Baldur's Gate Baldur's Gate 3 RELEASE THREAD

[Alex]

Yeah I don't understand evil= murder hobo and cutting off quests and content. Evil should equal acting in your own self interest, not necessarily killing everyone.

The whole raiding the grove bit is stupid. So stupid that the drow allegedly questions your motives afterwards, not really understanding why you went along with it.

There is no solid reward or motive involved besides "lewl, let's go murder hobo, join the evil cult and kill every druid or tiefling I see". There is the meta motive of romancing and recruiting mommy drow, but even that is not presented in the game before you take this option.

I dunno, killing hippies and snowflakes sound like its own reward to be honest.

 

[La vie sexuelle]

Valid point, but argument - not so much

 

[TheHeroOfTime]

 

[roshan]

So, what is the Codex verdict on this game?

 

[MerchantKing]

So, what is the Codex verdict on this game?

2/10 would not play again.

 

[TheHeroOfTime]

So, what is the Codex verdict on this game?

It's good, but also very gay. So kingcomrade/10

 

[sebas]

The whole raiding the grove bit is stupid. So stupid that the drow allegedly questions your motives afterwards, not really understanding why you went along with it.

If you actually play the dialogues as a self-centered driven Tav, it's not stupid at all.

You go with your tadpole to the druids and their "healer" tries to stab you with a deadly poison. They are lead by a Shadow Druid, cult which despises all society and preaches anarchy. They are also in conflict with a bunch of weak Thiefling hobbos who are living off the druids and have no strong leadership to get them even remotely prepared for the road ahead to BG. The hobbos want you to risk your neck and go kill the goblin leaders, as if that means the rest of the road to BG will be a stroll.

The goblins on the other hand control the Nightsong ruins, the nearby town and have competent leadership. Not only this, but when you go to their camp you meet a powerful Absolute entity which they serve, entity which is in some way linked to your tadpole. It's clear that from all you've learned so far, the Absolute is the only one who actually has good information on your tadpoles.

At this point, why the fuck would you do the Thieflings dirty work when you could easily ally with the winning side AND get into Absolute's graces. What do the useless thieflings or the clueluess druids have for you? The stupid choice here is taking on all the risk to serve a losing side which has zero answers for your tadpole problem. That's what's stupid, the sort of stupid that a moron like Wyll would do.

 

[Fedora Master]

So, what is the Codex verdict on this game?

Larian/10 saved by the mediocre 5e ruleset

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

So, what is the Codex verdict on this game?

It's a very good game with a handful of glaring flaws. Some understandable (you work on a game for X years, at some point you have to "let it go" and release something), some absolutely baffling (as doing better wasn't really going to require more expenses, just to make better decisions when needed).

Giving it a vote would be a bit arbitrary.
I'd say that the shortcomings would be enough to give the game "just" an 8, but on the same scale it would become challenging to think of many others deserving anything more than a 6-7.

 

[Barbarian]

The whole raiding the grove bit is stupid. So stupid that the drow allegedly questions your motives afterwards, not really understanding why you went along with it.

If you actually play the dialogues as a self-centered driven Tav, it's not stupid at all.

You go with your tadpole to the druids and their "healer" tries to stab you with a deadly poison. They are lead by a Shadow Druid, cult which despises all society and preaches anarchy. They are also in conflict with a bunch of weak Thiefling hobbos who are living off the druids and have no strong leadership to get them even remotely prepared for the road ahead to BG. The hobbos want you to risk your neck and go kill the goblin leaders, as if that means the rest of the road to BG will be a stroll.

The goblins on the other hand control the Nightsong ruins, the nearby town and have competent leadership. Not only this, but when you go to their camp you meet a powerful Absolute entity which they serve, entity which is in some way linked to your tadpole. It's clear that from all you've learned so far, the Absolute is the only one who actually has good information on your tadpoles.

At this point, why the fuck would you do the Thieflings dirty work when you could easily ally with the winning side AND get into Absolute's graces. What do the useless thieflings or the clueluess druids have for you? The stupid choice here is taking on all the risk to serve a losing side which has zero answers for your tadpole problem. That's what's stupid, the sort of stupid that a moron like Wyll would do.

