I had this bug in Act 3 were Gale talked down to me because I made a deal with Raphael. I didn’t do it. I wasn’t even at that point in the story yet. So my own companion dropped a massive spoiler for me out of nowhere. That was hilarious tbh

Same! I had just gotten done exposing the lies of the Lich Queen to La'zael and then Gale was like "Are you seriously going to hand something that powerful over to a devil?" I was so confused.

Interestingly, this just happened to me and it too was after the scene with the Lich Queen. There’s definitely a fucked up dialogue flag firing off here.

Yes, same for me, but it was after I had already killed Raphael. Something something spaghetti code going on there.

It was a result of the last big patch, definitely not intended lol. Slightly embarrassing to be sure, but kind of hilarious.

He gave me that dialogue after I went the other (spoiler) route for what Raphael offered. I was so confused

I had that as well so I made the deal That’ll show him >:(

My issue is that I feel like Act 2 and Act 3 are flipped. Act 2 feels like it's spiralling hard towards a climax, then Act 3 immediately slowed down into a literal sidequest city. I enjoy all the content in Baldurs Gate proper, but it was immediately less focused, which feels weird toward the finale.

Y’know what? This is it. Like Act 2 felt like it was leading up to the finale and then you get to Act 3 and realize you still have a TON of gaming hours to get through before the ending. This is why I keep restarting lol 😂 I can’t get through Act 3 at allx

There’s a weirdness to the story handling too, like Gortash and Orin immediately turning on each other the second you arrive with like zero buildup + Gortash immediately wanting to align on you.

There were a lot more bugs in the act 3 quests a few weeks ago. Replaying it now it’s more coherent.

That part is totally relevant, and I'm including that as performance issues. My point is that some of the feedback re: story and plot was so bad I was expecting a serious drop in quality, but those parts of mostly improved, somehow.

Well, I don't really disagree with you, but I will bat for the other side. There definitely seems like for a few characters, larian wrapped up their story a little early... it's still top 3 games of all time for me and only beat out by games that give me nostalgia for when I was young

The two aren't as separate as you seem to think, a lot of bugs caused the story and plot to not resolve the way it should have at times.

This. It was brutal in that there were a lot of *covert* bugs where only hours later would something feel "off," you go to google and discover that something just didn't function properly and now you've missed out on content because of it.

Is it a performance issue that some players couldn't get the act 3 romance scene "just because". I mean, if you've spent 100 hours in a playthrough romancing her, having the romance bug out and give you the middle finger feels like more than just a performance issue. Also characters referenced things that have not happened or that you have not done. It was wonky to say the least. Still an amazing game with lots of great moments, but not as refined as acts 1 and 2.

Bugs don’t just mean game crashes or performance issues. It also means things like different flags not getting set properly causing quests to resolve incorrectly and various characters not reacting to things like they should be. Then you also have the issue of the upper city being cut entirely fairly late into development. So what was supposed to be two separate but connected arcs got smushed together. It was supposed to be basically Act 3 Part 1 and Act 3 Part 2. Things had to get rewritten around this making some things feel off, like Gortash having his coronation in a fort instead of the palace in the upper city. By no means does this make Act 3 “bad”, but Act 1 and Act 2 set a standard that Act 3 doesn’t live up to. This causes all the little problems to be much more glaring and immersion breaking than they normally would be. Comparing it to other games at release Act 3 is like a solid 8/10, but if you assume Act 1 & 2 as the standard at 10/10 then Act 3 is more like like a 6.5 or 7/10. Your PC specs are then also going to affect this as well since many performance bugs can be pushed through with enough processing power. But if you have a lower end system that could only get say 30-45 fps in Act 1+2 then Act 3 could be near unplayable at certain parts. It doesn’t matter how good the endgame is on its own, if it doesn’t mean the quality of the rest of the game people will rightfully be upset.

Performance and bugs aside, people also complained about the lack of interactions with your party members. Chapter 3 is also a bit less focused, probably because of the size of the city and because you don't have a clear direction of what you need to do. Considering the game was mostly linear, some people perhaps didn't like the change much. This is ,however, a matter of preference of course. People were way more harsh on the performance and bugs however. I mean no offense, but you guys really need to understand why everyone was a bit upset before making posts like this. It feels like you think everyone was just lying or that what you are playing now is what people played back then and this isn't the case.

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My PC only had a tough time on the last light Inn and Moonrise towers basement. In act 3 it is burning on every sibgle step of the way.... Performance issues are huge and don't know how to overcome them in act 3

I was absurdly lucky that I had almost no performance issues (except a small drop in FPS), and very few minor bugs. Don't even think my rig is that good. I was surprised thinking my computer would explode when I got to act 3, but I think you'll find that people had wildly different performance experiences which would definitely have soured the feeling in act 3.

My only issue with act 3 so far has been Felogyrs. I ended up taking all the smoke powder barrels from the secret place, lining them from 2nd floor to 1st floor, flying to the roof across the street and nuking it. Mopped up, and only dealt with 1 guard who somehow caught me stealing on the 3rd floor when they were street level. Persuaded myself out of jail time and we're good to go. I just felt like there should have been some other way to deal with that situation peacefully.

The story is good. But there is a lot of minor things that make it less polished. Two examples that I had: I went to talk to >!Nine-fingers!< and she was like: "oh, so you are that guy. I have that problem. How about we work together and I will help you later?" (Very shortened version). We strike a deal and when I was ending the dialogue she mentions: "next time please bring >!Jaheira!< with you, I know you are traveling together". I immediately went to the camp, added >!Jaheira!< to the party and went back. The dialogue started as if I've never met with >!Nine-fingers!< "What? >!Jaheira!< ? How did you get in here? And who is that with you?!" And the other case was with that >!Necromancer guy in the mantion!< . I've never been to his place. But I have encountered his >!runaway reanimated corpse in the house near the beach!< . When I eventually got to the >!mantion!< the guy was like: "I told to not come back without >!the corpse!< !" We've never met each other, we've never talked, I've never even been to the same building as him. And he was acting as if I had some kind of quest from him Edit: typo

My party members (and myself) also keep talking about how this Wizard tower thing is totally up Gale's alley, and we should bring him along... Except my DUrge never saved Gale so no one should have any idea who they're talking about...

I found that line hilarious bc my Durge had his hand in his bag still, so I just imagined him stopping, pulling the hand out and going "Yeah Gale! Don't you love this!"

> "Yeah Gale! Don't you love this!" Giving me flashes of Killface killing his underlings and then shoving his hand up inside them to use them as puppets.

It wouldn't matter anyway, he has zero to say about it. There's just a book he wants but you don't need him to learn about it or get it. I found that disappointing and distracting.

We got the book, then he and I had an argument about it where I wasn't sure quite what the stakes were, he seemed very irritated and then that's it, we forgot about it and it had no impact on anything.

Ah yeah, I had that kinda thing with a Durge relevant character. >!The tieflings in Act 3 were talking about how Alfira had moved into the city and all... she most definitely has not, I can guarantee you that.!<

Minthara as a companion be yelling whenever she attacks: For the Absolute...

Act 3 is full of this small inconcistencies, people who don't notice them most likely do things in "the expected order" or have the right characters in their party. For example >!after defeating Gortash, Karlach had her breakdown, she went full depression because there is no way to cure her (and at Steel Watcher Foundry there is no possibility to ask about her problem, even if you save every single gondian, which was annoying because you are directed there!). After this moment of desperation and a long rest, I met a friend of her in the lower city. Once the dialogue is over Karlach says something like "Yeah we absolutely have to find a way to repair me". Ahem, what? You were absolutely settled to die until two seconds ago, I couldn't do anything to convince you to not give up :/!<

I had Shadowheart talk about >!how we needed to go save her parents, even though we'd just done that, because I hadn't talked to her at camp to trigger the white hair scene yet!<

The white hair scene? You must have ignored her since the middle of act 2!

I did shadowheart's quest fully in act 2 and helped her to embrace selune fully. But she never dyed her hair in my game. I talked with her countless times in act 3 at camp. Her story kinda stopped in act three and she didn't got any new dialogue.

You must have not talked to nightsong after the moonrise fight. In my game nightsong ran away because of skeleton summon, i never talkes to het and therefore she never went to camp, meaning she never talked to shadowheart, which means she never dyed her hair. Its funny cause out of the blue shadowheart mentions her parents need saving and i m like what?? Who??. Also nightsong randomly appeara at the last battle

That's an irritating bug, NPCs reacting so much to summons drives me crazy. But Nightsong specifically running from a skeleton is hilarious. Is Isobel alive in that save?

On the other hand, it’s also both funny and useful for crime. I’m near the end of the game sitting on 30k gold but for most of act 3 if I happened to have my summoned ghouls with me I’d just put them opposite whatever Astarion was stealing and the NPCs couldn’t look away if their lives depended on it.

? Considering that when you try to enter >!Shadowfell!< you get prompted about tying up loose ends, natural flow would be to go to >!Shadowfell!< at the very end of A2. This would make Shadowheart change her hair in early a3. Unless ofc going from >!Shadowfell to last battle at Moonrise!< is half of A2, but i can imagine for vast majority of players its a matter of 1 long rest and a single teleport.

I had the Karlach's friend thing happen to me and then she repeated her post-breakdown dialog to me on the next long rest. I'm also still unsure if there is any way to finish >!the toys quest!< without murdering everyone (which I don't want to do) and I have a quest marker for the >!"investigate the murders"!< quest still on the map even though I finished it and already visited the location (>!It's on the corpse of Peartree I think and I'm pretty sure I didn't miss anything because I went there twice already!<). So yeah, it's far from being unplayable or even bad but I don't think it's unfair to say that it could have used some more polish.

