Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Mega-threads and Guides Day/Night Cycle

Didn't know they had promised it for both Original Sin games and then dropped it and now they refuse to do it and certain immersive improvements because of their penchant for multiplayer. Really not a big fan of that at all. Always hated how much singleplayer custom experience was sacrificed by things like the origin system or the apparent need for a multiplayer mode. Those things are not bad things to want in a game, but they always seem to be at the expense of the overall game experience. :|

OK...WOW...start with a game clock / calendar and vary the brightness based on the time and length of day (equinox reference). Now for weather...bit of work there (Indy coders).

Of course the characters will have to adjust their dialogue...there are no problems, only solutions...No important dialogue (or at least limited) during weather or other situational events, just "can we talk about this later" (or something like that). Lets not over-complicate that massive dialogue tree.

Now they can actually add content for "situational events"... sneaky mission, comments about the weather, ect.

P.S.: "This is important and I want to talk about it...can we seek shelter first?" Lines like this would only add value to the overall story. I don't think Larian gets that "immersive elements" reinforce each other.

Just for context, the "problem" they pointed with multiplayer is that "With a day/night cycle it would be messy when the two players are supposed to progress at different pace".
Or something of that sort. I'm paraphrasing a bit the jist of the argument because I can't be bothered to find the actual quote (which was an answer to someone asking for it in an interview, by the way).

And frankly this strikes me as another example of Larian overcomplicating things, because the simple solution about "progressing time at a different pace" would be "DON'T".

- The "background clock" should always be in sync for all the players logged in a game (i.e. if it's 11:03am for the host, the same will be true for everyone).
- When one of the players enters turn-based mode and the "clock" freezes for them (i.e. If it's 11:05am it remains so as long as the turn-based mode lasts. Maybe with a 6-seconds-progression per round if you want to go overkill with the accuracy), it should "freeze" even for other players relatively afar sticking to real-time exploration (i.e. It will remain 11:05am for everyone as long as player X is in turn-based mode).
- "All players would need to agree on doing a long rest" is a bit of a redundant suggestion, since that's ALREADY THE CASE right now.

There, your "design issue" about "asynchronous time" solved entirely by removing the problem without removing the feature of having passing time.

Potential downside? Can't think of much, frankly, but for the sake of argument let's throw in the only plausible one:

"B-but if the players in turn-based mode take a lot of time to end combat, the others would experience longer days in real-time".
Possible answer: "SO FUCKING WHAT?". Who would care, honestly? How would that be any worse than just having your entire game world stuck in a single time window?

Who would prefer to explore a Baldur's Gate (and I mean the actual city now) frozen in eternal midday, without the joy to experience the dusk coming it, the city getting darker, the street lamps turning on etc, etc... just to avoid a trivial, negligible incongruence with the consistency of the clock?
No one in their right mind, that's who.

Absolutely nobody who has ever played a D&D Title.


Role play is about experiencing the world your in. I feel bad for the fire that Larian takes sometimes, but they stepped into the arena. If their philosophy is to not implement a feature unless they can do it right, then they should not try to make a D&D title unless they can do it right, let alone Baulder's Gate.

DOS is a dungeon crawler with RPG elements. D&D is first and foremost an RPG game.

The combat is not balanced, but the rules are accepted and we all love getting that extra mile out of a class and finding wining combinations.

D&D fans love to experience a authentic feeling representation of the world they have come to love gaming in.

Faerun is one of, if not the most iconic game setting ever created.

Trying to re-envision it to take cost cutting shortcuts will get a a harsh reaction (homebrew in teaspoons only).


Larian and EA should have been asked by WOTC if they understood what they were getting into. D&D doesn't need to "Get with the times", it needs to catch up in technology only.

It has a specific mindset that either needs to be understood or quickly learned.


Larian has made beautiful world and and an OK game, thanks to mods to be honest. If they want to make great a game then they have to stop cutting corners on the essentials..."essentials" being all of the time proven elements that, if done right, make a world feel alive. They show time and again that they don't truly understand the finer details of the genre.

Lastly, Larian has a lot to offer and have shown me some absolutely amazing work! The city that I can't feather fall to in the Underdark is intriguing and that whole area is just mind blowing. I just hope they figure out how to bring all these beautiful locations to life.

I applaud their vision and love the idea!

I am with you though...cake first, then frosting.

Love this. Will steal borrow!

There are no problems, only solutions. It's like I heard my younger self talking. Felt akward as hell.

I think the point is, it CAN be done. Will it? Probably not. Is it going to break the game if they don't. No. Will it be a disappointment? Absolutely.

SO many things players can do with night gameplay. Stealth advantages, superior dark vision for Drow, ambiance... Sigh. Such many opportunities missed. Sniff. Sheds tear.

I'm telling you, toll house would be MUCH freakier and creepier at night. All those severed limbs and such? Sigh.

Concidering minimum effort scenario ...

