Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Spoilers: Long Rest Cinematics need better pacing

Keeping this short, but I got the cinematic with Raphael appearing at my camp on night one, didn't even try any cure yet, just dealt with everything before the blighted village, so I didn't even deal with the hag, archdruid, bard, githyanki, and denied the poison from Nettie...

I feel like Raphael would rather appear a bit further down the line than this, definitely needs some better pacing than this.

Lae'zel's insistence to get to the Githyanki creche is also a bit much, considering you're level 1 or 2 by the time she suggests it, and following her route will end up with you VERY LIKELY facing off against a group of level 5 enemies, doesn't help that she's a Githyanki and that comes with believing she has the best clue out of all about what's going on with these mind flayers, so her option seems better than going after some druid in a goblin camp, or some ol' alchemist.

There are pacing issues for sure. I'm not sure Raphael is one of them, but the game does have this issue here and there.

this guy approached me telling i was running out of options after the only thing i tried was an apprentice druid healer, and still had a githyanki creche, a mysterious alchemist and the archdruid on my mind, and it was on night one, no less, he should definitely have waited a bit longer, maybe once I try three of the options and each fails to deliver an immediate solution he could appear, but this was way too fast.

It's not exactly what he says. He says you have a problem and he can solve it. And then he says you should try find solutions and that you will fail, and when that happens he'll be back

Raphie currently shows up after you talk to Nettie. That's the only requirement.

If you do not talk to her, he never shows up (happened in my second PT).

I think all of the 'cut scenes' are currently WIP, I've had conversations all over the place regarding when things happen.

One of the problems might have been that I tried to put off long rests as long as possible. I had this weird misconception that it might factor into if the goblins killed Halsin before I could rescue him. but I've still had a lot of misplaced companion convos.

I really hope it is a work in progress thing and not Larian thinh

I also think they need to think further on the rest system in general, I'm seeing that it has very little to no consequences, which I expect it should, considering there's a mind flayer tadpole eating away at your brain.
Even if it isn't changing you because of Netherese meddling, more urgency in your mission, changes that happen to character attitudes.

In my first run ol' Raphy appeared pretty early because I rushed to Nettie. Speaking to Astarion afterwards, he mentioned his master... despite the fact that my character at that point hadn't even found the blood drained boar yet and thus had no idea he was a vampire to begin with.
Hopefully this is just EA jank, I don't want there to be a possibility for me to accidentally spoil myself on any big reveals later on just by speaking to my companions.

Too much urgency doesn't work, because we're given so many side quests in just Act 1 to complete. So the game gives us a very early conversation in camp that explains we are not following the normal infection schedule with the tadpole.

There are also hints that we're being groomed for a higher purpose involving the tadpole, and not just the usual transformation. Which is another way of shutting down the timer.

In my first playthrough I never got that conversation in camp about the lack of tadpole urgency. I'm guessing this had something to do with me not long resting until after entering the grove, where its flag was overwritten by a different camp cutscene flag (Rahpael maybe, similar to OP?).

This led to me continuing to think I was on a tight schedule, and thus adventuring for as a long as I could without long resting, which led to even later camp cutscenes....you get the idea. Overall, yeah, I definitely agree that the long rest cinematics need better pacing. A mix of guaranteeing certain cinematics happen and setting/checking more flags to ensure cinematics and conversations don't reference things that haven't happened yet.

Which I also didn't have yet, despite, I think 2 or 3 big rests, now.
I know which one you mean, though, had that one on my previous character.
Maybe more things need to happen at once if you progress more in one "day" than expected, like Gale approaching you during the entire party, or him butting in when you're teleported to Raphael's castle, telling Raphael that the transformation's not been happening, anyways, which is when Raphael might point out that "Oh yeah, it's almost as if you're especially lucky, I wonder why, hmmm..."

One of the complaints people have had is they haven't been given enough motivation to invest with the main story or reason enough to justify why such a misfit squad of at-odds personalities would work together. I don't understand this myself, the threat of ceremorphosis is a pretty good sword to dangle over your head, but I think if they really played up the 'ticking clock' angle of the tadpole eating away at your brain it would really put the fire under people not to dick around, and really help with the pacing.

I remember the first time I played BG:2 I was really worried that if I took too long to save Imoen there might be serious repercussions (I was at a more credulous age), but of course I play Shadows of Amn now I could spend years in Act I because I know it doesn't really change Act II, if Larian actually had you worrying about the brain parasite growing in Act I I think it could realy improve the story.