Baldur's Gate Baldur's Gate 3 RELEASE THREAD

[Lagole Gon]

Oh wow. They are not exactly subtle with "We played Bloodborne recently" in act 2 ruined city location.

 

[Agame]

In my defense I knew nothing about the game going into it, aside from the clearly flaming homo 'Bioware incorporated' companions, so I was assuming it was going to play something like Dragon Age Inquisition - set every one to auto attack and step away from the computer.

Its a pleasant surprise that it does require some thought in combat. I am just not sure if I enjoy the 'puzzle' style of combat that requires reloading/fore knowledge, but maybe if I keep playing there is less of that.

 

[HammyTheFat]

Is it just Minratha that initiates total druid death? I'm thinking ahead to my evil run and I'm wondering if I can still attack the grove if I murder Gut and the bugbear/hobgoblin whatever he is for their brain worms.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Lmao, so Wyll is just written like a character from an 80s saturday morning cartoon.

 

[perfectslumbers]

Lmao, so Wyll is just written like a character from an 80s saturday morning cartoon.

At first but for most of the game he's just boring and dour. Unless you dance with him of course

 

[Lagole Gon]

Is it just Minratha that initiates total druid death? I'm thinking ahead to my evil run and I'm wondering if I can still attack the grove if I murder Gut and the bugbear/hobgoblin whatever he is for their brain worms.

You can kill the goblin shaman.
But after killing hobgoblin leader everyone will turn hostile. No matter what, AFAIK.

 

[Grunker]

Lmao, so Wyll is just written like a character from an 80s saturday morning cartoon.

No, it’s much worse. He is incredibly, almost unbelievably boring. He literally doesn’t have a single interesting story beat

 

[Fedora Master]

The only instance I've actually noticed any reactivity was when the Tiefling kids recounted what I did for them at the Last Light Inn.

Well that’s a lie. I’ve been the one constantly talking down the game’s C&C (not reactivity, there is a lot of that), but if you got to last light you know that Jaheira reacts differently based on your actions and there will be different characters joining that convo acknowledging or berating your actions. So you had to have seen more C&C than the Tiefling kids.

There’s more unavoidable instances of C&C but that’s one that you cannot have avoided seeing if you got to Last Light.

The game doesn’t have much C&C though, especially in its quest design. It’s often more a question of whether a quest is available at all or not.

I'm sure there was, like the Harpers saying I rescued them, but it's inconsequential.

 

[Lagole Gon]

After you get accustomed to the "I'm a proud exotic warrior" overload, Fr'og is actually a solid companion.
Simple gimmick - alien in a strange land. No more, no less. Even Larian can't screw it up.

 

[AwesomeButton]

wtf bros spying on me with tadpoles and shit

What the actual f....

You think they feel any better seeing this?

 

[Orud]

So, 1.5 million characters are created. Can we conclude that sales are so far around 2 million?

No, because it already sold more than 2.5 million during early access.

 

[Reinhardt]

After you get accustomed to the "I'm a proud exotic warrior" overload, Fr'og is actually a solid companion.
Simple gimmick - alien in a strange land. No more, no less. Even Larian can't screw it up.

frog is a bro. she approves my path of extreme violence monkeh.

 

[AwesomeButton]

It's about dopamine. When it comes to high budget entertainment, you're competing with The Avengers, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings. People are already used to epic stories. Their brains are used to it. You just have to keep going bigger until people are sick to death of it.

I think it's a case of stifled imaginations, and it's not necessary to have an epic story. Conan the Barbarian (the Schwarzeneger movie) was a great low-level story.

For me it all starts with a character concept. But to bring about a good character concept, one needs to be at least somewhat seeped into reality - maybe history, maybe philosophy. But by going off of some influential work, you are producing a derivative of something that's already a derivative.

 

[AwesomeButton]

AAA games are spending big money, and they're not going to do that to tell a small, forgettable story that will get lost in people's memories

Lol, like the market isn't full of completely forgettable high level stories. On the contrary, a low level story has the advantage of concentrating more on the characters.

