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Baldur's Gate Baldur's Gate 3 RELEASE THREAD

perfectslumbers

Arbiter
Joined
Oct 24, 2021
Messages
1,202
new Icewind Dale.
That would be great assuming it was in a similar format to the earlier games. It would cover Larian's weaknesses and highlight their strengths.
 

Eisenheinrich

Scholar
Joined
Apr 16, 2018
Messages
806
Location
Germania
Funny to see people shit on games like Pillars for trash combat encounters,

Trash combat encounters were not a problem in PoE (sans Sun-In-Shadows). Bit boring and clearly lacking in enemy variety, but White March especially had some really good and memorable encounters. Speaking of this, I remember more about The White March expansion than the main game.

Pathfinder on the other hand ... :0-13:
 

The_Mask

Just like Yves, I chase tales.
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Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I helped put crap in Monomyth
Playing Gith creche after skipping it the first time around. Is there any way out of the doctor's lab after the shitty tadpole-remover device explodes? The doctor has locked me in and lockpicking the door seems to turn the entire creche hostile.
I simply didn't care that she went to "get more tools" and proceeded to loot her cabinet, get illithid powers, check what the Arcane check did and sort out my inventory. She eventually returned, and opened the door by herself, and only her, and the Gith in the Infirmary were aggroed.

You can choose to go non-lethal and don't use ranged weapons, if you want to try spare their lives.
 

Herumor

Scholar
Joined
May 1, 2018
Messages
638
Oh and about Bhaalspawn nostalgia... not quite. This is how the original saga protagonist would have made sense itz.

Remember how every single bhaalspawn npc/antagonist was some bloodthirsty and powerhungry monster constantly yapping about ardent desires to become the new god of murder.

Meanwhile original charname/abdel adrian could be played as puresoul paladin goldylocks of the goody innocent heart. There was the occasional cutscene and gravitas about your evil heritage but it didn't translate in most of the game.
Yeah, the thing is the Dark Urge has these murderous urges for a reason unlike CHARNAME or other Bhaalspawn.

Read below if you don't mind being spoiled:

Turns out Dark Urge isn't really a Bhaalspawn as Bhaal himself just created him or her from his own gore, hence all the murderous urges all the fucking time and why Sarevok calls you the purest of Bhaal's children.
 

Darkwind

Augur
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591
Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Enjoy the Revolution! Another revolution around the sun that is.
There's a post some pages ago about Jaheira being 13 AC. Hasn't anyone commented regarding the inanity of adding old NPCs to this game? Throne of Bhaal has to be canon, else Sarevok couldn't be here, and if it is Minsc and Jaihera could skullfuck every encounter in the game at the same time. I'm not familiar at all with 5E but with the old rules Jaheira would likely not even lose a single hitpoint while doing so. And if Sarevok is a bad dude in this, well...

I suppose there are those who demanded the presence of old characters to form some sort of tenuous connection to the IP but the truth is their inclusion feels insulting when you consider prior events.

It wouldn't be as egregious if the events of BG2 happened like, a few years ago. But 100 years?! As you pointed out everyone included from BG2 would be god tier power. Jahiera barely surviving a fight w/ her 13 AC is patently absurd. She'd be the Archdruid of all of Waterdeep able to call down lightning that would make Thor green with envy and jealousy. Instead, she can... turn into a panther? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 

Tyranicon

A Memory of Eternity
Developer
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Oct 7, 2019
Messages
7,587
Playing Gith creche after skipping it the first time around. Is there any way out of the doctor's lab after the shitty tadpole-remover device explodes? The doctor has locked me in and lockpicking the door seems to turn the entire creche hostile.

Lae'zel can convince her that the parasite was destroyed or some other stupid nonsense and she just... lets you go.

Okay.

There's a lot of checks like this where yeah, it's a sort of high check, but it's like huh? Get characters acting like complete morons.
 

jf8350143

Liturgist
Joined
Apr 14, 2018
Messages
1,358
Picked drow on my second playthrough and apparently unlike every other races(except gith probably), if you pick drow you are not from baulder's gate. You don't get those dialogues saying things about your time during baulder's gate.
 
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Orion

Cipher
Joined
Jun 27, 2014
Messages
148
Playing Gith creche after skipping it the first time around. Is there any way out of the doctor's lab after the shitty tadpole-remover device explodes? The doctor has locked me in and lockpicking the door seems to turn the entire creche hostile.
In my playthrough it only made that room hostile and the rest of the crèche was fine.
 

