The Real Problem With BG3

[Pan Darius Cassandra]

There's no real freedom to explore.

Every map is a tightly constrained path that Larian leads you down. A yellow bricked road.

Occasionally you get to choose to go right or left, but you can never leave the path.

There's little player agency in this game.

From their near morbid insistence on playing an Origin character (can't create a fully custom party from start - and even once you can hire custom characters, their race and background are locked), to the literal physical constraints of tightly woven pathways, and dialog choices which funnel you into the same result regardless of what you choose (the first and most immediate that comes to mind is Kagha who will inevitably - as long as you don't attack - always push you towards getting Zevlor and the tieflings to leave, no matter what you say).

Larian leads the player by the nose.

[Damedius]

I think the real problem is how ambitious Larian was with BG 3. It's got lots of content and had to be rushed out before it was completely bug free. So the game tends to get b get buggier the closer you get to the end.

Even now, close to a year after release you run into plenty of bugs.

[coo]

I like this game because of this. A question of tastes. I no longer like games that are too open, with too many quests and choices in the game world where to go. I no longer play games that are of the open, never ending type (all those online multiple player games with continually new content to keep the players playing forever). But that is me.

[Pan Darius Cassandra]

Originally posted by Damedius:

I think the real problem is how ambitious Larian was with BG 3. It's got lots of content and had to be rushed out before it was completely bug free. So the game tends to get b get buggier the closer you get to the end.

Even now, close to a year after release you run into plenty of bugs.

The problem is that they put all their eggs into the cinematics basket instead of world and gameplay design.

[Pan Darius Cassandra]

Originally posted by coo:

I like this game because of this. A question of tastes. I no longer like games that are too open, with too many quests and choices in the game world where to go. I no longer play games that are of the open, never ending type (all those online multiple player games with continually new content to keep the players playing forever). But that is me.

BG3 would have been betterif it had no main quest and 10x as mani 'side quests'. Kinda like Ultima 4.

[OntologicalWeevil]

Are you suggesting an "open world" game. It's not inherently bad, but a game can suffer if there's negative space. I think I'd love to see something like Divinity II, their third-person rpg game be modernized.

[Gob]

I think they were constrained simply by what was possible currently. With each quest an encounter being tied together and voice-acted, it would get ever more complex and expensive to make the game more "open". You would end up with a different game, one that wouldn't have been as immersive and, probably, not as popular.

Also - its not rocket surgery to have a completely custom party, requiring no mods to do this.

[calabacina]

it fieels open to me, and not only geographically I can ally myself with opposing factions, a rare commodity if you ask me.

[Hobocop]

Originally posted by coo:

I like this game because of this. A question of tastes. I no longer like games that are too open, with too many quests and choices in the game world where to go. I no longer play games that are of the open, never ending type (all those online multiple player games with continually new content to keep the players playing forever). But that is me.

Same. I'm sick to death of open world games. Only one I've played recently is Elden Ring.

[Quillithe]

Originally posted by Hobocop:

Originally posted by coo:

I like this game because of this. A question of tastes. I no longer like games that are too open, with too many quests and choices in the game world where to go. I no longer play games that are of the open, never ending type (all those online multiple player games with continually new content to keep the players playing forever). But that is me.

Same. I'm sick to death of open world games. Only one I've played recently is Elden Ring.

My general issue with them is how often open world games feel they need to coat the map in repetitive filler content.

I like it more when the open world gives a sense of scale but is actually somewhat limited in content with areas feeling more meaningful (Morrowind, New Vegas, Outward, MGS5, Dragons Dogma all come to mind and Elden Ring and Witcher 3 mostly do this - though minor locations were a little repetitive) rather than when its used to hold many repeated tasks that fail to feel meaningfully distinct (anything Ubisoft, I'd say Skyrim leaned that way)

Because where some people seem to value a game more for length it's almost the opposite for me - it's so cheap to buy more games than I can ever find time to play that I really don't like repetitive filler and really appreciate short, focused games in general.

[Fluffykeith]

Considering the type of game this is, what the OP has listed as problems are, in my view, strengths. It's a party based, story driven RPG. There's a fixed main plot that, while you have a fair amount of agency in HOW you progress it, does require you to follow the story. It's not all that different from any pre-made adventure module like Tomb Of Annihilation or Out Of The Abyss.
This allows the writers to fill the game space with stuff that has story and detail, it allows "character" rather than generic. And yes, NPCs have their specific goals and attitudes and you're not going to be able to completely change their minds. If nothing else because there's a limit to how many such options can be scripted.

