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

[whydoibother]

since Wyll is gonna have a ton of it by virtue of being a companion and I don't wanna suck by comparison

I think you can play as Wyll. That's how it was in Divinity Original Sin.
So you'll have the Protagonist quests and reactivity, and the Wyll quests and reactivity.

 

[Delterius]

since Wyll is gonna have a ton of it by virtue of being a companion and I don't wanna suck by comparison

I think you can play as Wyll. That's how it was in Divinity Original Sin.
So you'll have the Protagonist quests and reactivity, and the Wyll quests and reactivity.

its a good idea but it would feel bad, plus the name is kinda silly

basically someone with a brain parasite in their heads doing sidequests is the definition of insanity. gotta be a low wisdom archfey lock instead of whatever hell pact wyll did.

wild magic sorcerer it is.

 

[Reinhardt]

human paladin or barbarian.

 

[Larianshill]

Post Race, Class, Weapon, Alignment, Party, Romance and Character Customization.

Probably dwarf paladin with a hammer, I'll probably end up taking Shadowheart, Lae'zel and Karlach, with one of them getting benched for Gale from time to time. Romance Shadowheart, of course.

 

[Shrimp]

I'm tempted to go barbarian because I vaguely recall reading that they apparently have the most dialogue options and class interactions. That and grug smash
Originally I was thinking of Bard or Sorcerer to have a CHA based party lead, but since I still don't know if there's a chance the game will initiate dialogue (usually after combat encounters) with random characters instead of your designated party lead I'm not too sure how much I'd actually benefit from the speech related proficiencies.

As for companions I haven't really made my choice yet. Might just take the new ones to see what they're like.

 

[Reinhardt]

you can romance as a dorf? disgusting. not real bg.

 

[Child of Malkav]

No clue, I'll go a sneaky wizard focused on utility and support. Keep Astarion for rogue, pickpocket, cheese stuff, Shadowheart for baby ma-----I mean buffs and stuff and the druid guy or the warlock or maybe the black burning chick. I ain't taking the green gremlin.

 

[S.H.O.D.A.N.]

I still don't know if there's a chance the game will initiate dialogue (usually after combat encounters) with random characters instead of your designated party lead

Oh Lord, please tell me this isn't a thing...

 

[whydoibother]

I still don't know if there's a chance the game will initiate dialogue (usually after combat encounters) with random characters instead of your designated party lead

Oh Lord, please tell me this isn't a thing...

Almost certainly not, and besides, it would be trivial to script it so it selects the highest CHA, or someone you previously selected to be the "leader".
But this was a problem for me in Neverwinter Nights 2, to the point of making me rage.

Anyways, reading the Steam forum for the game, and noticing many people thought this big budget licensing game is a scam to steal their $50, and is not actually coming out.

 

[Shrimp]

I still don't know if there's a chance the game will initiate dialogue (usually after combat encounters) with random characters instead of your designated party lead

Oh Lord, please tell me this isn't a thing...

Almost certainly not, and besides, it would be trivial to script it so it selects the highest CHA, or someone you previously selected to be the "leader".
But this was a problem for me in Neverwinter Nights 2, to the point of making me rage.

Anyways, reading the Steam forum for the game, and noticing many people thought this big budget licensing game is a scam to steal their $50, and is not actually coming out.
View attachment 38200

It happened frequently enough to bother me in DOS2 and I remember it occurring at least once in the one BG3 playthrough I did when it first entered early access. I don't know if it's been fixed since then, but to my knowledge there's still no way to change which character is speaking once you've started talking to an NPC.
I know I'd absolutely hate it if I finish an encounter or enter a new area and the NPC(s) start talking to one of the companions while the character proficient in persuasion stands still in the background.

Here's a collection of various threads of people mentioning it. It's definitely a thing.
https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=817387
https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=824813
https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/jb7i0h/anyway_to_switch_characters_mid_conversation/
https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/kvw2l1/please_let_us_change_the_character_when/
https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/zmc8ra/can_we_switch_what_character_is_active_in_a/

 

[Cnaiur]

I just noticed I've already got 105 hours on this game. Most of it is from character creation and even in Act I I've only seen the content that was available at EA release...Looking forward to what has changed/added in Act I.

Think I'm going evil party first, Larian games typically offer plenty of fun playing this way.

Steam marks me at 500, but realistically speaking at least half of it is idle time sitting on the main menu or with the launcher opened in background (yes, it's counted as playtime as well) and so on.
Still, I'd say that I probably spent more or less 200 hours between a bunch of playthroughs trying different classes (the first one was around 40-50 hours, the subsequent ones get progressively shorter as you become familiar with what to do and in what order).

I never made a secret of having a whole freaking list of complaints about some questionable (when not downright bad) decisions Larian made, but overall I'm confident the end result will be at very least a solid entry in the genre and worth spending time on.
Not sure if it will ever been considered an instant classic and one of the all-timers on the other hand. Time will tell.

Yeah, I'm in the same boat. It's being critical because you see the huge potential, whereas with other games I often don't even bother expressing criticisms because the foundation is not even there.

