Baldur's Gate Baldur's Gate 3 Early Access Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[kreight]

Calling this game a "masterpiece" requires a certain degree of braindamage. A very large one in fact. Caused by excess soy consumption.

Well it ain't masterpiece but it's certainly most advanced game we received(ing) in years ( not on class building front, and verticality).

There's nothing "advanced" in this game. AD&D was more advanced. Here's a steam review and I totally agree with it. I wouldn't give it a 8/10 though.

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198012383955/recommended/1086940/

It does everything that every other RPG has done in the past but not in any better or unique way; the tropes, the characters, the themes, even the start scenario (surprise, you're a prisoner) are all here. The tone is campy and easy with little in the way of tension or drama. Try as hard as you might, you won't find anything that make this game special. It does nothing that makes it stand out among today's RPGs or as a step forward from the past. On top of that is the infuriating RNG littering the place; a pointless dice roll on every occasion in the wild or in dialogue. Disco Elysium at least made failure fun.

It's a solid 8/10. I don't recommend it because it's not worth the price, and there was absolutely no need for it to be marketed as a sequel to Baldur's Gate

Sure it is advanced. You can speak with dead, polymorphs that matter, reduce size etc, physic, race reactions, and such. Magic got its use out of combat. Some CnC right of the bat ( removing eye). Shit like that. Too bad it attached to many other parts I don't like. But it is an advanced and complex game. Boobies also.

You are literally naaming everything that has been done before.

 

[Lacrymas]

Like Larian's previous 2 offerings, this will be best enjoyed with friends/lovers/kidnapped homeless.

 

[Storyfag]

Dragon Age didn't have a day/night cycle either, so... what's the problem? Did you really miss it in that game?

And, surprise surprise, Dragon Age was shit.

 

[InD_ImaginE]

And it won't be a better game just by having D/N cycle.

Unless you are going simulationist D/N cycle adds little to the game. Most of the time simulationists with D/N cycle also add nothing but "much immershun".

 

[Efe]

I'd trade day/night cycle for removal of astarion in a heartbeat

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I'd trade day/night cycle for removal of astarion in a heartbeat

just kill him when you meet him, problem solved?

 

[Larianshill]

If you want to remove Astarion, just kill him upon the first meeting like I always do. Honestly, it's a bit ridiculous that we're given the option to attack Gale for utterly no reason, but the man who presses a knife against your throat, you have to attack manually, because the game will only let you be a bit snippy to him in the dialogue.

 

[NJClaw]

If you want to remove Astarion, just kill him upon the first meeting like I always do. Honestly, it's a bit ridiculous that we're given the option to attack Gale for utterly no reason, but the man who presses a knife against your throat, you have to attack manually, because the game will only let you be a bit snippy to him in the dialogue.

Gale is a hot teleporting wizard, so the option to kill him is there because you could perceive him as a threat to your chances with Shadowheart. Only later you discover he is a true bro and would never do that.

On the other hand you have a vampire who's obviously gay, and you know Shadowcutie is not into that shit.

 

[Lacrymas]

But you feel your heterosexuality and/or masculinity threatened by Astarion, which definitely justifies murder.

 

[Larianshill]

It's more of a combination of factors. I gave Astarion a chance on my first two playthroughs, until I decided he doesn't deserve it. Everything about him is terrible, and designed to appeal to the female half of the audience.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

But you feel your heterosexuality and/or masculinity threatened by Astarion, which definitely justifies murder.

might have something to do with him being a vampire spawn, champ.

 

[Lacrymas]

I was sarcastic.

 

[Nano]

Game devs need to stop putting fems like Astarion and Daeran in their games, they're disgusting.

 

[Gargaune]

The argument they used boiled down to "it's a lot of work for very little pay off to do it properly. And if you are not going to do it properly it's better to not have one at all".
Which I personally find stupid on multiple levels, because both the premise and its implications are questionable at best.

Ah, the Bioshock philosophy. "We can't make believable NPC interactions, so everyone will be crazy and trying to kill you on sight."

For one, the idea that "getting nothing is better than getting little" is bullshit in itself. I'd take even the most basic-ass cycle, without any advanced scheduling (and with some of the NPCs standing there as signposts 24h-per-day and some other some just disappearing out of thin air at day/night) over having a world constantly frozen in an eternal noon.

Besides, having in the game the notion of proper passage of time and of a cycling between day and nights would spare them from having to come up with a lot of these other stupid and convoluted solutions they are working to, like creating separate scenarios for night events, having your camp as an instanced environment disconnected from the game world, having time as an abstract concept that triggers only when the game finds it convenient, etc.
And that's without going into how many possibilities this will preclude in terms of outdoor world encounters etc.

Agreed. Locking the timeframe is a necessary tradeoff in some types of games (e.g. Immersive Sims), but I'm perfectly happy to overlook stationary NPCs in isometric CRPGs. Having a natural, visual indication of the passage of time adds more for me than insomniac traders take away.

I like the night/day cycle myself, but I can understand the argument for not doing it, if there is little to be gained from it. Then again, in a game that has a vampire spawn as selectable character background/a companion it does feel like a huge missed opportunity for a unique gameplay potential.

