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Tuesday, August 22, 2023
My personal experience with Baldur's Gate 3 - Act II
My group in Baldur's Gate 3 is now at level 9, and I have done a large part of Act II. So I would like to talk about my personal experience in that Act, which obviously will contain spoilers. You have been warned.
My overall experience of Act II is one of disappointment on several levels. First of all, you really feel the difference between Act I having been in early access for three years and constantly improved due to player feedback, and Act II, for which that has not been the case. Possibly as a consequence, or for other reasons, the density of content of interest in Act II is much lower. There are a lot of areas which contain only filler content, like a few crates with rotten food and a skeleton with just a bone in the inventory. The Blighted Village in Act I had something going on in even the most deserted barn; the deserted town of Reithwin has larger buildings with less going on, and a lot of empty buildings and areas. Lower density of relevant content puts the player in front of an impossible choice: Either you still open every container you pass by and find just a lot of rotten tomatoes, or you give up on that and then miss the occasional magic object hidden that way.
The other big disappointment of Act II for me was a bubble bursting about how much choice I actually had in Baldur's Gate 3. I basically made a logical error and tried to play through content in the "wrong order", and the game punished me for it. *Repeated Spoiler Warning* In the latter half of Act II you need to face the big bad guy in Moonrise Tower, but you have also learned that the secret of his immortality is hidden in his family mausoleum. The error I made was thinking that I shouldn't visit Moonrise Tower before I hadn't "turned off" the archvillains immortality. So I went to the mausoleum first, and got to a point where the game warned me that I shouldn't proceed without finishing whatever other quests I had in Act II. I *assumed* that meant quests other than those involving Moonrise Tower; I was wrong. By finishing the mausoleum I got a bunch of failed quest messages telling me that I hadn't rescued the people from Moonrise Tower that I was supposed to rescue. So the *correct* order is going to Moonrise Tower first, doing the rescue quests, presumably finding out that you can't harm the archvillain, and only *then* doing the mausoleum, after which you return to Moonrise Tower for the final showdown of the act. As I really, really wanted to rescue these people, I had to reload an older save game, and will have to do the boss fight of the mausoleum again. And I am not happy that deciding to do some content first locks me out of other content.
My third disappointment with Act II is again with regards to freedom of choice, and concerns my experiment with starting a second playthrough as an evil character. Yes, *technically* you can make lots of evil choices in Baldur's Gate 3, for example siding with the goblins and killing the tieflings in Emerald Grove. But playing Act II as a good guy revealed that a lot of content in Act II is about interacting with, and rescuing again, the tieflings you met in Act I at Emerald Grove. If you do an evil playthrough, Act II will simply have a lot less quest content, and that in a part of the game which is already lower in content. Also, an evil playthrough will end you up with significantly less access to traders. While that has a certain logic, if you burn down villages you have less access to interaction with society, it isn't as if Baldur's Gate 3 really provides you with some compensation, the advantages of being evil. Even in my good playthrough, I made an error at the githyanki creche, where I didn't find and trade with the githyanki quartermaster before the whole place turned hostile. When you then kill the quartermaster, he does *not* have the inventory he previously would have sold you, and so I was missing out on some very good magic items I could have otherwise bought.
In summary, Act II showed me that Baldur's Gate 3 is a lot more linear than I thought, and that the game punishes you for deviating from the intended path through the game. And evil playthrough is possible, but not equivalent to the standard heroic goodness path.
- posted by Tobold @ 9:20 AM Permanent Link
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So I have had a similar experience with Act 2 although I stopped when I got the warning. I did basically everything else and left the tower for last because I thought that was the logical path. What was even stranger from a narrative point of view is that you can do several good guy things in the tower without making the whole place hostile, including fighting enemies. Apparently enemies in certain sections just dont affect the main areas of the tower. You can even venture into the end of Act 2 area early if you find one of the two ways to access it.
I also came across a lot more bugs and a really annoying game design decision/oversight. I had respec'd my ranger to beast master to try the pets and they added this mechanic where if you are in town the townsfolk react to your beast. Guards tend to follow you around and tell the pet to shoo or leave but regular NPCs cower in fear or run away. Well an important quest NPC tied to a companion quest decided to run out into the cursed area and die. I didn't notice this happened until I had cleared most of the zone and went looking for them as I didn't see them in town and found them cursed. I was pretty annoyed when I realized what happened.
I also suffered from the bugged romance flags on Gale that seems to be plaguing a lot of folks. The game acts like I romanced him despite me never accepting any of his romance scenes. I also have the bug where some buffs and debuffs just never expire despite long resting.
People are saying Act 3 is even more bug ridden and some parts seem unfinished with companion quests just dead ending due to a late game area being cut and their quests weren't reworked to account for that. One companion apparently doesn't even have their good endings available because the resolution was tied closely to the cut area. Supposedly even the endings themselves seem to be bugged with whole scripts of scenes missing triggers in game despite being content conplete with narration and everything. All this kind of makes me want to pump the brakes on my playthrough until Larian puts out a patch or two. I might even start a 3rd character and replay Act 1 and 2 again but as the Dark Urge origin just to see what's different.
I also came across a lot more bugs and a really annoying game design decision/oversight. I had respec'd my ranger to beast master to try the pets and they added this mechanic where if you are in town the townsfolk react to your beast. Guards tend to follow you around and tell the pet to shoo or leave but regular NPCs cower in fear or run away. Well an important quest NPC tied to a companion quest decided to run out into the cursed area and die. I didn't notice this happened until I had cleared most of the zone and went looking for them as I didn't see them in town and found them cursed. I was pretty annoyed when I realized what happened.
I also suffered from the bugged romance flags on Gale that seems to be plaguing a lot of folks. The game acts like I romanced him despite me never accepting any of his romance scenes. I also have the bug where some buffs and debuffs just never expire despite long resting.
People are saying Act 3 is even more bug ridden and some parts seem unfinished with companion quests just dead ending due to a late game area being cut and their quests weren't reworked to account for that. One companion apparently doesn't even have their good endings available because the resolution was tied closely to the cut area. Supposedly even the endings themselves seem to be bugged with whole scripts of scenes missing triggers in game despite being content conplete with narration and everything. All this kind of makes me want to pump the brakes on my playthrough until Larian puts out a patch or two. I might even start a 3rd character and replay Act 1 and 2 again but as the Dark Urge origin just to see what's different.
As an experiment, I switched to my second playthrough save game and did a speedrun-like exploration of the Act II main story in the most evil version possible. I totally aligned with the Absolute and did everything the cult asked me to do. And then at the end, the artifact you don’t control pops up and forces you into exactly the same end boss fight of Act II which you would have had if you had played as a good guy. Only now it is harder, because he has all the advantages that you delivered to him over the course of Act II.
I am giving up on the idea to do an evil playthrough, the game just constantly punishes you for it, and then forces you into the same story progress as the good guys. It isn’t really a viable alternative playthrough.
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I am giving up on the idea to do an evil playthrough, the game just constantly punishes you for it, and then forces you into the same story progress as the good guys. It isn’t really a viable alternative playthrough.
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