These devs are amazing, I love this kind of transparency.
this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2023
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Baldur's Gate 3
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Baldur’s Gate 3 is a story-rich, party-based RPG set in the universe of Dungeons & Dragons, where your choices shape a tale of fellowship and betrayal, survival and sacrifice, and the lure of absolute power. (Website)
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These guys are amazing. Almost feels like the industry is healing from toxic business models
Unfortunately it's just this one company. We're so used to being blindsided and treated like shit by every other company so our positive opinion of larian is increased tenfold because of how good they are to us
I know, you’re right. Hence the almost. But I sure hope others go this way too
They won't, unless they avoid going public like Larian isn't, or people stop giving them money for the bullshit they put into their games.
FromSoft has also been this way for a while too. Armored Core 6 just came out and I can't wait to try it, but BG3 is so big and fun that I'm waiting to finish it first.
I hope they're considering changes to the Iron Throne sequence. It's the only sequence in this game I didn't have fun with. 6 turns is not enough, and the AI pathfinding in those narrow corridors leads to a lot of frustration.
My main gripe with this sequence is that you cannot trigger the levers with ranged attacks which is suggested in loadingscreen tips.
Apart from that speed potions or better yet, fly will make a huge difference in the outcome. To me it felt like a hard choice moment. Can't rescue them all, must make a sacrifice.
Now the last boss fight..... that thing.... that thing can go straight to the nine hells.
I had no issues with the last boss fight, but I had a Tavern Brawler monk on balanced. After one unfortunate tpk on the run up due to some knock back splash damage, I hasted my monk, dashed, and then jumped all the way to the top in one round. Both boss phases were done in two rounds as the monk action surged and flurried their way through health bars, with the temp member helping clean up with double aoe. The final phase was super underwhelming; it took more time to get in and positioned than to take out it's health. I was really underwhelmed! I'm avoiding monk on my tactician run, and installed a boss difficulty mod to see if I can get things to stand up in the face of my eventual and unavoidable min-maxing.
I played on tactician and it was enough for me to save everyone. It was tough and took some planning, in particular on my wizard, but doable. My last character barely made it up the ladder though. The biggest issue is there is literally no reward for saving everyone.
One key thing I noticed is there are temperature sensors in the hallways. If you heat them (I think, it might be freeze), the two doorways close and lock. This is particularly important to the south, going towards Omeluum. You should send someone through that and, after the two prisoners over there are out, you should then hit the heat sensor with fire (or ice, whichever it is). Omellum can teleport the character out, but the sahuagin spawning that way will be locked out and you can focus on everything else.
You also almost certainly need an arcane gate and some haste or other method of increasing movement.
I managed to do it on tactician, and it was difficult and took a few redos. I don't mind that part, but you're right, the AI pathfinding was a bit frustrating. Some would dash and go nowhere. I ended up having to dimension door one of them, and also used Omeluum's power at least twice to make it work.
One of the reasons why we trimmed the epilogue is because we were afraid the ending cinematics were becoming too long and would detract from the epicness of the experience.
Deception check critical failure. Larian pls.
I was willing to grant them the benefit of the doubt when it comes to some disjointed writing/quests in Act 3 if they were pushing for a quicker release, but now they come out and say
It’s just important to know that what ultimately shipped was planned long ago, in function primarily of making Baldur’s Gate 3 fun to play, not for us to close development quickly.
Well... more power to you I guess, though I really, really hope they're just bullshitting and will make a Definitive Edition in a year or so.
How do you know those quests aren't the result of events not triggering?
Because some Act 3 content was scrapped in a way that leaves hanging threads with no resolution, awkwardly pointing you to things that were changed/removed, such as:
spoilers obviously
- Cazador's Mansion entrance is through some kind of ramparts in Lower City. You only learn about Cazador from Astarion's quest (and those Gur people I think), then you most likely kill him right after meeting him in his dungeon. This quest doesn't tie into main story whatsoever.
Based on some speculation (of course there's no way to find out what were Larian's true plans for this character), Cazador was meant to be a politically important figure in Upper City, and possibly had more related quests. If devs dropped this idea, that would explain how Cazador became a random boss enounter that doesn't really have any impact outside of Astarion's quest. It also makes sense why entering his place is so weird.
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Gortash's coronation takes place in Wyrm's Rest, a military fortress of the Flaming Fist and not, you know, High Hall where the parliament and other members of Baldur's Gate upper crust (ahem Cazador) plot their political intrigues. Also Gortash doesn't even get a Chosen's form like Orin or Ketheric during their fights.
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Omeluum's ring, which was supposed to protect you from Absolute's influence, has been at some point turned into an anti-charm item. In EA it used to block your illithid powers, but they've been reworked since. The dialog doesn't really reflect that.
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Kithrak Voss gains some battle scars and loses a part of his ear when you meet him later. AFAIK this is not explained at all in the game. Apparently it's a relic of a now removed fight between Orin and Githyanki in the creche.
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That Iron Flask quest with a trapped spectator has a lackluster resolution, possibly because it was related to Upper City at some stage of development.
Edit:
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Infernal Iron, Enriched Infernal Iron, Soul Coins that have very little use
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Gold, Silver, Bronze bars and a bunch of other items that feel like they should be useful for crafting
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All the talk about 'consequences' of using tadpole powers. No, actually there are no consequences.
Personally I think in Act 3 general pacing is a bit wacky, also the amount of quests there are in Lower City is overwhelming. Is this a result of moving a bunch of quests that were originally intended for Upper City? No way to find out.
Of course it's perfectly normal to cull content that seems too ambitious, time consuming etc., Larian just didn't properly cauterize what was left after removing all that stuff, which made the story flow really weird in some cases.
Also in the release Panel From Hell (timestamp here) it was mentioned that Crystal, the associate writing lead spent 6 months working on various ending permutations, and now we don't get to see most of them because they're too long. Oof.
I didn't follow the game in early access before this year, but this is the first misstep I've seen from them on messaging so far. Having a large section of the game ship with scripting issues and following it up with an abbreviated ending wasn't what was "planned long ago."
If I'm being totally honest, this reads like someone high up was annoyed (or embarrassed, more likely) by the cut content discussion and felt the need to respond. The rest of the paragraph is where they should have left it, because they're right: there's enough content, and every game has cuts. The number of loose ends that weren't tied up makes it a little more obvious than usual, sure, but that's the game that was shipped. Developers usually don't comment on this sort of thing, and for good reason.
They're doing everything right with what they have at this point in the release cycle. That doesn't need to be accompanied by a ham-fisted attempt to spin the cut content discussion into fixes for Minthara, or borderline arrogant messaging in general. Just lay out what you have planned. People will be happy.
I really don't like the non-answer they gave for the cut Upper City content:
It was always our intention for the Upper City to be an epic, cinematic epilogue bringing the story of Baldur’s Gate 3 to a close. But we didn’t talk about that in advance because it would have been a major spoiler.
What, exactly, is that supposed to mean? Can we expect them to finish that area and add it to the game? If not, then what happened?
It means that that area was never supposed to be playable and that you only visited it via cinematics. This would however be a major spoiler which is why they did not state it beforehand.