Baldur's Gate Baldur's Gate 3 RELEASE THREAD

[perfectslumbers]

It's just not enjoyable to fight this way. Bringing the difficulty down now.

You're going to struggle a lot since you're so underleveled. I arrived in act 2 at level 8.

 

[jf8350143]

Yo, I'm too lazy to dig through this thread and read 256 pages of drivel so somebody tell me, what's the general consensus of this game so far? I've seen a really raunchy drow 69 sex scene and a few cringe Astarion clips but don't know much else about the game because I'm too busy with work. Is it just woke reddit "haha look at me im such a witty character" trash, or is BG3 mostly decent? How's the story so far? Is playing BG1 + BG2 required before touching BG3? Do things from the previous games transfer over? I've never played either of them.

Also is this bitch an annoying rug munching dyke like she looks like or is she supposed to just be more of an amazonian dommy mommy thing? She's the only female NPC I've seen so far that looks interesting. Somebody tell me she isn't a gender queer troon and has a real vagina.

She is bascially a modern character being injected in to Faeurn. She talks and acts like a person who is playing DnD rather than a character in the world, if that makes any sense.

She was suppose to be this huge badass who kills devils and demons daily for whole 10 years and the moment she sees Jaheira she starts to fangirling.

 

[Desiderius]

Finally finished after 90! hours, Acts 1-2 were pretty good but my enjoyment began to sharply dip with the 3rd.
General Thoughts:

• Not a fan of the ending, very lousy RPG boilerplate where you just get to pick which ending you want right at the very end and previous choices only really change who's by your side for The Big Fight™.
• Story and writing in general was pretty midwit but that's to be expected from this genre/setting.
• Companion romances being initiated by high approval rather than picking flirty dialogue was such a numbskull decision, any potential these characters had to be endearing is flushed thanks to how pushy and pathetically they behave.
• 5e is weak, if you play martial have fun just not making any decisions for most level ups.
• Voice acting and motion capture performances are stellar, not quite CDPR level but close.
• Quests early on typically allow for clever stealth/diplomatic/environmental solutions, act 3 noticeably deteriorates into "Either pass this [Persuasion] check or clear another fight" design, sometimes just having characters behave irrationally to force a fight.

Yeah similar thoughts, they could had used the choices from previous acts to open new ways to play the game. But guess they wanted to make everything unified so your casual dad 40 yo with 309453242 kids and 400 wives could had time to finish once.

An observation compared to previous Larian games the story is at least "mid" this time instead of utter shit

They don't finish games because the suits think there's no money in it.

 

[Fedora Master]

I did the fight with Jaheira on Tactician and there's no way she survives or anyone else. I end up climbing on the beams, breaking the ladder and abusing AI that way.

It's just not enjoyable to fight this way. Bringing the difficulty down now.

Anyone playing it on Tactician w/o cheese?

I think I did without cheese? Besides Barrelmancy and shoving people from funny places what else?

It's still unironically the hardest fight in the Act, which in itself is pretty laughable

 

[Grampy_Bone]

oh yes goblins guarding place are not grouped up together for aoe nuking thats indeed shit design
and using consumables should be only for players to use to make it fair

Goblins are dumb trash mobs, not elite military tacticians. They can't go to town to buy alchemists fire nor have the industry, infrastructure, and skill to craft magic items in large quantities. They're a threat to peasants, not adventurers.

 

[Jermu]

oh yes goblins guarding place are not grouped up together for aoe nuking thats indeed shit design
and using consumables should be only for players to use to make it fair

Goblins are dumb trash mobs, not elite military tacticians. They can't go to town to buy alchemists fire nor have the industry, infrastructure, and skill to craft magic items in large quantities. They're a threat to peasants, not adventurers.

yes its like some smarter race is commanding em

 

[Eisenheinrich]

I did the fight with Jaheira on Tactician and there's no way she survives or anyone else. I end up climbing on the beams, breaking the ladder and abusing AI that way.

If you break up the ladder, you are not abusing the AI. You play as intended to win.

 

[Elthosian]

I avoided Gale as much as I could. Just refused any weird invitations from him.

Now I approached him to see if he has any comments about the recent major quest...

...

One of dialogue options - "About our night together"...

...

ENFORCED HOMOSEXUALITY IS HERE!

This is entirely a result of them implementing this in the laziest way humanly possible, because basically the romantic sequence is triggered purely by the amount of approval you have gained. There are no dialog options you have to go through to make it start, and no way to forstall it. Yes you can be an asshole to him which makes you lose approval, but that's just an indirect consequence of just being an asshole and approval from him can come really fast if you are at all good aligned, which most people probably are.

