Baldur's Gate Baldur's Gate 3 RELEASE THREAD

[430am]

I like Karlach a lot, what's not fitting with the game?

The "fucking fuck let's kick their ass, fucking kill bad guys L-O-L". The character could stay chipper and coarse, but be executed much better.

Isn't that the whole point of a barbarian? Moreover a soldier.

No

What would you personally improve about her then?

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Exactly. While I find the actual setpieces (Grove, Blighted Village, Selune temple etc.) good, everything is so densely packed.

Like everything happens in shouting distance. They say the way to Baldurs Gate would take you ten days.

And yet this is in keeping with the original Baldur's Gate. Most of that game's maps fit together. The entire worldmap of Baldur's Gate is probably the size of Act 1's overland map. To say nothing of the Underdark.

It's an RPG, so some abstraction is implied. It's just more noticeable due tot he detailed 3D format.

 

[ga♥]

Anyone else finished Shadowheart's personal quest? I feel like they shouldn't have brought in Viconia for this.

I haven't and I clicked the spoiler. It was pretty obvious that's who it was from the first memory of the wolf when it didn't show her face.

Bringing in any of the old characters was a mistake. But isn't that what all the haters itt said for two years? "REEEE it has nothing to do with Baldur's Gate! There aren't any characters from the first game in it!"

Well, now you have Jaheira (and her kids), the cartoon barbarian etc. This is what they all wanted. Doesn't make things better, does it?

Related- They made Jaheira old as fuck, clearly people who have no concept about D&D lore. Even in 5E where they changes so much elves typically live 500-700 years. A century on Jaheira would put her in middle age at best. She was modeled and textured more like a post-menopausal chick which doesn't seem right to me since she was fairly young in the other games.

ITT larian fanboys that never played BG.
Jaheira is an half-elf.

 

[Darkwind]

To be fair, that's very DnD. It's extremely hard to keep a PnP campaign from devolving into Monty Python, even with veteran players who get into character more aggressively.

I actually quite like Larian's D:OS 2, I'd argue it was pretty good at balancing whimsy with grit.

BG3 looks like it's very much capturing the tone and aburdism of a bog standard 5E group.

This is 1000% more challenging with nu-D&D especially. I was running some 5E Roll20 games online for a few years as a DM with randos from the internet. The amount of "Critical Role" effect cannot be overstated. Everyone wants to be ironic, edgy, "in on the joke", etc. It is seen as thee way to play vs A way to play. There are also a LOT of females in Roll20 games for the same reasons Zoomettes who watched Critical Role and like the social part of the interaction but have little interest in number crunching.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Bug with Gale: I turned down his stargazing and the game treats it like I banged him.

Larian-mandated homosexuality.

 

[430am]

Bug with Gale: I turned down his stargazing and the game treats it like I banged him.

Huh? In what way? I didn't refuse it, there was no banging and nothing changed after that pretty much, just + to attitude.

 

[gurugeorge]

Gale, less so, but he has a lot of range to his character, which can give the impression of better acting, even if it's mostly just him loving the sound of his own voice.

Man, I so wanted to like Gale. I wouldn't mind him being gay, or just weirdly star-struck with the hero of the party. But I think this is the third time I had to say no to him. And all scenes with him make my character act very feminine in movement and mannerisms. I mean, I want to take part of his story, but it's very off-putting, and I could only imagine playing some kind of brute character and seeing this. Then we have the fact that he was the lover of Mystra, which I assume is a god in female form. So, wtf is going on here with Gale? I really really wish they would just have stuck to something, make that character gay if you have to, and if necessary base his background on that. Not that would be important during adventuring, but hey ho, here we are. Player sexual makes it so fugging messy, and immersion-breaking, and as mentioned, we can't have bros thanks to this. And the writing is always mean when turning someone down. Jesus Christ game.

Although I haven't tried those sequences with a female character, so I don't know for sure, I bet you the reason why your male character acts in that bizarre way around Gale is that it was written and animated as a female part, and they just transferred it over to male characters.

IOW, being woke allowed them to be lazy.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

View attachment 39819

Oh no no no no, not him.

He even greets you with a "ho there wanderer, can you spare a moment to indulge an old man?" or something

 

[Shaki]

Exactly. While I find the actual setpieces (Grove, Blighted Village, Selune temple etc.) good, everything is so densely packed.

Like everything happens in shouting distance. They say the way to Baldurs Gate would take you ten days.

And yet this is in keeping with the original Baldur's Gate. Most of that game's maps fit together. The entire worldmap of Baldur's Gate is probably the size of Act 1's overland map. To say nothing of the Underdark.

