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

[fantadomat]

bg games never had good writing

BG1 had good writing, brilliant even in some places.

And you're like any other nowadays apologist who thinks that smearing with shit the great classics, can obscure the ineptitude and impotence of his favorite pretenders.

Yeah,a lot of dumb posers on the codex. Couldn't recognize a decent to good writing,to save his life. Most likely he was grown on dumb comics and haven't opened a book in his life. The future is bleak for humanity...

 

[catfood]

bg games never had good writing

It was still better than the last two Larian games.

 

[Cryomancer]

Only to trigger Larian fanboys and balancefags

 

[Nortar]

Who cares. My party has no room for necrophiliacs.

 

[Thac0]

Uuuh both games arent even out yet. But Necromancers in 5e base ruleset are incredibly potent, since they are the only summon in the game that lasts upwards of an hour.

https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Animate Dead#content

TL: DR for the spell:
You can expend spell slots to raiseSkellies or Meatbags for the adventuring day. In the morning you have to summon new ones or repeat the cost to keep them controlled, so no mass stacking.
The amount of units controlled is 1 for a level 3 spell slot, 3 for a level 4 spellslot, 5 for a level 5 spellslot and so son. So a level 9 wizard spending all his slots to control undead can have a platoon of 12 skelleton archers. Nothing to scoff at in a system with bounded accuracy.
Animate dead is frequently called OP in tabletop play and infrequently banned by inexperienced DMs, although mostly for bookkeeping reasons.

 

[luj1]

bg games never had good writing

BG1 had good writing, brilliant even in some places.

And you're like any other nowadays apologist who thinks that smearing with shit the great classics, can obscure the ineptitude and impotence of his favorite pretenders.

What he really meant

[anything which came out before I started playing RPGs] never had good writing

 

[Cryomancer]

Who cares. My party has no room for necrophiliacs.

Only to remember that vampire brides doesn't age.

 

[Jedi Exile]

I remember there was a time when I defended BG1 writing, arguing that it is actually good. Now I think that BG1 writing is mediocre. It is not particularly bad and it is not on par with games which had really good writing like PS:T. Writing in BG2 was better than in BG1, but wasn't really that good either.

 

[sser]

To be fair, especially for open world genres, riding gays is not easy. You have to design so much space for the player. Like, what if the player goes this route, or this route, or what if they think of a way in you've never even once considered? Hell, do you let them do two routes at the same time? And that doesn't even cover true experimentation. Like, you have to say to yourself, what if the player wants to go all-in on this route and they're expecting deepness but you've only spread yourself wide? One particular tricky thing is, you want to put in little easter eggs or hide small content in tiny holes, but are they even reading or listening? Will they ever find it, or will they just blast through the main pipeline?

 

[Roguey]

Remove some of the shitty and pointless lore books to make room for the characters then.

They'd just dump the lore in dialogue then.

 

[Fenix]

I really have no idea why they keep butchering his contributions tbh. I guess in the case of PoE1 it's understandable because he wrote like 4 times more than everyone else and they had a word quota, which I also don't understand, especially since the text was so badly edited (read: not at all) it doesn't matter. Not using any of the text he wrote (if he has written anything at all) for D:OS2 seems even weirder.

Probably to keep homogeneous-bad level of text, cause 1/10 part good and 9/10 parts being bad mean that because of that 1/10 part the rest being visibly bad. So better it all be homogeneously bad so it's ot that visible.

 

[Elex]

I really have no idea why they keep butchering his contributions tbh. I guess in the case of PoE1 it's understandable because he wrote like 4 times more than everyone else and they had a word quota, which I also don't understand, especially since the text was so badly edited (read: not at all) it doesn't matter. Not using any of the text he wrote (if he has written anything at all) for D:OS2 seems even weirder.

Because his name sells, his contribution no.

there is countless of people that think the games he contributed are entirely written by him.

 

[Cnaiur]

I remember there was a time when I defended BG1 writing, arguing that it is actually good. Now I think that BG1 writing is mediocre. It is not particularly bad and it is not on par with games which had really good writing like PS:T. Writing in BG2 was better than in BG1, but wasn't really that good either.

Both games didn't have stellar writing, but with god as my witness - compared to recent RPGs they were the holy champions of brevity.

 

[NJClaw]

I remember there was a time when I defended BG1 writing, arguing that it is actually good. Now I think that BG1 writing is mediocre. It is not particularly bad and it is not on par with games which had really good writing like PS:T. Writing in BG2 was better than in BG1, but wasn't really that good either.

