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

[Alpan]

Not sure why they are being so cagey about the details or the release date. If Stadia is coming "later this year", there is little reason to believe that the first game announced alongside it will come any later than that.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Also, those were some fairly gruesome visuals for the teaser trailer of a mainstream game. I wonder if it's an indication of the general tone.

last 30 pages: omg the game will be too cartoony! larian can only do cartoons!

 

[catfood]

When asked if the game would be isometric "CRPG-style" as with the previous Divinity: Original Sin titles, we didn't get an answer – which means it's likely some different form of presentation completely.

So this means that, inspired by the massive success that was Grimwah, the game is going to be an old school first person dungeon crawler, right? I am interpreting this correctly aren't I? Guys?

 

[jf8350143]

"but there's no word on when Baldur's Gate 3 will be released, and the only platforms Larian will talk about are PC and, wait for it, Google's stream-dream, Stadia."

Only PC announced at the moment and won't be a Stadia exclusive, however epic is still out there.

Get fucked Epic.

GOG here we go!

 

[DalekFlay]

lol why did this happen? A deal gone bad?

Or Epic has become such a tainted PR nightmare that they're pushing people away despite offering money. Stadia giving them money helps.

 

[vortex]

Is it crossover with Death Stranding?

Yes, Kojima will be new Minsc.

 

[Space Satan]

I am very happy Larian is making it.
I am even more happy that there will be no Rivellon setting, which is the vomit of plague-stricken hobos

 

[Shadenuat]

Also, those were some fairly gruesome visuals for the teaser trailer of a mainstream game

They do tick BG1 vibes strongly - BG1 began with blood on the stones of Baldur's Gate City, and here it is the same. However, gibz is not special for Larian, they had gibz and sorta moronic/bethesdard violence in DOS enough.

 

[hexer]

what is this symbol on the left?

 

[frajaq]

 

[rusty_shackleford]

what

Yep, the choices that "Heroes of Baldur's Gate" made are very strange. The only ones actually confirmed, 100%, to be alive and kicking are Minsc and Coran. But...Imoen? She's a fucking Bhaalspawn, so if this proves to be true, any notions of "Abdel Adrian and Viekang were the last" go right out the window.

If it's a clone then I'd assume it's fine. Sarevok had all bhaalspawn taint removed from him when he was brought back in ToB.

 

[Life of the Party]

Mind flayers used to be able to travel between worlds using via the Astral Plane, piloting massive shells with protruding tentacles known as nautiloids. They made the mind flayers even more formidable, but the art of making new ones has been lost to them. Until now. "Those are big problems," says Vincke. "They want to restore their empire, so we see the mind flayers invading a city, with a nautaloid, so you can imagine what might happen—but it's not what you'll expect!"

 

[Sailor Woedica]

Matt Mercer does an iconic mindflayer voice in Critical Role so don't be surprised if he is voicing the bad guys!

 

[FeelTheRads]

but no Epic pages will pop up

I prefer to be everywhere

Didn't know just releasing on Epic makes it an Epic exclusive.

Trying to capitalize on the Epic hate, I guess.

 

[LESS T_T]

Some timeframe of development:

 

[Shadenuat]

"Achtung brain sucking to the left"

Myrkul is just a skull, but he's not the only one. This one doesn't remind me of anything.

 

[vortex]

what is this symbol on the left?

If would be a Thief game, it would be symbol for black market alley.

 

[Mortmal]

Grimdark ,much more than usual, this scene could be out of alien , not cartoony at all. While being completely Faithfull to D&D, its a paladin of the flaming fist suffering ceremorphosis. Damn i like what i am seeing there already.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Some timeframe of development:

Two years of development? Interesting. Were there ever any leaks?

 

[DalekFlay]

Eurogamer has this on the Stadia launch titles list, which would be "later this year." That could EASILY be them just assuming it for whatever reason though, don't get too excited. Larian's comments make it sound much further off.

 

[Shadenuat]

Is they were any leaks we would know about it. And people would already be rioting on the streets.

 

[Life of the Party]

Spoiler

Baldur's Gate 3 will combine the best of Divinity and D&D 5th Edition

Gather your party again.

