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

[Nifft Batuff]

A measure of the quality of a cRPG is how much of the combat skills/spells/mechanics you can use outside combat to solve and overcome problems, and vice-versa. I.e. how much the game allow you to think out of the box.
From this point of view, I think DOS and DOS 2 are above average among peers. Admittedly this average is very very low on an absolute scale. BG 1 and 2 are in the lowest part of this scale, while Fallout 1 and 2 are high in this scale.
I have no idea where BG 3 could be in this scale. I haven't touched the EA.

Easy win for BG3 in the "thinking out of the box" category.

Stacking boxes and blowing barrels. Larian masterclass of thinking outside the box, guys, make way!

I said the absolute scale is indeed very low...

 

[whydoibother]

Stacking boxes and blowing barrels. Larian masterclass of thinking outside the box, guys, make way!

Maneuvering to jump at or push people, talking to animals, raising the dead to talk to them, all skills usable in dialogue, some crafting, pickpocketing, stealing, trading, skills even can influence your movement in the world. I don't know if they changed it, but in the early access the vampire couldn't cross flowing water.
So, already much more interactive outside of combat than traditional cRPGs.

 

[Zeriel]

I want to know why you think this is okay? What exactly is the payoff here for having NPC's stand around in place all day waiting for you to interact with them, like some fucking lifeless MMO?

The payoff is that day/night cycles are and always were gay timewasters. Fuck your immersion, I have loot to sell.

Can't wait to make a hot Body Type 2 with a big fat cock, boys.

Total Bible Black Gang victory.

The time needed to implement them is basically nill though. Swen creates a problem for himself here in insisting on being autistic about it (at least, that's his surface explanation, whether I believe it or not... eh...)

If they just settled for "apply a color filter, let devs decide whether they will use day/night tag in scripting" solution, they could have it done and wrapped in a day. It'd take almost zero dev time.

Then you look at the things they spend a lot of time on, and it's even more baffling.

 

[BlackAdderBG]

Stacking boxes and blowing barrels. Larian masterclass of thinking outside the box, guys, make way!

Maneuvering to jump at or push people, talking to animals, raising the dead to talk to them, all skills usable in dialogue, some crafting, pickpocketing, stealing, trading, skills even can influence your movement in the world. I don't know if they changed it, but in the early access the vampire couldn't cross flowing water.
So, already much more interactive outside of combat than traditional cRPGs.

Wow that sound exactly like Original Sin, are they releasing it soon or should we wait after the Baldur's Gate game?

 

[whydoibother]

CHA based class is a good idea for MC.

All skills can influence dialogues, from what we've seen so far. It makes sense for the leader to be a charismatic guy, from a roleplaying POV, but its no longer mechanically necessary.

 

[Theodora]

this complaint in particular is so weird to me

like, it's ironic: the reason bg2 was possible was asset reuse

so yes: bg3's is possible because of asset reuse

so maybe more of you should fucking asset reuse instead of chasing trends, motherfuckers

imagine if the guys at Tactical don't make another game using Solasta's engine. that would pretty much be case in fucking point now wouldn't it

I still think you're missing the point. The IP behind BG3 isn't just the original two games, but allllllllllllll the Forgotten Realms "lore" written since 1967. Good worldbuilding is especially important for an RPG, because it needs to be engrossing and "make sense" enough for you to suspend disbelief. For all the bells and whistles associated with muh immershion in modern games, the world being capable of capturing people's interests is the foundation which everything else relies on to be effective.

It would take a lot of either very wordy games or absurdly detailed environmental storytelling to reach anything close to the scale of the IP behind Baldur's Gate. (And quite frankly most gamedev simply doesn't pay enough to attract even simply competent writers at scale -- but that's another (related but separate) issue.)

 

[Grunker]

The asset reuse of BG3 is infinitely more important to its scope than using a basic bitch hodgepodge setting - which actually comes with its own development pressure as you can't just do whatever you want in it.

 

[Tacgnol]

The asset reuse of BG3 is infinitely more important to its scope than using a basic bitch hodgepodge setting - which actually comes with its own development pressure as you can't just do whatever you want in it.

I also think the asset reuse (engine and probably a bunch of other stuff they can reuse from DOS games) is probably more important in the equation than the setting reuse.

Having an engine your devs know like the back of their hands and a bunch of generic assets makes things a lot faster.

 

[whydoibother]

The asset reuse of BG3 is infinitely more important to its scope than using a basic bitch hodgepodge setting - which actually comes with its own development pressure as you can't just do whatever you want in it.

I also think the asset reuse (engine and probably a bunch of other stuff they can reuse from DOS games) is probably more important in the equation than the setting reuse.

Having an engine your devs know like the back of their hands and a bunch of generic assets makes things a lot faster.

Which is why Bethesda keeps releasing better and better games, in shorter and shorter intervals

 

[Readher]

Trannyera is SEETHING.

 

[whydoibother]

Trannyera is SEETHING.

Reads like satire, honestly.

 

[Readher]

Trannyera is SEETHING.

Reads like satire, honestly.

Someone never visited that shithole, lol (probably for the best). The """people""" there are insane.

 

[Swen]

4chan collage so far

 

[Konjad]

Trannyera is SEETHING.

Reads like satire, honestly.

Someone never visited that shithole, lol (probably for the best). The """people""" there are insane.

