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?

That would be a dream. I feel like a lot of the (Wizard) options were written with Gale in mind and it's hilarious, that they rarely make the situation any better. But what I would more generally like from the Origins is that the environment reacts to the important points of their plot. In Gale's case they did a good job in incorporating his moral dilemma, while the narration tells you what Mystra might want, Astarion presents other options to you. On the other hand they constantly forget Gale's orb. In Astarion's case it is insanely easy to skip his original content and the narration rarely gives you any food for thought either, which is also very unsatisfying.

The results of not commiting to either fleshing the origin system out so that it's actually impactful or making the custom characters actually in any way customizable so that they don't feel like a blank slate with no unique interactions with the world are speaking for themselves...

Not to sound melodramatic, but this is a real concern for me. When I 'buy in' to an RPG, I want to be in world as my character -- not someone else's. As you say, truly custom characters do seem to be lacking when compared to the origin characters. And from what I've read on these forums, some plot lines and NPCs don't truly light up until you play as an origin - Durge, in particular - and that feels like a real problem to me.

(Oh, and I still haven't finished Act 3. Probably never will at this rate.)

I just play Durge. Can’t play Tav anymore due to loss of content. Like you said, it feels empty. I suppose the player needs to think of a backstory and interject that for themselves. A valid way to play. But I definitely enjoy Durge more. Good Durge’s ending, for me, was super underwhelming though, which doesn’t make me feel excited to play through it again. I would say that it’s the most underwhelming thing about act 3, to me.

The story-wise essential difference between Act 1-2 and Act 3 is that the story is very linear from Act 1 to 2.

The story in Act 1-2 is essentially like this: you have a logical goal (survive the tadpole infection, understand as "get rid of that thing in my head"). You soon find out the goal is bound to a location called the Baldur's Gate. While there are more than several bridges you may cross, you know where is your destination. Your only decisions to make is which bridges to cross to get to there.

The story in Act 3 is significantly different: You only have a logical goal, but you don't know where to go. Surely, you still have the same logical goal, but the goal is now no longer bound to any specific destination that you know for sure. You feel lost at which bridge or bridges to cross, while there is always a force to push to move forward to cross your next bridge.

From Act 1 to 2, the game holds your hand and meticulously guides you in getting you set on the "right" path to the Baldur's Gate.

Once you have reached Act 3, especially the Lower City, the game won't hold your hand any more. You have to discover your own destiny. Even your goal is only literally the same - its actual meaning has shifted, especially after you have discovered you do NOT have to rid yourself of this infection - it's now understood as "do I have to get rid of that thing in my head or use it for my own benefit?").

Act 3 may have a lot of bugs (loose ends are hard to close after every major change). But it is not nearly as bad as it is occasionally phrased by certain posts online. Without the non-linear nature of Act 3 or the end-game, how may we get up to reportedly 17,000 different endings?




In short:

I like the linear nature of Act 1-2, both in term of story and in terms of adventure.
I like the non-linear nature of Act 3, which means I just have to make own choices then.

I think the "complaints" here are essentially due to some players preferring a more linear story and/or a more guided gameplay.

You still believe the 17000 endings nonsense?

Act 3 is just bad. The non-linearity is implemented in a very bad way and does not fit the narrative at all as now with the threat exposed and the clock (seemingly but not really) ticking is exactly not the time to start with completely unrelated side quests to chase pidgeons.

And in fact, some parts of the railroad get worse in act 3 (Emperor, Orpheus, ...) because of the constant rewrites Larian did and each time made the story more nonsensical and worse.

The complains are because players prefer quality which act 3 does not have.

You have the "gather your allies" quest. Only it is not clear what this means until you have completed a game once. Then you realize how the side quests help to get a group of allies to help you in the endgame.
There could be some more hints to the purpose of this quest. Or maybe they are there and I just missed them.

I'd just like to make 2 points:

1) All complaints can be said to be "because players prefer quality..." Even bug reports are. Even those who hate/leave certain games are. So, a statement so generic and universal does not mean much.

