(Warning, many spoilers ahead)

I'm just an old guy who started D&D in 2nd edition 30 years ago. I enjoyed Forgotten Realms and the classic "gathering my party to venture forth" from a tavern where we received a quest to go find some treasure. Usually an elf was the most exotic or strange party member who would garner attention from local villagers or farmers as they had never actually seen one in person before. If there were any Tiefling or Drow with us they would surely have worn a disguise to avoid drawing too much attention to themselves. Slaying an ogre or band of orcs was quite the accomplishment for a group of eager level 2 adventurers, enough to earn a reward from the local mayor and a reputation in the area. Finding a cache of magical items was quite rare and scrolls or potions were valuable assets to be used carefully. Eventually something would happen to thrust the party into the seat of danger and a plot would unfold which would lead to intrigue, greatness and powerful enemies. Back then, like in the original Baldur's Gate 1, our story began similarly to Gorion's Ward, a novice set off into the unknown on an adventure with their childhood companion Imoen. Can you imagine how boring characters like Imoen, Jaheira or Khalid would seem compared to those in "Baldur's Gate 3"?

In contrast, BG3 feels like some Michael Bay, Guardians of the Galaxy fever dream with flying ships and planar races being the new normal, throwing away the entire vibe set by the first 2 games. BG3 has the player fighting Beholders in the Underdark as early as level 2-3! It feels like someone who only just heard of Forgotten Realms wanted to take all the most over the top content and cram it all into the first chapter. By the time our characters set foot in a normal town or village (which currently doesn't even exist in Early Access) they will likely be in the double digit levels and have an entire troupe traveling in their camp. A camp which may consist (thus far) of a Lich, owlbear cub, The legendary Volo, a vampire, a gith, a druid, several magical humans and a dog. It makes deciding whether to spend extra gold for a nice room at the Friendly Arm Inn seem like an entirely different setting.

All of this leads to nothing in the current game feeling special or particularly noteworthy.
In the first BG1 game, our character discovered they are a descendant of the God of Murder much to their surprise as their life thus far has been relatively quiet and normal. They then slowly begin to manifest abilities and unravel the meaning of their lineage while being joined by an interesting cast of adventurers whose backgrounds never truly outshine that of the main character. All of this occurs while exploring the relatively quiet, pastoral wilderness of the Sword Coast.
In BG3 on the other hand, after our player crawls from the bowels of a gigantic nautiloid dimensional spaceship which is fighting dragon riding astral lizard people whom all escaped from the nine hells only to be marooned amidst a lost caravan of demon-folk battling a horde of magically enthralled goblins it is hard to imagine anything really standing out as unusual or particularly noteworthy. We are immediately joined by a wizard who has shacking up with the goddess Mystra herself and has now become a direct conduit for the weave, able to siphon seemingly infinite amounts of magic into himself. Yet he is somehow just probably the most mundane of our possible companions, all of whom have some absurdly complex story for level 1 characters. It is like every party member is competing to see who is the most special, edgy character that can subvert expectations, and this is all explained by the fact their minds were altered by psychic squid people but then further manipulated by an unknown magical entity known only as "The Absolute". Does anyone remember the Baldur's Gate games where you could recruit companions like the the ranger Kivan, a simple elf whose entire backstory was as complicated as revenge against a local bandit leader?

The entire premise of BG3 in this regard is absurd. Githyanki and Tieflings are more common than Humans or Elves in the current game. I was genuinely surprised when the player meets Mayrina's brothers in the swamp, who are two of the only non-magical, normal humans in the entire game thus far. This does not parallel BG1 & 2, both of which were centric around fairly mundane cities and towns. BG1 straight up went with the initial setting being a very quiet human castle/monastery of Candlekeep. BG2 got a little more exotic with the metropolitan city of Amn where magic was powerful just beneath the surface but it was still mostly grounded in traditional medieval fantasy. Part of the charm of Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 was interacting with townsfolk and playing the typical medieval hero (or villain). Hearing quips like "You tell 'em Marl" from drunken country bumpkins or deciding the quality of room you could afford at the local inn, created a backdrop of a living, believable and relatable world amidst the fantastic magical elements. Somehow BG3 seems more on par with the setting of Planescape or Throne of Bhaal which we didn't reach until level 18-20.

My character in BG3 has more potions, scrolls and magical items then I know what to do with. All of my party's gear slots are enchanted. Half the battles can be won by shoving the enemy off a cliff. Burning, acid or wet surfaces are such an important combat feature while game mechanics like alignment or reputation are ignored. Gone are character portraits. Gone are AI packages, formations, and 6 member parties. I played Divinity Original Sin 1 and 2 and enjoyed both but neither felt like Forgotten Realms, neither felt like D&D... This is, something else. Divinity Original Sin 3 maybe. Baldur's Gate 3, definitely not.

But everything in this post does resonate with me, truly.

It really makes one wonder, if Charname appeared in this game as a companion, like "Hi, I'm the spawn of Bhaal. I remember you from the ship. We must have taken the same wrong left when exiting Hell, crazy huh. I'm looking for a healer, how bout you? Want to team up?" and we probably wouldn't skip a beat. 'Sorry, I got Lae'zel in the group and we're all full up. Good luck!" hehe

Ah, for the days of High Hedge, and good old show stoppers like Kivan! I miss it too

ps. also, makes me wonder how Bhaal is going to figure back in. I guess TAV could be the Bhaalspawn somehow. Like ATTN Throne of Murder: The matrix has decided you get wiped, reincarnated and reset to lvl1, but with all the same knowledge of your previous life, just garbled all to hell in the flayer acid trip. That would be amusing. There should be a cassandra dialog option in every convo where Tav is insistent that they can "remember it all!" And like 'why doesn't anyone believe?' And 'what happened to the power!?' That would at least make me chuckle. That should be a BG3 'origin', filed under leans chaotic alignment hehe

https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=799229#Post799229

Welcome to the club.

+1 for sure

+1, without a doubt.

Those characters are not there to be your companions. They are walking advertisements for playing an origin character instead of your own character.

I like to think of them as boneable billboards.

Fantastic post OP. You hit all the right points.


Yep, the harsh truth.


Yep, it is just ridiculous. Such a poorly written character.


Yep, it feels more like Star Wars than Forgotten Realms.


As I said in another thread, I miss how the originals intertwined the plot with the political intricacies of the Sword Coast.

Was typing up a couple of paragraphs to express my thoughts but thought it would be rather redundant. So here just have my +1

Hey there,

You're not the first, nor will you be the last to say these things, OP... much to many folks' collective chagrin. There is not really answer to everything you're saying here - there are no excuses or apologies to be made, because it's all just as you say, more or less.



This in particular hits the nail very much on the head. It feels like this, because this is exactly what has happened.

Nevertheless, thank you for taking the time to sit and write this up- every voice counts, especially when it's anew voice chiming in fresh and coming to the same conclusion on their own. If you can spare the time and effort, I'd like to strongly encourage you to submit this to Larian's direct feedback form (from the launcher), just to send your particular voice to them directly.

It says a lot to me that one of the most 'normal' companions right now is the Githyanki, because in all things except for her current circumstance with the tadpole, she's pretty much a completely normal Githyanki. BGIII is really missing out on having some more 'normal' companions. The Anomens and Nalias etc to balance out the characters with crazy backstories and/or personalities like Edwin and Minsc.

But that ties into a greater apprehension I have with the game. You compared it to Michael Bay & Guardians of the Galaxy. And while I absolutely adore so much of the game, I have to agree there. There's too much high stakes, too many big names-mindflayers, jergal, the nine hells, githyanki, the dead three, shar, selune, etc etc getting thrown at us right at the beginning. We aren't even half way through act I and we can already fight mindflayers, drow, githyanki, and a frickin *adamantine golem* The game has no chill, no patience. Plenty of other D&D games have had absurdly high stakes before, but they usually had the sense to build up to them up. I fear this is all too much for one game, and introduced at too much of a breakneck speed as well.

I'm absolutely loving the characters and their interactions, and the amount of intricacy Larian has built into some character interactions, quests, giving players chances to think outside the box etc, but the overall plot? That has me worried. The super special status of all of our companions is a bit offputting, their endearing personalities and interactions aside.

I think it's way too late for Larian to reverse course on a lot of the decisions they have made at this point since they are firmly woven into the dna of the game by now, but I do hope they at least consider moderating some of the excesses. I don't want to feel like I'm playing through three Realm-Shaking-Events simultaneously over the course of a single game, and I'd really appreciate some more normal party members later in the game.

I really get what you mean. This all seems a bit overblown. Not because of one single thing but because everything seems out of what you think would be ordinary, or normal. I am with you that less is sometimes more. I wonder if our PC gets some special backstory, since why would Mind flayers abduct a totally ordinary character with all those oddballs .

If you have been around D&D an AD&D since 30 years, you are about the same as me. My first game beeing "pool of radiance" on the C64, where our party ended in the bowels of the dead god moander in space. So those overblown stories existed back then too. They started off a tad slower i guess. BG3 is a lot for new 1st level chars, and even more for people that are new to forgotten realms. Be that good or bad.

and if you read the realms novels of the last 20 years, the realms have changed quite a bit. We have earthmotes now (and i have not seen those in BG3 till now, nor spellscars).

All in all i agree on the fact that it may be a bit much for 1st act 1st level. That could have taken a bit longer

Alignment is one of the richest and most-missed features of D&D. The CRPG format lays bare the importance and necessity of alignment mechanics for a variety of reasons. The game would undoubtedly be much better with more alignment in it.

I am similar in terms of older gamer (50 yrs or so) played d&d mainly second and third edition - but I’ve put 280 hours into early access and on my 4th play through of patch six.

Whilst I agree with some of what you say I’m taking it for what it is under dark at lvl 4 & spectators I’ve killed two in this run they must be baby beholders as lvl 4 party would last 5 seconds normally..
Anyway Michael Bay or not this game is fantastic and the story will develop as it should it’s still early access and a good 12-18 months away from release in which time a lot can happen.

More Githyanki true but we are in the wilderness with a downed nautaloid ship makes sense gith would be in hot pursuit of their mortal enemy ..I can get with that…the start of a grand adventure & alot more interesting than 4 characters meet in a bar…lol but you are right was always the way

Tieflings in the modern game are common so are Dragonborn ? …as are druids, and a lot of other races/classes

And this story follows on from a city being dragged into avernus..I think ..so there is alot of scope for broader and more fantastical setting that perhaps would be the norm.


I’m enjoying the story - yes some of the traditionally higher level enemies are in early but they are weaker versions - I remember fighting small dragons in d&d in as low as level 4 ….dragonlance first module black dragon if my memory serves me correctly ..couple of other examples made things exciting..

It may also be in the final version that parts of what is early access areas may be level 5-6 in the end version with stronger versions of what we see now..

There are a number of magical items true but that’s the computer game aspect kicking in - can’t say I find any of the items overly powerful or unbalancing from a gameplay point of view. Larian have dialled things down a lot since early access began and I think they continue to listen to feedback

Shoving, surfaces …some will change some will not as it’s Larian game …I still think we are very lucky it’s them making this game if you look at some of the nonsense so called aaa studios are trotting out these days.

I was more of your view earlier on but as the game has evolved and improved and I’ve sunk alot more time into it I’m alot more accepting of the premise and the difference between table top d&d vs computer game d&d.

I do agree with you, OP. I'm a long time D&D gamer too and loved BG 1&2.
I do like many things about the new game and I enjoy it, but I find the companions too much, basically Mary Sues and 'main characters'. The story is overblown, with too much high level stuff, that fit dumbed down and yes, I would like a little normal town with some small quests and lesser grand schemes in the first act.

I dont want to sound harsh ... but maybe i will so i just state in advance that its not my intention.

It seems like nostalgia dreaming to me ... you know the kind old people have when they say that back in their days everything was right and better ... grass was greener, sun was warmer, politicians were honest ... that kind of stuff.
I mean i get it, kinda ... i also dislike what happened to my favorite settings (including games movies and books) but you cant stop progress and it just require changes ... only time will tell wich change will be remembered or fogotten.

Now lets look at sone specific points:
You were complaining about races ... i dont understand what should i take from that ... its somehow bothering you that there is more than just elves and humans?

Take Gith ... there are 4 in that cinematic as far as i know (including Lae'zel) and yes we later meet their patrol of 5 plus Kithrak if i remember corectly.
Thats not so much in my eyes. O_o
Also it kinda make sence that if your story include some cteature (a mind flayer in this case) you cant and possibly will also meet their forsworn enemies.

Tieflings being more common than humans ... this is just wrong observation ... i mean you are ignoring context here, you said it youreself we didnt even reach any settlement so far and as they tell us they are not even from here.
It makes to me as much sence as claiming that there is more Asians than Black people in Africa based on that you meet Chineese tourist group on airport. :-/

Companions ... well that is its own topic ... but are they really so special?
Lae'zel > totally regular and kinda boring among her own people ... i mean she is not even concidered adult. all her specialness is that she separated from her flock ... isnt that the oldest story ever made?
Gale > i mean i can understand that he would seem little too much, banging a Goddess of magic herself is no small feat ... i must admit that i dont know how often Gods walk among meere mortals in this world ... but concidering that almost litteraly any cleric can chitchat with them, it just seem possible ... also as far as i know we were told that Gale loves her but not even a woed about hwr feelings ... i mean have you heard about Zeus? The guy who created basicaly whole Greece mythology bcs he had some bed adventure with mortal from time to time? I dunno why Gods so often have fetish for humans but concidering varoety of halfbreeds they are not the only one.
Astarion > only a spawn ... and Vampires are not uncommon in this setting ... so where is the problem? I mean yes he gets quite strong bonus action (i really wonder if that gets powerup in level 5) but except that? As far as i know vampire mind flayers are rare but not new in this world.
Wyll and Shadow are just regular persons in my opinion.

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But i dont want just criticize ...
I agree woth your point about scrolls and enchanted things being little too common ...
But personaly i believe (read as: hope) that this is just for EA purposes to find out vich magic effects people like.

I tend to agree and disagree with OP, being an "old timer" who stayed up 'til 5am playing BG1 as a kid.

First off - BG3 is a sequel, even though it will start from scratch. It kinda sets the premises for "a little more right at the start". An introduction that sets the premises for future action is nice and attracts people. Just imagine the first Episode of Game of Thrones and the White Walkers in the woods - we didn't see them again for a loooong time. BG2 started with the most OP wizard we've ever encountered kicking ass and showing us how powerless we are.
The story takes off right after the official D&D campaign "Descent into Avernus", and that's where all your tieflings are coming from. For sure D&D has changes since 2E with a much wider mix of races.

Regarding magical items, in BG1 you find a Ring of Wizardry right outside one of the first friendly places, as lvl 1. You find an Ankheg armor before nashkel mines. You have a +2 hammer with lightning damage and a long sword +1 with frost damage. Not to mention you meet an elf with a moonblade, a super rare magical artifact. An all this before you have hit lvl 3. You can even run around with a 2-handed +3 cursed berserker sword. And don't forget the belt of gender swapping
And BG2 basically drowned you in magical items to the point that even my Bag of Holding was full.
So far in BG3, we have a bunch of magical items with the odd "on use" effect that doesn't throw off balance but gives flavor.
I would like to see far less items using surfaces however. This is just not a thing in D&D. And booming arrows throwing people off ledges etc. is just silly at these levels.

Regarding our origin characters, the only one with a truly over the top story is Gale, but he is also a very grounded character in every other aspect.
The main reason they are all very "much" is simply because they can be played as an Origin character, and this is Larians thing.
Bumping into Gith when you deal with mind flayers is kinda a thing. Same thing happened in BG2.

So to summarize, even if the intro is Michael Bay-like and you realize you've been thrown into something big, the overall setting in Act 1 isn't over the top and I do believe things will feel more in place once level cap is increased outside of EA (or if we're lucky, still in EA).

+1 , at this point I fear the best we can hope for is that they simply add some forgotten realms everyday life 'mundane, pastoralist, rural'-ordinariness to the current map. Suggestions I already made elsewhere which I think could somehow lessen the feelings described by OP and many others: add 'roaming' NPC of various kinds (e.g. merchant caravans, bandits, wildlife), add the necessities of life to make the world believable (e.g. an actual tavern, a farm - where do the people on the map grow their food?, some basic shops for clothes - see waukeens promenade in BG2 which had a lot of these, add some houses or other kinds of habitation structures - right now I simply wonder where all the grove NPC's are supposed to sleep, on the floor? - obviously atm there is no night so they don't "sleep",... etc etc etc.
I agree that a lot of this would amount to 'filler' and perhaps some players are more in favour of a really lean and stripped game where everything has a purpose but I hope they find some middleground and add some elements that suggest the game world is an actual world were people work, sleep, live their lives, etc.
An example to me would be the starting area(s) of Icewind Dale. IMO they did it better than BG1 in terms of starting areas that catapult you in a game world which is believable because of all the things that suggests what people do for a living and their 'way of life', e.g. fishing and fur trading, living in shacks with their kids, the alcoholic fisherman, villagers complaining in the tavern about the traderoute being blocked by harsh winter,etc.
If you compare this to BG3, for me, the BG3 world is super constructed, artificial, extremely meta-gamey, static, and overal giving the impression of a table-top dungeon or quest map instead of a 3d rendered fantasy world in which we as players can partake and explore but in which things also happen unrelated to our/the party's existence (everything has a quest related purpose, no 'flavour only' NPC's or structures: e.g. no farms, no housing, no tavern, no normal shops or markets, no travelers, no wildlife, no habitation outside of map 'hubs',...)

Well, after all we are suppose to be "in middle of nowhere" not "in middle of nowhere, just 5 minutes walk from supermarket"

There is fisherman village, up the river outside of map hub. O_o

I made a post like the OP almost one year ago to the day,.

A 200 year old level 1 rouge, "but he was a slave" the defenders cry. If he gained 150xp per year from killing rats, bugs and reading books he would still be level 8.

A magical progeny so gifted and powerful the godess of magic gave him a free sample. Cough....level 1? But the orb thingy made him do it. Then how can he cast spells at all if it ate all his magic and knowledge?

A warrior trained from birth in every combat style and is required to bring back an illithid head for bragging rights gets caught by 2 teefling noobs and a gobbo cage.

They send a level 1 cleric of Shar and team into the Githyanki astral plane to obtain a mystery box guarded by a legion of Kith'rak. So a legion of CR 20+ dragon riders got fooled by the breakfast club. Gotcha!

Wyll, a legend with many heroic exploits and a demonic patron....Righhhhht

And Tav, the player character, the only true NPC in game without a voice over......lol

What I got 1 year ago was "but the tadpole did it, it makes perfect sense".

I mean you need acrobatics of the imagination to make ^^^^^ that make sense.

You cannot build a world based on a strict set of rules and 50 years of established lore and plonk a bunch of stuff on a static map and call it BG3. I like the Guardians of the galaxy comparison it is quite apt. Take your character in Bg1, you just left school and jumped out of the frying pan. Even a wolf proved challenging. From the moment you start anyone with a scrap of D&D knowledge is left scratching their heads.

I agree.

The epicness of the game is so high right at the beginning that we'll probably loose an important part of such a game : the feeling our characters slowly become powerfull and that the story gains in intensity.

Story, visual effects, creatures, side quests/companions quests, world design, gameplay, cinematics,... They want our excitement gauge to stay at maximum all the time... As a consequence, I think the feelings we'll have playing the game are going to be very linear without a lot of surprise or emotional involvment.

We'll have to deal with it, guess it's Larian's style.

This is a very grounded and astute idea and highlights exactly what is missing from this game. It is all flash, no substance. I don't think the game actually has any structures where normal people are living? Every single house, village or barn has been ravaged, burnt, or is inhabited by enemies or vagabonds. There is no "breathing room" for life in such a setting. Adding any of these would make a huge difference.




Yes, you get it. A lot of this is simply bad writing and misunderstanding the source material. Your last sentence hits the nail on the head. Sure, D&D has changed over the years and 5th edition brings in a lot of new content but this is still a Baldur's Gate game. Most importantly it should stay true to Baldur's Gate and it most certainly does not.

So you think people in the middle of nowhere do not eat, need housing, have a professional activity, etc ? I agree, there should be less things in the middle of nowhere but still, people would need to farm, hunt or trade to secure food, while they would need markets or craftsman to provide them with the necessary services to live their lives (e.g. carpenter, stable,...). I mean if there are all these barrels and food items scattered over the map, I assume someone would have put them there ? Or is food magically conjured in 5e DnD ?

+1
I don’t consider myself a DND fan - never player a tabletop, have no interest in the world itself, never read any novels or even player handbook. Just played majority of DND based cRPGs and similar. I liked some of them more then the others, some I didn’t like at all.

BG3 is the first game that just doesn’t “feel” like the other.

With the drow, goblin, and gnol armies nearby, any ordinary human would have escaped by now.
In the first act of the game we mainly have forest areas, it is certainly not a densely populated area even in better times.
Apart from the druid grove (who are able to deal with it on their own), there is a fishing village nearby and it might as well be destroyed already. We do not have access to it, but it does exist.
We can also come across a toll station (currently destroyed) or an inn.
The fact that the vast majority of it is in complete ruin makes perfect sense. It would be strange if people could live peacefully with such neighbors.
We will certainly have more "normal" terrains when we finally reach civilization, which will happen sooner rather than later.

It all boils down to preferences if i see it right.

Back when D&D was new there were no tieflings, or genasi. And if there was a race like this, it was never intended as player race. i guess that most of this feeling the OP (and me at times too) comes from the fact that we encounter monsters that are usually expecteced at a much higher level.

I am with you on that "in my age everything was better". I really hate that too. Maybe "in my time i liked everything better" would be a better way to put it.

My only fear is that when you start off on such a high and epic level, with mindflayers and so on, you have to keep a high level. Who wants a story to get boring later on? Hope they did not fire most of their powder.

also, regarding the lore i know, mystra making contact to humans is not that rare . but why go after a fop like gale? :P

Again, they throw OP monsters at us, but then nerf them so it FEELS like you're killing super OP monsters when you aren't.

I, at one point, equated it to fighting and killing a dragon at level 4. The DM had to dumb the dragon down severely because he thought it would be fun to bring it in not expecting the players to actually say "Let's kill it!"

I often get exhausted by the overwhelmingness (is that a word?) of the story. It's all too much, too epic. I mean WE have mindflayers, red dragons, spider matriarchs, hags, beholder, drow, gighyanki etc. in just a few hours gameplay. And when you encounter normal enemies like goblins, they come in hords, because the gods forbid If it's not epic. I miss normal beginner quests and some excitment curve.
To be honest, nowadays I often burn out midgame and stop playing.

Well technically, there are spells for that xD

Create Food And Water
3 conjuration
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: 30 feet
Components: V S
Duration: Instantaneous
Classes: Cleric, Paladin
You create 45 pounds of food and 30 gallons of water on the ground or in containers within range, enough to sustain up to fifteen humanoids or five steeds for 24 hours. The food is bland but nourishing, and spoils if uneaten after 24 hours. The water is clean and doesn’t go bad.

Exactly.

Beginning of the game should not have us fighting imps. A single Imp could potentially wipe a party of 4 level 1s. We fight at least 7 before we reach the helm plus 2 hellshogs, whatever those are.

Then, most likely before level 2, we fight not 1 but 3 intellect devourers, and again, 1 could likely wipe an entire party of 4 level 2s, but we face them with just the MC and SH.

Why not, instead, start the game fighting 4 Manes. 9 AC and 9 HP with no resistance and +2 to hit. Challenge Rating 1/8, meaning 8 is a moderate challenge for 4 level 1 characters?

Then, on the beach, have us fight something like 4-6 Neogi Hatchlings. AC 11, HP 7. +3 to hit. No resistance. CR 1/8. This would also then tie into Lae'zel's dialogue later which says, "I've seen Kith'raki pull the legs off of a screaming Neogi.". Ah. Now the players know what a Neogi is.

You can have intellect devourers running around the nautiloid and demons and mind flayers, and if a player is dumb enough to attack one they wipe the floor with them, but in no way should the player be able to actually kill any at that stage in the game unless they are SUPER lucky.

That's the kind of stuff I'm talking about. They want you, the player, to go. "Oh dang! I just killed a dragon! Can you believe it? I'm so awesome. I'm like a god."

The answer, "No. That was no dragon. It had a dragon skin, but it acted nothing like a dragon and had virtually no dragon stats. You fought a nerd sword, my friend."

Magnificient post, OP! Absolutely +1

I don't care that much about it not feeling like a D&D game. I do care very deeply and passionately about it not feeling like a Baldur's Gate game and not feeling like it is in the Forgotten Realms. Yes it very superficially has all the trappings of a D&D and FR game, but when you scratch that surface just a tiny bit you immediately see D:OS underneath. But I don't need to say anything more. Your post does a superb job of making this case in a very compelling way.

+1 to the OP and many of the comments above.

But as mentioned previously, this is Larian's style. They don't know how to do grounded fantasy. Considering Larian's level of engagement with the community (zero), I suspect a negative review on Steam or Metacritic will be the only way to have those concerns heard.

You don't get to claim the heritage of some of the best CRPGs without actually trying to emulate the better aspects of those games. Progress is fine and necessary, but a token appearance by Minsc isn't enough to call this BG3.

There are many people who have criticized the world design, especially the over the top elements, me included.

I do understand that BG3 needs to sell and therefore Larian has to "grab attention" - with dragons, evil Illithids, Tieflings etc. That's just normal & I can't blame Larian for that. But that's what a prologue is for. After crashing with the Nautiloid, the story could have stepped back and begun more slowly.

Just think about it:

(1) In BG1 you are bascially a teenager, having lost his godfather, roaming the countryside
(2) In BG2, Elves, Drow and Tieflings are something rare and cool
(3) In civilization 1 you start with a puny settler, building a civilization that flies to the stars
(4) In starcraft/command and conquer, you start with puny marines and end up commanding battlecruisers
(5) In 3d shooters, you start with a crowbar or puny pistol and end up with rocket launchers

-> you always start small. If you start with giving the player a rocket launcher right away, that's anticlimactic.

We have already skipped over Flesh, clay, stone, bronze, and iron golems into fighting an adamantine golem. at level 4. Might as well be throwing atropals at us. Even a flesh golem should be a nasty opponent at our level, but it kinda feels like we the players are supposed to feel like huge badasses even at level 1 with world-shaking events swirling all around us. There's no time to move through fighting flesh golems to clay golems to stone etc. The goblins in Act almost feel like an outlier in comparison to that.

I have been trying to articulate a cogent simile (thanks stewie griffon) and yes overwhelmingness is a word .

Ignoring all the game mechanics, BG1&2 built the world around the player. It introduced the player in a controlled manner, monsters and lore were introduced in a way that felt organic. The world felt lived in and real with NPC's doing stuff like work, eat, shit and sleep. Night time was dangerous and exciting with entire story arcs built into it.The story was built around established lore and adventures felt chosen rather than "WE NEED TO FIND A HEALER!!!!". The story progressed as you grew, your allignment changed as you faced difficulty and became desperate, you made strange unlikely allies depending on choices, you became stronger and every part of the story felt like you achieved something or progressed even when you are suckered by Bhodi.

Enter GB3. It feels like the player needs to play a complete game BG 2.5 on all origin characters to gain an appreciation of where the story is as you start. You had a life before the mindflayer ship right? You weren't cloned a level 1 ranger in a tank. How were each of you captured by the mindflayers? Larian want you to play origin characters that technically know nothing about themselves? Mmmmmm I suppose we don't know yet as we cannot play them. Motivation is different for everyone yet everyone is dead set on "find a healer". I mean Githyanki are the most xenophobic race in the forgotten realms, no way would you ever trust them unless you were Gith. I mean wtf is a creche right? Narr pass Lae'zel cheers I like my head attached.

Why do we even need to bother pissing about in local politics when we could just walk to Baldurs gate ignoring ALL of it? Pretty sure Gale knows a few archmages in waterdeep right? There will be high level clerics in Baldurs gate for sure. If you are in the arse end of nowhere what are the chances of finding a level 17 cleric or a mage that can cast wish? He would tell you to get stuffed btw unless you could offer something like a legendary item in exchange. The second you realised you had more time aka "super tadpole" you would have got an uber to a big city IF a cure was your motivation.

My point being first and foremost you need to understand the motivations of a character for the story to make sense. BG1 you had a big scary warlord after you that just killed your mentor. Not going argue that running away is a simple but understandable motivation. Stories don't need to be convoluted to be good they simply need to make sense. On a side note Gale with a true resurrection spell could cure the tadpole by simply dying, waiting for the bug to come out and resurrecting!!!! Plot hole much? Narrr it will be fine.

Who is the AbSoLuTe? Why would you care anyway? Nobody else knows what the bloody aBsOlUtE is. But it all adds to the mystery right? No because you have no reason to care. Clear as day, surely the mindflayers that stuck you with a tadpole were working for this AbSoLuTe right? Why mindflayers? CoNvOlUtEd. By the end of act 1 I am ready to call it a day and just turn into a mindflayer and chomp some brains. I have nothing against mindflayers, they are super powerful and you can have a laugh making people do dumb shit. I would rather be a mindflayer than an errand boi for every clown I meet. Another thing that bugs me, why can you only use the tadpole after resting when all you did is convince a level 1 goblin to move out of the way? Other true souls are whapping da power guffin like a champ. I guess your TaDpOlE is a legacy version or something or is solar powered instead of Lithium Ion.

I am not a nostalgic person AT ALL. I don't want BG 3 to be BG1 or 2. I just don't want the disney version of Baldurs gate or a Jar Jar Abrams rehash of star trek where classic pop-rock music blows up spaceships for some reason. If I feel like being confused and depressed I'll drink a bottle of Jack Daniels and watch the force awakens.

It's weird. I keep hearing about how I'm playing a game that started so epic that it can't be working. While I'm playing a game that's working.

