Baldur's Gate Baldur's Gate 3 RELEASE THREAD

[The Abominable Showman]

I asked you this before, but again, if this game really has no redeeming qualities why spend months on end posting about it?

He probably just finds it fun to argue about it. I can sort of empathize with that. I haven't played BG3 and I have no interest in doing so, but I still lurk this thread because all the shit flinging is really entertaining.

 

[Black]

The size of act 3 was about as long as acts 1 and 2 combined for me, taking place entirely within a city, so it's not surprising that there were more bugs as well. And yeah, a few more dud quests. But also wayyyyy more amazing quests.

Honestly none of the individual quests in acts 1 and 2 really stood out to me or were memorable in the way that say, fallout 1 and 2 were. Only in act 3 did you get those kinds of quests where it felt like you were really impacting and shaping the world around you, rather than just moving on after completing them.

I don't care about impacting quests feeling like I'm "impacting the world around me." Who gives a fuck? You need to feel like a special snowflake? Grounded quests can feel like some of the most impactful. Hag quest was the best in the game and it wasn't hugely impactful. It was saving one person. Scale means nothing. Large scale or small scale are both fine. All depends on writing. The writing was so bad in this game I lost all interest. The 3 dead gods are controlling a giant alien brain...zzzzzzzz

C&C isn't for everyone, I get it

C&C is when you simply miss out on content like going evil in bg3.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

I dislike many games, but BG3 I think is 1 of maybe 3-4 RPGs I've ever judged as having no redeeming qualities. For example I absolutely hate POE series, but I mentioned in the past that Deadfire has decent itemization and build autism with the added dual classing, and in TB can be fun when treating it purely as an exploration/combat game. In BG3 I just cant find anything good, despite trying really hard.

Baldur's Gate 3 is Baldur's Gate 1/2 with better gameplay.

 

[jackofshadows]

For fuck's sake. "Content hunters"

1) *good* content in bg3 is the fucking worst. It was so big mistake for me to play another playthrough as a goody-two-shoes (some paladin options were cool though to be fair).

2) being evil is reward in itself is really big in this one. Unfortunately they've spoiled the biggest one in their showcase where you can sent the absolute slaves to willingly die w/o the necessary gear against the shadows or whatever.

3) SH/Minthy/some quest stuff was enough for me.

4) Sit and remember some counter-example RPGs where the dark path was done right, I'll wait.

 

[Shaki]

I dislike many games, but BG3 I think is 1 of maybe 3-4 RPGs I've ever judged as having no redeeming qualities. For example I absolutely hate POE series, but I mentioned in the past that Deadfire has decent itemization and build autism with the added dual classing, and in TB can be fun when treating it purely as an exploration/combat game. In BG3 I just cant find anything good, despite trying really hard.

Baldur's Gate 3 is Baldur's Gate 1/2 with better gameplay.

Unless you're very much into the sandbox thing, which I completely don't care about, I heavily disagree. At least when it comes to the BG2, I can agree about BG1, because this one is pure atmosphere, everything else is indeed pretty shit about it and it's hard to find games with worse gameplay.

What elements of the gameplay specifically, you think BG3 does better than BG2, and why?

 

[Hagashager]

I'm just not retarded. RtwP was cancer, but making a game TB doesnt automatically make it good. In fact making a piss poor easy TB and forcing players into 60 hours of mindless rightclicking in combat, is worse than RtwP, because in RtwP you can at least deal with shitty combat quickly.

Maybe you should just nope out of Baldur's Gate threads, it sounds like the entire series isn't anything for you. Thanks for confirming you're just here to bitch, though.

Nah, I like oryginał BGs, despite bringing decline in combat and romances, they were still great games. I'm just not a zoomer cuck who feels the need to pretend every thing he likes is perfect, and world will somehow end if he stops slurping the cum of devs he likes.

BG3 just has no redeeming qualities, unlike originals and hundreds of other flawed games I still liked.

Pretending everything you dislike has no redeeming qualities is just as bad as pretending everything you like is perfect.