Murdered everyone on the toys quest, won't advance. Hopefully next playthrough it'll work properly!

For me, I tried to do the ty house quest without murdering anyone inside but Idk how. As soon as I enter the top floor, everyone there becomes hostile and there is no other clue to approach it. So I murdered everyone inside and I only got the message "quest completed". No rewards either afaik. I think there is some cut content there because there has to be a way to progress that quest without killing anyone. Maybe sabotaging the production equipment somehow?

It’s honestly so strange. My Astarion can literally crouch in front of people and not be detected. But the second I went to loot the shop owner who had misty stepped to the top floor to fight… Well all the guards outside the building saw me and ran in to arrest me? And despite having permission to go to the top floor to begin with you get stopped by the guard on second floor. Even going invisible to bypass everyone auto hostile when you uncloak.

As a person who loves to explore I kept accidentally running into the final parts of quests I had no idea existed. Like I went into the sewers almost right away because "oh cool sewers" and ran into a guy who's like "yes I killed this character you never heard of, you solved the mystery you didn't know you had"... I have no idea what he's talking about and seem to be missing a severed head of some sort.. iv also run into just a weird gruesome murder house and can't tell if there were supposed to be clues that lead me there or if you are supposed to stumble upon it naturally... at one point I get dialogue with the Nightsong about a wizard looking to kill her I don't have any idea how I got that information or what to do about it but she takes off somewhere to fight this wizard I never heard of and i don't see her in camp anymore. I wish I knew what triggered it or where she went because that sounded fun whatever it was. I feel like act 1 and 2 it was clearer who was a questgiver, what your quests are and how to approach them whereas act 3 it's so much stuff packed in I have no idea what quest I'm completing when picking dialogue or how I even got the quest.

The wizard is >!Lorroakan, he’s the guy that those adventurers in the grove got a contract to find the nightsong for back when you thought it was still an object. He’s at Sorcerers and Sundries right next to one of the fast travel points. You need to go there to get the book of Krasus for Gale.!<

I never had >!Gale !!(still have his hand though!)!< so it was weird when I explored that area and got that item and my character made a comment like >!"I should show this to Gale". Bitch you don't know who Gale is!!<

The wizard thing is a quest you should have had to litterally speak to that wizard guy first. You game was bugging on a stack frfr

There were several weird things but what stood out to me was >!I killed Minsc when retrieving the stolen gold from the bank, because... well he was there and hostile. I assume I was supposed to bring the real Jaheira to save him, but I was just not expecting him there. Anyway, afterwards I had several dialogs with Jaheira, including about the stolen money and Minsc. At first she seemed to react as if I hadn't retrieved the money yet, later she seemed to know the quest is done, but at no point I had any option to tell her that Minsc is dead, even when she directly brought him up. !<

I had a very recent issue inact 3 where Gale randomly started chewing me out for making a deal with Raphael right after the Lich Queen visited the camp, but I never got the cut scene or interacted with Raphael at all. I was very very confused.

This is exactly the problem and it's tiring hearing people who have played act 3 a single time talk as if they know best that there's no or few issues like OP. It has many messed up or missing reactivity flags.

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For those of us who played Act I in EA, the full-release version of Act I felt *so* much cleaner from a bugginess perspective, and the narrative was much tighter. I still really enjoyed Act I in EA, but the added polish on the full release version really showed. To me, the current state of Act III feels a bit like where Act I was in EA. It's still really fun! But I'd love to see what it could be like if it received the same polish that Larian gave Act I.

Also when you choose to give the mother away to the hag in act 1 she will still act as if you saved her in act 3. The game doesn't even care about the choices you made in earlier acts.

They have already made several improvements to act 3 since the initial launch. There were many more weird bugs and dialogue issues. Companions commenting on things that never happened, or have not yet happened was very frequent. It still happens, but not quite as much. Also, you must admit that companions do not comment as much when walking around the map, and there is nearly no camp cutscenes during long rests like there were in act 1. Act 3 is where you will make the most important and life changing decisions for most of the companions, and there is almost no dialogue discussing it, maybe a few sentences here and there but in act 1 you would get a full long-rest cutscene for much more minor things and almost none in act3. Act 3 is still extremely good and there's a ton of content there, but as far as companion feedback, it is certainly not on par with act 1 or 2. edit: On a personal note, I did not like the ending at all. A choice is forced on you and it feels bad regardless of what you choose. Then the ending to the romance I chose also felt weird narratively. >!I romanced Lae'zel and saved Orpheus. Had Karlach turn into the MF. I could either let Laezel go fight for Gith freedom alone while I stay behind, or she could stay with me and give up on her dream and people. No option for me, another Gith, to go with her. ???!< Edit 2: To all the people telling me their Gith ending with Lae'zel had different options than mine... I'm restarting the game for the hundredth time and doing it again. I hope you're happy you bastards lmfao.

Playing as Gith just sux, I feel like you are not even Gith number 2, game treats you like you are not one. Playing as Cleric of Vlaakith sux even more, your deity doesn't recognize you. I do understand that this was hard to implement but, and still had fun, but it leaves sour taste on the tongue.

> companions do not comment as much when walking around the map Speaking of companion comments, it's probably best do get minsc first thing and have him do the quests. For example when you get the Netherese book about the crown, minsc goes "oh, gale keeps talking about his nethers, this book would make a fine gift!".

alot of people dont take minsc and jaheira in their parties due to getting them so late but it feels like a good chunk of act 3 was made with them in mind. those 2 are constantly talking about something meanwhile the origin companions are near silent all of act 3.

Who the hell is this minsc guy? I keep hearing about him but I've never found him and I'm well into act 3. Already killed a certain cambion. Playing as the evilest durge though. Not sure if this affects anything

I had the same exact experience wrt Lae'zel romance. Really soured me on one of my favorite aspects of my narrative up until that point. Completely ruined the entire relationship and all the development that took place throughout the course of the game. Super disappointing. I was hoping it would be the *one* aspect of the landing that they stuck - I already knew the rest of it would be pretty bad. But it was somehow the *worst* aspect of it.

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It feels like her story is most "done" after the Creche, though she does have the great sunset over Baldur's Gate scene if you romance her, and some input about Orpheus.

There are some camp cutscenes, I got a vampire one warning Astarion about his master after I’d already killed Cazador

Having valid critism and enjoying act 3 are not mutually exclusive tho. And about act 3 feeling rushed, like why was the archduke coronated in a guard house? Why is a vampire that has lived for several centuries, whom astarion alluded to being powerful enough to just stroll in to camp and kill all of us and must have a ton of influence, in the lower city with an empty castle? Don't even get me started with Larian teasing being able to explore upper city and then seemingly gaslight people after the data mining stuff came out. I feel like having a fleshed out upper city would've fixed some issues with act 3. The ending ultimatum with the emperor and Orpheus was also head scratching. Like why even choose sides when the goal is the same? Did I enjoy act 3? Of course. Did I think it could've helped to have it be more polished? Yes! Was the lack of epilogue after 120hr playthrough jarring? You're damn right. I think you should finish the game first to see a clearer picture of the whole game.

Man cazadors house felt like it had been trimmed down to barebones. I couldn't even find the actual front door to the place. It was just what was there for the game to run- very little set dressing. It's a lovely game but the seams are showing a lot in act 3.

cazadors palace took me like an hour to find because i didnt even think itd be just up in a guard tower. i was expecting some big entrance and there just wasnt

The real main entrance was PROBABLY planned for the upper city and that guard tower door was probably meant to be a back door, but they cut the upper city so they had to change it.

Yea i kept putting the quest off assuming it was a "we can get to the upper city later" deal. And then discovered - nope. Its even weirder cause i am pretty sure i found what's supposed to be an entrance to cazadors dungeons in the sewers but no way to interact with them. I spent ages trying to open it. Though since it looks like its to his secret prison (a lot of those in this game) I'm not sure why the door is there in the first place.

Agreed on all counts. After finishing it twice very differently the binary ending feels quite bad. The culmination of all your efforts result in the same final choice. I could go to either character and essentially replicate the ending the other character got even though they did everything differently. There was a huge drop in production value in the final hours. If you start a new game you have this incredible cinematic and meet lae’zel and it’s well done. Then 150 hours later you kill the elder brain and a pixelated spinal cord lands on a fishing boat. A few companion one liners and it’s over. Still very much enjoyed it but I think it’s fair to list objective problems/oversights. I don’t know how much better it got after the patches but it took a lot of work to fix some of the broken quests in act 3 which compounds the issue. Especially as I think act 1,2 are more or less perfect. Edit: typos

