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

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

You have to give them credit for portraying her with the classic 90s-sexbomb eyebrows

Eh. Seems like they tried to keep it sort of close to her BG2 portrait - minus the broken nose.

At least they didn't model it off her BG1 portrait, which kinda looked like a gypsy.

 

[kris]

For anyone who has trouble keeping up with this thread and maybe missed the "release teaser" that came out, this is for you. This is the people they are appealing to. This is enormous decline. If you purchase this, you are ok with it. In fact, you like it. This about who you are going to fuck. The choice and consequences lead back to one thing, who your sexual partner is and if they approve of your actions. This is crpg's going forward. And people are applauding it.

Yes, I know it's old but it needs to be seen by the people on the fence and as a reminder of the people defending this game. These people are in favour of this being the direction of crpg's.

I was just checking through the videos they released and seeing this one as the "release trailer" really left me puzzled. its not in phase with the other trailers and videos and most of all it doesn't show more of the game, regardless of what is to be said about people they cater too, it is just poor marketing to dedicate almost the entire trailer to something that will be a minor part of the game. I'd fire the person who made this trailer instantly (or fire myself if I greenlighted it). I checked it again on steam were it is the first trailer. It shows no action and very little enviroment, just poor. (and I dont mind romances)

Now that I read that they also removed ability bonuses for races I am quite worried about the direction they are taking with this.

yeah, I am sure you all discussed this things 500 times, hard to keep up with these threads.

 

[Shaki]

What? Lol no. It’s “paint this map then move on to the next one”. Odds are you will rarely if ever return to a map once you’re done with it. Much like BG1 (except for the city). You also won’t have access to new maps before completing old ones. From playing the EA it seems completely adherent to the Larian formula in this regard: a lot of non-linearity in terms of secret-finding and how you tackle a map, but otherwise linear progression and overall structure.

Reactivity (and intra-map nonlinearity) alone is a pretty big deal. How many Biowhore fake choice games have we suffered through? Or games that just gave you the stat check win button just to make you feel like you did something?

With a AAA game giving reactive RPG design this kind of visibility, we may just consider it a win and maybe we can nudge the market on plot non-linearity next.

What reactive design, the whole "reactivity" thing is just useless clutter in dialogues that doesn't change anything, it's still Bioware fake choices, just more flavours of them. And "nonlinearity" comes down to the old good "side with x to kill y, or side with y to kill x", that most of rpgs always had in some form.

There is nothing nonlinear, reactive, or revolutionary here, you move from map to map, choose between x or y, and get some different voice lines depending on your class/race/choices. It's Bioware v2, same shit just more bloated.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

I was just checking through the videos they released and seeing this one as the "release trailer" really left me puzzled. its not in phase with the other trailers and videos and most of all it doesn't show more of the game, regardless of what is to be said about people they cater too, it is just poor marketing to dedicate almost the entire trailer to something that will be a minor part of the game.

The game is for people who like Critical Role. 5E in general is.

I think it's a well-made trailer from that perspective, and plays off the bear sex viral video to show what other weird races you can bang in the game.

That said, I agree that I would rather have seen stuff about the story. Speaking of:

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

What reactive design, the whole "reactivity" thing is just useless clutter in dialogues that doesn't change anything, it's still Bioware fake choices, just more flavours of them.

Completely disagree. Have you played the early access?

And "nonlinearity" comes down to the old good "side with x to kill y, or side with y to kill x", that most of rpgs always had in some form.

You can also just skip killing either of them. What more choices are than that exactly? Convince everyone to get along? You can do that where it makes sense - ie with the tieflings, which btw are another choice: evicting them and letting the druids build their barrier or getting the druids to stand with them.

 

[Orud]

Eh. Seems like they tried to keep it sort of close to her BG2 portrait - minus the broken nose.

At least they didn't model it off her BG1 portrait, which kinda looked like a gypsy.

Found a portrait of her where they fixed her eyes and nose a few months back, when I started my latest playthrough. Larian was close enough.

 

[Gradenmayer]

There is nothing nonlinear, reactive, or revolutionary here, you move from map to map, choose between x or y, and get some different voice lines depending on your class/race/choices. It's Bioware v2, same shit just more bloated.

get some different voice lines depending on your class/race/choices

There is nothing nonlinear, reactive…

You are retarded.

 

[Swen]

Larian does what CDPR could not

 

[Swen]

For anyone who has trouble keeping up with this thread and maybe missed the "release teaser" that came out, this is for you. This is the people they are appealing to. This is enormous decline. If you purchase this, you are ok with it. In fact, you like it. This about who you are going to fuck. The choice and consequences lead back to one thing, who your sexual partner is and if they approve of your actions. This is crpg's going forward. And people are applauding it.