If your heart longs for a smaller story right now with a simpler approach, I get it. The type of story some of you are describing appeals to me also. Start off in a hamlet, learn to be amazed all over again by the sight of an otherworldly elf.

Which is fine. All of that is fine.

Except this isn't that. Which is fine also. This doesn't have to be that. There's a compelling narrative in this story that's pushing the plot forward.

For all the talk about how this *feels* different, it is. DnD has changed over the decades. Massively. I started off playing Ad&d years ago. There were no tieflings. No dragonborn. They didn't even have sorcerers, much less wild magic sorcerers or dragon blood sorcerers with scales.

I loved the Dalelands and Cormyr. I must've read the original box set a thousand times over or more. I imagined the ruins of Myth Drannor with devils crawling through the remnants. And when I think of that, or when I think of the city of Phlan being teleported to a cavern in a plot initiated by Bane... well... plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, the more that changes, the more it's the same thing.

There's nothing wrong with fighting a minotaur at level four. Or fighting a hag at level three. It's the story that counts. The challenge, the choice, the goal, the want and need. All the rest is an arbitrary number, a CR someone made up some time back. Who cares? You only think a Mind Flayer is overpowered because you think a Mind Flayer is overpowered.

Why not live in a world where Mind Flayers are like humans, in that some are tougher and others are weaker? Or, and this is possible also, consider that your character never really beat a Mind Flayer, not one at full strength. Just like your character didn't really defeat an Adamantine Golem. Rather, it happened to be an interesting setting where a giant hammer came down and crushed the creation.

That's not uninteresting. If you were telling a story about a game you were in and that happened, it would be pretty cool. You were at a giant forge, you managed to get the golem under the hammer and wham. It's not that you beat the golem in a fair fight. You were in an interesting circumstance, and you used it to your advantage in a clever way.

Anyway, my point is that it's okay to hunger for a smaller story. And it's also okay to enjoy an epic story. You can even enjoy both if you want. Neither is inherently bad.

Did they really lol. I fought the golem but that detailed completely went over my head.

You know what it reminds me of? Snyder’s Superman films. Expecting for wow moments to be wow moments because of familiarity of the franchise while doing no set up of its own, while pissing off everyone remotely familiar with the IP.

So there was a gimmicky golem fight. Was I to be frightened by it being adamant one golem? If they assume players will have an extensive DND knowledge, why do they mess with DND so much? And if they don’t, why did they go for adamantine golem? To me it was just a golem, they might have put anyone one of those and it would be the same.

In BG2 when I encountered badder golems I went “oh shit” because smaller ones where already kicking my butt before. And it felt great to fight my way through golems at the end of BG2.

Eh, I just hunger for a decent story, at this point.

I wont even get into “what the point of leveling system, if everything stays the same”. RPGs tended to be constructed in certain way because it worked. If you want to do something different, then great, but you still need to come up with something that doesn’t works as a coherent narrative and as a representation of systems.

Again, for all the "decent story" jabs... I'm playing a game that clearly has a decent story. Numerous people are enjoying it.

Saying it's not your cup of tea isn't the same thing as saying it's not a decent story.

Uhm, because it's an adamantine forge?

Well, the graphics are great, there are many little side stories, the combat mechanics are fun. Divinity Original Sin 2 was also fun, but had an unhinged story and world.

But yes, we're not talking high class literary fiction here. BG3 has more of a sandbox feeling and less of a credible fantasy world. Which might just be ok.

I agree with OP. Honestly, if we wanted BG3 to be a Baldur's Gate game worthy of the name, that ship has sailed the moment Wizards decided to give the rights to Larian, a game company that is very clearly afraid to even PEEK out of their comfort zone. Now the best we can hope for is a good Larian RPG, but the fact they went for the name just as a cashgrab without respect for either the Infinity Engine games or D&D in general will keep stinging me quite a bit, even if BG3 turns out to be a good game. Getting strong Fallout 3/4 vibes here... Maybe we can hope for something like New Vegas, made by someone else, who actually likes/respects the originals?

If I were an optimist, I'd say there is still some hope for BG3 becoming closer to 5e D&D (but to me, that's not nearly as important), but no hope at all that they will even attempt to change BG3 to feel (at least a bit more) like an actual Baldur's Gate game. Many of Larian's game (and world) design decisions go literally exactly the opposite way.

This has probably been posted a few times before, but:

The 20+yo games manage to give me a 9999x more faithful impression of an actual living and breathing world that keeps existing even when the player character is not there, with characters whose existence, motivations and interests are not defined only by their relation to the player. This is my main problem with BG3: Static, theme-parky locations where everything is mashed close together (for convenience?) and time simply doesn't exist; player-centric characters (and player-sexual companions, but whatever...) written/scripted in such a way that it's clear when their sole purpose is to provide the player with dialogue(s) and/or quest(s) and/or a cutscene or two; locations where almost every inch has to have some kind of purpose _to the player_...

I want (way more) bedrooms/bathrooms/toilets/latrines/useless store rooms - though, funnily enough, we sure DO get lots of useless/empty containers, almost on the other extreme end of the spectrum. I want to believe locations where people live were actually designed for people to live in and I want the game to give me the impression that people there actually do _live_. Yes, if you design a game world in such a manner, there will inevitably be some lost convenience and "wasted time" - but if the world you create is living and believable, then it's actually not a waste of time at all. 20+yo (Infinity Engine games, Fallout 1 & 2...) games were able to pull that off pretty well, I wonder what would happen if someone actually embraced this kind of world design with today's technologies. For a game that calls itself Baldur's Gate 3, a believable living world should have been an obligatory MUST HAVE in the pre-development/planning phases, instead we get a theme park "world" design that gets called out even by people that don't care about the originals, that's just sad...

Everything else (shitty controls, questionable combat, occasional cringy writing - the originals weren't completely without fault in this regard either) I can get over, but not this weird feeling that the whole BG3 world is in a snow globe.

I admit, if you back away from D&D, I had fun with Grymforge. It was a fun level. I enjoyed the fights, the puzzles, etc.

That said, story-wise, when you dig in, the whole game is like, "What the crap is this?"

There is literally no explanation at all as to why you're even fighting an Adamantine Golem when you are creating an item at the forge. Why? What's the story explanation for that? He's the guardian of the forge? Um. Shouldn't he, then, appear prior to you even getting to the forge to use it? And why do lava mephits pop up afterwards? It just makes no sense. There's literally no logic to it.

Now, if they had something where you are messing around and you hit a wrong switch or pulled a wrong lever, suddenly, the guardian of the forge springs out to attack you because you are obviously not the owners of the facility, or you'd know how to use it correctly, that's one thing, but you activate the forge and suddenly out pops an Adamantine Golem? ???

And yeah, I remember in BG2 encountering an Adamantine Golem. You couldn't kill the fricker! I had to have my character hasted, rush in, steal the loot, and rush out before that thing could get me. I must have reloaded that golem encounter a million times trying a million ways to kill those golems. I could kill them all but the Adamantine Golem.

They're supposed to be immensely tough at levels like 16 or something. Or is that an Iron Golem? I can't remember off the top of my head. Either way, they're supposed to be for WAY higher level than level 4 or even 6 or 7.

And that's the point, isn't it?

Cool video, being a stranger in a strange land is one of the reasons Baldur's Gate was so impactful for me when I played it, that and its cavalcade of interesting npcs.

I wonder how this video would play in the threads about playersexual npcs. A game not giving you everything is a good thing for a story, its world, and its characters.

I don't necessarily hate the concept of player-sexuality, though IMHO in an actual Baldur's Gate-like or Fallout-like game, it would feel VERY out of place. In a Larian RPG - which BG3 is - it kinda makes sense (though it sure highlights how badly written/programmed the romances currently are). It's just one more reason (and a very tiny one in comparison to other) why the BG3 world doesn't feel alive or believable at all.

There is something very telling about the times we live in (at least as far as 1st world is concerned) in this current game design trend where everything revolves around the player and handling players everything they want on a silver platter.

I partially disagree.

Yes seems strange to see a beholder at lvl 4 encounter, or the underdark...

But sincerely i feel happy to not pass my lvl 1 and 2 killing rats,.
Lvl 3 killing skeletons and kobolds,
Then start the real game at lvl 4- 5 (consider i played many d&d games, best one was newerwinter nights on line with human DMs)

And fortunately the game is really different from DOS2.
I can t play no more dos 2 ( i stopped at lvl 7 in act 1) now that bg3 is playable.

I really enjoy bg3. The only thing i dont like is the super OP shove action.

The risk is: act2 and 3 will be so super like act1????

Lets seeee.

+1 from me, I have same concerns

Not a beholder, its a spectator. Beholder has a CR of 13-14 and would delete 4 x level 4 characters in half a round and have enough time to make a bru and take dump afterwards. A spectator has a CR of 3 which means 4 x level 3 characters would find the monster moderately tough. CR 14 means the same, 4 x level 14 characters would find ONE beholder pretty tough. Imo beholders are tougher than CR13-14 generally. Even vs one beholder 4 level 14 characters would likely lose 2 permanently.

Two beholders vs 4 x level 14 characters would likely get disintigrated and blown to bits by the end of the first round. Bare in mind 1 level 14 sorcerer etc. would delete 4 level 4 characters in a single spell.

Nothing is stopping a level 1 character going to the underdark I just wouldn't expect to see them again. I don't have an issue with the underdark so early as the world exists it doesn't simply exist for the player to interact (or shouldn't at least). To my understanding though the underdark is a MASSIVE underworld that interconnects like the surface worlds but underground. Therefore the underdark would stretch as one large interconnecting map with different factions of drow, illithids, beholder nests etc. spread all over the joint.

EDIT: I think just commented on the wrong thread, derp.

+1

I don’t know about that - there has been multiple issues raised (lack of clarity when it comes to chain of events, lack of tonal consistency, lack of necessary set up and explanation, ineffective reveals, small segmented map design not supporting the story etc. etc.) that do point to some pretty transparent issues.

Unless you mean it’s a good story by computer game standard - a medium in which the story and writing are in general 2d class citizens. But by standards of an RPG, which tend to write on the quality of writing and storytelling over everything else, I find it quite underwhelming. Definitely not a game I would recommend to play “for the story”.

I am glad you are enjoying the game though.

What a surprise! Raggy doesn't like what everyone is saying in regards to changing the game to make it better.

Look, it's not about nostalgia. It's about proper encounters for variety and so that you ACTUALLY defeat the monsters you are fighting. You aren't just defeating an enemy that is called a certain monster and who looks like a certain monster.

Let me put this in a different way. It's like a kid wanting to be an NBA Allstar. "I want to be like Michael Jordan!" Then, a talent scout comes along and says, "Hey kid! You wanna be like Michael Jordan?"

"Yes!" says the kid.

The talent scout then takes the kid to a basketball court with nets that come up to the kid's chin and are so wide the kid would have a hard time missing the shot. The kid is also facing toddlers as his opponents, and those toddlers are hardly skilled at the game.

"Do you feel like Michael Jordan yet?" asks the talent scout.

"I sure do!" says the kid. "I'm a super star!"

Is the kid really earning the title of NBA Superstar? Absolutely not. Someone has completely dumbed the game down to give the kid the ability to FEEL like a superstar without actually having to do much to BE a superstar.

That's how I feel about BG3. We're fighting imps and intellect devourers and phase spiders and gnolls and githyanki and hobgoblin warlords and Nightsister Drow (Minthara) who are supposed to be elite drow warriors, and ogres and hags and red caps and wood woads and mud mephits and AN ADAMANTINE GOLEM, and bulettes and minotaurs and so on and so forth, but they are all so dumbed down and nerfed that we aren't REALLY fighting these creatures. We're PRETENDING to fight them because it feels good and we want everyone to be able to win the trophy.

I want Larian to remove the kid gloves and let us play the game right, building encounters appropriately so we can ACTUALLY be heroes in a D&D Baldur's Gate world. If you want to keep the party size at 4, then you limit the difficulty level of the monsters you can fight. So, you can't fight intellect devourers with only 2 level 1 characters (your MC and Shadowheart). No, if you want to fight intellect devourers, even severely injured ones, you need at least a party of 4 + Shadowheart for you to even stand a chance.

You want to face a phase spider matriarch + 2 phase spiders and up to 18 baby phase spiders? At least a party of 6 would be advised and at least level 4 or 5. Don't even allow the players to go down there until they meet these requirements or they're going to die.

Don't allow the githyanki fight until they are at least at party of 4 and level 5 or 6, or party of 6 at level 4 or 5.

Over and over again, that's the bottom line. The game doesn't feel like D&D because the encounters are designed to be WAY over the heads of the party you can have at the time you encounter these monsters. So, the monsters are babied down so we can actually beat them so we FEEL like we are so super awesome.

I do like to point out that the Act 1 can turn out to be a bit different as well.

On the official website the following can be found:


So they even planned to cram in a lot of stuff in a small space for us, to do game testing.

I do not fully agree with this critique, but there is one theme in this thread that I definitely agree with. It is that the game starts off far too fantastical... from the opening cinematic to the opening ship sequence. Once you hit the beach I tend to think that is more of what an RPG should start like. I tend to think it would have been a better approach to have been someone wandering about or in the local town where this mind flayer ship crashed who goes to investigate it and battles the infected people (or I guess chooses to join them if there was a realistic evil path to get to that point via the promise of power and such). It would have been fun to figure out the mystery of the ship and what is going on with these people as opposed to starting on the ship and being one of the infected. But I am kind of a sucker for the 'regular person' becomes a hero type of story.

The above was one of my main critiques of Pathfinder: WOTR as well. Within no time you are flung into this huge, epic situation and it felt very forced from a story perspective.

The other thing that I tend to agree with a bit is that the companions are too 'epic'. I think this is one of the issues with having all companions be origin characters. I think origin characters are a good idea and interesting, but not every companion has to have some crazy story around them. Some of them can be more regular people... or develop alongside your character. For example I think the Tiefling from the Druid Camp who talks about meeting you for a drink in Baldur's Gate would be a great companion option. She can be strong, powerful and have things to say... but she doesn't have to be some legendary vampire, a superwizard or an otherworldly being. You could just learn about her history, what she was doing at the camp, why she would want to come with you, etc.

But I will say I have been playing CRPGs for many years, all of the way back to BG and BG2. This game definitely feels like those games to me, just the evolution of those games rather than a copy and paste of them. Obviously things won't be the exact same since a different developer is working on them... but I very much enjoy the world and after the beginning of the game nothing has felt over the top or out of place.

Huh, not really? I really don't think "Act 1 in the actual released game will be much larger / less dense" is the correct take - but I would LOVE to be wrong. Although there are other issues with the world building, not just the lack of space between locations.

Pretty much the opposite of who Larian are as developers. Giving players options and freedom are core values of how they design games. I suspect that if they were acting as a DM hosting a tabletop game they would choose to make it as creative and free flowing as possible and would homebrew or fudge to make it a fun and memorable experience. You have to remember Larian are first and foremost creative entertainment artists, they're not bureaucrats obsessed with rules and procedures. So far their instincts and designs have been pretty darn successful as evidenced by sales of their various products. I think anyone expecting them to make the game more limited and restrictive will be disappointed.

Agreed...

Also, if one of the complaints is that the game isn't enough like D&D and the solution is to put a bunch of restrictions in on where people can go/what they can do... then that isn't like any D&D that I have ever played.

The nostalgia dream criticism has been levelled before, like 'get with the times! Don't you know you're too old to matter now? Just deal with it and move on! or hurry up and expire' hehe. So I'll respond to that again briefly. In short, it's probably correct, maybe that is what it is, but I'll elaborate a bit further just for the sake of conversation.

In virtually every area of actual life I'd consider myself highly progressive, meaning that I indulge the notion of progress as a positive force. I never buy into the argument that things were 'better before, in the good old days.' I know the 1950s were a trash nightmare for most people, and that any wish for a return on that count is indeed pretty misguided. Even from my own knowledge and direct experience, the 80s sucked compared to now in general terms. I feel that way pretty strongly in regard to real life, the general advancement of knowledge and also in politics, as well as most other arenas, but almost never with the arts.

For some strange reason, my attitude and general predisposition regarding the arts is the exact opposite. Inexplicably, I'm a stuffy curmudgeon on that count. I blame modernism in 20th century painting for doing this to me. Among other things, evaluating what happened in the 20th century in painting, how traditionalism was demoted in favor of the avant garde and the foundations derided, has shaped my views here in a puzzling way. I suppose because in my estimation the high water mark for visual poesis and visual representational language was achieved towards the end of the 19th century before the advent of photography and true mimesis arrived to kill it off. Basically we were cruising in the Rolls-Royce of painting and design, then made a hard left at WW1 and drove it straight off a cliff. 2000 years of knowledge and development that built on prior foundations was nixed and we climbed out the smoldering wreckage into a new wilderness with no compass to guide anymore. The world of anything goes, where art becomes philosophy with it's attendant aporia writ large. In no other disciplines has this occurred with such a stark about-face as it did in the visual arts and to a lesser extent the letters in the 20th century. They used to be a bit more like the sciences, building on previous knowledge and advancing incrementally with some deference to what came before, instead of throwing all that out the window in some kind of manic revolutionary fervor and desire for the new. Doing the undercut as it were. In the arts the countervailing narrative has ever been the dominant one. We almost never get a positive assessment of progress there. Just thinking how in Homer today 10 men couldn't lift that rock, whereas back in the day Achilles could handle it all by himself. Or in Hesiod, how there used to be a Golden Age, but now it's Iron, go figure. Or the sacred texts, how it used to be a beautiful garden free from woe but now we're all fallen and miserable hehe.

Then consider how we moved from a burn it all down, 'screw what our parents liked. We're on to the new shit now!' sort of mentality, to this strange situation where we now live in chameleon era, times unmoored from any sense of what's current. Unfixed in time, haunted by visions of the past constantly as the defining feature of the new millennium general aesthetic. You can see it in fashion especially. Curiously it grafts on to the general idea that people tend to hate whatever immediately preceded, whatever it was that their parents liked or who their parents were, but then have a sense of nostalgia (probably misguided) for whatever it was that their grandparents liked or who they were. We're slightly more forgiving of the grandparents and positive associations there. Taken further, a true love for what the great grandparents liked or who the great grandparents were (esp. since that last is too far removed for direct experience, so the impression is more pure flight of fantasy.) Perhaps also a general irritation with who's in charge currently that feeds into it all. I think this is how they can track trends and know in advance what each generational cohort will be into, vs what they'll reject in broader terms.

Since I think games are art, it doesn't surprise me that my views tack pretty similarly in the direction of conservation on that score. Maybe it's a failing of imagination, or just being stubborn. If I can see what's happening, be analytical about it, and yet nevertheless still see it in operation for myself. Maybe it's irrational, but we're also sort of irrational creatures when you get right down to it right? hehe



Enjoyed watching that!

What a surprise! GM4Him doesn't like others questioning or not agreeing with him.

(Do you see how this mannerism is not productive? Please stop it.)

The key to being a good game creator/encounter builder, is to give players the freedom to choose where to go and such without utterly killing them by allowing them into a nest of monsters that are way too powerful for them to handle.

So, when I say, "Don't let them go into the phase spider nest until they're ready," I mean that Larian should create obstacles that increase the party's level prior to them getting to said encounter. So, although they might work their way directly towards the phase spider matriarch, they have to jump through enough hoops and obstacles, fighting lesser monsters and such, so that by the time they actually get to the phase spider matriarch, they are at an appropriate level.

Same with the Githyanki Patrol. Lae'zel is pushing players to get there almost constantly. So, what if the player goes there at a whopping level 2? They're pretty much dead. So, what is needed is a series of enemies and/or XP rewarding puzzles or quests in the player's path that increases their level so that by the time they get to the bridge they are appropriately leveled.

Immediately, there are those who think that if Larian were to go more strict D&D 5e that it means the game would be severely limited and restricted. There is SO much freedom in D&D 5e that Larian could use to make this game work better. They're just not using it. Instead, they're homebrewing everything and claiming it's because the game is too restrictive. It's not true.

The whole point of encounter building is to provide a bunch of lesser, baby monsters and quests that build you up levels so you can fight bigger and more terrible monsters. You don't throw big and awesome monsters at your characters when they are inappropriately leveled and then nerf all the monsters to make it work.

Here's an example using the phase spider Whispering Depths situation:

You are level 2. You leave the grove. You reach Moonhaven. If you're friendly with the goblins, you don't fight them. You go down into the well. You don't go far and are suddenly attacked by a Swarm of Spiders. That's challenge rating 1/2. 100 XP. You head towards the left path. You are attacked by 2 Swarms of Spiders. Another 200 XP. (Note: A Swarm of Spiders is a single enemy, mind you. It's not tons of enemies, so the battles would be short.)

You're leaving the left path and heading down another path. A Phase Spider attacks. Dang! CR 3, but it's worth 700 XP. That's a considerable boost. Maybe you're level 3 at this point. Round another bend, 2 more phase spiders. 1400 XP. That's significant for such low levels, but now you're getting close to level 4 already. Round another bend, face another couple of swarms of spiders and an ettercap. 650 XP.

Suddenly, the spider lair isn't so devoid of life. There are spiders everywhere, and you really feel like you are cleaning out a hive of them because you are facing a bunch of baby swarms of spiders peppered together with a few bigger ones here or there. By the time you get to mama, you're level 4. Now build your mama matriarch spider encounter around a party of 4 or 6 or whatever level 4 characters, and you're set.

THAT is how you build encounters. You don't give players the ability to go anywhere and fight level 6 bosses when they're only level 3. You have to put smaller encounters and puzzles in the way to boost the XP to BUILD your characters to the appropriate level BEFORE they get to them.

That is my point.

Ok ok. I'm sorry. You are right. Uncalled for.

I have to agree with a lot of things said here in regards of this not feeling like D&D. I have not played the original Baldur's Gate games (Nor do I have any desire to, AD&D and THAC0 just.. No more, thanks) so I cannot comment on how they feel in comparison to this. What I have played is various other cRPGs and they struck a very good balance of feeling like you are low level versus going up against extremely "Strong" Foes.

Recently while playing through BG3 I found myself stopping around the time I enter the Druid Grove where I ask myself "Why does this feel overwhelming? Why must everything be Do or Die? Why must there be a constant crisis to solve?" I've played to the grove three times and just don't want to continue. The story and concepts are at conflict with the mechanics and the pacing. It doesn't want to slow down, the story discourages you from stopping to rest, and yet you need to rest to get in pace with the gameplay which in turn shows the "You are unique and epic and strong!" or brings up the Absolute and things like that. I just find it hard to actually get connected to the world and the characters if everything is going super fast.

For me, the need to long rest is a big one. If the encounters were done right, you shouldn't feel like you need to long rest so much. The idea is to be able to fight hosts of monsters in between each long rest. So, if I am level 1 with a party of 4 and fight 32 Manes, I should at that point feel like I need to long rest. Instead, I fight 3 Imps and need to long rest because they are way too powerful for level 1.

Likewise, I fight 2 phase spiders and 2 ettercaps and need a long rest. It's the only encounter in the Whispering Depths before you fight the boss. So rather than fight a host of baby monsters as I work my way towards the boss, I am only fighting like a single encounter beforehand instead because I'm fighting super tough monsters. Thus, we have fight, long rest, fight, long rest, fight, long rest and super nerfed monsters so you can actually still beat them using the fight, long rest, rinse, repeat method.

Take the hag's lair. Big fight with redcaps that nearly kills you. Long rest. Enter her lair. Fight the masks. DAng! They nearly killed me. I guess I'll have to leave and long rest and then return to face the hag. Otherwise, I can't beat her because the 2... 2 only, mind you... previous encounters were too grand so I couldn't just continue on to face the boss.

I guess my point was their commercial success speaks for itself. I think with DOS II and BG3 they are providing players with a great experience, hence the fabulous sales. I think they know what their audience wants and are delivering. Fine tuning comes from feedback. However I think Larian will always provide the opportunity for players to get in over their heads. They're simply not going to design encounters the way you suggest, it goes against everything they say they want to do.


BTW let me be clear GM4Him I am not saying I think your way is wrong. I read most of your posts, they're full of lots of interesting ideas and its obvious you know 5e in and out. You seem like the kind of person who would take a lot of care and pride in providing your players with a great experience whether its TT DND or the digital one with apps that you described elsewhere.

I 'm just pointing out that you have a seem to have a very different vision for what BG3 should be than Larian does, I'm just commenting on why I think they are doing things the way they are based on what Swen has said in many different interviews about DOS II and BG3.

I would not like to fight trash mobs, and certainly not in a turn-based game. As for me, such fights can lie where they are, that is in the garbage.
Such fights are simply boring, much better are the more difficult fights with stronger enemies.
The game should not waste the player's time by throwing a lot of pointless fights at him, where you might as well turn on automatic combat (the newest Pathfinder is more than 80% uninteresting fighting with trash).

Part of the issue I think stems from framing the EA as Act 1. It makes it so much more difficult to revisit or change anything once you've primed the player to think that this is the start of the story more or less fully realized.

I often wonder if they had described it differently initially, if the reaction to it might be a bit different?

If they had said something like 'In EA we're allowing players to preview Act 2, but the funhouse version of Act 2. Everything here is a placeholder and subject to change. The encounters aren't necessarily levelled and the companions you have in EA aren't necessarily the companions you'll meet in the full game. It's a bit of a mad science experiment, and building as we go, but we wanted to pull back the curtain a bit to give you a peek. Don't expect that what you see is what you'll get in the end. That said, your feedback is highly appreciated!'

Then people would probably approach it in a completely different way, with a much more forgiving attitude. Instead of seeing dashed hopes or disappointments at every turn they'd be more inclined to evaluate it as existing in a state of flux, and then the developers would have a lot more freedom to alter things without rocking the collective boat in each new iteration.

I wish they had done this in Patch 2 and then again in patch 3. Just shaking the box so the pieces would mix up again and people would adapt to the idea that it's a rough draft or a rough outline, rather than a final draft. Instead by calling it "Act 1" they gave the impression that this is the deal, and any changes are likely to just be peripheral. It sets up a situation rife for disappointment, or when any suggestion of change at this point would somehow betray the ultimate vision or intention. We're basically seeing the dailies with none of the sound or music or editing finished yet, and extrapolating from that what the final film will look like, with all the attendant attachments or disattachments that a preview of that sort entails.

Some people may feel its moving inexorably in the right direction, other's thinking no no no this is all wrong. Whereas all that could have been avoided if they just presented it in a different sort of light at the outset. I think there is still time for them to adopt that sort of angle, but then again players who are very attached to the current iteration may find that unsatisfying at this point. A bit like a knife in the back for the most ardent BG3 fans who have totally bought in and love it as is. Not sure what they can do with it really.

I'm not talking just throwing trash monsters at players for the sake of XP'ing up. See? That's what so many don't understand about true D&D. There are no such things as trash monsters in D&D. There are so many monsters and so many varieties that you don't NEED to make every fight a big awesome boss fight.

If done right, the game should feel like a steady increase of bigger and better monsters as you go. Each monster is unique and provides a different flavor of combat.

Take the opening fights on the nautiloid. You are Level 1. Right now, what do you fight in BG3? Imps. Imps. Imps. Oh, and maybe some hellshogs. All of these should be way more than you can handle.

My suggestion is:

Encounter 1 = 4-8 Manes, AC 9 HP 9 +2 to hit. Much more appropriate for you to kill. Every 2 hits and one is dead. You should have a 75% chance, roughly, to hit each one. Look up Manes. They're small, pale, undead looking fiends who do 2d4 damage if they hit you. Not super tough, but for level 1 characters, they're still somewhat of a challenge in numbers of 4-8 depending on your party size.

Next encounter = maybe an imp and a few manes. The Imp is injured, so he isn't too hard to take down. Maybe he has 4 HP, which would require you to do 8 damage to kill it since he has resistance. A mage would really come in handy against the imp, or a cleric. Either way, you're still fighting a few Manes, but now you've got an imp mixed in for flavor.

Next encounter = fight a few thralls. They're not super tough, but they'll give you XP and provide flavor in combat. At level 1, anything's fairly difficult.

Next encounter = fight 4 thralls, but one has an intellect devourer inside. You kill the one with the intellect devourer, and it pops out and attacks you. This battle only occurs if you killed Us or you're straying from the helm objective. The intellect devourer is severely injured as well, so when it pops out, it only has like 4 HP. Thus, it only requires like 8 damage to kill it, and again wizards and clerics come in real handy here.

Next encounter on the helm = a dretch and 4 manes. Now you have SH and Lae'zel with you and maybe Us. A dretch is a brute with 11 AC and 18 HP and multi-attack with +2 to hit and a few special abilities. It is surely a challenge for level 1 characters, but it is more appropriate for them. With a CR rating of 1/2, two dretches would be a challenge for a party of 4 level 1's. So, 1 plus some manes isn't overwhelming. Still a hard battle, but it shouldn't wipe the players.

The point is, it's not trash mobs, it's appropriate monsters for the characters and their levels. THAT is the point I keep trying to make. Don't give me imps with CR 2 challenge rating that should be a challenge for a party of 4 level 2's, and you have to face 3 of them or 3 intellect devourers who SHOULD wipe the floor with your party unless you had maybe a party of 6 level 2s instead of a party of 2 level 1s.

To be fair, also BG2 had some of these issues:

(1) The introductory Irenicus dungeon was a mess of areas with crystals and Djinns, areas with prisoners, areas with Nymphs and forest, areas with clouds and other Djinns. It didn't make sense, it seemed as if they wanted to cram cool stuff into a small map.
(2) In Amn, you could literally walk into a random tavern, manipulate a picture on a wall and directly step into a Lich's tomb. With no corridors, rooms or maze like secret passages in between.
(3) The Underdark had a single map where Drow, Illithids, Duergar and Kuo Toa were crammed together, living almost next to each other.