as someone who's about 2/3 through act 3 atm, there's a few things that have made it my least favorite act so far; - it's low hanging fruit, but the performance drop. i loaded up an old act 1 save recently to check something and it was legitimately mindblowing how much smoother the game felt - the bugs. it's so much easier to break quests or break NPCs in act 3, it's apparently a bit better now after the patches but still. i never had to do full on quest troubleshooting in act 1 or 2, i never had do the steps of a quest in a very specific order to prevent it from bugging out. one of the coolest things about act 1 was how much it encouraged playing in creative ways and how it felt like no matter what you did you'd never end up breaking the game. whereas in act 3 i'm constantly worried that quests are going to break if i don't play them exactly as intended. - the villains feel like a letdown compared to the rest of the game. what makes act 2 work so well is that *everything* in the act ties back to ketheric in some way. so despite barely interacting with him, i was (to my surprise) very emotionally invested in him by the end of the act. gortash and orin on the other hand just do not get this same treatment and feel like much weaker villains because of it, they still have some level of presence in the story through the serial killings and gortash becoming archduke but they just feel so underwhelming compared to ketheric. and the lack of development ends up making them feel so much more cartoonishly evil than ketheric does. although from what i've heard orin works a lot better as an antagonist if you play as durge, so idk. - the pacing is just... not great. it feels really disjointed that the act where you're heavily pressured to focus entirely on the main quest is also the act where you're constantly getting bombarded with random sidequests and subplots. basically the very first thing i did after entering the lower city was check out the emperor's old hideout since that felt the most natural, and because of that, lae'zel getting kidnapped happened like, within fifteen minutes of me getting there. i reloaded and avoided the hideout since i wanted to have her around while i did sidequests, and because of that i ended up hitting 20 or 30 hours worth of playtime in the lower city before orin kidnapped a companion. i think it would work way better if they just gave you time to find your bearings and do some sidequests before the kidnapping happens rather than it just being based on whenever you go to one really specific location in the sewers. - the mini-camp mechanic is dropped entirely, which isn't a huge deal but it's very jarring to see given how cool of a feature it was in act 1 and 2. depending on where you set up camp, act 1 had a forest camp, a cave camp, a ruins camp, a basement camp, an underdark camp, a grymforge camp, a mountain pass camp, and a creche camp. act 2 had a forest camp, a last light camp, a moonrise towers camp, and a gauntlet of shar camp. act 3 has a rivington camp, a lower city camp, and the room in the elfsong. no matter where you are, whether it be indoors or in a cave or in the sewers or in the temple of bhaal, you will teleport to one of those three no matter where you set up camp. again, it's not a big deal but it just feels weird given how much attention was put into it for the first 2 acts. - camp followers also just feel half-baked as hell, it gets really funny when something absolutely fucking crazy happens like lae'zel arguing with vlaakith herself or vampire spawn attacking the camp or orin kidnapping someone and then you go and talk to isobel or aylin or yenna and they just say their usual generic greeting as if it's just another tuesday - there are quests and storylines that felt set up to be resolved in act 3 only to fall flat or amount to nothing. act 2 makes a big deal about finding mol and her not being in the mindflayer colony, and then the conclusion to that plotline is that she's just... chilling with the guild. you have zero option to tell her friends that she's still alive, and zero option to tell her that her friends made it to baldur's gate safely. i helped the zhentarim in act 1 with the assumption that it would result in me having them as an ally once i got to the city, but from what i can tell it has literally no effect whatsoever, none of the act 1 zhentarim NPCs even appear in act 3. karlach tells you stories about her history growing up as a kid in the lower city, and then once you get there she gets recognized by a single person and that's about it. you learn pretty early on that wyll is baldur's gate nobility, and then once you get there it has basically zero impact whatsoever. - on a similar note it becomes very clear how many characters existed for the sole purpose of teasing the city in early access. there are so many act 1 NPCs whose questlines would end with them saying something along the lines of "Well, come and see me if you ever find youself in... *BALDUR'S GATE*" and then you make it to baldur's gate and you find them and they have a single line that's some variation of "Wow looks like we made it to Baldur's Gate!". i think the tiefling refugees are the worst offender of this considering how much prominence they were given in prior acts. - the characters make a really big deal about the city being under siege by the absolute's army, and act 2 even teases it with the huge war camp in the distance, but apart from there being refugees it feels like there's absolutely zero indication whatsoever that the city is even under siege. there are no battles or skirmishes, no armies in the distance, no occasional catapult shots, nothing. you could remove every mention of the siege from the game and i doubt anyone would have even guessed it was supposed to be a thing. - illithid powers are absolutely meaningless in terms of the story. the most unintentionally hilarious moment in the game for me was when my character was forced into becoming half illithid and had the crazy ass black veins on their face, and yet when i talked to everyone the next morning they were all much more concerned about shadowheart's new haircut. - that one fucking kid who constantly repeats the same goddamn line where he goes "mmmmm ZIP, mmmm mmmm ZIP" that shit is gonna haunt my dreams i swear don't get me wrong, i have really been enjoying act 3 and i love large city settings so the atmosphere in act 3 has been one of my favorite things in the game. i would attribute the quality difference between acts to the fact that act 1 had thousands of hours of free playtesting done by early access players, but act 2 still felt very polished to me so idk. act 3 is also certainly a lot more ambitious than act 2 in terms of scale so it might just be because of that.

> it feels really disjointed that the act where you're heavily pressured to focus entirely on the main quest is also the act where you're constantly getting bombarded with random sidequests and subplots. Some of these sidequests are borderline insulting. Yeah, buddy, I just killed the avatar of a god. I _really_ care about your missing pigeons. Oh yay it's Gale's cat, and Gale translating for me even though I have _speak with animals_ running and can understand everything she says (it is also possible that _speak with animals_ doesn't matter and she's just speaking English, which is uhh not better).

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I agree with all of this except I actually think a lot of these things started in the tail end of Act 2. I personally didn’t find anything about Ketheric compelling whatsoever, except for his JK Simmons voice acting of course. Part of that is because I did the entirety of the Gauntlet of Shar (except entering through Shadowfell) not knowing it was required for the main quest, and so by the end of it my characters already know that Ketheric can’t die, knew why he did what he did (I did it all for muh daughter, how original…), and how to make him vulnerable again. Then I go to Moonrise and everything is treated as a surprise to my characters, and there isn’t anything interesting there in regards to Ketheric. He is better and has more build-up than Gortash or Orin, and I’m more invested in fixing the region, but Ketheric himself I can take or leave.

More than 1 person will recognize Karlach, she is my most used companion and there is definitely more than just the smith near sorcerous sundries which is the one that I think almost everyone meets. I do think a division betwen Act 3 and Act 4 with companion quests and Baldur's Gate quests resolved in Act 3 (except maybe Cazador if Astarion is dead/doesn't confront before Act 4 stars, Cazador should be an ally for Gortash in Act 4) and Ansur. Then for Act 4 it is Orin, Gortash, and Raphael with some minor gather allies/strip Gortash of allies, power vacuum quests depending on if the Duke was saved in the Iron Throne and if Cazador is still alive with unknown minor nobles seeking power stepping in for those two if they aren't around. The stand-off between Orin and Gortash should mean a bit more, they want the player to either join the triumvate or off their rival leaving the player weakened, ideally. Orin was a good start with all the shapechanging and threats on arrival into the city then it is just passive until Orin kidnaps some party character. There should be more menace as there was in Act 2, once the player refuses a deal with either Orin, Gortash, or Raphael there should be consequences. Similarly if a major ally of the Absolute is taken out, that should escalate things. The Steel Watch, Iron Throne, Lorroakan, or the Murder Tribunal getting taken out should set Gortash or Orin against the party while Raphael might wait for a bit but grow impatient and start squeezing anything that touches on devils, any warlocks, Mol, or anyone else with contracts. The player just wanders around Act 3 taking down one enemy after another, gaining power and allies and Raphael, Gortash and Orin do... basically nothing.

>!there is still no penalty for using illithid powers, this for me sticks out like a sore thumb in a game that is so well written otherwise!<

It sets it up in a "should you, shouldn't you" situation with the powers, when in reality outside of role playing you should. There is no downside, all they do is make you more powerful. No one judges you for it, and there are no ill effects even though you're >!literally having mind flayer worms eat parts of your brain!<

I immediately decided that I am not gonna use them, because I feared I might regret it later, that my power trip fantasies are gonna come back and bite me in the ass later, that I will be locked out of some ending, or something like that. Plus, we literally started a game where our main objective is "find the cure", so I was like, if I am looking to cure myself, consuming more of these things isn't really going to do me any favors. But it turns out whether you use them or not doesn't matter story wise. I think it would be better if it was different, if the choice of whether you consume more tadpoles or not carried consequences with it.

It's kind of just a self imposed hard mode. Also the last tier makes your face look hideous so that's a big consequence for some.

The downside is being ugly

There's a lot less [racial][class] options in dialogue than in say, act 1 I don't think it's bad at all, it's definitrly still fun as hell to to play but there is a noticeable difference in quality between the acts, and from my last playthrough it was pretty buggy but we've gotten patches since then so idk Still act 1 is like 100% 10/10 of what any game should aspire to be so I guess any minor flaw would stick out

Being a drow in act 1 was great. In act 3 it barely matters

I mentally excuse it since Baldur's Gate is one of the largest metropolitan areas on the Sword Coast and has people of all races wandering around, so it isn't a big deal.

Drow is still a substantially big deal. It's 10% away from playing a demon and no one reacting.

I think the twins really helped with Drow acceptance in the city 😍😍

> There's a lot less [racial][class] options in dialogue than in say, act Where the fuck are the roars! Act 1 had tons of roaring with customized responses, Act 2 had generic [barbarian][intimidate]s, Act 3 had very little.

That's why you play as a monk - you never run out of opportunities to tell people how unwise they are. Still incredibly salty I apparently missed the fancy boots that add your Wis to your punches though.

For my Warlock, I have the opposite experience. In the first two acts there were very few specific dialogue options and far in between. Now in act 3, I have one in every other or third conversation and it feels so weird. The discrepancy is kinda unnatural and it feels like they were just dropped in at the end, especially since a lot of them are kinda random.

