Baldur's Gate Baldur's Gate 3 RELEASE THREAD

[raeven]

Once upon a time, the codex was a place that championed choices and consequences in games. Championed games that let you play different roles, with genuinely different outcomes and playstyles depending on those roles. Sometimes, even championed RPGs that were more tactical, had multiple party members, and/or were turn based compared to the garbage that we were being fed for the decade between Bloodlines and wasteland 2.

Sometimes with the criticism of this game I wonder what ppl are even comparing it to? This is the kind of game we wanted for years on end and thought would never be possible again, and now that we have it this forum is just non stop bitching about it as if there are a ton of options out there for turn and party based RPGs with actual choice, consequences, and role playing.

Never underestimate the butthurt people feel for something cool and niche they like becoming popular, I guess.

I agree that the combat can be on the easy side , although honor mode has been changing that and kicking my ass. Overall this game has way more to offer on the "role playing" front than BG1 and BG2 ever did, and that's worth celebrating imo.

But sure, complain about there being too many gay people I guess, how edgy.

 

[user]

This is the kind of game we wanted for years on end and thought would never be possible again, and now that we have it this forum is just non stop bitching about it as if there are a ton of options out there for turn and party based RPGs with actual choice, consequences, and role playing.

Don't know... even the broken-ass Rogue Trader managed to retain my interest more than BG3. I usually restart these games an autistic number of times to try new builds and C&C, but this one didn't do it for me. Not excited to make a new build for my main, or make different choices like choose the grove over the camp etc, not going illithid and so on. It also kind of lacks the BG grittiness I remember and was fond of.

PS: Wouldn't mind if every single character in the game was gay and trans at the same time, as long as I was happy with the rest of the game.

 

[Shaki]

Once upon a time, the codex was a place that championed choices and consequences in games. Championed games that let you play different roles, with genuinely different outcomes and playstyles depending on those roles. Sometimes, even championed RPGs that were more tactical, had multiple party members, and/or were turn based compared to the garbage that we were being fed for the decade between Bloodlines and wasteland 2.

Sometimes with the criticism of this game I wonder what ppl are even comparing it to? This is the kind of game we wanted for years on end and thought would never be possible again, and now that we have it this forum is just non stop bitching about it as if there are a ton of options out there for turn and party based RPGs with actual choice, consequences, and role playing.

Never underestimate the butthurt people feel for something cool and niche they like becoming popular, I guess.

I agree that the combat can be on the easy side , although honor mode has been changing that and kicking my ass. Overall this game has way more to offer on the "role playing" front than BG1 and BG2 ever did, and that's worth celebrating imo.

But sure, complain about there being too many gay people I guess, how edgy.

Are you retarded? Do you actually play RPGs and are interested in the genre, or just check out games that are hyped up by Reddit?

Where is that fucking amazing C&C in Baldurs gay 3? The game has exactly the same fake C&C as every other RPG, while having 10-100x bigger budget. The whole actual C&C here is ability to kill people and lose content associated with them, fucking amazing, I could do the same in Morrowind 20 years ago without all the gay sex. Other than that you have fake dialogue options that lead to the exactly same outcomes, even tho they suggest the existence of different ways to proceed. Go to the Githyanki Creche, it shows this very well - you theoretically have 9000 dialogue options, creating illusion of many possible ways to go through this place, but in reality EVERY SINGLE CHOICE will result in the EXACTLY THE SAME OUTCOME.

What fucking "playstyles depending on the roles"? It's one of the games where your class matters the least. Everyone can do everything, it's fucking 5E. Skills of the classes are pointless, because +2 bonus from proficiency or +4 form expertise barely matters when I'm throwing D20 and can apply 9000 buffs to rolls and also reroll x times. Your fucking Wizard with expertise in Arcana, will be barely any better at it than Barbarian with no proficiency. Everyone can use scrolls. Gear is not gated by class. Spellcasters play a little different than martials in combat, and that's it. All martials play like other martials, all spellcasters play like other spellcasters. You will do exactly the same run will every class, with some small flavour differences in dialogues, no better than what Owlcat etc. did for 1/10 of the BG's budget. Hell, many 1 man indies done in a basement have shit on the exactly same level or better. Where is the fucking revolution that you're saying we've been waiting for?

