Baldur's Gate Baldur's Gate 3 RELEASE THREAD

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

How about: The Guardian is indeed an illusion, but behind it stands the Giga Brain, who is trying to get you to kill the three avatars of the Dead Gods so it can free itself, and then dominate you. It works with lies, seduction, pretend friendship, etc, but the end is either you kill it, or dominate it, or it dominates you.

This is acceptable. Maybe even better than just the tadpole. Though I still like the "down by the river" ending idea. Hopefully that could be worked into a bad end somehow. I generally enjoy creative failed endings in games like that, or like Gale's suicide bomber ending.

You could also go midway and have the tadpole be taking suggestions from the brain, since if it just gave actual orders, the brain could simply transform you at will. You could have some sort of influence with Daisy, where you think you've convinced it to turn on the brain and betray it somehow. Then you can still get your false happy ending in the end.

Or just nix the idea altogether. Have removing the worms be a subplot and give the player REAL options. If you have to include a dream companion, it's just a minor feature with a unique ending if you fail to remove the worm.

 

[whydoibother]

You could also go midway and have the tadpole be taking suggestions from the brain, since if it just gave actual orders, the brain could simply transform you at will.

But it would need you to remain yourself, so you can free it. You can even keep that narrative about "im so weak, im using my power to protect you, but im under constant attack here", etc, and it would be the brain fighting the crown while maintaining juuuust enough severinty to keep a small warband independent so they can free it.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

But it would need you to remain yourself, so you can free it. You can even keep that narrative about "im so weak, im using my power to protect you, but im under constant attack here", etc, and it would be the brain fighting the crown while maintaining juuuust enough severinty to keep a small warband independent so they can free it.

Yes, but I'm thinking of the endgame. The brain could just snap its, uh, fingers... or whatever and then you're done, kiddo.

But I guess that goes back to what I wrote above about giving the player real options to remove the worms. So yeah, that works.

 

[volklore]

Anybody spoll me what is the emperor's endgame currently ? I am middle act3.

Spoiler

Once they revealed he actually brainwashed stelmane when I antagonized him in what I assuming to be the potential mindflayer sex scene, I thought his whole plan was actually a grand design i.e take control over the brain and remake the illithid empire only led by him as the only independant-thought minflayer. Would work with all of his characterizations so far, explains why he doesn't want orpheus freed ever, and also the fact that he apparently loves being an illithid.
All in all I thought they'd make him want to take over the dead three plan and actually go through with mass ceromorphosis at the end

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Someone help me, what is this specimen:

Spoiler

It has a female voice, female name, a beard, and seems to work as a guard, although it's a small race, most likely dwarf. What kind of name is Vlomina for a dwarf?

The sound of one barfing.

 

[just]

having gay sex with the emperor should pop an achievement so we could point and laugh at those who did it
also other degenerate things like trying on fem underwear, romancing the frog or playing as a female

 

[janior]

having gay sex with the emperor should pop an achievement so we could point and laugh at those who did it
also other degenerate things like trying on fem underwear, romancing the frog or playing as a female

what's wrong with playing as a female?

 

[Herumor]

Anybody spoll me what is the emperor's endgame currently ? I am middle act3.

Spoiler

Once they revealed he actually brainwashed stelmane when I antagonized him in what I assuming to be the potential mindflayer sex scene, I thought his whole plan was actually a grand design i.e take control over the brain and remake the illithid empire only led by him as the only independant-thought minflayer. Would work with all of his characterizations so far, explains why he doesn't want orpheus freed ever, and also the fact that he apparently loves being an illithid.
All in all I thought they'd make him want to take over the dead three plan and actually go through with mass ceromorphosis at the end

His goals are two-fold: he wants to keep on living as a Mind Flayer and he also wants to be free, but the second is not as high of a priority as the first. You'll see why if you decide to free Orpheus. He genuinely considers being a Mind Flayer to be cool as fuck, and has no morality issues about eating brains of others, though how truthful he was about hunting down only criminals for sustenance is debatable considering his past with Stelmane. He doesn't want the Grand Design, he doesn't want to become an Elder Brain (that would require him being an Ulitharid anyway), he doesn't want to dominate the world, he just wants to keep on living in the city he founded and doing his own thing, whatever that may be.