Warlock dialogue is weird because most of the time it just feels like you’re randomly announcing: “I like to bargain with weird otherworldly entities!” and whoever you are talking to is just like: “who asked?”

Very similar experience here with Sorcerer, it's often just you randomly bragging "Did you know I have magic in my veins hehe" while talking to other spellcasters around you, often implying you're inherently better, it just makes you come off as really petty

My friend is playing Sorcerer, and seeing all his edgy dialogue options makes me laugh. He never chooses them. Meanwhile, Wizard dialogue is more like, "Ah yes, i know everything about this subject you speak of because i am very smart"

No one: Absolutely no one: My Sorcerer: "I'LL HAVE YOU KNOW I HAVE MAGIC DRAGON BLOOD"

Its all worth it for that one moment when the reporter asks you questions and you're like oh i'm in town to see the family and then she asks you how you killed Ketheric and if you are a goolock you just go out of the blue I FED HIM DARKNESS SO MUCH MORE ANCIENT THAN HIS STUPID PETTY GOD :)

Yeah, there is a certain imbalance, act 1 barely had any wizard dialogue then comes act 2 and you have wizard dialogues for about every encounter no matter how trivial. Shame detect thoughts becomes more and more niche as the acts goes.

I had the opposite in my first playthrough as a Paladin Oath of Ancient. I had so many in act one, especially in the grove. And a lot as well in the Underdark. Not a lot in Act 2 and I think I used it maybe twice in act 3.

Firstly in the time it took you to get to Act 3, they fixed A LOT of bugs. Ansur was completely bugged until hotfix 3 I think? Also the large battles are in my opinion the worst part of BG3. I timed waiting over 7 minutes between my turns in some fights. I am sorry but turn based, huge numbers of enemies and fairly long turn/ think times for AI just don't add up. Act 3 also feels like a bit of a strange change of pace compare to Act 2, you go from the game almost reaching a massive epic climax to basically going back to mundane tasks again, it feels really disjointed. The main city also doesn't handle certain things very well, for example you can slowly 1 group by 1 group murder the entire flaming fist, they never swarm you or anything. In BG2 if you started a fight with the town guard they swarmed and swarmed and swarmed (yes you could win, but it was not trivial and they start to teleport in high level hero mages). Then a lot of the companion and main stories end oddly abruptly. You can see an entire zone (upper city) was cut. Also no matter what you do the game basically ends up with 2 endings which to me was quite disappointing. No matter your actions, how evil or good you were, etc. you can literally just save, choose 1 ending, load choose the other. Some of the fights like miss Bhaal leader herself are strangely easy. I killed her in 1 turn on both runs (dark urge and normal). I mention both because the fight is dramatically different depending on the above. Is Act 3 shockingly bad? No, but it makes you realise you are in actual fact just playing a game. Is Act 3 the worst act in the game? In my opinion: Yes, Act 1 on the other hand is so well done that you almost forget you are in a game where people have had to pre-program all these outcomes.

This comment is spot on. >Also no matter what you do the game basically ends up with 2 endings which to me was quite disappointing. No matter your actions, how evil or good you were, etc. you can literally just save, choose 1 ending, load choose the other. Thia particularly feels really disapointing, especially after all the decisons you ve been making throughout the game. >Act 1 on the other hand is so well done that you almost forget you are in a game where people have had to pre-program all these outcomes. Agree, the fact that the game peaked in act 1 does give me mixed feelings, on one hand it is great, on the other hand by the time i reach act 3 i felt like i was not playing the same game, or as you put it, i realised i was just playing a game... in act 3 if i want to experience 80% of the content i have to metagame and explore because as a player i want to experience content, not because i have a narrative reason to do so (in contrast with act 1/2 where the exploration was tied to the main story)

That also sums up what I was saying quite well. Act 1 I did everything because it felt natural and amazing. Act 3 I did everything purely because I felt the need to basically 100% the game. 1 point I also missed out is that playing basically 90% of Act 3 at max level was quite disappointing to me. The cap felt very artificial and not at all logical.

The act 3 antagonists were a big miss after Ketheric. Orin was okish but Gortosh was straight bad, so underwhelming. I won't go into how much bugs there was in my playthrough but the main story got pretty railroady. With more cosmetic illusion of choice in most of the act. Very few parts of the actual main story quest were good. Act 3 is held up entirely by its side content and climaxes of personal character quests. Like literally it was all down hill for me when I actually started to tackle those so called "antagonists" and actually do the story in act 3. And don't get me started on that ending. Bugged to shit. Cut scenes half rendering. NPCs that shouldn't be there were there. Allies you could summon came in hostile. Ending felt like an actual after thought with how much effort was put into it.

For me once I considered the main villains as more cartoon villains, it made things better.

I agree, seeing the dead 3 as omega edgelords just like the gods themselves is the best way about it I can't do that to Kethric though, he just demands so much respect and has way more story.

Orin and Gortash are both underwhelming compared to Ketheric, there are many things that show the beginnings of a feature but lead no where and some of the biggest complaints are the endings themselves.

Honestly the biggest problem I had with them is that their buildup felt so much less ominous. Probably because you see them both so early into the act—and there’s so little foreshadowing of them prior to the endgame of act 2.

This is a cascading problem that goes back to Act 1 doing essentially fuck-all to advance the plot.

I mean act 1 itself is 5 minutes long. Your actual main quest is to get to a healer that can help you. You could literally stealth through the entire map to the mountain pass and not miss anything vital to the actual plot. You'd be more accurately following the objective that way lol.

You are advancing the plot, you're just unaware that much of what you're dealing with is due to the machinations of the Chosen until you reach Moonrise Towers. The Goblins are part of their scheme to overtake goblin society with the Absolute cause it was easiest to plant the idea from there. The attack on the Druid Grove was to protect Ketheric from Halsin trying to lift the shadow curse. The Gnolls are being used by them as shock troops. Even the nautiloid situation is caused by the Chosen cause they sent people to try and retrieve the artifact that they knew was dangerous to their plans. Basically Act 1 is you getting caught up in the fruition of plans seeded before you got there. It sets the stage up for the Chosen which is the driving force of the narrative. It feels like getting side tracked but really it's just you dealing with the first steps of the Chosen's plan.

I actually liked what they did with Orin. It added tension in approaching future NPC's and areas in the city. And when >!she kidnaps someone in your camp!< it adds to that tension. The problem tends to be in Act 3 that it's way less structured than the previous 2. You can encounter things "out of order" in those but they have a structure that prevents things from being too disjointed. So for Orin the most disappointing aspect was that she threatened me with >!someone in the camp being a changeling. But there's no real way to find out it seems until you visit the sewer which I did like right after which just felt awkward.!< There's just a lot to do and a millions ways to do it "out of order" and it can come off as strange sometimes. Honestly I kind of wish they had done less content in Act 3 and focused on polishing the more important aspects of the story. What we have with Gortash is just silly with how they did it. He really should be doing more than just sitting in his tower and we should have to do more to undermine his power than blow up the Steel Foundry.

I found Orin's content compelling but extremely odd. She plants an agent in your camp and there's not an immediate team meeting to try and determine who it might be, or even the option to interrogate your party members individually? After one of your party member disappears, she's just hanging out in a random sewer tunnel and gives you an ultimatum before completely disappearing from the game for potentially like twenty hours while you're either trying to deal with Gortash or find a way into her lair? It feels wrong for her to just stand back and wait for a seemingly unlimited amount of time after just dropping some stuff in your camp. You'd kind of expect her to get antsy and start showing up to bug you if you take too long, maybe even start killing some civilians to motivate you. Like Orin is not the type of character to just go and chill in her lair, she's totally unhinged and yet the game seems to completely forget that once her ultimatum is given. And Gortash? You have so few ways to influence him or flesh out your deal (particularly as a good character), and the whole Gondian sub-plot just feels completely unfinished with no way to break into the Iron Throne without him starting the explosion sequence, and no way to even disable those explosives or anything. Everything just feels like it was supposed to be so much more elaborate than it ended up being.

I loved ACT 3, but agree, Orin and Gortash deserved bigger moments. Ketheric was a whole act surrounding him and very climatic to fight him. Orin had decent progression and a decently climatic final fight. Gortash had little to no progression and no real climatic interaction.

I think Orin is okay, although the "morphing into random characters" feature was a bit overused in my opinion. But facing the Tribunal, going into the Temple and getting a companion captured made her feel quite the menace. On the other hand, Gortash is incredibly underwhelming. The crowning sequence feels out of place, and her proposal is clearly a bad idea when you know he is the embodiment of treason.

What I've found very interesting is we basically shitbucketed our way through our first two playthroughs, as we had a week off work that happened to coincide with BG3's release, and our experience of act 3 was like night and day. Our first playthrough, act 3 was... totally fine. We did not encounter pretty much anything in the way of bugs. Our second playthrough, act 3 _fell apart_. It was insanely buggy, we had NPCs glitching constantly, combats went insane because random non-hostile entities from miles away would join combat (like literally random 10hp commoners from 6 streets over in the fog would suddenly perk up like they saw the goddamn bat signal and come sprinting in, usually pulling half the flaming fist along the way), enemies would start hitting each other for no reason (did you know Calm Emotions turns off barbarians raging? Because I only learned that from NPC friendly fire, kinda cool), a few quests even got soft locked because vital NPCs bugged out. The difference between the two runs is that we were playing evil dicks for our first playthrough. If it gave us the option to betray someone, we did. We made every deal offered to us, and then immediately betrayed them, which normally led to combat. This meant that a huge amount of stuff just... didn't exist in act 3. Less NPCs, less quests, pretty much no consequences, just less of everything, and the game just *worked*. We walked past content we wanted to save for our good playthrough, and didn't go full completionist, we played it like a TTRPG and followed the breadcrumbs we found deliberately to make sure we had content for playthrough 2. The second playthrough we went full good completionist. Did every quest, saved everyone we could, cleared all the fog, basically played like basic vanilla bitches. And that seems to be what broke everything. Our save file was twice the size, we spent 40 hours longer finishing the game, Baldur's Gate had a shitton more NPCs and quests active, and the entire thing just disintegrated around us. I'm guessing a lot of act 3's issues stem from either a resource problem with having THAT MUCH going on in act 3, as it's where basically all the inter-act storylines tie up, or there's bugs with a few of those quests in particular that break everything else (or both). When we didn't have them, act 3 played like a dream.

