Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Narrative completely broken, game is an unplayable mess. My experience as a new player.

I'd post this in technical problems but it seems like it's not just bugs, rather, questionable writing and game design. Let me explain.
The narrative is railroaded while the gameplay isnt.

After landing on the beach, you're free to go wherever you want... Except that if you don't go where the developers want you to (which is anyone's guess) the entire narrative of the game will COMPLETELY break. Im talking characters mentioning things that literally haven't happened yet. Or possessing knowledge they shouldn't have.
Sorry but i literally cannot play the game in these conditions. It feels like the story is AI generated because everyone is talking non-sense.
And no, im not skipping dialogues or cutscenes.

I will make a summary of my 10 hours of gameplay that completely broke my immersion to the point where i just gave up. It's gonna be a wall of text so im sorry.
Also, this is my experience on a completely blind playthrough, haven't even watched the trailers.

Summary:
So i go through the tutorial and wake up on the beach and whatnot. See Shadowheart. I wake her up without trying to inspect her artifact while she was asleep cause i thought it was rude to go through her personal belongings while she's unconscious, Especially as im playing a paladin. She doesn't really talk about it. Whatever, must be something related to her character that she will open up about eventually, since she's seen carrying that artifact on official art. You can literally see it on the banner on the top of this page.
We talk about the parasite and how we're in a race against time, but first and foremost we have to figure out where the hell we are and find a healer. Okay, seems reasonable. We just landed somewhere after being abducted in some aliencraft and going through portals between several planes of existance. In her own words "it's anyone's guess where we are". Again, it is also heavily emphasized that time is of the essence. Does the game reflect any of this? Nope.

The first living beings i meet are the looters on top of that building a bit ahead. What dialogue options do you get?
Asking where we are? Where the nearest settlement is? If they saw what happened with the huge aliencraft that just crashed nearby? Nope.
Your character only has the options to say "Nah, the loot is mine" and fight them over it, or persuade them into going away. Not a single reasonable option like "Listen, i don't care about this building, it's all yours, i just wanted to ask some questions" Priorities?

I then meet Astarion and Gale. The former pulls a blade on me. Not exactly a great first impression. But for some reason im forced to lick his boots instead of having the option of attacking him. Ugh. I just don't let him join the party and that's that.
I then meet Lae'zel. Her captors say Nettie could help us. While she says she knows a githianky cure. Great, something to work with. We have two leads.
We stumble upon the grove entrance where some people are being attacked, and we make it inside. I explore a bit, and find a secret cave. There's this unconscious gnome druid that i rescue. Him and my character start talking about Halsin being missing. And by that i mean they act like my character already has knowledge of who that is supposed to be. UH??? What the hell game? This after a bug where he wouldn't even talk to me and i had to redo the fight. Greeeeat.

Anyway, we talk to some random npcs and Baldur's Gate is mentioned, you as the player can infer you're at least in your planet/plane of origin, specifically the sword coast. This doesn't seem of any relevance to any of the characters though, who just earlier were wondering where the hell they ended up. Well, let's go see this healer Nettie. We get into a conversation with Khaga first, and finally learn who Halsin is. Now the healer seems kind of suspicious. Asks me to promise i would kill myself if any symptoms showed up. No thanks. She turns aggressive and i have to kill her. Go through her notes to see if there's anything useful about our condition, and get some quest markers about Halsin in the goblin camp. But first i better get the hell out before they see Nettie's body and the whole town aggros me. I also inform the thiefling parents that their child is dead, so maybe they're gonna cause some commotion while i book it.

Anyway, these druids seem like they won't be of any help. So fuck them. we're going with Lae'zels lead.

On our way there we find some statue that seems to upset Shadowheart. Turns out she's a priestess of shar, which doesn't go really well with my oath of vengeance paladin. Lacking the option to kill her, i just inform her that this is where we part ways. Except she doesn't really leave my group, she just waits goes back to camp. What? But alright. We circle over the goblin camp, and find the Githyiankis. They're after some weapon. Lae'zel lies a bit, and afterwards she says they're after our artifact??? WHAT??? What artifact? WHAT ARE YOU PEOPLE TALKING ABOUT?!