Also, there's been apparently some datamined stuff from the game's files that show that it was going to be revealed that the Emperor is actually the mythical Adversary the Illithids were afraid would come along one day, so it's not just an echo of Balduran's personality and memories inside a tadpole-turned-Illithid.

having gay sex with the emperor should pop an achievement so we could point and laugh at those who did it

It does, have you not played the game?

 

[AwesomeButton]

having gay sex with the emperor should pop an achievement so we could point and laugh at those who did it
also other degenerate things like trying on fem underwear, romancing the frog or playing as a female

Having no romances at all should also have an achievement.

 

[AwesomeButton]

lmao. The subsequent playthrough where you still know from the start the guardian is a lying piece of shit? Where you know that none of your choices for his or her appearance matter? That playthrough?

True, marginal difference.

 

[Lagole Gon]

Larian's cool-fun-superpowers-tree

Swen straight up said he thinks people don't get enough new things to play with on levelup, and levelups aren't frequent enough in late game, and you might get bored of your character at some point due to not getting new tools. That's what the illithid talent tree is there for, from a game design stance.
Narratively, it doesn't make much sense, especially since its not directly tied to irreversible progression towards ceremorphosis, and I can't say I like it either, but to be surprised by it is weird. Everyone knew what this is for.

Presumably there will be a further reveal about who he originally was, but by this point I'm not interested.

Lmao. There is.
It's an ooptional content tied to Wyll's personal quest.
Imagine the worst thing you can think of. You did? Well, it's even more pointless and dumber than that.

Post the video of yourself barfing/crying on YT when you finally reach it.

 

[Desiderius]

You can find and kill the murderer of Baldur's Gate, yet all of the victims on his kill list stay as objectives on the map for you, and you can still go and "warn" them of an attempt on their lives.

Edit: until you read his personal notes you find on his corpse. Then the markers disappear. One of the victims remains as a marker, you can find him, and he is already killed. No idea why keep him as a marker, but w/e.

LoL just found out that if you kill the hag the enemies that you could fight will become friendly. In he first chapter i knocked them out but the gamedevs were too dumb to think of such solution,so it only works if you don't engage them and just kill the hag. Found it out in the third chapter,lame.

Only one of them (Regret) actually matters AFAICT and keeping them around makes Hag fight a good bit more of a pain.

How come? The fight i pretty easy,two or three rounds at max.

Probably because I tried to fight it with Masks on and Prot ebul/good to protect from Hag cuntrol then cast Concentration spells that overwrote the Prot and got controlled.

I is gud playor. 5E didn’t just take the companions back to level one.

Seriously it’s one of the few fights that can punish bad saves if you let it.

 

[Desiderius]

Larian's cool-fun-superpowers-tree

Swen straight up said he thinks people don't get enough new things to play with on levelup, and levelups aren't frequent enough in late game, and you might get bored of your character at some point due to not getting new tools. That's what the illithid talent tree is there for, from a game design stance.
Narratively, it doesn't make much sense, especially since its not directly tied to irreversible progression towards ceremorphosis, and I can't say I like it either, but to be surprised by it is weird. Everyone knew what this is for.

Presumably there will be a further reveal about who he originally was, but by this point I'm not interested.

Lmao. There is.
It's an ooptional content tied to Wyll's personal quest.
Imagine the worst thing you can think of? You did? Well, it's even more pointless and dumber than that.

Post the video of yourself barfing/crying on YT when you finally reach it.

 

[Be Kind Rewind]

What's up Bioware social, dropping by to tell you that the old Codex had a much better understanding of Larian and their games than current year "Bulgarian" sword fuckers.

