Baldur's Gate Baldur's Gate 3 RELEASE THREAD

[Gradenmayer]

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

This issue will disappear whenever AI will be able to generate convincing voices (it’s almost there btw).

 

[Desiderius]

I think they might have been afraid that new players would hate her (or that they would get criticism from feminists) if they actually stuck to her womansplaining, nagging, I-know-better-than-everyone old self.

Or maybe they've been forced to learn from the error of their ways. Have you?

That's not what they've done here. What they've captured is that weird dichotomy between him being a simpleton yet using a very rich vocabulary to express his simple and often idiotic (yet sometimes strangely insightful) speech. It's quite well done if you like that sort of thing. Like I said it's not really for me, but it's basically the best way possible to write the character.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12505.The_Idiot

 

[perfectslumbers]

Tentacle hentai and its consequences have been a disaster for the CRPG genre. It has greatly increased the voice acting quality for those of us who play “advanced” games, but it has reduced writing quality, has made stories unfulfilling, has subjected human beings to indignities (mindflayer sex), has led to widespread psychological suffering (mindflayers are trying to fuck me), and has inflicted severe damage on the natural world (mindflayer sex goes against the wishes of God). The continued development of technology will worsen the situation. It will certainly subject human beings to more of Sven's perversions and inflict greater damage on the genre.

 

[Shrimp]

This game's pacing is fucked. Act 2 has all these big fights/story moments but once you reach Baldur's Gate is regresses into murder mystery/haunted house/missing person antics and a million different other small diversions when the plot is supposed to be finishing up.

I haven't fully finished the game just yet (most likely will tomorrow) so take this with a grain of salt, but I got the impression that as soon as you step into the main area of act 3 you can easily beeline straight for the ending while ignoring most of the side quests in the city.
It almost happened to me and I had to deliberately pace myself and go back to exploring the city since I had barely even uncovered the map at that point.

I agree it does make the pacing feel a bit weird, but on the other hand it has allowed me to treat everything else I encounter as optional bosses that I get to do while having access to the highest tier of tools the game lets you have. It's nice that the game gives me ample opportunities to actually make use of 6th level spells instead of making me turn over every stone just to barely reach level 11 or 12 a few minutes before the final boss.

 

[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

This issue will disappear whenever AI will be able to generate convincing voices (it’s almost there btw).

This is something I've thought about a lot and I really hope they end up becoming an industry staple despite the VAs themselves and uninformed Twatter activists trying hard to push against anything even remotely AI related. Most of the concerns seem to stem from them worrying they'll get replaced whereas in a realistic scenario it will (probably) be more of a toolkit that gets incorporated in the current workflow of writing and recording.
Once the technology is sufficiently advanced to mimic human speech without weird pronunciations or inflections I can imagine the VAs would be able to essentially sell licenses to 'voice packs' or some equivalent thereof that game developers can make use of.
Anything that the AI still won't be able to replicate adequately can be recorded by the real VAs who will only have to spend a fraction of the amount of time they otherwise would've been in the recording studio.

I think it's gonna take some time before we start seeing this sort of thing in AAA games and I can't imagine the first wave of examples and results produced by indie devs/mid-size studios will be very good, but it's definitely only a matter of time.
Still doesn't solve the issue of motion capture and 3D cutscenes being a huge drain on resources and budget though. Quite ironic since if anything the AI voice acting would be much better suited for Infinity engine-like RPGs and its successors since you can just cram all the dialogue and miscellanious text into a textbox at the bottom of the screen instead of worrying about an animated cutscene.

 

[Grunker]

Or maybe they've been forced to learn from the error of their ways. Have you?

Read again - that's exactly what they tried, they just executed poorly on the concept.

 

[Renfri]

To sum up my thoughts after finishing the game:

Combat, many fights with just lots of enemies and take too long for no good reason, some bosses are very easy to burst down, I killed several first turn. Combat was still alot more fun overall compared to Original Sin games. Why can't they just give option speed up combat.

Music did it job well, but very few outstanding songs, Raphael's Final Act was one of them. I still listen to Kirill's stuff sometimes, but I doubt I listen many songs from BG3.

Over the top horniness, very early on several companions wanted to bang you, and other creepy things later that should have been cut. They should have made people work for sex instead of being such an easy thing.

Bugs (my favourite was quest log giving conflicting updates about state of events and characters) and (lot of) crashes. Few quests were hard to complete, one I just gave up trying in Act 3 and left unfinished. In Act 2 I tried several times make one quest work, but I just moved on, it did get completed but not great.

Bugged out Shadowheart romance, she called me her love, wanted to have kinky time with me in dialogue, but somehow nothing happened, I guess it was one of those late game bugs. After googling about this, it seems I wasn't only one with this issue. Fixing this should be top priority.

Some standout places were Underdark and the Shadow Cursed Lands. Cool atmosphere and I enjoyed side quests in those areas alot. First Act was smooth with zero issues, which was to be expected. Baldur's Gate felt like proper town, it had that thing going for it.

