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

[Takamori]

I counter your shitty interview with Chinese Heman

By the powers of Tiananman Square !

 

[Larianshill]

Once the game actually releases, can we have a new thread for it?

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

Once the game actually releases, can we have a new thread for it?

Yeah, that would be nice.

 

[La vie sexuelle]

Once the game actually releases, can we have a new thread for it?

Aaah, full new place for bear memes!

 

[Fedora Master]

Once the game actually releases, can we have a new thread for it?

A pig only shits in one corner, in here all the corners are full.

 

[Grauken]

Once the game actually releases, can we have a new thread for it?

A pig only shits in one corner, in here all the corners are full.

Impossible, this place has infinite corners

 

[La vie sexuelle]

Once the game actually releases, can we have a new thread for it?

A pig only shits in one corner, in here all the corners are full.

Impossible, this place has infinite corners

It's round, like onion. A onions have many layers. We are deep and smelly.

 

[TheHeroOfTime]

I want to meet the guy who designed the camera on this game, and then break his legs.

 

[Ryzer]

I want to meet the guy who designed the camera on this game, and then break his legs.

Swen

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

I want to meet the guy who designed the camera on this game, and then break his legs.

What? You don't like that deforming effect that makes anything closer to the camera appear disproportionately larger?
(and before anyone says anything, I mean to a ratio that goes way past normal "perspective").

It pairs so well with the chain system, too.

Bonus point for "camera transparency" that makes you still interact with whatever is supposed to be in front of you on a click.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

He's a vampire spawn, not a full vampire.

Vampire, vampire lord, vampire spawn etc, can only ever be evil - iirc in 3e it was any evil. Only exception was the Blade day-walker race which can be any alignment.

He dies.

There are no alignments in BG3, but Astarion is clearly evil, regardless of being a vampire. However, being evil doesn't automatically turn him into a caped Dracula with his own castle. I don't know why people itt keep making this criticism is all I'm saying.

 

[Rhobar121]

Once the game actually releases, can we have a new thread for it?

First we need to get to 1000 pages.

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

First we need to get to 1000 pages.

It can be a matter of hours with the right stimulation.
Let's poke that dude with military-grade autism who keeps crying about the bear.

 

[Ryzer]

Once the game actually releases, can we have a new thread for it?

First we need to get to 1000 pages.

Start off by posting BG2 memes

 

[Raghar]

He's a vampire spawn, not a full vampire.

Vampire, vampire lord, vampire spawn etc, can only ever be evil - iirc in 3e it was any evil. Only exception was the Blade day-walker race which can be any alignment.

He dies.

There are no alignments in BG3, but Astarion is clearly evil, regardless of being a vampire. However, being evil doesn't automatically turn him into a caped Dracula with his own castle. I don't know why people itt keep making this criticism is all I'm saying.

https://www.gamebanshee.com/templeofelementalevil/locations/openingvignettes.php
I liked how they did opening vignettes there. They did wrongly Chaotic Evil vignette. They should add a vignette that leader of the party managed to discover rumor about a powerful sword that would allow him to conquer the world, your party decided to help him, because they would consider it as a BIG accomplishment they managed to save his hide before he conquered the world.

The end would be when they would find the sword is actually of wrong alignment, thus useless for them for conquering the world. They throw it to a lake as irrelevant trinket, and go conquer the world in a better way.

Remember correct way how to write for games is to make story 1. believable. 2. epic. 3. funny.

 

[The_Mask]

To be 100% fair, that's exactly what Korgan's view of the world must be. Even Kangaxx can't imprison his awesomeness.

 

[processdaemon]

Once the game actually releases, can we have a new thread for it?

First we need to get to 1000 pages.

Start off by posting BG2 memes

The video is funny but the term 'stuffed up milkies' unsettles me more than anything from the BG3 romances

 

[gurugeorge]

I counter your shitty interview with Chinese Heman

By the powers of Tiananman Square !

Ah, so you can make Chinese faggots too. What an advancement for humanity.

Lovely graphics, it has to be said. Larian have been inching towards making their games look like Keith Parkinson paintings come to life for a while now, and they're knocking it out of the park if this is how it looks in-game.

 

[Raghar]

First we need to get to 1000 pages.

