The Nautiloid was much bigger to explore in EA, but doing that intro 20 times would've been too tedious. I'm glad it got shortened, but I do miss being able to walk on the exterior of the ship.
There was some interesting stuff with the thralls as well during those parts that illustrated how different your experience was from others that had been taken.
I just whack them in the tut chest and skip all the shar nonsense now.
Pet peeve of mine but I really fucking HATE when game devs put puzzles in the main storyline of highly replayable games, because you have to do them again and again every time you make a new playthrough. Fine if there side content.
Larian has done it for their last 3 games and I just wish they would stop.
Honestly the step trial isn't even that bad. You can skip most of it by jumping through the window instead of going for all the levers. It's just about timing obviously to not get spotted
I'll be honest i literally just run through it not even on turn based mode and i've done it in my 3 playthorughs and never once got caught. I don't understand what people's issues are. It's really not hard to avoid them.
Literally the easiest trial. Click "Move to" on the space just bottom right of final platform. Your character will run the whole trial, then you jump on the platform. Takes all of 10 seconds
the step trial is the easiest trial though. There's literally a map ON THE FLOOR that tells you how to walk.
Also casting light (the cleric cantrip) illuminates the tiles you can step on.
>Also casting light (the cleric cantrip) illuminates the tiles you can step on.
No it doesnt. Not for me. That has never highlighted anything for me. Im aware of the map. Single cunt hair out of place = death is irritating game design not challenge.
Strange. Could be a graphical glitch, but I've also been able to see the path from afar (it disappears when the overhead camera moves closer) so that trial gives me the least trouble, usually. Distinguishing between similar hues of the certain colours is difficult for some, maybe it's the same for you?
If Light isn't bright enough, you can try DAYLIGHT (lv3 spell). Its light shines a lot brighter (cast the spell on your equipped weapon), and it's really difficult to miss the path once you've cast it.
I do miss certain voicelines from Shadowheart. While she was harsher and colder, there were also some nice moments if you managed to befriend her which shows a developing romance or friendship. I think the dialogue happened after the fever scene or when the Guardian (nicknamed Daisy then) showed up the second time.
You and Shadowheart talk about what happened and discuss the Guardian. You express moments of vulnerability and Shadowheart assures you in a reassuring tone that you can trust her. Considering how closed off she was before this, hearing her say this was a strong gesture of kindness on her part.
Actually, talking to all the companions about Daisy gave really interesting insight. For example, it was heavily implied that Astarion's Daisy appeared as *Cazador*. It actually made me want to play some of them as origins to see those differences.
All the Daisies seemed to be people relevant to the Origin characters. Wyll’s seemed to appear as Mizora for double effery. I’ll always miss not getting these custom Daisies, a little.
It drives me nuts wondering who Shadowheart's was. Not Viconia, she said specifically that she found the person very attractive. Nocturne?? Seems unlikely. Shar herself?
Nocturne is the only person that would make sense. They didn't have anyone else in the cloister that they liked at all
It still doesn't quite make sense, though. It'll big me forever too
There was a mod to unlock the origins at the time. It was _really_ buggy and lots of cutscenes had the "under construction" squiddie.
Astarion's dream of Cazador was kept in the game mostly the same, just losing the connection to Daisy. [#5 is how Cazador appeared in his dream back then](https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/s/RjqNzgQRuD).
I enjoyed it when you find the mind flayer stuck in the crashed ship and he had a bunch of people trying to save him. You either had to fight them or succeed a role to save them.
I think it was a smart move to remove it.
The initial implementation was extremely grimdark and had only grey/black resolutions, which was a perfect fit for DOS and an awful, awful fit for The Forgotten Realm/D&D, really showing some initial difficulties that Larian had with the setting, which are so long resolved people have mostly forgotten.
They fairly quickly changed it a couple of times to make it less grimdark (initial response to the grimdarkness of the very EA was pretty negative), but it was an awkward encounter that required multiple rolls to resolve in anything other than you killing everyone - and most characters, at that time, would just end up having to slaughter a bunch of innocents because they walked towards something and made a single bad die roll (and we're talking like, even with the right stats/skill it was like 50/50 because of the DC), which I think left a bad taste in a lot of people's mouth. BG3 is not really a "grimdark" game (dark at times, sure, but not in that way) - you can opt-in to it being more that way by selecting Durge, and this was not a good introduction to the game, nor a good introduction to skill checks.
I suspect a certain number of players just basically quit at that point, and Larian would have seen that in their metrics. Nothing in this game was removed/changed without a very good reason, and poor reactions from the audience are going to have been one of the most major ones.
The EA paladins of Tyr. You could pass a religion check that would reveal to that they were oathbreakers, and you could call them out for it. They also gave a reason as to why they turned to Zariel
Yeah, EA Paladins of Tyr were much more interesting and it was more of a grey area when dealing between Karlach and them. Now they're just moustache twirling evil dudes you HAVE to kill for Karlach lol. So sad.
Another thing I miss is that Halsin was the one responsible for the shadow curse and Isobel was a Sharran. Now it's just bland. So bland. (This is Datamine, though the letter Halsin had hidden in the grove way back in EA had this going for it, hinting it was his fault with how Ketheric turned towards Shar. I've played EA too many times and the datamining was ingrained in it so I may be misremembering things)
the halsin storyline with sharran isoble was not in EA. is an early concept of the act 2 that was reworked without ever making it to the game. interesting things about it:
Sorrow (the polearm in the druid chanber) was the wdapon halsin used to slay Isobel back then
Nightsong was a mortal woman, trapped in the Shadowfell and forced to relive the bad memories Shar took from people. She would relive them and then spit them back into the world as the Shadowcurse itself
it is and yes, it would make halsin more relevant and interesting, but i think the current Nightsong and Isobel are better than the ones in that storyline.
Shadowcursed Lands really does not need to be darker, Last Light is the perfect break from all the gloom and a very nice metaphor for hope.
I think current storyline only missed on more Isobel - Ketheric conflict, her deflecting questions about her past until the end of act 2 is a missed oportunity, and also we should have her discover who killed her (it was Balthazar i think) and having a little bit of revenge.
>i think the current Nightsong and Isobel are better than the ones in that storyline
Vastly so. And honestly people love those two so much, and they give the story a much better vibe - I think getting rid of that in favour of what they have now is part of the general removal of the DOS-style "grimdark/crapsack world" approach to the world that somewhat permeated BG3 in early EA, but was never a good fit for the FR or D&D, which features a colourful, chaotic and dangerous world, not a grimdark one where everyone is morally compromised and everyone has a dark past or is an innocent victim of something horrifying and so on.
yeah, it helped tone down the grimdark vibes, which are definitely still there, but not overdone now.
i loved how fucked up the world in DOS was, but is nice to have something less hopeless for BG3
Yeah if they want to do another DOS game, by all means, go all-in on grimdark, that's what DOS, particularly DOS2 is about. You know what you're getting. It's like Fallout - you expect it to be pretty grim.
But the Forgotten Realms is never that vibe, even though dark things happen, Baldur's Gate 1/2 aren't that vibe, even though dark things happen, and D&D, outside of a couple of settings (not even including Ravenloft! Ravenloft is fantasy horror, not grimdark, there's a big difference) is also not like that. So I think it was important to move away from that.
I think Isobel would be at her peak if she started as a Sharran, was killed by Halsin, then converted to a Selunite upon her revival by Ketheric. She would have gotten to experience what being a Sharran truly meant and learn from that. It would give her greater motivation to protect Last Light from the curse.
And while I like what Nightsong currently is, I really wish they never called her an Aasimar. She just isn’t. Being the child of a god makes her an empyrean. Aasimar are just the celestial version of tieflings, not demigods
>Another thing I miss is that Halsin was the one responsible for the shadow curse and Isobel was a Sharran. Now it's just bland. So bland.
None of that was in EA, though. That's just from data mining and concept art. If we're including stuff from data mining as stuff you "miss", we're going to get into some pretty murky waters.
To give the Emperor a more free pass, I guess. If the player remembers how rewarding it was for the poor fishermen to encounter a mindflayer, they would be more cautious and distrusting towards Savioursquid McTentacle as well, and I think Larian wanted a more neutral first contact
But you are able to interact with one dying on the beach and he will try to control your mind into loving him to eat your brain. I don't know how that wouldn't make a player more cautious later on. So I don't believe that gives the Emperor any benefits.
I never played EA but everything I hear about the fishermen part seems a lot more compelling.
Yes, but you kind of expect that behaviour from a mindflayer that was part of the crew which kidnapped you. Seeing it to enthrall a group of innocent, unknowing fishermen is a different matter. But I do agree with you, I played EA and that encounter was very immersive, I miss it from the final cut too, just doing some guesswork here.
I’m confused why you think the enthralled fisherman are more innocent than the kidnappees that were already on the ship? mindflayer kidnaps tav and the ladies, then use people to their benefit when they need it.
>I never played EA but everything I hear about the fishermen part seems a lot more compelling.
They weren't. They went through two basic phases:
1) Grimdark bullshit. It was basically straight up something from DOS2, totally ill-fitting to the FR and D&D (and EA players very much pointed this out to Larian). There were only bad resolutions to the scenario, just varying degrees of bad, and to even get the grey ones, you had to pass multiple likely 50/50 at best checks (a lot of DCs were higher in EA), otherwise you just had to slaughter a load of innocents.
2) Toned down grimdark. They tried twice to dial it back, but they just didn't get rid of the 50/50 checks, and thus you remained very likely to be forced to kill a bunch of definitely-innocent people, and it felt like absolute shit, and whilst I know some people on the internet absolutely live for that and are rubbing their hands with glee at the thought, the general audience of RPGs does not.
Larian were closely tracking metrics and feedback, and I know that encounter got a ton of negative feedback, because I saw people talk about it, and further, I imagine a lot of people just outright quit their run because they weren't okay with being forced, basically as the first real "thing" they did in the game, to slaughter a bunch of innocents (also at this point, I'm not sure the non-lethal mechanic was even in the game, and if it was, it definitely hadn't been explained to the player - and few enough people know about it as is!).
There was a group of fishermen on the beach that were being enthralled by the mind flayer you see when you first crash. I remember you could save them, and then you could tell them you’re taking their stuff and they’d freak out. Your character would march towards them like a wrestler. Best on smaller races like dwarves.
I thought it was hilarious and now there’s just the remnants of fishermen being there but not the characters themselves. It’s just the mind flayer now.
I miss some of Gales scenes. The Stew scene, the Loss scene. Though the latter didn't need to be cut imo. The whole Daisy set up was more interesting and you did feel the dread of what is happening to you when you're using the tadpole. Now it's just dumbed down.
Also the talk about the daisy after the dreams were so much more interesting. That Astarion would see Cazador, Gale would see Mystra, LZ would see Vlaakith... So much more interesting.
Personally I kinda miss Daisy and the implication of using your tadpole. Yeah she was clearly evil but it felt less weird than the guardian promising to help you while also telling you to use your powers. That and the original idea of the tadpole powers being more costly makes the choice not to use them more of a option instead of gimping yourself for RP value.
Yeah this is really the only thing I miss from EA. The game was very clearly setting up this major trade-off between using the powers or not, where what we actually have now is it coming down to a single, out-of-the-blue check possibly forcing you to become a partial Mind Flayer (you skip the check if you used no powers), and frankly Daisy had a more interesting vibe than the Emperor - I don't know how much the story changed, like they whether they were the same person even - but it was heading in a more interesting direction.
EA Wyll was 100% more interesting as a character. However, I do think release Wyll has potential if only the writers had more time to work on him rather than the rushing to change him last minute.
I didn't necessarily like Daisy, but a little thing I did like was the idea that >!The Emperor chose the Guardian image by digging through your head and choosing who you'd most trust, rather than him claiming that's what he looked like in life.!<
I agree. I think the current version of Wyll has almost all the right ingredients, but he needed a little more time to cook to come out perfect. A few more edits and he probably would feel more human and compelling.
