Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Does everything need to be turned up to 11?

I've been thinking a bit about why the world in BG3 feels so unconvincing to me. I think lack of verisimilitude in mechanics is a big issue, but I think there's a writing issue as well. Every NPC is involved in some kind of extreme storyline. We've got:

• Tiefling refugees who just popped in from Avernus
• Druids who are missing their leader and in the middle of a shadowy takeover
• A goblin war party being controlled by Absolute fanatics
• A town wiped out by said goblins
• Another town that was just burned to the ground in the middle of a drow kidnapping plot
• A tiefling on the run from Avernus, being pursued by corrupted paladins
• A githyanki search party with a dragon
• Two otherwise normal brothers, but their sister has been taken in by a hag
• The absolute circus of potential party members that you can recruit
• ...
• And then a mindflayer ship crashes right into the middle of it all

Where are the normal people who are just living their lives and aren't participating in the insanity of the main plotline? Where's the reclusive woodsman that just wants to be left alone? Travelling merchants? Farmers? Fishers? The few normal people that we see in this game (tollhouse guy and some bodies in Waukeen's Rest, among others) were dead before we got here (again, due to exceptional circumstances). The Zhentarim are the closest we see to people just living their lives, and they're pretty exceptional on their own and are also a little wrapped up in what's going on.

When every storyline is big and flashy and special, then none of them are special. This world doesn't feel convincing.

I dunno ...

Tieflings, maybe i get that wrong, but i believe that they were runaways from that city that ... i dunno right word, fall(?) down to Avernus ... or from some other city, and people chased them out since that city fall(?) down to Avernus, and they were affraid that it will hapen to them aswell ... but i dont recall any word about them being litteraly runaways from hells. O_o

Druids seem quite regular to me ... yes, their acting leader was power hungry, corrupted and kinda mad ... but the others?

Wat is odd about Githyanki with a dragon? I mean it, i dont know.
But as i understanded that, the only thing that is odd about them, would be its just a small group, since when Vlaakith sends her troops in material realm, its usualy whole army for raid.

Same story ...
What is odd about goblins raiding towns (note that this "town" consisted of 4 buildings ).
And about Drows raiding other town? O_o

You are all the way correct.

Individually, all of these things probably happen from time to time, but are relatively rare. Collectively, twenty different flavors of rare drama happened at the same time in a very small area where there is nothing that isn't overdramatic. It's like if you took a whole anthology of fairytales, made them real, and squashed them into one small village together. On their own, each fairytale can be meaningful and interesting and connect to your life in some way. All squashed together, it's just noise.

I mean, if you look at the history of Faerun haha... DnD campaigns often have lots of side quests and drama going on, otherwise there'd be little need for adventurers. The things that really stand out are the tiefling refugees and the mind flayer / Absolute stuff, which are both acknowledged as unusual in the game. The tieflings are coming from Elturel, which just had its own drama with Descent Into Avernus. Their plight in BG3 is just a follow up to that story.

Goblin raids don't seem extraordinary to me. The town (Moonhaven) wasn't wiped out by the goblins. There's no dead bodies, only skeletons, and many of the writings and books you find in the town reference raids from soldiers in black. I recall many of the notes you find label the date as the 1300's, which suggests the town has been in ruin for a while.

The drow raid really isn't all that strange, as that's one of their main things... they raid the surface for slaves. What's unusual is that they did it during the daytime and actually took someone really important.

Most of the druids seem normal to me.

The brothers and the hag don't seem that strange to me. Unfortunate, yes. But there are hags in the forest that do take advantage of common folk.

The Absolute fanatics and the mind flayers are all tied together and Nettie specifically acknowledges that she and Halsin think it's weird and were trying to find out what's going on.

The githyanki are a direct response to the nautiloid and are in search of a specific object that was supposed to be on it.

There were a bunch of fishers just fishing like normal until the ship crashed and squashed them all...

Exactly!

Because it’s a theme park!

Seriously, this design is very poor. It’s very inconsistent. I can’t stop wondering if those fishers that died because of nautiloid crash were aware of all this show going on around. Imagine fishing that morning trying not to think of that strange temple nearby, tieflings roaming around, goblins slaughtering everything, druids plotting something, and than all of a sudden a big UFO falls down right on their pity heads. I can’t even understand where did these fishers come.

And yes, this is ok for D&D. It’s just the pacing which is missing.

Are you aware of all the crazy things happening behind the scenes where you live? Cause I do my best not to be lol :p

Some of this stuff sounds pretty normal by cRPG standards. I think the actual problem is in its presentation and how quickly everything ramps up. Wrath of the Righteous has a similar tone, but the actual execution is way better because you're slowly eased into the setting and it's very clear why everything is happening. Not to mention that the companion writing does a lot to blunt the sheer edge/mask it all.

BG3 in comparison just throws all these scenarios at you near immediately, and your party is just a bunch of disconnected adventurers with their own problems that happen to have some input on these events because reasons. A lot of it is the presentation, although I guess one could argue that a big part of it is how the plot is structured to begin with.

Once again ...


We were told by Tieflings that Baldur's Gate is at least 3 days far (if i remember corectly), as we know they are moving in caravan with Waggons ...
Looking at this map, we can expect that the road they wanted to use is that one wich leads to north and west, around the Tollhouse ...
If we divide this path into three, relatively equally long sections, we get a rough idea of how far you can go in a day ...

