Dragon’s Dogma 2, like itspredecessor, hastimed side quests. While this might be annoying to players who like collecting side quests and finishing them whenever it’s convenient, I think it’s pretty cool. It’s a way of enforcing consequences on characters for moseying around and adds some degree of realism to the world. After all, in real life, telling your partner you’ll take out the trash and then sitting on it for three days is likely to result in a fight - especially if you’d spent that time searching a cave to fulfil the lifelong goal of some guy you just met. Dragon’s Dogma 2 is just emulating that. Saying you’ll help find a child in the woods and then leaving him there for three days might mean that child gets hurt or worse, and adds tension to an aspect of games that often are considered ‘extra content’ and therefore unimportant.
In the original Dragon’s Dogma, it wasn’t clear which quests were timed and which weren’t. However, Dragon’s Dogma 2 will indicate timed quests with an hourglass in the journal so that players know what to prioritise and what they can put off. It’s not clear right now whether this time will be measured as in-game time or real-world time, but it’s still a nifty tool to make sure players aren’t overextending themselves and taking on too many urgent tasks. The only thing I could imagine to make this evenmorerealistic is if the opportunity to take on side quests could time out too, meaning you have to choose who you help. You can’t save everyone!
Being cut off from potential side quests would probably be very annoying though, even if it does add a sense of realism to this cool fantasy game where you fight dragons.
Immediately, I wished there was something like this in Baldur’s Gate 3. The situation isn’t quite as dire in Larian’s 2023 hit, to be fair. ‘Timed quests’ aren’t reallytimed, per se, since in-game and real-world time doesn’t change them, and they’re instead measured by Long Rests. However, Long Resting is an unavoidable part of the game – you need to do it to recover health and spell slots without items, andit’s also key to progressing the story. It’s not clear when you start playing, but Long Resting too much or at all without wrapping up specific loose ends can lead to unintended consequences.
Spoilers ahead for Baldur’s Gate 3
For example, people will die at Waukeen’s Rest if you don’t save them immediately after entering the area. There’s a child on a Harpy-infested beach near the Druid Grove that dies if you Long Rest after triggering the start of the quest. Resting instead of helping Halsin with Thaniel leads to him dying. There’s a lot more. Taking your sweet time in Baldur’s Gate 3 very often leads to characters getting hurt or bad things happening, and players had to either learn this the hard way or find out online.
This is part of the Baldur’s Gate 3 experience – your unique choices shape the game’s world and the characters that live or die. Every person’s playthrough will be unique because they choose to do different things and rest at different times, but it can be very frustrating to take a Long Rest and then look at your journal to find that something you didn’t even start dealing with has been marked as complete. It does foster a kind of paranoia about tying up loose ends, which can be unpleasant.
This feels particularly bad in the game’s third act, because there is so much going on and you don’t know what’s timed and what’s not. When one of your companions is kidnapped by Orin, it’s not clear what, if anything, will lead her to kill them. Will Long Resting make her lose patience and stab your friend in the neck?Will prioritising following up on this quest lock you out of other ones?Will completing other quests make her mad? There is no way to know, and that is kinda sucky.
Some level of uncertainty in a game like this is good, because Baldur’s Gate 3 isn’t about getting perfect playthroughs, it’s about getting unique playthroughs. Not knowing exactly what will happen if you make a certain choice is narratively powerful. But there is so much uncertainty in the last act of the game thatI’m worried about every decision, and that anxiety is detracting from my experience of the game. I want to do what feels right, but knowing that I’ll face possibly unfair consequences is keeping me from moving forward. Maybe an hourglass icon in the game’s quest tracker could make that a little more tolerable.
Baldur’s Gate 3
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Baldur’s Gate 3 is the long-awaited next chapter in the Dungeons & Dragons-based series of RPGs. Developed by Divinity creator Larian Studios, it puts you in the middle of a mind flayer invasion of Faerûn, over a century after the events of its predecessor.
