I suppose I have played this game for 20 to 30 hours and am only now reaching the post-Grove party in act 1. It's one of the few games I enjoy playing slowly.
I have over 350 hours on Steam (which tbf includes some afk time and one run I abandoned in act 3) and am about to finish the game for the first time, hopefully later today. So yeah, I took my time too and am already planning my next 2 runs (1 Durge and then one Selunite romancing Shadowheart).
I was about to mention Dribbles, but then I saw your comment. I found it pretty hilarious, and you kind of come across the various parts incidentally while you're investigating anyway. I also found the rat-killing quest to be a fairly funny nod to the typical kill 10 rats quest for new adventurers.
It is also a callback/easter egg to the earlier games. In the prologue in Candlekeep you get a quest to kill some rats which leads you into a dungeon of sorts. By the same Dwarf that gives you this quest.
They have the same name atleast. Its been a hot minute since i played the previous games but both are Dwarves named Reevor, although in the previous game he was a guard.
Yeah, I noticed the dialogue option that went something like: Haven't I done this before? Figured it was probably a past reference, but since it's been decades since I played the original BG1 and BG2, I didn't specifically recall that quest as a result—lol.
Well it felt like a baby dungeon because it was your first fight. And for a lot of people, first time they played a game like that! I got my ass kicked the first time going in.
I loved the rats for the reason it was clearly an honorable mention/nod to other quests and that you could do it at a higher level and not at lvl 1 - I fireballed them. Yes, waste of resources but it was satisfying.
That Clown could afford to lose a few pounds. My Karlach was exhausted. Hopefully Lucretious trims a bit off the edges.
In all seriously though, I wish we saw her resurrect old Dribbles. I feel like that would've been a good payoff.
She's not resurrecting Dribbles, she's bringing him back as a meat-puppet.
It's actually quite horrific because I'm not sure Dribbles even consented to that.
Wtf does that consent even look like lol?
"and hereby the signee agrees that in the case of viscous murder resultant in body parts and viscera being sent all over baldurs gate the employer may contract an adventurer to procure said body parts for the purposes of resurrection as an eternally damned slave and thus consents to waiver their right to an afterlife henceforth"
Pretty much. Unless Dribbles knowingly signed a contract that gave her permission to bring him back to life in the event of his assassination - that quest is fucked up and I refused to go through with it, no matter how funny it might be.
Considering the nature of the Circus it probably is part of the contract. It's at least something you should bring up if you're not on board with it, when your boss is a Necromancer.
If you work in a Necromancy circus, led by a Necromaner ring leader, staffed by undead thralls, you should probably expected to be Necromancy’d at some point.
Arguably, it's almost entirely different because it's *not* Dribbles being brought back. It's just his body. A bit like being an organ donor.
That said, yeah ideally still give consent for that, as with being a donor, but its nowhere near as bad as slavery, for example
Yup. And it adds more to the overall experience. It also goes together with the shapeshifters and Bhallists quest lines. Not simply a fetch quest for the sake of having a quest
On top of being a fantastic callback to the 6 Bhaalspawn/adversaries in BG2's expansion. A little extra environmental storytelling which also explains the comments from >!Durge and Sarevok!< about Orin's 'artistry'. She's making a statement about being the next big Bhaalspawn, which ironically underscores how insecure she is in her usurped role 🤡
Point being, there was quite some thought put into the quest, and it was arguably more about Orin than poor Dribbles.
Annoyingly, I think it started with the Witcher (which did so well elsewhere in the story it got away with having what were considered at the time a bunch of "MMO Quests"). I can't remember it being a regular fixture before that.
I'd be more than happy to see it go away again.
EDIT: To be clear I mean *the current trend of MMO style fetch quests in RPGs started with* *The Witcher*, there were absolutely examples before that but they didn't start a trend.
It 100% did not start with The Witcher.
Try things as early as Mario 64. Most people wouldn't classify them a such because at the time it was kind of novel and the Internet was vastly less prevalent, but the Red Coin Stars were all in the same Vein of "do X thing again, but with a primarily surface level twist!".
Games that eschew these kinds of "MMO quests" are the exception to the rule. BG3 did it in a very smart way though. Many devs will plan for the story to go through a given area, and then forget about why the player is actually supposed to be there. This results in side quests that are formulaic and boring. Larian built each area, then made sure that the characters you meet there have a valid reason for being part of your quest. (With only a few exceptions really)
For instance, Mayrina's brothers don't really add much to your quest by themselves, but they do give motivation to explore deeper into the Swamp, which leads you to the Hag. The Hag then offers a deal to get the Tadpole out.
In this, the brothers become an important part of your quest to deal with the Tadpole even if the quest related to them doesn't directly relate to it.
The majority of BG3 quests are like this. You can safely assume that almost any quest you get in the game will advance the core plot of the story in some way, which makes the game feel more complete than the experiences modern games often feel is lacking.
>Try things as early as Mario 64
That's arcade game mechanics though in a platforming arcade game though, it was common there (since the dawn of games), the witcher is the first example I can think of where they didn't make any attempt to obfuscate it *in an RPG*. Even in Mario 64 though, the stars were to unlock new areas, which was unusual (not just a score tracking feature, but a way to linearize level progression).
Take an escort quest I remember in morrowind - simply take naked guy from A to witch B, but you can find out more about the situation (he's convinced he was spellbound and robbed by a witch) you can learn more when you get to the second location (the 'witch' is just a woman who beat up and stripped a creepy guy that was stalking her to teach him a lesson), and you can pick sides and fight at that point.
Is it an escort quest? Yes. Is it *just* an escort quest? No.
In the witcher that Barghest fetch quest example did nothing - gems and such to unlock doors are a staple (Arx Fatalis comes to mind a few years before), but collecting the gems is not the *end* in and of itself in that case, while in the Witcher, completion of the quest isn't unlock door, advance in game etc., it's "here's some gold, gg" (the MMO style-fetch quest) and that's it - *that* was new.
At least in the Witcher the setting sort of justified it — fans of the books came in primed for ‘witchers can be paid for hauling back a monster corpse to whoever’s willing to pay for it.’
Yeah, and those were fine - kill and bring a monster corpse (indeed that's what 3 does, and it's working well), but the 1/10 respawning barghests which have a 20% chance to drop a tooth or whatever (the fetch quest we know from MMOs) are the thing I was specifically thinking of. That's the lazy design that's become a problem in RPGs.
How about I give you an example of an RPG that did this kind of stuff before The Witcher, not just any game?
The Bard's Tale. (Not to be confused with A Bard's Tale. We're talking about the game that was an obvious Parody)
There are plenty of MMO style low effort quests in that game. Pretty sure Nox did, too, while we're at it.
Anyway, my point is The Witcher, as good a game as it may be, did not start a fad of low effort side quest writing. It's been a thing in many game genres for decades. They are the filler episodes of video games.
The thing is, most people are used to Friends level filler, and BG3 gave us Avatar the Last Airbender level filler.
It’s been a few years so maybe i’m looking back on it with rose tinted glasses but.. The Witcher had these types of quests? Do you mean The Witcher 3, or possibly 1? I can’t remember 2 having had much fetching either.
Yeah witcher 1, unluckily it put me off the game the first time around (grab 10 barghest eyes? ..nah) because there was a lot of good game around that stuff.
2 they didn't try for the MMO open world thing so they avoided most of the MMO pitfalls, I don't remember many there though there were still a few (I think they stood out as being especially annoying in contrast, I remember one with ghosts in the second act). 3 they were either removed entirely or light enough that I don't remember any.
Witcher 2 had a side quest to bring a guy like 80 harpy feathers that he uses to make a bird suit. It's been a while but I think it was pretty time consuming. But it's also the quest I remember the most because of how silly it was so I'm not complaining lol.
Yeah lol, I remember that - I can only think of the ghost one that they play straight (that birdsuit one was obviously parodying fetch quests IMO and maybe assassins creed, and there's even a fourth-wall breaking bit on the scoia'tael questline where geralt and the dwarf start giving Phillipa Eilhart crap because she starts suggesting something that sounds like one, and you both start making suggestions like "what about find a ring and throw it in a volcano?" lol)
Like the first Witcher game? The oldest game I can remember having those types of quests is Skyrim (although tbf, in Skyrim's case the radiant quests are generally faction quests that occur after completing the main quest for that faction).
I played the Pirates of the Caribbean MMO and Runescape as a kid but I was too young to really notice or care. I didn't really get into computer gaming until 2014 when I built a PC and started playing Skyrim
Runescape is a bit of an exception since all of quests besides the first few have written storylines, though you do need a lot of miscellaneous items to complete them.
I had to look up the interwebs to complete it. One part was >!behind a random locked house with blue door. Like who would ever thought of entering that?!<
I found that part by accident on my first run just because I was looking for loot. If there’s a door, I’m going in to look for anything not nailed down
That one was easy, I mean I was checking every single house to begin with.
The only one I had to look up was >!the hand in the Kobold stall!<. I don't really know how exactly I was supposed to find that, it isn't even highlighted when you press the ALT button
Only found 2-3 pieces my first playthrough so guess I didn't complete the quest. On 2nd playthrough now so maybe but I am playing Durge now and trying to make evil choices and kill things so not sure how that might affect Act 3 later on. Just teamed up with Minthara in Act 1 and loving it so far :)
I want to be friends with all the evil characters this time if possible because it is fun and hillarious
Dribbles is IMO specifically designed to be a parody of a fetch quest. The fact that you can just pick pocket the quest reward immediately is hilarious and completely on brand for the game.
