Baldur's Gate Baldur's Gate 3 RELEASE THREAD

[Rhobar121]

In every single game that has ever been made, something ends up being cut out in the development process.

 

[Lyre Mors]

Guys, please. I beg you. All of my brofists if you provided a few example of what you consider extremely bad writing in the game. I'm not disagreeing, but I have to see for myself if I consider the same piece of writing as atrocious as you're saying.

Good luck! It's much easier scoring those edge points by vaguely referencing a line or two that might have caused a mild annoyance here and there, and declaring it has utterly ruined a game you are otherwise having a lot of fun playing.

Codex game writing discussion workshop 101.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I spoke with madam Diversity at the Last Light, and it struck me, is this outfit approved by WotC actually? AFAIK NPC revealing clothing is frowned upon by the same people who "celebrate" the ability to walk around the whole game with your mangina on full display.

Spoiler

Also a photogenic picture of my dream girl:

Spoiler

"You know what else is getting stronger?"

I'm pretty sure at some point she offers me sex and then turns into a mindflayer in the middle of the act. Don't spoil it for me though.

 

[Sunri]

It's

I kind of wish the game was simply bad.

Same. Genuinely breaks my heart that a game that is so good in so many ways is absolutely destroyed by the writing.

It's not that bad compared to other newish rpgs

It's also better than the last stuff Obsidian put out just for the fact that it doesn't drench you in purpled prosed lore- and exposition dumps at every step. Some talk is pretty bad, some is mid, some is good. I enjoyed all the Gythyanki related content.

I liked writing in Poe I but hated it in 2 don't even remember why.

Funny. For me it was the other way around. Deadfire, while also not the best in the writing department, was way less convoluted and more often straight to the point. Full VA clearly helped getting Obsidians self-pompous writers in check because suddenly it became an budget issue.
Worst thing for sure were the heavy american accents which don't go along well with a medieval setting. Another aspect in which BG3 excels in comparion, relying mostly on voice actors from the UK.

I have this memory of great revelation about God's at the end of Poe 1 that was cool and I think Poe 2 ruined it or retconet something I can't remember the details I need to replay both games after I'm done with bg

 

[Eisenheinrich]

No fat humans in BG3. You only get slim or ripped.

 

[Modron]

This thread grew 40 pages in the last 2 days did something interesting happen?

 

[Sunri]

I spoke with madam Diversity at the Last Light, and it struck me, is this outfit approved by WotC actually? AFAIK NPC revealing clothing is frowned upon by the same people who "celebrate" the ability to walk around the whole game with your mangina on full display.

Spoiler

Also a photogenic picture of my dream girl:

Spoiler

"You know what else is getting stronger?"

I'm pretty sure at some point she offers me sex and then turns into a mindflayer in the middle of the act. Don't spoil it for me though.

Wait until you visit umbrele temple that is full of skimpy clothed ladies the catch is almost all.of them.are ugly negroes

 

[Lemming42]

Guys, please. I beg you. All of my brofists if you provided a few example of what you consider extremely bad writing in the game. I'm not disagreeing, but I have to see for myself if I consider the same piece of writing as atrocious as you're saying.

The companions are typically quite annoying. People make the comparison to Critical Role and I think that's a good starting point of reference. Everyone in your party is super-special and most of them have utterly ridiculous special backstories. The catch is that none of them are very interesting, though obviously that's subjective. I quite liked Karlach and Astarion but nobody else really did anything for me. The worst part is perhaps their lack of integration into the main plot - I raised the example a while back of Lae'zel demanding you go straight to the creche, then following you in the opposite direction and never objecting if you skip the creche entirely.

I'd also suggest the main plot is quite badly written; the player characters' actions typically aren't well-justified and, because the game is actually quite linear despite pretending to be otherwise, there's often bits where you're either offered a fake choice that's quickly revealed to be fake, or simply offered no choice at all at a juncture where it would be appropriate to have one.

Dialogue is often smoke and mirrors, totally different player dialogue choices will lead to the same response from an NPC. This sometimes turns into poor writing as conversations start to feel a bit railroaded if you deliberately try to go off-script and pick options the devs clearly didnt want you to.