I remember Chris Avellone in some Q&A saying that it's not about the idea you have, but about the execution. When you think about it, a guy who dresses as a bat and fights an enemy who dresses as a clown sounds like an idea without much chances, but when you see the execution, it's a classic.

 

[Shrimp]

I feel like the budget for the game was too much and Larian has too many staff members that do nothing. There is no polish in the end areas many bugs and glitches that show no one playtested or the product was rushed.

Look at BG3 it cost over 100m and DoS2 cost under 3m. They are almost the same size all of the end game cutscenes looked ugly like Da:I animation.

BG3 needs an enhanced edition. The only reason this game even sold was because of marketing it doesn't make any logical sense that it did so well and cost so much. Really strange something shady going on.

There's no telling how much of the budget was spent on the actual systems and refinement of the gameplay itself. For all we know they could've blown half of their money on motion capture studios and 3D animations.

Full voice acting and cinematic mo-cap cutscenes can make for a nice experience, but it comes at the cost of being a black hole swallowing up incredible amounts of development time and budget.
Not to mention how it also affects the writing since it discourages the writers from writing long-winded monologues (not necessarily a bad thing) and makes it so that any chance of inconsistencies and lines that feel out of place have a much smaller chance of getting fixed post-release. The likelihood of the studio hiring the VAs just to rerecord a handful of lines to add additional support for a scenario they hadn't thought of during development are slim to none.

Don't get me wrong, I think there's definitely a place for RPGs with full voice acting and cutscenes, but on the other hand I'd rather go without them tbh

 

[Riddler]

Im the only one who thinks that the game is challenging even on normal? sometimes enemies combo me with spells on turn 1 before i can even do anything

It's challenging if you don't min/max your build or buffs, and don't cheese with push mechanics or barrels. It's child's play if you do.

If find it annoying that people will come to the thread and complain how easy the combat is in one sentence, and then list the ways it can be cheesed in the next. Yes, if you place exploding barrels, make strong multiclass builds or otherwise exploit the system to its fullest potential, the game will be easy.

This is not a hardcore strategy game. There's at least two early-game bosses that can simply be pushed down a hole in one turn, and some of the early fights have environment win buttons like barrels. You can eliminate the entire druid grove without engaging in combat at all. You can talk one of the hardest bosses in Act 2 into killing himself and all his men. If you play it like a hardcore strategy game, you'll just end up getting bored.

Yeah, some of the fights feel more like puzzles where if you solve them they become trivial, and if you don't you get trounced. Not sure I like that kind of design much

Is this some kind of late game thing? I just started c2 and got to the harper camp and I feel like what you guys are talking about applies to like 1 fight so far.

I don't min max, use push or barrels and I barely even use consumables; I just try to control the action economy and get advantage on attacks.

No, pretty much from the start, though we all have different definitions of what is a puzzle fight.

I started a second playthrough on tactician and there I actually felt what you described. You have to use all resources available to you, be strategic and borderline cheese encounters; but on normal? Fights just take a long ass time because there are so many combatants and animation speed is so slow.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Anyone else having problems where the game isn't utilising their ram and suffering for it? It's only using 4 out of my 32 gb of ram and I'm having issues with cutscenes not having geometry. Dunno what the problem is. I have a good ssd as well.

Enable Slow HDD mode, even if you have SSD. It's supposed to offload data to your ram and vram, at least that's what it says on the tooltip. I haven't tested it but maybe the difference in negligible and you really need to be on an HDD to feel it.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Look at that shapely kielbasa sausage. Uncut, not to big, not too small, compliments the balls in terms of proportion. That woman has a nice set.

But look at the one the guard has.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Lol, like the market isn't full of completely forgettable high level stories. On the contrary, a low level story has the advantage of concentrating more on the characters.

Really doesn't matter if not enough normies buy it to begin with. You mistake memorable for substantive, unique or good. I'm talking about marketing.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Why would anyone actually side with bunch of treehuggers lol, ofc I was with the goblins

 

[Grauken]

I started a second playthrough on tactician and there I actually felt what you described. You have to use all resources available to you, be strategic and borderline cheese encounters; but on normal? Fights just take a long ass time because there are so many combatants and animation speed is so slow.