It's really mind boggling how pathetically lazy this is. If you are at all trying to make your NPCs happy, and most people like to do that in genral, it means ALL the NPCs will eventually try to come on to you, which means if you are a male, all the male NPCs will be faggots, where as if you are female, all the female NPCs will be lesbians, and it gets even more absurd because the romantic sequences are gated behind the druid quest, Hasilin or Haslin whatever his name is. So what happens is that you can gain a lot of approval before getting to that point, you get past the event that unlocks romances, go back to camp and suddenly ALL of them want to fuck you.

Also, there's no rejecting them. If you tell Gale to fuck off, he will shut up for a time, but gain enough approval and he'll try again because the romance is going to automatically trigger no matter what. Your choices aren't taken into account because the trigger is not the amount of approval you have, but what you gained. So you reject him once, earn the same amount of approval that triggered the romantic attempt the first time, and he'll try again. And the reason it is always Gale and not the others that do this is that he is the easiest NPC to get approval with.

It's really incredible just how bad this system is. I couldn't have come up with a worst way to do this myself even if i tried.

There's now a mod to shut that shit down. Jhaerik's Disable Reactions Mod (Avoid Unwanted Romance). You can shut down male-on-male or female-on-female romance altogether.

The downside is that not progressing the romance locks you out of male/female companion quest lines respectively, which might be a problem for completionists.

Interestingly, the modder says he isn't himself perturbed by the romances, but made the mod partly to gauge the strength of feeling about the topic.

Approval tweaks does the same without locking you out of content.

I though approval tweaks just slowed down the rate of influence gain? That mod shuts it off altogether (as Edgy rightly corrected me) for same sex.

Most of the horniness by other characters is associated with the approval ratings going up too quickly, causing you to miss camp interactions where you can kill the romance path early on.

I can’t say whether this works well for Gale as I lost him to the portal and soldiered on, but my guess is that it also helps. I don’t think it’s worth missing on several of the game’s quests when you have that alternative.

 

[Fedora Master]

The real question is: Why are all the goblins Bri'ish? What did Larian mean by this?

 

[GaelicVigil]

I've realized the thing I hate the most about BG3. I can't stand the fact that the game never allows me to set and complete my own goals without throwing me into sixteen other directions before I can take one step forward.

It's being praised for so much interaction and freedom, yet it doesn't even let me walk down the road for a few steps without forcing me into some new bullshit side plot.

I never feel comfortable in this game. I never feel like I can set goals, set up a base of operations, and complete missions on my own schedule because I'm too frazzled with drama from every direction.

Maybe this sort of thing really appeals to younger people with ADHD who need the constant pull of "stuff to do" because they can't stand simply going from point A to point B and back to point A again without interruption.

Anyone else feel the same?

 

[Takamori]

Finally finished after 90! hours, Acts 1-2 were pretty good but my enjoyment began to sharply dip with the 3rd.
General Thoughts:

• Not a fan of the ending, very lousy RPG boilerplate where you just get to pick which ending you want right at the very end and previous choices only really change who's by your side for The Big Fight™.
• Story and writing in general was pretty midwit but that's to be expected from this genre/setting.
• Companion romances being initiated by high approval rather than picking flirty dialogue was such a numbskull decision, any potential these characters had to be endearing is flushed thanks to how pushy and pathetically they behave.
• 5e is weak, if you play martial have fun just not making any decisions for most level ups.
• Voice acting and motion capture performances are stellar, not quite CDPR level but close.
• Quests early on typically allow for clever stealth/diplomatic/environmental solutions, act 3 noticeably deteriorates into "Either pass this [Persuasion] check or clear another fight" design, sometimes just having characters behave irrationally to force a fight.

Yeah similar thoughts, they could had used the choices from previous acts to open new ways to play the game. But guess they wanted to make everything unified so your casual dad 40 yo with 309453242 kids and 400 wives could had time to finish once.

An observation compared to previous Larian games the story is at least "mid" this time instead of utter shit

They don't finish games because the suits think there's no money in it.

Its a bit of suits and devs being bitches overall "Oh why I'm gonna do this so only 5% will play it"

 

[Xelocix]

Yo, I'm too lazy to dig through this thread and read 256 pages of drivel so somebody tell me, what's the general consensus of this game so far?

Unusually good RPG mechanics and overall, but 5E sucks and Larian put a bunch of tranny stuff in the game. Probably not as much trannyism as Wrath, but it may seem worse, since its cinematic.

Is 5E worse than 4E? I don't know shit about it mechanically but I remember people always bitching about 4E when I played the Neverwinter MMO and didn't have much problem with the worldbuilding in that game. Are the 5E problems just mechanical or from a worldbuilding POV too?

