Baldur's Gate Baldur's Gate 3 RELEASE THREAD

[Hydro]

In other words too big of a bite to chew. I wonder of any of the so called game journos ever pointed this out, but I suspect they were too busy shilling it.

 

[Fedora Master]

How much was the tadpole resolution actually tuned down?

That's by far the most disappointing thing anyhow... at the end, it boils down to whether you pick the powers to lol around or not. Despite the narrative dressing at first pretending this to be otherwise. This smacks as if they'd looked at the data, and found that a significant portion of their audience wouldn't give in to the temptation if they actually were teased to face -- THE HORROR -- consequences for doing it. Gale and his "hunger" feels hugely nerfed anyway -- an interesting character trait you may actually CONSIDER when getting him aboard is a minor nuisance at best.

Kinda reminds me of the reaction to Dishonored... and there wasn't even any subtlety involved as to what was going on with the Outsider, and his "gifts". People would still interpret that as the game punishing them for abusing the OP powers granted to them. When purely it terms of mechanics, it simply reacted to you going fully-on rampage by giving you more enemies to go fully-on rampage against (game's piss easy as is).

So does the game react to you NEVER using the Tadpole, ever? I doubt that's the case.

Very minor things. I remember a conversation with Jaheira where she asks if the tadpole is changing you. The negative answer changes depending on if you have consumed tadpoles(one is a regular line the other is a lie/deception check).

Also when the emperor offers you the astral tadpole. If you haven't consumed tadpoles you can flat out refuse. If you have you need to pass a will check or he will be force you to consume it - this one being the closes to an actual consequence of embracing the powers.

But yeah, most is just flavor. And yes the only consequence of consuming the tadpoles is aesthetic with some choice npc reactions and conversations changing, besides the will check I just mentioned.

Even consuming the astral tadpole and becoming "half illithid" has no consequence. There is a cutscene of some of your teeth falling out and you become a freak with bulging black veins on your face, but no npcs notices it or comments on it. Your party members quip about it once and that is it.

I thought even using the worm to operate machines on the spelljammer counted, but apparently there really isn't anything to it. Shameful.

 

[Barbarian]

In other words too big of a bite to chew. I wonder of any of the so called game journos ever pointed this out, but I suspect they were too busy shilling it.

In Larian's defense this is still THE rpg with most reactivity I have ever played.

No idea why they scrapped the original idea of the tadpole powers having consequences, but if they did so to sell more copies to normies apparently it worked.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

In other words too big of a bite to chew. I wonder of any of the so called game journos ever pointed this out, but I suspect they were too busy shilling it.

Eh, that's nothing compared to the amount of scrapped content for the third chapter. Anyone who gave a glowing review of this game is simply dishonest (or retarded). You can like or dislike the game, but you also have to acknowledge it as an incomplete game that got rushed out the door. And in the case of chapter 3, this meant merging the lower and upper city together and also scrapping some of the content that would've tied in companion quests to the main storyline (like with Cazador who was intended to play a more prominent role in the politicking of the city). One would also assume that if they hadn't rushed development, then you would've had a more complex storyline with the lower city being focused on Bhaal and the upper on Bane (and earlier in development they also intended to allow you to be a cleric of Bhaal, Myrkul or Bane, but that was also scrapped despite a lot of specific dialogue for that remaining in the game files).

 

[Barbarian]

In other words too big of a bite to chew. I wonder of any of the so called game journos ever pointed this out, but I suspect they were too busy shilling it.

Eh, that's nothing compared to the amount of scrapped content for the third chapter. Anyone who gave a glowing review of this game is simply dishonest (or retarded). You can like or dislike the game, but you also have to acknowledge it as an incomplete game that got rushed out the door. And in the case of chapter 3, this meant merging the lower and upper city together and also scrapping some of the content that would've tied in companion quests to the main storyline (like with Cazador who was intended to play a more prominent role in the politicking of the city). One would also assume that if they hadn't rushed development, then you would've had a more complex storyline with the lower city being focused on Bhaal and the upper on Bane (and earlier in development they also intended to allow you to be a cleric of Bhaal, Myrkul or Bane, but that was also scrapped despite a lot of specific dialogue for that remaining in the game files).

That has more to do with bad design choices and lack of focus.

Imagine the work that would be needed to make a cleric of Myrkul make any kind of sense as the player's class for instance - you woud literallybe forced into fighting your deity's "chosen one" and then fight and destroy an avatar of your god. There are already classes and races that barely make sense in certain contexts and have no related reactivity(e.g: Dark Urge and many class options).

They probably fooled around with the idea in early access and scrapped it once they realized the conflicts. Likewise with Bhaal and Bane.

Upper city is a really funny thing. Couple of months before release they were hyping it. Now they pretty much deny it was ever cut. I'm not aware of related datamining but they probably were far ahead in development and decided to scrap it literally months before release. Gortash making a lower city prison his base of operations makes no sense for instance.

 

[Barbarian]

I disagree about it being an incomplete game though. It is a long and very rich in content game.

