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

Fallout 1-2, Arcanum, Gothic, Realms of Arkadia, Dwarf Fortress if you go beyond RPGs,...

BG3 is complex compared to modern day games and current "rpg light", but hardly on a new level of complexity. Even other midern games like Wotr or RT are as complex, or even more, than BG3.

Again, this is exactly what Baldur's Gate 3 is FULL of.

Companion interactions are frequently based off of proximity to certain areas. Story transitions (Like, Zariel confronting Wyll) happen at specific times after doing specific things.

The only "Dynanicism" is the random barks they make while walking around. But even then that's not complex.


Most Bethesda titles do just as much. Which is why I'm referring to them. They do the stuff with the object mobility and permenance, they do the stuff with NPC interaction, they do the stuff with personal reputations. They don't do coop (Though, modders make it possible and they do have FO76 as a multiplayer title... So it's not like the games can't support multiplayer, they just chose not to implement it)

Their being buggy does not make them any less complex (It just means their execution is less polished)

The main thing that Bethesda titles lack, is decent writing. Which isn't indicative of complexity.


You're the one talking about narrative outcomes... When you reference those places in Pillars vs Goblin Camp...

Fort Deadlight offers many interactions. Entering the place under the guise of being a pirate, or going in guns blazing, or sneaking in. Then when you are in there, you can manipulate things to sneak in and kill the captain, you can lure him to the docks by messing with stuff to then kill him, you can sabotage his chair in the main hall, you can poison his drink in the main hall, you can talk to him and join him instead of killing him...

Compared to the Idol where you can steal the idol successfully... You can steal the idol and kill all the angry druids... Or you can ignore the idol...

Or the Goblin Camp where you can... Kill all the leaders. You can join the Absolute and raid the Grove. Or you can ignore them.

Those are the narrative outcomes from those 3 situations.

BG3 is narratively, not complex. Which is a common complaint about the game and especially the "Evil Route" the game is so railroady that you end up doing basically the same thing every playthrough.

The only aspect of these scenarios is that BG3 offers slightly more freedom in how you achieve a narrative outcome (I.e. Do you convince the spiders to attack the Goblins?, do you cheese the Idol by tossing it with a Mage Hand or by creating Darkness to obscure you?) which isn't necessarily more complex it's just utilizing different base systems (PoE offers less environmental interaction in favour of more scripted interactions whereby you get dialogue boxes and options based on your stats)

Beyond that, BG3 and all other RPG's are limited based on what interactions they can have with objects/NPC's and what is scripted as responses. It is no more complex than any other title in the genre besides offering a few more actions you can perform (Not all CRPG's allow for pickpocketing for example)

A game with complex interactions would be more like other modern titles (I.e. Something like San Andreas has fire that spreads, albeit with no consequences for such things. Some modern FPS games have terrain destruction). These systems are complex and require a lot of work to implement correctly, which is why they're so uncommon (Outside of lower poly titles such as Minecraft, Teardown, Deep Rock Galactic and Noita where it's much easier to create complex interactions because objects are voxel based and thus easier to work with).

The main thing BG3 has going for it is polish (Ironically given the mass complaints of bugs and rushed content). This is a result of being a AAA game where the extensive resources have allowed for things like enhanced graphics (As well as the more modern closer camera style as opposed to the typical isometic view of many CRPG's), motion capture to provide smoother animations, Voice Acting for all NPC's etc. This does not create complexity or scale, it simply is polishing up what was already created to provide an overall better experience.

Tbf, I believe he's referencing like how you really only need to do Shar's Temple -> Moonrise -> Mindflayer Colony -> Orin -> Final Battle in order to complete the game (with the Temple cutting off Act 1), while the rest is technically filler. Atleast, thats how I read it anyway.


Tbf, I found Starfield to be mostly bug free, but otherwise it was a very simple game. The NG+ aspect could've made things abit more complex/interesting but it wasn't utilized much.

I guess the problem with trying to quantatively compare complexity between BG3 and say, Owlcat's stuff, is that BG3 does do immersive sim puzzle boxes that other cRPGs don't, but it only does it a few times in the first act. (Druids Grove, Goblin Camp and maybe Nere?). Meanwhile, branching narrative pathways or choice and consequences happen far less by comparison.