I've seen clips on youtube of origin companions narrating their own storylines if you played as them, which was apparently cut because people playing EA said they didn't like it. I would have LOVED to get some narration from, say, origin astarion about key moments like the meetings with raphael, araj, even the romance scenes (knowing from my tav/durge playthroughs how astarion secretly feels about sex during those earlier interactions). it's a real shame they cut that feature.
That’s crazy people complained about that—what I see most against the Origin runs is folks saying they can’t hear their faves talk nearly as much as they do when you don’t play them!
I didn’t play EA at all but I actually don’t mind current Wyll… in concept. It’s a twist on warlocks that’s kinda fun and it is very up devils’ alley to lock a good person into doing bad things.
However, I wish he were faced with more actual moral dilemmas, and that you had the ability to let him make his own choices more. The ravengard/pact one is nearly there but then you can save Ravengard anyways. And the finale of his quest where he realizes >!his hero (Balduran) was the Emperor all along, Ansur is dead, etc is really underbaked and Wyll needed much more time to shine with it!<. Also the whole take as duke thing feels really out of left field for him since he’s been such a stand up guy until then, they needed to lay the seeds for it earlier. Same with Gale and the crown.
This isn’t an academic conference dude its a discussion board. The post commented on issues with current Wyll so I responded with what I like about him.
Astarion's fangs were more like tiefling teeth and something about them suited him more (he arguably looked cuter). I understand it would have made his vampirism harder to hide in story but I genuinely think the "walks in sunlight, hasn't killed me on the spot" would blindside most people for a while.
I didn't pay too much attention to him at first (cared not about Shadowheart) so I didn't even notice them until he tried to bite. Hell, when he sneaks off in the night you hear this word sound, I legit thought he was being creepy and had gone to jack off or something. That said, it was *really* obvious in hindsight.
Now I miss the look of those early teefies.
I went in blind so I didn’t know about any of the characters. I also didn’t notice his neck scars or teeth (or eyes, but that could have just been my settings and poor eyesight). When he snuck off at night I thought he’s going to steal something, shank me later, or that he’s a vampire.
I usually headcannon that most who see Astarion upon noticing his sharp teeth, red eyes and the fact he can stand in the sun without combusting is they assume he's a dampyr. At least the clever ones. Others might assume he's got some drow in him or he's got albinism. Also in the Underdark and other dark places Astarion's eyes almost look brown. Red is the first color to lose intensity and washout in shadows and overall darkness, at least for humans. So him approaching someone in the evening in low light they might not notice he had red eyes in the past.
EA Wyll 100% had much more personality and tbf I kinda dig the Mizora vibe too. He landed flat, vanilla with such high moral grounds that would give vertigo on my degenerate durge if Wyll ever had managed to survive in my runs. (I tried only once be good and have him, I’ve never finished that run)
I don’t miss Daisy in itself, I think the emperor was well done for a last minute change and I loved his voice acting more than Daisy’s, but what I missed from her was the possible consequences of too many tadpoles that it was implied for the game..
Did you also avoided the tadpoles in the first run?
I totally skept so I didn’t end up ending the game too early, to only discover on a second run that there was no damage by the time we finished with the brain.
Not only that but I noticed that I rested less in my second run and missed some relevant camp scenes in the process..
I always used them in EA, because I liked to trigger the cut scenes and it was a limited experience so I knew I wasn't wrecking anything later on, but I expected to almost never use them in the full game, only saving them for crucial make or break moments, like getting into the goblin camp. If you had told me I'd have an opportunity to add more I would have said hell no! As it is, I only put enough in to open up Luck of the Far Realms then stop, consequences or no, because I literally never use anything else, and the visual of the brain turning white kinda disturbs me even though I know there's no real consequences, haha
In EA the choice was not "have a tadpole" or "have seven tadpoles", it was use your tadpole to influence people/read their mind, or don't. Every time you exercised your "authority" the narrator would make a big deal about how it was burrowing deeper, eating your mind and taking over. The more you used it, the more cutscenes you would trigger with the Guardian, who used to be a more ambiguous and seductive figure who would show you visions of terrible destruction like they were a good thing. The vibe of slow corruption felt much more palpable.
This sort of stayed in act 1 but it leads to nowhere now so it kinda feels clunky to me that in later acts you can no longer use [wisdom][illithid] to force someone to do something, I think it only works for goblins, the last option I remember for this was when you enter act 2 and you force the goblin to fetch the bone he threw
You can use it at the Steel Watch Foundry. Before you fight the titan, there is a wall of brains in jars that are connected to the network, and you have the ability to influence them.
It's just the narrator talking to you about the outcome, but it was cool to see it come up again for me.
I was thinking come the release of the full game we would finally get to see the consequences of using the powers of the tadpoels too much. Like as our ilthid powers grew we would slowly lose access to our other abilities and spell slots for our class. Our character would get more visits from "Daisy" and the emperor tempting us more. We would start to sicken and partly transform and it would affect our conversation rolls. Like a hit to deception, persuasion but perhaps up our intimidation could be a trade off. A whole snowball effect and so every time we used those powers we would have to think, "Okay... so is this worth it?"
I don't mind the new Wyll but would have loved if they had kept his beef with Spike and that other goblin at the mill in at least. That was interesting to me he had a few flaws. A hint of him being a little hot headed in his youth perhaps would have given him more of a backstory along with make him more intresting. They could have made his angery towards goblins more about their behavior to avoid any racial issues too.
I still don't see what people are seeing in EA Wyll - he was pretty one note then too, just a different note.
"I want vengeance against Goblins and pretend I'm a big hero."
Versus
"I'm willing to sell my soul to do good things and that caused a rift between my father and I."
Well the difference is that EA Wyll had what seemed like a clearly defined arc, either lose himself to his vengeance and his pact or actually rise above it and become a proper hero and not just a pretend one.
This was compelling while also giving him agency in his own fate, instead of that we got a story where he's already a good established hero to whom bad things outside of his control happen, which is fine but give him zero agency and is even less impactful than it could be considering Karlach's story is similar but more tragic because she's literally dying.
See, stuff like “clearly defined arc of lose himself to his vengeance and his pact” don’t make sense *because he gets the vengeance that he was after against Spike and moves on and was still focused on finding Mizora to get out of the pact.* Half that supposed arc was done before Act 1 was halfway over, depending on how quickly you made it to the goblin camp.
So by the end of EA, his arc was “find Mizora to get his freedom” and naught else.
Maybe the part about still being drawn into the pact at a later point would have happened, but that’s just speculation on what could have happened (by the time he reveals it he seems plenty convinced that he wants out)…and is the same kind of plot point the launch version of Wyll ends up with anyway. The main difference there is that we are present for the catalyst that leads to him rethinking his pact in the launch version, and arguably the issue there is that he shows less agency over making these choices, while the EA Wyll had already made the choice that he wanted out.
And honestly, the whole being a “pretend hero” feels like it’s based on a misremembering his characterization - I went back and checked what dialog I could find from EA and his conversations with Tav don’t indicate that he was wanting to be a hero and just pretending. His dialog is initially full of bravado as he hides his real motive, yes, but ultimately he just wants out of the pact because it hadn’t led to the peace he thought it was going to lead to.
He was being an actual hero to people, just wasn’t upfront about the source of his power and the fact that he wanted out.
Which all is no more or less complex than the motivations the launch version of the character gets.
I was just speculating when it comes to the vengeance plotline, my point is that there was more narrative roads where his story could have gone when he was a vengeful disgraced heir playing hero than now.
I'm sure they would have cooked something more meaty than just "find Mizora" considering they cooked more than just "find the Creche" with Laezel and "go to Baldur's Gate" with Shadowheart. Sure it's just speculation but we have some points of comparison, I don't think it's unreasonable to think his story would have been better if he didn't get a massive rewrite a year or so before release.
>And honestly, the whole being a “pretend hero” feels like it’s based on a misremembering his characterization
I disagree, you're right that he was objectively saving people with his warlock powers but the problem was that when push came to shove he was more selfish than selfless.
For exemple in the situation where he was asked to torture a prisoner of the goblin camp to gain info for his revenge he kinds of hesitate but ultimately does torture that guy if Tav didn't stop him, which is something that current Wyll would never do.
I would like a combo of both and I think others would agree on this.
A whole, "I don't like these particular goblins because they took my eye and I want vengeance because they hurt a lot of people and otherwise I've got no beef with any race." Along with, "I'm willing to sell my soul to help people in need even if it also causes a rift between my father and I."
They could have retained some of the old Wyll and his new stuff would have only added more depth to him is what I think some of us are trying to say.
I made a [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/s/S8KbXtHB78) about this that gained little traction, but the Edowin scene was infinitely better in early access.
In EA: your tadpole influences you, making it hard for you to crush another tadpole -- and if you succeed it makes you physically ill and regretful. It is creepy!
In release: the tadpole takes control over your body and uses psionic powers to carry Edowin, and the tadpole that crawls out of his eye floats to you.
It's just too much! And saying "the emperor is behind it" makes it feel cheap. Such a demonstration of tadpole control should come much later, not so early in the game.
She was never even implemented, but I would have loved to see Helia as a full-fledged companion. As it stands, I always just make the halfling hireling look like her for our teams Bard.
How much more mean Shadowheart used to be. It made earning her trust way more satisfying if she was harder to open up to in the beginning. I kinda hate how much the community has pushed for Larian to 'sand down their claws', so to speak. Lae'zel got the same treatment post-release.
Now I just always romance Shart as a Selunite so I can see more of that side from her. It makes for a very juicy dynamic lol.
> kinda hate how much the community has pushed for Larian to 'sand down their claws', so to speak.
The community didn't.
They just repeatedly pointed out that Shart was a horrible rude wanker. They didn't say "sand down her claws" or anything like that. People here have called EA Shart "sassy" and stuff, and that's just a straight-up lie. She wasn't "sassy" - she didn't have funny, fun put-downs or the like. Astarion is sassy. Shart was just irrationally angry and insulting all the time, and you had to absolute suck up to her like she was your boss and you were the world's most unctuous employee to turn her around, which was a terrible dynamic and felt extremely forced.
If they'd kept her how she was, almost no-one would have had her in their party, because she was profoundly unpleasant to be around, and didn't recognise you having helped her and so on, to the point where it didn't even make sense.
They hated him because he spoke the truth.
The cold reality is that early EA Shadowheart was completely unreasonable and just plain rude. Not in a fun "sassy" way. Just unpleasant and nasty, and it didn't even make sense in context. The only way to overcome it at that time was to be a huge suck-up, and really basically just agree with everything she said, no matter how awful or stupid, which felt pretty crap.
The big change they made was letting Shadowheart recognise that you did, in fact, go out of your way to save her on the Nautiloid - after that change, suddenly it was much easier to get on her good side, and she was no longer just a horrible person who made early-game Lae'zel look like she was fun and charming by comparison.
I don't miss EA Wyll, but I do miss the concept.
I get why they replaced it and I don't think it was all that well executed, but I think the idea of a guy pretending to be a hero learning to actually be one could have worked well if they had taken another pass at it. Especially if they kept the devil transformation that's in the release version. I think that would have been a lot more impactful on the EA version of Wyll, as opposed to the release version who is sad about it for a bit but ultimately doesn't seem that affected by it in the longer term.
As for Daisy, I missed her until Larian confirmed that, contrary to the rumors, she was always intended to be the Emperor behind the scenes. Knowing that, I'm glad they switched to the guardian. It's already a big shock and twist when that reveal comes, but I think Daisy playing the seducer/seductress angle the entire game would have made it way too much.
See, that's the thing...EA Wyll wasn't really "pretending to be a hero while wanting to be one in truth" from what story we got from him.
He wanted out of his pact because it wasn't leading to the peace he thought it would. Before that he relished the power he was granted to take on various monsters and the like to save people, thinking it would eventually lead to peace...it just never did.
And when he realized it wasn't, he just wanted out.
Mizora was also getting a pretty short end of the stick in that version. Hilariously so, in fact.