It's an RPG, so some abstraction is implied. It's just more noticeable due tot he detailed 3D format.

Originals have everything on separate map, with travel time between them, giving the illusion that the whole area is much bigger, you're just arriving in an interesting location after 15 hours of traveling through boring fields, forests and shit. Here, thanks to everything being on one big map, that illusion doesn't exist.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

False alarm. It just treats it like I met him and turned him down. Whatever. "About that night we spent together..." was misleading.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

It is quite easy to rework the system, really. Just toss it all in the garbage and fetch the 2nd edition books.

I love AD&D 2nd Edition but it does have issues of its own, mainly melee classes being fucking boring and a joke. Fighters in the PHB get fuck all. HP, lower Thac0, proficiencies and specializations.... and that's it? The Combat & Tactics splatbook intodroduced weapon masteries.

The problem with procifiency, specialization and mastery is that it doesn't really open up new options for the fighter. It's just straight up better hit, more attacks and maybe a tiny damage bonus. It's dreadfully boring.

The class kits from the Complete Fighter splatbook didn't really add anything of relevance either and most of the kits were purely RP fluff anyway. IIRC, only the Berserker kit even did something new in terms of class mechanics.

In that regard, the core AD&D 2nd edition rules for fighters (and related classes) weren't really any different from the previous five editions of Dungeons & Dragons. PHBR1 The Complete Fighter's Handbook followed the core AD&D 2nd edition rules within just a few months, and it included 25 pages of new rules for various combat actions (e.g. pull/trip, pin, parry), specializations, and related items for the usual, one-on-one, melee combat that fighters engage in.

whats up with those preset faces? Even Cyberpunk allowed for more customization freedom. If you want to play as a white guy there's only white guy face and that's it.

The lack of face options is due to facial animation limitations I heard.

Your character makes expressions so much its hardly surprising they had to limit that. And even with the limits, it's still extremely hit or miss. Some make you go "ok that was actually pretty good" and others take you for a ride to the deepest trench of the uncanny valley.

Reminder: Dragon's Dogma had an innovative character appearance customization system that allowed the player to choose the basic shape of important facial elements from a lengthy list of options (in similar fashion to selecting a hairstyle in many games, including BG3), supplemented by sliders to change size, positioning, etc. And it even had a more limited customization of the body, allowing the player to select from a smaller number of options for arms, torso, and legs, plus a height slider, a musculature slider, a weight slider, and (for women) a bust slider. And this game was released in 2012 for a console released in 2006. The expressions made by the player-character in Dragon's Dogma weren't all that much worse than the expressions made by the player-character in BG3, despite Larian limiting the player to a handful of heads (once sex and species have been chosen).

You humans certainly make a lot of expressions.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Originals have everything on separate map, with travel time between them

This is about BG1, not BG2.

They were originally supposed to be a single map, but it couldn't be accomplished due to tech limitations. Especially Baldur's Gate itself.

This is an old discussion. People have matched the images and most of them fit perfectly or nearly perfectly together into a single large map. Look it up.

Yes, there was a travel time mechanic, though it wasn't long going from area to area. Again, an abstraction.

BG2 is another matter though.

giving the illusion

Which is all this is about. Cosmetic.

 

[Mojobeard]

I like Karlach a lot, what's not fitting with the game?

The "fucking fuck let's kick their ass, fucking kill bad guys L-O-L". The character could stay chipper and coarse, but be executed much better.

Isn't that the whole point of a barbarian? Moreover a soldier.

No

What would you personally improve about her then?

I mean where to start. Many things. She could loosen up, but have her start just a little more serious or at least have that professional grit when needed. Generation Kill's Iceman's professional mode. Lae'zel's calculativeness, but without being a zealous cunt all the time.
Something like that. Anything.
She feels Flanderized, despite not having been in anything before. A Bioware character.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Originals have everything on separate map, with travel time between them

This is about BG1, not BG2.

They were originally supposed to be a single map, but it couldn't be accomplished due to tech limitations. Especially Baldur's Gate itself.

This is an old discussion. People have matched the images and most of them fit perfectly or nearly perfectly together into a single large map. Look it up.

Yes, there was a travel time mechanic, though it wasn't long going from area to area. Again, an abstraction.

BG2 is another matter though.

giving the illusion

Which is all this is about. Cosmetic.

BG2 was consciously gamified because they realized they could't properly translate the happenings of a wilderness wandering group of adventurers into a videogame. As it has been said before, you need those human players to make shit up as they go. So in BG2, every branch of the main quest is a "stage" of sorts. Like a proper videogame.