 

[MerchantKing]

Anybody spoll me what is the emperor's endgame currently ? I am middle act3.

Spoiler

Once they revealed he actually brainwashed stelmane when I antagonized him in what I assuming to be the potential mindflayer sex scene, I thought his whole plan was actually a grand design i.e take control over the brain and remake the illithid empire only led by him as the only independant-thought minflayer. Would work with all of his characterizations so far, explains why he doesn't want orpheus freed ever, and also the fact that he apparently loves being an illithid.
All in all I thought they'd make him want to take over the dead three plan and actually go through with mass ceromorphosis at the end

He wants a Tentacle sex orgy.

 

[Sacibengala]

After playing this game it was clear that they did their research...to copy that dragon age feeling.

 

[janior]

After playing this game it was clear that they did their research...to copy that dragon age feeling.

it took more from games like witcher3 imo but i have not played drog age

 

[gurugeorge]

Again, the Guardian should have been Orpheus, he's the most obvious contender in terms of the player trying to figure out things from hints in lore drops as they play.

He has the inherited power to neutralize and control Illithid powers, and it could have been like one of those things where a character is imprisoned but finds a thin backchannel for communication to the outside world. Then you've got clean distinction between the adversaries (and after all the gith are depicted right at the beginning as adversaries of the Illithids), with the only funny business being him trying to fool you (the sex would have been weird, but after all there was no reason to have any of that nonsense at all), presumably because he thought you would be more liable to believe someone you had more of an affinity with (a dream figure representing whatever ideal of beauty and/or wholesomeness you have, which is after all what's offered in character creation).

It could even be him offering the powers - he has a visceral loathing of all things Illithid obviously, but he doesn't really care about you as such, and if you want to gorge yourself on tadpoles and get superpowers, he wouldn't care, so long as it makes you powerful enough to break him out, and he has the ability to grant it if you want.

You could then scale things back to the point where Goretex and the other two aren't main adversaries backed by gods but more of a spanner in the works at an earlier stage of a much simpler, less adversaries-heavy plan, and is using Orpheus for his fiendish plot to create an army of Illithids under his control. The scale would be right then because their motivation would be human-sized (dominance of the Sword Coast), but the big reveal would be that they would be being used by higher powers with more cosmic agendas in mind, currently unkown, which would prepare the ground for a "Moar epic sequel" to go to level 20, much like the Mythic thing of PF:WOTR.

I dunno, anything but this clusterfuck of baddies and mysterious personages. The Illithid/Gith rivalry should have been the primary axis on which things were developed, it's looking now like they're just some fucking joke in an over-complicated, over-fussy plot.

 

[volklore]

Again, the Guardian should have been Orpheus, he's the most obvious contender in terms of the player trying to figure out things from hints in lore drops as they play.

He has the inherited power to neutralize and control Illithid powers, and it could have been like one of those things where a character is imprisoned but finds a thin backchannel for communication to the outside world. Then you've got clean distinction between the adversaries (and after all the gith are depicted right at the beginning as adversaries of the Illithids), with the only funny business being him trying to fool you (the sex would have been weird, but after all there was no reason to have any of that nonsense at all), presumably because he thought you would be more liable to believe someone you had more of an affinity with (a dream figure representing whatever ideal of beauty and/or wholesomeness you have, which is after all what's offered in character creation).

It could even be him offering the powers - he has a visceral loathing of all things Illithid obviously, but he doesn't really care about you as such, and if you want to gorge yourself on tadpoles and get superpowers, he wouldn't care, so long as it makes you powerful enough to break him out, and he has the ability to grant it if you want.

You could then scale things back to the point where Goretex and the other two aren't main adversaries backed by gods but more of a spanner in the works at an earlier stage of a much simpler, less adversaries-heavy plan, and is using Orpheus for his fiendish plot to create an army of Illithids under his control. The scale would be right then because their motivation would be human-sized (dominance of the Sword Coast), but the big reveal would be that they would be being used by higher powers with more cosmic agendas in mind, currently unkown, which would prepare the ground for a "Moar epic sequel" to go to level 20, much like the Mythic thing of PF:WOTR.

