Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Huge lack of urgency in the story !

Giving the first act a second run, I finally spotted one thing that bothered me all along story-wise. Am I the only one finding it very weird and disturbing that :

- A major city just got literally harvested by mind flayers and absolutely nobody in the first act seem to care. NPCs don't care, companions don't care, your PC doesn't care either.
- Despite having witnessed a giant mind flayer hive crashing nearby (or at least heard it crash), people just casually go on with their business without the slightest sense of urgency whatsoever.
- NPCS even bring out Baldurs Gate in their lines, telling you how they hope to reach the city, despite it being literally destroyed. Even if they're not aware, your PC / companions should be able to tell them about the state of the city ! An event of this scale should affect everyone ! Look at the first chapter of Descent into Avernus for example. Refugees, panic. Everywhere. World feels alive.
- Last but not least : my PC has a tag showing I grew in Baldurs Gate. One of his/her main drive should be about getting to know the state of Baldurs Gate and learning why it got harvested / caught in friendly fire between Gyths and Mind flayers. Growing there, it's safe to assume he/she has friends, maybe family whatsoever. He/she should care.I have yet to see dialogues with my companions or major NPCs showing that. We should be able to inquire about those things. I don't care the slightest about refugees and druids if I know my hometown has been destroyed. My PC and his/her companions should talk more about this than spending time banting about how they hate each other.

There is an overall lack of urgency in the story. With such an intense intro, characters should react more about what they've been through. As it is right now, it seems like everyone knows about mind flayers, everyone seems to be okay with it, and everyone deals with it like it's just another standard threat.

Bottom line, the story of the first act seems totally disconnected from the world and the major events surrounding it. It makes my PC even blander. And the world doesn't feel alive at all.

EDIT : The city destroyed isn't Baldurs Gate, which the game doesn't tell you at all. The points remain valid complains.

*Puts DM hat on*

Players hate ticking clocks. Especially when you just start with one and haven't gotten into RP mode or really even know what is going on. You put in mechanisms to slow them down or make them less urgent because people are playing to explore, fight, get treasure. While its a nice carrot, turning it into a stick makes people not want to do side quests, talk to anyone, or have any patience for delays. It not only makes them impatient in the game, it will make them impatient WITH the game if there are things that feel like barriers and mechanics like makin you sleep often where every time you do you think your head is going to burst open and tentacles come out.

One of the things I tend to tell players if I am running a campaign like that, via the NPC giving info of course, is "You are not strong enough to take this on alone. Find allies, gather information, know who your enemies are. If you go into this blind, you will die - and if you die, while there are others searching, you have put a great many more people at risk by trying to take shortcuts. You have friends out there, find them, there are enemies who will try to use you, avoid them, learn the battlefield you will be fighting on, and prepare."

Seems like I got myself unclear. I don't want a timer or anything. I just want my PC to be able to react to what he's/she's been through. A major city destruction shouldn't be left over in dialogues. I should be able to talk about it and inquire about the whole thing. Doesn't mean I want to go there to save the world. Just means I should be able to care about it.

I might have missed it in my excitement to play haha, which city got harvested? I thought you were just a bunch of randos on a ship.

I understand where the OP is coming from but this may be an area when "it's a computer game and this is what needs to drive how stuff works."

If you have played Fallout 1? It had a mechanic that if you did not bring back the water chip to save your vault and if you did not do that by X date & time, game over, Man.

People hated that because FO1 was very sandboxy so you were encouraged explore everything and I believe then nerfed the clock running out in a patch.

I think trying to have a clock run out in a CRPG is just a bad idea. It can work great in a single adventure where the DM is upfront that the clock is running but I would never try to build a whole campaign around that.

OK, I should have read full thread before replying

Yes, there should be more references to what has happened to us, in camp dialogs, if no where else. Did we have friends in that town, etc.

I seriously missed something haha, what town?

I must agree that the NPCs could react a bit differently to the whole mind flayer thing. Also, a bit more references to the things that happened in Descent into Avernus would be nice, since that story ends literally right before BG3's story begins.

A really good point. +1

We are taking about the cinematic where the ship fly over the town, snatching up people. I am assuming that where we got picked up but now thinking about that why would a Drow be there? I have no idea where my Drow was snatched from.

Anyway, the background is at the beginning the ship is snatching up people to then implant these modified tadpoles in.

You are right that it is not just the town show in the cinematic because we have Goblins and Minthara with tadpoles. The Mindflayers must be snatching people from several areas.

This seems like two different (but somewhat related) issues: having the passage of time be meaningful and feeling like the character has a place in the world.

Passage of time:
I actually love a ticking clock. I don't want to just outright lose if I don't do the thing in time, but I want the world to feel alive and like it's not going to wait for me. This is the worlds story and my character is the lens through which I get to experience it. I want an ignored problem to get worse and have consequences. I want to have to pick and choose what I care about - not just which side of a battle am I on, but should I even involve myself when I also care about this other thing and I only have time to deal with one of them. Or maybe I can try to do a little of both things and take the chance that both of them fail. If I can go to every place on the map and complete every quest, the world feels much smaller and less alive; and that makes me care much less about what happens to the world.