This all can be achieved by implementing day/night switch button ... and nothing else. O_o

It could. Tbh in the light of everything that was said I'm just curious to see all those beautiful locations with night light. Druid grove with a gentle ray of moonlight enlightning the huge central area and small torches and campfire giving warmth and oh so needed hope. Would be cool.

That sounds really beautyfull ...
But it also sounds like spmething that would give location of the grove to goblins in meere seconds.

Well hear me out, my pessimistic prediction is that the city of Baldur's Gate will be under siege and a side effect of that will be some kind of mindflayer induced 'nuclear winter' weather scenario, so the map will be 'dark' in a certain sense and then they will simply go: here, you have what you want, you complained about eternal midsummer-noon, now you have eternal grey of the mindflayer clouds, now stop complaining.

My optimistic - took too much hopium - scenario would be that the revamped animation and lightning means they are seriously considering 2 or 3 different day-time condition thing for release. Maybe the decision makers don't see the need for D/N but some at Larian must be on the pro D/N side as indeed it has been mentioned as a goal of their previous games in the past, so perhaps the D/N thing is one of those final release surprises they're keeping out of EA atm.

Sincerely, I hope it's the case as otherwise it would be really disappointing. I don't say all games need passage of time and day/night differences but a game whose main plot revolves around a time sensitive issue related to a conflict that involves among others the forces of darkness (quite literally, multiple light sensitive races/classes) vs. those of light, not having passage of time or d/n just screams incompetent writers to me.

No one forced them to do it like this, they could've avoided passage of time and need for day/night by simply writing a different story or introduce 'night time' missions and leave the time-sensitivity simply out of it. E.g. First time you see the grove, cinematic starts showing you arriving over far away hills and the sun going down, then the battle is during the night. When battle finishes, you get cinematic of the sun rising above the battlefield and the surviving combatants entering the gates so you arrive at the grove in the day. Similar things could have been implemented all over. I mean if your studio/engine/whatever can't handle water, then don't make a game with a story involving the oceans but with fish walking on land because of 'reasons'.


FYI: I don't want to hate on Larian, there's a lot of good in the game and it will be worth it for me in any case. I just think these are potentially serious design/writing mistakes of which I can't even imagine your average 21 year old literature student would make, so I think it's important to point this out as the studio's own silence and apparent ignoring of this issue suggests they don't think this is a problem at all while it undeniably is an issue. How big of an issue it is might be open to discussion, but the fact that it comes across as very unprofessional can't be denied. Also consider this, you can have the nicest cake there is, with all the icing you want, if the inside is only half baked and there's holes inside, people are going to notice and those 'small' details will have a much higher (negative) impact on the cake evaluation than all the things that are done as they should. Aka no matter how excellent some parts of the whole are, if other parts are subpar, the whole will never be excellent.

To address Larian concerns about multiplayer.

Traveling together can be tied to their profile system. If on player can't show, they can stick him in camp, choose to play a different session, or perhaps control of his character can be delegated to another during this time.

Multiplayer should be a plus to the game that adds more choice...not a game killer.

Now I know this is the age of mobile gaming and networking, so perhaps a mobile / multiplayer version that is "less messy", and the single player version that is the "authentic experience".

The gen x-ers will probably leave the game running on the phone, that is sitting on the coach; abandoned at the first distraction that sends them running into the next room.

They will probably love the game too, and will talk about it for .687 minutes before the next distraction.

I thought the same thing about Star War's last trilogy.


Bigger entities have screwed up worse. In Larian's case, I do see them trying to self correct, and we have no idea what steps they are taking (that silence...its so loud).

They can pull off something awesome, but to acknowledge your comment above...the writing team needs some supervision. If not a consultant, then take a trip to the tutoring center at the University of Antwerp. Of course they will need to sign up for a class to get a student ID.

Tutoring centers...gotta love 'em.

Before you can be Great you have to be Good, and before you can be Good you have to be Bad. No one is good at everything, but I believe that with humility and determination, an average Joe can be Joe Montana, Joe Frazier, Joe Bide....never mind.

Please don't mention star wars, Disney is on a whole different level of genuine evilness. I also think Larian has the potential to improve and I'm really hoping they will surprise us all by the time of full release.
At the moment, however, it's not that the writing could be better or whatever, in the end our preferences remain subjective and as a for profit company I get that they should, perhaps not aim at, but surely consider 'the lowest common denominator' (e.g. a masterpiece like plansescape would probably find almost no audience amongst today's mainstream gaming audience I fear).

What bothers me is not the quality of the story's content as such, but that they explicitly chose to not only include, but put center stage certain things which should have simply never left the brainstorming table because these narrative elements really make BG3's shortcomings stand out. Their decision to have a vamp spawn and shar follower as central characters of the story in a game with no night-mode whatsoever is questionable in itself. IMO it would have been better to guide players' attention away from what the game and story lack (e.g. night itself, or the ability to roam in the dark), instead they chose to include that stuff anyway and stubbornly attempt to explain the inconsistencies and contradictions away. I just feel that for me this is totally unconvincing. 'Vamps in the sun ? Yes, but our Vamp spawn is a special one, you see, he doesn't mind daylight', 'Baddies that roam under the blistering sun instead of thieving in the night? No, you see, at night all the baddies go to bed really early because they really really need to get up early'. So yeah,what bothers me is not 'bad writing' in terms of themes, tropes, language used etc. (it's a fantasy game after all, not a nobel literature nominee) but all the clumsy executed 'excuses' their story needs in order to tell the story they want to tell because the game they are making doesn't allow for it.