Both games didn't have stellar writing, but with god as my witness - compared to recent RPGs they were the holy champions of brevity.

I think that there are more words in Divinity: Original Sin 2 ending slides than in Baldur's Gate 1 first two chapters combined.

 

[Ontopoly]

I remember there was a time when I defended BG1 writing, arguing that it is actually good. Now I think that BG1 writing is mediocre. It is not particularly bad and it is not on par with games which had really good writing like PS:T. Writing in BG2 was better than in BG1, but wasn't really that good either.

Both games didn't have stellar writing, but with god as my witness - compared to recent RPGs they were the holy champions of brevity.

I think that there are more words in Divinity: Original Sin 2 ending slides than in Baldur's Gate 1 first two chapters combined.

And yet those words were complete dog shit. My ending slide was my guy going on to fight the big bad. I don't get to fight the big bad, I just fight some undead fuck... Again. The big finale is reduced to a power point slide. Great. If your story can't combine with gameplay then change the story to something that is good and can work with the gameplay.

 

[NJClaw]

I remember there was a time when I defended BG1 writing, arguing that it is actually good. Now I think that BG1 writing is mediocre. It is not particularly bad and it is not on par with games which had really good writing like PS:T. Writing in BG2 was better than in BG1, but wasn't really that good either.

Both games didn't have stellar writing, but with god as my witness - compared to recent RPGs they were the holy champions of brevity.

I think that there are more words in Divinity: Original Sin 2 ending slides than in Baldur's Gate 1 first two chapters combined.

And yet those words were complete dog shit. My ending slide was my guy going on to fight the big bad. I don't get to fight the big bad, I just fight some undead fuck... Again. The big finale is reduced to a power point slide. Great. If your story can't combine with gameplay then change the story to something that is good and can work with the gameplay.

I don't know if your Larian fans spotting eyes made you read my post as a compliment on Larian's verbosity, but I feel the need to assure you that it wasn't.

 

[Cnaiur]

I remember there was a time when I defended BG1 writing, arguing that it is actually good. Now I think that BG1 writing is mediocre. It is not particularly bad and it is not on par with games which had really good writing like PS:T. Writing in BG2 was better than in BG1, but wasn't really that good either.

Both games didn't have stellar writing, but with god as my witness - compared to recent RPGs they were the holy champions of brevity.

I think that there are more words in Divinity: Original Sin 2 ending slides than in Baldur's Gate 1 first two chapters combined.

And yet those words were complete dog shit. My ending slide was my guy going on to fight the big bad. I don't get to fight the big bad, I just fight some undead fuck... Again. The big finale is reduced to a power point slide. Great. If your story can't combine with gameplay then change the story to something that is good and can work with the gameplay.

I don't know if your Larian fans spotting eyes made you read my post as a compliment on Larian's verbosity, but I feel the need to assure you that it wasn't.

I was complimenting BG on it's writing brevity. Next time I'll use even less words.

 

[Lacrymas]

Most of the verbosity in BG1 is in the lore books scattered around.

 

[Ontopoly]

Most of the verbosity in BG1 is in the lore books scattered around.

All of the cancer in Dos2 is in the game scattered around

 

[NJClaw]

I remember there was a time when I defended BG1 writing, arguing that it is actually good. Now I think that BG1 writing is mediocre. It is not particularly bad and it is not on par with games which had really good writing like PS:T. Writing in BG2 was better than in BG1, but wasn't really that good either.

Both games didn't have stellar writing, but with god as my witness - compared to recent RPGs they were the holy champions of brevity.

I think that there are more words in Divinity: Original Sin 2 ending slides than in Baldur's Gate 1 first two chapters combined.

And yet those words were complete dog shit. My ending slide was my guy going on to fight the big bad. I don't get to fight the big bad, I just fight some undead fuck... Again. The big finale is reduced to a power point slide. Great. If your story can't combine with gameplay then change the story to something that is good and can work with the gameplay.

I don't know if your Larian fans spotting eyes made you read my post as a compliment on Larian's verbosity, but I feel the need to assure you that it wasn't.

I was complimenting BG on it's writing brevity. Next time I'll use even less words.

Yes... I know, I was doing the same.

 

[Ontopoly]

I remember there was a time when I defended BG1 writing, arguing that it is actually good. Now I think that BG1 writing is mediocre. It is not particularly bad and it is not on par with games which had really good writing like PS:T. Writing in BG2 was better than in BG1, but wasn't really that good either.

Both games didn't have stellar writing, but with god as my witness - compared to recent RPGs they were the holy champions of brevity.

