Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Not BG4 or D&D

If you poll a hundred thousand people who are familiar with BG3, I'm confident the vast majority of them would understand that BG3 is a big part of the Forgotten Realms setting now. That's how successful the game was.

However, there are always some folks who aren't capable of understanding for one reason or another. It doesn't bother me that you don't get it. I don't expect you to agree. I certainly don't expect you to understand things outside of your processing ability.

So an imaginary poll and your confidence constitutes evidence? What is it I am incapable of understanding? What is it that I don't get? What you don't seem to get is that repeatedly saying something one wants to be true does not make it true.


If we were discussing a book then the question of whether Asterion ascended or not would not be up for discussion as regardless of however many people read the book, what happened to Asterion is the same in every copy of the book. With the game there are people who never took Asterion along; people who only had Asterion for the earlier part of the game; people who didn't have Astarion ascend; and people who did have Astarion ascend. Then there are all the other things Astarion can do or not do in the game such as romances etc.
Similar arguments can be made regarding characters such as Minthara, Wyll, Shadowheart or even relatively minor characters such as Auntie Ethel.
Nothing would ever become canon because the discussion as you call it would be interminable.

How much of Jaheira in BG3 is canon? I seem to recall discussions on this forum about that.

BG3 sold millions of copies, but nothing in it is a big part of Forgotten Realms until it's included in a module that sells upwards of 5k copies!

Okay, Jodaker. Thanks for letting us know where your line is.

Meanwhile millions of the rest of us will just continue considering BG3 a big part of Forgotten Realms.

Cool conversation, lol.

Asking an honest question as someone new to the FR and canon as it relates to DnD. What is the significance as to whether or not BG3 (or anything else for that matter) is considered canon? Obviously players are free to ignore or embrace whatever works for them. I'm assuming its only an issue for publishers.

What module? What line? I have no idea what you are talking about.

Now you are moving the goalposts. This wasn't about BG3 being a big part of FR, it was about BG3 being canon. Even the 'big' part of FR is debatable can you show any evidence of BG3 material appearing anywhere other than BG3?

You are trying to sound oh so nonchalant with your "cool conversation, lol" yet you very rarely, if ever, answer any of my questions and I'm still waiting for any evidence.

I see a lot of it being about the identity of the world/universe of the IP. Over the last few years there has been outcries against the makers of Rings Of Power because they trashed Tolkien's lore and against the makers of Wheel Of Time because they did a similar thing to that IP.

The significance is that it enables future stories to include parts of the canon stories.

For example, if BG3 is canon and it's Steel Watch factories are canon, then future story writers can include Steel Watch factories. Which, if someone really doesn't want that in their FR, means it will detract from that particular story.

Whether this future story is a module (Thus more easily avoidable with a likeminded DM who just doesn't include them), or a video game, it can impact someone's overall enjoyment of the content.

With of course, the major gripe tending to be the slippery slope problem. Where something that someone dislikes not only gets reused, but built upon, further straying from that persons personal ideal for the setting.

The most often seen complaint is along the lines of Steel Watch and Factories can lead to more industrialization and thus gunpowder and then firearms and then all of a sudden the setting isn't fantasy swords and magic but people running around with AK's and flying fighter jets and then it becomes laser rifles and space ships...

That said, this slippery slope argument doesn't hold a lot of weight, due to the fact that it's not even guaranteed that anyone will ever re-include anything like that, let alone build upon it. Also, future writers always have the potential to write something out of the setting (Stuff like "Mystra didn't like gunpowder, so she used magic to make it inert and thus useless" because magic and gods are great sources of plothole filler and retcons).

Also, it's far more likely that more drastic changes to a setting might instead be replaced by a new setting that better fits it. Much like there's the 40k setting to provide a futuristic theme for the Warhammer universe without affecting the OG swords and magic Warhammer setting.

As Taril notes it's slippery slope issue and it's a question if the flavor of the setting has been altered.

Someone mentioned Star Wars - which is a useful analogue. In the prequels it was revealed that the force came from Midi-chlorians. Now Star Wars has a policy that is the inverse of WotC's policy on cannon: movies are canon and books are not.

