People are clamoring around you in a huge chorus of it’s fine just roll with it but frankly, I think your point of view is totally valid. While Larian did a great job making every path a valid way to the ending, you can really only ever lock yourself out of content with your choices.
Go too far down one of two branching paths? Hope you can pass a big fat skill check or two, or that one companion will bail. Hope you didn’t like that character or want to see more of that content. (Oh, and if you do pass the skill checks, 10 minutes later the companion is like “ugh no it’s fine you were right, forget I ever wanted to go that way even though I’ve been obsessed with it for the last 20 hours” in the name of railroading the character back in line.)
Get interested in the wrong quest too early? Hope you didn’t want to finish the main side objective in that one area. No no, even though all the characters are still present, you don’t get to finish it. Because we said so. Shoo along to the next place. Go. Get.
And here’s hoping you don’t get curious about the “evil” path - you lose multiple companions and a whole-ass cast of side characters that are meant to follow you through the game and gain one (1) bit of interesting new content to replace them. Is it still interesting? Absolutely, but it’s a consolation prize compared to how much you lose.
It took me 3 playthroughs or so before I finally felt like I was on a save where I was having a good 80%+ of the intended experience. And yeah, you can replay it for what you missed, but not everyone has time for that, especially in a game this immense. I know I’ve started it up to make my fourth character about half a dozen times and Alt-F4ed during character creation as soon as I think about going through the parts I’ve thoroughly combed already.
BG3 is my GOTY by a long shot, but people should have more sympathy for this outlook. There are definitely right paths and wrong paths, and while they all lead to the end, the wrong paths have a lot less to look at and a healthy amount of rubbing your face in the fact that you did stuff in the wrong order (“Perhaps you could have…” ok thanks, narrator).
I feel this. I’m still in the first act and taking my time, but I’ve already lost Gale because I accidentally selected the option to not give him a magical item to consume after he asked a second time - I said I would, and then when I went into the selection menu I realized I couldn’t give him the item I intended, so I backed out and he said fuck you and left. So that’s great for me. Maybe he’ll come back later but then again maybe not. So that’s a whole character I don’t have any more because of an accident.
Oh, and I also never got Lazel because I never went to the area where she was captured until much later and she wasn’t there any more. I did find her (before that, funnily enough) as part of the cut scene with the Githyanki near the bridge but I didn’t know she was a playable character, plus she acted like an enemy and I was really low level and got destroyed so I had to reload. So that’s another character I don’t have and may never get, although I’ll have to go back now that I’m a higher level and see what happens.
My point is that it’s really easy to miss out on large parts of the game due to random or accidental decisions, so I do understand people who find the experience off-putting. Still, I’ve been lucky to have enough free time to be able to play through with my wife so I’ve been able to avoid a lot of the stuff I fucked up in my solo game, and I personally love the game despite the experiences I outlined above.
I’m pretty sure I missed out on the bear cock experience because of this. He’s down for the three way but it’s getting dangerously close to the end of the game and there’s no way to beg for it, haha. The thought of a whole nother playthrough just to see it has me dreading the goblin area.
People are clamoring around you in a huge chorus of it’s fine just roll with it but frankly, I think your point of view is totally valid. While Larian did a great job making every path a valid way to the ending, you can really only ever lock yourself out of content with your choices.
Go too far down one of two branching paths? Hope you can pass a big fat skill check or two, or that one companion will bail. Hope you didn’t like that character or want to see more of that content. (Oh, and if you do pass the skill checks, 10 minutes later the companion is like “ugh no it’s fine you were right, forget I ever wanted to go that way even though I’ve been obsessed with it for the last 20 hours” in the name of railroading the character back in line.)
Get interested in the wrong quest too early? Hope you didn’t want to finish the main side objective in that one area. No no, even though all the characters are still present, you don’t get to finish it. Because we said so. Shoo along to the next place. Go. Get.
And here’s hoping you don’t get curious about the “evil” path - you lose multiple companions and a whole-ass cast of side characters that are meant to follow you through the game and gain one (1) bit of interesting new content to replace them. Is it still interesting? Absolutely, but it’s a consolation prize compared to how much you lose.
It took me 3 playthroughs or so before I finally felt like I was on a save where I was having a good 80%+ of the intended experience. And yeah, you can replay it for what you missed, but not everyone has time for that, especially in a game this immense. I know I’ve started it up to make my fourth character about half a dozen times and Alt-F4ed during character creation as soon as I think about going through the parts I’ve thoroughly combed already.
BG3 is my GOTY by a long shot, but people should have more sympathy for this outlook. There are definitely right paths and wrong paths, and while they all lead to the end, the wrong paths have a lot less to look at and a healthy amount of rubbing your face in the fact that you did stuff in the wrong order (“Perhaps you could have…” ok thanks, narrator).
I feel this. I’m still in the first act and taking my time, but I’ve already lost Gale because I accidentally selected the option to not give him a magical item to consume after he asked a second time - I said I would, and then when I went into the selection menu I realized I couldn’t give him the item I intended, so I backed out and he said fuck you and left. So that’s great for me. Maybe he’ll come back later but then again maybe not. So that’s a whole character I don’t have any more because of an accident.
Oh, and I also never got Lazel because I never went to the area where she was captured until much later and she wasn’t there any more. I did find her (before that, funnily enough) as part of the cut scene with the Githyanki near the bridge but I didn’t know she was a playable character, plus she acted like an enemy and I was really low level and got destroyed so I had to reload. So that’s another character I don’t have and may never get, although I’ll have to go back now that I’m a higher level and see what happens.
My point is that it’s really easy to miss out on large parts of the game due to random or accidental decisions, so I do understand people who find the experience off-putting. Still, I’ve been lucky to have enough free time to be able to play through with my wife so I’ve been able to avoid a lot of the stuff I fucked up in my solo game, and I personally love the game despite the experiences I outlined above.
I’m pretty sure I missed out on the bear cock experience because of this. He’s down for the three way but it’s getting dangerously close to the end of the game and there’s no way to beg for it, haha. The thought of a whole nother playthrough just to see it has me dreading the goblin area.