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

[Ontopoly]

I'm glad we can all come together and finally agree on something. All it took was for rusty_shackleford to say the study thing I've ever seen

 

[Lyric Suite]

Some of the best moments in BG is coming back into a town at night after an hard day of adventuring.

 

[Mazisky]

Some of the best moments in BG is coming back into a town at night after an hard day of adventuring.

Only if you are human and have emotions

 

[Orma]

It's not even about which is deeper or more complex. There's other factors as well - sheer time spent playing a simple encounter, as well as realism and relation to actual physical combat.

I guess not having to actively play and think is a definite plus for RTwP fans.

You do realize that rtwp IS the system where you actually PLAY, think, micro and position your party in real time

instead of being asked for minimal input every 3 minutes and watching the same lengthy animations play over and over on 20 kobolds as you eat and/or wank off?

 

[Valky]

Some of the best moments in BG is coming back into a town at night after an hard day of adventuring.

Well, when performing the actual adventuring itself required you to endure the RTWP slog, I don't blame you for enjoying the reprieves the most.

 

[Anonona]

Seems to me that the lack of day/night cycles is tied with the shadows mechanics. If I had to compare, the Splinter Cells game relies heavily on using shadows as cover. The declaration Larian made about focusing on stealth also makes me think this is an important factor in this decision. For this it required a precise level design that allowed the players to find routes that take advantage of enemies blind spot and move from shadow to shadow. I would say this is probably one of the reasons of why it is no include. The second one, and its probably related to the multiplayer, as time passes differently from turn based combat and real time, and certain players can be in one mode or another, its probably to avoid issues with the passage of time or players exploiting this time differences. Furthermore, we cannot say how the adventure will be structure, how linear or open it will be, so maybe it could also be done for consistency. Of course all of this are conjectures, but seems the more likely reasons as to why do it that way.

I'll say multiplayer is mainly to blame for this decision, and it does suck. The sneaking system with changing shadows may had been complicated but interesting if they could have pulled it out. I hope at least it helps with stealth, it is such a unappreciated feature in so many CRPGs. I was very sad on how useless it was in Kingmaker for example. Also wishing for more importance on scouting ahead and prepare for encounters.

 

[pinotto]

I think that any feature in a game should be well implemented or not implemented at all.
For example a game with bad crafting would be better without any crafting at all, same goes for city building, army battles and, of course, day/night cycle.
Having nights in which people behave exactly like in the day is just bad design, expecially in 2020

That being said I think a game that call itself AAA should implement daily routines, but I suspect they are calling it this way more for marketing reasons than for it being the truth.
At least they should have done static days and nights, that could be selected for example during campings, this should be simpler since there would be no routines to be implemented, but just two placings for every character

 

[Xzar]

Reaction of Reddit user Jabba the wutt to the PAX interview


Lol you're right. It's like they are unaware that "Baldur's Gate" refers to a series of *video games* from the early 2000s, and not just a city in DnD.

I mean does anyone else find this legitimately strange? Putting aside my salty subjectivity even, there was literally not a single word spoken during the entire reveal about the old games. Here when straight up asked about the fact that some BG fans do not see how this is a sequel, they don't even give some bullshit answer. They just completely ignore the question. It's like they conflate DnD and Baldurs Gate. Guys you are making a *video game*. Baldur's Gate was also a *video game*. There are a lot of people who played BG and never played DnD. There are a lot of DnD video games that are not called Baldurs Gate, hell Neverwinter Nights was set in the Sword Coast, why isn't this NWN3?

>We are making some changes to the Baldur's Gate formula to more fit the fifth edition of Dungeons and Dragons and really go in that direction. I guess that's one of the bigger risks.

Apparently to them the "BG formula" is simply a video game using DnD mechanics. And I guess that's really the heart of the issue here, isn't it? Some of us feel like there is more to BG specifically than that.

I'm mostly over being a raging nerd about this, but still. Why in the fuck couldn't they have called this something else, and avoided this ENTIRE situation. So easily. It is extremely clear at this point that Larian is not interesting in making a successor to the BG games. And tbh that is fine. It's not like we were sitting around here demanding BG3. I certainly never expected it, or wanted it. Larian wants to make their own DnD game and that's great.

