Larian Banner: Baldur's Gate Patch 9
Previous Thread
Next Thread
Print Thread
Joined: Jun 2019
stranger
OP Offline
stranger
Joined: Jun 2019
I'm afraid I'll be going on a bit of a rant here, and SPOILER warnings for the Baldur's Gate games, Neverwinter Nights games, Pillars of Eternity, and Divinity Original Sin.

This will kind of be pointless if there won't be any dragon encounters in Baldur's Gate 3, and I have mixed feelings about whether I look forward to their inclusion or dread it. In the aforementioned games I mentioned in spoilers, I feel like its been a mixed bag, however I do feel like the dragon encounters in Baldur's gate 2, overall, treated with the appropriate amount of respect and reverence from both the player and the developer's.

So basically what I'm hoping for, is if there are going to be dragon encounters in Baldur's Gate 3, I'm hoping that we will be able to save at least one dragon's life. It might sound simple, but none of the games I've mentioned really let you do that, even though at times there are clearly "good" and "evil" dragons and you can do some favours for the "good" ones, the quests of which I found very memorable, the most being in Baldur's Gate 2 and NWN 2. Or in an indirect sense, give you enough role playing freedom to not force you to kill dragons whenever you find them and find a way to always avoid a fight and/or death of a dragon, even if said fight is practical.

With Original sin there are basically two dragon encounters, one incredibly disappointing, but the other pretty cool and I was glad for the inclusion. The first is... the two "dragon" skeletons you find in black cove. I found this inclusion incredibly disappointing, and in hindsight unnecessary, as my first time through that area I was looking forward to finding these dragons possibly trapped down there. How did they get there? Where did they come from? How did they get trapped here? And why the hell can't they just blast their way out through the pirate skeletons, being dragons and all? Unfortunately I didn't get any answers as they were just skeletons. Apparently losing to a level 8 mutated spider. This was so ridiculous that it almost feels like a joke. Suffice to say, this did not feel like the "dragons" got the respect or attention they should have here, and it would have been better if they had just not bothered to include them here at all. I suspect that Larian might have had more plans here but had to cut them due to time or budget reasons. Thankfully the Void dragon was a really cool and challenging boss that I did like for its inclusion.

A lesson I really hope Larian takes from the next example is how NOT to include dragons. Pillars of eternity admittedly was balanced and fair in its approach overall, however one encounter was particularly egregious that made me swear off all games in the series from that point.
In a nutshell, you get a quest from a temple priestess to find some kind of sacred rock important to the church. Pursuing the quest, you find yourself going into a cave, and slaughtering your way through drakes to get there (which according to its own lore drakes are supposed to be solitary...) and I felt dread creep into my stomach as I saw the red lit cave. Sure enough, there's a big red drake in there guarding treasure, probably including the rock. And you're forced to fight it, the dialogue being completely pointless as you have no other options to perhaps sneak or persuade or anything. Once the drake is dead, you get the rock. Not one of your companions even calls you out on doing something like invading a drake's territory and slaughtering scores of them just for a stupid rock, the game pretending like slaughtering them in this manner is just another Tuesday stroll. I felt both furious and disgusted with this outcome, as I'm supposed to be a diplomatic paladin who avoids killing where possible, and this is generally the kind of character I role play anyway. After finding out that there really was no other way to finish the quest, I had to load and go back and murder the priestess who gave me the quest to complete it in a way that I could accept. I can't tell the priestess that a dragon is guarding the rock and to get further information on how to proceed. If she had said she doesn't care; kill it, I would have felt like murdering her would have been within my character's character. However there is no such dialogue option. This supposed RPG forced a noble paladin character to murder a peaceful priestess in cold blood, because the developers couldn't foresee that a diplomatic character would want to use diplomacy to save an enemy/dragon's life.
The second example I'll mention is far better, but still rubs me the wrong way. The scenario is that a sky dragon invaded a rooftop temple or something and killed a few people while the rest were forced to flee. They ask you to go back and get rid of it. At least you can talk to the dragon this time, and you can try and convince her to leave, fight her, or just leave her be. Since I cared far more about her life than the temple, I let her be. Except... she just lets me go. No persuade checks, no suspicion from her even though she was hostile to humans before, to the point it felt like a copout. And the developers treated it like a copout too, as there is an achievement that involves killing her (and her baby) but no achievement for not doing so. Because sparing her is so easy a Level 1 character could have done it. In essence, I felt like I was being mocked by choosing this path, like killing her is the "real" path that I should have chosen regardless of my moral response to the situation.

