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

[Drakortha]

Let's say you're in Larian's marketing department. Either a contractor or you work for them directly. How would you advertise the game to the RPGcodex community?

Keep in mind you want to stay employed, so your first instinct of making an account and posting a video of killing Halsin while chanting, "Come home, white man" may not fly.

Montage of combat encounters with Limp Bizkit's Rollin' playing in the background.

BG3 doesn't need better marketing. The game has to just not be millenial/zoomer gutter TRASH.

 

[Zeriel]

You should play them if you want a superior experience and story, one that will make you not want to ever play BG3. If you want to enjoy BG3... don't play BG1-2.

SoD is canon now. Is SoD really better than BG3? Just kidding I'll skip that. But yeah I might do I've got both of the EEs on steam so I could just roll up something unique and original.

Maybe a Kensage or Fighter/Mage multi and I can use shadowkeeper to change his paperdoll so it looks cool.

I'd only play the original games with mods, not the EE.

 

[KIss My Ass]

Montage of combat encounters with Limp Bizkit's Rollin' playing in the background.

That would be epic af tbh. Rollin' is timeless. That would get me to buy the game.

 

[Nerevar]

Yeah my first complete playthrough was with TuTu and I've done 1 + ToSC like 5 times but only done BG2 and ToB twice.

I think the EE is good enough if you just ignore the (((new content))). I almost had a brain aneurism when some pink haired original the character started talking shit to my trusted and proven henchmen.

 

[Volourn]

WUT THA FUK

 

[Pizzashoes]

Its funny to think that there was once a time when rtwp was considered more generally accessible than turn-based combat.
At this point way more "casual gamers" have played some Fire Emblem or Civilization game and understand the basics of turn-based combat.

Pathfinder Kingmaker/WOTC convinced me I don't like rtwp. This clip has the cool aspect of real time with pause. Load up and then nuke at the start, but there's too much shit going on and the player has to do too much waiting in between phases of battle.

You should play them if you want a superior experience and story, one that will make you not want to ever play BG3. If you want to enjoy BG3... don't play BG1-2.

SoD is canon now. Is SoD really better than BG3? Just kidding I'll skip that. But yeah I might do I've got both of the EEs on steam so I could just roll up something unique and original.

Maybe a Kensage or Fighter/Mage multi and I can use shadowkeeper to change his paperdoll so it looks cool.

I'd only play the original games with mods, not the EE.

I tried hard to avoid the Enhanced Edition, but a lot of the good mods I like (SCS in particular) started to prioritize the EE to the point I caved. The engine and the UI and the $20 convinced me to sell my soul, and it wasn't worth it.

 

[Zeriel]

Its funny to think that there was once a time when rtwp was considered more generally accessible than turn-based combat.
At this point way more "casual gamers" have played some Fire Emblem or Civilization game and understand the basics of turn-based combat.

Pathfinder Kingmaker/WOTC convinced me I don't like rtwp. This clip has the cool aspect of real time with pause. Load up and then nuke at the start, but there's too much shit going on and the player has to do too much waiting in between phases of battle.

You should play them if you want a superior experience and story, one that will make you not want to ever play BG3. If you want to enjoy BG3... don't play BG1-2.

SoD is canon now. Is SoD really better than BG3? Just kidding I'll skip that. But yeah I might do I've got both of the EEs on steam so I could just roll up something unique and original.

Maybe a Kensage or Fighter/Mage multi and I can use shadowkeeper to change his paperdoll so it looks cool.

I'd only play the original games with mods, not the EE.

I tried hard to avoid the Enhanced Edition, but a lot of the good mods I like (SCS in particular) started to prioritize the EE to the point I caved. The engine and the UI and the $20 convinced me to sell my soul, and it wasn't worth it.

I just don't see how it would be worth it? Like what are they adding after 20 years that is substansial compared to before? Most of these mods were feature-complete/done back in NWN days.

I'll admit I was never a big SCS fan though. Just seemed like it was a completely different thing from how the game is intended to be played. Great if you enjoy cheesing and then the game reacting to your cheese, but whatever. I always preferred things that just polish out the experience. Baldurdash, maybe letting you have multiple strongholds on one character, the package to combine BG1/2 etc.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

This is about morons being chosen as the prime target demographic.

Morons are ALWAYS a target demographic. Why do you think BG was RTWP instead of turn-based to begin with? Turn-based too hard to code?

Moron money is always something devs want unless they're making a niche game like KotC.

I predicted it would gonna be full on "go for teh eyes buuuu" meme idiocy from day one, but apparently retard and his hamster are no longer memetic enough unless he shoves said hamster up his arse.