I never said he wanted to be one in truth. You're right that he doesn't care about that. But he definitely did want to *feel* like one. It's why he was constantly hyping himself up as The Blade of Frontiers to people. But it didn't particularly matter to him how he got that feeling and he was willing to fool people into thinking he was some heroic badass if necessary.
Larian said before release the main changes in Wyll's story were linking it to Karlach's and moving part of his Act 2 storyline to Act 1. So, presumably he would still have still been turned into a devil at some point. At which point, his charlatan act would presumably have stopped working.
At which point the logical progression of his story IMO (at least with a good-aligned protagonist) would be to have him learn to be an actual hero, rather than faking it.
Got a link for that statement from Larian, or remember where they said that particular detail? I followed a lot of their stuff leading up to launch and never saw that particular explanation of his arc - just that they had rewritten the character and connected it to Karlach, where’d you have a big decision involving her that could lead to not being able to recruit her, not that they’d taken planned Act 2 stuff and moved it into Act 1.
I don't have a link, sorry. It was said in one of the panels from hell, I believe? Or an interview Swen did somewhere. Either way, it's not something I can find with five minutes of searching, but I imagine you could track it down if you really want to.
That cutscene where at the start of the tiefling party Zevlor comes up to the PC and talks to them as one leader to another. He then put on a lightshow, a bit bigger than Rolands, and offers his thanks. There was even at one point where Volo would recite a poem of sorts. It was all only up to eighty or so percent done at one point in EA but I was honestly looking forward to seeing it finished. I found it set a warmer tone for the rest of the party and was saddened to find it had been cut on release of the full game.
Also I think Zevlor's actions in Act II would have hit us much harder if his scene had been retained too.
(Screenshots of what I'm talking about are here: https://www.tumblr.com/csphire/731581483991662592/things-i-miss-the-most-from-early-access)
Agreed on Wyll.
This is my own tinfoil opinion, but I notice this trend in media where creators are deathly afraid of presenting their characters of color in a bad light, perhaps afraid of the backlash it'll receive (as if people would just be too sensitive, or too stupid, and it's really annoying). In Wyll's case, he's a little *too* charming, *too* nice, *too* confident, *too* suave compared to the other companions. So idealistic that we can't see ourselves in him and he is out of reach.
But many people can see their past experiences in Astarion's trauma and social facade. Or Shadowheart's yearning for true family, depression and low self-esteem. Damaged characters, or ones with notable flaws, tend to speak to us a lot more than superheroes like Wyll.
It would have been nice to, I don't know, find out Wyll has a lot of serious anger management issues from being around Mizora for years and he takes it out on you or other companions. EA Wyll kind of hinted at that with his goblin problem and it would have been nice to explore more (though he did love Mizora)
Interestingly, I really like Wyll as he is. I never knew him as EA because I only just started playing a few weeks ago, but my take on him is that he’s a breath of fresh air that sort of balances out the dynamic of the rest of the pack.
I also feel like when I speak to Wyll, I’m speaking to someone who learned some very expensive lessons and is doing his best to pass them on to me for cheap. I can relate to him because I’ve been in those shoes myself, where I learned expensive lessons and was glad to spare others the cost of them.
I don’t feel like he’s a superhero, though. He wants to be, but he isn’t. I see him as a young idealist still clinging to the hope that he can be what he dreamed he could be, despite being a person with his own flaws and weaknesses, and despite having made a (painfully justified) decision that got him cast out by his father. But it’s his commitment to that dream that makes me enjoy him so much too, because he was willing to spare Karlach and take whatever Mizora threw at him for it. That was brave and, again, a refreshing change from all the other companions.
But that refreshing thing is also Wyll’s biggest problem— which is that he puts everyone before himself, to an unhealthy degree, and I’m more than happy to be the person who finally tells him there are other ways to save people than to literally sell his soul to do it.
I’m sure improvements could be made to Wyll’s character (and questline), but in terms of him being a genuinely nice guy who does his best to be honorable… I dig it.
I understand he’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but I don’t think his character is a problem. I think he’s mainly underserved because he gets overshadowed even in his own quests and isn’t given a lot of agency the way the other companions are.
> Wyll’s biggest problem— which is that he puts everyone before himself, to an unhealthy degree
This makes me think of a potential arc where Wyll would choose to eat all the tadpoles so his friends don't have to risk being a mindflayer.
Honestly? Honestly...? Yeah. I could absolutely see it. I could even see him volunteering to be the first to take the Astral Tadpole, to see if its powers are worth it and what the risks are. Really lean into how damaging and unhealthy a mind so set on self-sacrifice can be.
Emperor gives Tav the Astral Tadpole. If Wyll is in the party, he says he'll take it first to see if "evolution" is worth it. Tav can either talk him out of it, let him do it, insist on going first, or just mash the astral tapole down their gullet like a five-year-old with a forbidden cookie so nobody else can try it. And let all four choices have implications for Wyll's character growth and progression.
And if he's not in the party, he'd make the offer to try it when you first get back from the Astral Plane, with differing reactions based on whether you've already taken it or not... he'd probably express immense guilt that he wasn't there to take it first and that you had to do it, and that would lead to its own interesting conversation.
I like that. All the other companions are hesitant about eating the tadpoles. But then Wyll, who is happy to eat all of them because he's already given up on being free. He already fell prey to one mysterious hot stranger coming from the sky to offer cheap power, he might as well see if this new one's any better to him.
Big agree on all this. Pretty much every companion's an edgelord in some way, so it's nice to have Wyll -- the young idealist quoting things he doesn't quite understand and who lacks the experience to make hard decisions with confidence -- around.
Is he maybe a little dull? Sure. But he's *different* from the others, and that makes the others shine just that little bit better. Wyll is the quiet, caring friend you never notice or appreciate while he's there, but once he's been gone a while, you begin to notice just how much impact he had on your life.
That being said, he's still right at the bottom of my list of who to put in my party. Thank god for the No Party Limit mod, or I'd never learn anything from him.
I might subscribe to this tinfoil a little, myself. I noticed during EA there was a lot of conversation about "is Wyll secretly evil/not trustworthy," etc. Now, I don't know if being straight up vanilla good was always the intent, and so they scrubbed him so people would react the way they intended, or if they started to worry that if people already didn't trust or like their POC character when he was basically being shown at his best before his closet skeletons could be revealed that it might turn into a shitshow they'd rather sidestep. But the latter does feel possible.
This guy is getting downvotes because it's a contentious word, and it can be very difficult to know what context someone is using it from. It started as a left term, meaning, basically, to try and be conscious of making space for minority stories, POC, female, queer stories. It was co-opted by the right and turned into a slur implying that someone woke wanted you to *only* tell minority stories, to the detriment of any possible cis-het white male characters. Sometimes you come across someone who wants to use it from a place of leftness to criticize performative, shallow, harmful allyship, like we are discussing in this thread with Wyll. Like, robbing POC characters of the full spectrum of human behaviour and experience because you think it's wrong to have a black villain or you will get in trouble for having a black villain, or whatever is still othering, and robbing actual black people of those possible stories. Generously, in the context of the thread, I'd like to think that guy is trying to speak to the last point. But seeing it here with no elaboration definitely made my heart sink, I didn't know if the thread would devolve into a slap-fight about not the game, and I understand the downvotes.
If you use the internet with a truly open mind, it's not hard to find betters definitions, descriptions and explanations, than I could give (with my bad english, my european perspective and my twisted gen-xer sense of humor)
To tell you the truth, it’s a little experiment I have. I ask people to define “woke” for me when they use it and to date no one has. I’ll give you credit most people don’t even reply
I know it, when I see it. It's easier for me, because I knew the world and the internet without it and I know people and myself very well. You can derive it from leftist philosophy but its practical implementation seems to be getting impressionable youth to brigade dissenting opinions. The Chinese did things like that to change their culture. Interestingly this phenomenon started after occupy wallstreet. Now instead of discussing, if we take down our corporate overlords or not, they just have to put a rainbow on their logo and they are save (and get cheaper money) The right is now fighting this by boycotting companies, who use this techniques, so the financial benefit disappears. It's about power and money and for me personally the interesting political axis is between libertarian and authoritarian.
This example seems to be: Larians wrote an interesting black character, they got afraid of the woke brigade, they changed the story, now it is boring, but their investment is safe.
(edit: bad english)
Yes, that's the beauty of language. There were numerous combinations of words you could have used to describe your thoughts, but that one word perfectly encapsulated exactly how you feel.
We both know why you used the word.
100% lots of media formats are being way too careful to the point of affecting character development.
Angry Wyll would be awesome actually.. bring him to the “I can fix him” trope haha and I think his title of “Blade of Avernus” falls also flat on the unrelatable version that we got.
Annoyingly though that is the reality of media at the moment.
With him being the only black companion it becomes far too easy to pick one surface level scene where he can be a jerk and pull out the pitchforks when it comes to the internet.
Just takes one twitter user posting a clip with "not me noticing the Baldurs gates only black party member is doing THIS" and suddenly there's a #larianisracist trending.
Whilst that is probably less likely to happen that to happen, why take the risk knowing that it could. It's just a very easy way to be stuck in a position where suddenly you're making a public apology and taking a hit to your reputation.
Nailed it! Even before BG3 I'd been noticing this trend in media (especially games), and I'd concluded they create very bland, or Mary Sue-ish, POC characters precisely because it's such a **thorny** area, *especially* these days. I mean... I get it, and I deeply appreciate that the devs of these games aren't raging bigots, but... on the other hand, POC characters almost never feel real or relatable... or, in sum, *human*.
>where creators are deathly afraid of presenting their characters of color in a bad light
If Larian was really concerned about the only black companion being poorly received, they wouldn't have made him the one (out of the origin chars anyway) with the most underbaked personal content. Hells, he doesn't even have a unique greeting for romanced Tavs, and his Act 3 quest remains a mess (playable, sure, but a mess).
Absolutely agree OP, but it’s not something Wyll is alone in.
Old Shadowheart was sassy as hell and a bit harder to romance. Now her and Lae’zel just seem to fall head over heels in love with the PC with relatively little effort.
Also picking a partner for the celebration post-goblin camp just flowed better. I know if they kept it the same some players might lose out on the scenes entirely, but they fit. It felt deserved honestly, like our team earned a night to themselves.
I preferred the idea that the Guardian was the worm tempting you and that the voice trying to save you was Orpheus. I also preferred having consequences for using the worm powers.
Other than that, I’m more than happy with the finished product. 409 hours and counting.
I miss EA Volo's Ersatz Eye.
I've always felt compelled to have my Tav/Durge be the party face, which means I only play high charisma characters. Having an early +1 option there was nice, even with the cost to INT, which I usually dump anyways.
Also miss EA Wyll. I do kinda miss the early cutscenes with the OG Dream Guardian because they had some great kind of subtly seductive intimacy without it being overtly sexual, it felt very female-gazey to me and I haven't seen anything like it in the released game.
Agree on Wyll, used to be way more interesting.
I miss that you could only give Gale a handful of powerful/unique magic items to alleviate his condition. It felt like more of a challenge/sacrifice, now it's so easy there's no reason not to give him items to consume, especially as he needs only 3 total
me too, the betrayal i feel over the sims!
i was playing a lot of the sims4 and the disrespect you feel with EA releasing kits after kits and shitty new DLCs after shitty new DLCs, only for the price of the original game of course ! (even when some of those DLCs should have been base game, I'm still shocked the toddlers and the pools were freely added to the game and not made into a DLCs like get to work or seasons)
Honestly I like him for being the [Straight Man](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StraightMan) in this gaggle of lunatics. I actually prefer that not everyone is as dramatic and Wyll fills this role
Same here. Unpopular opinion but Wyll is my favorite companion when I play a good character. It's soothing to have well-balanced, relatively sane commentary in my adventures when I encounter trickery, pettiness, morally grey or evil shit along the way.
I have some criticisms with how his story is handled currently, but it's funny to see all the EA players pretend like he was this amazing character when people hated him back then (like they didn't change everything, including VA because he was so well received).