-> all these issues are relatively minor in comparison, but they are also a bit sloppy. If you compare this to the undercity map of BG1 were you had a whole area of a destroyed city which basically only housed the final fight, there is a completely different design philosophy behind it.

In what way?

Are you talking about things like Astarion mentioning Cazador before revealing that he's a vampire spawn? These are little bugs that need to be tweaked, not storytelling flaws.

Or are you referring to something else? Can you clarify?


This is not a great criticism. In a story, there should be a shift. It helps to relieve tension. It creates the sense of a big world, where there are good days and tragic days. Those things play off one another to elevate the experience.

If it were all one note beaten again and again, it would get overwhelming and monotonous and annoying. Instead, it strives for ups and downs in a balance that's meant to elicit an emotional reaction in the world.

And remember, for all the talk about decapitation... that's a choice. Your character chooses whether or not to do that, meaning you are the one bringing that mood to the game. Just like your character is the one who chooses whether or not to thunderwave Alfira off the cliff.

See what I mean? You are a part of the mood. You are a part of the shifting of that mood, because this is an interactive game, with options built in.



There's wonderful set up. There's wonderful explanation.

The game starts you off with an excellent scene. It shows a Mind Flayer putting a tadpole in someone's head while you watch from your point of view. Then it shows the tadpole going in your head. From there, the ship captures more people, engages in conflict with githyanki, hops about dimensions, ends up in the hells, and you are knocked free from your pod.

Now you make your way to the helm. You know you have a tadpole in your head and that you can transform into a Mind Flayer, which effectively means that you'll die as the Mind Flayer will be a new creature and not you. Very much like the birth of gnoll resulting from the death of a hyena.

The game even shows you what your facing with the "changed at the pull of a lever!" scene.

This thing that starts as an immediate worry about your immediate survival begins to turn into a mystery as you explore ways to heal yourself, specifically in the grove.

It gives you two options, roughly. One, help Halsin get free so he can help you. Or two, join Minthara so you can get close to the source and hopefully learn more.

And so on, the game continues from there. Revealing an underdark, revealing the history of Selune temple and Grymforge, hinting at some curse on the land above, all leading toward Moonrise Towers.

We understand what's happening in the game because there's clarity, because there's set up, and because there's explanation.

So you say there's a lack thereof. How so? I'm guessing you're saying there should be more explanation about Shar, and in that suggestion, it's like you're forgetting all the other amazing elements clearly on display, all the things that have clearly been put forward.

As for Shar and Shadowheart, I have my own thoughts about that, which is to say that I doubt we share the same concerns. But regardless, it's not a difficult fix, especially considering we're in early access.


Are you referring to Shadowheart revealing herself as a follower of Shar?

I agree. This could be stronger. And I don't think it's a difficult fix. Remove "Cleric of Shar" from her character sheet, for one. Have her lie about who she worships earlier, for two. And while I don't agree this is necessary, as some folks have suggested, have her use Disguise Self until the crucial moment comes. All of this would make the scene stronger.

But that said, seeing a scene that could be stronger doesn't mean you're looking at a story that's not decent. That's an enormous leap. From "this scene could be better" to "this whole story sucks and I want a decent story."


How exactly does the map design not support the story?

Because things are too close? Are you saying the narrative suffers because the player doesn't have to walk far enough to get to the village? Do you think that has anything to do with the writing of the story?


No, I mean it's a good story. It has interesting characters who are in an interesting situation. It has conflict. There's a goal and a sense of repercussions if the goal isn't met.

By computer game standards, it also works, especially considering how there are multiple ways to approach things. So many scenes have been discovered that are surprising, as in, "wow, I didn't think that could happen, and it's cool to learn that the game accommodates for that possibility."

Now, you might argue that the character's aren't interesting, and then you might try to twist your personal taste into an argument that further says that means the writing is bad. But I wouldn't agree with you.

Let's take Gale as an example. I don't like Gale as an NPC. His story seems ridiculous. The stuff of eye-rolls. But would he be fun to play as a character? Possibly. Then I wouldn't be listening to him, I'd be him, making decisions from his point of view.

Some might say his proclaimed relationship with a goddess is too much. But is it? I think back through the history of fantasy writing. Even going to someone like David Eddings, I see a setting where mortals and gods are very close.

Whether that aspect of the character appeals directly to me or not... it doesn't inherently make it bad writing.


Thank you. I am sorry that you are not. I hope you get a chance some day to see in it what I do, and thus find some more enjoyment for yourself.

What the OP wrote really resonated with me, I couldn't have put it better myself. I imagine nostalgia plays a part when looking back at those seminal prequel games but nevertheless they have stood the test of time (I had a blast replaying BG1 this summer-it's flawed but oh how it draws you into its world). The BG3 map feels devoid of life and totally craps on immersion with its theme park feel and endless 'corridors' of exploration...I don't recall a single open expanse one could traverse.

BG3 suffers for being something of a hybrid game; not quite D&D, not quite DOS. The original games were far more measured, immersive and there was a patience involved in levelling up but the rewards felt far more tangible for it. Perhaps Larian worried that gamers these days would have the patience for such a game? I see posts here talking about not wanting to fight trash mobs but the alternative is seemingly to throw every crazy encounter you can possibly imagine at the party? Where is the sense of scale, or achievement, when you level up regularly in no time and are facing every exotic monster possible, all in Act 1. I shudder to think what later Acts will be like in BG3.

Criticisms of the intro of BG2, while valid, also have to consider the party started at a much higher level. I concur it's a bit strange and a pain in the arse to get it out of the way but it has never bothered me in the same manner as BG3's explosive intro.

The thing that gets me perhaps the most is that I just don't care about any of the companions in BG3, I don't care what or who The Absolute is...it's a convoluted mess of a storyline full of plot holes. I had a vested interest in many of the companions in previous games; some felt relatable and others were detestable but for the most part they felt believable. I stopped playing BG3 a year ago because I just felt empty forcing myself to try and enjoy the game.

Everything is too special, fantastical and exceptional in BG3 and hence, nothing really is. There's no foreplay, it's all f**king. It's like Larian took a classic car and rather than refine it, they turned it into some brash muscle car.

Yup. Plus +100 to the post and this.
Larian is catering to the PG13, modern WE WANT EVERYTHING AND NOW!! <<RPG>> crowd. And to that, yes its a pretty great game.
The game feeling from the get go at LEVEL1 like a Michael Bay flick is the perfect analogy. In terms of pacing the freaking game starts like late 90s games ends lol. For sure It will sell very well and be popular.

And as in ALL LARIAN GAMES, after hitting level 4, NOTHING SPECIAL. Seen it all. Item overload. STUFF overload. No point to special monsters. Characters are all over the place glass cannons. And Im already bored to NINE HELLS.
Larian does not seem to understand the concept of slow steady progression, introducing WEAKNESSES TO CERTAIN CHARACTERS/CLASSES, atmospheric build up, time and urgency. EVERYTHING is just already THERE, waiting on the map.

I see a lot in this thread people essentially asking, "if there is something wrong with this game, why is it still fun/why are we still playing it?" etc.

That's because despite the problems, BG3 is still a fun game. The poor writing is subjective, the fact remains it is an entertaining fantasy RPG. Despite acusations that I see things through rose tinted glasses, I enjoy many newer rpgs like this. Pillars of Eternity 1&2, DOS 1&2, Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous are all great, fun games.

Despite that, It's like if I had a party and called a restaurant to order a pizza for my guests but they deliver a lasagna with pizza toppings instead. Then when I complain that they didn't deliver a pizza as requested, they point out that "ahh but your guests were hungry and are still eating the strange lasagna which happens to be delicious isn't it?" They advertised one thing, delivered another, and whether or not it is good is beyond the point.

BG3 is a fun game, in fact if the names and faces were changed they could call it "Divinity Original Sin 3" and I would enjoy it, just as I enjoyed DOS2. We can argue about the quality of the script but that aside, it simply fails to perform as a threequel to the Baldur's Gate series. As such, it is bipolar and trying to be something it is not. I agree with all the comments about how strange it is that Larian takes existing monsters, alters their CR and ignores more appropriate challenges for our party's level. This is a comedy of errors, it does not matter if I am entertained, an error was still made.

I agree - critisising something doesn't mean, that one can't enjoy parts of it. It's not black and white (it seldom is). But pointing out things, that don't make sense or are over the top, is valid to do.
I never played a Larian game before, wasn't interested in the DOS games, since you are basically forced to play an origin character to experience the whole story. So I'm solely here because Baldurs Gate, nothing else. I bought the EA last year and am not really sorry, I did. But I do hope, they will tone it all down a bit - right now, it's just overload.

Let me preface that I really like bg3 (best DnD crpg game in my opinion) and played act 1 a few times over, even did a drow solo run, back when you could abuse some game mechanics (stay hidden and always attack with advantage).


I must say I really like it as is, and the time when it got announced (2019) cRPG were still a niche. The tonality with characters developing story arch's of Bg3 reminds me also a bit of DA:O, which was a great game as well. And although I played (and liked) PoE 1 and 2 and Pathfinder and Solasta, it was BG3 in the end which fueled my DnD needs and made me read more lore books, listening to more YouTube lore videos and made me Replay BG1,2 and NWN 2 just recently.
No other cRPG would do that. And btw. while replaying BG2 I must say I found some dialogue pretty cringe sometimes, and story pacing felt off as well. NWN 2 was great but towards the end had me do too many errand like things and I felt much too powerful.

Edit: the combat feeling in BG3 is so perfect btw. Can really feel the impact, while in older cRPGs combat always felt hollow and a little weird.

When I started my first BG3 playthrough it felt perfect. Because I did mistakes and the game felt pretty tough it is tailored for starters that don't know everything, and that come from normal video games. Now doing my 6th or so playthrough, of course I feel mighty because I know every encounter, every magic item and every room.

But try to remember the first time you launched, when you did not minmax everything.

Now in my 6th playthrough I try again to mimic a first start, try to do mistakes, and it again feels nearly as good as the 1st time. Encounters are just right in my eyes!

And every DM makes homebrew rules. I get that some people want a slower Start, a more more grounded start, and I wouldn't turn that away either. So.
Maybe BG3 could offer a tutorial before the tutorial, where when we build our character, and chose our origin we get a mini 1-2 hour mini tutorial (living the life on a farm, or in a mage school), in which we can learn more about the world, recent events, or BG1/2 events? All that through talking to people, overhear chatter, reading lore books or getting hints in other forms. Then we get captured by the mindflayer ship, and the game starts. ( This mini story / background / lore tutorial could also be in form of separate dreams.. )


Edit2: I really really hope bg3 will be a huge financial success and more players are lured into the forgotten realms. I want add-ons, dlcs and everything and occasionally a bg4 in that engine, with that story telling please . In my eyes it's super awesome and fits BG lore perfectly.
For example the first time gale died . Really I was so flashed . This is what I love, or the swamp hag, cmon, it's brilliant.

And I don't mind a little Humor. It's not forced at all and is nothing like jarjar Bink's...

The funny part is that you see youreself as completely inocent in your example ... all their fault huh?

Actualy its like they Advertised something, you EXPECTED another, and then they delivered ...
Something that meets their advertising in their eyes, but not your expectations ...

No given promise was broken and you could theoreticaly know better what to expect if you were listen to their (and not just their) advertising more closely ... but you were like "yay pizza, lets get there" and then completely ignored what ingredients will be used. Funny enough, for last year there are terabites of content all over internet where people are complaining that salami was too dry, tomatoes too fade, or paste too thin (or thick, matter of prefferences) ... yet you refuse to listen to all those, since "yay pizza, me hungry" ... and now you are complaining that pizza you got dont meet your expectations ...
Question here: Is that really fair to blame the food for that? O_o

I think my issue is that the game starts off going to 100 real quick on the epic scale, and I don't see the game being able to convincingly bring the pacing down to something more normal/mild without it feeling awkward and forced. WotR in comparison probably starts off even higher on the epic scale, but its companion cast is still rather largely grounded (and effectively dulling a lot of the edge through their party interactions and constant interjections). Plus the overall framing and your party actually participating in almost every conversation makes it extremely clear that you're in a turbulent region of the world widely known to be affected by extraordinary circumstances - but it also doesn't mean everything has to be extraordinary.

But BG3's companions and the overall plot just pushes the epic scale as high as it can, and it's also a big contributing factor to the worries that custom MCs are going to get the shaft again. I mean, you've got a Githyanki that isn't normally seen in the setting, a mysterious cleric of an evil goddess with a crazy maguffin artifact, a wizard that people theorize is a reincarnation of something close to the freaking goddess of the weave and source of all magic, a vampire spawn, and a warlock beholden to a cambion. Like they're all really damaged in terms of backstory and personality, and it shows with how little actual party banter exists between them, or how their backstories don't lend themselves to any semblance of potential future character development that doesn't involve five layers of mystery being peeled away or murderhoboing something. Let alone themselves actually interacting with the setting that they're supposed to be from without something exploding. Kind of telling that none of them talk about their family or ever having any friends before any of this began - meanwhile all of WotR's companions do, even if they're only slightly lower on the epic scale in a direct comparison (and some are even higher, such as the succubus Arueshalae, but she gets utilized in a way that really adds to the characterization of the party as a whole, not to mention offering a unique perspective into the lore of the setting rather than trying to become so epic that their existence comes off as trying to retcon something).

Literally any of them could be a main character in their own separate games, and maybe that's the point with the existence of the eventual Origin system. But really, how the hell do you balance that kind of party from a narrative standpoint against everything else that's happening? That kind of competing focus not just drowns out whatever perceived role a custom MC should have, it also overpowers the actual setting itself.

I've come to realize that throughout my time playing BG3, not once did I really feel like I was really playing a game in the Forgotten Realms setting (and I wouldn't have known it was a Forgotten Realms game if the game didn't take every opportunity to tell us it was, rather than showing us in a sense), because a lot of the background details feel like they've been completely overpowered by the extraordinary events happening to your party and the surrounding areas. With the way things are, it almost feels as if we as players got dropped into something in media res, except it's the beginning of the story rather than something that was done on purpose.

After reading a bit more in this thread, I came to the conclusion that one of the issues in terms of narrative (thus, leaving aside all the worldbuilding, map, lore issues) which makes the first steps as a player less of an exploration that emphasizes player agency (meaning [non main plot] decisions and chosen path is contingent and non-linear) and introduces us to the setting, story, and our role in it as a player/character stems from the difference between how in BG1&2 we were effectively left completely free as to either ignore, run away, or pursue our - obviously unavoidable - destiny. No one forces you to actually join up with Jaheira in BG1, you can simply start exploring all the other areas and ignore the main quest/story line for a fairly big part of the game. Same thing is what made BG2 so grandiose, after the linear starting dungeon, you the player are put in a situation which both conveys incentives to follow the main plot (save your hot sis from Irenicus' BDSM nightmare) but also forced you to explore the world (you need to do other quests to get the gold to proceed in the main story/quest). This left a lot of choice in the players hand, you could immediately try to free Imoen, or you could totally ignore her (and your destiny as a Bhaal spawn), at least for a while, and simply set out to become one of the region's great adventurers.

The key point being that the narrative devices employed are much more open ended (e.g. foster father killed in ambush leaving you alone in wilderness with only vague instructions; freeing yourself from imprisonment and finding yourself in a strange city with your sister and close friend taken captive together with the guy who imprisoned and tortured you, with only vague hints as to which path to pursue to find out about your sister and/or who imprisoned you for what reason). The story does not predicate that the player will die because he doesn't want to follow Gorion's instructions or because he doesn't care about Imoen and Irenicus, instead it implies those choices mean you roleplay as someone of questionable morals who pursues his/her own interests instead of doing the obviously good thing (finding out who killed your "father" and saving your sister).

This is very different from BG3 where we are dropped in the world knowing only that we have a life-threatening condition that needs our immediate attention. The lack of narrative choice is so that not even with the current party cast made up solely of evil-neutral companions it makes sense for the player to say 'fuck them tadpoles, I don't care, i'm just gonna do some adventuring instead', as even evil characters do not want to risk losing who they are by turning into a mindflayer. (Except for Astarion that is, the day-roaming vampire thief whose mere existence depends on plot armor). At the same time, however, Larian doesn't want you to rush trough their expensive act 1 map, so quite early they make it evident that there is no urgency at all and the player can freely explore the map and do some quest-lines.

So on the one hand we have a narrative which in roleplaying terms introduces us to the world as an agency possessing character forced to make moral choices right from the start, either willfully or by mere choice of what to do next; while on the other hand, we have a narrative which strips us of all agency (no one, not even the most evil of characters, wants to ignore the tadpole, not even Astarion who merely contemplates the benefits of the tadpole but also by definition can not ignore it) and only manages to introduce player agency and choice by contradicting its own main premise.

I feel that the old story, although a bit cliché and a stereotypical fantasy coming of age trope, was a much better starting premise to give the RP illusion of choice, one can say fuck my sister, I will pursue personal power, but one doesn't say 'fuck that tadpole, I will simply save this guy from the burning inn in what could potentially be my last hours/days and while I feel this thing growing in my skull'. Being on the run, or having to find out something (which is also giving time pressure, IF the player decides to roleplay as someone who cares, but doesn't have to) is much better suited for cascading from side-quest to side quest and getting to know the setting and world, without breaking immersion and contradicting the game's main premises and plot lines, compared to the tadpole which acts a kind of Schrödingers late stage terminal brain tumor.

I think an easy solution would be to only introduce the tadpole at a later stage. This would mean:

- the player starts by noticing something weird, a stain, something out of place and suspects it to be related to the mindplayer abduction

- the quest for a healer to remove the tadpole becomes a quest to find out what this weird stain and change could be

- the player only finds out it is a tadpole at the completion of one of the 'healer' quest lines, meaning that instead of learning we have a 'special' tadpole, we simply find out that we have a tadpole only then. Finding out it is a 'special' tadpole should follow logically from this, either as part of the quests (e.g. the hag could detect the tadpole, hesitate and if player passes insight and charisma check, tell the player she believes the tadpole to be no immediate risk of transforming into mindflayer; or, the player could simply keep resting and using tadpole powers to find out the same thing trough camp/party interactions).

So instead of this giant contradiction as the starting premise of the game and the immersion breaking non-urgent urgency on which it hinges, the player should be left in the unknown about his condition and FIRST find out what is actually happening (e.g. what is this weird feeling, what are these sudden powers I obtained) and only then be told of the exact nature of his/her condition. This would still instill some narrative/moral urgency (no one would NOT want to know what happens to his/her body except the totally suicidal) but not the over the top "we are all going to die, transform in mindless slaves or evil psychic octopus aliens" type of urgency which is so over the top that it forces the main story to contradict itself right from the start.

Actually, your post gave me an interesting thought, Serra. Maybe the overall perception would be improved if we *didn't* start on the mindflayer ship already infected. We could have started somewhere else, doing smaller things and taking our first steps towards adventuring. Maybe you briefly meet or catch a glimpse of some of the other party members doing their own thing along the way, like running into Astarion if you were a Baldurian. Or maybe you were a Waterdhavian adventurer planning on tackling the Undermountain through the Yawning Portal, when Gale comes and starts buying drinks on the house to diffuse a fight about to break out in the corner. All this, before the mindflayer ship suddenly shows up above, you get to see the sheer panic that overtakes everyone around you, and you find yourself powerless to stop what's happening before you get taken.

It'd also give players time to familiarize themselves with the setting before everything goes sideways. A big reason why DA: Origin's backgrounds worked so well is because of this type of concept. You got to see how things changed drastically later in the game, instead of simply being told about it. That kind of concept also subconsciously provides an additional avenue for a player to assign extra motivation for their characters doing what they do in a roleplaying sense. (Maybe the poor reception of DOS2's Act 4 would have also been much improved if we visited the area it took place in, before heading off to the Act 3 Nameless Isles. On that note, BG3 starts off doing A LOT of telling rather than showing, really.)

Though, as with many other things, the existence of the eventual Origin system makes this a much more monumental task than it should be.

I have no problem with an exciting start like what they've given us. The art of good storytelling is that you need a good hook in the beginning to draw your audience in. This is good. It's a lot more exciting than the starts you get for Neverwinter Nights or Icewind Dale or even the previous Baldur's Gate games.

I like the pizza analogy. That really fits perfectly. It's good. Great even. It's just not at all what we were in the mood for and what we ordered.

And just to be clear, I'm not here to complain. I'm here to suggest how to make the game better. It's great. They could release the full game today and I'd be happy.

But it could be SO much better if they gave us really great pizza instead of a really great lasagna thing.

The changes required aren't monumental although the DOS 2 engine may have major limitations for all I know.

1) Time - a clock and a light source that moves in sympathy across the sky. In essence a moving light or moon above you.
2) Spawn "stuff" and have them walk about the map hunting (wolves) , patrolling (goblins) etc. and unspawn after X time.
3) On rest roll dice and spawn/not spawn "stuff" in camp (risk). Higher risk in dungion zones and underdark.
4) Short rest moves light abit.
5) After XXX time have the goblin attack the druid camp regardless OR have the Tieflings attack the goblins to attempt to get on the road. Being backed into a corner like the tieflings would cause them to do "something" rather than wait to die.

That would add so much to the "lived in" world feel. Add a few minutes intro to each origin character showing their backstory and circumstances that lead them to be on the ship. This would add insight to the player to why their live sucks (Astarion) or how they got the gith box etc.

The world needs to react organically without the player interacting with it for there to be a sense of urgency and immersion. Nobody is asking for Larian to rewrite the entire game. Stuff plopped on the static map just standing there for days/weeks/ever waiting for a "trigger" from the player is just plain awful.

This ^^^^^ is real feedback and has been said again and again by thousands of players in every way possible. Over the past year I see 2 general repeating opinions,

1) BG3 needs to be a Balduers gate (5e) game here is why, followed by a detailed list of x - or words to that effect
2) Game is fun and pretty - dont change (5e) = bad although I now nothing about it

One of these ^^ is feedback one is not. Praise needs to be followed by criticism and vice versa.

Let's say it again. The game as a stand alone NOT Baldurs gate (5e) game is fun and playable and is better than DOS2. What make it batter ARE the 5e and BG lore elements not the DOS2 mechanics, story or origin crap. Asking for more BG elements in a BG game is not an unreasonable request. If this was DOS3 with BG elements I would be on the side of the DOS fans. It isn't.

Please no timed quests!

I still think "timed quests" would make the game more enjoyable, BUT... And that's a big BUT... They need to rebalance the game, which they need to do anyway.

So many are opposed to having things happen after a certain amount of days goes by, but let me propose this:

Imagine you leave the grove and face encounters that don't almost wipe your party each fight. Imagine your companions don't require a long rest to have a conversation with you. So you don't feel like you need to long rest so often.

Would having events occur after 3 or 4 long rests be such an issue if standardly you weren't feeling like you needed to long rest so much? They would only occur IF you really abused the system because it would make sense to have SOMEthing happen if you're going to truly drag your feet.

Timed quests suck when you have to scramble and stress about which path to take and which quest you aren't going to be able to complete. If it isn't about locking you out of this quest or that, but about just making SOMEthing happen, a timed event can be very fun.

+1

What you *could* do is a conditional advancement of the quest. For example, if you reach the Goblin camp, this might serve as a trigger that in the meantime, an attack on the grove occurs. If you get to act 2 without killing the bandit leaders, the druids grove might get wiped out.

But this would not be timed, but just advancing the quest at certain stages in the narration.

When the message one is trying to convey is being (widely) misinterpreted, blaming the receiver is generally a bad idea. It more likely means that the communication could have been handled better on the sender's side.
You are obviously very much in tune with the company and I have no doubt you are having the experience you expected from their claims, but it's also undeniable that many of us feel that our expectations have been somehow betrayed. I wish I had had your clarity, I wouldn't have bought the game.

I agree with pretty much everything that the OP said, this game does not feel like D&D for reasons that go beyond homebrew rules and game mechanics.

I see how such over the top characters could appeal to some people. Personally I find they cost the story and the immersion much more value than they add. I feel I wouldn't enjoy having Mr. Swen at my table, either as a player or DM.

Advancing between acts sounds good to me. 😊 They could add a message to let people know to finish any quests they want to complete before moving to the next act.

It is not a "timed quest" as it isn't a quest. It is a choice in a world that doesn't revolve around the player. Goblins plan to attack and destroy the camp, they don't necessarily want the tieflings dead just the druids, story options? Convince the tieflings to team up with the goblins for a free road to BG. It isn't super mario world where you need to complete level 1.1 to progress to level 1.2.

The player is a character in a living world that happens to exist and function before player got there right? If the player died on the ship and wasn't there to "save the day" what would happen? Currently in BG 3 absolutely nothing. The world would be midday forever and everything and everyone would wiggle about "awaiting player 1" to insert coin. The astral plane isn't as static as the BG world currently.

My suggestion wasn't "do this" my suggestion was "do something" or "something must happen". Inaction doesn't prevent the world from turning until you decide, you are not a deity at level 1. It rains, it gets windy, wildlife eat grass or get eaten. Causality!

A hundred times this. When so many people politely say that the goods are not as advertised, then the goods are not as advertised. If you disagree, good for you Ragnarok, but don't invalidate everyone elses legitimate perception.

(1) I partially agree, but it still makes way more sense than anything we see in BG3. Irenicus is an insanely powerful wizard, reasons for many/most prisoners being there are given IIRC. It is a high-level party dungeon (and in BG2, you do start as a reasonably high-level character), not unlike what you get in some D&D high-level P&P adventures.
(2) Don't remember that at all, which Lich was that?
(3) Drow had their own map, so did the Illithids and Kuo Toa, no? Then yeah, there was the in-between "hub" Underdark location which wasn't exactly huge, but as long as you have to "gather your party and venture forth" and travel between maps, you can at least pretend in your head-cannon these locations are reasonably far away from each other (even though IIRC there is no travel time). This is impossible with e.g. the druids/tieflings and goblins.

Also, BG2 is a 21 years old game, it is not unreasonable to expect BG3 being better and not _MUCH_ worse. I will absolutely agree that BG1 with it's many non-dense outdoor locations etc. definitely had a less theme-parky feeling than BG2.

And everything being crammed together isn't the only problem with BG3's world/location building (though it's a major one) - even if you consider only a specific location where people (or goblins...) live, there are major verisimilitude issues.

Great post, op.

Without humble beginnings there will never be a proper frame of reference for epic or high level content. When everyone and everything is epic and awesome from level 1, there will never be room for growth.

The constant barrage of "amazing" in Baldurs Gate 3 has made me completely numb to the point where nothing feels awesome or impressive anymore. It takes courage and skill to show restraint and write small and mundane things. I think Larian as a developer lacks that ability. Ultimately it will mean that while BG3 will be a high quality game, the doors to the RPG Hall of Fame will remain closed.

Exactly. This is not a debate about whether BG3 in its current form is fun to play for many people, because of course it is. Just like hundreds of other games on Steam, GOG, and EGS being enjoyed by millions of gamers. The issue is whether the game feels like a Baldur's Gate game, set in the Forgotten Realms, and using D&D 5e mechanics? The issue of the game being "fun" to play has nothing to do with this and is an entirely separate issue. And I think it is very telling that generally, the people who are very favorable towards BG3 are those who don't really care that much about the game's ancestry and roots as a Baldur's Gate/FR game, because things like the game supposedly being part of the Baldur's Gate videogame franchise or a game set in the Forgotten Realms setting with all it's rich lore collected over decades are not at all relevant to them. So, your excellent OP is going to resonate only with those of us who care about this game actually being a **Baldur's Gate** game, and not just another RPG made by Larian that happens to be called BG3.

That is exactly it ... its not widely.
There was not even hundert people ... and even if there would, its like how much ... 0,000001% ?

No one will ever know how many people won't buy the game because "it does not feel like a BG game" (or a DnD game, or whatever you want).

But I saw a lot of people complaining on other forums I'm active on, especially at the beginning. Is that more or less than 0,000001% of players that will buy it ?
How could we know ?

This debate won't change anything but the title of this thread is still something many people agree with... even if they like the game for other reasons (people like me, in exemple).
I like BG3 a lot but I definitely think it was doable to create the same game with a better DnD/BG vibe. It's not because I like BG3 a lot that I'm convinced by "Larian's vision" or by a lot of core design choices they made.

But how could you understand ? You never played BG1 and 2 (smile because you love them)

Pulling numbers right out of our ass, aren't we?

Also completely missing the point (which is BG3 not being a Baldur's Gate game, not BG3 being a bad game).

Numbers aside it shows some bias that you're weighing the number of people who voiced their disappointment against the entire user base. This means that you assume that every single person who downloaded the game and did not express any opinion is automatically on board with you.
Bear in mind we're not arguing whether people enjoyed the game, the question here is whether we think it is as faithful a D&D translation as we feel we were promised.

I could do the same to you: in this whole thread you've been the only person to say that Larian communicated effectively and it's us fools who failed to understand their vision. How much is that? Since it's just you and not a hundred people I will take your estimate and add a couple of zeros: 0,00000001%.

Does it feel right? It's just as legitimate as your own math.

I agree. Both the story and the larger than life companions seems to be turned up to eleven from the get go. The Michael Bay parallel seems fitting in this case.
Not saying this game can't enjoyable. But it does not feel like DnD.

1. The game feels like DnD. I have no idea what some of you are talking about. Every time a character casts magic missile, I think to myself, this sure does feel like DnD.

The D20 is being rolled right in front of my face. Feels like DnD. There are Mind Flayers and character classes and races straight out of Dungeons and Dragons. Yep, feels like DnD.

Doesn't feel like 2nd edition DnD. Because it's not.

*

2. I feel like some of the arguments boil down to: it's too exciting!

I prefer my excitement to come at later levels, thank you very much. Bah humbug.

*

3. Regarding timed quests: there sort of is one right now. If you contact Nere telepathically, then from that point on, you're under the clock.
*

4. I would also like to see a day/night addition to the game. However, the absence of a day/night schedule doesn't mean the writing is bad.

