Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Why games can't stick to their own premises?

Guess I made the title inflamatory enough.

Anyway, I was thinking about Gale's personal quest. The way he has this contrived system to resurrect him in case he dies, etc.
And then you talk to him and learn more details about his condition, but above all, the fact that...




Needless to say this isn't an isolated example, just one of the most immediately notable ones, but games do this stuff all the times.

"Oh, it's urgent, you are risking a whole lot if you don't hurry". Except don't worry too much, we are never actually going to do anything about this.
"What? You are making a powerful enemy in a noble family? Sounds bad". Except there will hardly ever be a meaningful follow up except from two unthreatening hired thugs ambushing you two hours later.
"Oh, you need a very specific and bizarre ritual to ress your companion? You better pay attention to it!". Except any random-ass revivify scroll will do the job just fine (but FINE, I can see the reasoning for this one).
Etc, etc.

I can't be the only one who perceives these half-assed timid attempts to suggest "urgency" and "great danger" without the proper courage to inconvenience the player, by committing to them, as a bit of spineless cop out.

yeah, and my guess is even if you / we kill them all, we will see them again in act 2. well alive.

not feeding him magical item also do nothing.

A narrative expedient where "if we leave him dead he will be saved by someone else and come back to bite us later" would already work better.

The thing is: nothing like this happens. He doesn't disappear setting the foundations for "Ill be back, bitch".
The guy's corpse just stays on the ground for days with absolute no consequence, in spite of the game clearly telling us of the risk involved.

The games are like that. Games very often tell you to hurry up or otherwise (put the reason here).
It doesn't matter if the evil dragon is attacking the city (my favorite example) or if your evil brother is about to start a devastating war to become a god, or if your sister has been kidnapped by a mad mage who will most likely kill her, however you always have time to explore the entire map, pick up cabbage from the field or whatever you want.
The lapse of time in games has always been conventional. It's hard to find a game (not even an RPG) that would really force the player to hurry. What would be the point of wasting resources creating a lot of side content if the player felt they had to rush the main story otherwise they would lose?
Not only is the player happy when he can play as he wants, but the developers are also happy that They havnt wasted time creating content that the player will never see.
You can give the player up to 10x more time than he really needs, but he will still feel that he has to rush, which will probably not make him have too much fun.
Most players really don't like time limits.

ps. I'm not referring to this particular quest, but more to the time limits in general.

Yeah, which doesn't mean they need to be. Also, please note that "urgency" is just one angle of the topic.
The point is setting stakes and then ignoring them completely. Which makes you wonder why to set them to begin with.


No design that "forces players to skip content" is particularly appealing, but the good news is that you absolutely don't need to do it to have internal coherence.
Setting some limitation only on a specific, maybe even optional sub-goal, is not going to force you to skip half of the game's content. You could also be forgiving with your restrictions.
For instance an example I already mentioned several times is how Kingmaker gives you three months to complete your first main objective... Which is WAY, WAY more than what you need (and in fact you can complete that part of the game under a month for an extra reward and still do 100% of the content up to that point).

In general it's fine to leave time to the player to... well, take his time, as long as you don't keep repeating him how much he needs to run.



Which is fine? The goal isn't to punish the player, but to live up to the stakes you set up and be consistent with them.


Aside for the fact that they can fuck off into Oblvion and I disagree with them... I think you are focusing on "time limits" a bit too much here. The point wasn't "put the player on a tight clock". It's "if you say that something bad will happen, makes it sure it actually happens if we fuck up badly".
Otherwise is just... Condescending game design, I'd say.

Also, fun fact: BG3 already has "time limits" on some quests and optional objective, and their current implementation is even less forgiving than what I'm suggesting.
Here's a list about act 1 from a dataminer:

+1

I don't really care for Gale's personal quest, but yeah, that's a pretty big loop hole. It's a relatively easy fix though - even just by despawning his corpse and have the PC react to it quickly would be fix it.

