‘Baldur’s Gate 3’ can be a fantastic experience and a bad game at the same time.
I disagree with some of their assessment. Specifically the point that you really aren’t given enough information to weigh out which decisions you go with and that is something problematic. Unknowns are pretty inherent with Dungeons and Dragons. In tabletop, you typically don’t know what the outcome is going to be. You can only veer towards decisions you think will be a net positive and then hope you make your rolls.
With a couple of exceptions, no decision you make is really game over for you. It just changes how the story unfolds.
“At more than one point in the game, there are moments where the game prompts you to make a decision between two or three things, but one or more of those choices result in you going through some dialogue, and then the game just goes ‘No, game over, you’re dead now, you lose.'”
It does? I’m nearly done with Act 2 and haven’t encountered that.
Perhaps what I’ve learned by paying attention to the books, letters, and NPC chatter (which are abundant in this game) has guided me away from those game-over options. They constantly telegraph useful information like history, faction politics, plots, and character motivations. By the time I’m in a dialogue, I usually have some idea of which options are likely to be bad choices, and in exceptional cases, just relying on good old situational awareness has served me well.
Does Rodis do none of that?
“You are blindly making decisions at almost all points.
I’m not, though. A few decisions have been unknowns, of course, but in story-appropriate ways. (Is this character going to attack me if I rescue them?) But for the most part, I’ve found that the clues I need to make good decisions are out there; I just have to explore and talk to people to find them.
How can Rodis have “a vast, intimate understanding of Dungeons & Dragons” when he seems to be ignoring two of the game’s three pillars (exploration, social interaction, and combat)? Maybe he does these things but quickly forgets what he learns, and doesn’t take notes?
In short, you are punished for trying to think deeply about the situation or the characters, or the potential impact your choices may have because there is no consistency to them.”
I have been rewarded over and over again for thinking deeply about the situations and characters. Even when I make suboptimal choices (often for role play reasons), they have never felt unfairly punishing.
And that’s not even the full picture of how the game undermines the weight of decision-making and, by extension, the weight of the game’s narrative. As Rodis alluded to above, each and every one of those choices can be reversed by save scumming
Well, yes, that’s how game saves work. Abusing them for advantage is a player choice, not a game flaw. For a more immersive story experience, I recommend exercising a bit of self-control instead of habitually reaching for F8.
Take it from Cory Rodis, a professional game developer, designer, and educator with over a decade of experience in the field.
I appreciate that the author admires her mentor, but ten years of experience isn’t all that much, and in this case, I think it really shows. His analysis seems very subjective to me, based more on consequences of his personal play style than in the game’s fundamentals.
(For the record, I have a multi-page document of complaints about BG3, but I think the complaints here are off the mark.)
There’s an instant game over via dialogues in the Monastery region. That’s the only one I saw across two playthroughs. There are also two more instant game over sequences you can get by traveling. All three of these are highly telegraphed.
I don’t like dunking on writers new to the gig, but the linked article is a puff piece for some dude with 500 YouTube subscribers and unspecified credits. Not worth the read.
I experienced an instant game over a couple hours in on my first playthrough on the crashed nautiloid. When I found the wounded mind flayer, I tried to peer into his mind and failed the roll leading to him overpowering me. I became a thrall while Asterion and Shadowheart watched. No option to revive during the cutscene.
The monastery one makes sense if you are going into the game blind, but it makes no sense in the context of knowing what >! going into the prism and then refusing to kill your guardian!< results in. How come not going along in the first situation gets you killed but not going along in the second situation doesn’t? What circumstances have changed?
Refusing to go in doesn’t necessarily get you killed, it just puts you into a fight. We’re talking about the third option, where
spoiler
you’re not only refusing, but you’re also insulting and outright provoking a quasi-god with predictable results.
Spoiler markup is different on Lemmy, by the by.
So you’re telling me the difference in whether or not someone chooses to kill you when there is no question or not of whether they are capable of doing so is a provocation? That ignores the material reality that you are in possession of an artifact that the person has made their main focus and you refuse to give it up peacefully and you are in their territory. Vlaketh has the ability to smite you right there and take the prism but just doesn’t for… reasons? That’s bad writing in my opinion. Either don’t allow Vlaketh to encounter the player at the creche, don’t give her the ability to insta kill the PCs, or make the deadly mistake to march into the heart of the creche against your guardian’s wishes.
I love the game, but it’s not without it’s flaws in the writing and I think this is an example of that.
I remember a few dialogue options that had me thinking, “why did they bother putting that option in the game? Nobody would ever choose that!”
Apparently I misjudged.
They are all over the place; but they are also so obvious if you didn’t know they would lead to a game over, you’d have to be illiterate. Like at one point in Act 1, you are pretty much given the option to say “Go ahead. Try it.” When Lae’zel thinks you’re turning and has a knife to your throat. If you can’t guess what happens next: That’s on you.
The most inconsistent thing that cracked me up is doing an evil run, slaughtering the Grove citizens and then having my own character say something like “massacred… Whoever did this won’t get away with it.”
My problem isn’t with the game, but the fact that I put so many hours into it and beat it and now I want another experience like it… but I don’t know of any.
I do have Divinity II on Switch. I’ll try that again unless you guys have a better idea.
