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

[Pizzashoes]

Gortash

How is this flaming, blue-haired, "raised by a devil", modern-day edge-lord in charge of anybody? His shirt is half off, dragons sewn into his collar, demons pinned on his coat. This isn't good.

It's all a LARP. The Gnome who's office is behind the throne is actually in charge and is the only reason the kingdom can even function.

I think that would be interesting to have a power propping this guy up. He dresses gaudy with blatantly clashing styles to hide his utter incompetence and insecurity. The devil bit is a lie to cover up his mundane background as the son of a cobbler. The scared Baldurians turn to him, reminiscent of the way they turned to Sarevok (like pottery), but the power behind the scenes (Mindflayers) have propped up this weakling to make the entire city easier to convert. There is no strength in him, only subversion.

But I have a strong feeling this character was designed by a 31 year old, blue haired, they/them, demisexual writer who has never exercised authority in their life, and who thinks this gilded turd looks intimidating. The haircut is damning.

Dragon

The dragons on Gortash's clothes reminded me of Rand Al'Thor. The difference being, Rand's name is the Dragon Reborn, and in his cover art and in the books, his dragon tattoos are tastefully concealed. His dragon belt looks based, and he projects more masculine energy. He doesn't look like a limp wristed Karen.

 

[jaekl]

 

[Fedora Master]

Hey, don't sully an actually funny movie by association with Larian humor.

 

[rojay]

The dragons on Gortash's clothes reminded me of Rand Al'Thor. The difference being, Rand's name is the Dragon Reborn, and in his cover art and in the books, his dragon tattoos are tastefully concealed. His dragon belt looks based, and he projects more masculine energy. He doesn't look like a limp wristed Karen.

Dude.

 

[bobocrunch]

The decadent sleazeball leader / ruler / whatever is an old trope but the writing will have to do the legwork for the believability of why he'd be there without just boring mindflayer rape, I expect it to be very hammy and not show the sort of charisma that might make a guy that devolves into that someone who people look to in the first place

 

[Infinitron]

Well, Swen whined about day and night having to have some profound differences, gameplay wise.

But what if... a game called Baldur's Gate actually confined itself to Baldur's Gate?

Larian don't want to have day-night cycles that are purely cosmetic and don't want to invest the time and effort necessary for every NPC in the game to have a daily schedule with their own bed etc. It's simply not something they want to prioritize at the cost of other things.

 

[Drakortha]

Larian don't want to have day-night cycles that are purely cosmetic and don't want to invest the time and effort necessary for every NPC in the game to have a daily schedule with their own bed etc. It's simply not something they want to prioritize at the cost of other things.

What other things could they possibly be prioritizing over making their gameworld more dynamic and unique and believable?

Hiring celebrity voice actors?

Making stupid Youtube videos?

If they don't want to make the effort to develop a worthy sequel to Baldur's Gate they will never get a dime from me or any respect from me, for that matter. These lazy developers have killed gaming as a hobby for me. If they can't develop the type of game I want they can fuck off. Go make mobile games or something, you lazy cunts!

 

[Infinitron]

Fewer areas and quests in the game because you had to allocate area designers, scripters and QA staff to making sure Guard #2 gets to bed without interfering with some scripted event along the way.

Designing for that is a discipline you have to dedicate yourself to and Larian just don't care enough to pay the cost.

 

[Drakortha]

Fewer areas and quests in the game because you had to allocate area designers, scripters and QA staff to making sure Guard #2 gets to bed without interfering with some scripted event along the way.

Designing for that is a discipline you have to dedicate yourself to and Larian just don't care enough to pay the cost.

Just sum it up in 2 words;

No Ambition.

 

[The_Mask]

No Ambition.

Working on a game for half a decade is plenty of ambition. Besides, they do have 1 last panel before launch. No need to be a Negative Nancy before the game is out. Right?

 

[whydoibother]

Just sum it up in 2 words;

No Ambition.

If you look at BG3 and compare it to the usual cRPG offerings, the last words that should come to mind is "no ambition".