Make fun of me all you want, the BG games matter to me. I care about their legacy. Gaming is one of my main interests and hobbies, and has been since I was very young and I first spent like 8 hours installing Outpost with 20 floppy discs on my mom's 386. Baldur's Gate along with Mass Effect are pretty much my favorite games ever, certainly my favorite single player RPGs. And in recent years I've really enjoyed this subreddit, lurking and posting here actually got me back into the BG games and I recently completed a full playthrough of the saga - and *loved* it. Like really, I can't think of another time in my life I've revisited something I had such strong nostalgia for and it was actually *better* than I remembered. Those games are special and have withstood the test of time. And I don't see why being video games means they are somehow a lesser art form or we can't actually care about them.

So when I read this interview, and watch the reveal, and read the other comments by Larian devs... There is just zero sense that anyone other than us fans gives an ounce of shit about the BG games. There is no reverence at all, which I find kind of sad and odd considering a company like Larian would probably not even exist if not for BG basically creating the modern CRPG.

The fact that this could have been so easily avoided by simply calling this something else almost makes it worse. Like nobody at WOTC or Larian even thought for 5 seconds about it. Even just a sentence or two from Swen at the reveal basically saying "we are fans of the old games and we respect their place as some of the best RPGs ever but this is a new start for DnD games and a new beginning and we feel honored to take on the legacy of Baldurs Gate and bring it into the new generation of gaming." But no, nothing. Nobody could be bothered to toss us a low effort bone even.

It's really a shame because while I really don't like the DOS games, a lot of the other stuff they're talking about in this article sounds legitimately great. I think this will probably be a good game. But I have such a bad taste in my mouth from this whole thing, I doubt I could even enjoy it if I wanted to. And yeah, I get that actual BG fans are not a majority of the modern Larian audience. We wont affect the bottom line. But for a company with such a good reputation, it's pretty shitty how they've gone about this and to all the people who think I'm being ridiculous, just you wait until something like this happens to a franchise you really love. We've all seen EA and Blizzard destroy our favorite games, but everyone knows they are evil corporate bastards and while we all get pissed and circlejerk about it, it never felt *personal* the way this does. I really expected better from Larian.

*thanks for the gold! its nice knowing theres people here who feel the same way

Sent from my NX551J using Tapatalk

 

[rusty_shackleford]

he's upset that a company purposely isn't raping a franchise and is instead going to make their own game set a century later unrelated to the previous games?

 

[Elu]

In my opinion - yes. In BG you could kite melee enemies. In PoE you had to stick to them or use abilities, otherwise you'd eat attacks of opportunity (which mostly meant you ate attacks anyway). I agreed with Sawyer when he said that the lack of melee engagement of any kind made melee less threatening/useful and more prone to exploiting (imagine enemies ignoring your warrior to get to your mage/archer), but his solution to this was not a good one.

It has been discussed to death. Kiting is a logical tactic and there's nothing wrong with it. It is only problematic when it becomes an optimal answer for everything. You could instantaneously improve Baldur's Gate by merely varying movement speed between creatures - let's say make spiders the fastest, then the wolves/dogs then the bears, then the small and big bipedal creatures, in that order. It would make kiting viable in certain circumstances and impossible in others, as it should be. No need for arbitrary mechanics. Sawyer boasted about "fixing" DnD but in the end he was unable to veer away even a little from standard DnD concepts, nor did he understand when they make sense and when they don't. Anyways, usefulness of kiting decreases towards the end of BG1 and is a minor problem in BG2.

It's not a tiny thing at all.

A day-night cycle is only valuable if it changes something else than lighting. For that, you need serious systems to make it work: NPCs schedules that change with the time of day, visibility and stealth differences, moments to trigger quests and events. Not many games have done it right. I can think of two: the Gothics, and Arcanum (and the Witcher 1 to a lesser extent). In both cases NPCs did different stuff at night than during the day. Night time has sleeping people, valuables behind lock and key, patrols, stealth possibilities, etc.

Either you go full cycle, or you don't do it. Larian is wise not investing resources if they're not willing to go all in on this.

Also, given the way Larian does TB while other characters not in combat are in real time, the flow of time wouldn't work well for cycles. Does time only pass for characters not in TB? In that case, what happens if players outisde the fight join it, while some are in nighttime and the others in daytime? Which visibility rules do you apply, for one? The alternative, that time passes for everyone based on a IRL clock, isn't better. In that case, one fight of 10 rounds could start during the day and end during the next day, a full cycle having passed while in fact the fight would only have taken 1min in D&D time (6s/round). Both ways of doing cycles would have problems.