It can a matter of hours with the right stimulation.
Let's poke that dude with military-grade autism who keeps crying about the bear.

Considering you talked about bear...

That should help you.

 

[Fedora Master]

Once the game actually releases, can we have a new thread for it?

A pig only shits in one corner, in here all the corners are full.

Impossible, this place has infinite coomers

 

[Fedora Master]

Once the game actually releases, can we have a new thread for it?

First we need to get to 1000 pages.

Start off by posting BG2 memes

 

[TheHeroOfTime]

I hope this game C&C goes beyond deciding who can you smooch. It kinda feels like a parody sometimes.

 

[Child of Malkav]

Wow this thread is going at the speed of light. Should just turn off the notifications at this point, it's absurd.

 

[Crispy]

Once the game actually releases, can we have a new thread for it?

Infinitron will probably opt for this, yes.

 

[RangerBoo]

https://kotaku.com/baldurs-gate-3-character-creator-races-genitals-options-1850653066

Baldur's Gate 3 Aims For RPG Fans' Ultimate Character Creator​

Baldur’s Gate 3’s character creator is incredibly expansive. Larian Studios has described it as a tool for players to build their ideal fantasy protagonist, but before it could be that, the Belgian studio needed it to serve a different purpose: filling the RPG’s world with unique, believable civilians.

In an interview with Kotaku, lead character artist Alena Dubrovina walked us through nearly every aspect of Baldur’s Gate 3’s suite of character customization options, and despite its impressive breadth, each variation of the RPG’s hero I saw still looked like a deliberately crafted individual on which every scar, piece of jewelry, or hairstyle looked tailor-made for their face, whether they were a human, a reptilian Dragonborn, or any of the game’s numerous other races. According to Dubrovina, a lot of that precision comes from Larian making these options for its team more so than for the players who will inhabit these characters when the game launches on August 3.

“We never make a character creator [...] specifically for the players, even though we sort of do,” Dubrovina said in a video call. “First of all, when the production starts, we make it for us. Because we knew that the game was gonna be huge. We knew that there’s gonna be too many characters and we knew we need to customize everyone and be prepared for Dragonborns or similar creatures like that. […] So we kind of know that if a design is requested and there’s gonna be—like in a year— 100 [characters] throughout the game, it’s our job to kind of be prepared to make sure that all of those imps or at least some of those imps look unique.”

Unlike other RPGs like Skyrim that use sliders to fine-tune aspects of a character’s face or body to your liking, Baldur’s Gate 3 uses preset faces that can be added upon with what Larian calls “attachments,” such as hair, jewelry, scars, tattoos, or facial hair. According to Dubrovina, this was to maintain that tailor-made look of other characters you meet in the game.



“My personal experience with most [slider-based character creators] is you kind of customize it, it takes you a lot of time and effort, and then a lot of times it kind of looks the same in the end,” she said. “So we wanted to avoid that. And if we would make sliders, we needed to make it into something that would be truly unique and wouldn’t look the same.”

According to Dubrovina, Larian isn’t married to taking this approach for all of its games, but they felt the approach worked well for Baldur’s Gate 3 and, she said, it kept custom characters from looking “mediocre.”



That crafted look for each race, hairstyle, and accessory means that there aren’t really “ugly” custom characters. This isn’t Street Fighter 6 where players are making a bunch of weirdos. And indeed, even as Dubrovina repeatedly clicked the randomize option in the character creator, each hero with different accessories, colors, and other options looked believable.

Larian has been working on Baldur’s Gate 3 for six years and the game features 11 races, with their own original appearances and traits. For now, the studio has “no plans whatsoever” to add any new races to the RPG. So if you were hoping to play as some of the other Dungeons & Dragons races like a Giff or a Bugbear, temper your expectations. But the races that are in the character creator all seem to have a lot of options, even among the presets.

“We tried to kind of stay true to the lore,” Dubrovina said. “If the [Dungeons & Dragons] book said, ‘Oh, Tieflings usually have like a red shade of skin,’ then we followed that for the most part.”

