The points at which the game transition between acts seem a bit arbitrary (mainly for Act I to Act II), and I don’t see a narrative or mechanical reason to lock us out of previous maps and quests. As far as I remember, previous Baldur’s Gate games didn’t have this kind of points of no return. Why do you think they did it? Do you like it?
Iirc you don’t lose access to anything in the mausoleum until you take a dip in the pool, where they quite literally show a popup that uncompleted quests may be broken. If by that point you check the map and the quest log and you have stuff you clearly should do before continuing, like exploring the tower, or freeing th eprisoners they will obviously murder if an assault happens to avoid having to fight them in the case we liberate them in the assault, well, yeah, idk man.
My only gripe is the Zevlor quest and the Mol quests, where the don’t really say that you need to do it to see them. Well technically you can go down below through a hole and featherfall or through some stairs after liberating the prisoners, and rescue Zevlor before the pool, but most do it after it. SO my only gripe is Mol, because the journal gives no indication that spoilers of act 2:
spoiler
she was not at the towers
:::
But besides that it’s quite clear that once you reach the gauntlet that maybe that’s a bigger thing than a simple side quest, specially when the popup shows up.
It is unclear which quests will be broken, or how many. 15 of the 20 or so quests I had at that point couldn’t actually be progressed then anyway, but 5 could.
How is this clear? I was assuming once I got to Moonrise it would be one long fight to Ketheric and so was trying to do everything else first, imagining it would effectively conclude the act. I had no reason to assume it would be a social zone that I needed to visit and complete quests in before doing the temple. I had no idea there would be an assault on the tower.
The pop-up is, but a similar popup happens when you leave Act 1, but many things remain accessible. So it is inconsistent. I think it would help to have quests show recommended levels so it is more obvious what order you’re expected to do them in - you could still go out of order like you can now, but I think it would be a better experience.
Well, all Jaheera and Isobel told you to go to the towers to investigate how to disable Ketheric’s invulnerability and that you could pass through as a True Soul thanks to your condition, so… yeah? You had reasons to assume that it would be a social zone.
The act 1 to 2 popup doesn’t say that previous zones will become unnaccesible and this does. That’s a pretty big indicator to me.
By the way, I think that it’s possible to go down below through the prison and reach the final zone before dealing with the nighsong, I have to try it in my yet next playthrough.
The level indicator thing would be nice, but this won’t happen with Larian, since they don’t treat quests like quests you are expected to do, but as “stories” that you write up in your journal. The issue here is that effectively they are quests and that you are expected to do them since they give EXP and you need it not to get stomped anyway. Here I agree with you but don’t expect changes.