I actually enjoyed saving the tieflings, even the (initially)annoying children with their scam and thievery ring(MC is a rogue so I had a lot of cool class interactions with them). Wouldn't really be entertained being a murder hobo and joining some insane tadpole cult with rapey goblins and gigafag drows. Druids and tiefling refugees are not so bad in comparison. You also get some pretty nice interactions later on for helping them when you meet them again in Last Light. I assume there will be more upon reaching Baldur's Gate.

The point of original dnd was to roleplay a hero after all, or at least antihero. It is only the edgy shit that came afterwards that encapsulates notions like "killing innocent people is fun!" and such bs.

Most annoying moment for me so far was when the deep gnomes showed up. There was no frontloading wokery until then, suddenly you got half a dozen homosexual couples going on about how you should save you their gay husband or lesbian wife. Honestly felt like becoming a villain there and helping the duergar end the killing of the sodomite shitstains.

 

[kangaxx]

Sooooo... I just finished the game in about 100h.

Larian really ran out of budget for Act 3 and especially the end didn't they? I'm not a massive 'ending slides' kind of guy, but I felt even the end of Act 1 gave me a better sense of victory than the eventual Act 3 victory.

I might write a very long and autistic list of good and bad things about this game later today. Overall pretty good (certainly one of the better games I've played in a while), but has some major issues. Especially toward the end.

 

[Raghar]

Sooooo... I just finished the game in about 100h.

Larian really ran out of budget for Act 3 and especially the end didn't they? I'm not a massive 'ending slides' kind of guy, but I felt even the end of Act 1 gave me a better sense of victory than the eventual Act 3 victory.

I might write a very long and autistic list of good and bad things about this game later today. Overall pretty good (certainly one of the better games I've played in a while), but has some major issues. Especially toward the end.

So it needs enhanced edition like Witcher, and other games...

 

[volklore]

Sooooo... I just finished the game in about 100h.

Larian really ran out of budget for Act 3 and especially the end didn't they? I'm not a massive 'ending slides' kind of guy, but I felt even the end of Act 1 gave me a better sense of victory than the eventual Act 3 victory.

I might write a very long and autistic list of good and bad things about this game later today. Overall pretty good (certainly one of the better games I've played in a while), but has some major issues. Especially toward the end.

So it needs enhanced edition like Witcher, and other games...

It could benefit from a bit of polishing in act3 but the main issue with the game is the many rewrites and patchwork plot that resulted from it. Not a lot can be done about this, that's way out of scope for an EE imo.

 

[janior]

Sooooo... I just finished the game in about 100h.

Larian really ran out of budget for Act 3 and especially the end didn't they? I'm not a massive 'ending slides' kind of guy, but I felt even the end of Act 1 gave me a better sense of victory than the eventual Act 3 victory.

I might write a very long and autistic list of good and bad things about this game later today. Overall pretty good (certainly one of the better games I've played in a while), but has some major issues. Especially toward the end.

So it needs enhanced edition like Witcher, and other games...

It could benefit from a bit of polishing in act3 but the main issue with the game is the many rewrites and patchwork plot that resulted from it. Not a lot can be done about this, that's way out of scope for an EE imo.

so we're just waiting for a remake in 30 years

 

[volklore]

Sooooo... I just finished the game in about 100h.

Larian really ran out of budget for Act 3 and especially the end didn't they? I'm not a massive 'ending slides' kind of guy, but I felt even the end of Act 1 gave me a better sense of victory than the eventual Act 3 victory.

I might write a very long and autistic list of good and bad things about this game later today. Overall pretty good (certainly one of the better games I've played in a while), but has some major issues. Especially toward the end.

So it needs enhanced edition like Witcher, and other games...

It could benefit from a bit of polishing in act3 but the main issue with the game is the many rewrites and patchwork plot that resulted from it. Not a lot can be done about this, that's way out of scope for an EE imo.

so we're just waiting for a remake in 30 years

Heh just another game with a bad story :shrug:
There's things they can do to ''fix'' the plot for stuff to make sense with some changes.
Like adding a quest

Spoiler

to enter the prism and free orpheus (possibly through sourcerous sundries) prior to the ending which would set you up to the orpheus path and get rid of the emperor. That would have the benefit of making raphael's deal at least somewhat interesting. Maybe they can also think about a better plan for him instead of just having him give you the same fucking plan as the emperor... not to mention the fact he can somehow turn himself into a squid even though he's not tadpoled...