That would mean that "strange temple nearby" ... if you mean those ruins ... are at least 2-3 hours far ... usualy waggons are moving around 8km/h (acording to Wikipedia ) ... that would mean that "strange temple nearby" should be somewhere between 8-24km far ...
That sounds like enough to me to not worry about. O_o

Tieflings are roaming around groove ... that is even more distant.
That patrol of litteraly 2 Tieflings, was scouting just bcs of that Nautilodid Crash ... so until your fishermans head was smashed by UFO, there was none.
Therefore even less reason to care about imho. :P

Gobins slaughtering everything around are double as far as "strange temple nearby" ...
Also, there was no survivors, runing around the beach and screaming "help, help, there are Goblins 50km far from here and just murdered my family few hours ago!".
So, only way your fisherman could get that info would be if he noticed smoke ... wich could be possible, unless that whole beach was under a huge cliff, wich kinda diminsh your line of sight.
And gues what? Yes, it is.
Once again ... no knowledge > no worries.

There is only ONE druid plotting something ... and nobody knows about it.
Also, since gobins are "searching for the Groove" we can quite easily asume, that its location will not be common knowledge around.
So your fisherman cant worry about it, since he have no idea, just as 99% of Druid Groove.

So ...
What exactly should be your fisherman worried about again? O_o

Map is way too small. Spacing is an issue. Needs to spread out these events and have some of the mundane.

Except they weren't really fishermen. They were actually Bane, Tyr, and Tymora, trapped in mortal form by a powerful kobold wizard.

Now just looks at this map to understand how inconsistent the world is...
The worldmap and the "game map" are not the same at all... (distance, positions,...)

https://www.dm-gaming.eu/baldurs-gate-3/carte-secrets-acte-1/

It would be so cool if this beautifull worldmap was the map arround which they designed the act 1 map...

Distance is allways different in games ...
Who would like walking for 3 hours in wood, without any interactions? :-/
Positions seem quite okey, maybe that ruins should be a little more in west ... but that is minor detail. Other positions seem to be quite acurate, maybe not exactly 1:1 ... but same building are in direct line on both maps, that i would call a sucess. O_o

I presume that in older times, like from BG 1 / 2 ... we would probably get just smaller areas, Groove would be single area ... blighted village another area ... nautiloid crash side another area ... etc.
And we would move in between them like it was in old Fallout, just dot roaming on map to better simulate distances.
Today our computers manage to hold a lot bigger playground ...
Therefore areas are bigger, but distances might seem little distorted.

I dunno, i gues im used for that.
I mean, when i readed War of Ancients ... it took almost a week, until Night Elves traveled through Ashenvale Forest ... i can run through is on foot in 15 minutes in WoW.

Peter Jackson could have decided to place the entrance to Moria 30 feet away from the gates of Rivendell and then shown the fellowship leaving Rivendell and arriving in Moria in one continuous shot. Some of us would have been critical of such a cinematic decision, to which others might retort "who wants to watch the Fellowship just walking for 3 weeks without any interactions?"

The alternative of course is to not have all the traveling take place in one continuous shot, but rather to end the scene after the Council of Elrond, have a traveling montage to show the passage of time while Moria is loading, and then start the Moria scene in its own environment in a new scene. This is what Peter Jackson ultimately decided to do. It's also what pretty much every other cRPG does, presumably for the same reason. Just because the technology exists to do things in one continuous shot does not mean that it is always a good cinematic choice.

Fun fact: He could ... and the movie would still be Awesome. :P

But what about the consistency of the middle earth...

Subtlety, nuance, balance and immersion seem to be lacking in Larian's design philosophy so it's not really a surprise that everything is cranked up to the max in BG3. It creates a dissonance; the game is in need of some grounding and a clear direction. The proximity of things is a huge problem, as well as the 'corridor' nature of exploration; there are no open areas to traverse in whichever direction you please, just a series of pathways.



Digressing here, the LotR films are incredible achievements in film making and incredibly enjoyable but for my liking there were too many unnecessary changes from the original source material, mostly in terms of plot. Gimli is a wonderful character in the books, in the films he is turned into Jar Jar Binks. I also couldn't stand the whole Elves being constantly surrounded by backlight and talking in slow motion, it felt very contrived.

I never really liked the films much. Actually that's not true, I think they're fine fantasy films, but for me they were about as wide of the mark as one can get when it came to capturing what was for me the overall "feel" of LotR. In part I guess it's two rather polarised subjective takes on it, but it didn't help that Jackson was rather overly liberal with "re-imagining" or just ignoring huge swathes of stuff. That and the seemingly excessive amount of epiiiiiiiic!!! and that he managed to put most of the focus on the parts of the books I skimmed and completely ignored the bits I enjoyed. I suppose it was very much "Peter Jackson's LotR" in that it's a significantly different vision and one that feels rather appropriated. I mean Middle Earth isn't in NZ, it's here. And here features more mud than appeared in the films.

Yeah I know, "it wasn't as good as the book!" said nobody ever who read the book any given film was based on.

I've spent so long shaking my fist at nobody in particular I've now completely forgotten what my actual point was. Oh well, it's time for me to go to bed anyway.

The BG3 map itself is not terribly big. Breaking it down into small areas would make it claustrofibbically small.
If BG had come out in the last ten years, it probably wouldn't be so fragmented into small areas.
The map would most likely be more compact then.
However, the capabilities of computers have grown significantly since then.

Over time, most games began to move away from small areas. If you look at the newer high-budget RPGs, virtually all of them have either one compact map or several smaller (but still large) areas.
It looks like BG3 is definitely going in the other direction.