The Immersive Sim elements, I find, are also at odds with the narrative and characters too, like stealing the idol, in full view of the druids, and booking it, doesn't change how the druids interact with you after you return.
Other things like the quarter-baked Knockout system and Barrelmacy kinda remove abit of the immersion too.

But in general, your probably right as far as AAA RPGs go, given the last one that had meaningful choice + consequences was Witcher 3.


Tbf, Skyrim together is very jank (from last I saw) and Fo76, iirc, they wanted to make Fo4 multiplayer but had to have the engine rebuilt/reconfigured to accomodate Multiplayer so they went with Fo76 (Tho, I can't recall where I heard this from...). So I imagine it's more work than its worth.


Fwiw I think Kenshi does what your describing, as it has a ton of contextual (e.g. location, race or world states) based dialogue between characters. But thats mostly trivia.

One last try as this is a good comparison. You are simplifying things to an extreme to have a point. You are again referring to narrative outcomes (you can stealth through, fight through, talk through) not the complexity of systems that get you there, nor how liberally they can or can’t be applied. Sneaking in Deadfire is far less complex and far less interactive than in BG3 (enter enemy vasinity, bucket fills up, when bucket fills up are are seen - that’s less complex than a line of sight, with different lighting conditions, environment that can be manipulated to modify lines of sight and lighting condition, distractions you can plant, invisibility, free 3S movement across the levels including jumping and flying etc, ability to re-stealth, ability to enter and leave combat and more). There are very few ways you can navigate through a Deadfire levels, there are a lot of systems and interactions you can use to sneak through BG3 level. I haven’t seen much emergent gameplay in Deadfire (things devs didn’t intend players to do) while BG3 is full of this stuff. A lot of narrative bits can be triggered from different angles, in different positions in different set ups - that created a need for more testing and more fixing. That is the complexity I was referring to.

And yes, Fallouts and Arcanum would be closest games to BG3 that I can think of, but they are still less complex (again, compare robustness of individual systems) and buggy (at least arcanum).

It’s been a while but I think I replied to: “aghr, why is BG3 buggy, and why new problems pop up”. The answer still stands: it’s a complex game, with a lot of interacting systems and content. Games that you bring that are comparable to just one aspect of BG3 are were also buggy.

Still, I hope that Larian will squash as many bugs before moving on as possible.

What? No. BG3 is in no way, shape or form more complex than Arcanum and (old) Fallout.
Even New Vegas is more complex than BG3.

This is for example how a NV quest looks like which is more than what BG3 offers.

Mechanically too BG3 is not exceptionally complex, partly on account of D&D rules have been simplified a lot over time. And even when sticking to D&D rules, Solasta uses less shortcuts than BG3.
You bring up the stealth system, but that is not really complex. A lot of games do sight lines and BG3 does not have any advance features like NPCs investigating disturbances.

Yes, complex games like RPGs tend to suffer from a lot of bugs and that includes BG3. But BG3 is not a special case which deserves leniency.
Other companies at least put the time and effort in to fix the bugs, see Owlcat for example which famously suffers from bad quality control but has supported its Pathfinder games for years now with both paid and free content.
Larian now decided not to do that for BG3 though.

Larian has stated that they are putting effort into fixing bugs, rounding out the game, and adding new features. They still need to release cross-play and a photo mode, so at least two bigger patches are in the works for the future.
Unfortunately, their current model of adding new content, addressing bugs, and considering all community feedback may not be the most efficient workflow. Personally, I would prefer them to prioritize fixing bugs more vigorously rather than focusing on tweaking Astarion's animations.

Yes, because YOU brought these situations up. I literally said that. It's literally in the part of my post you quoted.


Yes, as I said, Deadfire favours more narrative complexity rather than gameplay complexity. Deadfire creates more possible outcomes for decisions and has "Dialogue option" style decision making to determine player interactions.

While BG3 is narratively simple with very few outcomes for decisions, but more gameplay complexity as you manually have to take actions using the toolset available.