We cross the bridge west and our characters fall to the ground and have some vision about three shrouded figures. An artifact, just like the one Shadowheart had appears in front of us. My character takes it. It's bound to me apparently. I proceed and we're brought to camp. I go talk to Shadowheart. She tells me that the githyianki want the artifact. Specifically, says this:

"That thing is shielding us somehow. I don't want to know what would happen if we lost it." ????????????????????????????????

Now my replies are even more puzzling.

"There must be more to the artifact. You were sent to take it, you must know why it's so important."
"The artifact is shielding us, but ultimately, you wish to give it away?"

She was sent to take it??? WHAT? I NEVER EVEN SPOKE TO HER. How does my character know all that??? And it's shielding us??? Since when?
Everyone talking about stuff that im not supposed to know. I reload and this time instead of talking to her, i just attack her since she must be bugged and my original intent was never having anything to do with her anyway. She doesn't even fight back and dies. Gale and Lae'zel dont react at all, like i just casually killed a mosquito and not one of our companions. Cue cutscene where the artifact goes from Shadowheart's body to mine. Even though i already had it after the bridge cutscene. My companions go: "it seems like the artifact has found a new owner." They're not even supposed to know of its existance.

Literally what the hell am i supposed to do at this point? This game is unplayable. It's a role playing game where you can't roleplay because going where you're not meant to go just breaks the game. There is right and wrong dialogue options, except we're not talking morality, but the game working as intended.
Im so disappointed. I didn't even mention some of the nonsensical dialogues from minor characters, or the horrendous gameplay bugs.
If it was just that, i could've handled it. But when the entire story doesn't make sense, on top of the gameplay being a buggy mess? Sorry.

I also basically skipped over most of Act 1's content, because again, the game acts as if you're gonna die soon. So it would be silly from a roleplaying perspective to worry about random secondary quests. I thought the group would soon learn that they're immune to the parasite or whatever, maybe after speaking to Nettie, and from there i would be free to go do what i want or pursue the main quest.
Any attempt at immersion is basically impossible.

I don't even wanna know how buggy it gets in the later acts.
So dear Larian, either railroad the players, or account for the fact that they may not go where you intended and in the order you thought, speaking to x people and picking y dialogue options.

This game is best enjoyed if you don't take everything too literally. Most RPGs seem to pull this "you need to hurry, doom is upon us!" shtick, but it is always fake. You are better off exploring everything, otherwise you will end up under-leveled and under-equipped.

The writing around the artifact is indeed quite messy.

I think that the main issue is the false sense of urgency to begin with. Because if you take a couple of long rests before you get to the Grove, you’ll get comments from your companions about how the transformation isn’t proceeding like it normally does. And that’s when you start to get the sense that maybe something is different with you. But that relies on you taking two or (better) three long rests before the Grove. You have to long rest pretty frequently to see the content that makes the game makes sense. But the false sense of urgency discourages long rests. If I were you, I would just start the game again and take long rests more frequently. That should help make the story make sense.

Also, don’t skip over almost all of act one content, because yeah, if you don’t do the content, the story won’t make sense. Like I said, the problem is the false sense of urgency that would inspire someone to do that.

Im gonna try again with a new character. but it sucks that my first blind experience was this bad, since you only get one of it. Im already gonna know the consequence of most actions and everything i do will be biased. i remember i had similar issues with another larian game, divinity original sin. game was very overwhelming, while having underwhelming explanations and tutorials...
anyway you basically have to play the game first, make terrible mistakes, and then start over fresh with a new character with your new knowledge. clearly the game fails at guiding the player into getting started appropriately. which is sad and i hope it will be fixed. they really should focus on this instead of making new origins or whatever.

From what I've gathered reading these forums, it appears that the storylines make more sense and are potentially more engaging if you chose certain origin characters and are able to loosely follow Larian's intended path for you.