I think it is just the reality of development that content needs to be cut in order for goals and deadlines to be made.

They are assholes for just denying it was actually planned and such. Just so that they are not cornered into actually finishing it once the eventual "definitive edition" drops.

 

[Fedora Master]

Right. You can see the seams but it isn't an incomplete game. The reworks just threw a wrench into the pacing.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

They probably fooled around with the idea in early access and scrapped it once they realized the conflicts. Likewise with Bhaal and Bane.

I'm guessing that originally they planned for you to be able to side with the antagonists if you so desire since that could've still led to the same sort of infighting between the three chosen which in turn would've led to the same endgame confrontation with the Netherbrain. And even in the game that we've got, you can still side with Gortash (albeit the devs still kill him off unceremoniously since they were too lazy to come up with an ending acknowledging that choice) as well as with Bhaal if you're playing as Durge.

 

[Barbarian]

Right. You can see the seams but it isn't an incomplete game. The reworks just threw a wrench into the pacing.

In the case of large rpg games aren't most games exactly like this? Even Torment had significant scrapped content that was restored.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

I disagree about it being an incomplete game though. It is a long and very rich in content game.

I think it is just the reality of development that content needs to be cut in order for goals and deadlines to be made.

Right. You can see the seams but it isn't an incomplete game. The reworks just threw a wrench into the pacing.

Dunno, perhaps I am judging it too harshly since I dislike the default path that the game did retain while other options that I would've enjoyed more ended up being discarded. I don't think it's anywhere near as bad as something like KotOR2 in terms of incompleteness, but just having a functional game from beginning to end doesn't solve the issue of quality drops that happen throughout (primarily in chapter 3, but also from chapter 1 to chapter 2 to a lesser degree). Then again, frontloading large games like this tends to be a common occurrence so perhaps people tend to be less critical about it.

 

[Barbarian]

That is my main gripe with the developers. The decision not to make any dlc or eventually expand and restore the game(even with just restoring planned areas not finished).

It isn't just a shitty decision from the point of making a better game. It is a terrible business decision. DLC for this is a guaranteed shit ton of money. Even if they gave the dlc to another studio.

Either this was a very principled(?) decision or they are indeed *extremely* butthurt with WOTC. They were pretty affirmative about releasing more content for the game before. Nobody understands the U turn.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Either this was a very principled(?) decision or they are indeed *extremely* butthurt with WOTC.

Probably the latter.

 

[The Bishop]

That is my main gripe with the developers. The decision not to make any dlc or eventually expand and restore the game(even with just restoring planned areas not finished).

It isn't just a shitty decision from the point of making a better game. It is a terrible business decision. DLC for this is a guaranteed shit ton of money. Even if they gave the dlc to another studio.

Either this was a very principled(?) decision or they are indeed *extremely* butthurt with WOTC. They were pretty affirmative about releasing more content for the game before. Nobody understands the U turn.

You can't know if it's a terrible business decision unless you're familiar with the terms of their contract with WOTC. If WOTC demanded an unreasonably huge cut of profits this time around then walking away from such offer could be a perfectly sensible thing to do for Larian business wise.

 

[Herumor]

Your party members quip about it once and that is it.

Still more reactivity than when you're playing as the Dark Urge, you reject Bhaal, he kills you and Withers just casually resurrects you.

 

[Barbarian]

Your party members quip about it once and that is it.

Still more reactivity than when you're playing as the Dark Urge, you reject Bhaal, he kills you and Withers just casually resurrects you.

If you talk to your companions afterwards they do comment on it, but you are right, that is not compatible with the gravity of having the PC dead in a pool of his own blood and later brought back in an unlikely turn of events.

I would expect at least the lover crying and craddling durge in the arms, or companions with high approval also deeply moved by the scene(during and after Withers' ressurrection).

They claim this will be fixed next patch though. We will see.

That is my main gripe with the developers. The decision not to make any dlc or eventually expand and restore the game(even with just restoring planned areas not finished).

It isn't just a shitty decision from the point of making a better game. It is a terrible business decision. DLC for this is a guaranteed shit ton of money. Even if they gave the dlc to another studio.

Either this was a very principled(?) decision or they are indeed *extremely* butthurt with WOTC. They were pretty affirmative about releasing more content for the game before. Nobody understands the U turn.

You can't know if it's a terrible business decision unless you're familiar with the terms of their contract with WOTC. If WOTC demanded an unreasonably huge cut of profits this time around then walking away from such offer could be a perfectly sensible thing to do for Larian business wise.

That is also a possibility, sure.

 

[dukeofwoodberry]

I always get bored in my playthroughs by act 3. One of the main reasons is the combat gets too easy. But yeah I typically enjoy Act 1 quite a bit, Act 2 is okay and then Act 3 is a chore to finish.

