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

[rhollis]

Brand new footage of the new Baldur's Gate. Can't wait!

This looks so much better than Kingmaker holy shit.

Really? If it didn't have the scrolling camera I would be hard pressed to distinguish it from Kingmaker. I'm still pumped for it though.

 

[Dishonoredbr]

Really? If it didn't have the scrolling camera I would be hard pressed to distinguish it from Kingmaker. I'm still pumped for it though.

Idk Something about this make looks so better than Kingmaker to me.

 

[rhollis]

Makes sense. BG3 initiative system will be beneficial in terms of encounter pacing but will lead to less interesting strategic decisions.

i don't see the pacing benefit.
Because when you fight a massive number of enemies you will have to wait 5-6 minutes before you can move again.

Well when you have a turn to hit them with everything you've got, you presumably disable half the enemies, which cuts down the amount of time spent watching enemies shuffle around aimlessly. That's what happened in the RPS footage at least.

 

[Decado]

Thanks to this thread I really did start another play through of BG 2. Vincent the Cavalier reporting for duty, ready to jam Carsomyr up a demon's ass.

Also yes, I plan on impregnating Aerie.

Download the mod that turns the baby into a ranged weapon.

This is why I come to the codex, to glean such valuable and arcane information.

 

[Black]

Yeah, I just watched their entire presentation and the initiative does look bad. It's party vs party initiative instead of character vs characters and it seems you can switch between characters mid-turn.
Funnily enough, that's still better than DOS 2 initiative, which only highlights how horrible it was in that game.

 

[Saravan]

Brand new footage of the new Baldur's Gate. Can't wait!

This looks so much better than Kingmaker holy shit.

Here is how you know the whiners are suffering from delusional confirmation bias.

It looks exactly the same as Kingmaker because (just like the BG3 presentation) it's early in development and they have to re-use assets from the previous game to show you something.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/20...ou-toss-your-boots-barrels-even-your-buddies/

Baldur's Gate 3 will let you toss your boots, barrels, even your buddies

At last we’ve gotten our first look at Baldur’s Gate 3 and I—liker of both Baldur’s Gate and Divinity: Original Sin 2—am feeling quite swell about what we’ve seen, but RPS have even more interview goodies yet. In the gameplay reveal this week, Larian CEO Swen Vincke takes off his character’s boots and throws them at an enemy as a last-ditch escape manoeuvre. During an interview with RPS folk Matthew and Alice Bee, Vincke let on that, in Larian’s signature permissive dungeon master style, that’s far from the only thing you can chuck across the battlefield.

In her mammoth Baldur’s Gate 3 preview, Alice Bee gets into a few of the shenanigans that Vincke claims players will be able pull off. As he showed off in the PAX East panel, Vincke says you can stack movable objects in the environment to build makeshift stairs or barricades. You can throw your footwear if you need to. You can throw bottles, though what’s inside will spill out, leaving you to contend with a surface on the ground of whatever you’ve foolishly (or perhaps tactically) discarded.

Ah but wait, there’s more! “With throwing, I forgot to mention you can also throw NPCs if you’re strong enough,” Vincke says. Sorry, what? “Why would you be able to do that? Well it could be an interesting thing, right? My buddy could be dead and fire is burning and I need to get him out of there because death is so harsh in this game. So I throw him away.” Ah yes, the classic tactical decision to throw your friends out of a burning fire. I’m sure that can’t possibly backfire in any way. I almost, almost feel like Vincke has planted this idea on purpose, just to see who gets themselves into trouble by accidentally chucking a pal off a high ledge or into a hidden pit.

Aside from everything being on fire absolutely all of the time in DOS2 (Vincke also says Larian are toning down environmental effects a smidge in BG3) I best remember all of the ways that players learned to abuse the interactions between DOS2’s many systems. One favorite ball of cheese was the ability to drop barrels full of junk on enemies’ heads to crush them beneath the weight. Another was the infamous Chicken Claw plus Rupture Tendons that forced enemies into self-inflicted death with a combo of status effects.

