Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Is this a joke? No, really, where is the punchline?

If you dig into the game's insides on a coding level, there are a lot of flags and so called "points". SH especially has a bunch of those, which can permanently glitch out. Every other patch I've personally played, there's a new SH problem.

(One example: if her wound scene played outside a scene, EVEN ONCE, as background party commentary, she would at some point permanently stop gaining a point type. At another she would ALWAYS accuse to player of not respecting her decision in regards to the Nightsong).

The game is complex in the sense that the code is spaghetti, the flags are meatballs, and the smallest error has far reaching consequences. At some point, very early into release, it was impossible to break up with some characters I think, and those characters weren't even romanced. There were a lot of complaints. It might not feel complex to play for someone personally, but the coding is mess of gigantic branching trees of choices.

Some of the related issues are plain out laziness in bug fixing, for example, it's still always a 50/50% shot if "permanent" buffs stick around after companion revival. It's been this way since release -- but a lot of issues also come and go.

No. You made the statement so the onus is on you to proffer the evidence to back it up. Trying to throw it back at me suggests you have no evidence.

Even apps such as MS Word have to keep track of decisions and every other game with combat and dialogue has to keep track of potential variations. Again the special pleading for Larian. Why is it a lot more complex than some other games? What other games is it more complex than?

So speaking as someone who really just doesn't like this game, each individual act of this game is as large or larger than many other games. As an example Tyranny, by Obsidian. One run of that game is probably equivalent to a run of just act 3. The game also has to account for not just dialogue choices, but a number of outside dialogue actions that most crpgs don't try to account for, such as if you pickpocketted something, if you straight up stole it openly, if you've witnessed one or another event first, what direction you may have approached from, etc. I don't think this exuses the state of the game and all its issues, this game absolutely has a lot of performance issues that people are giving more grace than they should (I think a bit of grace given its ambition and the amount of success it did achieve is reasonable, but what has actually happened passes the point of reasonableness). However I do think that claiming this isn't a BIG game is just factually wrong. Any game you can reasonably spend 70-80 hours on before finishing it is a big game.

I like to think it is incredibly complex -- but in a way that's really, really inefficient, or the flags wouldn't break as much.

I sacrificed SH to BOAL and kept my companion rooster small this playthrough. Really not much that can go wrong, really. Well, Halsin disappeared in Act 2, seemingly not only my Halsin even. I did get to complete his questline and theoretically recruit him, unlike the other person here. That just goes to show you: anything than can go wrong, will go wrong.

If the choices didn't span so many Acts, maybe we wouldn't struggle so much, but even things with comparatively few flags break off and on. It's really something about Larian's code that's extraordinarily vulnerable, but also that it's combined with a very long game.

An example: if you convince BOAL you're more useful if you kill many in his name, he normally gives you his sickle. Well, this game has lots of questionable checks in place, so if you pickpocket the actual reward off a fish person while in that dialogue... You would receive the blessing only normally obtainable through sacrificing a recruit or companion. Because he doesn't have the sickle to give you anymore, and the game knows that.

Will people enjoy that complexity? Probably not. Is it one of thousands of useless, hidden things? Oh, yes. Will you lose the blessing on revival often anyway because this method is absolutely terrible? Also yes.

That is really, really not true.

The game is not that big. Maybe if you waste a lot of time trundling around doing nothing for 40 hours... The actual size of the game is nothing special. Neither the actual scale of the map, nor its density are impressive.

Certainly a single Act is not comparable to an entire game. Unless you're comparing to tiny indie games made in 24 hours for GameJams...


Uhh... Pretty much every RPG tracks those things.

Heck, Elder Scrolls and Fallout actually tracks individual stolen goods permenantly (Fallout also has a Karma system and various Reputation systems that change how NPC's act around you)

The ONLY thing that BG3 does, is have NPC's show up again in later acts. Which is not complex. It's simply state based flags used by many games of various genres (Heck, Skyrim has you make a choice about who takes over control of Whiterun)

None of these things cause BG3 to be complex. At least no more so than any other RPG be it Classic or not.

It's easier to track stolen goods permanently than only under certain circumstances. You can just set a flag "stolen_item" and every NPC with a "can_see_stolen_item" flag can react to it. Setting a flag and making sure it's only visible for a certain time under certain circumstances is more difficult. For example, making sure that the flag does not activate if you are invisible when stealing the item is a separate exercise in itself.

Not only is it not, you simply activate the same flag but it only matters for certain NPC's and/or for a period of time (And doesn't interact with killing the owner NPC). But being invisible when stealing an item doesn't impact things in BG3. NPC's still react to items being stolen, they KNOW what's been stolen and will confront you about said stolen item (And take it back if you can't persuade them).

Even if invisibility worked to prevent theft from triggering things... It's literally exactly the same as normal. You just have an "if_visible" check...