Irellevant ...
The premise was that this game was advertised as something else than what was delivered in the end ... if someone as you says "won't buy the game becasuse it does not feel like a BG (or a DnD, or whatever you want) game" ... those people were obviously not fooled by this "evil cheating advertising" ...
And therefore (quite logicaly i would say) cannot be part of amount of people who was.

Yeah, that might be true ...
But once again, since there is no way to tell how many of them is just same people also active on other forums, just as you do ... its also irellevant. :-/
Unless you actualy found a forum where litteraly ten thousand different people were complaining about it, and even then you would only move by two decimal places closer to 1% while still being DEEEP below. :-/

That is the thing ... where did you get "many" ?
I mean i totally understand that when your surrounding agree often, person totally can get the expression that presented opinion is accepted by the general public ...

Im just pointing out that this is just ilusion caused by the fact that your test group is:
A) Too small to base any conclusions on it
B) Interested in the topic and therefore not objective

Its just the same ilusion you get if you talk about politics with your friends ...
You asked them all and nobody voted for "Candidate A" (to keep it as unspecific as possible) ... therefore you can easily get to conclusion that he can never win the votes ...
Then later, when the votes are counted ... you find out that "Candidate A" have won with 80% votes.
Why is that?
Bcs your test group was not wide enough to be relevant ... if you are oriented to "Candidate B" (or vice versa) you with high probability will be talking with same oriented people, and therefore some "Candidate A" oriented person will be so rare in your surrounding you can easily get to conclusion that they dont even exist.

This topic is same story.
Most people who come here, come here just to add +1 to complaining ... you can see that by the fact that not even everyone curently active on this forum expressed themselves.
Therefore our group is too dedicated for our "Candidate A" (larian sucks, we want DnD) so we can easily get to conclusion that "Candidate B" (larian rocks, we want it as it is) dont even exists, or is so small to being irellevant.
But that is just bcs we ignore all those millions of people who are not curently here to complain.

Im aware, i was there.
Not sure why you are telling me tho. O_o

That is why i never (if you check this topic, you will see) expressed myself about how this game feels compared to them ...
Only to general topics i had opinion to ... and i dont think that there was any condition telling us that those who didnt play previous games cant understand rules of statistics, or telling them to others here. :P

On the contrary my dear friend ...
Im aware of this point, i just pointing out that this is matter of personal feeling that is distorted (among other aspects) mainly by thing called "selective memory" ... feel free to google it.

Shorter version:
No matter how this game would look, work, or sell ... there will allways be someone who will be sure that its not BG or DnD enough ... the only way to prevent this is to create remaster instead of sequel.

Not sure what means "being on board with me" ... also kinda doubt that you even know, but that is different topic ...
But yes, i asume that every single person that buyed a product that litteraly say "if you didnt like product you just buyed, please come to this web and complain" ... and dont come to this web and complain ...
EIther dont want to complain since they are satisfied, or isnt bothered enough by things they dislike to complain.

One ancient quote says: Silence means consent.

I dared to mark most important part in this statement.

Now my reaction to this statement:
I understand YOUR point ... not sure about the others here to be honest ... but i even agree with you ...

But bear in mnd that im not arguing here whether the game is faithful as a D&D translation ...
Im just pointing out for some people that they actualy do compare their own expectations (just as you said) with final product, and blame developers for not meeting them ...
Wich would be udnerstandable and totally fine as long as people will say things like "i wanted" or "i expected" or "i would like" or w/e simmilar ... but not for people claiming "i was promised" or "it was advertised" bcs he wasnt, and it wasnt.
Nothing more, nothing less.

I would say its not "as legitimate" since you are limiting both input (just people who said exactly the same as i did) and source of your check group (this topic only) ...
But if that pleases you, with this obviously purposefull restrictions you would be right.

But as soon as you start searching in other topics you can find other people claiming something quite simmilar to me ... this is one example of them:

Back in June 2019 (if I'm not wrong) when this game has been announced it was only advertised as "BG3".
Then it was advertised as a DnD video game. And guess what ? The only DnD video games that video games players could think of were the old BG games (and similar).

People had expectations and talked about BG3 before you came here in october when the early access begin.

And even after the beginning I'm sorry... But even a non-DnD player like me could understand that it doesn't mechanically look or feel like a DnD game, a DnD low level campaign or an old BG game at all.
It was already awesome for the choices and what they call "permutations", for the races and classes tags and so on... but in exemples the rules implementation were terrible and it's obvious that BG3 does not have any references to the old games (visually, mechanicaly and so on...)

Just as your conclusions, your numbers or your intepretation of what "many" means, your exemples are irrelevant too but it doesn't matter at all. We don't have to play with words (not sure if it's an understandable expression in EN)
I saw here, on youtube and on other forums a lot of players claiming that this game does not look like a BG game for various reasons - way more than those claiming that it looks like a BG game.

After 1+ year, such thread still have 5 pages in 36 hours. This mean that this is still something people have in mind even if you disagree or just don't understand what it means.
You're not giving your opinion but you're giving an opinion on other's opinion. Your first answer was once again the stupid "it looks like nostalgia" argument. Which has always been irrelevant. Smile smile smile.

No, there's not. There's not a lot of comments about how this game doesn't look like a BG game.

There are, however, a lot of comments saying how awesome the game looks, and how people can't wait for it to be fully released, and speculation about mysteries in the game, and character class build advice, and people talking about equipment, and debates about which companion is the best, and so on and so on.

At some point, it just feels like there's a handful of people piling on hate. I end up wondering if any of these folks work for competing companies, lol.

You obviously don't remember the "DoS3" thing but you know what ? If you say so, let's say you're right

At the end of the day Larian don't pay any heed to these forums. It is simply a place where we can say what we feel is the good, the bad and the ugly.

The good,

The combat and classes are decent D&D adaptations.

The Bad,

The world is DOS

The Ugly,

The world is DOS

As simply as it gets. lols

1. Nobody is asking for 2nd Edition, don't be facetious. Sure, it feels like D&D; a Larian rendition of D&D liberally smothered with their idiosyncratic, 'hilarious' style and Superhero companions. It bears little resemblance to a BG game, which is the point many people are making. It is a marked departure from the original games.

2. That's your own perception of the feedback provided and is absolutely not the intention. There is little palpable sense of achievement when you level up constantly and are inundated in magical (and non magical) loot from the very beginning. In essence, it gets boring very quickly and starts to feel like a MMORPG.

People aren't piling on hate, they're giving valid feedback...consider that perhaps it is because they care?

Yes, but games like BG3 revolve around exploring the world. In reality, you wouldn't stop to investigate every single chest or even the conflict between Goblins and Tieflings. You would care for the Tadpole.

And many people play the game to open every single chest and do every single quest. They want to have absurd amounts of time to do all that. Which is admittedly highly unrealistic.

There were actually several But the one I'm referring to is just the tavern which you come by in front of the gate (The map you have to enter to leave Amn). In this tavern there is a picture on the wall which is a hidden door. If you step through, you are directly entering a small tomb housing a lich.

My point is that the vast majority of people clearly like what they're seeing and experiencing. It's not even debatable.

It's okay to have an opinion that disagrees with the majority, but I don't think it's helpful to suggest that "a lot" of players have a problem with this game because it doesn't "feel like BG." That's just not true. The numbers don't support that argument, not at all.

And it's also a bit ridiculous. I mean, it doesn't "feel" like BG? What does that even mean? The original post was talking about how elves were the most unique race. Well, guess what? Now tieflings and dragonborn exist in Forgotten Realms. They didn't before, so the whole DnD has kinda changed, you know?

Not to mention, games don't look the way they used to. That "change" is pretty darn apparent also, because now things are visually stunning. Back when people were playing BG, they would've been blown away to see even ten minutes of play of BG3, and they would've been praising the future.

It doesn't "feel" like BG. C'mon, gimme a break. Of course there are differences, and to hyperfocus on those differences means ignoring all the similarities.

It's like, Elturel went to hell. Is that too epic for you? Well, was it too epic when the city of Phlan got teleported because of a plot by Bane?

People want to complain about how exciting the first act is. Okay. I guess. Whatever. I mean, I like it. And while I appreciate the concern trolling over whether the second and third act will be able to live up to the pacing of the first act... I guess I'll just wait and see before casting my vote on that one.

Meanwhile, I don't care what level someone thinks a character should be before they're allowed to interact with a Mind Flayer or a Cambion. That seems like arbitrary nonsense to me, like someone's mind got stuck thinking inside a box. Like only 5th level characters qualify for an express ticket to the underdark. Gosh. How do all the 1rst level drow and gnomes and duergar exist there?

Not to mention that the game doesn't even expect you to fight Mind Flayers and Cambions yet. They've just been introduced, and they've been shown fighting one another. If *you* fought them, that was *your* choice, not the games.

Consider, if you will, two things:

1. What if... the Nautiloid were a ship on the ocean? And the Mind Flayers were human slavers. And the ship was under attack by Sahuaguin. And you had to escape, which led to the ship crashing ashore somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Would it still be too much? Too epic? If not... is it really just the aesthetic that makes it all too much?

and

2. What if... there had never been a DoS 1 or 2? Then BG3 just appeared as it is now. What I'm getting at is that saying the game is DoS 3 isn't actually an argument. It doesn't mean anything. There's no steak there, only sizzle, only rhetoric. It's not saying what's wrong with the game in any constructive way because it's appealing to an authority (an authority that no one ever agreed with, I might add) that apparently says BG3 can't look like DoS.

There's nothing facetious about it. DnD changed editions, and those changes have impacted the way DnD feels. Period. It's a fact.

Again, I point to the original post, talking about how elves were this unique race. Well, now there are tieflings and dragonborn and and and and and... The races have changed, the classes have changed, the spells have changed, there's more, always more.

Of course those things *feel* different.

Additionally, computer graphics have changed. It's dramatically different now. So of course that's also going to *feel* different.

But the more things change, the more they stay the same, as the saying goes. It's still a setting with basic character classes, there are still spells, and clerics and wizards.

As for plot, the plot of this story is that there's something special about you. Just like there was something special about you in BG. In this story, you have a tadpole in your head. The action of the plot pushes you forward to find a cure; in other words, it gives you a goal to pursue. And in your pursuit, you find mysteries that need to be solved.

So goes the adventure.


We're in Early Access. Do you actually think the leveling is going to be the same on full release? Do you really think the pacing of leveling will be just like this?

I don't even understand why an argument like this is being made. On full release, the game isn't going to rush you to 4th level and leave you there forever.


I'm sure some people are trying to be constructive. And I'm sure some people care.

But when I see a bunch of buzz words about the "lousy writing" and such, I begin to wonder. For instance, saying a game needs a day/night cycle has nothing to do with whether or not it's filled with terrible writing, but it gets lumped together in the oddest ways in some comments. It's to the point where *it feels to me as if* there are attacks that don't make any sense, as if they're thrown against the wall in a wild effort to see what sticks.

I agree and I never said something else. I'm a part of those players that like BG3 and are hyped by the game but that are/were also "dissapointed" at the same time because it does not feel at all like a Baldur's Gate game.
But I saw many people saying "DoS3", "not BG game" and so on. What numbers are you refering to ? The number of players that would have buy if "..." ?

Nothing in BG3 has been inspired by Baldur's Gate and I think they made a mistake.
But obviously the majority don't care. The majority haven't even played the old games when they were not considered old.

I don't see an issue with how Larian has communicated in regards to what they were planning to do. They were clear it would be a fun game based on DnD 5e and that it would use the Divinity engine. That is pretty much exactly what they delivered thus far.

I agree with Ranxerox, so another +1.

See, this is exactly what I'm talking about.

There's no way for you to know what inspired the writers. I mean that. Literally. There is literally no way for you to know. Yet you feel confident enough to proclaim it without a doubt.

How could you possibly know what inspired the writers? You haven't even seen the whole game. You don't know the mystery behind the tadpole or who the Absolute is or what's going on with the dead three. I'm talking about the entire plot here, the entire mystery of what's happening to the character.

None of that is known.

There is literally no way to know what inspired the writers, and what parts of that inspiration may have come from BG.

Do you see what I mean?

And if the game was named Divinity: A Forgotten Realms Adventure, many of us would be silent - at least those of us that care more about BG3 being a Baldur's Gate game rather than being a faithful D&D 5e game. But the game's name is Baldur's Gate 3 and right now, it sure seems right now like a false advertising. Larian's (especially Swen's) interviews regarding what they consider fun (and what they do not) give me the feeling that they don't even think the originals are any good. With that kind of game/world design philosophy (which is not bad, mind you, and works for DOS, I guess), I really have to wonder what other than a cheap nostalgia cash grab and free media coverage made them making "BG"3 and not DOS3. In the history of cRPGs (and dungeons), there were many D&D games set in Forgotten Realms, that by itself didn't make them Baldur's Gate games.

And it's not a one specific thing - I don't care specifically for RTwP, AD&D 2e, actually not necessarily even the Forgotten Realms setting - it's almost every design decision Larian went for (their comfort zone is DOS and it seems they will never leave it) is in conflict with the game being an actual worthy sequel.

Huh? Amn? Amn is a country/region, not a single location/map... Do you mean Athkatla? Whatever, not important, I guess...

In simple terms, what makes it DOS and not BG?

Ah, sorry, yes Athkatla. It's been some time 😅

Distinctively DOS-like (or Larian-like?) world building/design and a complete lack of verisimilitude is my main gripe with the game as of now: https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=800706#Post800706

Related to that is non-existent flow of time (though I mentioned that in the post as well I think). 90s RPGs even older than BG were able to pull off time flow and day & night, BG3 not having it (just like DOS games don't) is a crime. Not necessarily for timed-quests and such - that's not at all the point.

The "everything is special, everyone is a unique superhero snowflake, every bigger quest (on level 1-4!) is basically a major region-altering event" style of writing screams DOS as well. Well, specifically DOS2, DOS1 was kinda toned down in that regard IIRC (was a long time ago). I mean in BG1/2 you play as a literal child of a god, but most of the characters/companions (with some notable exceptions - which is perfectly fine) you encounter are not memory-wiped vampire spawns from other world that used to have sex with Mystra and turn into nukes when they die. In the first ~3 hours of BG3 playthrough, there's more of this crap than in whole BG1 including the expansion... BG2 and especially ToB had more of this, of course, but in those games you progress towards being a high-level epic hero and then continue progressing towards literal godhood. It makes sense to pace and carefully dose these kind of things as you become more powerful/renown, otherwise it falls completely flat. When everything is special, nothing is special.

Combat. I don't think I have to explain anything here, do I? Although I actually don't mind TB and don't think the game HAS to have RTwP. But it is distinctively DOS-like, surfaces and all. It's the engine, I guess...

Controls/interface - again, I don't think I have to explain, engine-related thing.

One positive thing I will say is that when I fully zoom out in specific locations, I do get the feeling that purely visuals/graphics-wise, this could work. As long as I don't touch my keyboard and mouse and am somewhere where the dead, static, theme-park world building philosophy isn't immediately apparent, I do get some Baldur's Gate vibes.

Kind of off to a bad start. These are just broad topic buzz words.

In other words, what about the world building...?

In other words, there isn't a complete lack of verisimilitude. Notice the way you're using hyperbolic language? Clearly, there are elements where there's a sense of realism.

Let me put it this way, someone reading a story will ask three questions:

1. So what? --does the person following the story care about what's happening?
2. Huh? --does the person following the story understand what's happening?
3. Oh yeah? --does the person following the story believe the events are plausible?

You apparently have an issue with number three. There's something happening that you feel isn't plausible. To that, I reply:

1. It's not everything. So it's not a *complete* lack of verisimilitude. As such, what is it that you don't find plausible?

and

2. What does that have to do with it being DOS and not BG? Are you arguing that DOS has a complete lack of verisimilitude but BG is all about the verisimilitude?

See what I mean? I feel like these are all buzz words. No examples, no steak, just accusations that it's bad, and bad apparently equals DOS?


So it's not BG because the sun doesn't go down? Does that sound reasonable to you? It's a "crime" that the sun doesn't go down?


What's special about everything?


I assume by "everyone" you mean the origin characters. Sure, people like to play unique characters. There's a lot of "chosen one" literature in fantasy. It's pretty common. I recall someone being awful special in the original BG, don't you?


I'm trying to follow you. I really am.

Basically, every game in Forgotten Realms, BG or not, has had a story that impacted the surrounding region. There's nothing new there. So what are you talking about, I wonder?

Every quest... is a major region altering event... as in saving or not saving the fishmongers? As in letting the owlbear cub live or die? As in picking up the letters from Scratch's old master/friend? As in trying to get healed by a hag and maybe saving a pregnant Mayrina from giving up her child? As in building up a connection with the Zhentarim?

Sure, there are some big things happening in the main plot. That's what the whole of the story is about, so it's not strange that it might be big enough to alter the region. The Duke has been kidnapped. Maybe the Absolute is a new god (who knows?), and if so, that would be a big event.

I don't know. Lots of big events in Forgotten Realms, the Bhaalspawn not being the least, I'd say. Heck, even the iron being contaminated was region altering.


Yep. Some people might even call that a unique superhero snowflake trait, but to each their own.


You're putting all the characters together in an attempt to exaggerate. Regardless, they're all potential player character, pre-generated. That's what the origin characters are, so yes, they each have something special about them, to make them more enticing as player characters.


This game is too action packed and exciting!



So progressing toward literal godhood = good, but BG3 = too big and epic.

Are you sure all of what you're saying makes sense in your head?

It's like, what's actually too big about BG3? Anything other than the background of the origin characters, which are designed to be player characters? And which even you have to admit aren't as big and crazy as being literal Bhaalspawn.


Is this concern trolling about whether or not Acts 2 and 3 can live up to the pacing of Act 1?

While I appreciate the crystal ball, I'd rather wait and see how the next two acts play out. For what it's worth, I suspect you're wrong, and that Larian has even more in store for us, despite the first act being so action packed. In other words, I don't think they're out of ideas, and I don't think the story tension can't continue to rise toward a climax, despite your assertions otherwise about it all falling flat.


Yes.


Plenty of games have been turn based. One of the best DnD games ever, in fact, at least in my opinion. Temple of Elemental Evil. It was very faithful to the system, and it worked on a turn based system. Luckily so, because DnD lends itself to a turn based approach, being that DnD is, of course, turn based.


This is what I think it comes down to. How you move your characters around. The user interface mechanic feels like DOS. Well. For what it's worth, I think that's something that's easy to overcome. Just my opinion.


More buzz words. What does any of this really mean? In simple terms.


Yeah. Me too.

Now we are saying that we misunderstood Baldur's Gate 3 as Baldur's Gate game instead of whatever Larian's vision is? You must be kidding.

We went from a immersion-centric game to a game that completely disregards immersion in favor of game mechanics. How is that fair?

And I can't even understand these people defending BG3, as if improving immersion and writing quality would somehow worsen the game.

The game doesn't completely disregard immersion. That's a baseless accusation.

You don't like it. I get it. But your subjective taste is not the definitive guide to whether or not a game disregards immersion. "Completely" disregards it, no less. Cares not one whit for immersion, apparently. Imagine that.

I mean, seriously. Consider how ridiculous that would be if a company designing a role playing game didn't care about immersion.

Again, this is what I mean when I talk about buzz words and hyperbole.

I think constructive criticism is great, but I'd like to challenge some of these notions about how the game is filled with bad writing and "theme park" locations and the kind of oh-so-special characters that would never have made it into a game about a Bhaalspawn.


I'm all for improvement. The problem is not everyone agrees with you that your version of better is actually better.

Honestly I could care less what edition of D&D BG3 runs off of. It could be GURPS for all I care. But Larian chose to go with the name 'Baldur's Gate 3'-thy hung their hat on nostalgia for a game two decades old, from a series that was basically the bedrock of what could be called the 'golden era' of D&D video games that lasted until 4th edition hit. It has some big boots to fill, some expectations to hit. That much hardly has to be said. And while I think Larian has been doing an absolutely stellar job in so many departments, I don't think they have quite hit the mark in a couple areas. Not so much in the overall quality-which is mostly pretty good, I have to say-but in their endeavor to evoke the essence of that particular era I think they have slipped just a bit more than I'm comfortable with.

I understand that we can't rewind time and just place BG III in the 2nd or 3rd edition Forgotten Realms- 5th is might not be as alien as 4th, but it still feels 'off'. Too many shifts, retcons etc. As a game set in 5th edition that's a sequel to one set in 2nd, it invites comparisons between the two and I find myself wondering silly stuff like 'If we ran into Haer'dalis, would he look like one of the 5th edition Tieflings, or like his BGII self?' when I see the Tieflings. Or I'll read a book about the Red Wizards or the Spellplague etc and I remember how so many places I used to like got blown up or otherwise completely changed. Yeah, I know. Not Larian's fault since WoTC called the shots on that and it's nostalgia talking-'You can't go home again' indeed. But it's a game that's built and sold on nostalgia so I don't feel entirely unjustified in feeling disappointed.

Other stuff though? I think Larian could, should...and hopefully will consider changing or at least laying off a bit until later in the game. The whole 'Michael Bay' thing talked about earlier. Yeah, it's hyperbolic, but there's a truth behind it. BG III promises the most epic, earth-shattering adventure pretty much right off the bat. I'm honestly half-expecting wotc's next 'Spellplague'-level event to get launched with this game as a tie-in at this point. Too many gods, the Nine Hells, Githyanki...all deeply involved. Where can it lead, who knows? But it promises to be quite the event. And we the player are right there in the thick of it. It's true we start out fighting goblins, but already we are graduating to significantly harder enemies and threats we aren't even out of the first act yet. D&D computer games typically (near universally) start you out on the low-end of things, scrapping with goblins and kobolds, then orcs, etc. I think the idea is so you can see and appreciate your character grow over the course of the game and experience the 'arc' of growing into a battle-hardened hero. But we are already scrapping adamantine golems and giving drow and Githyanki dirtnaps. How do you escalate from what are traditionally some of the more infamously formidable opponents you'd face in Toril? Are we going to really be fighting back-alley thieves guild thugs in Baldur's Gate after killing mindflayers and cambions in the first act (potentially even in the prologue!). I hope they tone it down, but I don't know if they even can at this point.

The companions, yeah, that's another thing. They all feel strongly like the star of the show.....which they are actually, because of the origins system. But if this is going to be the story of the player character, wouldn't it be best to build the story around...the player character rather than a cast of 7-8 other characters they have to share the spotlight with? It's also very front loaded. 8 party members all right off the bat, but you gotta choose your 3 soon, cause the rest are gone in act II. It's limiting and overwhelming. I think this could be alleviated much by the inclusion of some additional non-origins party members down the line. I have the most hope for this to be addressed some time. Hopefully Larian will talk about it some in the future, since this seems to be a pretty common observation/complaint.

Why do you think I'm specificaly talking about the writers ?

I REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY hope they don't force us to be locked into a set party in Act 2. That would REALLY suck.

I want MORE characters to choose from, not less. 4 feels so dang limited already. I even just tried to mod the game for 6 because 4 is driving me crazy.

Don't introduce me to cool characters like Karlach and make it seem like they'll be available party members only to lock us into like 3 companions.

I agree. I want to be able to switch companions, different setup for different occasions.

It makes a pretty good habit of disregarding immersion. These are some of the issues which personally break immersion for me:

-No day/night.
-No weather.
-Conversations only happen at camp. (Speaking of which, did they ever change the awful Fixed Camp Location? That was another immersion breaker-traverse the under dark but port back to the surface to rest each night)
-No clock/calendar in a game where the plot is literally an urgent race against time.
-Magical way portals liberally littered throughout the realms that apparently only we have discovered and only we can use. I'd imagine surface raiding Drow would have loved to have know about these portals?
-Level 1 companions with backstories more befitting of high level characters. The 'because tadpole' explanation of the loss of their powers is appalling writing.
-A condensed , railroaded map, devoid of life. The place was a literal graveyard once I had cleared a few quests. No random spawns, no random encounters, everything feels like a trip along a rail track. Little to no animals, no birdsong.

Correction- it’s the story of up to four playable characters, because it can be played in co-op with up to four players. DOS1 has two main characters and up to two followers, as it’s playable with 1-2 players, DOS2 and BG3 have up to four main characters because they are playable with 1-4 players.

Before anyone says it, that’s not really a DOS thing, it’s a how Larian implement co-op thing. I have little interest in multiplayer myself, but it seems perfectly reasonable that those who want to should all be an equally big part of the story, rather than one player being the star of show. And that means that the story has to fundamentally be built around a group of characters, not just one.

Personally, I quite like that I can go into dialogue with any one of the origin characters, or even separate them off to do something on their own.

However, I do agree that it would be good to also have a bunch of regular companions we could meet along the way with their own stories and personalities, but without the full control of origin characters. They could be functionally just be a combination of mercenary and camp follower, with their own dialogue and potentially quests.

That probably wouldn’t mess too much with whatever reasons Larian might have for fixing the party origin characters, but still allow a pool of companions. Additionally, it should be much easier to add more regular companions than origin ones and they could be spaced out a bit throughout the game, making them feel more like companions from the original games and others like it.

Of course, Larian might be deliberately trying to get away away from the Pokémon “Gotta catch them all” type gameplay that tends to happen. If so, they could still probably find ways to stop you recruiting absolutely everyone.

It’s the best compromise I can think of anyway.

I don’t know that they needed to go down the route of making everyone the star of the show in order to to make co-op work. If you took the Lord of the Rings or Star Wars then conceivably you could say that Frodo and Luke Skywalker were the stars of the show…but they couldn’t have done what they did without the aid of other ‘stars’.

Some of Larian’s decision making seems to have been driven by accommodating co-op a certain way and the result is that game has suffered for it. What percentage are playing co-op anyway…surely a minority?

One thing I will say is that I actually don't think the game does a good job of immersing you in the setting because having played through as much of act one as I have, I don't really have a clear idea of the setting. Like, I can guess it's classic medieavel fantasy, but we get hit with so many strange things that we don't really have a baseline for what normal is in the Forgotten Realms. I'm unfamiliar with the Forgotten Realms, and having played this, I only have a vague sense of how rare tieflings are, I only roughly know the place druids have in the setting. We don't actually have a sense of their power because Halsin, the leader of the druids, was caught by goblins. But those goblins were allied with powerful leaders, but we don'tsee any real displays of his power. Gale is a supposedly a powerful wizard from Waterdeep, a city we don't get to really learn anything about, but he's level one, so how powerful is a typical wizard in this setting? What place to they hold in the setting? What role does magic typically serve in the setting? Astarion has been a vampire spawn for overa centure but is still level one. And how common even are vampires in this setting? And Githyanki and mindflayers are unique creatures. I get the sense that they're rare, but are they as rare as vampires? Rarer? And we don't have any sense of who our player character was before this, and so we don't know if they're someone who would have special knowledge or not, so when dialgoue implies our character knows something, we can't really use that as a measure of how commonplace that knowledge is. So whether it feels like Baldurs Gate or not, what it doesn't feel like is a cohesive world. We don't ever get a good sense of how things normally relate to other things, so we can't fully appreciate just how weird things are. Sure, we took a trip into hell, but then we get to the grove and hear about an entire city that got pulled into hell. So...how much of a constant threat is going into hell in this world? Is it a standard thing that adventurers can expect to experience? The large number of tieflings (my favorite race by the way) would suggest that the presence of hell is at least somewhat pervasive.

People point out that Wrath of the Righteous also starts out really epic, but that's not entirely true. The first thing you experience, however shortly, is a festival. You get to look around a little bit and see "okay, this is a standard medieavel fantasy world. The place I'm in has a dragon protecting it and demons are a threat, but this place is an exception in those regards. It gives you a quick baseline for what normal is like. Plus you even get a glimpse at a few early companions. Then even after the demons attack, you're told that such a thing should not have been able to happen, so you can appreciate the gravity of it. On top of that, you can appreciate the horror of a day of celebration turned into a mass slaughter by horrific beasts. If WotR truly started like BG3, then your character would start off right as they were falling through the ground, seeing the demons swarming above them.

Regarding the companions issue specifically, I made an observation a while ago that I think still holds true; it's possible to make a crpg where an ensemble cast of the player and companions are all equally important and get the chance to shine, but I don't think that's what Larian is doing. To me it feels as though what they're doing is making a story where one character is meant to be the central character, but the story doesn't know who that central character is yet, so it's written to allow any of the characters to fill that role. And I think that's a mistake that keeps the group as a whole from feeling like a cohesive unit,

I am in 100% agreement with this. I came into BG3 and WotR knowing more about the Forgotten Realms setting than I did with the Pathfinder setting due to prior experience with 5E tabletop. I did everything I could in BG3 EA and finished WotR, and came out of the experience with a FAR greater understanding of the Pathfinder setting than Forgotten Realms, because the story and the party members of WotR are clearly written to interact with or add to the setting itself.

BG3's overall presentation is damn near 100% seemingly self contained plot with only vague references to the larger world in comparison. The party members don't exactly help, only Gale seemingly talks about the setting in broader terms that is less directly related to his personal subplot (namely when he talks about the Yawning Portal in Waterdeep and actually explaining what Mystra is). The mention of the Yawning Portal and Undermountain holds special significance to me as someone who is participating in a tabletop campaign entirely revolving around them - but it is utterly meaningless to everyone else without additional comparative context that the game can't really provide, when the context for many other things in the setting can't be observed within BG3 as it currently is.

Admittedly, this may change later in the game and we reach an actual city for once. I really hope Larian understands that they have to knock the presentation of the city of Baldur's Gate out of the park. Or else we may be about to witness the cRPG version of 'HD towns are hard' that FFXIII got absolutely slammed against a brick wall for back in the day, that cast a dark pall over the entire series for a better part of a decade.