In this specific case, the overall complaint is really about the "you do as you are instructed" type of linearity vs. the "no one holds your hand and you feel lost" type of non-linearity.

2) "Up to reported 17,000 endings" is a fact. Not necessarily my belief or personal opinion.

Of course I agree a lot of things can still be improved. I have been running into such things almost all the time. I just don't think Act 3 is as bad as some have made it appear to be.

I agree. I haven't completed Act 3 yet, but :

After Act 1 & 2, my first impression was that Act 3 is a bit overwhelming and confusing.

But having spent quite a bit of time there now, I kind of appreciate that it is not so linear (I mean I really dont want this game to end forever).
So for me Act 3 has become an endeavor to put the finishing touches on all party members in terms of gear you can find to bolster their abilities, before I go taking on any final end game scenes.

Act 3 once you start doing that, I think extends the life of the game. So much to do and find. Still want more though, as I feel I am close to the end and do not want that to happen . No doubt I will be starting a new play through when it does happen.

Here's hoping for some large DLCs when Larian have put the finishing polish on the main game, and higher levels for characters than 12.

I do feel though that there are a lot of ways to screw the pooch in Act 3, take a wrong decision and thats a few people you could befriend thrown out of the window. For example I went straight past the Gortash Audience chamber, and decided I wanted to see more first before I go meeting a potential end game boss and his manipulations .. I then met some people who gave me a bomb for the steelworks, and decided yeah blowing that all up would be a good idea and limit Gortash influence around the place, well quite a few side quests I could have taken then got wiped off my journal as completed / dead. Sigh. FOMO looms large in Act 3.

I agree with you but I think the problem with Gortash, Orin and the Emperor/Orpheus is something that poisons the non-linear aspect of act 3.
Because they TELL you to take care of something or deny its possibility but you know for a fact thats its not true. So you have to ignore them and what the game story is telling you until you get around to it.


Its odd that Gortash is revealing all his evil plans in a room full of people right before his coronation.
He should explain his plans while you are in a private setting and then take you to the coronation and THEN relocate himself to a proper throne room where he and his minions can face you as a final boss instead of a small office.

We should be able to find out who the imposter is immediately or at least have a chance to. Its odd that the rescue mission could be put off for several long rests, There should be a time limit or a linear way of dealing with the situation of the captive until we confront Orin properly.

You can't just put urgency in the story and then not respect it. Either it is urgent or it isn't!
As for Emperor and Orpheus, its very rail roaded, we are lied to that Orpheus would kill us or without the emperor for even a second we would die.

If that were true the moment we tell Emperor that we intend to free Orpheus, he should have turned us into mindflayers and joined the absolute... rather than let us live long enough for Orpheus to be freed.

Something is not working with these three, we need an editor to correct some of the events and contexts so that we may explore the city in peace at our own time rather than meta knowledge our way into ignoring things until we are ready.

There may or may not be pacing issues with quests in Act 3. I quite like the things I can do in Act 3 but it is still a disappointing and depressing act in my experience.

Act 3 is disappointing and depressing because your companions are for the most part, especially compared to the masterpiece that is act 1, unresponsive to some heavy personal events that happen. You get one line or one scene in reaction to things.

Act 1 is full of you and your companions bonding over not turning into mindflayers, yet. In Act 3 everyone just seems cold, with nothing or very little to say to major personal events.

Act 3 is not a bad act, but it feels unfinished. If Act 1 wasn't so good, maybe the unfinished aspect could be hidden. I just hope more patches are released that flesh out Act 3, because it desperately needs it. At this point, Act 3 is just depressing and lonely.

All of the former criticisms I’ve made here are still valid, in my mind. Lack of companion reactivity, lack of camp scenes in Act 3, and lackluster endings to Durge and companion quests are all massive issues.

