Baldur's Gate Baldur's Gate 3 RELEASE THREAD

[dukeofwoodberry]

The reason why the evil companions are the only reasonably likable ones is because they're the only ones with somewhat believable motivations. The good ones don't really make any sense as characters because their motivations are just not believable.

Gale's background is like something written by an 8 year old boy that had some assistance in sexing up the concept by his 13-year-old brother. Like the 8 year old wrote the part about him having a bomb in his chest that would blow up the world if he didn't eat enough magic weapons and the 13 year old brother is how Gale is just so sexy because of his beard and his earring that he's banging the goddess of magic who has huge knockers.

The idea that good means putting others first in sacrifice of self is essentially postmodern-feminine and unheroic. Ancient portrayals of the tragic feminine hero would be like Cassandra (tells the truth in service of her people, is rebuked, goes mad), Dido (gives of herself freely to provide a future for her people under a strong king, Aeneas, but is spurned and cheated by the commands of the gods), Lucretia (kills herself to show that a Roman woman would rather die than be defiled; calls Romans to heroism to crush the evil Tarquins and so give everlasting freedom to all Romans), or Verginia (kills herself rather than submit to rape by the tyrannical judges; inspires the Romans to overthrow the tyrannical panel of judges). The ancient concept of the feminine hero is different from the masculine hero. The medieval Christian ideal of male and female heroism is not so far off from this.

The postmodern feminine heroic ideal is to sacrifice yourself for people you have never met so that they can go and be happy in some utilitarian way. Virtue doesn't really come into play because postmodern models of virtue are quite muddled. In BG3 (from what I have seen towards the end of Act I) the evil characters are the ones that are particularly devoted to some religious cult or to a martial people. The good characters are sentimental loner-narcissists obsessed with themselves and creating the appearance that they are good people.

As a side note, the notion that good characters also have to have an evil side is particularly confusing to children who are exposed to it in their japanimations or video games. Wyll's an example of this, in that he's supposed to be a good character, but he has made a pact with an obviously evil demon, obsessed with promoting his image as a perfect swashbuckling knight-errant. The evil characters are the only virtuous ones; it's just that they are dedicated to bad cultures.

Well, too bad you didn’t actually play the fucking game, because Gale is quite a heroic guy, more than willing to sacrifice himself for the good of the world. Same as Wyll.

Gale and Wyll are uninteresting terribly written faggots

 

[Gradenmayer]

The reason why the evil companions are the only reasonably likable ones is because they're the only ones with somewhat believable motivations. The good ones don't really make any sense as characters because their motivations are just not believable.

Gale's background is like something written by an 8 year old boy that had some assistance in sexing up the concept by his 13-year-old brother. Like the 8 year old wrote the part about him having a bomb in his chest that would blow up the world if he didn't eat enough magic weapons and the 13 year old brother is how Gale is just so sexy because of his beard and his earring that he's banging the goddess of magic who has huge knockers.

The idea that good means putting others first in sacrifice of self is essentially postmodern-feminine and unheroic. Ancient portrayals of the tragic feminine hero would be like Cassandra (tells the truth in service of her people, is rebuked, goes mad), Dido (gives of herself freely to provide a future for her people under a strong king, Aeneas, but is spurned and cheated by the commands of the gods), Lucretia (kills herself to show that a Roman woman would rather die than be defiled; calls Romans to heroism to crush the evil Tarquins and so give everlasting freedom to all Romans), or Verginia (kills herself rather than submit to rape by the tyrannical judges; inspires the Romans to overthrow the tyrannical panel of judges). The ancient concept of the feminine hero is different from the masculine hero. The medieval Christian ideal of male and female heroism is not so far off from this.

The postmodern feminine heroic ideal is to sacrifice yourself for people you have never met so that they can go and be happy in some utilitarian way. Virtue doesn't really come into play because postmodern models of virtue are quite muddled. In BG3 (from what I have seen towards the end of Act I) the evil characters are the ones that are particularly devoted to some religious cult or to a martial people. The good characters are sentimental loner-narcissists obsessed with themselves and creating the appearance that they are good people.

