Baldur's Gate Baldur's Gate 3 RELEASE THREAD

[AwesomeButton]

I figured since this game was marketed to nostalgia fags

Es certus?

We are talking about the game mostly marketed on a gay vampire spawn companion and romances, before being marketed on bear sex (in a funny way or not). It was certainly marketed to fags, but the "nostalgia" variety?

 

[Lyric Suite]

I figured since this game was marketed to nostalgia fags

Es certus?

We are talking about the game mostly marketed on a gay vampire spawn companion and romances, before being marketed on bear sex (in a funny way or not). It was certainly marketed to fags, but the "nostalgia" variety?

Biotards were always a bunch of deviants. The evolution from BG2 romances to "riding the bull" in Dragon Age was likely very natural for those misfits. I never paid attention to custom made romances back in the BG1/2 days as i hated the very idea of romances to the core but i wouldn't be surprised if some of those weren't filled with lurid details too.

 

[Herumor]

People talking about what D&D setting Larian might tackle next - did you see the news that WotC will be releasing a new set of Planescape books sometime this year? I expect them to try and rope in Larian to make a new game for Planescape at one point.

 

[Grunker]

Ultimately, i think the fallacy the industry seems to be running on is that they think that because normies want stuff that is easy going and untroubling or unstressful

Is that what they want though? Godsdamned Elden Ring is the most stressful shit I've ever played.

What they want is the new shit (reminder: ).

The most brilliant thing about Dragon Age's marketing was it marketed an RPG with a ton of "legacy" mechanics and a lot of older school design as this completely neo-futuristic nextgen experience, like "this is something else entirely from every RPG you've ever played." Even convinced the Codex-haters of this, much like with BG3 - they bought into the idea that this was something completely new, rather than simply an isometric RPG with a little bit more focus on companion-interaction than we were used to.

Normies want the hotness. The talked-about-thing.

What determines what that thing is the actual subject of your discussion. And here, I think, we've recently seen that one important criteria is often the amount of actual effort, not just the high production value. Then the cycle begins anew with trend-chasing: companies copy the basic layout of a succesful game without the effort, the normies buy it because they liked the game that had effort put into it, find out they don't like this new game as much because despite the production value it is obviously low effort, and at some point, someone else makes some other high effort production that sends the community within that genre abuzz, spreading to other communities and thus to normies, making *that* thing the popular thing.

Reminder to everyone that the massive criticism of Cyberpunk 2077 probably helped BG3 a great deal. If Cyberpunk had delivered we would be in the age of futuristic dystopian third person games and D&D would get less attention even from an insane production like BG3.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Biotards were always a bunch of deviants. The evolution from BG2 romances to "riding the bull" in Dragon Age was likely very natural for those misfits.

This was marketed to anyone who has heard of dwarves and elves man, the Bioware old farts with loosened sphincters are a peanuts segment of the target audience here.

 

[Strange Fellow]

https://boards.4channel.org/vrpg/thread/3157401

Typical 4chan garbage.

- turn based is best, rtwp is shit, but normies too stupid, industry too greedy, they will never recognize this

*Gets popular turn based game*

- wtf, rtwp was best, turn based is shit, but normies too stupid, industry too greedy, why did they change classic good stuff

The OP is from the Codex though

I wonder where that post was made, I'd love to rate it retadred.

 

[Konjad]

People talking about what D&D setting Larian might tackle next - did you see the news that WotC will be releasing a new set of Planescape books sometime this year? I expect them to try and rope in Larian to make a new game for Planescape at one point.

As much as I like BG3 and would like Larian to make IWD3 and BG4, giving them Planescape would be a disaster. They wouldn't be able to write any serious stuff even if their survival depended on it.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Ultimately, i think the fallacy the industry seems to be running on is that they think that because normies want stuff that is easy going and untroubling or unstressful

Is that what they want though? Godsdamned Elden Ring is the most stressful shit I've ever played.

What they want is the new shit (reminder: ).

The hotness. The talked-about-thing.

What determines what that thing is the actual subject of your discussion. And here, I think, we've recently seen that one important criteria is often the amount of actual effort, not just the high production value. Then the cycle begins anew with trend-chasing: companies copy the basic layout of a succesful game without the effort, the normies buy it because they liked the game that had effort put into it, find out they don't like this new game as much because despite the production value it is obviously low effort, and at some point, someone else makes some other high effort production that sends the community within that genre abuzz, spreading to other communities and thus to normies, making *that* thing the popular thing.

Reminder to everyone that the massive criticism of Cyberpunk 2077 probably helped BG3 a great deal. If Cyberpunk had delivered we would be in the age of futuristic dystopian third person games and D&D would get less attention even from an insane production like BG3.

Possibly. I'm not going to argue that the "hype" aspect isn't also part of it when it comes to normies (i myself made an hyperbolic claim that's ALL they care about a few pages back), but notice that what i said and what you just wrote share one common point: normies aren't exactly complitely oblivious when it comes quality of content, or else they wouldn't be bothered by any "low effort", as you say.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Is that what they want though? Godsdamned Elden Ring is the most stressful shit I've ever played.

hahaha, you should try CoH2 multiplayer. I loved playing it, but I can't play more than two games per day.