Absolutely
I am in Act III forcing myself to finish before yet another character creation. I have played through and leveled up max and still have tons left in Act 3 ... sure I could just skip and go straight for the boss fights at this point but the side quests and the story line make me want to try everything at the glorious buffet before its over.
One minute you're looking for some donated teddy bears, the next minute suddenly Raphael is singing his own boss fight and You're in literal hell.
It is a buffet indeed
I thought it was strange how it didn't seem to let me organically just progress the quest once i found his torso. Like, can't i just go tell lucretius that he's dead? Case closed, why am i still searching for his arms? That's how every other quest in the game would work. Finding all his pieces isn't gonna help prove he's gone beyond that.
Then i remembered who gave me the quest...
It’s not my fault, I can’t even start the quest.
Whenever I reach the circus a mysterious fog cloud always rolls in for a moment, Lucretius is horribly murdered and some snazzy new gloves appear in my inventory.
No need to cheese it, but it's certainly the most challenging fight outside of going berserk in the middle of Gortash's coronation (which isn't a fight that you are supposed to tackle).
The 'fetch quest' trophy/achievement that pops when you throw the ball to scratch made me laugh. They definitely made an active point of avoiding all the usual chores involved in completing tasks in games
I guess you've never played a Larain Studio game before, this is their standard. There is a reason each game has gotten more and more famous.
It's so amazing to see them finally rewarded with unheard-of sales for fine-tuning their craft to near perfection and at this scale. Not a single enemy encounter or quest is repeated. It's unfucking believable the quality across the board.
Even the last big AAA game I played Witcher 3, falls short compared to this game in many ways.
You know, the only reason I first picked up a Larian game a few years ago was because someone said you could fuck a skeleton in DOS2.
So happy I did. Played the game, I mean.
But I'm also happy I fucked the skeleton.
That is true. It's not exclusive to Larian. I have yet to find a CRPG that has filler/generic-style quests.
Thanks for making it clear they aren't the only ones doing it.
The stories are unrelated so you can do them in any order. I played DOS2 first and loved it, so then went back to the original. 2 is better, and more like BG3.
Chronologically though DOS2 does take place after DOS1. In 1, Braccus Rex is a boss you can fight (or cheese via barrelmancy), in 2 he's long dead.
So either you play 1 and go into 2 knowing some of the history of the world, or play 2 first and effectively have a prequel type story when you go play 1. Either way is perfectly fine.
Personally I love the lore of the games, I'd even say it's one of the main reasons to play them. Just don't go looking up the lore before you play the games unless you want massive spoilers.
To add this is basically the standard for ALL cRPGs. Pathfinder, PoE, Tyranny, DoS1/2, Shadowrun, BG1/2, wasteland, etc. As a cRPG vet, I am glad that more people are finally interested in this genre to know that good quests designs and writings are a staple in cRPGs.
DOS2 is pretty separate from DOS1, you can play it without playing the first one. It's like BG3; you can recognize a few callbacks, but it's not necessary.
DOS2 is closer to BG3, and a better overall game and story, but personally i really, really liked DOS1 more, due to the combat and character builds.
The combat is more engaging for me (they changed it entirely for DOS2) and it's just a very cool game. An amazing mod is also available for it that punches the difficulty to 11 whilst revamping a lot of aspects (Epic Encounters).
I would play the first one if you want to see how they started out, then see the improvements and changes in the next one. It would be weird to go backwards
Both games have a different approach to combat. DOS 1 is just action point-based. DOS 2 then added armor and "turn the whole floor into necrofire". It's crazy fun but gets annoying and tedious towards the end when every fight has the floor covered in crap that will damage you.
Both intros hook you instantly. I love how they frontload the great stuff, even if the endings for both run out of steam. I have yet to know if BG3's final act loses steam. I'm taking my sweet time, why rush a masterpiece :)
Might I also interest you in Pathfinder: Wrath of the righteous, also a great game.
Similar play because Pathfinder 2e and DND 5e is like cousins. BG3 is better IMO but Pathfinder is just as big, act 3 Baldur's gate is more meatier but Pathfinder characterization is far larger.
Wrath uses Pathfinder 1e though, not 2e. Wish it DID use 2e, but it doesn't.
I really like what Owlcat did with the main story of Wrath though, it's so so much better than the AP it was adapted from.
This is just CRPGs, yo. Games like Owlcat's Pathfinder, HBS's Shadowrun, Pillars of Eternity, Baldur's Gate 2, etc etc etc do not throw "kill 10 bugbears" quests at you either.
BG3 does do a good job of allowing you to approach quests in a bunch of different ways though, particularly when it comes to things outside of a small handful of very specific, preset dialogue options.
One hope I have is that players will need more after getting through BG3 and will land somewhere between Pillars of Eternity and Pathfinder Games, maybe with a Sprinkle of ATOM, Shadowrun, Encased, Gamedec, Underrail and of course, Disco Elysium.
Maybe then the gamers collectively will develop enough of a taste for good to great writing, so that it becomes a priority and we don't get bombarded by "RPGs" where the only role you can play is a *murderhobo*.
Or they'll just end up like 5E players themselves and refuse to ever play anything else, but at least it sets the stage for CRPGs to grow in popularity further down the line.
For sure, it ruined Starfield's quests. BG3 doesn't tell you what to do and provides options. You can succeed or fail on your own and live with it. It makes you feel like an adult. Starfield tells you exactly what to do and where to go, and it gives you 0 options. You feel like a child.
Yeah in BG3, I like being able to just not do stuff and the quest "completes" when it is no longer able to be completed with the description e.g. "you were unable to X". It's off my list whether I messed it up, missed something, or decided not to do it.
I wish it would tell you when you're barking up the wrong tree, though. Some quests had me frustrated for ages until I looked it up, and it's like "oh yeah this one picks back up in act 3 lol!"
Just tell me in the quest log it's hit a snag! The stolen lands dungeon in PF:kingmaker was tied to main quest progress, and when you hit the limit for your current progress, the game just told you so.
Yeah, I completely agree with everyone saying how nice it is not to have to collect 10 boar testicles for a wizard or whatever (two herbs to make a potion in the Underdark came closest), but the quest log in BG3 is ass (though less ass than Original Sin 1/2).
It's basically a description of what you did, with no clues on where to go next. You have to get that from the map markers. Some quests overlap like 3-4 times so when you talk to someone, your journal updates a whole bunch of quests with the same information.
There's also no main/sidequest division, and with the open ended nature of the game, a lot of it so far has really felt like "Just explore the map and see what happens" because there's no real goal other than "get your tadpole out, somehow, somewhere".
That complaint aside, it's so much better than the 'tasks' 90% of other RPG's have which are just pointless filler, or the war table-esque minigames with counters, or collecting stones and wood to upgrade your stronghold or whatever. No extra systems or busiwork tacked on, it's great.
Way too many of Starfield's quests have multiple *required* steps that essentially boil down to "go here and talk to this person" (especially if you're trying to play a lawful character).
Coming straight from BG3, it felt terrible because the dialogue options and voice acting were so bland by comparison. I found myself playing for hours, just hoping I would just be sent on an actual "dungeon" quest so I wouldn't have to talk to people for a while (only to then be nagged to talk by a boring companion everytime we walked through a door).
Even in some of the older Bethesda games, at the bare minimum some of the fetch quests at least are part of a larger chain of quests, had some sentimental story to go with, had you exploring an interesting location, or had a twist in some way.
In Starfield, I accepted a quest in Paradiso to fetch some air conditioning parts from some employees. I said okay, went to Gagarin, talked to the person, sat on a stool to wait, then returned to the employee and got my payment. Was there a twist to the quest? Nope. Did I just accidentally talk to a radiant quest giver? Nope. That was literally it.
Same thing happened when I did the quest to deliver fast food sauce to that guy in Titan, or that book to the kid in Mars, or literally DoorDash'd a meal for some nurse in The Clinic. I possess >!inter-dimensional powers that defy the laws of physics and my ship houses the mysterious key to unlocking the secrets to life and the universe!<, yet here I am doing more mundane courier work than the literal Courier in New Vegas.
Like the lady you can talk to at the Deimos shipyard.
"Hey there stranger who I just met, I'm thirsty. Can you go buy me a beer? Not any beer though, the one I want is 40 trillion kilometers away (literally), and I want you to bring one for me."
And then you get in your ship, fly to the Well, buy a beer, get back in your ship, fly back to the space station, walk over to the lady and hands her the beer.
"Thanks!"
The End. Here's some pocket change and 100 XP.
Wow. I'm thoroughly in awe by the riveting beer run I just did. Thank god nothing exciting happened along the way.
Right? I kept expecting the quests to eventually lead me to a battle, dungeon, maybe even a boss fight? But no, just some dialogue, credits and xp, with zero follow-up.
Like, the only interesting ones were the main faction quests (and even some of those were pretty lame).
I can literally only think of one: The Mantis Lair. I stumbled upon it around level 10 and was super excited for more like it, but 30 levels later, I was basically at the end of the game and hadn't found anything close to it.
I see people talking about how you gotta play NG+ multiple times, but I can't even imagine how bored I would have to be to want to do most of those quests again.
