Baldur's Gate 3 – Is The Story Any Good?



**CONTAINS SPOILERS**
Baldur’s Gate 3 dropped on steam two days ago for ALPHA access. Check out our playthrough here: https://youtu.be/mq7NtiPY7os – and these are my thoughts on the plot and story of the game thus far, plus my predictions of what we can expect moving forward from Baldur’s Gate 3!

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45 thoughts on “Baldur's Gate 3 – Is The Story Any Good?”

  1. That lack of urgency at the beginning of the game you mentioned is not only made on purpose, but it's actually demanded by the fans of Baldur's Gate 2. In BG2, players had a clear objective of getting 20.000 gold pieces, and while there was urgency in the narrative side of it, players could take all the time they wanted to explore the game before moving on.

    This looks like a flaw on paper, but it let the player engage with the enormous amount of sidequest that populated the game, and most players regard that second chapter as the best of the game. BG3 devs are just trying to emulate that. These are games where exploration is more important than the script, so they can't really enforce plot advancement (expanding the game vertically) at the expense of exploration (expanding the game horizontally).

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  2. My only complaint is there was one situation where you had to convince someone and had to do 3 rolls to convince this one person. And if you failed even once you fail completely I can understand multiple rolls for a situation but if you succeeded in intimidation then I don’t see the point of multiple rolls when you have already succeeded

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  3. I feel like the beginning offers something interesting but the rest of what we can access atm (I probably did half of it) is a little meh, but you know its that beginning ramping up sort of thing I think. Just like Divinity 2 fort joy can be a pain, annoying, not too interesting but Ive fully enjoyed the entirety of it.

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  4. im a huge fan of BG1+2 and dragon age, and this game seems like, inferior. constant combat, and not really fair or well balanced combat. It seems to reward cheesing, and doesn't have a lot of clear direction with the combat scenarios.
    i played the intro and explored the tutorial island a bit, and was really underwhelmed. there was like almost no narrative, or dialog. BG1 + 2 had SUCH memorable dialog from its intro and beginning scenes.
    the intro to this game has nothing memorable , its just combat scenarios after combat scenarios. It feels exactly like divinity original sin, and nothing like baldurs gate

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  5. I still haven't finished the game, I actually have 2 parties, one solo and one co-op with a friend.

    But, I agree with your sentiment. When someone asks me whether it's worth it, I usually answer with something like "For intricate, polished mechanics and character customization? Definitely not. For interesting story and plotlines? Most likely."

    I won't watch your video till the end, don't want to see any spoilers.

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  6. The lack of a ticking clock is actually mandatory in video games. Players really hate it when they are forced to progress through the game instead of doing it in their own speed. Some players like to rush through the main story of a game, missing 90 % of the game because they never explore anything (that was a problem specifically in Mass Effect 2 for example where this type of players rushed through the main quests, ignored all the companion quests, didn't upgrade the Normandy and then where taken completely by surprise when their whole crew died. This type of players doesn't have a problem with getting forced to rush through a game because they don't give a shit about all stuff that's not linked to the main questline and all background information anyway – again in Mass Effect or Dragon Age or The Witcher you can really see who has read the Codex entries and who hasn't.
    Other players prefer to explore every inch of the map, collect every collectable item and do each and every single side quest to get the full experience. This type of player hates it to get forced to leave half the quests unfinished just because the game tells them that time has run out. This was one of the major points people where unhappy with regarding Fallout 1 for example – it had a limited timetable which blocked you from doing all quests and the playerbase, while being positive about the game as a whole, did not like that particular part.

    It's fine to do that kind of things when you're playing with a group of friends at a table – you know your players and if they like to be pressured this way or not, and if needed you can adjust the pace of the game; but it is unacceptable in a video game that has to cover all interests and where adjusting the pace simply isn't possible.

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  7. I saved a druid grove!!! yay!!
    Thank you Guy for all your tutorial videos. I've been learning from your videos and started DMing what I hope to be a long haul game last week!

