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

[Heroic Liberator]

He is a creative voice at least in the sense of establishing the tone and overall story. He talked about this on a GDC panel, they started by inviting basically everyone in their Google group but they noticed quite early on that that's retarded, so they started kicking out people one by one until only Swen was left to say what must be done.

That actually sounds pretty good. I'll hunt for that video.

Lacrymas can confirm which of them it is.

 

[Thunar]

REEEEEE WHY WON'T LARIAN ADAPT A TURN-BASED RULESET AS SOME RTS-RPG MONSTROSITY REEEEEEEEEEEEEE

no initiative
no alignments

adapted ruleset lmao

Alignement doesn't mean anything in 5e.
As for initiative, wait and see, someone made a very good point up above about JA2 using team based initiative, perhaps BG3's level design will make up for it.

 

[Curratum]

REEEEEE WHY WON'T LARIAN ADAPT A TURN-BASED RULESET AS SOME RTS-RPG MONSTROSITY REEEEEEEEEEEEEE

no initiative
no alignments

adapted ruleset lmao

Alignement doesn't mean anything in 5e.
As for initiative, wait and see, someone made a very good point up above about JA2 using team based initiative, perhaps BG3's level design will make up for it.

Why not at least have per-character binary initiative - if you pass your Dex check, you go before all enemies. If you fail it, you go after all enemies, but at least you can have SOME variance in your party.

 

[deuxhero]

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).

There's no watered down anything in 5E. Proficiency being one static bonus means that, for the most part, you can do something or can't. A handful of exceptions like Rogue's expertise and Ranger being awful at everything exist, but they're the exception (and admitted bad design in the Ranger's case).

This is the reason why Bard is considered the best class in 5E. It can cast, and has skill options and doesn't really suffer from being able to do both.

 

[I ASK INANE QUESTIONS]

Alignement doesn't mean anything in 5e.
As for initiative, wait and see, someone made a very good point up above about JA2 using team based initiative, perhaps BG3's level design will make up for it.

don't tell me what to do
I want to shitpost here and now

 

[FranticDistortion]

but until photorealism dies, excessively glittery, plastic fantasy is here to stay across the board.

Except that is a contradiction, because the glittery, plastic fantasy has nothing to do with "photorealism", where as the Infinite Engine games did.

In fact, that plastic fantasy shit has more to do with indie games and their so called "artistic freedom". The first time i noticed it was around the time Torchlight was released. The combination of those cartoony 3D graphics with the Matt Uelmen familiar soundtrack playing in the back ground just felt jarring as shit to me, and the first time i started to resent colorful graphics, which became endemic in the industry afterwards, with Blizzard leading the charge probably with Warcraft 3 and WoW.

True, 3D is not the problem. Every RPG game having the same locations, moods and color pallets is.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Except that is a contradiction, because the glittery, plastic fantasy has nothing to do with "photorealism", where as the Infinite Engine games did.

I disagree, the plastic-y Bioware vibe is a timid reaction to photorealism, it's too much of a standard from which they can only deviate in these minor ways of 'the world is magical so the graphics are colourful and sparkly, duh!'.

BG is heavily paletted, as are most 2d isometrics, which is a huge step away from photoreal styles which have nowhere near as much visual control as even that.

I don't think you understand what photorealism means dude. The Infinite Engine games were a milestone in realistic looking isometric graphics. It was one of their strong points.

 

[Serious_Business]

It's about calling your game Baldur's Gate 3 even though it has nothing whatsoever to do with Baldur's Gate.

Larian did the exact same thing Obsidian did with Pillars. They set up an expectation but failed to live up to it. It's basically wanting to have your cake and eat it too. Get all the hype and free marketing by pretending you are making a certain thing even though you had no intention to actually put the effort to do it, and when people invariably get pissed, tell them you were just doing your own thing, why so mad lmao.

Except if you wanted to do your own thing maybe don't try to exploit the nostalgia you dishonest assholes?

You're really getting senile old boy, you should think about maybe taking a bit less pills, because these things are stopping you from contemplating the absolute lmao.

 

[Alpan]

Lacrymas can confirm which of them it is.

Thank you. I skimmed through the D:OS 2 video and Swen starts talking about what Lacrymas mentioned around 14:38.

 

[Lyric Suite]

It's about calling your game Baldur's Gate 3 even though it has nothing whatsoever to do with Baldur's Gate.

Larian did the exact same thing Obsidian did with Pillars. They set up an expectation but failed to live up to it. It's basically wanting to have your cake and eat it too. Get all the hype and free marketing by pretending you are making a certain thing even though you had no intention to actually put the effort to do it, and when people invariably get pissed, tell them you were just doing your own thing, why so mad lmao.

Except if you wanted to do your own thing maybe don't try to exploit the nostalgia you dishonest assholes?

You're really getting senile old boy, you should think about maybe taking a bit less pills, because these things are stopping you from contemplating the absolute lmao.

