Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General The Game Fails to Present a Compelling Setting

Sad but true indeed. On the other hand, WotC does have a stake in this as owners of the IP. But I guess when I see the ugly ass artwork of those Minsc DnD comics and the recent DnD MtG crossover, they also don't give too many fucks about a consistent and immersive representation of Faerûn anymore. Alas, O tempora, o mores something something.

A good counter example would be Game of Thrones initial success in reviving fantasy after the Tolkien film adaptations. It's exactly because of its low magic and highly 'credible' world building that it could attract both old and new people to fantasy. The last season of the TV show, however, also serves as a strong warning against dropping consistency in the narrative and simply seeking profit. You might still make huge profits, but you lost the moral battle for integrity and the immaterial value created by being considered authentic good quality work.

Yup ... as our economy teacher allways said (and im not quite sure if this will be translated properly).

Quote: "Peníze jsou vždycky AŽ na prvním místě" ...

Basicaly: After everything else ... money allways come first.

I cant agree with this ...
Expanding a universe is allways hard work, bcs you litteraly need to add something, that will feel the same (or at least simmilar) but will not be the same ...

Some people will love it, some people will hate it (this is inevidable) ... their ratio can be used to decide how sucesfull you were in your effort, but as long as your product was sucessfull on financial site, nobody cares.
That was what i was trying to say.

I often use Star Wars as an example ...
There is many people who litteraly HATE with burning passion new trillogy ...
But 20y earlier, people HATED the Prequels just the same ...
And i just recently come to this article, wich i find extremely hilarious (and sad at same time).
But i think it sums the idea pretty well.

In spite of my disappointment with the state of the industry, I maintain that deep veins of quality material (tabletop gaming or otherwise) lie out there undiscovered; creators who place passion/the aforementioned consistency above profit (the ones who have yet to be cowed by corporate pressure, in other words) don't receive nearly as much press unless they catch a lucky break...and then the compromises begin . Fortunately, for artists, the internet is an equalizing force.

Dude, the FR-MTG crossover is a cash grab, plain and simple.

I can see where the OP of this thread was coming from.

However, I do not feel like the lack of exposition is necessarily a bad thing and also that it is partly unavoidable and pretty much intented design with the narrative direction of atleast the first act.

I personally hate forced exposition and much prefer the style of writing where I'm thrown into the "deep end" only for the story to slowly reveal the grand picture to me. Obviously this does demand a different attitude from the gamer, opinions can differ.

BG1 & BG2 weren't too different at all in this regard however. Especially in BG2 (first game of the series / forgotten realms I played) I had absolutely zero clues about what was going on. In regards to that I feel like BG3 already does a much better job, which is normal as this is the case for most older vs newer games.

The first act of the game is also all about not knowing why you've been taken on the mindflayer ship, who the absolute is or generally what the hell is going on. The followers of the absolute are even programmed to be unable to tell you or to have to hide the truth. Given that there's a whole slew of people on YouTube and reddit who love datamining the game and speculating about the actual underlying plot, it's clear that this is an approach many people (me included) enjoy as well.
I'm pretty sure that act two will have a lot more answers in this regard guiding us to a final resolution in act three.

As for forgotten realms knowledge: exposition with pop-up text like in the Pathfinder games is pretty much not possible here given much more voiced content. Kingmaker and the first few hours of Wrath that I played through are not the perfect examples of "show don't tell" mentality either in my opinion. I frankly found the massive info dumps you get sometimes extremely tiring and detrimental to those games' pacing.

An elegant way to do it would be to include much more, "tell me more about", dialogue options with the companions to talk about their personal lives and experiences and impart knowledge of the world through that.
That is already present to some extend but could be expanded upon.

Another idea is to add appropriate visitor NPC's to the camp when in certain locations which you can ask about the locale and various lore relevant to that stage of the game. For example a travelling family when in the first area, a bunch of tieflings in the druid grove, some random adventurer in the underdark etc.

I find it hard to come up with a better way of providing background information than the Owlcat way: use highlighted hyperlinks in all text. The links to more information are unobtrusive; if you already know who Dyzalicobyn from the city of Q'twalla is, then don't click on those hyperlinks. Otherwise, quickly open a window to digest the information you need. It is very (cost) effective for both developers and players.

During the game's progress, more hyperlinks may become available, and hyperlinks can gradually provide more information. Help texts could also tie in with the quest system.

What is the connection? The two approaches do not need to exclude each other. Someone speaking to you could provide you with a bit of info that can later be accessed by a hyperlink popping up a window.

Books aren't voiced in BG3 so there's already precedent for there being read-only text.

The rest of your arguments against exposition pop-ups are personal preferences, so I can't argue with those except to say I disagree and that I would prefer optional extra knowledge (that my character should probably know) in the form of exposition pop-ups.