 

[Infinitron]

Another feature at PC Gamer: https://www.pcgamer.com/games/baldu...s-gate-3s-most-audacious-and-musical-dungeon/

​

How Larian created Baldur's Gate 3's most audacious and musical dungeon​

Baldur's Gate 3 serves up a bounty of massive, complex dungeons primed to gobble up unprepared adventurers, but the one that stuck with me the most—even now, a year after launch—has to be the House of Hope. This late game dungeon shares the limelight with some other corkers, like the exceptional Iron Throne, but still manages to stand out thanks to its audaciousness. To mark the RPG's one year anniversary, I spoke with the writers and designers involved in its creation to find out how my fave came together.

The House of Hope is the climax of the Raphael storyline. This charming devil, who keeps cropping up throughout the game, had been part of the plan from the early days, though he went through a lot of different iterations.

"The original brief for Raphael was that you are going to meet this devil on a bridge," says Larian CEO Swen Vincke. Originally, he was known as the Monitor. "He was watching you from afar, continuously." One version of Raphael made him more as a side character, but at one point he was also a lot more active, "offering you a way of getting rid of your tadpole in the very beginning, because the original vision of the core story was, you're gonna get multiple ways of dealing with your tadpole, but you're gonna realise it's not gonna work out and then you're gonna have to do something else."

While a lot of things about Raphael changed—originally he was Gortash's father—what did stick were his digs: the House of Hope. But that also changed shape quite a few times. "At least four times," says gameplay scripter Nikita Radostev. "At one point, it was a house full of devilish traps and puzzles that needed to be solved to gain access... not to the Orphic Hammer, but to another secret hellish location. In another iteration, it was a full-fledged heist where you had to bypass all the defences unnoticed and successfully escape the House of Hope without Raphael knowing."

The actual dungeon does involve a heist, but not to the degree of the scrapped version. The problem was, none of these earlier concepts were quite fun enough. "Ironically, the most fun was when the player was caught," Radostev says, "and all hell broke loose, which is why this always happens in the released version." One thing that was missing from the previous versions was the ability to properly explore not just Raphael's abode, but Raphael himself—what makes the final version work is that you're really getting to know your charming tormentor.

"With the House of Hope, we wanted to make it about Raphael," says senior RPG designer Viacheslav Kozikhin. "He's our sole pillar. The dungeon was built around his persona: how does the place where he lives look, how does he treat the poor souls he captures, how do these poor souls perceive him, how does he have fun, and what does he think about himself—and we show that he loves himself very, very much."

Nowhere is this narcissism more obvious than when you encounter Haarlep, the incubus that serves as Raphael's concubine. He takes the form of his master, because nobody is sexier or better than Raphael himself. This devil really needs to go to therapy.

To capture all of this, Larian came up with a "simple but very visual pitch—the fucked-up Disneyland," says Kozikhin. "We invited players to stay for a ride in Raphael’s world and pay the harshest price for doing so."

Letting you peacefully explore Raphael's abode, for a time, gives it a very different vibe from dungeons like the aforementioned Iron Throne or the complex Gauntlet of Shar. "Instead of pushing players into combat we focused on creating narrative tension," says Kozikhin. "We hint that Raphael will come and it will be the end, some characters shout it out directly, and at the same time, we maintain that sliver of hope that players can leave without facing the devil's wrath."

Of course, there's no avoiding the devil's wrath, and when the peace is broken, says Kozikhin, we get to see a very different side of the dungeon. "Everything changes in one moment: the same dungeon, but a different experience. This contrast is what makes the dungeon stand out, and we aimed to keep it that way."

I died a lot to countless horrible Hell Spheres and the house's now very aggressive denizens. "The escape sequence that occurs after you lift the hammer from its pedestal—or destroy the contract if you made that grave mistake—went through many iterations on its own," says Radostev. "This moment, when the whole house turns upside down, should've served as a final reminder: you shouldn't have come, and now you're going to pay for it. So it was intended to be sudden, fiery, explosive, and relatively challenging, knowing that it's only an appetiser before the main meal. And finding the balance between 'it's too much' and 'it does nothing to me' was the part [where] we spent weeks trying different approaches and setups, shuffling around enemies and traps. We even tried it without those Hell Spheres, but Swen was adamant about including them, and rightfully so."

Thankfully, you don't have to get through it on your own. You've got Hope herself lending a hand. It was important to give players a guide, Kozikhin tells me. "Someone who knows the place and can direct them, and someone they can relate to, even if she is slightly mad. With such a character, it’s only natural to allow players to save her (or not) in the process. And since we love puns in this dungeon, we made Hope really useful in combat—free Divine Intervention is no joke—so it would be a lost cause to fight the devil without Hope."

Like so much of the dungeon, Hope went through some changes. "At one point, Hope was the house itself," says writing director Adam Smith. "A sentient building that Raphael had dominated and bound to his will. It seemed antagonistic at first, but if you played your cards right, it would help you to find your way through. That version only ever existed on paper, but it was one of the early concepts. There are traces of it still, in the character Hope, who sometimes seems like she’s an abstract figure, embedded in the house’s madness."

