Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Modding Mod ideas for: character creation, 1st combat tutorial, journal

I recently asked my followers which was the game they loved a lot but struggle the most with.
They told me about Baldur's Gate 3 UX, and wanted me to do a case study about it.
So thanks to their participation, we tried to redesign:

- The character creation interfaces and flows
- The 1st combat tutorial
- The journal organization and features

If I'm posting it here, it's because I follow their recommendation: they think some people may be interested by thoses redesign and would like it to be a mod.
Other stuff just doesn't work at all.

So here is my redesign with the prototypes links:
[French audio with EN subtitles]

I'd love to have your thoughts about it!
(plz don't be harsh, I know everything is not perfect, I just love the game, wanted to do a UX study case on it and share it <3)

oups, why is the thumbnail that fat

Yeah somehow the youtube links always embed gigantic here. Works for me though, cause I liked all those UI and presentation suggestions! Well done!

Even for someone pretty familiar with D&D and BG games, I found a lot of the stuff in char creation felt hard to parse with more back and forth than I would have liked. I also like that idea of asking the player some prompt type questions to help determine what kind of character they might enjoy. Or even better if those types of choices had knock on effects for the actual story paths in the campaign, so sorta taking the temperature or reading the room. If they player is say interest in a more heroic or a more villainous type of experience, or maybe heavy or light on say romance. Nudity and Gore is toggle on/off like we have to opt in, but they could probably have arranged a whole series of variables there that might have customized the gameplay to varying degrees. Maybe Gore is fine, but Spiders not so much, or Snakes, who knows, but the game could take stock of that without necessarily showing all the cards up front. I guess there's another sense in which as a player, I might not really know what I want until I see it, but I just like the idea that the game takes some sorta initial survey and then we get a gloss on it. Similar to how the Dream Guardian, or the Dream Lover from EA, could be used to gauge what sorts of visuals the player enjoys, and then maybe adapts that into various NPCs or people we meet along the way. That's more than just an interface thing I suppose, but think it's a cool concept and a way for the player to start teasing things out for themselves. I particularly liked the HUD suggestions and combat tutorial with the information staged out more.

One thing that is interesting to consider, regarding the usability or how many new players need to ask a friend or seek out information online about how to play or use feature X or whatever. Weirdly I think that may have been a boon for the sense of community that developed around the game. It's a little strange for a game that is mostly a Single Player experience probably, but rather than being intuitive but solipsistic, it's almost like the game was overly complex but also communitarian/friendly about the challenges of playing D&D. Like there are all these little opportunities for min/max and curious one off rules, insights or tips and advice, that players had to give each other, because it wasn't forthcoming in the tutorial or in the manual or particularly easy to spot maybe. The Wikis and encylopedia type stuff that is referenced outside the game for how to play the game, or play it well. That was kinda unique. Not sure if it worked out, but there is a sort of triumphant feeling of actually finally getting ones head around some of this stuff. Or helping someone else to do that, after the fact. Well anyway, again, cool video! Nice designs!

ps. For character creation I also wish this screen would preview our portrait somewhere, like before we launch into the main campaign.

The reason is because it may take an hour or more before the player actually reaches their camp on the beach and discovers that there is a magic mirror to make appearance adjustments.

One thing which I would have loved, a BG3 Character Portrait that was backwards compatible with BG2 and BG1. I'm not sure why they didn't do it in such a way that the BG3 portrait would conveniently produce an image at the requisite dimensions for that. Basically all we needed was for BG3 to spit out an image that could be scaled to 330x210px 210x170 etc. Instead they gave us circles and squares, with no way to get at our character portrait outside of just screen capturing something and bringing it into an image editor like PS or GIMP.

It would have been really cool to use a new BG3 portrait suite based on 3d avatars with hella options, then create the BG1 or BG2 characters from that as well.

Like here was my attempt at a Yoshimo yesterday.



It's not terrible right, but what about the Yoshimo grin?

Can't really pull that off, short of playing out like a whole campaign and trying to grab a screenshot. What we need is get whatever the Deva has going on. Like this... hehe



Or I don't know, but just compare some of the cool options available for a couple random NPCs.



