this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
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Baldur's Gate 3
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Baldur’s Gate 3 is a story-rich, party-based RPG set in the universe of Dungeons & Dragons, where your choices shape a tale of fellowship and betrayal, survival and sacrifice, and the lure of absolute power. (Website)
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The only point of no return I encountered was once you head into Baldur's Gate itself, you can't go back to any previous area. All the other areas before that may give you a vague warning implying you can't go back, but you most certainly can. Though at some points, the only way back is to fast travel, since you can't just turn around and go back the way you came because you had to jump/fall into a pit or something.
I do find that one point of no return silly. The only logical reason I can think of is that they didn't make an uncursed version of the woods, so it would be immersion breaking to go back there. But plot wise? Shit doesn't make sense at all. There's no reason I shouldn't be able to go back to Emerald Grove once I reach Rivington.
Yes, I found it confusing that sometimes there is a warning which has no consequences, then in anothere you get locked from all previous maps. Also with time-sensitive missions, you can fail a few quests and it is not always specified that there will be consequences if you take too long in your exploration (in a game that is all about exploration)
I believe they mentioned that those time sensitive ones are directly related to taking long rests near the location of the quest.
You aren't told this in game, tho. The quests in question don't even apply the pressure to give the illusion time is crucial, the way they do with the worm in your head every 5 minutes. You have no way knowing that these two specific quests have a time limit. It's not like every quest has them.
Does your DM tell you the consequences of all your long rests and choices as well, or do you find out after?
Does your DM straight up not make it clear there are time constraints, either through context or by just directly telling the party? The story in BG3 emphasizes a time crunch in one thing, that doesn't matter until you progress beyond certain map points, but then you get these other couple of quests that make no effort to say there is any time limit, so you rest after 1 fight and fuck everything up without even realizing wtf happened. Even after it happens, it's not clear it was because you rested and time had passed. From the player's point of view they were in a dungeon, rested, woke up and all the bad guys were gone/dead and the quest gets stuck with nothing in the journal telling you what happened. It appears to be a bug, but it's actually an intended consequence that is never telegraphed or alluded to, period.
When I'm running a game I absolutely tell my players things that I think their characters would be aware of, and that includes time pressures that a reasonable adventuring party would understand through professional experience
They do give you hints with some of them - I did a long rest and everyone was telling me we needed to hurry or the dude trapped under rubble was going to die. I thought that was a good way to handle it.
Exactly, all the time critical events I encountered had NPCs clearly indicating it's a time sensitive issue.
Does your DM let you re-roll if you don't like the outcome?
Yeah, actually. If I have inspiration points. That's what they're there for.
In act 1, if you don't resolve the druid/goblin/tiefling dispute, and iirc the burning house before reaching act 2, it resolves itself. If you did nothing the grove's ritual finishes, if you killed the druids the goblins invade and kill everyone, and the other options don't matter since you would resolve the quest, oh and karlach's personal quest too, if you don't do it she leaves.
Odd, I tried to go back to Act 1 from Act 2 (looking for a vendor since spoiler stuff happened at the only settlement in cursed lands) and when I clicked the elevator it told me I "really shouldn't" like twice and the third time it game over'd me in a unique and creative way... I felt that was a pretty hard lock out of act 1... Lol
I think there is a grace period after hitting act 2 where you still can go back but once you've done a bit of story related stuff you are pretty locked in.
You could try just opening the map and bringing up the list of fast travel spots. This will let you fast travel even to points on another map. Like if you're in the under dark, you can warp straight to Emerald Grove without going back up topside. I had to do this when in the basement of Moonrise Towers because I wanted to go back and sell shit before moving forward, but there's no transition back the way you entered.
Once you hit the lock out point, there aren't any waypoints for act one when you open the map... I didn't get all the way through acts one and two by literally walking everywhere and ignoring fast travel, lol.
No waypoints was why I had to walk back to the elevator to even try going back. I don't want to drop spoilers, but I have a hunch what the "point of no return" is and depending on your methodology playing the game you might trigger it relatively early in act 2 or it could be very nearly the last thing you do... I'm assuming you happen to have done the later and didn't even notice when you got locked out of act 1.
I've heard of this early ending and yeah, maybe that's it because I was able to go back to the very beginning as far as just before entering Rivington. After that, is when the only FT point I had was my camp. I did all the top of emerald Grove, then the underdark, then the mountains, then the shadow forest before finally moving on.