I finished BG3

2023/12/31 in gaming

MONTHS ago, when it came out. But I really hate it when I don’t even publish at least one post a month, because then this month is missing from the archive links on the right side. So I sort of have to crank out SOMETHING. In any case, I think at this point everything should have been said about this game numerous times so I can just skip repeating most elements. I’ll exclusively focus on things I noticed in the game and haven’t seen discussed anywhere else (although they probably were discussed too SOMEWHERE). It’s not like I keep track of that. Or do a search or ANYTHING really.

Back when I played it (of course one of the countless patches could have changed it since then), BG3 had a level cap. Of 12. Now I really wouldn’t claim that I did everything in this game, because I’m sure I haven’t. I didn’t ignore quests really, but I also didn’t try my hardest to find everything. But despite me not playing every quest in the game, I seriously reached max level ~50 hours before the game was done. I always thought this was a sign of… somewhat less than perfect balancing (that’s why I threw in the remark with the patches, I’d almost expect them to iterate on that), when players could reach max level with so much game left. Quests should just give less XP then etc…

I mean thankfully the game has more qualities and motivating factors than just leveling up, I’m not saying that, but it’s just weird and frustrating that your character is just done and can’t learn anything new anymore with a significant part of the adventure still ahead.

That kind of brings me right to the ending. BG3 seemed so elaborate in many parts and I’m a sucker for long elaborate endings, especially when it comes to games I’ve spent so much time in. The ending I got felt almost abrupt to me. Some of the characters barely gave more than an “k bye” before leaving forever. That’s weird after everything they went through (I played and finished all sidequests for all the companions). There was one brief scene/conversation with the romance option and then it was go ending credits go and that was the game. Of course I’ve definitely seen much worse endings, but it still felt like a little bit of a letdown, after playing this for ~150 hours.

While playing this, I caught myself numerous times thinking, that I’m happy about this game’s success, because it gives me hope there might be more (or any) D&D games in the future (as opposed to NONE). I’m first and foremost into this setting, I like and know all the places, people and whatnot and I missed it all. It’s so strange that it took “them” 20 years to do another game like this.

While I’m not one of the Larian fans, I still can only applaud this developer for just selling people a game and not have any micro-transaction bullshit or DLC insanity going on. Just buy this game once and then go play it. This mentality really isn’t something one can take for granted with major titles like this. So yeah, this game is in this weird space where its success is good for any RPG fan, because it might embolden devs with similar philosophies and could “inspire” others to do similar stuff. They were also smart doing EA the way they did. I bet CDP wishes they would have done the same with Cyberpunk and thus sidestepped so much needless drama.

btw: Why did they name it Baldur’s Gate 3 when the previous game was named Baldur’s Gate II? A subtle hint that this is from a different dev and maybe doesn’t have all that much to do with the previous games? It can’t be coincidence, right?