BlackAdderBG

Arcane
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Little Vienna
Codex 2013 Codex 2014 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Grab the Codex by the pussy Codex USB, 2014 Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker
There's a lot of checks like this where yeah, it's a sort of high check, but it's like huh? Get characters acting like complete morons.
Good writing can solve that problem, unfortunately we are presented with "[Persuade]:NUH-UH, I didn't" [Success]: Yes, you are right, sorry."
 

Immortal

Arcane
In My Safe Space
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Safe Space - Don't Bulli
Finally finished the game. I didn't mind the ending, I had a nice conversation with all of my companions and got to see where they're going in life now. But the final combat encounters were worse than The House at The Edge of Time. The main mechanic was summoning the allies you've made throughout the campaign which is absolutely terrible in a game with AI that spends as much time sitting there and thinking as it does in this game. The other main mechanic was cannons shooting at you, unfortunately the texture that indicates where the cannon will shoot was invisible on my graphics settings and I spent a few hours dying to invisible cannon fire. Several terrible plot twists and plot threads are introduced right at the end. It reminded me of watching The Avengers when I was 11 and the entire movie was just nonsense about aliens destroying New York or wherever. Oh nooo the aliens are destroying all the buildings and faceless nameless citizens! Who cares? I didn't even care about that shit as a child. BG1 and BG2 had amazing final encounters because they made it personal, Sarevok and Irenicus fuck with you throughout the game in various ways. In BG3 they just throw boring villain after boring villain at you and pile up countless plot twists and pointless mysteries.

Act 3 was mixed. I think the side content was generally fine. The encounters and puzzles needed polishing but there was a good core to work with there, and while there was performance issues my PC isn't amazing so I could accept it. The main quest content in act 3 was seriously undercooked though. I killed Orin in one round and Gortash basically just sat there picking his nose during the fight. Combined with the plot twists and late introductions, and the messy
Orpheus/Emperor
content that feels suddenly thrown together, as if it were rewritten a week before the game comes out, and act 3 was disappointing overall.

I still hold that the game would've come out much better without the Illithid plot line at all. Mindflayers are an excellent horror enemy, in gameplay where they limit the players agency with stuns and instantkill attacks (which haven't been implemented), through body horror where they infest you and use your body as an incubation chamber, and in the horror of them creating thralls and altering your mind and identity. Larian never really does anything with any of this though. Throughout the game mindflayers are either just trash enemies with a stun attack or there to push the "No race is inherently evil!" thing WOTC loves by throwing rogue criminal-eating mindflayers at you. The mindflayer colony in BG2 was a much better use of mindflayers as villains than anything in BG3.

Something I slowly realised throughout the game is that most of the choices are fake. Many of the dialogue checks I would use inspiration on didn't actually do anything and many of the seemingly important dialogue options all lead to the same conclusion in a really artificial manner. The most obvious example is the Creche which at first appears to have earth-shattering decisions based on how everyone treats it and the dialogue options present, but the shitty plot requires that nothing actually happens. So the end result of the Creche is always the exact same, and the choice made in the astral plane has no effect on the rest of the game. At that point the guardian even says "I have very important information that could shake the foundations of everything we know! I can't tell you yet though because you're not ready ~~~~" So much of the game is forced to bend to a boring nonsense main plot.

The games biggest boon is the level design which is far more systemic and free form than the combat-mazes of Owlcat's games, and the games excellent puzzles and solid (up until act 3) encounter design. The game is absolutely brilliant when you're given a tough situation or an enemy camp to take down and you just have to figure out how to do it. The game is at its worst whenever the main plot is moving forward, or whenever you're going through dialogue. There are some good moments with the companions but for the most part Larian can't write a convincing character to save their life. Just compare the returning characters to how they were in the old games and you'll see an gargantuan gap in dialogue quality.

I think a lot of this could be fixed with a definitive edition but the amount of work required might not be worth it to Larian, I suspect it's likely that they'll just smooth over all the encounters and add some extra dialogue here or there and call it a day. Maybe they really will fix it though, with how much this game sold. BG3 has the potential to be really great and I would like to see Larian fulfill that potential.

Overall I agree with your review.. but that last sentence is a pure wishful hope.
The interviews Swen gives - he sounds exhausted. They'll fix the bugs.. and move on..

If this game gets any large refactor to pacing / story / cut content / dialogue that actually has lines redone / re-narrated - I'll be shocked. If they do make an enhanced edition they might rebalance the leveling system and add more levels.. but this is the story we are getting and it ain't gonna change.