I’m quite glad to hear that Baldur’s Gate 3 will have as much if not more of this tinkering involved. Not every ridiculous discovery will be a cheesy strat for bulling through fights, but I’m quite sure we’ll see a fair chunk of videos with neat combos after players get their hands on the game. If you’re playing in co-op, maybe ask before picking up and giving your mates the heave-ho, though? Or perhaps don’t, just for the laughs.

Baldur’s Gate will launch first in early access, as Divinity: Original Sin 2 did, though Larian have yet to say exactly when that will happen. Previous rumors suggested it could be this summer, which is plenty believable given the state of the demo we’ve now seen.

https://www.pcgamer.com/i-love-that-baldurs-gate-3-makes-you-roll-a-die-for-big-decisions/

I love that Baldur's Gate 3 makes you roll a die for big decisions
The RPG adds the drama and physicality of tabletop D&D by making you spin a big die to determine your fate.

There's a lot of Divinity: Original Sin DNA in Baldur's Gate 3, but if there's one major distinction between Larian's last RPG and its new one, it's dice. Dungeons & Dragons is built on dice, D6s and D8s and D20s and all the other weird-shaped ones in between. The dice control your destiny. Larian took that to heart when it set out to make the sequel to Baldur's Gate, making dice much more than the driving force behind combat. Baldur's Gate 3 makes you roll for big narrative decisions, in what I think is the best use of dice in any D&D game I've played.

"The dice are super central. The feeling that everything is rolling on dice, that maybe you can manipulate it to get an advantage, that's as D&D as it gets," says Larian founder Swen Vincke.

RPGs have long given you dialogue options based on certain character traits and skills. In Skyrim, for example, your ability to persuade NPCs is based on your speech skill, but the game doesn't tell you what threshold you need to hit in a given conversation. There's no randomness, though. In Morrowind, by comparison, your chance to admire or intimidate someone is governed by an invisible die roll modified by your stats. Mass Effect is much more straightforward—you don't have to worry about failing a skill check, because dialogue options will be grayed out if you don't have enough Paragon or Renegade points to select them.

Like Morrowind, a lot of videogame RPGs hide the dice rolls that determine whether you pass or fail, figuring you don't really need to see the math of a D20 roll modified by a bunch of stats. Baldur's Gate 3 takes the opposite approach to better emulate tabletop D&D. When you're choosing dialogue options that require some persuasive skills, it literally makes you roll for it. A big D20 pops up on the screen, with a number above it showing the number you need to hit. Then you grab hold of the die with your mouse and spin it with a flick of the wrist.

Spoiler

It's a simple animation, but so much more satisfying than simply clicking a dialogue option and then passing or failing based on an invisible number. It also makes these decisions way more dramatic. The die spins. You watch, holding your breath for three seconds. What's it going to land on? No whammies, no whammies—Yes!

The roll is simplified a little bit from tabletop D&D. The number you need to hit to pass the skill check, which is labeled as "target" above your die, automatically takes into account your character's bonuses (or penalties) and whatever you're rolling against. But it retains the drama of the die-rolling experience. And not just in dialogue sequences—you have to do skill checks for other actions in Baldur's Gate, too.

"We wanted to make the dice central, because that's what it is in the tabletop," Vincke says. "We didn't want to hide it, but at the same time we didn't want to scare people with it either. So we had to come up with a system that was going to allow you to do all those passive skill checks. They're happening all the time, these checks, and we have to visualize them in a way you can understand. But also active rolls—in general they advertise there's going to be a permutation here that you can choose between."

In the two hour demo I saw, I'd occasionally notice a "passive" check play out on the screen when Vincke wandered close to something that requires a perception check for his character to spot. A small icon would appear, and if the check passed, something would appear, like a hidden lever in a dungeon.