I dislike many games, but BG3 I think is 1 of maybe 3-4 RPGs I've ever judged as having no redeeming qualities. For example I absolutely hate POE series, but I mentioned in the past that Deadfire has decent itemization and build autism with the added dual classing, and in TB can be fun when treating it purely as an exploration/combat game. In BG3 I just cant find anything good, despite trying really hard.

That is the edgiest hot-take of this thread so far. It's almost on-par with the numb-nuts who thought BG3 fans were all CIA plants about 100 pages back.

my God man, dislike BG3, sure, but to say it has zero redeeming qualities is patently wrong. Your opinion is wrong. You have a bad opinion.

All this talk about C&C being non-existent is bullshit. If BG3 has no meaingful C&C then neither does Fallout 1 or 2, with their Noble-Bright "Be the wasteland hero who gets special perks, gear and discounts" good path versus their dogshit "be deprived of everything, including a good fight" bad path dichotomy.

 

[Shaki]

I'm just not retarded. RtwP was cancer, but making a game TB doesnt automatically make it good. In fact making a piss poor easy TB and forcing players into 60 hours of mindless rightclicking in combat, is worse than RtwP, because in RtwP you can at least deal with shitty combat quickly.

Maybe you should just nope out of Baldur's Gate threads, it sounds like the entire series isn't anything for you. Thanks for confirming you're just here to bitch, though.

Nah, I like oryginał BGs, despite bringing decline in combat and romances, they were still great games. I'm just not a zoomer cuck who feels the need to pretend every thing he likes is perfect, and world will somehow end if he stops slurping the cum of devs he likes.

BG3 just has no redeeming qualities, unlike originals and hundreds of other flawed games I still liked.

Pretending everything you dislike has no redeeming qualities is just as bad as pretending everything you like is perfect.

I dislike many games, but BG3 I think is 1 of maybe 3-4 RPGs I've ever judged as having no redeeming qualities. For example I absolutely hate POE series, but I mentioned in the past that Deadfire has decent itemization and build autism with the added dual classing, and in TB can be fun when treating it purely as an exploration/combat game. In BG3 I just cant find anything good, despite trying really hard.

All this talk about C&C being non-existent is bullshit. If BG3 has no meaingful C&C then neither does Fallout 1 or 2,

Yes. That's the point, isn't it? BG3 has about as much C&C as F1, arguably even less considering the fact that BG3 is much more linear and your choices will have much less impact on the ending, despite Fallout 1 being 26 years old and costing 3mln to BG3's ~100. There are also many games (even indies, AoD for example) which completely destroy it in terms of C&C/reactivity.

Yes, BG3 has basic C&C that most major RPGs had. Is that by itself a redeeming quality? For me it isn't. It's the minimum that I'd expect from the project of this scope, and it's the type of thing that works as a "cherry on top" of a good game, but can't make a shit game good. When it's paired with the worst itemization since first POE, which also makes exploration incredibly unsatisfying, extremely easy/boring combat and streamlined character building with less agency than even original BGs gave you, I just can't find any fun in it. The only "redeeming qualities" I could argue, are the sandbox mechanics, coop, voice acting and mocap - these things are indeed better than in any other RPG. But I don't consider them RPG qualities, so they don't redeem the game as a good RPG in any way for me..

 

[Black]

*good* content in bg3 is the fucking worst.

While *evil* content in bg3 doesn't exist.

 

[Desiderius]

*good* content in bg3 is the fucking worst.

While *evil* content in bg3 doesn't exist.

Isn’t that the goal?

 

[Crichton]

I think a lot of this discussion about C&C misses the point because it isn't about how many differently colored ending slide explosions a game has, it's about how you play the game. When people play first-person shooting games, a lot of the time the first thing they try to do is shoot the friendly NPC in the tutorial, finding out whether:

i) their character automatically lowers the gun when the cursor is near the NPC or
ii) the NPC is invulnerable to friendly fire or
iii) they get a game over screen

This isn't really about some deep-seeded edgy Sith/Caesar's Legion/Anti-Paladin desire to kill the friendly NPC; it's about how the game plays. Does it let you fuck something up or are their guardrails preventing you from doing that? Is this actually a game or just a ride?

If you think about most recent RPGs, if you were to try the same thing and attack the prologue NPC, they're somewhere around possibility ii up there

Deadfire: Try to attack Eder, he takes damage, but doesn't care
Wrath: Try to take attack Anevia, you fucking can't.

