I just watched a video discussing realism-formalism in films, and I have learned a fancy new word that nicely discribes my issue with BG3 - verisimilitude, or rather lack of it.
Verisimilitude meaning: the appearance of being true or real. The fiction being able to present it's story in a convincing way.
There is cultural versimilitude - how plausable the fiction is in the context of real world
generic verisimilitude - how plausable the fiction is within it's own conventions.
BG3 just falls flat on both accounts. Being fantasy adventure the generic v. is of course more important, but even so stuff like riddiculus jumps and push do take away from authenticy of the action, without giving in-universe explanation for it. Pretty much all major complaints I can think of (distance between grove and goblin camp, pocket universe camp, teleporting, cheap ressurects, stealing barrels, clearly inteligent and sentient animals, healing through throwing potions etc. etc.) it all chips at the story's verisimilitude.
That's I think why from recent Larian games I was fond the most of D:OS1 - it's story and tone complimented design, gameplay and encouraged interaction, resulting in a coherent experience. It has verisimilitude, even though it has little to no realism. While there are silliness that can be pointed towards in BG1&2, I rarely found it brake its verismilitude, as well - it is a colourful and silly word but that never clashed with a story it was telling. It's not on how realistic or deep the story was - it was, by all means, a story for teens. But it told its story well.
BG3 is just difficult to buy into - I can't care for characters nor situations so the whole thing ends up unengaging and boring.
Yep, this is precisely it.
You can't have characters being power shoved in rivers of lava on a regular basis and bounce back with a pocket change res as if nothing ever happened, and tell a serious story at the same time. I would be surprised if there isn't internal discussion about this at Larian. But it seems like every department can do whatever they want so gameplay design and storytelling feel like different games.
I think Bioware gets this. Dragon Age games are pretty grindy and button-mashy as of late, but they're still cohesive and logical where it counts. And that's why the Inquisition story has impact and emotion. With BG3, even though it's an impressive game in a lot of ways, I don't feel anything.
