Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General A relatively fresh article from Techradar with S. Vincke; IGN article added.

I think you're forgetting how flat many of the characters are in BG 2 with maybe 2 -5 lines of voiced dialogue each and how much work Larian has left to do. BG 2 could only rope you in to caring about a companion if they had their own quest or lots of backstory(all delivered through text.)

Now every companion has to be like that and it means we get less companions but more complex backstories for them.

BTW Dragon Age Origins set the precedent of modern 3d RPGs using 4 party members (devs called it a spiritual successor to BG) and it was quite effective and fun.

I don't understand why this discussion has to turn into another "6 party members yes or no?". @KillerRabbit I think the fact of the matter is that no matter how right you are on the matter, the fact that people are still arguing with you (and it doesn't matter who's right) means there is no agreement on it even in this bastion of D&D and BG forum.

I mean... is there anything that there IS agreement on? These forums or not? You'll even find the rare surface enthusiast.

My comment might warrant a separate topic, but for now, I'll put it here.

Honesty, Larian, and the Future of Baldur's Gate 3

I feel like any allegations against Larian of being dishonest is unfair. Granted, I wasn't a part of any of their EAs before, so my knowledge of the subject is limited to Baldur's Gate 3 development, but I feel like they provided a lot to me to work with to show my point. Time will tell, but from what Larian did so far with their updates (ever since the game's first presentation) was (somewhat) painfully honest. It would have been so much easier to release a trailer with only the best bits of the game, but instead, Larian CEO just decided to have a playthrough and risk the game bugging on him live (which it did, several times, with the last bug completely breaking the game). I don't know if Larian has any PR people (I assume they do), but I feel like every time Sven talks to someone they're probably banging their heads against the wall.

And this interview is not so different. Even the first response from Sven in the interview (“They're all horny, I can tell you that... So anybody who tells you the opposite, I can tell you that's not true.”) which I found funny and cute, made some people in this forum angry. But I guess that's not the issue most people here are so furious about...

The issue people here seem to be very mad about (and correct me if I'm wrong) is this line:
“I can imagine that we will never manage to find the balance that will please everyone,” says Vincke. But, there is a (sort of) solution: “The game will be moddable eventually, so people will be able to make their mods. I expect multiple flavors of Baldur’s Gate 3 to come out of that. Over time there will be probably a flavor that will appeal hopefully to everybody.”

Now again, if I was a Larian PR guy, I would be very angry with this answer. this is the kind of honesty that makes people angry. It would have been much more easier to pull some " we are looking into all possibilities and will change things to suit as many players as possible" crap, but Sven said what he really thinks - It's impossible (yes, impossible) to please everyone and to only thing to do is to make the game you would want to play. And I'm sorry guys, but some of the things you hang on to here (six members party? really? this is the difference between legend and meh game? wow if it is that easy I wonder how come Baldur's Gate never had any successors) are not even remotely in a consensus as you think they are. It's not the topic of this thread, but a shortlist of things people think are a must and I disagree with completely (and sure I'm not the only one): 6 members party, day-night circle, more faithful D&D rule adaptation, removing camp, hp bloat (didn't even know it was a thing, pretty sure most players are on my camp on this), action\bonus action things I really don't understand much about (and lo and behold, I still enjoyed the gameplay, strange world).

Other than that, people seem to comment on the fact Sven addressed the issue with the RNG but not much else, which is not true as well. He did address the evil path and the companion choice, which are also a big point of criticism toward the game. Of particular interest is what he said on the evil path: There is nothing specific here about whether there would be changes to the evil path, but keeping the honesty title in mind, I simply think he doesn't want to commit to anything yet, probably because they are still debating about the nature of changes they are gonna make.

In the end, I am still very happy with this interview. My feeling is that there is still an internal debate in Larian about how to proceed with several issues that we raised during the last month and that Larian is not willing to commit to changing anything that there was no decision about yet.

a word about solasta - it's much easier to take feedback from 10 people than from 1000 people I think. And I honestly think solasta can be as faithful to D&D is it wants, but a short playthrough proved that you need much more than this to create a good game and many many games before proved it.

well, that's my point. check the previews page for a more detailed comment.

