Baldur's Gate 3: Not Really Cut Content

There is no way anyone can convince me Larian thought the endings were good enough to release, what a joke.

I don't get this discussion, to a certain degree. Has the definition ot cut content changed? Is it not content that was ultimately determined to not be added to the game, and thus cut out?

I will start from it - yes, i believe Larian will polish game, and after ~year we will have definitive edition which will be much much better.
For now its great game, but not so great how all this hype around promoted.
And before u will start toss stones in me - 260hours, 3 completed runs.
I will skip part about all this UI and usability problems like slow running, cant click to map and run, lot of rimekillers etc etc. Fuck it. Also lets skip that act 3 extremely raw. Fuck it.
Lets talk about seroius things.
That will include some SPOILERS.

1) Final abrupt as fuck. A want to know how good Alfira with her school. I need to find place for Yena and her cat. I want ask Omellum where was his ass while i searched for any mindflayer with some brains. Like wtf Larian, i need we need at least some slides. And more cutscenes with team. And i believe this part will be fixed. We just need to wait.

2) Again, about finals. And here im not sure it will be fixed. After final battle everyone just go do their stuff. Like man, 15min ago me and ancested Astarion talked about his future dark empire of night and now he just runaway in most cringe scene ever. Same 15 min ago we talked with Gale about how we can got crown and use it power and he just "okay, i will go search crown" and pufff - he is gone. There need not just add content but serious rework imao. Not sure if they will do it.

3) Romances bad as fuck. I mean sorry, but any romance here divided for 3 parts (first talk, first scene, second scene). So not much content, almost no content between and after. And if u not reach first scene before camp in act1 - its gone forever. Also everyone want your ass, so if u just talk with Gale at night everyone can decide youre couple now. Even more it will block other scenes with other companions. So for now its just bad. And I not even touched that Larian said a alot about polyamory but the only polyamory character is Halsin. Okay, so u can create MMM or MFM but not MFF or FFF. Why? Maybe Minthara have same option, because she was fixed today, but im to tired to do 4 run to check it.

4) Minthara and evil walkthrough. First of all there is lack of content for evil characters. If u help Minthara - u losing 3 companions, all tiefligs, and in reward you reach Minthara and thats all. If u do it right way - u losing only Halsin, all romances (maybe already fixed), because almost all of it start at party after grove battle, Karlach subquest because tieflings dead, and all tieflings too. U can keep Wyll and Karlach though, but cant fix Karlach. I do not understood where is the fucking problem to let us do with Minthara same we do with Minsc - knock out, then see her again in Moonrise Towers. I believe this part can be fixed (at least we already have mod that doing exactly this), but i do not believe that Larian will add content for evil bois.

5) Tadpoles. Like they all just died with no consequences. In my first run i completely skip it, because i waited for some heavy consequences. But there is nothing. They just dead and that all. Lol, really? That thing ate your brain and youre fine, because its just DIED INSIDE YOUR HEAD. It certainly won't rot, right? Nothing to worry about, no consequences

I mean. While u read this looooong comment u probably think i hate this game.
I do not. I love it. I played 260h. Its twice more than any other crpg including both Pathfinders and DoS2.
I absolutly love characters (not bear, though, because get your hairy hands off my girl, u bastard), and i do not care that plot is simple and full of agenda. Just give me normal romances, finals for party and for people I met.
For now i feel like Larian said "sir, your paid time is over, proceed to exit, please. FAST!"

It its still good game. But not revolution, not best game, just really, really good.
But I hope it will became better.

Also sorry for my english if there is some problems, not my native language

I trust Larian. They are the only studio to gain my complete trust.

During EA we saw so many ideas being tried then scrapped. IE there was a way to get to Grymforge before it was ready in EA and Larian played with the idea that the damage the tadpoles due less to madness on the lines that we see in True Soul Nere. There was a backround check and comments characters and companions made about Nere’s insanity. Larian clearly scrapped that by the time they made it officially available in the next EA patch.

Anyone else have Vlakith 'Wish' them dead? I decided to test her...