Divinity: Original Sin 2 developer Larian Studios is working on its follow up to one of the best RPGs on PC—a third adventure with a new party of heroes and more fate-of-the-world quests. Just what you'd expect from Baldur's Gate 3. Cue fainting elves and gasping halflings. 18 years after the Bhaalspawn saga came to a close, we're finally returning to the Forgotten Realms.

The world's moved forward quite a bit since the last games, so instead of picking up where its predecessors left things, Baldur's Gate 3 is a brand new adventure set in the Forgotten Realms as it is today, where Bhaal's unruly kids are history. Not to worry, though, as Larian's got another crisis to fling at the unfortunate city.

With over 20 years of D&D-adjacent RPGs behind it, from Divine Divinity to Divinity: Original Sin 2, Larian's hardly a wildcard choice, but when CEO Swen Vincke first approached Wizards of the Coast, he didn't get very far. Wizards called the studio "a bit too green" when Vincke tried to convince the publisher during the development of the first Original Sin. It was Wizards that got in touch with Larian, however, once Original Sin 2 was in the works.

"During Divinity: Original Sin 2, we had to submit the design for Baldur's Gate, which was annoying because we were about to release DOS2," Vincke says. "So we sat in a hotel for a weekend the month before release, me and a couple of writers and designers, and we made the initial design document. It wasn't very good, but it had the core ideas and they did like it."

Larian made another version, Wizards loved it, and that became the foundation for Baldur's Gate 3. Much of that foundation, unfortunately, remains a mystery. Larian is going to be taking more of a 'show, don't tell' approach, both in how it reveals things like combat and within the game itself, which will still have plenty of text and dialogue but also a greater dose of environmental storytelling than Original Sin 2.

The first trailer is appropriately enigmatic until the end, with only a few hints that it's Baldur's Gate. A man with a flaming fist emblazoned on his tunic stumbles across cobbled streets, sweaty and distressed. The trailer quickly descends into gruesome body horror as he spits up teeth and violently transforms, evoking the appetite-ruining transformations of Akira and American Werewolf in London, until his final form is unveiled. Baldur's Gate is being invaded by mind flayers.

If you've not got your Monster Manual at hand, mind flayers are a race of Cthulhu-looking villains that use their psionic abilities to control their victims and slaves. They're a pretty rotten bunch and absolutely the last thing you'd want flying around inside your city. Their glory days, when they ruled a vast astral empire, are long behind them, and the squid-faced tyrants have been skulking around in the Underdark, impressing the also-not-very-nice duergar and drow. Unfortunately, they've had an upgrade.

Mind flayers used to be able to travel between worlds using via the Astral Plane, piloting massive shells with protruding tentacles known as nautiloids. They made the mind flayers even more formidable, but the art of making new ones has been lost to them. Until now. "Those are big problems," says Vincke. "They want to restore their empire, so we see the mind flayers invading a city, with a nautaloid, so you can imagine what might happen—but it's not what you'll expect!"

With Divinity, particularly the crowdfunded Original Sins, Larian's been free to build its world how it sees fit. With the Forgotten Realms, however, the studio's playing with a license that's been developed over decades by countless writers and designers, full of its own lore and rules, but Vincke says it's not been an obstacle.

Lore cops

"There are a lot of people at Larian who play D&D and there are a lot of game sessions going on continuously, so that already makes it easier because we have the internal lore police. I'm the guy that usually tries to break it, but then I get the lore police on me. Usually that's sufficient, and our internal checks sometimes go further than Wizards of the Coast's. They're very flexible about making cool adventures, and most of the things we've pitched to them have been passes. We're really very aligned in our thinking and how we do things, but ours is just the videogame version."

Original Sin 2 already shares quite a lot with D&D, beyond the things that most fantasy RPGs share. The Game Master mode and co-op effectively let you play a tabletop RPG on your PC, but even when you're playing alone it can still feel like you're doing so under the gaze of a Dungeon Master, hoping they'll let you try this brilliant new idea you've come up with. The sheer variety of systems and Larian's willingness to let players bend or occasionally break the game leaves so much room for ingenuity. Vincke loves to talk about players solving conundrums in ways Larian had never even considered, and it's exactly like listening to a proud Dungeon Master gush about their party.