Yeah, I've read it and to an extent I agree (I must thank you for restoring a bit of my faith in Larian), but I don't think "you can't please anyone" should be an excuse to not at least consider various criticisms. Perhaps this is not what Swen (or you) intended to say, but it does sound like a possible implication.

I also think most people realise there is no consensus. But since this forum is mostly feedback- and suggestion-oriented, that's what we provide. Each of us has an idea of what the game needs, and of course these ideas will often clash. But I believe a lot of good things can come out from these discussions and debates, even if no "consensus" is ever reached. In the end, this is not a democracy and Larian will do as Larian pleases. But what we can do is provide food for Larian's thought.

“All of the things that people are suggesting were already on the list of things that we had to do,” says Vincke. “So they fit our roadmap. We are, to a large extent, in sync with our audience, I think. But there are things that we hadn't thought of. So it'll be interesting to see what they are going to add to the game.”

based on larian's responses concerning evil/neutral companions already in game and the discussion about 12 or 8 npc companions in total im getting more concerned about what impact this may have for other aspects of the game, mainly the 4v6 party debate and the incorporation of blank merc companions. I could see larian keeping the party size at 4 (not a fan of btw) bc there is a limited roster to work with (which may be even more limited post act 1 companion/map locks - also not a fan of) and just rely on modders to up it to a party of 6. like others have posted, one npc per class i would have assumed being the bg standard, and then taking into alignment, you have a minimum of 24 possible good v evil npcs but it seems that larian prefers their origin character approach and supplemental mercenaries to round out a party of 4. While i dont dislike the merc approach (pretty sure we havent seen this in game yet) i would likely have preferred if larian chose one or the other - all origin characters that are full fleshed out but limited in number or all merc companions that have some limited dialogue but are larger in number and more variety in class, race, alignment, etc.

It's an interesting issue. Who gets to define what is a major criticism? What metric do we use to measure interest in an issue? I tend to see the evil path criticism as a niche one, you see it as central.

I think Vinke has been stressing evil from day one -- repeatedly asking EA players play evil, showcasing his ability to play evil, commenting on how many people play the evil path time and time again. And I think he is doing so because he knows without such encouragement most people will ignore the evil path. So where you see him addressing an issue that has come from the forums I see the continuation of a narrative that started before EA launched and the use of a forum topic as a pretext.

I truly think there are many more D&D ruleset threads, surface discontent threads and party size threads than 'evil playthrough' threads here, on reddit and on the beamdog and obsidian forums. I'd guesstimate the 'surface dissatisfaction' to 'evil path dissatisfaction' at a factor of 5 to 1?

Sure. And it shows that the game is better with 6 party members. But the point that is that 'a mod will fix' it is not addressing the concern of those of us who believe that the game should come with native support.

I also think most people realise there is no consensus. But since this forum is mostly feedback- and suggestion-oriented, that's what we provide. Each of us has an idea of what the game needs, and of course these ideas will often clash. But I believe a lot of good things can come out from these discussions and debates, even if no "consensus" is ever reached. In the end, this is not a democracy and Larian will do as Larian pleases. But what we can do is provide food for Larian's thought.

The biggest part of the ideas don't clash and the problems raised are very often the same... Even if there are lots of variety about solutions and even if "controversial" things like party size or HP bloat have more activity than other threads.

But after reading 160 forum pages of titles, tons of feedbacks and half the compendium... I think it's not impossible to create a mega list of suggestions that could pleased the huge majority of people talking here.

You're right that "you can't please everyone" is no excuse, but it's not exactly what Sven said:

You can assume that when he says "all" he is a pretentious guy who didn't even read any feedback, or you can read the whole quote and assume that "all" was just a poor word choice, because later he specifically say there is some feedback he didn't think about. It goes back to my original title, how honest do you think he is?

Sure. And it shows that the game is better with 6 party members. But the point that is that 'a mod will fix' it is not addressing the concern of those of us who believe that the game should come with native support.

I think many of the people here don't realize that what they consider better to be subjective. Sure, you can create some metrics, for example, you could argue that 5e is a more balanced system and then using balance as a metric argue that it is better. But what if the game Swen is trying to make, isn't supposed to be balanced? And don't take this to mean that I am perfectly happy with the game as is and believe that everything is fine and dandy. My "ideal" game has a lot of differences from the product which is being produced here. I can give you some easy examples, I am at core a simulationest, I like worlds which have a high degree of "realism" where everything is explainable and makes sense. As a result of this, I like a lot of mechanics which I can tell you without even polling people, most people hate. For example, I like the following:

• Encumbrance Systems.
• Hunger Systems.
• Fatigue.
• HP for individual body parts (think Deus Ex).
• Item Durability.
• Magic systems that actually make sense (The Vancian system fails here horribly in my opinion).
• Realism in inventory storage (stuff like heavily restrictive inventory tetris).

