Baldur's Gate Baldur's Gate 3 RELEASE THREAD

[processdaemon]

Is this game any good... I want overall opinion of codexers, not indi vidual opinions . Was there a poll perhaps

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads...rst-game-of-your-live-and-10-the-best.148390/

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Is this game any good... I want overall opinion of codexers, not individual opinions . Was there a poll perhaps

Baldur's Gate 3 has the best viral bear-marketing in the history of CRPGs.

 

[Desiderius]

• Spore servants raised by Glut now have spellcasting blocked.

 

[GreenMagicSpell]

I want a first person shooter mod for this game then I can give it a try

 

[blessed king of longing]

Ketheric is the best. The entire second act was dedicated to him, and I liked that.
Orin annoys me. I'm irritated by her storyline, her frustrating personality, her quest, and the whole plot surrounding her.
Gortash so far appeared in so small doses that I don't know what to think about him.

i was surprised that gortash was actually genuine about sharing power with you, and the only way he will refuse is if you show weakness by offering to give him the stones

https://www.pcgamer.com/amelia-tyle...-want-to-tear-the-world-apart-with-its-teeth/

Amelia Tyler, Baldur's Gate 3's narrator, talks putting a voice to the Dark Urge's 'feral, visceral, animalistic, want to tear the world apart with [its] teeth'​

I sat down with the Sword Coast's illustrious narrator earlier this week, and talked ripping, tearing, and animal psychology.

Baldur's Gate 3 has voiced narration—a lot of it, as I've personally confirmed by playing the dang thing while having the sound turned on. I recently had the pleasure of speaking to the voice behind the game's reams and reams of narration, Amelia Tyler, earlier this week.

While Tyler's dulcet tones do stay largely consistent, there are noticeable differences if you play the game's different origin characters. She's on record as having done over a dozen different narration styles for the game, each representing a different character's inner voice.

Not for every single line of narration, as Tyler assures me, but for key moments? Absolutely. "When we started off recording the narration for the early access version, it was very much a one-note narration style … but with much more of an attitude. The brief I was given was 'Scar from the Lion King'."

Granted, that's something we knew already from her past interviews. However, she explains why they shifted away from smarmy judgement to inner monologue, namely, that it would get exhausting to be judged all the time. Instead, "we wanted [the narration] to echo the choices the player was making, so it was very much your narrator, whether you're choosing to play a Paladin, or Dark Urge, or anything in between."

Tyler says that philosophy happened almost by accident, during those early access days of experimentation. "I don't think it was a conscious decision at the beginning, to give it those different voices, it just sort of evolved naturally. We'd get to a more Dark Urgey line or a Shadowheart line or an Astarion line or a Wyll line, and [I'd say] them in a way that allowed me to convey emotion … you never wanna tell a player how to feel, but I can echo the emotion of a moment."

That resonates with me, as someone who has DM'd games of Dungeons & Dragons (which Baldur's Gate 3 is built upon). While I'm certainly not a voice actor for one of the best RPGs in the past decade, I've definitely found myself saddled with the task of providing a narrated inner monologue for my players. Tyler agrees, drawing another line between the role of Dungeon Master and narrator.

"That's how we wanted it to happen," Tyler says. "We imagined it almost like 'I'm behind you with my chin on your shoulder, just whispering in your ear and tilting in your head, like: look at that!" She does, however, go on to say that there are some key differences between DMing and narrating—namely, she doesn't have to describe anything visual. "The narration [is used] to describe anything that you can't see. It's your feelings, or a smell, or a memory, or [tadpole manipulation]."

Leading up to this interview, Tyler suggested I give the Dark Urge—a character who suffers from violent impulses—a spin. Armed with that knowledge, I started picking up on how much more feral her line reads became, whenever I was being tempted down the path of blood. I asked her how she found that energy.

"I mimic [the character's] intonation or their pacing, the rise and fall of their voice. Karlach is a little more boisterous, Shadowheart's is just lifted in pitch slightly, and a bit more delicate. But for Dark Urge, throughout the game … [it] doesn't talk. So I didn't have that to base it on. So we took it back to: 'What does this character represent? How do they think? What drives them?'

"I am very much the voice of the [Dark Urge's] bloodlust, of that feral, visceral, animalistic, want to tear the world apart with your teeth," she says. As for where that darkness came from, Tyler gives thanks to her background in animal psychology of all things. "I did a lot of animal studies," she starts, before quickly reassuring me: "I wasn't in a lab, attaching electrodes to things—animal psychology, study. Behaviour in the wild versus behaviour in captivity."