Once you've survived the dungeon's transformation and freed Hope's physical form, it's time to meet the big guy: Raphael. It's a challenging encounter, but it's also a playful one. Case in point: Raphael's HP is set to 666.

"At that point in Lower City, players have accumulated so many potions, weapons, summons, powerful artifacts—some of which are right there in the House of Hope—that health points alone don't make much difference," says Radostev. "This is why Raphael has a lot of support, soul pillars that boost his AC, devastating spells, and a couple of soul tricks up his sleeve. The main challenge there is not to die and get to the point where you can deal any damage at all. But to start tweaking the numbers we still needed a big HP number in a certain ballpark, and 666 was such a low-hanging fruit that we just couldn't resist."

The most memorable part of this encounter, of course, is Raphael's song. A boss who sings his own theme? Gotta love it. "One of the ways I described Raphael to Andrew Wincott, the guy who performed him, was he's a theatre kid who got too much power," says Smith. The song idea originated with Vincke, who actually wanted it to play a bigger role, starting when all hell breaks loose and you're trying to survive the house's various traps and devils. For flow purposes, however, it was pushed back to the final confrontation with Raphael.

Wincott had never performed a musical number before, but Smith remembers Larian asking the casting agency if Wincott could sing. "And the response we got back was yes. Then when I spoke to him about it, he was just like 'Well, what I said was, I don't think so.'" To make up for Wincott's lack of singing experience, Larian considered a rap, as well as a Leonard Cohen-style spoken word song. Either of which I'm sure would have been incredible.

The end result was something almost Disneyesque, which fit in perfectly with the pitch for the entire dungeon. Smith recalls meeting Wincott in-person for the first time at the wrap party, where he showed the actor the YouTube video of his song, which at the time had a million views. "He said, 'My god, are the other actors' songs as popular?' Then he said, 'Well, was it not a musical?' He wasn't joking; he genuinely thought it was a musical. He's fantastic."

Ultimately, the version of the House of Hope we got sounds like the most coherent and well thought out iteration, but I still wish I'd seen the version where, I kid you not, you got to fly the house through the realm of Mephistopheles. "Somewhere on our harddrives," says Vincke, "Mephistar [Mephistopheles' citadel] exists." This also led to one of Vincke's favourite scenes, where you'd meet Mephistopheles, he'd thank you for defeating Raphael, while the devil was hanging in front of this massive, titanic archdevil.

One of the reasons this was all cut was because an additional adventure in the Nine Hells just seemed like too much. "We played it," says Vincke, "and it was heist after heist after heist, and it didn't flow properly."

"It's the fatigue thing," adds Smith. "It was exhausting. It was a dungeon after another dungeon." Some of this still exists in another form, though. For instance, you can tell that the House of Hope is flying when you go out onto the balcony. And if you visit the shop where you first entered the house, after defeating Raphael, you can click on a crystal ball and see a vision of Mephistopheles.

"The thing is," says Smith, "all of it was in service of the game. When you see people talk about all the cut content, there's a reason. It's editing." This is also why we never went to Candlekeep, or the Red War College, where you'd originally meet Wyll. These would have been cool places to visit, but in the end they didn't make the game better.

For more of Larian's insights into the development of Baldur's Gate 3, as well as the past, present and future of the studio, check out the first anniversary interview I conducted with Vincke and Smith. Now I'm going to listen to Raphael's song on repeat for the rest of the day.

 

[Barbarian]

I always get bored in my playthroughs by act 3. One of the main reasons is the combat gets too easy. But yeah I typically enjoy Act 1 quite a bit, Act 2 is okay and then Act 3 is a chore to finish.

Level cap being reached too early is one big issue. Once you get your desired gear loadout and reach level cap progression stops.

I look forward to mods that fix it, but like you said higher level cap is not the only issue. You need it together with buffed enemies and tweaked difficulty.

 

[dukeofwoodberry]

I always get bored in my playthroughs by act 3. One of the main reasons is the combat gets too easy. But yeah I typically enjoy Act 1 quite a bit, Act 2 is okay and then Act 3 is a chore to finish.

Level cap being reached too early is one big issue. Once you get your desired gear loadout and reach level cap progression stops.

I look forward to mods that fix it, but like you said higher level cap is not the only issue. You need it together with buffed enemies and tweaked difficulty.

Difficulty to me is the bigger issue than level cap/progression. I don't really have to think about fights anymore with all the attacks, powerful spells hasted, ect... It's like they designed the combat to be careful/strategic instead of power fantasy mowing down mobs. But if you have a properly built 4 man party the combat becomes zero thinking required by act 2.

 

[Bulo]

But if you have a properly built 4 man party the combat becomes zero thinking required by act 2.

More specifically, at about level 5

 

[Barbarian]

I always get bored in my playthroughs by act 3. One of the main reasons is the combat gets too easy. But yeah I typically enjoy Act 1 quite a bit, Act 2 is okay and then Act 3 is a chore to finish.

