Baldur's Gate 3

[Old_Hunter_77]

Just... Baldur's Gate 3, man, it's coming out.

Anyone play the early access? Anyone play either of the first 2?

Me, I haven't played any BG. But the marketing hype is working its magic on me.

Actually, I did try the original BG a couple years ago but didn't have the patience for it. I also tried Divinity Original 2 and didn't have the patience for it. Too much reading. And turn-based combat is not my thing so much?

But I have been in the mood to break my pattern of go-to gaming and have been enjoying an ARPG and a fighting game which I haven't literally this century before so why not a full on D&D nerdathon RPG. And the fact that there is spoken dialogue instead of walls of texts is a big draw.

They moved up the PC release to early August and pushed back the PS5 release to 9/6, both because of XBox exclusive Starfield, and this kind of looks like a genius move, we'll see how that pans out.

This is also a release that is as close to guaranteed quality on day 1 release because of its warm reception on early access.

 

[CriticalGaming]

I played the EA a long time ago, but it was a bit busted back then and I never bothered to come back to it. I am excited from what I've seen of the full game recently though and will be playing it, especially considering I bought it 3 years ago.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

I played the EA a long time ago, but it was a bit busted back then and I never bothered to come back to it. I am excited from what I've seen of the full game recently though and will be playing it, especially considering I bought it 3 years ago.

Do you have specific race/class/stats/build stuff in mind?
I have a major choice paralysis with RPG's. Like I wanna play as a wizard obsessed with powering up magic; or a self-serving bard who charms the pants off of everybody; or a poison-spewing thief/rogue; or a goody-two-shoes cleric...

 

[CriticalGaming]

Do you have specific race/class/stats/build stuff in mind?
I have a major choice paralysis with RPG's. Like I wanna play as a wizard obsessed with powering up magic; or a self-serving bard who charms the pants off of everybody; or a poison-spewing thief/rogue; or a goody-two-shoes cleric...

I typically chose a warrior/barb character and will probably be a half/elf dude so i can bang the bear.

 

[BrawlMan]

Just... Baldur's Gate 3, man, it's coming out.

Anyone play the early access? Anyone play either of the first 2?

Me, I haven't played any BG. But the marketing hype is working its magic on me.

Actually, I did try the original BG a couple years ago but didn't have the patience for it. I also tried Divinity Original 2 and didn't have the patience for it. Too much reading. And turn-based combat is not my thing so much?

But I have been in the mood to break my pattern of go-to gaming and have been enjoying an ARPG and a fighting game which I haven't literally this century before so why not a full on D&D nerdathon RPG. And the fact that there is spoken dialogue instead of walls of texts is a big draw.

They moved up the PC release to early August and pushed back the PS5 release to 9/6, both because of XBox exclusive Starfield, and this kind of looks like a genius move, we'll see how that pans out.

This is also a release that is as close to guaranteed quality on day 1 release because of its warm reception on early access.

I've only played the second game, and that was all the way back around 2003 or 2004. We never actually owned it and we borrowed it from a friend. I have not touched that game in basically two decades now. I forgot a lot of things and it would be like brand new again if I played it.

 

[sXeth]

Just... Baldur's Gate 3, man, it's coming out.

Anyone play the early access? Anyone play either of the first 2?

Played both back in 2001(I think?).

So context is important because at the time a lot of the RPG genre was struggling mightily with trying to go 3d (as was much of gaming) or trying to go real-time instead of turn based. The classic "gold box" D&D games had kind of had a downturn as dodgy combat mechanics or higher graphics took over much of the meat. (Actually even the older ones had most of their "meat" in these giant manuals that the game would occasionally give you a reference number to look up the relevant text)

Other mainstays in the genre, Ultima had tried to ARPG then tried go ARGP and 3d and basically did awful at both. Might and Magic had been kind of overshadowed by its strategy incarnation Heroes, and 3d0 was having monetary troubles anyways. Elder Scrolls was the would-be successor to Ultima but not quite managing it and particularly at that point was just procedurally generated jank.