Not only was this a movie, it was a movie directed by the creator of the series. It is absolutely canon! And many fans hated it. For them it ruined the 70's mysticism of the force. Star Wars fans wanted the force to be arcane and mysterious force not some biologically inherited trait that can be discovered with a blood test.

And because the backlash was so strong subsequent directors have left midi chlorians alone even as they have changed the lore on the force . . .

Closer to home, the canonical hero of the Bhaalspawn crisis is Abdel Adrian. A character most BG2 fans hate. Passionately. But, because he is the canonical hero he has figured in modules like Murder in Baldur's Gate. He's even mentioned in BG3 but Larian was smart to downplay him. You really need to search to find the references and neither Minsc or Jaheria name the hero of Baldur's Gate.

So even if something is deeply disliked it is much more likely to appear in future works if it is canon. Taril downplays the slippery slope to which I say: Abdel Adrian is BG3 and Murder in Baldurs Gate. He's in BG3 despite the fact that Larian knows that fans hate him. Such is the nature of canon, it's difficult to ignore.

If we're adding more examples, then there's also Meetra Surik (The Exile) from KOTOR 2 getting similar treatment and everyone hates that.
Even this game does it to Viconia and Sarevok, which most BG2 fans seem to dislike too (at least going by thread on this forum).

Seems like continuing and/or making certain choices cannon is a bad idea for everyone involved at this point, so I can imagine the most WOTC might use would be the Dead Three's plans.

https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Absolute_crisis

My experience with the Forgotten Realms is that there's a "hierarchy" of canon. Official adventures are at the top, and video games are usually somewhere near the bottom. This doesn't mean that the events of video games are never canon, only that they are considered canon unless those events are superseded or contradicted by a source with a higher hierarchy. You can read about it, here, in fact.

If your complaint is that there's multiple ways to end the game and therefor you disagree with what ending is considered canon, then you may be happy (or not) to learn that this issue is not isolated to the video games. The canonical end of Descent into Avernus (an official adventure) is not the Zariel redemption ending, despite it being the objectively best one. This has been a thing since the beginning of 5e, because everyone's personal version of the Forgotten Realms is different, based on the choices they make in their adventures. So there is "official" canon, and then there is your/your DM's/your group's personal canon based on the choices that get made. Murder in Baldur's Gate had the same issue.

We've been through this with multiple other games set in FR. Broad strokes over fine details. It doesn't matter if the Kalach-Cha sided with the shadow thieves or the city watch, what matters is that they were instrumental in ending the Shadow War in 1374. Until some further piece of official material comes out that mentions something specifically related to a choice that could be made in game, like the leader of the Sharran church in Baldur's Gate being led by a woman named Shadowheart, it's in flux, and kept vague for this very reason.

The most IRONIC thing about BG3 is that most die hard fans of the game AND D&D 5th outright dislikes the prior games. Or don't even mention them in comparison.

I think the forgotten reals world and atmosphere/immersion was top tier and really well done with the prior games. I still prefer them to BG3 in the long run.
So many more options/ways they can be played thanks to mods still being developed, a huge playable NPC companion base mixed in with 6 party adventure gives it tons of replay potential.

Even with current/future MODS no way BG3 will ever have more NPCs, quests, dialogues and such... and a forced modded 6 party game just does not fit the Larian designed board game type encounters.
And Larian's weak mod support + giving up on future expansions or any kind of major changes apart for bug fixes is pretty much the nail in the coffin for this game.

Why the hate for Abdel Adrian? I only know of him from the FR wiki where he is described in positive terms.

The novelizations of BG 1+2 are quite possibly the worst things ever created by humankind. Definitely among the worst books ever published. Those are where Minsc having red hair comes from (maybe it was intended in the games at some point - the books were written while they were being developed so a lot of things like that are wrong).

Abdel Adrian is equivalent to picking a race, gender, and class progression for Tav, and then making THAT canon.

Ok, this was helpful and led me to some other discussions online and now I get that people dislike the character because of the poorly written novels and/or because in the game he's essentially Tav.