So yeah, i feel a need to point that out. However cliché BG1/2 were (they were) in their story, at least the games didn't constantly need to throw BS at you to explain all their obvious limitations and inconsistencies in a totally unconvincing way. The worst is probably that all of this could have been simply avoided by not letting everyone at Larian have their thing included. You propose Vamp companion, sorry pal, no night in our game, good idea but not this time. It feels like they wanted to please everyone and as a consequence compromised too much instead of taking harsh decisions with the whole in mind (i.e. either make cuts to implement night, or cut the content that screams 'night-time needed').

I mean, you want us to go to camp and never walk around during the night ? Fine, but give me reason other than ' cinematics are tied to camp' 'our supposedly new (!) engine can't handle two light modes'. You wanna have teleportation portals conveniently placed around the map, fine but at least do the damn effort to tie them into the narrative, like add a little sidequest where we accidentally discover them or need to pursue a mad delinquent mage hopping trough these portals instead of having gale pop out as if he were a tutorial pop-up but otherwise totally ignore it in the universe you build. I mean, why the fuck doesn't gale simply tell everyone at the grove they could try escaping using the portals ? Why do our elf companions (who don't need sleep afaik) never complain about the party's apparently severe phobia of the night ? Why have Astarion bring to your attention that he , contrary to us and all other inhabitants of act 1, does in fact enjoy himself some good wandering around at night?

[end of rant]
ps: this is all in good faith Larian. No hate, I couldn't do it any better myself, but I think you can and should do better.

Was a righteous rant though

Love the early access, but I hate how much I agree with this post. Not all of it, but definitely the gaps in writing logic and gaps in worldbuilding/narrative. It is a very good point that it is absurd to have the game take place entirely in midday while your major characters are a vampire spawn and a Sharran...

You know, I hadn't really thought about the possibility that the EA surface may be the ONLY area in the entire game that would even potentially be affected by Day/Night. If that's the case, it doesn't really make sense for them to worry so much about building an entire Day/Night system just for 10% of the game.

I mean, whether we go into the Underdark or into the Shadow Cursed Lands - our next objective - it's not likely going to have Day/Night. And will Moonrise Towers? Will whatever comes next? And, as someone said, will even Baldur's Gate? What if it IS besieged in some sort of Lord of the Rings style cloud of darkness thing where it is perpetual night there the entire time? That would actually make sense if they are going to bring Cazador into it as a major player, and devils like Raphael, mind flayers, undead of all kinds, etc.

So, as much as I want Day/Night, I could see Larian thinking, "Come on. Most PCs are going to travel by day on the surface of EA. Why go through all the work for one small area of the game?"

The other thing I was thinking was that other D&D games have done this same thing. Neverwinter Nights, for example, didn't have Day/Night cycles. Each map area was what it was. Granted, the resting system was taking a knee in the street, but the point is that you didn't see shifting day to night events. The map dictated what time of day it was. Unless I'm remembering incorrectly. It has been awhile.

Again, I WANT Day/Night. I think the EA map would REALLY benefit from it, and when I play a drow, it's REALLY weird to travel about in broad daylight. I'd much rather have the option to travel by night. All I'm saying is, I am maybe understanding a bit more why they COULD think it's not worth it in the long run.

This is a good point. On the other hand, does that mean we are in for as urgent a main story as the DOS2 story? I know we have the tadpole and all, but I'm concerned that urgency will take away from worldbuilding or making the game have a lived-in experience. A lot of times the games feel static and that sort of frozen experience is justified by the idea that all of this is happening instantly from one moment to the next. Not necessarily terrible, but not ideal either.

At this point, I see no reason to believe it'll be any different from DOS2 - well, what I'm assuming anyway since I've never played DOS2.

I have come to see BG3 like Star Trek Into Darkness while the original BG games are like the old Wrath of Khan movie.

BG3 is flashy and fast paced and exciting. My kids and I watched the climax of Wrath of Khan a while back and they said, "Wait. THIS is the climax?"

Wrath of Khan was about Star Trek exploration and universe development - about the story. Into Darkness was about explosions and intensity and thrill.

I think Larian is more focused on the Into Darkness approach. Less on Wrath of Khan because today's generation thinks Wrath of Khan is boring. And frankly... I probably wouldn't be out here if I didn't agree. I don't have a lot of time to play a game and sit and learn history and politics and world building in a video game world. It's sad and unfortunate, because that makes for a very surfacy game world with little substance, but it seems to be the direction a lot are going.