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Game News Baldur's Gate 3 Community Update #6: Multiplayer & Cinematics

Infinitron

I post news
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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Tags: Baldur's Gate 3; David Walgrave; Larian Studios; Swen Vincke

This month's Baldur's Gate 3 community update marks the welcome return of the funny Swen video tradition. The topic of the update is multiplayer and dialogue cinematic integration. As the video demonstrates in an introductory skit featuring Swen and executive producer David Walgrave, Larian have come a long way since the simplistic rock-paper-scissors game from the first Divinity: Original Sin. In a Baldur's Gate 3 multiplayer session, a character who is engaged in dialogue may be approached at any time by another character controlled by a different player. That character will be able to join the dialogue cinematic and suggest which dialogue options the first character should choose. The game will also feature Twitch integration, allowing audiences to vote on which dialogue options should be selected. Another new multiplayer feature unrelated to dialogue is the ability for two players to act simultaneously during combat if their characters have the same turn. Here's the video and an excerpt from the update, which is basically a summary with some additional details:



Everyone - it’s time to talk about multiplayer. Cinematics, Crowd Choice, and Twitch integration. We’re creating a huge, sprawling RPG with all the tools you need to direct your own adventure, and weave your own tale. Or, weave that tale with your friends, or your audience online. No matter if you choose to play solo, with friends, or with your audience -- Baldur’s Gate 3 is a huge cinematic experience spanning over 1.5 million words, and that story can be enjoyed together through the games cinematics, in multiplayer, or as an audience in a stream.

If your character walks into a dialogue situation, the cinematic dialogue begins with you by yourself. If one of your posse comes close, they can choose whether or not they join you in the discussion. Once they do, they can tell you what options they would like you to select as you ponder your next choice.

Your party is of course free to roam around the world while you independently charm your way through conversation. They can even pick-pocket you while you’re in a dialogue. Or cause a fire. Or abandon you. Or, put an end to your waffling and kill the person you’re talking to.

Whatever you do, the game will react appropriately. Even if your friends aren’t.

Our ambition is to make all of this as seamless and interactive as we can and during Early Access you can expect us to continue building more and more ways to interact, observe, intraject, and subvert expectations. Raising the level of drama, and expanding the level of depth.

As far as we know, there has never been an RPG this large, with multiplayer, attempting these intimate, character driven cinematic moments throughout the entire experience. We put a lot of effort in it and are super curious to hear your feedback. Applying cinematics to a multiplayer game, and one launched in Early Access, means that our cinematic ambitions can grow alongside all the other iterations and tweaks that come with working directly with our community and that can only lead to good things!

THE NEXT STEP
Today’s Community Update video begins with a memory of Divinity: Original Sin quite deliberately. Interactions in DOS1 were merely relegated to rock-paper-scissors (literally!), and dialogue moments between players were a wall of text that scrolled down the screen. We took this a little further in Divinity: Original Sin 2, as characters and players reacted to who you are, and what you’ve done, with many permutations spanning multiple races and tags. Still, dialogues between characters, and interactions in multiplayer were rudimentary though much evolved over DOS1.

Baldur’s Gate 3 is the next great leap and once you’ll start playing, you’ll find that the distance between DOS2 and Baldur’s Gate 3 is tremendously large, as we begin to push the boat out on not only cinematic dialogues, but also the ways in which you can interact with them.

In Baldur’s Gate 3 dialogues have more permutations, more depth, and a cinematic layer that reacts seamlessly to any situation using custom adaptive camera technology (see: elves and dwarves are nay the same height) as well as performance capture. Now, not only do we retain the narration our games are so well known for, but you’ll often see the action on screen - whether it’s a vampiric bite in the night, or a slip of the tongue on a goblin’s foot. Long gone is rock-paper-scissors, as we’ve built tools for debate not only within the multiplayer party, but also as an extension to the thousands of people who watch at home, all in the spirit of the D&D spirit of bringing people together. And we still have some surprises up our sleeve when it comes to multiplayer, but we’ll leave those for another time. There have never been a greater number of ways to gather your party in a single game. Now’s the time!

Reading this update, I can't help but feel like I'm watching history being made. Clearly, Larian are sparing no effort in their mission to appeal to the modern audiences that their game needs to reach in order to succeed. Purists will scoff at this stuff, but make no mistake, what we're seeing here will likely become the standard for premium roleplaying games going forward. According to Swen, the next community update is going to be about romance.
 

Farewell young Prince into the night

Guest
Whoever gave the green light for the video editing at timestamp 6:30 really dropped the ball.
 

Glop_dweller

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Are there any lip-readers here?

