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The Box That Broke Baldur's Gate 3



Baldur’s Gate III, like Dungeons & Dragons, is a game meant to evoke player freedom. But somewhere early in its making, a small decision was made that collided with that basic principle, and sent its development into a cascading spiral of…

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42 Comments

  1. I’m pretty shore that is what railroading is, no mate what the player wants, you will meet this npc and you will end up with the box. At that point they should have simply made it one of the first encounter, made it unescapable and had a curse on the box to make it so it can’t be dropped.

  2. How about if you don't receive the box up to some point Zou yet killed ok the moment you actually needed it? If my players blatantly ignore tools I offer them multiple times and proceed to fight the bbeg. They die.

  3. I put quite a few hours into Balders gate 3 when it was initially put on steam. I feel like I'm in some parallel universe or they patched this in later because I don't recall ever seeing this box. I talked to shadowheart, had her in my party it never came up.

  4. I think it's a huge shame that this is an issue. Even though it's full to the brim with permutations and choices, it's still a video game. If there's a "main storyline" in it, I would be totally fine with it railroading just that one choice, and then leaving it up to me as the player to follow that lead forward or to ignore it and forge my own path. It's the same with almost any other video game out there, even the ones that are super open world. I wish he'd just force the box to be introduced early on, leave it in an area that you can return to later once you're ready, and then move forward. It's a shame the game is being delayed more because of this.

  5. I have been on both sides of the table when McGuffins were not recognized as worth picking up by the party. Once the players decide it is not important, the DM has one heck of a campaign ahead of them. Nice to hear they are really trying to handle it well, too bad Sven hadn't encountered this in a tabletop session before committing to the McGuffin.

  6. Well… all this video has done is incentivize me to avoid the box. Fall damage and dangerous side routes, here i come!
    I mean someone called "Shadowheart" and a spikey box with demonic looking runes on it, can't blame me for wanting to avoid that?

  7. Why not just considering a path where the player doesn't get the box, the game gets extremely difficult (but still possible), and reward the player with alternative solutions? It's D&D FFS, everything is possible.

  8. They could just pull a Skyrim and toss it in random chest. After you pick it up of corse you’d need to hear, A NEW HAND TOUCHES THE BECON!!!

  9. There is one simple solution… If you get to the point you need the box and you don't habe it yet, you die. If your choices lead you to never finding the box, that was your choice.

  10. It's ok to let the player fail. It's ok to let the player work to get what he needs to have to progress the story. This flawed design is a symptom relating to the desease plaguing computer games for the last twenty years or so – dumbing down games to make them appeal to the lowest common denominator. Thinking in a game is very rare. Disco Elysium is the only recent game that doesn't hold your hand. They're so rare… It's a shame Baldure's Gate 3 follows the popular trend.

  11. Yeah that definitely is not an issue for me. Never was. What kind of an RPG player are you, if you don't pick up a shiny thing with glyphs on it, by default? Not an RPG player, that's who.

  12. this level of detail and choices is nothing compared to Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 lol
    people now have very very low knowledge about past games and weak expectations

  13. How to solve the problem: The player finds the box, before her, after trying to free her and failing. A cinematic appears and he takes the box automatically, after leaving the ship she finds the player and says that the box he found is hers, now the box is with the player, she follows the player or fights him for the box, done.

  14. Why not just have the box enter your possession on the nautilus
    Edit: i get you dont want to limit freedom but is that not something the tutorial/exposition phase is for?

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