Baldur's Gate Baldur's Gate 3 RELEASE THREAD

[AwesomeButton]

I don't expect these faggots and soys at Larian to ever be able to capture the vibe and comradery between two masculine men (especially warriors/soldiers) bonding and forming a friendship

Heh, you tempt me into veering off from the subject entirely but what the hell.

Yesterday I watched, for the first time, S01E01 of Miami Vice (1984). Lots of meme-worthy moments, TV tropes, naturally from today's perspective of a spoiled, overindulged, jaded viewer. Yet there was one particular scene of how "camaraderie between two masculine men" was born - during a conversation they each took a jab at each other's jaws. Then their argument died down and they "started on the path to becoming friends".



Honestly, I'd love this kind of humorous approach in my game when it comes to portraying bro party member relationships.

But the "internet generation" will momentarily declare it "cringe" in a bad way.

 

[Grauken]

Well, my question was "Why bear sex?". I wasn't aware it was a joke. It may very well be one, but to say it is JUST that is disingenuous. They absolutely knew it would cause people to talk and, ultimately, would be good press, whether controversial or not. Bestiality has long been said by more reactionary fearmongers than I as the next thing to become normalized, along with MAPs, etc. I don't see this happening, but if Larian are moden humans and online humans, they know of this, and were absolutely poking the proverbial bear, so to speak, just to ruffle some fur and "make all the right people mad" as politically-minded people so often say. At the very least, it's not JUST a joke.

It is just a joke. US culture warriors like you might not realize that the rest of the world gives little crap about your hangups and woke vs anti-woke tribalism

 

[Florian Gheorghe]

how is this compared to POE? I don't like the fact that is not isometric and no day/night cycle. What about story? Is it Chris Avellone good?

 

[whydoibother]

A new dichotomy is being born in front of our eyes.

Or an indie dev is latching onto a popular social media tag to get awareness for his project.
This is at least as likely as Larian intending for the bear sex scene to be anything more than a few giggles and forgotten.

 

[Jaunty]

SKALD: Against the Black Priory will be a non-horny game:



A new dichotomy is being born in front of our eyes.

let the horny vs the non-horny wars commence

It's almost like an entire generation growing up on hardcore porn has its consequences.

 

[whydoibother]

It is just a joke. US culture warriors like you might not realize that the rest of the world gives little crap about your hangups and woke vs anti-woke tribalism

Many such cases!

 

[Infinitron]

That entire stream with the bear sex was Larian shotgunning a bunch of romance, sex and violence scenes and hoping something would stick. They succeeded!

 

[dukeofwoodberry]

I think a lot of the positive reception to vampire fag is he's a well written character and larian are definitely able to capture the vibe of a faggot aristocrat. So it's a believeable personality and in that sense immersive.

Larian are right at home writing that kind of character. Writing a warrior/masculine bro type of character? Out of their comfort zone even tho it's one of the most classic and tried and true tropes in party RPG games. Bioware always put one in their games.

 

[whydoibother]

the vibe of a faggot aristocrat

The actual vibe of the character is someone sex trafficked, who has, as a way of coping, molded their personality to seem like they are in on the joke, and participating, and enjoying it. You can glimpse at the facade collapse quite a few times.
So more like a caged bird singing when people look, crying when people aren't looking. Which is yet again a very typical writing trope. All the characters are very typical and anyone who reads more than a few books per year will have met them already, and recognize them. The fact that people ITT are so confused just tells me Codexers don't read.

 

[F. J. Rothchild III]

the people you're describing are the audience for BGIII, right? Are they also the authors of it?

To some extent the demographics intersect. There are lots of people in their 20s in Larian, including its writing team, aren't there?

Why the bear-fucking?

Swen himself has answered that they meant it more as a joke than anything else, and they underestimated the viral effect it would have.

Didn’t people play Arcanum? Might be a good moment to set up some re-education camps and force everybody to play it 24/7 before being allowed back in.

I adore Arcanum.
I remember a selectable backstory where your character is a retard who manipulates people's sympathy. Pretty nuanced. deep. un-PC and great game, aside from the combat.
Which of BGIII's traits being discussed requires Arcanum re-education?

Specifically? Complaining about the bear sex joke when Arcanum had a sheep sex joke with an actual sheep.

Well, my question was "Why bear sex?". I wasn't aware it was a joke. It may very well be one, but to say it is JUST that is disingenuous. They absolutely knew it would cause people to talk and, ultimately, would be good press, whether controversial or not. Bestiality has long been said by more reactionary fearmongers than I as the next thing to become normalized, along with MAPs, etc. I don't see this happening, but if Larian are moden humans and online humans, they know of this, and were absolutely poking the proverbial bear, so to speak, just to ruffle some fur and "make all the right people mad" as politically-minded people so often say. At the very least, it's not JUST a joke.