More options to make our own portraits look like those. With the cool background gradients and different angles or tilts.

Here was my attempt at an Imoen... again had to do it from a screenshot.



I think a full on portrait suite of that sort would have been endlessly entertaining, and if we were able to preview and customize that image more, then what I would want from the Avatar UI is a way to explain basic features of portraiture with a little lexicon or matrix of terms to help the player craft something unique that conveys the characters personality. So like having presets with emoting or expressive names. Instead of Head 1, head 2 etc, we might have a whole spread. The material is there, we just can't get at it. My favorite thing they added into the full release from EA was the cabinet of heads which allowed us to preview the model instead of just cycling endlessly. I'd love to see that but done up to the nines, with all the extra options layered on top.

I know it's not UI/UX per se, but in a sense it sort of is, because the portrait is the main thing we interact with throughout the game for things like character selection. Also for the sense of aesthetic progression, as we acquire cooler armors or certain campaign related events change the portrait visualization to carry a concept home, say God Gale or Shadowheart with different hair, or just Wyll getting to wear the Evil Devil robes early on and have that reflected in the portrait. It's one of those areas where a little bit more would have gone a very long way for me. Like just having a palette for our basic background color. I would love to see someone really craft a UI for a portrait suite that leaned into the craft on that. Like just have the people who were responsible for creating the many portraits shown on the wiki for NPCs, and systemize that process to make it into a kind of mini game the same way we get to "play" at creating our avatar. I would have loved that!

pps. For the HUD and that first combat with Lae'zel, I really like the idea to show the actual resources required on the individual icons. In the example shown in the video where each potential thing a character might do is displayed with a little green circle for the Action, orange triangle for the Bonus action etc. For accessibility players (esp those with colorblindness) have also requested some clearer indication of when a spell or action has been expended already. Currently the method is to 'gray-out' that icon, but subtle variations in hue or vibrancy may not be enough for some, who might prefer something more noticeable like a red checkmark say. Similarly it might be helpful for the overall HUD organization to indicate whether a special ability or spell will replenish on Short Rest vs Long Rest.

In Early Access the Hotbar was a hotbutton issue, with a lot of mixed feedback there. For my part I like to keep it hot with the Hotbar, but I know others enjoyed the massive hotbar of EA which we could extend the full width of the screen.

Right now the hotbar can be raised (adding more rows above the standard hotbar) but we cannot extend the width of the hotbar (like adding more columns.) Even when the additional Rows are added on top, it's still possible for characters to completely fill the available space on their hotbar relatively quickly, like from the the Midgame on. When adding rows or collapsing the hotbar back down, the icons will re-arrange, so it's not clear if new icons are being added by column or row, top down or left to right etc, it becomes a jumble. It's possible to lock the hotbar arrangement with the little padlock icon to the far right, but if the hotbar is unlocked (as it is by default) it's easy to accidentally remove a hotbar icon and then have to hunt it down again from a more complex Char Sheet or Spellbook menu. For things like passive abilities or toggles, or certain item or class abilities like meta magic, that space can be quickly taken up pretty quickly.

In general I feel like their approach to the HUD/Hotbar was that players would enjoy this minigame of constantly tending to their hotbar or customizing it continually (how the icons there are arranged, how large/tall to make the hotbar for spellcaster characters etc.) I'm the opposite way, I prefer the game to give me a default, or to have a way to reset the hotbar if something goes amiss according to those defaults. So for example, some people may prefer to have everything on the hotbar at once and then arrange the icons to be color coded, or with spells arranged by most used rather than by level. For the standard actions I tend to leave all those in the same space, so that when the hotbar is raised (tallest available grid, and fully expanded) that the standard actions will all be in the same arrangement when switching between characters. I end up doing this for all characters, even if some characters like Rogues and Fighters don't need the full grid in the way that dedicated spellcasters would, I still max them, just so the standard actions will all display the same way. Again so if Gale or Shadowheart has their hotbar expanded all the way, that their standard actions will be in the same place as Lae'zel's or Astarions. I don't need Jump or Dip or Dash to be in a different spot, just cause the character is a different class, but that's what will happen if playing with characters that use a different sized hotbar. It would also be nice if those Rows could conveniently map to keybinds on the keyboard, say 1-12 and then allow us to cycle with a secondary key.