X to doubt

So wtf is going on? Is it safe to continue following through Karlach's story or is it still cut to only the "bad" ending?

After playing Bg3 and EA I would pay for any game Larian puts out. I am hoping they continue to add more content, without burning themselves out

Karlch needs not just ending, but full rewrite and new questline made from ground up, her content is just...terrible and not worthy of larian quest design.

Content was definitely cut otherwise they did Gortash dirty!

I don't understand this "cut content" complaint at all. ALL big games have cut content. Do people think that game developers just know exactly every piece of content they are going to do when they start development and just perfectly plan out how everything is implemented? Uh...no, there's always content that just doesn't make the final cut for whatever reason...bad quality, unfinished, wrong direction, etc.

Sticking the landing is important; if a movie or show is great, but the ending leaves a bad taste in people's mouths, it retroactively drags down the enjoyment of what went before.

I'm baffled by the thought process of "we decided to trim down the endings because we didn't want players to get bored." We just spent 100+ hours playing this game. As long as I can pause the cutscene, give me a suitably epic sendoff!

One thing I wish Larian would implement to the game is...

...the Level 20 Multiclassing mod. Yeah okay, Higher DnD levels are OP I get that. But just because Level 20 is the highest level it doesn't necessarily mean everyone will try reaching that level. Most often than not, people will opt to Multiclassing than outright gaining Level 20 in just one Class. So yeah, please give us the option to go further with Multiclassing.

May I ask where was the expansion idea given to us?

Act 2 and Act 3 seems rushed. I wish they took longer time to fix it.

Larian: "All that stuff that was datamined and not included in the game? That wasn't cut content, it was just, uh, stuff that we decided wasn't good enough for the game, but definitely not cut content, yep. No siree, no cut content here, absolutely not."

As good as this game is, I still think there’s a lot of missed opportunities. Some of my favorite monsters apparently aren’t in the game. No demons, angels, giants, or no chromatic dragons, other than red.

Act 3 is a damn joke and doesn't deserve to be in the same game as Act 1. Anyone who isn't enthralled by the ability to shove or stack smokepowder barrels can tell that there is a huge amount of cut content surrounding Act 3 and companions throughout act 2 and 3

Look, stop making excuses. They were talking about the upper city being fully explorable two weeks before launch. Turns out the "upper city" consisted of one wrecked building. That's just one of their lies.

Man, I really wish they didn't remove the epilogues... The ending felt lacking for such a grand adventure, although I don't know how you could end something so good in a satisfying way

omg you made my day by talking of a potential expansion, one with all the companions at their full potentials and profits from all the power acquired would be epic.

Spell and shield, any thoughts about the patch 2?

It seems they are rolling out patches pretty frequently right now.

OK, let's not be unrealistic either. I can promise that there is a lot of things in that data-mine they wanted to get in the game. I think up until about 6 months ago they planned on a possible surprise level cap increase. My guess would be level 15, though the level table goes up to 20, as there is enough content to get all the way to level 20 in one playthrough using their table which requires far more XP than D&D 5E does. That type of thing I'm fine with. They knew 10 was way too low for everything they had, set it to 20 for in house work and settled on 12 figuring that people who played 70-100 hours should be able to get there and not feel like they missed out. It also saved them a ton of resources that would have been needed for spell animations, new class features (which are in the game btw) etc etc.. The Jaheira romance was something I think they wanted to put in the game as well, but would have been one of those nice to have's, so again, no biggie. The illithid being the "Emperor?" I'm 99% sure they decided on that years ago but left the other part in for Early Access as it didn't give anything away and still got them the information they needed from the player base. Now, things I believe would have been in the game with a paltry month to keep plugging away;

We'll start with crafting. There is no way on God's green Earth that the crafting that shipped day one was what they planned on for the majority of development. There is way, way too much metal and ingots scattered about for all of that to just be toss away vendor fodder. I'm sorry, but I legit would not believe them if they said "Yep, this is the crafting system we wanted in our game from day 1." They didn't say that though. They were actually very, very careful with the wording, saying that everything in the game was supposed to be in the game. They did not say "The game has everything we wanted in it." Quick aside; did they change Minthara's character model from Early Access? For some reason I recall her being way...sexier? I stopped playing Early Access right after the Druid update though, so that was maybe 3-6 months after release and my brain could just be playing tricks on me. Back to cut content.

