Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Some cutscenes shouldn't be as easy to miss

Already posted this on reddit, but I figured, why not throw it out here too? I was planning to pile my feedback in one big review of EA, but I'm lazy I procrastinate I'm busy and don't know when I can get the whole thing out.

It's not really a secret that there's a dichotomy going on with what the game tells you (you could die at any moment) and what the game lets you do (abuse long rest). While long rest's abusability is a whole 'nother problem, what I really want to look at with this post is how to possibly fix the story-gameplay dissonance.

Several cutscenes necessary to progressing companion quests and deepening your relationship with them can only be seen by using long rest. And they don’t pop up all at once. You need to long rest at least twice to hear Raphael’s offer, Gale apparently (I haven't been able to trigger it) has a cutscene that locks you out of his romance if you miss it, and it can take several long rests before you catch Astarion trying to drink your blood. You also need to long rest to trigger the parasite dreams and obtain the super powers you were hoping to tap into when you experimented with the tadpole.

In short, playing the way the game implies you should play actually robs you of the chance to get to know your companions more or progress their questlines, stifles the main quest, and hinders your rise to ultimate power (if you want it).

My suggestion is that these cutscenes should either be implemented in a way that ensures you always see them (especially Raphael’s), or the game should introduce some sort of quest barrier. Something like “the goblins will attack in three days”, and you need to long rest three times to trigger the next stage of the quest. This could also encourage players to explore more, since in this scenario, they have three days of free time, and what better way to spend it than on side quests?

Personally, I favor the second scenario, since I think it’s smoother and, in-universe, would work as a way to lull the party into a false sense of security/make them aware that Something Is Weird about their parasites (though I'm aware there are already a few conversations where they comment on it being strange already). It also gives the player full control of the "time limit", in that it won't run out until they let it, which would hopefully alleviate the stress that usually comes with such things.

Thoughts?

(Also, please let me know how well you think this feedback is constructed--this is my first time actually helping out with EA)

I do agree it's too easy to miss some of these, but you have a lot of misconceptions here. It's justified in-story why you can long rest as much as you want without turning, and almost everything you mentioned here is triggered externally, not by the number of times you have rested. Raphael can trigger on your first long rest if you progress far enough in the story first (I have had him show up on first rest, although I don't know what the exact trigger is). The companion interactions are triggered by your relationship level with them and/or your progress along their plotline. The parasite dream is triggered by overusing the tadpole in dialogue options.

That being said, you can't trigger all of these at once, so you still end up having to rest a dozen times to see them all, and it does seem like some dialogue is missable. I know on my first playthrough I was really hesitant to long rest until I got to the point where it was made clear the tadpole is being suppressed. They either need to make events stack (which would get kind of funky if you can build enough of them up at once) or forcibly have you long rest for certain story/quest milestones to keep the backlog down.

I have this same issue. I don't know what triggers these scenes, but I too assumed it's long rest. I don't rest often when I play. I didn't rest in other BG games until the party were actually falling over from exhaustion. In BG3 the party said they were tired, but there weren't any negative status effects so I figured they could push on awhile. I got the Raphael scene, and a couple Astarion scenes and eventually the dream. Then I went through the whole goblin camp without a long rest. By the time I did rest it was the tiefling celebration and I hardly knew my party members so they hadn't much to say. Next rest, Gale had a big scene revealing the secret inside him. It was AFTER that upon a later rest that Gale asked for a magical artifact, hinting that there was a secret. But he'd already told me the secret! So I think the scenes happened out of order.

It didn't occur to me that the dream could be triggered by using the Illithid power. But that also requires rest, so I didn't use it often and got the special power much, much later than maybe I should have. The first time you use the power the narrator says something about losing something important, which made me think of Prey where using the powers resulted in you becoming more of a monster. Since I could avoid it in favor of other choices, I did.

Do the scenes happen based on their opinion of you? If so, they should've been triggering because you get approval/disapproval even when they aren't with you.

If the scenes, instead, happen based on the plotline, then something seems to be out of order with Gale's scenes. I also haven't had anything eventful happen at camp with Wyll, Shadowheart, or Laezel, unless those are post Underdark. I've been resting a lot more to see what I've missed, but nothing has been occurring.

But I kind of agree with OP about there being some kind of barrier for the goblin camp since finishing it results in all other cutscenes being blocked in favor of the tiefling celebration. I feel like I did the camp too soon and confused Gale.

Yeah those scenes are currently all over the place, they really should look into those triggers because something is not adding up. I find Gale is particularly broken in this regard. So the things I discovered:

- you might miss Gale's death scene depending in where/how he dies for the first time, leaving you with the pouch and no instructions
- Gale's Weave scene - no idea how you get it to trigger, I'm currently on my 4th character and I've never gotten it (tried everything mentioned in different threads, but seems like many - od even most people have the same problem)
- Shadowheart has some weird stuff going on where you can question her about some strange magic which sounds as if it should be tied to something that happened in-game, yet I've seem nothing of the sort
-Shadowheart after shrine od selune - sometimes you get the dialoge after asking her about her behaviour in there, sometimes you don't even get an answer, as if the game didn't realise you took that option
- Wyll - missing out on a lot od content if you don't take him to windmill (ok this one is probably intentional as the whole deal with goblins deal is kinda his crusade)

Warning - spoilers!