In that spirit of staying true to D&D lore, the options Baldur’s Gate 3 initially gives you to customize aspects of your character are meant to be in-line with what you’d find in the storied tabletop RPG’s sourcebooks. However, you can also opt to swap to a more expanded options list and use any color provided, so you can have a green-colored human or a blue Tiefling. There is some freedom in customization, but you’ll still find traits that are exclusive to certain races, such as horn customization for Tieflings or a Dragonborn’s ancestry affecting a pattern on your character’s scales. It also results in some restrictions, such as Elves canonically not having beards.


Gif: Larian Studios / Kotaku

While the lore itself will stick to the script, Dubrovina said Baldur’s Gate 3 isn’t too beholden to Dungeons & Dragons, as it doesn’t implement concepts like moral alignment. So you won’t be forced to adhere to a specific alignment that you pick early on, which opens up opportunities for role-playing and player expression. The source material acts as an inspiration for the team, rather than a set of hard rules.

Even with its fantasy foundation, Baldur’s Gate 3’s world overlaps with our own in some ways, and the character creator is part of that. Video games’ and studios’ frequent inability (or unwillingness) to render the specific textures of Black hair has been a hot topic in recent years. In some of the biggest games like Elden Ring, Black players are often left to choose between fairly standard options like cornrows or dreadlocks, if they even get those. In creating Black hairstyles for Baldur’s Gate 3, Larian Studios sought help from consultants and animators outside the studio to get them right, both in terms of how they look when dry, but also to account for how different hairstyles might react to the elements.

“The types of hair that humans have varies,” Dubrovina said. “[There are] different physical properties dependent on the quality of the hair itself. Like if it’s wet, if it’s dry, if it’s unkempt, [we’d say] ‘oh yeah, let’s try making this hairstyle less sleek and a little bit dirty, but we’ll need to remake it’ because, you know, the mesh needs to be placed in the whole different ways.”

Dubrovina says working on those hairstyles was a learning experience for the studio that has helped its art team “expand [its] lineup,” and will hopefully let people play as a character who looks like them. That philosophy of trying to let players create a character who looks and acts like them expands into gender identity. Baldur’s Gate 3’s approach to gender and how you identify with a body is incredibly fluid, and has even been changed up in a few ways since the RPG was in Early Access.

Screenshot: Larian Studios / Kotaku

Most races now have four different body types no longer designated by the gender symbols, but simply numbered one through four. In these four choices are options for a shorter stature, or a taller, more broad one for both sexes. This is entirely independent of your character’s pronouns (you can choose between male, female, or non-binary ones out the gate), voice, or, as we wrote about earlier this month, their genitals.

Baldur’s Gate 3 allows you to pick your character’s genitals, and unlike Cyberpunk 2077, they actually show up in the game itself, rather than just in the menu. You can choose between a penis or a vagina, as well as pubic hair options, though given the Dragonborn’s reptilian nature, theirs will look slightly different.

According to Dubrovina, the decision to add this option didn’t stem from the inclusion of sex scenes in romance subplots (such as the one with the druid bear), but rather because the team decided to make underwear a piece of equipment you would obtain throughout the game, customize, and wear. She explained that underwear is an extension of the character customization as a form of in-universe expression, as some of the underwear you’ll find is meant to represent the race that wears it (or did before you looted or stole it), such as the leather-based “spicy” Githyanki pair. Then after putting so much work into underwear, the studio naturally thought about what would be under these meshes.

“The question arose, ‘what happens when you take it off?’” she said. “At first we were like, ‘you know, maybe nothing’s gonna happen. Maybe we’re gonna have another underwear mesh under it. Who cares? But then I started thinking about it, talking about it, and we realized that for some players, it’s just another way to represent their identity.”

Having options like this, especially ones that aren’t tied to each other like how Cyberpunk 2077 tied protagonist V’s pronouns to their voice, is key to letting people, regardless of their identity, represent themselves in a game all about player expression. That expression extends far beyond which race you play and which class you pick. Having the option to mix these different pieces of your character is how you allow a player to be their truest selves in a game. Baldur’s Gate 3 is lacking in some aspects of body diversity, what with all its body options appearing to be very fit and there not being any means to create a fat character (as fans have noticed), but there is something to be said for its commitment to different signifiers of queer identity.