I think that there are more words in Divinity: Original Sin 2 ending slides than in Baldur's Gate 1 first two chapters combined.

And yet those words were complete dog shit. My ending slide was my guy going on to fight the big bad. I don't get to fight the big bad, I just fight some undead fuck... Again. The big finale is reduced to a power point slide. Great. If your story can't combine with gameplay then change the story to something that is good and can work with the gameplay.

I don't know if your Larian fans spotting eyes made you read my post as a compliment on Larian's verbosity, but I feel the need to assure you that it wasn't.

I was complimenting BG on it's writing brevity. Next time I'll use even less words.

Yes... I know, I was doing the same.

Well I was confused. Thought both of you were Larian cultural.

 

[AwesomeButton]

The only companies who could do Baldur's Gate III justice and have a feeling for the atmosphere of the original are either dead or would never get the rights to making a BGIII from WotC.

The truth is, the game was rigged from the start - WotC are the real source of corruption. Like it or not, we only have Pathfinder and Owlcat as a source of good D&D RPGs with good production values, QoL features, and a character cast and writing that is a descendant of the BG style.

Sure, we also have Ceres Games with Realms Beyond: Ashes of the Fallen, but they are just making first steps right now. Let's hope they eventually become an established RPG developer without selling out.

The only thing to be excited about that I can think of regarding Larian's BGIII is the module building tools, but even there, the modding community is not what it used to be 15 years ago. Gaming is invaded by plebs, the dorks and the geeks of >15 years ago mostly have families to look after and have moved on.

A collective sigh of relief went through the rpg world when Larian was announced since "At least its not Beamdog as rumored before".

I don't know if this was so outside of the Codex, but for the picture inside the Codex, you can look at the first 100 or so pages of this thread.

 

[Thac0]

or would never get the rights to making a BGIII from WotC.

Hard agree, WotC is owned by Hasbro.
There are still good developers around, and there are even a few competent people still working for WotC, but WotC is corporate to the bone. They were never gonna give the license to someone good, their only interest was someone safe to not hurt the brand image.

 

[Cryomancer]

If i could choose a company to make BG3, i would chose CD projekt red. Owlcat, WoTC would't never licence to then. Larian, i was expecting a complete AWFUL sword coast legends feat dos2 game at first but the gameplay surprised me and i an now neutral really wishing that the game will be great(for declined modern standards)

A collective sigh of relief went through the rpg world when Larian was announced since "At least its not Beamdog as rumored before".

I believe that beamdog doesn't have enough manpower to produce a BG3. And after Siege of Dragonspear got negative repercussion by the fans, with 2.5/5 score on GoG a score similar to Arcania, another fiasco(from gothic series), WoTC probably decided to give the license to another company(only speculation. Not sure)

sources af.gog.com/game/arcania?as=1649904300 and af.gog.com/game/baldurs_gate_siege_of_dragonspear?as=1649904300

Like it or not, we only have Pathfinder and Owlcat as a source of good D&D RPGs with good production values.

Sure, we also have Ceres Games with Realms Beyond: Ashes of the Fallen, but they are just making first steps right now. Let's hope they eventually become an established RPG developer without selling out.

OwlCat has a huge competitive advantage over other RPG companies. They are localized on Russia, US$2,000,000 from kickstarter to spend on Russia can buy far more "hours of development" than the same 2mi on US or Western Europe.

But one game which i loved from Larian was Divine Divinity. It was like "Ultima meet Diablo in a nightclub"... If BG3 will not have the mechanics which i hate from modern games(CDs, item fever, number inflation) and the unique downsides are the stylized art style, lv cap and the slow animations, it can still be one of the greatest RPG's of MODERN times(due the lack of competition).

-------------------------------

And honestly, i an glad that is Larian and not BioWare(modern bioware is not 90s bioware). BioWare would probably make a "live service" wow clone mmo. Obsidian, will have a lot of Sawyerism worst than NWN2 and now that they are owned by M$, will have to be XBOX and controller friendly...

 

[AwesomeButton]

OwlCat has a huge competitive advantage over other RPG companies. They are localized on Russia, US$2,000,000 from kickstarter to spend on Russia can buy far more "hours of development" than the same 2mi on US or Western Europe.

That's true, but it's not the whole explanation

Owlcat also combine excellent knowledge of the setting - Mishulin and others are old-school Pathfinder geeks - with the fact that besides getting more value per raised dollar, they get more value per dollar in profits as well. Meaning they probably "feel" stronger profits with a profit margin that would be deemed too low by western companies.