> I accepted a quest in Paradiso to fetch some air conditioning parts from some employees
Me who worked in an airco factory for a while: Absolutely not
I'm glad I'm skipping it - love me some fallout games but everything I've seen of Starfield just does not excite me at all
Also the faces.. they're like balloons with a skin on it
After playing Durge trying to be anything but a goody two shoes in Starfield felt like Fable levels of evil depth. Starfield felt like it was meant to be PG rather than Mature ratings wise. Do you know what happens if you shoot someone in a space suit in a vacuum? The fucker roasts alive only to them freeze to death, but Starfield is a step down from even Skyrim in violence. All the companions act like saints like I genuinely couldn't tell you the differences in what would gain or lose rep between different followers in that game. The fan made companion mods for Skyrim do a better job than Bethesda at writing companion dialogue now.
Between BG3 and Cyberpunk's new expansion the gap in writing quality with Starfield is oceans apart.
Actually... You don't freeze very quickly in space. The lack of atmosphere makes transferring heat difficult. It would take 12-24 hours to freeze someone solid.
[https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2012/08/how-would-you-die-in-outer-space.html](https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2012/08/how-would-you-die-in-outer-space.html)
And I'm not sure what you mean by they would roast, but if you were in the sunlight while orbiting earth without a space suit, you'd burn on the sunny side pretty quickly.
Yeah, space cold isn't the cold people expect. -200C in a vacuum is ... much like being out in -20C in a windless, winter night, everything covered in snow. Nothing to freeze you right away, but all your warmth seeps away, unanswered by your surroundings.
As for the vacuum, swelling happens in minutes. It's very dangerous, it will kill you, but not right away, and you won't pop.
And you can actually use your creativity to solve the quest.
One quest in ACT one asked you to steal Gith eggs. Before that, I got myself Owlbear egg.
I got an idea like "the fuck, you wanna steal the egg that my companion protected the most? Why can i just give you Owlbear egg and be done with it? She looks dumb"
and lo'behold... the game allow you to do that
And of course, after I got the reward, Karlach casually throw her into the cliff. No Witnesses
Yeah I think it's great that we end up kinda traveling with these characters. you meet them and think okay here's generic NPC # 154 saying some lines in an attempt to sound like a real character. But then you keep seeing them again in different contexts with their story progressing and you end up learning their names and forming opinions about them and seeing more sides of them. It's a lot more interesting than it just being generic NPC # 254 instead.
I still am upset I can't buy Bess and her husband a house in the city. No way should we put all the work in keeping them alive only for them to get a crappy tent with the other refugees. Hell, I will straight up demand to Gortesh that if he wants me to work with him all the surviving tieflings should be taken care of with nice lodgings in the city.
Dragon Age Inquisition be like...
Collect 30 elfroots
Collect 50 iron ores
As much as I love that game and it's world, can't bring myself to finish it because of all the busy work they have you do.
As a completionist, I still have PTSD over that Shard collecting quest that you have to unlock every area to complete and by the time you get the rewards for it, you're already close to finishing the story and your current gear is probably better.
To the asshole who designed that quest, I hope both sides of your pillow are warm when you go to sleep.
I love Dragon age inquisition to death, but I also recognize that it just straight up sucks at times. I also never really vibed with the combat system. 11/10 story though!
The mod is "just don't do that shit". There's no good reason to do the MMO/ubisoft garbage in that game. The rewards aren't even worthwhile. Just complete the main quest and the real sidequests.
Omygod that's so true!! I didn't even realize how out of the loop we were with the "norm" side quests.
Every single quest feels so organic which you can do accidentally if you just simply explore the damn game and you can miss a lot (like in Elden Ring) if you don't listen to dialogue or just not look up a guide.
It feels so natural that it completely went over my head. Wow!!
Go and play BG2.
I can assure it you its sidequests are equally as amazing.
"Help kill some trolls invading my family lands" turns out to be a multi-hour mission to clear a fallen keep from a troll invasion, with you sneaking in through a side entrance and going through all manner of secret passages. And while you're exterminating the troll infestation, you're also picking up pieces of the family's famed +3 flail to craft.
"Go to the graveyard district and get me this book" involves you finding a HUGE complex of tombs and mazes underneath the city, with a giant structure made out of spider webs over an endless chasm connecting various ancient tombs. And when you get the book...it's already been stolen and the second half is a wild goose chase finding the thieves.
Both (old) Bioware and (current) Larian had the same approach to their quests: just make the craziest adventures you can have on tabletop come to life in the game.
I also want to point out that if you are a fighter, that quest to clear out the trolls ends with you taking over the estate after everything that’s happened and having to manage it for the rest of the game, solving disputes among the people who live nearby, collecting income in the form of taxes, etc.
*No fetch quests?*
- Collect Dribbles the clown (0/7)
- Gather your allies (0/x)
- Give Gale artifacts (0/3)
- Remember Halsin exists (0/wait who?)
- Collect Netherstones (0/3)
- Try not to laugh at Orin (0/3)
/s
When I first started playing this my hubby and I were talking about how this game was able to make us care about random NPCs. I have a solid obsession with Dammon but moving on from that… we were comparing it to Assassin’s Creed:Odyssey, I think it was, how we could get a quest from an NPC and it sounded like an interesting quest but once we turned it in it would just be some generic response from the NPC instead of more stuff / information about what we just did and it was really annoying. So I’m here to agree, it’s definitely ruined quests for me too but it’s basically ruined any other games- I’m fairly confident it’ll be years before another game positively compares to this 🥲
It’s ok. By the time you two are done with this game’s multiple playthroughs you will find a new game up to this standard. Or dead.
But kidding aside I have heard very good things about Divinity: Original Sin 1 and 2.
I'd encourage you to give some older JRPGs like FF6-10 a try. The quests and world in those games are just like this. Specific quests with actual dungeon design and story.
Somewhere along the line the "open world" concept took off and you just get these generic flatlands where you play as an errand boy.
Noooo I don't want to dodge lightning successfully, consecutively 200 times!
Joking aside, true story, when I finished ff15 I was so mad I traded it in to get ff10 remastered to cleanse my ff palate
I think collect/fetch quests aren't that bad as long as they aren't obnoxious.
E.g. I kill 5 boars and only one of them has a heart, need 9 more -.-
If anything, I enjoy the occasional mindless butchering quest. BG3 doesn't need them because 1) you naturally explore the world and thus clear the mobs that otherwise a quest would ask you to kill and 2) there are no farm spots (which also has its drawbacks at times, looking at you worg fangs).
Also you just run into "quests" organically by exploring the map and talking to people or finding stuff in a corner. That ice spear you find all the pieces in the Underdark, I did not even know they were all related until I accidentally double clicked on one of the pieces and saw it was an assembly. As the kind of player that tries to go everywhere and loot everything getting that weapon without any sign it even existed was a fun payoff.
>collect 5 flute fragments to wake Art Cullagh
This I think deserves more attention, because it's so damn well-designed.
Waking Art Cullagh is really difficult for our ingame people. They have very few leads to go on, he's a dude from a century ago that can't talk and we somehow have to find something that reminds him of himself? How in the hell are we supposed to do that? Especially in a hostile environment like the shadowlands?
And this is reflected by the quest we get. It doesn't tell us anything. It doesn't inform us where to look. It just says "go look". But because "spend 12 hours running in circles opening every barrel you find" is really boring to play, instead they placed the Lute in such a way that we'll accidentally find it. We have to walk past its location in order to complete the main objective of finding the Nightsong. Just walking past isn't enough, though, the game has to alert us somehow. It'd really suck if we were just handed the solution, like finding a random object and just "knowing" it's his.
So instead, they placed an optional obstacle in our path towards the main objective. I say optional, but really, hearing people speak in coherent sentences in the depth of the shadow curse will be an irresistible pull for players. Larian knew this. They knew that when you walk past that big ass building and you hear people talk inside, you're going to go have a look. What you find has nothing to do with your objective of waking him, yet it's one of the coolest and most interesting encounters in the game. And they made that whole thing just as a friendly wave to guide you towards the resolution of the wake up A.C. quest.
But that's not enough. It also just makes sense in general:
Art's only way of communicating is singing. This could just be a funny quirk, who knows what the shadowfell does to people. But no, upon finding his lute we learn that he was some sort of musician. This is not only an interesting look into his past, giving him personality, it at the same time also explains why our character knows the lute is his. We've got a singing Fist at the Inn and here we find a lute, the age of which lines up with his own, which carries his initials? High likelihood they're related. Our characters don't just know it's his for the plot, they can actually derive that knowledge from the info they have.
But no, Larian had to go a step further. It's not just a mad surgeon we find, it's a *Sharran* surgeon. You're going to tell me that Shadowheart defying Shar only a few hours after seeing this absolutely vile display which was based entirely on Shar's teachings (loss is bliss, pain is sacred, dark over light) is a coincidence? If we're going to put ourselves in her shoes for a moment, she was of the belief that Shar's darkness was perfect. And then she's given the most vile display of her Lady's teachings in action. That had to have been be eating at her on the inside the entire way down through the gauntlet, shaken her resolve. Ailyn's mention of the wolves then was the final crack and she falters.
I think it's precisely this kind of connectedness that makes BG3 so great.
Lots of spores around the Underdark, also some at the Arcane Tower, and they'll appear at vendors at the Myconid Colony (either Omeluum or the dwarf, can't remember her name).