Conversations around queer player expression in video games have spanned decades, and have only become more fraught thanks to the internet. One common response to requests for more representation is that development time and resources must be spent elsewhere. BioWare made a similar argument regarding the Mass Effect: Legendary Edition remasters and not implementing gay male romance in the first two games, claiming doing so was beyond the scope of the project. Meanwhile, developers like The Game Bakers spent an entire year making the romance in its adventure RPG Haven queer-inclusive through new models, voice lines, and other assets. The recent remake of Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life modernized the 20-year-old game to allow same-sex romance and diverse gender and fashion options. It feels like whether or not these requests get implemented largely comes down to the will of the studios in question, rather than them being a huge burden, as detractors might predictably argue.

Dubrovina says she’s sympathetic to how difficult it might be to implement these things retroactively, but she feels that Larian’s character creator was was designed to be more flexible, which made adding things like genital options somewhat easier.

“It really actually depends on how your characters are made and I can very much imagine the scenario where you made your character model in a certain way that it’s really hard now to change it,” Dubrovina said. “That is very much possible. in our case, we tried to be prepared for anything. Like, you want to slap a tail on an elf? Sure, we, we might get prepared for it. it’s relatively easy to do with what we established as our character systems.

“I could imagine with some other developers or with some games, it could just happen that nobody had thought about [the need to add new types of options] when working on the character model or mesh and then it just happened. Yeah, [in that case] it’s gonna like be like a few months of work and the production time just couldn’t accommodate that. So that’s possible.”

Because Larian was already prioritizing player expression, it was able to plan accordingly when it came to voice line recording, which was notably an issue in retroactively adding gay romance to the original Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 in the remaster. By planning from the jump to accommodate they/them pronouns, which did take extra work and time, the studio was able to make the implementation a smoother process. Also, because these options don’t affect gameplay, they can more easily be added without having to worry about how doing so will impact other systems. They will, however, change the nature of which romance scene you get because the mechanics will obviously be different depending on what your character is packing.

Development lift aside, Dubrovina explained that adding all these customization options that tie into your character’s identity felt in-line with Baldur’s Gate 3’s philosophy of prioritizing player expression, and so it was worth the extra effort.

“BG is very focused on your identity and the ultimate fantasy where you can be whoever, whatever you wanna be,” she said. “And we wanted to have this represented. We believe that visual [character creation options create] a positive player experience. I noticed it with myself when I playgames or when I pick which game to buy, right? I’m looking at the characters and I wanna look pretty. I wanna look fun.”

If you’re someone who doesn’t really want to engage with the genital options (among other nudity), Baldur’s Gate 3 does have the option to hide nudity and other non-stream-friendly content.

Screenshot: Larian Studios / Kotaku

The options are vast and the custom characters are cool, but if you’re anything like me, who makes a character that looks like him and then replays a game over and over making the same choices with the same character, you might be wondering if Baldur’s Gate 3 will have an option to import an old character into a new playthrough. Unfortunately, you’ll have to remake them for your future playthroughs, as Baldur’s Gate 3 won’t have any kind of import option at launch. This includes bringing an old character from the Early Access period into the full game.

All of this comes after years of iteration working on Baldur’s Gate 3 during Early Access, and Dubrovina says feedback from the past three years of players making their way through the game’s first act has helped Larian craft the character creator it has.

“We weren’t living under a rock,” she said. “We were following what the community wanted and we were looking at what other games do. We were looking at what’s being discussed online. There are a lot of things that evolved, and I feel like, yeah, generally games are trying to move towards increasing the amount of diversity they have. We definitely wanted to represent that. So we wanted to like, kind of give everyone the opportunity to pick from a wide selection.”

You can't change your face but you can change your genital's and pubes. Jesus Christ Larian! You have gone out of your way to please the worst kind of female gamers with romances and fujoshi baiting but you decided to not add the thing that female gamers demand that you add in a game and that is a character creator. The RaceGen mod for Skyrim is the most popular mod on the Nexus and for good reasons. I can't believe they didn't learn anything from the 12+ years since Skyrim has been out. If the mods on the Nexus are any indication players want a character creator that isn't ass and a hot female companion who they can romance. Instead you make restriction on the character creator and every female companion in the game looks like she has been hit hard with the ugly stick and cucks you. Fucking great game design right there.