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

I agree with all you have written, but an opinion that Larian is creatively led studio is more of my own asseement. Frankly I am impressed they decided to move away from BG3 - it is consistant with all they have said and done before, but that they decided not to double down on BG3 is something I admire.

Nonetheless, BG3's success could easly trip Larian (as I think Witcher3 success lead to CDPR overreaching in years after), we will see where they will go from here. I liked the idea of them working on multiple smaller projects, but it seems they found something big again they want to do.

Fortunately, on account on being mixed on actual Larian made games, I am not a fanboy at this point . I just seem to like how Larian does business more than the games they make.

I wouldn't call it consistent.
Larian started the trend of having a definitive edition which has been adopted by several other high profile RPG creators. And many people, including people who like BG3, expected there to be a definitive edition that fixes act 3, which is why they have been rather lenient with Larian so far.

Once they realize that a definitive edition is not coming, as many people do not follow Larians communication on X closely, there will be a lot of disappointment.

But Larian already has their money and they apparently don't think that this will hurt future games.

I certainly appreciate that they are, as you said, creatively led, but I also expected them to properly wrap up the game, which is the professional and fan appealing thing to do, and it's also something they did do in the past. I can understand not willing to make DLCs but leaving the core game in this state is worrisome. I agree with Henry that I'd prefer a more balanced approach, where they also focus on responsible actions and not just merry-go-round artistry, randomly discarding things and moving on to the next project. This approach might work well in other artistic fields, but they're also a business and if they sell you a game in early access, it's not wrong of you to assume you'll get a finished product eventually, particularly if the said studio already released a definitive edition before. This is not the case for me anymore, and regretfully, I'll have to abstain from purchasing their new game early, as I did with BG3. In the past I was even looking forward to it, thinking that I kind of missed out on not being more involved during the EA, but after seeing how certain things were changed and good scenes irrevocably removed for unknown reasons, things that worked well being rewritten last minute and morally grey characters not receiving a proper conclusion, I'm doubly discouraged from throwing my money at Larian again. I also remember all the promises/lies about the Upper City and 17K endings just before the release. The trust is gone.

in fairness to Larian, while they did keep talking about the Upper city in a way that was ambiguous at best, they specifically said that they did not want to put a number to the amount of endings the game had and that 17K number came from a journalist who claimed to have gotten hold of info from within Larian. So they at least did not lie about that.

Exactly this. Nobody is asking for any kind of new content, but Act 3 should be finished. People are even willing to pay more money to Larian for doing so.
I'm not saying that my trust is completely gone, but simply saying: "Oh, we are tired of this game, so we will left Act 3 unfinished and move on" is not a cool or even responsible thing to do, when people have already paid you money. People didn't pay you money for you to have fun only, people paid money for the FINISHED product. (And just to be clear, I'm not expecting Upper City to be back, I'm just saying: "Fix those broken things which are already in the game, please!") This game is a huge success, so I don't see what's stopping Larian from just hiring a few people to slowly fix Act 3, while the rest of the crew is working on the new projects.

Huh, cause I never actually checked where the 17K endings claim came from I did a little digging and found the source.

So fwiw, it came from Fextralife's video, where he asked a/the Lead Writer of the endings, Crystal, "how many variations of the ending are there"; she replied with 17K. She also didn't give a number when asked for how many mainline different endings there are.

So maybe she was taking into account the hourish long scrapped ending cutscene.

With that definition in mind, maybe the current epilogue has technically hit/surpassed that number, even if it's just small differences?

But do you have issue with Larian not supporting the game, or their branding? Please, feel free to correct me if my timelines are wrong (I played D:OS1 and 2 only after Enhanced Editions were released, so I might not have a full picture of their post launch support nor 1.0 state).

In past Larian released D:OS1&2 on PC and about a year after the release they released Console Port, which included improvements, and some major new features (VO for D:OS1, remade act3 for D:OS2). Those also came in a patch to PC, together with "Enhanced Edition" rebranding.