The new release timing is interesting, as I'll be coming back from a US trip on the 3rd. Good fight the jet lag material.

 

[Daedalos]

pretty fucking great that they chose to release this a month earlier!
I can now play it in my vacation, while the kid is in daycare.

Fuck yeah niggas

 

[Gargaune]

Post Race, Class, Weapon, Alignment, Party, Romance and Character Customization.

1) Lawful Neutral Dwarf Fighter with Axe
2) Lawful Neutral Dwarf Fighter with Hammer
3) Lawful Neutral Dwarf Fighter with Axe and Hammer
4) Shadowheart







Just kidding. I'm not going to play this. I don't wanna subscribe to Gigabyte for six new mice every month.

 

[Ibn Sina]

duergar race supremacy.

 

[Bohrain]

Post Race, Class, Weapon, Alignment, Party, Romance and Character Customization.

inb4 there's no such thing as alignment, clearly you will prefer to play a certain way to have a meaningful character
inb4 i dont know what weapons there are, clearly you will start the game with a certain ideal plan in mind and adapt as it goes

With the way all skills appear in the dialogue trees, I'm not sure the CHA heavy protagonist is necessary, so my original Bard plan might be replaced by something else

Tempted to go bard so I could skill monkey through all checks, but I could settle for using party and savescumming. But I'm kind of curious how their homebrewed monks play out.
Race will be whatever gives worthwhile stats and that I can doll up on character creation.

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

The new release timing is interesting, as I'll be coming back from a US trip on the 3rd. Good fight the jet lag material.

pretty fucking great that they chose to release this a month earlier!
I can now play it in my vacation, while the kid is in daycare.

Fuck yeah niggas

For me this change is perfect.
The previous release landed exactly at the end of my vacation days AND overlapped almost perfectly with Armored Core VI and Starfield, two other games I'm at very least interested in.
Now it's releasing shortly before my vacation days begin, which leave me a couple of weeks I'll be able to dedicate to Jagged Alliance 3, before playing BG3.

P.S. It also helps that I'm not going any-fucking-where and I'm calling it "vacation" simply because I'm closing my gym for few days.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

Haven't followed this shit for 3 years.
Is this still true?

 

[GhostCow]

Haven't followed this shit for 3 years.
Is this still true?

Some of this is no longer true, most of it is.

Not sure what he means about overuse of ground effects, but if he means barrelmancy type stuff, that has been significantly toned down
You will not lose companions after act 1
Past tense narration is gone

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

- Yes, WOTC required so.
- Yes and that's a good thing.
- Opinionable at best.
- Not really, ground effects aren't that common anymore (so far). Balance issues remain in other areas, though.
- Yes
- There are 12 confirmed one so far. So I guess it depends on which Bioware RPG you are thinking of.
- A bit too soon to tell, but on the other hand a recurring complaint in EA from many was that "companions were too special".
- Not true anymore, but it was planned at some point and changed due fierce backlash.
- Compared to what?
- Past tense hasn't been a thing since before the EA even started 3 years ago.
- Camping/resting is instanced and it's trash I fiercely fought against, yes.
- Fog of War was added at some point.
- No day/night cycle is true and it remains one of the most unfortunate decisions Larian made in the entire production.
- The game is ANYTHING but "linear". In fact it may very well be the most reactive thing I've ever seen even in acknowledging the player's deliberate attempts at "sequence breaking".
- No idea what this is even about. Goblins in the game aren't exactly rocket scientists to begin with... And WOTC classified them as a sentient species a long time ago.
- You roll a lot of skill checks, yes.
- I have absolutely no problem with loading times (which are basically inexistent unless you reload a save, to begin with) but I have a good PC and not a Potato-machine.
- Yeah, character creations options are finite in number.
- Completely true. "Empty container galore" is something a lot of us complained about and pointed as unnecessary since the EA started. And I'll stress that the problem is "too many of them" rather than "Empty". If they solved this filling everything with random stuff would be even worse.
- I don't speak Retardo so I struggle a bit to relate to people who whine about games "not communicating well". The UI could use some improvements though. To put it mildly.
- "DOS 3 with D&D rules, classes and itemizations" would implicitly be a game that has fuck nothing to do with DOS 2. That said, yeah, you can spot the resemblances here and there.
- Art style is noticeably different from DOS 2. About the rest, you can spot the similarities.

P.S. Next time post a numbered list of questions if you want a better formatted answer, because I'm not going to do the counting for you.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

I don't think combat is slow, tbh. Deadfire's turn based system felt way, way slower, probably the slowest out of any modern tb rpg. Pathfinder combat could be slow but that's because of rus coding "skills" more than anything else I'd say.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

Past tense narration is gone

Wow. That irked me the most. I'm impressed they could take criticism at all, given current year.

 

[whydoibother]

Past tense narration is gone

Wow. That irked me the most. I'm impressed they could take criticism at all, given current year.

You ask for something, you get it, and you still respond in a bitchy passive-aggressive way. Unhealthy!

 

[Larianshill]

That irked me the most.

It was removed before EA even went alive.