Vincke was playing vampire spawn Astarion, who had the option to sneak up on a party member at night for a little midnight snack. He had to pass a stealth skill check to drink her blood, and then had to pass a wisdom save to stop, rather than letting his bloodlust overpower him. I really like that reversal, because it shows you'll sometimes have to roll to avoid the unforseen consequences of your actions. Skill checks aren't just for doing what you want.


Later in the demo Vincke rolled to successfully pickpocket someone and lift a key from their pocket. In another nice touch, when you land a critical hit in combat, a golden D20 briefly appears on the screen to add a little 'Hell yeah" to your attack.

Together these little details add up to make Baldur's Gate 3 feel well-grounded in D&D mechanics, and will hopefully assuage players who think it looks too similar to Divinity: Original Sin 2. I think seeing the dice roll play out will make failure a bit less frustrating. But mostly I just love the idea of making dice rolls tactile. Since Larian's games already support controllers, I hope they go the next step and add support for the rumble motor in the Steelseries Rival mouse. Let me feel that roll!

 

[Onionguy]

Brand new footage of the new Baldur's Gate. Can't wait!

This looks so much better than Kingmaker holy shit.

Really? If it didn't have the scrolling camera I would be hard pressed to distinguish it from Kingmaker. I'm still pumped for it though.

same cartoonish shit with bunch of retarded companions. Contemporary fantasy games are all the same to me- disgusting.

 

[Black]

Whoa, a d20.

 

[Decado]

Tnx to our own Pink Eye and his anon friends pkm community is ready for this long war.

lmao @ illithid aids my god

 

[rhollis]

Whoa, a d20.

Everyone loves game design that makes you wait 11 seconds to watch fake dice animation every time you say something. Hiding skill check rolls in text box tooltips is far too unintrusive.

 

[DeepOcean]

Brand new footage of the new Baldur's Gate. Can't wait!

It is really funny that a Pathfinder game looks more like a Baldurs Gate game than a DnD one, it is hilarious, Biowhore RTwP fans must be on suicide right watch now.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Lol:
https://www.pcgamer.com/how-larian-is-keeping-baldurs-gate-3-weird/

Baldur's Gate 3 is hardly the first D&D game to include mind flayers—you can encounter them as enemies in BG1&2, even

 

[Harthwain]

Whoa, a d20.

Everyone loves game design that makes you wait 11 seconds to watch fake dice animation every time you say something. Hiding skill check rolls in text box tooltips is far too unintrusive.

It's not every time. It's for active skill checks only. Passive skill checks and combat skill checks are hidden in a box.

They put the dice animation there in order to re-create the tension of rolling a D20 in tabletop, because that way you can see it "rolling" and hope that you'll get roll high enough to pass. It's actually a pretty clever bit of sociotechnique.

 

[Dedicated_Dark]

Some excellent thought provoking arguments from both sides.

 

[Mortmal]

Take our ongoing Pathfinder game for instance, my Barbarian is the groups resident door/chest opener. He has an adamantine weapon that can easily deal with locks. So he just smashes things open.

You have never played D&D 5, right? Each class can fill so many more roles. Druids, clerics and barbarians make excellent tanks, fighters and rogues are the best damage dealers (both ranged and melee). And there are many more examples. You can build very diverse party combinations even with 4 slots, but it would obviously be more fun with 5 or 6.

Right. Never tried 5e. Please enlighten me. Can these guys actually perform as well as a pure class or are they more like a watered down jack-of-all-trades. This is important given the supposedly "brutal encounters".

Do we still need rogue or bard for locks and arcane for control? Because then you have just two remaining party members to experiment with (tactically speaking--Larian of course guaranteed we will be able to experiment in other ways with all of them).

It depends what sort of options Larian gives you.

Take our ongoing Pathfinder game for instance, my Barbarian is the groups resident door/chest opener. He has an adamantine weapon that can easily deal with locks. So he just smashes things open.