Baldurs Gate 1 is essentially non-remarkable outside of that context. It was a D&D game that was functional and playable (outside of the inherent mess of 2E D&D mechanics). But nothing to write home about put in any other context. Icewind Dale was much the same (except you create all the characters in that one, which leads a decent chunk of people to find it true-er to D&D)

Baldurs Gate 2 (which ironically does not include the city of Baldurs Gate) has some decent to good dialogue and side content. And quality vA performances. It also doesn't really make much sense in its main storyline. Its Bioware/Black Isles first struggle with making continuity in an open game, because it assumes and forces a specific canon onto you, and a chunk of it is anchored around that idea. Particularly your opening party, one of which is the anchor for the first 60% of the main story. The villain gets some nice dialogue, but his motivations are inscrutable and his backstory is legit jank nonsense (He's an elf who got turned into a human and exiled plotting revenge on the elf city)

Throne of Bhaal, acting as something of a conclusion to the series (as if the publisher reached out and smacked them for not doing anything with it, and the epilogue of the first game) is just a quick boss rush. Culminating in the main protagonist becoming a god, or not. Kind of dead ends the whole saga. The Forgotten Realms canon was quick to retcon and overwrite this canon by having a completely different and unrelated character become the God of Murder.

And that last part means well, you're not missing anything coming into BG3. Baldurs Gate the series ended with a hard stone cold finality. And even that ending was effectively wiped from the settings canon. Presumably BG3 might take place around the titular city, but it functionally can't have an actual position in the series.

As to the game itself, Larian can probably do a solid job, from what I've heard of Divinity (I don't have 100+ hours to devote to long winded dialogue RPGs). From what I saw of early access, D&D by way of video game is as taxing as ever with silly dice rolls and limited options that really highlight why a DM oversight is needed to make the system work well.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

Played both back in 2001(I think?).

So context is important because at the time a lot of the RPG genre was struggling mightily with trying to go 3d (as was much of gaming) or trying to go real-time instead of turn based. The classic "gold box" D&D games had kind of had a downturn as dodgy combat mechanics or higher graphics took over much of the meat. (Actually even the older ones had most of their "meat" in these giant manuals that the game would occasionally give you a reference number to look up the relevant text)

Other mainstays in the genre, Ultima had tried to ARPG then tried go ARGP and 3d and basically did awful at both. Might and Magic had been kind of overshadowed by its strategy incarnation Heroes, and 3d0 was having monetary troubles anyways. Elder Scrolls was the would-be successor to Ultima but not quite managing it and particularly at that point was just procedurally generated jank.

Baldurs Gate 1 is essentially non-remarkable outside of that context. It was a D&D game that was functional and playable (outside of the inherent mess of 2E D&D mechanics). But nothing to write home about put in any other context. Icewind Dale was much the same (except you create all the characters in that one, which leads a decent chunk of people to find it true-er to D&D)

Baldurs Gate 2 (which ironically does not include the city of Baldurs Gate) has some decent to good dialogue and side content. And quality vA performances. It also doesn't really make much sense in its main storyline. Its Bioware/Black Isles first struggle with making continuity in an open game, because it assumes and forces a specific canon onto you, and a chunk of it is anchored around that idea. Particularly your opening party, one of which is the anchor for the first 60% of the main story. The villain gets some nice dialogue, but his motivations are inscrutable and his backstory is legit jank nonsense (He's an elf who got turned into a human and exiled plotting revenge on the elf city)

Throne of Bhaal, acting as something of a conclusion to the series (as if the publisher reached out and smacked them for not doing anything with it, and the epilogue of the first game) is just a quick boss rush. Culminating in the main protagonist becoming a god, or not. Kind of dead ends the whole saga. The Forgotten Realms canon was quick to retcon and overwrite this canon by having a completely different and unrelated character become the God of Murder.

And that last part means well, you're not missing anything coming into BG3. Baldurs Gate the series ended with a hard stone cold finality. And even that ending was effectively wiped from the settings canon. Presumably BG3 might take place around the titular city, but it functionally can't have an actual position in the series.

As to the game itself, Larian can probably do a solid job, from what I've heard of Divinity (I don't have 100+ hours to devote to long winded dialogue RPGs). From what I saw of early access, D&D by way of video game is as taxing as ever with silly dice rolls and limited options that really highlight why a DM oversight is needed to make the system work well.

Well that's quite a contrarian opinion to the worship BG seems to get. Certainly an earned and informed one so I'm agnostic about all this.. I mean yeah of course what interests me about BG3 is as a video a game not like "playing D&D without humans" or whatever.
I didn't talk about the actual combat but its quality is going to be a big determining factor of whether the game works as a game and reports are positive so far.