And that's what this is really about, game developers telling you that you fucking can't:

-Murder their snowflake NPCs
-Skip to the end of their linear quests
-approach their scripted encounters any way but the way they drew it up.

Meanwhile, in BG3, if you want to kill the prologue NPCs, steal plot items, jump over walls, disarm enemies and beat them with their own shit, the game is about empowering players to play it their way.

BG3 is going to be the Codex GotY because in a world that says 'you fucking can't', Sven is one of the few devs who says:

 

[Shaki]

I think a lot of this discussion about C&C misses the point because it isn't about how many differently colored ending slide explosions a game has, it's about how you play the game. When people play first-person shooting games, a lot of the time the first thing they try to do is shoot the friendly NPC in the tutorial, finding out whether:

i) they're character automatically lowers the gun when the cursor is near the NPC or
ii) the NPC is invulnerable to friendly fire or
iii) they get a game over screen

This isn't really about some deep-seeded edgy Sith/Caesar's Legion/Anti-Paladin desire to kill the friendly NPC; it's about how the game plays. Does it let you fuck something up or are their guardrails preventing you from doing that? Is this actually a game or just a ride?

If you think about most recent RPGs, if you were to try the same thing and attack the prologue NPC, they're somewhere around possibility ii up there

Deadfire: Try to attack Eder, he takes damage, but doesn't care
Wrath: Try to take attack Anevia, you fucking can't.

And that's what this is really about, game developers telling you that you fucking can't:

-Murder their snowflake NPCs
-Skip to the end of their linear quests
-approach their scripted encounters any way but the way they drew it up.

Meanwhile, in BG3, if you want to kill the prologue NPCs, steal plot items, jump over walls, disarm enemies and beat them with their own shit, the game is about empowering players to play it their way.

BG3 is going to be the Codex GotY because in a world that says 'you fucking can't', Sven is one of the few devs who says:

Yes, as I said in a post yesterday, only real "C&C" the Larianiggers have, is the ability to kill NPCs. Big fucking C&C, instead of NPC telling me "Go do x" I instead will find a note on his body or something, telling me to "Go do x".

Or if it's not main plot NPC, he and all his associated content will just disappear from the game - which would be ok, natural consequence for murderhobo, if not for the fact that it doesn't affect the world at all. You kill the forge nigger in act 1, you'll still find his forges stocked with his items in act 2&3, he just won't be there, and it'll be an immersion breaking random empty location. Kill more people, you just get half of the map full of empty locations in later acts. Amazing, pinnacle of gaming. If this is your C&C, then I don't want it.

It's the most lazy and pointless type of C&C you can imagine, that no normal person will actually care about in a single player game. Shit exist only because it's a co-op thing, and they want le fun sandbox for multiple people to fuck around in, but still be able to finish the plot if your retarded friend kills an important NPC. The game is primarily an isometric equivalent of retarded open world survival multiplayer games like Rust, etc. with some RPG elements and quirky writing/coomer content slapped on top.

 

[MerchantKing]

Wrath: Try to take attack Anevia, you fucking can't.

In Owlcat's defense, they probably don't have the coding ability to even let you do so.

 

[Junmarko]

Larian can't even code day & night cycles.

 

[Crispy]

I think it's safe to say this game is polarizing.

Polar.

Like a bear.

Shit.

 

[raeven]

Yes. That's the point, isn't it? BG3 has about as much C&C as F1, arguably even less considering the fact that BG3 is much more linear and your choices will have much less impact on the ending, despite Fallout 1 being 26 years old and costing 3mln to BG3's ~100. There are also many games (even indies, AoD for example) which completely destroy it in terms of C&C/reactivity.

Wait.... hold on. Your *criticism* of BG3 is that it has reactivity and choices and consequences on par with the all time greats of the genre?

Well.... perhaps we agree more than I thought!

Idk what its budget has to do with it. Obviously the budget went to bear sex and voiceovers, not exponentially more C&C.

I mean it's a nice idea to think that a game with 10x the budget would have 10x as much of precisely what you want in it... but tying the best the genre has to offer in that department is a pretty good consolation prize, I'd say.