Level cap being reached too early is one big issue. Once you get your desired gear loadout and reach level cap progression stops.

I look forward to mods that fix it, but like you said higher level cap is not the only issue. You need it together with buffed enemies and tweaked difficulty.

Difficulty to me is the bigger issue than level cap/progression. I don't really have to think about fights anymore with all the attacks, powerful spells hasted, ect... It's like they designed the combat to be careful/strategic instead of power fantasy mowing down mobs. But if you have a properly built 4 man party the combat becomes zero thinking required by act 2.

I could see someone intelligent with knowledge of the system getting his ass kicked occasionally playing this blind on honor mode(not knowing enemy resistances/vulnerabilities/abilities and having fights and boss fights being a surprise without preparation and without reload). Bad choices and bad rolls can result in bad situations in this game. Like sneaking past Ethel's minions and having to face them all along with her(significantly buffing the fight difficulty).

Most people playing honor mode are replaying the game though, knowing the mechanics inside out and hardly being surprised by the boss fights and events. And yes that removes most challenge. Honor mode was a big improvement over tactician but it was not enough.

And yes I think progression is a big issue and one of the reasons so many players get bored by act 3. Reaching level cap with 1/3d of the game to go is bad design and bad balance period.

 

[onemananadhisdroid]

Either this was a very principled(?) decision or they are indeed *extremely* butthurt with WOTC. They were pretty affirmative about releasing more content for the game before. Nobody understands the U turn.

As to DLC / content updates, Hasbro et all seem a factor. In general though, Vincke's 52. This game has been in his head for like a decade now, if you consider the first pitch. At today's silly dev cycles (and lord knows how much sillier ones tomorrow), he doesn't have all that many more big projects inside of him...

... and he's in a position where he can afford to move on to the next one now. Much like for any of the other guys who tried to do a third BG before, the entire project was in big parts already a business decision, after all. The thought process being, and they've openly talked about it: Get popular IP. Use popular IP on Larian sauce. Level up to the next tier. That Hasbro/WOTC changed may not have helped with that, mind.

 

[Hydro]

Another feature at PC Gamer: https://www.pcgamer.com/games/baldu...s-gate-3s-most-audacious-and-musical-dungeon/

​

How Larian created Baldur's Gate 3's most audacious and musical dungeon​

Baldur's Gate 3 serves up a bounty of massive, complex dungeons primed to gobble up unprepared adventurers, but the one that stuck with me the most—even now, a year after launch—has to be the House of Hope. This late game dungeon shares the limelight with some other corkers, like the exceptional Iron Throne, but still manages to stand out thanks to its audaciousness. To mark the RPG's one year anniversary, I spoke with the writers and designers involved in its creation to find out how my fave came together.

The House of Hope is the climax of the Raphael storyline. This charming devil, who keeps cropping up throughout the game, had been part of the plan from the early days, though he went through a lot of different iterations.

"The original brief for Raphael was that you are going to meet this devil on a bridge," says Larian CEO Swen Vincke. Originally, he was known as the Monitor. "He was watching you from afar, continuously." One version of Raphael made him more as a side character, but at one point he was also a lot more active, "offering you a way of getting rid of your tadpole in the very beginning, because the original vision of the core story was, you're gonna get multiple ways of dealing with your tadpole, but you're gonna realise it's not gonna work out and then you're gonna have to do something else."

While a lot of things about Raphael changed—originally he was Gortash's father—what did stick were his digs: the House of Hope. But that also changed shape quite a few times. "At least four times," says gameplay scripter Nikita Radostev. "At one point, it was a house full of devilish traps and puzzles that needed to be solved to gain access... not to the Orphic Hammer, but to another secret hellish location. In another iteration, it was a full-fledged heist where you had to bypass all the defences unnoticed and successfully escape the House of Hope without Raphael knowing."

The actual dungeon does involve a heist, but not to the degree of the scrapped version. The problem was, none of these earlier concepts were quite fun enough. "Ironically, the most fun was when the player was caught," Radostev says, "and all hell broke loose, which is why this always happens in the released version." One thing that was missing from the previous versions was the ability to properly explore not just Raphael's abode, but Raphael himself—what makes the final version work is that you're really getting to know your charming tormentor.

"With the House of Hope, we wanted to make it about Raphael," says senior RPG designer Viacheslav Kozikhin. "He's our sole pillar. The dungeon was built around his persona: how does the place where he lives look, how does he treat the poor souls he captures, how do these poor souls perceive him, how does he have fun, and what does he think about himself—and we show that he loves himself very, very much."

Nowhere is this narcissism more obvious than when you encounter Haarlep, the incubus that serves as Raphael's concubine. He takes the form of his master, because nobody is sexier or better than Raphael himself. This devil really needs to go to therapy.

To capture all of this, Larian came up with a "simple but very visual pitch—the fucked-up Disneyland," says Kozikhin. "We invited players to stay for a ride in Raphael’s world and pay the harshest price for doing so."

