Baldur's gate 3
P

Philistine

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For a game that is regarded as having great writing, I am often left choosing a dialog option I don't agree with because there are NO appropriate choices. Particularly aggravating are the ones regarding Astarion.
#1 After attacking you in camp, you have the choice of killing him, or letting him feed and telling everyone he's ok!
I wanted to restrain and warn everyone that he's a vampire and to stay away from him. Keep him around in case he's needed for the cure, but if becomes too dangerous, then stake him.
#2 I met Gandrel who I can tell where Astarion is, or not, or just kill Gandrel.... excuse me, what??! Unless you are playing Evil, why would you kill a vampire hunter who's trying to rescue kidnapped children?? If I tell him where Astarion is (the moral choice) the rest of the party gets mad?:rolleyes: If I don't tell the hunter where he is, I cannot follow this up with Astarion. He only talks about a third party I don't care about - where are the children, damn it!!
 
I wonder if you realize the fallacy of directly linking the quality of the writing to whether you're given more or less choices as the outcome of any particular quest or NPC interaction. Every best-written book and movie has only one choice, the one that the author wrote and published, and nobody is stupid enough to relate the lack of choices to the quality of the writing, even when they would have made a different choice than the characters did.

Personally, I like videogames in which you have to take a stance on matters that come your way; non-committal "wait and see" choices don't belong in a brutal setting like the Forgotten Realms.
 
BG3 isn't a linear VN, it's an open world RPG. As such, the writing I respect is such that the widest variety of narrative paths are possible. I don't believe either of my preferred choices above were "non-committal"... holding a potentially useful prisoner, or prioritizing the rescue of children.
 
Ideally you should have been able to throw him off the track. Given what happens in Act 3 they could have just added an event in Act 1 or 2 where he finds Astarion with you and your mates and attacks so you have to put him down - which would lead to the same outcome in Act 3 as if you had of killed him - albiet with a slightly more "good" twist to it.
 
Who says choices have to be easy? That there should always be a "good" choice? You seem to be complaining about what most people want in the game - hard choices. How does not personally giving you a choice you find "good" a reflection on the quality of writing?

Is your definition of quality writing only writing that matches your own tastes in choices? So, if someone writes something you don't like that immediately means the quality is bad? Sounds more to me like you didn't like the choices which is a different concept from quality.

Things are not black and white. The choice to reveal Astarion is *not* the morally "good choice", it's only what you personally think is the "good" choice. Astarion can help the party, he has reasons why he is the way he is and is as much a victim as others. He didn't have a whole lot of choice in what he did. There are also concepts of loyalty to companions, watching each others back, ... and well the whole situation is nuanced.

Hunting monsters is not black and white as monsters themselves are not always black and white.

It seems irrational to think a game should have limitless choices to appeal to every possible users desire to have every possible outcome available in a game. Sure you didn't say every possible outcome - just the outcomes that you want yourself ... which equates to every possible outcome a user might have.

Even limited choices, like Bjon stated, are not really possible in the sense that they all add up. Sure they could have done XYZ with that quest line, just as they could have done ABC with another questline and MNO with yet another ... and so on. It sounds so easy to say "Oh why didn't they just add these simple extra options and wove them into easily into the game" ignoring just how complex the game is and the fact that even small things add up.

Also, for the record, not an Astarion fan myself but I could tell his situation wasn't black and white and saw it through to the end and he was redeemed in my eyes. He has a lot in common with the Urge.
 
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My first good play-through I killed Karlach because
I couldn’t see through the ruse of the “Tyr” paladins

Does that make my paladin play-through oath-breaking? Seems like it should to some degree.

Karlach was much less “evil” than Astarion, at least in my view.

Then there is
the whole should I let the zaith'isk kill Lae’zel who is a very evil character all things considered? I didn’t.

There’s also stuff with Shadowheart in Act 2…

I like that the game lets the player have core black-and-white decisions on very grey issues. These decisions also have huge implications in the story moving forward.

Ultimately though I think it’s about you and your companions sharing the whole tadpole issue and working past your differences (if you feel like it).
 
If I were to complain about anything story-wise I wish Larian did more with the whole tadpole in brain thing. The brain is a really interesting organ and there are tons and tons of really deep ways of exploring identity, psychology, language, memory, consciousness, emotion etc that they left somewhat shallow.