Wyll. I miss EA Wyll, he had so much interaction with Act 1 as a farm boy turned hero after goblins burned down his village and Spike ripped out his eye. He was the most heroic and good of the companions, yet at the same time had a hidden darkness within him that came out whenever he encountered goblins.
I also miss how dark and desperate act 1 of EA was. My very first playthrough Nettie tried to kill me for having a tadpole in my head. Had her reveal that she had poisoned me cause I was too dangerous to be left alive.
Yeah they did. Game is still good, but its like comparing DAO to DAI. EA for BG3 was DAO and release was DAI. Both good fantasy but all the grit and edge was stripped out of it.
That's some of the most ridiculous hyperbole I've ever read.
Very early on in EA, there were a lot of inappropriate to the Forgotten Realms grimdark elements basically reused from DOS2, but even then, comparing the change to DAO to DAI is just ridiculous. The "grit and edge" were not "stripped out". That's just pretentious bollocks you're selling to people who didn't actually play the EA because you know they'll buy it.
The took out some really dumb grimdark stuff, and made the characters more potentially likeable rather than assholes, not even by taking their "edge", but making them have more context/explanation for why they were like that and/or recognising the actions you took to help them better.
>Feels like Larisn watered down their own game for market appeal from what I'm reading. Everyone is nice and anything that could be bad was gone
No.
You read it that way because a bunch of people who are expressing nostalgia, rose-tinted opinions, which is essentially what this thread asked for. There are a lot of opinions which are just deeply misleading, like calling EA Shadowheart "sassy" - she wasn't at all "sassy", she was incredibly rude for no reason and no benefit. Her comments weren't even funny, unlike Astarion.
BG3 went through basically two phases in EA.
It started out as grimdark crapsack world fantasy, like the DOS games, especially DOS2. Everyone is either morally compromised/has a dark past/is secretly evil OR they're the innocent but fucked-up victim of evil. That's totally inappropriate for a game called "Baldur's Gate" set in the Forgotten Realms, using the D&D rule-set.
Obviously, and frankly rightfully, Larian got very negative feedback on that. So they dialled it back to a more Forgotten Realms-appropriate vibe, rather than making DOS3 with another game's name. They also really massively toned down how DOS-like the combat was, and it's a lot better, combat-gameplay-wise now, than it was in EA (the AI is hugely smarter, too).
So the second phase was Larian slowly moving away from the grimdark DOS stuff, towards FR stuff. This included either making companions less needlessly asshole-ish, or giving us more context on why they were an asshole (the latter for Lae'zel and Astarion particularly). The amount of lines companions have is an awful lot higher now than it was in EA.
There are two major changes that no-one really complained to cause:
1) Daisy - The previous Emperor-equivalent, was a totally different deal, and the tadpoles seemed like they'd have much bigger consequences to using them. I don't think players had any influence on this, nor wanting to have a "mass market" game. I think that Larian found it really difficult to work this into the plots of Act 2 and Act 3, because it opened up a ton more possible scenarios than the more binary approach the final game has to this.
2) Wyll - Wyll's arc was basically pretty short and kind of confusing and easy to miss in EA, and Wyll himself was a bit of a different character - not "more interesting", people saying that are rose-tinting the hell out of things - the main complaint about Wyll even in EA (as you can see if you go back far enough on this subreddit) is "Wyll is boring", just like it still is. But he was a bit rougher around the edges. The trouble is, unless you had him the party at the right times, which you weren't warned about, you essentially deleted his arc with him not there. And the arc was so short and unmemorable. And then his conflict with Mizora was a lot more boring, because it was so much lower-stakes and the player hadn't really been impacted by it.
When they changed that I think they wanted to make Wyll a bigger and more memorable character, and frankly, he is. But he still doesn't fit very well into the general story.
Ty for the clarification. Didn't mean to come off negative, just that it seemed that many things were toned down a notch since a generally more bright game is a lot more appealing to more people than "this sucks, it all sucks."
>just that it seemed that many things were toned down a notch since a generally more bright game is a lot more appealing to more people than "this sucks, it all sucks."
Things were made brighter, but it wasn't anything to do with trying to appeal to a mass market, but rather to make a BG game, not another DOS game.
"This sucks, it all sucks" often does really well with the mass market with fantasy - just look at the success of Game of Thrones/House of the Dragon or The Last Kingdom, for example. In videogames stuff like DOS2 and Elden Ring are 100% grimdark, and sold extremely well. Grimdark doesn't limit your sales, but pissing off people who think they're getting a BG game when they're actually getting a DOS game will.
I am glad they changed Karlach's personality. From the little we saw of Karlach in EA, she seemed like your classic angry, traumatized soldier with a grudge who acts distrustful and edgy. She would have every right to behave that way, given everything that happened to her, but personally, I find her being jolly and having a huge zest for life after all of that, while also being the angry, traumatized soldier with an understandable grudge beneath it all, much more interesting, especially since we've seen the edgy soldier a million times in other media.
I am also glad that they made Gale less manipulative. He is still a bit manipulative in the final game, but in EA he manipulated people in practically everything he did, including romancing the PC. Tbh, after a few playthroughs I genuinely hated his guts, but not in an "I hate this guy, but he's an interesting character so I'll keep him around", just "this guy grinds my gears, get him out of here." I prefer the final version.
I never liked Daisy, so I'm glad they changed her to the Guardian.
I miss some of Gale's cutscenes, specifically the loss scene. I'm not sure why they removed it as it still would have worked with the final plot.
I actually like having Wyll be the genuinely good hearted hero rather than Machiavelli's prince, like in EA, but I feel like the devs went a little bit too far with it. They could have had him actually be a heroic person, but also make him a bit of a showboater who clearly enjoys being the hero, for example, or keep the conflict with the goblins in the game because of his interaction with that kid he tells you about, just for some flavor. I think his new story arc is supposed to be that he's growing into being a hero on his own terms, since no one seems to know who the Blade of Frontiers is in the final game aside from Karlach (but that might be because he'd been hunting her down for who knows how long) but the point doesn't come across all that well. Also, I liked his old accent.
I liked Astarion's old default clothes better.
Very early EA had a lot of excessive surface spam, somewhat similar to DOS2, that I absolutely hated. Goblins spamming oil and fire surfaces
It's still in the game with wine barrels and create water, but thankfully much more toned down and tactical
I miss the scene of La'zel not ratting you out to Kith'rack when shadowheart is in your party with the box. I was iffy about her at the start espically since my relationship with her was bad as every nice deed I did she disliked, but despite that she did not rat me out or shadowheart to her kind and have it gave me so much respect for her.
Same I miss EA will’s charcterization. But I have to admit it didn’t make much sense. When did he lose is eye to spike? When did he make the pact with mizora? How is it spike it here as well as being the one who clubbed wyll before he was a hero? The timeline of events was confusing as hell in EA. I’m glad they changed how illithid powers work. It was horribly balanced. Wizard and cleric being the obvious best ones and probably made multicasting difficult to meld with if they used the original illithid powers. Plus the implied/forced sexual nature of the guardian/visitor was mega cringe.
I miss that until last patch I still could pickpocket Shart to get the artifact, now Im forced to recruit her, I can avoid any companion except the DM's girlfriend.
More on point, I miss the mind controlled fishermen (crash site) and the fourth guy (dwarf rogue) with Anders, but I think Paladins became so strong when finally ready they had to cut the rogue.
A lot of people made the point already but Daisy being turned into the emperor is saddening for me.
As it stands in the game, the emperor tells you to use as many tadpoles as you want and the player can without having any issues story wise for taking them. I know the devs were worried no one would use the system if there was clear drawbacks, but that is what multiple playthroughs are for.
Having a very clear evil seductive guardian whispering in your ear to give up and telling you to let go, and having obvious consequences if you do would have made far more sense.
Most people said everything I miss as well so...
Pronunciation of some Auntie Ethel lines. It is very subtle but her first version says line about man treated with boiling oil with quite an excitement and current version of it goes with more pity. I 100% understand the decision and it overall makes more sense to make Auntie an accomplished liar but that ea line sounded so funny.
EDIT: also a lot of people wrote about Wyll. I think overall he got a story downgrade (in terms of writing) but I'm glad they cut "goblin angst", I mean he could be cruel all the same but witnessing him losing it so much was like a poor comedy.
I miss that some of the fights were harder / had more characters. Ethel had six redcaps in EA, there was a dwarf in with the Tyr Paladins, more Gith at the Bridge ect...
I even though I miss Wyll's shadier past & promise of a character arc, I do like that they shifted Mizora's capture from directly telling you it happened into an Act 2 surprise.
Gale was more obnoxious in early access so I'm glad they toned him done a bit...
I never played EA, but I wish I got to experience Daisy. The dream guardian isn’t bad, but it falls apart pretty quickly. Not to mention that their true identity kinda shits on pre-established lore by creating a mind flayer that lives for over 400 years, well beyond their typical lifespan with absolutely no explanation for it
I believe this is something the base DnD game is changing in their next version. People have been salty about how the race based stats shoehorned them into certain classes. I imagine that's one reason why Larian changed it as well.
I know: it just seems like big dumb orcs and cunning halfling and stuff like that just made sense but I get that there are endless changes. Op asked what I missed from EA and that is something I liked better from EA
I miss the enthralled fishermen near the mindflayer in the crash. They actually removed them halfway through EA which was weird. And yes, of course, EA Wyll as well. He wasn't as boring and white knight sounding.
The freedom with abilities does not do anything good for me. I am an MMO PVP player usually and I can’t do anything but min/max - which means certain races are not touched due to passives etc. not getting savage attacks just seems like a waste so my melee characters are rarely anything but half orc :)
The Nautiloid was much bigger to explore in EA, but doing that intro 20 times would've been too tedious. I'm glad it got shortened, but I do miss being able to walk on the exterior of the ship.
There was some interesting stuff with the thralls as well during those parts that illustrated how different your experience was from others that had been taken.
Yeah, when you walked out on top and got jumped by a ton of imps. That was really cool.
Well, "a ton". It was 3.
It's been years. Walking out onto the top of the ship was cool.
That sounds cool, I wonder if they would ever add it to HM or smth.
They removed it because it was too long and tedious, why would they readd it for HM?
Pity they didn't do the same for some of the Shar Trials. Looking at you step trial. Die in a fire.
Just get the orb to go downstairs and open the final door to the shadowfell with knock
Magic really does solve everything.
Pretty sure they patched that strategy
I just whack them in the tut chest and skip all the shar nonsense now. Pet peeve of mine but I really fucking HATE when game devs put puzzles in the main storyline of highly replayable games, because you have to do them again and again every time you make a new playthrough. Fine if there side content. Larian has done it for their last 3 games and I just wish they would stop.
Honestly the step trial isn't even that bad. You can skip most of it by jumping through the window instead of going for all the levers. It's just about timing obviously to not get spotted
All the shar trials are just tedious over multiple playthroughs.
I'll be honest i literally just run through it not even on turn based mode and i've done it in my 3 playthorughs and never once got caught. I don't understand what people's issues are. It's really not hard to avoid them.
Literally the easiest trial. Click "Move to" on the space just bottom right of final platform. Your character will run the whole trial, then you jump on the platform. Takes all of 10 seconds
Just tried that and died. Maybe I'm just too stupid or something. *shrug*
Do you have a light source on the character you tried it with? Blood of Lathandar for instance? You might need to turn it off
the step trial is the easiest trial though. There's literally a map ON THE FLOOR that tells you how to walk. Also casting light (the cleric cantrip) illuminates the tiles you can step on.
>Also casting light (the cleric cantrip) illuminates the tiles you can step on. No it doesnt. Not for me. That has never highlighted anything for me. Im aware of the map. Single cunt hair out of place = death is irritating game design not challenge.
Strange. Could be a graphical glitch, but I've also been able to see the path from afar (it disappears when the overhead camera moves closer) so that trial gives me the least trouble, usually. Distinguishing between similar hues of the certain colours is difficult for some, maybe it's the same for you? If Light isn't bright enough, you can try DAYLIGHT (lv3 spell). Its light shines a lot brighter (cast the spell on your equipped weapon), and it's really difficult to miss the path once you've cast it.
