Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Disappointed in Larian

Thats an interesting connection that I've kinda missed, which made me look up a few games that had rather great narratives and can probably add a few more like: Josh Sawyer, and maybe Yoko Taro too.
On the other hand you have Emil Pagliarulo (Bethesda), who is abit of a divisive writer, although he definitly likes his environmental storytelling.
But anyway, guess I found it abit interesting. I guess these game devs are abit of a rare breed.

Shame about Avellone being blacklisted and reminds me that I really need to get through Torment at some stage.
I'm also reminded that KOTOR 2 included a diegetic way of explaining how your character gains levels and influences your companions and ties everything to it.
He also created Kreia (The character who lets him deconstruct Star Wars tropes and the force, in a similar way as Torment I imagine and a template he's used in a couple of other games since too), and she still seems to be a very popular within the SW fandom.

Although, for writing her, he apparently spent 10 months reading/researching Star Wars media in order to do so and he admits that that just isn't fun.
Which is why I imagine writers coming into games might not care about whats possible or even writers entering other media without doing the research which can leave fans abit frustrated (e.g. Pre-Bethesda Fallout vs Post)

Actually, there is also Dragons Dogma that, while rather short, delved into some elements of Nietzschean philosophy and used NG+ as a metaphor for Eternal Recurrance. (Or breaking it, depending on interpretation)

I don't agree that cinematics are at odds with video games at all. I've enjoyed them immensely since I got really into games in the early 2000s. And I've loved seeing how they've advanced over the years. Of course if the rest of the game is lacking good cinematics won't save it, but you can say that about almost any aspect of a game and I don't think BG3 falls into this category at all.

But as I said before people look for different things in games. It's subjective. And sometimes a game isn't trying to be what you want it to be.

I don't see what any of this has to do with Larian's decision to move on from BG3 while it still needs work though. (This is also subjective but it's the topic of the thread)

I must admit that today I’ve felt rather discouraged about my attempts to bring awareness to the unfortunate situation surrounding the game. It’s pretty clear that it’s not working, and that Larian is pretty set in stone after patch 7 of just making technical adjustments to the game and then just riding off into the sunset without ever giving it the attention and closure it deserves. Unfortunate, but sadly probably what will happen to this gem of a game, because people’s romantic fantasies can only keep the game alive and profitable to Larian for so long. I’m pretty torn up now between continuing to fight against this absolutely atrocious decision by Larian, or just giving up while I’m ahead before I become labeled as an “annoyance” in the community. I ultimately do want to enjoy what the game does have to offer, and now it’s often feeling like I can’t do that because loading it up to play just gets me angry and thinking about the wasted potential on the screen in front of me.

I really disliked the jarring change of perspective, but even so, I feel if one really, really wants cinematics in their cRPG, they could be better implemented than they were in BG3. Constrains that they bring aren't that far off a traditional conversation window, and in spite of higher production cost no one can accuse Larian of not producing enough branching conversation paths (which is a common fear for higher production cRPGs). I think some bits work really well in BG3 - Goblin Camp being my go to example.

Too often though, it feels like Larian envisioned a more constrained, linear narrative to begin with, and than tries to deal with players braking the progression. I don't like it, because going "off script" feels like I am doing something wrong. I thought Larian games were at their best when they give players easy to understand, long term goal (break out of prison, kill three goblin leaders), as players are free to pick and choose content on the way, and accomplish goal in whatever way feels appropriate for their character.

I also feel that once a dev team becomes of a certain size, they become simply too big to deliver a unified vision for the game. Game devs seems like a such a voliatile production process, that it must take a lot of effort and understanding on what other teams are working on to keep the whole thing coherent.

On a side note, Tim Cain made an interesting video about decline of Generalists.

This is when a solid director becomes important. Someone who's able to keep things unified and coherent (But still allows the teams to flourish and produce good content).

An example is Naoko Yoshida, who has a passion for the projects he works on so he is able to keep everyone on the same page and working well.

Unlike most directors who seemingly only exist to enforce executives requests for more BS monetization and awful game design parameters...

The notion of having a solid leader is simply part of the human condition. Eventually when a group of people gets large enough, a leader is required to keep things in order. This is true in all aspects of life, not just game development.

Of course, the issue we often face is the people who get into such positions of leadership, are often the least qualified for the position...

Let's pull this back on topic.

I think that is it important to compile specific information and complaints in order to build momentum.
There may be disappointment with the content of Patch 7 among the beta testers given its limited focus on evil endings, so this is a good time to hone in on the problems of the rest of the game.
I would suggest everyone replay sections of the game that they found most egregious, see what problems they encounter, and document them here.

