Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Not BG4 or D&D

Am I disappointed that there will be no DLC or BG4? Absolutely.

Is it the end of all days? Of course not, because the modding support will probably lead to a "Big World Project - BG3" and I'm already looking forward to that

Well, well, well.
After six or seven months of fantasising what they want from future DLCs the very same people are now saying they understand Larian not wanting to do any DLCs and are looking forward to what Larian's future output maybe.
Similarly, none of this is down to Larian, it's all down to WotC or Hasbro or somebody - anybody but the Larian clown show.

Personally I'm glad Larian are moving away from DnD. Also I'm wondering where this leaves Larian's statements vis-a-vis modding and modding tools, etc. Or upgrades to this forum for that matter.

My prediction for Larian's next game - some dumbed-down rubbish aimed primarily at the US yoof market because that is where the money is.

I am not quite seeing your point.

I am sure maintaining Early Access is a big commitment, but whenever it is worth it, or not is really up to Larian. Without EA they could withhold from recording VO so early on, but it seems they have created a pipeline that supports that kind of investment.

I also disagree about feedback. Larian has been responding to feedback - throughout EA and up to 1.0 and after release. They didn't change the game they are making, simply because some playerbase didn't like what they were going on, but they did address criticisms that they found valid. Early Access is a testing ground, not a design committee. EA is not the for players to submit their design ideas, it is for devs to see how players interact with the game they are building. Not quite EA but here is TIm Cain talking about his love/hate relationship with focus testing.

I am mostly surprised you thought Early Access wasn't beneficial. In both of their titles I played (D:OS2, BG3) I thought the opening chapter, which was extensively tested throughout EA period has been the best, most polished and robust part of the title by a large margin. Would BG3 be really better, if whole of the game was as messy as act2&3?

Now, that there is sizable gap in quiality in IMO a concern in itself. It seems like Larian has tendency to overscope to start with, and is unable to keep up with the standard they set at the start of their titles. To me it is not great, and I find all three of their recent RPGs to be disappointing - and they are disappointing mainly due to the expectations they set up for themselves. I have no clue what they should do, or if there is a problem to begin with. Complex RPG as simply difficult to test, and testing part of it, and spending time fixing the rest post release, seems like a fairly decent way of doing it. It seems like a happy medium between releasing whole game in Early Access, and releasing game with only internal testing, and than fixing the whole thing post release.

I think you meant Broken Roads, and yes I have that game on my Steam wishlist. Also New Arc Line.

I'm okay giving a TB game a try if it checks off most of my other major preferences (story-rich, strong character development, great world-building, extensive dialogue trees/good writing, choices with meaningful consequences, noncombat paths to resolve encounters and quests, NOT first person perspective, party-based, single-player). But I'm angry with Owlcat over Rogue Trader for not including the RTwP option the same way they included the TB option in the Pathfinder games. Feels deliberately discriminatory to me personally since I was one of the first people to back the first Pathfinder game, backed the second one too, and bought all the DLCs.

Yeah I feel you, but to be honest I don't see how Rogue Trader would work in RTwP. It would have to be designed in a complete different way. It's usually not that simple to just pług a parallel combat system, so it could work flawlessly. And I really doubt they haven't included it only to make you and players like you unhappy.

And yeah, I meant Broken Roads, sorry.

I have no words about how much the turn-based combat in Pathfinder (and in PoE II) sucks. It was so horrible that it even made me, a TB lover and a rtwp hater, to change to rtwp after a while, before I drop the game altogether of course. You can't have both systems in the same game and I can't imagine how Rogue Trader could have a rtwp option that would be playable.

I'm disappointed they will not add DLC or pursue more DnD. For one, I think they created one hell of a game. Some things I would have liked changed a bit but all in, I think the attention to detail, the weaving of the story with multiple outcomes, dialogs and options so deeply woven into the game is second to none.

With that said I do hope another quality team picks up more DnD games with the same depth and story-telling and perhaps one that takes you all the way to 20th level. Would love to see something like owlcat did wiht kingmaker and having / building a base too.