 

[Konjad]

The OP is from the Codex though

Typical codex contrarians too.

 

[Grunker]

Ultimately, i think the fallacy the industry seems to be running on is that they think that because normies want stuff that is easy going and untroubling or unstressful

Is that what they want though? Godsdamned Elden Ring is the most stressful shit I've ever played.

What they want is the new shit (reminder: ).

The hotness. The talked-about-thing.

What determines what that thing is the actual subject of your discussion. And here, I think, we've recently seen that one important criteria is often the amount of actual effort, not just the high production value. Then the cycle begins anew with trend-chasing: companies copy the basic layout of a succesful game without the effort, the normies buy it because they liked the game that had effort put into it, find out they don't like this new game as much because despite the production value it is obviously low effort, and at some point, someone else makes some other high effort production that sends the community within that genre abuzz, spreading to other communities and thus to normies, making *that* thing the popular thing.

Reminder to everyone that the massive criticism of Cyberpunk 2077 probably helped BG3 a great deal. If Cyberpunk had delivered we would be in the age of futuristic dystopian third person games and D&D would get less attention even from an insane production like BG3.

Possibly. I'm not going to argue that the "hype" aspect isn't also part of it when it comes to normies (i myself made an hyperbolic claim that's ALL they care about a few pages back), but notice that what i said and what you just wrote share one common point: normies aren't exactly complitely oblivious when it comes quality of content, or else they wouldn't be bothered by any "low effort", as you say.

Oh I agree with you. That was sort of the point. I think the hype is like 90% of this entire phenomena. My point was that then the disucssion becomes "what generates hype." And to start hype from complete scratch, you gotta have something that shines high effort, not just production value, I think. At least it has to feel like it. Cyberpunk 2077 failed because of mismanagement and design - there's no question it was high effort.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Biotards were always a bunch of deviants. The evolution from BG2 romances to "riding the bull" in Dragon Age was likely very natural for those misfits.

This was marketed to anyone who has heard of dwarves and elves man, the Bioware old farts with loosened sphincters are a peanuts segment of the target audience here.

I think even if we aren't dealing with literal Biotard boomers we are still talking about the same typology of people. Larian-tards may be mostly counted among the newer generation but i think they rapresent a kind of continuation of the same basic mentality.

 

[General Disarray]

Really like the skill checks and what it allows you to do. Playing as a power hungry Mage with Charlatan background is just to fun. Lie, steal and exploit. Shadowcute guidance cantrip + charm cantrip allows me to blast through all checks. Sleight of hands to open locks with the guidance cantrip bonus and Arcana to find the good stuff to steal. Stole the treasure hoard in goblin camp. Cleaned out Druid grove. Playing both sides but will not help in the end if avoidable. Only concern is if I need to help to get Drow lady, can you get her if you skip helping her in the fight? Playing with Champ Shadowcute, froglady and Gay wizard. But will convert to full Harem when I find more females.

10/10, would pirate again.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Larian-tards may be mostly counted among the newer generation but i think they rapresent a kind of continuation of the same basic mentality.

We were discussing their likelyhood of expecting a printed or pdf manual, remember. The larian cohort are the wiki/reddit/discord generation, ordered by the sources' level of degeneracy. Either way, they wouldn't know what to do with a manual, too lazy to turn the pages.

Come to think of it, they'd probably be happiest if Larian sets up some kind of "AI" chat bot. That way they don't have to wait for responses from discord chat.

 

[Riddler]

Has anyone found a magical HEAVY armor in Act 1? All I've encountered is the one worn by the githyanki in the monestary.

Yes
There is one in the

Spoiler

Zhent shop

as well.

 

[Eisenheinrich]

You are recounting the facts correctly, but what is your point? What you recount confirms what I said: same as BG and BG2 back in the day, same as Witcher 3 in 2015, same as Crusader Kings II, BG3 succeeds on the back of two main advantages: more accessible than before, higher production values.

DAO: Inquisition and Mass Effect had much much more production values than prequels and much more accessible, with heavy marketing. It didn't save them. Production values alone cannot make a good game - studio team is what matters. Owlcat managed to make Pathfinder into a decent RPG with meager resources but a ddgood creative team.

There has to be something solid to start with that you then make more accessible and as you continue down that road eventually that solidity disappears and accessibility is all that remains. No one seems to be able to strike that balance.

I think accessibility is key when it comes to normies but i agree you also need a decently substantial base to start with, which both BG1/2 had, and BG3 may or may not have (i'll find out as i go along i guess).

Accesssibility also comes in many forms. I think Torment was more accessible than Pillars of Eternity despite the fact both games were too overburderning for the average normie on account of their attempt at "deconstructing" the standard fantasy tropes normies tend to gravitate to (normies in general want an easy going escapism, they don't want to be "challenged" or be forced to step out of their comfort zones) because while Pillars was dry and prosaic, Torment was poetic and thus easier to absorb and come to terms with.