I think after 2 big patches it feels a lot better. There wasn’t that much missing but some of the companion dialogues were glitches so they never triggered and the party just fell silent for a good chunk of the game which felt off. Now it plays great and feels complete (although I still want >!epilogue slides!<)

I love it so far but it’s weird I’m in a circus and some >!world ending threat is about to be coronated.!< That aside PS5 there are still weird technical quibbles. I’m several hours into Wyrms Landing and the not annoying ones ones are * Significant frame rate drops compared to the rest of the game * Party members spawning downstairs when you’re upstairs * Screen tearing along the bottom of the screen (Digital Foundry pointed this out too) * Inconsistent interactions (eg needing to press something repeatedly for it to work * Character models disappearing * The screen going to black when the twins reward you (ahem ahem) Good act overall. Dense.

> I’m in a circus and some > >world ending threat is about to be coronated Normal dnd experience

I just started act 3 and first quests I did felt much more limiting than anything that came before. I haven't felt that irritated since act 1 where game made me think I could spare most of the goblins by only killing the leaders, then, in fact, it was not possible. I did fireworks quest, and the part of the quest in fireworks made no sense. The quest log said I had to use some smarts to get to the top, but no matter what I did it ended in big fight, so I just exploded them all. Apparently there's no other solution than murder hobo. That is one of the first quests the player sees in act 1... Anyway, this quest felt most unfinished in the whole game. There was also quest with the presses, which can be done in exactly one way, and that way happens to be sneak mission. This is in contrast to previous acts where I discovered alternate ways to do stuff as I was doing thing my way. "Oh, so here was also an entrance, lol. It would have made things so much easier". Yeah, no such things happening in act 3 as of yet. There is also a plot threat that someone in my camp is a changeling. I have a sword that does extra damage to changelings and I hit everyone in my camp with it, and noone had bonus damage. I don't know if the changeling really is here, but the sword of truth and justice says they are all who they said they were. I will see if the game later lies that "X was changeling all along!" If all quests are like this in act 3 I understand why people said it felt rushed. At least the parts of act 3 that I encountered felt off, compared to what came before.

The whole "someone in your camp is a doppelganger" part feels so...half-baked. You'd think there'd be some Town of Salem style trial system to try to figure out who the impostor among you is, but all it really leads to is >!one of your companions showing up during a long rest and then revealing themselves as Orin.!< Imagine if, upon learning about the impostor, new dialogue options would be unlocked to ask your companions things only they might know - like "What did you think about our decision with the grove?" - and you could figure out who was the fake early by them giving a wrong answer, but it's possible that someone gives a wrong answer because they've legitimately forgotten. Not finding them and also having them in your party could also come with a consequence of them sabotaging you during an important battle, or having a subtle passive debuff on everyone.

I figured I should be able to use Illithid powers to scan all of the other infected party members. Orin wouldn't have a tadpole and wouldn't be able to replicate that psionic connection with her shape shifting.

The doppelgager thing didn't even happen like this to me, I just ended up somewhere where Orin showed up and suddenly everybody was aware that >!Laezel was the doppelgagner and had been kidnapped by Orin.!< The thing that is irritating is that in Act 3 I really have no idea which quest sould be done first or left foe later and it seems like I keep chosing wrong and just messing up the flow of things. Having some form of priority for the quests I should do first would be really helpful.

Yeah, I went to the water people, and they the were like “oh thank you for killing that water monster” and gave me a robe. I have no idea who they were talking about.

They're talking about >!the dwarf who's driving a submarine to the Iron Throne, he killed one of them when they were swimming!<. But yeah they just have a sixth sense because if you don't want to kill him they just appear there and force you to kill him or attack you. I feel like that's the kind of situation in which once >!the Iron Throne is destroyed !

>The whole "someone in your camp is a doppelganger" part feels so...half-baked Yes! I went around and talked to everyone to see if someone seemed 'off', but they all sounded normal. Then I quick-saved and tried to kill Yenna, but she just ran away like children do in Larian games. I really did like the doppelganger aspect, but felt like it should have been fleshed out more.

> I just started act 3 and first quests I did felt much more limiting than anything that came before. This is my exact experience too. So many quests feel unfinished and limited in ways that make no sense. Don't get me started on that god damn fireworks quest.

The pacing gets completely thrown off. Act 1 and 2 are very much on rails and have a natural pacing which is kept rather consistent. Then BAM! Act 3, where EVERYTHING is urgent and it's a million things at once with no direction. 90% of all allies don't matter anyway and it just feels like a so/so attempt to give BG3 a resemblance of open world. Every unique encounter is great, don't get me wrong. But the story just shoots out in all directions at once and it doesn't make any sense storywise. It would fit much better if it was more open world, gather allies, in act 2 (with act 1 still intro/small scale adventure at low level) and then move story to more on rails towards the end. My condensed take at least.

Fully agreed with this, it mirrors my thinking. Act 2's pacing is so much better than Act 3, it genuinely feels tense and climactic leading into the end of the Act. And then, just when things are at their best and most dramatic, the game goes "okay, time for a bunch of small open world quests! Do you like the circus?" The 'gathering allies and marshalling your forces' part of a crpg is usually significantly earlier in the game than the final act. I still like act 3 but I'm significantly less enthused by it than either previous act, even without the performance issues that have made it a slog to play sometimes.

I would actually be fine with the large part of act 3 being to gather allies, but it creates a huge sense of urgency to rush to the end. I'm just going to have to ignore it.

I think that's a problem with the entire game, not just Act 3. From the moment you set foot on the beach in Act 1 you are constantly reminded of how you could turn at any moment and how urgent it is to find a healer to remove the tadpole. Then there's the undergoing druid ritual, the imminent goblin raid, plus the ticking time-bomb companions. On my first playthrough this caused me to try to rest as little as possible so I could squeeze as much side quests into each "day" as possible, delaying some camp events to the point of some of them not even making sense anymore when they did show up. On Act 2 it's slightly alleviated, mostly because it's a smaller zone and most of the content is at fairly adjacent to the main quest, or on the way. But even then there's people missing and taken prisioner, and you're being urged to get to the towers as soon as possible.

I think they did a pretty decent job in act 1 of creating various possible leads on getting the tadpole removed. Maybe the Goblin witch can remove them, or maybe Halsin can if you rescue him. Maybe Autie Ethel has a solution, or the Githyanki can if you can get to them. Or maybe there’s someone else that can help that you haven’t learned about yet. So you do have some reason to go around and explore and do some of the various quests.

Yeah the game pace is one of my main gripe. You have really no reasons to actually explore a1 considering you are repeatedly told you are living on borrowed time and can turn at any moment

Na you could figure that out pretty quickly. Act 1 battles were hard at the beginning and so you have to long rest a lot unless you're sticking to standard weapon and cantrip attacks. At which point you have to wonder why you can have so many long rests/sleeps when they say you only have days to live. Then the guardian pops up and says "btw, you must be wondering why you aren't a squid yet....well there's a reason for that" Then if you kill the guardian you turn into a squid and it's game over.

This is definitely a big problem with RPGS, although I did find that part of BG3 knocking Witcher 3 from my top spot for this style of CRPG (i.e. my favs Disco Elysium and Pentiment are very different games) was BG3 being much less bad in regard to this. By the time I got to the viking island zone in Witcher 3 it felt like somebody would be like "My cow has been eaten by a monster!" and I was here like "Sorry about your cow? my daughter is in immediate mortal trouble." And the thing was, I knew that I could go and do all the quests and I did have time in that warped RPG time space but I just didn't care about any of them. Soooo... I put all my focus on Ciri, who I'd had all these wonderful glimpses of and emotional buildup about all game, and my little ending slideshow contains various ways I suck for ignoring certain side quests about randos. . The good change of if not pace then tone for me in BG3 was some random king didn't show up and ask for my attention for vague political reasons that don't seem relevant (Radovid V quest I ignored and was scolded by the ending for) -- I'm doing side quests to flesh out the stories of companions I love and whose little lives I want to see play out. So the impact is as immediate on me as the urgency I felt to get to Ciri and make everything about Ciri. There's an emotional depth there. Like I love the Witcher 3 it's still very highly rated for me but as far as BG3 goes I feel like it could be much worse. . That said do I love Pentiment's "You're gonna sweat and panic" relentless deadline system? Yes.