I dunno, anything but this clusterfuck of baddies and mysterious personages. The Illithid/Gith rivalry should have been the primary axis on which things were developed, it's looking now like they're just some fucking joke in an over-complicated, over-fussy plot.

There's no real reason for Morpheus to hide his identity though. That's why guardian had to be something minflayer related (at least as long as larian wanted to keep the dream guardian in the game). They could honestly have cut the guardian from the game and it wouldn't necesarrily worse for it. Morpheus would be imprisoned in the prism. Since The plot is only about

Spoiler

repurposed mindflayer biotech. Only Illithid related event is the brain trying to break free. But they probably thought they had to have a flagship illithid there to fit their early marketting.

 

[gurugeorge]

Again, the Guardian should have been Orpheus, he's the most obvious contender in terms of the player trying to figure out things from hints in lore drops as they play.

He has the inherited power to neutralize and control Illithid powers, and it could have been like one of those things where a character is imprisoned but finds a thin backchannel for communication to the outside world. Then you've got clean distinction between the adversaries (and after all the gith are depicted right at the beginning as adversaries of the Illithids), with the only funny business being him trying to fool you (the sex would have been weird, but after all there was no reason to have any of that nonsense at all), presumably because he thought you would be more liable to believe someone you had more of an affinity with (a dream figure representing whatever ideal of beauty and/or wholesomeness you have, which is after all what's offered in character creation).

It could even be him offering the powers - he has a visceral loathing of all things Illithid obviously, but he doesn't really care about you as such, and if you want to gorge yourself on tadpoles and get superpowers, he wouldn't care, so long as it makes you powerful enough to break him out, and he has the ability to grant it if you want.

You could then scale things back to the point where Goretex and the other two aren't main adversaries backed by gods but more of a spanner in the works at an earlier stage of a much simpler, less adversaries-heavy plan, and is using Orpheus for his fiendish plot to create an army of Illithids under his control. The scale would be right then because their motivation would be human-sized (dominance of the Sword Coast), but the big reveal would be that they would be being used by higher powers with more cosmic agendas in mind, currently unkown, which would prepare the ground for a "Moar epic sequel" to go to level 20, much like the Mythic thing of PF:WOTR.

I dunno, anything but this clusterfuck of baddies and mysterious personages. The Illithid/Gith rivalry should have been the primary axis on which things were developed, it's looking now like they're just some fucking joke in an over-complicated, over-fussy plot.

There's no real reason for Morpheus to hide his identity though. That's why guardian had to be something minflayer related (at least as long as larian wanted to keep the dream guardian in the game). They could honestly have cut the guardian from the game and it wouldn't necesarrily worse for it. Morpheus would be imprisoned in the prism. Since The plot is only about

Spoiler

repurposed mindflayer biotech. Only Illithid related event is the brain trying to break free

He could be hiding his identity from the tadpole in your brain (so to speak). You could have a trope like the face-hugger choking your neck thing in Alien, where the tadpole doesn't control you and isn't able to fulfil its ceremorphosis destiny because of the artifact, but might still be able to cause you pain and problems if you were having dealings with the arch-enemy.

Basically everything is easier and wrinkles can be worked out, so long as you have a clear enmity between two main antagonists, with you being caught in the middle.

 

[Shaki]

Again, the Guardian should have been Orpheus, he's the most obvious contender in terms of the player trying to figure out things from hints in lore drops as they play.

He has the inherited power to neutralize and control Illithid powers, and it could have been like one of those things where a character is imprisoned but finds a thin backchannel for communication to the outside world. Then you've got clean distinction between the adversaries (and after all the gith are depicted right at the beginning as adversaries of the Illithids), with the only funny business being him trying to fool you (the sex would have been weird, but after all there was no reason to have any of that nonsense at all), presumably because he thought you would be more liable to believe someone you had more of an affinity with (a dream figure representing whatever ideal of beauty and/or wholesomeness you have, which is after all what's offered in character creation).

