I dislike most if not all party members. Like not always actively dislike, but don’t care much what happens to them. Even if the writing and voice acting is more than decent. Too grimdark and fucked up is how I would describe it. It’s like Larian took all the criticism about previous games being too lighthearted and overcorrected. And not in particularly relatable ways, feels more like they sat down and brainstormed intensely in nerdy excitement and with little depth or restraint about what would be cool and extreme and fucked up, and oh wouldn’t that be awesome… creating freakish caricatures with oh so dramatic and cursed backgrounds rather than you know, relatable flawed characters. Of course I only feel like this because much is done very well and so any missteps are more striking.
I don’t think the writing is particularly good, and it is particularly problematic in Act 3. The pacing falls apart, all urgency disappears and there is also a big problem with the villains. Gortash and Orin are pretty bad characters and the nebulous blob that is the Nether Brain is not a compelling antagonist. The Emperor is a pretty interesting character, but he sadly doesn’t really play out as an antagonist - which I find a massive waste in itself. It also felt like some parts of the plot only make sense if you’re playing as Dark Urge.
The companions all being extremely horny and protagonist-sexual gives off a weird vibe, and the progression and design of the relationship system is extremely bad. As an example, Shadowheart can say you’re her soulmate that changed her whole life on like the second day you spend together! There is also a severe lack of bonding moments that are purely adventure party/friendship and not avenues for everyone else to hit on you.
There being literally 0 consequences for dabbling in Mind Flayer powers felt weird and bad and generally undercut the impact of the entire main story. There is no reason not to fill out your whole tadpole tree (including becoming half illithid), and there is no reward for completely abstaining. No specific dialogue, no impact on the ending. Not even an achievement.
Lots of small attempts at fanservice for fans of BG 1&2 feel like surface level lipservice made by people who never played the originals. The Flail of Ages being a shitty rare regular flail sold in a random shop is just depressing.
I wish they left more BG 1&2 characters alone if they didn’t know exactly what to do with them. Jaheira is mostly fine, but even Minsc felt out of place and shoehorned in and the character assassinations of Viconia and Sarevok just felt terrible. Especially since the role of both of those characters in the plot could have easily been replaced with brand new NPCs.
On a similar note, it strikes me as extremely weird that they seemingly outright refused to have any voice actor reprise their role. Heidi Shannon has disappeared from the face of the earth so Jaheira needed to be recast, but Grey DeLisle (Viconia) and Kevin Michael Richardson (Sarevok) are still out there working for example and Jim Cummings (Minsc) was asking random fans at cons to remind Larian he exists.
I don’t think the writing is particularly good, and it is particularly problematic in Act 3. The pacing falls apart, all urgency disappears
Overall I disagree with you. I loved the writing in the game, and the companion back stories are rich, and full of tragedy. But I completely agree with you about act 3. We’re smack dab in the middle of literally trying to save the entire world. We just defeated a major contributor to the master plan. We finally travel to Baldur’s Gate, close to accomplishing our goal… and we stop all of that to help a little kid find their mommy, investigate dangerous toys, and go all detective mode for a missing prostitute. I couldn’t figure out how to get into Baldur’s Gate because I had rejected all of those story lines. They felt completely out of character, and not something I had time to worry about with the fate of humanity hanging in the balance. I think that they really could have used a smoother transition from act 2 to act 3.
the companion back stories are rich, and full of tragedy.
The thing is, they’re mostly exposition dumped at you. All of them already went through the worst of it and tell you about it. To me, Larian fell in the old TTRPG trap of making up those elaborate grandiose backgrounds for your characters and expecting the other players to be impressed instead of writing the story of their adventures during the actual game.
I was there when Jaheira found Khalid’s corpse. I accompanied Nalia when she came back to a ruined home and a dead father. I broke Imoen out of the wizard’s asylum.
Karlach told me how bad the hells used to be and we proceeded to make a few trips to the blacksmith together. Wyll told me of his pact and his crazy adventures, the rest just happened to us at camp. Gale told me he banged a goddess and I got to make a persuasion check at the end. Astarion told me of the torture he suffered, and the resolution was done in 2 fights after we met zero vampires before the last room (BG2’s Bodhi and her lair were so much ahead of this it’s not even funny).
Shadowheart is the only one I felt had a story that I actually experienced with her and wasn’t just politely informed of. Oh, and Minthara, but the evil play through really got the short straw in any other way.