 

[meiam]

Well that's quite a contrarian opinion to the worship BG seems to get. Certainly an earned and informed one so I'm agnostic about all this.. I mean yeah of course what interests me about BG3 is as a video a game not like "playing D&D without humans" or whatever.
I didn't talk about the actual combat but its quality is going to be a big determining factor of whether the game works as a game and reports are positive so far.

I don't think that opinion would be considered contrarian at all. BG game are product of their time, with the limited availability of other option they managed to rise above the packs, but they were always plagued with plenty of problem that were recognized back then and have only become more prominent today.

 

[sXeth]

Well that's quite a contrarian opinion to the worship BG seems to get. Certainly an earned and informed one so I'm agnostic about all this.. I mean yeah of course what interests me about BG3 is as a video a game not like "playing D&D without humans" or whatever.
I didn't talk about the actual combat but its quality is going to be a big determining factor of whether the game works as a game and reports are positive so far.

Nostalgia is a powerful thing lol. My older cousins all remember DOOM being the craziest **** imaginable lol. But in todays context? Its obviosly historically important but few people would be sitting down to play a FPS game where you have to aim with arrow keys lol.

Baldurs Gate got to be the shiny new mainstream D&D game keeping the title afloat for video games. Like many of the most popular examples, of genres. its just kind of floating there as a 7/10 or so though.

Torment was the more interesting niche cult-classic writing wise. Neverwinter Nights (1) would become the D&D nerds proper fantasy since it gave a relatively easy to use toolset with open modding capabilty and consequently people are still playing away at it 20 years later. (NWN2, screwed the proverbial pooch by turning the toolset into a Blender-lite complexity nightmare, and Enhanced Edition apparently is just the garbage tier official campaigns when I looked at it).

Elsewise there was again more niche but interesting stuff being done with non-D&D properties around the same time, like Arcanum and the original Fallouts.

A large number of millenials (yes that is the actual generation) will probably remember that it was available on the shelf (whereas you'd have trouble finding Fallout or Arcanum) and picked it up as their *introduction* to CRPGs, but if you actually press them they often don't have much recollection fo the detail. Or the more die hards are playing with layers of fan patches and such (similar to the differentation between a base install of VTM:Bloodlines and how people who idolize it actually played)


Baldurs Gate 3 is inherently just a marketing gimmick on Larian doing a Forgotten Realms D&D game though. Maybe they really wanted to do one and thats the only way they could get whoever to cough up the D&D rights? Or whoever has the D&D rights wants to try and get it going as a solid video game brand and approached Larian. Who knows.

The few and far D&d games with "good" combat have mostly just stapled the names from tabletop for things onto their own systems though.

 

[Zykon TheLich]

Never really liked Baldurs Gate, even though I only tried it a couple of years after it came out. Those 2nd ed rules were brutal at low level, which is difficult in an RPG with no GM to fudge and nothing much to do but fight.

Much as I keep trying to like the semi-realtime party based isometric type RPGs I can never really get on with them. Dragon age, divinity, mass effect, pillars of eternity, original fallouts...

It looks pretty high quality but eh... not willing to risk it at full price. Maybe in a few years when it is half price.

 

[Gordon_4]

Never really liked Baldurs Gate, even though I only tried it a couple of years after it came out. Those 2nd ed rules were brutal at low level, which is difficult in an RPG with no GM to fudge and nothing much to do but fight.

Much as I keep trying to like the semi-realtime party based isometric type RPGs I can never really get on with them. Dragon age, divinity, mass effect, pillars of eternity, original fallouts...

It looks pretty high quality but eh... not willing to risk it at full price. Maybe in a few years when it is half price.

Mass Effect isn't isometric, or did I misread how that sentence was meant to be?

 

[Zykon TheLich]

Mass Effect isn't isometric, or did I misread how that sentence was meant to be?

I probably shouldn't have included it but it's just another bioware game I didn't like. There's a lot of commonality if not the isometric bit

Edit: Perhaps 3rd person would fit better for all of them, but also isometric gets a special mention. Basically there's a lot of commonality between the RPGs I tend to dislike. But I can't be arsed listing the intricacies of which games have what etc for a bunch of games that I wasn't particularly keen on and didn't play that much.

 

[Gordon_4]

I probably shouldn't have included it but it's just another bioware game I didn't like. There's a lot of commonality if not the isometric bit

Edit: Perhaps 3rd person would fit better for all of them, but also isometric gets a special mention. Basically there's a lot of commonality between the RPGs I tend to dislike. But I can't be arsed listing the intricacies of which games have what etc for a bunch of games that I wasn't particularly keen on and didn't play that much.