Dubbed.gif
 

Glop_dweller

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What an absolute shame. Yet another great RPG series destroyed with trendy window dressing, and grafted gameplay by developers all suffering from "Kid with a hammer" syndrome. This is nothing like the Baldur's Gate series.

It reminds me of the Michelangelo sketch.

 

Au Ellai

Educated
Joined
Jan 18, 2017
Messages
40
Considering anyone with a reasonable reading speed can read the entire sentence before the character has spoken 3 words, spending all this time making dialogue "cinematic" when the bulk of players are just going to mash spacebar every 4 or 5 words to skip to the next chunk of dialogue is completely pointless and serves to entertain idiots who think side-quests is "grinding" and need the screen to flash pretty colors every two seconds less they get bored. Watch, next they're going to make it so all dialogue is un-skippable because they want you to watch their "cinematic" work and you have to listen to every. single. word. slowly. spoken. at. the. speed. of. a. special. needs. teacher. every. single. time. there's. dialogue.

Fuck the people that can actually read I guess. Y'know, the ones that play rpg's.

Lame and casual-pilled.
 
Self-Ejected

Thac0

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I'm very into cock and ball torture
Multiplayer nonsense is a distraction.
Nah, console tards and normies love it. Just look at games like Monster Hunter.

Actually right. A good 30% of comments about Wasteland 3 I read online where about some bugs with the coop.
My friendgroup isn't made up purely out of antisocial prestigious hobgoblins and more people I knew played DOS2 in coop than classic single player.

Its a pretty disgusting way to play a pcrpg tbh, you lose the speed of single player gaming and the reactivety of plain old tabletop D&D. I guess noone has to be the Dungeon Master?
 

a cut of domestic sheep prime

Guest
Actually right. A good 30% of comments about Wasteland 3 I read online where about some bugs with the coop.
Yeah, and I've seen normies hate on Pathfinder for not having co-op.

Disgusting.

edit:
That said, BG series had co-op, so I can't fault them for including it.
 

a cut of domestic sheep prime

Guest
Playing a vampire could be cool, just like playing a lich could (well, it might shatter some people's image of liches if it were true to D&D and you had to consume people's souls regularly).

That said, I too prefer a strong focus on core gameplay over a bunch of other junk.
 

d1r

Busin 0 Wizardry Alternative Neo fanatic
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Am I the only one who finds the vampire stuff lame? I hope it's just a minor part of the game.

I find it quite amusing that they decided to include a vampire to the party roster, but didn't care about implementing a day / night circle. Can vampires actually roam freely at day in DnD5e?
 
Self-Ejected

Thac0

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I'm very into cock and ball torture
Am I the only one who finds the vampire stuff lame? I hope it's just a minor part of the game.

I find it quite amusing that they decided to include a vampire to the party roster, but didn't care about implementing a day / night circle. Can vampires actually roam freely at day in DnD5e?

There is no option to make a vampire in 5e, apart from DM shenanigans. The only way to become a vampire is to die by the bite of a vampire, which turns you into his mindless pawn. That said every vampire has this statblock.

Vampire Weaknesses. The vampire has the following flaws:
Forbiddance. The vampire can't enter a residence without an invitation from one of the occupants.
Harmed by Running Water. The vampire takes 20 acid damage when it ends its turn in running water.
Stake to the Heart. The vampire is destroyed if a piercing weapon made of wood is driven into its heart while it is incapacitated in its resting place.
Sunlight Hypersensitivity. The vampire takes 20 radiant damage when it starts its turn in sunlight. While in sunlight, it has disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks.

I am gonna strongly assume that they will cut the 20 radiant damage due to the player being a half-vampire or some bullshit, since it would scorch your level 1 adventurer to permadeath if you only get a single tick of sunlight damage.
 

d1r

Busin 0 Wizardry Alternative Neo fanatic
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I was obviously talking about AAA games that you personally are interested in (if such a thing is even possible today anymore).
 

grimace

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This could be the next epic viral meme like Twitch Plays Pokemon.

Twitch Plays Baldman's Gate 3.

Twitch Plays Pokémon (often abbreviated to TPP) is a channel that is known for streaming play-throughs of Pokémon games, usually through the use of emulators. It is hosted by game streaming website Twitch. Unlike other channels, where the streamer plays the game for the audience to watch, Twitch Plays Pokémon gives every viewer the chance to participate via the built in chat.

https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Twitch_Plays_Pokémon
 

Jedi Exile

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Project: Eternity Shadorwun: Hong Kong
Well, all of this explains the price tag :D Now looking forward to the next video about romances.
 

Gyor

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Am I the only one who finds the vampire stuff lame? I hope it's just a minor part of the game.

It's optional just don't take Asterion with you and don't make your character or Mercanies vampires.
 

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