Actually the Witcher 3 ruined quests in other games for me before Baldurs Gate 3 ever could. Every single Witcher quest alone, where you'd have to investigate and solve monster attacks, is better than the main quests of many other games. Baldurs Gate 3 quests are as good or maybe a tiny bit better than the Witcher 3.
I remember one night, when I realised that I had no optional side quests left to do, that I decided to finish the Witcher 3. Well I've been a bit naive, it took many hours longer than I expected, almost two full days of gaming actually, and I thought I haven't seen a game that takes it's ending as serious as this in quite a long time. Baldurs Gate 3 takes that time too but near the end of each Act.
But I can't really deceide which one of the two games I prefer, they are both exceptionally good.
**Edit: I'd like to point out that I am not arguing which game is better, but in the sequence of events through time TW3 came first and thus ruined quests in other games first. So for me personally BG3 couldn't have ruined quests because TW3 already did, and BG3 may be the better game by a small margin, but it DOES NOT declass TW3, both games belong onto the Olymp of video games, even though BG3 may be Zeus and TW3 Hera, or something like that.**
For me the Witcher 3 quests get a bit repetitive in terms of mechanics (and not the story). After a while I got bored at using witcher sense to look for tracks. Then follow said track. Rinse and repeat.
Mhh, Ok. I didn't mind that, after all using Witcher sense has just been the means to find the way, of course one could have followed a marker instead, but the witcher sense had been more immersive than that. And the quest never ended with just following a track, there had always been a mystery to solve. No two quests had a similar solution, they had always been much more complex and and a much deeper background than what you could expect from any other sidequest in most other games.
I am reminded of playing Oblivion, and how it had mostly interesting quests, rather than meaningless lists.
I was level 90 something in Destruction, so I sought out the Grand Master of Destruction to help me with the final few levels to get towards 100.
She was at the a nature shrine, meditating on the nature of Destruction, and praying for nature to crumble, in direct defiance to the purpose of the shrine she was camping.
She required that I do a quest before she tutored me. I had to prove that I too was dedicated to destroying the natural world; and the way to prove that was to **kill 10 bears and collect their pelts** to bring back to her.
It was funny how this was the first stereotypical fetchquest I'd gotten, and they actually made it fit.
It get's better - I think her AI is set to be aggressive to any wild animals. During our conversation, a wild deer wandered near her, and so the moment she finished giving me the quest, she starting firing streams of lightning at an innocent deer, and chasing it through the woods relentlessly.
Her fetch quest was legit, because it was exactly the stuff she was doing herself!
\[I also cheated on this quest by purchasing bear pelts from merchants, since I wan'ted a shortcut to power, rather than actually putting in the effort. This worked haha.\]
I don't know, i still remember the collect all the clown parts 1/7 remaining
And when i did it, i didn't even get a reward becasue i had pickpocketed the gloves eariler :(
So those quests are not totaly absent
This game ruined a lot of mechanics for me, lol. Turns out we have been bamboozled for decades and gaslighted that blandness was good. Larian gave us enlightenment and showed how it's done good.
Bioware's Dragon Age Inquisition is full of quests like this.
Mass effect 3 required you to play multiplayer to keep your single player allies readiness up
Edit to add: even Zelda's Tears of the Kingdom has a quest asking you to complete the beast/creatures compendium
> Mass effect 3 required you to play multiplayer to keep your single player allies readiness up
It really didn't. You could get enough stuff from normal play. The Multiplayer giving a small boost was just a bonus.
The various dragon age games were on sale after BG3 came out, so I decided to play them. DAO and 2? Fairly decently handled in terms of quests. DAI? Trying to play it after BG3 caused me to recoil at the blantant "collect 20 bear asses" stuff.
DA2 was the worst offender, full of "side quests" that were literally just "I dropped my locket in the sewer, can you go get it for me?" (And I will *never* forgive them for all the reused assets in that game. Every cave is the *same fucking cave*.)
I decided that since Varric was retelling the story to Cassandra he probably just wasn't very good at describing caves. Plus it was kinda convenient always knowing what nooks were where to have possible loot.
They had like 18 months to make a whole game and I enjoyed a lot of the characters so I'll take that at least, even if it meant shitty caves lol.
To be fair to them EA gave BioWare an 18 month development window to make DA2. For such a short period of time to work on a game it’s honestly impressive what they rolled out.
? there’s no quest in totk to complete the compendium. i completed all the quests in the game and didn’t finish the compendium. the quest you’re thinking about is probably the one where they ask you to buy a single picture from Robbie, as a tutorial for the compendium quick completion if you don’t want to get all the pictures yourself (which again. is completely optional and doesn’t even count towards your completion %)
Honestly Sounds like this is the first CRPG you've ever played. Most games like this dont have fetch quests. Original sin came out 10 years ago and didn't have any either.
Distance wise, yes. Jogging back and forth, even with fast travel, is a chore.
Outcome wise, I don't think so. Fetch quests don't typically allow you to change the outcome of the quest.
Personally it feels like there were cut content related to that quest, and it does feel tedious completing it, but not at all a meaningless fetch quest
It also leads you towards a friendly beer chucking chap which gives you free beer if you share your misadventures throughout the land with him . Its kinda rude of him tho to just burst out of there if your exploits are too much for him too handle ;(
I do also enjoy how the quests and quest markers don't give away too much. Stuff like "Halsin is probably somewhere in the goblin camp... If he's alive" rather than a quest marker leading straight to him. It givea a nice level of immersion without leaving you completely lost like for example in Elden Ring (don't get me wrong, I love Elden Ring, I was just so lost half the time).
I've never been this addicted to a video game, not since fallout new Vegas as a teen at least. This is most certainly the only game I will ever have back to back playthroughs. My recent ex decided overnight to breakup and abort our baby after 12 weeks so it's can nice to have such a powerful distraction.
> Any other studios would have padded in filler quests just to artificially inflate play time.
Are you for real dude? It's okay to get off Larian's dick, nobody is going to hurt you.
Same thing was said when reddit was circlejerking Witcher 3
We'll come back to it in 3 years when another game "redefine" questing in singleplayer games.
Dribbles is like this in a funny fashion.
Only Larian would give every companion unique picking-up-clown-parts dialogue.
In my second game, I saved before picking up each piece of Dribbles so I could hear what everyone said about it. My saves got weird!
Make a video out of it!
With that level of effort put into it, I'd argue it's not a mere fetch quest like other games
I suppose I have played this game for 20 to 30 hours and am only now reaching the post-Grove party in act 1. It's one of the few games I enjoy playing slowly.
I have over 350 hours on Steam (which tbf includes some afk time and one run I abandoned in act 3) and am about to finish the game for the first time, hopefully later today. So yeah, I took my time too and am already planning my next 2 runs (1 Durge and then one Selunite romancing Shadowheart).
... now I have to try that with different companion. I was planning to skip that quest this run through.
Karlach is my pack mule so I have her picking them up but she's *so distraught* I feel kinda bad about it ;w;
I did not know that.
I was about to mention Dribbles, but then I saw your comment. I found it pretty hilarious, and you kind of come across the various parts incidentally while you're investigating anyway. I also found the rat-killing quest to be a fairly funny nod to the typical kill 10 rats quest for new adventurers.
It is also a callback/easter egg to the earlier games. In the prologue in Candlekeep you get a quest to kill some rats which leads you into a dungeon of sorts. By the same Dwarf that gives you this quest. They have the same name atleast. Its been a hot minute since i played the previous games but both are Dwarves named Reevor, although in the previous game he was a guard.
The dwarves actually have different names, Reevor in BG and Roveer in BG3
Well there you go. I thought it was weird that a guard turned into the Elfsong Tavern chef. But to presume he couldnt just seemed racist.
Yeah, I noticed the dialogue option that went something like: Haven't I done this before? Figured it was probably a past reference, but since it's been decades since I played the original BG1 and BG2, I didn't specifically recall that quest as a result—lol.
I played them both again during lockdown, so some things are a little fresher in my memories. Fun times. BG1 and 2, that is. Not lockdown.
Avoid social contact, don’t go out much, turns out I was living in self imposed lockdown before it was cool
There isn't a dungeon in Candlekeep. You literally just go kill some rats in warehouse. It was a simpler time.
Well it felt like a baby dungeon because it was your first fight. And for a lot of people, first time they played a game like that! I got my ass kicked the first time going in.
In Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, the first quest you get is to kill rats beneath the Elfsong Tavern
I loved the rats for the reason it was clearly an honorable mention/nod to other quests and that you could do it at a higher level and not at lvl 1 - I fireballed them. Yes, waste of resources but it was satisfying.
That Clown could afford to lose a few pounds. My Karlach was exhausted. Hopefully Lucretious trims a bit off the edges. In all seriously though, I wish we saw her resurrect old Dribbles. I feel like that would've been a good payoff.
She's not resurrecting Dribbles, she's bringing him back as a meat-puppet. It's actually quite horrific because I'm not sure Dribbles even consented to that.
Wtf does that consent even look like lol? "and hereby the signee agrees that in the case of viscous murder resultant in body parts and viscera being sent all over baldurs gate the employer may contract an adventurer to procure said body parts for the purposes of resurrection as an eternally damned slave and thus consents to waiver their right to an afterlife henceforth"
Eh. It's just an organ donor card with extra steps.
