Baldur's Gate Baldur's Gate 3 RELEASE THREAD

[Eisenheinrich]

I wasn't expecting to plane walk in act 1, always something unexpected

You gotta rest.

 

[Tyranicon]

I wish there was an arena where some enemies are utilized more than just once.

Seems kind of a waste.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

So, after killing the eagles I feel like that nest is slightly too big for the Blue Jay. I feel like I've been had (though the young eagle you kill first was kinda funny to talk to)

Blue Jay tells you a secret tho after you freed "his" nest.

I really love how you find unique encounters in every corner of the map

Yeah, but map feels "theme park" esque often. Like how you will find most of these events or fights literally happening 100 steps away from each other with no connection.

A bigger and less crowded/saturated map would have been much better.

Like those harpies - they are like a two minute walk from the druid grove eating tiefling kids and druids themselves! wtf bro.

the old world map would have been better. Would have also given me a potential fix for the biggest issue I have with the game... Lack of random combat encounters.

 

[Grauken]

You gotta rest.

Died after I came out again and had to reload an older save

 

[Fedora Master]

https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/1344

Finally the game is playable.

 

[Sunri]

I wasn't expecting to plane walk in act 1, always something unexpected

You gotta rest.

Your character looks kinda like Freddie Mercury swagger

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Also nobody would care as much for BG3 if the game would send you rat killing again.

Uh….. NOBODY?

 

[Tyranicon]

Also nobody would care as much for BG3 if the game would send you rat killing again.

Uh….. NOBODY?

Don't worry, there's a rat-killing quest, in a basement. This can't be Baldur's Gate otherwise.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Like those harpies - they are like a two minute walk from the druid grove eating tiefling kids and druids themselves! wtf bro.

Can you join the harpies in the feast? Can you fuck the harpies afterwards, get married, have 1/2 harpy kids and eat more people in towns? Maybe open up a restaurant?

 

[Sherry]

Hi.

F1. F2? F3! F4?!?

Gosh. Who designed the user interface for this game? It is so utterly upended it makes me wonder if the UI merchant design team did not communicate with the UI game team. You have to relearn an entire system all over again that it is .. okay. Okay. OKAY! I avoided the wine today after my last post so I could better explain this.

You play the game. F1. F2. F3. F4. You flip through your party members using this default design. BUT not when you meet a MERCHANT!

Nononononono!!! F1. F2. F3. F4. It doesn't work.

Welcome to the merchant mini-game!

What does that mean? Well, you cannot select party members using what the game has already taught you with F1. F2. F3. F4. Now you must click on the portrait to individually select what party member you want selling items. Oh, it does not end there!

This merchant mini-game will keep you entertained for a bit while you relearn the UI system because well who knows why! okay? Okay? OKAY!!! WHO DESIGNED THIS? Why can I not use the same UI system that I have already learned while playing the game, with a merchant? why? Why? WHY?! Y!?!

Is it that difficult to program F1. F2. F3. F4. character selection while in a merchant system? Is it that difficult to even DRAG AND DROP an item purchased, to a member in your party within the merchant menu because I cannot even do that to sort a purchase to another member of the party.

You cannot even drag and drop items from an inventory into the camp chest when you are out of camp. Do you know what you have to do? You have to right-click the inventory item and use the Pool of Radiance Ruins of Myth Drannor menu system to SEND TO CAMP! A third UI design.

A simple CHEST icon somewhere on the HUD for drag and drop functionality ..... this is a group who are ULTIMA fans. DRAG AND DROP SYSTEM. Ultima 7.

Please someone tell me I am missing something here so obvious. omg smhh

Thanks,
Sherry

 

[toro]

Casters are, in fact, excellent, especially if you use summons liberally (almost none of them require concentration). You can also dodge having to rest in much of the game by just swapping out your casters once you exhaust their slots, not that it matters to economize on long rests except for some ancillary quest outcomes. The reason why they are not that useful is that most of the encounters do not involve many enemies. Casters only hit above their weight class against large numbers of mooks. Martials are really strong in encounters with small numbers of enemies, which is most of the fights in BG3. As most of the fights are against smaller numbers of enemies, your casters are often just along for the ride as your martial characters clean up everything in a round or two. You either waste a spell you don't need or hang in the background uselessly.