Ending and other story stuff:

Spoiler

Ending kinda sucked if you chose evil thing, then it just ended without getting dialogue what companions would do, if you chose good ending then you'd get to chat with them after. Other strange thing was Jaheira wanting to join party even though you fucked up her friends, but she died in fight anyway and couldn't join. The Emperor just randomly switching teams right at the end, but I was more than happy to kill that pervert.

I liked game overall, but I'd find it easier to recommend with less bugs, crashes and espcially alot less horniness. Lenght of game makes it difficult to try again any time soon.

 

[Shrimp]

Tentacle hentai and its consequences have been a disaster for the CRPG genre. It has greatly increased the voice acting quality for those of us who play “advanced” games, but it has reduced writing quality, has made stories unfulfilling, has subjected human beings to indignities (mindflayer sex), has led to widespread psychological suffering (mindflayers are trying to fuck me), and has inflicted severe damage on the natural world (mindflayer sex goes against the wishes of God). The continued development of technology will worsen the situation. It will certainly subject human beings to more of Sven's perversions and inflict greater damage on the genre.

If BG3 truly will be the game to 'set the standard' for RPGs in this decade then my one hope for the future is that other studios will take the right lessons from it (interactive game world, generally speaking nice levels of reactivity, free-form adventuring and quest design) instead of the superficial aspects such as cinematic appeal, smaller character cast in favour of 'fleshed out' companions (lol) and a some times strange fixation on the Bioware approach to romances that at times makes the game feel like a dating sim.

Who am I kidding, of course they won't...

 

[King Crispy]

We have a thread established for cringe stuff in BG3. Please look for it the next time you want to post pictures of dicks encountered in BG3, both circumcised and not, whether on a male or a female. Don't post them here.

Thank you.

 

[BrotherFrank]

Beat the game. The ending sucks ass. It's ME 3 level of bad.

Whatever you do beforehand barely matters because every choices you make in the ending is almost the same no matter what you do during your playthrough.

There is no ending slides. On top of that, you can't even fucking talking to your companions before the final batter and after the final battle. The ones aren't in your team simply disappears, and never show up again. And even the ones in your team won't necessarily get a resolution to their arc. Gale's personal quest was straight up left unfinished in my playthrough becase the game never asks me what to do with the crown. Shadoweart just stands there the whole time and says nothing. Only La'zel gets a proper ending.

The emperor is a fucking joke, if you don't agree with him he just go fight for the enemy for no reason.

This sucks to hear and cements my opinion that in the end, despite the marketing over how detailed your relationship with your companions will be and how it will be so much more deep then old bioware games, actually lol no that was a whole load of lies. I mean me3 level of bad? At least in me3 you had a final talk with your bros, even those that were not playable in the game. So bg3 ending even worst in a number of ways, just missing a starchild.

Also supports my belief that it‘s better to just pick up the 3-4 companions you like and stick with them throughout the game rather then collecting them all like pokemon.
Between this and the clunky ui+unable to easily switch companions and having to dismiss/recruit them each time you want to check their gear, having more then a handful of companions is just a chore and discouraged by multiple aspects of the game itself.

I suppose one can argue this was already somewhat the case in the older baldurs gates, having to to back to the copper coronet/pocket dimension whenever you wanted to switch companions, but at least in those games you can fully resolve your companion’s arcs before the ending. And party size was 6, so offered more freedom in who you wanted to take.

Ah well if nothing else this will cut down on number of hearts i have to break.
So in my future runs will just stick with shadowheart, astarion , frog girl and wyll as those were my regulars, everyone else can gtfo.
Can throw in Jaheira and minsc i guess since they come late and don’t have a big ongoing narrative that makes you feel like you’re missing out if you bench them at camp for the finale. Hell if anything it’s lore accurate to how my bhaalspawn treated them back in the day, so they should be well used to it.

 

[jackofshadows]

Everyone hates it but I wonder if a keyword system is better for this kind of game, especially since they decided to make you unvoiced. Like, instead of an option that says "Hi, please tell me where the nearest dildo shop is", it would just say "[Ask about dildo shop]". Obviously you could just assume the current options are meant to be representative rather than what you're actually saying... but a lot of NPCs respond to you as if you've just said the exact words given by the option, which means your character is in fact saying all this bland shit in the exact dialect and wording given to you, no matter who you're trying to play as.

By the way I assume everyone forgot about that butinitially Larian came up with another idea for similiar reason apparently: all the dialogues were in the past tense like "I asked about nearest dildo shop".

 

[dukeofwoodberry]

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.

You can't have a brotherly bond or espirit de corps with Wyll and Gayle. First their personalities aren't set up for it. Wyll could have been if they had made him some tweaks. His character is a huge disappointment, could have been really cool if properly executed.

But more importantly you can't have a brotherly bond with someone who wants you to fuck their ass. The moment they ask you to do that, it's over. Would your brother ask you to fuck their ass? No because then you aren't brothers.