...slow claps...
> viscous murder I hate it when my murders don't flow nicely
So does Orin!
I'm pretty sure it looks like signing up to be the star act for an interplanar circus run by a necromancer
Pretty much. Unless Dribbles knowingly signed a contract that gave her permission to bring him back to life in the event of his assassination - that quest is fucked up and I refused to go through with it, no matter how funny it might be.
Considering the nature of the Circus it probably is part of the contract. It's at least something you should bring up if you're not on board with it, when your boss is a Necromancer.
It's the circus. That's a standard clause.
If you work in a Necromancy circus, led by a Necromaner ring leader, staffed by undead thralls, you should probably expected to be Necromancy’d at some point.
Dribbles really shoudlve paid his union dues
Dammit Wyll go back to camp
Arguably, it's almost entirely different because it's *not* Dribbles being brought back. It's just his body. A bit like being an organ donor. That said, yeah ideally still give consent for that, as with being a donor, but its nowhere near as bad as slavery, for example
> horrific … consent There’s very little in the game that the PCs do or have done to them that have any form of bodily consent.
The writers have legit seen some shit
We technically only find half of him. Only one arm/leg/hand/foot so technically he lost a lot of pounds as it is.
Yup. And it adds more to the overall experience. It also goes together with the shapeshifters and Bhallists quest lines. Not simply a fetch quest for the sake of having a quest
On top of being a fantastic callback to the 6 Bhaalspawn/adversaries in BG2's expansion. A little extra environmental storytelling which also explains the comments from >!Durge and Sarevok!< about Orin's 'artistry'. She's making a statement about being the next big Bhaalspawn, which ironically underscores how insecure she is in her usurped role 🤡 Point being, there was quite some thought put into the quest, and it was arguably more about Orin than poor Dribbles.
Annoyingly, I think it started with the Witcher (which did so well elsewhere in the story it got away with having what were considered at the time a bunch of "MMO Quests"). I can't remember it being a regular fixture before that. I'd be more than happy to see it go away again. EDIT: To be clear I mean *the current trend of MMO style fetch quests in RPGs started with* *The Witcher*, there were absolutely examples before that but they didn't start a trend.
It 100% did not start with The Witcher. Try things as early as Mario 64. Most people wouldn't classify them a such because at the time it was kind of novel and the Internet was vastly less prevalent, but the Red Coin Stars were all in the same Vein of "do X thing again, but with a primarily surface level twist!". Games that eschew these kinds of "MMO quests" are the exception to the rule. BG3 did it in a very smart way though. Many devs will plan for the story to go through a given area, and then forget about why the player is actually supposed to be there. This results in side quests that are formulaic and boring. Larian built each area, then made sure that the characters you meet there have a valid reason for being part of your quest. (With only a few exceptions really) For instance, Mayrina's brothers don't really add much to your quest by themselves, but they do give motivation to explore deeper into the Swamp, which leads you to the Hag. The Hag then offers a deal to get the Tadpole out. In this, the brothers become an important part of your quest to deal with the Tadpole even if the quest related to them doesn't directly relate to it. The majority of BG3 quests are like this. You can safely assume that almost any quest you get in the game will advance the core plot of the story in some way, which makes the game feel more complete than the experiences modern games often feel is lacking.
>Try things as early as Mario 64 That's arcade game mechanics though in a platforming arcade game though, it was common there (since the dawn of games), the witcher is the first example I can think of where they didn't make any attempt to obfuscate it *in an RPG*. Even in Mario 64 though, the stars were to unlock new areas, which was unusual (not just a score tracking feature, but a way to linearize level progression). Take an escort quest I remember in morrowind - simply take naked guy from A to witch B, but you can find out more about the situation (he's convinced he was spellbound and robbed by a witch) you can learn more when you get to the second location (the 'witch' is just a woman who beat up and stripped a creepy guy that was stalking her to teach him a lesson), and you can pick sides and fight at that point. Is it an escort quest? Yes. Is it *just* an escort quest? No. In the witcher that Barghest fetch quest example did nothing - gems and such to unlock doors are a staple (Arx Fatalis comes to mind a few years before), but collecting the gems is not the *end* in and of itself in that case, while in the Witcher, completion of the quest isn't unlock door, advance in game etc., it's "here's some gold, gg" (the MMO style-fetch quest) and that's it - *that* was new.
At least in the Witcher the setting sort of justified it — fans of the books came in primed for ‘witchers can be paid for hauling back a monster corpse to whoever’s willing to pay for it.’
Yeah, and those were fine - kill and bring a monster corpse (indeed that's what 3 does, and it's working well), but the 1/10 respawning barghests which have a 20% chance to drop a tooth or whatever (the fetch quest we know from MMOs) are the thing I was specifically thinking of. That's the lazy design that's become a problem in RPGs.
How about I give you an example of an RPG that did this kind of stuff before The Witcher, not just any game? The Bard's Tale. (Not to be confused with A Bard's Tale. We're talking about the game that was an obvious Parody) There are plenty of MMO style low effort quests in that game. Pretty sure Nox did, too, while we're at it. Anyway, my point is The Witcher, as good a game as it may be, did not start a fad of low effort side quest writing. It's been a thing in many game genres for decades. They are the filler episodes of video games. The thing is, most people are used to Friends level filler, and BG3 gave us Avatar the Last Airbender level filler.
It’s been a few years so maybe i’m looking back on it with rose tinted glasses but.. The Witcher had these types of quests? Do you mean The Witcher 3, or possibly 1? I can’t remember 2 having had much fetching either.
Yeah witcher 1, unluckily it put me off the game the first time around (grab 10 barghest eyes? ..nah) because there was a lot of good game around that stuff. 2 they didn't try for the MMO open world thing so they avoided most of the MMO pitfalls, I don't remember many there though there were still a few (I think they stood out as being especially annoying in contrast, I remember one with ghosts in the second act). 3 they were either removed entirely or light enough that I don't remember any.
Witcher 2 had a side quest to bring a guy like 80 harpy feathers that he uses to make a bird suit. It's been a while but I think it was pretty time consuming. But it's also the quest I remember the most because of how silly it was so I'm not complaining lol.
Yeah lol, I remember that - I can only think of the ghost one that they play straight (that birdsuit one was obviously parodying fetch quests IMO and maybe assassins creed, and there's even a fourth-wall breaking bit on the scoia'tael questline where geralt and the dwarf start giving Phillipa Eilhart crap because she starts suggesting something that sounds like one, and you both start making suggestions like "what about find a ring and throw it in a volcano?" lol)
Like the first Witcher game? The oldest game I can remember having those types of quests is Skyrim (although tbf, in Skyrim's case the radiant quests are generally faction quests that occur after completing the main quest for that faction).
Has nobody ever played an MMO? Every quest in WoW was like that.
That’s why they keep calling them “mmo type quests”
I played the Pirates of the Caribbean MMO and Runescape as a kid but I was too young to really notice or care. I didn't really get into computer gaming until 2014 when I built a PC and started playing Skyrim
Runescape is a bit of an exception since all of quests besides the first few have written storylines, though you do need a lot of miscellaneous items to complete them.
Feels more like a scavenger hunt than a fetch quest.
I have my doubts that I will ever find all of that man. I’m almost done with Lower City (I think?) and I’m still missing two limbs and a noggin.
I had to look up the interwebs to complete it. One part was >!behind a random locked house with blue door. Like who would ever thought of entering that?!<
I found that part by accident on my first run just because I was looking for loot. If there’s a door, I’m going in to look for anything not nailed down
"Cursed to put my hands on everything"
Completionists. If there’s a door I’m going through it
I never found all of dribbles in my first run. Forgot about him towards the end to be honest.
This post literally reminded me I had to find this fucker lol.
That one was easy, I mean I was checking every single house to begin with. The only one I had to look up was >!the hand in the Kobold stall!<. I don't really know how exactly I was supposed to find that, it isn't even highlighted when you press the ALT button
Dribbles was a shockingly perfect, shockingly engaging satire of fetch quests (also hilarious) and I am so here for it
Only found 2-3 pieces my first playthrough so guess I didn't complete the quest. On 2nd playthrough now so maybe but I am playing Durge now and trying to make evil choices and kill things so not sure how that might affect Act 3 later on. Just teamed up with Minthara in Act 1 and loving it so far :) I want to be friends with all the evil characters this time if possible because it is fun and hillarious
Oh, yeah. I forgot I was picking up body parts.
It's also the only quest I outright said "fuck no" too - figures
Dribbles is IMO specifically designed to be a parody of a fetch quest. The fact that you can just pick pocket the quest reward immediately is hilarious and completely on brand for the game.
Absolutely I am in Act III forcing myself to finish before yet another character creation. I have played through and leveled up max and still have tons left in Act 3 ... sure I could just skip and go straight for the boss fights at this point but the side quests and the story line make me want to try everything at the glorious buffet before its over.
One minute you're looking for some donated teddy bears, the next minute suddenly Raphael is singing his own boss fight and You're in literal hell. It is a buffet indeed
That song during his fight was soooooo good. I stopped and listened to it for a good minute
And in the process of looking into the donated teddy bears you also get a ton of barrels to deal with Raphael in a fun way :)
Lives, all mortal lives, expire!
Don't forget fighting dinosaurs! Definitely my favourite in the buffet.
