'The Game Just Fundamentally Undermines Itself': Game Designer Breaks Down 'Baldur's Gate 3's Most Fatal Flaws
'The Game Just Fundamentally Undermines Itself': Game Designer Breaks Down 'Baldur's Gate 3's Most Fatal Flaws
‘Baldur’s Gate 3’ can be a fantastic experience and a bad game at the same time.
‘Baldur’s Gate 3’ can be a fantastic experience and a bad game at the same time.
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“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.
There are plenty of warnings against doing that, you chose to ignore them and do it anyway, you paid the consequences (I did it too once XD).
That's fair game, we were curious to see what happened BUT you can't say the game is bad just because actions have consequences, not "you" personally, it's the article saying that, it's bullshit.
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.
Well, to be fair, I only saw any of them because (after saving) I thought "how bad could it be, really?" 😅
Same for me. I'm aware of two ways to get a game over in the first act, but both are very telegraphed, repeatedly. Each one has at least one NPC outright telling you not to do this, because if you continue with the thing you are doing, you WILL die.
Of course, I save scummed just to see. First, because I had this idea like, "I know it's supposed to be a catastrophe that could theoretically crater the entire coast, but...what if I trigger it really far down underground and then run really fast? (It did not work.)
The second was me deliberately egging on a self-styled god and then doubling down on it sincerely because I wanted to see what their in-game stats looked like, or at least how fast they could squash me and in what exciting fashion. Friends, I did not even get to enter initiative.
But a person has to really be pushing back the lower limits of the bell curve to make me believe they couldn't have foreseen a single one of these.
There's a choice like that in Nier Automata. Instant game over. It's very amusing and unlocks an ending achievement.
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.
If there's an instant game over now on that one, that's new. All I had to do was have someone else in camp cast a Revivify on Tav.
Off the top of my head, in no particular order:
- If you kill Gale and ignore the immediate convo about rezzing him, it results in a game over 3 days later.
- Let a Vampire feed on you and don't stop him in the two attempts.
- Fuck Around and Find Out with damned Vlaakith, after listening to, watching and reading tons of stuff showing you that the Githyanki are nasty bad news, and several red flag warnings where the game explicitly warns you not to fuck around and find out.
- Fail the Insight checks and trust the apprentice druid healer.
- Trust the wounded Mind Flayer.
- Fuck Around and Find Out with a desperate and angry explosives expert gnome.
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.
It's crystal clear by that point that just killing Tav and party and taking the prism is Plan B, considering they weren't killed on sight at multiple points upon arriving. As is revealed much later,
spoiler
with the prism out of her control, she's in a race against Orpheus and the stakes couldn't be higher for her. If she loses, her empire and likely her existence are forfeit. Killing everyone puts her back at square one, and she may not have time for that. Once provoked, she uses a Wish on the party (hell of a way to go out). Obviously, she's either already tried that as soon as she lost the prism, or she dares not risk it because Wish is notorious for backfiring. Monkey's Paw scenarios and all that.
Or maybe Wish was just something fun they wanted to include. 🤷♀️
A common theme I noticed is: if someone is in a position to kill you, and you dare it - it dares, and you die.
A prisoner that I found ran away from prison. They saw that they'll never go back, and have an explosive barrel near them and a fuse, threathening to blow it up.
If you dare them, they will blow themselves - and you - to pieces. Instant game over.