Baldur's Gate Baldur's Gate 3 RELEASE THREAD

[Sunri]

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

 

[Lemming42]

How far into the game were you with your first savegame? Anyway, if your savegames still work then most likely you were playing the correct version.

I was into Act 3. I've noticed the big version watermark under the minimap has disappeared now.

 

[Grunker]

Rate the following games for me in rough order of how good you think they are. Help me filter out what kind of gamer you are.

Underrail
Baldur's Gate
Baldur's Gate II
Age of Decadence
Disco Elysium
Planescape: Torment
Divinity: Original Sin 2
Icewind Dale
Disco Elysium
Arcanum
Fallout
Pillars of Eternity
Fallout 2
Fallout: New Vegas
ATOM RPG

Personal preference rather than "objective merits" (otherwise Fallout would be higher):

1. BG2
2. Planescape: Torment
3. BG1
4. Underrail
5. Fallout: New Vegas
6. Icewind Dale
7. Disco Elysium
8. Pillars of Eternity
9. Fallout
10. Fallout 2
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
11. Arcanum
12. Divinity: Original Sin 2
13. Age of Decadence
14. ATOM

 

[AwesomeButton]

The takeaway for the other developers won't be "make a game in a setting people care about, with good level design and production value", it'll be "ADD MORE HOMOS AND BROWN PEOPLE"

Why are you so fixated on homos and black people?

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Kinda disagree. He's portraited as having good (LG) intentions but clearly being mentally retarded.

I think this was him in Early Access, but the rewrite seems to be trying to portray him as an antihero.

He's constantly pretending to be some epic hero, but really he's just a guy who made a deal with a devil.

It kind of makes sense on one hand. Warlocks have high Charisma. Why wouldn't there be one who pretended to be a good guy?

But the execution is lackluster, and he's clearly some kind of Mary Sue magical negro. Unlike every other character in Act 1, you aren't given an option to kill just him. Instead, you have to sit back while he jumps around like a superhero with his buffed health bar and stats, taking down gobos left and right.

 

[AwesomeButton]

scandal whores

This is a perfect description. I'll be using it henceforth.

 

[Desiderius]

This game is pretty powered down compared to Wrath or D:OS II tho. It's really nice all the subtle effects they've included without having to make everything +100 to hit vs 95 AC, which also ends up being a problem with MMO design and Diablo clones.

I thought that's the kind of shit you liked.

What's your point?

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Personal preference rather than "objective merits" (otherwise Fallout would be higher):

7. Disco Elysium
8. Pillars of Eternity
9. Fallout
10. Fallout 2
.
.
.
11. Arcanum
.
13. Age of Decadence

 

[Elthosian]

How far into the game were you with your first savegame? Anyway, if your savegames still work then most likely you were playing the correct version.

I was into Act 3. I've noticed the big version watermark under the minimap has disappeared now.

The watermark was present until hotfix 2 or 3, you definitely were playing the correct version. Unsure if your first save was bugged, but that was certainly not EA.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Rate the following games for me in rough order of how good you think they are. Help me filter out what kind of gamer you are.

Underrail
Baldur's Gate
Baldur's Gate II
Age of Decadence
Disco Elysium
Planescape: Torment
Divinity: Original Sin 2
Icewind Dale
Disco Elysium
Arcanum
Fallout
Pillars of Eternity
Fallout 2
Fallout: New Vegas
ATOM RPG

Why would you put Disco Elysium on an RPG list twice when it isn't one?

 

[Elthosian]

Rate the following games for me in rough order of how good you think they are. Help me filter out what kind of gamer you are.

Underrail
Baldur's Gate
Baldur's Gate II
Age of Decadence
Disco Elysium
Planescape: Torment
Divinity: Original Sin 2
Icewind Dale
Disco Elysium
Arcanum
Fallout
Pillars of Eternity
Fallout 2
Fallout: New Vegas
ATOM RPG

1. Arcanum
2. Fallout
3. UnderRail
4. Planescape: Torment
5. Fallout 2
6. Baldur's Gate 2
7. Age of Decadence
8. Fallout: New Vegas
9. Divinity: Original Sin 2
10. Baldur's Gate
.
.
.
11. Pillars of Eternity

1-6 are fairly interchangeable, just like 7-10. Great games all of these. I enjoyed POE but it got repetitive halfway through and I just wanted it to be over.

Have to find the time to finish Disco Elysium, but what I played left me pretty satisfied. Likely to be closer to the first rather than the second half of my ranking.