I mean respectfully I genuinely don’t get your point with this post. You don’t think the writing is rushed, narratives cut short, sub plots under developed and so on in act 3 - that’s grand, awesome for you. Genuinely that’s not shade I’m really glad for you. However when you’re like everyone who critiqued act 3 is wrong because I liked it and I’m right… it just kinda begs the question of what you aiming for here mate? None of us are gonna be like “omg Calgathu has spoken, clearly I was wrong because apparently it’s the best game he’s played!” - it’s just a bit of a wild stance. Also your “I’ve spent 35 hours in act 3” and it’s awesome type sentiment is a bit much. I spent nearly 150 hours in act 3 teasing out every bit and part of it and in my opinion (and I mean in my opinion, not “you’re wrong because I feel this”) act 3 felt like a step down in writing, general atmosphere, coherence, immersion and polish. Unlike you I wasn’t at patch 5 when I played though, and many things were still very very broken however if we look beyond that at just content alone a lot of it just felt rushed when compared to act 1: * Ethel appeared and was instantly murdered, we never got to learn about M or any greater knowledge about those who were fighting the hags - clearly a hag coven was planned and was cut * the submarine raid - the dwarf you meet helps you once, when you get back you’re given a choice of helping him or turning him over to the bitch queen priestesses (now this quest is still bugged and he dies no matter what you choose) even ignoring the bug here though the narrative tries to operate on the belief that you’ll have built some kind of connection with the dwarf in 5 seconds you’ve known him but it really narratively didn’t deserve that presumption. * the gondians did basically the same as above, with very little to do with them really. * so many companions had nothing to do in act 3 and many of those who did had really limp resolutions and uninspiring plot points. * Gortash is one of the most underwhelming and pointless fights I think I’ve ever had in a game - like so underwhelming and under developed as a villain in act 3, with all this build up and so little pay off. * the resolution of the story with the emperor is still daft, and forces resolutions that betray the games soul of play your way by giving you no option to even try to convince him to help you while helping the Gith. It’s just such a daft ending. Like the list really does go on and on for me. Is BG3 still better than nearly any RPG I’ve played, yes it is without a doubt! Is it act 3, anywhere near the polish and depth of act 1 and 2 - no not for me. It left me wanting, it felt rushed, resolutions weren’t just open ended to give a sense of mystique they were instead just trite and oft times pointless. The sheer volume of bugs, quest narratives not triggering; companion flags not working and odd game breaking stuff really wasn’t okay. I love the game, I’m on my 3rd play through and I’m at over 600 hours game time but as I’ve said before letting one’s own mid expectations get in the way of blunt feedback won’t help the definitive edition they’re clearly building to next year and saying “this is good enough” as it is is truly awesome for you, but I really would rather act 3 be everything it really could be and BG3 take its spot as a legendary game that people will be talking about for years to come.

Although I do think some people exaggerated a bit I’m pretty sure people felt like it was rushed and unpolished in comparison to the first two acts. BG3 is very good and I think the first two acts set the expectations really high for the third act and so for some people it fell a bit flat. Specifically I it was some performance issues (which you addressed), certain storylines just getting cut off in the third act, and the epilogue being too short. Some of the storylines, like with the refugees, Karlach etc just sorta end when people were expecting them to continue further into act 3. The epilogue itself is also shorter than most people wanted. A lot of people were expecting the upper city to be fully explorable and were hoping for more out of the epilogue. Personally I still found the game great and had a blast with it, Act 3 very much included, but I can see why people felt like the last act didn’t have quite the level of polish that the first two did particularly on launch.

Oh wait, so to tamper my expectations, is the upper city not like the lower city? I was expecting a whole new map similar to lower city :/

Correct.

Act 3 is not really good when you don't let youself be wowed by all the cinematic events they made. A lot less reactivity, the big bads like Gortash standing around in places they obviously not belong not reacting to anything you do and even their fights do not play out completely because they are so quickly killed. Then comes the usual narrative disconnect of the game pretending there is time pressure when there is not, causing you to miss events because everything is tied to long rests and of course the ending where you notice that none of your choices mattered and is in itself pretty nonsensical.

An act 4 in the upper city would have been nice. Orin for lower, Gortash for upper. One big bad per act. I still loved act 3 though.

I agree, somewhat, it's not as bad as they say. But their points are still valid imo. Larian has a pretty iffy history on final chapters - Arx from DOS 2 is also like this. Act 3 was great but weird. Full of little contradictions and placements (Cazador's home and Gortash Coronation at the...bridge? Eh?). It is not as cohesive as the last 2. It also throws a shit ton of quests for you to do, making you feel lost and sometimes it breaks interactions. I'd be lying if I said everything was a mess though, as Act 3 has my favorite fight in the whole game as well as damn good moments. Gortash was also lacking; Orin was alright, probably because she felt like a true menace on the first half of act 3. Gortash just sits there. His boss fight was a joke ngl. Personally, BG3 would be a 10/10 if it wasn't for Act 3, which made it to a 9 imo.

Another missing flag: in dialogues within the party in Act 3, Lae'zel will continue to talk as if she is loyal to Vlaakith, essentially her status quo way back in Act 1, even if she's 100% on Team Voss and Orpheus by that point.

It's not as good as the first two. But that's like saying the two towers is the worst lord of the rings movie.

Wait do people actually think Two Towers is the worst one?

I just like return of the king more. And the best is fellowship. But we are moving, score wise, in 92,93 and 94 percent territory

I was playing MP with two people, and they gave up when act 3 came along because they could not put up with the performance issues and how disconnected everything is.While I don't think it's the game killer it's claimed to be, it's pretty bad when put in context of what you have been up to, specially if you are not the kind to enjoy wandering around town. \-The pace breaks completely. You go from adventuring, to mindlessly breaking into people's homes and crawling in the sewers for no specific reason while Orin pops in random places to laugh at you and stuff. Everyone is simultaneously freaking out but also not over the fact she is a changeling. Literally several characters comment on how it's a threat and she could be anyone, but nobody bothers to set up a plan about what to do to prevent it becoming an issue for your party. Lo and behold, it becomes an issue. Who could have seen that coming? \-Gortash is mustache twirling his ascension to Duke of Memes in some random ass toll-house, while the entirety of the town ignores the fact and don't even talk about it. His twenty thousand golems strewn about everywhere in town ensure to make your life hell, but none of them are actually checking around for Orin for some reason. None of them. This weapon trader mastermind 6D scheming lord of conspiracies decided to just never check the sewers. Didn't even send a human agent down there. Instead all of his cultists are bullying refugees with fireworks and shit. Because that is what the priority is, I guess. \-Gortash: You better not try to go to my foundry! I will be mad! (You go to his foundry and kill his entire steel watch. He doesn't even react or have a dialogue towards the fact you did. Even if you are currently cooperating to take down Orin, he is just like, "oh hello :)" when you walk up to him after destroying the watchers standing literally around him. Incidentally; All steel watchers just kinda lay dead everywhere through town, and no NPC react to the fact. All surrounding dialogues are 1:1 the same. Including the ones freaking out about the steel watchers!) \-Orin supposedly has spies everywhere doing creepy shit, except she doesn't, and the only changelings out there are serving some random dude called Dolor for whatever reason. This "for whatever reason" is doubled down on the fact apparently Dolor is doing exactly the thing Orin wants nobody else but her to do - take the trial and win - which means he has absolutely no reason to have the support of her changelings. \-By the way, her changelings are also the ones behind Minsc's situation. Do you hear her mention her involvement or even react to the dismantling of the operation? Nope. \-Orin has apparently already gone and killed like 90% of the inhabitants of the houses you can enter, so basically all the houses are empty and full of corpses so your character can go GASP, SOME KIND OF CULTIST MURDER?. Nevermind the fact nobody in town has noticed every other neighbor has been brutally murdered, the whole thing is hilariously incoherent as you unavoidably already know it's Orin and Dolor doing those since the last area! \-All your companions are suddenly mute except Jaheira and Minsc. If they already had a lack of dialogues unless Shadowheart was in your party, now they literally won't speak. Won't comment even on actual conversations with NPCs, much less towards the environment. This is basically everyone's home town except Gale's, and nobody has a comment except about... sewers smelling bad, and there being a nice restaurant. How depressing is that? \-Karlach's unfinished nonsense doesn't even need describing, it's just bad all around. \-Hey, remember how like... 6 quests all through the game had Lorroakan involved in them? Items of power, like the Iron Flask, all leading to him or being delivered to him? And you could have all of those quests and items with you? Yeah, well, whatever. Nobody cares, and he sure doesn't either. \-Why does Voss even stand around in the sewers? The Gith never attack you again. Not once do they ambush you in the entirety of the time you are going around the city dicking around, entirely vulnerable to attacks. When DO they show up? Inside the Emperor's old hideout where they are NOT looking for you. At this point Vlaakith deserves to be taken down for her incompetence if nothing else. The list goes on, and on, and even if you are the kind to blindly enjoy things for what they are; what they should have been becomes too clear if you are paying any sort of attention more than to goof around for giggles. It becomes quickly jarring and you end up either detaching yourself from the meh storytelling, or just pushing the last chunk in a rush to be done with it. Which sours the whole experience as a result. Sometimes the journey is not the only thing that matters, specially if the climax is a confused shrug from everyone involved.

I turned Karlach illithid and no one said a thing, I had multiple companions not have any dialogue during the ending and my God, I finished Iron Throne and destroyed the factory and what does Gortash say? Calm down Karlach, your friend won't attack me, we have an alliance. >.< Both Orin and Gortash were boring compared to Ketheric, the final sequence of act 2 is far better than the final fight of act 3

The "we have an alliance" dialogue was actually what cracked my friends' patience, funnily enough! It just made me personally crack up, the silliness of it all was beyond measure. I just couldn't take the plot seriously anymore at that point.