Reminder that it was implied that he did this at the start of BG2.

 

[Volourn]

BG was rt with pause because it was going to be a real time strategy game. You dumb fukk.

 

[Nerevar]

Pathfinder Kingmaker/WOTC convinced me I don't like rtwp. This clip has the cool aspect of real time with pause. Load up and then nuke at the start, but there's too much shit going on and the player has to do too much waiting in between phases of battle.

What's even happening in that clip lol. For this fight I just killed everything with my min/maxed martial build while the rest of the squad hid in the corner.

I only played on hard though. Cool party BTW.

 

[Hace El Oso]

Here is my contribution, again it runs rings around bg3 even when it comes to sex related humor. And is far classier.

This is the effect of declining IQs, literacy and life experience. Nothing is going to get better unless that changes, and there is no bottom to the abyss. Dragon Age: Origins released in 2023 would be a glass of water in the desert.

I predicted it would gonna be full on "go for teh eyes buuuu" meme idiocy from day one, but apparently retard and his hamster are no longer memetic enough unless he shoves said hamster up his arse.

Reminder that it was implied that he did this at the start of BG2.

That was a prison joke, not a homosexual freak 'joke'.

 

[scytheavatar]

Have those games sold well though? Not trying to be a doomer, but BG3 is a pretty big and expensive undertaking for what was a medium sized developer.

Pokemon sold 10 million copies in 3 days and is turn base, is that not selling well?

Larian is no longer a medium sized developer, DOS2 sold tons of copies and Larian now has 400 employees. And BG3 has already sold more than 1 million copies in early access. DOS2 already has become the gold standard of CRPGs and the game that every CRPG dev without CDPR/Bioware level funding should be hoping to achieve. And devs right now are already crying about how BG3 are going to lift those standards way higher.

 

[Pizzashoes]

Its funny to think that there was once a time when rtwp was considered more generally accessible than turn-based combat.
At this point way more "casual gamers" have played some Fire Emblem or Civilization game and understand the basics of turn-based combat.

Pathfinder Kingmaker/WOTC convinced me I don't like rtwp. This clip has the cool aspect of real time with pause. Load up and then nuke at the start, but there's too much shit going on and the player has to do too much waiting in between phases of battle.

You should play them if you want a superior experience and story, one that will make you not want to ever play BG3. If you want to enjoy BG3... don't play BG1-2.

SoD is canon now. Is SoD really better than BG3? Just kidding I'll skip that. But yeah I might do I've got both of the EEs on steam so I could just roll up something unique and original.

Maybe a Kensage or Fighter/Mage multi and I can use shadowkeeper to change his paperdoll so it looks cool.

I'd only play the original games with mods, not the EE.

I tried hard to avoid the Enhanced Edition, but a lot of the good mods I like (SCS in particular) started to prioritize the EE to the point I caved. The engine and the UI and the $20 convinced me to sell my soul, and it wasn't worth it.

I just don't see how it would be worth it? Like what are they adding after 20 years that is substansial compared to before? Most of these mods were feature-complete/done back in NWN days.

I'll admit I was never a big SCS fan though. Just seemed like it was a completely different thing from how the game is intended to be played. Great if you enjoy cheesing and then the game reacting to your cheese, but whatever. I always preferred things that just polish out the experience. Baldurdash, maybe letting you have multiple strongholds on one character, the package to combine BG1/2 etc.

I don't think they added anything that substantial to be worth it. Now after ten years of bug fixing and mods, QoL improvements in my mind are: looting is easier, and the UI has that cool background you can see from a couple pages back.

But they added some actual bonehead decisions like the new UI for spellbook makes using the spellbook harder. It's just worse.

UI Madness

And it made me accidentally hit permanently remove spells a bunch of times. The other crazy one off the top of my mind is you can't hit escape when you're leveling up or dual classing to get out. Once you hit the dual class button in the statistics, I believe there's no way out.

Pathfinder Kingmaker/WOTC convinced me I don't like rtwp. This clip has the cool aspect of real time with pause. Load up and then nuke at the start, but there's too much shit going on and the player has to do too much waiting in between phases of battle.

What's even happening in that clip lol. For this fight I just killed everything with my min/maxed martial build while the rest of the squad hid in the corner.

I only played on hard though. Cool party BTW.