I think they wanted to do more in the Upper City. A lot more. Unfortunately I think they realized, too late, that they didn't have time to make sure everything worked properly and had to turn it into a short epilogue. I believe this happened pretty last minute, and I am not sure that launching in September would have been enough time for them to get it ready unfortunately. As cool as everyone says the House of Hope quest is, I also think they planned on having the "Hells," or at least that level of Avernus, be far more in depth than it was. Something closer to the Sewers or the Underdark. I'm relatively sure that had the game released a month later we would have gotten that content in, along with more for Karlach. Now perhaps she was always meant to make the "Hero's Sacrifice," or more like that was what they decided on after shooting a bunch of ideas back and forth, but I believe there was more to it than we got and the late changes along with the 30 day bump squished something that was hoped to be there but unfortunately could not be.

There are a handful of other things, but if I was going to throw a number out there, I would surmise that had Larian been shipping in early December, about 50% of the content that was data-mined would have been in the game along with additional content to make sure everything was fleshed out.

Do I think they are happy with what shipped? Absolute*ly. ;^) . Do I wish there was more? Yep. I took a couple of days off playing altogether bc I've been at level 12 for the last 50+ hours of my playthrough and, even with the great story, not having *ANY progression was really starting to take the wind out of my sails. I still have some major, major quests to go as well which really sucks. I've been debating adding a level cap remover mod that let's you multi-class up to level 20. The catch is you can't take a 12th level in any one class until level 20 as that crashes the game to desktop bc Larian locked up the table to make sure no one consoled it in. That's actually pretty UN player-friendly, as is forcing a mod to access the console...I am not sure why they did that. All their other games were like Bioware where you just change an .ini file and kabaam, you can pull up the console whenever you like. Nope, this time they literally set traps. Again, I have no clue why, but it's kinda f'd up. There are also some 7th and 8th level spells...about 50 I believe, so again, though they have been saying level 12 was the cap for a year or so, they definitely were not positive for the majority of the development process.

Now I assume they will unlock the console via patch at some point; maybe they had it locked for playtesting reasons, perhaps due to Early Access and they just spaced out un-booby-trapping it? What an off phrase; "Booby-trap." I wonder where that came from?

Back to rambling; So, I am sure that Larian planned on shipping what they did and a good deal of what was data-mined were planned cuts similar to what ends up on the floor of the cutting room after a movie shoot. I'm also sure a lot of it was content they did want in the game but real life factors made it infeasible to get in.

What Larian has always done before is to slowly add that content back into the game over the first year or so of release, often improving upon what they simply did not have time for, then releasing a "Definitive Addition" which is also a free upgrade for everyone who already has the game. I don't expect a Jaheira romance unfortunately, but I do expect a higher level cap. I don't expect the Upper City but I do expect an expanded hells area and better crafting. There's just so much there, even if a lot of it was intentional and cut years ago, if they have time to work it into the game AND it fits/makes the game better, it would not surprise me at all if it was added into the game. That's just what they have always done. D:OS2 ended up with about 45 hours of additional content. it was pretty insane.

Something completely ot again in this ridiculously long post (heh, I should have made some cuts here!); Imaging how massive a game Larian could make if you couldn't play the NPC's and they just focused on, say 3 possible character backgrounds instead of...idk, like 15? 8 NPC's, the Dark urge, and 6 or 7 custom variations that switch things up for the player...yeah, concentrating on just the created character as playable would be pretty insane. At the same time, "if it 'aint broke, don't fix it" I suppose.