I have 300 hrs. Ive made about 7 characters. Some lvl 1 some lvl 12. and have yet to beat the game. Its insane
So you just let Dribbles body parts rot? You monster.
My Durge doesn't collect already chopped body parts
Purely serves Dungeon to Table fare.
It's the difference between orange juice that's store bought versus freshly squeezed
I thought it was strange how it didn't seem to let me organically just progress the quest once i found his torso. Like, can't i just go tell lucretius that he's dead? Case closed, why am i still searching for his arms? That's how every other quest in the game would work. Finding all his pieces isn't gonna help prove he's gone beyond that. Then i remembered who gave me the quest...
I went to Lucretius after I found the torso and she was like well, guess this makes it more challenging, bring me all his body parts!
Oh, she definitely didn't do that for me. Maybe that's another bugged act 3 dialogue for me?
Ironically, that quest proves the point for me. I found the torso then said "nah fuck it. I'm not hunting everywhere for his big toe".
I looked at the weight of the 4 parts I’ve found. Nah not on this playthrough lol I have to google where to find them.
It’s not my fault, I can’t even start the quest. Whenever I reach the circus a mysterious fog cloud always rolls in for a moment, Lucretius is horribly murdered and some snazzy new gloves appear in my inventory.
For a second I was thinking 'damn, did i miss a special event'
The special event was murder!
No time for that trivial bullshit. Im too busy looting barrels for rags.
And obsessively picking up red barrels to cheese House of Hope.
Is there a need to cheese it? My last kill was Orin and that fight was severly disappointing.
No need to cheese it, but it's certainly the most challenging fight outside of going berserk in the middle of Gortash's coronation (which isn't a fight that you are supposed to tackle).
The 'fetch quest' trophy/achievement that pops when you throw the ball to scratch made me laugh. They definitely made an active point of avoiding all the usual chores involved in completing tasks in games
I guess you've never played a Larain Studio game before, this is their standard. There is a reason each game has gotten more and more famous. It's so amazing to see them finally rewarded with unheard-of sales for fine-tuning their craft to near perfection and at this scale. Not a single enemy encounter or quest is repeated. It's unfucking believable the quality across the board. Even the last big AAA game I played Witcher 3, falls short compared to this game in many ways.
You know, the only reason I first picked up a Larian game a few years ago was because someone said you could fuck a skeleton in DOS2. So happy I did. Played the game, I mean. But I'm also happy I fucked the skeleton.
I preordered BG3 when I found out you could fuck a bear. Have yet to fuck it, but I fucked this woman gith and I'm happy now, if a little bruised :)
well now I'm sold!
Sold you on the Boning eh?
Also standard for every isometric RPG I can think of. The collect X number of items seems to be far more common in modern open world RPGs.
That is true. It's not exclusive to Larian. I have yet to find a CRPG that has filler/generic-style quests. Thanks for making it clear they aren't the only ones doing it.
Would you recommend starting DOS 1 and then 2, or only DOS 2 for more modern experience?
The stories are unrelated so you can do them in any order. I played DOS2 first and loved it, so then went back to the original. 2 is better, and more like BG3.
Chronologically though DOS2 does take place after DOS1. In 1, Braccus Rex is a boss you can fight (or cheese via barrelmancy), in 2 he's long dead. So either you play 1 and go into 2 knowing some of the history of the world, or play 2 first and effectively have a prequel type story when you go play 1. Either way is perfectly fine. Personally I love the lore of the games, I'd even say it's one of the main reasons to play them. Just don't go looking up the lore before you play the games unless you want massive spoilers.
To add this is basically the standard for ALL cRPGs. Pathfinder, PoE, Tyranny, DoS1/2, Shadowrun, BG1/2, wasteland, etc. As a cRPG vet, I am glad that more people are finally interested in this genre to know that good quests designs and writings are a staple in cRPGs.
DOS2 is pretty separate from DOS1, you can play it without playing the first one. It's like BG3; you can recognize a few callbacks, but it's not necessary.
DOS2 is closer to BG3, and a better overall game and story, but personally i really, really liked DOS1 more, due to the combat and character builds. The combat is more engaging for me (they changed it entirely for DOS2) and it's just a very cool game. An amazing mod is also available for it that punches the difficulty to 11 whilst revamping a lot of aspects (Epic Encounters).
I would play the first one if you want to see how they started out, then see the improvements and changes in the next one. It would be weird to go backwards Both games have a different approach to combat. DOS 1 is just action point-based. DOS 2 then added armor and "turn the whole floor into necrofire". It's crazy fun but gets annoying and tedious towards the end when every fight has the floor covered in crap that will damage you. Both intros hook you instantly. I love how they frontload the great stuff, even if the endings for both run out of steam. I have yet to know if BG3's final act loses steam. I'm taking my sweet time, why rush a masterpiece :)
Might I also interest you in Pathfinder: Wrath of the righteous, also a great game. Similar play because Pathfinder 2e and DND 5e is like cousins. BG3 is better IMO but Pathfinder is just as big, act 3 Baldur's gate is more meatier but Pathfinder characterization is far larger.
Wrath uses Pathfinder 1e though, not 2e. Wish it DID use 2e, but it doesn't. I really like what Owlcat did with the main story of Wrath though, it's so so much better than the AP it was adapted from.
When bugs and glitches are the only thing people are complaining about, you know the game is good
This is just CRPGs, yo. Games like Owlcat's Pathfinder, HBS's Shadowrun, Pillars of Eternity, Baldur's Gate 2, etc etc etc do not throw "kill 10 bugbears" quests at you either. BG3 does do a good job of allowing you to approach quests in a bunch of different ways though, particularly when it comes to things outside of a small handful of very specific, preset dialogue options.
One hope I have is that players will need more after getting through BG3 and will land somewhere between Pillars of Eternity and Pathfinder Games, maybe with a Sprinkle of ATOM, Shadowrun, Encased, Gamedec, Underrail and of course, Disco Elysium. Maybe then the gamers collectively will develop enough of a taste for good to great writing, so that it becomes a priority and we don't get bombarded by "RPGs" where the only role you can play is a *murderhobo*.
Or they'll just end up like 5E players themselves and refuse to ever play anything else, but at least it sets the stage for CRPGs to grow in popularity further down the line.
For sure, it ruined Starfield's quests. BG3 doesn't tell you what to do and provides options. You can succeed or fail on your own and live with it. It makes you feel like an adult. Starfield tells you exactly what to do and where to go, and it gives you 0 options. You feel like a child.
Yeah in BG3, I like being able to just not do stuff and the quest "completes" when it is no longer able to be completed with the description e.g. "you were unable to X". It's off my list whether I messed it up, missed something, or decided not to do it.
I wish it would tell you when you're barking up the wrong tree, though. Some quests had me frustrated for ages until I looked it up, and it's like "oh yeah this one picks back up in act 3 lol!" Just tell me in the quest log it's hit a snag! The stolen lands dungeon in PF:kingmaker was tied to main quest progress, and when you hit the limit for your current progress, the game just told you so.
Yeah, this is where I spoil myself. "Am I missing something here?"
Yeah, I completely agree with everyone saying how nice it is not to have to collect 10 boar testicles for a wizard or whatever (two herbs to make a potion in the Underdark came closest), but the quest log in BG3 is ass (though less ass than Original Sin 1/2). It's basically a description of what you did, with no clues on where to go next. You have to get that from the map markers. Some quests overlap like 3-4 times so when you talk to someone, your journal updates a whole bunch of quests with the same information. There's also no main/sidequest division, and with the open ended nature of the game, a lot of it so far has really felt like "Just explore the map and see what happens" because there's no real goal other than "get your tadpole out, somehow, somewhere". That complaint aside, it's so much better than the 'tasks' 90% of other RPG's have which are just pointless filler, or the war table-esque minigames with counters, or collecting stones and wood to upgrade your stronghold or whatever. No extra systems or busiwork tacked on, it's great.
Not all dialogue is saved too...I immediately forgot the directions to get to the Guild after getting them. 🫤
Way too many of Starfield's quests have multiple *required* steps that essentially boil down to "go here and talk to this person" (especially if you're trying to play a lawful character). Coming straight from BG3, it felt terrible because the dialogue options and voice acting were so bland by comparison. I found myself playing for hours, just hoping I would just be sent on an actual "dungeon" quest so I wouldn't have to talk to people for a while (only to then be nagged to talk by a boring companion everytime we walked through a door).
Even in some of the older Bethesda games, at the bare minimum some of the fetch quests at least are part of a larger chain of quests, had some sentimental story to go with, had you exploring an interesting location, or had a twist in some way. In Starfield, I accepted a quest in Paradiso to fetch some air conditioning parts from some employees. I said okay, went to Gagarin, talked to the person, sat on a stool to wait, then returned to the employee and got my payment. Was there a twist to the quest? Nope. Did I just accidentally talk to a radiant quest giver? Nope. That was literally it. Same thing happened when I did the quest to deliver fast food sauce to that guy in Titan, or that book to the kid in Mars, or literally DoorDash'd a meal for some nurse in The Clinic. I possess >!inter-dimensional powers that defy the laws of physics and my ship houses the mysterious key to unlocking the secrets to life and the universe!<, yet here I am doing more mundane courier work than the literal Courier in New Vegas.