OK and everyone can trap spot but what about disarm? Who gets proficiency with thieves tools?

Or Moon druid to tank, warlock hexblade to tank, cleric to tank , sorcerer divine soul to heal, bard to heal, barbarian, fighter to dps and even paladin oath of conquest to CC with fears ,full charisma build, so many options....Sad to see even old timer like crispy saying d&d is going downhill while its complete opposite since 5E...People should really try playing it.

Mortmal, you seem to have a lot of experience with these 5e class variants, are you telling me those variants you mention would be just as good in those roles or are you handicapping yourself by choosing them?

Yes i am expert in 5E(and every previous editions) by now . Played it weekly and also dming it weekly since years now. The class i mention are pristine in their role, the moon druid is almost unkillable, having an array of support spells and shapeshitfing allow to recharge HP, so temporary HP+ buffs+ bear form is a superb tank. Not only its not an handicap but end game they are borderline overpowered. The paladin as CC class might surprise, but the oath of conquest makes him kind of a damge sponge , gluing all the enemies to him, you have an aura of fear giving frightened effect, they move away from you you get an AOO AND drop their speed to 0 , now add reach and you control the battlefield . Sorcerer divine soul makes perfect healer as you get cleric domain spells+ meta magic .
There's a lot to do with 5E , many guides on the net for different builds. You wont have nearly as much as pathfinder of course, but there's a lot of tactical depth.

 

[Infinitron]

It is really funny that a Pathfinder game looks more like a Baldurs Gate game than a DnD one, it is hilarious, Biowhore RTwP fans must be on suicide right watch now.

lol come on man. Isn't it the clear lesson of the past half decade in RPGs that "oldschool IE RTwP fans" are an impossible to satisfy, highly overrated niche?

The actual BioWare fans of today are looking at those cinematic dialogue sequences and getting a hard-on. Make the combat encounters a bit faster & easier and they'll be pleased as punch.

(and btw Swen deserves respect for introducing his game to the world in core rules, total-party-kill, no-companion-autoresurrection-after-combat mode)

 

[RNGsus]

Spoiler

Shouldn't I have to roll 4 and lower for the check to work?

 

[rhollis]

Whoa, a d20.

Everyone loves game design that makes you wait 11 seconds to watch fake dice animation every time you say something. Hiding skill check rolls in text box tooltips is far too unintrusive.

It's not every time. It's for active skill checks only. Passive skill checks and combat skill checks are hidden in a box.

They put the dice animation there in order to re-create the tension of rolling a D20 in tabletop, because that way you can see it "rolling" and hope that you'll get roll high enough to pass. It's actually a pretty clever bit of sociotechnique.

It's every time you say something with a skill check. Which is a lot, but I admit I was exaggerating purposefully.

It's clever if you are the kind of person who loves slot machines and loot boxes. To the rest of us, we see a dice animation overlayed by meaningless flashing random numbers, making it a novelty that will wear off after the second time you have to sit there and watch it.

Why not take it a step further and give us a 3d hand we can shake around with our mouse pointer to roll the dice? Maybe give us a table to roll the dice on. Maybe Swen the DM will be sitting at the other side of the table in a dunce cap. Then we can have a real table top experience. In fact, the game should just be that so we can really feel like we are playing with pen and paper.

 

[Nryn]

Honestly the more I think about it, the more I don't get why they are meddling (AGAIN) with the initiative system.
Why change a basic feature that distinguishes the "dexterity based" classes?
It's really the main thing that bothers me a lot. I can live with 4 PCs, even if I'd have preferred more.

I suspect team-based initiative is an unfortunate concession for the new multiplayer changes. One of the new "features" of BG3 multiplayer is that players can act simultaneously when it is their side's turn. Individual initiative doesn't facilitate such co-op play, but the team-based initiative is tailor made for it.