That’s what a backstory is though, it’s what happened in their past, before you met them. If you’re experiencing it with them then it’s their current journey. I did feel like I was able to reach meaningful and entertaining conclusions to all of the companion’s personal stories after hearing their backstory. But I never played any of Larian’s other games, so I don’t have anything to compare BG3 to. For me it was a completely new style of game, and one I enjoyed so much that I consider it to be a masterpiece, and the best game I have ever played. That’s saying a lot considering I’ve lived through the entire evolution of gaming, starting out with an Atari in the early 80’s.
I strongly dislike turn-based combat and I would love an option for real time combat. I just want fights to be over, they distract me from enjoying games. With real time combat I just mash the same attacks until it is over. BG3’s combat is a fucking chore and it’s the only reason I abandoned the game on the second map (in that monastery ruin).
In this community? Definitely. People tend to downvote me when I voice this opinion. But it is what it is. I’ve hated turn-based games ever since I first tried some X-COM game on the Amiga. It’s just not something I enjoy.
But I wish I could enjoy BG3. Everything apart from the combat is so much fun that I really want to finish the game. But for me the combat is such a major drag that I don’t think I’ll ever play BG3 again.
You might enjoy the Pathfinder games then. I’ve only played Pathfinder Kingmaker, but it has a real-time combat mode. I spent 3 weeks doing nothing except playing that game, so I think it’s fair to say that I enjoyed it. I did not use the real time combat mode though, so I can’t say how well it works. The game is good, but it’s definitely not as polished as BG3.
If you hate turn based games why do you buy them? It’s like if I bought COD and complained about everything being too fast and the lack of civ building mechanics
The good news is there’s a couple of decades where games in this style WERE real-time for the most part. A majority of players seem to like turn based a lot more, but neverwinter nights and the earlier baldurs gates have a pause-assign actions-unpause flow rather than turns.
With pen and paper d&d, guidebooks explain that turns represent about six seconds of action. Some of the older titles took this seriously and it makes trying to use mages in small parties absolutely insufferable, especially at early levels with a low concentration skill total.
Hilariously, this is one of the VERY FEW genre where I find I do prefer turn-based personally. I didn’t turn on ATB mode in ff15, I refused to use strategic view and pausing in dragon age, but for CRPG I’ve found solidly defined turns to really help drive my decisionmaking.
I love the turn based combat but sometimes it does feel like a chore, I wish I could do real time sometimes or purely rules-based AI, and switch to turn-based only when shit goes wrong. For those fights that really do not pose much of a risk and are not that interesting. Someone might say on the difficulty so no fight is trivial, but that can tire one out as well as now every fight can be a major obstacle and sometimes you just want to move the story on a little.
You’d probably like Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance games. They’re dated (PS2 era) but really fun, and it’s literally just Baldur’s Gate, but more like Gauntlet-style rogue-like games. Real-time, not turn-based, and they’re just side stories to the Baldur’s Gate canon.
That’s as far as I got too before quitting due to boredom, but for different reasons.
Character building and combat are the main draws for me to D&D, but D&D 5E character building is a step backwards from 3&3.5E and micromanaging an entire party through turn based combat feels like a chore. I’d like to see a Borderlands or Diablo II mod that takes those gameplay styles into the Forgotten Realms setting - a fast paced, skill based game that focuses on action, where you control a single character who’s design and progression increase the skill ceiling by providing more options to make split-second decisions about what tactics to use during each encounter.
Really like the pathfinder games because you can swap between turn based or real-time on the fly, sometimes I want to think about my actions but other times yeah it gets repetitive
I hate multiplayer in pretty much any game where there’s a lot of menuing. And being able to wander off? There’s a reason you don’t split the party IRL and it holds here. Having a shopping session also is boring IRL and it is here, too. Oh, there was important plot stuff happening? I didn’t know the other person was in a conversation.
You can do this and also listen to conversations you aren’t present for from the active character portraits without changing settings. There’s even a prompt for ongoing conversations to join in on them as a listener remotely.
The game is good despite DND 5e’s rules, not because of them.
Unfortunately, DND is mega popular. Many people have never played anything else. Many people have never even played it. So any discussion about it has a “of course 15 strength is +2, isn’t that just how RPGs work?” segment where you have to establish that DND is in fact weird.