Arcanum? Filled with tons of jokes. Any sheep-fucking joke in that game was in THAT GAME's context, not the context of a photo-realistic game that's already filled to the gills with non-joke sexuality that everyone has an opinion about. I think comparing BGIII to Arcanum is also disingenuous. Not intentional on your part, I'm not accusing you of that. You clearly bought and are enjoying/defending the game, however, and no one likes ot see something they paid for beign mis-represented or criticized, especially by people you ideologically disagree with, so I can see it being easy to go "Arcanum had a sheep sex joke. Same thing. Check and mate,"


I don't think it's as simple as that, personally. However, others might, and I respect your view, despite disagreeing.

The scene has a squirrel looking dumbfounded at the scene while dropping a nut. It’s pretty clear that it was intended to be a joke. Was it expected to cause a scandal and get attention? Maybe, I don’t really bother taking into account a dev’s marketing tactics while playing a game and the culture war shtick is little more than gringo drama to me so I really can’t be bothered to look more deeply into it.

Anyway, sexual jokes might be not that common in Arcanum, but the developers had a pretty obvious penchant for that kind of content. It was extremely blatant in Fallout 2 where you even had sex-related perks and could do your own pornstar career. And of course, Bloodlines had a similar amount of sex-related stuff.

Now, we can talk all day about whether that stuff fits some settings better than other but I think it’s pretty obvious that Troika devs always loved to make games with that kind of content.

But Troika didn't make BGIII. Your point, that it may fit in some settings more than others, is exactly right. "Troika did it and it's okay, but Larian does it and it's not?" may seem like you've happened upon a bit of hypocrisy around these parts, but it really only drives home how a subject as easy to make uncomfortable and stupid as sex in an RPG was handled better by fantastic writers at Troika. If people played their games and got that those were either jokes or fit the world better (Bloodlines BETTER have sex in it. Hell, it bette rhave BDSM in it. It's seedy vampire fiction.) but are finding it to be off-putting in BGIII, then there is at least the possibility that they found it to be better-fitting and better-written in the former than the latter, no? Or do you think people who played old Troika games and genuinely had no issue with sexual content are just straight-up changing their stance because of politics or something? That's a big assumption or guess, and seems much more related to the gringo culture war (to which you pay no mind) than you may think.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Many such cases!

That entire stream with the bear sex was Larian shotgunning a bunch of romance, sex and violence scenes and hoping something would stick. They succeeded!

Like I said, in modern times you do marketing by supplying meme material and then crazies from both ends of the horseshoe do your marketing for you. The middle part of the horseshoe hears echoes of the artillery and learns about your product.

 

[Grunker]

the vibe of a faggot aristocrat

The actual vibe of the character is someone sex trafficked, who has, as a way of coping, molded their personality to seem like they are in on the joke, and participating, and enjoying it. You can glimpse at the facade collapse quite a few times.
So more like a caged bird singing when people look, crying when people aren't looking. Which is yet again a very typical writing trope. All the characters are very typical and anyone who reads more than a few books per year will have met them already, and recognize them. The fact that people ITT are so confused just tells me Codexers don't read.

Yeah, these characters are so earthshatteringly basic in their cliches it’s basically a mechanic for outing yourself like a complete illiterate if you take their initial character at face value

 

[Swen]

I think a lot of the positive reception to vampire fag is he's a well written character and larian are definitely able to capture the vibe of a faggot aristocrat. So it's a believeable personality and in that sense immersive.

Larian are right at home writing that kind of character. Writing a warrior/masculine bro type of character? Out of their comfort zone even tho it's one of the most classic and tried and true tropes in party RPG games. Bioware always put one in their games.

U ever played DOS2?



Larian is definitely capable of writing a masculine bro character.

 

[dukeofwoodberry]

the vibe of a faggot aristocrat

The actual vibe of the character is someone sex trafficked, who has, as a way of coping, molded their personality to seem like they are in on the joke, and participating, and enjoying it. You can glimpse at the facade collapse quite a few times.
So more like a caged bird singing when people look, crying when people aren't looking. Which is yet again a very typical writing trope. All the characters are very typical and anyone who reads more than a few books per year will have met them already, and recognize them. The fact that people ITT are so confused just tells me Codexers don't read.

But there's no classic male warrior/soldier personality trope

 

[Reinhardt]

U ever played DOS2?

no. why should we?

 

[Grunker]

U ever played DOS2?

no. why should we?

No, it’s terrible

 

[whydoibother]

Like I said, in modern times you do marketing by supplying meme material and then crazies from both ends of the horseshoe do your marketing for you.

When Mass Effect Andromeda came out, it got memed to hell and back. It didn't seem to help sales.
And, as we know from an internal memo leak, EA then had the teams instructed to make the next release "unmemeable", or whatever the weird word used was. To defend the product against mockery, by concentrating effort in fixing the things that could be mocked, rather than releasing a compelling gameplay experience.

And a year later we got Anthem. A game with no memes, and no soul.