 

[Grunker]

Personal preference rather than "objective merits" (otherwise Fallout would be higher):

7. Disco Elysium
8. Pillars of Eternity
9. Fallout
10. Fallout 2
.
.
.
11. Arcanum
.
13. Age of Decadence

Arcanum is mediocre and AoD is pretty bad

 

[AwesomeButton]

This is a very fantastic take.
“You engage as little as you need to, and then you wonder why you’re not getting back what you had when you engaged more.”

Lol not surprised the (maybe) chick enjoys watching Josh Strife Hayes, the handsome, eloquent, British Muay Thai fighter that enjoys talking about game design/philosophy.

That being said he's absolutely correct and is actually spitting facts here. He has decent content sometimes but I dislike how surface level he seems to get into certain games. He enjoys OSRS and plays it, but I've yet to see him do any high level PvM. Same can be said about the other MMOs he plays. The new player experience is important and I can understand being a casual gamer, but you if you never do high level content, you're creating a major blind spot.

That is not even mentioning the fact that he was hyping up D:OS2 which seems to be a shit cRPG based off of the Codex's impressions as well as my first few hours with the game.

When it comes to Codex this days you have to learn to filter gamers from scandal whores so opinions on game in the Codex as a site are not really reliable to make a decision giving that here we have more people interested in outrage rather than games.

Dos2 was far from perfect tho the DOS games are responsable to lit the sparkle for other titles coming. BG3 despite the flaws because it has flaws as well to me is the best crpg released in a lot of time and i have more fun to play it than the originals and believe i love the originals.

Rate the following games for me in rough order of how good you think they are. Help me filter out what kind of gamer you are.

Underrail
Baldur's Gate
Baldur's Gate II
Age of Decadence
Disco Elysium
Planescape: Torment
Divinity: Original Sin 2
Icewind Dale
Disco Elysium
Arcanum
Fallout
Pillars of Eternity
Fallout 2
Fallout: New Vegas
ATOM RPG

I forget, are you some kind of great fan of Disco Elysium. You've put it twice

I'd say, it's a very unfair comparison, because you want to compare games made by vastly different companies, with different resources at their disposal, and in different time periods where the "fashion" was different, and thus the accent on gameplay and mechanics was different. Still, very roughly speaking here is my order:
Arcanum
Fallout
Underrail
Icewind Dale
Age of Decadence
(Fallout 2 || Fallout: New Vegas || Baldur's Gate) -- very much sharing the same spot
Baldur's Gate 2
Deadfire (why not include this, haven't you played it?)
Pillars of Eternity
Disco Elysium - putting it here because this one is "genre-fluid"
Divinity Original Sin 2 (lol, no contest for this last place)
-----
(ATOM
Planescape: Torment) - haven't played enough to judge, but I don't think I'd rate them very highly

Looking at the list, I've pretty much classified them in order of how much freedom for exploration each one gives. Only Icewind Dale is an outlier, but I value its atmosphere and coherent design so much that for me it compensates for its linearity. Personal choice.

P.S.
Shit, I've played more than a few RPGs throughout the years

 

[AwesomeButton]

Check how many people finished the game yet and then again in 6 months.

E: Apparently nobody has finished the game on Tactician and 1.1% have finished it at all yet.

Some streamers finished game on Tactician, and complained why Hope exploded in combat when she used certain stuff.
I see two streamers that are doing solo on Tactician. One with rogue, the other with Monk.

Why are you watching streamers

People play slot machines, watch stramers, even read your posts. You never know when something of value may come up.

 

[Desiderius]

If you want Shadowtits (and the rest) it's a simple matter of equipment.

Appreciated the Intimidation check for my Deep Gnome when the Gith told me she was taking control. Whatever. Owlcat includes HoMM as minigame, Larian goes with The Princess Comes of Age.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

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.

Not only that, you can't even rejected the NPC and be done with it. Gale tried to hit on my MC and I said fuck off not interested. He said he won't try again, and later he tries again. For fuck sake.

I refrained from Gale's invitation to experience the "Weave" quite early on, and he's never bothered my character since then. Is this intended or a fortuitous bug?

 

[Grauken]

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.

Not only that, you can't even rejected the NPC and be done with it. Gale tried to hit on my MC and I said fuck off not interested. He said he won't try again, and later he tries again. For fuck sake.

I refrained from Gale's invitation to experience the "Weave" quite early on, and he's never bothered my character since then. Is this intended or a fortuitous bug?

It's intended, same for me, he's just a good bro now but never tried to jump my bones.

