Baldur's Gate 3

[Bartholen]

This is the perfect sort of basis for an expansion or sequel. Go fix/rescue Karlach!

(Or kill her, MUAHAHAHA!)

The campaign actually sets a perfect precedent for it.

Spoiler: Spoilers

Defeating the Elder Brain requires a 9th level spell, something you can't get anywhere else in the entire game. That spell is unique to Baldur's Gate 3, but there's another 9th level spell that's been in DnD since the beginning that would be the perfect vehicle for Karlach's salvation: Wish. It basically lets you rewrite reality by merely speaking. It's the ultimate story/worldbreaker power in DnD, and getting one is always huge in campaigns. I can just imagine people going nuts over getting to wish for anything they want (like how Divine Intervention works in BG3), and using it to save Karlach for good. I'm getting misty-eyed just thinking about it.

 

[CriticalGaming]

 

[BrawlMan]

I appreciate the use of "Black Winter Night Sky" from Tekken 2.

 

[Casual Shinji]

So I got to this burning town/manor with soldiers trying save a bunch of people, but... is there anything you can even do there? Because I tried to save this dude trapped underneath some wooden beams, but when I did the game switched over to combat mode and I had to arduously guide everyone out one by fucking one. And even when I did that the game was still in combat mode, so I reloaded thinking it might've been a glitch or something, but when I retried it did the same exact thing. So what the hell is going on in this place, and is there a way to accomplish anything there without burning the fuck up?

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Sure dude. That's waffle and no data. And whenever you look for actual data, you're still wrong.

That Reddit source says Obsidian has teams of 80 devs per game (others, probably questionable, say their new property Avowed is being worked on by ~100 with one estimate as high as 150). This article (Jan 23) says Obsidian has 260 devs, although are working on several games.

Feargus Urquhart is doing what he does best

The Obsidian founder isn’t ready to leave the RPG behind just yet

www.nme.com

Larian - from the words of its own CEO - had over 400 for BG3. (For context, this article and other sources say Skyrim was made by ~100.)

Larian's Baldur's Gate 3 team is 10 times bigger than when it made Divinity: Original Sin

The studio chose to scale up instead of scaling down its vision, which it calls 'the benchmark incarnation of D&D 5th Edition.'

www.pcgamer.com

For anyone who wants to use the power of language skills and analysis and bothers to check stuff out properly, it's simply more accurate.

Back in #181, you are talking about devs "complaining" and hosting a vid of someone saying "Well, everyone else just has to do better." Then later the IGN article which makes the absurd and grossly emotive claim other devs are in "panic" (despite there being no apparent panic). Just to give an idea of how problematic the IGN vid is, it prominently cites a Twitter argument from one Xalavier Nelson Jr., who I had to look up on the web and does not appear to be a AAA game developer. Fucking hell! IGN mostly then just wanders off into a rabble-rousing whinge about microtransactions and shoddy ports rather than addressing the issues in question of core game development that the devs it aspires to criticise were discussing.

This is then why we are having this argument, with you guys laying into developers like Obsidian, leaving me to point out that these are not the AAA development mega-studios you seem think they are, and they are not dripping with money and resources, and this is precisely the point many devs were making that BG3 is a work most studios in the cRPG genre cannot readily meet.

And that 400 number most likely includes everyone in the company, which is what I've been trying to tell you for so many posts now. Whereas the Obsidian numbers are just the devs. You're comparing apples to oranges. That's why the RocketReach numbers are different as it counts anyone employed at the studios vs just the devs.

I already covered all these issues before...

Just about everyone making fun of the whole thing is over the AAA dev comments and not the original thread, hence why the Escapist article saying the IGN is disingenuous is being disingenuous itself (that's why it's a pretty shit and Kotaku-level article). The fact that you're now just knowing the original thread of the debate means you came into rather ignorant on the whole thing and now just learning about it all yet you're gonna say the Escapist article is good (and we just don't like it because it doesn't align with our preconceived notions) is pretty rich on your end.

I am thinking about the time it takes do all those things. My point is use that time for different things vs just making the game look prettier and the game world bigger, that's what AAA does (while usually removing stuff in the process like the worlds of Far Cry are more static than they've ever been). Instead of spending the time and resources to do that, you can spend that stuff towards actually making the game itself better. Rockstar games like RDR can have missions designed to be completed in a multitude of different ways because why have an open world game if you make your missions super linear? Mercenaries (a nearly 20 year old game) is still my standard for open world games that very few of today's games even come close to meeting. The biggest point of an RPG is to allow the player to make decisions and the world reflecting said decisions and you can do that in lots of different ways like BG3 and Mass Effect are obviously very different games but at their core, that was their primary goal.