I don't want to argue because I strongly agree that the game is in a terrible state with bugs. Whatever they are doing isn't working - meaning that every time they fix a bug, three new ones pop up - and Larian should consider dedicating some extra capacity to optimizing their codebase. (However, this is unlikely to happen). The game is probably more complex than it should be.

Okay but Tyranny is not a AAA game and nobody claimed it was large or complex.

Skyrim was doing that back in 2011. It even has a 'complex' system whereby crimes in one hold are not counted as crimes in the other holds. Things like this are commonplace in these sort of games, Larian is doing nothing out of the ordinary.


I don't disagree with your 70-80 hours figure but any such figure is highly dependent on how one plays the game and the figure would be a lot lower on a second run. In any case I am using 'big' in relation to the size and number of the maps, number of NPCs in the game etc.

No

Germain made the original comment that it is not complex with scant evidence offered that did nothing other than to assert that at least one other game was more complex.
You then agreed without offering any further evidence.

So you and Germain are the ones making assertions without evidence.

The game is large and complex compared to many computer/console games and required a rather large development team.

That’s bleeding obvious.

Thanks, it's always nice to know it's not just me.

Just as an aside. I'm a veteran modded Skyrim LE player currently just finishing off building my first SE game with 350 mods and currently 26K Actors. Still got around 100 follower mods to install. I like to have dozens of followers with me. I probably have more people in Whiterun Hold than there are people and creatures in the whole of Act 1 of BG3.

If you want to be like that, then it was Wormerine who first made an assertion regarding complexity:


In any case, when there is a party claiming something and a party denying the claim, the onus is on the party making the claim to provide evidence. Since you cannot provide evidence for the lack of something.

Ergo, it is on the shoulders of people who claim that the game is large and complex to provide evidence that supports such a claim.

I see Taril has got in first but it was indeed Wolverine who made the initial assertion to which I responded. Germain posted mainly agreeing with my position. You then repeated the original assertion.

A dog is large compared to a mouse; a horse is large compared to a dog. A dog is physically larger than a mouse; a horse is physically larger than a dog. BG3 is large compared to what? How is BG3 larger than this thing? Ditto 'complex'.
The size of the development team is irrelevant.

Let’s not fall out, folks. Some people clearly have had worse experiences of bugs than others, and probably some people have lower tolerance for bugs than others. People are welcome to share their experiences both positive and negative, to express their frustration at bugs that have affected their enjoyment of the game, and to share opinions and impressions without needing to provide extensive proof.

Of course, we’re not going to agree with people making claims we judge to be insufficiently backed up by evidence, but we’re probably not going to agree on the evidence anyway. It’s fine to agree to disagree!

Or indeed to keep debating, but only if it’s friendly and constructive, and all involved are enjoying it.

Size does not necessarily imply more complexity but there are indeed many examples where it does . A large city is clearly more complex than a small town. The US economy is more complex than the economy of Bermuda….etc etc ad nauseam.

A Mouse is not only larger than a tapeworm it is also a more complex organism.


A large development team creates its own complexities aside from the size or technical complexity of the final game. Even if you don’t think that BG3’s code is complex the sheer number of people involved in the process creates additional complexity in regards to the many issues mentioned on the forum.

Size is only part of what makes BG3 a complex game. There are many other factors at play.

You seem to think otherwise thus

We’ll just have to agree to disagree.

We'll just have to agree that you cannot come up with any reason why BG3 is big or complex.
None of your examples address why BG3 is bigger or more complex than any other AAA RPG type game of recent times.

Have you any idea how long a tapeworm can grow?

Frankly, I didn’t think it was controversial statement. Going back to any of other titles should make it abundantly clear how less interactive they are. There is of course a question of how much Baldirs Gate3 manages to utilise this complexity, but that’s more of a “was it worth it” question, rather than “what is it”?

So few things I can mention on top of my head: there are very few hard progression gates - per act, you have a lot of freedom as to order you complete the content (and of you complete the content) - and that content has reactivity (so rather than open-world game with small pieces of individual activities that can be completed in any order, but they play out the same regardless, let’s take for an example the infamous Shadowheart that required a lot of custom triggers and hand made narrative content). A lot of companion content happens dynamically, rather than in predefined, linear, set in stone progression gates.

NPCs and objects in BG3 are quite interactive, with individual AI (they will respond to your actions, like sneaking, doing illegal actions, will react to noises, have their own reputation system etc.) NPCs and objects have weight and can be moved around, that has further consequences.

And that all rubs against authored content that tries to accommodate all the chaos that player can do.

Spells and skills have a lot of properties that can be applied and will interact with NPCs and objects in the world. Objects have also permanence - which isn’t uncommon, but it’s worth mentioning due to their interactivity.

Compare it to usually cRPG fare, where systemic interactivity tends to be limited to combat, narrative can be interacted with through rigid scripting of a dialogue system, and the main „systemic” interaction is „attack” NPCs. „You can kill every NPC and still progress” has been the high bar of RPGs so far, and BG3 allows for so, so many player driven changes beyond that. (And that’s ignoring games that straight up don’t allow for unsanctioned interactions).

