Baldur's Gate III

[MaXenzie]

Having played DoS: 2 I think this is just something Larian Studios does. It seems they put all their effort and time into the first two acts and then they don't really know how to wrap it all up, or just don't have enough time to conclude it all in the way they intended and so kinda fumble.

the inevitable definitive edition will improve the later acts based on player feedback

 

[Sil]

Act 3 definitely felt like the least-finished part of things, even with all the content there is. Big shame too, because its somewhere you'd expect to have plenty in, but once you've explored a fair bit of it you kind of run out of the 'woah new things' factor and are sort of pushed to finishing the game via whichever quest path you choose.

Spoiler: Spoilers for Act 3 + the Ending

On my playthrough, I sided with Gortash since the game made it seem quite appealing from a bard perspective; share the power with him, conquer all of Faerun together, sounded awesome. Not to mention Orin was just... boring. Edgy but not in a cool way like Sarevok, edgy in the kind of way you'd see That Guy play a rogue. I really did not care for the whole 'look at me I'm murdering everyone and disguising myself as a literal child just to get at you hee hoo I'm EVIL' shit, she's just a very boring character and I was looking forward to the fight.

But, the fight was... piss easy, really (will admit beforehand I was playing in storyteller mode but even then, this felt too easy especially since Ketheric Thorm's whole battle was really difficult on that difficulty). Used a couple spells but my party took her down in what must've been 2-3 rounds, even in her slayer form. The cultists around her didn't do very much, and were picked off easy enough after she was piled on and killed. The slayer form she goes into doesn't live up to General Ketheric Thorm's Avatar of Myrkul, and she just looks like a giant quasit (and dies like one too). Having the lore side of things make it so that Orin was Sarevok's great granddaughter too just felt really weird from a story perspective, since if he's still alive then why is she around? I'd genuinely rather Sarevok come back as the Bhaal Chosen, since at least he's a very pre-established character with plenty of story. Orin just feels like someone's OC they shoved in.

Then, the unfortunate kick in the nuts right at the end, at least if you befriend Gortash and take the offer, the Netherbrain just... kills them. Straight up. No fight, no dramatics, there's a neuroquake and then his head explodes. If that's what happens then what's the point in befriending him or wanting to take him up on his offer? Since in the end you have to kill Orin regardless, if you go against Gortash you just add lots of extra work for yourself that in the end doesn't get paid off since he'd die anyway. If he survived it would've been cool to have some sort of ally during the final battle that wasn't just the people whom you recruited as friends along your travels. A part of me thinks that with the Upper City being mostly cut, also probably cut out a lot of the positives of befriending Gortash, though I'm just speculating here.

I'm hoping in the future Larian releases an update or DLC to add the cut content with a polish. It's clear that with the game being in early access for so long, they really were running at the end of whatever internal allowance they had to keep it in such a state before releasing it full, a bit of a Cyberpunk situation (but thank god is BG3 so much more polished and fun than that game) in regards to appearing to have so much content but not delivering it all.

 

[fofa]

After over 100 hours playtime, finishing the game once with most sidequests complete, and mulling it over for a while, while I can say with 100% certainty this is my GOTY and a fucking amazing feat.

MAN did act 3 drop the ball. Act 1 and most of Act 2 were great, engaging, polished (mostly) and just pure fun. Act 3 really wasn't.
I can't be the only one who finds act 3 worse, right? First, almost all of my gamebreaking bugs I encountered (where I had to reload saves and lose progress) were in Act 3 due to bad pathing, weird level design, or bad scripting. I also felt like the level design was a lot more confusing and it was much easier to miss stuff even when you were looking for it. A lot of quests also felt strangely scripted unlike the rest of the game where for some quests you had to do random arbitrary things to unlock the ability to talk about stuff to progress the quest.

My worst points were probably my save getting randomly corrupted in one major lore location underground causing me to lose about 2 hours of progress, and getting stuck in combat in a big tower because an enemy flew through a very obvious open space but my party apparently couldn't and therefore couldn't reach them and the enemy refused to come back up, and that time I was trying to do a side-quest the "morally good" route but an NPC refused to give me the item I needed despite me doing everything necessary so I was forced to kill them for it.

Not to mention:

Spoiler: big act 3 spoilers

The fact that you can't even access the Upper City, which was teased and is semi-implemented in the ending (it was confirmed to be cut late in development with A LOT of story content).
The rushed end of the Dead Three arc (seriously, Gortash was lacking A LOT of stuff to flesh out his character and motives, I bet a lot of it was in the Upper City originally).
The fact that Karlach's "good end" was blatantly cut with the Upper City (Larian confirmed this and that all the possible endings she has currently was the "fail-state endings".
And perhaps most importantly, the "17000 different endings" were cut, they had most of the voice acting done for ending epilogue slides that would change based on your actions and a camp party scene similar to the end of Act 1.

TL:DR if youre playing the game now and haven't gotten to act 3 yet, take your time with act 1-2 while we wait for Larian to fix the mess.

lots of stuff was cut out from act 3, including the upper city and endings for some of the characters. heres a list

it'll definitely be included in the definitive edition as larion has a tendency to include cut content in those, which was seen in DoS 2

 

[Señor Jaggles]

I kinda love Larian ngl

 

[Ond]

"No, you can't kill (SPOILER), if you do the child inside will die!"

My honest reaction (I spent way longer than I should have doing what I could to prevent such an outcome for little reward):

 

[Señor Jaggles]

"No, you can't kill (SPOILER), if you do the child inside will die!"

Double kill

 

[Ond]

Double kill

Skill issue

 

[Señor Jaggles]

Skill issue

On the topic of "why pregnant women are mechas and thus machines of war and thus are not civilians" we will be discussing why me being sentenced to 70 years with no parole for a simple fireball spell is a mistake and severely unjust

 

[Ond]

On the topic of "why pregnant women are mechas and thus machines of war and thus are not civilians" we will be discussing why me being sentenced to 70 years with no parole for a simple fireball spell is a mistake and severely unjust

"You're under arrest for theft!"

The level 6 disintegrate spell in my pocket:

 

[Señor Jaggles]

 

[Ond]

HOLY SHIT NOW I CAN ACTUALLY PLAY A HALFLING

 

[Señor Jaggles]

HOLY SHIT NOW I CAN ACTUALLY PLAY A HALFLING

@Rabid

 

[Ond]

"During Gale's spell-teaching scene, you now have the option to picture a future with Gale that falls somewhere in between kissing him and kicking him in the head."

 

[Luft]

Act 3 has me like

 

[Ricsow]

Some guy asked me to tell a story to a bunch of kids he was training, and in my head I just had the thought "You're all gonna die"
It was a actual dialogue option

Game of the millennia

 

[Ond]

So glad I got to

Spoiler

knife that bitch lae'zel in the end cutscene with orpheus

 

[Goatson]

So glad I got to

Spoiler

knife that bitch lae'zel in the end cutscene with orpheus

woah

Spoiler

i guess i got a diff one cuz i followed her quest but for me orpheus entrusted her as his successor, there really are major differences actually surprisingly good

 

[Rabid]

So glad I got to

Spoiler

knife that bitch lae'zel in the end cutscene with orpheus

Peace was never an option.

 

[Eviction Notice]

Spoiler: spoiler sshh

this game awakened something in me

 

[Toriwarior30055]

Some guy asked me to tell a story to a bunch of kids he was training, and in my head I just had the thought "You're all gonna die"
It was a actual dialogue option

Game of the millennia

I know exactly who you’re talking about. Me, Phil and Andrew murdered those children.