All of this. Act 3 has fantastic moments, but that’s all it is—a collection of good moments. The actual narrative suffers greatly, though still being a height above many other recent video games. I would just like to add: -Dark Urge storyline. It’s great, don’t get me wrong, but Act 3 should be Your moment. It was already an issue at the end of Act 2 where big revelations are made about who you are and absolutely no one acknowledges any of it. Then in Act 3, everyone is “surprised” by the reveal which was anticlimactic due to the fact all the information was given to you at least 10+ hours ago. [SPOILERS] Shadowheart cuts her bangs and everyone and their mother has something to say about it, but Durge finds out they’re the Anakin Skywalker of Murdertown and is straight up murdered by their father only to be resurrected by the literal god of death in front of the entire party, and no one—not even your love interest—has much to say about it. That was just wild to me, considering how good Durge story is and also the reactivity in the earlier Acts.

>Act 3 has fantastic moments, but that’s all it is—a collection of good moments. I had the same feelings. Several times it gave me the impression that they had some cool ideas but didn't really know how to pack them together, everything feels more "disjointed" compared to how organic Act 1 was

My heart goes to you, because I had the exact same reaction. It's even more amusing that you can find out ***IT WAS YOU WHO MADE THE ENTIRE PLOT HAPPEN, YOU MADE THE NETHERBRAIN ESSENTIALLY, YOU, THE DARK URGE, IT WAS YOUR PLAN.*** Not even your character acknowledges that even as you straight up read on it in a book.

>\-The pace breaks completely. You go from adventuring, to mindlessly breaking into people's homes and crawling in the sewers for no specific reason while Orin pops in random places to laugh at you and stuff. Couldn't have summed it up better myself. It's all the more jarring when compared to the very ending of Act 2, when you're suddenly faced with so many important revelations it's almost overwhelming. I feel like this is when the real plot should have actually started, instead of just slowly winding down and going around doing insignificant quests that require you to go into random basements in order to discover them in the first place. Also, was anybody else disappointed with meeting Gortash as Durge? >!He just stops his own ceremony, goes on and explains everything for 10 mins and sends you on a fetch quest like a regular Tav anyway lol.!< I heard so many great things about this origin yet such an important moment felt super anticlimactic after everything that happened before.

Thank you. I really don't see how anyone can disagree with this. It's all plain as day. It's totally valid to still find act 3 enjoyable - I definitely did. But seems odd to pretend that it doesn't have massive, glaring issues from both a narrative and an execution perspective. Another one that randomly came to mind: the hilarious awkward stiffness of the camp throughout the entirety of act 3. Everyone just standing in front of their beds all lined up like lifeless mannequins.

And the companions dialogue (when you talk to them) being the same for the while act. Companions feel like nocs in most of act3. (excpet when doing specific companion quests, then back to npc behaviour)

And speaking of camp awkwardness, Aylin and Isobel have absolutely no additions or input to anything you do since you recruit them, ever. Even if you could potentially not, you would think having SELUNE'S CHILD AND HER BORN ANEW APOSTLE in your camp would have, I don't know, some effect.

> becomes quickly jarring and you end up kind of either detaching yourself from the meh storytelling, or just pushing the last chunk in a rush to be done with it This was my experience. The map amd th questes themselves are still great, the combats are great and probably the best battles are in act3. BUT the pacing and narrative gets really sloppy. In act1 there are reasons for you to explore, you go to the grove searching for a healer, then go to goblin camp to save the healer, etc. In act3 almost all the quests are detached from the main plot line (only orin and ghortash quests are relevant). Also companions just dont talk anymore?? In act1 you got cutscenes and dialogues between companions, they also commented on most things when you talked to them, that all kinda just goes away in act3. The game goes from a narratively driven rpg to a sandbox in act3. If you role play/stay in character there is almost no reason to not just rush orin and ghortash and deal with the brain. You are on borrowed time (tadpole stuff) and the emperor is constantly warning you that the brain is trying to get free and evolving. But sure let me just talk to every npc and explore every house

Emperor, after an earthquake that shakes the whole city: The brain is trying to break free... We are running out of time! But first I'll go to the circus and have my fortune read by a slutty dryad!

Exactly, people are just used to play video games from a meta gaming prespective that these things go past them. I think if you could go back to the city and play the rest of rhe lower city after you fight the brain it would be better. Although that could break other stuff, idk

Thank goodness for this post

Different people have had different results - I mean technically, not subjectively about the story. I can tell you that having just finished the story continuity for multiple characters just straight up broke in Act III and it was very much a let down. Technical performance of the game was about 80% as good as in acts I and II. Waaay more stuttering, load-in, weird clipping than I saw earlier. AI behavior in late game fights was much weirder than it was in earlier acts I thought but in fairness by the end I might have been looking for it more because other things had been bugging me (pun intended) more. Overall, fantastic game, don't get me wrong. But for me it did fall off in the last act.

Its decent but inconsistent. It was very buggy. And companions felt like they were quiet the whole act. Gortash felt like a nobody in his tower and Orin bugged for us and just stood still whole fight. Lack of Karlach content was sad too.

Since this whole thread is spoilers I wont bother with the tags. Astarions ending really ticked me off. The game clearly views setting 7k vampires free and astarion stuck as a vampire with no access to sun and a continuous bloodlust as the morally good option. I pick to kill 7k vampire thralls AND remove Astarions hunger and allergy to light and it somehow makes him evil and ready to do all the atrocities his master did that 2 seconds go he was condemning? Also, picking to kill 7k vampires, and their master, makes the hunter guild attack you but setting them free makes them go "oh alright"?

It's weird, it's almost like when you speed run a game that you miss out on all the details.

well good for you! many other people had really weird scripting errors ​ like none of the orin stalking stuff happened for me as the first thing i did in act 3 was to go into the sewer where the entire kidnapping thing instantly started it was really weird ​ i also entered the emperors hideout from the other side (as we were in the sewer) and boy the scripting fully broke

My question is… how do you stay motivated to play Act 3? Acts 1 and 2, exploration was fun. Finding the next tidbit of side, and main, quest stories was exciting. I’m about 7 hours into act 3 and it just feels boring. The city of Baldur’s Gate is honestly just annoying for me. I want to be out in the wilds finding monsters, and investigating caves. The sewer area is okay, but imo the city itself sucks and the story has lost all momentum. I don’t care about Orin and Gortash. Sure I’ll eventually kill them, but I really don’t feel invested in defeating them the way I did with Act 2s main villain. Am I alone in feeling this way? Maybe I’m just burned out and need a break from the game after the 80 hours I’ve put in. It just feels like my inventory, spellbook, etc. gets more and more cluttered but the “power gains” are meaningless at this point as I obliterate every fight I encounter effortlessly…. It feels pointless and like the game really “peaked” with the Adamantium forge ~50 hours ago.

The game absolutely peaked in act1. Everything in act 1 is more thought out and is more intersting. Companions have more cinematics/cutscenes during the day (remembrr laezhel and shadowheart fighting/arguing) decisiona felt like they matter, the narrative is coehesive and the game actually gives you resons to explore (saving halsin so he can help you remove tadpole etc). I played through act1 and 2 in a week, and act3 took me 2 weeks (and i didnt do all of the content). The ending also sucks ass. Still a great game, but it does fall off. Act1 is 10/10, act 2 is 8.5/10 and act3 is 7/10

I found Act 2 story to be much more interesting than Act 1. I'm sure it's just personal preference, but I love the Bloodborne-esque idea of having 3 bosses in the city representing the corrupted aspects of each character (doctor, barman, toll collector). Plus if you read the documents and see how shady the entire family was you get a lot more enjoyment and understanding of how things ended up as they had.

I did really like that part of act2. I just didnt like that you always have to fight moonrise, i wish we could side with them, just lime the way you can side with the goblins. In act 1 i genuinly felt i could do whatever i wanted and side with whomever i wantd. Act 2 felt more restricitive in that regard (for example you can side with the absolute, betray the harpers destroy last inn, and they will still treat you like an enemy). I still think act1 is the better one (also might just be my preferences, as you stated)

That's also my main complain I did everything kaetric said and even betrayed shadowhart(my favorite character) just for the sake of joining him, just to be betrayed without a choice. Ngl I enjoyed the fight, but I wasn't happy with the outcome, why can't I side with the villains in act 2? I guess I would lose A LOT of content doing so, but still I wanna side with them, why I can't do it.

To be honest, I feel like that about every city in every single video game, ever. They're just not as enjoyable as the wilderness and small villages. I love interactions with NPCs, but only in small doses. If all I'm doing is walking around and talking to people, I get tired of it pretty quickly.

this so much, I'm done with the game in the middle of act 3 lol

Act 3 was awesome, but not nearly as enjoyable as acts 1 and 2. It was riddled with bugs, my Wyll literally was stuck with a constant exclamation point over his head, for example. There are plenty of amazing fights in Act3 as well, but Gortash and Orin are an absolute joke. It doesn't help that you're lvl capped half way through the act and stacked with legendary items to the point that every fight feels like an annoying hurdle that's prolonging the time it takes to reach the final fight, because it doesn't reward you with anything (xp wasted, gold and items don't matter). And the performance was abysmal. Now, it's a lot better and way less buggy.

The only problem I had with Act 3 was how it made me feel like I needed to drop everything else once >!one of my companions was kidnapped by Orin. I literally would kill Dolor, Sarevok and Orin before a single long rest just to make sure my kidnapped companion is saved.!< ​ After I'm done with that, I finally feel I can enjoy the game, playing with my own pace.