Ah, I'm playing on tactician, no idea how it feels on normal

 

[Renfri]

It was quite disappointing that after you get Minthara to join your party, she doesn't have companion quest at all, not even smaller one. It's not for lack of resources, cos there alot of stuff in game.

 

[Grunker]

It was quite disappointing that after you get Minthara to join your party, she doesn't have companion quest at all, not even smaller one. It's not for lack of resources, cos there alot of stuff in game.

I think they count the optional companions' joining requirement quests as their companion quests. Halsin's only "personal quest" is the one to get him to join.

 

[Desiderius]

I don't know about others but party members and interactions is one of my favorite aspects of party based rpgs. For all bioware criticism they always delivered on that aspect for me. I always had that male comradery and that really made me feel like we were brothers who had each other's backs in life and death situations.

You had Garrus in mass effect. Loved the moment when you did the shooting competition with him and you could miss on purpose and he said the line about this being his favorite place in the citadel. Actually hilarious and great male comradery.

Alistar was awesome in DAO. Great bro and funny. I was happy to marry him with the queen and encourage him to be king because he was my boy.

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

Edit: also had Canderous in Kotor.

I have brotherly comradery with goobers like Wyll, spergs like Gale, and even scoundrels like Astarion in rl. A lot depends on what you bring to the table too.

Took me awhile to unlock the code for the brocephuses you esteem - being a sperg myself - but running out of fucks to give helped with that. So did living around black dudes a lot.

Seems like you unlocked the true meaning of "tolerance". Which is one of the most abused words in modern political landscape.

I appreciate the sentiment but my sense is that mere tolerance is in practice the opposite of the approach that engenders real brotherhood/solidarity/fraternité/esprit de corps. One doesn't merely tolerate that which one hates - and if it is sufficiently hateful one shouldn't at all - one focuses on what one loves (philia aka no homo), values, can build on, in a word needs to accomplish the task at hand and focuses on that which requires no tolerance. It then takes on a life of its own.

The fact that Larian and Owlcat relegate that approach to the most "evil"/alien companions is a mark of the West's alienation from itself, which is another way to describe decadence.

I don't know about others but party members and interactions is one of my favorite aspects of party based rpgs. For all bioware criticism they always delivered on that aspect for me. I always had that male comradery and that really made me feel like we were brothers who had each other's backs in life and death situations.

You had Garrus in mass effect. Loved the moment when you did the shooting competition with him and you could miss on purpose and he said the line about this being his favorite place in the citadel. Actually hilarious and great male comradery.

Alistar was awesome in DAO. Great bro and funny. I was happy to marry him with the queen and encourage him to be king because he was my boy.

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

Edit: also had Canderous in Kotor.

I have brotherly comradery with goobers like Wyll, spergs like Gale, and even scoundrels like Astarion in rl. A lot depends on what you bring to the table too.

Took me awhile to unlock the code for the brocephuses you esteem - being a sperg myself - but running out of fucks to give helped with that. So did living around black dudes a lot.

This weirdly reads like "I have gay sex with black dudes all the time "

Like Paul writing his epistles it's an objection I did anticipate, but of course that reaction itself is a mark of the simple oddness of decadent times. It would be akin to reading a Swen post as "I love MAGA". Not only is it absurd but of course he's viscerally disgusted by the thought. That isn't *all* conditioning. Fr fr regular men do not want to smoke pole any more than we want to drink motor oil. It is in fact not a thing so making a game where *all* companions do is just, well, like a betrayal of the whole spirit of the the thing itself.

 

[Renfri]

It was quite disappointing that after you get Minthara to join your party, she doesn't have companion quest at all, not even smaller one. It's not for lack of resources, cos there alot of stuff in game.

I think they count the optional companions' joining requirement quests as their companion quests. Halsin's only "personal quest" is the one to get him to join.

Comparing those two to Shadowheart's quest makes them quite laughable unfortuntately.