It might not even be Larian's fault though. Apparently BG3 is actually meant to be a sequel of sorts to a recent 5E tabletop module that among other things explains exactly why we run into the tieflings at the grove. Though I also think that maybe the game's style of presentation already assumes that we should know a lot about the overall setting already, which I think is a mistake - but I'm not sure how to go about addressing this, other than a proposed idea to overhaul the opening entirely in a way that actually gives us time to familarize ourselves with the setting instead of essentially throwing us in-media-res as it currently is (and/or make it so that the mindflayer ship sequence isn't actually the start of the game).

I’m not sure that Star Wars and Lord of the Rings are really comparable, unless you are talking about specific co-op games based on the stories?

My point is that there’s a reason that the origin characters are just as “special” as your main, and that reason is multiplayer. I find it weird that many people don’t address this when talking about it. I don’t know how many people will play multiplayer, but it’s a pretty core feature of the game and therefore entirely reasonable for the game to designed so that all players would have equal agency instead of some being relegated to side characters in someone else’s story.

I don’t think the game suffers for that decision in single player either. My main character is still the one who calls the shots, they just aren’t the unique special one, but one of several. However, I also have the option of making other characters take the lead on occasion, so for example, I can do something much more dickish with Laz'el or Astarion than I would with my main character.

Seen a few people throw this out there and it's a ridiculous assertion. If this argument had any merit those that use it would not be wasting their time on this forum but would instead be huddled with lawyers in the discovery process of a potentially lucrative lawsuit. I challenge anyone who seriously believes this to shop the idea around to some attorneys, but I suspect most who employ it know it is nothing more than lazy rhetoric.

Well. Maybe not really a sequel but yes, in the first phase of BG3 development, Larian and WoTC did work together as to make the module Descent into Avernus(released 2019) in some part pave the way for BG3, as stated in this interview from E3 2019.


Which, in my opinion is a really nice touch for those that are engaged in current 5e table top, getting an insight how events in BG3 fits the timeline etc. But sadly it does nothing for those who's first interaction with Forgotten Realms lore will be BG3 and that is something Larian really can improve upon. Speak to me Larian. What is this world? Who are those strange people(?) with horns and tails? People speak of Shar, who or what is that? A god, a religion, a goth movement?

There are some hints in books and dialogue that places our MC in regards to current year, geographical point etc, but I would really like for Larian to somehow, give a quick intro to as where their story takes place. It can be an intro cinematic explaining that Faerun is a continent on the world Toril, shaped and constantly affected by the war between the deities Selune and Shar. On this continent there is a province/region called Sword Coast and in that region is a city called Baldur's Gate.

I don't know the best way to do it, but considering that Larian wants their game to feel intuitive, that should go for the presentation as well and not only the gameplay. In my opinion.

Ironically, I think the companion character that gives you the most background on the setting is Lae'zel. She gives you a very evocative description of what the astral planes and life as a Githyanki are like. But I don't recall being able to talk to either Wyll or Asterion, or Gale about where they're from or what the world beyond the area we're in is like. I give Shadowheart a pass because she explicitly had her memories erased, but what's the excuse for the others? I should be able to ask them about where they're from and what it's like there. Part of the point of companions in these games is that they give you an opportunity to learn more about the setting you're in. In Dragon Age: Origins, you get to learn about Orlais and Antiva from your companions, you get to talk about what life in the circle of Magi is like, you get to learn more about the Chantry, all by just talking to your companions. They're able to teach you more about the basic aspects of the setting which otherwise you might not have been able learn. That really feels like it's missing with our current companions. This is act one of the game, we should have a general sense of the world by about the middle of it. Instead it feels like we're going to be experiencing the opposite; a whole lot of weirdness front-loaded into the first act and we don't see any sort of "normalcy" until act two when we're in the city of Baldur's Gate. And if part of their goal with this game is to appeal to people who aren't already fans of the series, that is the wrong way to do this.

I've also mentioned in another thread that the story of the game as presented kind of disinsentivises you from getting invested in the area you're in. With maybe the exception of the cult of the absolute-and even then it's iffy-none of the people you can form bonds with in the area are really very tied to it. Tieflings want to leave, smugglers want to leave, the druids want everyone else to leave, including you so if you sympathize with them then explicitly you're encouraged to move along and not come back. Halsin goes with you if you want him to, same with Volo and even if he doesn't go with you, he doesn't stay in the area. The game as it stands is really pushing you, telling you that everything of interest is in Baldur's Gate, which means that you're going through the beginning portion of the game actively being encouraged to feel attatched to the setting itself. Yet we're given basically no concrete information about what makes Baldur's Gate special. We know it's a big city, but that barely means anything. Hell, we have someone from Baldurs Gate and someone from another city, that's a prime opportunity for Larian to build the setting by presenting us with two different cities with two different personalities that we can learn about. But we don't learn about them, the opportunity is squandered.

+1

As someone who has not played D&D since AD&D and thus had never heard of Baldur's Gate or the Forgotten Realms I agree with all of this. After the first few days of playing BG3 I wanted to know more about the world and searching the net brought me to the Forgotten Realms Wiki which has been an excellent source of information that has significantly enhanced my enjoyment of the the game (for example allowing me so much more ideas for how to build my characters back story). However that was my own initiative and effort completely outside of the game. I agree with Private Racoon and others that Larian could have done a lot more to provide or access this background within the game. They are missing out on rich and easy opportunity to provide a much more immersive experience by ignoring all of this fabulous lore that is just there to be used.

First of all, how do you get "vast majority"? Vast majority of what? Vast majority of all gamers? HAHAHA. Dream on.

Then, you still keep (intentionally?) missing the point. I don't care how many people like/enjoy the game. That has nothing to do with the issue of the game NOT feeling like a Baldur's Gate game. All you are saying here is that a lot of people who don't care about the original Baldur's Gate games like this game. But those people (which may include you yourself) are completely irrelevant to this debate.

The game feels like a Baldur's Gate game.

Most people playing the game (the definition of majority) enjoy it. The people enjoying the game are buying the game. Their feedback matters also. They are not irrelevant.

Again. The game feels like a Baldur's Gate game. I've played the other BG games. I've played all the Forgotten Realms games. I've played through multiple DnD games that took place in other settings, including Greyhawk and Darksun. I have a long history of playing in these games.

And this feels like a Baldur's Gate game.

Say it again. Maybe someone will believe you. 😏

JK.

Really, I get where you're coming from. It's your opinion and you are entitled to it.

But ultimately it is your opinion. We can argue until we die about this, but it is pointless.

You believe it is a BG game and many do not.

I, personally, am in between. It is great, but it could be SO much better IF they did more to make it a legit D&D world with legit D&D elements instead of what many of us feel is a simulated, looks like D&D illusion.

D&D was created as a roleplaying parody of Tolkiens LOTR saga. What made this story so good on a fundamental level? It was based on fantasy but grounded in reality.

All of the great fictional stories ever written no matter how fantastical have this in common. This is immersion. A reader or player needs to believe the story and setting is plausible for them to be "sucked in" or immersed in said story. Otherwise it is just special effects and the human brain naturally disconnects.

The BG 3 story and setting breaks this fundamental rule at every level. The world the game is set is not grounded in reality, it is a pretty looking chess board with stuff plopped on it. Your companions and their fantastical backstories are quite frankly ridiculous. Could I believe these people existed, sure. Could I believe these people just so happened to be in the same predicament, in the same place AND at the same time? No, why? Because my brain is telling me on an unconsious level these characters are there for the sake of the story not because of it. At this point my brain becomes aware of these anomalies and switches off.

The game world, story and character motivations break rule 1. <<<< This is the story and as such is objectively shite. Chess is a good game but I don't get immersed in it. I don't wonder what motivates the queen or if the king is having it off with the rook because they are just pieces on a board for the sake of a game. BG 3 in a nutshell.

I am not saying this to be overly critical.

Spoilers: You kill all the druids at the grove and find Halsin, you tell him you killed his entire family on purpose. He gets mad for a sec and you say "they were being a dick", he says oh that's ok then and carries on waffling a bunch of words. Total disconnect.

At the Gith patrol the Kith'rak discovers his holy mission is standing in front of him. He asks his minion to kill you and says "I am going to report our success our mission is over" then buggers off to magic land. Eh? He may as well have said "you stay here, I am going home". A real Kung Pow moment made me laugh actually.

Two of the many but these stood out as they made me laugh.

Heck, I've even made an argument about the similarities between BG and BG3, and I've shown where the major differences are coming from, which happen to be results of changes in editions over the years, as well as general changes to the setting.

As for arguing until we die, I'm just providing a counterpoint. A much needed counterpoint, in my opinion.

You say: "You believe it is a BG game and many do not."

In fairness: Many believe it is a BG game. See? It's not me against many. The "many" you refer to are actually a handful of folks here who regularly voice their same opinions on repeat. The many I refer to are die-hard fans out there buying the game, playing it, and having a blast.

That's why I believe a counterpoint is sorely needed. I find a lot of the typical complaints echoing about are rhetorical in nature, lacking roots in dialectic. Shaky subjectivity masked as fact behind walls of venom. These things need to be challenged, in my opinion. I would hate for someone from Larian to see these comments go unopposed and assume things that are actually working in the game need to be fixed, thus making the game worse over all, not to mention making it take longer to hit full release. That's why I believe a counterpoint is sorely needed.

Grounded...in...reality...with magic and dragons? Care to elaborate how you mean that exactly?

The other thing with Halsin and the Kith-rak...i am not sure you realize how far people go for their beliefs. Even in our world more extreme things happen.

Halsin is a firm believer in balance and nature. Nature is not fair or friendly. He knows if you back an animal into a corner it will bite back. That goes even for his own grove. It is his way of life. He is sad that he was not there to guide them. Same goes for the Kith-rak. He is so sure of the superiority of his own race that
he cannot believe some low-race-adventurers and a small time gith can actually foil his underlings. So he does not even think about getting his own hands dirty, or the mouth of his dragon.

Hard to believe for "normal" thinking people. Goes for me too. But only think what happens in our world. Extremist believers BOMB themselves up because they believe they go to paradise with that. In the USA people created a church praying to their fking machine-guns. Well, Halsin and the gith are acting more logical than
that if you ask me....

It depends ...
If this is only complain topic, that is not suggesting anything ... you would be right.
BUT Suggestion and Feedback topic, wich i dare to presume it is, since it is in suggestions and feedback section ... those people are as relevant as any other, since their point is that they dont want this game to change ... no matter how close it is or isnt to previous titles.

Because *your* brain can't figure out why these characters are there together means the story is objectively bad? Objectively. As in: not influenced by personal feelings or opinions, but only representing facts.

lol

Okay.

Hmm.

Shadowheart is there because she was chasing an artifact. So we know why she was there.

Lae'zel is a Githyanki. The artifact is covered in Githyanki symbols, and Githyanki are chasing the Nautiloid. Maybe Lae'zel got caught when the Mind Flayers raided some Githyanki to get their hands on the artifact? Gosh, suddenly it's feeling more reasonable that Lae'zel is there.

Wyll has a pact with Mizora, and she's been kidnapped away to Moonrise Towers. Maybe he was captured as a bystander because they had reason to get Mizora? Sounds like Wyll's reason for being there makes sense.

Gale? He has a condition based on Netherese magic, and whatever's putting the tadpoles in stasis is Netherese in origin, so maybe there's a connection there somewhere?

Astarion? Maybe he was just captured. Maybe Cazador traded him in some kind of bargain, and maybe that has something to do with the infernal tattoo on his back?

The point is, we're in early release, in act one, and because you can't figure out why all the characters are there, you immediately assume everything is objectively bad.

This is not objectivity. This is your subjective opinion. There's a big difference.

As for understanding why all these characters are in the same predicament, I think that's going to become more and more clear as the story unfolds. There are already hints all over the place.

I'd really like to know what makes you feel a Baldur's Gate game when playing BG3.

And because you're probably going to answer "city", "DnD" (Magic missile, D20, AC) and "FR" (Sword coast, underdark, mindflayer)... Can you explain why most people that enjoy those games think that Pillard or Eternity, Pathfinder, Tyranny, Solasta, DA:O (...) feels like BG games and/or are "spiritual successors" ?

On the other hand, I never heard that about DoS.

Is that only a matter of graphics ?

I am playing again right now. Downloaded a few mods to test a few mechanics and oh boy does this game need work. Dialogues do not fit, going stealthy as solo rogue or druid has issues and so on.

This is not BG or BG 2, it even is a new publisher. So i was ready for changes. I even welcome them to a point. I still agree that larian is going a bit over the top with the epicness. Sometimes less is more. All this monumental storytelling still has so many loose ends, even in act 1 and i hope they get it fixed before they release or run out of money and we have yet another unfinished game at our hands we were looking forward to. (i would even donate if it comes to that).

Be that as it may, does anyone think the story we are discussing now will be changed? It is not so far off from existing games or novels. There have been more fantastic stories. (if you want to read one with a good laugh, read the Greyhawk triology about the Justicar Evelyn and his Fairy).

They should have opted for another name and not "Baldur's Gate 3". No wonder so many peopl are looking for a sequel and comparing. They should add "A new beginning" to the title. We are after the second sundering which is how long after BG 1 and 2? I think BG2 ended 1369 DR and the second sundering was 1482 to 1487 DR after the spellplague (i would love spellscars).

So over 100 years later...

You don't really want to know because you've already presumed my answer. That is not asking a question in good faith.

Guys. Come on. Based on established FR lore, a gith Kith'raki would not just fly away and leave a subordinate to claim his queen's ultimate prize.

And I don't care how much Halsin believes in balance of nature, if someone killed all of his friends and loved ones, I doubt he'd just casually accept it especially since he shows examples in other ways of being very passionate about the grove and his friends there.

Come on. The story doesn't line up with itself or established FR lore.

Oh yes I definitely want to know.
Feel free not to answer the second question if my assumptions were wrong.

Yes quite easy. In a world of magic and dragons water is still wet right? People need to eat, people love their families etc. The settings change not life motivations. In a world of magic stuff doesn't just happen because of magic. What do you think an IPhone would look like to someone living in the middle ages?

Let's assume dragons exist. They fly and everything, if this dragon that was the size of a house had the wings of a sparrow would it makes sense that it could fly? Imagination has its limitations.

If someone kills your entire family no matter the reason my reaction would not be, meh. I don't care if there was dragons and magic in the world.

If I need to expain further I am wasting my time.

Oh yes. Just read a bit about extremists and fanatism. Easily explainable. I already told soul-scar a few posts back. And especially D&D, that had so much going for alingnments. For people that think "normally" that is not understandable. Go a bit into psychology and you will understand the explanations. That has
nothing to do with rationality.

I cant help the feeling that this should not even be matter of debate ...

I dunno how about you, but i allways followed rule "DM has spoken". :-/
We might not agree with his conclusions, but once DM say that some NPC will react like this, or that ... it simply will.

And right here, DM is Larian.

A Kith'rak, based on established lore, is a proud individual who seeks greater and greater favor with his Queen.

Here is this ultimate weapon the gith are all looking for. He believes the people in front of him have said weapon. All he has to do is kill them and claim it for himself. "Quedenos! Fry them!" Dragon breathes fire. You're all dead. Voss stretches out his hand and claims the weapon. 30 seconds tops.

So why would he just leave and let a petty subordinate kill your characters and claim this ultimate prize while he does something so mundane as to "inform" the rest of the gith pack that they've claimed the weapon and their search is done? Makes no sense. Kill the adventurers, claim the weapon himself, take it and present it to Vlaakith. That makes WAY more sense from a common, logical perspective.

Come on guys. Don't give me, "The characters don't think like logical, rational beings. They are extremists and fanatics."

That only goes so far.

But, in this particular situation, as in everything regarding BG3 until Larian says otherwise, the DM has asked for our opinions. Stating that things are like this because Larian decided it so and that it's therefor not up to debate, is like saying we can stop giving feedback all together and should just let Larian do their thing. Sure, we can do that but what will we then do with all our free time?

Btw. Let's not throw psychology into this. I've taken psychology. I've studied human behavior and the behavior of animals and such. Even illogical people are logical and predictable in various ways. There is order even in chaos and chaos even in order.

I think the githyanki are crazy. They are psycho nutjobs for serving an undead lich queen and they do so very vehemently. This is established lore. They are crazy, intelligent, and very dangerous, and they serve their queen zealously.

But even their insanity has rationale to it. They are driven and insane because they are sold out to their belief in their lich queen. As such, a gith who does not act in an extreme way to serve his lich queen and gain glory for it, is acting contrary to how he should act using his own people's logic and reasoning.

Exactly.

Ok, if you do not want to go into psychology, thats ok. But if you took psychology classes and studied human behaviour i cannot understand your posts, sorry.

So we go with what Ragnarok said:

Larian is the GM and the GMs word is rule ( only not on shove please). All hail Lord Ao.

Yes, and again, no one is questioning this, which is to say, people who love Larian's games and will buy and play and enjoy any game made by Larian. Not because it is D&D or FR or BG (because most of them couldn't care less about any of these things), but because they are die-hard fans of ANY game that is a Larian game.

I, however, have an interest in this game for one and only one reason: that it says "Baldur's Gate 3" in its title. If not for that I would not be here in this forum discussing this game because this game would then have nothing of real interest to me. If a game is going to be advertised as "Baldur's Gate 3," it is eminently reasonable for a die-hard fan of the first two games in that franchise to expect that this third game in the franchise will look and feel and play like the first two (with complete consideration for the fact that it will be more technologically modern, have more modern graphics, and use the current ruelset rather than the old ruleset). But for me, and yes for MANY others LIKE ME, this game in its current state does not satisfactorily pass that test.

Of course Larian is the GM and the GM rules.

However, if the GM makes rules and alters the world so much that the players are unhappy with it, the players will go find another GM.

Again, we're here making suggestions. If Larian doesn't listen to our suggestions then that's Larian's call and I respect it.

But until Larian says, "Listen guys. We're not going to make this more like D&D and we don't give a flying rats behind about making it cohesive with the FR lore and world," I'm going to keep suggesting that Larian should make the game more like D&D 5e with more cohesion in the story, dialogue, lore, etc.

Right now, the game doesn't make logical sense in many, many ways, and that's a problem for a lot of people as is evident by the numerous, numerous postings that you'll find all over this forum site, reddit, Steam, etc. Yes, there are lots of people who are also like, "No! Larian! We love the game as is! Don't change it at all!" I'm not saying there isn't.

But that doesn't matter. I'm going to continue to relentlessly call for more D&D 5e rules and stats and other elements that will make the game more like a true D&D world and more like a Baldur's Gate sequel because I'm hoping that those who are in my camp are the majority over those who are in the opposing camp.

Isn't that what you're ultimately doing?

There are two sides here, with some misconduct in the middle. People here are right in that the DM (Larian) has asked for feedback, and therefore it's unproductive to try and stifle criticism and feedback just because of disagreeing with it, or believing it's pointless. However, as JandK has tried to express too...



It's equally wrong and unproductive of those on the other side of the fence, wanting certain changes or ideas through, to actively try to shut down or devalue any input or criticism to said criticism that attempts to offer a different viewpoint. I've had reports on posts in this thread, that I've explicitly waited with moderating, because I view those reports as "This is bad man disagreeing with me, must punish". Discussions like these get very tribal and defensive because of opposition, or "Haters VS Larian Shills", where either side describes itself as a more flattering descriptor of "Being realistic" or "genuine criticism" - Where from my PoV, everyone has moments of failure when it comes to productive conversation. I see some people holds their point of view to be more valuable because of being criticism (and getting defensive if ever not fully agreed with by a respondent) and that's bad. None of you individually has more right to an opinion, than anyone else. Yet I see people indirectly imply this through disagreeing and trying to essentially say "This is criticism, you're not allowed to disagree with my criticism so go away."

You're all walking down the path of unproductive conversation, and if you ever find yourself in a position of wanting to silence someone just because you disagree: Stop. This is not a tribal war.

Let me preface this by saying that I agree that it's odd when the Kith'rak leaves right on the cusp of victory.

But that said, I think you're forgetting something.

You're assuming that it's a mistake when something strays away from established lore. By that measure, Drizzt is a mistake. Drow don't act that way, after all.

It's arguable that the scene we're watching is more complicated than we're giving it credit for.

In fact, I'll point out that the Githyanki creches don't all seem to be the same. If you play a Githyanki, for instance, you don't know anything about the purification that Lae'zel is talking about. There's literally a dialogue option for that, talking about how you never heard of such a thing in your creche.

Meaning that the Zaith'isk might not be known to every creche?

Basically, we don't know if the Kith'rak is following his mandate or not.

I don't want anyone to be silenced, and I'm certainly not asking for anyone to be silenced.

I just want Larian to know that there's an opposing viewpoint. In other words, if I didn't say "I disagree" and no one says "I disagree" then Larian might think everyone agrees because all the dissenting opinions are quiet or have been quieted.

Yes, that point was in defense of you, rather than alluding to you silencing others. As long as you behave and post constructively, no one should report or try to shut you down. At best, your challenge may help improve and refine the points of criticism. At worst, it's just disagreeing. I sense people taking disagreement a little too personally around here.

Don't strawman me then rant bunch of nonsense based on the strawman you invented, this is a discussion not a debate. The backstories are convoluted and fantastical, any ONE of these paradigms would be very unusual/unlikely even in magicland. 5 of them at the same time, in the same setting, on the same aircraft.....It is like getting on the number 22 bus and finding the Pope, Joe Biden, Mr Ed, superman and robocop having a casual chat at the back.

So there is no such thing as objectly bad storytelling? All writing and storytelling is subjectively good to someone therefore all writing must be wonderful and terrible in the same context? On a social level that is indeed true. However if my daughter does a crayon drawing of a spider and I sent it to the louvre because I subjectively think it is wonderful I doubt somehow it will end up next the Mona Lisa. Why? Objectively bad. Standards exist for a reason and when held to said standards.......I will let you work out the rest yourself.

That is not true ...

DM asked our opinions ... we told him ... work is done, we could end there.
Instead, we start to argue to each other to find out whos opinion is better. :-/
(That is the debate i was talking about BTW)

I mean i agree ... DM should be able to take feedback, but people should aswell be able to take his decisions ... there need to be ballance, that is what im saying. :-/

If you read this topic thoroughly, almost half posts says basicaly "everything is wrong and i know better" ... that dont seem ballanced to me, that seems demanding.

//Edit:
I just want to say that im glad im not alone in this anymore.

I do agree that the arguments around here can often get more intense than they need to be, but honestly, part of that is, I think, on Larian themselves. We have no way of knowing what decision they've made until we see it implemented in a patch. We can infer, but don't actually know, what decisions they've already made that they won't or can't change at all. So to a degree we don't have a choice but to get bogged down in arguments. The only way we know how to communicate with Larian is to post on these forums and make our cases for the changes we want. So one person makes their case. Another person makes the opposite case. Now the first person feels they have to defend their case because what if Larian takes not doing so as agreement that the other person's case is better. And a whole bunch of people come to back up the various cases being made because they have to prove that they support their idea, so Larian sees that the idea has lots of support. To a degree I can understand Larian's general silence, they don't want to box themselves in. But I still feel like the approach they've taken can't help but exacerbate this sort of arguing. Though I won't go so far as to say they caused it. This is an internet forum about a video game, of course arguments would inevitably occur.

I agree that to know some roadmap would help A LOT.
I was supporting the idea since i get here a year ago ... sadly it seems like Larian still believe that this model suits them better.

On the other hand, blame all our behaviour to their absence of comunication that dont seem fair at all. :-/

It's just sad that you don't explain your "dissenting" opinion to.people that try to understand it.

Whatever may The Composer think, I was really interrested and never tried to devalue your opinion even if we disagree on the thread title and on your affirmations.

My assumptions were based on the only arguments and affirmations we read on this forum when we had those discussions but if your opinion is that a game with (i.e) magic missile, D20 and mindflayer feel like "a BG game", that's fine.

Mine is different especially because some games that does not have those things are more or less unanimously considered as "BG-like" (and some that have them aren't).
But an opinion is an opinion, I'd just like to understand yours.

Larian has internal roadmaps for development, however from a player PoV, Early Access is and always will be only Act 1. A road map for a typical early access game where the full game is released incrementally, a road map makes sense for a release schedule and general idea of where things are going. However, a road map for BG3 would look something like...

Q1: 2022 - Act 1
Q2: 2022 - Act 1
Q3: 2022 - Act 1
Q4: 2022 - Act 1

One could argue or hope for hypothetical details on what content patches include, say...


Q1: 2022 - Act 1: Mountain Pass
Q2: 2022 - Act 1: Monk
Q3: 2022 - Act 1: Iteration pass on 5E adaption
Q4: 2022 - Act 1: Bard

But as far as feedback on forums go, doesn't really make much difference for what kind of feedback or mannerisms we hold here, does it?

Is that hypothetical details though?...Do you know something we don't?! Next class to be released will be Monk! There, The Composer said it, and I will hold it as truth! (No, I'm not being serious )

Haha. I wish. Monk when?!

Anyway yes, just an arbitrary example for a point. Sadly.

Lol!

As there are no "in stone" road maps I am aware of it suggests the schedule/process is somewhat fluid which makes me quietly optimistic. Trial and error is better than a tick sheet to do list imo. Still I would prefer a bit of player feedback from Larian instead of dead silence until they drop something.

I get the feeling the EA testbed is something in the background at the studio rather than something they are actively developing. As such I think when the game drops for reals we may be surprised....Or maybe that is the eternal optimist speaking again.

Amazing. That “rant” directly addressed your point of why these people might all be taken. The simple answer is that we don’t know because we’ve only seen the start of the story. Except for one case which we do know is linked somehow.

You don’t like it, that’s a shame, but it is very subjective.

Yes. sadly.

And I guess with a road map I believe I would be asking for the impossible because what I would like is to see which parts that is set in stone. That way, no matter if I like the current situation or not, I know I can focus my feedback on something else. But either is something never set in stone with Larian, and even if it is, they will never let us know will they

But for example, in the Camp clothing thread you stated that random encounters is against Larians design philosophy. There, I didn't know that. Now I know that we most(not saying 100%) certainly won't get random generated combat meaning there's no use asking for it.

I was actualy thinking about marking at least megathreats if not everything as "concidering" "declined" and "working on implementation"

I do believe they have internal roadmaps, it would be crazy to create something like this game without them.
But we cannot see that, wich is understandable. :-/

Still wouldn't make a difference as far as forum behaviors and mannerisms go.

If 'concidering', posts would be as now, with people arguing their preference of implementation, and arguing why it should/shouldn't to sway where the consideration lands, just like now.

If 'declined', there'd be outcry with people arguing their preference and arguing why it should/shouldn't to sway why it should be considered, just like now.

If 'working on implementation', posts would... You see where I'm probably going with this: Not change from status quo. Only the format of the argument would change: "I hope they don't Larian-fy this / Why are they implementing this instead of X that I think is much more important for it to be BG3 and not DOS3', and around and around the wheel spins.


Edit: Doesn't mean I disagree by the way. I'd love some insight on what goes on and what is definitely in the works etc. Just suggesting that I don't think a road map matters here as much as sometimes is implied. Personally I think it'd be better in form of community updates and/or in the Panel From Hell streams, so I more often push for a change of where the focus is at during those streams, than something I don't believe really matters in any sense other than "cool to have".

I beg to differ ...
Sure there would be people who would act just as you described ... but there would also people who would appreciate it and accept it ... i count myself for one.

Let me be clear here. Just beacuse I don't think the game feels like DnD it doesn't mean that I don't like it. In fact I like BG3 very much. I like it in spite of it not feeling like DnD, and I like it in spite of the awful party control mechanics.
So when people say "Oh well there are thousands of players out there who is having a blast with the game so they must all think that BG3 feels just like DnD" I think that statement is a bit disingenuous. They may very well, just like me, be having a blast with the game in spite of it not feeling like a DnD game.

The easiest solution is to speak for one self, and one self only. As soon as people start speaking on behalf of others, regardless of which side of any isle, that post loses most if not all of its credibility to me. Of course there are exceptions, but in general I think it's in peoples best interest to stop using "so many hypothetical others in my perspective that I think is many means that my argument is more valid". Because like Peranor says, it's not black and white.

No it was an attempt at a insult "your brain cannot figure out" followed by a deliberate misinterpretation of what I said creating a strawman. Then preceeded to argue against said strawman. How does describing 5 backstories as "fantastical" therefore not believable in the setting translated into "my brain dumb"? You are arguing semantics on the back of the same strawman argument. Arguing on the back of something I never actually said.

I agree the story isn't complete and as such maybe fragmented in a way that makes it unbelievable. If for example there is a prologue explaining why these 6 very specific esoteric people were "chosen" etc. and this is why they were on the ship, then sure it would make more sense. However their individual predicaments like Gale the godlaying magic bomb etc. etc. Is still a difficult swallow. It is the problem created when you feel the need to create 5-6 origin stories and hamstring them into an already complex plot. You as the player are not eased into the plot, you basically have it rammed down your thoat all at once.

Example, you are on the nautiloid and kill your way to the helm, kill all the stuff and hit the warp button. Why did the nautiloid warp to a palce you just so happened to need to be? Was it random? Did the mindflayer give the co-ords? Was it on purpose? If so why not take you to moonrise towers or something? DON'T KNOW!! If it is random then that is a mighty coincidence that you dropped out where a bunch of others with magic tadpoles were. Just outside a grove where a druid just found someone with your exact condition and has a history that suits the main plot....The nautiloid can travel between realities, even the hells yet you were plopped out right where you needed to be. Seriously? So it is only my opinion that this is bad writing? This is 5 minutes into the game.

At no point did I say or even suggest nobody else should like it.

Maybe let them release bg3 first. It's too good to delay ..

But when it comes to expansions, why not let them create a different approach and test the waters how a more grounded story would appeal to the masses. Could be a parallel side story which happens during the main events, but smaller scope more grounded.