With Baldur's Gate3 they released at the same time on all three platforms and instead of working for a year and releasing "Enhanced Edition", they were patching the game with improvements, new modes and new content.

My personal view is that Larian didn't really change their attitude to post-launch support, but rather changed how it was released - more regular patches throughout the year, rather than one big patch and re-release. There is no denying, however, that ino BG3 case Larian's approach seemed to be focus on polishing what they had in the game and adding a bit on top, rather than diving deep into guts of the game, and remaking parts of it. I am willing to assume that such unwilligness to change BG3 content comes down to it being a far more intricate game, with far higher cost and time required to make content and any new major content might require it's own post re-launch support (more on that later). It's been a year+ since the game released, and new endings release only now. How long have they been in production? If Larian decided to remake act3 - how much time would it take? Months? Years? If let's say Larian had to set aside a team to work for 3-5 years to remake act3, would it really be worth it? Not only to them, but to us as well. How many people would care about BG3 getting revamped content years from now? Is that estimation way too generous? I really don't know. But it took CDPR almost 3 years to release Cyberpunk2.0, and as far as I remember they did mostly polish and revamped gameplay systems - not remake 1/3 of the game's levels and narrative content. At the very least, I don't think it is unreasonable to assume that revamping act3 of BG3 would require much, much more time investment and resources than that of D:OS2. Would D:OS2 get a new act3 if it was full of cinematics for each NPC interaction? There is also a matter of how long it took to make BG3 vs D:OS2, so I don't think this is 1-1 comparison - D:OS2 released 3 years after D:OS1, while BG3 released 6 years after D:OS2 - so not only they supported both games for about a year after launched, but even before the release they spend 2x as much time on BG3 than they did on D:OS2.

I reposted Larian's recent retrospective twice already in 24h, but I think it is just too relevant to many discussions happening here.

1) 11:10, 41:44 - Sven mentions the original plan for the game to be much bigger. Isn't possible that issues that we as players see is the result of this scaling down, rather than game being "unfinished"? If so, even though 1.0 didn't feel right in many aspects, I don't see there is a feasable way of fixing it, beyond "try to planout next project a bit more realistically". As well as explanation why there might be links to other areas which in the end weren't utilised.

2) 47:55, 06:07, 28:27 - on QAing BG3. I found third clup especially interesting, when Sven describes how cinematics needed to be constantly watched and rewatched throughout the development as "done" content kept breaking due to seemingly unrelated changes. So I don't think making act3 is as simply as hacking it off and adding something new. What state could BG3 end up with, if Larian kept working on new content, instead of focusing on new stuff?


I should also stress that I don't really aim to defend Larian. I do find their game's tendency to dip in quality as they go on to be frustrated, and I hope they will find a way to address it in the future. I also think they have been addressing it, and each game they did have been getting better and better at it (I will take 1.0 Baldur's Gate3 over D:OS2 Enhanced Edition any time!). Larian also have been supporting BG3 post launch for a good chunk of time and responding to some feedback. That they don't agree with some feedback or think addressing some of it would be unfeasable, or not worth the work it would take - I mean that's their call to make, I am incapable of making that judgement myself. Sven doesn't think it is worth continuing changing things, and that's pretty much that. At the same time it is players right to be dissatisfied with product that was shipped. On the other hand if a larger chunk of the playerbase feels that BG3 needed more time in the oven and required extensive post launch support, perhaps they should be more objective about game's state. I don't mean to aim it specifically at you, Ixal, or anyone on the forum. But I think that if a game with 96 metacritic and 8.8 user score and crap ton of awards is left in a "bad state" after a year of post launch support and improvements, than something very questionable has happened with how the game was appraised (or of course, the game is excellent, and some of the players have unreasonable expactations).