The problem I've found with open world or psuedo open world RPGs is that they tend to be very "story lite" and while there's lots and lots of scenery to wander around in, a lot of it feels very generic and bland, without depth or story. For example in Skyrim, the plot is so light touch that you can effectively completely ignore it and just wander around occasionally punching dragons...but a LOT of the exploration you get to do, leads to "filler zones". There might be some buildings and maybe some enemies to fight, but other than some items to loot there's nothing there, there's no sense that this ruin you're exploring was a place once, with a story behind it. It's just some assets and some loot boxes.

Compare that to the abandoned village in Act 1, that's been taken over by goblins. There's a strong sense of the places history there....there's the kids game in the dirt near the well, there's the missing persons poster hinting at the spiders in the caves below, there's the stuff with the blacksmith and the apocathery. There's STORY there. Its a place you want to explore and read the stuff you find because of it, and not just because you're trying to find SOME reason why you bothered to slog your way over to it in the first place.

Open world games have that "Hey, whats that over there?" feeling, where you can spy something on the horizon and spend twenty minutes walking through woods and over rivers and killing wolves to get there, only to find that there's nothing much there anyway.

[muh]

1. I've just finished my third playthrough and i am still discovering new areas...
2. BG3 is biased on pen&paper. in theory you can ignore the gamemaster and just go where you want...but you shouldn't do it...

[Brian_the_Brute]

It is a railroad. There are many paths, but they all lead to the same place. There are even backup characters for most NPCs to loop you back into it if you kill the original NPC. ACT 3 doesn't even work without Yenna as a plot crutch. You can be an evil drow trying to kill her many times over and she keeps coming back...doesn't make any sense at all.

[The Biggest Fish]

Originally posted by Pan Darius Cassandra:

There's no real freedom to explore.

Every map is a tightly constrained path that Larian leads you down. A yellow bricked road.

Occasionally you get to choose to go right or left, but you can never leave the path.

There's little player agency in this game.

From their near morbid insistence on playing an Origin character (can't create a fully custom party from start - and even once you can hire custom characters, their race and background are locked), to the literal physical constraints of tightly woven pathways, and dialog choices which funnel you into the same result regardless of what you choose (the first and most immediate that comes to mind is Kagha who will inevitably - as long as you don't attack - always push you towards getting Zevlor and the tieflings to leave, no matter what you say).

Larian leads the player by the nose.

I dont see it as a problem. This isnt Skyrim, its not supposed to be a sandbox. And neither is Dungeons and Dragons to be honest. The DM is telling a story, you are playing through that story, you have some freedom, like when you do certain things, weather or not you interact with npc's or do side quests ect, but if you try to treat it as an open world sandbox then all you are doing is leaving the story that the DM has crafted for you.

As a DM, it took me a while to realize that the best D&D games actually arent open world sandbox, "do whatever you want," adventures. How could they be? in such a game the DM cannot prepare, you would have to wing EVERY SINGLE ENCOUNTER, you would have to come up with npc's names, personalities, stats, everything on the fly. you wouldnt be able to tell an overarching narrative. No, BG3 is a perfect game. You have just as much player agency as you need to have fun. I have played through this game 4 times start to finish and I love every minute, each play through has been different. I do things in different orders, and try to new things each time, I play as different characters and romance different NPC's, I play different classes and experiment with different builds. There is plenty of player agency.

The "problem" that I think you are alluding to is that the story is similar every time with little deviation. But thats true with every game. You use Kagha trying to get rid of the tieflings as an example.. but thats her character, sometimes you just arent going to change a persons mind about something regardless of what happens. But heres the thing, you can have at least 3 or 4 outcomes from this interaction. You can end up exposing her as a shadow druid and having a fight, you can convince her she is wrong, you can support her or you can wipe out the grove. This is an interconnected story, which is the BEST kind of story, when everything you do across multiple plot threads interacts with each other.

Some stories are best told one chapter at a time, in order, and this is one of them.

[Orion Invictus]

Originally posted by Brian_the_Brute:

It is a railroad. There are many paths, but they all lead to the same place. There are even backup characters for most NPCs to loop you back into it if you kill the original NPC. ACT 3 doesn't even work without Yenna as a plot crutch. You can be an evil drow trying to kill her many times over and she keeps coming back...doesn't make any sense at all.

Yup, it's a video game.

[Shale]

Originally posted by Fluffykeith:

-there's the missing persons poster hinting at the spiders in the caves below-

Huh for some reason I never pieced that together, I had assumed the missing people was the hag's work. Probably since the posters are right by the kid's game, so I associated the missing people with children, which a hag is a classic cause for.
But now that I'm thinking about it there are a lot of corpses down the well.