This game is full decline, it's the opposite of what we wanted. You wanted fully animated and voiced 100 hours of bear&squid gay sex, and haha licking goblin feet, BDSM and kicking squirrels so funny and quirky - And you got it. Go consoom it in silence, or nut over it with your reddit friends, but stop trying to convince monocled RPG enjoyers that this filth is somehow their dream. It's not.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Never underestimate the butthurt people feel for something cool and niche they like becoming popular, I guess.

Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 were popular at the time. Most of the butthurt seems to come from that it's a Divinity game with D&D license and this is what the series will be going forward, so it's irreconcilable.

Speaking of that

https://www.reddit.com/r/DivinityOriginalSin/comments/18s11uc/came_from_bg3_got_decimated/

Came from BG3. Got decimated.​

So I've never played CRPGs before Baldur's Gate 3. And after putting almost 130 hrs into BG3 and loving it, I decided to buy DOS2 and brought a friend along with me who never played NG3 or anything like that. We both played custom characters and got decimated in Fort Joy twice. We're playing on classic difficulty.
First it was the frogs, everyone except one character died and all of our resurrection scrolls was on a dead character and we couldn't transfer the scrolls to the alive character. So we loaded back the save then returned to the Fort.
Then it was the merchant accusing someone with stealing stuff, we pissed him off apparently and everyone killed us.
Is this game supposed to be super hard? What are we missing? Every person in the fort had twice more health than we had and always burned us to death...

 

[Old Hans]

I think I ran into a weird bug during my honor run mode. I was helping the teiflings defend the grove, during the fight an ogre was running up the path towards the upper gate, so I blew up the buried barrel, and as soon as I did that, the game decided I was now on the goblin team.

 

[raeven]

Are you retarded? Do you actually play RPGs and are interested in the genre, or just check out games that are hyped up by Reddit?
- Not retarded, yes play RPGs, not especially active on Reddit

Where is that fucking amazing C&C in Baldurs gay 3? The game has exactly the same fake C&C as every other RPG, while having 10-100x bigger budget. The whole actual C&C here is ability to kill people and lose content associated with them, fucking amazing, I could do the same in Morrowind 20 years ago without all the gay sex. Other than that you have fake dialogue options that lead to the exactly same outcomes, even tho they suggest the existence of different ways to proceed. Go to the Githyanki Creche, it shows this very well - you theoretically have 9000 dialogue options, creating illusion of many possible ways to go through this place, but in reality EVERY SINGLE CHOICE will result in the EXACTLY THE SAME OUTCOME.

The Githyanki creche is an example where there is essentially only one outcome. There are dozens, maybe hundreds of examples of situations where there are wildly varying outcomes. Tons of characters from act 1 / 2 show up in act 3 and react to your prior actions, quest lines are opened up / closed off as a result. There are more consequences connecting the early part of the game to the later stages of the game than any other RPG I've played. I sincerely doubt there is any RPG ever that has more. BG1 / 2 don't even come close.

What fucking "playstyles depending on the roles"? It's one of the games where your class matters the least. Everyone can do everything, it's fucking 5E. Skills of the classes are pointless, because +2 bonus from proficiency or +4 form expertise barely matters when I'm throwing D20 and can apply 9000 buffs to rolls and also reroll x times. Your fucking Wizard with expertise in Arcana, will be barely any better at it than Barbarian with no proficiency. Everyone can use scrolls. Gear is not gated by class. Spellcasters play a little different than martials in combat, and that's it. All martials play like other martials, all spellcasters play like other spellcasters. You will do exactly the same run will every class, with some small flavour differences in dialogues, no better than what Owlcat etc. did for 1/10 of the BG's budget. Hell, many 1 man indies done in a basement have shit on the exactly same level or better. Where is the fucking revolution that you're saying we've been waiting for?

Idk what to tell you. Barbarians play different than Fighters play different than Rangers play different than Paladins etc etc etc. Ok, you don't like RNG skill checks, fine, it's not my favorite system either, but acting like skill proficiencies don't matter is just disingenuous.

Gear is gated by class. Period. This is just the basic rules of D&D 5e, you can look them up, it's publicly available.

