Baldur's Gate Baldur's Gate 3 RELEASE THREAD

[Reinhardt]

You will lose Halsin, Wyll, Gale

and where is the catch?

 

[Haplo]

So, I'd appreciate the thoughts / comments / advice of the respected members of the Codex...

Jump in with whatever you want. So far it seems that this game provides unprecedented reactivity and quest branching, so you'll hardly put yourself in a bad position.

Most importantly, play it as much like PnP as possible. Don't savescum, don't rest-spam, let checks fail, look for alternative routes when they do. Try to forget it's a videogame.

Sounds good.

Although reading some more, it seems that other Patrons might be a better fit for a melee-centric warlock.
Fiend has the sweet passive life leech on kill and awesome boost to skillchecks on demand.

But come to think of it, I really like what Archfey brings to the table:
1. Short range aoe Charm/Fear, that doesn't eat into the extremly limited spell slots I guess,
2. Faerie Fire for Advantage on attacks vs enemies and against Invisible enemies.
3. Misty Escape for teleport AND Invisibility on reaction when hit!
4. Access to Greater Invisibility.

 

[turkishronin]

How has it not popped in this thread yet how every single aspect of this game is designed for a twenty seconds attention span player ?
It's not a problem, nor a flaw per se, but I can't help but notice how every book is two (ingame) pages long. Some of them even read like "hmmm to put it shortly errrr" and feels like whoever wrote them had, at some point, to recompile his already short text into a ridiculously superficial three paragraphs nothing.

Level up screen purposefully does away with any sort of class progression information. Even if you wanted to ponder your options on the next ten levels, you wouldn't be able to.

Everytime an event occurs, it just aggressively pops on your screen, cutting everything else you were doing. It, more often than not, features npcs that yell, scream, bounce around and spew out the most out of place stuff they could come up with.
The few npcs that don't indulge in attention whoring either talk in sybilline formulas or transform into a bear, a devil, a chair, a sex scene - you name it.

This game is constantly fighting for your attention.
It comes off as an insecure theatre play, where comedians double down on the energy to make up for their fear of the void.
It reminded me of a short time I spent at the pediatric service of the hospital, as a kid, and volunteer clowns were rushing through the thousand of toys in their bag to make our day. God bless them.

Other than being the 2023 embodiment of a themepark, built around such an inamovible principle of constant distraction that Skyrim itself would be considered a contemplative piece in comparison, it's a good immersive sim light à la DOS2, a bit less cluttered in every department (level design, writing, gameplay, UI).
It's probably goty, depends on Shadow of the Erdtree I guess.

Isn't that just Baldurs Gate 2

 

[AwesomeButton]

Ah, if you're looking for metagaming advice, I don't know. I try not to approach it from such a perspective until I've had some substantial amount of time with it.

 

[Nerevar]

Finally my bard has magical secrets and I only had to wait until level 10 now I can use fireball.

 

[Nikanuur]

He's much more bitter about his fate now, and it's well-acted. It's just a subtle shift in the actor's tone really, but it's very well done, and the animations seem to have shifted subtly too, along with the change in tone (though I can't be certain about that, might just be an illusion from the acting

The problem I have with Astarion is that I'm having a hard time rationalizing why my character would want to have anything to do with him after our first meeting. By attacking the protagonist, and later by attempting to suck blood off him, Astarion just leaves no sensible protagonist a choice but to kick him out.

There is a type of protagonist character who would still keep Astarion around after such behavior, but that protagonist is incompatible with anything I'd want to play, and I don't want to break my own character's consistency over a gamey objective of exploring a companion NPC's content.

I understand that to be this finicky is actually intelligent from a thief--people tend to reveal themselves without knowing when facing such edginess, and a thief needs to read his quarry.
Still, this is my opinion on Astarion, the dude who appeared at our party and kind of never left the camp since:
"Someone in your camp still wants to talk to you, are you sure you w---"
Sleep.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Isn't that just Baldurs Gate 2

Most of our "classics" here were always striving towards today's maximum decline, they were just limited by the technology. BG2 had to be Infinity Engine, but they did their best to be as declined as possible.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

I thought I was in Act 2 because I took the West road.

I was wrong. All this time I was still in Act 1.

Now I'm in Act 2.

Huge game.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I understand that to be this finicky is actually intelligent from a thief--people tend to reveal themselves without knowing when facing such edginess, and a thief needs to read his quarry.
Still, this is my opinion on Astarion, the dude who appeared at our party and kind of never left the camp since:
"Someone in your camp still wants to talk to you, are you sure you w---"
Sleep.

The kind of player whose PC would keep Astarion around and would be ok with him jumping on top of his PC in the first minutes of their meeting, and later sucking the PC's blood while the PC sleeps, does exist, but it's most likely female and around the age of 15.

So, Astarion will likely have his adoring audience. Just not us.

 

[Nerevar]

Oh fuck I should have listened to the dark urge. I've made a terrible mistake.

 

[Joggerino]

that has your character animated like a massive faggot, who is uncomfortably close to Gale right up until the end where you choose whether or not to kiss him.

How did it feel to roleplay as a massive faggot

Non-Edgy Gamer
Why the butthurt rating, I specifically said "roleplay as" meaning you aren't a massive faggot irl

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Why the butthurt rating, I specifically said "roleplay as" meaning you aren't a massive faggot irl

Oh I see. In that case: it does not feel good.

Actually, on that subject, I wish RPG devs in general would understand that we do not want to see our character's face reacting to something unless it's a dialog choice we've made.

