It might have had a 1.0 sticker on it, but it sure did feel like it was still in a pre-release state and Larian decided to use the public as their final stage of QA testing while they took a few extra months after the game’s release to actually complete the development of the project and market this work as “new content updates”.
I suppose I just expect that a game offering this amount of player agency will require a lot of post-launch work, and frankly it launched in a better state than I expected (think I posted it before but here is Tim Cain talking about Bugs in RPGs). And I also sympathise with you, if you feel BG3 will loose out by not having more support. I somewhat felt that way with Pillars of Eternity2 - a game that I feel is frustatingly close to being excellent, but in spite of a decent post launch support, I don't think devs were able to fully resolve it's underlying narrative issues. Just to be clear, I think it is fair to criticise what BG3 had and didn't have on launch and be unhappy with the state Larian leaves some of the narrative beats, but I just think that it is unfair to call the game unfinished (not now and not on launch). And that's mostly because I think there is a distinction between devs not finishing their game, and devs overpromising and deciding to lesser the scope of the title.
I think it is important to distinguish as by all accounts most if not all games ship with less (or at least different) content that devs originally imagined - so that some areas were cut during production, or quests abandoneded or shorten isn't a problem in itself. It is how Larian went about it (aka. how noticable it is in the finished product) that is a problem, and I don't think a solution necessarily comes down to "make more content".
Let's take one instance from act3:
First encounter with the Emperor has been criticised before on this forum - it forces a narrative outcome, which feels odd especially that later, after aquiring the hammer, players CAN resist the Emperor. So why not add some content, and make this choice available earlier? Well, I think it is because otherwise we wouldn't have a need for hammer - or if we were able to disobey the Emperor, but than were forced to free the Gith that would greatly gimp our interactions with Raphael.
Oh I am sure there could be a major redesign to fix that narrative problem, but it would require either some major restructuring of Act3, or completely change Raphaels deal. On a side note, I wonder how much of act3 was planned when they were making act1. Whenever it is true or not, to me it feels like they make making stuff up as they go along, rather than the story being revealed overtime.
So it seems to me that Larian is struggling with tying up all the threads that they have set up, rather than not finishing the game. Maybe they had a grand plan initially, which became unfeasible after they better realised the scope of their game. Maybe they could have done smarter cuts if they haven't revealed so many plot threads in EA which were: 1) already polished to a pretty high standard and scrapping them would mean scrapping content in a pretty advanced stage of development 2) Players would see it and probably would be more upset that something was removed from first 40h of gameplay, than if they would underdeliver a narrative payoff in 140thh of gameplay
Ending is that I will give you felt like something was missing, but I also think that if you are not going to ship with something, than the epilogue is not a bad thing to ship without. For one, a big chunk of your player base will not see it in time (or ever). and for those that do finish the game, reloading a save later and seeing a better conclusion for your adventures works just fine.
And on a side note, I had little technical issues with BG3 1.0 - quite a bit narrative reactivity being off (characters refering to past events as if they werern't achieved, or mentioning things we didn't talk about in barks etc.), but for me that's accaptable level of junk for 1.0 of a game of this scale of reactivity.
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I’m curious as to what you would say your general opinion of BG3 is if you could sum it up. It seems like you and a couple other people in the thread feel generally ambivalent about this game and despite recognizing the same flaws as me, would much rather Larian just starts from scratch and learns from their mistakes to make something you’ll like better on their next release.
Sure.
To me BG3 is very confused in what it wants to be. On one hand it is a systemic game, which encourages player agency. On the other hand it is a Bioware style cinematic game, with fairly rigid storylines full of "not do this, and after this that" in way that doesn't allow for much creativity. There are moments where the game really shines - specifically narrative bits where the game gives you an overarching objective, and offers you a bit playbox through which you can complete the objective in whatever way you like (killing three Goblins leaders, freeing prisoners from Moonlight tower), but for the majority of the run, I thought it didn't properly leverage it's systemic depth, nor did it offer a compelling story. I felt not like I was playing an interactive story with many interesting choices, but fairly rigid story, which I can break if I want to.
Combat is mixed bag as well. I tend to enjoy it a lot for an hour or so, but I just don't enjoy the balance or "Larianisms". Larian has very different mentality and prorities to D&D, which is fine, but the two just don't gel well together. I enjoyed D:OSs (first one more than the 2nd) and D&D games, and BG3 doesn't seem to really deliver either. I just wish it would pick a line.
I think the structuring of the game is off as well, with plot being pretty unevenly spread throughout, and early acts setting up so much plots with so much potential narrative repercussions, that act3 specifically gets crushed under the weight of plot threads and potential outcomes that it needs to navigate (and it does that, predictibly, but reducing importance of our previous choices, and focusing mostly on new characters and plot events).
Those are probably three things I would like to see Larian do better in the future - find a way for your narrative and gameplay to work in tandem more often, rather than clashing with each other. Use systems that promote YOUR ideal gameplay systems, not try to adapt 3rd party systems which had different priorities than you. Try to create a move even and consistant experience from the beginning to the end.
Than there is stuff, I don't expect them to ever change, but I don't like - their tone, and humor, UI design and control systems, that I find so tedius, inefficient and unpleasant to use it really hurts my experience with the game. Focus on "do whatever you like" over tactically interesting gameplay with choices and consequences.