Ok, consoomer.

 

[NJClaw]

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.

I never understood this argument and I still don't.
Issue: players having too much initiative makes them too strong.
Solutions: increase the tradeoff needed to get such high initiative, add enemies that also have high initiative, add enemies that begin combat in stealth.

The issue isn't initiative, the issue is that it's too easy to stack initiative and the stat that gives it also boosts crit.

How do you plan to stack initiative in D&D 5?

That post had nothing to do with D&D.

I don't understand your point, then. The post you quoted was about the fact that initiative is handled with the solution "your entire team goes first or your entire team goes last". It was not about the fact that it's easy to have an high initiative.

 

[Theodora]

There's already plenty of great 80s and 90s style dungeon crawlers and FPS games from indies in the past few years. IE style games are probably next (I mean we've already had a real fallout successor in UnderRail from what I've seen of it), but it'll demand more than most of these games. Y'all are looking in the wrong place expecting Larian to be the answer.

Can you name a couple?

FPSs, I'm thinking DUSK, Amid Evil, Project Warlock; Dungeon Crawlers/RPGs, I'm thinking Legends of Amberland, Grimoire, UnderRail, arguably the Bard's Tale Trilogy remaster, Vogel's games, roguelikes like Cogmind and Caves of Qud, or even 3D isometrics like ATOM or Age of Decadence. (I haven't played all of these, but the gameplay is all the things mainstream RPG devs have left behind.)

You don't have to agree with me, but there's cool stuff being made from small teams. I honestly think this is a great time for indie RPGs, which is why I think y'all are looking for deliverance from the wrong place, and getting upset by the most obvious of outcomes.

 

[FranticDistortion]

Except that is a contradiction, because the glittery, plastic fantasy has nothing to do with "photorealism", where as the Infinite Engine games did.

I disagree, the plastic-y Bioware vibe is a timid reaction to photorealism, it's too much of a standard from which they can only deviate in these minor ways of 'the world is magical so the graphics are colourful and sparkly, duh!'.

BG is heavily paletted, as are most 2d isometrics, which is a huge step away from photoreal styles which have nowhere near as much visual control as even that.

Photorealistic is what modern shooters are trying to achieve and some still end up having distinct visual style while doing so.

Stop using term you don't understand, please.

 

[Lacrymas]

Yes, this is about your entire team going first and the initiative being counted as a group, not as individuals. You can't stack retarded amounts of initiative in 5E, so that's a non-issue. The problem with D:OS, and it will probably be in BG3, is that if you win initiative your party goes first and you can choose which person to act when. It doesn't work that in way in D&D, you roll Dexterity checks to determine the order of who goes after whom, including the enemies. So it can be something like Rogue -> enemy Rogue -> enemy Bard -> Druid -> enemy Fighter -> Cleric -> Sorcerer -> enemy Cleric.

 

[PrK]

They want the same game re-created indefinitely, using the same engine, same visual style, same core mechanics, etc. Such a boring way to approach games and kills any innovation in the genre.

In truth, I'd love to live in a world where Gold Box and Infinity Engine games were still made regularly.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

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.

I never understood this argument and I still don't.
Issue: players having too much initiative makes them too strong.
Solutions: increase the tradeoff needed to get such high initiative, add enemies that also have high initiative, add enemies that begin combat in stealth.

The issue isn't initiative, the issue is that it's too easy to stack initiative and the stat that gives it also boosts crit.

How do you plan to stack initiative in D&D 5?

That post had nothing to do with D&D.

I don't understand your point, then. The post you quoted was about the fact that initiative is handled with the solution "your entire team goes first or your entire team goes last". It was not about the fact that it's easy to have an high initiative.

D:OS1 is per-unit, not team-based. It still has the same issue because you could stack it to effectively go first every fight.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Except that is a contradiction, because the glittery, plastic fantasy has nothing to do with "photorealism", where as the Infinite Engine games did.

I disagree, the plastic-y Bioware vibe is a timid reaction to photorealism, it's too much of a standard from which they can only deviate in these minor ways of 'the world is magical so the graphics are colourful and sparkly, duh!'.

BG is heavily paletted, as are most 2d isometrics, which is a huge step away from photoreal styles which have nowhere near as much visual control as even that.

Photorealistic is what modern shooters are trying to achieve and some still end up having distinct visual style while doing so.

Stop using term you don't understand, please.

It's not even that there's this strange assumption that photorealism in and of itself is "bad" and the root of all evil even though most games today are anything but photorealistic, including AAA garbage who always tend to ruin their visuals with retarded filters or photographic effects like depth of field or vignetting or stupid shit like motion blur which are anything but "realistic".

In fact, the real cancer in modern graphics is "retro" for indie games and "cinematic" for AAA games.

The reason photorealism became a meme is that there was a point in the past where making your graphics look super detailed took a way from the gameplay, but that has nothing to do with "realism" in itself, which ideally, is what you want, and games like Diablo or Baldur's Gate looked great precisely because of how "realistic" their visuals were.

