Baldurdash

"Run from the fate

Curse as they wait

Fly as you're still

Play at your will"

 

Chiasm - Disorder

 

 

I polished off Baldur Gate 3's second act last night, but not before it infuriated me into taking a few days' break to avoid burnout, so I might as well talk about why. The Shadowlands drag a bit, sticking to a central theme better than Act 1, but also burying that theme in a narrower overland map with the dungeons seeming overbuilt to compensate. But that's not really the issue. As Act 2 content was presumably subjected to less "early access" free testing, it is both buggier and its various game mechanics stumble over each other more often.

 

For example, the end-act boss fight's knockdown during phase transition made my screen black out whenever one character was selected (appropriately enough, Shadowheart) and forced me to reaload. The war demon was easily cheesed, partly due to poor add AI and partly to some effects remaining visible on invisible characters. But not even that's my real beef.

 

I had to repeat a whole series of fights because I somehow didn't realize the quest title "Infiltrate Moonrise Towers" meant literally "walk into your enemy's stronghold before you're ready and cause havoc while the organized, fanatical army corps pretend not to notice a group of strangers murdering their allies just a pinewood door away" and that to rescue Minthara I had to sneak/smarm my way through the place before ending the act. Don't look at me like that. I AM NOT A SUBTLE MAN! I don't think in terms of infiltration, but of relative force sizes and attrition. I treated the location for the boss battle as the last location I'd visit and strategically planned my Act2 circuit around weaker locations beforehand. Alright, alright, so that was at least half my fault, and speaks to the fact I'm a TBS gamer at heart more than an adventurer. Fine. Shut up. And stop giggling and pointing at me.

Another big reload came when trying to collect my reward from one homognomo for rescuing the other, except he's too excited by his crush's return to even speak.

Problem: Wulbren is very much not back sitting with the others around the table, so no quest advancement for you!

 

Hey kids, let's play "where's Wulbren?"

Is he one of the endless NPCs patrolling the inn? Nope! Is he on the upper floor? Nope! Is he hiding in the basement? Is he hiding in the barn? Is he hiding on the docks? Is he hiding in a box? Is he hiding 'hind a fox? Or in a tree or on a train, behind the house or with a mouse? He is not hiding, Sam-I-am, he is... choosing to commit a very peculiar manner of suicide by lingering intemperately beyond the protective shimmering dome preventing primordial darkness from consuming all it befouls.

 

Sam you are, Wulbren. Sam. You. Are. Go Bongle yourself, eedjit.

 

See, Act 2 takes place in a zombie curse wasteland causing most characters constant environmental damage until they die and resurrect as zombies. The non-zombie NPCs mostly stay within safe zones. OK, all good so far. Except... they seem to lack any line of code telling them to get back to safety if they wander outside safe zones, or to resume their normal behavior after healing themselves. Combine that with:

Summoned creatures elicit various responses from various NPCs, depending on their flags. While the harpers here heroically rush to surround my druidic fungal zombies, more civilian types flee in incoherent panic at the sight. In itself, a nice bit of immersive world-building. It's all fun and games until Bongle Sams his Waldo!

(I should not see dead NPCs, I will reload this buggy cheese.)

Bugs like that really seem like they might've been reported in the years' worth of "early access" unpaid bug testing Larian magnanimously bestowed upon its customers, especially given this is not the first friendly NPC I've seen die in the shadowlands for lack of taking one step to the left. Not that I gave a shit about Harper Branthos or his friend Harper Wots'isStrings. Or, wait... is this working as intended? Is this some moralistic punishment for zombification? Are entire quest chains meant to be cancelled out by an NPC's random positioning and pathing?

During my playthrough of Wasteland 3 I remarked on its inexplicable lack of a pause button preventing you from panic-pausing to set up firing angles or use something out of your overloaded inventory, and worst of all allowing enemies to continually path into you in real-time as you're fighting in turn-based combat. At the time I did not even consider the possibility this ommission may be intended, as it's so UTTERLY, RETARDEDLY POINTLESS AND MEANINGLESS as to boil down to the developers just deliberately griefing their audience. BG3 makes a big deal of on-demand turn-based mode as if it's meant to solve all your problems, except... wait for it...

Goblins, cultists, guards, scrying eyes, brains on stilts, BG3's full of monsters patrolling over large distances and stumbling into your combat, which apparently takes place in some sort of Time Stop ignored by the world at large. Never mind the fact that you might sometimes want to look away from the screen for a few seconds without your entire surroundings shifting randomly.

 

While that last one is inexcusable, the icing on the cake for me? Larian choosing to get hyper-realistic about the weirdest shit.

 

Inventory load for instance is a common theme in RPGs, but in BG3 I've routinely found myself surprised by what exactly overencumbers my characters. Heavy armors being truly heavy, eh, ok, I actually like it. Food weighing as much as swords and crossbows? I didn't think I was playing Mount&Blade or Vagrus: The Riven Realms here... but OK, fine... I guess it's more immersive. Yet shifting all the gear and food and potion weight onto the rest of my party and tossing books and keepsakes into the camp chest, I couldn't figure out why my own character still kept getting increasingly weighed down as I advanced through the campaign. Alchemy materials were one issue, but didn't account for the bulk of it, and the only other large quantity in my bag was... oh, WHAT! THE! FUCK!

 

By the end of Act 2, a third of my encumbrance comes from gold coins. Weightless cash is such a standard feature for any RPG that I had not even thought to check gold's weight, had glossed over it even whenever I sorted my inventory by weight, for a hundred hours. It's invisible to me except as an amount, and it seems a weird way of undercutting the booty-hauling kill>loot>vendor core loop.

 

Now, alright, I'm sure lots of GMs do like enforcing the weight of those coins in tabletop D&D campaigns... but why here? Here, in Baldur's Gate 3, where all it means is one more thing to shuffle into your infinite capacity storage chest that travels with you by itself, in a game where level 8 nobodies trounce divine avatars and everybody knows alchemy and a random zombie gives you free resurrection and fighters magically self-heal and you constantly teleport instantly across the map for free and characters willingly stand in death miasmas until they turn into George Romero and everybody can leap tall buildings like Super-Elf and the entire landscape is littered with crates of rotten bananas and nobody questions a voice from beyond claiming to be your savior and only hot-bodied bisexual lovers are allowed to go on adventures and there's an ogre doing calculus and a mind flayer playing Nurse Nightingale and half-demons are all salt-of-the-earth Beaver Cleavers and every issue's simpleminded good vs. evil but we don't call it that and every single one of your companions has daddy issues and you can't pause the damn game to take a leak...

...why is the fantasy credit card your sole anal retentive sticking point?!?!?!?!!?!????!?!?!?