I am replaying Act 3. Here is what I've encountered (not present in other acts):

Companions repeating long sections of dialogue about their backstory to me, word for word, when I have already seen it and as if it is new (Wyll and Karlach)
Wyll abruptly having dialogue as if we are in the Iron Throne and his father is still prisoner. He was at camp and his father was ten feet away, alive and free.
The entire UI disappearing, resulting in the game crashing
Sections of the UI disappearing at random (ie the points for each food item before a long rest)
Aylin's wings getting stuck in a short loop of their animation as she walks (twitching effect)
Characters walking through environment elements (like the rubble as you approach Boo)
Falling through the world map after a jump
Long periods of lag in combat, every large fight
Midway through Mystic Carrion quest, Thrumbo repeats dialogue from first encounter
Oskar paints a different character than the one who spoke to him XD
The Tav character regularly disappears during the fight with Orin. Not because of spell or hiding. Just vanishes leaving a blue circle behind

The whole Act is full of elements like these that are immersion-breaking and feel glitchy and unpolished. This is in addition to four big issues:

1) Too many quests in one place that do not have to happen in any particular order. This could be solved with an additional map, or by making the defeat of one of the two big bosses advance time.
2) Tonal shift for the villains. I felt inclined to spare Ketheric, for a moment. Gortash and Orin feel "stupid evil" and have no redeeming qualities. I wish there was at least something for Gortash, maybe if he had provided material comfort for his parents in addition to tadpoling them.
3) No reactivity to the approach of the Absolute's army. I have long rested about seven times, but no one's attitudes have changed about the approaching army. I feel like there should be a limit of two weeks or so, and that we should see civilian dialogue start to change as they start to see the smoke on the horizon, not to mention when the army become visible just before the time is up.
4) Obviously not visible in my replay, but dissatisfaction over limited choices for the Emperor at the end (let us spare him, let him run, roll to have him try to work with Orpheus, etc)

I’ll add to that list the fact that Minthara is an irrelevant character in Act 3 entirely. Even beyond the incredible number of bugs she faces, some of which are admittedly being addressed in the upcoming patch, she is so lacking in content to the point where it feels like she wasn’t even written by Larian with how little care went into her character. She is essentially the only reward you get for choosing evil in a game where playing evil actively decreases the amount of content you have access to, so I feel like it’s not crazy to expect her to be damn well worth being evil. Yet she only has one single greeting for the entire game (romanced or not), and her romance fully feels like it was added in a day before the game’s release. She does not have a single romance scene that is actually part of her romance story, and it’s exclusively made up of two short dialogue sequences that are solely triggered based off of reaching an approval benchmark and have nothing to do with the actual story progression. Not sure why Larian is even bothering to add the evil endings cinematics when it’s pretty obvious they themselves acknowledge that whole part of the game being basically non existent (hence why they now let you have minthara in a good playthrough). As your reward for being evil (giving up on Wyll and Karlach) she should have as much content as they do, or at the very least have content equal to her non-origin counterparts like Jaheira and Halsin. Yet she only has about as much content as Minsc, who is only in the game for the sake of an extra nostalgic companion and isn’t intended to really have all that much impact on the story. If they didn’t want to commit to Minthara being a worthwhile companion then they should have just cut her from the game along with all the other things they decided they didn’t have time for, instead of leaving her in as a testament to all the places where the game drastically falls short of expectations despite the places where it shines.

In Larian launcher there is feedback button in the launcher that one can use to feed stuff directly to Larian. It is what I used to pass on bugs and more after my play sessions.

Larian stopped development of BG3, so feedback is useless.
And even in the past they cared little for it. And now after they got showered in praise despite all the bugs, bad mechanics and nonsensical story they have even less reason to listen to feedback.

It's important to point out these problems publicly so that they're visible and can be discussed publicly. The goal is to call attention to the need for further patches or at best a remaster, so it's important to be specific.

I keep on repeating - Larian should had never bent backwards to the whining of the "we want to recruit and romance Minthara/Halsin" crowd. Waste of (half arsed) effort.

Wait-- Do neither Halsin or Minthara have Act 3 quests?????