Troon stuff I'm not surprised about, but damn I was hoping it wouldn't be in this game. I bet the troons are hard to insult/kill/fuck over without a million consequences too. Gay bullshit like that is in every game that supports it.

lso is this bitch an annoying rug munching dyke like she looks like or is she supposed to just be more of an amazonian dommy mommy thing?

Not a dyke, but if you're into burn-victim demons, you have other problems.

I'm perfectly fine, my characters on the other hand...well...singed pubes might just have to be a character flaw I give them.

Xelocix

Karlach is the Reddit companion.

Goddamnit.

Otherwise, the game is both painful to play and pure joy at times. Long time since I have been this conflicted. It contains lots of typical modern shit, but at the same time, it's clear a lot of passion went into the game. The writing is so-so, beyond the oversexualized stuff I don't really care that much for any of the companions. The general story I feel is way too epic in scale, involving everything from aliens to gods, to angry devils. You don't have to have played the earlier games. It helps lore-wise, but there is so much stuff in BG3 that I feel lost, so I don't think it matters much.

The way you describe the writing makes it sound like a marvel capeshit movie. I was going to try playing BG1 and BG2 before BG3 but if I do I feel like I'm setting myself up for disappointment now. Like playing the Mass Effect trilogy and hoping into Andromeda right after.

 

[N'wah]

I was pretty disappointed when Shadowheart

Spoiler

turned her hair white. For the sake of inclusivity she should have at least given herself a penis. The story was very high fantasy so there is no logical reason why she couldn't. I multi-classed her into a Cleric / Wizard so it would've made total sense, and well Larian must have added penis sliders for a reason. Imagine what a brave move it would have been if Larian turned her trans as a symbolism for the change in identity she was undergoing.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Is 5E worse than 4E?

No.

Are the 5E problems just mechanical or from a worldbuilding POV too?

5E brings back a lot of the lore from 2E and 3E, but it's dumbed down. (For example, tieflings are now just demonic-looking humans instead of humands with various mutant-looking traits from some planar ancestor.)

4E was awful, in part, because it just shafted most of the lore for the planes to make it extremely dumbed down.

So, yes, 5E's lore is a problem, but not as much as 4E's was. Apart from the transsexual and faggot stuff they've forced into the setting, that is.

 

[Alienman]

The way you describe the writing makes it sound like a marvel capeshit movie. I was going to try playing BG1 and BG2 before BG3 but if I do I feel like I'm setting myself up for disappointment now. Like playing the Mass Effect trilogy and hoping into Andromeda right after.

It isn't that bad thankfully, you might find a few characters written in the style of the Marvel movies, but it's not the majority. If it was I wouldn't be able to sit through 80 hours of it
You still get all the aliens and stuff, but I guess they do have their place in the narrative, and the story can be enjoyable. It does have intriguing moments. You just have to accept it for what it is. Even if I like BG2, I think that game suffers a bit from the same problem - it's just too epic in places.

 

[Fedora Master]

4E was so bad they had to blow up the setting again to revert some of the changes. 5E is mechanically a mishmash of 4 and 3.5 that doesn't really satisfy either side but at least It Sorta Works.

The biggest problem is that there are a LOT of clearly superior choices with feats and spells, which gets only more pronounced with Larians design on top.

 

[Eisenheinrich]

It's being praised for so much interaction and freedom, yet it doesn't even let me walk down the road for a few steps without forcing me into some new bullshit side plot.

The old "Why do I have to walk through empty spaces checking chests" vs. the "Why is there so much content in this game, let an old man stroll peacefully through the woods"-dilemma again.

Which way western man?

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

I was pretty disappointed when Shadowheart

Spoiler

turned her hair white. For the sake of inclusivity she should have at least given herself a penis. The story was very high fantasy so there is no logical reason why she couldn't. I multi-classed her into a Cleric / Wizard so it would've made total sense, and well Larian must have added penis sliders for a reason. Imagine what a brave move it would have been if Larian turned her trans as a symbolism for the change in identity she was undergoing.

Is that the good route? Evil route just has her part her bangs to try to look more like Shar.

Both are kind of lame ideas. It's what you expect some dumb modern cunt to do after her boyfriend dumps her, not what someone would do when changing what's probably the most important part of their whole life.

 

[Fedora Master]

There are Svirfneblin in Baldurs Gate but so far I've seen exactly one Dragonborn in the entire game and he was a random peasant npc. Almost as if the entire race was an afterthought.

 

[GaelicVigil]

Yo, I'm too lazy to dig through this thread and read 256 pages of drivel so somebody tell me, what's the general consensus of this game so far?