 

[raeven]

That is the edgiest hot-take of this thread so far. It's almost on-par with the numb-nuts who thought BG3 fans were all CIA plants about 100 pages back.

Imma need some more information about this conspiracy situation pls

 

[Hagashager]

That is the edgiest hot-take of this thread so far. It's almost on-par with the numb-nuts who thought BG3 fans were all CIA plants about 100 pages back.

Imma need some more information about this conspiracy situation pls

Page 348 of this thread. Post #8696. User Be-Kind-Rewind.
My response is immediately below.

 

[rojay]

Jesus Christ some of you are so fucking stupid it is actually starting to trouble me.

 

[Desiderius]

Wrath: Try to take attack Anevia, you fucking can't.

In Owlcat's defense, they probably don't have the coding ability to even let you do so.

Takes a phaggot to make an honest woman of Anevia

 

[raeven]

That is the edgiest hot-take of this thread so far. It's almost on-par with the numb-nuts who thought BG3 fans were all CIA plants about 100 pages back.

Imma need some more information about this conspiracy situation pls

Page 348 of this thread. Post #8696. User Be-Kind-Rewind.
My response is immediately below.

That shit was hysterical, thanks

 

[dukeofwoodberry]

I'm doing an evil playthrough now and I'm seeing a ton of content I didn't see before. Just about to recruit Minthara now.

Despite being dark urge, I'm also not playing as a murderhobo. My goal as an evil character is to get inside the cult and seize its power for myself. While I end up killing a lot of innocents in the process, my goals are understandable and logical, I'm not just killing people for the lulz or anything.

So far, this playthrough has exposed me to lots of questlines and dialogue that I never got to experience in my good playthrough. Your characterization of the two paths as being simply a matter of less content in one vs the other is not accurate for me.

Lots of questlines? Presses x to doubt.

You'll see by act 3 evil gets almost nothing. Swen says it's supposed to feel lonely being evil and it's definitely not a result of them half assing the evil path.

There is almost no content to rping as pragmatic evil, working with the cult and seizing power from within. That sounds pretty cool but it just isn't a thing. You end up turning on and fighting the cult after a very short time. There are almost no opportunities to work with them

 

[Old Hans]

I'm doing an evil playthrough now and I'm seeing a ton of content I didn't see before. Just about to recruit Minthara now.

Despite being dark urge, I'm also not playing as a murderhobo. My goal as an evil character is to get inside the cult and seize its power for myself. While I end up killing a lot of innocents in the process, my goals are understandable and logical, I'm not just killing people for the lulz or anything.

So far, this playthrough has exposed me to lots of questlines and dialogue that I never got to experience in my good playthrough. Your characterization of the two paths as being simply a matter of less content in one vs the other is not accurate for me.

Lots of questlines? Presses x to doubt.

You'll see by act 3 evil gets almost nothing. Swen says it's supposed to feel lonely being evil and it's definitely not a result of them half assing the evil path.

There is almost no content to rping as pragmatic evil, working with the cult and seizing power from within. That sounds pretty cool but it just isn't a thing. You end up turning on and fighting the cult after a very short time. There are almost no opportunities to work with them

Larians idea of C&C is basically "do you want to sneak into building from the upstairs or the downstairs?"

 

[TheKing01]

Game has the same issues I have with every Larian/Post-BG1 Bioware game; it's all insufferable tongue and cheek. Doesn't matter what the context is, it's all light-hearted and good "jolly ole' fun!"

It just gets old. As an overly long addendum to that, I can't tolerably stand the Forgotten Realms setting. It's insufferably generic. The problem with WoC and whatever other writers have contributed to this enigmatic-less setting (including Marvel), is that everything is known. You know what you're getting at the "Woods of Unspeakable Evil" or the "Plains of Foreboding Darkness", it's all revealed. This unironically is probably why I prefer the setting of Golarion in Pathfinder despite it also being generic. FR is bloated, it's without the sense of discovery. Every plain, every ruin has been uncovered. I don't give a shit about the Underdark, I already know what's down there. It's a fantasy setting that sustains itself through novelty ("The DM makes it good!") and that's all it has. The world itself is boring, the gods itself have been made relatable, which makes it feel like any OC you create has to unironically be an ignorant fucking moron for worshipping these idiots.