 

[jf8350143]

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.

Not only that, you can't even rejected the NPC and be done with it. Gale tried to hit on my MC and I said fuck off not interested. He said he won't try again, and later he tries again. For fuck sake.

I refrained from Gale's invitation to experience the "Weave" quite early on, and he's never bothered my character since then. Is this intended or a fortuitous bug?

Other NPCs seems to be working fine, you reject them once and they just won't bother you.

But Gale seems to be different, probablly due to the fact he has several different cut scenes(practice magic, celebration after the goblin and grove thing, then in chapter 2 he asks you to watch the stars with him) and all of them can lead to you start a relationship with him(or a friendship if you didn't hard reject him right from the start).

 

[Grunker]

Check how many people finished the game yet and then again in 6 months.

E: Apparently nobody has finished the game on Tactician and 1.1% have finished it at all yet.

Some streamers finished game on Tactician, and complained why Hope exploded in combat when she used certain stuff.
I see two streamers that are doing solo on Tactician. One with rogue, the other with Monk.

Why are you watching streamers

People play slot machines, watch stramers, even read your posts. You never know when something of value may come up.

I haven't watched any streams of BG3 except having this one very wholesome basic bitch lady called Tea something run on my second monitor while doing other things. She's kind of interesting to watch because on the one hand she's never played a single RPG before, but on the other she's very interested in actually learning the systems - like, learning the rules of 5E and stuff. It's kind of fun to watch someone who is simultaneously incredibly shit at the game but on the other hand very patient and trying her best to actually learn. Kind of like teaching people to play pnp.

 

[Darkwind]

I'm just reveling in the fact that cRPGs are mainstream again. Hopefully this is the start of a renaissance that brings back quality games with talented creators.

Maybe this will also signal boost indies like Colony Ship? Would be nice.

Maybe we'll get a surprise announcement for Planescape: Blood War with Avellone on board.

I would jizz a happy jizz.

CRPGs are not mainstream, D&D is

This is exactly backwards of objective & observable reality. Relative #s wise, few people play D&D, a metric fuck ton of people have played the various cRPGs over the years. Skyrim alone would smash D&D numbers by a mile. Dragon Age, Witcher 3, I can go on...

 

[Grunker]

I'm just reveling in the fact that cRPGs are mainstream again. Hopefully this is the start of a renaissance that brings back quality games with talented creators.

Maybe this will also signal boost indies like Colony Ship? Would be nice.

Maybe we'll get a surprise announcement for Planescape: Blood War with Avellone on board.

I would jizz a happy jizz.

CRPGs are not mainstream, D&D is

This is exactly backwards of objective & observable reality. Relative #s wise, few people play D&D, a metric fuck ton of people have played the various cRPGs over the years. Skyrim alone would smash D&D numbers by a mile. Dragon Age, Witcher 3, I can go on...

It’s especially the case with BG3. Hasbro is by their own account expecting BG3 to make what 10 years of D&D spin-offs have earned them combined.

People saying the resurgence of DND has helped BG3 have it backwards. At this point, it’s BG3 boosting interest in DND

 

[Swen]

Lilura says this game is shit.

View attachment 40043

Lilura and all other incel codex autsists completely destroyed and butt blasted by BG3's success.

We will be drinking their tears for years, even decades to come!

 

[perfectslumbers]

The fight in the courtyard right before the ending is the worst thing I've ever experienced. 45 ai units taking their turns one by one by one by one by one. Very interactive.

 

[Grauken]

I'm just reveling in the fact that cRPGs are mainstream again. Hopefully this is the start of a renaissance that brings back quality games with talented creators.

Maybe this will also signal boost indies like Colony Ship? Would be nice.

Maybe we'll get a surprise announcement for Planescape: Blood War with Avellone on board.

I would jizz a happy jizz.

CRPGs are not mainstream, D&D is

This is exactly backwards of objective & observable reality. Relative #s wise, few people play D&D, a metric fuck ton of people have played the various cRPGs over the years. Skyrim alone would smash D&D numbers by a mile. Dragon Age, Witcher 3, I can go on...

It’s especially the case with BG3. Hasbro is by their own account expecting BG3 to make what 10 years of D&D spin-offs have earned them combined.