Because people put a lot of trust in Larian, we thought they would at least finish the game, so Larian was given A LOT of credit in advance. Even with broken Act 3 at launch.
You know, nobody expected them to just be like: "Oh, we are tired of this game, it isn't fun anymore for us, so we stop supporting it and fixing bugs."
I mean, their ENTIRE approval system for characters with different paths is broken for Act 3 (like Astarion and Shadowheart), it doesn't care at all that a lot of their approvals contradict their cutscenes and dialogues, because it's the same approvals for both evil and good paths. And they think such things aren't worthy to be fixed? Just one example among many.
Now it's too late to downvote or change user scores, you know.

I am hoping that in the majority of cases that isn't true, and they genuinely enjoyed the game and thought it's the best thing since.... Elden Ring? Praising the game because someone imagines they will play a different version of it sometime down the line is a silly thing to do (and I think unkind for other potential players who try to make up their mind on how to spend their $60). As gratifying it would be to get my opinions reinforced by a shift in general's public opinion, it would also be sad to see people sour on an RPG that's been received so well by so many people.

Funny thing, Elden Ring also falls flat on its face in the latter third. Maybe players have a soft spot for games that bite more than they can chew. Fire up the imagination, and all that. [Don't kill, me I like ER a lot. Just it's on my mind a lot, as I am trying to decide if I want to jump straight into Erdtree from my old save, or do a fresh run... but boy, while there is stull in ER I wouldn't mind going through again there is also decent chunk I don't care for].

So do you really blame people for expecting to get a FINISHED game some time down the line?
For me one thing doesn't contradict the other at all. I'm not saying this is an awful or a bad game now all of the sudden, but yes, I won't call it a masterpiece anymore when developers refuse to bring it to the finished state. I mean 'finished game' is definitely not the same as 'a different version of the game'.
Once again, I repeat, nobody is asking for new content or DLC. But I'm willing to pay them even more money just to finish the game and fix bugs.

Personally, no, I don't like Elden Ring much. Just not my cup of tea, so I can't really compare.

I mean... In the last 10 years... When has there ever been a "Finished" AAA title?

Meanwhile, people had been (And still continue to) ranting and raving about how good the game was on release and how good it still is... Despite it being so very lacking outside of Act 1.

It'd be pretty disingenuous for people to be rating it GOTY and giving it award after award... On the presumption that it would eventually be finished and thus be deserving of such.

Ergo, it would seem that expecting the game to get finished is a problem for only a minority of people. With many others being satisfied with its unfinished state (Or at least, not bothered by it)

The Norwegian fuckwits gave Obama the Peace Prize on exactly such premise.

There is a difference between "lets add full voiceover" (Disco Elysium) and "lets add ending cinematics and maybe fix the broken last third of the game (no, we don't).

As for the awards, the reason for this is hype thanks to the ip and Larians bear sex marketing. You can see that by the several nonsensical awards BG3 got where people just voted BG3, no matter what the award was for like best community engagement after Larian went complete radio silent and not even informing people of delays until the day if release, and then only posting it on a privat developers X account.

Hmm... I am not blaming anyone, see no villains or heroes here. Just making an observation. In case it wasn't clear from previous posts let me clarify.

First of all, BG3 was finished when it released in 1.0 - that's what 1.0 is. Any problems it had on launch should be judged in terms of the finished product's quality, not its development state. I get that there is a lot of "release it now, fix it later" attitude happening in the last decade or so, but 1) it usually doesn't happen, 2) I don't think a game shouldn't be praised as a masterpiece, and penicle of the genre if it is in an unfinished state (may or may not apply to BG3) - in the best case scenario it's a game with a lot of potential. Also, I don't remember Larian promising to support BG3 extensively post launch, so to expect it is maybe not a stretch, but it is also not a given (and again, Larian did support BG3 for about a year now). Maybe it is just how I am, but I like to try to treat things as they are - I mean I rated one of my fav games in recent years (Disco Elysium) 3/5, because while I loved its initial half of the runtime, I found the latter half and ending to not land. I was trying less to criticise players, but to point out the clash between critical and player response, and the outrage that 2023 Best Game of the Year winner, is allegedly not finished. Two conclusions I can think of: either people reviewed and awarded the game for what they wished it would be, rather than it was, or the game isn't as unfinished as people claim.

