Baldur's Gate Baldur's Gate 3 Pre-Release Thread [EARLY ACCESS RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Dodo1610]

I have seen absolutely no reason why this is isometric even the official press release says: https://www.gamasutra.com/view/pressreleases/344218/Larian_Studios_Announces_Baldurs_Gate_III.php

“Baldur's Gate means so much to so many people. It's a great responsibility but I think we're ready for it,” said Swen Vincke, Creative Director at Larian Studios. “We're all about creating reactive, systemic worlds that respect player agency and having a chance to apply our team's skillset in a universe as rich as Dungeons & Dragons is a lot of fun. We're working very closely with Wizards to bring an unprecedented level of immersion to the realm of Faerun and I can't wait to show the world what our team cooked up."

No one uses the word immersion to describe a game with an isometric perspective. I don't understand why people are still arguing 17 after NWN and 10 years after Dragon Age Origins about whether 3rd Person and party RPGs work together.

 

[vortex]

No one uses the word immersion to describe a game with an isometric perspective.

Some said D:OS 2 was immersive 'cause having roots in Ultima.

 

[Cryomancer]

No one uses the word immersion to describe a game with an isometric perspective.

Camera perspective is only one of the aspects that impacts on immersion. Baldur's Gate 1/2 is not immersive as Dungeon Hack or Ravenloft: Strahd's Possession, but is pretty immersive if compared to skyrim for eg.

Some said D:OS 2 was immersive 'cause having roots in Ultima.

I don't see much of Ultima in any Larian game, except divine divinity. Was amazing. Imagine U 7 + D'1...

 

[Elex]

I somewhat doubt that Lariam is going to include the Beamdog characters since they were never mentioned outside these games again. Even Swen didn't even mention the enhanced editions in any of the interviews I read. I wouldn't be surprised if WOTC just erased them from their canon.

There were two stories about Neera published in Dragon+ along with a character sheet
https://media.wizards.com/2018/dnd/dragon/22/DRA22_Neera.pdf

this sheet make no sense. a charisma 10 sorcerer is useless.

* Spellcasting • PHB 101 You can cast known sorcerer spells using CHA as your spellcasting modifier (Spell DC 11, Spell Attack +3). You can use an arcane focus as a spellcasting focus.

LOL

 

[Lacrymas]

Neera is a Wild Mage, not a Sorcerer, that sheet is wrong.

As for TB cinematics, I doubt they would be developing 2 TB RPGs at the same time (Fallen Heroes before it was cancelled), one of them just bigger than the other. It's *possible*, but it's possible in the sense it's possible to win the lottery, i.e. very unlikely. That's in addition to everything else that points to this not being an isometric TB RPG of course.

 

[Cryomancer]

The railroadness of a RPG is proportional to the amount of "cinematics"...

 

[Ismaul]

You can have cinematics to show off monsters, cities, events. No need to be railoroady there.

 

[J_C]

PF:K isn't mainstream. D:OS2, all things considered, kinda is.

D:OS games were never created to be mainstream, however they ended up really decent games in age of decline so they became main stream

sven referred to D:OS1 as a game you can play with your girlfriend, therefore it was aimed towards the mainstream audience of girlfriend havers

So hardcore RPG players are incels. Thanks for confirming it.

 

[Serious_Business]

Fuck this game. We already have Baldur's Gate 3, it's called Kingmaker path of the divine sin. What the fuck man. Fuck high fantasy. This shit needs to stop. Stop caring about this. FROM THE CREATORS OF THE 2015 RPG OF THE DECADE COMES... THE ULTIMATE RPG EXPERIENFFFFFFFUAAAAAAAAAACK

 

[Cryomancer]

You can have cinematics to show off monsters, cities, events. No need to be railoroady there.

Then is little railroad. Mount & Blade, the most "sandboxy" game that i saw have no cutscenes and square enix JRPG's have a lot of railroading and cutscenes . And they have so many railroading that they often forces you to play as the anime swordsman(most boring protagonists)

Cinematics encourages railroad from devs, because create a expensive CGI that only the players who will chose A, then B, then C and will play as a class D will see is a waste of resources, but create a "picture" and a text is not that expensive.

Voice acting too, games with fully voice acting tends to have more raildoading. There are exceptions. Larian DOS2 for eg have voice acting on animals and only those who pick a skill can talk with animals.

 

[LESS T_T]

Cinematics encourages railroad from devs, because create a expensive CGI that only the players who will chose A, then B, then C and will play as a class D will see is a waste of resources, but create a "picture" and a text is not that expensive.

Their team is not doing CGI, but real-time in-engine cinematics.