Ultimately, i think the fallacy the industry seems to be running on is that they think that because normies want stuff that is easy going and untroubling or unstressful (which means "standard" fantasy settings will always be more popular than alternative ones), they are automatically assumed to be completely braindead, which is not necessarely the case. I think normies can also recognize good design when they see it. In this sense, "production values" that are purely in the service of the presentation can often miss the mark. Blizzard of old had high production values that were in the service of accessibility. The gameplay in their games was more fluid and intuitive than the competition, their systems were easy and immediate to get into despite being difficult to master in the long run, which i'm sure helped a great deal in making their games so massively popular.

Of course, i'm sure the industry people will not learn shit by the success of this game and will continue with their old assumptions, that isometric games don't work, that turn based combat doesn't sell, that the less substance a game has, the easier it is to get into and so forth. I fully predict BG3 will make no actual impact and AAA gaming companies will continue to produce their worthless slop.

See, you are able to actually post something good and worthwile.

Anyone encountered bear sex by now?

 

[AwesomeButton]

Playing both sides but will not help in the end if avoidable

So it's possible to play both sides? I guess eventually you'll have to decide if you want to save the druid or no...

 

[Lemming42]

The game's marketed towards D&D fans, which is a vast number of people. It's become very very popular especially over the last 10 years, in part due to actual play series, and you'd struggle to find any "nerd"-adjacent zoomers/millenials friend groups who don't have some kind of perpetual campaign going on.

That's why the game has the rollling dice graphic and such, it's to appeal to people who either like D&D, or like the idea of D&D and watch actual play podcasts but are social retards with no friends and thus need a simulacra of the experience delivered to them by a game dev.

 

[Swen]

https://boards.4channel.org/vrpg/thread/3157401

FUCK rtwp. TB is how it should be played, every time.

BG3 is superior to the old games by default because it's turn based.

 

[Louis_Cypher]

For example, one weird consequence, might be the idea that big publishers should revive other late 90s dormant CRPG franchises, that they have sitting in their IP bins. Something like Icewind Dale III

This, definetly. I was also pondering an Arcanum II, but in currentyear all the fun would be castrated. The magic vs science conflict would be reimagined as another round of "mages vs templars", all the ironic takes and cartoonish Gilded Age references including the racism would be scrubbed out or turned into moralizing preaching... Better leave that setting alone.

People talking about what D&D setting Larian might tackle next - did you see the news that WotC will be releasing a new set of Planescape books sometime this year? I expect them to try and rope in Larian to make a new game for Planescape at one point.

I was gonna comment earlier: "God forbid someone tries to make Planescape: Torment II. It's probably way too low profile thankfully." However, with them pushing out Planescape manuals, an unrelated Planescape game is at least somewhat possible in a hypothetical CRPG glut. Avellone is uncancelled, so I would love to see what that guy would do with Larian's engine TBH, whatever the setting was.

Anyway, all this wild speculation about CRPGs getting noticed, looking years into the future, is pointless. All sorts of things can happen in the industry and genre. All we know is that this kind of ridiculous hype/success, with something as unlikely as a turn-based CRPG selling maybe 10 million, and sitting at number 9 on Steam all-time players, will likely produce a few Baldur's Gate III clones, post 2024.

On the unforseen optimistic side, Larian gives out their fairly 'ready-to-adapt pen-and-paper' engine to every little studio that wants it, for a small fee, becoming the Infinity Engine of the 2020s, with say devs like Owlcat getting it, and small studios somehow using it with some success despite the burden of creating high-fidelity assets. On another less optimistic timeline, we just get a few lame attempts at Baldur's Gate III clones between 2024-2027, maybe one by Obsidian as boring as Pillars of Eternity, and then the genre fizzles out again until Baldur's Gate IV.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

For the record, my rig is a couple years old now, at least 4 or 5 years I think, don't remember.
It has a GeForce RTX 2080 Ti. The EA version caused the cooler to howl, as if playing an Unity game. But when starting the release version, the game told me my driver version isn't recommended and to install the new Nvidia driver. So I did. Now the cooler is silent and the game runs fine.

 

[Eisenheinrich]

Anyone who says this game feels like D:OS 2 has never played either. It feels a lot like a Baldurs Gate titel. The RtwP was never the core element that made these games.

 

[Swen]

BG3 should get an anime, will bring in all the japs. Then they'd learn what an actual rpg is.

 

[Grunker]

Anyone who says this game feels like D:OS 2 has never played either. It feels a lot like a Baldurs Gate titel. The RtwP was never the core element that made these games.

Bizarre statement. I hate DOS2 and I really like this game, but the exploration and fundamental structural design is 1:1 DOS. It has copied so many mechanics directly

 

[General Disarray]

Playing both sides but will not help in the end if avoidable

So it's possible to play both sides? I guess eventually you'll have to decide if you want to save the druid or no...

Yeah it's possible, I stopped the Druid spell while also hanging out in the goblin base, freed Druid but not commited to helping him yet so he just stands there and waits. You just have to pass checks to not get smashed, which I can do easily with my build.