Larian made a great game, and I will make myself finish it at some point. 273 hours in one playthrough, good grief. Heh, and that only earned 49% of the achievements. I'm not just doing them to do them though. Ei. I keep forgetting to use an enemy as a weapon, win a battle with my character drunk, load a save before a certain point and let Gale take care of business etc.. So I could probably jump to 65% give or take if I banged out the easy ones. Maybe next week when the level cap mod is updated to this last patch I'll wrap up. Or maybe before, who know? Maybe I'll just start a new playthrough as I am really not happy with how my character looks. And man, I can't wait to see what Larian puts in after the fact. D:OS1and D:OS2 were legit different games, to the point where some people were pissed about the upgrades, it was kinda crazy.

I'm still quite early in the game - having restarted once due to disliking my character. So, I don't know how all this pans out. But I remember hearing there was a bunch of stuff planned in the upper city for Act III, specifically regarding final character arc stuff. If that's true, that's pretty poor - especially since this is going for the Mass Effect deep companion stuff.

Further, they shouldn't be protecting themselves by masking it as creative vision. Though, I think we share the opinion that doesn't seem like them. I just hope they see the community wants the content, so it eventually finds it's way into the game one way or another.

You killed the owlbear, you monster

What made this video even better is that patch 2 is out. Even if some devs have an issue with BG3 setting a standard, the transparency and the way they do things cannot be questioned. Got damn it Larian, you guys are the best. Hope you are editing your follow up video Spell&Shield.

I find it hard to believe the upper city wasn't meant to be in the final game given how they were still hyping it up only a few weeks before release. That just smells like bullshit to me.

Expansion(s) would be amazing and the possibilities are endless.
And yes I'd love a continuation of the story but I guess it would be extremely hard to do considering the branching endings. Something like a side-story could work, akin to what they did in Witcher 3... And it could be even done in a region/ plane of "broken time" (or whatever) so the "urgency" of the main quest isn't lost on another 70 hours of doing side quests. On top of the regular 70 hours of doing side quests.

The only thing that is bitter sweet for me personally is old wyll. I think I preferred the wyll from early access. He was always in my party but I don't find him as interesting as a character anymore . But the game exceeded my expectations, that other cut content seems minor since we have a full complete game regardless. Just as Elden Ring is

Regardless of what early ideas were datamined, the fact is in community update 19, a few weeks before game launch, they stated that the Upper City was fully explorable. Obviously for whatever reason they weren't able to see that through, which lead to origin characters losing a lot of their content.

I think we are all having a love affair with Larian. As you mentioned, Larian's transparency is so refreshing and their determination to fix problems with BG3 and enhance the existing game reinforces our belief in the studio. I so hope that Larian does bring us an expansion(s) to the game, because I love the game and I want more of it. I'll happily buy whatever they make.

💯 on everything u said. Waiting for few more patches before a second playthrough tho

Im confused Spell&shield .... when did you start being Bias towards Larian and BG3? Your content used to be Pro D&D and just fun stuff. Now it seems you like to play politics with what Larian did and how '' you '' think things are. Don't get me wrong .. i like most of the stuff that you post. But it seems you gotten soft. Have you played BG1 and 2 at all? Do you know D&D at all... to claim larian did right by BG3.