Letting you peacefully explore Raphael's abode, for a time, gives it a very different vibe from dungeons like the aforementioned Iron Throne or the complex Gauntlet of Shar. "Instead of pushing players into combat we focused on creating narrative tension," says Kozikhin. "We hint that Raphael will come and it will be the end, some characters shout it out directly, and at the same time, we maintain that sliver of hope that players can leave without facing the devil's wrath."

Of course, there's no avoiding the devil's wrath, and when the peace is broken, says Kozikhin, we get to see a very different side of the dungeon. "Everything changes in one moment: the same dungeon, but a different experience. This contrast is what makes the dungeon stand out, and we aimed to keep it that way."

I died a lot to countless horrible Hell Spheres and the house's now very aggressive denizens. "The escape sequence that occurs after you lift the hammer from its pedestal—or destroy the contract if you made that grave mistake—went through many iterations on its own," says Radostev. "This moment, when the whole house turns upside down, should've served as a final reminder: you shouldn't have come, and now you're going to pay for it. So it was intended to be sudden, fiery, explosive, and relatively challenging, knowing that it's only an appetiser before the main meal. And finding the balance between 'it's too much' and 'it does nothing to me' was the part [where] we spent weeks trying different approaches and setups, shuffling around enemies and traps. We even tried it without those Hell Spheres, but Swen was adamant about including them, and rightfully so."

Thankfully, you don't have to get through it on your own. You've got Hope herself lending a hand. It was important to give players a guide, Kozikhin tells me. "Someone who knows the place and can direct them, and someone they can relate to, even if she is slightly mad. With such a character, it’s only natural to allow players to save her (or not) in the process. And since we love puns in this dungeon, we made Hope really useful in combat—free Divine Intervention is no joke—so it would be a lost cause to fight the devil without Hope."

Like so much of the dungeon, Hope went through some changes. "At one point, Hope was the house itself," says writing director Adam Smith. "A sentient building that Raphael had dominated and bound to his will. It seemed antagonistic at first, but if you played your cards right, it would help you to find your way through. That version only ever existed on paper, but it was one of the early concepts. There are traces of it still, in the character Hope, who sometimes seems like she’s an abstract figure, embedded in the house’s madness."

Once you've survived the dungeon's transformation and freed Hope's physical form, it's time to meet the big guy: Raphael. It's a challenging encounter, but it's also a playful one. Case in point: Raphael's HP is set to 666.

"At that point in Lower City, players have accumulated so many potions, weapons, summons, powerful artifacts—some of which are right there in the House of Hope—that health points alone don't make much difference," says Radostev. "This is why Raphael has a lot of support, soul pillars that boost his AC, devastating spells, and a couple of soul tricks up his sleeve. The main challenge there is not to die and get to the point where you can deal any damage at all. But to start tweaking the numbers we still needed a big HP number in a certain ballpark, and 666 was such a low-hanging fruit that we just couldn't resist."

The most memorable part of this encounter, of course, is Raphael's song. A boss who sings his own theme? Gotta love it. "One of the ways I described Raphael to Andrew Wincott, the guy who performed him, was he's a theatre kid who got too much power," says Smith. The song idea originated with Vincke, who actually wanted it to play a bigger role, starting when all hell breaks loose and you're trying to survive the house's various traps and devils. For flow purposes, however, it was pushed back to the final confrontation with Raphael.

Wincott had never performed a musical number before, but Smith remembers Larian asking the casting agency if Wincott could sing. "And the response we got back was yes. Then when I spoke to him about it, he was just like 'Well, what I said was, I don't think so.'" To make up for Wincott's lack of singing experience, Larian considered a rap, as well as a Leonard Cohen-style spoken word song. Either of which I'm sure would have been incredible.

The end result was something almost Disneyesque, which fit in perfectly with the pitch for the entire dungeon. Smith recalls meeting Wincott in-person for the first time at the wrap party, where he showed the actor the YouTube video of his song, which at the time had a million views. "He said, 'My god, are the other actors' songs as popular?' Then he said, 'Well, was it not a musical?' He wasn't joking; he genuinely thought it was a musical. He's fantastic."

Ultimately, the version of the House of Hope we got sounds like the most coherent and well thought out iteration, but I still wish I'd seen the version where, I kid you not, you got to fly the house through the realm of Mephistopheles. "Somewhere on our harddrives," says Vincke, "Mephistar [Mephistopheles' citadel] exists." This also led to one of Vincke's favourite scenes, where you'd meet Mephistopheles, he'd thank you for defeating Raphael, while the devil was hanging in front of this massive, titanic archdevil.

One of the reasons this was all cut was because an additional adventure in the Nine Hells just seemed like too much. "We played it," says Vincke, "and it was heist after heist after heist, and it didn't flow properly."

"It's the fatigue thing," adds Smith. "It was exhausting. It was a dungeon after another dungeon." Some of this still exists in another form, though. For instance, you can tell that the House of Hope is flying when you go out onto the balcony. And if you visit the shop where you first entered the house, after defeating Raphael, you can click on a crystal ball and see a vision of Mephistopheles.