Unusually good RPG mechanics and overall, but 5E sucks and Larian put a bunch of tranny stuff in the game. Probably not as much trannyism as Wrath, but it may seem worse, since its cinematic.

Is 5E worse than 4E? I don't know shit about it mechanically but I remember people always bitching about 4E when I played the Neverwinter MMO and didn't have much problem with the worldbuilding in that game. Are the 5E problems just mechanical or from a worldbuilding POV too?

Troon stuff I'm not surprised about, but damn I was hoping it wouldn't be in this game. I bet the troons are hard to insult/kill/fuck over without a million consequences too. Gay bullshit like that is in every game that supports it.

lso is this bitch an annoying rug munching dyke like she looks like or is she supposed to just be more of an amazonian dommy mommy thing?

Not a dyke, but if you're into burn-victim demons, you have other problems.

I'm perfectly fine, my characters on the other hand...well...singed pubes might just have to be a character flaw I give them.

Xelocix

Karlach is the Reddit companion.

Goddamnit.

Otherwise, the game is both painful to play and pure joy at times. Long time since I have been this conflicted. It contains lots of typical modern shit, but at the same time, it's clear a lot of passion went into the game. The writing is so-so, beyond the oversexualized stuff I don't really care that much for any of the companions. The general story I feel is way too epic in scale, involving everything from aliens to gods, to angry devils. You don't have to have played the earlier games. It helps lore-wise, but there is so much stuff in BG3 that I feel lost, so I don't think it matters much.

The way you describe the writing makes it sound like a marvel capeshit movie. I was going to try playing BG1 and BG2 before BG3 but if I do I feel like I'm setting myself up for disappointment now. Like playing the Mass Effect trilogy and hoping into Andromeda right after.

I watched Guardians of the Galaxy 3 today and I just had the realization that all of these movies and games are interchangeable: talking alien creatures with swords, pew-pews, and magic/psychic abilities. They all have the same ultra-epic alien invasion, world ending plots. They all have the same slapstick ironic humor. They all have the action cut scenes / sequences. They are all have a few tranny/negro/asian cardboard cutouts set front and center for the hero to sleep with.

Seriously. They are all the same in tone. Marvel, Star Wars, Dungeons & Dragons, Star Trek, and on and on. They are all the same. Corporate, ESG funded shlock.

 

[Tyranicon]

I still haven't seen Shadowtits. How many times are you supposed to rest?

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

He makes a legitimate point, but (as he's implying himself) this is not something strictly related to BG3, it applies to a vast range of titles.

If you aren't willing to commit to an extent, to learn how "the systems and rules in a game work", to have a grasp on what you are actually doing. you simply are not going to enjoy certain games.
Which is why I groan and roll my eyes every goddamn time we get some idiotic clickbait take from PC Gamer or similar that goes more or less "Hey, my casual friends, this is game that will always forgive you even if you do everything wrong and where you don't need to understand any of that nerd stuff!! Isn't this wonderful?"

No, it fucking isn't.
First things first, it's not even remotely true and the game (as most games of this type) will require your understanding of some basic system to not make the experience completely random and miserable.
Second, IF that was true, it wouldn't be anything praiseworthy, only strong circumstantial evidence that the game is probably shallow as shit.

 

[GaelicVigil]

View attachment 40025

I still haven't seen Shadowtits. How many times are you supposed to rest?

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

The way you describe the writing makes it sound like a marvel capeshit movie. I was going to try playing BG1 and BG2 before BG3 but if I do I feel like I'm setting myself up for disappointment now. Like playing the Mass Effect trilogy and hoping into Andromeda right after.

It isn't that bad thankfully, you might find a few characters written in the style of the Marvel movies, but it's not the majority. If it was I wouldn't be able to sit through 80 hours of it
You still get all the aliens and stuff, but I guess they do have their place in the narrative, and the story can be enjoyable. It does have intriguing moments. You just have to accept it for what it is. Even if I like BG2, I think that game suffers a bit from the same problem - it's just too epic in places.

BG2 was almost as high fantasy as BG3. From start to finish, you're dealing with some pretty far out concepts of D&D - including mindflayers.

As I said: Irenicus' dungeon at the start has cloning vats, magic portals, and a room where you can look at entirely different worlds, including an modern Earth-like one with cars.

The game had several instances of things like planar travel, astral skiffs, travel to the hells, epic wars in ToB. And you start it in some psychopath's dungeon where he's already cut up one of the characters from the previous game.

If BG2 were given the same AAA treatment that BG3 has, I think it'd look very similar. Probably with better writing on the whole, but still similar.

 

[Takamori]

Well time for some Dark Urges Paladin gameplay, in theory this is Hard mode due to constant will rolls