As a side note, the notion that good characters also have to have an evil side is particularly confusing to children who are exposed to it in their japanimations or video games. Wyll's an example of this, in that he's supposed to be a good character, but he has made a pact with an obviously evil demon, obsessed with promoting his image as a perfect swashbuckling knight-errant. The evil characters are the only virtuous ones; it's just that they are dedicated to bad cultures.

Well, too bad you didn’t actually play the fucking game, because Gale is quite a heroic guy, more than willing to sacrifice himself for the good of the world. Same as Wyll.

Gale and Wyll are uninteresting terribly written faggots

I don’t disagree, but the retard above is using some dimwitted reasoning to explain why they suck.

 

[Tyranicon]

I can't wrap my mind around why anybody likes Lae'zel. I did both a pro and anti Lae'zel run to completion and she's just 100% bitch all the way through.

Her dialogue is literally just:

• Do this or I keel you!
• Muh Queen!
• Muh Orpheus!

 

[MerchantKing]

The one thing I’ve read about it is that people complain about savescummin.
That means there’s a lot of dicerolls and I FUCKING LOVE IT!

I hate the dice rolls. Wasting a large of time with the dice roll animation on something that took less than a millisecond with just a basic random number generator and just displaying the result in the log. I want to play a game, not watch a movie.

 

[janior]

I can't wrap my mind around why anybody likes Lae'zel. I did both a pro and anti Lae'zel run to completion and she's just 100% bitch all the way through.

Her dialogue is literally just:

• Do this or I keel you!
• Muh Queen!
• Muh Orpheus!

didn't even allow her into my group lol

 

[Eisenheinrich]

Average larian fan

[REDACTED]

That's just a bearded Russian. Your point?

Alistair's haircut alone nearly made me uninstall the game.

This is lowkey gay. Imaging uninstalling a game because of a polygon blokes polygon haircut. Wow. You guys.

 

[undecaf]

The one thing I’ve read about it is that people complain about savescummin.
That means there’s a lot of dicerolls and I FUCKING LOVE IT!

I hate the dice rolls. Wasting a large of time with the dice roll animation on something that took less than a millisecond with just a basic random number generator and just displaying the result in the log. I want to play a game, not watch a movie.

Oh dear, I love the dicerolls. They really, really allow me to play my character. And I mean *play my character* not ^as my character^.

Not being able to do something? That’s what happens to the character, that’s your story. What ever it entails.
That’s the fun of an RPG; to be able go try out different things and *either* success or fail. Failure doesn’t stop your journey, it alters it. And that’s where the real fun is.

This is probably a thread of its own, but anyway…

 

[Tyranicon]

I can't wrap my mind around why anybody likes Lae'zel. I did both a pro and anti Lae'zel run to completion and she's just 100% bitch all the way through.

Her dialogue is literally just:

• Do this or I keel you!
• Muh Queen!
• Muh Orpheus!

didn't even allow her into my group lol

I'm assuming the key ingredient I'm missing is that I didn't fuck her.

Imagine wanting to have sex with that.

Frog meme companion.

 

[Lagole Gon]

I can't wrap my mind around why anybody likes Lae'zel. I did both a pro and anti Lae'zel run to completion and she's just 100% bitch all the way through.

Her dialogue is literally just:

• Do this or I keel you!
• Muh Queen!
• Muh Orpheus!

She's decent by the virtue of:
- Not having "OC do not steal" backstory as a total badass reduced to level 1 (Karlach, Gayle, Wyll).
- "Alien in your strange world" is a simple gimmick, even Larian wasn't able to fuck this up.

But yes, you need some patience with her "muh warrior culture" bits.
Overall, that's still pretty good for Larian.

 

[processdaemon]

How far have you gotten in the game? Because this

The idea that good means putting others first in sacrifice of self is essentially postmodern-feminine and unheroic.