"The thing is," says Smith, "all of it was in service of the game. When you see people talk about all the cut content, there's a reason. It's editing." This is also why we never went to Candlekeep, or the Red War College, where you'd originally meet Wyll. These would have been cool places to visit, but in the end they didn't make the game better.

For more of Larian's insights into the development of Baldur's Gate 3, as well as the past, present and future of the studio, check out the first anniversary interview I conducted with Vincke and Smith. Now I'm going to listen to Raphael's song on repeat for the rest of the day.

Sorry sir, just wondering whether you ever asked yourself if anything you post in this thread bear any value. Cause maybe you just fuck off.

 

[Anthedon]

Another feature at PC Gamer: https://www.pcgamer.com/games/baldu...s-gate-3s-most-audacious-and-musical-dungeon/

​

How Larian created Baldur's Gate 3's most audacious and musical dungeon​

Baldur's Gate 3 serves up a bounty of massive, complex dungeons primed to gobble up unprepared adventurers, but the one that stuck with me the most—even now, a year after launch—has to be the House of Hope. This late game dungeon shares the limelight with some other corkers, like the exceptional Iron Throne, but still manages to stand out thanks to its audaciousness. To mark the RPG's one year anniversary, I spoke with the writers and designers involved in its creation to find out how my fave came together.

The House of Hope is the climax of the Raphael storyline. This charming devil, who keeps cropping up throughout the game, had been part of the plan from the early days, though he went through a lot of different iterations.

"The original brief for Raphael was that you are going to meet this devil on a bridge," says Larian CEO Swen Vincke. Originally, he was known as the Monitor. "He was watching you from afar, continuously." One version of Raphael made him more as a side character, but at one point he was also a lot more active, "offering you a way of getting rid of your tadpole in the very beginning, because the original vision of the core story was, you're gonna get multiple ways of dealing with your tadpole, but you're gonna realise it's not gonna work out and then you're gonna have to do something else."

While a lot of things about Raphael changed—originally he was Gortash's father—what did stick were his digs: the House of Hope. But that also changed shape quite a few times. "At least four times," says gameplay scripter Nikita Radostev. "At one point, it was a house full of devilish traps and puzzles that needed to be solved to gain access... not to the Orphic Hammer, but to another secret hellish location. In another iteration, it was a full-fledged heist where you had to bypass all the defences unnoticed and successfully escape the House of Hope without Raphael knowing."

The actual dungeon does involve a heist, but not to the degree of the scrapped version. The problem was, none of these earlier concepts were quite fun enough. "Ironically, the most fun was when the player was caught," Radostev says, "and all hell broke loose, which is why this always happens in the released version." One thing that was missing from the previous versions was the ability to properly explore not just Raphael's abode, but Raphael himself—what makes the final version work is that you're really getting to know your charming tormentor.

"With the House of Hope, we wanted to make it about Raphael," says senior RPG designer Viacheslav Kozikhin. "He's our sole pillar. The dungeon was built around his persona: how does the place where he lives look, how does he treat the poor souls he captures, how do these poor souls perceive him, how does he have fun, and what does he think about himself—and we show that he loves himself very, very much."

Nowhere is this narcissism more obvious than when you encounter Haarlep, the incubus that serves as Raphael's concubine. He takes the form of his master, because nobody is sexier or better than Raphael himself. This devil really needs to go to therapy.

To capture all of this, Larian came up with a "simple but very visual pitch—the fucked-up Disneyland," says Kozikhin. "We invited players to stay for a ride in Raphael’s world and pay the harshest price for doing so."

Letting you peacefully explore Raphael's abode, for a time, gives it a very different vibe from dungeons like the aforementioned Iron Throne or the complex Gauntlet of Shar. "Instead of pushing players into combat we focused on creating narrative tension," says Kozikhin. "We hint that Raphael will come and it will be the end, some characters shout it out directly, and at the same time, we maintain that sliver of hope that players can leave without facing the devil's wrath."

Of course, there's no avoiding the devil's wrath, and when the peace is broken, says Kozikhin, we get to see a very different side of the dungeon. "Everything changes in one moment: the same dungeon, but a different experience. This contrast is what makes the dungeon stand out, and we aimed to keep it that way."

I died a lot to countless horrible Hell Spheres and the house's now very aggressive denizens. "The escape sequence that occurs after you lift the hammer from its pedestal—or destroy the contract if you made that grave mistake—went through many iterations on its own," says Radostev. "This moment, when the whole house turns upside down, should've served as a final reminder: you shouldn't have come, and now you're going to pay for it. So it was intended to be sudden, fiery, explosive, and relatively challenging, knowing that it's only an appetiser before the main meal. And finding the balance between 'it's too much' and 'it does nothing to me' was the part [where] we spent weeks trying different approaches and setups, shuffling around enemies and traps. We even tried it without those Hell Spheres, but Swen was adamant about including them, and rightfully so."