So Pillars of Eternity's problem was that it was too restrictive in your responses, and the game in general suffered from this. In contrast, Baldur's Gate 2 was the best game in my opinion for role playing and dragon inclusion, and that's one of the reasons why Baldur's gate 2 is one of my favourite RPGs of all time.
The most memorable encounter with a dragon was the Silver dragoness Adalon (I think her name was) who tasks you with rescuing her eggs from the nearby drow city. Your character can actually respond with a lot of respect and reverence to her as well as being invested in the quest she gives you, and I was invested in it as well. I don't need to say much here, since saving some dragon eggs is easily an objective I can get emotionally invested in. I'd say this is an example of a dragon encounter done right. However, and I'm hoping BG 3 can take note from this, but this could have been even better. In the drow city you can talk to a man who describes Adalon having a mate who ended up being capture and killed, who is obviously the father of the eggs. Sad, but Adalon doesn't confirm this, understandably. But that got me thinking... why did we have to arrive after her mate is already dead? Why couldn't we be tasked with rescuing him instead of the eggs that came after? It wouldn't have been hard to implement, since he could have been in human form in some magical prison that we could free him from. It would have been nice to see how he would have reacted to you rescuing him and how he reacts to Adalon since we pretty much never see a mated dragon pair where both are alive and in the same room/cave etc.
I also liked the encounter with the red dragon Fikraag. He obviously set up as an antagonists and killed innocent mercenaries in the past, and shows no remorse or regret and is pretty much a huge asshole. And he has a sword that most paladins would definitely want for gameplay purposes. Yet when you find him he has the intelligence not to immediately fight you and let you go for pragmatic reasons, but you can come back later in a phrased challenge. My point here is, with evil dragons, don't make them stupid about it.
Otherwise, pretty much every dragon you're not forced to fight or kill, except where killing them is justified in the context and story. Compare this to the red drake in Pillars of Eternity, whose death was not justified at all. The game even lets you spare a jerkass black dragon at the end by letting you give up all your equipped items and he leaves! I really appreciated this as I don't think many developers would have the foresight to think a player would go to such a length to spare a dragon's life, especially one that's supposed to be evil. I did choose this but obviously worked around it by removing my items before talking to him. It was an incredibly nonsensical response, but the game let me do it, and I loved if for that.

I would say Pillars of Eternity and Baldur's gate 2 have the worst and best encounters with dragons respectively, especially from a role playing perspective. But I wanted to mention some other examples, as my point here is that no matter how well the encounters are done, you can never save a dragon's life, and even if you help a dragon another dragon dies or is already dead in the process which I would rather have lived.
In Neverwinter Nights, you find a gold dragoness called Gorgotha tasks you with finding her eggs which have been stolen by the resident asshole red dragon. Similarly another green dragon tasks you with the same, except she's a bit more of a bitch, but whatever, I'm helping dragons. Obviously, the red dragon, and possibly another relatively innocent blue dragon, end up dead in the process of rescuing the eggs. I guess this couldn't have been improved much, but I would have preferred the red dragon have not been a dragon or at least make his motivations understandable and fleshed out instead of being a stereotypical stupid evil dragon. I have some issues with the whole "good" and "evil" dragon thing, but that's a topic for another time...
In Neverwinter Nights 2, another memorable quest was helping a white dragon called Nolaloth be free of his curse. However... Nolaloth is already dead, effectively, and you can't save him apart from mercy killing him. And you also have to kill two black dragons to do so. I did appreciate the fact that your character can express the desire to save him despite it being impossible, and being reluctant in fighting the black dragons. However, like Adalon... why did Nolaloth have to be dead? Why couldn't he have just been freed from a binding curse and was allowed to fly free after?