But..

If Larian do a new IP who would like to see their take on a game similar to XCOM (if not take on the XCOM IP directly) but with their deep story-telling, and depth of game on a similar scale? Finding a way to mix procedural in for some replayability?

BG3 has set a high bar when it comes to voice acting and cinematics. And art design, in general. I mean, just look at how great the characters look compared to something like Starfield.

Until another crpg by any developer can match or exceed what Larian has done in this regard, I'm not interested.

When it comes to comparisons to Starfield, anything is a high bar...

A more accurate comparison to good games would be things like the latest FFVII, Dragon's Dogma 2, Elden Ring etc.

Yeah. Me. As I wrote a bit earlier in this thread, I think Larian moving towards XCOM style would be terrific.
Apart from the things I mentioned, one thing that always bugs me is the gradual deflation of excitement of a traditional RPG game, where the first part of the game is a thrilling experience, with much unexplored terrain to cover, and the quest pile getting bigger and bigger. Then at the end the game always peters out. Less and less quests remain open. There is nothing more to do but defeat the end boss, in a final fight that is kind of predictable. It is a long and sad goodbye to a world you've grown to love some. I think it is better to have a game where the tension keeps on rising until the very end. A mission based game could be more gripping than a game based on quests.

The cinematics, the lively characters, the motion capture and voice acting all are very good in BG3 and they could be compellingly paired with permadeath of team members. A mitigating circumstance is that the better your companions get, the less likely will be their death. And the option of romance could really improve your emotional attachment to squad mates, companions that have a real chance of dying. Larian have plenty of room for improving on romantic relationships in their games, and making them integral to the gaming experience. Maybe that will go better if they abandon the sex scenes, which don't do much for story development.

They seem to listen rather selectively, mostly commiting to enabling what is essentially a bug (the whole Minthara debacle) and making less and less content exclusive, practically killing replayability. Why even bother with the Absolute's route if you can get Minthara anyway? It's simply a "wrong" choice that you are punished for, rather than a road for an alternate narrative.

People have also been asking for dice rolls for abilities since Day 1, and for at least the full roster of basic combat actions to be implemented, and yet we got neither of those. People have been pointing out how Disguise Self shouldn't just let you access the "small" tag for interactions because your physicality doesn't change, only your appearance since it's an illusion spell. People have been complaining how Mage Hand doesn't do what it's intended for, making it pointless for most of the puzzle-solving. People were confused where the fishermen from the nautiloid went. People were annoyed about the grove attack taking place in broad daylight.

Act 1 is nowhere near as "polished" as it should have been, all things considered. It's as awkward and janky as the rest of the game. And as far as their previous titles go, I actually think that it's the midgame that's the strongest in both of them, since that's when they really open up and you have most of your toolkit available. Lategame is a mixed bag, but I enjoyed it in both of them, whereas BG3's was a big slog that made the plot stop dead in its tracks, and it was already severely gimped by the Emperor's reveal.

There is so much truth in this words, I like the game (at least some parts of it) but still I feel people are overhyping it, leading to undeserved story awards. Hot take: If it wasn't for the companions, the game would have been dead two months after release or maybe even on EA.

Nothing is an accurate comparison as there is no other high budget cRPG. The most direct comparisons would be Owlcat's Pathfinder and Pillars of Eternity, but those work on a completely different budget.

FFVII is a lavishly produced game but being a jRPG means little reactivity and player agency - DD2 and ER also quite different games. Though DD2 being very systemic, berhaps there is a thing or two it and Larian games could learn from each other.

BG3 is definitely not the best looking, not a smoothest playing game. But we also haven't seen anything with that kind of production value AND that kind of player agency. BG3 pales in comparison to 8 years old Witcher3, but again, that game is mostly quests with occasional branching and heavily pre-staged cinematics and pre-made protagonists.