Even comparing robustness of individual systems, they're not inferior to BG3. For example, Skyrim and Fallout also do the line of sight, light levels, sound etc. Heck, they even specifically do line of sight from... NPC's actual eyes (Leading to the notorious "Put buckets on everyone's head and steal everything" meme in Skyrim). They also have more complex object mobility. So it's not just "ONE ASPECT" of BG3 they're comparable to...

I never said they were. I feel like you are not getting what I am trying to say, or I am not getting what you are trying to say. 🤷

You literally did:

Yes, but it doesn’t comment on which design is superior. Just expresses an observation that one is more complex than another. Word “overengineered” exists for a reason.

Having pretty shit RPGs for the last decade +, mind just a few exceptions, of course BG3 is going to be amazing to many.
People forgot about games like Fallout New Vegas for example (for interactions).
And most haven't even the slightest clue about Arcanum, Fallout 1 and 2, Ultima VII black gate/serpent island, and skipping over dozens of amazing DOS era rpgs...

BG3 is the accumulation of an era were tactical/high fantasy rpgs are very few. So it will naturally stand out in a smelly pile of AAA pay to win business standard.
But its still a far cry from the interactive masterpiece people are calling it. Any gamers above 40 years old can just smirk at that.

But again, most of those were really buggy. The conversation wasn’t „is BG3 the most complex game of all times”. It was “ahrrrr, why is BG3 buggy, and why more things break with patches”.

Did they patch out all the crappy low effort filler copypasta combat in the meantime? The unedited walls of text? The quests and areas that oft seem barely iterated upon, but finalized as they came? Currently Owlcat's 70s to low 80s approval ratings seem just, unfortunately. WOTR is the only major CRPG of the past ten years I'm likely never gonna finish. Most of the time I fire it up again, I'm like: "I can't do this anymore."

To quote Obsidian's former Eric Fenstermaker: "Balancing polish and campaign length on a budget is a zero-sum trade-off". Owlcat have released three massive 100-200 hour games, numerous DLC plus Enhanceds in the space of ~five years. If they'd patch their clearly "quantity over quality" stance, iterate and throw out the trash, they would easily climb to the top tier. I genuinelly hope they do... because the good parts of their games are real good. But canned Solyanka is evidently easier and quicker served than a nice Filet Mignon. So you're getting a lot of canned Solyanka in between bits of Filet Mignon. And you oft have to grind hard to get them.

Recently checking for Rogue Trader being on sale again, but my conflicted experience with both Pathfinder games coupled with the by far most upvoted Steam review had me going for Wartales and SKALD instead. Now I think BG3 is oversold a bit. In parts due to it being the first proper RPG in the big budget space in generations of hardware. However, Owlcat games are inherently stretched beyond outstaying their welcome with low effort content and low polish design -- and unfortunately, that seems ingrained in a business model of knocking out massive epics nobody else does as quickly as possible. I mean, even if their games were half as long, they'd still dwarf them pretty much all.

Gosh, I am with you there. I wish so much I would enjoy playing through Pathfinder games (slogged through Kingmaker, failed to get too deep into WotR).

In case this mind sound mocking the Owlcats: It's frustration on my part. I have fond memories of Kingmaker as well, in particular early stages. Plus any game that is insipred by Realms Of Arkania's travelling and camping system does something good. However, I'm still not gonna revisit that either. I only need to think of the grind in the final chapter/s or so. And how the last couple maps had the same Wild Hunt super mob paste&copied all over them. Finding the right buff routines to make it out alive is challenging once. It's okay twice. But dozens of times?

That's just a low effort filler to make an already immensely long game even longer, as studios can do much better even when on a tight budget. And with Wrath, I wasn't near that final stage of Owlcat escalation yet, despite the in-game clock showing like 80+ hours of play-time total... Seems I didn't miss out on anything.

I think this all is a vital topic for the entire genre though. There's devs that try to go all-out LOTR, despite having the ressources for an episode of Xena - Warrior Princess at best. There's also genuinelly audience expectation that games offering less than X hours of playing time are ones to be picked up on a Steam discount at best. More importantly, outside of BG3, EVERYBODY is working on a budget. And even BG3, see the ongoing debate about the last act...

This obsession with campaign length needs to stop.

Question about patches causing more bugs.

This game has been released on multiple platforms. Are the new bugs bad on Xbox and Playstation as well as PC?