"There was a lot of that which got mimicked in Dark Urge. That kind of caged animal, pacing, needing to be free, needing to kill and not even really knowing why. It's just: that's how you're wired … It's tapping into something more primal in that character, it's not necessarily someone else's voice. It's the part of you you might not like."

She then goes on to reflect on her other shifts in performance with the game's other origin characters, and how her route was similar, if a little less wild: "The narration often echoes those hidden feelings that they have, those little moments of self doubt—or noticing something and feeling uneasy, and not knowing why. It's very much taking it back to that basic animal psychology of whatever grounds that character."

Tyler also has something called aphantasia, which affects around 1-5% of the population according to the Aphantasia network website. Simply put, people with aphantasia don't have a 'mind's eye', which means they're unable to summon an image to their minds. For some, this can even extend to imagining mental 'images' linked to other senses, like sound and taste—like many conditions of its type, it exists on a spectrum.

For Tyler, as a voice actor, this has meant she's needed to rely on the emotional side of things. Which, if you're needing to convey the emotion of a specific character, speaking to that inner voice, is very helpful: "I translate instructions into feelings. So that has been, apparently, very useful to what I do. I'm not trying to tell someone how to see me, I'm just feeling it—and trusting that translates."

If you've not started a second playthrough yet, I'd encourage you to pick an origin character—and pay close attention to those lines of bespoke narration. The Dark Urge is the most obvious, but Tyler's added her own personal flourish to every one of them. While she might not lend voices to a huge cast of NPCs like your average DM, she's everyone's inner monologue, and that leads to some pretty special performances.

so the narrator is an npc that can't imagine objects?

 

[Hagashager]

I finished the Iron Throne prison. It took me about 5 tries. That *was* bullshit however. An infuriating amount of that segment is just RNG. Fuck you if the Sahuagins decide to just kill the prisoners instead of attacking you.

I got really unlucky on my fourth attempt. Half the prisoners ran past the ladder and hid in a corner. I was actually cursing at my screen over that.

On my successful run I learned the hard way you only need one survivor in your party to succeed.

Got all the prisoners but couldn't get my party in except Karlach.

So uhh, yeah, Wyll, Shart and my Tav ended up dead on a beach for a bit until I rezzed them with Jergal.

 

[Quillon]

Half the prisoners ran past the ladder and hid in a corner

tfw 1 npc blocks the 1 person wide ladder either at the base or top, wastes the turns of all the rest...



...this would never happen in RTwP

 

[NaturallyCarnivorousSheep]

I remember throwing and shoving the prisoners so they would go faster, but yeah you gotta try this one few times if you want to release all

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

I finished the Iron Throne prison. It took me about 5 tries. That *was* bullshit however. An infuriating amount of that segment is just RNG. Fuck you if the Sahuagins decide to just kill the prisoners instead of attacking you.

I got really unlucky on my fourth attempt. Half the prisoners ran past the ladder and hid in a corner. I was actually cursing at my screen over that.

On my successful run I learned the hard way you only need one survivor in your party to succeed.

Got all the prisoners but couldn't get my party in except Karlach.

So uhh, yeah, Wyll, Shart and my Tav ended up dead on a beach for a bit until I rezzed them with Jergal.

Even on my first attempt, I rescued all but three or four of the prisoners, and that was with blindly sending one party member in each direction, one of which doesn't have any prisoners. My second attempt, I ignored that direction, grouped Gale and Shadowheart in one direction with Karlach and my paladin following the other two routes, and had two summoned creatures (air elemental and deva) to provide further distractions. You should be able to quickly kill the initial sahuagin, and the rescued prisoners should be able to run out ahead of any late-appearing sahuagin. Meanwhile, you can utilize haste, dimension door, and misty step to get your party members to the prisoners and back to safety within the time limit. The only issue is that the poor AI pathfinding might cause someone to block the path for the others; IIRC, I used dimension door to move one rescued prisoner out of the way. But I did rescue everyone, including the duke, and had all of my party members (though not the summoned creatures, of course) back in the submarine.

 

[Cyberarmy]

You can also force shot the doors in Iron Throne, it is useful for getting rid of sahuagin quickly.

 

[Cryomancer]

Is this game any good... I want overall opinion of codexers, not indi vidual opinions . Was there a poll perhaps

At moment, 8/10 is the most popular vote according to this poll > https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads...rst-game-of-your-live-and-10-the-best.148390/

To be fair Mystra has a long history of having absolutely no standards.

Yep. But here is a hard question. Mystra was Mystryl before Karsus folly. Can we say that Mytra is transgender?

Hotfix TEN. After what, a few months past release. Shouldn't it be at least idk, warmfix?

I din't encountered any significant bug

 

[whydoibother]

Yep. But here is a hard question. Mystra was Mystryl before Karsus folly. Can we say that Mytra is transgender?