Place in the world:
Apart from the immediate "I should find someone to get rid of this tadpole.", the character I'm playing doesn't feel like they have any aboutness. They don't want anything. The expressionless, voiceless appearance of my character during dialogs really doesn't help; it doesn't seem like they care about anything. Admittedly, in a tabletop game, it's fairly easy to decide what your character wants and have it color their actions; but not so easy in a video game with limited scripted options for dialog; it's much easier to focus on "what's happening to me right now?" and ignore the rich life and backstory that you've been living up to this point.

That said, maybe there could be some options for personal backstory? They could come up pretty naturally during conversations with party members at camp, for example: "What do you do for a living?" "What's your family like?" "Have you ever been to prison?" "Have you ever encountered X?" "Have you ever fought in a war?" "We've been out here for a while - do you miss anything from back home?" It doesn't have to be heavy-handed, and maybe it doesn't even have to affect anything else in the game, mechanically, but being forced to answer those kinds of questions can get you thinking more about who your character is, beyond just "what useful combat skills do I have?"

From what I can see in the cinematic, I don't think Baldur's Gate got "destroyed". There was an attack, there was some damage, quite a few people were abducted. But overall not a "destroyed city". The Nautiloid was in the city only a short time before it got chased away by the Githyanki.

Yeah, they grabbed some school teachers and stuff too, but a surprising amount of special people as well. The big event that has recently happened was the entire city of Elturel got teleported to the hells into the clutches of Zariel and was recently returned. Its why youre seeing so many refugees. The Grand Duke of BG disappeared with the city as well and BG was going to be next - the entire city was walled off with refugees from Elturel outside its walls Woodstock style.

So, there are a few things recently that might ignore some close encounters of the third kind activity

edit: for cinematic are you talkin about the teaser trailer where they show the nautiloid above BG? Im not sure where that falls in the timeline of this, exactly. The intro doesnt show anything of the kind iirc

edit 2: im an idiot it was Yartar

I need to find the reference - but I don't believe the city we see in the opening cinematic is Baldur's Gate. Could be wrong (yes I know it's in the name), but I remember reading somewhere it was not BG that got attacked by the nautiloid.

Well if you're a Drow you don't have the Baldurian tag I'm pretty sure? So maybe you got snatched somewhere else?

The city was Yartar, which is SE of Neverwinter, its 2+ months journey from BG

The city wasent destroyed. A tower got toppled and that was kinda it.

That said I agree that most of the people dont seem to care but I think thats due to their more pressing issues. The people at the druid grove kinda have to worry about not beeing killed by Goblins. Thats their inmediate problem and if they cant solve that before anything else they wont live to even meet the city that theyre supposed to worry about. About our characters not caring is probably because of the same issue. They do care, but not turning into a mindflayer kind of has priority...TAnd whenever we have voicelines we dont see our character really respond or animate to it. Thats because were the PC and how we do that is up to us. If they dident take that approach wed just have a voice protagonist.

Speaking off the people at the grove, they wont know about BG beeing attacked. They know that some weird 'ship' fell out of the sky near their location but if the PC doesent tell them they wont know about the attack either. Its not like they get a message on their smart phone or anything, unless a messenger comes along or they hear from it some other place they wont know what happend to the city. Thats probably why they arent worried about it. They dont know.

I agree, just the fact that a huge ship full of tentacles crashed and there is a red dragon patrolling the skies should make everyone feel very worried.

Zavlor says that their scouts saw us in the goblin camp, then they also saw a bunch of brains and mindflayer bodies.

Yes, I just watched the in game intro again. The town in part 2 of the in game cinematic was not where any of us were snatched as we are already on the ship.

So, what do we know? There was a raid on BG as we have people from BG with tadpoles. There were raids from elsewhere because we have Goblins and Drow with tadpole. I think we have multiple ships gathering experiential subjects, just how big is the Mindflayer plot?

I can answer the drow bit.

By this point there is a significant population of drow living on or near the surface. This includes both Seladrine Drow and Vhaerun-worshipping Drow.

4th edition storyline had an event were a large portion of drow were re-accepted back into the Seldarine which resulted in them returning to their original skin colors among other things. I personally didn't like that bit of story which came along with the deaths/removal of Vhaerun and Eilistraee, both of whom I find as more interestingly developed gods than Lloth. It was basically an excuse to remove not-Lloth drow by declaring them no longer drow. With 5th ed, they've brought back Eilistraee and Vhaerun. I personally would still tend to stat the Seldarine Drow as Wood or High Elves (because they've been on the surface for a couple of generations mostly) but they are culturally in the lore considered drow again.

But to summarize up, there's a significant minority of surface dwelling Drow in the Sword Coast regions. If your Drow is Lloth-sworn....that's another question entirely....but with the growing number of openly existing surface-drow communities it is likely that Lloth-sworn have started sending spies up.