Don't forget about light-based stealth modifiers and visibility. BG3's mechanics, to Larian's credit, could offer interesting tactical choices on whether to approach by day or night, weighing your ability to sneak, Darkvision among your party and the benefits and disadvantages of using torches against one another.

It's not "a lot of work" only because you need some kind of NPC schedule/different events to make it interesting, you also need to double your entire effort on the lightning system. They are probably spending thousands of man-hours to make halflings climb stairs without turning into Lovecraftian abominations, they probably wouldn't be able to make every scene work both during day and night without cutting at least half the content of the game.

Eh? Setting up variable lighting parameters for each scene would take a bit of elbow grease, sure, you wanna make sure all your environments look good, but it's not even in the same order of magnitude with what you seem to be implying. You don't need to rebuild interactions or anything like that for different times of day, you just need to set some lighting parameters in a way that looks pretty at night and check how they interpolate throughout the day.

Dragon Age didn't have a day/night cycle either, so... what's the problem? Did you really miss it in that game?

Yes, both Dragon Age and Baldur's Gate "3" gave me the same microcosm vibe. It's not a major complaint on my part, but I'd rather take a superficial day/night cycle over none at all.

 

[Poseidon00]

Game devs need to stop putting fems like Astarion and Daeran in their games, they're disgusting.

From Sevran, to Dorian, to Astarion, every gay character in an RPG has been insufferably cringe. It's not even the agenda pushing that is the worst part, they are just all some of the worst characters in their games.

 

[Falksi]

Call me a lazy fuck but I am not going to go through all 259 pages to find the info and I can't find shit on google.

So can someone tell me the release date for the game (finished product) or at least an estimate. Thanks

You lazy fuck.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

re: "it doesn't require that much effort!"

anytime there's a discussion of day/night, it reminds me of kingdom come deliverance that had countless bugs that were incredibly hard to identify because they only happened at very specific times during very specific circumstances

Again, if you provide me with the cam location, Time of day, and weather conditions, we can check properties of the site, and setting of the NPCs if you happen to identify them.

This sounds like playtesting hell.

It is. After a year of nothing wrong reported we found in October that half the monastery is fucked up in this regard. And only after somebody fixed some global parameters which finally changed the state of the monastery from "behaves within expected margins by accident" to "wtf why is everybody blind"?

 

[hell bovine]

If you want to remove Astarion, just kill him upon the first meeting like I always do. Honestly, it's a bit ridiculous that we're given the option to attack Gale for utterly no reason, but the man who presses a knife against your throat, you have to attack manually, because the game will only let you be a bit snippy to him in the dialogue.

Gale is a hot teleporting wizard, so the option to kill him is there because you could perceive him as a threat to your chances with Shadowheart. Only later you discover he is a true bro and would never do that.

I suspect the option to kill him is so that the players can avoid the fun of Gale falling off the cliff, magically spawning in the camp and creating a death zone the npcs and animals there are too dumb to avoid.

 

[NJClaw]

Eh? Setting up variable lighting parameters for each scene would take a bit of elbow grease, sure, you wanna make sure all your environments look good, but it's not even in the same order of magnitude with what you seem to be implying. You don't need to rebuild interactions or anything like that for different times of day, you just need to set some lighting parameters in a way that looks pretty at night and check how they interpolate throughout the day.

I wouldn't be surprised if making every scene work with a day/night cycle would actually KILL dozens of Larian employees and thousands of players unaware of the risk

 

[Nano]

I wouldn't be surprised if making every scene work with a day/night cycle would actually KILL dozens of Larian employees and thousands of players unaware of the risk

I changed my mind. I want a day/night cycle.

Do it even if it kills you, Larian.

 

[gurugeorge]

Am I the only person who does a 16 hour awake/8 hour asleep (at night) schedule in games, if it's at all possible (e.g. in Skyrim, PF:K, etc.)?

I think you should get penalties for staying awake - slight loss of dexterity/co-ordination and perception, and eventually you start mildly hallucinating if you've stayed awake over 2 days and nights, which lowers perception and dexterity even more. (I've never stayed awake for longer than 2 days and nights, so I don't know what happens after that, I should imagine the degradation accelerates.)

The only people who should be awake at night are night watchmen and thieves, who then have to sleep during the day

 

[Desiderius]

It's more of a combination of factors. I gave Astarion a chance on my first two playthroughs, until I decided he doesn't deserve it. Everything about him is terrible, and designed to appeal to the female half of the audience.

Half? That % thing after the 2 is a picture of a fraction to be sure but it means “divide by 100” not “put me in the denominator.”

 

[Larianshill]

I think you underestimate just how many ladies from tumblr this game seems to have attracted.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I think you underestimate just how many ladies from tumblr this game seems to have attracted.

legbeards are a vocal minority

 

[Harthwain]

Am I the only person who does a 16 hour awake/8 hour asleep (at night) schedule in games, if it's at all possible (e.g. in Skyrim)?

I sleep if the in-game mechanic requires it or if I don't like day or night phase for some reason. Kingdom Come: Deliverance is the best example here. It requires you to sleep in order to rest. I preferred to rob people when they were asleep, but other than that my favourite time to play would be since dawn to early evening, so I'd call it a night and go to sleep (unless I got preoccupied with a quest or something).

I think you underestimate just how many ladies from tumblr this game seems to have attracted.

What's the main attraction for them in Astarion's case?