I completely agree - the cutscene triggers need to be worked on. On my first playthrough (still not finished, played around 20 hours) I haven't gotten several cutscenes and only know about them by reading the forum.
I created a new character to test some triggers and am still at the beginning, but at least got some of the cutscenes that I missed earlier playing.

Scenes/dialog:
- 1st night was Gale looking into the fire ("go to hell" dialog) and Astarion having a dialog with you about sleeping in the woods. I got that on both my characters.

- The 2nd night I had the Gale cutscene where he looks at his double and gives the speech about not showing signs of transformation yet. Astarion will have a dialog about how to kill my character if the transformation occurs. I didn't got this on my first character. Only when I loaded an earlier save and made an earlier camp night I got it. So I guess proceeding with the story led me to miss this somehow. It is not dependent on using the tadpole power, at least I know that.

- On a condition where I assume you need some approval gains (but can still be neutral) and have spoken with Zurro about the Gith creche but haven't find out about Astarion being a vampire spawn you might get a cutscene with Astarion where he is looking at the stars. This I missed on my first character. I assume it was because I only talked later in the game with Zurro and had already found out about Astarion being a vampire spawn. On my second character I went straight after the recruiting of the companions (except Will) to the druid grove and tried to get as much approval with Astarion as possible and not lossing any. There are some opportunities for this at the druid grove. I think I got 2 or 3 approval gains (he was still neutral) and when I camped I got the scene.


On my first character I rested very few times because I got the feeling or urgency and thought the quest might be time limited. It wasn't and I am glad it isn't because I don't really like this kind of pressure and is not helping if you want to explore the game and surroundings. But with few camping nights I think I missed some of the triggers for the scenes. Gale for example has still not after 20hours talked to me about his need to get artifacts (I only know about this from the forum) also I have lots of them already aquired. He never died on my playthrough too. Might have helped with his story progression I suppose.

It is frustrating if you missed a cutscene with your favourite character(s), especially if it is somewhat romance related and you want to romance this particular character. If you find out 15+ hours later in the game that you are locked out of a romance or missed a nice flirt cutscene this is very unfortunate and for me for example a reason to start the character new. But if you don't even know about missing cutscene or how to trigger it isn't really helping because in your next playthrough you might miss it again.

Astarions cutscene where he looks at the stars could also work later if you already know who he is. If you don't have the necessary approval with him (because you played good) and only get it later you might miss it because I think already on night 4 is where you learn about his secret. Not so much time if you don't know about this.

I just think it is a shame if some cutscenes are not playing due to wrong timing. I mean not getting cutscenes related to tadpole power if you don't use them is one thing - but to miss nice or important cutscenes because you rested too late or at the wrong time is not encouraging. So I hope they fine tune that somehow to make it easier not to miss those scenes.

I don't really know what I did wrong but the whole story - main and companions - was a big mess to me...

I even don't have the dream(s)... And I long rest a lot !
I just don't understand any companion quest and I think I missed a lot about the main story ..

I think the dreams only come if you use the tadpole powers. You can use them once per long rest I think. One opportunity is for examle when you recruit Wyll. You seem to get more cutscenes with the companions too about these dreams. So not using the powers really feels like missing out.

Another problem this game drags from the days it was dos2. I don't think it is a problem or issue per se, but more of a design philosophy. Larian really wants the player the explore every aspect of the game and experiment, and rewards players for it.

I feel like I should just copy/paste this response from here-on-out:

I don't need a perfect playthrough. Missing things is ok. I don't need every companion in my party and 4 is a fine limit for me. I look forward to experiencing events and play styles that I've missed on new playthroughs when I make different choices.

If the story you experiment is totally inconsistent and incomprehensible because you miss too many important things... That's bad.

+1. Again, Larian strikes me as a studio that cares about the gameplay a lot, and in my opinion a little too much. It's much more important to them to give the player options to explore and and experiment than to make sure all the story flags works into a cohesive narrative. And again, it's not necessarily bad, I'm sure there's an audience for it, but it's just not for me.

- Still haven't found a reliable way of triggering Gale's Weave scene (I think it's related to "in case od death" which somehow finds numerous ways to bug out on me). It's a bummer since the whole romance is based on this particular scene

- I've never ever seen Astarion's stars scene

- Lae'zel's dialogue on Faerun being too pretty just seemingly randomly does/doesn't happen

Yes, I just rested once, and I had only few companion interactions so all of them feel very shallow to the point that I care less about them than for any other companion I had in any other RPG. They all just shove it in my face that they have a very deep story attached, yet it does not come up, unless I rest. Now technically I should rest before every fight, so I have all resources available. However people naturally do not like to rest a lot, as many feel it is cheesing the system. It also takes you out of the game completely, with it being a whole different screen and also location.
So they created a paradox it seems. It is something that brings forth the interaction with companions as well as parts of the story, it is also elemental to the gameplay. Yet players are reluctant to use it and therefore feel like they are missing out. Now I suppose the whole thing will be somewhat resolved, but right now it is really not satisfactory.

Gale triggers are definitely messed up. I have had about 10 characters and no matter what i do, I can't get the weave scene. He approves literally of everything I do and yet I have not been able to trigger his romance weave scene. It is so frustrating. He literally says the same "what can I do for you line" everytime i sleep at camp. Larian........Please please fix Gale triggers. He is my favorite character and yet i play through and can't romance him. Every single character wants to sleep with my character at the party except Gale, because the weave scene just will not trigger. Ok I am going to try again for the twentieth time to romance Gale. but i suspect he is just broken right now.