 

[Alpan]

They want the same game re-created indefinitely, using the same engine, same visual style, same core mechanics, etc. Such a boring way to approach games and kills any innovation in the genre.

In truth, I'd love to live in a world where Gold Box and Infinity Engine games were still made regularly.

Yeah, the accusation of nostalgia is a whole class of moronic criticism; there is this implicit supposition that new = better. Within the domain of cultural output it's pretty unique to games, as far as I can tell. You don't hear this shit about how music needs to be made a certain way in 2020, you don't see people declaring certain forms of literature obsolete, and while the art of making blockbuster movies has by now turned into a science, you don't see the consumers of those movies shitting on each other for preferring certain visual styles.

 

[Lyric Suite]

There's already plenty of great 80s and 90s style dungeon crawlers and FPS games from indies in the past few years. IE style games are probably next (I mean we've already had a real fallout successor in UnderRail from what I've seen of it), but it'll demand more than most of these games. Y'all are looking in the wrong place expecting Larian to be the answer.

Can you name a couple?

FPSs, I'm thinking DUSK, Amid Evil, Project Warlock; Dungeon Crawlers/RPGs, I'm thinking Legends of Amberland, Grimoire, UnderRail, arguably the Bard's Tale Trilogy remaster, Vogel's games, roguelikes like Cogmind and Caves of Qud, or even 3D isometrics like ATOM or Age of Decadence. (I haven't played all of these, but the gameplay is all the things mainstream RPG devs have left behind.)

Not what i was asking, all though you proved my point here i think.

 

[Lyric Suite]

They want the same game re-created indefinitely, using the same engine, same visual style, same core mechanics, etc. Such a boring way to approach games and kills any innovation in the genre.

In truth, I'd love to live in a world where Gold Box and Infinity Engine games were still made regularly.

Yeah, the accusation of nostalgia is a whole class of moronic criticism; there is this implicit supposition that new = better. Within the domain of cultural output it's pretty unique to games, as far as I can tell. You don't hear this shit about how music needs to be made a certain way in 2020, you don't see people declaring certain forms of literature obsolete, and while the art of making blockbuster movies has by now turned into a science, you don't see the consumers of those movies shitting on each other for preferring certain visual styles.

Even if that wasn't the case, there's still that little pesky fact this game is called Baldur's Gate 3. Imagine people bringing their nostalgia in a game with a name like that. The nerve.

 

[Theodora]

Photorealistic is what modern shooters are trying to achieve and some still end up having distinct visual style while doing so.
Stop using term you don't understand, please.

You're missing my point, it's that the desire for ever-approaching-photoreal has stunted the diversity in graphics for years with the idea that games with big money behind them have to be of a style adjacent to that 'goal', and it's a very limiting requirement.

 

[Shadenuat]

Yes, this is about your entire team going first and the initiative being counted as a group, not as individuals. You can't stack retarded amounts of initiative in 5E, so that's a non-issue. The problem with D:OS, and it will probably be in BG3, is that if you win initiative your party goes first and you can choose which person to act when. It doesn't work that in way in D&D, you roll Dexterity checks to determine the order of who goes after whom, including the enemies. So it can be something like Rogue -> enemy Rogue -> enemy Bard -> Druid -> enemy Fighter -> Cleric -> Sorcerer -> enemy Cleric.

It's baffling because a single wizard of yours going 1st is already game winning in D&D, whole party acting first is

 

[GhostCow]

It's not even that there's this strange assumption that photorealism in and of itself is "bad" and the root of all evil even though most games today are anything but photorealistic, including AAA garbage who always tend to ruin their visuals with retarded filters or photographic effects like depth of field or vignetting or stupid shit like motion blur which are anything but "realistic".

In fact, the real cancer in modern graphics is "retro" for indie games and "cinematic" for AAA games.

So much this. Photorealism can be really good. Look at the Yakuza series for a great example. I can't think of anything I've played that's done photorealism as well as this series. Anything else I can think of that gets accused of trying it fails so hard that I can't even believe the accusation. Depth of field of motion blur are absolute cancer especially. Those are the first two options I turn off in any game.

You're missing my point, it's that the desire for ever-approaching-photoreal has stunted the diversity in graphics for years with the idea that games with big money behind them have to be of a style adjacent to that 'goal', and it's a very limiting requirement.

It seems to me that I see way more games that look like WoW than games trying photorealism so I find it hard to agree with this.

 

[NJClaw]

D:OS1 is per-unit, not team-based. It still has the same issue because you could stack it to effectively go first every fight.

Shit, I despised that game so much that I cant remember anything.

But if that's the case, why would they go for a "party initiative" in BG3?

 

[thesecret1]

How's the combat? Is it the retarded "battle ridiculous sponges, get their armor to 0, then stunlock them until end of combat" like in D:OS2?