It's one of those weird websites where I've been permanently banned before reaching post #5

 

[whydoibother]

Trannyera is SEETHING.

Reads like satire, honestly.

Someone never visited that shithole, lol (probably for the best). The """people""" there are insane.

I've visited it for ~2 weeks, after they did a max exodus from NeoGAF to start that forum. Its libshit central, and bans are given away for rude jokes, but this exact post does seem like satire. Its too on the nose.
Could be Poe's law, of course. Used to be NeoGAF and early Resetera were primary sources for video game development, leaks, investigations. Haven't heard anything from them for years, so maybe its just weirdos safespace.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Maaaan, even gay bear sex is not enough for those clowns.
Also it seems like they haven't even playe Dragon Commander or Div.OS 2

 

[Swen]

Tuco Benedicto Pacifico Is a famous poster on trannyera though

 

[whydoibother]

4chan collage so far

There's so many people both on 4chan and here that are invested in Larian failing, that no matter how the game turns out, good or bad, they will claim its shit. Prepare to have all the good things ignored, all the flaws exaggerated, and every crumb of cringe or gays or whatever be copy-pasted on every page of this thread.

 

[Louis_Cypher]

What is the consensus, will the Codex be boycotting this game?

I don't want a product stuffed with anti-scientific gender ideology, or post-modern ideas that are killing Western civilization's survival traits, or implicit anti-white misandry in it's axioms (essentially all entertainment now), but I also doubt many people will avoid playing the premiere RPG of the age, on an RPG topical forum. It's gonna make Larian huge money either way, and yes, activists will argue normalisation of things like bear beastiality was given a mandate by consumers voting with their wallets. The battle was lost when the game achieved killer app level hype. I'll hold off until reviews are in, but once again it looks like all my consumer friends have pre-ordered.

That tweet thread has apparently caused quite a stir:

Bear sex and tranyisms aside, just reading how game devs are shitting themselves in that thread makes me think this game is pure incline.

Sounds like some devs are afraid of Larian trying to accomplish what RPGs have been aiming for since the 1990s, and charging just £49.99 for it.

They charge £59.99 for less, and it can't be labour costs if Larian has a team of 400.

A lot of the drama around that twitter thread calling BG3 an anomaly seemed to lose track of what the original post actually said. He was trying to convey that Larian have access to a huge, pre-existing IP and had already built much of the technology required to realise BG3 over the development of DOS 1 and 2; that they saved a tonnn of developer time that instead went directly to building the game, which alongside a successful Early Access phase allowed them to build something far grander in scale than most ""AA"" RPG developers could safely afford to.

But all that means is that every developer should build their expertise step-by-step in similar fashion.

In other words, a company sticking to their vocation.

The reasons why they don't, are well documented. Usually a publisher buys, then forces, developers to do things they are utterly unsuited to. Company XYZ being forced to develop a MMO shooter, when they are a single-player story-driven RPG company. The only thing that sounds different here, is Larian was allowed to develop to a large size more like an indie studio with a vocation. Like a business actually should, i.e. "Harrison & Sons Tailored Suits" or "Smith's Tyre Company".

On the one hand, I understand that not every developer can hope to compete with this project; half of independent RPG studios can't even afford to competently work with a fully 3D engine like Unreal 4. Essentially in the mainstream, only BioWare, Obsidian and CD Project made lavish voice-acted third-person RPGs of that sort for a decade (stuff like Dragon Age: Origins, Alpha Protocol, The Witcher 2). The genre must be something like 90% isometric. However, on the other hand, indie games should charge indie prices, and big AAA studios have no excuse at all. They still want AAA prices, for terrible psuedo RPGs, while FromSoftware and Larian at least display a desire to push the genre.

 

[Kiste]

Maaaan, even gay bear sex is not enough for those clowns.

Yeah, because the bear isn't trans and Astarion isn't a nog.

 

[whydoibother]

Yeah, because the bear isn't trans and Astarion isn't a nog.

Mods will fix it

 

[Konjad]

Yeah, because the bear isn't trans and Astarion isn't a nog.

Mods will fix it

IT'D BETTER HAVE TRANNY BEAR SEX OR BUST

 

[Theodora]

Having an engine your devs know like the back of their hands and a bunch of generic assets makes things a lot faster.

I mean I did highlight the technical side of things in the same breath, but these are separate factors.

Having an established world goes a long way when it comes to building the actual world and the quests/stories within it. Just having "content designers" ad-hoc'ing it would mean a lot of stupid inconsistencies and contradictions (which gets exponentially worse the bigger a game aims to be), shallow motivations, and generally either contrived stories, or narratives that have few meaningful anchors to the world. Having pre-existing foundations here spares you a lot of that (or wasting more development hours and $$$ attempting to compensate for those weaknesses), but perhaps more important is that it allows the writing staff to focus on the actual writing, which is esp. important with games of this scale, given the enormous number of lines even far less ambitious titles end up shipping with.

 

[Tacgnol]

Just having "content designers" ad-hoc'ing it would mean a lot of stupid inconsistencies and contradictions (which gets exponentially worse the bigger a game aims to be), shallow motivations, and generally either contrived stories, or narratives that have few meaningful anchors to the world.

I think you just described the entire FR setting.

 

[Tyrr]

Trannyera is SEETHING.

Stop it RetardArea. Don't make me like the game.
I most likely could like it if I just try to ignore the name and treat it as a the first game in a new franchise.