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

Self-Ejected

Lilura

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RPG Codex went full retard complaining about writing and graphics while ignoring the fact that this is the first DND game since ToEE that doesn't butcher DND's ruleset.,
You are right, though it's little consolation that you have correct D&D impementation when you are playing a by-the-numbers campaign, with the "larian humor", "Chosen One" story, etc.

Yeah, see. ToEE's dialogue was shit but at least there wasn't much of it.

BG3, otoh, has got 1.5 million words of "cinematic dialogue" written by twaddlers who 'Dex shitposters could outdo after three days of binge-drinking.
 

Decado

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RPG Codex went full retard complaining about writing and graphics while ignoring the fact that this is the first DND game since ToEE that doesn't butcher DND's ruleset.,
You are right, though it's little consolation that you have correct D&D impementation when you are playing a by-the-numbers campaign, with the "larian humor", "Chosen One" story, etc.

Yeah, see. ToEE's dialogue was shit but at least there wasn't much of it.

BG3, otoh, has got 1.5 million words of "cinematic dialogue" written by twaddlers who 'Dex shitposters could outdo after three days of binge-drinking.

I wouldn't even need three days.
 

GhostCow

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Have you all played BG and IWD knowing the D&D rules? Be honest.

No because tabletop gaming and LARPing are both cringe and gay. I'm not a fat neckbeard who's never had sex. D&D has some cool monsters and settings though. I liked some of the crpgs. Do I have to like the tabletop shit or know the ins and outs of it to enjoy a crpg based on it or have an opinion? Nope.
 

DraQ

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Have you all played BG and IWD knowing the D&D rules? Be honest.

No because table top gaming and LARPing are both cringe and gay. (...) D&D has some cool monsters and settings though.
Don't take it personally, but for some reason I would like to set you on fire then dump the remains in a mass grave.
 

Tartantyco

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Here's the thing. Even if RTwP was objectively faster (it isn't), that still doesn't fix all of its other issues we've discussed to death on this forum. TB doesn't have issues that need "fixing" with RTwP, RTwP on the other hand has tons of issues that require arcane solutions if they can even be solved. I don't think this thread is the place to talk about this anymore, BG3 is TB and that's incline, go to the other threads where this is discussed and read the responses there, especially in the one I linked.

RTwP doesn't have issues that need to be fixed. It's, uh, real-time. Consecutive turn-based is what inherently has flaws, and is the shittiest game mechanic. When other characters can perform actions while other characters are forced to idle, that's complete dogshit.

If you want to champion turn-based, you need to go for simultaneous turn-based. Consecutive turn-based is literally the only one of the three that has this inherent problem, and you dumbasses are hailing it as the pinnacle of RPG design.
 

Dramart

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Well, why should i learn more than enough to let me play game? Why should i care about this nerdy mumbo-jumbo at all?
I think few did. I didn't I just learned some basic stuff when I played BG recently. Just what is 1d4, 2d4 in weapons, THAC0, AC, simple stuff.
 

Grotesque

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Divinity: Original Sin Divinity: Original Sin 2
Have you all played BG and IWD knowing the D&D rules? Be honest.

I still remember as clear as day the puzzlement back in 1998 I had, wondering why the fuck a plate armour has lower armour class than a leather armour.
And what the fuck thaco means. thaco bell?
I don't know if the manual explains it but who the fuck had an original bought game in the "shithole country"™ I was in?


But that music... that intro....the way blood was flowing filling the depressed crevice of the cobblestone to reveal the game title, that voice narrating the prologue...
games are more than imposed mathematical rules
 

Shadenuat

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Another thought on initiative: in you go all them go you watch 10 ai go. in proper D&D initiative, some of your guys go then some of theirs, leading to more i go u go, which breaks the pacing of watching ai climb ladders and injects some randomness and risk into combat.

So at this point I can only guess Swen blindly ditched initiative because people were butthurt on round robin from DOS2.
 
Self-Ejected

Lilura

RPG Codex Dragon Lady
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But that music... that intro....the way blood was flowing filling the depressed crevice of the cobblestone to reveal the game title, that voice narrating the prologue...
games are more than imposed mathematical rules

If one played Fallout beforehand, the impression made by Baldur's Gate was nowhere near as great. In fact, for many Fallouters Baldur's Gate was equivalent to shit on a stick.
 

