Game News Larian is making Baldur's Gate 3

[Sacibengala]

“We started with a very rigorous port of the ruleset. Then we started looking at what worked and what didn’t work. Because obviously, it’s a video game, so not everything translates very well. We modified where it made sense to start modifying,” Vincke said.

One of the modifications: Misses from dice rolls. “The very obvious one would be that you tend to miss a lot when you roll the dice, which is fine when you’re playing on the tabletop, but it’s not so cool when you’re playing a video game,” Vincke said. “We had to have solutions for that.”

Baldur’s Gate III will not use the same game engine as the Original Sin series. “We’ve been in development on this game for several years already. It’s not the same engine as those two, but it is our own engine. It’s built on the technology that we already have,” Vincke said.

All this plus the no comment on the isometric probably means it's gonna be some third person action crap....

The sad part is that Bioware ported 2e to RTwP format back in 1998; Troika ported 3.5e to TB in 2003; and these schmucks can't do the same today. Furthermore Bioware already came up with a solution for 'misses' back when they made NWN; the characters actually showed misses by actively dodging and parrying attacks (same with KOTOR a few years later that used the d20 Star Wars ruleset based on D&D also by WOTC).

I knew it was a mistake for Larian to get the license.

Yeah, that comment from him is actually really strange. I want to see more of that, maybe it was just a bad example that he used to describe changes.

 

[DeepOcean]

Vincke suggests the game will be heavily systems-driven and Larian will be creating its own D&D-inspired ruleset. "We'll stay true to our roots, so we'll give players lots of systems and lots of agency to use these systems and try to accomplish what you need to on your personal adventure and your party's adventure. That's not going to change; that's the core of what we're doing. But then there will be an interpretation of D&D, because if you port the core rules—we tried it!—to a videogame, it doesn't work."

Wow, this sounds godawful. Real disappointed in the Swen.

As I feared, you can expect cooldowns and item fever Diablo shite, this will be Dragon Age over again.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Decado]

If anyone still believed in Swen:

There are some things on the chopping block, however. It's an interpretation of D&D, specifically 5th Edition, because porting the core rules, which Larian tried to do, doesn't work. Or it works, Vincke clarifies, but it's no fun at all. One of the culprits is missing when you're trying to hit an enemy, and while the combat system has yet to be revealed, you can at least look forward to being able to smack people more consistently.

"You miss a lot in D&D—if the dice are bad, you miss," he says. "That doesn't work well in a videogame. If I do that, you're going to review it and say it's shit."

I can't fucking believe he is saying this dumb shit about dice when the games he is basing Baldur's Gate III on -- that is, Baldur's Gate I and II -- HAD MOTHERFUCKING DICE IN THEM. THE WHOLE REASON "BALDUR'S GATE III" MEANS ANYTHING TO ANYBODY IS BECAUSE OF THE TWO GAMES BEFORE IT, AND THEY WERE LOADED WITH DICE ROLLS. DICE ALL THE TIME, EVERY FUCKING WHERE, FOR EVERYTHING, DICE UP YOUR ASS AND COMING OUT OF YOUR FUCKING NOSE AND BALLS. JESUS H FUCKIGN CHRIST I AM GOING INSANE FROM RAGE

 

[DeepOcean]

Can't wait to go around on third person free camera on Baldur's gate with my other two companions controlled by the Ai, probably romances with Larian written characters (Oh the joy, can't wait for that.), I will go with my dudes, spamming my cooldown World of Warcraft abilities because I'm too much of a badass, then when I kill dudes, there will be a shower of colored loot, most will be useless but there are a few that are gold looking and those will take 30 mins to become completely useless because of stat inflation as you know, 5e isn't fun despite millions of player playing it.

We will totally come up with our shit solutions that we didn't test extensively at all, oh no, I died, what an unfortunate event... well, after the fight, all my dudes will wake up again with probably some minor injury that I can pay 10 gold to get rid of. The joy of returning to 2009.

 

[Melcar]

Why do we have like a million threads on this?

 

[DeepOcean]

This interpretation should still be more true to the tabletop RPG than its predecessors, however, capturing the feel of D&D even if it's not borrowing every single system and rule.

Some of this is because of a difference in technology. Black Isle faced a lot of limitations that Larian doesn't.

Internally, 200 people are working on Baldur's Gate 3, while another hundred are working on it externally.

Well... I kinda hope it is Dragon Age Origins and not Dragon Age Inquisition at this point...

 

[Melcar]

The technology of the time did not allow the game developers to make a steaming pile of shit.

 

[Jasede]

You click the button and the mind flayer takes damage.
You see that mountain? You can climb it.

 

[Jasede]

ITT people who aren't cool enough to post in the official General RPG Discussion megathread

New newspost coming soon.

Hey dumbfuck, how the fuck is anyone supposed to find that thread if it's hidden in a subforum? I had no idea it existed. If it's not under General RPG but hidden in one of those stupid company subforums me and 90% of other oldfags aren't going to find it because we don't climb into company subforums.