Scrolls being able to be cast by anyone is kinda bullshit, sure.

This game is full decline, it's the opposite of what we wanted. You wanted fully animated and voiced 100 hours of bear&squid gay sex, and haha licking goblin feet, BDSM and kicking squirrels so funny and quirky - And you got it. Go consoom it in silence, or nut over it with your reddit friends, but stop trying to convince monocled RPG enjoyers that this filth is somehow their dream. It's not.

Where are these incredible games of which you speak that are soooooo much better? There are other good games out there, sure, but the premise that BG3 fails to have meaningful C&C or class distinctions compared to vaguely alluded to "other games" is just BS. Sure there are probably games that do some things better, some things worse. but BG3 does narrative agency better than any other game out there. Sorry, it's just facts. If you had played through it, you'd know.

 

[rojay]

Baldurs gay 3?

Everybody here knows you're gay, dude.

 

[jf8350143]

While I don't agree this game is a masterpiece(it's good but that's about it), it's tiresome to see people complain about wokeness when that's the least of the game's problem.

Change every character into a straigth white male/female won't improve the game. The problem lies elsewhere.

 

[dukeofwoodberry]

Are you retarded? Do you actually play RPGs and are interested in the genre, or just check out games that are hyped up by Reddit?
- Not retarded, yes play RPGs, not especially active on Reddit

Where is that fucking amazing C&C in Baldurs gay 3? The game has exactly the same fake C&C as every other RPG, while having 10-100x bigger budget. The whole actual C&C here is ability to kill people and lose content associated with them, fucking amazing, I could do the same in Morrowind 20 years ago without all the gay sex. Other than that you have fake dialogue options that lead to the exactly same outcomes, even tho they suggest the existence of different ways to proceed. Go to the Githyanki Creche, it shows this very well - you theoretically have 9000 dialogue options, creating illusion of many possible ways to go through this place, but in reality EVERY SINGLE CHOICE will result in the EXACTLY THE SAME OUTCOME.

The Githyanki creche is an example where there is essentially only one outcome. There are dozens, maybe hundreds of examples of situations where there are wildly varying outcomes. Tons of characters from act 1 / 2 show up in act 3 and react to your prior actions, quest lines are opened up / closed off as a result. There are more consequences connecting the early part of the game to the later stages of the game than any other RPG I've played. I sincerely doubt there is any RPG ever that has more. BG1 / 2 don't even come close.

What fucking "playstyles depending on the roles"? It's one of the games where your class matters the least. Everyone can do everything, it's fucking 5E. Skills of the classes are pointless, because +2 bonus from proficiency or +4 form expertise barely matters when I'm throwing D20 and can apply 9000 buffs to rolls and also reroll x times. Your fucking Wizard with expertise in Arcana, will be barely any better at it than Barbarian with no proficiency. Everyone can use scrolls. Gear is not gated by class. Spellcasters play a little different than martials in combat, and that's it. All martials play like other martials, all spellcasters play like other spellcasters. You will do exactly the same run will every class, with some small flavour differences in dialogues, no better than what Owlcat etc. did for 1/10 of the BG's budget. Hell, many 1 man indies done in a basement have shit on the exactly same level or better. Where is the fucking revolution that you're saying we've been waiting for?

Idk what to tell you. Barbarians play different than Fighters play different than Rangers play different than Paladins etc etc etc. Ok, you don't like RNG skill checks, fine, it's not my favorite system either, but acting like skill proficiencies don't matter is just disingenuous.

Gear is gated by class. Period. This is just the basic rules of D&D 5e, you can look them up, it's publicly available.

Scrolls being able to be cast by anyone is kinda bullshit, sure.

This game is full decline, it's the opposite of what we wanted. You wanted fully animated and voiced 100 hours of bear&squid gay sex, and haha licking goblin feet, BDSM and kicking squirrels so funny and quirky - And you got it. Go consoom it in silence, or nut over it with your reddit friends, but stop trying to convince monocled RPG enjoyers that this filth is somehow their dream. It's not.

Where are these incredible games of which you speak that are soooooo much better? There are other good games out there, sure, but the premise that BG3 fails to have meaningful C&C or class distinctions compared to vaguely alluded to "other games" is just BS. Sure there are probably games that do some things better, some things worse. but BG3 does narrative agency better than any other game out there. Sorry, it's just facts. If you had played through it, you'd know.

