Baldur’s Gate 3 has so many different dialogue options for players to explore. From using the 
Detect Thoughts spell to get the upper hand in a conversation to having class-specific dialogue options, like striking awe with a bard or tearing off a mindflayer pod using strength with a barbarian, there is no shortage of unique opportunities. For each type of character, the dialogue journey can be an exciting experience within itself, apart from a player who wishes to travel through the game as a druid in wild shape. Even Larian Studio’s giant Patch 7 has not altered this.
The wild shape form is a multipurpose and fun ability for a character to have. Instead of hunting down the greatest weaponry and spell parchments to use against the Absolute, the player can simply turn themselves into a badger and hack their enemies to death with sharp-digging claws. When it comes to engaging dialogue at critical moments of the story, wild shape falls short. It comes to no surprise that a transformed druid cannot speak as a bear or spider.
Wild Shape Effects On The Player
Wild Shape Is Not Just A Visual Transformation
When a Druid performs the wild shape spell, they are not simply turning their body into that of an animal; they are magically assuming the attributes of an animal. Strength, constitution, and dexterity may change to fit within the animals’ combat prowess; a druid retains their intelligence, wisdom, and charisma to maintain their mental faculties while in animal form. This keeps the druid mentally aware of their magical change rather than succumbing to an animal’s base instinct. It comes with the caveat of being unable to speak to other humans, unless the spell speak with animals has been cast.
The possibilities are not just limited to combat. By being in a wild shape form, the player can become a raven and soar over obstacles or become a cat or panther and sneak through dangerous territory. It is a multi-utility ability that could have a player wanting to remain in wild shape throughout the length of the game. Unfortunately, the inability to engage in dialogue can be a costly price to play the game as a cuddly bear. Even with recent patches to try and help the player with other dialogue issues, the primary dialogue problem persists.
Wild Shape’s Disruption To Dialogue
Crucial Dialogue Events Can Be Ruined
The wild shape form makes some dialogue impossible. Larian Studios created some options previously to try and assist in players interacting whilst in wild shape, such as back in 2023 with Patch 5. The fix was implemented to force the player in wild shape to revert to their humanoid form when engaging an NPC in dialogue. This helped with allowing the player to traverse the open map and interact with other characters without needing to dismiss their form, costing them the number of times they could transform before a long or short rest.
If the player engages in the fight as an Owlbear, stomping The Lord of Bones with
Crushing Flight
, they will suddenly find themselves missing from the following dialogue. One of their party members, the closest one to the conversation initiator, will take their place.
It certainly helped the quality of life for the druid subclass, Druid of the Moon, but it only touched the tip of the iceberg with the druid dialogue issue. It is the most monumental moments within Baldur’s Gate 3‘s narrative that pull the player from combat straight into a vital conversation, such as when the player is challenging Ketheric Thorm atop Moonrise Towers or after blowing up the Steel Watch Foundry and debating the morality of building weapons of war under duress with Wulbren Bongle and Barcus Wroot.
The Party Dynamic Is Negatively Affected
A Fundamental Part Of The Baldur’s Gate 3 Experience Is Lost
The forced dialogue scenarios with the Wild Shape form gravely affect the party dynamic, making the primary protagonist of the story, the player, obsolete in the most important of interactions. Players must consider how to utilize their transformation in the middle of combat to ensure they do not miss the important dialogue that comes after the fight, and that is only for those who are replaying the game. Many who are playing for the first time will be caught unaware and confused as to why their Tav is not the face of the party, and Gale or Shadowheart suddenly is.
From a Dungeons and Dragons role-play perspective, it makes perfect sense that the druid in raptor form cannot have meaningful dialogue with a beaten Auntie Ethel to snag her scalp. Raptors lack vocal cords to produce human speech. From a quality of life perspective, it would make more sense to make adjustments to how interactions work so players do not have to strategically plan out their Wild Shape forms in combat to quickly return to a humanoid before the fight is over.
This highly-requested dialogue alteration was hoped for Patch 7 but has yet to come. Considering how difficult it might be to make the adjustment and how small the player base for druids is, only beating out Cleric for the least played, it may not be high on Larian Studio’s priority list.
Such A Huge Fix Could Be More Work Than Reward
Game Adjustments Can Be Costly And Difficult To Implement
To make such a drastic change to the game’s structure, it may simply not be worth the alteration. On DnD tabletop, the Dungeon Master can easily manage a druid reverting to their humanoid form for the purposes of a rolepay scene. A video game format is far more tricky and risks the game losing much of its fluidity when a character is transforming mid-scene back to a humanoid and then shoehorning them into the dialogue after the game’s coding has already initiated the conversation.
It is a fix that risks creating far more coding issues to tackle and may also not be a priority in comparison with other game breaking or heavily requested changes to the game. If the fix allowed a character to speak whilst in wild shape, it goes against the lore of 5e DnD and how wild shape is supposed to perform. If that were to happen, the entire Halsin plot thread in the Goblin Camp would have to be changed, because he would also have the ability to speak in his Cave Bear form.
As much as some players wish for their wild shape druid to be able to speak or for the developers to fix the dialogue issue at certain points in Baldur’s Gate 3, it is too small of an issue on the surface and too big a workload for the developers under the skin, and simply not feasible to address just yet.