Stacking casters is also something that is really overpowered in 5e and particularly in BG3 just because it can create situations that are so deadly.

false

Spoiler

Viconia De Vir fight is simply insane

 

[toro]

So I played the shit out of this, or should I say, it played the shit out of me. Three weeks non stop of this nonsense, oof. Just finished it. I think it's great overall ; interesting reactivity and quest design, some weird writing with novelty elements of the setting that manages to hold up a mystery, good itemisation (massive improvement from DOS), good encounter design. I played evil all the way and it was pretty fun. I mean I don't know, this is probably the best crpg since the last best one, which means Arcanum I guess. What a big deal, yes. It's funny though how much this big money design and all the work that it implies, instead of being invested in graphical details, seems to have been injected in voice acting - all these characters with their unique lines, it's pretty insane. A lot of it really truly was not necessary. This much resources and time invested managed to break the conventional wisdom that voice acting makes expansive dialog too costly. Well, it probably is still too costly, but there you go, infinite dialog and C&C, all voiced. That's some intense ear bleeding if you don't want to hear british people all the time.

My only serious complaint is that the game is too easy, the combat crumbles down as you accumulate abilities and such. I think they game about had one or two tough fights. Too easy to abuse the resting system, I guess, but that was the case in the original games too. I believe that in the PnP system, in 5e, magical items are limited per character - this is not the case in BG3 and probably breaks the balance entirely. I don't play DnD so I don't know, just a hypothesis. At any rate this is still miles beyond the Pathfinder games and their shit quantitative design. This game is so expansive that it refuses to copy any kind of enemy type, sometimes you fight an enemy once and that's it, the asset is never used again. It's just really over the top in that sense. No copy pasta trash fights. You have to give Larian points here, unless you really don't like the gay, I suppose. Then you must carry on with your mission, for the children. I mean, you know about children. In this game you can slit their throats. I mean just go all out, as far as I'm concerned.

Jesus Christ, Dude! You are so wrong.

 

[toro]

The encounters design is uneven and far from good: in the beginning some fights were decent and they let the player experiment with different strategies but then they tried to overwhelm the player with hordes of enemies, they suddenly introduced new buffs/mechanics for certain fights [like Unstoppable] or they punished the player if it didn't follow the prepared cheese recipe. No fun allowed.

Spoiler

1st Hag fight in Act 1 at lvl 4 was the most tactical fight of the game. The one with the redcaps.
2nd Hag fight in Act 1 to save Mayrina was designed for cheese therefore retarded.
GithYanky Inquisitor fight was really tense at low level.
Nere fight was also decent.
Then most of Act 2 bosses from that cursed land can be persuaded to kill themselves.
Thorm & Myrkul fight is horseshit -> Fight is trivial after realizing that the most dangerous enemy is the one with Dominate Person.
Grym boss -> Hammer cheese.
Orin fight -> Pure retardation. One of the worst fights in the entire game because it basically nullifies your wizard/sorcerer progression: Magic Missile is required to debuff Unstoppable asap. Or a horde of summons. Or 2 fighters with Action Surge.
Viconia -> Chaotic fight for which I had to use Resistance to All Damage potions. There is no way to win this fight without cheese. The amount of enemies is simply retarded.
Cazador fight -> Another retarded fight in which you can throw Cazador's projection over the edge in the 1st or 2nd round.
The Hag fight in Act 3 with the mushrooms could have been better.

 

[Tyranicon]

Hardest fight in the game was the gith bridge encounter at level 4 with just me and shadowtits.

My stubborn ass did a Dark Souls and finally got gud by pushing them off the cliff.