 

[430am]

She feels Flanderized, despite not having been in anything before. A Bioware character.

Well, yeah, fair enough but then none of the characters really show good or in-depth writing to me, so by that standard she's ok to me. Compared with the others. Shadowheart doesn't even come into play that much until the end of the game I imagine. I feel like they went with the mile wide and inch deep approach to characters in this game, so many of them but they are barely fleshed out besides their face value.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

To be fair, I don't know if it's because i'm taking her along for the entire ride, but Shadowheart's personal quest's story beats are way more frequent than any companion. It feels like she and Gale were kinda meant to be the main companions/romance options for the PC.

 

[The_Mask]

Anyone else finished Shadowheart's personal quest? I feel like they shouldn't have brought in Viconia for this.

I haven't and I clicked the spoiler. It was pretty obvious that's who it was from the first memory of the wolf when it didn't show her face.

Bringing in any of the old characters was a mistake. But isn't that what all the haters itt said for two years? "REEEE it has nothing to do with Baldur's Gate! There aren't any characters from the first game in it!"

Well, now you have Jaheira (and her kids), the cartoon barbarian etc. This is what they all wanted. Doesn't make things better, does it?

Related- They made Jaheira old as fuck, clearly people who have no concept about D&D lore. Even in 5E where they changes so much elves typically live 500-700 years. A century on Jaheira would put her in middle age at best. She was modeled and textured more like a post-menopausal chick which doesn't seem right to me since she was fairly young in the other games.

ITT larian fanboys that never played BG.
Jaheira is an half-elf.

Jaheira's race doesn't matter much. Druids have timeless body.

 

[Lovely Feather Pillow]

This game is farking good guys

 

[430am]

To be fair, I don't know if it's because i'm taking her along for the entire ride, but Shadowheart's personal quest's story beats are way more frequent than any companion. It feels like she and Gale were kinda meant to be the main companions/romance options for the PC.

In my experience it's Lae'zel every single time. I don't care about her at all yet she always shows up and comments on everything far more than any other party member. Straight up tells you to fuck her on your second night or something. And then there's the whole plot thing with her as well. I don't care about the Githyanki shit at all but they keep forcing me to come back to it all the time.
Also Wyll. Probably the second most frequent.

 

[Larianshill]

Somebody really needs to explain to Gale that no means no, because he tried to bang me three separate times, despite being rejected each time before. And in the end, when I romanced Shadowheart, he was like "I guess this is the end of things between us". Fuck you, Gale, there was never "us", go eat shit.

 

[Johnny Biggums]

Gale, less so, but he has a lot of range to his character, which can give the impression of better acting, even if it's mostly just him loving the sound of his own voice.

Man, I so wanted to like Gale. I wouldn't mind him being gay, or just weirdly star-struck with the hero of the party. But I think this is the third time I had to say no to him. And all scenes with him make my character act very feminine in movement and mannerisms. I mean, I want to take part of his story, but it's very off-putting, and I could only imagine playing some kind of brute character and seeing this. Then we have the fact that he was the lover of Mystra, which I assume is a god in female form. So, wtf is going on here with Gale? I really really wish they would just have stuck to something, make that character gay if you have to, and if necessary base his background on that. Not that would be important during adventuring, but hey ho, here we are. Player sexual makes it so fugging messy, and immersion-breaking, and as mentioned, we can't have bros thanks to this. And the writing is always mean when turning someone down. Jesus Christ game.

Astarion's flamboyancy is far more likable (and his VO and lines are funnier). He slots into a pre-existing buffoonish gay villain archetype in my head, which it seems I'm comfortable with, while Gale somehow feels more like a pathetic creep.

 

[Alienman]

lol, Wyll. I keep forgetting he exists. He is still level 1 in my party and has his old equipment. He just sits in camp all day and yells "BLADE OF THE FRONTIER".

 

[StrongBelwas]

Yeah, maybe I'm not using him properly, but Warlocks feel very fragile for dubious benefits.

 

[Alienman]

Astarion's flamboyancy is far more likable (and his VO and lines are funnier). He slots into a pre-existing buffoonish gay villain archetype in my head, which it seems I'm comfortable with, while Gale somehow feels more like a pathetic creep.

Yeah, and he tricks you every time. Wanna see some cool magic? Hey, listen to this hologram and follow the instructions. Also he makes me questions his and Elminster's relationship.

 

[Varnaan]

Man the only thing I wish is that I could have 6 characters in my party, I wanted to take a druid with me but I can't rationalize dropping Shadow, Gale or Karlach the bulldozer.