There are two ways to play the game: do gooder who goes out of his way to help every Troon and crazy murder hobo. I wouldnt tout all the vast ways you can play a game with the 1.5 types of playthroughs you can have. Also character building is non existent. You pick your class and that's all.

Encounter design is well done and I like the turn based combat besides the myriad of changes Larian made that make it too easy

 

[Orwenn]

A quick question for table-top players. Is BG3 writing better or worse than that of an average DnD module?

 

[Yosharian]

A quick question for table-top players. Is BG3 writing better or worse than that of an average DnD module?

Worse tbh

Gameplay aside the game is carried entirely on its presentation, which is incredibly good

 

[Lacrymas]

A quick question for table-top players. Is BG3 writing better or worse than that of an average DnD module?

I'd say worse and more disjointed. It depends on the module how big the difference is, though. If you take something like Dragon of Icespire Peak, they are more or less on the same level, but if you compare BG3 to Curse of Strahd there's no contest, Strahd runs circles around it.

Don't know... even the broken-ass Rogue Trader managed to retain my interest more than BG3. I usually restart these games an autistic number of times to try new builds and C&C, but this one didn't do it for me. Not excited to make a new build for my main, or make different choices like choose the grove over the camp etc, not going illithid and so on. It also kind of lacks the BG grittiness I remember and was fond of.

PS: Wouldn't mind if every single character in the game was gay and trans at the same time, as long as I was happy with the rest of the game.

That's because the writing is shockingly bad and uninteresting, it puts you in trivial situations you have no investment in. The (easy) combat can only do so much to keep your attention when you are bombarded with cringe Tumblr-tier characters and a bizarre plot that goes nowhere. After having recently played Spellforce 3's expansions, I realized the writing does a lot of the heavy lifting. You'll be surprised how easy it is to go through a game if you want to see what happens next and want to spend time with the characters. Both recent 5E games (Solasta and BG3) are failures in my eyes, both squandered whatever potential they had because of either shit encounter design or extremely awful writing and that's sad.

 

[raeven]

A quick question for table-top players. Is BG3 writing better or worse than that of an average DnD module?

Writing in modules is often quite sparse, and they vary widely over time and between authors. It's mostly up to the skill of the DM. But, writing and story is not exactly BG3's strong suit. The goofiness factor is reined in compared to D:OS, but it's still fairly cliche and bland fantasy fare. There are certainly better written modules than BG3.

 

[Swen]

Criticism is always the same tardation: "muh woke/gay/bear sexorz" and "muh writingz"

While I agree to a certain extent, most of BG3 is an RPG masterpiece, nothing else comes even close, especially not the old overrated RTWP garbage that was BG2.

Haters can keep coping though, from now on BG3 is the gold standard for CRPG's.

edit: BG3 also destroying Zelda in total GOTY awards

https://goty.gamefa.com/year/2023/

 

[Lacrymas]

You are saying "muh writingz" as if everything in the game doesn't revolve around writing in one way or another. It informs where you go, what you do, whom you talk to, what enemies you are facing, what your role in the game is, how it relates to the overall lore, etc. On top of that, it's not one of those games where you can ignore the writing and play for the combat, 80-90% of the appeal is the writing in this game because there's so much of it constantly and it's fully voiced. Nobody is making inhuman noises on stream when facing Cult of Shar Cleric Nobrin and Moonrise Tower Guard Isilda, they are doing it when Astarion tells them he wants to be the only dark power inside them.

 

[Cryomancer]

awards

The fact that Harry Potter - Hogwarts Legacy is not being considered in this awards because JKR(very lefitist individual) disagrees with only one of the most nonsensical dogmas of the neo official religion of the west shows that this video game awards are pure nonsense. Not that I think that Hogwarts legacy is good as BG3. Imagine if the unique class that you could play BG3 was Wizard and the game barely had 25 spells to chose from, in fact a lv 1 wiz in bg3 will have more spells only from tier 1 + cantrips than the entirety of HL. But many people really liked the game and the game is not even being considered in many awards due pure political reasons.