 

[Drakortha]

Just sum it up in 2 words;

No Ambition.

If you look at BG3 and compare it to the usual cRPG offerings, the last words that should come to mind is "no ambition".

You're right. You're right. Those celebrity voice actors and quirky Youtube videos are ambitious as fuck. How could I have been so foolish..

BG3 looks almost identical to Original Sin, they didn't even try to differentiate it graphically. The only ambition that exists at Larian is to make an Original Sin 3 under the Baldur's Gate brand name so they can make lots of money. They are literally just following along the rainbow towards the pot of gold at the end. Please explain how that is ambitious?

 

[Cryomancer]

Piranha Bytes which has a tiny fraction of Larian budget and employees managed to implement D/N cycle and "virtual ecology" in Gothic 1 with animals like wolves hunting in packs, attacking other animals and even the fictional beasts like Shadowbeast works in gameplay like in lore. Larian is more worried about motion captured astarion sex scenes than this stuff. Priorities.

 

[whydoibother]

BG3 looks almost identical to Original Sin, they didn't even try to differentiate it graphically.

You accuse me of surface level analysis, lelelele voice actors lelelele, and then your jab is just to compare visuals?
How can it be "just DOS3" when the entire combat system is different, the item system is different, the classes and builds are different, there's a new stealth system, there's a new hybrid real time-turn based system, there's more focus on pushing, throwing, etc.

Gothic 1

Gothic 1 is much smaller, and there's a lot of shit that's in BG3 and isn't in G1. Might as well compare it to Minecraft, which also has day and night cycle, and some scripts regarding it, like spider spawning.

 

[Drakortha]

Piranha Bytes which has a tiny fraction of Larian budget and employees managed to implement D/N cycle and "virtual ecology" in Gothic 1 with animals like wolves hunting in packs, attacking other animals and even the fictional beasts like Shadowbeast works in gameplay like in lore. Larian is more worried about motion captured astarion sex scenes than this stuff. Priorities.

Video games are quickly going the way of the Pyramids.

We have game developers today looking back at games from 20 years ago scratching their heads wondering "How did they do that?"

Plight of the modern game developer. Woe..

 

[Rhobar121]

Piranha Bytes which has a tiny fraction of Larian budget and employees managed to implement D/N cycle and "virtual ecology" in Gothic 1 with animals like wolves hunting in packs, attacking other animals and even the fictional beasts like Shadowbeast works in gameplay like in lore. Larian is more worried about motion captured astarion sex scenes than this stuff. Priorities.

Gothic is a bad example the game was largely linear with minimal player influence. The other thing is that the game was an accident. All their other games were only worse

 

[Drakortha]

Piranha Bytes which has a tiny fraction of Larian budget and employees managed to implement D/N cycle and "virtual ecology" in Gothic 1 with animals like wolves hunting in packs, attacking other animals and even the fictional beasts like Shadowbeast works in gameplay like in lore. Larian is more worried about motion captured astarion sex scenes than this stuff. Priorities.

Gothic is a bad example the game was largely linear with minimal player influence. The other thing is that the game was an accident. All their other games were only worse

Oblivion/Skyrim

Fallout 3/NV/4

Are those small linear games?

Stop making excuses for Lazy Larian!

 

[Pizzashoes]

The decadent sleazeball leader / ruler / whatever is an old trope but the writing will have to do the legwork for the believability of why he'd be there without just boring mindflayer rape, I expect it to be very hammy and not show the sort of charisma that might make a guy that devolves into that someone who people look to in the first place

I wanted to read how the lads roasted the guy after I watched the trailer, and I didn't see much.

Sleazeballs work because they can glad hand and on the surface keep relations level. No one's going to call them a liar to their face because they're powerful/useful. On close inspection they don't have good character, but to the average layman they are charismatic. Not to get political, but a guy like Trump values gaudiness and other emotional arguments to persuade. He's obviously effective in that sense. Pimps, too, are good leaders, dress provocatively, and keep folks in line.