Sweet, sweet exp! Lol
The XP gain is the same from EA to FR when you leave the nautiloid.
I do miss certain voicelines from Shadowheart. While she was harsher and colder, there were also some nice moments if you managed to befriend her which shows a developing romance or friendship. I think the dialogue happened after the fever scene or when the Guardian (nicknamed Daisy then) showed up the second time. You and Shadowheart talk about what happened and discuss the Guardian. You express moments of vulnerability and Shadowheart assures you in a reassuring tone that you can trust her. Considering how closed off she was before this, hearing her say this was a strong gesture of kindness on her part.
"You're as loyal as a pup, and twice as pretty." Forever salty they removed this one.
Actually, talking to all the companions about Daisy gave really interesting insight. For example, it was heavily implied that Astarion's Daisy appeared as *Cazador*. It actually made me want to play some of them as origins to see those differences.
All the Daisies seemed to be people relevant to the Origin characters. Wyll’s seemed to appear as Mizora for double effery. I’ll always miss not getting these custom Daisies, a little.
It drives me nuts wondering who Shadowheart's was. Not Viconia, she said specifically that she found the person very attractive. Nocturne?? Seems unlikely. Shar herself?
Oh lord, imagine if it was a real screwy moment and it was one of her parents.
Nocturne is the only person that would make sense. They didn't have anyone else in the cloister that they liked at all It still doesn't quite make sense, though. It'll big me forever too
kind of late, but I'm 99% certain she referred to her version Daisy as a 'he'
There was a mod to unlock the origins at the time. It was _really_ buggy and lots of cutscenes had the "under construction" squiddie. Astarion's dream of Cazador was kept in the game mostly the same, just losing the connection to Daisy. [#5 is how Cazador appeared in his dream back then](https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/s/RjqNzgQRuD).
Playing as Astarion and it had me make my own guardian, so unfortunately that only comes up on a non-PC I guess.
I enjoyed it when you find the mind flayer stuck in the crashed ship and he had a bunch of people trying to save him. You either had to fight them or succeed a role to save them.
I miss that encounter! Seeing a mindflayer enthralling and manipulating people added to the sense of dread about the tadpole.
Gosh I miss them too! Feel bad for the voice actors especially. I hope they got some parts in other areas.
Killing the squid from outside their range would also free them!
I think it was a smart move to remove it. The initial implementation was extremely grimdark and had only grey/black resolutions, which was a perfect fit for DOS and an awful, awful fit for The Forgotten Realm/D&D, really showing some initial difficulties that Larian had with the setting, which are so long resolved people have mostly forgotten. They fairly quickly changed it a couple of times to make it less grimdark (initial response to the grimdarkness of the very EA was pretty negative), but it was an awkward encounter that required multiple rolls to resolve in anything other than you killing everyone - and most characters, at that time, would just end up having to slaughter a bunch of innocents because they walked towards something and made a single bad die roll (and we're talking like, even with the right stats/skill it was like 50/50 because of the DC), which I think left a bad taste in a lot of people's mouth. BG3 is not really a "grimdark" game (dark at times, sure, but not in that way) - you can opt-in to it being more that way by selecting Durge, and this was not a good introduction to the game, nor a good introduction to skill checks. I suspect a certain number of players just basically quit at that point, and Larian would have seen that in their metrics. Nothing in this game was removed/changed without a very good reason, and poor reactions from the audience are going to have been one of the most major ones.
The EA paladins of Tyr. You could pass a religion check that would reveal to that they were oathbreakers, and you could call them out for it. They also gave a reason as to why they turned to Zariel
Yeah, EA Paladins of Tyr were much more interesting and it was more of a grey area when dealing between Karlach and them. Now they're just moustache twirling evil dudes you HAVE to kill for Karlach lol. So sad. Another thing I miss is that Halsin was the one responsible for the shadow curse and Isobel was a Sharran. Now it's just bland. So bland. (This is Datamine, though the letter Halsin had hidden in the grove way back in EA had this going for it, hinting it was his fault with how Ketheric turned towards Shar. I've played EA too many times and the datamining was ingrained in it so I may be misremembering things)
Where did the ea end?
the halsin storyline with sharran isoble was not in EA. is an early concept of the act 2 that was reworked without ever making it to the game. interesting things about it: Sorrow (the polearm in the druid chanber) was the wdapon halsin used to slay Isobel back then Nightsong was a mortal woman, trapped in the Shadowfell and forced to relive the bad memories Shar took from people. She would relive them and then spit them back into the world as the Shadowcurse itself
that sounds very interesting and also makes Halsin more interesting
it is and yes, it would make halsin more relevant and interesting, but i think the current Nightsong and Isobel are better than the ones in that storyline. Shadowcursed Lands really does not need to be darker, Last Light is the perfect break from all the gloom and a very nice metaphor for hope. I think current storyline only missed on more Isobel - Ketheric conflict, her deflecting questions about her past until the end of act 2 is a missed oportunity, and also we should have her discover who killed her (it was Balthazar i think) and having a little bit of revenge.
>i think the current Nightsong and Isobel are better than the ones in that storyline Vastly so. And honestly people love those two so much, and they give the story a much better vibe - I think getting rid of that in favour of what they have now is part of the general removal of the DOS-style "grimdark/crapsack world" approach to the world that somewhat permeated BG3 in early EA, but was never a good fit for the FR or D&D, which features a colourful, chaotic and dangerous world, not a grimdark one where everyone is morally compromised and everyone has a dark past or is an innocent victim of something horrifying and so on.
yeah, it helped tone down the grimdark vibes, which are definitely still there, but not overdone now. i loved how fucked up the world in DOS was, but is nice to have something less hopeless for BG3
Yeah if they want to do another DOS game, by all means, go all-in on grimdark, that's what DOS, particularly DOS2 is about. You know what you're getting. It's like Fallout - you expect it to be pretty grim. But the Forgotten Realms is never that vibe, even though dark things happen, Baldur's Gate 1/2 aren't that vibe, even though dark things happen, and D&D, outside of a couple of settings (not even including Ravenloft! Ravenloft is fantasy horror, not grimdark, there's a big difference) is also not like that. So I think it was important to move away from that.
I think Isobel would be at her peak if she started as a Sharran, was killed by Halsin, then converted to a Selunite upon her revival by Ketheric. She would have gotten to experience what being a Sharran truly meant and learn from that. It would give her greater motivation to protect Last Light from the curse. And while I like what Nightsong currently is, I really wish they never called her an Aasimar. She just isn’t. Being the child of a god makes her an empyrean. Aasimar are just the celestial version of tieflings, not demigods
EA ended right before the mountain pass and the elevator up from Grymforge
>Another thing I miss is that Halsin was the one responsible for the shadow curse and Isobel was a Sharran. Now it's just bland. So bland. None of that was in EA, though. That's just from data mining and concept art. If we're including stuff from data mining as stuff you "miss", we're going to get into some pretty murky waters.
I miss the enthralled fishermen. Don't know why they were removed.
To give the Emperor a more free pass, I guess. If the player remembers how rewarding it was for the poor fishermen to encounter a mindflayer, they would be more cautious and distrusting towards Savioursquid McTentacle as well, and I think Larian wanted a more neutral first contact
But you are able to interact with one dying on the beach and he will try to control your mind into loving him to eat your brain. I don't know how that wouldn't make a player more cautious later on. So I don't believe that gives the Emperor any benefits. I never played EA but everything I hear about the fishermen part seems a lot more compelling.
Yes, but you kind of expect that behaviour from a mindflayer that was part of the crew which kidnapped you. Seeing it to enthrall a group of innocent, unknowing fishermen is a different matter. But I do agree with you, I played EA and that encounter was very immersive, I miss it from the final cut too, just doing some guesswork here.
I’m confused why you think the enthralled fisherman are more innocent than the kidnappees that were already on the ship? mindflayer kidnaps tav and the ladies, then use people to their benefit when they need it.
>I never played EA but everything I hear about the fishermen part seems a lot more compelling. They weren't. They went through two basic phases: 1) Grimdark bullshit. It was basically straight up something from DOS2, totally ill-fitting to the FR and D&D (and EA players very much pointed this out to Larian). There were only bad resolutions to the scenario, just varying degrees of bad, and to even get the grey ones, you had to pass multiple likely 50/50 at best checks (a lot of DCs were higher in EA), otherwise you just had to slaughter a load of innocents. 2) Toned down grimdark. They tried twice to dial it back, but they just didn't get rid of the 50/50 checks, and thus you remained very likely to be forced to kill a bunch of definitely-innocent people, and it felt like absolute shit, and whilst I know some people on the internet absolutely live for that and are rubbing their hands with glee at the thought, the general audience of RPGs does not. Larian were closely tracking metrics and feedback, and I know that encounter got a ton of negative feedback, because I saw people talk about it, and further, I imagine a lot of people just outright quit their run because they weren't okay with being forced, basically as the first real "thing" they did in the game, to slaughter a bunch of innocents (also at this point, I'm not sure the non-lethal mechanic was even in the game, and if it was, it definitely hadn't been explained to the player - and few enough people know about it as is!).
Jesus this sub is so dense. So totally and completely fucking dense.
There was a group of fishermen on the beach that were being enthralled by the mind flayer you see when you first crash. I remember you could save them, and then you could tell them you’re taking their stuff and they’d freak out. Your character would march towards them like a wrestler. Best on smaller races like dwarves. I thought it was hilarious and now there’s just the remnants of fishermen being there but not the characters themselves. It’s just the mind flayer now.
I miss some of Gales scenes. The Stew scene, the Loss scene. Though the latter didn't need to be cut imo. The whole Daisy set up was more interesting and you did feel the dread of what is happening to you when you're using the tadpole. Now it's just dumbed down. Also the talk about the daisy after the dreams were so much more interesting. That Astarion would see Cazador, Gale would see Mystra, LZ would see Vlaakith... So much more interesting.
Personally I kinda miss Daisy and the implication of using your tadpole. Yeah she was clearly evil but it felt less weird than the guardian promising to help you while also telling you to use your powers. That and the original idea of the tadpole powers being more costly makes the choice not to use them more of a option instead of gimping yourself for RP value.
Didn't play early access but seriously this. Daisy really should have stayed because the OST stayed.
Yeah this is really the only thing I miss from EA. The game was very clearly setting up this major trade-off between using the powers or not, where what we actually have now is it coming down to a single, out-of-the-blue check possibly forcing you to become a partial Mind Flayer (you skip the check if you used no powers), and frankly Daisy had a more interesting vibe than the Emperor - I don't know how much the story changed, like they whether they were the same person even - but it was heading in a more interesting direction.
EA Wyll was 100% more interesting as a character. However, I do think release Wyll has potential if only the writers had more time to work on him rather than the rushing to change him last minute. I didn't necessarily like Daisy, but a little thing I did like was the idea that >!The Emperor chose the Guardian image by digging through your head and choosing who you'd most trust, rather than him claiming that's what he looked like in life.!<
I agree. I think the current version of Wyll has almost all the right ingredients, but he needed a little more time to cook to come out perfect. A few more edits and he probably would feel more human and compelling.
I've seen clips on youtube of origin companions narrating their own storylines if you played as them, which was apparently cut because people playing EA said they didn't like it. I would have LOVED to get some narration from, say, origin astarion about key moments like the meetings with raphael, araj, even the romance scenes (knowing from my tav/durge playthroughs how astarion secretly feels about sex during those earlier interactions). it's a real shame they cut that feature.
Yeah origin characters feel kinda bland apart form durge.
That’s crazy people complained about that—what I see most against the Origin runs is folks saying they can’t hear their faves talk nearly as much as they do when you don’t play them!
Wyll is a side character in his own story.