Still an amazing game though.

I kinda feel like an idiot lawn-chair game writer saying this though because then it would be more like Disco Elysium than what it is. And I love what it is.
 
Philistine said:
For a game that is regarded as having great writing, I am often left choosing a dialog option I don't agree with because there are NO appropriate choices. Particularly aggravating are the ones regarding Astarion.
#1 After attacking you in camp, you have the choice of killing him, or letting him feed and telling everyone he's ok!
I wanted to restrain and warn everyone that he's a vampire and to stay away from him. Keep him around in case he's needed for the cure, but if becomes too dangerous, then stake him.
#2 I met Gandrel who I can tell where Astarion is, or not, or just kill Gandrel.... excuse me, what??! Unless you are playing Evil, why would you kill a vampire hunter who's trying to rescue kidnapped children?? If I tell him where Astarion is (the moral choice) the rest of the party gets mad?:rolleyes: If I don't tell the hunter where he is, I cannot follow this up with Astarion. He only talks about a third party I don't care about - where are the children, damn it!!
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Great writing and difficult choices are orthogonal; the fact you don't see the choices you'd like to take has nothing to do with the quality of the writing. As for the choices themselves, it's like life: you don't always get what you want, though here it's most likely a limit to what the developers could do. Try to think of all the consequences they'd have to manage.

It's already a game that offers much more choice than average and acknowledges it, so it's strange to see complaints about it.
 
I agree that relating quality of writing and the range of dialog choices and consequences does not add up, but I also agree that BG3 generally lacks the neutral "I don't give a fuck, I only want to save my own ass without causing too much trouble to my companions" choice many places. My first character was a drow of that type and I could not play it as I had intended to due to the lack of choices. There's the evil kind of narcissist type of choices, but not the neutral kind of not wanting to do unnecessary harm but at the same time not giving a damn type which is used for some characters in books about Forgotten Realms. Note that this is not a complaint, merely an observation. It is not possible to make a game that considers all whims of the player, at least not until generative AI is given the reigns.
 
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Firstly, I never said the writing was bad. I was criticizing the lack of nuanced options
wolfgrimdark said:
Hunting monsters is not black and white as monsters themselves are not always black and white.
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soola said:
I like that the game lets the player have core black-and-white decisions on very grey issues. These decisions also have huge implications in the story moving forward.
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This is my issue... the situations are not black and white, the the decisions you are forced to make are, and I do not feel this is fair to the player. I'm also sick of all the friendly monsters! The game's "Don't judge a book by it's cover" mantra is repeated way too often.
 
Philistine said:
Firstly, I never said the writing was bad. I was criticizing the lack of nuanced options
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Maybe I misinterpreted that part, but you wrote 'For a game that is regarded as having great writing, I am often left choosing a dialog option I don't agree with', which implies a contradiction with the fact it has great writing because some condition is not fulfilled.

Just disregard the first sentence, then; it was only a secondary comment anyway.
 
And what is precisely the issue with some "monsters" not being openly hostile? That you don't get to feel it's morally acceptable to kill them without good reason?

From all your "complaints" I feel your problem really is with the DnD setting. There are plenty of settings with no nuance out there, let us have this one for people who enjoy deeper interactions.
 
I don’t know about that @Vaelith.

I interpreted it at a higher level that would include your argument in that it is a problem with a lack of Lawful Good to Chaotic Evil equally represented throughout the dialogs.

Problem is Larian has never wanted to design narratives along these routes and wants the player to “sweat/stress” at these “imperfect“ representations of good vs evil, etc.

I see it more as a complaint that it isn’t enough like BG2: not rigorous enough in representing these alignments.
 
That's a good point, but there is only so much you can do with a videogame where choices are going to have to be limited.

I feel the choices offered are meant to position the main character in one side of the matter, to be character-defining, and develop towards different outcomes taking into account that the other characters in your party are all nuanced and independant. While you control them in combat, they do not belong to you morally, only "Tav" does.

In the case presented in the original post, it wouldn't be up to your main character to keep the vampire caged in the camp to decide later what to do about him; Lae'zel, Karlach, Gale or Shadowheart are not extensions of your will that will think what you want them to think and act as you want them to act, so that may be very well why your choices are limited to "kill him yourself" or "keep it secret", because nobody would allow you to keep a vampire caged in your camp, and your "Tav" knows that.

