Throughout the industry, just about every game that has single player with real-time elements has a functioning player controlled pause that will entirely pause the game. In a handful of games, a window might pop open or they might darken the screen. In the Baldur's Gate series, pausing, queuing actions, then unpausing is pretty standard gameplay.

Baldur's Gate 3 doesn't have a proper player controlled pause remotely similar to any games that I've ever played, especially the Baldur's Gate series. For reasons that baffle me, the Divinity developers and fans alike absolutely hate the idea. The developers have even gone so far as creating the Divinity engine to make it impossible for modders to make a functioning player controlled pause.

Some Divinity fans might point to pressing Escape or entering Baldur's Gate 3's turn-based mode. Pressing Escape will pause the player, but it doesn't properly pause the game nor most of the NPCs within it. Turn-based mode, which cannot be entered when any background combat is occurring, also won't pause a good portion of the game. In no way, do either of these act like pausing will in any other games that I've played, particularly the Baldur's Gate series. These aren't bugs, but intentional engine limitations.

I've made requests for adding a functionable player controlled pause, but Divinity fans have flooded the request with negative feedback or bad information. It's my hope that Baldur's Gate 3's developers might actually read one of these requests and lift the ban against having a proper player controlled pause. I'll be the first to admit that I don't know much about coding, but how hard would it actually be to, at least, allow modders to fix something like this?

BG3 has it's own forum now. Posting there might increase the chance of the devs noticing

As I mentioned, I created the request here: https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=654123#Post654123 , but the thread has been flooded by Divinity fans providing bad information or absolutely hating the idea. Am I the only one that uses pause in the way that I've outlined in my OP?

here is a hint mate, pause breaks multiplayer... that's why its not allowed

I remember ages ago I tried BG2 on Gamespy. I tried pausing to cast my spells, but the other players kept unpausing. I couldn't get anything done.

I haven't played multiplayer, but with every other game that I've played that does have multiplayer option available seems to have it figured out. Neverwinter Nights being a good example. Have different pause options for multiplayer? Seems like lazy development.

The issue isn't necessarily one of developers being lazy. It's that player-controlled pause in combat really only works with real-time combat engines. With Baldur's Gate III being turn-based combat, there really isn't a need for a pause in combat function, since you can take all the time you want between moves to plsn your strategy.

What it sounds like you're wanting would essentially be a complete re-working of the combat engine, which would be a fundamental (and monumental) change in the way the current Baldur's Gate III works. At this stage in the development, Larian may not be willing to put the time and effort needed to add such a change to the system. This especially could be the case if their development staff is relatively small.

That isn't to say it's impossible they wouldn't look into it later. Pillars of Eternity II devs did later offer a patch to the game that added a turn-based mode as an opion to the real-time with pause combat in the game. It may be possible Larian would be willing to offer it as an option after the main game releases.

Hope this helps. =)

Flynn

I definitely agree that the lack of a true pause is certainly an engine limitation. DOS games had the same problem. They would have had to put some effort forth and add true pausing options to the engine for this idea to work. I was hoping that they did this for BG3, but those hopes quickly died in a fire.

I've played a good number of turn-based games, too, and I can only recall the ones made with this engine not having a real pause. Not turn-based, but I've been pointed to the Dark Souls games as other games that have no real pause. So, I guess that it's not just Larian that hates pausing, but that not having a real pause is a trend in today's games that I haven't caught onto.

At this point, I have little hope that things will change to where even modders would be allowed to add a real pause.

patch 4 is being streamed as a live event next week so maybe you can ask them about it

Are you talking about just a normal pause like most games have or a pause mode like in BG1+2 during which you can assign commands?

I don't understand what a pause is for, in a game that has turn-based combat. I'm not trying to start a fight, I just don't understand the conversation.

From what I gather, only the combat is turn-based, and a player may want to pause outside of combat.

Thanks. I'd be a bit annoyed if there were timed things and I could not pause to get the door or the phone without having to go back to my best save. So I will allow it (jk).

That sounds like a pause to me. I am back to not understanding what the conversation is about.