Mystryl (pronounced: /ˈmɪstrɪl/ MISS-trihl[1]), the Lady of Mysteries, was a greater deity and the first incarnation of the goddess of magic. Later incarnations of the goddess were named "Mystra".[7]

 

[Reinhardt]

dress-wearing person don't even know gender of their supposed god. shamefur dispray, victor!

 

[whydoibother]

dress-wearing person don't even know gender of their supposed god. shamefur dispray, victor!

Gender is a mortal construct.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

dress-wearing person don't even know gender of their supposed god. shamefur dispray, victor!

Typical, really.

 

[Swen]

I feel it, I will win GOTY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLnxyV_FNRE

 

[Cryomancer]

I feel it, I will win GOTY

Probably truth. Because only AAA games are in this slit and AAA modern games are made by diversity hires hence full of bugs. BG3 compared to other modern games is great.

BTW, the average score of BG3 here in Codex is 6.067 which is much above what I expected ( https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads...our-live-and-10-the-best.148390/#post-8686466 )

dress-wearing

Dress is what you wear. Robes is what your master wears. IS that hard to understand? BTW, not all games limits casters to non armor. DDO is the most iconic example, no reason for a sorc/wiz to not wear medium armor + shield from EK. In BG3 case, human wizards get proficiency in light armor and there is no arcane spell failure in 5e and a staff is a one hand weapon hence I played as a wizard in armor with a shield

 

[Sarathiour]

I feel it, I will win GOTY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLnxyV_FNRE

I mean, what are the realistic alternatives ? Zelda ?

 

[Crichton]

I finished the Iron Throne prison. It took me about 5 tries. That *was* bullshit however. An infuriating amount of that segment is just RNG. Fuck you if the Sahuagins decide to just kill the prisoners instead of attacking you.

I got really unlucky on my fourth attempt. Half the prisoners ran past the ladder and hid in a corner. I was actually cursing at my screen over that.

On my successful run I learned the hard way you only need one survivor in your party to succeed.

Got all the prisoners but couldn't get my party in except Karlach.

So uhh, yeah, Wyll, Shart and my Tav ended up dead on a beach for a bit until I rezzed them with Jergal.

I thought this was a nice change of pace from the usual encounter design, but I agree that it's total bullshit if you want the player to do it without prior knowledge. I had no chance at this one going in blind. I rescued everyone and got out cleanly the 2nd time, because I came prepared with 3x haste potions on everyone. Although I suppose "iron-man" players probably go into every encounter with 3x haste potions on everyone...

 

[Swen]

I feel it, I will win GOTY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLnxyV_FNRE

I mean, what are the realistic alternatives ? Zelda ?

Zelda, alan wake 2, Mario wonder, RE4 remake,...

 

[Hagashager]

I finished the Iron Throne prison. It took me about 5 tries. That *was* bullshit however. An infuriating amount of that segment is just RNG. Fuck you if the Sahuagins decide to just kill the prisoners instead of attacking you.

I got really unlucky on my fourth attempt. Half the prisoners ran past the ladder and hid in a corner. I was actually cursing at my screen over that.

On my successful run I learned the hard way you only need one survivor in your party to succeed.

Got all the prisoners but couldn't get my party in except Karlach.

So uhh, yeah, Wyll, Shart and my Tav ended up dead on a beach for a bit until I rezzed them with Jergal.

I thought this was a nice change of pace from the usual encounter design, but I agree that it's total bullshit if you want the player to do it without prior knowledge. I had no chance at this one going in blind. I rescued everyone and got out cleanly the 2nd time, because I came prepared with 3x haste potions on everyone. Although I suppose "iron-man" players probably go into every encounter with 3x haste potions on everyone...

I generally avoid meta-knowledge. I knew from spoilers that it would be a rescue but I did not stock up the first time.

Shame on me there. I got arrogant and the segment curbed me.

Second time went beautifully until a Sahuagin decided to snipe a prisoner twice at the ladder.

Third time was similar.

Fourth was the aggravating "lemmings running around" incident.

Fifth time worked at the sacrifice of three party members.

Again, it was RNG. I did the meta strats of haste and teleportation. With only 5 turns on Tactician, even the meta-strat can't stop a rogue enemy from killing unarmed NPCs.

 

[Jonathan "Zee Nekomimi]

 

[Swen]

Beating out weebs and nintentoddlers

 

[ferratilis]

https://x.com/GoldenJoysticks/status/1723038246072893636?s=20

Beating out weebs and nintentoddlers

https://twitter.com/Cromwelp/status/1723040712726372708

 

[Swen]