It could even be him offering the powers - he has a visceral loathing of all things Illithid obviously, but he doesn't really care about you as such, and if you want to gorge yourself on tadpoles and get superpowers, he wouldn't care, so long as it makes you powerful enough to break him out, and he has the ability to grant it if you want.

You could then scale things back to the point where Goretex and the other two aren't main adversaries backed by gods but more of a spanner in the works at an earlier stage of a much simpler, less adversaries-heavy plan, and is using Orpheus for his fiendish plot to create an army of Illithids under his control. The scale would be right then because their motivation would be human-sized (dominance of the Sword Coast), but the big reveal would be that they would be being used by higher powers with more cosmic agendas in mind, currently unkown, which would prepare the ground for a "Moar epic sequel" to go to level 20, much like the Mythic thing of PF:WOTR.

I dunno, anything but this clusterfuck of baddies and mysterious personages. The Illithid/Gith rivalry should have been the primary axis on which things were developed, it's looking now like they're just some fucking joke in an over-complicated, over-fussy plot.

There's no real reason for Morpheus to hide his identity though. That's why guardian had to be something minflayer related (at least as long as larian wanted to keep the dream guardian in the game). They could honestly have cut the guardian from the game and it wouldn't necesarrily worse for it. Morpheus would be imprisoned in the prism. Since The plot is only about

Spoiler

repurposed mindflayer biotech. Only Illithid related event is the brain trying to break free

There is no real reason for a lot of things in the plot. Honestly, if they decided on a story before development and stuck to it, whatever the story would be, would probably work 10x better than what we got in the end. Majority of problems simply come from the fact they started changing things after majority of the game was already in place, so anything new they created had to be limited by the preexisting stuff, and fit into what they already made. Emperor stuff is retarded because of it - they had Daisy, they scrapped her but didn't want to scrap all the content they created for her, so they just quickly invented and stuffed the dumbfuck squid in her place and repurposed her content for him. Other parts of the story probably went through similar shit, until we were left with clusterfuck repurposed 10 times for 10 different plots, which obviously will feel weird, nonsensical and disjointed.

 

[gurugeorge]

Again, the Guardian should have been Orpheus, he's the most obvious contender in terms of the player trying to figure out things from hints in lore drops as they play.

He has the inherited power to neutralize and control Illithid powers, and it could have been like one of those things where a character is imprisoned but finds a thin backchannel for communication to the outside world. Then you've got clean distinction between the adversaries (and after all the gith are depicted right at the beginning as adversaries of the Illithids), with the only funny business being him trying to fool you (the sex would have been weird, but after all there was no reason to have any of that nonsense at all), presumably because he thought you would be more liable to believe someone you had more of an affinity with (a dream figure representing whatever ideal of beauty and/or wholesomeness you have, which is after all what's offered in character creation).

It could even be him offering the powers - he has a visceral loathing of all things Illithid obviously, but he doesn't really care about you as such, and if you want to gorge yourself on tadpoles and get superpowers, he wouldn't care, so long as it makes you powerful enough to break him out, and he has the ability to grant it if you want.

You could then scale things back to the point where Goretex and the other two aren't main adversaries backed by gods but more of a spanner in the works at an earlier stage of a much simpler, less adversaries-heavy plan, and is using Orpheus for his fiendish plot to create an army of Illithids under his control. The scale would be right then because their motivation would be human-sized (dominance of the Sword Coast), but the big reveal would be that they would be being used by higher powers with more cosmic agendas in mind, currently unkown, which would prepare the ground for a "Moar epic sequel" to go to level 20, much like the Mythic thing of PF:WOTR.