Do you even need such production values in the first place if they mostly go towards cinematics, and those aren't all that great in the first place? The direction is often worse than in, say, DA:O, to be honest.

The game's over-reliance on the narrator while it is hell-bent on also showing everything that happens, while also chewing and regurgitating the rather obvious plotline creates a rather jarring dissonance. I will take PoE/Owlcat-like adventure book interactive sequences that make for a better role-playing experience (since I don't have to look at my character grimacing awkwardly or wait for the animations to play out, instead letting imagination do its job, you know, like in tabletop) on any day over BG3's heavily cinematic approach which makes every character practically the same no matter who you're trying to play.

Like, the lady-like swagger from the first scene with Us the devourer looks so freaking goofy on buff bodies and short / stout races. I'd rather have a far-off camera angle or a static pose, please. And if the sheer amount of supposed facial detail and emotion they wanted to showcase is the reason why we didn't get a good character creator, then it kind of failed to deliver on both fronts, especially since it's a rather weak excuse given how, say, Capcom have had both heavily editable faces AND impressive animations in their games which had character creation for a good 3/4 of a decade at this point.

It's kind of interesting reading through this thread, because I see a lot of people going through the same process I did with Larian, years ago.

For me, the conclusion I reached is that Larian is a studio with humongous weaknesses and glaring flaws, many of which, after multiple games, they have not managed to improve on:

1. Does Larian make good combat systems? Debatable. Part of Larian's saving grace, to me, is that they have really fun combat....for a portion of the game. In the early to mid-game, the systems are well-balanced and fights are fun. By the end, in almost every Larian game, combat degrades into being trivial. And yes, almost all RPGs have the problem where combat becomes easier by the endgame, but part of the problem with Larian's very deliberate turn-based format is that the ease of the combat becomes a much bigger problem because all combat takes much longer. (Easy combat in a RTWP system does not hurt the game nearly as much as RTWP in a turn-based combat system.)

I give Larian huge props for having combat that simply feels very fun in that early game. But that's not to say their combat systems are the best in the early game either. People have already mentioned DOS2's armor system. It is fun DESPITE the glaring flaws in the combat.

I will be honest - when I first heard that Larian was making BG3, I wasn't very enthusiastic about it. And I was even LESS enthusiastic when I saw their first cutscene trailer (but I'll talk more about that in a minute.) But I had hoped that Dungeons and Dragon's system - which, to blunt, is far superior to any combat system Larian has ever natively come up with - would actually serve to cover their weakness with combat systems becoming degraded over the course of the game. But it didn't, because Larian, entirely of their own accord, unbalanced the DnD system by introducing wildly unbalanced homebrew rules and handing out artifact-level magical items like candy. It is perhaps one of the most frustrating things I've seen them do in any of their games. I'm not saying that they had to follow the DnD 5e rules exactly, and I'm even willing to overlook some unbalanced stuff in the name of fun (like the pushing.) But a huge reason why combat becomes so trivial, a huge reason why the game begins relying on combat gimmicks in combat as early as act 2, is because Larian very thoughtlessly implemented ridiculously unbalanced changes to the system. And what has been worse about it has been watching people blame DnD for it. Because no, DnD is not the problem here. This is 100 percent Larian's own self-inflicted wound.

2. Does Larian make good worlds to interact with? Again, debatable. In the parts of their game that actually feel polished, like act 1 in BG3 or act 1 and 2 in DOS2, the world feels fun to interact with, and you can appreciate the effort that went into implementing multiple approaches to a problem. But much like the combat, it clearly degrades and falls apart by the end game.