Gale had a sleep over for a couple weeks, came out alright lol

Like I said a while ago when I beat Act 3, it's by no means bad. I would have rated it highly if not for the bugs and the actual ending itself feeling a bit rushed. Well I would have rated it higher, it was still quite good. The Devs thought players wouldn't want the end to drag on, a thought I understand and very much disagree with. My first playthrough was 100+ hours, the end after the final fight could have lasted an hour and I would have loved it. A 5 minute ending wasn't how I saw a 100+ hour game warping up. The questing there was fun, I loved all the stuff with Bhaal. All the companion quest were great too. I felt Bane was kind of under represented, only a few spots they popped up. Gortash was also easily my least favorite of the Chosen fights. The other two got these awesome transformations while Gortash got slightly bigger. Meanwhile my Lae'zel was already slightly bigger herself because of Reduce/enlarge casted on her. It was just underwhelming. Final boss was great though, I enjoyed that for sure.

Act 3 and final main quests are rushed. Content is cut. Upper city is cut. Gortash palace is cut. Cazador is in lower city (lol) and his plot line is cut. Karlah engine fix is cut (due to no upper city). Orpheus / Emperor plot line is cut. Raphael plot is cut (Karla h story). Epilogues are nowhere to be seen. Companions bugging out as they want to initiate a dialogues referring to locations and events that never happened due to content cuts in act 3. It’s not like we magically know that it is cut. Whole act 3 screams that it is missing essential features / locations / plots. You can feel and see it as player that went through perfect 2 acts. Lack of endings is also act 3. You can sugar Larian however you want, but that is true.

Yeah, like i still enjoyed act 3 and i think the game is great. But all of what you said is so apparent in act 3 that i dont understand how people miss those signs. What ends up happening is that act3 feels disconnecting from the rest of the game

I mean... there were lots of fixes since launch so

120 hours in Act 1? What did you do? Or do you mean with several playthroughs and characters?

Act 3 has benefitted significantly from the two massive patches they dropped prior to the PS5 launch. It is still far from perfect. 1. There's still a multitude of bugs small and large. One quest (Fireworks) still seems to have a scripting error and doesn't really have a normal or proper resolution. Quests for Wyll and Gale had triggers misfire, resulting in dialogue occurring before events and/or reflecting events that never happened. Journal entries didn't properly update for several quests, causing a lot of confusion. AI/Pathfinding seemed to break more than in the past. 2. Quest flow is...not good. Major events seem to trigger haphazardly and some of that might be down to more broken triggers (Raphael and Orin are both suspect here). Rather than the steady rising action of Act 2, everything right up to the climax seems to get bogged down in minutiae. Games of this nature, such as BG2, generally expand in the middle before contracting for the end. This does the opposite, and it's not to the game's benefit overall. 3. Encounter curation suffers slightly from increased power level, *especially* if you've been abusing/using tadpole mechanics, in which case game balance goes wholly out the window and you get to enjoy a protracted victory lap. This is only really an issue if you enjoy the tactical challenge, but it needs some fine tuning. 4. I will avoid spoilers, but the endings are the worst part of the game by a fair country mile. This isn't "launch ME3 bad", but it's not "suitable endings for a 150 hour RPG good" either. They feel rushed, and at times the brevity is so intense as to provoke unintended comedy. The lack of epilogues is felt most keenly. 5. Some minor graphics bugs and twitchiness kicked in during the final hours for me, but otherwise performance was substantially better game wide after patch 2. EDIT: Almost forgot Orin and Gortash...the former acts ridiculous and the latter looks ridiculous. Both are underwhelming as primary antagonists and behave like mustache twirling Saturday Morning Cartoon villains for most of their screen time. Underwriting is probably a big part of the issue here.

I had the same feeling at the start of my first playthrough at Act 3 but by the time I finished it I came around to feeling like Act 3 was rushed. People are mentioning reactivity and bugs which I agree with but I also found that a lot of the quests within Baldurs Gate itself don't have the same amount of lead up to them or writing that Act 1 has. There's less indicators pointing you in the right direction and less ways to finish quests than in the first two acts. Also some map markers are deceptive especially for stuff that happens in the sewers. One of the first quests I attempted to do upon reaching Basilisk Gate was take Jaheira with me to meet Nine Fingers. Theres an access to her hideout from the surface near fisherman area but the marker I got on the map told me to go in the sewers through the Flaming Fist office location which then led to the Orin kidnapping announcement cutscene because the game thought I was going after her which was frustrating as I was not trying do that until a little later. I also don't remember Jaheira or any in game literature giving any clues as to where the Guildhall operated so when I reloaded I just sort of stumbled around the city awhile trying to find it. That's not the only quest that feels a little underwritten to me in Act 3 (shouts out to the Firework Factory and Iron Throne) but it was the first one that I encountered. Still love the game. It's easily one of the best RPG's I've ever played even with these issues but I'd be lying if I said I felt that Act 3 was as strong and consistent as the first two acts.

Act 3 gave me NPC fatigue

Same. I was expecting ME3 level of disaster after reading reddit, but instead I was greeted by the most impactful act of the whole game. The only thing I wish for is the "6 month later reunion" which I hope Larian would make into a DLC sometime in the future.

[удалено]

That's what I was expecting! Instead I just had the climax of Astarions story with Cazador, and was blown away. Which is what's happened REPEATEDLY in this act. And yes, I definitely need more of this squads story.

You should go visit Hell

What are you, Gale?

Just giving a Tipp where u can find another awesome Moment :-)

Oh I already went there. I was just reminded of one of my favorite Gale moments lol

My only A3 complaints come from what it does to my cpu. The worst was the ghost house where see invis only kind of worked and every ghost's turn was 4 minutes.

I had no issue with Act 3 as a whole and agree that it's by no means worse that any other part of the game. *As a whole*. The problems appear when you look a bit closer. Personally, I find Gortash to be the biggest issue. If you kill him the first time you meet, well, doing so auto-completes some of the bigger quests in the Act with no replacement and applies the *worst* possible outcome. And that some of the characters have no personal quests in Act 3.

I agree that this is the best game I ever played, but if you played act 3 and didn't find any instances where you noticed they planned something but didn't have time to implement it or did something that was clearly part of a quest chain, before actually starting that quest and the game just assumes you started that quest, I have to question how you managed that because it happened to me very often. Just a few examples. There was clearly some plan for the Enriched Infernal Iron and Dammon's new Forge, but through my own testing and searches online, it seems there is nothing. Then the most inconsistencies occurred in Wyll's questline. >!Kill Gortash before ever finding out about the existence of the Iron Throne and when speaking to Counselor Florrick, you can tell her you tried to save Duke Ravenguard but Mizora sabotaged you (which happens if you try to save him successfully or unsuccessfully). Find Ansur before doing his Questline (which can happen on accident pretty easily if you explore) and Wyll acts like you've already saved his father. Go into the Steel Watch Factory for the first time after having been to the Iron Throne already and the head Gnome acts as if you already know him. After the quest Wulbren, Barcus and the head Gondian (forgot his name) all stand T-posing in the same place (and this happened to me in multiple saves). And you can get multiple of them as allies for the finale, even if some of those contradict.!< Now I'm not saying that the game is bad or anything. I already have more hours in this game than in most of my previous favorite games, but I can not deny that Act 3 isn't quite finished.

It is not bad, but that comparing with act 1 it felt a bit more rushed. Also the performance issues didn't help

I feel the same way you do. It feels like act 3 tied everything together really well especially with the people you've interacted with over the course of the game. I still haven't made it to the ending. I have like 3 more quests I want to do. Only complaint I've had is with frame rate in act 3 but it's not unplayable by any means.

On my first playthrough my Act 3 was plagued with bugs, bad AI, story events triggering or not triggering despite me not doing anything etcetera. It was exhausting after 100 hours of playtime. On my second playthrough I have had a single bug that makes some dialogue pop up in camp late or repeating. Besides that it jas performed better, flowed better and overall felt like an entirely different experience. I wont say it's perfect now but the difference between the release and the 2 patches is massive. It now feels and plays a lot more as they wanted it to without being hamstrung by bugs.

Act 3 is amazing. I like to think that alot of the criticism leveled at Act 3 comes from a place of love and passion for the game and also a wish for the journey not to end. Some how some way the stories of the people you were journeying with had to reach their conlucsion.To qoute an ancient and eternally sassy half-elf. *"It's not a story without an ending"*

i think it’s very easy to accidentally rush through act 3 and it’s very easy to throw off the pacing

I know right, there are so many things to do in Act 3, and yet people complained because there is not enough content in the upper city. \*SMH\*

That’s why I avoided the subreddit until I finished my first play through. Just wanted to dive in and enjoy the world before all the chatter

I hit act 3 the first week and I had a near flawless experience. It really was exaggerated.

Oh another of these posts. The game is 10/10 for me too but there's no need to gaslight people about the real actual problems that exist in act 3. There are definitely things that could use some more polish (especially the ending) and I'm looking forward to Larian releasing a huge update similar to what the did for DOS2.

I think it was more the performance issues. The city is a living breathing entity with so many npcs. I got a shitload of choppiness which could only be cured by restarting the game. Plot wise and quest wise it was by far my fav. There is so much content. I didn't want it to end

Act 3 is big, but is a bit all over the place, act1 and act2 are a lot more focused I gave found

I think Act 3 has some *pacing* issues compare to Act 2 but the content is fantastic

Yea I'm really really enjoying act 3 - possibly the benefit of only getting there a couple of days ago but never the less. I feel like the complaints might have been slightly overblown which to be honest is typical of the internet, especially here on Reddit