Nothing is perfect, but I truly believe BG3 handles this kind of thing better than any game ever has, considering the myriad of branching options that every decision leads to.
 
Vaelith said:
And what is precisely the issue with some "monsters" not being openly hostile? That you don't get to feel it's morally acceptable to kill them without good reason?

From all your "complaints" I feel your problem really is with the DnD setting. There are plenty of settings with no nuance out there, let us have this one for people who enjoy deeper interactions.
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It's not DnD per se. , it's this modern version of it that drives me crazy. I played pnp 1st edition for years as a teen, then 2nd edition in crpgs. I played 3rd edition only in NWN2 and didn't like the changes made to the system there. And now this, which I hate with a passion. DnD for me is about defined roles and archetypes, and this has thrown all of that out. I'm ok with the RARE monster that exhibits unusual traits, but when I run into friendly goblins, hobgoblins, intellect devourers and mindflayers, on a regular basis, it's too much.

Vaelith said:
In the case presented in the original post, it wouldn't be up to your main character to keep the vampire caged in the camp to decide later what to do about him; Lae'zel, Karlach, Gale or Shadowheart are not extensions of your will that will think what you want them to think and act as you want them to act, so that may be very well why your choices are limited to "kill him yourself" or "keep it secret", because nobody would allow you to keep a vampire caged in your camp, and your "Tav" knows that.
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It never occurred to me that my companions wouldn't agree with that idea. In my head he WAS in a cage! Now he's gone, and Shadowheart has admitted to me who she worships, I had to strip her and put her in my mentally modded cage. I can't have her running around furthering the goals of Shar. I'm going to see if I can throw her evil artifact into a chasm in my next session.
 
It's true, it's 5E DnD, where paladins can be evil, drow have no alignment, and every morality is a shade of grey, much like in real life. I do understand this point and I can see that it is a point of conflict, as some of the oldschool friends I talk with feel the same way. Traditional DnD was all about restrictions, to the point where playing a Paladin was nearly impossible if you used traditional character creation, as you needed to be Lawful Good and roll 17+ for Charisma in 3d6. Unless your DM allowed you to reroll repeatedly or cheat in some way there was only a slim chance that you'd get to play one, if that's what you wanted.

But it's as I said, your issue there is with DnD, and not really BG3's fault, which sadly is made to play on DnD5E by contract and under WotC supervision (and I mean that unironically, I can't wait for Larian to make their next game free of DnD chains and systems that are ill-suited for an enjoyable single player RPG experience.)

About NPCs, it's up to you what you do with them, but it's hard to know what kind of bond the tadpole forms between these people who are doomed to understand each other to save themselves. Shadowheart has a beautiful redemption arc if you do wish that for her, but rejecting others without knowing them instead of trying to understand them won't get you anywhere with anyone, in BG3 and in real life too. In real life, that's fine, you can always find more people who are like-minded if you can't stand some kind of mindset, it's unlikely you'll browse through all 7+ billion people and not get along with anyone, but in a game you're stuck with the bunch of NPCs that were made. :p

You can still ditch her if dealing with someone of her faith is too far against your character's moralities and use Withers to create a priest of Lathander devoid of own ideals or personality, that will follow you like a loyal pet without ever tossing half a complaint about anything, if that's what you want.
 
Vaelith said:
Traditional DnD was all about restrictions, to the point where playing a Paladin was nearly impossible if you used traditional character creation, as you needed to be Lawful Good and roll 17+ for Charisma in 3d6. Unless your DM allowed you to reroll repeatedly or cheat in some way there was only a slim chance that you'd get to play one, if that's what you wanted.
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Wasn't point-buy a kind of default at least since 3.5ed?
 
Morrandir said:
Wasn't point-buy a kind of default at least since 3.5ed?
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Kind of, point buy came up as an alternative "middle ground agreement" between players and DM to prevent very lucky/unlucky character stats, and it became more or less accepted over time. It also had different iterations, with different point values, and different costs for increasing stats at different thresholds. Regardless, Philistine was talking about BG1/2 compared to BG3 which were built on ADnD and 5E rulesets respectively, the former being when Paladins were required to have 17+ Charisma, so in this context 3.5 doesn't really matter.
 
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