3. Does Larian have good plot writing...? Bluntly, no. Hard no. I have never played a Larian game where I've been enthralled by the plot. And in fact I would say BG3 is probably one of their weaker plots. This is part of why I found the initial cutscene they released for BG3 so troubling. It had all the hallmarks of Larian writing. If there's one word I could use to summarize Larian's flaws, it's that they are "immature." Like, in combat, they can't seem to have the restraint to build fun effects that are still balanced; they have to give you ridiculously OP powers, and ridiculously OP items, because you get a short dopamine boost from using them the first couple of times. But then you end up frustrated because those OP things end up ruining combat by making it have zero challenge. And likewise, with the plot, they don't seem to be willing to do the work to draw people into the world on the strength of intrigue. It's immediately WHOOOOOAAA YOU'RE ON AN ALIEN SHIP AND THEN WHOOOOOA DRAGONS ATTACK AND THEN WHOOOOOOOAAA NOW YOU'RE IN HELL!!! And this continues into Act 1: You have archdemons casually teleporting onto a beach to talk with you at like, level 2. Their other games had a similar problem.

And also, they cannot seem to stop themselves from using modern anachronisms in what is supposed to be a fantasy world? I mean, I'm not super strict about this. The original Baldur's Gate games had a bunch of in-game gags referencing modern things (including items that were tongue-in-cheek references to the Blair Witch Project.) But it feels a bit different when it's a 'wink wink nudge nudge hey it's a joke' reference, vs when characters are using clearly modern terminology and there's no joke or reference, they're just.....written that way.

4. Does Larian have good character writing...? I know a lot of people say they enjoy the characters in BG3, and I do agree they're the most appealing characters in any Larian game to date, but the thing is....I don't know if that's actually down to Larian's writing. Like, I don't actually think their character writing improved at all. I think it's simply down to the fact that they gave the characters expressive, animated faces and fantastic voice actors. I've said it before, but I think I'd hate Gale's guts and find him super obnoxious if it wasn't for his VA and his expressive character - now I just sort of find him a lovable scamp. Maybe this is more of a criticism of the rest of the people in this space....they've relied on static paper dolls for a long time and it really handicaps them.

To be honest, I have very, very mixed feelings about Larian, and very, very mixed feelings about BG3. I mean, BG1 and BG2 are basically the grandfathers of WRPGs. Tons of games, even if not in the same format or similar setting, can trace their lineage back to BG. And Larian's strength has always been in making a very charming early-game, especially for people who are unfamiliar with them and their flaws. So the combination of Larian's early game charm and the number of people being introduced to them because of the popularity and legacy of the Baldur's Gate name led to an explosion in popularity. But that being said....I sort of wish Larian really just cashed in on the name, and didn't connect their game or story to the previous Baldur's Gate games at all. To me, all the flaws, all the disappointments in BG3 are absolute repeats of disappointments in previous Larian games; for that reason alone I don't buy into the idea that they can be blamed on other actors like WoTC and Hasbro. You don't need any explanation other than "Larian is a humongously flawed gaming studio."

I'm glad that they aren't making another DnD game. I don't think they treated the system very well; in fact they sort of seemed to have a bit of contempt for it. And if they move in a science-fiction direction, I actually think that would be great. I think the quirks of their writing would feel more at home in a sort of lighter-hearted scifi setting than they do in any fantasy setting. However, I am very, very skeptical of the idea that the new game would be "of even greater scope" than BG3. As far as I am concerned, Larian has literally never, not once, properly met the 'scope' of any of the games they've made. It sounds like more Larian "immaturity" to me, like another project where they'll inevitably burn out and have a crappy second half of the game because they didn't have a realistic vision to begin with. BG3 is the last game of theirs I will ever buy on release; in the future, I don't care how much people are singing their praises, I will wait until they release a DE. What I would want to see from them, more than anything, is a game where it feels like the passion they had for the first half still existed in the second half; or at the very least, a game where the quality did not crash so dramatically in the second half.

I enjoyed the swagger, which I read more as cat-like, but of course that scene is etched into my brain now too. On my hot avatars like Generica D'Tav the High Elf Barbarian or Tav'itha the Githyanki sorceress it played pretty well. Din the Durge pulled it off too. Six Middling the Halfling not so much, where it could only ever make me laugh. I did think though, in each instance trying to save Us, that if this was a thing that I had somehow selected, as a gestural/emotive trope that was being expressed in the cinematic, then that is sorta exactly what I want from a cRPG sim of this sort. There are tons of little moments like that throughout the game and among the various characters, especially the bit characters who are most memorable. It's definitely more step into the role than role invention though.