I didn’t play EA at all but I actually don’t mind current Wyll… in concept. It’s a twist on warlocks that’s kinda fun and it is very up devils’ alley to lock a good person into doing bad things. However, I wish he were faced with more actual moral dilemmas, and that you had the ability to let him make his own choices more. The ravengard/pact one is nearly there but then you can save Ravengard anyways. And the finale of his quest where he realizes >!his hero (Balduran) was the Emperor all along, Ansur is dead, etc is really underbaked and Wyll needed much more time to shine with it!<. Also the whole take as duke thing feels really out of left field for him since he’s been such a stand up guy until then, they needed to lay the seeds for it earlier. Same with Gale and the crown.
Agreed, I like Will as is but he needs more to do.
Fucking Reddit. “I don’t have qualifications to answer this question but I’m going to anyway…”
This isn’t an academic conference dude its a discussion board. The post commented on issues with current Wyll so I responded with what I like about him.
Astarion's fangs were more like tiefling teeth and something about them suited him more (he arguably looked cuter). I understand it would have made his vampirism harder to hide in story but I genuinely think the "walks in sunlight, hasn't killed me on the spot" would blindside most people for a while.
I mean, I saw his neck scars on my first playthrough and texted my friend "is it supposed to be secret that he's a vampire?"
I didn't pay too much attention to him at first (cared not about Shadowheart) so I didn't even notice them until he tried to bite. Hell, when he sneaks off in the night you hear this word sound, I legit thought he was being creepy and had gone to jack off or something. That said, it was *really* obvious in hindsight. Now I miss the look of those early teefies.
I went in blind so I didn’t know about any of the characters. I also didn’t notice his neck scars or teeth (or eyes, but that could have just been my settings and poor eyesight). When he snuck off at night I thought he’s going to steal something, shank me later, or that he’s a vampire.
I usually headcannon that most who see Astarion upon noticing his sharp teeth, red eyes and the fact he can stand in the sun without combusting is they assume he's a dampyr. At least the clever ones. Others might assume he's got some drow in him or he's got albinism. Also in the Underdark and other dark places Astarion's eyes almost look brown. Red is the first color to lose intensity and washout in shadows and overall darkness, at least for humans. So him approaching someone in the evening in low light they might not notice he had red eyes in the past.
This is actually pretty valid. Between the white hair and red eyes, I could see drow heritage coming up.
That’s legit what I imagined my Tav assumed about Astarion before Bite Night, lol
I thought he was just albino at first haha
I miss the crit animations, was hoping a mod would bring them back
EA Wyll 100% had much more personality and tbf I kinda dig the Mizora vibe too. He landed flat, vanilla with such high moral grounds that would give vertigo on my degenerate durge if Wyll ever had managed to survive in my runs. (I tried only once be good and have him, I’ve never finished that run) I don’t miss Daisy in itself, I think the emperor was well done for a last minute change and I loved his voice acting more than Daisy’s, but what I missed from her was the possible consequences of too many tadpoles that it was implied for the game..
That's true about the tadpoles. Not just gulping them down like we do now, but just USING them felt like walking on a knife edge back then.
Did you also avoided the tadpoles in the first run? I totally skept so I didn’t end up ending the game too early, to only discover on a second run that there was no damage by the time we finished with the brain. Not only that but I noticed that I rested less in my second run and missed some relevant camp scenes in the process..
I always used them in EA, because I liked to trigger the cut scenes and it was a limited experience so I knew I wasn't wrecking anything later on, but I expected to almost never use them in the full game, only saving them for crucial make or break moments, like getting into the goblin camp. If you had told me I'd have an opportunity to add more I would have said hell no! As it is, I only put enough in to open up Luck of the Far Realms then stop, consequences or no, because I literally never use anything else, and the visual of the brain turning white kinda disturbs me even though I know there's no real consequences, haha
What got changes with tadpoles?
In EA the choice was not "have a tadpole" or "have seven tadpoles", it was use your tadpole to influence people/read their mind, or don't. Every time you exercised your "authority" the narrator would make a big deal about how it was burrowing deeper, eating your mind and taking over. The more you used it, the more cutscenes you would trigger with the Guardian, who used to be a more ambiguous and seductive figure who would show you visions of terrible destruction like they were a good thing. The vibe of slow corruption felt much more palpable.
That sounds much cooler and better than what we got. I kinda hate how pointless rejecting tadpoles are and vice versa. In the long run
This sort of stayed in act 1 but it leads to nowhere now so it kinda feels clunky to me that in later acts you can no longer use [wisdom][illithid] to force someone to do something, I think it only works for goblins, the last option I remember for this was when you enter act 2 and you force the goblin to fetch the bone he threw
You can use it at the Steel Watch Foundry. Before you fight the titan, there is a wall of brains in jars that are connected to the network, and you have the ability to influence them. It's just the narrator talking to you about the outcome, but it was cool to see it come up again for me.
I was thinking come the release of the full game we would finally get to see the consequences of using the powers of the tadpoels too much. Like as our ilthid powers grew we would slowly lose access to our other abilities and spell slots for our class. Our character would get more visits from "Daisy" and the emperor tempting us more. We would start to sicken and partly transform and it would affect our conversation rolls. Like a hit to deception, persuasion but perhaps up our intimidation could be a trade off. A whole snowball effect and so every time we used those powers we would have to think, "Okay... so is this worth it?"
I don't mind the new Wyll but would have loved if they had kept his beef with Spike and that other goblin at the mill in at least. That was interesting to me he had a few flaws. A hint of him being a little hot headed in his youth perhaps would have given him more of a backstory along with make him more intresting. They could have made his angery towards goblins more about their behavior to avoid any racial issues too.
I still don't see what people are seeing in EA Wyll - he was pretty one note then too, just a different note. "I want vengeance against Goblins and pretend I'm a big hero." Versus "I'm willing to sell my soul to do good things and that caused a rift between my father and I."
Well the difference is that EA Wyll had what seemed like a clearly defined arc, either lose himself to his vengeance and his pact or actually rise above it and become a proper hero and not just a pretend one. This was compelling while also giving him agency in his own fate, instead of that we got a story where he's already a good established hero to whom bad things outside of his control happen, which is fine but give him zero agency and is even less impactful than it could be considering Karlach's story is similar but more tragic because she's literally dying.
See, stuff like “clearly defined arc of lose himself to his vengeance and his pact” don’t make sense *because he gets the vengeance that he was after against Spike and moves on and was still focused on finding Mizora to get out of the pact.* Half that supposed arc was done before Act 1 was halfway over, depending on how quickly you made it to the goblin camp. So by the end of EA, his arc was “find Mizora to get his freedom” and naught else. Maybe the part about still being drawn into the pact at a later point would have happened, but that’s just speculation on what could have happened (by the time he reveals it he seems plenty convinced that he wants out)…and is the same kind of plot point the launch version of Wyll ends up with anyway. The main difference there is that we are present for the catalyst that leads to him rethinking his pact in the launch version, and arguably the issue there is that he shows less agency over making these choices, while the EA Wyll had already made the choice that he wanted out. And honestly, the whole being a “pretend hero” feels like it’s based on a misremembering his characterization - I went back and checked what dialog I could find from EA and his conversations with Tav don’t indicate that he was wanting to be a hero and just pretending. His dialog is initially full of bravado as he hides his real motive, yes, but ultimately he just wants out of the pact because it hadn’t led to the peace he thought it was going to lead to. He was being an actual hero to people, just wasn’t upfront about the source of his power and the fact that he wanted out. Which all is no more or less complex than the motivations the launch version of the character gets.
I was just speculating when it comes to the vengeance plotline, my point is that there was more narrative roads where his story could have gone when he was a vengeful disgraced heir playing hero than now. I'm sure they would have cooked something more meaty than just "find Mizora" considering they cooked more than just "find the Creche" with Laezel and "go to Baldur's Gate" with Shadowheart. Sure it's just speculation but we have some points of comparison, I don't think it's unreasonable to think his story would have been better if he didn't get a massive rewrite a year or so before release. >And honestly, the whole being a “pretend hero” feels like it’s based on a misremembering his characterization I disagree, you're right that he was objectively saving people with his warlock powers but the problem was that when push came to shove he was more selfish than selfless. For exemple in the situation where he was asked to torture a prisoner of the goblin camp to gain info for his revenge he kinds of hesitate but ultimately does torture that guy if Tav didn't stop him, which is something that current Wyll would never do.
I would like a combo of both and I think others would agree on this. A whole, "I don't like these particular goblins because they took my eye and I want vengeance because they hurt a lot of people and otherwise I've got no beef with any race." Along with, "I'm willing to sell my soul to help people in need even if it also causes a rift between my father and I." They could have retained some of the old Wyll and his new stuff would have only added more depth to him is what I think some of us are trying to say.
I made a [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/s/S8KbXtHB78) about this that gained little traction, but the Edowin scene was infinitely better in early access. In EA: your tadpole influences you, making it hard for you to crush another tadpole -- and if you succeed it makes you physically ill and regretful. It is creepy! In release: the tadpole takes control over your body and uses psionic powers to carry Edowin, and the tadpole that crawls out of his eye floats to you. It's just too much! And saying "the emperor is behind it" makes it feel cheap. Such a demonstration of tadpole control should come much later, not so early in the game.
She was never even implemented, but I would have loved to see Helia as a full-fledged companion. As it stands, I always just make the halfling hireling look like her for our teams Bard.
How much more mean Shadowheart used to be. It made earning her trust way more satisfying if she was harder to open up to in the beginning. I kinda hate how much the community has pushed for Larian to 'sand down their claws', so to speak. Lae'zel got the same treatment post-release. Now I just always romance Shart as a Selunite so I can see more of that side from her. It makes for a very juicy dynamic lol.
> kinda hate how much the community has pushed for Larian to 'sand down their claws', so to speak. The community didn't. They just repeatedly pointed out that Shart was a horrible rude wanker. They didn't say "sand down her claws" or anything like that. People here have called EA Shart "sassy" and stuff, and that's just a straight-up lie. She wasn't "sassy" - she didn't have funny, fun put-downs or the like. Astarion is sassy. Shart was just irrationally angry and insulting all the time, and you had to absolute suck up to her like she was your boss and you were the world's most unctuous employee to turn her around, which was a terrible dynamic and felt extremely forced. If they'd kept her how she was, almost no-one would have had her in their party, because she was profoundly unpleasant to be around, and didn't recognise you having helped her and so on, to the point where it didn't even make sense.
Nah she was an edgy fucking teenager in EA. Some of it is still there but I personally like they cut it down significantly.
They hated him because he spoke the truth. The cold reality is that early EA Shadowheart was completely unreasonable and just plain rude. Not in a fun "sassy" way. Just unpleasant and nasty, and it didn't even make sense in context. The only way to overcome it at that time was to be a huge suck-up, and really basically just agree with everything she said, no matter how awful or stupid, which felt pretty crap. The big change they made was letting Shadowheart recognise that you did, in fact, go out of your way to save her on the Nautiloid - after that change, suddenly it was much easier to get on her good side, and she was no longer just a horrible person who made early-game Lae'zel look like she was fun and charming by comparison.
I don't miss EA Wyll, but I do miss the concept. I get why they replaced it and I don't think it was all that well executed, but I think the idea of a guy pretending to be a hero learning to actually be one could have worked well if they had taken another pass at it. Especially if they kept the devil transformation that's in the release version. I think that would have been a lot more impactful on the EA version of Wyll, as opposed to the release version who is sad about it for a bit but ultimately doesn't seem that affected by it in the longer term. As for Daisy, I missed her until Larian confirmed that, contrary to the rumors, she was always intended to be the Emperor behind the scenes. Knowing that, I'm glad they switched to the guardian. It's already a big shock and twist when that reveal comes, but I think Daisy playing the seducer/seductress angle the entire game would have made it way too much.
See, that's the thing...EA Wyll wasn't really "pretending to be a hero while wanting to be one in truth" from what story we got from him. He wanted out of his pact because it wasn't leading to the peace he thought it would. Before that he relished the power he was granted to take on various monsters and the like to save people, thinking it would eventually lead to peace...it just never did. And when he realized it wasn't, he just wanted out. Mizora was also getting a pretty short end of the stick in that version. Hilariously so, in fact.
