‘Baldur’s Gate 3’ can be a fantastic experience and a bad game at the same time.
“This is a bad game because the bad choices are not marked red and the good ones are not marked green” -“Game Designer” turned “Professor” of game design at some random college, as reported by one of his Discord students.
Thanks for sharing.
Yeah exactly… I was hoping for something more insightful, but it just made me feel that is you get to this level you become rigid in your ideas and reductionist in trading this apart to match your rigidity. Can’t say I completed the whole article though, because at some point I got fed up with the argumentation
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.
Yeah, I agreed with the headline, hoping to see some discussion about how the game doesn’t have a finished evil route and how bugs or failures of logic can cause the game to unfold in ways that don’t actually make a lot of sense. Instead, we have this purist “save-scumming is bad” perspective hiding behind a sense of academic authority.
I do think the narrative really breaks down in act 3. I do think the game fails to give your actions in the first two acts weight. Murder-hoboing your way to Baldur’s Gate, or consuming a shit-ton of theoretically inherently evil tadpoles never gets in the way of you simply defeating the grand evil at the end of the game and making all your previous decisions inconsequential, and I think that’s a failure of the game Baldur’s Gate 3 was intended to be. In this way, I do think the game undermines itself; you can’t both set out to be a grand adventure where all of your decisions are supposed to shape you and your world, and refuse to let the players actions result in actual consequences. But it doesn’t come from inconsistency in dialogue or a perceived lack of information.
Hell, the authors whole argument regarding the failures of the combat system doesn’t even hold water. Perhaps the most egregious case of having a “correct” method of winning a fight is the golem at the forge in the Underdark, and nothing stooped me from killing that boss, on tactician difficulty, using strictly my evergreen tools. The achievement popping up and telling me that I failed to realize I could use the giant hammer in the center of the forge to functionally skip the fight is the only reason I knew I did it “wrong”, and in part thanks to the achievement, I felt accomplished in doing so. I genuinely don’t think there’s any moment in the game that decidedly punishes you for trying to rely on your bread and butter combat tactics, beyond increasing the challenge presented by an encounter while still keeping it very winnable.
Analyzing whether Baldur’s Gate 3 is a “good” or “bad” game, definitively, is just not a simple concept, even within the confines of the author’s method. Player action has a massive impact on whether they find success or failure in combat, puzzle-solving, exploration and individual story-beat/dialogue. There are win and loss conditions, there are tensions created in getting to those outcomes, and by-and-large, players have the tools and knowledge at their disposal to reach the outcome they want while avoiding others. In a “bigger picture” sense, I would argue that some of these qualities break down; decisions fail to have meaning as you approach the end of the game, which is a problem that could reasonably contribute to one calling it a “bad game”, ie player action failing to determine outcome. If one wanted to focus on that perpsective, a reasonable argument could be made, but at best we’re cherry picking and giving weight to one quality that matters immensely to some observers and less to others. So is it a perfect game? An immaculate one? Absolutely not; it fails to do one of the major things it set out to do. Is it a bad game? Absolutely not. It is, by all means, good, as a game, even under the terms the author of this article sets.
Spoiler alert
Well said, and also well written! I enjoyed reading your comment.
Thank you! It’s nice to know when a more long-winded ramble like this is appreciated.
I’m not very far into BG and never have played tabletop DnD, but it has shown me how much “on rails” and handholding there is in many open world RPG games. Currently I have multiple ways of fulfilling my main mission and no idea which is better or right. It’s a circumstance I’ve never seen in another game and did catch me off guard a bit at first and was maybe slightly frustrating, as I want to make the right choices, but I thought of how it would play out in a tabletop game where the players really do not know and see it more like a choose your own adventure now.
“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.
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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.”
Rule number one with getting away with a lie is believing your own bullshit.
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It has no fatal flaws, just the regular variety, because it’s a spectacular game. There’s no better implementation of a DND experience in a video game.
Its not a bad article and I can see how the author and his friend have gripes, but there isnt a video game out there that those 2 cant scrutinize under the same criteria. Video games are crafted narratives and any “choice based” game is only going to get you to a couple different outcomes, and usually only one minor ending is different.
“then we could say that chess or soccer are bad games.”
And Ill argue soccer is a bad game, but thats just my opinion. Whether that makes me right or wrong doesnt matter
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.
Divinity 2 is great, I loved pillars of eternity 2, and it is a bit different but disco Elysium (I’d highly highly recommend torrenting it), The Dungeon Of Naheulbeuk is kinda a goofy cartoony one but I enjoyed it.
Great suggestions. I forgot about some of those. Looks like I have some games to try.
Replay it with a different character and a different approach like reversing whichever way you did negotiate/combat or take the options you think are the worst choices.
That’s a good idea. I played with a custom character the first time. Maybe one of the premade characters would be a good idea this time.
If you did a fully custom character the first time, try playing as the Dark Urge origin. There’s a good story there that you wouldn’t have experienced elsewise.
Oh, I’m interested now. I’ll have to try that.
One of the devs said that playing the Dark Urge while trying to do a good alignment run was the most heroic run. That’s definitely what I’m trying on my next game.
What an idiot
I think this is a good analysis. I often make choices based on what NPC I’m wooing rather than any consistent sort of personality of my character. Heck my party composition is based on who will like my natural choices and who won’t. I mean I generally side with good and empathy, but sometimes someone just rubs me wrong or I take the unique bard/wizard/etc option just because I won’t get that option on another playthrough. For example just today I encountered someone and the bard choice was different based on whether I succeeded or failed an insight check and I wound up in combat on the wrong side. So I scum loaded, but maybe that would be an interesting storyline had I followed that path.
Some of the choices seem meaningful, though, should I ever manage to bring myself to do an evil playthrough.
