D&D 5E Baldur's Gate 3 will allow us to explore the whole city of Baldur's Gate Seamlessly

[Sword of Spirit]

Yes, it's the largest city on the small section of the Sword Coast that falls within the region known as the Western Heartlands. That doesn't mean it's the biggest city on the whole of the Sword Coast, nor does it mean it's the biggest city in Faerûn. It just means it's bigger than Elturel, Scornubel, Iriaebor, Berdusk, and the like.

While 5e doesn't delve into population numbers like previous editions did, here's a Twitter thread in which Ed Greenwood muses on Baldur's Gate being the second largest city in Faerûn after Calimport in terms of population. (I think Waterdeep, even with its 'transient' population, is still larger in terms of surface area.)

Interesting. I wonder how much of WotC's lore Ed chooses to use himself I never did read Elminster's Forgotten Realms, but it seems surprising to me that he would accept major revisions to Baldur's Gate. Is the Spellplague even "Greenwood canon"?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Unlikely does not mean impossible. Your scenario could happen with physical dice. You would need to track all your dice rolls to get a bigger and better sample size to make an accurate assessment of the game's random number generator and its fairness.

It's a well known phenomena that human nature does not understand how true randomness works. People think getting 20 heads in a row is less probable than other sequences, when of course, the probability is exactly the same.

It's probably why all slaad come out looking like silly frog creatures. What seems more improbable than creatures of chaos all looking the same?

 

[Henadic Theologian]

More likely to be the circus where Aerie was encountered in Athkatla in BG2. Quayle, as a gnome, could definitely keep it running until the present day.

Makes sense, but I'm still hoping for Witchlight.

 

[Andvari]

I liked being able to explore the entire main city seamlessly in 1992 while playing Ultima VII. And also the entirety of the game world.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

I liked being able to explore the entire main city seamlessly in 1992 while playing Ultima VII. And also the entirety of the game world.

How big was the city in Ultima VII?

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

How big was the city in Ultima VII?

Ultima 7 Interactive Map

Ultima 7 interactive map of Britannia. All locations including regions, cities, buildings, shopkeepers, npcs, merchants and more

www.kxmode.com

 

[Andvari]

Ultima 7 Interactive Map

Ultima 7 interactive map of Britannia. All locations including regions, cities, buildings, shopkeepers, npcs, merchants and more

www.kxmode.com

And since it's a 2d game with top-down view, the game only had to show you a small area at a time. In a 3d game with a free camera, you can look across the city. Of course, the game also had to run on ancient hardware.

 

[Parmandur]

How big was the city in Ultima VII?

Not as big as the game makes one think, less than half a square mile for the whole world in Ultima VII, so BG3 is likely going to be larger.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Ultima VII was illusionism, the "city" was the size of a small village. Baldur's Gate in BG1 was bigger, both in terms of amount of content and imaginary square mileage (although the forced-perspective means map scale isn't a constant). BG3 may avoid splitting the city across load screens, but how big is it? How much interesting content does it have?

 

[Andvari]

Ultima VII was illusionism, the "city" was the size of a small village.

But it wasn't just the city. It was the entire game world, which includes many cities. You could also enter all bulidings and they had detailed interiors with interactive parts and objects you could move around.