed then it would make all the other things just much better because its not... as rushed and confused as before.

I edited my post but basically my point is that we need a path.

We confront Gortash at the Wrym's crossing. He sets us up against Orin whom kidnaps our romantic interest, Gortash can perhaps take Ketheric's Netherese Crystal in exchange to help us and while he has two crystals maintaining control over the brain (which makes way more sense) we go for Orin.
Like maybe we enter through the sewers rather than the front gate and are motivated to get our loved one back asap. If we are the DU we get even more reveals, we have an extra romance moment with our loved interest when we save them and then we can explore the city.

Gortash will not be at Wrym's cross but the upper city. Maybe a palace area for a big boss confrontation. Since he has both crystals and is in control of the brain (at least we think) it gives us a chance to deal with other people's problems while Gortash has made it clear to us that we can perhaps join him. He can't control all three crystals and needs a partner. Again with DU this has even more added benefit!

I think this makes more sense and is more thematic than just throwing us into the city and telling us we have different things we need to rush or its GG but really its not.


Thats the issue though, its not the story but meta knowledge that is dictating. It totally breaks immersion... its like I am exploiting the game rather than following the story that the Dungeon Master is trying to tell.

I like Act 3, but I agree it is long and unfocused. On one hand we're supposed to be on an urgent mission to kill the Netherbrain, but hey, here's a circus and a haunted house. NOT having that content would make Act 3 (and the game) too short. So it's a catch 22.

But Act 3 is major for Dark Urge runs.

I mostly keep restarting because I want to try a different class or subclass, and leveling them up is part of the experience. I just feel too powerful by Act 3.

Act 2 is by far my favorite.

Much agreed, especially on my second playthrough.

When I first started the game, I thought that the choice to use the tadpoles or not was going to be a big deal. I chose to abstain on my first go because it's what my character would do, and then started a whole second playthrough based on the idea that I was going to gobble every tadpole. I was also vaguely aware of some of the companion ending choices and was looking forward to mixing it up, even if I knew I wasn't going to be here for a fully "evil" run. (e.g. I was basically planning to go "Team Power-hungry" and get ascended Astarion, god Gale, maybe make a different choice regarding Wyll's pact, Shadowheart's parents, etc.)

But then it just felt like some things didn't matter as much as I thought. I could also rant about Orpheus vs Emperor for a while and how weightless and forced it seems. (I spent so long in my first playthrough assuming he was going to try to force me to be a mindflayer, or finally reveal his plans to take over the brain, and that would be the moment my first character finally had to oppose him... But no. He's chill. Almost all of his threats and rants are hollow, and he was never going to double-cross you in the end.) And despite the Emperor's insistence that Orpheus would never work with a mindflayer... that is literally the exact thing Orpheus has to do and he knows it. I feel like a simple conversation could have sorted this out, even if they both spent the finale glaring at each other.

Now, that's not to say I had an entirely bad time with it. On a single playthrough, there were things I loved. Jaheira's quest, for one. I think her Act 3 quest might be one of my favorite storylines in the game, but I may also be a bit nostalgic since I've known her since BG1. I admit to also having a fun time when doing the Open Hand temple murder mystery, although I was rather disappointed when the Duke Stelmane murder was just "Yeah, her name was on a murder cult list. Case closed." I was hoping to uncover something a bit deeper than that when this thread began.

And same feelings about the imposter in camp. I was so ready to quiz my companions and watch for signs of an imposter. I even had some weird questions forming in the back of my mind like "If Orin pretends to be Astarion, will she have a reflection?" and the kind of nonsense that might come up in an actual tabletop game if you were trying to suss out a shapeshifter. I was very disappointed to learn there was no option to be proactive at all.

I feel like Act 2 was also a little bit too narrow. I'd love to see a bit more going on with the town of Reithwin, in particular, where it feels like we have some interesting, quirky miniboss NPCs... and hardly any reason to even cross paths with them. Or perhaps something else going on with the devil characters, Raphael and Mizora, who are in this act but have very little going on. Just, something. Something with a similar feeling to having the githyanki creche that Lae'zel was determined to reach in Act 1, but for a different companion / faction, perhaps.

There are a bunch of little things I'm sure they can clean up that would help smooth out the experience, but I hope it's not too late for them to make some larger changes, too. I personally think Wyll's Act2-3 quests could use a revamp, and while pockets of Act 3 stuff are good, I'd really like to see some sprucing up of basically all the core plots with Gortash, Orin, and the Emperor.

Ye I completely agree with that. I never felt immersion in Act 3 apart from during individual quests (Cazador or Orin as Durge). But at least the meta knowledge lets you do whatever you want without being worried about failing a quest.

Yep, here.

Amidst a flurry of restarts and abandoned playthroughs, I've reached Act 3 twice and lost interest both times. As much as I can engage with the early companion development and various side quests in Act 1 and to a lesser extent Act 2, the writing and plot reveals that open Act 3 just switch me off.

It doesn't help that Act 3 also has a loaded junk drawer of side quests and content that can feel irrelevant or out of place.

About kidnapping the romantic interest: I agree from a story point of view, but from a gameplay point of view it would be such a major annoyance. I am not sure, if I am in the minority hear, the LI is the secondary character, the one who never leaves the group. They are the one who has all the necessary things we need but that would clutter my poor little STR 8 inventory too much. While I tend to build my groups without building up one character as the big hero, the LI and my Avatar work best together because they are simply always there, they also split the perma buffs between them. The emotional and practical turmoil of the Cazador battle is kind of enough for me in this regard, because when Astarion was taken away, it wasn't just the LI, it was also the best friend, partner in crime and battle companion who was gone - and the one I'd usually send over the whole platform to get someone out of a trap.

From a purely game play perspective I am also disappointed that Act 3 doesn't continue the fun item sets from Act 1 and 2 that you can base a whole play style on. I really like those and I think that Act 3 only continues to the +Heat style of them.

I agree with this, I like those side quests but you either rush like mad to complete those or Mizorra shows up so the problem isn't those side quests it that you can only solve them by being indifferent to the fate of either Wyll's Dad or the capture victim.

And I don't really enjoy losing Wyll's soul ( it's also stupid that you can't say "we'll just wait 6 months thanks, bye")

I had a potion of angelic slumber and a spellcrux amulet so my wizard was able to complete everything nearly everything before Mizorra showed up but I was put in a place of either abandoning immersion or feeling rushed.

The last interview suggested that Larian isn't making a definitive edition - but the game needs one.

The first time i did a playthrough with only bard Durge and Astarion, I gave him Durge's cloak and the best daggers, and forgot to take them away before Cazador. That RP moment when you realize that the guy who always saves your ass is now in need of saving himself.