Now, there will be people who claim that these things do not matter -- but as you've already observed, the writing and coordination of events and dialogue can unravel if you go too far outside the lines.

One bit of caution, though, and this was just my experience: When I started out, I thought "The combat is horrid, but I'm interested in seeing where these characters go and what the main plot reveals itself to be." Once I got those answers, I realized that the worst part of BG3 - for me, at least - was the writing.

Your experience may be drastically better, of course -- just a warning that if you don't like what you've seen so far I would wonder if you're going to love what comes later. Hopefully, it works for you. Good luck!

The Dark Urge origin definitely makes the storyline more engaging.

But not better. It actually introduces even more inconsistencies.

If you long rest often enough, you would learn all there is about your condition by mid Act 1. You are on a time limit, but the night you're supposed to transform into a mind flayer, something else happens.

You will not long rest that often unless you do side quests/the underdark, though. End of act 1 is more realistic. Had you continued playing, the githyanki lead would have lead to nothing and you'd be back to Halsin. There is about a 10% chance for battlemaster Lae'Zel to pass the deception check and not be slaughtered by the Githyanki patrol at level 2-3. if you do pass it and enter the Creche, you would learn everything about the artefact.

In truth, the early gameplay is mostly railroaded as well. Picking the wrong enemies will not let inexperienced players survive. You also did definitely skip over dialogue as the game very specifically introduces you are shielded by the artefact when you meet the three shrouded figures (who try to mind control you right then and there), yet you've forgotten/never learned this??

"We cross the bridge west and our characters fall to the ground and have some vision about three shrouded figures. An artifact, just like the one Shadowheart had appears in front of us. My character takes it. It's bound to me apparently. I proceed and we're brought to camp. I go talk to Shadowheart. She tells me that the githyianki want the artifact. Specifically, says this:

"That thing is shielding us somehow. I don't want to know what would happen if we lost it." ????????????????????????????????

Now my replies are even more puzzling.

"There must be more to the artifact. You were sent to take it, you must know why it's so important."
"The artifact is shielding us, but ultimately, you wish to give it away?"

She was sent to take it??? WHAT? I NEVER EVEN SPOKE TO HER. How does my character know all that??? And it's shielding us??? Since when?"

I also made the mistake of not Long Rest-ing enough early on.

As an RPG veteran with strong completionist "Avoid the main quest and do everything else first" tendencies, I didn't have as many problems of missing major information... But I also took the "This parasite will kill in in a matter of days" situation to mean that Long Rests were a countdown to death -- similar to Pathfinder:WotR having some early game timed events based on resting too much. Plus, I just wasn't really getting in that many combats in between story beats, so I didn't feel the need to rest to replenish resources. Thus, my first playthrough missed a number of the early camp cutscenes. To say nothing of how I managed to accidentally dodge my way past every companion recruitment point except Shadowheart, until I finally got several encounters deep and was like "I feel like I should have more party members by now" and had to try harder to find the others.

I feel like with this genre of RPG, you do have to be a little bit lenient with not taking "Time is of the essence!" things too literally, and knowing that the game has a vaguely intended path for you that straying too far from will break. But I do also agree that it's a bit too easy to break some of BG3's sequencing by mistake. I feel like there were times that characters acted like they had told me things in previous conversations that must have been down other dialogue paths, or something, because I certainly didn't remember learning it.

The Long Rest / Camp Event system is interesting, but I definitely feel like it does strange things to the pacing of playing the game. I missed so many early events because I didn't know they'd be waiting for me, and then I spent the rest of the game trying to guess what narrative events were "worthy" of triggering some kind of event back at camp, eventually leading to me just Long Resting far more than I actually needed purely to check if anything would happen. It'd be a minor QoL improvement if the game would just tell you when one was waiting, but that doesn't remove the awkwardness it can create to the flow of the adventure.