I think the thread raises valid points and Larian may or may not discuss it:

(1) The graphics and general presentation of the game are, right now, very good. I don't think anyone would disagree with that
(2) It's of course a far cry from pathfinder kingmaker or pathfinder wrath of the righteous, which many people argue is closer to BG1/2, in mechanics, world and storytelling
(3) Some people are rightfully pointing out that they want their Elves, Drow, Tieflings to be rare, enigmatic and special. By going overboard and presenting Tieflings, Drow, Elves, Githyanki, Illithids, Dragons, high end magic etc. as 'everyday' occurence, they essentially become boring.
(4) Having a few "special" companions that are vampires, have a demonic pact, slept with the god of magic etc. is fine, but again, they can only shine if they are put in contrast with "normal" companions.
(5) The game is centered on the player, but the player seems to be the least cool/important. In BG1/BG2 the player was the spawn of Bhaal, which resulted in a whole lot of comments by companions, romances etc. Right now it seems the player is the most normal of the bunch.
(6) There is apparently a big change from D&D 3.5 lore to 5 lore, which confuses people who played BG1/2. Their beloved evil, supremacist Drow are suddenly the same as Humans with silver hair, long lived, spiritual Elves are just the same as Humans, only prettier, infernal Tieflings are the same as Humans with horns and glowing eyes.
(7) Fantasy and science fiction is popular because people actually love to discuss philosophical questions in these stories. How would a long lived species like Elves behave? How would evil Drow organize their society? I'm not asking for Baldur's Gate 3 to be a PhD thesis but a bit of Jules Verne would be cool.

For me the "BG feeling" is also being able to build a party that shares alignment, works well together and generally gets along. BG1&2 have a large selection of companions so you can always build a group you like.

Because of the origin focus, BG3 might only have 8 companions. How many are you even going to like out of them?

We have the evil companions in EA with the good ones mostly missing. So, what if you like to play a good-aligned party like most players do? What can we even expect? Are we going to be stuck bringing Minsc and the halfling or gnome bard every time? And the annoying cocky Wizard with his ludicrous stories? I never liked Minsc because he seems more like a liability with his mental handicap, and I don't like Dragonborn, Tieflings, Halflings or Gnomes as PC's. I'm a fan of a more classic human/elf/dwarf party composition. It's simply easier to relate to those races. I have nothing against Halflings or Gnomes but that's like bringing children to battle. I liked Gale at first but the Mystra story kind of ruined his credibility and then the overconfidence also became annoying.

My most used BG1 party has been Jaheira, Ajantis, Branwen, Dynaheir and Coran. (Who all seem like real adventurers somehow compared to the epic menagerie in BG3. I miss ordinary believable heroes. The BG3 cast just makes my eyes roll. Even the amazing voice acting doesn't help when everyone's story is so ridiculous.)

So.. if you want to play a neutral / good aligned party of humans, elves and dwarves, or a more down to earth party in general, BG3 simply won't deliver???

I don't personally have an issue with the situation of the companions, but I do agree that they're all rather...much. however I don't really agree about the situation of the coincidence at the start of the game. I view that as just the coincidence needed for the story to happen. Sometimes in a story, things just happen because the writer needs them to. When this is leaned on too much, it ruins stakes and becomes a bad story, but honestly, I think this is a fine way to start this sort of story. It happens this way because it's interesting and moves the plot forward. I think the fact that it's the beginning of the story actually makes it more forgivable, because it's the rush of beginning, when everything is being laid out. It's setting the stage, putting the pieces in order. I don't think that this is the sort of thing that requires a clear rationale.

*Frowny face*

Niara Disapproves.

I was making a point and being over-critical. You understand then things happening just because the plot needs them to is usually a bad thing. I agree the pace at which these things occurs distracts from why they occur. This is fine. However the more the plot involves "stuff happening because the plot needs it to" or the over reliance on the plot mcguffin (tadpole) to explain "stuff" the less interesting the plot becomes. My experience with writers that use this methodology is they will continue to do so. I already feel hamstrung into decisions I would not normally take because "reasons". Nothing feels like a choice to me, maybe it is me.

I have 4000 hours in path of exile and couldn't tell you anything about the lore or story, I love the game. I have no idea why the bosses are bosses or why "exile" is relevant because I lost interest in the story very early. In contrast the Witcher 3 was magnificent storytelling.

That being said I very much like BG 3 and is party why I am so critical sometimes. Games rarely involve a great story and fantasitc gameplay. BG 3 has the potential to have both.

Well said, and much appreciated that you make this point.

Yup, this is a HUGE source of my fear about the game as well. I won't ever use empty-suit mercs. I won't use evil-aligned party members, especially my first several times playing the game, with "evil-aligned" being determined by me regardless of how Larian may try to spin their characters. And I will only play with a mod that allows a party of six. So am I going to have five companions-- and fully fleshed-out companions at that--who are NOT evil-aligned in any way? I highly doubt it at this time.

Buzzwords? Like "rose tinted glass", "BG3 feels like Baldur's Gate"?

How many CRPGs don't have a day/night cycle? How many CRPGs have a world with virtually zero local fauna and inhabitants? What are the chances of having a Druid Grove, a Selune Temple and a Lich Crypt so close together?

We are lucky that the Nautiloid didn't crash north, otherwise we wouldn't have any Early Access content.

Strangely it tends to rub people the wrong way if you claim something they like is bad, not just as your opinion, but as an objective fact. If I said I didn’t care much for BG 1 & 2, I could expect fans of the originals to tell me they think I’m wrong. If I said the story, characters and gameplay are objectively a bag of shite, what do you think the reaction would be?

The description of the characters was about how these people might all have been together (TBD), which you appeared to object to. And wouldn’t explaining this in a prologue mean having even more plot “rammed down your throat all at once”?

Yes, it’s your opinion. I have no problem with your opinion, and don’t even disagree with all of it. Still an opinion though.

In my opinion the actual game doesn’t do that bad a job of revealing the start of the origin characters stories. It happens over several night’s rest. The problem for me is that we know this already from what was released prior to starting the game. Descriptions on the wiki etc could have been vaguer, but it’s a bit late now.

Yeah I feel you. It is a main reason why I want to roll for attributes introduced sooner. While I prefer chaotic alligned characters than good/evil purely because I may decide to help someone.... but you know what? Not in the mood go away. The current crop of companions all seem lawful/neutral except Astarion who is pretty funny at times. Any character that follows duty and honour around a cause is lawful. Lae'zel, SH are lawful evil imo, Gale is neural good, Wyll is a prat and Astarion chaotic neutral.

Chaotic evil are too much trouble. I hate Paladins as they are just as likely to throw handbags at you for not acting EXACTLY the way they demand. Allignment is a positive gameplay element too harshly removed. Astarion is the only character I would likely take but I like playing rouges soooo pfft. Otherwise I would use the others to experiment on to learn more about the tadpole or kill them and nick all their stuff. I wouldn't help the druids or the goblins, I would however find a way to profit from the situation.

I hate Minsc he always pulled a shitty on me in BG2. Jaheria was always a good choice not too demanding. I agree all the character in BG1&2 seemed real enough and all reacted according to a set of values based on allignment. If you stolen something all the lawful characters would eventually freak out in some way. Chaotic neural all the way.

The point buy system in the character creation locks you into race/class paradigms which i don't like. Humans have no special features like nightvision or weapons so the fact you can "stat" into anything is irrelevant. No reason to make a human class if you can get preferred stat and weapon prof anyway right? If you can roll stats 2 or 3 18-19's in con and dex goes a long way to make up for it.

No. Buzzwords like... the game used to be immersion-centric! And now it completely disregards immersion!

So the game once upon a time was nothing but immersion.

Now it has zero immersion. Doesn't even care about immersion, no less. Totally disregards it.

Is it possible to just say it would be nice to have a day/night cycle without the exaggerated drama?

Like nothing ever happened in the original BG that broke immersion. No way, it was immersion-centric, don't ya know? (talk about rose tinted glasses, geez) As proclaimed by... who exactly?

And nothing, not a single thing, in the current game allows for immersion, because the designers decided they didn't want none of that stuff, making a point to actively disregard it.

I mean, seriously, listen to what's being said.

Do you want a day/night cycle? Yeah, sure. --Okay, cool, good feedback.

-versus-

The sky is falling and no one at Larian cares about immersion and the writing is crap and they only care about mechanics!!! --My goodness, do you not think this is overly dramatic?

*

What are the chances of adventure locations being close together in a role playing game? Pretty good. It's even neater when there's an actual connection between those locations in the story, which there happens to be.

Amen. I acknowledge that it's a little presumptuous to assume we won't get a full roster of good aligned companions to choose from but I do have concerns that we will have a much more limited pool to choose from than the previous games, mostly because of the nonsense Origins system. I have always felt that one of the biggest attractions in the BG games was the sense of freedom and choice, so when I hear Larian will have a smaller number of companions and potentially lock the party after Act 1 it all of a sudden feels rather constrictive. I want the freedom to swap out my party members whenever I want and I'd like a large group from which to choose them.

Funnily enough, the one companion who I would have really liked to have permanently in BG3 was that Myconid who can join you temporarily. Ironically, for a game check full of super hero companions with exceptional backstories, here was someone who had a far more believable character. My memory fails me but wasn't he a deposed king or trying to usurp the current king...anyway, it at least felt relatable.

I don't understand the logic of saying it's neat that the locations are so close together because they are linked in the story? It's daft that everything is so condensed. Separate maps would have at least conveyed a sense of distance and scale. Again, that hyperbolic buzzword 'immersion'.

In many respects it's the small details that help to make a game world believable and grounded, especially when the setting is full of magic and monsters.

I like cheesy 80's horror movies, not because they have a good story or good acting, I just like them. Because you like something doesn't mean it is good. Because someone tells me these movies suck I don't get defensive about it, they are objectively bad, unnecessarily so in most cases. I am not going to deny the reality these movies are low budget trash with bit part B actors because I like them. I don't like them any less because most people see them as garbage.

Not everything is opinion. If it was "objective" wouldn't be a word. However, if admitting that holding the writing of BG 3 to a standard and therefore coming to, what I believe is an objective conclusion free of bias is indeed my opinion then so be it. I am not trying to be right, I am trying to be objective. Telling someone they are amazing when they are in fact shite does them no favors. Tough love, that's all.

I said the odds are good that adventuring locations are close together in a role playing game. Otherwise, the characters would be teleporting all over the world.

Forgotten Realms is a bit of a kitchen sink setting with ruins and pathways to the underdark and secret cults all over the place. You can't stumble around anywhere without running into a plot... because that's what the setting caters to... adventures and plot.

The phrase "even neater" is meant to imply that it's good that these locations which are close together happen to be tied together in the plot. They connect, which makes their proximity understandable.

*

From what I'm gathering, I'm guessing you like transition maps? Probably because it gives you the sense that your characters have been walking for miles?

Fair enough, I suppose. I don't really need that kind of thing myself. I can accept that the map isn't entirely to scale and figure that my characters have been walking longer. It's not that big a deal to me.

Sort of like I can have my characters go into a city and accept that the city is technically larger than what I'm seeing. That the city has thousands and thousands of people within it, despite me only seeing the same few dozen meandering about.

The most games are capable of doing right now is giving across an impression of something real. I get the impression. I understand what's being said in the game, and I enter into it with an open mind, prepared to look for things to enjoy rather than looking for things to... not enjoy.

Maybe he is just not a typical specimen of his race and not only too proud but also an arrogant idiot. That is in no way lore or rulebreaking. We humans also have quite a lot of them, also in interesting positions where normal thinking people simply cannot understand how the hell they got there...

On the fact that larian needs to adhere more to the 5e ruleset i totally agree with you. Imo opinion too many homebrew rules can really ruin it. Shove/jump beeing a prime example. The kithrak behavior is a lore thing that does not sit well with you since it is idiotic behavior. Thats how i understood it.

Lorewise i am not sure if i can agree with you since "true D&D" lies a lot in the eye of the beholder. If you are as much a fan as i am you certainly have read novels too. Every author has his/her own perspective. There are some that i hate and others like and vice versa. I only hope that they do not contradict each other too much.

But i like that you fight for what you think D&D should look like so that in the end we may get larian to change it so that most players find it agreeable.

Upon further thought, the whole mindflayer ship opening is quite possibly one of the worst ways to start a story. The entire plot is suddenly pigeonholed into an urgent quest to find a way to get rid of the mindflayers, which turns out to be false both narratively AND from a gameplay sense. It really messes with player expectations a lot.

I also think the mindflayer tadpole plot device is quite boring at this point. Seems to me like literally every other subplot in the game is a lot more interesting with more potential varied outcomes than the zero sum 'what the hell are these tadpoles and how do they factor into the big bad's plot' thing. I really think we should have gotten an opening phase showing us hints at all the other subplots before the mindflayer stuff happens and screws everything over sideways.

I only wonder if BG3 is putting too many eggs into everything being dark and mysterious, because we literally don't find any meaningful answers to anything in regards to the larger plot at our current point in the EA. I've said this before, stuff like this is why expectations in regards to the writing for people who are really into crackpot theorycrafting are sky high (like all the insane people guessing that Gale might be a reincarnation of someone who fought against Mystra or something). But to everyone else who prefers a more well rounded experience, it's not surprising that things feel a bit shallow.

And the higher you go, the steeper you crash if you fall. The writers of the Mass Effect series know that all too well.

At this point, I think it would be much better if the PC's didn't have the tadpoles in them at all. Get rid of the fake urgency completely. And most of all, get rid of the plot holes or far out explanations why the PC's tadpoles are "different". It's getting too messy to be a good story. I'm afraid I'm going to be seriously let down here. Already, looking for a cure three times, and failing every time is really annoying because they are prolonging the tadpole situation for whatever reason.

Even if the party didn't get tadpoled before the crash, we would still encounter the True Souls and start unraveling the mystery. There could easily be OTHER motivations for both good and evil parties to get involved in the plot. You could even have a good old betrayal or body snatchers moment when one of your trusted companions or followers turns out to be a True Soul, which is not possible when literally everyone has a tadpole and they're just working differently because. If Shadow Magic implies Shar has altered the PC's tadpoles, surely a divine intervention level event does not require Mind Flayer tadpoles to be inserted first. The foundation of this plot seems very shaky and I'm afraid god avatars are going to be casually popping up at level 5 when level 15 is more appropriate.

But I guess they wanted to add "fun powers" and gameplay is calling the shots over at Larian. I never used any of the tadpole powers anyway, considering the source and all the unknown. In the end, it's still a disgusting parasite in your brain and not giving us a way to remove it isn't cool.

While I don't necessarily disagree, and personally have a couple of gripes and criticisms of my own when it comes to storytelling, there's some arguments here that I just have to raise a hand at. Mainly the case of missing meaningful answers or solutions to removing the tadpole. I know at least I don't watch the first 20 minutes of a movie, pause it and start complaining about not having meaningful answers to some of the main mysteries of the movie already, or solutions to defeat the big bad. Like... What?

However 1varangian does make a fine point of a logical inconsistency of...


Logical inconsistencies and how a story is presented is usually where my passionate thoughts hide. Though I recognize I only have Act 1 of a "book", which in Larian's design approach is to lay the foundation of some of the main mysteries, while Act 2 explores them and Act 3 answers them. (Beginning, middle, end) - So I'm not ready to be all overdramatic and hyperbolic, and rather just say that I hope some of the points, like the quote of 1varangian has some satisfying/believable enough explanation later on, to make sense in hindsight as the party gets deeper into their adventures.

I'm not against the tadpoles in theory. I'm not even against the tadpoles being special and it turning out that we don't need to really worry about changing, but I think the handling of all that isn't really that good at this point. And a big problem is that the game starts out by telling us how worried we should be about the tadpoles then walks it back in a bunch of indirect ways almost immediately, which hurts the experience because that urgency actively discourages exploration from an in-character perspective. I know in my first playthorugh I tried to rest as little as possible and went straight for the Gith patrol because I thought that was the main quest, I thought transforming was a real threat and I thought the druid grove stuff was just side content. As a result I missed out on a lot of companion content and genrally had a pretty poor first experience because my lack of resting made everything in the game harder on me. I've seen arguments made that the game gives a lot of hints that transforming isn't as much of a problem as it seems but I think that when the issue is touted as the first big threat of the game, hints aren't good enough. We're primed to be laser-focused on the tadpole problem by everything in the story, primed to be concerned about the ticking clock they present, all of that. I think that in the face of that, there should be some sort of cathartic confirmation that we don't have to worry about changing. Otherwise it's just a lot of built up tension that at best kinda fizzles. Even in the context of it all being a mystery, part of the fun of a mystery is that the story itself presents you with the answer and you can have the catharsis of "yes, this is what's going on, I understand now." Even if you can figure out the mystery ahead of time, if by the end of the book, the story doesn't actually give you the answer, it's not going to feel as satisfying unless the point is to not have an answer. And I know we're not at the end of the game's story or even the end of the game's first act, but if Larian wants us to behave as though the tadpoles aren't an issue, then they should at some point give us narrative permission to fully relax and confirm that "it's okay, you don't have to worry about this." Otherwise, what do they gain by not providing that?

The argument is more that the gross brain worms are not the mystery itself. It's not required to insert a tadpole in every PC's head to tell this story. It seems more like Larian wanted players to have more Bonus Actions and cool powers at low levels.

The third party that has altered the PC tadpoles and is working against the Mind Flayers could have done any number of other things. Whoever they are, they are putting blind faith in a clueless party to do whatever it is they need. It doesn't seem like a very good plan.

edit: It would make more sense the party would become the unwilling agents of the third party to infiltrate the Absolutes ranks. It would be a small redemption if they were in fact saving the whole introduction of this third party for the full release. But still I think this story has way too many elements way too early, because the devils and Jergal are also already introduced. It's hard to write a story that resonates well if the player is confused by too many factions and plotlines.

Agree completely and my first playthrough was almost identical to yours. It left me rather frustrated and then when I realized the urgency was not there I was a bit disappointed in the story. I also find it difficult to ever include Lae'zel in a party despite the need for a fighter because her character is completely driven to find her kin and thus should naturally lead to going straight for the Gith patrol. Logically I think Lae'zel would leave any party and strike out on her own if she thought they were planning on going to Ethel or Halsin. I find Lae'zel's character too one dimensional. Given the actual lack of urgency in getting rid of the tadpoles It might have made more sense to have Lae'zel written as a bit of an outcast among the Gith somewhat suspicious of Voss and his party and therefore not so driven to find them and more open to pursuing alternatives.

As it stands they only way I feel I can logically have Lae'zel in my party is to first head to the Gith as she wishes, then assume the lead in talking to Voss. It feels completely unrealistic that Lae'zel allows me to do this given that up until then she has been barking orders at me as if I'm a servant. It also seems odd that I would attempt to do this since up until now I've been following those orders. Even that solution is unsatisfying though as she still insists on heading to the Creche. How am I to logically resolve her coming back with us to explore any of the alternate paths? Realistically we should just part ways at his point (especially since I can't go to the creche in EA!) as she has abandoned me before. I therefore find it really hard to logically include her in my party so I have done playthroughs as a fighter myself, gone with a party of 3, or a party of 4 with no fighter.

This also brings up a further thought. I don't know where the Lae'zel character is supposed to appear after the Nautiloid crash but the story suggests she deliberately abandons us. Wouldn't it be more in keeping with how her character is written that she would slit our throats (and Shadowheart) before heading off?


I therefore think the Lae'zel character as currently written is seriously flawed.

Maybe give some hints and attitude from the companions. Let for example astarion and gale maybe say things like "you know in a certain way I feel not sooo bad having those tadpoles, etc." So that having tadpoles and using them is more like a personal choice, making life easier but in return getting more addicted to an alien Superpower. (And unknown consequences) So that it's like a trade off.

And companions like lae'zel are hardliners which won't use tadpole magic, and only want to hurry up, getting rid of tadpoles, not use their magic at all, and not being aroused by the imagined love interest thing (= game hard mode) while astarion on the other end of the spectrum is more like, let's chill. "Let's wait, see if it's really that bad or maybe useful, and let us use the power", in a " I don't care if the lovemaking is only a dream if it feels good, right?" - kind of way.. Etc.


In my eyes tadpoles and the broad spectrum of interesting characters combining alignment with choices and game difficulty in an immersive way is a genius move!

That is a very interesting idea.

She also probably wouldn't give her armor to what seems like half of the people she meets on the nautiloid and continue on her own wearing a bra and panties.

That's the problem when companions are given such strong voices and opinions. When they don't act on them it makes them lose credibility. Lae'zel would go straight for the creche and ditch the party. Her following a random noob PC and complaining about doing the wrong thing completely undermines her character. Would an epic Wizard who plays with goddesses or an infernal commander of the Nine Hells suddenly start blindly following a level 1 nobody?

Ok. Now we're getting carried away. What's our objective here? Do we want them to completely start over and we'll never see the game finished?

The writing's not that bad. Little things can fix just about every issue and explain it.

SPOILERS: Gale has in his posession the most powerful healing spell in the world of D&D outside of maybe "wish". True resurrection can bring a 150 year old zombie back to life at full health. This spell cures ANYTHING, mindflayer tadpoles included. It is a 9th level spell so powerful if the only thing left of you was your big toe your entire body would grow back from it, it would pluck your soul from the netherrealm and shove you back in. You would be like a new born baby.

The number of clerics or druids that can cast this spell would be probably countable on one hand in the entire fogotten realms, it is also INSANELY expensive to cast. The only divine magic more powerful than this spell would be that of the higher gods. As such if you cast cast true resurrection on gale and he still has the bloody tadpole the chances of finding someone to heal you outside of a god is naught. Not happening, end of story.

When you first meet gale he asks you are you an arch/druid/mage/cleric? You answer no obviously. Gale being an academic know it all, he would know full well his "true resurrection" spell is the most powerful healing spell any healer in the world would be able to cast. He also clearly understands its usage. Mmmm. This is a quite painful story plot hole. This paradox shatters the entire story for me.

Gale has a magic void in his chest that feeds on powerful magic. The tadpole is enchanted by powerful magic.......See where I am going here? The void is also the same netherese magic used in the tadpole. I know if you suck the magic from a tadpole you would turn into a mindflayer according to that geezer in the underdark. However you could still use gale to suck the magic from the true souls tadpole and have the resulting mindflayer/s go nuts in the goblin camp.

That said if you could dispel the magic from the tadpole with gales glory hole you would have half the solution yes? All you would need to do then is get someone to remove a normal tadpole say the hag and drum roll.....meh.

I agree with the premise that the strong imposing nature of your companions like lea'zel, who basically thinks of you as dog dirt under her boot, very unlikely to remain in your party unless of course she enslaved you all. If you were gith of a different creche and cast she would still be overly critical unless of course you agreed with her zealous devotion to the lich queen. She is like an anti-paladin. Gith are xenophobic to an extreme level. The Kith'rak said it in a nutshell, "question, kill, move on".

I really loved playing a neutral kingdom in Pathfinder Kingmaker. That was my main motivation to play the game. I only would have wished that playing neutral would have given me more special quests & allowed me to recruit beasts and monsters into my kingdom.


Larian could simply give people to possibility to generate additional characters even in single player.


He would have been great as being just an arrogant, conceited, self absorbed mage. Just a really genius mage with lots of intelligence who constantly reminds you how much better than you he is.

The Mystra story ruined it. It's too much over the top.


I either played alone with a ranger or sorcerer or together with Imoen, Jaheira, Khalid, Minsc, Viconia. Mostly just with characters I found interesting, not those that were useful.

I must admit I have found BG1 to be the most lackluster of the trilogy. I liked BG2 quite a bit, though. BG3 seems great lorewise. The companions in BG1 were quite basic, cartoonish even and fortunately, BG2 added a layer of complexity to them. I love moral ambiguity and BG3 offers far ore freedom to pursue your goals. Part of the changes in enemies come from the 5e ruleset where in general low level characters have a bit more chance against stronger single monsters than in earlier editions. Overall, BG3 is on the way to topple BG2 in my ranking (if they might reduce the number of explosive barrels, it will be even better )

I sincerely hope I'm not the only one reading this thread and feeling like some of the feedback has jumped the shark.

*

Sigh.

*

The tadpoles are great. It's a little reminiscent of the ear worm scene in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, but I accept that as a nod. The idea of a worm getting inside of a character's head is strong. And it becomes a powerful visual when we see it happen, as we do in the opening scene of this game.

This puts the characters in a situation where they have a condition. This is good for storytelling purposes. There's now a problem that the characters face, and conflict is what storytelling is all about.

Initially, the conflict is twofold. There's a parasite in the character's head, yes, but they also need to escape the Nautiloid. This is dramatic. It's full of action; it's wonderful. The setting is interesting, hurtling through the hells on a flaming Nautiloid, the stakes are interesting, the combat is in your face, and you can feel the heat of the flames all around. And everything is alien, even the floors, writhing underneath.

During the desperate escape, unlikely alliances are made. This is also good for storytelling. It escalates tension.

When we reach the helm, there's a sense of urgency pushing us forward. We have to fight our way forward to connect the nerves of the transponder.

--Now, some players are going to ignore the urgency and concentrate on killing the Commander to get the ever-burning blade (and the extra xp). That's a player choice, and in my opinion, it breaks the scene a little bit, but I respect Larian for leaving it in as a possibility because some players want that level of agency, to break out of the story momentarily for the reward of a small power boost. Fine, to each their own.

--But as a reminder, that is a player choice. At no point does the game demand that the character fight a Mind Flayer or a Cambion. The opening scene is about fighting imps. The Mind Flayer and Cambion are nothing more than background figures to make the scene more exciting from a storytelling perspective.

*

So our opening is excellent. We have a condition, and we find ourselves in the middle of nowhere with nothing on our side but an unlikely alliance.

--I do have a small issue with how this is done. If we were knocked out of the side of the ship, how is it that we wake up right beside the ship? Wouldn't the ship be a lot farther away after having crashed? Or did it drop straight down beside us?

--That's an example of what we would call "refrigerator logic." The idea being that the logical inconsistency doesn't generally occur to us until later. Regardless, it's not the biggest deal because the essence of what's happened is clear. Personally, I would prefer that we just crashed with the ship and were thrown from it onto the beach, but if Larian feels like there's something important with the fall and the magic keeping us from splitting our heads open, fine, I can accept that without screaming about bad writing.

*

We've accomplished one of our goals, which was to escape the Nautiloid. Again, we are confronted with a couple of goals.

The biggest one, of course, is that we still have the parasite in our head. We need to avoid turning into a Mind Flayer.

But we also have to survive and ideally get away from the wreckage, to find shelter and food and such.

*

Basically, we always have a goal amidst conflict. That's how storytelling works, and Larian is doing a wonderful job in that regard. Things are visually interesting, and our main character conflict continues to grow and develop.

First, it's that we need to avoid turning into a Mind Flayer.

When we realize we're not turning into a Mind Flayer, we're confronted with what the tadpole is doing to us. It's giving us powers, yes, but is it also controlling us? Speaking for us? Where do we end and where does the tadpole begin? What is this dream? Is it the tadpole talking to us?

Why were we infected? Not to turn into Mind Flayers, perhaps, but what... to become a beautiful weapon? And if so, to be wielded by whom?

This mystery deepens. We are confronted with True Souls. These are people like us, infected with a tadpole, but they don't know they're infected. Why not? Ah, maybe we never finished going through the process to become a True Soul. Maybe there was another step at Moonrise Towers, and we're not fully baked. Half-done.

What do we do now? Do we confront the True Souls directly in a combative manner? Or do we infiltrate the True Souls? And then there's a third option still, which might sound crazy, but could we maybe even join the True Souls?

*

Everything going on is fascinating.

There's a religious order building, shaking things up along the Sword Coast, and we are right there in the thick.

Who is the Absolute? A new goddess? Perhaps. Certainly a force to be reckoned with.

And the True Souls are her powerful disciples, leading a force in her name.

As we continue to learn more, we realize that she has three chosen, and it seems that there may be factions within the ranks of the True Souls. Only by continuing to Moonrise Towers can we learn more.

*

The whole of the plot is an unfolding mystery, but we can be sure that it interconnects multiple things. Shar is somehow involved, for one. As are the Githyanki and the Mind Flayers, and the connection of all of this is evident in the artifact, the item being referred to as the weapon.

Cambions are also somehow involved. We know that the True Souls have abducted Mizora, and that may explain Raphael's interest.

*

This is a setting and a plot filled with mystery and flavor.

Are there things that need to be smoothed out? Sure. Some people apparently have an issue because the plot makes them want to avoid long resting, which is keeping aspects of the story from opening up to them. That's a legitimate issue that needs to be smoothed out.

But the answer to that isn't that the story sucks.

The answer is to get across the idea that you're not turning into a Mind Flayer immediately faster. Or let the game force you into a long rest if only because of sheer exhaustion. Something to solve the problem and continue the narrative.

And yes, there's an issue with Lae'zel being so singularly focused on the creche. It's hard to accept that she would stick around to fight the goblins instead of venturing out on her own.

The solution to that isn't to throw our hands up in the air and say the story sucks.

The way forward is to perhaps tweak her character and make her at least a teensy bit more open to trying out Halsin or Gut.

Someone else mentioned that her character would never stand for having her armor taken. I agree. Does that mean the story sucks and the writers are no good? No. Personally, I would suggest that Larian locks her armor to her unless she can be talked out of it in dialogue. Something like, "We need to talk about your armor. I'm going to give you this better armor, but you need to get rid of that armor."

That said, if they don't lock her armor, I'm fine. Because I never take her armor. Because I know taking her armor isn't something that would make sense. So I don't actively do things that wouldn't make sense and then blame Larian for the things I'm doing.

*

I don't know. Again, we're to the point where people are suggesting that Larian get rid of the tadpoles. In my opinion, that's insane.

Not only is such a thing not even feasible, it would completely ruin all the amazing flavor and plot we have right now.

I like the idea of the Absolute. I like the mystery. I like the terror and wonder of the tadpoles, and I'm blown away by the flavor of the True Souls, acting as disciples of a new goddess.