The most recent crpg I played that had team-based turns was Expeditions: Viking, and the team-based turns had a profound negative impact on the tactics employed. Rushing and focus firing down the nearest or the most dangerous opponents on the enemies' side with all of your team while they were helpless during your turn was something the encounter design had no answer to. I think the cancelled Divinity Fallen Heroes was also supposed to have similar initiative design.

Also as an aside, BG3's handling of initiative made me curious how Solasta handles it since it also has 4 player parties and is based on the OGL rules of 5E:

Spoiler

Solasta's initiative rolls (top right of the screen) accurately reflect in the turn order (top of the screen).

 

[Lacrymas]

If I were forced to say a good thing about RTwP is that this battle wouldn't have worked in TB, at least the effect of hordes of enemies attacking a city/district and you defending it with the NPC guards. It can be represented in TB of course, but you either have to skip all animations to not take forever or the enemies and NPCs should all move at the same time. You can also make it so that you only take part in small skirmishes and the other NPCs fighting are window dressing. So, yeah, if you want a frantic huge battle that gets the adrenaline pumping in the most primal way, RTwP is the way to do it. There's a "but", though, party-based RPGs usually aren't appropriate for big battles, it misses the point of the whole "party-based" thing.

RE: Initiative - there's nothing worse than your entire team going first and completely annihilating the most threatening of the enemies' people, throwing pretty much all encounter design in the garbage bin. This was one of the problems of D:OS1, you going first and using the same abilities each time to great success.

 

[frajaq]

deterministic > RNG

 

[Volrath]

I've just watched the presentation in full. The game in its current state is a broken mess. Still it looks promising and fun, the worst thing now is lots of D:OS 2 assets which were re-used, I hope it will be changed during development. Maybe it was going to be D:OS 3 originally and then Swen changed it into BG3 when he obtained the license because it will guarantee more sales? Dragon Age look may indicate they are going for the BioWare old fanbase. I fear that competition with Kingmaker will negatively impact development and may force Swen to release the game in an unfinished state (or it will delay the game as it happened with Alpha Protocol).

Competion... You people really live on another fucking planet don't you?

 

[Harthwain]

It's clever if you are the kind of person who loves slot machines and loot boxes. To the rest of us, we see a dice animation overlayed by meaningless flashing random numbers, making it a novelty that will wear off after the second time you have to sit there and watch it.

It's possible to recognize somebody's cleverness without being okay with the manner of it. I will leave it at that.

deterministic > RNG

Spoiler

"rpg codex > doesn't scale to your level"

 

[rhollis]

Whoa, a d20.

Everyone loves game design that makes you wait 11 seconds to watch fake dice animation every time you say something. Hiding skill check rolls in text box tooltips is far too unintrusive.

It's not every time. It's for active skill checks only. Passive skill checks and combat skill checks are hidden in a box.

They put the dice animation there in order to re-create the tension of rolling a D20 in tabletop, because that way you can see it "rolling" and hope that you'll get roll high enough to pass. It's actually a pretty clever bit of sociotechnique.

It's every time you say something with a skill check. Which is a lot, but I admit I was exaggerating purposefully.

It's clever if you are the kind of person who loves slot machines and loot boxes. To the rest of us, we see a dice animation overlayed by meaningless flashing random numbers, making it a novelty that will wear off after the second time you have to sit there and watch it.

Why not take it a step further and give us a 3d hand we can shake around with our mouse pointer to roll the dice? Maybe give us a table to roll the dice on. Maybe Swen the DM will be sitting at the other side of the table in a dunce cap. Then we can have a real table top experience. In fact, the game should just be that so we can really feel like we are playing with pen and paper.

Also, if I had to guess, they got the idea for the dice when they consulted with Disco Elysium's devs on how to handle skill checks. DE did it better with a split second roll and accompanying sound effects: https://youtu.be/m-tJXGgr2jc?t=334

Not dimming the whole screen so you can watch a 11 second nonsense animation for the 100th time.

(That's right, Volrath, your beloved DE devs are going to get a special thanks in the credits to BG3)