You need serious systems? All you need is a different pattern for NPCs' spawning in areas, proper lightning and you're set. You can then add to this frame as much mechanical consequences as you want. Applying modifiers to skills and abilities based on lightning is relatively trivial. Baldur's Gate had all that. What exactly requires huge ammount of resources?
Oh come on, combat in games that have day-night cycle has already been tackled. Is Larian working in a vacuum? Are they making their first game?

rtwp was a casualization to attract the mainstream audience at the time you dumbshit

RTS genre was for casuals back in late 90s? Then what was Tomb Raider and its ilk? Super casual? Super duper casual?

You are being retarded for the sake of being retarded. It's not "too hard to understand", it's too chaotic and hectic to present the player with as meaningful challenges as a TB system could do. Since the player doesn't have precise control over the encounter, encounters need to be simpler and easier to deal with.

Please point me to the DnD-based cRPGs that have these mythical meaningful challenges, better and more complex encounters than Baldur's Gate. Because I have not witnessed any while playing ToEE, KotC, GoldBox/FRUA. In fact, Baldur's Gate 1+2 either has them beat or stands its ground in comparison.

Because they didn't want to add a day/night cycle that was purely cosmetic you fucking dipshit.

Ah, so someone made a poor argument and thus there overall point is automatically incorrect. And you will cling to it as much as you can, because even you know that your position is untenable. Your shilling is too obvious.
The point is that Baldur's Gate 1+2 to which this game is supposed to be a succesor do have a day-night cycle and it does have meaningful consequences there. Shady traders, modifier to stealth and unique encounters (the whole chain of semi-random vampire encounters in BG2 happen only at night).
Sure, you may deflect and point to this game being mainly about adapting 5ed Forgotten Realms. But wasn't Swen claiming that they want to give players unprecedent freedom and the ability to enact pnp shenanigans, improvise and whatever. But you can't even plan a night raid or ambush? Rofl. Oh, but you can throw boots at enemies. Muh deep complex gameplay.

 

[Mazisky]

he's upset that a company purposely isn't raping a franchise and is instead going to make their own game set a century later unrelated to the previous games?

Unrelated to the previous games in almost everything to the point it's a different franchise.

But Baldur's Gate 3 name sells more than Divinity Original Sin 3.

That's the reality, we all know that, regardless of Larian fanboysm or hate.

 

[Anonona]

he's upset that a company purposely isn't raping a franchise and is instead going to make their own game set a century later unrelated to the previous games?

I mean, it easy to understand, it really is a kick in the balls that the third game is such a drastic change. While is true that is more faithful to the source material, I'm pretty sure a considerable number of fans of BG 1 and BG 2, who are fan of the game before the system itself, feel betrayed for the change of combat gameplay. Also the change on art style is almost unavoidable, as its a completely different team working on the game. It may be just a name, but when it carries a 3 and present itself as a mainline game, it kills the hope of a "proper" sequel for a part of the fanbase. Hell, the post you are referring to claims that he is frustrated that a simple name change would had avoided this issue. If it has presented itself as an spin-off in the same setting but different style and time, it probably wouldn't have so much controversy (although it will still bother some people regardless, can't be helped). Just imagine waiting for a D:OS 3 for years, and then it is announced as RtwP with anime designs for its characters. Even it is good and respect the original settings and lore, it would still feel like they are using the name just for recognition.

Oh, but you can throw boots at enemies. Muh deep complex gameplay.

A little pet peeve with this argument that is being repeated ad naseum. What is the issue with this? The action is not "throwing boots", but just "throwing". It just allows you to throw any object you have. Of course the normal use will be to throw things like daggers and grenades, but you can get creative with it. Is just a tool taken to its logical conclusion. Using straw man like those is of poor taste.

 

[Elu]

Wait until you find out that D&D is a tabletop game

Wait until you find out that tabletop D&D employed real time gameplay elements... wait, who am I kidding, you will still be shilling.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

he's upset that a company purposely isn't raping a franchise and is instead going to make their own game set a century later unrelated to the previous games?

Unrelated to the previous games in almost everything to the point it's a different franchise.

But Baldur's Gate 3 name sells more than Divinity Original Sin 3.

That's the reality, we all know that, regardless of Larian fanboysm or hate.

would you people prefer if it actually continued where BG2 left off?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Just imagine waiting for a D:OS 3 for years, and then it is announced as RtwP with anime designs for its characters. Even it is good and respect the original settings and lore, it would still feel like they are using the name just for recognition.

divinity series went from a diablo-like RPG to a third person action RPG to a strategy-RPG/RTS to a turn-based RPG

 

[Anonona]

he's upset that a company purposely isn't raping a franchise and is instead going to make their own game set a century later unrelated to the previous games?