 

[Melcar]

Yeah. Fuck that Jew.

 

[Murk]

If anyone still believed in Swen:

There are some things on the chopping block, however. It's an interpretation of D&D, specifically 5th Edition, because porting the core rules, which Larian tried to do, doesn't work. Or it works, Vincke clarifies, but it's no fun at all. One of the culprits is missing when you're trying to hit an enemy, and while the combat system has yet to be revealed, you can at least look forward to being able to smack people more consistently.

"You miss a lot in D&D—if the dice are bad, you miss," he says. "That doesn't work well in a videogame. If I do that, you're going to review it and say it's shit."

I wouldn't jump to a conclusion that hit chance is out, since the last two original sin games both had hit chance. First game had a host of 'chance' effects that could result in a miss, as well as a series of abilities to increase/decrease them.

If they make it a full blown action game then yeah sure, but so far Larian has made games on both sides of that equation.

 

[DeepOcean]

300 people working on this, that sounds like action oriented game for me.

 

[Zeriel]

Yeah, this is awful. A big part of why ie games (and now Kingmaker as well) worked for me is that they tried to follow the existing ruleset as close as they could in a rtwp computer game. And they can't do the same with a simpler system, and possibly even in a turn based game? Or do they think they could do better? Fuck, I'm getting PoE flashbacks here.

I'm okay with them making decline games for casuals, but at least be honest about it. The only part that ticked me off there was him claiming that it doesn't work. Excuse me, then what the fuck was Temple of Elemental Evil? Don't piss on my face and tell me it's raining. It's fine if they want to make a shit D&D game that has no actual D&D rules, but communicate that instead of saying it's impossible to implement D&D rules, which is just patently false.

 

[Black]

Yeah, this is awful. A big part of why ie games (and now Kingmaker as well) worked for me is that they tried to follow the existing ruleset as close as they could in a rtwp computer game.

So, as close as they could without actually following the ruleset.

 

[Zeriel]

Yeah, this is awful. A big part of why ie games (and now Kingmaker as well) worked for me is that they tried to follow the existing ruleset as close as they could in a rtwp computer game.

So, as close as they could without actually following the ruleset.

Right, and here we are in 2019 and Larian isn't even trying to follow the ruleset, they're just throwing the whole thing out and saying, "Dice rolls are gay, yo."

 

[Black]

I'm not defending Larian but I'm sure if they launched a kickstarter for it, Codex would almost immediately run a campaign to support it and one up rpgwatchz.

 

[Melcar]

The Codex is fickle like that.

 

[Mr. Hiver]

Right, and here we are in 2019 and Larian isn't even trying to follow the ruleset, they're just throwing the whole thing out and saying, "Dice rolls are gay, yo."

They did not say that.

He said they are following the rulesets as close as possible, but that not everything can be transcribed directly - which is true.
He mentioned only one example of missing TOO MANY times, but did not claim you wont miss at all.

The problem is what exactly did he mean by all that and how far will the adjustments go.

 

[Tigranes]

It's not that complicated. Lots of us would really like it to be good. But it's notable how, despite an almost total lack of information, Swen is still able to give out plenty of worrying signals.

As things stand, there is zero reason to be optimistic until a lot more substantial and promising information comes out. At worst, this could be a Fallout 3.

 

[agris]

Oh, I see I’ve found the BG3 thread with people who get it.

Yeah, this is a mess. Larian are going to go the BioWare 2.0 route, just wait.

 

[Sacibengala]

He must to be an imbecile to fuck this up. And we all know that he is not. Only the ingame jokes are.

 

[The Bishop]

I'm okay with them making decline games for casuals, but at least be honest about it. The only part that ticked me off there was him claiming that it doesn't work. Excuse me, then what the fuck was Temple of Elemental Evil? Don't piss on my face and tell me it's raining. It's fine if they want to make a shit D&D game that has no actual D&D rules, but communicate that instead of saying it's impossible to implement D&D rules, which is just patently false.

He didn't necessarily lie. Stuff like determining hits with a dice roll indeed doesn't work in video games... if those are action video games. Morrowind is all the evidence you need. If that's indeed the direction they've taken (player skill over character skill), then all that talk about D&D not working one-to-one makes perfect sense.

 

[DeepOcean]

300 people working on this guise, this is a bigger team than the whole Obsidian, chances for this to be even close to a traditional RPG are quite slim. At best, we can expect a dumb down NWN 2 or a Dragon Age origins. If the game was to be an isometric TB game, they wouldn't bother changing engines.

 

[Black]

He must to be an imbecile to fuck this up. And we all know that he is not. Only the ingame jokes are.

I mean, realistically fuck what up? The last bg came out almost 20 years ago, the story is finished, the ruleset is different, the studio is different, the people who'll play it are different. It's just a name, an established IP to attract nostalgiafags.