When Swen talked about doing "smaller games" I was hoping they don't go back to the Divinity Setting. I really don't care for that.

When Larian announces D:OS 3, I'll be sure to watch Infinitrons shilling thread for your woes of anguish. That's exactly what Larian is doing next.
 

Immortal

Arcane
In My Safe Space
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Safe Space - Don't Bulli
Didn't D:OS 2 end in a way that killed off the franchise?

Kinda but it's not the first time.

Divinity world is really a "do whatever you fucking want" consistency of lore.
Like before, just make a prequel or sequel that goes 1000 years in the past or a 1000 years in the future and problem solved.

(Although they might abandon 'Original Sin' go with Divinity: Something Else)
 

Agame

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 29, 2015
Messages
1,706
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I cum from a land down under
Insert Title Here
Playing Gith creche after skipping it the first time around. Is there any way out of the doctor's lab after the shitty tadpole-remover device explodes? The doctor has locked me in and lockpicking the door seems to turn the entire creche hostile.
In my playthrough it only made that room hostile and the rest of the crèche was fine.

The question is why you would not be committing genocide against those filthy frog people in the first place?
 

Zeriel

Arcane
Joined
Jun 17, 2012
Messages
13,919
I think everything I said about this game in EA still holds except the lack of class options. At least that's something.

-Bad maps -- too myopic (Where's the world map?), no coherence. (why am I fucking around in the woods? Find a road and get to town already. No I don't want to do a bunch of lol random side quests right now. Time and place man.)
-Stupid opening (demons, illithid, and dragons vs level 1 noobs should never go well)
-5E is still lame*

*I didn't want to rely on a gay vampire rogue, so my MC needs lockpicking, and I didn't feel like having a second rogue, so, god-dammit, I'm playing a bard, and it works. Did 5E finally do the impossible and make Bards good? Or is this some Larian fuckery??

I hate myself. And Nickelback.

Lockpicking is not really a "skill". It's just a dex check with modifiers. So if you had a fighter with skyhigh dex you could lockpick too.

Honestly I consider this kind of thing max decline even if it makes sense in an IRL sense, the strong class identity of early D&D is one of its best aspects.
 

Zeriel

Arcane
Joined
Jun 17, 2012
Messages
13,919
I'm kind of annoyed that we got mostly ugly girls for companions when there are random npcs as hot as this one
09fg2n.png

Let's just say it's not an accident. This theme repeats throughout every modern game. It's not that they can't create attractive or normal characters. They specifically choose not to. For... reasons...
 

MerchantKing

Learned
Joined
Jun 5, 2023
Messages
1,574
It's kinda interesting how they ignore any agency from BG2 since if Jaheira didn't romance Charname, she never returns to the Sword Coast according to the ToB ending slides. Minsc and Binky being dead from old age is expected at this point since they were just humans. Viconia if romanced should also be dead from poisoning or from burning if you left her to her fate in Amn.
 

Non-Edgy Gamer

Grand Dragon
Patron
Glory to Ukraine
Joined
Nov 6, 2020
Messages
17,656
Strap Yourselves In
Honestly I consider this kind of thing max decline even if it makes sense in an IRL sense, the strong class identity of early D&D is one of its best aspects.
It has no sense IRL. Lockpicking isn't about dexterity as much as it is about knowledge of locks and how to pick them.

In an age without YouTube lockpicking videos or even widespread access to literature, such a skill would be specialized to thieves and locksmiths.
 

Non-Edgy Gamer

Grand Dragon
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Strap Yourselves In
It's kinda interesting how they ignore any agency from BG2
This has been discussed, but 5E canon is from the novelizations, not the game.

There was a 5E campaign set 10 years before this, where the bhaalspawn from BG1&2's novelizations, a guy named "Abdel", died and it brought back Bhaal. That's why Bhaal exists in the setting again.
 

Zeriel

Arcane
Joined
Jun 17, 2012
Messages
13,919
Honestly I consider this kind of thing max decline even if it makes sense in an IRL sense, the strong class identity of early D&D is one of its best aspects.
It has no sense IRL. Lockpicking isn't about dexterity as much as it is about knowledge of locks and how to pick them.

In an age without YouTube lockpicking videos or even widespread access to literature, such a skill would be specialized to thieves and locksmiths.

I more meant in the sense that IRL you don't need to officially be X to have the skill to do something. But yeah, as an abstraction of packages of experiences classes work better than "you are agile, therefore you can pick mechanisms".
 

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