Unrelated to the previous games in almost everything to the point it's a different franchise.

But Baldur's Gate 3 name sells more than Divinity Original Sin 3.

That's the reality, we all know that, regardless of Larian fanboysm or hate.

would you people prefer if it actually continued where BG2 left off?

To be honest, I think at this point a "Baldur's Gate 3" should have never existed. It would have been better to go with "Baldur's Gate: Subtitle" or "Forgotten Realms Chronicles: Subtitle" and make different games on the same setting and time-line. It would have been the only way to avoid a shitstorm.

Just imagine waiting for a D:OS 3 for years, and then it is announced as RtwP with anime designs for its characters. Even it is good and respect the original settings and lore, it would still feel like they are using the name just for recognition.

divinity series went from a diablo-like RPG to a third person action RPG to a strategy-RPG/RTS to a turn-based RPG

Not exactly. The games are part of the "Divinity" franchise, which cover different sagas, some with multiple entries but all using the same setting (Divine Divinity, Divinity Ego Draconis, Divinity Dragon Commander, Divinity Original Sin...). This was actually what that user was saying would be a better solution: create a Baldurs Gate "franchise" with sagas made by different developer using the same setting but each with is own take and gameplay.

 

[Xzar]

would you people prefer if it actually continued where BG2 left off?

I would. With a new protagonist and 1/6 of former NPC cast.

But this time skip would also be ok, if only the art and writing styles would remain the same or roughly the same. I had my share of wishes on what could be improved, but these guys are taking it into totally opposite direction.

Sent from my NX551J using Tapatalk

 

[rusty_shackleford]

To be honest, I think at this point a "Baldur's Gate 3" should have never existed. It would have been better to go with "Baldur's Gate: Subtitle" or "Forgotten Realms Chronicles: Subtitle" and make different games on the same setting and time-line. It would have been the only way to avoid a shitstorm.

outside of a few grognards making a lot of noise there is no "shitstorm"

 

[Grotesque]

he's upset that a company purposely isn't raping a franchise and is instead going to make their own game set a century later unrelated to the previous games?

he's upset because this game is Divinity 3 cashgrab masquerading as Baldur's Gate 3.

 

[Anonona]

To be honest, I think at this point a "Baldur's Gate 3" should have never existed. It would have been better to go with "Baldur's Gate: Subtitle" or "Forgotten Realms Chronicles: Subtitle" and make different games on the same setting and time-line. It would have been the only way to avoid a shitstorm.

outside of a few grognards making a lot of noise there is no "shitstorm"

To be honest I don't know how many people are upset about this. Regardless, I still think it wasn't the right course of action from an "ethical" point of view so to speak. Financially we will see. It does bring recognition and the publicity of being the "long awaited" sequel of Baldur's Gate 2. At the end of the day though, I just want it to be a good CRPG. I will give them that so far, they seem to respect the originals enough not to retcon or fuck over with the story of those games and I liked what I had seem of the game play. I do like the art style, nothing impressive but not to bad, but it feels like it could be improved in certain areas.

 

[Roguey]

Swen seems to be letting perfect be the enemy of good when it comes to day/night cycles.

Very Dragon Age of him though.

(this also more or less confirms that passage of time won't be a factor, don't worry about the tadpole in your head)

 

[Grotesque]

Just imagine waiting for a D:OS 3 for years, and then it is announced as RtwP with anime designs for its characters. Even it is good and respect the original settings and lore, it would still feel like they are using the name just for recognition.

This very argument was brought up here again and again but the cocksucking Larian psychopaths who simply are unable to put themselves in someone else's shows can't grasp this argument.
It's pearls to the swine.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Just imagine waiting for a D:OS 3 for years, and then it is announced as RtwP with anime designs for its characters. Even it is good and respect the original settings and lore, it would still feel like they are using the name just for recognition.

This very argument was brought up here again and again but the cocksucking Larian psychopaths who simply are unable to put themselves in someone else's shows can't grasp this argument.
It's pearls to the swine.

Maybe if you wanted a "proper" BG3 you should have bought more copies of siege of dragonspear

 

[Xzar]

Maybe if you wanted a "proper" BG3 you should have bought more copies of siege of dragonspear

Don't blame him for Trent's decision to put Mizhena in and hire SJW writers.

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[rusty_shackleford]

Maybe if you wanted a "proper" BG3 you should have bought more copies of siege of dragonspear

Don't blame him for Trent's decision to put Mizhena in and hire SJW writers.

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guess you didn't want it that badly then