Yes, I know it's old but it needs to be seen by the people on the fence and as a reminder of the people defending this game. These people are in favour of this being the direction of crpg's.

Now that I read that they also removed ability bonuses for races I am quite worried about the direction they are taking with this.

Because of WOTC, there will be a new D&D version next year where this will be the new standard.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Because of WOTC, there will be a new D&D version next year where this will be the new standard.

I thought One D&D was going to be an offshoot and not 6E or whatever?

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Btw, Codex, did you subscribe?

 

[Shaki]

There is nothing nonlinear, reactive, or revolutionary here, you move from map to map, choose between x or y, and get some different voice lines depending on your class/race/choices. It's Bioware v2, same shit just more bloated.

get some different voice lines depending on your class/race/choices

There is nothing nonlinear, reactive…

You are retarded.

I would like to see Larianfags actually playing PnP, it would be hilarious.

"WTF DM, what do you mean I can do what I want and go where I want? Give me a or b choice, I want nonlinearity!!!!!!! Also PLEASE stop forgetting to include my race in conversations, is it that hard to say "Yo brotha I see we both black!" when you're playing an NPC, didn't they teach you to be REACTIVE in the DM school??? Retard, smh."

You can also just skip killing either of them. What more choices are than that exactly? Convince everyone to get along? You can do that where it makes sense - ie with the tieflings, which btw are another choice: evicting them and letting the druids build their barrier or getting the druids to stand with them.

And what is exactly revolutionary about that? As I said, this kind of "nonlinearity" was a thing since forever. Actual revolutionary thing would be doing more of shit like Witcher 2, with whole act being different depending on your choices, but majority of people agreed it was retarded and waste of resources, and that's why it wasn't repeated - cRPGs are not PnP, they're not suited for nonlinearity, it'll always be bioware fake choices until AI is advanced enough to act as a DM and dynamically control your campaign. I don't have anything against this kind of fake "nonlinear" shit, as I said it's a staple in RPGs since forever, and you can't do it any other way, but I really don't get why there is a big group of Codexers that tends to get hyped about it and pretend we have incoming revolution, every single fucking time a big RPG is announced. There is literally nothing revolutionary here. Nothing. BG3 has pretty much the same amount of nonlinearity that Fallout had 26 years ago, and the same will be true about the next 100 big RPG games.

 

[Swen]

Because of WOTC, there will be a new D&D version next year where this will be the new standard.

I thought One D&D was going to be an offshoot and not 6E or whatever?

It's still unclear, could go either way.

 

[Orud]

It's still unclear, could go either way.

The changes so far are quite small, nothing but a tiny iterations on certain aspects of 5th edition. I'd be surprised if it isn't considered 5.5 edition.

The handbook changes are free to check out by anyone at: https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/ua

 

[Gradenmayer]

There is nothing nonlinear, reactive, or revolutionary here, you move from map to map, choose between x or y, and get some different voice lines depending on your class/race/choices. It's Bioware v2, same shit just more bloated.

get some different voice lines depending on your class/race/choices

There is nothing nonlinear, reactive…

You are retarded.

I would like to see Larianfags actually playing PnP, it would be hilarious

But you already described it yourself:

There is nothing nonlinear, reactive, or revolutionary here, you move from event to event, choose between x or y, and get some different voice lines depending on your class/race/choices.

 

[Readher]

Larian does what CDPR could not

This one always puzzled me.

CDPR: WOAH, LOOK! YOU CAN CHOOSE BENIS OR VEGANE AND EVEN PICK BETWEEN CUT AND UNCUT FORESKIN AND IT'S ALL UNCENSORED. WE ALSO HAVE ROMANCES AND SEX SCENES. WE'RE CREATING A M A T U R E EXPERIENCE.
Coomer: Seems like you're going all out on the adult front. Will the sex scenes be interactive then?
CDPR: WTF??? Why would you even bring that up?

Yeah, I wonder.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

I love shooting barrels. I hope there are many barrels in BG3.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

There is nothing nonlinear, reactive, or revolutionary here, you move from map to map, choose between x or y, and get some different voice lines depending on your class/race/choices. It's Bioware v2, same shit just more bloated.

get some different voice lines depending on your class/race/choices

There is nothing nonlinear, reactive…

You are retarded.

I would like to see Larianfags actually playing PnP, it would be hilarious.

"WTF DM, what do you mean I can do what I want and go where I want? Give me a or b choice, I want nonlinearity!!!!!!! Also PLEASE stop forgetting to include my race in conversations, is it that hard to say "Yo brotha I see we both black!" when you're playing an NPC, didn't they teach you to be REACTIVE in the DM school??? Retard, smh."

I don't understand. Isn't that what you're asking in saying the reactivity and nonlinearity in the game isn't enough?