And that's my opinion.

In my opinion, that's how it should work, and indeed taken as a bulletpoint pitch the story is great indeed, it's just that the way they implemented (in EA, lets hope some things are simply left out for not spoiling us) the story is not convincing at several occasions to some of us - for a variety of reasons - and this thread served to illustrate this by comparing BG3 to previous BG games.

It's great that you share your opinion but at this point simply repeating your praise for the story and presenting subjective opinions as fact (tadpoles are great, opening is excellent) doesn't feel like contributing much to the discussion of how it relates to the previous games, nor does it meaningfully engage with what others have said, criticized and suggested in this thread.

I feel you just counter what you might interpret as excessive negativity with what you probably think is a nuanced and positive constructive attitude, while - in my eyes - your post has a very annoying and condescending undertone of which you might not be aware but which does not benefit the tone of the discussion, nor any potential replies. So please stop taking criticism on a video-game in development personal and let us grumpy old BG veterans have our critical reflection, this is a hill no one wants to or needs to die on... We're all here to offer our own perspective, it's up to Larian what to do or not with it, I don't see the point of bitter discussions as to who is right or who isn't as it really doesn't matter, we can only hope and try keeping these forums a nice civilized place to share our thoughts and (differing) opinions...

Special shout-out to the composer, btw, I seriously think Larian should just give you a salary and put you in charge of community engagement ! Give that person a job Swen !

So why fight on a hill at risk of dying, over someone else offering their perspective? Rest assured it doesn't overshadow criticism and discussions, I've had a gold-mine of notes to lurk and snag from the thread already


Thanks! I'm flattered. I'm not sure if Larian would actually like my ideas and approach to it, I'm a gamer first and foremost and would approach it as a gamer but with energic spirit of Swen, rather than a PR guy. Thought about it quite a bit, on how I'd approach it actually, but that's neither here nor there.

It is great, I agree. Just like the original BG story was great. Because it focused on conflict, goals, and getting to the bottom of a mystery that specifically impacted the main character. See how similar the two stories feel when you take a step back and actually look at them?


And I believe I touched on several of those reasons.



Thank you.


"It's great that you share your opinion, but stop sharing your opinion."

Hmm.


No. I legitimately don't think some of what I'm hearing makes sense. I think, as I've mentioned, that a lot of the suggestions amount to really bad advice, and I think it needs to be challenged because I'm worried that Larian might actually go that direction if no one makes any counterpoints, and in my opinion, that would ruin the game.


I disagree with you about storytelling and about the direction a game should take. Other than that, I have no idea who you are, and I'm not making any personal judgments.

I do happen to believe I'm right in what I'm saying. I do happen to be confident. But I'm also open to ideas that challenge my own.

For what it's worth, I'm not sure that others here have been so open. To me, it appears a handful of regulars have settled into a collectively shared opinion, and oddly act transgressed against if someone disagrees with that opinion. Sincerely, the environment here feels uncomfortable for a newcomer like myself, almost bully'ish I dare say.


I do not take it personally. Again, I'm countering the points only after they're mentioned, and only in an effort to show Larian that other opinions exist.


I would never stop someone from sharing their opinion on a forum designed for that purpose. In return, I would ask you to refrain from trying to quiet me, politely.

In my small opinion, people have been quite a bit more rude to me than I've been in return. At least from my viewpoint.

I'm also an "old BG veteran," by the way.


Yes, which is why I'm offering my perspective.


That's certainly the goal to my understanding, and that's what I'm going for.

I see the opposite probably occurring, at least considering it from the perspective of the OP, who signed up for the boards what, like not even 2 week ago? First did a bit of dabbling by responding to some existing threads, created a couple new threads offering what I read as largely positive feedback suggestions without much recourse to charged language or a sardonic tone. But then came back a few days later and just brought the crashing hammer this time! With a hilarious and lighthearted take down of BG3 from the vantage of BG1. The kind of post that calls for a nod and a first bump, like someone delivering a clutch eulogy at a wake, with some good jokes sprinkled in there to really capture the spirit of the dearly departed. You know, the kind of thing that gets a hand on the shoulder and some drinks on the house for +650 xp. To see it pulled apart on the point by point as if it were offered as some kind of philosophical tractatus or something seems somehow more bully-ish. I agree though, the boards are often a bit hostile, like a wolf pack devouring itself or internecine video game warfare lol. It's what happens when forums are left sort of anarchic like this, they tend to devolve into the personal agon pretty quickly. I thought for sure that Larian would migrate their forums or use this EA as a pretext to provide some better boards, with better structure and functionality, more Mods, more stickies, and a more guided discourse in general. Baldur's Gate III deserves its own set of boards I think, with some nice gilded framing, a warm hearth and inviting light, perhaps even a section specifically for comparisons with the previous BG games. Instead it's still hella desperado here, even after a year lol

All this thread is about subjective opinions of players. The discussion is also about good writing or rather to what extend the players subjectively think it is good.

I think JandK has made a number of valid arguments why the flow of logic in BG3 is there and that it is good enough (with some room of improvement, of course).

In addition, there has been all kind of nods towards the original games: special powers and the githiyankis, mindflayers and drows had quite the presence in BG2. Plot wise there is enough ground to call this game Baldur's Gate 3. If you take into account how gaming has changed the last decades, I think this game justifies the title. Personal opinion, of course.

I wouldn't say that "special powers and the githyanki, mindflayers, and drow" are nods to the original games. Having special powers is the generic premise of ~all chosen one stories, and all those species exist in the D&D world. The presence of these certain races & creatures in both games doesn't necessarily connect the games - that's just a result of both games being based on an edition of D&D.

If there's a quest about investigating a mine that's producing sub-standard quality ore, that'd be a nod to BG1&2. Or if named characters from BG1&2 show up (e.g., Minsc), that'd be a nod.

This does come across as rather arrogant you know? There is no right or wrong here…just opinions. I think the game is flawed, you think it’s wonderful. Neither of us is ‘right’. I totally respect your stance on it but I don’t agree with some of your points. Again, that doesn’t mean I am correct, we merely have opposing opinions.

Horses for courses, as we say in England.

I think i agree. Especially when it comes to conversations where i constantly ask myself why certain questions are not asked or this or that solution not tried etc. Ofc multiple choice answers are there to lead us in a certain direction but after seeing so many different dialogue choices ending the same way makes me cringe at times.
Also background knowledge of the chars is somewhat strange, especially the gith knowledge about the mindflayers. Things the PCs know and don't know is inconsistent at times. Especially if you do not follow a certain path.

Knowledge and die rolls were always an issue for me. either you know something or you don't. Skill checks on history etc. feels more like remembering. So my char knows everything but remembers only somethings if the dice are nice. But i guess thats a game mechanic issue.

I agree dice rolling knowledge checks etc. translate quite odd in a game. What would make more sense would be meeting a minimum of say +2-3-4 in the chosen field or you simply fail the knowledge check, don't even roll. If you meet the minimum in the check say it is +2 you need to roll a dice to see if you remember but if you have +4 you automatically succeed. A bit like knowledge based on race of class should automatically succeed imo.

A wood elf druid isn't going to fail a nature check where a city rouge passes because of a lucky 20. It would also make it advantagous to have a group with varied knowledge bases.

Normally I'd be in agreement. Except we're at a point where the standard EA playthrough is approaching ~30 hours or so. Taking in the perspective of a new player who will be taking it much slower (as much of the people in EA right now have already done their first playthrough long ago), probably closer to 40-50 hours. I've played and seen enough games that I don't think Larian should make it a goal for the typical 'this game gets interesting after X hours' criticism to approach the higher end of the spectrum.

Of course, there's probably a way to actually rush a solution to the tadpole problem in the full game. But then you run into other potential issues - possibly being extremely underleveled because you didn't put things on hold to explore instead, along with the implication that you're not returning to the area + possibly losing half your party afterwards. Again, not a problem with the foresight us EA players have. But with the floodgates opening to new players once the full game launches that come into the game believing what we all did on our own first playthroughs in an environment where we can actually act on it now? Oh boy.

Always gotta look at the big picture.

---

My argument though is less 'the tadpole plot device is bad and should be scrapped', it's just I don't think it should have been the central focus of the game because of how much it can hamstring the potential narrative in the long term. The amount of handwaving the overall presentation already does over it is outright concerning.

Maybe it's a red herring and the tadpoles aren't actually that important, they're probably just the vehicle for us to gain access to crazy magical abilities. Perhaps we actually do get the option to have a permanent solution to the tadpole problem at the end of act 1 but still keep some of the abilities granted by them/still at risk of being brought under the influence of the Absolute. It's what I'm hoping for, because I'm not wholly interested in a plot that's controlled by a singular mcguffin plot device, where all of the other more compelling plot threads throughout the entire game end up being interrupted by constant queries of 'oh by the way we have a tadpole in our heads, what do you think about it/what can you do about it?' while knowing in the back of our heads that everyone's just going to string us along until towards the end.

Earlier today, someone went and posted a thread on Reddit about recent datamining discoveries. The tadpole stuff is only mentioned once, and... It's a bit much.

https://old.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/qxfczx/minor_and_major_act1_datamining_spoilers/


That said, I am intrigued as to what the game may do with that plot development. But I expect half this thread to react purely negatively to it too since it'd be way high up on the epic scale, ha.

Meanwhile the Last Light Inn subplot seems to make no references to it, and I imagine it'll be a lot better off for it.

something along those lines would be good. Best would be to have different systems for active/passive skills. so lets go for your nature example: Knowledge of nature beeing a passive and passed/failed automatically based on skill level. active beeing to pluck some difficult berries (while that could go under survival).

Easy to implement ways should be available. That beeing a change to the rules i would applaud. (not like shoving people 50 m over a 2m high wall, gods how i fking hate that mechanic)

The opening/religious setting is basically 1:1 DOS2 - your ship is attacked, you drown/fall to death and some god seems to intervene and save you. Then you have a religious cult that is trying to take over/save the world.

Reusing that opening and setting is not necessarily bad, but a little bit lazy.

Agree, also if you go one step further back you start out on imprisoned on the ship with an attached/inserted foreign object/lifeform that you need to get rid of. I was a little taken aback on my first playthrough and unfortunately I wonder if it was more a case of it being a deliberate choice to be cute rather than unintentional laziness.

It would be so much better if there was no Absolute and we had just regular tadpoles with Mind Flayers being the primary antagonists.

The scene of being saved from the Nautiloid crash is just a downright cheap plot device.

Ok. Again. What's your hope here? Are you trying to get them to recreate the whole game?

I like the game. I want them to finish it. Although I do think that it could use more BG elements, basically saying, "Get rid of the main antagonist and just make it a normal parasite and rewrite the whole plot" might mean the game just isn't for you. That's a bit extreme.

Besides, a normal parasite would literally kill you in hours after infection. Kinda lame game if you're no longer you after a short rest.

The point is to tone down the absurdness of the game.

This is dangerously turning into God of War 2 and soon we will have Selune, Shar, Bhaal, Mystra involved in a weird carnival.

Ceromorphosis can take up to 7 days and you could easily create a plot using the same idea of slowing its progression. Not that is feasible anymore.

Absurdeness? Well we do talk about larian here. They tend to have a knack for exactly this. If you compare it to DOS2 it IS toned down.

Every story can be a good one, no matter how far over the top. I think though that the more absurd a storyline is, the harder you need to plot to make it good. Even if it is a fantasy setting, players need some logical threads to go by.

Take the Nautiloid crash: We get thrown out of a fast-moving ship, fall a pretty huge distance while the ship still moves away from us and.....end up right in the wreckage of said ship, saved by a higher power...yea, right. Why go through all this if they want us ending up near the ship anyway.
I would rather accept surviving said crash with 1HP and limping movement for a few steps (having been saved from certain death by our tadpoles) then this fall without moving and stopping right before earth stuff. Way more believeable imo.

Going on: Let us say our tadpoles stopped the fall to secure their survival, why the heck do they save us only once? We can die anywhere in this game, juming into the hole at the spider queen is pretty much the same situation but no stopping there. Why? Inconsistent.

And so on. A lot of pieces simply do not fit together very well. so they make up for a pretty brittle story. I sincerly hope they get this glued together later, otherwise we may end up with a b-movie type of game with lots of facepalm situations. Would make me sad.

I would love to see them change some things to get this on a more believable-unbelievable level (get a good author look over the story).

On the other hand i agree with GM4Him: We want the game to be finished, so a full rewrite will not happen anyway, just remove a few of the bigger kinks in the storyline.

Expecting a major story rewrite is fantasy. Even if Larian wanted to the amount of work in redoing numerous cinematics and voice acting would set the game's release date back a couple of years at least not to mention cost a fortune. It's just not going to happen.

A bit off topic and not really helping it feel more like BG/D&D but since we're talking about improving writing, there is some improvement needed in dialogues.

Just had a chat with Gale, right after our little "bonding with Mystra" and the first line available to me was: "I never realized it was so easy to cast magic"

Really?! My sorceress, who's been casting spells galore up till that point, have never realized how easy magic comes to her?! Gale even responds that since I'm a sorcerer it comes naturally to me. Come on Larian, you can do better than that.

I do realize that line is for non casters but still, since they obviously had Gale recognize our class in that conversation, it's such a silly mistake.

Oh there is MUCH MORE dialogues that would use adjusting than this one.

Quick sumary here:
https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=741085#Post741085

This is how I see it as well. So much needs to be changed/added/improved for this game to become a true "Baldur's Gate" game, which it most certainly is not at present. However, it is unrealistic to expect Larian will do any such thing. They are convinced they have all the (correct) answers, and it is up to us to get with their program and simply agree that their game is aces. I only expect marginal changes here and there to happen between now and full release. None of the truly major concerns so many people here and elsewhere have raised will ever be addressed, because to do so would be for Larian to have to admit they got something fundamentally wrong. And that is not something they ever do. But again, for no other reason than because "Baldur's Gate" is in the title of this game, I will continue to raise my concerns and provide my feedback, even if it all ends up being a completely futile and pointless exercise.

Not quite. If anything, it is you and others like you who ALWAYS have Larian's ear. Larian literally made this game just for you. It is people like me and similar others who Larian doesn't appear to give a damn about, and whose voice very likely never gets heard within Larian's halls.

Fantasy is thinking Larian will not finish the game. This game will be done by 2023, regardless.

I think its just a case of Larian knowing what sells. It's their wealth and reputations on the line. They're trying to make money in an extremely competitive market, winning style points is secondary or lower.

They’d probably have been better off just making DOS:3 then, given the success of DOS:2?
I mean, it’s basically what they’ve done anyway

Oh, I'm sure they hear plenty of voices.

It's just not always easy to respond diplomatically to someone whose big idea is to either remove the tadpoles or the Absolute. Personally, I don't even know how to humor that. In my opinion, it's not just a bad, dumb idea, it's actively harmful to the intellectual property.

I don't know if the suggestion is meant to be taken seriously or not. It doesn't feel like it's meant to be helpful, at least it doesn't feel that way to me.

But all I can do is accept it as someone else's subjective opinion, note my disagreement, and move on.

I am wondering if by working with WotC they gained addition budget to make the game bigger and better. Scale of BG3 is immense, and while D:OS2 did well, I can’t quite imagine it did that well. Then again Witcher3 is also bounds above and beyond of what CDPR was able to do in W1&2.

I’m certain that is the case. Given the scale of the game and the Intellectual Property behind it and the legacy of the previous games, Larian are taking a big step up.

Of course it's too late for that. My personal feedback is more meant for future games.

Larian's writing and world building has already improved from DOS2 to BG3. In the next game it might be still better.

They more likely gotten additional budget from Stadia rather than WoTC.

If anything, they will have to share profits with WoTC.

But I am not sure if Larian will pull-off a comparable increase in sales as CDPR did with W3.

Why?

Just because some mechanics are the same doesn't make it DOS 3. They were pretty clear that they were going to be using the Divinity engine, expecting completely different mechanics seems unrealistic. The story/world are unique compared to DOS II.

My point was mainly addressing you saying that Larian know what sells and and are trying to make money in a competitive market (that last point could be made regarding just about every business). I was being somewhat sarcastic when suggesting they make DOS:3 instead but truthfully it doesn't feel like a BG game to me, that's just how I have found it to be. I lost myself in the previous games, whereas BG3 just left me feeling disappointed. It's not just about the mechanics, it's a whole swathe of things that I really can't be bothered to list yet again.

Fair enough, I never played BG1 and BG2 so have no opinion on how BG3 compares to them. I misunderstood your point. As far as why they didn't go DOS III (who's to say they won't at some point) I think they wanted entry into D&D in the hopes of expanding their reach. There are also more opportunities to produce additional D&D content by tapping into its wealth of lore compared to DOS II.

Well, it is good for laughs at times. Every new playthrough i am very close to rather go facedesk than facepalm.

Who wrote some of those conversations? Even some 1on1 talks leave me openmouthed at how wrong they feel.

It may not be entirely in line with the topic, but whatever.
I guess people don't know what really makes the game a successor to bg.
Reading the topics closer to the premiere of EA, it was much more visible (some people have given up since then).
I remember opinions (and not single ones) that the game cannot be bg if there is no rtwp fight or 2e rules.
There would also be opinions that the game is not BG because it does not have the same heroes, 2d graphics (these are only single cases, at least), bad color palette or even voice acting. If you did a good search, you would certainly find more.
Reading these topics, you could get the impression that the only thing that would satisfy the fans is a copy of BG2 (even such a Pathfinder would barely fit). However, many fans really disagreed with each other completely.

So what really makes a bg game? The problem is that it is different for each person. For some, rtwp combat may be what defined games and other things may not matter. Likewise, other people may care more about 2e or other things.

Which is why the ethically correct thing to have done would have been to NOT call the game BG3. Even BG:..... would've been okay. Just not BG3. The moment they made it BG3 they instantly ended up disappointing many fans of the original BG games because you are just not going to make them feel the same way about this game as they felt about those original BG games. It is also why I hate it when devs use the term "spiritual successor" to describe their new game. In my view, it is the one huge mistake Obsidian did in talking about PoE, and similarly what cost inXile so much support for their new T:ToN game. If some fans on their own want to thing of a game as a successor to some much loved older game, that's fine. Let them come to that conclusion. But a dev should stay away from trying to jump on the bandwagon of a much beloved older game.

I don't see any evidence to support this.

My way of looking at this is very simple: (A) Are Larian's efforts todate making changes to the game aimed at convincing people who were a 'no' on the game when it went into EA to change to 'yes' (i.e. people like me)? Or (B) are they meant to make people who were already a 'yes' an even stronger 'yes' (i.e. people like you)? For me it is extremely clear without even the slightest doubt that Larian's efforts are all about (B) and not (A). And so then, as one of those people who's been a 'no', this is of course very bitterly disappointing to me.

What changes would you like to see to make it more like BG1/BG2? If you've already posted this somewhere just post a link. I've never played either of those games so don't know what is missing here.

Well I think a lot of other people have already posted on various things I would agree with. That the game is 5e is NOT an issue for me as I fully agree that D&D games should be made using the current ruleset. I have also come to accept that TB and not RTwP is how this game is going to be and that won't change. But I feel very strongly about such things as: a party of six; party movement mechanic similar to how it is in the IE games; your custom PC is at least as central to and plugged into the story and the world as any "origin" character, if not more so; enough party companion options to make any kind of party you want in terms of party member role distribution and alignment distribution (but NOT counting blank-slate mercenaries); no locked party and ability to switch out party members whenever you want; very strict adherence to established FR lore; a world/setting atmosphere that is reflective of the Realms, which is a high-magic setting where 'good' is the default of society; and maybe some other things.

But the main thing I want is what I treasure the most of the original games, specifically BG1. When you start out with your non-pregenerated custom character, you are a nobody with no power or skills or abilities whatsoever and can barely stand up to a wolf. That is what it means to be level 1. You are more capable than the average peasant, and certainly more knowledgeable, but that is it. And this same thing should be true for your level 1 companions.

I like this idea.

Conversely, what BG3 has in common with originals?

Somewhat similar setting (although executed in a different way as exposed by OP), based on D&D ruleset (with vastly different game mechanics) and party-based story driven RPG (which even JRPGs are).

As far as I know, it could be a NWN game or any other game.

And that is why in the end, being a level 9 Wizard conjuring Lightning Bolts and Cloudkills feels so good. Because you still remember being scared of wolves in the wilderness.

Larian are trying so hard to make you and your companions badass and amazing at level 1. Flying on a spaceship chased by dragon riders, killing Mind Flayers and Cambions in Hell. The baseline is so epic you're not going to feel any different at level 5, 10 or 15. No dynamics. Just more of the same with more abilities.

Precisely! Casting 9th level spells and defeating dragons and adamantine golems can feel special only if you begin the game as a nobody. I still remember how amazing it felt in BG1 when I won my very first +1 weapon. That's how a BG game should feel. At the rate BG3's prologue and Act 1 are going, I'm actually going to be bored to death with the game fairly early on because doing amazing and epic things will no longer feel amazing or epic to me.

I wont repeat why BG3 isn't a BG-game (or at least isn't a GOOD one), there is tons of comments about it everywhere.


But what is certain is that PoE, Tyranny or Pathfinder feel way more like a BG-game than BG3.


And that is a point Larian should seriously consider if they had just a bit of conscientiouness.

Now that I think of BG1, the difference between a level 1 PC fleeing Candlekeep and a level 9 PC about to confront Sarevok in the hidden underground temple is immense. You feel you've come a long way. Power-wise, but also emotionally. You've survived assassination attempts, learned the truth, made friends, and no fight ever came easy by just pushing someone into a pit or spamming surprise void bulbs and AoE's. Every step of the way, the story has been personal for you. You are in the center of it all, not your amazing cast of companions.

The difference between a level 1 party cheesing Cambions on a spaceship in Hell, and a level 4 party clubbing an Adamantine Golem to death.. no difference. And won't be any different killing an Elder Brain at level 9 or whatever god avatars we will be shoving from platforms by then. Probably your companions will steal the show and you'll play the role of silent witness to their awesomeness.

I really hope Larian can take some pointers in building a more dynamic and immersive world. Or maybe it's the theme park maps. Probably a combination of everything. I don't even know anymore. I'm just not immersed in BG3 and it sucks because I need that D&D fix.

I hear you, I was desperate for this game to sate that hunger. I think fundamentally they don't have a handle on making a coherent D&D game, it's just not in their DNA. For all their protestations about how much they loved the original games I can't see much that has been done to honour the legacy of those games.

For me, they have just dispensed with too many familiar things from BG1 & 2 and implemented a bunch of things that I don't like.

Funny thing about this "level one peasant" narrative is that game had a hidden cheat build in that protected level 1 characters from one-hit kills, and yet most players wouldn't notice. And it is not a cheat that, to my extent of knowledge, you could even turn off.

I've had a lot of fun figuring out how to commit mass murder in Candlekeep prologue and get away with it. I've also had fun with roleplaying playthrough, placing certain limitations on my characters. I guess the difference is in the audience, because BG1 could be easily beaten as a level 1 character just by spamming all the wands the developers placed everywhere, and yet this wasn't much of an issue.

One thing that doesn't get mentioned much comparing BG1 and BG2 to BG3, is how quickly 3d animation tends to become very dated in the look. Unless a game is heavily stylized in the overall art direction, it's virtually guaranteed to look pretty awful in the very near future. Given BG3's heavy reliance on 3d cinematics and animation to carry the overall experience, I really wonder how well it will hold up in the long term? I mean for a game that aims for 'realism' in the aesthetic, some of it already looks kinda old, and I think the best one can hope for is maybe 5 or 6 years before the 3d modelling becomes so notably behind the times that it's hard to even watch/play anymore. Just like 'realistic' CGI in films, there's a real limit there to the staying power before it just starts looking like Lawn Mower Man or something right?

Of course right now for BG3 everyone is still very much in awe of the visual appeal, and it probably seems wildly cutting edge. But then I think back to BG1/2 and how the cutscene animated movies in those games are now absolutely abysmal. At the time that stuff seemed amazing, and perhaps had everyone wishing "why can't the rest of the game look more like this?" but it ends up being the worst looking part of the game a short while later, and the one part of it that can't really be salvaged. By contrast the 2d sprites of BG1/2 that constitute the actual gameplay there still hold up quite well. All the paper dolls and avatars and environments, the in-game cutscenes which utilize those assets rather than outside animation too, they're still pretty decent. They were necessarily heavily abstracted using the avatars available, so they still look pretty good in relative terms. They're still serviceable, and have an internal aesthetic continuity despite being pretty ancient. Not so for the animated cinematic stuff.

Comparing BG1 to 3d games like NWN1, NWN2, Dragon Age etc, the 2d BG1 game still has a lot of aesthetic charm, whereas those 3d games all look pretty horrid now. It makes me wonder, even if BG3 could match the replay and the hundreds of hours of content that we saw in BG1/2, even if they got it all right in terms of the lvl1 feel, would I even be able to return to it every couple years and still enjoy it the way I did with those earlier BG entries? Or will it just look so whack compared to other 3d games floating around by then, that I can't even play it without a remaster? How many years out before the opening movie in BG3 looks as bad to modern eyes as this one does to us now...?

BG1 opening movie cinematic


I love it, doubtless, but you know what I mean hehe.

And now it's not just a little 2 minute intro cinematic anymore, or a brief 30 second thing when we first get to the Friendly Arm Inn like it was in 1998. Now it's like half the entire experience of the game done in cinema. Obviously the horse has already left the barn on this one, but I think BG3 is way over-reliant on this stuff to set up what the game actually is. When I think back to BG1/2 it's not the cutscenes that I remember, but in BG3 they're basically the entire thing, the whole story is delivered that way now. I just can't imagine it ever achieving the same kind of longevity, where even big budget Hollywood films that rely heavily on realistic cgi animation from a few years ago already look campy by current standards.

I think they should really try to stake out a look that recalls not live action but rather cartooning in it's essence. BG3 already has a bit of this going on, particularly with the Goblins, but as they continue to refine it, I think they might be better off going a direction like that rather than towards the ultra real. The way they are now dropping roto-animated stuff on Netflix daily that looks like Unreal cinema, I think stuff like BG3 is just not going to seem all that impressive pretty soon, whereas if they can make it look a bit more like a classic cartoon perhaps it would retain a bit of the charm in a different sort of way? I'm not terribly happy with how much the game just feels like watching a movie, and I wish they could get away from that somehow. BG1/2 felt more like a kind of puppet show or shadow theater play that sort leaned into that sensibility, whereas BG3 is much more like a box office live action film. It just gives me pause, cause I don't think it will have the same kind of shelf life and impact going totally that direction.

BG 2's intro movie holds up a bit better, because of the way it's composed in montage, but still pretty rough.


ToB did something pretty similar... Though nothing inside the gameplay actually looked like these intros.



Clearly BG3 looks pretty badass stacked next to those... it's the whole reason I bought the game early if I'm honest, but I wonder how it will age?



ps. Full + Hell just since it was mentioned in the OP. It's pretty masterful. Didn't notice that the other promo one ended with the dragon flame. Although admittedly a clutch cut, I definitely liked the full flick in hellscape with the Imps flying around that monolithic III at the end. The opener did feel pretty BG to me, certainly set the bar hella high! hehe

It's like we have the same brain or something.

I mostly agree with the OP.

I personally like the initial setting of the game, with the battle between the mindflayers and githyanki. I could certainly skip the prologue on the nautiloid in hell, even though I love the opening cinematic. The mysterious saving from the Nautiloid currently seems very contrived and should probably be cut from the game.

I could currently care less for the Absolute storyline and most of the origin characters. I am not a fan of how the tadpoles are implemented. The tadpole powers seem kind of dumb and contrived. There isn't a good explanation for the suppression of ceromorphosis, so that also feels contrived.

The writing and dialogue is very similar to DOS 2. I feel like this hasn't been a strength for Larian and they should shake up the writing team. Hiring someone that was a lead writer for BG2 or D&D might help?

Larian's changes to the D&D mechanics have unbalanced the game and made it less realistic and resulted in a significant power creep relative to RAW 5E. While I like the tiered construction of their maps, the jumping/shoving mechanics seem very cheezy and unrealistic. The attack modifiers for changes in elevation are also quite cheezy. I feel like this should be a gritty, dark fantasy setting and the cheezy physics detract from that.

You must be some kind of purist that hates everyone elses enjoyment of the game

(I'm being snarky, because I agree with everything you said above.)

I definitely thought that in 2000s move to 3d for RPGs was a mistake - those games didn't take advantage of the 3d space, while looking much worse then it's precedessors. Now they look just horrible.

I don't think using 3d is a mistake, especially if you make a use out of a 3d enviroment - 2d background does come with limitations. I think games like Warcraft3 still look pretty decent to this day. And I think there are older 3d games that still look great after years passed. I had no issues reptro playing Max Payne, Thief1&2, Systemshock in spite of their age.

I do think cinematic approach is an issue. To do it half well takes a lot of resources. I don't expect BG3 cinematics to look great on launch, not to mention years after release. Dragon Age: Origins is a good reference point - I thought it was awkward when it released - now it's just offputting. It would be a problem, if like BG1&2, the game didn't try to look like a movie. *shrug* I don't expect BG3 to have that much staying power anyway. It will make a splash, and it will age. Poorly.

Exactly, Swen repeatedly admitted that Larian never had good writing.

Surprises me that they felt confident and didn't try to up their game for BG3, especially considering how well they improved the other departments.

That's kinda part of the mystery. I don't think we're supposed to have an explanation yet. It's like, I don't think I'd call Agatha Christie a bad writer for not revealing the mysterious affair at Styles earlier.

Personally, I'm loving the story, and I'm absolutely impressed with the writers on Larian's staff. Sorry to hear that you don't. I guess the game's not for everyone.