You aren't right because the article is pretty shit and Kotaku level garbage. Sure, IGN or anyone uses some hyperbole in the headlines saying devs are "panicking". The Escapist article says IGN's video is disingenuous while being completely disingenuous to what IGN's video (and tons of other videos) are actually about. IGN was mainly criticizing the AAA dev response to the twiiter thread and not the original thread itself, and that's what everyone else has been making fun of too.

And you never even admit when you're wrong like when you were comparing apples to oranges talking about the staff size at these dev studios. You said Obsidian had less than half of Larians staff, not even close to true. You said Bioware had less employees than Larian when they have about 200 more. Then, when you reply you just cut all that shit that you're wrong on out of the quote. Then, people here are trying to say Larian has all this funding to be citing they got money from selling shares of their company acting like that's some unique way to get funding when that's the bong standard way companies get money (nobody is saying Larian didn't get money from some means to make the game). The point is Larian didn't get funding in the way most AAA devs do and they were able to make a better game than them. Larian even tweeted back to a dev with "what funding?"

I play and buy good games regardless of where they come from. AAA has been pretty barren of such games for 5-10 years now. Why would you think Starfield isn't gonna "Bethesda" (isn't Bethesda still using their shit game engine? probably why there's no driveble vehicles), what was the last Bethesda game that didn't "Bethesda"? It's like saying the next Ubisoft game that looks just like all the past Ubisoft games isn't gonna "Ubisoft", why would you think that? The next Larian game is probably gonna "Larian" because Larian makes their type of games and always have. Why don't you look through my post history before Cyberpunk released, it was pretty spot-on (though I didn't expect all the bugs), I knew from CDPR's experience that there would be no way they could make a game they were claiming Cyberpunk was going to be; a FPS immersive sim RPG with important narrative choice in an open world needing tons of AI, traffic, driving vehicles, etc. They never did any of those things before, yet they are going to make a game with all those elements? That's one of the tallest tales ever and people fell for it. It's like people totally forget that CDPR had to fix with a patch literal running in Witcher 3 because of how shit the controls were at launch, but Cyberpunk's scope is totally what CDPR could do... believe it!!!

 

[Ag3ma]

And that 400 number most likely includes everyone in the company,

Read the god damn articles! Straight from the Larian CEO's mouth:

"I never expected us to be 400 people to make BG3," Vincke told me.

Jesus wept.

 

[Baffle]

So I got to this burning town/manor with soldiers trying save a bunch of people, but... is there anything you can even do there? Because I tried to save this dude trapped underneath some wooden beams, but when I did the game switched over to combat mode and I had to arduously guide everyone out one by fucking one. And even when I did that the game was still in combat mode, so I reloaded thinking it might've been a glitch or something, but when I retried it did the same exact thing. So what the hell is going on in this place, and is there a way to accomplish anything there without burning the fuck up?

Sometimes it switches you to combat mode (or turn based) because if you move everyone as a group some Dumbo will stand in the fire and die. In that particular bit I just left everyone except myself outside.

 

[Ag3ma]

Sometimes it switches you to combat mode (or turn based) because if you move everyone as a group some Dumbo will stand in the fire and die. In that particular bit I just left everyone except myself outside.

Pathfinding on the game can be poor. I noticed sometimes the companions jump over damaging terrain (usually if the PC does), but the AI is very haphazard. I think one of my least favourite things is trap spotting and avoidance, because your party have no sense and apparently they'd rather die in formation than live out of formation. You can of course avoid the stupid pathfinding setting off traps by just taking in one character and disarming, except of course if they fail the perception check for other traps, you have to move in the others manually to see if one of them can pass it instead and then go back to your disarmer. It's so tediously clumsy.

Minor gripe with stats fiddling. I'm fighting some dudes and they resist pretty much everything, whilst my guys spend the whole game failing checks left right and centre, cowering in fear or paralysed by hold person. Oh look, the bad guys have got about 16-18 on all stats. Well, shit. I thought we were supposed to be special, but every generic Githyanki grunt got an extra 20 points to spend on the character stat selection screen. The Githyanki parry ability (which they get with the right weapon) is also some really hot bullshit.

 

[Baffle]

Pathfinding on the game can be poor. I noticed sometimes the companions jump over damaging terrain (usually if the PC does), but the AI is very haphazard.

I enjoy casting wall of fire in combat, then my entire party gathering in it afterwards because they're a bit chilly.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Sometimes it switches you to combat mode (or turn based) because if you move everyone as a group some Dumbo will stand in the fire and die. In that particular bit I just left everyone except myself outside.