Yeah I made that party maybe two or three years ago. I don't remember how to play either. My plan was head in buffed up, hit chain lightning, dazzling display, sirocco, and physical attack from MC. Which didn't even work. I failed the Sirocco cast, and I forgot to hit dazzling display. With real time with pause, it's so easy to get overwhelmed and focus on one little thing. So you end up not even using the other characters' rounds efficiently like you said, and just focus on your main guy. Tying all of those ridiculous combat mechanics back into roleplaying makes even less sense. Terrible system, and when the devs make these Unfair/Tactician modes, they just divorce the game from roleplaying. I don't think I'll bother with Tactician mode, but my epeen does get hard from beating the difficult modes.

 

[Takamori]

RWTP for me is a convenience when I notice the encounter is just a filler so you can solve in seconds.

But I always preferred Turn Based for RPGs, RWTP feels like I'm playing micro in some RTS game.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

[Dragon Age: Inquisition] is a grindy chore

It's basically a single player MMO, yes.

And the writing is pretty bad too. You think bear sex is so terrible? You won't walk straight after the Bull.

 

[Gradenmayer]

[Dragon Age: Inquisition] is a grindy chore

It's basically a single player MMO, yes.

And the writing is pretty bad too. You think bear sex is so terrible? You won't walk straight after the Bull.

Yeah, BG3 dialogue is the same level of cringe, but at least you can threaten to kill people and kill people with dialogue choices, unlike Inquisition where you can only be a bitch or be a bitch later.

 

[Saravan]

Everything about this game is trash. Its animations, its saturated bright as fuck colors, the cast of characters, the dialogue, the choices, the promotion, the people making it, the fans, the character creation, the multiclassing, 5th edition ruleset, the voice acting, the diversity, the combat, the silly jumping, the exploding barrels, the lack of a day / night cycle. This game will have many broken promises, be filled with bugs, and people will still sing its praises. And it will win codex GotY, guaranteed.

I couldn't have said it better myself. And it will certainly win GotY (GARBAGE of the year)

But you can't reason with Larian sympathizers. They are the type of person who never stood up for their own convictions, because they never had any. They will jump on over to either side of the fence and bat for whichever team looks like it's winning. Even if winning only means netting more sales and attention. No dignity at all.

The way you two are sucking each others dicks should also be bannable due to extreme homosexuality.

 

[Kiste]

You should play them if you want a superior experience and story, one that will make you not want to ever play BG3.

Oh, can we please do without the fucking hyperbole for once? Or at least be honest about BG1/2? Take off the fucking nostalgia goggles?

Superior experience? We're still talking about the some old chaotic RTwP clusterfuck, right? Nothing has magically changed about that over the past 25 years, or has it?

And I keep reading about BG1/2's superior "writing". Really?

In BG1, pretty much the first encounter in the first area after Candlekeep, a few yards to the left from the ambush site, where your adoptive father was brutally butchered, you find a dude with the very in-universe name "Chase" who is about to comit suicide by jumping off a cliff. The whole encounter is incredibly goofy and and awash with the sort of shitty "comedic" writing that relies heavily on anachronisms.

Chase tells you that he will be "true to the genre" and jump if you come closer. When you talk him out of it, he mentions that he already did this several times, which implies that he just hangs around the cliff and waits for random passerbys to talk him out suicide. Haha, very funny. When you don't talk him out of it, he claims to see it as you having faith in him and he decides to live. Then he goes on blathering about having jeeves fix his mom a bunch of cocktails and the players gets to comment: "1: What a tool."

Yeah, that's really a masterclass in immersive writing that is sincere and respects the setting. Someone in this here shithole thread even had the gall to claim that the "humor" in BG1/2 was "in-universe". Yes, I am sure that everyone in the Forgotten Realms has deep knowledge of Hollywood tropes surrounding suicidal jumpers and calling people a "tool" is a common figure of speech in this medieval world, where people are apparently slurping "cocktails", a term coined in the USA around 1800. "Jeeves" the buttler is a literary figure form the 20th century and the name "Chase" became popular in the USA in the late 1980s, and only there.

A few minutes later you run into an old man whose speech is thick with "thou" "wouldst" "nigh" and "thee" and other Shakespearean wankery. So this shit isn't even consistent. The writing in BG1 is incredibly uneven and inconsistent.

And this is stuff you encounter within the first 15-30 minutes. Is there anything that egregious in BG3 within the first 15 minutes? Or even the first 15 hours?

 

[BruceVC]

So they took out some of the explosive barrels from encounters.

It's still Mass Effect / Dragon Age under the Baldur's Gate brand.

Man Isabela was one my favorite Romance options, there is nothing better than a liberated smoking hot pirate women for your Romance options

Thats one minor criticism I have for BG3, the Romance options for straight men aren't great. I mentioned this before

But since Romance is such a small and inconsequential part of the overall game its not a big deal to me

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

And I keep reading about BG1/2's superior "writing".

