Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Anyone else think the hag's teahouse feels out of place?

I dont hate it or anything but the overall tone and weirdness of it compared to the rest of the game is really jarring to me, it's like you're teleported into a completely different game and it takes you out of the experience.

Visually the area is really awesome and I dont think it should be removed, but in my opinion it needs to be toned down to fit with the D&D feel of the rest of the game.

I thought it was great, and didn't feel like it wouldn't be part of that area.

I haven't played tabletop D&D, only the computer games, so I don't know how well it fits into overall D&D lore, but deceptive witches living in swamps or forests has been a theme in fantasy and fairy tale settings for hundreds of years. Like the story of Hansel and Gretel, for example. The quests involving the 3 witches of Crookback Bog in Witcher 3 was a highlight of that game.

This is just Larian's take on a classic theme, and I thought it was done well. If anything, it's telegraphed a little too well that she's not to be trusted on that first encounter, but I still enjoyed it. The visual transformation of the tea house was a nice touch.

The only reason Id say its out of place is everything on that map is geographically to close to one another. Hag's are more traditionally in far off places and while its the most isolated place on the map, its still right near a druid grove - they would certainly have known about this well before the refugees and encroaching goblins.

While I enjoyed the content there. In my experience Hags are known for much trickery and illusion. Its not uncommon for adventures to run into situations where they are under a "Hallucinatory Terrain" with a hag. It would be kinda neat if this area was the spell I listed below and after you dispatch her the area changes to its current swamp form.

Hallucinatory Terrain
4 illusion
Casting Time: 10 minutes
Range: 300 feet
Components: V S M (A stone, a twig, and a bit of green plant)
Duration: 24 hours
Classes: Bard, Druid, Warlock, Wizard
You make natural terrain in a 150-foot cube in range look, sound, and smell like some other sort of natural terrain. Thus, open fields or a road can be made to resemble a swamp, hill, crevasse, or some other difficult or impassable terrain. A pond can be made to seem like a grassy meadow, a precipice like a gentle slope, or a rock-strewn gully like a wide and smooth road. Manufactured structures, equipment, and creatures within the area aren’t changed in appearance.
The tactile characteristics of the terrain are unchanged, so creatures entering the area are likely to see through the illusion. If the difference isn’t obvious by touch, a creature carefully examining the illusion can attempt an Intelligence (Investigation) check against your spell save DC to disbelieve it. A creature who discerns the illusion for what it is, sees it as a vague image superimposed on the terrain.

The pacing would fell better if it was 6 maps you had to select from the world map to move in-between with added travel time:
- beach/crashed ship/ruined chapel
- grove
- village
- swamp
- goblin camp/temple
- Risen road (Waukeen's Rest/Tollhouse/gnolls/bridge)

Would even make sense to rest in-between visiting them now.

I really like the swamp area and the teahouse. It reminds me of the witcher 3 quests. And it's good I feel.

I agree. For me, all the maps feel a little too cramped. Same thing in DOS 1 and DOS 2, you couldn't move more than two or three screen areas from the last encounter before you'd find another dialog with someone or more combat. I don't know if it's a limitation of the game engine, or an intentional design so the player doesn't get bored. Either way, I guess we're stuck with it.

I am all about that idea. Old games did a great job of "travel to swamp/village/..." really well and it lets you do what you said rest and get attacked. Also lets you really devote an entire area to FEEL like a huge rotting swamp they are parked in instead of their little slice of goo that plopped down in the middle of pretty mountains haha

Oh totally, it was a bit jarring to me as well. There should, in my opinion, be a whole map dedicated to a swamp, to let the players take in the setting and the mood of that place. Where the farther you go in, the more the feeling of dread sets in. But again - I think that they made it as it is, to crowd the map a bit more and to not let the players get bored.

Whatever happened to beautiful vistas like they were in NWN2? NWN2 is the perfect example that you don't need to smash in a secret around every corner to get the players invested. Appreciating a beautiful scenery (and an 'evil' swamp can still count as visually beautiful mind you) should be it's own reward.

I liked the swamp. Was the most fitting area for the setting IMO.

The design of the game seems to be "Lots of stuff, but kinda condensed to that the world map ain't 10^1000000000 square miles - with little to no benefit from the size.