On a side note, a game can still be "unfinished" and be a great game - Arcanum and Mascarades come to mind. But it's not like they launched to 10/10 acclaim, swept all major industry awards and only later people realised that the problems the game had when they played the released version were part of the game they played.

I also didn't imply that it is players fault that Larian isn't continuing development. Even if the player base was more critical, I am doubtful it would change Larian's decision. I just find the conflict between game's reception and announcement that it won't receive further updates after a years worth of support to be interesting. Sven addressed it directly, so I am sure it is not just few laud voices on this forum who are disappointed. Perhaps, I am just the one who still lives in early 2000s and doesn't take post-launch support as a given.

On a more positive note - let's see what patch 7 will bring. And while Larian said not to expect any new major content after that, they didn't discount technical support - so hopefully any major bugs and issues will continue being ironed out. Narrative and design challenges will be what they are.

TDLR: People thought Larian is not like the other studios and people gave Larian a lot of credit in advance - such a foolish thing to do? Do you really think we shouldn't have supported Larian because they didn't make an official statement: "We are going to finish this game and fix the bugs"?
Well, If Larian was never going to finish the game properly, they should have said it from the start. " it usually doesn't happen" - if other studios are irresponsible it doesn't mean that people should have expected Larian to act the same. It's really sad that this is the state of the gaming industry now, when we can't even ask for a finished product. And listen, I can understand when small studios have no resources to continue to support their games, it's totally understandable, but for Larian after their HUGE success? And after people literally still saying: "Just take my money!"? Sorry, but it's just not the same. People thought that by supporting Larian from the start we will get just more content, more DLC. Instead of it all we got is: "We don't want to finish this game, we are bored".

Does Larian really want to get the reaction like Cyberpunk got at first when they release an unfinished game the next time? Well, at least Cyberpunk was supported for much longer than just 1 year.


You know, if this is the case, then I take my complains back completely. Unfortunately, they now talk like they want to fully distance themselves from this game and their message reads (at least for me) like: "We are fully done with this game, we won't fix anything anymore."

Well... These days... It's good to have a healthy amount of skepticism.

Expecting better from any company is largely an exercise in disappointment (See: CDPR)


We very much can.

We just can't expect to get it.

Between the increases to development complexity, the corporitization of the industry and the nature of game monetization... There's too much going against having an actual finished product (Perhaps Gabe was onto something with his idea of Episodic releases? I know the recent Hitman titles have been using that formula and it seems to work - Releasing a game in chunks so you can monetize each chunk after you finish working on it rather than getting nothing until you complete the ENTIRE game and release it all at once... Of course, if this ever becomes mainstream I fully expect it'd just get corpo'd into releasing each Act of a game for full $70 + MTX + preorder bonuses...)


The flaw in this premise was that Cyberpunk was fundamentally bad on launch. It, like No Man's Sky, FFXIV and Fallout 76 where utter disasters upon release. We're talking Concord/Forspoken/Redfall/Gollum levels of "This game completely bombed".

So of course they received a lot more support, several years worth of work, to bring them up to a level where they could start actually earning money.

Meanwhile, BG3 was critically acclaimed upon launch, winning several GOTY awards and selling like hot cakes. As such, there's far less of a NEED to put extended development into the game because it was ALREADY a success and earning money. Unlike games such as Cyberpunk, No Man's Sky, FFXIV and FO76 which were net losses until they were turned around.

If Larian's next game releases as a complete disaster to the same degree as aforementioned titles, then yeah, it would be possible to expect far more post-release development to occur to bring the game up to a level where it can make money. But as the case currently stands, BG3 is not that.

Well except having the opinion that the game is "unfinished" in any way is the minority opinion.
Most people seeing Larian move on and not do any DLC is either excused by adding to their mythos of "not like other game developers" or blame WOTC instead.