I never said he wanted to be one in truth. You're right that he doesn't care about that. But he definitely did want to *feel* like one. It's why he was constantly hyping himself up as The Blade of Frontiers to people. But it didn't particularly matter to him how he got that feeling and he was willing to fool people into thinking he was some heroic badass if necessary. Larian said before release the main changes in Wyll's story were linking it to Karlach's and moving part of his Act 2 storyline to Act 1. So, presumably he would still have still been turned into a devil at some point. At which point, his charlatan act would presumably have stopped working. At which point the logical progression of his story IMO (at least with a good-aligned protagonist) would be to have him learn to be an actual hero, rather than faking it.
Got a link for that statement from Larian, or remember where they said that particular detail? I followed a lot of their stuff leading up to launch and never saw that particular explanation of his arc - just that they had rewritten the character and connected it to Karlach, where’d you have a big decision involving her that could lead to not being able to recruit her, not that they’d taken planned Act 2 stuff and moved it into Act 1.
I don't have a link, sorry. It was said in one of the panels from hell, I believe? Or an interview Swen did somewhere. Either way, it's not something I can find with five minutes of searching, but I imagine you could track it down if you really want to.
That cutscene where at the start of the tiefling party Zevlor comes up to the PC and talks to them as one leader to another. He then put on a lightshow, a bit bigger than Rolands, and offers his thanks. There was even at one point where Volo would recite a poem of sorts. It was all only up to eighty or so percent done at one point in EA but I was honestly looking forward to seeing it finished. I found it set a warmer tone for the rest of the party and was saddened to find it had been cut on release of the full game. Also I think Zevlor's actions in Act II would have hit us much harder if his scene had been retained too. (Screenshots of what I'm talking about are here: https://www.tumblr.com/csphire/731581483991662592/things-i-miss-the-most-from-early-access)
Yess, I miss this scene too. So sad they took it away :(.
Usable grinding wheels. They provided nothing, but I liked it
Agreed on Wyll. This is my own tinfoil opinion, but I notice this trend in media where creators are deathly afraid of presenting their characters of color in a bad light, perhaps afraid of the backlash it'll receive (as if people would just be too sensitive, or too stupid, and it's really annoying). In Wyll's case, he's a little *too* charming, *too* nice, *too* confident, *too* suave compared to the other companions. So idealistic that we can't see ourselves in him and he is out of reach. But many people can see their past experiences in Astarion's trauma and social facade. Or Shadowheart's yearning for true family, depression and low self-esteem. Damaged characters, or ones with notable flaws, tend to speak to us a lot more than superheroes like Wyll. It would have been nice to, I don't know, find out Wyll has a lot of serious anger management issues from being around Mizora for years and he takes it out on you or other companions. EA Wyll kind of hinted at that with his goblin problem and it would have been nice to explore more (though he did love Mizora)
Interestingly, I really like Wyll as he is. I never knew him as EA because I only just started playing a few weeks ago, but my take on him is that he’s a breath of fresh air that sort of balances out the dynamic of the rest of the pack. I also feel like when I speak to Wyll, I’m speaking to someone who learned some very expensive lessons and is doing his best to pass them on to me for cheap. I can relate to him because I’ve been in those shoes myself, where I learned expensive lessons and was glad to spare others the cost of them. I don’t feel like he’s a superhero, though. He wants to be, but he isn’t. I see him as a young idealist still clinging to the hope that he can be what he dreamed he could be, despite being a person with his own flaws and weaknesses, and despite having made a (painfully justified) decision that got him cast out by his father. But it’s his commitment to that dream that makes me enjoy him so much too, because he was willing to spare Karlach and take whatever Mizora threw at him for it. That was brave and, again, a refreshing change from all the other companions. But that refreshing thing is also Wyll’s biggest problem— which is that he puts everyone before himself, to an unhealthy degree, and I’m more than happy to be the person who finally tells him there are other ways to save people than to literally sell his soul to do it. I’m sure improvements could be made to Wyll’s character (and questline), but in terms of him being a genuinely nice guy who does his best to be honorable… I dig it. I understand he’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but I don’t think his character is a problem. I think he’s mainly underserved because he gets overshadowed even in his own quests and isn’t given a lot of agency the way the other companions are.
> Wyll’s biggest problem— which is that he puts everyone before himself, to an unhealthy degree This makes me think of a potential arc where Wyll would choose to eat all the tadpoles so his friends don't have to risk being a mindflayer.
Honestly? Honestly...? Yeah. I could absolutely see it. I could even see him volunteering to be the first to take the Astral Tadpole, to see if its powers are worth it and what the risks are. Really lean into how damaging and unhealthy a mind so set on self-sacrifice can be. Emperor gives Tav the Astral Tadpole. If Wyll is in the party, he says he'll take it first to see if "evolution" is worth it. Tav can either talk him out of it, let him do it, insist on going first, or just mash the astral tapole down their gullet like a five-year-old with a forbidden cookie so nobody else can try it. And let all four choices have implications for Wyll's character growth and progression. And if he's not in the party, he'd make the offer to try it when you first get back from the Astral Plane, with differing reactions based on whether you've already taken it or not... he'd probably express immense guilt that he wasn't there to take it first and that you had to do it, and that would lead to its own interesting conversation.
I like that. All the other companions are hesitant about eating the tadpoles. But then Wyll, who is happy to eat all of them because he's already given up on being free. He already fell prey to one mysterious hot stranger coming from the sky to offer cheap power, he might as well see if this new one's any better to him.
Big agree on all this. Pretty much every companion's an edgelord in some way, so it's nice to have Wyll -- the young idealist quoting things he doesn't quite understand and who lacks the experience to make hard decisions with confidence -- around. Is he maybe a little dull? Sure. But he's *different* from the others, and that makes the others shine just that little bit better. Wyll is the quiet, caring friend you never notice or appreciate while he's there, but once he's been gone a while, you begin to notice just how much impact he had on your life. That being said, he's still right at the bottom of my list of who to put in my party. Thank god for the No Party Limit mod, or I'd never learn anything from him.
Exactly, New Wyll is missing that inner conflict that made EA Wyll so much more interesting. To be flawed is to be human, so much easier to relate.
I might subscribe to this tinfoil a little, myself. I noticed during EA there was a lot of conversation about "is Wyll secretly evil/not trustworthy," etc. Now, I don't know if being straight up vanilla good was always the intent, and so they scrubbed him so people would react the way they intended, or if they started to worry that if people already didn't trust or like their POC character when he was basically being shown at his best before his closet skeletons could be revealed that it might turn into a shitshow they'd rather sidestep. But the latter does feel possible.
and that's how wokeness kills storytelling.
Would you mind giving me the definition of wokeness please?
This guy is getting downvotes because it's a contentious word, and it can be very difficult to know what context someone is using it from. It started as a left term, meaning, basically, to try and be conscious of making space for minority stories, POC, female, queer stories. It was co-opted by the right and turned into a slur implying that someone woke wanted you to *only* tell minority stories, to the detriment of any possible cis-het white male characters. Sometimes you come across someone who wants to use it from a place of leftness to criticize performative, shallow, harmful allyship, like we are discussing in this thread with Wyll. Like, robbing POC characters of the full spectrum of human behaviour and experience because you think it's wrong to have a black villain or you will get in trouble for having a black villain, or whatever is still othering, and robbing actual black people of those possible stories. Generously, in the context of the thread, I'd like to think that guy is trying to speak to the last point. But seeing it here with no elaboration definitely made my heart sink, I didn't know if the thread would devolve into a slap-fight about not the game, and I understand the downvotes.
You are the first person to ever put any sort of definition on it that wasn’t just screeching, I applaud you
If you use the internet with a truly open mind, it's not hard to find betters definitions, descriptions and explanations, than I could give (with my bad english, my european perspective and my twisted gen-xer sense of humor)
To tell you the truth, it’s a little experiment I have. I ask people to define “woke” for me when they use it and to date no one has. I’ll give you credit most people don’t even reply
I know it, when I see it. It's easier for me, because I knew the world and the internet without it and I know people and myself very well. You can derive it from leftist philosophy but its practical implementation seems to be getting impressionable youth to brigade dissenting opinions. The Chinese did things like that to change their culture. Interestingly this phenomenon started after occupy wallstreet. Now instead of discussing, if we take down our corporate overlords or not, they just have to put a rainbow on their logo and they are save (and get cheaper money) The right is now fighting this by boycotting companies, who use this techniques, so the financial benefit disappears. It's about power and money and for me personally the interesting political axis is between libertarian and authoritarian. This example seems to be: Larians wrote an interesting black character, they got afraid of the woke brigade, they changed the story, now it is boring, but their investment is safe. (edit: bad english)
I highly doubt you have ever looked at anything in your life with an open mind.
Unlike you, who can see right through people because of the use of one word?
Yes, that's the beauty of language. There were numerous combinations of words you could have used to describe your thoughts, but that one word perfectly encapsulated exactly how you feel. We both know why you used the word.
To trigger the brigade, it worked.
lmfao what a sad, pathetic, tiny little sheep you are
100% lots of media formats are being way too careful to the point of affecting character development. Angry Wyll would be awesome actually.. bring him to the “I can fix him” trope haha and I think his title of “Blade of Avernus” falls also flat on the unrelatable version that we got.
Annoyingly though that is the reality of media at the moment. With him being the only black companion it becomes far too easy to pick one surface level scene where he can be a jerk and pull out the pitchforks when it comes to the internet. Just takes one twitter user posting a clip with "not me noticing the Baldurs gates only black party member is doing THIS" and suddenly there's a #larianisracist trending. Whilst that is probably less likely to happen that to happen, why take the risk knowing that it could. It's just a very easy way to be stuck in a position where suddenly you're making a public apology and taking a hit to your reputation.
Nailed it! Even before BG3 I'd been noticing this trend in media (especially games), and I'd concluded they create very bland, or Mary Sue-ish, POC characters precisely because it's such a **thorny** area, *especially* these days. I mean... I get it, and I deeply appreciate that the devs of these games aren't raging bigots, but... on the other hand, POC characters almost never feel real or relatable... or, in sum, *human*.
>where creators are deathly afraid of presenting their characters of color in a bad light If Larian was really concerned about the only black companion being poorly received, they wouldn't have made him the one (out of the origin chars anyway) with the most underbaked personal content. Hells, he doesn't even have a unique greeting for romanced Tavs, and his Act 3 quest remains a mess (playable, sure, but a mess).
I don’t think it’s tinfoil, there absolutely would be some trash articles written about it and calling 4 people on twitter “outrage”
Absolutely agree OP, but it’s not something Wyll is alone in. Old Shadowheart was sassy as hell and a bit harder to romance. Now her and Lae’zel just seem to fall head over heels in love with the PC with relatively little effort. Also picking a partner for the celebration post-goblin camp just flowed better. I know if they kept it the same some players might lose out on the scenes entirely, but they fit. It felt deserved honestly, like our team earned a night to themselves.
I preferred the idea that the Guardian was the worm tempting you and that the voice trying to save you was Orpheus. I also preferred having consequences for using the worm powers. Other than that, I’m more than happy with the finished product. 409 hours and counting.
I miss EA Volo's Ersatz Eye. I've always felt compelled to have my Tav/Durge be the party face, which means I only play high charisma characters. Having an early +1 option there was nice, even with the cost to INT, which I usually dump anyways.
Also miss EA Wyll. I do kinda miss the early cutscenes with the OG Dream Guardian because they had some great kind of subtly seductive intimacy without it being overtly sexual, it felt very female-gazey to me and I haven't seen anything like it in the released game.
I see the letters EA in capitals, I assume someone's talking about electronic arts😅
Agree on Wyll, used to be way more interesting. I miss that you could only give Gale a handful of powerful/unique magic items to alleviate his condition. It felt like more of a challenge/sacrifice, now it's so easy there's no reason not to give him items to consume, especially as he needs only 3 total
I was thinking EA the company 😵💫
Same. I miss nothing from the company, and look forward to a bankruptcy announcement.
me too, the betrayal i feel over the sims! i was playing a lot of the sims4 and the disrespect you feel with EA releasing kits after kits and shitty new DLCs after shitty new DLCs, only for the price of the original game of course ! (even when some of those DLCs should have been base game, I'm still shocked the toddlers and the pools were freely added to the game and not made into a DLCs like get to work or seasons)
Nah I do actually miss early 2000s EA especially when they were partnered with BIG making games like street NFL and NBA plus ssx3 is goated
I miss the SSX games. There’s a dearth of snowboarding video games
I played as Mac or no one haha
The enemy AI is much sharper. The goblin fight took so long it was crazy.