So, to wrap it up, in all the games and examples I've mentioned, you can at best do a good dragon a favour, but you can't "really" help them in a meaningful way. Saving dragon eggs is nice and all but they're not the most talkative or expressive NPCs you'll run across. Since I really like the dragons as well as the D&D universe I do hope BG 3 gives you as much or more freedom as BG 2 in roleplaying, not just with dragons, but for characters/NPCs in general. So I would REALLY appreciate it, Larian, if we get the opportunity to unambiguously save a dragon's life. Just one would be enough. Alternatively, don't include dragons at all if you're not willing to put the effort in, as in my Original Sin example the first encounter hurt the game since so little effort was put in. Best case scenario, is that we are granted the role playing freedom that not one dragon has to die during the course of the game, even the evil ones, and a dragon isn't forced to die in the past because we arrived on the scene too late and have no control over that.

Joined: Oct 2017
old hand
Offline
old hand
Joined: Oct 2017
I take it you haven't played PoE2? PoE2 actually does a pretty good job at giving you options to deal with encounters. Encounters in general, not just the major ones. Maybe I ran into two dragons but I can only recall clearly one. I could talk to this one and persuade her(?) to leave, aside from a couple other options.

Last edited by Try2Handing; 28/06/19 12:06 PM.

"We make our choices and take what comes and the rest is void."
Joined: Mar 2013
S
veteran
Offline
veteran
S
Joined: Mar 2013
seems to be a rather specific request.
debating the moraltiy of dragon killing... well its a staple of western fantasy.
In DnD, at least in FR; dragons are pretty much colour coded for morality. if its a chromatic dragon, youare probably better off either running away as fast as you can or shanking it.
Since these guys are bareley capeable of repayign a favor.

For one thing, Dragons are an iconic creature in western mythology so id be surprised if they wouldnt sneak one or two in there. Even OS2 had one.

Joined: May 2019
veteran
Offline
veteran
Joined: May 2019
Yeah PoE is very good with this; I only end up killing one dragon in that game and leave all the others be.

But I agree wholeheartedly with the point of the OP. I've never understood why everything has to be about killing anything we come across. In the tabletop games that I played, which were a great many back in the day, we always at least tried to talk/negotiate.

I think it would be really awesome to be able to talk to a dragon, exchange stories with it, get advice, get some quests, become friends, maybe even become allies. And, I think this would be cool with other awesome monsters as well - like giants for example.

Joined: Jun 2019
addict
Offline
addict
Joined: Jun 2019
I think the BG series so far has missed opportunities with dragons because every dragon you meet is mega-powerful adversary. If you read the books or watch Game of Thrones, you see that dragons come in all ages and have different levels of ability. It is certainly possible to have a dragon encounter even at level 2! A dragon could make a very interesting recurring non-joinable NPC.

Joined: May 2019
veteran
Offline
veteran
Joined: May 2019
Originally Posted by Argyle
I think the BG series so far has missed opportunities with dragons because every dragon you meet is mega-powerful adversary. If you read the books or watch Game of Thrones, you see that dragons come in all ages and have different levels of ability. It is certainly possible to have a dragon encounter even at level 2! A dragon could make a very interesting recurring non-joinable NPC.

I want to meet an ancient gold! I would probably just end up standing there staring at it in awe until I drop dead. smile

Joined: Jun 2019
stranger
OP Offline
stranger
Joined: Jun 2019
Haven't played PoE2, and though it sounds like it improved that aspect that I had complained about in the first game, the memory of that quest just makes me bitter no matter how I look at it. Best for me just to leave that in the past.
Though does the game itself handle choices like that overall better than the first? I can think of a lot of quests in the first game that really annoyed me because it came down to kill one side or the other, no third option available.
@Sordak, that's pretty much how DnD has always been, but throughout all the games and books I've read/played, not one character questions why chromatic dragons tend to be murderous assholes and metallic tend not to be. It's like the whole universe is coded to ignore this. Given the scale of slaughter dragons are capable of, you'd think some metallic dragons would want to actually stop them at the source instead of just minding their own business, especially when they themselves are harmed by the chromatic dragons. And definitely the humans/ other humanoids would want to get to the source of the problem.
And I've never been a fan of creatures being chaotic evil for no reason. It's why I don't like the orcs and goblins in Lord of the Rings but I do like that some are portrayed as more neutral in the Shadow of Mordor.

Joined: Jun 2014
veteran
Offline
veteran
Joined: Jun 2014
- plays Paladin
- murders Priestess
PICK ONE

I take it there was no option to, say, refuse?


Moderated by  Dom_Larian, Freddo, vometia 

Link Copied to Clipboard
Powered by UBB.threads™ PHP Forum Software 7.7.5