Hard agree the ruleset is the mayor shackle to the game. I think the DnD part also includes the whole lore of the forgotten realms which is the incredible foundation in which the game could bloom tho. I’m not saying larian can’t create fantastic worlds and I’m looking forward to the next games, but the lore aspect of the DnD license is mayorly beneficial to the game
Gale’s “bad” ending is actually the best ending in the game.
Who cares that he doesn’t get character growth, he disappointed a cat and an old man, HE’S A GOD! Seriously, nothing else matters. So what if Ao is going to make him earn his spot on the pantheon? He’s immortal, he has literally forever to do it. Sure professor Gale is fun and more chill, but he’s still mortal. In six months Gale does what Vlaakith has been attempting for centuries. I don’t know how you can be disappointed in someone for successfully becoming a god
You can tell Act 3 had the least amount of polish put into it. Act 1 and 2 feel very carefully and intentionally designed. You can tell they planned everything out. Act 3 feels like it was rushed and they had to make a lot of compromises.
The pacing is the most obvious thing but there’s also stuff like why is Gortash, the literal ruler of the city, being sworn into power in a random fort in the lower city instead of you know… the actual castle?
Act 1 is a great sandbox and the most D&D like experience as a result.
Act 2 is the strongest story and writing, much more focused and tightly built. Some cool D&D like dungeoneering/puzzles to boot.
Act 3 is what happens when you don’t leave enough time and energy to wrap it all up. It tried to be as expansive (more even) as Act 1 and they couldn’t keep up with the writing. They also should’ve done away with the entire section before you actually enter the city. Talk about a momentum killer.
It's weird, but I suspect that Act 2 and Act 3 were swapped originally. It makes more sense to have Act 2 be where you go to Baldur's Gate, learn more about your companions, resolve their personal stories, explore a large open map, and THEN move on to the big confrontation against the Absolute at the tower.
From a story perspective it's really weird how you confront the Absolute and then go on to sort of aimlessly do all that other stuff in Baldur's Gate. It makes more sense if the story acts are swapped, imo.
I find all the party members insufferable. I change their classes almost immediately for better synergy or I switch them out for the soulless NPC’s Withers has. Ironically, I’ve been D&D 5E Dungeon Master numerous times and I find the party members to be absolutely authentic characters real people would play. Good work Larian, ya made the characters so table top believable that I want to find a new group to play with.
I loved the character design because I hated the characters too: Lae’zel was a close minded warrior, Shadowheart a smartass, Gael Mr nice guy not so nice when you do something he doesn’t approve, Astarion the vampire rapist… Etc.
But then I kept on playing and I realized they were really deep characters. Lae’zel was indoctrinated super hard, but she’s smart and can recognize when things don’t make sense, even if she totally believes those things. Shadowheart has been lying to everyone, including herself, and putting a mask on; but she’s a really sweet woman. Astarion was abused in every possible way for centuries, and being a total asshole is his way to cope.
My point is, yeah, the characters are flawed and can come across as dicks, but many real people do too until you understand their circumstances. Not saying that what they do is justified, just that they are interesting characters and redeemable from my PoV.
I feel like a lot of characters were just standard RPG archetypes with maybe a wrinkle added in. Like Wyll is the classic “Warlock that makes the deal for the right reasons” and the wrinkle is that he has dad issues.
Compare him to one of my favorite RPG companions. Classic elf wizard nerd with an abusive father that made him hit the books and hit him also… but because of his childhood trauma his soul’s past life, a foul mouthed woman from a long time ago awoke within him and sometimes he dissociates and she takes control because she wants him to be assertive… which, along with his fears of animancy, caused him to have an obsession with control, and why he accepted to join the baddies some time before you meet him.
Seriously, though. In the last act, Baldur’s Gate was so huge and took so long to explore that it destroyed the momentum of the overall story. (The evil army is invading! Oh wait, they are now hiding underground doing nothing, so that you can take your time exploring the city).
In terms of pacing and stakes, it would have made much more sense for the PCs to have gone to Baldur’s Gate earlier in the game to do all the “adventurers faffing around” stuff, then revisited the city during the endgame. Though it would have clashed with their “each act is one set of maps” setup.
Instead, in the last act we have Gortash, supposed 5D chess player, centering all his plans on the PCs flipping to his side. Then he sits back and lets them wander all over the city, undermining him. Ultimately, when they don’t take up his offer, his backup plan is “whelp, guess I’ll die”.
Maybe the excuse is that the Elder Brain was making him stupid…
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