    PS: 4 Giant spiders in the tavern basement VS 6 lvl 1 PCs…. what do you think? It was my "tutorial" adventure for the new player. the real adventure starts next week.
    I think they handled it nicely, only 2 went down, and I only fudged HP with your "Drop it by 5" method a little bit. (Dropped 2 HP on one spider, and 4 HP on another, they killed the other 2 legit outright. )

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  8. I just completed the early access material, and I think it's pretty awesome. How can you have not played Neverwinter Nights?! For it's time, it was an epic game. I think you'd love it if you tried it! You can get it on Steam. Play the first one. IMHO NWN2 is a great game, but it's really an entirely different game and not as good at NWN1.

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  9. You are what you are and you know what you are 😀 – Oh sweet Popeye reference
    A fun video. I'm also in early access and loving it. The hag, oh the hag. That lair is a nightmare come true… a really cool one.
    Watching you geek out was my kind of fun 🙂

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  10. Moral relativism.
    Yeah that descends into a murky pointless soup.
    If Hell is Heaven and Heaven is Hell, they both completely lose their identities and become meaningless.
    The last you want to do is strip away meaning and purpose from a story.
    It's just the way our eyes and our minds work. They need to focus on singular linear objects. You read a book page by page. You don't just lay all the pages down at once look at them all at the same time and somehow comprehend it. No. Our brains don't work like that. If good and evil become meaningless then there is NO direction or purpose at all. Why do anything? People do things because they think it is good for them.
    Evil must always exist as an abstract, or tragic flaw of something good.

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  11. Congrats on the new site thanks so much for providing that resource! Maybe you can let the web goblin burn 1 druid forest down this week as a thank you lol. Also so glad a D&D video game is looking promising so far that is quite a challenge to undertake. Look forward to hearing more as it progresses

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  12. Bg 3 is a huge step up the the already amazing divinity original sin 2. Larian showing that each game they make sins DOS1 is getting better.

    And the price is fine tbh bc you literally pre order the game. The games quality is clearly AAA level

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  13. I also love this game already so much. It's kind of the perfect game for me, has so much in it that I like about videogames, and it's D&D.
    Just like you I am thinking about where the plot is going. There is definitely something going on with Shadowheart having stolen a githyanki device – that kind of looks like an infernal puzzle box but with gith runes – and it contains some sort of weapon. And that's why the githyanki were attacking the Nautiloid. To get that thing back for Vlaakith. I don't know if Shar is the Absolute and how she gained influence over the mindflayers then… I also kind of imagine that the villain in the end must have some sort of mortal representative that a party of lv. 10 characters can defeat.

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  14. So far Larian have done a stellar job. I've put in 35 hours or so and it's just super enjoyable and interesting. I also promise you that you haven't seen half of the current playable content at 12 hours in x)

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  15. This guy: "I don't need to play GTA because I can go out with my friends and steal cars and shoot people".

    Play the original Baldurs Gate games before making ignorant comments on them.

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  16. this is the most confusing video ever he makes no sense and ive beaten this game he talks about factions and never names one talks about npcs never names one. have you ever heard of context sir.

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  17. Just wanna say about the urgency issue, it's NOT that they don't know how long it should take. NPCs in the party know exactly how long it should take. NPCs you meet in the world know exactly how long it will take for you to turn.
    There's a conversation with a your own NPCs at camp about this very dilemma. The question is "Why haven't we turned into mind flayers yet?" And the answer is unknown. So while you don't feel pressured, there's always that question, that mystery in the back of your mind every time you go to sleep. Will this sleep be my last? Every time you enter a dream sequence, you wonder if that will be your last…

    So while there isn't an immediate sense of urgency, it's still there IMO, always haunting you. Which I think is brilliant and has really held my interest.

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  18. My baldurs gate 2 half orc barbarian doesn't like mindflayers.
    Baldurs gate 1 and 2, now there's a plot. They still remain two of my favorite games I ever played. Kotor and Red Dead Redemption 2 coming close.

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  19. The sence of urgency is zero. Well welcome to video games lol Where NPCs can stay in a timeless limbo waiting for you to pick up and examine every spec of dust on a beach while a nuke is about to be launched.
    Sadly though it cant really be done better in an open world game. The player should be able to take as many long rests as they want/need or they will suddenly be locked and have to start the game over, if said nuke goes off.

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  20. I'm very curious about how the rest of the game goes. For now, I've pretty much-finished ACT I and probably gonna go back through to make different decisions. That's one thing I like the most about this game is that you can go back through it making different choices though the bad part about it is that you gotta reloot and stuff again.

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