This is explained by the prism protecting the player. This is revealed a little later on when the player reaches the Goblin camp, however the player can discover more about this through clever dialogue. Such as meeting Auntie Ethel at her house and discovering that the tadpole has been tampered with and cannot be magically removed. This is also a setup for several story beats. Such as the part where Lae'zel suggests suicide to avoid transforming into a Mind Flayer.
The character talks to several criminals who directly threaten the player with drawn weapons. This is a very common trope in rpgs and feels like nitpicking. Especially since the grove is right next to where they are.
The game lets you attack any npc in the game so this is also a moot point. The player can just murder Astarion as soon as you meet him. This is also an exceptionally rare circumstance in rpgs, especially with party members. So this also feels like nitpicking.
The city of Baldur's Gate is flown over by the Nauteloid, additionally Astarion mentions he was in Baldur's Gate when you first speak to him. You can also see several other locations like Avernus which matters more when the player meets Karlach.
They're after the prism Shadowheart is holding. It's stated to be an artifact if you talk to Shadowheart and gain her trust. She says she stole it from the Githyanki.
The protagonist logically infers that Shadowheart was sent to take the artifact and that the Githyanki want it. The artifact causes the visions of the Absolute to go away. That is what the protagonist is referring to when they say it's "shielding" us. It's logical inference.
A lot of this feels like nitpicking and not picking up on things to be entirely honest. Especially in the context of your next statement.
If the player goes to camp they point out they should have changed into Mind Flayers already so something weird is occurring. Additionally if the player goes to the grove and talks to Auntie Ethel, she claims to know how to cure it. If you follow that questline she also reinforces this. The idea of a ticking clock before catastrophe is also a very recurring trope in rpgs but it's rarely actually literal outside of games like Fallout 1. The player is never told outright "you have xx number of days" you're always told a vague "this should have happened by now".

It makes me wonder if you went to camp and ever long rested as the characters in camp discuss this information at length and the player eventually visits their guardian in a dream who also says the same thing.
This reinforces what I mentioned before. Demanding that Larian spoonfeed you information more would end up making the game feel insufferably linear at the start. When one of the best aspects of BG3 is replayability. Like I said earlier you don't even have to pick up any of the party members your given. You don't even need to actually visit the grove after the initial fight infront of it. You can completely skip almost all of the content in Act 1 if you know what you're doing.

this happened AFTER i spoke to the githyiankis and lied to them about the artifact though, when:
1)My other companions shouldn't even know Shadowheart had such an artifact
2)It was in her possession and she wasn't with us
3)Nothing ever happened with it, much less something suggesting it was protecting us
4)i had literally no reason to lie?

realistically they should have just went "oh you're looking for an artifact? damn that sucks. good luck." They literally lacked the information to react the way they did.

What part of this would lead my party to get anxious and lie about an artifact that isn't in their possession, they don't know the existance of (aside from my main character taking a quick look at it on the beach, MIND YOU, i didn't even examine it cause i chose to woke up Shadowheart), and has never served them any purpose?
Also from that cutscene at the bridge, it didn't actually look like the artifact was protecting me, if anything giving me visions or something.

yeah, except the game and characters basically don't even acknowledge this properly, as seen from my attempt at killing shadowheart. So killing people outside of scripted dialogues just breaks immersion and feels cheesy. It's pretty much like they died in combat to a random goblin.

Okay. thank you for the spoilers. Except the game should have told me, not some guy in an online forum. I did NOT gain shadowheart's trust. I did NOT learn any of what you said. So why is my character telling Shadowheart "you were sent to take this, it's your mission" ????
keyword *IF* you talk to Shadowheart. which i didnt. i literally dont know the point you're trying to make here pal.

Maybe you missed the part that i never had any plot point related to the artifact at all. the only thing related to the artifact in my game, was me seeing it in the beach in shadowheart's hand.
Never had a dialogue about it.
Never had a "vision".
Never had a cutscene.
Please tell me what is there to infere? unless by inference you mean tarot reading.