 

[janior]

Finished the game, the last section is insulting.
I get now why people hate the last act, the worst sequence of encounters in the game leading the the worst final boss fight, cinematic ending scene is also laughably horrible.
That being said I think overall it's a great game , if larian keeps working on it for the next few years and figures out how to get rid of bugs and general retardation it will be up there with the best crpgs.

 

[Parabalus]

I wish there was an arena where some enemies are utilized more than just once.

Seems kind of a waste.

You'll get something similar at the very end.

 

[Parabalus]

The encounters design is uneven and far from good: in the beginning some fights were decent and they let the player experiment with different strategies but then they tried to overwhelm the player with hordes of enemies, they suddenly introduced new buffs/mechanics for certain fights [like Unstoppable] or they punished the player if it didn't follow the prepared cheese recipe. No fun allowed.

Spoiler

1st Hag fight in Act 1 at lvl 4 was the most tactical fight of the game. The one with the redcaps.
2nd Hag fight in Act 1 to save Mayrina was designed for cheese therefore retarded.
GithYanky Inquisitor fight was really tense at low level.
Nere fight was also decent.
Then most of Act 2 bosses from that cursed land can be persuaded to kill themselves.
Thorm & Myrkul fight is horseshit -> Fight is trivial after realizing that the most dangerous enemy is the one with Dominate Person.
Grym boss -> Hammer cheese.
Orin fight -> Pure retardation. One of the worst fights in the entire game because it basically nullifies your wizard/sorcerer progression: Magic Missile is required to debuff Unstoppable asap. Or a horde of summons. Or 2 fighters with Action Surge.
Viconia -> Chaotic fight for which I had to use Resistance to All Damage potions. There is no way to win this fight without cheese. The amount of enemies is simply retarded.
Cazador fight -> Another retarded fight in which you can throw Cazador's projection over the edge in the 1st or 2nd round.
The Hag fight in Act 3 with the mushrooms could have been better.

Most of these fights were the result of your choices, I had radically different experiences.

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

I wish there was an arena where some enemies are utilized more than just once.

Seems kind of a waste.

I wouldn't really mind if they added some sort of "gauntlet mode" entirely focused on dungeon dwelling or where you experience a series of combat encounters (at worse even partially randomized ones) in a straight sequence sequence.
Just to have more chances to play around with the combat system, builds and so on.


Moving to another topic...
What the fuck is this??
https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=887351&#Post887351

 

[S.H.O.D.A.N.]

What the fuck is this??

Dude got his knees smashed for card counting at his local Indian casino, so he moved to CRPGs.

 

[HumanTotemPole]

man I can't stand listening to this guy

Mind you, you're saying this after having posted that other cringelord above.

the other cringelord at least doesn't try to turn his thoughts about the game into a wrestling pre-show, more tolerable

This argument kind of mimics the one about which BG writing is more shit.

BG was definetly intended for a more mature audience than BG3, with its task made easier by the facts of the more narrow and uniform demographic, and the more niche market at the time. BG2 on the other hand was, I'd say, made for the same age group as BG3 was made for. The difference is that we were that age group then and we had our sensitivities as an audience, and they are not those of today's teens. It's a ten year's gap, if not more. The average BG3 player will have been born in the early 00's, the same time when BG2 was all the rage with those born in the late 1980s.

This doesn't mean BG2 is any more mature than BG3 in terms of its theme. In some ways even less - at least in BG3 you're not the child of a god. This sounds even more capeshit than BG3's plot. And by the time of ToB it does get even more capeshit. Check your glasses' color, and the age on your driver's licenses. It's a videogame, not an elixir of youth.

What does annoy me is the woke messaging, but for now at least it's not getting crammed into my brain with no option to avoid.

Looking in from the outside this strikes me as a correct assessment. Not been paying attention till recently but BG3 strikes me as BG2 made for the 2023 audience the way DA:O was BG2 for the 2009 audience with the following caveats:

• Baseline cRPG combat mechanics have improved compared to DA:O's time though not necessarily compared to BG2's.
• RPGs, videogames and general nerd shit are a much more mainstream affair now as we've emancipated being a brain-poisioned basement dweller.