The other one is big one that bugs me is the "die and revive" method of tadpole removal. Mainly because the game went out of its way to introduce this plot-hole in. Unless, this was all done intentionally - i.e. the main characters' tadpoles are somehow different (hence why they don't leave). But that is pure head-canon right now.


Many RPGs create a problem for themselves when they introduce an urgent, main-motivator in a world loaded with sidequests. I will give BG3 credit for doing a better-than-average job of forcing initial urgency while giving you an excuse to explore/sidequest. Most major side quests in BG3 are at least framed as potential solutions to your problem (the ruins, the druids, the goblins, the hag, etc).

Sure, the story does walk-back on the whole "urgency" thing a bit by the end of the EA, but you didn't know that until you got there, and it was enough to kickstart a whole variety of quests.

That aspect, at least, is a bit better than BG2 when there was a clear disconnect with further side questing in Ch. 2 once you've got the 20k, or in Ch. 6 since you're missing a chunk of your soul.

+1
I actually didn't try to leave him dead, but you bring up a good point. a small cutscene of BG exploding, or him coming to find you later maybe as unique encounter sound good.

Yep and here we are 100 years after BG1 and still no Wyrm spreading a plague killing everyone. I mean if they weren’t going to script and add every detail by early access why even bother calling it a Baldur’s Gate game, just call it ‘Early Access Not Complete 50 Hour of Content’ and be done with

“The Wyrm shall wander the earth and such a pestilence will follow in his wake, that all that know of his passing shall be struck down by the plague. So sayeth the wise Alaundo.” - Voice of the East

Every video game has some ludonarrative dissonance like this. Good designers try to eliminate as much of it as possible, but there's always some. Hopefully Larian will make a few passes between now and launch that look for this kind of thing.

+1 to OP ... i would love to see some consequences here ...


You are not even able to feed him magical item, if he dont likes you enough to unlock that conversation ...
In mine pure-evil Drow playthrough Gale didnt like me at all, he was keep talking about needing magical artefacts, the threatened that he would leave if i dont offer him any, and he sounded more and more urgent with every dialogue ... that was all good, i liked it ... but anyway, i was not able to give him anything even if i wanted to.

I'm pretty sure something happens, like his body turns into necrotic fire or something. I wouldn't worry about it to much, half the stuff isn't even finished since you know EARLY ACCESS!!!!!!!!!

Everytime My friend's and I killed Gale in our multiplayer game, it removed the ability to save. I had assumed this was due to the whole turning into a bomb thing, but I guess it doesnt happen in single player

Yeah, that happens in the very same instant he dies and it has NOTHING to do with what we are talking here, which are the long terms consequences he warns you about.



Oh, right, I almost forgot. Thank god someone reminded me it's

EARLY ACCESS.

Guess only after release it will be finally the proper time to point it out.

Jesus Fucking Christ.

started to wonder...your welcome btw

also do you really think the company would in anyway skip or just happen to have a brain fart to one of the companions storylines? like really...really really

Reminds me of literally every other game ever made where the antagonist is going to destroy the world and you can still rest 20x in row at the Inn - i have never seen that as an issue though

That's a bit different, isn't it?
We aren't talking about "You better hurry or the bad guy will win in the end".
We are talking about a specific claim ("If I stay dead two days the entire region goes nuclear") and then literally nothing happens if you put the claim to the test.


Look, maybe you missed it but in case it wasn't clear I was actually mocking you, because "it's early access" is not a legitimate explanation, it's a stupid, pointless excuse.

LOL, I'm going to bed Tuco, have a nice night/day/whatever

What if Gale is wrong?
What if the absorbtion is a con to feed power into, whatever it is, but the whole explosion ting just isn't real and Gale doesn't know it becuse he has been fooled into believeing it?

Just saying, because if it is all true, then yea ya grumpy sod Tuco, I agree with you. He should level the place after two days dead, or should dissapear because someone else sorted him.

So on one of my play throughs, Gale went postal and I had to put him down. Just saying...killing him near my sleeping bags was probably not the best choice.