However, I will say that I am enjoying Act 3 a little bit more now that I’m playing it more slowly and exploring the finer details. The unfortunate thing is, everyone is practically screaming at you to hurry up and get to the main quest. So that you can’t relax and enjoy exploring. It’s a false sense of urgency. The same false sense of urgency that takes the lead in act 1.

I started enjoying act 1 a lot more, too, when I started playing it more slowly. The false sense of urgency and hurry doesn’t feel fun, especially when it runs counter to the fact that going more slowly turns up so much more detail in Act 1 in particular. They make it so counterintuitive to slow down, but that’s the way to fully enjoy the game.

Hello there. I'm out of my deep cave, once in a decade... I finished my first run yesterday, and I found myself pretty annoyed/downed in the end. As I roamed here, I found some articulate feedback that touched on what I also feel. But what stung the most was the last "choice", given how I approached the playthrough.

You not alone in this

The story just kinda falls apart in Act 3 because the main antagonist (Elder Brain) is completely missing, you already killed the only antagonist with character depth, gravitas and motivation (Ketheric) and since it's heavily focused on non-linear side content, almost everything you do effectively undermines the urgency of the story in a way that just doesn't make any sense. On top of that, the characters that do play a bigger role are either boring and poorly characterised (Gortash, Orin) or, to put it mildly, very hit or miss (the Emperor).

The ultimate resolution of the plot is also just bad. I knew that we couldn't expect Larian to deliver a story that could live up to RPGs like Dragon Age Origins but it was still disappointing to see that for all of their different "branches" and lovingly crafted companion stories, the game just utterly fails to culminate in anything that is even greater remotely than the sum of its parts (if anything, the inverse is true).

I agree, not a fan of the elder brain as the antagonist. It's just not an interesting character in the same way ketheric is, or even compared to orin and gortash. At least they have motivations and some character complexity. The brain is just one dimensional evil.

The finale combat sequence of act 2 was also more epic than the finale of act 3, which was a real letdown.

act 3 has lots of interesting quests individually so here's to hoping there will be a better arc to bring it all together.

Love the game nonetheless!

From what little I understand, (I may be wrong) elder brains can have personalities and that wouldn't break the lore. I don't think the problem is that the brain is the main antagonist, the problem is that, for all intents and purposes, it's not actually the main antagonist. It's more akin to a natural disaster, something faceless and mindless, a force of nature that has to be stopped and resisted, but that lacks a will of its own. It's a ticking clock rather than an antagonist we can relate to as a character. That role falls on Orin and Gortash, who are treated as secondary antagonists, lieutenants, barriers keeping us from dealing with the main threat. As a result, we the player end up lacking an antagonist we can really invest in for the length of act 3.

I think this issue becomes clearest if you look at the Dark Urge, the character who's most directly tied to the plot of the game. There, the netherbrain isn't really the antagonist either. Thematically, Orin probably fills that role.

Just because I am currently in Act 3 again: I don't mind neither Orin, Gortash nor the Brain, and I quite like many of the quests but it all feels a little disconnected. I wrote it before - probably in this thread - it would be so nice if you could take all the juicy blackmail material which is hidden across town and use it to discredit Gortash before finally taking him down. You could even use it to simultaneously build up Wyll as a politician or to lay the foundations for either Dark Shadowheart or Ascended Astarion's future ambitions in Baldur's Gate. And wouldn't that be sweet.

On a gameplay level I am also missing situations to fight. Act3 is when you have or gather most of the cool equip, all of your companions and abilities. It's when you can mess around most and it becomes such a hard choice whom to take along - well apart from the spare druid on the bench - because most of the fights are rather specific. Something like the goblin camp would be neat.

Agreed. Surviving the goblin camp was a really fun experience just because of the sheer odds (especially if you get Halsin and the war drum gets activated), really an epic battle that tests your endurance. Not much else like it.

That's what i was getting at, i think. Imo, it is fine to treat the brain as a time bomb, provided there was stronger antagonist character (a stronger gortash, or orin, or whatever). They are more relatable and more interesting than a giant talking brain.