I also find that I end up managing a lot more stuff from the Inventory or Char sheet menus than should really be required, particularly for stuff like consumables such as potions or scrolls, or to switch special weapons or equipment that way rather than using the HUD. Like at least half the time, I have an inventory screen open, and that is hardly a Heads Up type situation. Sure we're able to move these inventory screens around and reposition them, but that's also problematic when the thing we have to do is say 'insert' object X into 'environmental feature Y, to produce whatever outcome. Say one of the pedestal puzzles. In those case, the selected UI screens may end up obstructing other UI screens that we need to interact with. On the whole I end up having to drag stuff around or reorder icons more often that I'd like, and this coming from someone who play inventory tetris for hours upon hours in BG1. On the one hand it's sorta cool to have this much control over the HUD presentation, but it can be pretty onerous and probably not a great time sink for the first time player.

For the Mini Map, I think part of the problem is that the little planchettes are difficult to see. They're very small and the shape is quite round. This makes it hard to tell at a glance which way the character is actually facing. The issue for me is that Mini orients around the character, but it's the Camera that we actually control. Typically I want to know where my Camera is and which direction the camera is facing, rather than the selected character. Part of this is owing to the fact that we don't ever control the party, but only a single character at a time, but it's easy to switch from Character to Character by say clicking on the portrait, which confuses the situation when the camera snaps.

One problem more generally for how the Combat Tutorial is presented, is that most of the time we are managing our characters outside of combat. Before we get into controlling the team in Turn Based mode with combat stuff happening, a more basic 'how to move' or 'how to select/change characters' would have been nice. We can rescue US, before meeting Lae'zel, but US is a follower, so the display there is different. Their portraits appear to the right of the Character, and are attached to the controlling party member. This looks different than when Lae'zel is added as a full member of the active party, so the game should clarify what's going on there. Also when it comes to basic actions that are very critical, say Dash or Hide, none of that stuff is explained during the tutorial. It's only the most basic weapon attacks that are covered.

Shove is ignored. We no longer have to Jump to reach the first battle. Dipping isn't really explained. Movement paths/previews which at that point are new thing, since it's the first time we ender Turn Based mode, are also left without an explanation. In the Early Access the tutorial area was much more extensive, but in this one there is really only 1 setpiece fight with the Imps, before the player is suddenly fighting Devils on the bridge. There we have to deal with stuff like an Ally (Mind Flayer in Green, on our team) and also environmental stuff. Before we get to that point, there's a good chance we also have a spellcaster in the party, Shadowheart, but she doesn't have a separate treatment to explain what's going on there. For example, the best thing Shadowheart can do is to replace one of her default spells with the spell "Command" so she can make the Devil drop his flaming sword, but we'd have no clue as a first time player. Even opening the spellbook isn't really covered, so that we can see that spells need to be prepared beforehand to use them. What this means is that I can go through the whole Nautiloid prologue, hit the beach, and still miss a lot of critical insights about how to manage my party. It's never revisited in any detail, so the player is just kinda left to figure it out for themselves. I might play for 20 hours before even realizing that I have other spells, or that it's possible to set my attacks to Non-Lethal etc. This is before even getting into stuff like weapons or armor proficencies, where equipping the wrong thing might make a character lose spellcasting abilities or suffer a serious malus from wearing the wrong weapon/armor. Lighting is never discussed, even though it makes a huge difference to a characters ability to hit. Stuff like this could all be handled by an optional extended tutorial. These could be delivered at any time, it doesn't have to be in a prologue and all front loaded. It could be a dialogue option at camp. Battle Mastery with Lae'zel, Casting spells with Shadowheart or Gale, Thieving with Astarion etc. Each Companion could have a class themed tutorial that covers the basics. I would have liked that!