I would much prefer these over actual voiced dialogue, where our character selects multiple "What is X?" prompts during dialogues to get this information. That would get tedious and is very unimmersive in my eyes.

I think The Witcher 3 does a pretty good job at recording and updating information about both people, monsters, placers and story development.
So if you ever forget, you can just go back and read up on it.

What was so wrong with the MTG cross-over? One does not impact the other here, nor is it in my mind a reason to question WoTC's commitment to Faerun or D&D content.
I like D&D, I like Magic, frankly the cross over was fine.

+1

Really? You had to remember alot of stuff in Witcher 3. I played it two weeks. Im supposed to remember it all, average people get drunk 4+ times during that time. I think Larian is facing similiar problems with BG3, no doubt this is long game like DOS2. I would use Narrator to fill you in, occasionally. I would also add somekind of zoom, to see what kind of locations/characters are in front of you, well around you, in tabletop games, DM usually do this, she/he tells abit about the area and city, and people, call it "dm zoom" if that makes sense.

Or how about Telltale's style? Previously happened?

Oh I definitely think certain things about the world should be added by the narrator, so generic descriptions that most people of the Sword Coast would know (but not something someone new to D&D would know).

"Selune, the godess of the Moon...."
"Shar, her evil Twin sister..."
"The Blood War, the eternal struggle between demons and devils..."

They can easily weave more of those kind of lines to get the player up to date.

Personally not a fan of the notion of the narrator explaining things in-game, I have a hard enough time being immersed in BG3 as it is without a voice over telling the player what’s what. Feels too much along the lines of Alexa or Siri. Besides I can’t stand the narrator’s sultry voice.

Opinions differ indeed.

Of course there can be more books explaining all manner of things, pretty much no one can be against that. But most people probably won't even touch those very much.

Perhaps a good codex like thing in which you can read up in extensive detail would then be the best solution. Especially if it's illustrated richly etc. One could even include some popups directing to the codex in a tutorial like manner.

Books are good for non-essential story elements. All the details about Ketheric Thorm, for example, books are good for all that.

What is not good is that there are main story elements only really detailed in the books. So, if you know nothing about Shar, you're clueless as to why Shadowheart's secret is such a big deal. Since Shar is a HUGE goddess in the game, there should be more dialogue explaining who she and Selune are way back at the beginning. Not a ton, mind you, but enough to let players know she is Female Satan. So, when Shadowheart reveals her secret, you are like, "What!!" Not "What??? Who cares."

The game actually does this pretty well for most main elements.

One thing I myself had to get used to, and still am, is that this game is all about telling stories from different perspectives. You CAN'T fully understand everything unless you replay the game again and again. You need to take different paths to learn more things from different perspectives and then piece it all together.

So, for example, the gnomes. You get one piece from Barcus at the windmill IF you're good to him. You get another piece from Thulla, then another from Phil, then another from Barcus again, then another from Beldron, and yet another from Laridda and Lunkbug, and yet still more from books and so forth. If you make different decisions, you may miss out on some of the details and get a whole different idea of what's happening.

So, at the end of the day, it's not like a lot of RPGs that tend to spell everything out for you. You have to piece it together like a mystery.

But again, this is good for non-essential elements. However, the game currently suffers from a few things not being more clearly explained, leaving players lost and therefore disengaged.

I had exactly the same feeling when I played BG2 for the first time. I didn't know the context, I didn't play BG1 before that, and my English was atrocious back then. Yet somehow it worked out.

So, maybe it's not really a problem? Time will tell, anyway.

Seriously, the more I play it, the more the story does fit together quite well, and it's pretty impressive. I still have issues with some of it and have called things out, but overall, the sheer magnitude of the story is amazing.

The problem is that you have to get the full story by talking to everyone, sometimes more than once, and also by picking different dialogue choices on subsequent playthroughs. And you have to READ books. And I mean REALLY read. Pay attention to detail. I've made mistakes more than a few times because of one little missed detail.

Take Ethel, for instance. Play as a mage and actually trust her to remove the tadpole. You get some interesting info by NOT being aggressive towards her.

Play "evil" and see the scene with Ragzlin and the mind flayernas opposed to the "Die Ragzlin" approach.

Be evil and join Minthara... And... Ugh... Be naughty with her, and you learn even more. (I'm not a fan of sex in video games, books, movies and TV. Fade to black please.)

And for the love of God, don't neglect halflings! (You're welcome, Niara.). You can learn some other details by simply playing other races or classes.

I recommend playing as a cleric of Shar and/or Selune at least once.

Then, I'm sure we'll REALLY learn tons more once we can actually play as the origin characters.

Except they had a really nice manual that (tried to) explain at least the basics. If i remember correctly it was a two part thing with volo and elemeninster taking turns in explaining stuff.