People saying the resurgence of DND has helped BG3 have it backwards. At this point, it’s BG3 boosting interest in DND

I'm not entirely convinced of this. If Larian had made DOS3 at the same level of quality, I doubt it would have had the same success. I see it more as symbiotic. D&D is definitely more mainstream these days than it was even 10 years ago, with the popularity of Stranger Things and Critical Role. At the same time, gaming in all of its forms trumps every other kind of media. So without real numbers, my guess is that this was a lucky happenstance of license plus an excellent game that catapulted BG3 to these heights

 

[AwesomeButton]

Finding it slightly hard to keep playing, game starts to feel like a chore.

-Too few combats that take too long. Larian seems to take heed of the common (bad) Codex advice of "no trash fights!" The result is every combat has to be a 'puzzle' that often requires reloads or heavy resource use just to get by. Even the goblins are like this, basically no straightforward battles where you and some enemies square off; everyone is spread way out, everyone has consumables and bombs to throw at you, forced ambushes (beholder), etc. The rest of the time you wander through the empty areas bored to death while picking through 1000 empty boxes. Not everything has to be a miniboss, sometimes you just encounter some orcs to wail on as a warm up and there's nothing wrong with that.

-"I'm going on an adventure!" said Bilbo, then dicked around in the Shire for 5 weeks. No urgency, it's a random collection of events/quests with no coherence. Just "stuff to do". It feels like nothing has happened and I'm still in a prologue. I liked the random hard to find Kuo-toa hideout in the underdark, yet there was nothing in there worth looking for or seeing besides the kill XP. Which brings me to...

-Lame loot and rewards. Every time I find a cool chest or hidden bit of loot its like 10 gold and a potion. Itemization is terrible because it's all conditional stuff like "+1 damage every other Tuesday if your male companions are on fire." Hey remember finding Carsomyr for the first time and reading the description and being like "OMG I'm rerolling a pally just for this!" Or finding awesome gear like Gauntlets of Ogre power on some random evil halflings in the planar sphere. Idk if this is Larian's fault or if all of 5E is this weaksauce. (tbf all the loot in BG1 was also lame so I guess there's that).

I find myself partially agreeing with this criticism. On occasion I've raised the same problems while playing. However, taking the opposite side, I'd counter-argue this to your complaints:

Too few combats that take too long, and feel like puzzles
I can classify combats into two rough categories - "extra credits" optional combats, and combats which you trigger as one means of solving a quest. It's the latter category feels more puzzle-like to me. In the optional combats, I've usually been able to get by with basic attacks/cantrip casts. YMMV of course, because I'm playing on Balanced.

wander through the empty areas bored to death (while picking through...)
Man, if you are bored, by all means don't play. Resist the unhealthy urge to stay glued to the PC and mechanically click your way through the game. It's spoiling the game for yourself. Find something else to do, take a break. There is life outside the Steam client Rest assured, the itch to go back to the game will visit you soon, and if it doesn't, it wasn't meant to be. Don't turn your fun into a job. If you let go of a game for a day or two it doesn't mean "the game defeated you". If you want to show persistance, show it in an activity that's improving your health - like go do pull ups, it pays to be persistant in that. Enternainment activities are not an area where you would benefit from being persistant and going forward "in spite of" something.

I swear there must be people on this forum who even mastrubate out of habit, not because of a physical urge to do it You can tell by the way they shittalk games before, during, and after having played them for ~100 hours. It's the same mentality.

no urgency
Again, feeling urgency is up to the player. I can get a work email with the subject prefixed with "[URGENT]" and still not feel urgency, so what's to say about a game quest?
Anyway, seriously speaking, urgency in a cRPG is a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" - you are screwed if you lack it, you are screwed if you have it. In a PnP campaign, it's easy to pull the leash on the party and to give them some time according to your discretion. In the videogame you have to play both DM and player. Unlike in other games, in BG3 it's easy to momentarily jump in the shoes of a DM and tell yourself "I won't play this as a videogame", "My character wouldn't do that", "My paladin would just steal all the silver spoons", etc.

I had some deliberation when thinking would my character even want to go into the Underdark after having finished the monastery. Shouldn't he feel the urgency? I decided to RP the decision such as the venturing into the Underdark is done because I have the respective NPC in the party. We will assume there was a discussion and Shadowheart is determined to check out what happened there, and we don't intend to entangle ourselves in anything more. Which of course is merely the initial plan...

Lame loot and rewards
I think there are some very significant items that come as rewards from quests (The Blood of Lathander), but most of the time it doesn't really matter which of the 4 greataxes I equip in Laezel. However I'm not a fan of swapping weapons too often. I currently have a gith greatsword equipped on Laezel which incurs bonus psychic damage if wielded by gythianki. The more level stats of items allows me to RP equipment choices more, so there is that as a positive.