Thankfully, you don't have to get through it on your own. You've got Hope herself lending a hand. It was important to give players a guide, Kozikhin tells me. "Someone who knows the place and can direct them, and someone they can relate to, even if she is slightly mad. With such a character, it’s only natural to allow players to save her (or not) in the process. And since we love puns in this dungeon, we made Hope really useful in combat—free Divine Intervention is no joke—so it would be a lost cause to fight the devil without Hope."

Like so much of the dungeon, Hope went through some changes. "At one point, Hope was the house itself," says writing director Adam Smith. "A sentient building that Raphael had dominated and bound to his will. It seemed antagonistic at first, but if you played your cards right, it would help you to find your way through. That version only ever existed on paper, but it was one of the early concepts. There are traces of it still, in the character Hope, who sometimes seems like she’s an abstract figure, embedded in the house’s madness."

Once you've survived the dungeon's transformation and freed Hope's physical form, it's time to meet the big guy: Raphael. It's a challenging encounter, but it's also a playful one. Case in point: Raphael's HP is set to 666.

"At that point in Lower City, players have accumulated so many potions, weapons, summons, powerful artifacts—some of which are right there in the House of Hope—that health points alone don't make much difference," says Radostev. "This is why Raphael has a lot of support, soul pillars that boost his AC, devastating spells, and a couple of soul tricks up his sleeve. The main challenge there is not to die and get to the point where you can deal any damage at all. But to start tweaking the numbers we still needed a big HP number in a certain ballpark, and 666 was such a low-hanging fruit that we just couldn't resist."

The most memorable part of this encounter, of course, is Raphael's song. A boss who sings his own theme? Gotta love it. "One of the ways I described Raphael to Andrew Wincott, the guy who performed him, was he's a theatre kid who got too much power," says Smith. The song idea originated with Vincke, who actually wanted it to play a bigger role, starting when all hell breaks loose and you're trying to survive the house's various traps and devils. For flow purposes, however, it was pushed back to the final confrontation with Raphael.

Wincott had never performed a musical number before, but Smith remembers Larian asking the casting agency if Wincott could sing. "And the response we got back was yes. Then when I spoke to him about it, he was just like 'Well, what I said was, I don't think so.'" To make up for Wincott's lack of singing experience, Larian considered a rap, as well as a Leonard Cohen-style spoken word song. Either of which I'm sure would have been incredible.

The end result was something almost Disneyesque, which fit in perfectly with the pitch for the entire dungeon. Smith recalls meeting Wincott in-person for the first time at the wrap party, where he showed the actor the YouTube video of his song, which at the time had a million views. "He said, 'My god, are the other actors' songs as popular?' Then he said, 'Well, was it not a musical?' He wasn't joking; he genuinely thought it was a musical. He's fantastic."

Ultimately, the version of the House of Hope we got sounds like the most coherent and well thought out iteration, but I still wish I'd seen the version where, I kid you not, you got to fly the house through the realm of Mephistopheles. "Somewhere on our harddrives," says Vincke, "Mephistar [Mephistopheles' citadel] exists." This also led to one of Vincke's favourite scenes, where you'd meet Mephistopheles, he'd thank you for defeating Raphael, while the devil was hanging in front of this massive, titanic archdevil.

One of the reasons this was all cut was because an additional adventure in the Nine Hells just seemed like too much. "We played it," says Vincke, "and it was heist after heist after heist, and it didn't flow properly."

"It's the fatigue thing," adds Smith. "It was exhausting. It was a dungeon after another dungeon." Some of this still exists in another form, though. For instance, you can tell that the House of Hope is flying when you go out onto the balcony. And if you visit the shop where you first entered the house, after defeating Raphael, you can click on a crystal ball and see a vision of Mephistopheles.

"The thing is," says Smith, "all of it was in service of the game. When you see people talk about all the cut content, there's a reason. It's editing." This is also why we never went to Candlekeep, or the Red War College, where you'd originally meet Wyll. These would have been cool places to visit, but in the end they didn't make the game better.

For more of Larian's insights into the development of Baldur's Gate 3, as well as the past, present and future of the studio, check out the first anniversary interview I conducted with Vincke and Smith. Now I'm going to listen to Raphael's song on repeat for the rest of the day.

Sorry sir, just wondering whether you ever asked yourself if anything you post in this thread bear any value. Cause maybe you just fuck off.

This is Infinitron we are talking about here, he'd still post news if Hamas/Hezbollah would invade his house.

 

[jf8350143]

You spend the first chapter, pretty much half of the game's content, doing nothing but running around and try to find a way to rid of the tadpole in your head. You don't get any useful information until you get to chapter 2. Then you spend another half of the game speed running all the bad guys. You spend more time dealing with the refugees in act 1 then you defeat Gortash and Orin combined.

They clearly planned the game to be way bigger than it curretnly is. It needs at least 5 chapters to make the story progress naturally. Act 1 is suppose to be the prologue part of the story, yet it takes away half of the game's content.