Larian lied, they got caught ... don'T try to sugar coat it and claim they are angels telling only the truth. The upper BG city part was supposed to be in the game Sven himself said it 2 weeks before release in a video. I have 800 hours + played in BG. I have a game tester background and a extensive D&D understanding and knowledge. As far as BG3 goes, the game was incomplete and it started in Act 2 and then 3. Everyone is starting to talk about it.Doesnt take an IQ of 200 to figure out that they cut on relationships with npc's... .every npc in Early access had tons of dialog... in full release its talk a bit and then lets romance. There's ZEROOOOO dialogue for friendship or companionship in terms of what D&D is about. Normaly, there should of been some dialogue after defeating the bosses like raphael and some other huge fights. The npc's in this game feel like they are with you...but it doesn't feel organic and real. It takes more then 1 linners while your moving in a dungeon to make you feel like these are friends. That content was cut.... its plain to see. Also, most of the pre ending fight dialog was cut. It's quite easy to see... the volume goes from high to low to normal from 1 voice to another...or sometimes even the same. Halsin is the worst trough the game for this. Lets think about this logically .... you just played 200-300 hours , but they say '' we didn't want the dialogue to be too long'' .. Please define too long? 5 seconds lines x 5 times and its goodbye .... None of the interaction with the npc's felt good. Don't take my word for it ...everyone i spoke too said the same. The beginning had a huge cinematic ..but the ending didn't. The end of the game didn't feel like a huge celebration... we did it. Most none D&D players don't realise that the whole plot didn't make sense. A elder brain is a campaign level 20+ .... a nether elder brain is like the strongest of all elder brains ever ...and we are doing this at level 12. I don't know why people are trying to pretend like this is normal.. it's not. In any case .. you can see in the dialogue that sometimes the dialogue of one npc is cut short.. in mid sentence and another vocal dialogue starts. How on earth... can you take 300 hours + game play and then decide to cut at the ending like that in quality.

Let's talk truth here .... not Bias. BG3 was incomplete and doesn't feel fine tuned at the end of the game. Actualy to be honest ...from act 2 and 3. You don't need to be heinstein to figure this out. You have priest npc's never healing, lvl 10 mages never casting fire balls and only using cantrips to attack you. The goblins in the fort are 100x more tuned, scripted and the AI smarter then most of the enemies you meet in the rest of the game. The data mined stuff is nothing compared to the stuff in the game that's been botched and done to fast. All 3 chosen fights were a joke, even at the tactician settings ... they were dead in turn 1. Turn 1... imagine. Do you realise that story telling...and buildup in this game is what actually makes it horrible for the hardcore BG community. It's like going at a gordon ramsay restaurant after doing 300 hours and then the steak is undercooked...nothing is what you thought it was gonna be. Ketheric storms 2 minute dialogue after being defeated 3 times ...why would anyone in their right mind let the antagonist just prey to his god to help him and just wait ...till it happens...3 times. Your whole party is standing still looking at this doing nothing while everything goes down. Those things to me are wayyyy worst then the data mined cut content.

Another thing they cut..... GOLD , items, making everything in the D&D world a HOMEBREW..... like a 1200 year old great wyrm draco lich ... that's 1/4 the size it should be .... with 1 attack per round and the stats of a juvenile dragon. Nobody is mind blown by this ? You can't just add things for the sake of adding them and then make them homebrew because heck ....''I'm a game creator i can do whatever''. Heck lets add a Tarask with 100 hp that shoots flowers up its ass as a attack ... heck , lets put 300 hp buny's with 10 attacks per rounds. After act one ...so much content doesn't make sense. Cazador is one of those things ..... greatest vampire of BG....dies in 1 turn ... no cinematic , no video dialogue worthy of a great vampire. The dungeon he's in is EPIC ...the people who made his dungeon must cried to see all the effort they made to create that place for him to die in 20 seconds. Nobody is gonna convince me that they didn't cut on this also. Just me and 2 of my friends spoke about it and we came up with 10 scenario's that would of been 1000x better than the one in the game. Gortash is the same.... how can chosen have such simplistic mechanics. Explain to me how they didn't cut on those most important things. They took time to put vampire and bear loves scenes ..but lets make the most epic fights of the game so basic and chimpanzee can smash the keyboard and defeat the boss with everyone still alive.

What do gamers want? When you buildup something .... deliver the effort to that buildup, no??? If your gonna add mechanics like romance... make it something deeper then just 2 naked scenes and nothing at the end worthwild. When you buildup boss fights... make sure everyone talks about it afterwards. Larian kept saying , we don't think we can do an expansion because its too complicated. Maybe for the guys you hired it is .... tell that to the guys who made '' pathfinder kingmaster and the sequel '' ...or the guys who made BG2 and the expansion. Obviously if your gonna cut on dispell mechanics, control mechanics, on the AI and scripting of better selected spells and ability and positioning from npc's ... obviously its gonna be hard. Instead Larian chose to homebrew everything in order to not be accountable for the choices they made. Like being able to transfer items mid fight from 1 inventory to the other even if characters are 100 feet apart ... or like ignoring armor and spell casting requirements , or how spell levels can be linked with other class, etc..etc..etc..