I dunno, anything but this clusterfuck of baddies and mysterious personages. The Illithid/Gith rivalry should have been the primary axis on which things were developed, it's looking now like they're just some fucking joke in an over-complicated, over-fussy plot.

There's no real reason for Morpheus to hide his identity though. That's why guardian had to be something minflayer related (at least as long as larian wanted to keep the dream guardian in the game). They could honestly have cut the guardian from the game and it wouldn't necesarrily worse for it. Morpheus would be imprisoned in the prism. Since The plot is only about

Spoiler

repurposed mindflayer biotech. Only Illithid related event is the brain trying to break free

There is no real reason for a lot of things in the plot. Honestly, if they decided on a story before development and stuck to it, whatever the story would be, would probably work 10x better than what we got in the end. Majority of problems simply come from the fact they started changing things after majority of the game was already in place, so anything new they created had to be limited by the preexisting stuff, and fit into what they already made. Emperor stuff is retarded because of it - they had Daisy, they scrapped her but didn't want to scrap all the content they created for her, so they just quickly invented and stuffed the dumbfuck squid in her place and repurposed her content for him. Other parts of the story probably went through similar shit, until we were left with clusterfuck repurposed 10 times for 10 different plots, which obviously will feel weird, nonsensical and disjointed.

Yeah that's basically what it's feeling like now. Act 1: excellent, Act 2: waffles a bit, but a good climax, but this intro to Act 3 - suddenly it's the whole kitchen sink, too much cosmic devilry to keep track of, and the multiplication of entities beyond necessity.

 

[Immortal]

Yeah that's basically what it's feeling like now. Act 1: excellent, Act 2: waffles a bit, but a good climax, but this intro to Act 3 - suddenly it's the whole kitchen sink, too much cosmic devilry to keep track of, and the multiplication of entities beyond necessity.

Act 2 started strong... I had high hopes.. but it really cheaps out.

Remembering that Grymforge and Mountain Pass are technically still Act 1.. Act 2 is really just you fucking around playing ghost busters for a few hours.. before anything meaningful happens again.. and then it's over before you blink.

 

[Barbarian]

having gay sex with the emperor should pop an achievement so we could point and laugh at those who did it
also other degenerate things like trying on fem underwear, romancing the frog or playing as a female

what's wrong with playing as a female?

It is teh gae.

 

[gurugeorge]

Aaaand another thing: all that evident chopping and changing with the plot has led to a complete mess of different-sounding vocal takes from the various actors. There are so many edits with different-quality audio it gets really annoying and jarring. Even if they were using several studios simulataneously, they should have had like 3 or 4 Larian "vocal recording laptops" with specific mics (e.g. a Neumann TLM103, which is basically a much cheaper, cut-down version of the Neumann U87, still the industry standard mic for vocals AFAIK) a good, simple audio interface (one of the cheap ones that's cut down on inputs and features but high quality) and specific software, the same on each laptop. Maybe £1500 a pop? (The laptops don't even have to be all that powerful just to record a bazillion alternative vocal takes with some basic neutral input processing, just a compressor/eq, with each actor having their own slightly different setting.) With a budget of millions that's a mere drop in the ocean.

All they really needed studios for was a) the location close to the actor and b) soundproofed vocal booths, to some general standard (which could be tested by a Larian guy before use).

What it sounds like Larian did was rely on the various studios' specifications - bad idea.

************

Aaaand another thing. The fucking gurning on my character in convos is really starting to piss me off big time. I thought the whole fucking point of not having a VO protagonist was not to force a character on the player? Yet here we are, with your character having very specific emotional reactions that don't jibe with your rp flavour in your head, most of the time. A particularly horrific case in point being the lovelorn gurning you do with Gale as a male player, but there are hugely inappropriate - for my character - emotions displayed in convo animations throughout.

Just give the player character a neutral expression ffs. Or, if you have the time to do all that animation shit, do them in sets where you can choose between "fluffy," "neutral," "stoic" characterization, etc.