It was superior, yes. How can you think BG3's generic druids v generic goblins with some Teifling immigration allegory (complete with an orange-haired druid who wants to build a wall) mixed in is superior to quests like Firkraag, the beholder cult, or Durlag's Tower?

It's not terrible in the beginning either. The hag quest was pretty decent, and the tadpole mystery is pretty cool.

But speaking of goggles, you might want to objectively evaluate some things.

In BG1, pretty much the first encounter in the first area after Candlekeep, a few yards to the left from the ambush site, where your adoptive father was brutally butchered, you find a dude with the very in-universe name "Chase" who is about to comit suicide by jumping off a cliff. The whole encounter is incredibly goofy and and awash with the sort of shitty "comedic" writing that relies heavily on anachronisms.

Yes, there were a ton of silly side quests. So what? There are plenty in BG3 too. E.g., the child thieves in the druid village, or saving Volo. Compare apples to apples. If you pick out Noober or similar as an example of the quality of the writing in BG 1&2, it's just dishonest.

In terms of main quest writing, I would say that both BGs had equal or superior writing (especially BG2). And the NPC writing in BG2 was superior to what I've seen in BG3, and I've defended its writing to no end.

And this is one of the first fucking things you encounter in the game. Is there anything that egregious in BG3 within the first 15 minutes? Or even the first 15 hours?

Not counting the allegory? I really don't recall, just that the quests I mentioned were silly. But now that Karlach is in-game, I would say you should "prepare your orifices" for some Larian "humor".

 

[Nerevar]

Man Isabela was one my favorite Romance options, there is nothing better than a liberated smoking hot pirate women for your Romance options

Thats one minor criticism I have for BG3, the Romance options for straight men aren't great. I mentioned this before

But since Romance is such a small and inconsequential part of the overall game its not a big deal to me

Pretty sure even the bear from BG3 is a better choice than Isabela. The bear is probably cleaner too.

A literal pirate hooker. I do agree about the choices for BG3 being garbage though they are all evil hoebags. You should like that shit though?

 

[Infinitron]

Dragon Age: Origins released in 2023 would be a glass of water in the desert.

Reposting this: https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads...fangirls-rejoice.115334/page-163#post-8525745

 

[Nerevar]

The Bioware formula of having five or six locations and then an end game area got them through quite a few of their modern titles.

If they went back to the old formula it would do well on consoles these guys don't beat games anyway or just hunt achievements. I beat DA:O in two days when it came out and even though I felt a bit ripped off I still have good memories of it.

 

[Ibn Sina]

Biggest issue of discussion in the larian forums:

"
This is probably something of an odd question, but I know it's something that some people care about. Myself included, obviously. As far as cutscenes or even general dynamics, do we know in the case of male/male pairings which companions force a top or bottom role, or even a dom or sub dynamic? It's something that's unfortunately fairly frequent in the case of LGBTQ+ pairings, that it's often sort of stereotyped based on body type. eg Zevran from Dragon Age: Origins, or Iron Bull from Inquisition. Being forced into a pairing or dynamic that's the complete antithesis of what you're comfortable with often results in being jarred out of the game, or just dropping it entirely. While I'm not expecting Larian to write/design cutscenes for both directions across each companion, it would be good to know ahead of time to avoid dissatisfaction sort of... which corresponds to which? And the answer might be 'wait until the game is out', as that's what I expect to need to do when it comes out to finding out who is okay with a poly relationship and such. Still, figured it couldn't hurt to ask!

"

This is the fandom that Larian actively cultivated.

 

[Drakortha]

Everything about this game is trash. Its animations, its saturated bright as fuck colors, the cast of characters, the dialogue, the choices, the promotion, the people making it, the fans, the character creation, the multiclassing, 5th edition ruleset, the voice acting, the diversity, the combat, the silly jumping, the exploding barrels, the lack of a day / night cycle. This game will have many broken promises, be filled with bugs, and people will still sing its praises. And it will win codex GotY, guaranteed.

I couldn't have said it better myself. And it will certainly win GotY (GARBAGE of the year)

But you can't reason with Larian sympathizers. They are the type of person who never stood up for their own convictions, because they never had any. They will jump on over to either side of the fence and bat for whichever team looks like it's winning. Even if winning only means netting more sales and attention. No dignity at all.

The way you two are sucking each others dicks should also be bannable due to extreme homosexuality.

As opposed to the way you Larian Fags suck each other off in such large groups? Like a extreme homosexual faggot orgy.

One person agrees with me in this entire shitshow of a thread and you get all butthurt about it. Go fuck yourself you faggot fuck!