Ive done enough game testing to know that those things count as cuts too. Now... lets be honest. Larian are amazing for trying to do this...I'm grateful for the effort... if anything act 1 is a testament of what they really intended to deliver. But they didn't and for them to say ... ''we don'T want you to think'' BUTTTTT Karlach has no ending.. the ''prey to your god for help'' dialog does nothing.... end game dialogs with no variable outcomes... being forced into becoming an illithid or (spoilers).... those arent just things they decided '' lets make the story this way'' ... the fact you are level 12 1 hour after doing some questing in the city of BG...and you gain the equivalence of level 16 + experience when you finish the game. Is not coincidence. Maybe some people like to live in a fake make believe world ... but in reality these things don't happen by mistake. None of those things are just random acts of creation. That being said , of course Larian wants to pickup the ball .. now that Sven said in a interview...we were thinking of selling maybe 1 million copys of BG3 and then realising he sold almost 10 if not more...and maybe a few more millions once released on xbox.

Bg3 had the potential to be a masterpiece...so many times i was like WOW amazing.... the scenary , the decor ...the environment and sounds ....the fan service ... the Bg3 issues arent about the intentions and wants of larian. It's about the setups and how they delivered. One of the best examples is wyll, gale , karlach... all supposedly great talented gifted but level 1. Jaheira was level 20 + in bg2 ... shes level 8 or 9 100 years later. The fact they didn't allow players to roll their stats is also not a coincidence ...the game was so easy from the starts imagine if they let you roll characters with 3x 18 or godly stats. what sucks even more is that Larian is kinda tossing the ball to moders... Mods will try to fix the game where Larian dropped the ball. Imagine a D&D world where high level ( level 10 and more ) characters actually use hiding , invisibility potions, fireball , powerful Aoe spells , dispel mechanics and all the great D&D content Larian had access too. Priest that actually heal, without npc's tossing potions of healing on them. If you love BG3 blindly its all good .. if you are a Larian fan boy ...great its all good. But please don't make a video telling black is white. Especialy not when all your previous video's were on point with D&D literature. You do yourself a great disservice when you try to play politics and try and defend Larian.... nobody wins when you sugar coat the actions of someone else. Especialy when they are lying. I like Larian , i like Sven .... i think that Larian studios has hugeeee potential and is on their way to great success. But it isn't because there asnt been that many great CRPG's with that kind of reputation like the BG franchise....them selling millions. Doesnt mean its without fault or white lies....

Il end my post with this..... why would a huge game like this not have a cinematic ending...worthy of the intro animated cinematic. '' maybe they scraped the ending more then 1 time'' Maybe the ending was decided ...Last minute''.

If there's a company I do trust, it's Larian. And that's about the only one I do. It also happens to be the only game i bought early access.
I wish they owned the D&D IP.
It would be easier to support them. WoTC doesn't deserve the lore.

Trust them 100%. Disappointed Upper City didn’t make it in.

Love the game and Larian.

Played about 600h of EA, and now I'm now arriving west of the docks in the city, spent about 140h in one play-through. So I don't know what else they could give me for my 60 buck? I have so many notes about things I'll do different in my next few games. So about 200-300 hours more, I guess?

I had to watch that other video and rewatch this one to understand. Since I have worked on gaming projects I will try to add to what Larion has stated. Sometimes in game development there are just bugs that effect the fundamental mechanics in the game. This usually happens after implementation of many new mechanics in the game halfway through to final completion. And if you are working on major levels and you find it's too buggy or it may just feel like it doesn't add to the game, then the team may just cut it. But, it's always okay for the customers to say what they want because Larian is actually patching in some of the content, yay!. If they can they will probably make an expansion(s) for some of the cut content. They might have to completely change it to make it fit as an expansion to the game though. It would make sense to make a upper city expansion for example. I also think the weapon smithing could be a great expansion and opportunity for the modding community. But only if there was no fundamental bug that effected the main game in development.

