Anyone else feel the same way? I finally slogged through Act 1 for maybe the sixth time as I had played it through early access, and find myself in yet another zone where I have to fight my way through hordes of enemies. There's no village, city, or town where I can forget about the main questline for a few hours and instead meet some of the local inhabitants, sort my gear out, or while away some time in a cozy tavern. Someone who has played further than the Last Light Inn please tell me that the grind is over just around the corner?

You don't have to fight everything. You can get by some of them with checks. This includes but is not limited to the ambush at the Blighted Village, rescuing the deep gnome from the windmill, and the encounter with the owl bear.

You can also spend some time with your companions and engage in idle chit-chat.

It's not to say that I have fought everything, my PC is a Drow and so I've been able to talk my way past most of the goblins and so on. I've tried to avoid fighting where possible unless I felt that it would be in character to do so e.g. with the Duergar.

The point I'm trying to make is that I have to perform the tasks laid out in front of me in a linear fashion in order to progress at all. In BG1 after a short introduction I'm told to head to the Friendly Arm Inn to meet up with some friends, but I am not forced to. From that point on I can do pretty much as I like - I can head to Beregost and deal with Silke's thugs, or head to Nashkel and play carnival games. Here, no such luck. If I don't like the zone I am in, well tough! You have to beat it in order to get to another one.

Never played BG1/2 and IWD so can't comment on those. However, I find BG3 to have a good balance of combat, exploration and dialogue/cinematics and not a slog at all. In contrast, I found DOS1 and 2 to be a combat slog with little else to it and even though Dragon Age Origins had a great story and scope, the combat became a tedious slog. To each their own. Everyone will have a different tolerance level.

Although you have to tackle each region/Act in order, I find Act 1's region to be an immersive sim sandbox that can be tackled in a non-linear fashion. Granted, some combat needs to be avoided because it will be too hard but I'm okay with that. Sure, it's not the same as an open world but the benefit is a tighter control of the story. I still have many hours to go in Act 1 for my first playthrough but there's clearly a theme that people you meet here will crop up again in BG and your actions may have consequences for your next meeting.

I have found that some games disappoint on my first encounter because they broke some key things I enjoyed from earlier games. But when I return to them years later with less expectations I enjoy them more. Had this experience with Pillars of Eternity 2 vs 1.

If this were an Icewind Dale game I'd be able to create a whole party from scratch!

Not that I'm not impressed by how Larian has managed to make this bunch of jerks likeable enough to keep around, but they are a bunch of jerks.

I prefer story and exploration over combat, so I'm playing on the easy mode to save some time and hassle. If combat gets to be a pain, I recommend this. Even in this mode, it is necessary to put some thought into the harder fights, which is fine with me. It is possible to get out of some fights, and I have done a charisma-focused build, so I typically have the opportunity to take advantage of this, and I usually do. Despite this, in my current playthrough, I decided to go murderhobo on the goblins in the blighted village because I thought the world would be better off without them, but I don't know how feasible this will be in the main goblin camp even in the easy mode. Hopefully, word hasn't gotten around to them that I have massacred their buddies; if so, murderhobo will be the only option. The blighted village isn't too bad if you sneak around, set the characters up in favorable positions, and ambush the vile goblins.

So far, there is enough to do besides combat. There are NPCs to talk to in the grove, party member stories to get started on, and places to explore that aren't necessarily overloaded with enemies, though some places are. I suspect that later in the game, when the player gets to more civilized areas, there will be more non-combat activities.

That's kind of the question I was asking. I am now almost through the next zone (20+ hours of gametime in this playthrough) and still no sign of civilisation. It looks like once I slog my way through some more fight scenes the quest line will take me to Baldur's Gate, but at this rate I'm expecting it to be a gritty, hostile environment as well. I fear that the city of Baldur's Gate is going to be the final zone as well, we probably won't even get to wander the Sword Coast. Agreed. For some reason I thought that they were only giving us the "evil" companions during the early access so that people could explore bugs through their questlines etc. (as most people would pick the "good" companions in their full-game playthrough). Nope, these are the only companions - and they are almost entirely unlikeable. If I ever bring myself to do a second playthrough it'll be with a fully player-generated party.

I must admit that I'm quite disappointed at the choice of companions too. Don't get me wrong, the ones we have are pretty interesting, but they feel very limited. The vast majority of them are the Origin characters, and there is not a single Dwarf, Gnome or Halfling companion. (Why the hatred for shorties, Larian??) We do have the option of hiring henchmen to fill out our party if we really can't stand the companions, but I've been told that the henchmen basically just follow you around like mute AI robots. They never have anything to say, never participate in conversations, etc. Definitely not on the same level of quality.

At the very least, I think Larian should have created 8 companions, 1 each on the Good/Evil spectrum for the four major roles in a D&D party (Warrior, Mage, Priest and Rogue), and then potentially added more as time allowed. As it is, we've got some roles that are majorly over-represented; mostly Priests and Warriors, but Mages and especially Rogues are painfully limited.

I hate them because they don't keep up.

As someone who absolutely loves Icewind Dale - The answer is no. It does however feel like DOS set in the Forgotten Realms using a variation of 5e.

Err ...

Actually BG1 and BG2 also restricted your movement A LOT.

You cannot enter many areas from the start of the game in BG1.

And the moment you went to rescue BG2, it stays completely linear for a VERY long time. Areas of which you can only revisit one later.

Also in both games you are hunted by an antagonist who most of the time has no idea where you are. Thus you can explore freely for a while.

While in BG3 you are suffering from an extremely serious condition and have to take care of it immediately.


I have only played IWD2 and no, BG3 isnt anything like that.

More like turn based Diablo.

You are wrong, Sarevok in BG1 keeps sending assassins your way, so he knows where you are at all times after you get some renown, for example. Irenicus knows damn well where you are as well, after the beggining of the game. If those aren't "extremely serious conditions", i don't know what is.

In BG3 lterally nothing stops you from wandering around, as much as the linearity of the game allows you anyway. There is no sense of passing time, nor is there any time limit, as there's no day-night cycle anyway.

So no, there is no urgency in the game.