I feel like there is a lot of player agency in the approach to encounters and how a given combat might play out, but the main character isn't really a D&D player character the way I tend to think of that, or at least not in the way that I really wanted to see. We can't make a custom character with anything like the depth of their origin companion characters. To me that would be a big thing worthy of doing, somehow getting the custom Tav to be at that level, but then dude up and said they weren't a tool making company. Kind of a buzzkill honestly, cause that's the exact thing I want from a D&D cRPG, that exact sort of tool, specifically.

It's tough. I really wanted a full Expansion and a BG4, probably for weird reasons of a sense of symmetry on my part that doesn't truly matter, but still, it's what I wanted. That BG3 would get a BG4, the same way BG1 got a BG2, created by the same people. Seemed like all the groundwork was laid and then now they have this massive audience all primed for it.

I get that desire to only make big things even if it does sound kinda megalomaniacal, but they legit just did that, so I kinda thought it would go "big" in the other way. You know, bigger but simultaneously more intimate, where we might get something along the lines of the BG2 stronghold quests but in BG3. Sorta more intimate and oriented on things like Class or Background and more stuff for the custom Tav. I expected any big news to be like a trailer for the expansion. Something to get another hook in, like these did...


But then I at every point along the way I also imagined them way further along than they apparently were, so I don't know. I thought it'd already have been the oven like 6 months by now, and that maybe I'd get a teaser trailer with a party of 6 or something. So a bigger party, but more intimate campaign adventure, perhaps camp in-world. Things of that sort.

For now it just sorta took the wind out the sails a bit. Clearly there's not going to be any return to werewolf island with Shadowheart in tow. As a result my desire to dive back in on it just fell off a cliff into some kind of chasm, least for the moment. I'm sure I'll return to it periodically the same way I would return to BG1 every year or so. I think it will strike a similarly nostalgic chord for me, and this whole experience did clue me in to some of my own sentimentality on this score, but yeah I'm torn. I wanted them to call it on the Full Release so they could wrap that disc and ship it, focus on the next big campaign, but I didn't want that to also mean no Expansion or no BG4 lol. Damn, this is going to be a hard one to move on from. DD2 is alright, but it's not scratching the same itch really. Just a very different sort of gameplay vibe. I think I'm a sucker for FR too, even though it's probably the silliest of all possible settings hehe. Maybe somehow it gets picked up again, who can say, but if the length of the last intermission was any indication I'll be holding my breath till the 2040s and like D&D 10th Edition? Like damn, last time it took forever and a day just to get to from 2 to 3. The distance from 3 to 4 now seems unfathomably far off, cause I can't imagine who else could step up and pull it off, and I don't trust wizards any farther than I could throw them with a strength potion. Guess we'll have to see. As it stands even the boards are feeling like a concert encore after the lights have already been turned on. Light I'll be holding the lighter up totally pointlessly lol

I mean, the original post I was responding to wasn't strictly about CRPG's, nor did it talk about actual gameplay. It merely talked about VA, cinematics and art design. Then compared to Starfield of all things (Which is meme worthy with how horrible its characters are)


Player agency has little to do with things.

There are plenty of good character creators that also look very good - Things like Dragon's Dogma 2, Soul Caliber 6, Black Desert Online, Monster Hunter.

Also "Pre-staged cinematics"? As if BG3 isn't literally full of pre-staged cinematics... You don't get height options in CC because of all the pre-staged cinematics.

Meanwhile, BG3 also lacks things such as VA for player characters (Something Solasta has), dynamic conversations (Most dialogues are Bethesda-esk standing still and make faces at each other) and actual character creation that isn't just choosing a preset head and hair (At least you get a portrait of your actual character unlike most other CRPG's that make you pick some random png that often has little to do with what you can actually choose for customization options)...