GhostCow

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I still remember as clear as day the puzzlement back in 1998 I had, wondering why the fuck a plate armour has lower armour class than a leather armour.
And what the fuck thaco means. thaco bell?

I learned what thac0 is from reading DSimpson's AD&D rules FAQ on gameFAQs as did probably most people who played BG
 

Curratum

Guest
Another thought on initiative: in you go all them go you watch 10 ai go. in proper D&D initiative, some of your guys go then some of theirs, leading to more i go u go, which breaks the pacing of watching ai climb ladders and injects some randomness and risk into combat.

So at this point I can only guess Swen blindly ditched initiative because people were butthurt on round robin from DOS2.

Initiative is in the game, what are you talking about?
 

Reinhardt

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No, seriously - i tried to learn about this dnd thing more. Read some books. And compared to, for example, warhammer, where books are mostly shit, dnd books are ALL shit . So dungeos and dragons is just crpgs for me.

At least you could do some grown up manly stuff, like painting soldiers and playing with them in Warhammer.
 

Curratum

Guest
No, seriously - i tried to learn about this dnd thing more. Read some books. And compared to, for example, warhammer, where books are mostly shit, dnd books are ALL shit . So dungeos and dragons is just crpgs for me.

At least you could do some grown up manly stuff, like painting soldiers and playing with them in Warhammer.

Warhammer is so much more autistic than D&D, it's not even funny. I have a colleague in the office who is into WH and paints tons of minis. He's the biggest manchild I've ever met in real life.
 

LESS T_T

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Codex 2014

This is pretty fun thing.

Where did you get all the money? D:OS2 happened, and they have money guys and lawyers and COO and such:

Would you call it a triple-A game now, at this point?

Walgrave: Yes. I think, for instance what you've seen, with the lip-synching and the cinematics, the motion capturing that we're doing - I think you're still seeing it in "raw" form. But we do know what it can be, and we have again hired a couple of guys with a lot of experience. The cinematic producer and the cinematic director come from Telltale. This is what they've been doing for the last five, six years. They know what they're doing, they know what to request from the team that hasn't done anything like this before. So, if you see that - and if you see all the technical stuff that has gone into our engine - I would call it a triple-A game. It has a triple-A budget, has a triple-A team by now, and I think that is our aspiration.

We are still one hundred percent independent; we don't have anyone that we need to talk to. Apart from Wizards of the Coast, that still needs to agree on certain things that we do - but they did give us a creative carte blanche, almost - like certain things, we just need to check with them. But the relationship that we have with them is very good, and they're not being difficult about anything.

You mentioned the budget, where did that come from? You're self-publishing, so is that triple-A budget coming purely from Divinity: Original Sin 2's success? Is there investment from Google with the Stadia deal?

Walgrave: Yes, we do get support from Stadia, but again there's nothing that they can say about the game. We have certain agreements and deadlines with Stadia, but that's mostly about technical stuff. They want us to support a couple of typical Stadia features and we need to show that we do, and that's basically it. But I don't know everything about our financial background. I also think that we are managing our money intelligently. So I don't know what the accountants are for! They're probably, like, investing here and there so that our money is not just simply going into development, making sure that the money that we have in the bank is actually growing, or making money.

The production values are quite impressive, given you're more or less totally independent. The money definitely looks like it's on screen.

Walgrave: Well, it's a bit unreal. I've been working at Larian for 15 or 16 years, and we've always made things like Divine Divinity. Beyond Divinity I was there, and Divinity 2 et cetera. And you could always tell that we were not really triple-A, even though we were always aiming for it. We wanted to blow people away by using the money that we did have very smartly. And now we do have the budget, we're going to try and maximise the use of that again.

So is it triple-A? I really don't think you can make Baldur's Gate 3 without saying this is going to be a triple-A game.


Turn-based is so 2020:

You changed some stuff. Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 had "real-time with pause" combat, you've gone turn-based. The camera is that sort of third-person-isometric hybrid...

Walgrave: It's 2020!

Is that basically the reason why - you felt you needed to modernise it?

Walgrave: So, I think that in spirit it's still the successor of Baldur's Gate 1 and 2. Because there are so many things that people who did play and like Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 will still recognise in the new one. It's still about your party. It's still about big personalities clashing with each other and relationships. It's still a party-based game, you still need to do combat, you will recognise a lot of D&D rules - even if you haven't played D&D in 20 years. You will still recognise all the spells, et cetera.