The whole ordeal where the gods were reduced to mortals is a great example of novelty vs long-term consequence. It's all short-term thinking. You don't make gods relatable, they cease to have any sort of divinity outside of being powerful and are reduced to ultra-strong beings who feel entirely self-serving. It's boring and frankly requires a great deal of logic leaping. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people who play in this awful, boring setting choose to be athiests simply because all the gods suck.

If you want my opinon on the game and want to save on the rant, I've already stated it in the first two sentences. Larian's writing is DA: O writing, which I also found to be completely lacking in memorable moments outside of "look at this sex scene!"

 

[jf8350143]

Comparing to BG3, DA:O(or even DA2 and DA:I)'s writiing is a master piece.

 

[Orutrus]

I have finally finished Act 1 and here are my impressions.


THE GOOD:

• Map building. Both natural environments and dungeons. They are very fun to explore.​
• Graphics and overall technical quality. The game looks beautiful.​
• The quality of the voice actors and mocap is very good. Raphael, Minthara, Mizora, Lae'zel? are brilliantly played.​
• The combat, both the design of it and the interactions with the environment and that it is limited and not plagued by encounter after encounter of trashmobs. It is too easy but is fun nonetheless.​
• Overall map dressing. All the maps look very rich in details.​
• Some companions like Astarion or Lae-zel are very fun. Others like Karlach or Wyll are embarrassing.​
• Very good gameplay and handling. It's a very good videogame.Variety when it comes to approaching some quests. I think it's really all an illusion and the game will shepherd you where it wants, but the idea is there and at that level is very well resolved.

THE MEH:

• The music. One can barely remember a memorable theme over the course of the game and most are variations of the same one. There is no theme that sticks like Exploring the Plains, Bhaalspawn Battle, Mass Effect main, PoE main or Leliana's Song. The attempt to replicate Leliana's song with the tiefling bard at the druid grove was poor.​
• The dialogues and texts in general don't shine for their quality, there are many lights and shadows. Voice acting helps with this but some times is not enough to cover the disaster.​
• The interface. I like the look but the handling is a fucking chaos.​
• Character backstories don't make sense for level 1 characters. I understand that some explanation will be given for this, I guess because of the parasite issue as Wyll hints but at this point they are not consistent as backstories for level 1 characters and any DM would tell them to write something that makes sense.​
• Too many objects specially in dungeons make them messy to navigate and loot. Too much unnecessary loot. The item highlight key doesn't always work well.​
• Crafting. I have never used it and unless it brings something new or needed for survival I will continue not to do it. It is an absolute waste of time.​
• There is no day and night cycle with the opportunities it offers. Nor wandering monsters to disturb the rest. Or to disturb the path to camp. The idea of the camp is good but it is too exploitable.​

THE BAD:

• Too slow pace due to a lot of cinematics, although this improves with time.
• New generation Forgotten Realms, its aesthetics and its social and political agenda everywhere.​
• Too much fantasy for my taste in very little space. In Act1 alone there are illithid ships, divine conflicts, demigods acting in the shadows, githzerai, red dragons, the Underdark... Too much. I can't wait to see what they pull out of their sleeves for Act 2. This comes from the previous point, of course.​
• Many NPCs act and talk as if they were humans from 2024. There are very good exceptions but in general they look like humans with another skin. Voice actors are a double-edged sword here.​
• The main character's lines of dialogue are embarrassing. One of the worst things about the game. I understand that it has to adapt to an infinite number of different characters, but they are very, very bad.​
• Some of the dialogues of the companions are really bad. The moment when Karlach and Wyll meet for the first time is embarrassing. The moment when Shadowcoochie's and Lae'zel's interact at the camp made me want to shoot myself in the mouth. In general, the companions leave something to be desired. The rules of 5th edition are the fucking garbage that I already suspected. But I didn't know they were that bad. Theres basically no player choices in how the character advances.​

Good videogame? Yes, by all means it's one of the great videogames released in the past years. But it is nowhere near the second coming in RPGs as many people claim. I have the feeling I have played this many times before, just split in different games.