This.

I don't understand why they didn't do something like that...
Their maps are totally inconsistent, as many things in the game.
The solution was easy and we could really have the feeling of a journey.

I agree, but I expect this to probably be a very controversial idea. It is why DOS:1 and DOS:2 have zero immersion for me, compared to BG:2 or DA:O, because the maps feel like a theme park of random set pieces of fantasy cliches, only set-up for a specific battle or riddle. Like "so here is a dragon, 10 steps behind it is a graveyard with a lich, 5 steps behind that a cave with a shadow druid...". BG:3 is less bad, but still bad. Many players don't seem to be bothered by this, and it is deeply ingrained in Larian's game design.

The hag also does not seem to have any connection to the story, to any characters, or events, or anything. And I don't get what people like about the "quest"? You instantly learn that she is a hag. There is a fight, the girl is freed. The game then tries to create a poignant scene because of the dead husband, which falls IMHO completely flat like all scenes in DOS:2 that tried to change the tone from spoof movie to drama, and not just because I was ROFL because I literally kicked the hag's ass just a minute before (if ever a moment in a RPG deserved the phrase "ludo-narrative dissonance", it was this one).

+1

+1

A little too close, yes I kinda see what people are getting at here, though one could argue it's not so different to BG1&2 where you cleared an area and then moved into the next one, just without the screen transitioning. The Map was for places much further away and I am not sure the Hag needs to be too much further.

WHat I do agree with though is the telegraphed nature, at least for me. I met her when the two gentleman were looking for their sister and even if the narrator hadn't of spelled it out for me (did I pass a background Insight check or something?), it was far too obvious how shifty she was. These men were too desperate and she was too " oh no sir, not little old me". I feel as if the men should have been more aggressive and the Hag a little more scared and pleading to make us really question who to believe.

Also the yellow acidic clouds all over the lower part of her base were bloody annoying.

In reference to the Witcher 3, the 3 "ladies" and also the questline regarding Spoons (chillllllls)... this felt cliche D&D vs the real creepy effort put into the Witcher 3 for those 2 segments in particular. In Both cases you are ut on edge and Geralt is very weary of the predicament. With the Hag it felt too easy to read what was going on with the sister and nothing the Hag said seemed to entice an alternative to fighting, nor did I feel in anyway in danger. When the fight comes the Redcaps are too far away and take ages in TB to get to you, by which time the Hag has run off and you have the high ground advantage when the Red Caps do make it through the door.

Love the idea, the music, etc... would prefer some murky polish.

I think it's simply because they ported what they did in the DOS series. It's the way the devs have been working for years now. They have the experience in doing big maps. So I guess it saved development time.

It's just a side quest not related to the main story too much. These types of quests have been in the games for much longer than I can remember.
Division into smaller areas is not very popular in modern games. Most RPG have one (or several) large areas that you can move around.

Yeah, or you go open world and then vast spaces are part of the journey.

Actually if I do have a complaint about the area in Act1 is that it's very "path-y" if that makes sense. No fields to traverse or openess, it's all quite hemmed in and tunnel-esque and given that that is how I expect Underdark and cities to feel, there is an element of claustrophobicness to the map design "as things stand".

To me it's a perfect representation of a Hag. Heck a few days before finding the quest I ran a similar adventure for my DnD group.
Hags try to trick you, they lurk in corrupted forrests, hang out with Redcaps and genuinely "F*ck" people over.

If anything, I'd like to see more of that tone in some of the other questlines, not less.

It didn't feel any more "in" or "out" of place than most other sidequests in the game.
I liked the hag a lot as a character and if anything the questline was one of the highlights for me.
Well, it could have been, if not because the quest bugged badly in the end.

Oh, and let's not forget the shitty "poison traps" past the masked guys as one of worst low points in the game currently. Not even a challenge to pass, just a genuine annoyance where I felt I was fighting the control scheme more than anything else.
All that platforming, chaining/unchaining characters and/or throwing items to cover gas pits to not take a buttload of poison damage... I have no idea what Larian was thinking. It felt like a passage purposefully designed to make you hate even more the way your party controls in the game.