Also, I already said it's not usually superficial reactivity or choices like you're implying. Again, have you played the early access?

You can also just skip killing either of them. What more choices are than that exactly? Convince everyone to get along? You can do that where it makes sense - ie with the tieflings, which btw are another choice: evicting them and letting the druids build their barrier or getting the druids to stand with them.

And what is exactly revolutionary about that? As I said, this kind of "nonlinearity" was a thing since forever. Actual revolutionary thing would be doing more of shit like Witcher 2, with whole act being different depending on your choices, but majority of people agreed it was retarded and waste of resources, and that's why it wasn't repeated - cRPGs are not PnP, they're not suited for nonlinearity, it'll always be bioware fake choices until AI is advanced enough to act as a DM and dynamically control your campaign. I don't have anything against this kind of fake "nonlinear" shit, as I said it's a staple in RPGs since forever, and you can't do it any other way, but I really don't get why there is a big group of Codexers that tends to get hyped about it and pretend we have incoming revolution, every single fucking time a big RPG is announced. There is literally nothing revolutionary here. Nothing. BG3 has pretty much the same amount of nonlinearity that Fallout had 26 years ago, and the same will be true about the next 100 big RPG games.

Well, I already said that the game isn't nonlinear. It's linear with branching choices. Individual areas are nonlinear, but that's about it.

We were talking about reactivity and "fake" choices. They aren't fake, and I demonstrated that, so now you shift the goalpost over to what's revolutionary about it.

To that, I'd say that this is the first AAA RPG to approach this level of reactivity since Witcher 3, and it exceeds it, since W3 didn't have much in the way of skill-based dialog choices, and had no race or faction choices to factor in either. Arcanum did a lot of what this game did 20 years ago, but Arcanum was a one-off from a company that failed shortly afterward. Not exactly something for other devs to emulate or feel challenged by. That's what's "revolutionary" even though that wasn't what my previous post was discussing.

 

[Tyrr]

Larian does what CDPR could not

This one always puzzled me.

CDPR: WOAH, LOOK! YOU CAN CHOOSE BENIS OR VEGANE AND EVEN PICK BETWEEN CUT AND UNCUT FORESKIN AND IT'S ALL UNCENSORED. WE ALSO HAVE ROMANCES AND SEX SCENES. WE'RE CREATING A M A T U R E EXPERIENCE.
Coomer: Seems like you're going all out on the adult front. Will the sex scenes be interactive then?
CDPR: WTF??? Why would you even bring that up?

Yeah, I wonder.

Nothing new. Women do the same all the time.
Like Twitch thots that stream in bikinis but later complain about being objectified or "sexist" comments in chat.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

I love shooting barrels. I hope there are many barrels in BG3.

They removed most of them in the early access.

 

[Grauken]

We were talking about reactivity and "fake" choices. They aren't fake, and I demonstrated that, so now you shift the goalpost over to what's revolutionary about it.

Doesn't really matter as this isn't sold as some new revolution in cRPGs but as a massive Bioware-style (romances, story-faggortry) cRPG with TB combat. Apparently, its what people want, not revolutions or NPC schedules. What a surprise

 

[Readher]

The "revolution" here is that a game that's a mix between cRPG and console-era Bioware RPG with big budget is releasing in 2023. Industry would make you think you'd need 3000 people, 10 years of development and 2 billions budget to make that since all they do nowadays are linear moviegames or empty open-worlds with filler content Ubislop style.

 

[Child of Malkav]

Again this stuff with choice and consequence. Like that guy above said about Witcher 2, half of the game is different based on one choice. That's how you do consequences. By making meaningful content. Which takes time and resources. Maybe don't include c&c in your marketing if the consequences will not be anything meaningful, as a general rule. Making meaningful content for every choice would be insane, it would be like putting a few games worth of content into one game, depending on how many choices you can make and the scope of the consequences.

 

[Drakortha]

Drakortha not realizing he's the only simulation-fag among story- and combat-fags, poor guy will go mad over things nobody cares about

You're still not getting it.

I want all of the above. Story, Combat, and Simulation. A big release like BG3 shouldn't be compromising on anything. They certainly have the budget to do it, but nobody expects devs to work hard anymore.

This is what you all want, this is what you get. A big pile of SHIT!

 

[Drakortha]

The "revolution" here is that a game that's a mix between cRPG and console-era Bioware RPG with big budget is releasing in 2023. Industry would make you think you'd need 3000 people, 10 years of development and 2 billions budget to make that since all they do nowadays are linear moviegames or empty open-worlds with filler content Ubislop style.

How is this revolution good for me?

As a customer, why the fuck should I give a shit if 3000 people worked on a game, or 300? What matters to me is the product. There is no revolutionary product here, it's all the same shit we've seen before..