Villains typically have no depth. There is no convincing reason to side with the goblins/Drow in the first act, for example, other than to be an evil dick for no reason. This is by design, I assume; Larian set out to write something without complexity and to offer people a familiar-feeling adventure with clear good and bad guys, but you might still find it quite disappointing.

I sperg'd out about the brothel a while ago in the thread which I consider to be a particularly dire bit of writing, but that's probably due to my sensitivity towards the topic combining with the writers' obvious lack of care, and the protagonist being forced to voice a specific viewpoint (which mostly doesn't happen elsewhere).

Other than that, for the most part the writing isn't bad, but it's quite shallow and is always in the service of a boring and mostly linear main plot. If you go in expecting an action-adventure without much to dig into, you won't be disappointed, but if you expect it all to make much sense and for people to behave in complex and convincing ways, the plot doesn't really offer that.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Guys, please. I beg you. All of my brofists if you provided a few example of what you consider extremely bad writing in the game.

It's often not the same without the context, because anything could be cited as bad writing when out of context, but I'll try.

 

[Eisenheinrich]

It's

I kind of wish the game was simply bad.

Same. Genuinely breaks my heart that a game that is so good in so many ways is absolutely destroyed by the writing.

It's not that bad compared to other newish rpgs

It's also better than the last stuff Obsidian put out just for the fact that it doesn't drench you in purpled prosed lore- and exposition dumps at every step. Some talk is pretty bad, some is mid, some is good. I enjoyed all the Gythyanki related content.

I liked writing in Poe I but hated it in 2 don't even remember why.

Funny. For me it was the other way around. Deadfire, while also not the best in the writing department, was way less convoluted and more often straight to the point. Full VA clearly helped getting Obsidians self-pompous writers in check because suddenly it became an budget issue.
Worst thing for sure were the heavy american accents which don't go along well with a medieval setting. Another aspect in which BG3 excels in comparion, relying mostly on voice actors from the UK.

I have this memory of great revelation about God's at the end of Poe 1 that was cool and I think Poe 2 ruined it or retconet something I can't remember the details I need to replay both games after I'm done with bg

The big reveal was a fake one tho, like "They're no real gods but creatures with god-like powers worshipped as gods and basicall functioning like gods" It's the whole WH40k Emperor of Mankind debacle again.

 

[mastroego]

Just got a cutscene with two monsters (of different species) fucking.

What the fuck, man.

 

[Jaunty]

Honeymoon phase off

https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGat...ontent_from_final_version_of/?sort=confidence

content p much always gets cut in every game and later on when players add the 'excellent cut conent' via mod(look kotor2 restoration project) you realize that shit was cut for a good reason

Maybe, but KotOR 2 is a particularly bad example. The entire last planet was butchered at the last minute, with about a million plot threads left hanging in the air. I mean, there are still waypoints on the map that you can't get to because they deleted the doors, for fucks sake. It's awful. It wasn't cut content as much as hacked off with a cleaver, with a band-aid slapped on the gushing wound.

 

[Vic]

Just got a cutscene with two monsters (of different species) fucking.

What the fuck, man.

at the goblin village? how dare these monsters fuck in MY GAME!?

 

[Grauken]

The companions are typically quite annoying. People make the comparison to Critical Role and I think that's a good starting point of reference. Everyone in your party is super-special and most of them have utterly ridiculous special backstories.

That's not writing, that's character design. A lot of people here confuse bad writing, bad story, bad character design and so on. The writing here is mostly solid with some occasional bad stuff. The character design is what some have problems with and later on with the story.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Just got a cutscene with two monsters (of different species) fucking.

What the fuck, man.

I know, I almost fell off my halfling.

 

[Eisenheinrich]

Just got a cutscene with two monsters (of different species) fucking.

What the fuck, man.

Yet another nod to Arcanum.

 

[volklore]

I have this memory of great revelation about God's at the end of Poe 1 that was cool and I think Poe 2 ruined it or retconet something I can't remember the details I need to replay both games after I'm done with bg

The big reveal was a fake one tho, like "They're no real gods but creatures with god-like powers worshipped as gods and basicall functioning like gods" It's the whole WH40k Emperor of Manking debacle again.