But Gortash with the Karen cut, the blue highlights, v-neck, and dragons and demons looks lame. How is Larian going to give him the solid inner core to act, to kill, to do whatever's necessary, like you see in mob movies. And that's the disconnect. School shooter edgelord or a mindflayer puppet are what he looks like, and his trailer shows him seriously negotiating with a party that went through fire, hell, and a series of death matches to get to Baldur's Gate. I don't think that Larian will bridge the disconnect, for reasons the lads have discussed. And I swear, this particular point has been proved over and over. The characters don't make sense.

 

[Rhobar121]

Piranha Bytes which has a tiny fraction of Larian budget and employees managed to implement D/N cycle and "virtual ecology" in Gothic 1 with animals like wolves hunting in packs, attacking other animals and even the fictional beasts like Shadowbeast works in gameplay like in lore. Larian is more worried about motion captured astarion sex scenes than this stuff. Priorities.

Gothic is a bad example the game was largely linear with minimal player influence. The other thing is that the game was an accident. All their other games were only worse

Oblivion/Skyrim

Fallout 3/NV/4

Are those small linear games?

Stop making excuses for Lazy Larian!

Just out of curiosity, is there any reactivity in Bethesda games? I can only recall a few quests where you had a choice and it was usually binary.
You can say a lot about the Larians, but they're definitely not lazy.
Find me another game that has so much reactivity, you can literally kill every npc in the game.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Oblivion/Skyrim

Fallout 3/NV/4

Are those small linear games?

Or, you know, Baldur's Gate 1 and 2.

 

[Drakortha]

Find me another game that has so much reactivity, you can literally kill every npc in the game.

Fallout New Vegas

Just face it. Larian is Lazy.

They did the minimum work required by converting their shit Original Sin game into something that barely resembles Baldur's Gate. And then the consumers bought it. The end.

 

[Infinitron]

Sleazeballs work because they can glad hand and on the surface keep relations level. No one's going to call them a liar to their face because they're powerful/useful. On close inspection they don't have good character, but to the average layman they are charismatic. Not to get political, but a guy like Trump values gaudiness and other emotional arguments to persuade. He's obviously effective in that sense. Pimps, too, are good leaders, dress provocatively, and keep folks in line.

I don't think there's much point in having a discussion about a character we really know nothing about, but FWIW these are things that matter less in a pre-mass media society.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Well, Swen whined about day and night having to have some profound differences, gameplay wise.

But what if... a game called Baldur's Gate actually confined itself to Baldur's Gate?

Larian don't want to have day-night cycles that are purely cosmetic and don't want to invest the time and effort necessary for every NPC in the game to have a daily schedule with their own bed etc. It's simply not something they want to prioritize at the cost of other things.

Even if I can accept this reasoning (I don't), still, the choice to have as the weather/light condition a bright sunny day is killing the atmosphere of the game for me.

 

[Cryomancer]

Just out of curiosity, is there any reactivity in Bethesda games?

Not from bugthesda, but In new vegas, there is a lot of reactivity. Pure Sandbox games like Mount & Blade offers a lot of reactivity. Everything that you do has consequences. Even buying stuff cheap in a town and selling high in another town has consequences in the caravan routes, economic prices, raider locations and so on. Romance which is pretty inconsequential in 99% of games, in M&B allows you to get into certain families, get right to rule, connections and many people of the Lady family can oppose your marriage.

you can literally kill every npc in the game.

Gothic 3 which is considered the worst piranha bytes game by many Gothic fans. The "everyone dies" ending is a bit bugged but can happen :

Spoiler

In Morrowind, you also can kill every single NPC in the game. You would't be able to progress the MQ and live alone in a desert, but you can do it.

------------

I do agree that Larian is the masters of reactivity but is not as if you could only find it in Larian.

And a D/N cycle problem would't be only for NPC schedule/routine. Stealth at night, how certain monsters behave at night and so on, to do a proper D/N cycle, would require too much resources.

 

[Reinhardt]

nigger decided to shit in every active thread on codex?