It still feels like Avernus is "missing" from the game. There are a lot of hellish themes and events that are touched on but not present, save for one brief jaunt into the hells.

Even with all this cut content they managed to give a good story experience so yeah it sucks but down the road they’ll prolly just do a definitive edition to give us the complete experience

Mild Spoiler warning: there are 3 letters that can be found in the place where raphael is staying in in Act 3, which refer to Alias Names of his plan moving forward. From those letters you can clearly deduce which people are actually meant, but it simply leads nowhere. I've spend a lot of time searching for what was going on there, but this is probably a blatant example of cut content, where the buildup remained in the game...those things are what bothers me the most about cut content.

Larian really knows how to engage its community. They have truly worked for and earned all the success they are seeing now! Also side note... Music is so important and iconic in a game, that I recognize The Witcher 3 music playing in the background of your video and it brings back such good feelings from the game. I haven't played that game in several years, but the music is so iconic I always remember it. Good choice!

I just want avernus as an expansion or something, there are so many cool items in the art book that seem to be connected to avernus like flaming scimitars and daggers but there are armors too that looked 10/10 and are not in the game.

Not having a DM option is a real letdown, i hope they bring that back in DOS3

Upper City was 100% cut content. Gortash's location doesn't make much sense, and Cazador's location is awkward as well.

I'm hoping they continue adding content based on community input. The evil playthrough feels pretty skimpy in comparison to the other playthroughs.

It doesn't matter what was cut. It matters if what remained was enjoyable. I have 280 hours in BG3 and I've had a blast. After a break for a bit I expect I'll have a blast again.

I don't cut any developers slack anymore. If Bethesda released BG3 they would get raked over the coals for Act 3. If the Act 3 we got is what they intended all along, then they released something shitty on purpose. In an update in June they implied the Upper City would be much more involved. Just because they did definitive for prior games does not mean they'll do it for this one. To properly fix act 3 would require a lot of time and money. Probably much more than it would have cost them on prior games.

If the reviewers actually played through the whole game it wouldn't be a 9/10 or a 10/10. It would be a 7/10. Act 2 is empty and Act 3 is a mess. I'm sorry but Larian didn't deliver in my opinion.

My 120 hour first playthrough was extremely satisfying. Some of the companion endings weren’t the best, but for me the journey was well worth it, and hey, they are adding more ending; so win win.

I trust larian. If they say the upper city, avernus, etc, just didn't meet the quality bar to be in the game, then that's the reality, and the game is better as it is now.

Regarding the endings, there is where I think they made a bit of a mistake. I think what happened is they were super laser focused on making the ending "cinematic" as they call it... in that context it's pretty clear having slides and long epilogue describing the status of the world takes that cinematic feeling away, so I can see their logic. The thing is, crpg gamers aren't like that lol, we want to see it all, so you get a bit of a conflicting result. I think here they'll cave and eventually add it all back. Interesting note is that the result of fixing the shadow lands is immediately shown to the player, and at that moment I immediately suspected there might be no ending reel: that's precisely the kind of thing that shows up at the ending in crpgs.

For an expansion that would make sense for the game is going to Tu'narath and taking the fight to Vlaakith in some kind of form. That would make sense with almost all endings, as they currently stand.

The entire story around Vlaakith and what comes next could be easily expanded into the Avernus. There we could try to find Gith or at least discover her fate and find out what deal Vlaakith struck with Tiamat to become the ruler of the Githyanki. For instance would it be interesting to find out that the current Vlaakith is still the original who sustained her life via the process of stealing the bodies of her progeny. In your travels to stop Vlaakith you might even travel to limbo to gain the assistance of the Githzerai, who are the cousins of the Githyanki. The aim of the expansion would be to stop Vlaakith to ascend to true godhood and maybe claiming it for yourself.