Baldur's Gate 3 will similarly give players lots of tools and then let them have at it. "We'll stay true to our roots," says Vincke, "so we'll give players lots of systems, and lots of agency to use these systems and try to accomplish what you need to on your adventure. That's not going to change; that's the core of what we're doing."

There are some things on the chopping block, however. It's an interpretation of D&D, specifically 5th Edition, because porting the core rules, which Larian tried to do, doesn't work. Or it works, Vincke clarifies, but it's no fun at all. One of the culprits is missing when you're trying to hit an enemy, and while the combat system has yet to be revealed, you can at least look forward to being able to smack people more consistently.

"You miss a lot in D&D—if the dice are bad, you miss," he says. "That doesn't work well in a videogame. If I do that, you're going to review it and say it's shit. Our approach has been implementing it as pure as we can, and then just seeing what works and what doesn't. Stuff that doesn't work, we start adapting until it does."

This interpretation should still be more true to the tabletop RPG than its predecessors, however, capturing the feel of D&D even if it's not borrowing every single system and rule. Some of this is because of a difference in technology. Black Isle faced a lot of limitations that Larian doesn't. The studio has invested heavily in this side of things, as well as in staff, who now number in the hundreds. Internally, 200 people are working on Baldur's Gate 3, while another hundred are working on it externally.

Party planner

To save Baldur's Gate you'll need a party of heroes, and like a typical D&D party they're all the protagonists of their own stories, each with their own motivations and ambitions. When you make a character, you'll be filling in your character sheet, essentially, not just with abilities and skills, but backgrounds, personality traits and ideals. If you make a Mage, you'll be able to look at the last pages of your Players Handbook and find, for the most, exactly same spells. You'll have all the pieces you need to make a D&D adventurer.

While he's not ready to confirm that it will feature in Baldur's Gate 3, Vincke's also interested in taking another crack at Original Sin 2's origin system, which gives players premade characters with unique backgrounds, quests and talents. They're better defined than their custom counterparts, and more connected to the world.

"I thought the origin stories were a really good addition to the RPG genre, like we did them, and it would be strange if we went back on that," he says. "The ambitions for the origin stories in Original Sin 2 were actually higher than what we managed to do, though we did it well if you think about all that we fit in there, but there's so much more that can be done with it. I'd certainly be interested in exploring it."

You'll be controlling your whole party, but Baldur's Gate 3 will also let you strike out on an adventure with pals. Larian's not ready to spill the beans on how the multiplayer system will work, but something resembling their last two co-op systems seems likely, letting each player choose exactly where to go and what to do independent of the rest of the party. It's how it works in D&D, too, where parties can split up and one player might be getting sozzled in the tavern while another is trying to pilfer a relic from a nearby temple.

Despite the success of Larian's last two Kickstarters, it won't be going down the crowdfunding route this time. It's in large part to those successes that it doesn't need to. Larian will still be publishing the game itself, as well as involving the community and posting regular updates. For prospective players wanting to follow the game's development, there won't be much of a change. For Larian, though, it's the studio's greatest challenge, and when players finally get to return to Baldur's Gate, Vincke thinks they'll be very surprised by what they find.

"We're going beyond what we've done before to make it the game it deserves to be. That sounds like a slogan—it is a slogan—but it's true."

https://www.pcgamer.com/baldurs-gate-3-will-combine-the-best-of-divinity-and-dandd-5th-edition/

 

[Ziggy]

what is this symbol on the left?

not what the symbol looks like, but it is a skeleton hand. so maybe Vecna

 

[TT1]

what is this symbol on the left?

My memory might be fuzzy, but isn't that fucking Myrkul's symbol?

Its the Flaming Fist. BG police.

 

[Shadenuat]

U know if they make Baldur's Age 3 they would burry both Obsidian and Bioware at the same time. One shovel, two legendary studios ruined by a belgian.