 

[Lacrymas]

The video game awards are a joke, pure nonsense and a vehicle for ads, but Hogwarts Legacy is an awful game, why would it win any awards?

 

[Swen]

awards

The fact that Harry Potter - Hogwarts Legacy is not being considered in this awards because JKR(very lefitist individual) disagrees with only one of the most nonsensical dogmas of the neo official religion of the west shows that this video game awards are pure nonsense. Not that I think that Hogwarts legacy is good as BG3. Imagine if the unique class that you could play BG3 was Wizard and the game barely had 25 spells to chose from, in fact a lv 1 wiz in bg3 will have more spells only from tier 1 + cantrips than the entirety of HL. But many people really liked the game and the game is not even being considered in many awards due pure political reasons.

Hogwarts did win some GOTY awards but what do you expect it to beat BG3 or Zelda? Lol, no way

 

[Delterius]

Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 were popular at the time. Most of the butthurt seems to come from that it's a proper D&D game with C&C.

how unfortunate

 

[Cryomancer]

what do you expect it to beat BG3 or Zelda?

Which nominations did HL got? https://www.ign.com/articles/the-game-awards-2023-winners-the-full-list
I used CTRL + F and only found ppl complaining about the lack of nominations on commentaries.

But one aspect which I really liked HL is ohk spells. Sure, is ridiculous how you can cast "unforgivable curses" in front of teachers consequence free but I like this type of magic. Don't matter how powerful and tough the enemy is, if he fails to resist my magic, he is dead. I'm playing DDO at moment with a illusionist for the first time( Phantasmal_Killer ). The game would't be as great if was based in 5e instead of 3.5e.

And by being 5e, mindflayers and other enemies become much less terrifying. I would say that the Intellect devouter in NWN1 OC - chapter 1 gave me more troubles than all mindflayers in BG3 and he was relative easy.

 

[Orud]

Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 were popular at the time. Most of the butthurt seems to come from that it's a Divinity game with D&D license and this is what the series will be going forward, so it's irreconcilable.

I vastly prefer Baldur's Gate 1 & 2, but this type of complaint is misguided. BG1&BG2 are, at best, D&D inspired games. If you need to make a "D&D" game, you'll always end up closer to BG3 than anywhere near BG1/BG2.

 

[Swen]

what do you expect it to beat BG3 or Zelda?

Which nominations did HL got? https://www.ign.com/articles/the-game-awards-2023-winners-the-full-list
I used CTRL + F and only found ppl complaining about the lack of nominations on commentaries.

But one aspect which I really liked HL is ohk spells. Sure, is ridiculous how you can cast "unforgivable curses" in front of teachers consequence free but I like this type of magic. Don't matter how powerful and tough the enemy is, if he fails to resist my magic, he is dead. I'm playing DDO at moment with a illusionist for the first time( Phantasmal_Killer ). The game would't be as great if was based in 5e instead of 3.5e.

And by being 5e, mindflayers and other enemies become much less terrifying. I would say that the Intellect devouter in NWN1 OC - chapter 1 gave me more troubles than all mindflayers in BG3 and he was relative easy.

HL got these 4 GOTY awards so far:

1. Gepigeny (HU) (Readers’ Choice)

2. NovaStream (AU)

3. GeekTown (UK) (Readers’ Choice)

4. NWTV (NL) (Readers’ Choice)

 

[Yosharian]

You are saying "muh writingz" as if everything in the game doesn't revolve around writing in one way or another. It informs where you go, what you do, whom you talk to, what enemies you are facing, what your role in the game is, how it relates to the overall lore, etc. On top of that, it's not one of those games where you can ignore the writing and play for the combat, 80-90% of the appeal is the writing in this game because there's so much of it constantly and it's fully voiced. Nobody is making inhuman noises on stream when facing Cult of Shar Cleric Nobrin and Moonrise Tower Guard Isilda, they are doing it when Astarion tells them he wants to be the only dark power inside them.

I would be happy to play just for the combat if it wasn't braindead-easy

 

[BrotherFrank]

So long as spiderman gets cucked again idc who wins.

Normally completely indifferent about awards but people flipping out over bg3 winning and discovering turn based games existed and was popular with more people then their recycled goyslop was hilarious and i want more of that.

 

[TheHeroOfTime]