It's an extremely retarded ending especially when a lot of the plotline in the first two acts of the game ponders on the divine, historical interpretations of messiahs, the intricacies of faith relatively competetently. Only to end with ''hurr durr, god aren't real... kinda *tips fedora*''

 

[Grauken]

Just got a cutscene with two monsters (of different species) fucking.

What the fuck, man.

at the goblin village? how dare these monsters fuck in MY GAME!?

I killed them for XP

 

[Lemming42]

The companions are typically quite annoying. People make the comparison to Critical Role and I think that's a good starting point of reference. Everyone in your party is super-special and most of them have utterly ridiculous special backstories.

That's not writing, that's character design. A lot of people here confuse bad writing, bad story, bad character design and so on. The writing here is mostly solid with some occasional bad stuff. The character design is what some have problems with and later on with the story.

The backstories, and the way they're presented, can surely be classed as "writing". I'm talking stuff like Gandalf popping up to loredump Gale's crap backstory, Karlach just overwhelming you with her story of how she became Major Colonel Sargent General of the entire universe as soon as she meets you, stuff like that.

Again, I know that Larian deliberately made all the companions like this, so they achieved what they set out to do and it's therefore successful writing in that sense, but I think when most people say "bad writing" it's pretty clear that they're asking for things that most people are likely to find jarring, weird, cringeworthy, dull, cliched, logically inconsistent, and so on.

 

[EvilWolf]

The companions are typically quite annoying. People make the comparison to Critical Role and I think that's a good starting point of reference. Everyone in your party is super-special and most of them have utterly ridiculous special backstories.

That's not writing, that's character design. A lot of people here confuse bad writing, bad story, bad character design and so on. The writing here is mostly solid with some occasional bad stuff. The character design is what some have problems with and later on with the story.

I guess character design is a nebulous endeavor to you? It's literally part of the writing process to design the characters you're actually WRITING about.

 

[Grauken]

The companions are typically quite annoying. People make the comparison to Critical Role and I think that's a good starting point of reference. Everyone in your party is super-special and most of them have utterly ridiculous special backstories.

That's not writing, that's character design. A lot of people here confuse bad writing, bad story, bad character design and so on. The writing here is mostly solid with some occasional bad stuff. The character design is what some have problems with and later on with the story.

The backstories, and the way they're presented, can surely be classed as "writing". I'm talking stuff like Gandalf popping up to loredump Gale's crap backstory, Karlach just overwhelming you with her story of how she became Major Colonel Sargent General of the entire universe as soon as she meets you, stuff like that.

Don't know about Gandalf, but the example with Karlach is a good one, that was indeed bad writing. But for the most part, its actually pretty good, froggie, shadowheart, the vampire, various conversations with Gale.

 

[Grauken]

The companions are typically quite annoying. People make the comparison to Critical Role and I think that's a good starting point of reference. Everyone in your party is super-special and most of them have utterly ridiculous special backstories.

That's not writing, that's character design. A lot of people here confuse bad writing, bad story, bad character design and so on. The writing here is mostly solid with some occasional bad stuff. The character design is what some have problems with and later on with the story.

I guess character design is a nebulous endeavor to you? It's literally part of the writing process to design the characters you're actually WRITING about.

You're a moron. You can have incredibly bland or ridiculous characters in an incredibly well-written book and vice versa. If you've never seen his, you seriously need to read more

 

[Eisenheinrich]

I'm talking stuff like Gandalf popping up to loredump Gale's crap backstory

See, that's like the subjective part. I had fun with Elminster being that pompous fedora-wearing mumbojumbo-freak using all his vocabulary to impress.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I spoke with madam Diversity at the Last Light, and it struck me, is this outfit approved by WotC actually? AFAIK NPC revealing clothing is frowned upon by the same people who "celebrate" the ability to walk around the whole game with your mangina on full display.


Also a photogenic picture of my dream girl:

"You know what else is getting stronger?"

I'm pretty sure at some point she offers me sex and then turns into a mindflayer in the middle of the act. Don't spoil it for me though.

Wait until you visit umbrele temple that is full of skimpy clothed ladies the catch is almost all.of them.are ugly negroes

My guy has quite the poker face around skimpy clothed women tryng to impress him.

Spoiler

He's a paladin after all.

 

[Lagole Gon]

Just got a cutscene with two monsters (of different species) fucking.

What the fuck, man.

Oh, sweet summer child...