.

Changing the rugpull if you ally with some of the chosen

Spoiler

Not killing ghortash, having help you in the brain fight with the steelwatch and have an epilogue where BG stays under his rule i.e his plan kinda complete.

.
Among other things.
Mostly superficial changes that don't fix the most glaring problem of the plot, which is the emperor, he's too interwoven into everything to fix that, but enough to make it a bit less bitter at the end.

 

[Lagole Gon]

So, what is the Codex verdict on this game?

Wait for Finished Edition.
It's worth playing for fun combat and encounter design. Maybe with some balance mods.
Main story and some writing are really bad, going through it might require the protective powers of alcohol.
You can really feel some major rewrites and design changes in the middle of production.

Thumbs up with a whole page of odd caveats.

 

[koyota]

I'm disappointed that Ranger is just a fighter with extra steps, right down to heavy armor proficiency.

Always plays Ranger -> Beastmaster


Druid Grove confused me to no end and I thought the game was bugged as Volo and everyone ran around screaming " HELP, GET IT OUT OF HERE", when he is sitting there telling his life story to another bear (as trigged by the cut-scene) and there are bears just chilling all over the place.

They could have onboarded it a bit better, as I had no idea they were talking about my friendly bear companion.

 

[Raghar]

I'm disappointed that Ranger is just a fighter with extra steps, right down to heavy armor proficiency.

Always plays Ranger -> Beastmaster


Druid Grove confused me to no end and I thought the game was bugged as Volo and everyone ran around screaming " HELP, GET IT OUT OF HERE", when he is sitting there telling his life story to another bear (as trigged by the cut-scene) and there are bears just chilling all over the place.

They could have onboarded it a bit better, as I had no idea they were talking about my friendly bear companion.

They are doing that stuff to your undead companion as well.

 

[whydoibother]

 

[whydoibother]

I'm disappointed that Ranger is just a fighter with extra steps, right down to heavy armor proficiency.

Rangers have spells, including some unique ones. They have a subclass that's about stealth, and a subclass that's about a summoned beastie.
And even if you want to be a dual wielding melee fighter as a ranger, you still get the benefit of dropping that 75% move slow and forcing people to fight you instead of going around you.

 

[Mebrilia the Viera Queen]

Game of the year for me!

 

[kangaxx]

I'm disappointed that Ranger is just a fighter with extra steps, right down to heavy armor proficiency.

Always plays Ranger -> Beastmaster


Druid Grove confused me to no end and I thought the game was bugged as Volo and everyone ran around screaming " HELP, GET IT OUT OF HERE", when he is sitting there telling his life story to another bear (as trigged by the cut-scene) and there are bears just chilling all over the place.

They could have onboarded it a bit better, as I had no idea they were talking about my friendly bear companion.

I had the same thing - I had a giant spider following me around the whole time and it made NPCs run around like fucking lunatics. It created some funny and immersion-breaking moments.

 

[Sarathiour]

View attachment 41089

Those subverted copypasta rarely works, I never went to 4 chan and it's pretty obvious the original one was a rant about girl wanting "bad boys daddy"

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

It could benefit from a bit of polishing in act3 but the main issue with the game is the many rewrites and patchwork plot that resulted from it. Not a lot can be done about this, that's way out of scope for an EE imo.

Yeah, that's the main issue.
The game definitely isn't lacking in the AMOUNT of content offered, cuts or not.
But bloodly hell if most of the subplots and questlines don't seem to end in a wet fart after hours and hours of build up.

Cazador would be an egregious example; he's built-up as some sort of machiavellian super-villain with power, politican influence and raw strength... and he turns out to be a pitiful manlet you can casually walk into AND bitchslap in one go.

 

[kangaxx]

The thing that puzzled me most about this is how any of the characters can be level 1 at the start of the game.

For example

Gale.. fucking the godess/essence of magic itself, yet is level 1. Surely that would take some high level dick to achieve?

Also why would Viconia send a level 1 Cleric on such an important mission?

Astarion has a long history of abducting people for his vampire patron... etc etc.

Is anyone who understands D&D better than me able to explain if this is normal or feasible in TT?