I could list a whole bunch of other things, but you get the idea. My ideal game would be a game so niche that its target audience is probably only 1 person and its not realistic to expect any company to make that game. But here is the thing - Swen isn't trying to make my ideal game or your ideal game, he is trying to make his studio's ideal game. As a result of this, there will be some very large deviations from something that you want, that I want and that they want. This isn't to say feedback is useless - obviously it isn't, but its likely far more useful for them if you identify what you dislike and why you dislike it, rather than trying to propose solutions for how to go about making it something that you like. I am also guilty of this and I won't deny that I like to throw out my hows just as much as anyone else, but I do that in the full knowledge that I expect that my solution will be completely ignored. What I expect isn't for them to implement my solutions, what I expect is for them to figure out how to address that dislike, whilst still making the game that they intend to make. Sometimes, this is impossible and the thing that I dislike is fundamentally at odds with one of their design pillars and in those cases, there can be no reconciliation.

What would be nice is if they would draw up a list and say, "these are the things we are unwilling to budge on," just so players know what not to waste time providing feedback on, but I also understand that giving that kind of message to a group of people is a very quick way to lose that particular sales group, so there is a strong incentive not to do so. It also might send the wrong message if not worded very carefully and players might interpret that thing they are unwilling to budge on to be much larger or smaller than it actually is.

Added to all of this, you have the fact that this forum represents a "bubble" in online spaces, where its community is only a microcosm of the entire game's community. I can tell you without polling the forum, on the whole, the majority of people here want the game to be closer to 5e, have a better camera system, have less surfaces and have a higher party limit. Some of those things I even happen to agree with. That doesn't mean it represents the majority view however, it only represents the view of this community. Btw, in the game's code next to the party limit of 4, there is a comment which says, "make it support up to 8 because we know modders will add that anyhow." They know that people want stuff like that, but they also know that is not the default experience they are trying to present to the world. To be honest they should probably just have a difficulty option that allows you to change the party size with a default setting of 4.

I can tell you without polling the forum, on the whole, the majority of people here want the game to be closer to 5e, have a better camera system, have less surfaces and have a higher party limit.

if everything I knew about the world was based on the post on the Bg3 section of these forums, I would say Solasta is probably the greatest RPG ever made and has millions of sales. I would also think Crpgs are the most popular genre of video games and that most players only care about D&D mechanics.

things like party size or HP bloat have more activity than other threads.

That's the idea for original post: to get information (from articles, journalists, who gave the right set of questions) - what are the things Larian wouldn't budge on.

It would save so much time for so much people to direct their feedback whenever it is needed, or simply get off the horse because it is going the wrong way, for them.

Low amount of voice acting makes companions flat? What? (Or did I misunderstand? But the way you wrote it does make it seem like it's implied.)

And no, companions in BG2 had A LOT of interaction, both with the PC and with each other. Not all were equally good, that's true (looking at you, Nalia), but most had quite a lot of depth. And as KillerRabbit said, some were shallow - but I think there's a place for "shallow", fun characters, both in old and in new games. Perhaps you're thinking about BG1, in which, yes, companions had just a tad more depth than cardboard. Fun cardboard, but still cardboard.



Usually I'd agree that quality>quantity, but I think Larian went too far. Yeah, the origins/companions have massive backstories and lots of content, but there's very little in terms of choice, and choice is of great importance in cRPGs. It won't do me any good that companions have so much stuff to them if there's not enough to choose from that I can have a party I actually care about. Not because of better/worse writing, but because I subjectively like some characters and dislike others.



Unfortunately, it did set the precedent. I was actually very disappointed with there being only four party members in DA:O. Apart from that, it was indeed a great, fun game. And I'd even say a decent spiritual successor.

Story feedback is very important then, because of the resource cost associated with making changes there. I'm not sure if there has been a lot of news on that front at all.