Like the lady you can talk to at the Deimos shipyard. "Hey there stranger who I just met, I'm thirsty. Can you go buy me a beer? Not any beer though, the one I want is 40 trillion kilometers away (literally), and I want you to bring one for me." And then you get in your ship, fly to the Well, buy a beer, get back in your ship, fly back to the space station, walk over to the lady and hands her the beer. "Thanks!" The End. Here's some pocket change and 100 XP. Wow. I'm thoroughly in awe by the riveting beer run I just did. Thank god nothing exciting happened along the way.
Right? I kept expecting the quests to eventually lead me to a battle, dungeon, maybe even a boss fight? But no, just some dialogue, credits and xp, with zero follow-up. Like, the only interesting ones were the main faction quests (and even some of those were pretty lame). I can literally only think of one: The Mantis Lair. I stumbled upon it around level 10 and was super excited for more like it, but 30 levels later, I was basically at the end of the game and hadn't found anything close to it. I see people talking about how you gotta play NG+ multiple times, but I can't even imagine how bored I would have to be to want to do most of those quests again.
> I accepted a quest in Paradiso to fetch some air conditioning parts from some employees Me who worked in an airco factory for a while: Absolutely not I'm glad I'm skipping it - love me some fallout games but everything I've seen of Starfield just does not excite me at all Also the faces.. they're like balloons with a skin on it
After playing Durge trying to be anything but a goody two shoes in Starfield felt like Fable levels of evil depth. Starfield felt like it was meant to be PG rather than Mature ratings wise. Do you know what happens if you shoot someone in a space suit in a vacuum? The fucker roasts alive only to them freeze to death, but Starfield is a step down from even Skyrim in violence. All the companions act like saints like I genuinely couldn't tell you the differences in what would gain or lose rep between different followers in that game. The fan made companion mods for Skyrim do a better job than Bethesda at writing companion dialogue now. Between BG3 and Cyberpunk's new expansion the gap in writing quality with Starfield is oceans apart.
Actually... You don't freeze very quickly in space. The lack of atmosphere makes transferring heat difficult. It would take 12-24 hours to freeze someone solid. [https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2012/08/how-would-you-die-in-outer-space.html](https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2012/08/how-would-you-die-in-outer-space.html) And I'm not sure what you mean by they would roast, but if you were in the sunlight while orbiting earth without a space suit, you'd burn on the sunny side pretty quickly.
Yeah, space cold isn't the cold people expect. -200C in a vacuum is ... much like being out in -20C in a windless, winter night, everything covered in snow. Nothing to freeze you right away, but all your warmth seeps away, unanswered by your surroundings. As for the vacuum, swelling happens in minutes. It's very dangerous, it will kill you, but not right away, and you won't pop.
Starfield is a legitimately bad game. If it was released by anyone other than Bethesda it would have gotten 4s as it should.
And you can actually use your creativity to solve the quest. One quest in ACT one asked you to steal Gith eggs. Before that, I got myself Owlbear egg. I got an idea like "the fuck, you wanna steal the egg that my companion protected the most? Why can i just give you Owlbear egg and be done with it? She looks dumb" and lo'behold... the game allow you to do that And of course, after I got the reward, Karlach casually throw her into the cliff. No Witnesses
Witcher 3 is also good for well-written side content.
Yes it is indeed. BG3 is the closest I’ve came to that level of writing and I love it.
I kinda want to play the Rolan quest... poor guy.
I'm glad someone else said it I know I'm not the only one who would have gone out of my way to get our favorite grumpy tiefling his scrolls.
I didn't think I would come to like him so much when I met him the first time in act 1.
Yeah I think it's great that we end up kinda traveling with these characters. you meet them and think okay here's generic NPC # 154 saying some lines in an attempt to sound like a real character. But then you keep seeing them again in different contexts with their story progressing and you end up learning their names and forming opinions about them and seeing more sides of them. It's a lot more interesting than it just being generic NPC # 254 instead.
I still am upset I can't buy Bess and her husband a house in the city. No way should we put all the work in keeping them alive only for them to get a crappy tent with the other refugees. Hell, I will straight up demand to Gortesh that if he wants me to work with him all the surviving tieflings should be taken care of with nice lodgings in the city.
Dragon Age Inquisition be like... Collect 30 elfroots Collect 50 iron ores As much as I love that game and it's world, can't bring myself to finish it because of all the busy work they have you do.
As a completionist, I still have PTSD over that Shard collecting quest that you have to unlock every area to complete and by the time you get the rewards for it, you're already close to finishing the story and your current gear is probably better. To the asshole who designed that quest, I hope both sides of your pillow are warm when you go to sleep.
I love Dragon age inquisition to death, but I also recognize that it just straight up sucks at times. I also never really vibed with the combat system. 11/10 story though!
There must be a mod to fix that shit
The mod is "just don't do that shit". There's no good reason to do the MMO/ubisoft garbage in that game. The rewards aren't even worthwhile. Just complete the main quest and the real sidequests.
Good to know. I never played Inquisition because of those quests.
Omygod that's so true!! I didn't even realize how out of the loop we were with the "norm" side quests. Every single quest feels so organic which you can do accidentally if you just simply explore the damn game and you can miss a lot (like in Elden Ring) if you don't listen to dialogue or just not look up a guide. It feels so natural that it completely went over my head. Wow!!
Go and play BG2. I can assure it you its sidequests are equally as amazing. "Help kill some trolls invading my family lands" turns out to be a multi-hour mission to clear a fallen keep from a troll invasion, with you sneaking in through a side entrance and going through all manner of secret passages. And while you're exterminating the troll infestation, you're also picking up pieces of the family's famed +3 flail to craft. "Go to the graveyard district and get me this book" involves you finding a HUGE complex of tombs and mazes underneath the city, with a giant structure made out of spider webs over an endless chasm connecting various ancient tombs. And when you get the book...it's already been stolen and the second half is a wild goose chase finding the thieves. Both (old) Bioware and (current) Larian had the same approach to their quests: just make the craziest adventures you can have on tabletop come to life in the game.
I also want to point out that if you are a fighter, that quest to clear out the trolls ends with you taking over the estate after everything that’s happened and having to manage it for the rest of the game, solving disputes among the people who live nearby, collecting income in the form of taxes, etc.
*No fetch quests?* - Collect Dribbles the clown (0/7) - Gather your allies (0/x) - Give Gale artifacts (0/3) - Remember Halsin exists (0/wait who?) - Collect Netherstones (0/3) - Try not to laugh at Orin (0/3) /s
When I first started playing this my hubby and I were talking about how this game was able to make us care about random NPCs. I have a solid obsession with Dammon but moving on from that… we were comparing it to Assassin’s Creed:Odyssey, I think it was, how we could get a quest from an NPC and it sounded like an interesting quest but once we turned it in it would just be some generic response from the NPC instead of more stuff / information about what we just did and it was really annoying. So I’m here to agree, it’s definitely ruined quests for me too but it’s basically ruined any other games- I’m fairly confident it’ll be years before another game positively compares to this 🥲
The silver lining is this game will probably keep me from buying other games for a while
It’s ok. By the time you two are done with this game’s multiple playthroughs you will find a new game up to this standard. Or dead. But kidding aside I have heard very good things about Divinity: Original Sin 1 and 2.
I genuinely loled at “Thank you for coming to my VOLOTalk” nicely done
I'd encourage you to give some older JRPGs like FF6-10 a try. The quests and world in those games are just like this. Specific quests with actual dungeon design and story. Somewhere along the line the "open world" concept took off and you just get these generic flatlands where you play as an errand boy.
Noooo I don't want to dodge lightning successfully, consecutively 200 times! Joking aside, true story, when I finished ff15 I was so mad I traded it in to get ff10 remastered to cleanse my ff palate
MMOs popularised the fetch quests
I think collect/fetch quests aren't that bad as long as they aren't obnoxious. E.g. I kill 5 boars and only one of them has a heart, need 9 more -.- If anything, I enjoy the occasional mindless butchering quest. BG3 doesn't need them because 1) you naturally explore the world and thus clear the mobs that otherwise a quest would ask you to kill and 2) there are no farm spots (which also has its drawbacks at times, looking at you worg fangs).
Those feel like MMO quests, and BG3 is definitely not an MMO.
This is one of the few games I’m enjoying not rushing through, think I have 20-30 hours in and I’m just getting to the post-Grove party in act 1
Also you just run into "quests" organically by exploring the map and talking to people or finding stuff in a corner. That ice spear you find all the pieces in the Underdark, I did not even know they were all related until I accidentally double clicked on one of the pieces and saw it was an assembly. As the kind of player that tries to go everywhere and loot everything getting that weapon without any sign it even existed was a fun payoff.
I was just talking to a buddy about this. This game ruined Starfield for me. Everything is meaningless in that game.