Fair enough, nothing is ever all or anything to all people.

 

[Dreiko]

Very excited for it, Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous and Divinity OS2 were both excellent so imagining a combination of the two has me drooling.

 

[CriticalGaming]

Very excited for it, Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous and Divinity OS2 were both excellent so imagining a combination of the two has me drooling.

I haven't been able to play D&D in over three years (thanks covid), so I'm hoping this scratches something of my D&D itch. Dice rolls, epic saves and fails....BEAR FUCKING! You know.....normal D&D things.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

BG3 is one of the very very few games I'm actually looking forward to. Larian's DOS2 was pretty fucking awesome (with a few mods) and if Larian is just using straight-up DnD rules then no mods should be needed. For example, DnD has no real loot type system per se so there shouldn't be a bullshit loot system in the game where you constantly pick up slightly better weapons/gear that you constantly have to switch out in your inventory all the fucking time. If you couldn't guess that was one of the mods I used in DOS2 that auto-leveled up your gear so I didn't have to switch out anything unless I actually found something that was legit better.

As to the game itself, Larian can probably do a solid job, from what I've heard of Divinity (I don't have 100+ hours to devote to long winded dialogue RPGs). From what I saw of early access, D&D by way of video game is as taxing as ever with silly dice rolls and limited options that really highlight why a DM oversight is needed to make the system work well.

DnD isn't really too hard to make a video game out of. Sure, you probably a have a few more things to implement that you probably wouldn't do if you made your own system but you also have the system already built so you don't have to spend time on that end.

The few and far D&d games with "good" combat have mostly just stapled the names from tabletop for things onto their own systems though.

DnD combat is pretty simple in essence. Current DnD 5's action economy has a bit more to it than before, but XCOM is basically DnD combat but with guns where you have a move action and attack action and that's pretty much it. Past DnD was you get a move action and attack action and I think the only main limitation in XCOM was, IIRC, that once you attacked, your action ends so you couldn't attack then move.

I haven't been able to play D&D in over three years (thanks covid), so I'm hoping this scratches something of my D&D itch. Dice rolls, epic saves and fails....BEAR FUCKING! You know.....normal D&D things.

That sucks, my group never stopped playing outside of like a month or 2.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

I was thinking honestly one reason I was getting myself hyped for the game is that I'm in the mood for some REAL hardcore high fantasy shit. Top quality level, in any medium. I hold the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, first few seasons of Thrones, and Witcher 3 on that level.
There has been a lot of fantasy and I've enjoyed it but it's been compromised on quality or style of something. BG3 is unabashed nerd shit and I want that.

The reason I won't be playing on release day is Starfield, which will be much cheaper because of Gamepass so it wouldn't make sense to play the more expensive thing first. And also let's be honest I'll still be struggling my way through Armored Core at that point.

 

[hanselthecaretaker2]

I typically chose a warrior/barb character and will probably be a half/elf dude so i can bang the bear.

Why only they can?

In any case it sounds like something someone would say when suggesting something…well, outside the box.

As in, “I’m gonna bang the bear a bit and say we should implement a one hour lunch period, with the latter half hour devoted to game time.”

Or, “Jim really banged the bear when he said he wanted to cut upper management’s salaries in half and disperse the savings as pay hikes for hourly staff.”

 

[CriticalGaming]

Why only they can?

I think anyone can? Maybe. It might be class specific though because I know the game has relationships limited by your class and race. I'm not sure HOW to bang the bear, but I'm gonna fucking figure it out I tell you wut!

 

[Dreiko]

I haven't been able to play D&D in over three years (thanks covid), so I'm hoping this scratches something of my D&D itch. Dice rolls, epic saves and fails....BEAR FUCKING! You know.....normal D&D things.

It's prolly a bit more combat-intensive than real D&D but the roleplaying in Divinity OS2 was excellent so I have high hopes for this too. Never mind bear fucking, you could enslave a ship. And not one of those anime girl ships, a real ship with a dragon's head as a mast.

I think anyone can? Maybe. It might be class specific though because I know the game has relationships limited by your class and race. I'm not sure HOW to bang the bear, but I'm gonna fucking figure it out I tell you wut!

You likely won't be able to bang the bear as a lawful char, because it's bearly legal.