So really games I think that we could compare BG3 to are:
1) immersive sims - which are more focused, have a lotność systemic interactivity and are generally unoptimised and buggy at launch
2) Bethesda games - that are highly systemic, but compared to BG3 very light on narrative content and are highly buggy
3) Tim Cain games, like Arcanum - which were also quite systemic, with emergent gameplay, and decent amount of narrative content, a lot of player urgency and tended to also be famously buggy.

One needs to reiterate that BG3 does things that those games don’t - like a high amount of cinematics that need to play nice with the systemic stuff.

So yeah, why I personally don’t even like BG3 that much, and I don’t think it’s not as effective in utilising its complexity as let’s say, Arcanum, it boggles me how one could claim that BG3 isn’t an insanely complicated and ambitious title. Permutations and potential interactions are so numerous that testing this game must be a nightmare.

This is neither new, nor complex though. This has been a standard of modern RPG's for decades.


Did we play the same game? EVERY companion content happens after predefined, linear, set in stone progression gates...

The only thing about BG3's companions is that some of their content is tied to the predefined, linear, set in stone progression gate of Long Resting. Meaning you can skip certain content by not Long Resting enough...


Which is also not new nor complex. It's been a staple of Bethesda games since FO3.


Though, most of the spells and skills have limited properties that can be applied to NPC's and objects. Ironically, DoS2 was more complex in this manor due to it having a more developed surface system with more combinations of surfaces (I.e. Water can be electrified, or burned into steam and that steam can be electrified. The same is true for Blood and electricity/ice can transition across both blood and water without issue. Poison can also be burned into poison clouds)


BG3 is more interactive than typical cRPG's... Which is one of the reasons why I'd personally call BG3 a Modern RPG more so than a Classic RPG. Since most of what it does is simply incorporate modern designs, such as those found in games like Bethesda titles.


They're not THAT numerous. There's still only very limited ways to interact with things. It's not like you can start a fire in the grove and burn down all the houses because fire interacts with objects in a complex way, it's not like you can use Create Water to flood an area and wash away objects. It's not like NPC's will react to you doing these things in a somewhat realistic manner.

You simply have some ways to interact and NPC's have their standard flags to respond to certain actions you do. It's nothing significantly complex, even compared to other CRPG's since they also have their limited interactions and standard flags to respond to actions. Heck, there's a guy on these forums that keeps making threads about the complete lack of complexity involved in certain situations (The most recent one being the "Tiefling vs Druid morality" whereby due to the lack of complexity, the Tieflings in the grove will simply attack you or throw you in jail for any crime because of the limited scope of the AI flags - Meanwhile Kagha allows you to step in to protect Arabella)

The only thing that BG3 does that is implicitly more complex than any other RPG out there, is it takes on the ability to move objects (Though, not as complex as in Bethesda titles and other similar games (Such as those like Stanley Parable, Prey, System Shock remake etc) where you have more freedom to move objects and in Skyrim in particular they have weight related interactions in the form of pressure plates that require certain weight objects to utilize). Which is nothing major, especially by modern standards.

To a smaller extend, yes.

By gate I mean a mandatory cut off point that acts as transition between one piece of content and another. Baldurs Gate 3 has very few of those. Yes, Larian created camp and I would guess it’s precise point is to limit circumstances - but there are a lot, a lot of contextual interactions in the wild - and those do sometimes play when they shouldn’t. More ambitious than any other cRPG that I can think of.

I am not claiming that Larian’s implementation isn’t flawed, but that’s it’s more complex (and therefore more prone to breaking) than competition.

In case it wasn’t clear: complex doesn’t necessarily equal better.


Yes, but as I mentioned Bethesda games are very lacking in other aspects (and also buggy - more so than BG3 In
would say, but I also didn’t spend that time with Bethesda titles, so maybe I have just been unlucky). BG3 does a lot of things (sometimes quite conflicting things - systems vs handcrafted cinematic storytelling, single player vs coop). You seemed to argue that Individual title do some things better you might argues, but point me to a game who does just as much in a single release - aka, of the same complexity.



They're not THAT numerous. There's still only very limited ways to interact with things. It's not like you can start a fire in the grove and burn down all the houses because fire interacts with objects in a complex way, it's not like you can use Create Water to flood an area and wash away objects. It's not like NPC's will react to you doing these things in a somewhat realistic manner.
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You are referring to narrative outcomes, which is not the same as interacting with these outcomes in multiple states. Stealing an idol in itself is a convoluted puzzle box of systems and scripting. Compare Goblin grove, to let’s say a Pillars of Eternity dungeon like Fort Deadlight, Roderick’s Hold or the monastery from White March - do you really think those offer as many possible interactions and systems as BG3?


Anyway, you clearly played enough RPGs to confidently made up your own mind, so I won’t try to convince you further.