Look at this.... A bunch of entitled cr.....--- better say nothing more here. Larian worked for more than 1 year AFTER release to improve a game that was already one of the best game ever released, but this is not enough for you. I guess you want this to become a live service game (free of course, just because...) with endless content / updates. Oh now, how dare you, Larian, working on a new project????? You can be disappointed in Larian as much as you want. Now name one company doing a better service. And don't mention CDRed (Cyberpunk 2077, anyone???), or I will know for sure you like to complain just because you belong to this generation of "Oh My God, this "thing" in not 100% exactly I want it, how horrible....". Don't buy Larian next game, rest assured there are other 20M people who will and mostly because of how Larian act as a company.

There is no need to be so aggressive, everyone is giving their opinions in a forum designed for that.

If your opinion is different, you can simply say it in a civilized way.

Larian shipped an incomplete game at launch and has done nothing with its patches but partially finish the game. I don't think I speak only for myself, but I tolerated this because I expected a truly finished game some time after release. This has been Larian's business model, particularly for the Divinity series. Their claim that they don't intend to work further and will leave Act 3 an incoherent, incomplete, unpolished mess is a disappointment and has put me off buying Larian games in the future.

In any case, here are some more Act 3 complaints:
1) Saverok's random appearance partway through a story quest is bizarre and jarring.
2) My character has a background from Baldur's Gate and has made no comment about needing to get their family or friends out of the city.
3)There are smuggling boats everywhere, but absolutely no ability to smuggle anything or hire a smuggler. Not even for the refugees.

I think you’re really misunderstanding what people are criticizing about this game. We aren’t just standing here stomping our feet and throwing temper tantrums in the hope that Larian makes DLC sized updates to the game until the end of time. The story of the game is a clean narrative from start to end that I don’t feel needs any more continuation at this moment in time. What people here are expressing their frustration at is the fact that Larian themselves have set a standard of making up for their errors and crafting their projects to a state where they truly feel like they are the best they can be. They made definitive/enhanced editions for the divinity games because those games desperately needed them. Yet here we are, seeing BG3 with the exact same problems (huge glaring issues in the games quality in the final act) and Larian has simply decided they’re calling it quits on fixing things up after they’ve already begun the process of improving the game. Why go through the effort of making new ending cutscenes and adding an entire epilogue when you won’t also address the mistakes you made in rushing through the development of the third act?

Given how the pacing of updates has drastically slowed down, it seems like they’ve moved most of their team over the next project and left a smaller crew to handle the support of BG3, which is pretty standard for a dev company to do after launch of a title. What doesn’t make sense is why Swen (the director of the studio) has made several public comments about giving up the IP entirely and about how the team is “elated” to be finished with having to work on BG3. To talk so much about leaving a project behind is in rather poor taste in my opinion, as it leaves the people who are incredibly passionate about that game in particular feeling like you don’t actually care that much about your product because you don’t have 100% control over it. There’s no reason larian couldn’t have kept their control of the IP for the team that is still working on the game, apart from the blatant greed that they call out other developers for pursuing and claim that they don’t believe in. What other reason would there be for you to dump a license you don’t own (therefore making you less money) and use all your accumulated good will and awards to promote a different project where you get much more of the profit?

No one knows what conditions WoTC set for Larian to continue the IP. A new set of D&D rules is being made for 2024 and 2025, and WoTC management has declared they will go "all digital". In this changing environment it may have become difficult, or no longer intersting, for an indpendent developer to comply with all the new things coming.

When I met Roah Moonglow in Moonrise, I could query her about the smuggling operations and even request to "get in" to the operations, but she refused me.
On the docks in the lower city there 's a family pleading with a skipper to be smuggled out, but they can't pay the fee. Your PC can persuade the skipper to drop the fee and take them out.

How would a background in Baldur Gate city be implemented for a custom character ? Given you have several background choices at character creation : nobleman, urchin, sage, acolyte, bandit....... Do they need to create a backstory for you for every possibility (+ race variation, gender variation)
The absence of material memories in your home town is a normal price to pay for a completely free custom character design IMO. If Larian added things, players would be annoyed because it doesn' t fit entirely what they had in mind.

You mean just like Dragon Age Origin has done it? Or how your background came up in Mass Effect and Starfield?

This is not an impossible task. Other games already do it. Larian chose not to make the background matter. Like they chose to give everyone the same background no matter how little sense it made and abandoning the background system halfway during development like so many other things.

I haven't actually played all these games, so correct me if I'm wrong, but itsn't Mass effect PC an Origin character ? And in dragon age your class and race determine the origin, so the choice is much more limited, right ? Not saying one is "better", but different players have different preferences. No one wants all games to be the same. I'm happy with a totally free custom build and I don't mind making up my own backstory.