 

[zapotec]

I still don't know if there's a chance the game will initiate dialogue (usually after combat encounters) with random characters instead of your designated party lead

Oh Lord, please tell me this isn't a thing...

Almost certainly not, and besides, it would be trivial to script it so it selects the highest CHA, or someone you previously selected to be the "leader".
But this was a problem for me in Neverwinter Nights 2, to the point of making me rage.

Anyways, reading the Steam forum for the game, and noticing many people thought this big budget licensing game is a scam to steal their $50, and is not actually coming out.
View attachment 38200

It happened frequently enough to bother me in DOS2 and I remember it occurring at least once in the one BG3 playthrough I did when it first entered early access. I don't know if it's been fixed since then, but to my knowledge there's still no way to change which character is speaking once you've started talking to an NPC.
I know I'd absolutely hate it if I finish an encounter or enter a new area and the NPC(s) start talking to one of the companions while the character proficient in persuasion stands still in the background.

Here's a collection of various threads of people mentioning it. It's definitely a thing.
https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=817387
https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=824813
https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/jb7i0h/anyway_to_switch_characters_mid_conversation/
https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/kvw2l1/please_let_us_change_the_character_when/
https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/zmc8ra/can_we_switch_what_character_is_active_in_a/

aha what a bunch of crybaby,

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

It happened frequently enough to bother me in DOS2 and I remember it occurring at least once in the one BG3 playthrough I did when it first entered early access. I don't know if it's been fixed since then, but to my knowledge there's still no way to change which character is speaking once you've started talking to an NPC.
I know I'd absolutely hate it if I finish an encounter or enter a new area and the NPC(s) start talking to one of the companions while the character proficient in persuasion stands still in the background.

Here's a collection of various threads of people mentioning it. It's definitely a thing.
https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=817387
https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=824813
https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/jb7i0h/anyway_to_switch_characters_mid_conversation/
https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/kvw2l1/please_let_us_change_the_character_when/
https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/zmc8ra/can_we_switch_what_character_is_active_in_a/

I remember having my own proposal to address this, at some point.
I even"structured" it to scale depending on the budget they wanted to spend on in, going from "basically nothing" to "Hollywood can blow us".

Copy-paste:

Of party leaders and NPCs arbitrarily starting conversations with companions

Ok, I'll keep this reasonably short, since we all know what this is about, right?

You finish a battle, and the NPC immediately starts a dialogue automatically with the companion who's the closest to his current position.
You reach a hotspot with an automatic trigger and same happens.
Same when you are druid in beast form and everyone talks over you as if you weren't even there.
I hate it, you hate it, everyone hates it.

It's something that was pointed as an annoyance since the very first days of EA, but we all had more urgent things to debate/complain about and this minor issue was always sidelined. As I was saying few days ago in another thread "You have to pick your battles at some point" etc, etc.

Still, this is something that needs to be addressed and doesn't even take much work to correct.

Premise:
- Especially in single player ALL NPCs, in any circumstance, should ALWAYS start the dialogue with the Main Character as a priority over anyone else.
- As second best alternative (and maybe the "problem solver" in multiplayer, too) the player(s) should be able to *mark* one character in the party as the "Face/Party leader".

Only exceptions when dialogue can start with other characters:
1- The player prompts the dialogue with the companion on purpose.
2- the trigger for the dialogue happens with the MC hidden/dead/significantly out of range.

This should be the baseline of the system. Not a new thing, just a refinement of what we have now mechanically.

Then, on top of it, it would be IDEAL if the rest of the party could be involved at will when there are skill checks to make during dialogue.

The basic form of this feature would involve just using the character skill value to make the check/roll (see Kingmaker/Wrath of the Righteous)
The "luxurious" one that may be more up to Larian's taste, could go the extra mile and have every companion offering a voiced line with a comment about how they "got this" for us ("Let me handle this" and so on).
Bonus points (and extra budget spent) if the comment is occasionally contextual to the specific situation rather than generic and used all over the game.

The way I envision the expensive version would be more or less like this:

- You pick the Intimidation option.
- Wyll is the best at intimidating in your party.
- Your character glances at his side (you can make few variations of this and make it mostly a systemic thing, rather than handcrafting each individual animation)...
- Wyll nods, makes a half step forward and does his intimidation attempt, saying whatever he has to say to the interlocutor.
- Regardless of how it goes, the dialogue goes back to you (assuming there's still a dialogue going on after).

Did I forget to address something?

EDIT - Extra clarification:

"But not all Player Characters are built to be the Face, whereas at least one of the Companions, Wyll, is built for it."

Maybe I'm weird but it doesn't really matter to me. I don't want to pick the Face as matter of min-maxing. I just want my character to be the "protagonist" even when there are better diplomats in my party.
Last thing I want is having to handle every dialogue with a bard, paladin or warlock companion only because I'm playing a Barbarian, for instance.

I'll deal with the consequences and occasional shortcomings of being a barbarian if I have to.
And companions can contribute to the min-maxing of dialogues anyway, if the suggested conditions are met (their ability to infer during the conversation to help with skill checks, I mean).