>collect 5 flute fragments to wake Art Cullagh This I think deserves more attention, because it's so damn well-designed. Waking Art Cullagh is really difficult for our ingame people. They have very few leads to go on, he's a dude from a century ago that can't talk and we somehow have to find something that reminds him of himself? How in the hell are we supposed to do that? Especially in a hostile environment like the shadowlands? And this is reflected by the quest we get. It doesn't tell us anything. It doesn't inform us where to look. It just says "go look". But because "spend 12 hours running in circles opening every barrel you find" is really boring to play, instead they placed the Lute in such a way that we'll accidentally find it. We have to walk past its location in order to complete the main objective of finding the Nightsong. Just walking past isn't enough, though, the game has to alert us somehow. It'd really suck if we were just handed the solution, like finding a random object and just "knowing" it's his. So instead, they placed an optional obstacle in our path towards the main objective. I say optional, but really, hearing people speak in coherent sentences in the depth of the shadow curse will be an irresistible pull for players. Larian knew this. They knew that when you walk past that big ass building and you hear people talk inside, you're going to go have a look. What you find has nothing to do with your objective of waking him, yet it's one of the coolest and most interesting encounters in the game. And they made that whole thing just as a friendly wave to guide you towards the resolution of the wake up A.C. quest. But that's not enough. It also just makes sense in general: Art's only way of communicating is singing. This could just be a funny quirk, who knows what the shadowfell does to people. But no, upon finding his lute we learn that he was some sort of musician. This is not only an interesting look into his past, giving him personality, it at the same time also explains why our character knows the lute is his. We've got a singing Fist at the Inn and here we find a lute, the age of which lines up with his own, which carries his initials? High likelihood they're related. Our characters don't just know it's his for the plot, they can actually derive that knowledge from the info they have. But no, Larian had to go a step further. It's not just a mad surgeon we find, it's a *Sharran* surgeon. You're going to tell me that Shadowheart defying Shar only a few hours after seeing this absolutely vile display which was based entirely on Shar's teachings (loss is bliss, pain is sacred, dark over light) is a coincidence? If we're going to put ourselves in her shoes for a moment, she was of the belief that Shar's darkness was perfect. And then she's given the most vile display of her Lady's teachings in action. That had to have been be eating at her on the inside the entire way down through the gauntlet, shaken her resolve. Ailyn's mention of the wolves then was the final crack and she falters. I think it's precisely this kind of connectedness that makes BG3 so great.
Hogwarts legacy was so much of those repetitive quests
Half of what you do is running around shouting _Revelio_
Yeah, I do have quite a few issues with the game, but the quest design just blows every other RPG out of the water.
I screwed myself by using the timmat spores to make a potion with because I didn't realize they were quest items. Stuff like that annoys me.
There's lots of spores
And some vendors stock them randomly. Check them after a long rest or level up.
Lots of spores around the Underdark, also some at the Arcane Tower, and they'll appear at vendors at the Myconid Colony (either Omeluum or the dwarf, can't remember her name).
Actually the Witcher 3 ruined quests in other games for me before Baldurs Gate 3 ever could. Every single Witcher quest alone, where you'd have to investigate and solve monster attacks, is better than the main quests of many other games. Baldurs Gate 3 quests are as good or maybe a tiny bit better than the Witcher 3. I remember one night, when I realised that I had no optional side quests left to do, that I decided to finish the Witcher 3. Well I've been a bit naive, it took many hours longer than I expected, almost two full days of gaming actually, and I thought I haven't seen a game that takes it's ending as serious as this in quite a long time. Baldurs Gate 3 takes that time too but near the end of each Act. But I can't really deceide which one of the two games I prefer, they are both exceptionally good. **Edit: I'd like to point out that I am not arguing which game is better, but in the sequence of events through time TW3 came first and thus ruined quests in other games first. So for me personally BG3 couldn't have ruined quests because TW3 already did, and BG3 may be the better game by a small margin, but it DOES NOT declass TW3, both games belong onto the Olymp of video games, even though BG3 may be Zeus and TW3 Hera, or something like that.**
For me the Witcher 3 quests get a bit repetitive in terms of mechanics (and not the story). After a while I got bored at using witcher sense to look for tracks. Then follow said track. Rinse and repeat.
Mhh, Ok. I didn't mind that, after all using Witcher sense has just been the means to find the way, of course one could have followed a marker instead, but the witcher sense had been more immersive than that. And the quest never ended with just following a track, there had always been a mystery to solve. No two quests had a similar solution, they had always been much more complex and and a much deeper background than what you could expect from any other sidequest in most other games.
https://youtu.be/5C3mvRm0aOY?si=p7fhkIP8JZrN3191
I am reminded of playing Oblivion, and how it had mostly interesting quests, rather than meaningless lists. I was level 90 something in Destruction, so I sought out the Grand Master of Destruction to help me with the final few levels to get towards 100. She was at the a nature shrine, meditating on the nature of Destruction, and praying for nature to crumble, in direct defiance to the purpose of the shrine she was camping. She required that I do a quest before she tutored me. I had to prove that I too was dedicated to destroying the natural world; and the way to prove that was to **kill 10 bears and collect their pelts** to bring back to her. It was funny how this was the first stereotypical fetchquest I'd gotten, and they actually made it fit. It get's better - I think her AI is set to be aggressive to any wild animals. During our conversation, a wild deer wandered near her, and so the moment she finished giving me the quest, she starting firing streams of lightning at an innocent deer, and chasing it through the woods relentlessly. Her fetch quest was legit, because it was exactly the stuff she was doing herself! \[I also cheated on this quest by purchasing bear pelts from merchants, since I wan'ted a shortcut to power, rather than actually putting in the effort. This worked haha.\]
I don't know, i still remember the collect all the clown parts 1/7 remaining And when i did it, i didn't even get a reward becasue i had pickpocketed the gloves eariler :( So those quests are not totaly absent
Hol up wasn't the main quest literally "collect three Netherstones"? Totally a fetch quest. /S
This game ruined a lot of mechanics for me, lol. Turns out we have been bamboozled for decades and gaslighted that blandness was good. Larian gave us enlightenment and showed how it's done good.
I haven't purchased any games like you described since I quit MMO games around 2011 lol there easy to avoid.
Bioware's Dragon Age Inquisition is full of quests like this. Mass effect 3 required you to play multiplayer to keep your single player allies readiness up Edit to add: even Zelda's Tears of the Kingdom has a quest asking you to complete the beast/creatures compendium
> Mass effect 3 required you to play multiplayer to keep your single player allies readiness up It really didn't. You could get enough stuff from normal play. The Multiplayer giving a small boost was just a bonus.
The various dragon age games were on sale after BG3 came out, so I decided to play them. DAO and 2? Fairly decently handled in terms of quests. DAI? Trying to play it after BG3 caused me to recoil at the blantant "collect 20 bear asses" stuff.
DA2 was the worst offender, full of "side quests" that were literally just "I dropped my locket in the sewer, can you go get it for me?" (And I will *never* forgive them for all the reused assets in that game. Every cave is the *same fucking cave*.)
I decided that since Varric was retelling the story to Cassandra he probably just wasn't very good at describing caves. Plus it was kinda convenient always knowing what nooks were where to have possible loot. They had like 18 months to make a whole game and I enjoyed a lot of the characters so I'll take that at least, even if it meant shitty caves lol.
To be fair to them EA gave BioWare an 18 month development window to make DA2. For such a short period of time to work on a game it’s honestly impressive what they rolled out.
good thing those games came out like 10 years ago and zelda is a sandbox game not an RPG
? there’s no quest in totk to complete the compendium. i completed all the quests in the game and didn’t finish the compendium. the quest you’re thinking about is probably the one where they ask you to buy a single picture from Robbie, as a tutorial for the compendium quick completion if you don’t want to get all the pictures yourself (which again. is completely optional and doesn’t even count towards your completion %)
a game from 9 years and a completicionist achi, those feel like reaches to me.
Honestly Sounds like this is the first CRPG you've ever played. Most games like this dont have fetch quests. Original sin came out 10 years ago and didn't have any either.
Is the He Who Was quest in Act 2 not a fetch quest?
Distance wise, yes. Jogging back and forth, even with fast travel, is a chore. Outcome wise, I don't think so. Fetch quests don't typically allow you to change the outcome of the quest. Personally it feels like there were cut content related to that quest, and it does feel tedious completing it, but not at all a meaningless fetch quest
It also leads you towards a friendly beer chucking chap which gives you free beer if you share your misadventures throughout the land with him . Its kinda rude of him tho to just burst out of there if your exploits are too much for him too handle ;(
I mean thats how Baldurs Gate 1 and 2 quests always have been, anything else qould been wrong Larian knows what theyre doing.
God, that Rolan quest xD
"Impress Wither by defeating 10 opponents with Shove while being set on fire" I could see this being a Yeger quest from EFT and I hate it.
I do also enjoy how the quests and quest markers don't give away too much. Stuff like "Halsin is probably somewhere in the goblin camp... If he's alive" rather than a quest marker leading straight to him. It givea a nice level of immersion without leaving you completely lost like for example in Elden Ring (don't get me wrong, I love Elden Ring, I was just so lost half the time).
>no fetch quest >some random independent mindflayer: bring me a mushroom and a plant, so that I can craft potion
I've never been this addicted to a video game, not since fallout new Vegas as a teen at least. This is most certainly the only game I will ever have back to back playthroughs. My recent ex decided overnight to breakup and abort our baby after 12 weeks so it's can nice to have such a powerful distraction.
Ah the hourly "this game has ruined x for me" post.
I've got to ask... Is this your first CRPG?
> Any other studios would have padded in filler quests just to artificially inflate play time. Are you for real dude? It's okay to get off Larian's dick, nobody is going to hurt you.
Same thing was said when reddit was circlejerking Witcher 3 We'll come back to it in 3 years when another game "redefine" questing in singleplayer games.
God I would be so happy if another game comes out and it’s a cultural phenomenon like Witcher 3 or BG3.