Is basically the entire point of Gale's arc in Act 2 (the unheroic aspect of self sacrifice rather than the feminine one). If you actually let Gale sacrifice himself you get a shit tier ending where the narrator heavily implies that your decision wasn't heroic and that you should have fought on rather than giving up, and the progression of other companions' stories (as well as PC Durge's) imply the same; that heroism comes from bravery and actively fighting against seemingly impossible odds, not indiscriminate self sacrifice. I still need to beat Act 3 to be sure but at this point I'd be shocked if they abandoned that theme since it's so heavily emphasized throughout the game.

As a side note, the notion that good characters also have to have an evil side is particularly confusing to children who are exposed to it in their japanimations or video games. Wyll's an example of this, in that he's supposed to be a good character, but he has made a pact with an obviously evil demon, obsessed with promoting his image as a perfect swashbuckling knight-errant. The evil characters are the only virtuous ones; it's just that they are dedicated to bad cultures.

M rated adult entertainment shouldn't cease to exist because it confuses children.

 

[Kiste]

I'm assuming the key ingredient I'm missing is that I didn't fuck her.

Imagine wanting to have sex with that.

Frog meme companion.

View attachment 40271

Lae'zel is kind of cute.

 

[janior]

Wish there was some alt spellcaster you could recruit, gayle is really annoying gotta spacebar all his lines.
I don't mind karlach that much, shadowheart is alright.

 

[Shaki]

I can't wrap my mind around why anybody likes Lae'zel. I did both a pro and anti Lae'zel run to completion and she's just 100% bitch all the way through.

Her dialogue is literally just:

• Do this or I keel you!
• Muh Queen!
• Muh Orpheus!

I like simple and predictable characters and she's much less of a special snowflake than majority of other companions.

 

[Mebrilia the Viera Queen]

so i met a bunch of companions for now. all the women are strong wymminz who don't need nobody and are way more than capable, all the men are fags. now i do too see the agenda.

One is brainwashed like the ones of her species. Another is brainwashed by a cult. Another is dumb barbaroan with an engine inside that trusts the wrong person blindly and got sold as slave.
Strong womenz indeed lol.

The only strong woman of your conpanions is an old character returning from the past games.

What you are even talking about?

Every companion in this game, save for Jahiera and Minsc, is some flavor of "traumatized, broken bird that needs saving." None of these people are psychologically fit to be saving any worlds, especially their own, yet here we are. None of the female companions strike me as all that strong, they do strike me as exactly the kind of wounded, misunderstood damsels my female players irl adore making for themselves. It's so spot on that I commend Larian for reflecting that demographic so acutely. I have had Shadowhearts and Karlacks in my groups- shit's on point.

Really though, I don't find myself that offended by anyone. These NPCs are fairly tolerable, certainly better than the painful crap from BioWare.

Lmao imagine being retarded enough to think these companions are anywhere near the level of Alistar, Morrigan, Garrus, Wrex, Mordin, Edwin, Viciona, Jolee, Canderous, Hk 47.

Black faggot, Wizard faggot, Karlach are all so bad they're offensive.

Alistair? Really i guess you love to lick poles in winter.
Morrigan? She is a bitch there is also a fun mod to address that that is call "Slap morrigan"

Garrus? He is fine.
Wrex? meh
Mordin? Fine
Edwin? Fun one but the worst wizard of thay.
Viconia? Fun only if you have an evil party.
Not knowing the other 3 but i think you are being too harsh on the companions. The only critique i have for bg3 companions is that they are all a disaster.
Karlach is not bad nor is Gale two tragic characters if you know their story arc.
Wyll was rewritten and i actually like it a lot.

 

[Zayne]

Wish there was some alt spellcaster you could recruit

Respeccing Wyll into "proper" spellcaster fits thematically

 

[gurugeorge]

The one thing I’ve read about it is that people complain about savescummin.
That means there’s a lot of dicerolls and I FUCKING LOVE IT!