Yeah, but I couldn't break out of this mode, and the building itself got a turn as if it was the enemy. It was weird. I initially thought this was a moment where I had to get everyone out of the building before it was completely consumed by fire or whatever, but even after getting everyone outside I was still trapped in turn-based combat mode. There's another building in that area where you can either help rally or use Strength to help break the door down, and apparently there's some duke in there that you can save, but that entire fucking place is so littered with fire pits that it's impossible to take a step or a jump without lighting up.

 

[Ag3ma]

Yeah, but I couldn't break out of this mode, and the building itself got a turn as if it was the enemy. It was weird. I initially thought this was a moment where I had to get everyone out of the building before it was completely consumed by fire or whatever, but even after getting everyone outside I was still trapped in turn-based combat mode. There's another building in that area where you can either help rally or use Strength to help break the door down, and apparently there's some duke in there that you can save, but that entire fucking place is so littered with fire pits that it's impossible to take a step or a jump without lighting up.

I don't really get what's going on with the combat mode in that but, but...

...climb up the annex area on the right when you arrive (not the main entrance), head north along the first floor (second floor if you're American?), knock through a door, rescue some woman called Florrick.

Do the pretty much the same on the left - meet some chump on the landing who'll tell you about his wife, go north, loot her body, head back and done. You don't need to bother with the main inn area at all.

 

[Satinavian]

Sooo

turns out, that everyone being super horny was actually a bug and is fixed now.

 

[Baffle]

Sooo

turns out, that everyone being super horny was actually a bug and is fixed now.

Too late, those hearts can't be mended.

 

[Ag3ma]

Sooo

turns out, that everyone being super horny was actually a bug and is fixed now.

LOL!

There will undoubtedly be a large chunk of latecomer players frustrated that they missed the hot action.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Sooo

turns out, that everyone being super horny was actually a bug and is fixed now.

Good thing I had Lae'zel have her dirty, dirty way with me before that happened.

 

[hanselthecaretaker2]

So honeymoon period’s over?

*Modders* “Hold my mead.”

 

[Bartholen]

So I got to this burning town/manor with soldiers trying save a bunch of people, but... is there anything you can even do there? Because I tried to save this dude trapped underneath some wooden beams, but when I did the game switched over to combat mode and I had to arduously guide everyone out one by fucking one. And even when I did that the game was still in combat mode, so I reloaded thinking it might've been a glitch or something, but when I retried it did the same exact thing. So what the hell is going on in this place, and is there a way to accomplish anything there without burning the fuck up?

I know it's probably too late to say this, but that scenario is, to my knowledge, a special situation that's never forced on you by the game outside of that one instance. The reason the game sets to turn-based mode in that situation is because as soon as you save that guy, the fire starts to spread very fast, and you need to get the fuck outta dodge before your whole party gets grilled. The quickest solution is to break down the broken door right next to the guy and run out.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I know it's probably too late to say this, but that scenario is, to my knowledge, a special situation that's never forced on you by the game outside of that one instance. The reason the game sets to turn-based mode in that situation is because as soon as you save that guy, the fire starts to spread very fast, and you need to get the fuck outta dodge before your whole party gets grilled. The quickest solution is to break down the broken door right next to the guy and run out.

Oh okay, thanks. Still kinda weird and fucking annoying, especially with how the camera operates in small confined spaces.

I'm actually now a bit stuck on how to get to Halsin. I know where he is and what he looks like, but I can't find an entrance, other than a breakable wall that I guess I can't break with any melee weapon.

 

[Bartholen]

Oh okay, thanks. Still kinda weird and fucking annoying, especially with how the camera operates in small confined spaces.

I'm actually now a bit stuck on how to get to Halsin. I know where he is and what he looks like, but I can't find an entrance, other than a breakable wall that I guess I can't break with any melee weapon.

I'm assuming you're at the goblin camp at the ruined shrine.

Spoiler: The way to get to Halsin

is by going inside, and finding the door to the dungeon by the upper right corner of the map. That's where Halsin is being kept.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I'm assuming you're at the goblin camp at the ruined shrine.

Spoiler: The way to get to Halsin

is by going inside, and finding the door to the dungeon by the upper right corner of the map. That's where Halsin is being kept.

Spoiler

I sort of figured, but I was also confused by the mission marker which highlights that the way to Halsin is outside.

By the way, in that camp I actually got into a pretty big scuff with the goblin priestess and about 8 other goons that I guess were close enough to hear me. But once I killed them all I could still move freely through the castle and the camp, with npc's still talking about the priestess as if she were still alive. The main drow leader I think even walks straight by the area where I fought and killed the priestess and her goons without making any fuss about it.

With how intricate the game is it's sometimes difficult to discern what is part of the game and what is the game not accounting you making a certain action.