So, to me it's a true sequel, but we are bringing it into the 21st century by saying, "Look, it's glorious 3D. It has really nice cinematics. We're taking it further with systemics, we applied the 'Larian philosophy', which is like, oodles of content and hidden features and hidden stuff everywhere." So to me it's a good sequel.

The choices that we made are ours. Why did we go for turn-based instead of real-time with pause? Because D&D to us is a turn-based game and we're really good - or we have become really good - with turn-based combat. So that, I think, is one of our strengths, and trying out real-time with pause for now, just because the originals were that? It's a big risk. Because the team would have to think completely differently, our combat would be completely different. And we didn't really feel good about that. Normally we do try out a lot. Normally we try out a lot before we make a decision, but with real-time with pause and turn-based we didn't, we just said "Okay it's just gonna be turn-based."


They're not working on DM mode, but maybe...:

Are you doing the same co-op and multiplayer thing as with Original Sin? Is there going to be a "Dungeon Master" mode?

Walgrave: Dungeon Master we don't know yet. Because... it's not very easy to do it. I think that, for a Baldur's Gate game, it would make a lot of sense, and people would probably love it and use it a lot. Currently nobody's working on it. It's something that we want to do, but we don't know yet.


No-vellones:

You mentioned the Telltale people that have joined you. Have you got any of those typical "big name" writers on board? Your Chris Avellones, and the like?

Walgrave: No, we've worked with Chris before but for Baldur's Gate 3 [we're not]. We've been building our team of writers since Divinity: Original Sin 2 as well. I think we now have like a dozen writers, and some of them are very junior, some of them are very senior and have been working - like our lead writer, Jan van Dosselaer, has been working for us for I think 10 years as well. So he's really - it's not a "big name" - but to me he's really good at what he does, like a lot of the a lot of the really good writing is typical for him. When you really know the people that are working on the dialogue, you can recognise it and say "This guy's probably written by that writer".

And we have so many writers because we have so many dialogues and so many different consequences and choices. But we also give an origin character to a writer that's really good, because then they can really pour their soul into their character and their origin. And, to be very blunt, we didn't need a "well known" writer for now because I think that our team is really good.
 

Jimmious

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Another thought on initiative: in you go all them go you watch 10 ai go. in proper D&D initiative, some of your guys go then some of theirs, leading to more i go u go, which breaks the pacing of watching ai climb ladders and injects some randomness and risk into combat.

So at this point I can only guess Swen blindly ditched initiative because people were butthurt on round robin from DOS2.

Initiative is in the game, what are you talking about?
There is no initiative per character but team-based initiative
 

Decado

Old time handsome face wrecker
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I learned DnD rules from The Bard's Tale first -- they blatantly ripped some shit off, like AC going down to -10 and whatnot. Hilarious that they didn't get sued back in the day.

I knew 2nd Edition when I played BG II (I skipped BG I) but I learned 3rd edition through a combination of NWN and IWD. Of course, I was getting the truncated, computer game version and I later filled out my knowledge of 3rd/3.5 by actually playing it.

Games can be a good way to get introduced to the mechanics, even if they are not comprehensive. I'm betting a lot of grognards in the 1980s/early 90s learned basic DnD from the Goldbox games. Every one of those games came with pretty substantial manuals, IIRC. The BGII manual was itself a pretty good summary of 2nd edition rules. It made for good toilet readin'.
 

NJClaw

OoOoOoOoOoh
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Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture
He's setting his arrows on fire, it's just an abstraction, get over it, lol.
No no, he is literally dipping his bow into the fire and the bow becomes grossly incandendescent as a result:
sDkmgF1.png
But you are right, I definitely need to get a life. It's just a coping mechanism to tone down my excitement. I don't want to get hurt.
Yeah, I know he dipped the bow and it jerked me out of the moment, but I suppose it's fine as a representation of the arrows being on fire. I hope we can't dip all weapons in fire, that's getting silly.
The "dip" action icon is a sword and is active for Shadowchick even if she has a mace or something like that, so I guess you can dip your club. Anyway, it's fine with me, it's cool and I really don't care that much for this kind of "realism"
 

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