This is exactly the sense I've had ever since the BG3 trailer dropped. Dragons and 'splosions etc. from the very start make for a cool-looking cinematic, no doubt. However, this approach of starting the game at "AMAZING FACTOR 11 !!!!1!!1!" completely flies in the face of BG1's and 2's carefully crafted story arcs - and IMO good writing in general - which start your adventures in a very personal, grounded way, and gradually ratchet up the emotional investment and tension as the story and your in-game relationships and knowledge organically evolve. The quality and pacing of the writing I've seen since has not in any way allayed my initial disappointment in this regard. I really do want BG3 to succeed, but significant gripes about clunky UI and cheesy gameplay aside, it's for this reason I doubt I'll ever "feel" it's truly a masterpiece of personal storytelling in the mold of its predecessors. An above average and fun game, sure, but it pales in comparison to its admittedly intimidating legacy.

The hag and Omeluum, the mind flayer give you incites as to why. Oh there's a good reason.

I do think there's a middle ground. Sure. I think it could feel more like D&D and a BG sequel, but to totally rip it up at this stage is a bit much, IMO. What drew me in most was the story. Every character, even every goblin, has a story. That's incredible. And there are SO many paths you could take. I've never played a game with so much replayability. I certainly never played 1 and 2 this much. I enjoyed them, but they were nothing like this.

And I see plenty of elements to tie it in to the originals, and we haven't even gotten to the good stuff. As a writer, you need an adventure hook. It is good to start with such high level excitement. Draws people in. Then they do bring it down a notch as you explore on the beach and stuff and get to meeting people and learning about where you are and what's happening in the region.

That said, there are still a lot of things they could do, like make monsters actually like how they're supposed to be and they need to have some additional things like day/ night and maybe some roaming animals and consistency with story elements like when was Moonhaven really destroyed and what the flip cause Halsin and crew to be gone for over a month and a half when the goblin camp is 10 minutes away. But overall, if you read the books and find the clues, you start really piecing together a LOT of things. There is way more to this game than many realize. WAY more.

We already have an explanation : it is infused with "strange netherese magic" that puts it in stasis. Classic Larian plot device, don't expect any intricacies.

From there, it likely goes to godlike power in a domination plot orchestrated by Absolute/Shar/random god.

I think people are being a bit too harsh about the tadpole plot. In my opinion it's a perfectly neutral plot device to start a story with. A thing that should be acting one way is acting in a different way for some unknown reason. That's a classic impetus for a story. Is it complex? No, and I actually don't think it should be. It's simple and complexity can be added as the story goes on and we understand more of what's going on. Do I think the plot point is executed well? I don't, but I think it would only require some minore changes to produce a version I AM perfectl happy with. And the tadpoles also are different from the Source Collars of D:OS2. Sure the first act revolves around removing both, but here, it's the source of your power and putting you in active danger, while in D:OS2 the collar is containing your power and is given to you because you're on a prison island so of course you're going to get something to reduce your powers.

As for where the plot goes, I do think it'll involve godlike power, etc. I'm not against it, it'll come down execution.

Let's just take a step back.

BG1. Plot point = You're a demigod, child of murder. Embrace it of resist. Your choice. Fight others with said heritage.
BG2. Plot point = You're a demigod, child of murder. Others want to steal it. Fight for your life or die. Claim your father's heritage and become a god or reject it. Fight others with said heritage. Your choice.
BG3. Plot point = You're infected by a godlike mind flayer parasite that will likely turn you into a god. Others want to claim the power for themselves. You have a choice. Resist or claim your new godlike powers. Fight others with said heritage.

Well when you put it like that…sounds like a BG game to me! Lol

I feel like I've been trying to say this over and over again.

As I said, it isn't a good explanation. It is especially poor because the tadpoles aren't really in stasis, there is a symbiotic relationship forming (e.g., tadpole powers). There is no explanation for why this might be occurring.

It is Act 1. If this was the end of the game, and we didn't have an answer, I'd totally agree with you.

However, what we do know is that there is powerful Sharran/ Netherese Shadow Magic involved which is keeping it from transforming you by normal means.

This is no different than Bhaalspawn. With the Bhaalspawn, you were infused by the powerful seed of a god. Here, you are infused with the powerful seed of a mind flayer that is special and godlike. Just as the Bhaalspawn was slowly transforming into the Slayer, so we are being transformed into some sort of special weapon that the Absolute and others want to use.

It is honestly not much different at all. The only difference is that they haven't fully explained what the differences are between the special tadpole we have and the tadpoles of other True Souls. But it's only Act 1. They didn't explain why we were having those strange visions in BG1 until later in the story also. We just started having all sorts of weird murder/death visions and dreams. Nothing made sense until later.

Give Larian a break on this. I agree there are other discrepencies that don't make sense in the game, but this major plot point, I don't think, is one of them.

I think they upped their game - I feel there was much more thought and care put into BG3 story, characters and writing then D:OS1&2 combined. It is a different studio, making a different game with different priorities. I suspect it is less about talented writers but how much imput they have - do they get to dictate content, world structure or do they have to tie up loose ends after other teams do their work.


Parasites and power that comes with it is clearly BG3 analogy of Bhaal Spawn heritige. Still, one must do some extreme reductions to make those game feel like they have anything to do with each other.

They are pretty different. Narratively, for one, although you got dreams and special powers over the course of BG I, BG I is not a game in which you really have to face the consequences of your heritage. That doesn't start to happen until BGII. In BG I the struggle is against your half-brother Saraevok who is trying to murder you, but the narrative of 'fight what you are, embrace your ancestry' is very low key. Slayer doesn't even show up until BG II.

BG III the tadpole is treated as an immediate crisis that needs to be addressed in the here and now. A near and constant danger. You will die or worse if you don't get it out asap. The entire narrative push revolves around what to do with the tadpoles.

In the ruined Selunite temple you can get a conversation where the party members will remark after talking with Minthara where the similarities are pointed out between the party and the True Souls. It's even flat-out said at the time that the Nautaloid was probably going to Moonrise and that the party would have ended up like the True Souls had it arrived.


Omelum says that killing yourself might not be enough to get rid of the tadpole, so I am inclined to say that at the moment, the tadpoles abandoning the bodies of the other true souls upon death does look like a plot hole, until/if more information becomes available.

Yeah, see. I don't think it is. Originally, only Ed's tadpole escaped the body and fled. Then, in later patches, they added massive tadpoles fleeing from dead True Souls, implying that this was a normal for True Souls. However, never once does a tadpole escape from you. Yes, indeed. Something is truly different about yours.

And again, that's why everyone, including Raphael, wants you. Something about you is different from the others. Yes, if you got to Moonrise, they might have been able to complete your "training" so to speak, and you'd have been brainwashed like other True Souls, but I think you are still definitely unique. Even if you'd made it to Moonrise, I think you'd have been only similar to other True Souls in that you'd have been brainwashed and unable to choose for yourself. I still think you'd be very powerful; moreso than the others.

Notice that Minthara and Glut and Ragzlin don't use illithid powers like Survival Instinct or Reflection or whatever. Those powers only belong to you.

Ragzlin uses the Repulsor power. Really surprised me when I saw him do it.

On the other hand you dont use illithid powers like Shield of Screams, that other Psyonic damage that have chance to cause mind control, Nere had ...
That aura Ragzlin is using ... (Aura of Leadership i believe?)
Or that buff that Minthara is giving to her minions ... (really dont remember the name :-/ )

//Edit:
Isnt that from his mace tho?

No, although his hammer's ability is similar.

I'm pretty sure he actually used the Repulsor ability and knocked me off upper walkway. It was a long battle. I had started the fight with Minthara, and it ultimately triggered Ragzlin's room.

They came out of Ragzlin's room the long way around (because apparently nobody can open a door?). So this fight happened over the spider pit area between Ragzlin and Gut.

My Tav was on the wall and Ragzlin joined him. They went to square off against each other, and I was looking forward to the fight, and then wham, Ragzlin hit me with Repulsor. And I don't mean Faithbreaker's Absolute Power ability, I mean Repulsor.

I guess it's possible I'm mistaken, but I'm pretty sure I saw what I think I saw.

Ok, ok, ok, ok... Let's just take a step back !

BG1 : You're a freacking random dude but one day your adoptive daddy told you that you have to leave your home cause... just he told you to follow.
The night you leave, damn he is killed by some random powerfull dudes and you have no other choice than run away.
You investigate to understand what's happened... or you jsut leave yoru life for a long time until you decide to visit some mines...
You discover a conspiracy to trigger war.
You investigate, investigate, investigate and investigate.
FINALLY you understand than the guy who killed your dady wanted to kill you and was the mastermind of all the plots.
You discover you was from the same temple, linked by a terrible fate.
You discover the god thing, blablabla.
You kill him in order to survive and/or to take his place.

BG2 : You awake in a prison. Your mates are imprisonned or killed.
You discover a sorcerer just stole your soul, damn !
You chase him. He kidnapped your childhood friend !
You discover she was also a god child !
You struggle against your own god nature trying to take the control.
You follow the sorcerer on earth and underground.
You fight and/or allied with his sister.
You discover the bad guy want to become a god
You follow him over his thirst for vengeance
You fight him in order to take your soul back

BG ToB : You discover some powerfull god child have decided to kill all the other to take all the god power
You put all the god kids in a castle and they get wrecked
You chase them one by one to survive and/or take all the power.
You discover the nice girl wasn't a so nice girl.
You fight her in order to survive and end this god thing for good !

BG3 : you have a thing in your mind, it can give you superpower but be carefull it could have "effect".
So it's a tadpole linked to the mindflayer and some big big big conspiracy (big ship in the sky, dragons, etc) you are going to wrecked by any means necessary cause.... plot armor. and I knew all of this after... like.... 30mn of playing BG3.
I'm sorry but, I really didn't feel interested by "who's the bad guy" because I think this "tadpole thing" is a cheap and crappy way to give epicness to a basic story (you know it's cheap when it is used to help the maincharacter to survive deathly moment... many times).
Like... O god.. headache, I'm so scared.... I might die if I used it to much or loose my mind forever !!! LeL. Wait. I feel like... it won't happened cause... plot armor.

The problem is all the plot is understandable after 3mn of game.



Btw, I played all the early the first month he was released.
So let's see what I remembered

BG3 : I fight gobelins, I fight people here and there. I saw a dragon. I visit a forest. I visit underground. I got some headaches. I did dumb fights...
Mmm... Sorry but I'm still looking for an interesting story... Wait! I got one ! Oh, no... sorry... It's just Gale trying to eat my staff while Astarian is trying to bang me while Shadowheart play tsundere and Laezel play yandere.
Damn.. my companions would fuck trees if they had holes...
I feel like it's gonna be a long long long journey...

yep I'm a little disappointed.

The reason why BG 1 and 2 simple plots worked was because you could easily be immersed and there was a strong sense of worldbuilding and verossimilitude supporting it, along with overall better writing.

When you remove that for BG3 and you reuse the same basic plot, it feels dull.

Plus, altering the biology of tadpoles and vampire spawns with the excuse of "god power" is an extremely cheap plot device (again, lack of verossimilitude). Throw some Absolute cult cliche, some cartoonish Rag and Devil and the story only goes downhill.

And I am not even accounting for the 20 years evolution in video-game writing or the difference in budget.


Technologically, yes, but, narratively, no. BG3 is a little more serious than DOS2 in tone, but the writing is not that different. In many cases, I liked DOS 2 companions backstory better (or maybe they were more original at that time). Wyll and Astarion backstory are a variation of Lohse's and Astarion shares the same arrogance as Red Prince.

These characters literally have nothing in common.
On this logic, you might as well try to match any character in the games to another.

Yes I do feel as though BG3 is a direct spinoff of DOS2. You're in a flying ship, travelling through dimensions (planes), the very gods themselves are interested in level 1 characters, each companion already has a long, detailed history, the players characters are the "chosen ones", you get stranded on a tropical beach and your companions don't trust you much at first, there are ancient ruins directly nearby... the list seems to go on and on. The writing is very much the same.

You guys make me never want to play DOS. Sometimes I consider it, but then I read something like this.

Sigh.

Except...there are several already legendary characters who have the same condition, except they are sown into the story and you are just a random unknown dude in comparison.

Sorry. Not sure where you're going with that. How is that so much different from the originals? In the first two, it was you and Imoen. So there was still more than just you. In this game, it is you and five others. It's still relatively the same premise.

That is the beauty in Custom character ...
They can be anything you want them to be ... starting with random unknown dude, over secret son of a King, and ending by demigod personification with memory loss, or just wanting vacation ... the only limit is your imagination.

Oh...they have. It is disguised (like BG3/DOS2 intros) but it is there.

Companions - extensive backstories and woven into the plot. 5000000000 lines of spoken dialogue.
Tav - Cloned in a mindflayer tank as "level 1 - insert class".

Well they did give Tav 2 lines in the polt.

"this looks like a good place to make (warp) camp"
"Something something something absolute.....curious"

Hahahahaha!! The player character is basically an extra in a B movie.

Honestly, I personally hope they don't give Tav too much spoken dialogue. I think in a case like this, having the dialogue of the main character be unvoiced is probably for the best.

As someone who LOVES to give their crpg characters intricate backstories and complex internal lives that grow and develop as the game progresses, I will say that the game could do more to make players feel like their backstories have some degree of grounding in the world (also there's the fact that new players really don't get any insight into the workings of the world at large, which makes coming up with backstories that fit the world harder). It's really as simple as having characters ask about your background a bit more, maybe give us a couple more opportunities to say what we are and aren't familiar with. Little things like that would go a surprisingly long way towards helping us connect with our character a bit more, make it feel like we can bring some of what's in our heads out into the game world. And honestly I still maintain that if the game worldbuilt better, that would actually help as well, since it would make it easier for us to really conceptualize where our character could fit into the wider world.

Actually, I agree here. They should not be non-standard in the form of spoken lines IF it is to be so rarely.
They should either sound most of the dialogue lines or not at all.
I don't know about the others, but it didn't irritate me so much, but surprised me for lack of a better word.

I really liked that the main character was voice acted until I created an evil character and found that none of the voices match at all. I never wanted my main character to not have a voice so much until I did this. The voice so did not match my evil drow sorcerer that it really ruined a lot of the evil playthrough for me whenever he spoke.

There are still a few currently unavailable voices in the files, so who knows, maybe you will find something for yourself.

I kinda understand where this came from ...
But it seems impossible to me. :-/

You would need to implement litteraly any and every story, so your companions can react on that.

Unless you mean it as give option to say "never heard about it, tell me more" or "yes, im familiar with this concept" for everything our companions wish to tell us about.
That dont seem so hard ...
I mean when i played my Gith i would certainly appreciate not being so clueless moron who asks even what is Creche. -_-

That is common prolbem with voiced characters ...
There will ALLWAYS be somoene who will feel like "my character would never ever say that" :-/

Yeah, I mostly mean just giving us the option to know about stuff. Maybe even to be able to explain certain things to our companions if it would make sense for your character. Like when I had the opportunity to tell Lae'zel that I'd heard of gith before, for instance. Being able to say to Gale, "I've been to Waterdeep and thought it was beautiful/a dump, etc. More moments like that. Another example is, when you interact with the Zentarim, maybe being able to say that you've heard of them before, or you've had dealings with another branch or something. Just sprinkling little opportunities for your character to voice their experiences and flesh their own backstory out. They obviously can't provide for every idea a player could create, but something is better than nothing. Plus not every player is going to have a fully fleshed out backstory in their heads, and little prompts like that will give them something to latch onto.

Yeah i would like that.
You should probably send this last message to Larian through official feedback, this will get easily lost on paige 15 in topic that will soon be once again full of complaining about how things was better in the past.

A plot twist: It is WE who are the NPC.

It means that while the plot has similarities, the storytelling is completely different.

BG1&2 are about you. The other bhaalspawn being your sister is also about you. You have a supporting cast of companions.

BG3 is about Larian's NPC's first and foremost and about you second. They are not a supporting cast. It's an oversized ensemble cast where every one of them is legendary and awesome already at level 1. And when everyone is, no one is. And if you like to envision your own level 1 PC as an actual rookie, it hardly makes sense with your companions being so legendary already.

Dragon Age games are also about the player and the companions are always the supporting cast. The storytelling has more impact that way. That's why BG3 is leaving me cold so far. I hope they can somehow improve their storytelling and poke some emotional response out of the player. But it's much more difficult when the focus is on NPC's instead of you.

Ah. Ok. Makes sense.

I don't see them changing in this regard, it's just part of their DNA.

It can work with a single awesome sidekick. In Andromeda, Dylan Hunt was your typical hero but you had one side character, Trance, who could basically manipulate timelines. This did work because you only found out far into the story (before she was just depicted as extremely "lucky") and it was only one character.

But yes, the other characters necessarily had to step back compared to her.

The problem in BG3 is that the origin characters are supposed to be played by you, so they have to be awesome. But of course, if there are so many of them, it gets too much.

Maybe a solution would be to just have ~3 origin side characters and most others "normal" characters. More is not always better or can be added by expansions.

Honestly, it's still a game you should play. If only because it'd give you a window into understanding why there's immense pushback in seeing anything remotely similar to DOS2 in BG3. Many fail to understand that the whole 'BG3 = DOS3' criticism isn't mean to disparage the DOS games, it's a warning to Larian that they shouldn't expect to blindly take aspects of their own series and insert it into a DnD-focused world and engine and expect it to go over well. Especially since some of the things that obviously did make it over are also the most harshly criticized parts of DOS to begin with (the toilet chain system for instance, the idea of the origin system, and the fears that we'll end up with all of our inactive party members dead at the end of act 1 like what happened in DOS2, though it looks more and more like Larian has reversed course on the latter since none of the datamining is showing any hint that it is even on the table anymore).

Beyond that, it's still a great game for what it is, even if the balancing becomes questionable about halfway into the game.

I actually like the DOS2 party members. My issue with them is that there's literally no party banter between them at all (you will not see party members talking to each other at all, they only really talk to the designated player character. They will only comment as a group and tell you what they would personally do before you make a major choice). Because of their overall lack of interaction between each other, it's a contributing factor as to why they mostly come off as selfish murderhobos as the game goes on, as they don't really get much opportunity to showcase any sort of depth.

BG3 isn't quite that much better yet, but my standards in this department are also admittedly very high, almost unrealistically so, with how lively WotR's cast of party members are. At face value, WotR's characters aren't that much different from Larian's characters, the primary difference is their party banter gives them numerous opportunities to show true depth. It's probably the only game I've ever played where one can make a convincing argument that the entire cast of party members should be judged as a complete package, instead of on an individual level.

This...this right here, is one of my biggest hangups. I love party banter and convos. I desperately want the BG3 characters to interact more and share their opinions together as a party, not just one v one with the MC. Some scenes make sense as one v one but some should definitely be party interaction. One thing that makes D&D what it is has to do with party members getting closer, becoming friends as one cohesive unit.

I'm not sure there is such a big difference.
While exploring, companions in BG3 talk to each other very often, unlike WotR.
It's hard for me to consider saying literally one sentence as a conversation, as is the case in WotR, especially since many of these "conversations" are written so that they could fit more than one person.
What WotR does better is that the companions join the conversation. Only here are two things to consider.
First of all, considering the whole game is a bit unfair.
We only have less than 1/3 of the game.
Secondly, full voice acting is quite expensive so of course there will also be a more limited number of combinations.
It would be nice if companions joined conversations more often (it's much better than it was at the beginning of EA), but you shouldn't have unrealistic expectations.

Jesus people complaing about the game having too many mythical stuff, have you seen the crazy shit you do in WOTR!??????

I can't even take some of the complaints seriously. It's constant throughout multiple threads, as if any excuse stands as a reason to swoop in and make some snide comment about Larian.

Feels more like the bitterness of a jilted lover than actual feedback.

This is where you're mistaken. We just want the game to be better. It's not complaining. It's constructive feedback.

I wouldn't 2ven be out here if I didn't love this game. I wouldn't say anything or post anything if what I posted was just complaining.

So, when I suggest that they make monsters with proper D and D stats, it's because I think it would make the game better. People who don't know D&D don't know what they're missing because they don't get to truly experience what D&D is really like because SO many things are homebrewed and genuine D&D is lost.

Example: Rogues. My gosh! The rogue is so stripped of their genuine abilities. It's like, what's the point of being a rogue at all?

I'm not talking about you.

I might not agree with all of your ideas, but I accept that you love this game as much as I do.

ETA: now go look at the Lenore thread! I'm curious what you think about my suggestion there.

It's not comparable. I participated in WotR alpha and beta too. If the current state of BG3 is 1/3rd of the game, then WotR up to the end of chapter 2 is basically 1/3rd of the game there as well. By the time you get to the end of chapter 2 of WotR, you already have a very clear idea on how most of the party members feel about each other, and they've all interjected in conversations numerous times. BG3's companions can talk while exploring, but I can't recall a single one that didn't go beyond mildly generic quip about where they're from or what they do, nor do I really learn anything meaningful about the characters involved. With one exception, the heavily scripted one near the ruined town involving Wyll contacting Mizora. WotR's equivalent of exploratory banter would probably be the campfire convos, a good chunk of them being voiced.

I think the point I'm trying to make here is that the primary difference is that most of WotR's companion convos lean greatly into their personalities, sometimes showing a level of thoughtfulness towards each other, instead of somehow looping back to their personal plots or backstories. Because you should already know enough about the latter from meeting them, talking to them privately, or from their personal quests.

A couple examples.

Regill and Greybor: https://old.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder..._would_you_call_a_bromance_but_based_on/

Nenio and Seelah: https://old.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_Kingmaker/comments/q6fggc/thanks_nenio_very_nice/

Camellia and Ember: https://old.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_Kingmaker/comments/qzfmdw/camellias_kinda_right_here/

Daeran and Regill: https://old.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_Kingmaker/comments/qbwqlx/daeran_is_just_so_thoughtful/

Stuff like this is a subtle way of livening up not only each other's personalities, but the setting they're a part of. While BG3's companions still feel rather self-contained.

There's really no reason to believe that BG3's companions can't reach that level of interactivity or complexity. Maybe you're right that this is an unrealistic expectation. Doesn't mean that there still isn't work to do in this department, especially considering we only have 5 companions right now.

Looping back to what I said about DOS2 before, there was a huge amount of missed opportunities with the companion cast in that game. Sebille and the Red Prince had brief animosity towards each other at Fort Joy, but it gets immediately dropped and never brought up again after the first step of their personal quests. One would think Red Prince would have something to say upon Sebille remembering that she's basically next in line to become queen of the Elves and royalty just like the Red Prince is. But nope. Ifan doesn't seem to react to this revelation either, despite half of his personal quest dealing with his immense guilt with near genociding the Elves by indirectly gassing their homeland with deathfog long ago. And that's just the things I can think of as it directly relates to their personal arcs.

I really think that BG3's cast is capable of so much more. Quite frankly, going all in on the banter would be the best way to dispel the commonly held notion that they're all rather one-note, in their depth largely consisting of their shrouds of mystery and not much else.

The problem is not 'mythical stuff', the problem is that we are inundated with 'mythical stuff' from the very outset. There is no logical progression.

You can't take the complaints seriously? Why not, is it so hard to imagine that some people have a different opinion to yours? That these people desperately want the game be better and more resemble its illustrious and much beloved predecessors? Gushing hyperbole about this game to Larian is going to achieve precisely nothing, it's constructive critical feedback that does that.

No? But I keep Baldur's Gate3 to early Bioware standards, not Owlcat standards. That said Kingmaker was the worst campaign I played since Neverwinter Nights1, which was also a Bioware game, so maybe I am a bit disingenuous here.

For me, there's an issue that both the BG3 "wayside" banter and the Kingmaker/WotR "campside" banter share: it's between party members only. It doesn't feel like it involves my character at all, it's over my head. BG3 goes a step further and doesn't even involve you or your actions/choices at all, meaning it contributes to the feeling that Tav doesn't actually exist or matter.

I'm a bigger fan of reactions during dialogue, to me they come of as being more including, even if they technically could be reduced to still just being between two party NPCs if you pick them apart. WotR has more of those, but they're not exactly absent from BG3 either, there's for example Gale introducing himself to Shadowheart at the beginning and SH and Laessie often interjects to bicker with each other. They just feel less characterisating than WotR's ones.

When it comes to companion banter and such the game I'd hold up as an example to follow would be DA:O. It has a very strong mix of both "interjection" and "wayside" banter, the latter which will be partly shaped by your choices and sometimes be them talking about your character too.

I think it would be interesting to see more PC-NPC-NPC dialogues though. Something to make you feel more like a group and like your own character has a presence.

+1 to all of this. More party interactions, with the PC + multiple NPCs, would go a long way toward making BG3 feel like a Group of Adventurers.

I can understand your point. I'm playing DDO - and I *love* it because of its Ebberron setting ! But it also has a few trips into the Forgotten Realms available - and, indeeed, the tne there is much different.

The Forgotten Realms are vast, though, and I have learned that travel through theplanes is in principle possible, so I'm not that much surprised.

However, I fear that younger player generations are just trained towards a particular play style with modern games, and that this might come through in games like a watermark.
Modern games have mostly emphasis on 1 thing : On excitement and thus on adrenaline. If you look at which games sell most, you can clearly see what's common these days.




And, besides, I see no difference in the look between a beholder and a spectator.

i'm late to the club. +1 to original poster. can't said it better myself

I love BG3, but you make a good point, and I have heard friends make the exact same criticism. The game doesn't start from a particularly grounded perspective and it throws you into an extreme and rather obscure end of the D&D mythos despite you being level 1. Its difficult to reconcile that with how Bg1 starts with you fleeing your home of Candlekeep under mysterious circumstances and then you have a more or less open world to explore.

Does that make it not a Baldur's Gate game? I don't think so, but this is a subjective thing.

And anyway, the platform is the main thing that matters to me - it is my hope that other people will write adventures that have a more grounded jumping off point in the traditional style that can be played multiplayer with friends.

Ok, I made an account on here just to vent my frustration. I think I heard about BG3 coming out in late 2022 - I was super extremely excited. I am pushing 40 and do not have the time or interest to play many games these days
anymore but having spent most of my teenage years / early 20s GMing various D&D plus having absolutely LOVED BG1 (especially) and 2 ( to a lesser extent)... Color me excited.
Fast forward to last week I buy the early access, thinking I would just dabble around in Act 1 til August 3rd.... I am ready to stop playing after about 4 hours and uninstall.

Mindflayers ? The rogue dude seems to be a vampire ? They sent a bunch of level 3 characters to rescue some arch druid from a bunch of goblins (how did that happen exactly ? And what is my party supposed to do
that the arch druid could not himself ??? )I see a fricking red dragon through the telescope on top of the Druids Cave ?????

What exactly would have been wrong with taking the (granted, completely absurd and way over the top) prologue but then turning it into a "normal" BG game ? The mindlayer ship crashes on the beach, you get blown out, you look for other survivors.... And then I would much rather fight 2-3 goblins, or maybe some giant spider, an orc, a wolf .... Is this really what "the casuals" want ? Red dragons, mind flayers, flesh golems and so on ?


I thought this would be the game of the year for me. I am honestly very sad to see they turned it into this clown fiesta.

Hi.

I'm pushing beyond forty, but I do have that time. Other than that, my introduction is roughly the same.

Yeah, it's all a bit much.

But I love it anyway.

You don’t fight the mind flayer or the red dragon. The Archdruid was overwhelmed by an entire fortress worth of goblins, ogres, hobgoblins, bugbears, and drow. You don’t fight them all at once; you either talk or sneak your way in and do it one by one intelligently. Like maybe going after their leaders. Or freeing the Druid to help you. Maybe play the game to find out how you do what he could not.

That particular thing is called "foreshadowing."

I guess this is the "constructive criticism" another poster mentioned above.

To reply to the title of the thread, what exactly is a "Baldur's Gate game?" Does it have to have Gorion's Ward in it or something?

"a bit much " ? What is supposed to happen in acts 2-4 ? Do we fight actual gods in the last act, having left behind measly mindflayers, dragons, beholders and so on ?
What would be wrong with a bit of an excitement curve ? Why not slowly ease us into it ?

I know nothing I type on here will change anything about the game, they already have my money and if there are people who enjoy BG3 - good for them.
I can only repeat how disappointed I am.

Sure, "escaping from mind flayers" is a bit over the top in terms of how to start a campaign, and not something I would do in a PnP game, but after that, we do "slowly ease into it."

I think you're missing something here. Yes, you *see* mindflayers, dragons etc; but you're not fighting them. You're fighting goblins and spiders and so.

Yes. Really happy with how it turned out

There are 3 Acts.

Look, I get that nothing anyone says will get you to slow your roll but maybe just consider taking a deep cleansing breathe, go for a long walk with your doggo, and maybe center yourself with some Yoga and then come back and play the game once it releases and - then - judge.

I mean I'll probably be too busy playing the game to read it, but still...somebody will.

I like the way you think.

You don't fight the Mindflayer or the dragon, that might come later. Your enemies are mostly goblins, hostile wildlife and later on some bosses, a hag among them. Nothing too over the top. The harder enemies come later, when you are at the end of EA and levelled up, but dragons and Mindflayer are not among them.

..Which is fair. Pretty much every RPG out there introduces you to the primary antagonist[s] in the tutorial section.

Sarevok in Candlekeep, Irenicus in his Dungeon, Alduin in Helgen, Shaun in Sanctuary Hills, Whatshisdemonface in ThatPathfinderTown, Buchanan in Colorado Springs, ThatSoulstealingdude in Pillars of Eternity...

Colorado Springs hour from my front door. Nice

I like that we are instantly thrust into a world with real danger we can learn to navigate to stay alive. I would hate a game that started in a beginner region where nothing can really hurt you. There should be threats and encounters that show you you are weak and not yet ready.

And realistically I think this opening (an escaped prisoner freed during a 3rd party attack on our captor) is virtually the same as BG2, so claiming it isn't in line with the franchise seems dubious. Are you really saying you want LESS Dragons in your Dungeon and Dragons?