 

[dukeofwoodberry]

Does shadow pussy have more content than Asterion? I thought Asterion had the most. It's telling to me that it seems Larian wanted to make him the poster boy of the game. Even in the stats they posted, the biggest graphic was all the people who didn't fuck asterion like they were hurt about him.

Shadow pussy probably got romanced like 80% of the time. The average gamer isn't a gaymer. Tranny fuckers are too stupid to even complete this game most likely. Gaming is still a hobby that's majority center right/right wing. Especially difficult/complicated games

 

[Shrimp]

Everyone hates it but I wonder if a keyword system is better for this kind of game, especially since they decided to make you unvoiced. Like, instead of an option that says "Hi, please tell me where the nearest dildo shop is", it would just say "[Ask about dildo shop]". Obviously you could just assume the current options are meant to be representative rather than what you're actually saying... but a lot of NPCs respond to you as if you've just said the exact words given by the option, which means your character is in fact saying all this bland shit in the exact dialect and wording given to you, no matter who you're trying to play as.

By the way I assume everyone forgot about that butinitially Larian came up with another idea for similiar reason apparently: all the dialogues were in the past tense like "I asked about nearest dildo shop".

I could be wrong here but from what I remember this never even made it into early access. I think it showed up in the earliest screenshots of the game following its initial announcement and received an overwhelmingly negative reception, so they ended up changing it.
I think even people on here disliked it because the *asterisks* reminded them of the cringy *pounces on u x3 rawr* speech from the 2000s. Who's to say what would've happened if they kept the ambiguous lines instead though.

 

[Shaki]

I have a bug that removes my clothes all the time on myself. Whatever I wear just disappears when I change maps so I have to walk around camp naked.

Are you sure you aren't just using this item without reading the description

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Still no companions I like. The drow lady has such a deep and raspy voice. It's unnerving. I hope some mod changes that.

I will add that to the list of mods to try to make at some point. I hope someone will put out a helpful modding guide soon enough.

I think skintone should be an easy fix at first. Then we need to mod out Gale's romance paths, either in general or for men only. Astarion's too maybe, even though it'd be unrealistic for someone who sounds like that to not be at least half a fag.

 

[Lyric Suite]

It's telling to me that it seems Larian wanted to make him the poster boy of the game.

Obviously, since he is the overtly faggot one.

Looking at Wyll seems niggers got the short hand of the stick here when it comes to woke rapresentation. He is essentially just boring tokenism, everything else in this game revolves around teh gay.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Does shadow pussy have more content than Asterion?

Probably at least as much, if not way more. About half of Act 2 is very closely related to an aspect of her character. Astarion hasn't had nearly that much.

 

[jf8350143]

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.

As far as I know Minthara didn't even have any cut scenes after she joins the party. She has no personal quest, no romances, nothing. She is the defination of after thoughts. And it requires you to give up three other companions to get her.

All of the four non origin character companions are like that minus Jaehira, she actually has a decent amout of content even after she joins you.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

As far as I know Minthara didn't even have any cut scenes after she joins the party. She has no personal quest, no romances, nothing. She is the defination of after thoughts.

She has several interjections, especially during Act 2 and a scene at the end of Act 2 where she talks about plans for the future.

I'm not sure about romance. I know her relationship is hard to increase. She implies that there might be something in the future, but maybe that's for after the game.

 

[Tacgnol]

Finished it after 54 hours. Really enjoyed it overall, though the ending is very rushed. There are no slides and all you really get is a couple of lines of dialogue with each companion.

Act 3 generally feels rather unpolished, and whilst it does have quite a lot of content there are a lot of bugs right now and bits of it feel quite rushed.

Does make me wonder if it was a good idea for the release date to be brought forward.

Endgame spoilers for those interested:

There was no consequence for evolving the tadpole/taking the mindflayer powers. I ascended to half-illithid with the special tadpole given to you in act 3. This wasn't commented on by anyone but companions and it was ultimately purged in the end when all the tadpoles get destroyed.

I was trusting/working with The Emperor (actually Balduran turned into a mindflayer), but I hit a bug where he immediately accused me of betraying him after hearing his plan for the endgame. I ended up working with the trapped Illithid prince, Orpheus, who turned out to be a good guy (by Gith standards).

9/10 game, brought down to 8/10 by Act 3 and the rushed ending.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

All of the four non origin character companions are like that minus Jaehira, she actually has a decent amout of content even after she joins you.

Can the player bang granny Jaheira? Also, how many negro kids does she have?

 

[Grauken]

Does make me wonder if it was a good idea for the release date to be brought forward.

Certainly from a financial point of view. They can patch the ending, since with this size many players won't see it in weeks. And competing with Starfield might have been not good for them

 

[Tacgnol]

Does make me wonder if it was a good idea for the release date to be brought forward.

Certainly from a financial point of view. They can patch the ending, since with this size many players won't see it in weeks. And competing with Starfield might have been not good for them

I hope they do actually spend some time revamping it and don't just leave it in its current state.

 

[Shrimp]

Yet another case of it being best to wait for the Definitive Edition™ that comes out 1 or 2 years down the line huh
Honestly kind of sad