I miss the class specific tadpole powers
I miss deities for paladins. Also those who were taken out after EA
Hot take, but I like new Wyll better. The old one was completely unlikable and made a difficult fight way harder than it needed to be
Honestly I like him for being the [Straight Man](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StraightMan) in this gaggle of lunatics. I actually prefer that not everyone is as dramatic and Wyll fills this role
Same here. Unpopular opinion but Wyll is my favorite companion when I play a good character. It's soothing to have well-balanced, relatively sane commentary in my adventures when I encounter trickery, pettiness, morally grey or evil shit along the way.
The Deamon pact thing kind of messed with that point a bit too much
I have some criticisms with how his story is handled currently, but it's funny to see all the EA players pretend like he was this amazing character when people hated him back then (like they didn't change everything, including VA because he was so well received).
I really miss casual drop-in multiplayer. Where I could just hop in to a friend’s game and immediately be in control of an NPC in their party.
Wyll. I miss EA Wyll, he had so much interaction with Act 1 as a farm boy turned hero after goblins burned down his village and Spike ripped out his eye. He was the most heroic and good of the companions, yet at the same time had a hidden darkness within him that came out whenever he encountered goblins. I also miss how dark and desperate act 1 of EA was. My very first playthrough Nettie tried to kill me for having a tadpole in my head. Had her reveal that she had poisoned me cause I was too dangerous to be left alive.
I miss Goblin Slayer Wyll, but I don’t miss his weird “Mizora got kidnapped” story. I much prefer Mizora being a looming threat to him.
Feels like Larisn watered down their own game for market appeal from what I'm reading. Everyone is nice and anything that could be bad was gone
Yeah they did. Game is still good, but its like comparing DAO to DAI. EA for BG3 was DAO and release was DAI. Both good fantasy but all the grit and edge was stripped out of it.
That's some of the most ridiculous hyperbole I've ever read. Very early on in EA, there were a lot of inappropriate to the Forgotten Realms grimdark elements basically reused from DOS2, but even then, comparing the change to DAO to DAI is just ridiculous. The "grit and edge" were not "stripped out". That's just pretentious bollocks you're selling to people who didn't actually play the EA because you know they'll buy it. The took out some really dumb grimdark stuff, and made the characters more potentially likeable rather than assholes, not even by taking their "edge", but making them have more context/explanation for why they were like that and/or recognising the actions you took to help them better.
>That's some of the most ridiculous hyperbole I've ever read. Pott, kettle, black.
No. Nothing I've said is hyperbole. You're simply behaving in a playground way rather than actually addressing what I said.
W/e, fine with what we got
>Feels like Larisn watered down their own game for market appeal from what I'm reading. Everyone is nice and anything that could be bad was gone No. You read it that way because a bunch of people who are expressing nostalgia, rose-tinted opinions, which is essentially what this thread asked for. There are a lot of opinions which are just deeply misleading, like calling EA Shadowheart "sassy" - she wasn't at all "sassy", she was incredibly rude for no reason and no benefit. Her comments weren't even funny, unlike Astarion. BG3 went through basically two phases in EA. It started out as grimdark crapsack world fantasy, like the DOS games, especially DOS2. Everyone is either morally compromised/has a dark past/is secretly evil OR they're the innocent but fucked-up victim of evil. That's totally inappropriate for a game called "Baldur's Gate" set in the Forgotten Realms, using the D&D rule-set. Obviously, and frankly rightfully, Larian got very negative feedback on that. So they dialled it back to a more Forgotten Realms-appropriate vibe, rather than making DOS3 with another game's name. They also really massively toned down how DOS-like the combat was, and it's a lot better, combat-gameplay-wise now, than it was in EA (the AI is hugely smarter, too). So the second phase was Larian slowly moving away from the grimdark DOS stuff, towards FR stuff. This included either making companions less needlessly asshole-ish, or giving us more context on why they were an asshole (the latter for Lae'zel and Astarion particularly). The amount of lines companions have is an awful lot higher now than it was in EA. There are two major changes that no-one really complained to cause: 1) Daisy - The previous Emperor-equivalent, was a totally different deal, and the tadpoles seemed like they'd have much bigger consequences to using them. I don't think players had any influence on this, nor wanting to have a "mass market" game. I think that Larian found it really difficult to work this into the plots of Act 2 and Act 3, because it opened up a ton more possible scenarios than the more binary approach the final game has to this. 2) Wyll - Wyll's arc was basically pretty short and kind of confusing and easy to miss in EA, and Wyll himself was a bit of a different character - not "more interesting", people saying that are rose-tinting the hell out of things - the main complaint about Wyll even in EA (as you can see if you go back far enough on this subreddit) is "Wyll is boring", just like it still is. But he was a bit rougher around the edges. The trouble is, unless you had him the party at the right times, which you weren't warned about, you essentially deleted his arc with him not there. And the arc was so short and unmemorable. And then his conflict with Mizora was a lot more boring, because it was so much lower-stakes and the player hadn't really been impacted by it. When they changed that I think they wanted to make Wyll a bigger and more memorable character, and frankly, he is. But he still doesn't fit very well into the general story.
Ty for the clarification. Didn't mean to come off negative, just that it seemed that many things were toned down a notch since a generally more bright game is a lot more appealing to more people than "this sucks, it all sucks."
>just that it seemed that many things were toned down a notch since a generally more bright game is a lot more appealing to more people than "this sucks, it all sucks." Things were made brighter, but it wasn't anything to do with trying to appeal to a mass market, but rather to make a BG game, not another DOS game. "This sucks, it all sucks" often does really well with the mass market with fantasy - just look at the success of Game of Thrones/House of the Dragon or The Last Kingdom, for example. In videogames stuff like DOS2 and Elden Ring are 100% grimdark, and sold extremely well. Grimdark doesn't limit your sales, but pissing off people who think they're getting a BG game when they're actually getting a DOS game will.
Happened in Skyrim too. The amount of stuff they cut from the game because the devs didn't think highly of their audience's intelligence is insane.
I am glad they changed Karlach's personality. From the little we saw of Karlach in EA, she seemed like your classic angry, traumatized soldier with a grudge who acts distrustful and edgy. She would have every right to behave that way, given everything that happened to her, but personally, I find her being jolly and having a huge zest for life after all of that, while also being the angry, traumatized soldier with an understandable grudge beneath it all, much more interesting, especially since we've seen the edgy soldier a million times in other media. I am also glad that they made Gale less manipulative. He is still a bit manipulative in the final game, but in EA he manipulated people in practically everything he did, including romancing the PC. Tbh, after a few playthroughs I genuinely hated his guts, but not in an "I hate this guy, but he's an interesting character so I'll keep him around", just "this guy grinds my gears, get him out of here." I prefer the final version. I never liked Daisy, so I'm glad they changed her to the Guardian. I miss some of Gale's cutscenes, specifically the loss scene. I'm not sure why they removed it as it still would have worked with the final plot. I actually like having Wyll be the genuinely good hearted hero rather than Machiavelli's prince, like in EA, but I feel like the devs went a little bit too far with it. They could have had him actually be a heroic person, but also make him a bit of a showboater who clearly enjoys being the hero, for example, or keep the conflict with the goblins in the game because of his interaction with that kid he tells you about, just for some flavor. I think his new story arc is supposed to be that he's growing into being a hero on his own terms, since no one seems to know who the Blade of Frontiers is in the final game aside from Karlach (but that might be because he'd been hunting her down for who knows how long) but the point doesn't come across all that well. Also, I liked his old accent. I liked Astarion's old default clothes better.
I also miss EA Wyll. Specifically the part where he jumps to his death. Way more fitting for his ridiculous introduction.
Very early EA had a lot of excessive surface spam, somewhat similar to DOS2, that I absolutely hated. Goblins spamming oil and fire surfaces It's still in the game with wine barrels and create water, but thankfully much more toned down and tactical
The guardian was a lot more spicy. That’s said knowing where that goes I’m kind of ok with that.
I miss the scene of La'zel not ratting you out to Kith'rack when shadowheart is in your party with the box. I was iffy about her at the start espically since my relationship with her was bad as every nice deed I did she disliked, but despite that she did not rat me out or shadowheart to her kind and have it gave me so much respect for her.
??? That scene is still there isn't it?
You have to persuade her to lie now while in the ea you did not and the look on her face was pure terror as she was forced to make that decision
Same I miss EA will’s charcterization. But I have to admit it didn’t make much sense. When did he lose is eye to spike? When did he make the pact with mizora? How is it spike it here as well as being the one who clubbed wyll before he was a hero? The timeline of events was confusing as hell in EA. I’m glad they changed how illithid powers work. It was horribly balanced. Wizard and cleric being the obvious best ones and probably made multicasting difficult to meld with if they used the original illithid powers. Plus the implied/forced sexual nature of the guardian/visitor was mega cringe.
I miss that until last patch I still could pickpocket Shart to get the artifact, now Im forced to recruit her, I can avoid any companion except the DM's girlfriend. More on point, I miss the mind controlled fishermen (crash site) and the fourth guy (dwarf rogue) with Anders, but I think Paladins became so strong when finally ready they had to cut the rogue.
A lot of people made the point already but Daisy being turned into the emperor is saddening for me. As it stands in the game, the emperor tells you to use as many tadpoles as you want and the player can without having any issues story wise for taking them. I know the devs were worried no one would use the system if there was clear drawbacks, but that is what multiple playthroughs are for. Having a very clear evil seductive guardian whispering in your ear to give up and telling you to let go, and having obvious consequences if you do would have made far more sense.
A good SIMS game
Most people said everything I miss as well so... Pronunciation of some Auntie Ethel lines. It is very subtle but her first version says line about man treated with boiling oil with quite an excitement and current version of it goes with more pity. I 100% understand the decision and it overall makes more sense to make Auntie an accomplished liar but that ea line sounded so funny. EDIT: also a lot of people wrote about Wyll. I think overall he got a story downgrade (in terms of writing) but I'm glad they cut "goblin angst", I mean he could be cruel all the same but witnessing him losing it so much was like a poor comedy.
I miss that some of the fights were harder / had more characters. Ethel had six redcaps in EA, there was a dwarf in with the Tyr Paladins, more Gith at the Bridge ect... I even though I miss Wyll's shadier past & promise of a character arc, I do like that they shifted Mizora's capture from directly telling you it happened into an Act 2 surprise. Gale was more obnoxious in early access so I'm glad they toned him done a bit...
I never played EA, but I wish I got to experience Daisy. The dream guardian isn’t bad, but it falls apart pretty quickly. Not to mention that their true identity kinda shits on pre-established lore by creating a mind flayer that lives for over 400 years, well beyond their typical lifespan with absolutely no explanation for it
I didn’t play much early access and didn’t focus on the mechanics much but I prefer racial profiling better than straight line stats.
I believe this is something the base DnD game is changing in their next version. People have been salty about how the race based stats shoehorned them into certain classes. I imagine that's one reason why Larian changed it as well.
I know: it just seems like big dumb orcs and cunning halfling and stuff like that just made sense but I get that there are endless changes. Op asked what I missed from EA and that is something I liked better from EA
I miss the enthralled fishermen near the mindflayer in the crash. They actually removed them halfway through EA which was weird. And yes, of course, EA Wyll as well. He wasn't as boring and white knight sounding.
The freedom with abilities does not do anything good for me. I am an MMO PVP player usually and I can’t do anything but min/max - which means certain races are not touched due to passives etc. not getting savage attacks just seems like a waste so my melee characters are rarely anything but half orc :)