Anyways, the point is, even if Larian were intentionally throwing what on 4chan used to be called exploitables, image and video macros that are a good core to develop jokes from, that would still be unusual for the industry as a whole. Other video game companies wouldn't make their product look silly like that, hoping people mocking it spread awareness of it.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Yeah, these characters are so earthshatteringly basic in their cliches it’s basically a mechanic for outing yourself like a complete illiterate if you take their initial character at face value

Provided you trust the writers' ability, which you have every reason not to in the medium of videogames.

Also, does this mean you agree with whydoibother that they are cliches, or you disagree and think they are actually interesting, just need to develop?

 

[Swen]

Well, my question was "Why bear sex?". I wasn't aware it was a joke. It may very well be one, but to say it is JUST that is disingenuous. They absolutely knew it would cause people to talk and, ultimately, would be good press, whether controversial or not. Bestiality has long been said by more reactionary fearmongers than I as the next thing to become normalized, along with MAPs, etc. I don't see this happening, but if Larian are moden humans and online humans, they know of this, and were absolutely poking the proverbial bear, so to speak, just to ruffle some fur and "make all the right people mad" as politically-minded people so often say. At the very least, it's not JUST a joke.

It is just a joke. US culture warriors like you might not realize that the rest of the world gives little crap about your hangups and woke vs anti-woke tribalism

This so hard.

Oh well, US is a third world country anyway now. Their culture war retardation is one of many problems.

 

[Swen]

U ever played DOS2?

no. why should we?

It's one of the best RPG's ever made.

 

[dukeofwoodberry]

Just got the Wyll dance scene, I've never felt so embarrassed for an NPC in my life. I agree with what BrotherFrank said before, it feels so harsh and even if you reject him in the nicest way he looks at you like you've ruined his life. I guess props to the actor for capturing the emotion well but nobody wants to play a romantic rejection simulator

You know what we say. Don't hire black (non drow) into the party. If you didn't hire him, you wouldn't be disappointed.

Even if you go by the figure of 7.1% of people being gay or bi (which is almost certainly high), the chances of all 4 romanceable characters of the same gender as the PC being gay or bi are about .0025%.

And that is if we are assuming that in whatever universe your playthrough takes place in the characters of the opposite gender are either straight or bi.

If we go off of all 8 romanceable characters actually being bisexual it is drastically more unlikely by many orders of magnitude.

No real point to this post. I just felt like doing the math and wanted to present it as food for thought.

Homosexuality is about 0.5 percent, it kinda results from genetic equation because of heritability of gay genes.

Now bi isn't that rare because morons mimics it, especially in the army.

However with Larian characters, if there would be a sex machine usable for free as an alternative to a final boss, I suspect all would turn into sex machine room and stay there until boss would go to do something more important than fighting them.

Most gays were actually abused, diddled or had an inappropriate sexual relationship at a young age making vampire fag even more believeable

 

[volklore]

Going for mute MC was the right choice, but why did they have to add those cringe ass facial animations. Would prefer a typical text-box with iso view, but if you're going to go for mute MC and cinematic dialog, why oh why not go all the ay and make a purely expressionless MC ala DAO?

 

[Irxy]

Codexers look at sixty dollar price tag for kotc2: lol pogz…miss me wit dat shieeet muthafugga

Codexers look at bg3: thank you daddy I will spend 150 on double deluxe edition for my cuck mindflayer bestiality fantasies

Ouch.

I'm pretty sure KotC2 is a passion project and has its moments but to put that even in a competition with a behemoth like BG3 ... retarded.

It's the best D&D CRPG ever made, the most complete implementation of the 3.5 ruleset ever put to the computer. It has grapple attacks, disarming attacks, trip attacks, shove and push and pull, your fighters actually become utility characters who can do more than just attack. Systems-wise it is the PERFECT tabletop D&D 3.5 simulator.

The campaign is so hardcore it will filter 90% of players though. To be fair, especially later fights can become too much about winning initiative and nuking the enemy before they nuke you, but the whole second level of the dungeon was the most intense and tight dungeon crawling experience I ever had.

This game is worth every penny. It's a masterpiece of game design. For hardcore CRPG players, this is leagues above the casual-friendly BG3.

KotC2 is a grognard's game.

It is so hardcore that 99,99% of playered will be filtered out due to extreme vomiting caused by looking at those shit-tier windows 3.11 era art & interface.
I'd check it out anyway yet every review I checked says that everything about this game aside from superb combat sucks.
And while combat is certainly important it's just not enough for RPGs.

 

[Reinhardt]

U ever played DOS2?

no. why should we?

It's one of the best RPG's ever made.

really low bar

 

[whydoibother]

But there's no classic male warrior/soldier personality trope

Arguably Wyll is exactly that. The tweeeeeeest here is that he's a warlock instead of a swashbuckling duelist.
Just like the twiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeest with Karlachs is that in addition to being a good natured dumb brute, she's also a naive girl.
Just like the TTTTTTTTTTTTTTWWWWWWWWWWWWWIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSTTTTTTTTTTT with both religious fanatics is that they were led astray by lying prophets, so to speak. Though in at least one case, you can make the lie real. No spoilers.