FWIW what they want from their cinematic artists: https://larian.com/jobs/6cd2421e-af1c-499d-bb81-fecdcdfec314

• Use proprietary cinematic tools to bring scenes to life
• Craft cutscenes and sequences that emphasize camera motion and character performance
• Manipulate performance capture data to stage scenes
• Understand and maintain the cinematic style of the production title
• Elevate the emotional impact of the narrative through cinematics
• Tap into your cinematic experience to tackle emotional and performance heavy sequences

Yes, "emotional impact" and all that, but I'd imagine they want a big cinematic team proportional to choices players make than long and linear movie-like scenes. (Still not fond of them though.)

 

[Lacrymas]

Wasn't there a meme about emotional engagement floating around here somewhere? Imagine me posting that.

 

[Dodo1610]

Cinematics encourages railroad from devs, because create a expensive CGI that only the players who will chose A, then B, then C and will play as a class D will see is a waste of resources, but create a "picture" and a text is not that expensive.

Their team is not doing CGI, but real-time in-engine cinematics.

FWIW what they want from their cinematic artists: https://larian.com/jobs/6cd2421e-af1c-499d-bb81-fecdcdfec314

• Use proprietary cinematic tools to bring scenes to life
• Craft cutscenes and sequences that emphasize camera motion and character performance
• Manipulate performance capture data to stage scenes
• Understand and maintain the cinematic style of the production title
• Elevate the emotional impact of the narrative through cinematics
• Tap into your cinematic experience to tackle emotional and performance heavy sequences

Yes, "emotional impact" and all that, but I'd imagine they want a big cinematic team proportional to choices players make than long and linear movie-like scenes. (Still not fond of them though.)

If they want emotions then they need to hire David Cage

 

[Lady_Error]

What have you guys been discussing for 227 pages when we still don't know shit?

 

[Artyoan]

What have you guys been discussing for 227 pages when we still don't know shit?

Fears and broken dreams.

 

[Ismaul]

What have you guys been discussing for 227 pages when we still don't know shit?

Oh we know shit alright. All we've been doing is sniffing each other's. We just don't agree on which smells the least worst.

 

[AwesomeButton]

3rd person actions fellas.

Open your eyes now, or open your asses to Swen next year!

 

[Grunker]

Neera is a Wild Mage, not a Sorcerer, that sheet is wrong.

No, it's not. Wild Mage in 5th edition is a Sorcerer bloodline. Having 10 CHA would, indeed, make her completely useless unless you guys missed some picked asset that makes her rely on another stat. Those are very uncommon in 5th ed, though.

EDIT: You can see she chose exactly that bloodline:

Nothing immediately explains the lack of CHA, though.

 

[Lacrymas]

They might have copied her attributes from the game and rounded them down (since she has 11 CHA) without realizing the rules for Wild Mages have changed.

 

[Cryomancer]

What have you guys been discussing for 227 pages when we still don't know shit?

We know a lot. We know that Vincke will treat 5e rules like placeholders and that for him mechanics that exists since Pool of Radiance(1988) obvious not work.

 

[Reinhardt]

Nothing immediately explains the lack of CHA, though.

Nothing explains why she had positive CHA is beamdog games too.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

What is Minsc doing there? And when is it compared to the 2 Baldur's Gates?

Minsc gets petrified at some point and everyone thought it was a statue of him until someone undoes it.

Whether that's a petrified Minsc or a statue of him brought to life is still unresolved. One of the bigger evidence for the latter is that, after "awakening", Minsc is surprised as to why is he in Baldur's Gate. So, unless someone lugged his petrified corpse, without shattering it, from who-knows-where; this isn't the real person. Or, at least, his real body.

Maybe his memory is just foggy after being a statue for so long
afaik there's no record of Minsc for a long while which is unexplained by the second theory.

 

[Thonius]

Imagine deeply caring about lore that can and will be changed at will. LMAO.

 

[Lady_Error]

From reading some more about it, it seems very unlikely that BG3 will be 1st person RT.

First, they tried to get the license, but couldn't. Then they were approached by Wizards when they were finishing up D:OS 2 - which kind of implies that Wizards liked what they did as far top-down perspective with TB tactical combat is concerned. Having Larian develop a completely different type of game wouldn't make sense.

Secondly, you have a party and this doesn't really work in pure RT. Even if the rest of the party does its own thing, it would still be a clusterfuck.

Thirdly, Larian already said that they want the same or similar kind of environmental interaction as in the D:OS series combat. You cannot really do this in 1st person pure RT either.

Finally, the game is apparently confirmed to be in a revamped D:OS 2 engine. I doubt that converting this engine from TB to pure RT and from top-down to 1st person makes much sense.

So, it may not be shit after all.

 

[LESS T_T]

(IIRC Swen himself doesn't like first-person perspective.)