Clumsily using established IP to get eyes on the product and sell copies is so very 2023 as well. Ditto for retconning/rehashing old characters or story arcs to pad out your own content.

I'll be keeping it on the long finger for now till the hype dies down but anecdotally this thing is a smash with the intended audience. A younger work colleague adores it - humanities graduate, very socially liberal, redditor, bisexual, loves the Lord of Rings movies but not the books, loves the MCU to the point of allegedly having written slashfic and has a bunch of parasocial attachments to Youtube Let's Players/D&D groups. Notably doesn't really talk about the mechanics (they seem pretty solid based on the discussion here and elsewhere) but gushes about the companions, story and NPC interactions.

Lest we forget a significant portion of the cRPG audience has always enjoyed a CYOA fantasy/sci-fi soap opera with some light ERP. That audience has had slim pickings lately given Bioware's gradual decline. Kudos to Larian for identifying the gap in the market and reaping the dividends.

 

[Abu Antar]

Newest patch increased loading times, and also messed up my characters face.

 

[Grauken]

Newest patch increased loading times, and also messed up my characters face.

One of the quick fixes before the newest patch managed to make my char look like he was going through a balding phase, but this has since disappeared again

 

[gurugeorge]

Mods for this so far are pretty miserable. Dragonborn dicks, bigger tits and... ENBs. Amazing work.

Eh? There are a lot of gameplay mods now - they're massively split between mods that make the game more journalist-mode (e.g. get rid of 5e restrictions) and mods that stick more to 5e/RAW (e.g. making shove a full action) and/or try to make the game harder (e.g. better AI).

There are also lots of QOL mods (e.g. better containers).

Whether they work well or not is a different question, but it's definitely not all just graphics/faggot enhancements.

 

[gurugeorge]

Kudos to Larian for identifying the gap in the market and reaping the dividends.

It's a lowest-common-denominator game, there's something in it for everyone. It appeals to the audience you've outlined, but it also appeals to many of us here because it has enough decent gameplay to sustain interest.

Swen is obviously a smart guy and wants a bit of everyone's money - but charmingly, he still holds to some old school design tropes that Larian have always consistently held to. It's a delicious irony, in fact, that the old school tradition that Larian uphold of being able to kill any NPC is what redeems the game for some anti-wokistas here and enables them to keep playing - in a trope, for every disgusting faggot you come across, there's an option to murder them outright

IOW, Swen knows all his audience and tries to satisfice everyone's requirements. (You might think that it's more woke than anything else, but in terms of effort put into making the game, that's obviously not quite true, a lot of effort has gone into the elements that Codexers like too, while on the other hand, the game isn't woke enough to satisfy the ultimate requirements of some of the crazies, but it's woke enough to keep them interested too.)

 

[Grauken]

Kudos to Larian for identifying the gap in the market and reaping the dividends.

It's a lowest-common-denominator game, there's something in it for everyone. It appeals to the audience you've outlined, but it also appeals to many of us here because it has enough decent gameplay to sustain interest.

Swen is obviously a smart guy and wants a bit of everyone's money - but charmingly, he still holds to some old school design tropes that Larian have always consistently held to. It's a delicious irony, in fact, that the old school tradition that Larian uphold of being able to kill any NPC is what redeems the game for some anti-wokistas here and enables them to keep playing - in a trope, for every disgusting faggot you come across, there's an option to murder them outright

IOW, Swen knows all his audience and tries to satisfice everyone's requirements. (You might think that it's more woke than anything else, but in terms of effort put into making the game, that's obviously not quite true, a lot of effort has gone into the elements that Codexers like too, while on the other hand, the game isn't woke enough to satisfy the ultimate requirements of some of the crazies, but it's woke enough to keep them interested too.)

You're overthinking this, Swen has professed that he loves Ultima 7, so he integrates as much simulationism into his games as he can, so killing everyone is just par for the course