Pretty much all you're telling me is "well it makes sense because had you done so and so, you would have find out this information." Okay but i didnt. so?
It's normal that the game just takes for granted that i did? Maybe it assumes i get spoiled half of act 1 on the larian forums?

This has been an issue ever since the EA, and Larian ignored feedback on it. Since so much of the plot hinges on the artifact, it would make sense for the player to receive it immediately on the ship, by finding it. Unfortunately Larian has been weirdly insisting on Shadowheart carrying the box around. So the prism gains a teleporting mechanics (if you never recruit her, it will eventually show up in your inventory with zero explanation), and also apparently can work withing rather large range, as you can adventure for a quite soem time without it.

Imo the main story is badly written (there are other plot inconsistencies as you progress) and I don't think it can be fixed at this point, as it would require an extensive rewrite. So I just focus on the parts of the game I've found fun: exploration and adventuring with the companions I like.

This is exactly why I think you skipped a lot of scenes and deny it, because there is just no way to get that impression. It explicitly tells you the artefact is the only reason you are protected by the absolute's mind control. I get not seeing the "shielded" condition next to your icon, but being completely clueless? No way.

I'm literally playing with someone in chemo who forgets half of everything and skips 50% of scenes and *she* understood the role of the artefact then and there. This game has major pacing issues, but it's literally impossible to genuinely miss this much information.

In fact, the *only* way to come to the absolutely wild conclusion that the artefact gives the player *visions* is to see the figures, skip and behold the artefact suddenly close to the player. This is as good as a direct admission.

There is an argument to be made that allowing a player to skip this scene is idiotic, as is being able to fool the Githyanki and most companion reactivity. Even so, I really can't believe you on the point of the bridge scene being ambiguous. This is more fishy than the Pacific Ocean.

(By the way: Astarion absolutely does acknowledge being attacked and will try to kill you, as will literally any NPC not in your camp. The people in your group don't because it's quite easy to annihalte them through friendly fire. It's a limitation of the engine).

Well Most of the Stuff that i always felt Weird in the Tale of this Game its that they never actually Planned for us to Play as Durge/Tav
Thats i beleave was something they add later becouse a Bunch of Players dont Play RPG games when they cant create there characters..
Its like a No GO for a Bunch of Players this..
(BTW thats why they dont Have a Tent Get it ?! becouse they were not Planned from the start.)

Thats why i always felt its Incomplete and Rushed and left a Bunch of things Open/unexplained that well..
if they Stick there Guns to the Only Important Characters without increasing the Rooster of companions with a Bunch of Useless characters..
This game would have been Better and would Have a More Rounded Tale.
Like for Real..
They just Need 5 companions not 10 jesus..
Thats why a Bunch of then has Stupid Quests and Tales..
Becouse they were left behind or add too closer to the game lounch
And know they Broke the Game evry time they Try to fix those characters.. funny thing.
(im looking at Yu Karlack, Wyll, Halsin. haha)

so, i just restarted the game and i talked with shadowheart. im trying to build a relationship with her this time.
she didn't really open up other than saying she needs to meet someone in baldurs gate, yet the journal says she told me she has a mission from her goddess.
clearly something is wrong with her flags, at the very least. how was something this basic not caught on?

Flags and sequences *still* break all the time, so it's hard to say if this is old or new behaviour. Problems range between NPCs not talking anymore to dialogue options missing.

In some cases, it's obvious because there's something wrong with the journal immediately. In others, you'll find out in 40+ hours time. Most infamously, some people end up unable to recruit a certain companion

Maybe the recent patches & hotfixes broke something. I've experienced some dialogue weirdness on my dark urge playthrough, and while I didn't pay it too much attention, because I already know the story, it indeed looks like some camp scenes were triggering too fast. Example (spoilers because OP might not have played this part yet) Obviously it made no sense this way, since there was no build up leading to this scene.

This happened on the incredibly buggy playthrough I'm helping with as well, though not on mine. It also triggered the transformation night early. Additionally, the owl bear cub sequence is completely broken. I was never able to recruit it. Still chewing on the corpse 20 long rests later.