Slightly curious as to your definition of unfinished is?
Mine would be, minimally, a fixed Minthara for those that include her, because I hear she's still broken in P7. Maximum would be fixing Act 3's structure by readding the upper city (assuming that exists, idk at this point); Bonus points if they make inventory management easier.


I mean, it's happened 4 times in a row now and no one seems to care much... (Except for Dragon Commander, I guess)
It helps that they utilize EA to polish up their first act or two, which most people probably spend most time with too.
Hopefully, they don't do use EA again, although I fully expect them to.


Tbh, I'm in the "something very questionable" camp for this; If it was only Act 1, then sure, I can understand it, but the complete product just doesn't reach those heights.

It's kinda the same when you look at the other DOS games, despite rough last Acts (How rough on release, idk exactly), and they're in the high 80-90s.
But I guess I understand that too, I use to think DOS2 was the best RPG around, but after finishing it (and replaying Act 1 -> 2 probably too many times), that opinion descended quite quickly to the point that I just cannot touch it ever again.

Well I guess this depends on the methods used in critical evaluation. Some break down the game into systems and evaluate them separately, i.e. gameplay is a 10, story is 8, graphics 7 etc. This seems like a universal and just approach to evaluation, but I find it deceptive in terms of representing the game's true value. If overall enjoyment the game brings is immense, it would not be just to extract some points just to check some boxes on the evaluation sheet. There should be phenomena and exceptions, when a game gets high scores despite its technical flaws or other mistakes, just for the sake of being a wonderful experience overall.

That I think is a great question - as I mentioned before, when I played BG3 upon release I didn’t get an impression that was anything missing that Larian meant to add. I had narrative and design issues, but those were issues with what WAS in the game, rather than what WASN’T. I would also like to hear examples of “bugs” people mention. I didn’t encounter many in my playthrough almost a year ago now.

Cyberpunk was on a completely different level. It had to be pulled of the stores because it didn’t work on older controls on which it was solved. A game overreaching and perhaps cutting some corners to finish the game and ship (yes, finish!), is not the same thing as releasing a game that doesn’t work on consoles it was sold on.

I hate to get into the realm of speculation, but I cannot shake a thought I've had since watching the Larian Panel at PAX. Despite his smiley appearance and silly "look at me I'm wearing armor" attitude, Swen seemed to be really bothered throughout the entire panel, especially when making the statement about how they're entirely done with the game. It looks like he's just sick of all the publicity they've been doing on this game, and seemed really glad that the panel was the last BG3 event before the devs return to fully engrossing themselves with their next project. I wonder if the big mess we find ourselves in regarding the unfinished state of the game is a result of Swen personally being a little upset about how successful the game has been. I'm sure he's at least a little bit ticked off about the fact that he put decades into crafting an original fantasy story in the divinity universe only for it to always be a "niche" sort of game that has a pretty limited fanbase. Meanwhile, his studio gets the opportunity to work with an established IP and continue a fan favorite series, and they suddenly have the biggest game in the world on their hands and are being showered with award after award. He's probably eager to show everybody in the world that a true Larian original project can be just as awesome and popular as Baldur's Gate.

All these awards and praise are holding Larian in the spotlight, so this is the perfect time for Swen to show people how cool his ideas are. Shame that this has to come at the price of him making the studio dump BG3 without fully realizing its potential just so they can get all hands on deck for something new.


I imagine if the developers had more passion for this game and actually cared about what it could be at its best, they would come back in a few years and release the "enhanced edition" alongside a new generation of consoles that's inevitably on the horizon. Even while they were plugging away on Cyberpunk 2.0, CDPR found the time to work on and release the next-gen edition of the Witcher 3 for Xbox Series X/S and PS5, which featured some pretty substantial changes to the game, completely overhauling the skills system that many people didn't like in the original release. Larian's pretty firm stance of "we're done and that's that" makes me believe that they really just do not care enough about BG3 to ever come back to it. The praise and awards it brought them with its release is seemingly all they needed from it to fuel their bigger ambitions for games they actually 100% care about.