All BG3 has going for it in terms of art quality... Is it's a CRPG that isn't using the classic isometric viewpoint. Thus, making character models more prominent as you are closer to them so can actually see detail. Then what few model options exist are well executed (If somewhat repetitive... How many NPC's have the exact same scar as Shadowheart...)

I reject your notion that it's not "all that great in the first place."

It's exceptionally well done. You can certainly cherry pick the occasional buggy moment, but overall, it's the result of real skill and effort. The success of BG3 speaks for itself, and it's shallow to reduce that success to nothing more than "bear sex." The game succeeded because of the cinematics, the voice acting, and the excellent character writing. Yes, excellent. Those characters came alive for so many people. That doesn't happen with hack writers.

It's fair if it's not to your taste. I think it's remarkably well done. You don't. Let's just call it a no-brainer.


Yes, it was. The part of the post that you didn't quote said:

Eh, it's a difficult balance. I mean, personally, for now I am still against cinematics in cRPGs, in the same way as I would rather have silent protagonist, over bland, non-discripts PC voice as an attempt to be both fully voiced, and allow players to roleplay. For me personally, the "RPGs" that worked with cinematics are those that also greatly limited who our PC is (Mass Effect, Witcher3). For a game like BG3 to work, they would need to come up with a dynamic cinematic system that would adjust to my roleplaying choices and shifting power dynamics between actors, and I am just not sure how it could be done.

As to comparison to DA:O. I thought DA:O was very uneven. It had some great cinematics, mostly in early game, but for majority of the playtime, it was both farily limited, and not very good. But I do think, that at least at times, DA:O achieved competency (in both non-interactive cutscenes, like intro or battle scenes, and some mildly interactive sequences like meeting King Cailan) that BG3 was never able to get close to. Still, I think DA:O was only good, when PC wasn't an active participant, and anything with PC was pretty bad. I thought BG3 pulled of interactive, cinematic dialogue much better, as misguided as the core concept is in my opinion.

I must say that that Bioware titles from that era (Mass Effect1&2, Dragon Age1) were particulalry well done in cinematic sense - something Bioware didn't managed to do before or after. I do wonder if there was a particular person, or a group of persons thanks to whom cinematics in those games didn't suck.

@WizardGnome I overall agree with what you have written. Couple thoughts of mine:


Does any RPG have a good combat system? I think flexibility and player choice that is core to RPGs, goes against what I would consider a "good combat system" that would need to be tighter and more balanced.

However, like yourself I was looking forward to Larian doing a D&D as I thought them using 5e would result in flat out better combat experience. What they decided to do, is still beyond my ability to comprehend.

As such, I would rather see them pursuing their own game systems. D:OS combat has a lot of good ideas, and a lot of potential, but it needs to mature. D:OS2 armor system was abhorrent, making a lot of D:OS interesting aspects irrelevant, but in D:OSs Larian did a lot of things differently and I think it is worth exploring. After BG3 though, I am more worried Larian isn't interesting in creating a strong core gameplay loop, rather than them not being able to.



As I see it, I don't think Larian figure out how to combine effectively different things they build. I don't think BG3 (and D:OS2) narrative design interacts well with the systemic side of the game. It tends to lean toward two outcomes:
1) you can do whatever you want and it doesn't matter
2) We have created a narrative, and you are free to discard it, but if you want narrative experience you will do what we want you to do. Otherwise have a less rich experience.

I just don't think narrative and interactivity support each other well. On a flip side, BG3 does have some great bits - killing goblin leaders is a very neat, open ended quest, that can be completed in multiple ways, and be satisfying on both narrative and emergent gameplay side. I think Larian needs to take a good look at stuff they created as well as Arcane and Tim Cains works, and figure out how they can create a narratively compelling scenario that will encourage and reward use of emergent gameplay without clashing with the narrative.

BG3 did feel like they tried to combine more scripted and linear Bioware style game, with their own systemic sandbox as those were quite often at odds with each other.