I cannot count the number of times I've been taken out of the moment by my character miming some stupid, gay or just incongruous emotion in dialog.

I am the player. I should be the one to react or not react.

That Gale scene was case in point the worst example of it I've seen in a long time.

 

[Reinhardt]

things i've rawred today at: harpies - check.

 

[sebas]

Oh no! the game has gais, it doesn't pause when I mash space and the Barbarian devil angsty girl wasn't written by Kafka, such a shit game!

You know what, it has 600k concurrent players which means we've actually lived to see the day when DnD is mainstrem. That's fucking fantastic because we're going to get a lot more DnD games in the future and by that I don't mean Pierre's "my first Paint project" or Jarlhrank's "Gimme some money" games.

 

[Joggerino]

Why the butthurt rating, I specifically said "roleplay as" meaning you aren't a massive faggot irl

Oh I see. In that case: it does not feel good.

Actually, on that subject, I wish RPG devs in general would understand that we do not want to see our character's face reacting to something unless it's a dialog choice we've made.

I cannot count the number of times I've been taken out of the moment by my character miming some stupid, gay or just incongruous emotion in dialog.

I am the player. I should be the one to react or not react.

Indeed. What did you think of the narrator's voice and delivery?

 

[Falksi]

Combat-wise, how close is this game to Divinity Original Sin 2?

I've only played D:OS2 for around 5-6 hours, but the combat was a bunch of great ideas implemented really poorly.

 

[sebas]

It has barrels and soaked surfaces you can mess around with, that's about it. But try it, 5e DnD combat mechanics are definitely better than DOS2

 

[Nerevar]

The Selunite is a faggot with the deva that you rescue on the so called "good path" wow this is after two dungeons and a boss fight.

This story is fucking garbage. Now I have to go back in saves to kill this garbage whore how can you be good and gay? I'm really seething over this bullshit.

The people who wrote this shit need to dark urge themselves IRL.

 

[Turisas]

You will lose Halsin, Wyll, Gale

I lost Halsin and Gale (or rather, never managed to recruit them to begin with) before I ever reached Minthara. And why would anyone take Gale anyway since he apparently eats up all your magic items, especially when Withers has a mindless band of slaves ready.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Indeed. What did you think of the narrator's voice and delivery?

It's usually ok, but sometimes it just makes uncomfortable scenes worse.

Too often, I think the narrator is there to try to tell the player what they're supposed to feel about a thing, even if just with the tone of voice.

I think that's also a bit of a mistake, though a lot easier to ignore than the animations.

 

[Lemming42]

Shadowheart left my party in a mood over not taking her to the place with the whales from Dishonored. I was very confused to be suddenly accosted by her because I'd forgotten she exists, to the point where it never actually occurred to me that she might like to come visit the temple of her goddess. Same for whenever Wyll pops up, I'm like "who's that? oh, yeah".

Decided to let her go without protest because there's no room for deadweight in my team anymore. I need hard-hitting go-getters like Vampire Boy, Frog Woman and Devil Girl.

I keep wanting to take screenshots in this game because parts of it look ace. Wish there was a photo mode, that's one of the few trends in modern gaming I really appreciate.

 

[Haplo]

Ah, if you're looking for metagaming advice, I don't know. I try not to approach it from such a perspective until I've had some substantial amount of time with it.

I respect this.

Personally I tend to obsess about builds and optimization a bit.
Probably tagged wrong skills too (Investigate and Deception AFAIR), should maybe have put more points into Int and tag Arcana? Eh... whatever.

Guess I'll just roll with it for now. GOO Entrophy Ward should be nice enough along the sparse crit Fear.

Leaning towards polearms, with Polearm Mastery and Sentinel.

 

[koyota]

Oooookay, there is a serious fault in the combat engagement system. You absolutely CAN lure individual enemies away so you can murder them one by one.

100% it's on purpose, Swen loves giving players "creative solutions" to combat encounters, like luring enemies away, hitting a barrel so they all explode, or pushing them into a chasm that is conveniently placed right behind a group of them.

It depends how that's done. I don't like the idea of being able to "lure" a guard away. The whole point of a guard is to... well, guard. If they spot you you'd think their first prerogative would be to alert the rest of the group, otherwise wtf are they guarding?

So unless you can use a spell to fool them into coming after you, this feels like just cheating badly written AI.

It feels like some of this stuff with AI and temp hostility, could have been fixed but they made it that way to dissuade from save-scumming / make the game more fun?


Failed check in the middle of the goblin party and aggroed everything.
Rest of my crew made a valiant last stand, killing 6+ of the goblin party before perishing.
While Astarion used a scroll of flying and moseyed on out of there.

Revived everyone through the camp skeleton.
Full HP / pre-buffed ready to take on the fight again, into battle positions:
and... everyone was just totally cool again, partying around their comrades dead bodies that I had just killed, inviting me to the party and beer as if "no hard feelings between drinking buddies right?".

 

[Hobo Elf]

You will lose Halsin, Wyll, Gale

I lost Halsin and Gale (or rather, never managed to recruit them to begin with) before I ever reached Minthara. And why would anyone take Gale anyway since he apparently eats up all your magic items, especially when Withers has a mindless band of slaves ready.

I only had to feed Gale three times and now due to story reasons he doesn't need any more at all. I just gave him some cheap garbage magic items that had no use or value, since you drown in those anyway. It's not a big deal.

 

[Falksi]

It has barrels and soaked surfaces you can mess around with, that's about it. But try it, 5e DnD combat mechanics are definitely better than DOS2

Thank God for that.