Having pondered this and the above ongoing discussion I do have a deeper appreciation for the issues of canon as it relates to something like DnD. It's definitely something that gets infinitely more complicated the more popular the subject becomes, and the more content that gets added to it. I've been struck about the passion shown by some posters regarding the whole Astarion ascension issue as well as the presentation of Viconia and Saverok in BG3. Its amazing how attached people can become to these characters and settings. I guess that is a big part of the attraction of CPRG's.

haha I found this online after I first posted it, thought I would share it for context.

"I remember my brother once tried to play BG1, to see why I was so obsessed about the game.

He created a stereotypically brainless fighter with mediocre stats and little intelligence, despite not knowing what min-maxing was, the character barely got through it's first fight and cared little about anything or anyone, ignored side quests to flesh things out and also promptly kicked out Khalid asap, by having the character die soloing trash and kicking the greyed out portrait from the party, so the character couldn't be resurrected. He got as far as recruiting Xan, only to try and have him as a frontline character, then kicked him out too as soon as the portrait went grey.

That's what Abdel Adrian is. An idiot.

The novelisation remains the only book I've ever used for kindling.

Athans also wrote a book in the War of the Spider Queen series for WotC, I remember at the time, people said it was the weakest novel of the series, yet the series was apparently his idea in the first place. I have no idea if that is true and I fear finding out because he also wrote BG2 and that was also just as shit as the first one."

Yeah, I've never seen anyone say they like Abdel unless they're trolling. In addition to being a stereotypical meathead, he is intensely unlikeable, cheats on Jaheira with a villain from BG2 and so forth. The books he comes from are terrible (even the author said they were bad because he had like 2 weeks to write the first one and hadn't played the game or something. It shows).

It's also ironic because if the books themselves were truly canon, Jaheira would not even be alive in BG3, because she died in the last book.

I did same to Khalid - and Minsc's Witch too.

Personally, don't have an opinion as I know nothing (and don't particularly care for) novelization of an RPG game.

To me changing an RPG protagonist into pre-defined character is just problematic. The point of an RPG is to come up and role-play as your character. If than IP owner makes your choices irrelevant and potentially replaces your character with someone pretty different, it will not be welcome by people who played your RPG (at least myself). Same principle also applies to retconing player choices in RPG sequels.

That's of course quite a challenge but not one that is not insurmountable. Annoying enough, BG3 was walking the line rather well until act3. Than they bring back characters who should be dead, and don't even respect who they were in previous games, not to mention manouvering around possible outcomes. As clunky as BG2 was in that regard (But I thought I killed you!) at least it acknowledge some discrepencies between BG1&2.

Name dropping Abdel just seemed completely unnecessary. He means nothing to not fans of BG1&2, and will annoy fans of BG1&2 as it means their character is considered non-canon.


With... Irenicus? That's something BG3 would be very much into.

Viconia, although I suspect that she died more often than not in BG1 and BG2, still had some following as the resident edgelady. Hence her resurrection in BG2 (where you had 10-20 seconds to react to keep her alive) after saving her in BG1 (dialogue to prevent her summary execution for murder by LEO).
As I vividly remember her battlecry of "Nightsinger, give me strenght!" the cracked faced angel in BG3 rubs me the wrong way.

Well that would have at least made the books more interesting.

In other CRPG sequels I've played - which are chiefly Elder Scrolls and Fallout - although they do choose certain events to be canon or not (for example, obviously the Brotherhood of Steel wasn't nuked at the end of Fallout 3), they do generally avoid mentioning anything specific about previous protagonists and only refer to them in vague terms.

Although before anyone says it, I am aware Fallout 1 does have a canon protagonist, as Fallout 2 came with a booklet (remember when games came with books?) that was the Vault Dweller's diary detailing the events of the first game. I don't think he was named, although we do know he was a he, and the original Dogmeat died running into a force field. Other than that, I guess it didn't really matter so much then as most of the NPC's in those games were disposable; people didn't have relationships and become attached to them as with characters like Jaheira, Aerie, and Viconia.