I hate the dice rolls. Wasting a large of time with the dice roll animation on something that took less than a millisecond with just a basic random number generator and just displaying the result in the log. I want to play a game, not watch a movie.

Oh dear, I love the dicerolls. They really, really allow me to play my character. And I mean *play my character* not ^as my character^.

Not being able to do something? That’s what happens to the character, that’s your story. What ever it entails.
That’s the fun of an RPG; to be able go try out different things and *either* success or fail. Failure doesn’t stop your journey, it alters it. And that’s where the real fun is.

This is probably a thread of its own, but anyway…

I love the dice rolls too - if you don't "game" them and you take what's given, it's very immersive. My only beef, as with a lot of those types of things (like the unfurling r-click context menu) is that they're tuned for a new player, so they run at a snail's pace and have lots of little gaps for the new player to take in information. Developers should always try to have an option to speed all that stuff up, get rid of time gaps, etc., for players who're in the saddle with a game. Same as with animations - it's good to absorb the animation quality when you start playing, it gets you into the mood, but usually about a third of the way through a game after you've seen all the animations for a while, you want to speed all that shit up.

 

[Lagole Gon]

I'm assuming the key ingredient I'm missing is that I didn't fuck her.

Imagine wanting to have sex with that.

Frog meme companion.

View attachment 40271

Lae'zel is kind of cute.

The only problem is her "skinny mummy" body. Eh, it is lore-accurate...
I don't mind the face at all.

 

[janior]

dragon age? quit that game after the prologue

 

[gurugeorge]

too much of an edgy goth insert

What's edgy about her? She absolutely doesn't do anything appropriately evil and nihilistic for a Shar worshipper.

i.e. she's an edgy goth girl

 

[darkpatriot]

I can't wrap my mind around why anybody likes Lae'zel. I did both a pro and anti Lae'zel run to completion and she's just 100% bitch all the way through.

Her dialogue is literally just:

• Do this or I keel you!
• Muh Queen!
• Muh Orpheus!

My character was at a really low point in his life, having just been kidnapped by illithid and had a parasite put in his head, when she appeared and saved him while offering him hope for the future.

Then a little later she submitted when he asserted his dominance over some Goblins, Tieflings, and her.

Pretty run-of-the-mill boy meets girl kind of thing.

 

[gurugeorge]

I can't wrap my mind around why anybody likes Lae'zel. I did both a pro and anti Lae'zel run to completion and she's just 100% bitch all the way through.

Her dialogue is literally just:

• Do this or I keel you!
• Muh Queen!
• Muh Orpheus!

The way she's a bitch is what makes her seem like a real character, not someone put there to please you. She's genuinely prickly and unpleasant sometimes, yet she's a great fighter worth having on the team. That feels very right for an RPG.

 

[General Disarray]

The one thing I’ve read about it is that people complain about savescummin.
That means there’s a lot of dicerolls and I FUCKING LOVE IT!

If you like dice rolls, you gonna love it

Thanks for the info. I’ve been waiting for a proper diceheavy RPG for a looooong time.

Maybe it even makes good for the undoubtly awful story and gringe moments. Who knows.

Vagrus The Riven Realms is a diceheavy RPG that I can recommend if you like that aspect.

 

[Herumor]

I enjoyed my Chosen of Bhaal Dark Urge playthrough, but I still think this shit should have had a different ending than just the Absolute stuff. It's not really nearly as thematic as I would have liked it to be.

The Illithid Empire isn't a thing that happened in the past, it's a condition that will ARISE in the far future. Illithids eventually "win" and cast themselves back in time to rule the past as well as the future and also to make sure THEIR future does eventually come to pass. That is why Aboleths, the oldest race in existence with a racial memory, do not remember them.

Where did you read about this? I know it's touted as a theory, but does it have some kind of official book saying this?

 

[Jvegi]

I'm playing bg1 and it has a day and night cycle.

 

[Grauken]

I'm playing bg1 and it has a day and night cycle.

Also it has no turn based combat and is just bland in comparison