Baldur's Gate 3 Early Access impression

[Trunkage]

So, in a unique-but-not-surprising turn of events, Kotaku and other places are calling out the BG3 players for creating overly "basic" (pronounced "white and male") characters, and even the devs join in the condemnation.

Stop being white and male guys, it's toxic and just basic and boring. (incidentally, what sort of races does the game even offer, are there dragonfolk?)


Like, I played the Red Prince in D:OS2, so it's not like I even think this applies to me, since yeah I always found the nonhuman races more interesting, but to call other people's chars "basic" is so ridiculous when you're having an RPG experience.

You know when Kotaku says something like ’basic’ like this, they actually mean stop it with all the identity politics right?

Anyway, I was about to say that there isn't any white males characters to select in D:OS2. I had to look it up and found out that there was one.... That was incredibly boring and basic. No wonder you picked Red Prince. I did Sebille, with Red, Beast (who turned out to be a bit bland too) and Fane. Mostly great fun. I almost picked Lohse because she seemed cool (her skills seemed crap) but Ifran... Legit couldn't remember anything about him. I'm was thinking about doing another go through but Ifran still doesn't interest me and I'm the type of person who tries most things once

So, I see a character like Ifran as being as well written as Ghostbuster2016. More about identity politics and not much substance

 

[Mister Mumbler]

So, in a unique-but-not-surprising turn of events, Kotaku and other places are calling out the BG3 players for creating overly "basic" (pronounced "white and male") characters, and even the devs join in the condemnation.

Stop being white and male guys, it's toxic and just basic and boring. (incidentally, what sort of races does the game even offer, are there dragonfolk?)


Like, I played the Red Prince in D:OS2, so it's not like I even think this applies to me, since yeah I always found the nonhuman races more interesting, but to call other people's chars "basic" is so ridiculous when you're having an RPG experience.

Couple of points, first it isn't Kotaku/gaming outlets saying this but the actual devs (they ran through the data of the most used character creation options), and secondly it's comes off less as "stop picking white male characters" and more "we gave you tails and demon eyes and so much more to fuck with, so why do all your characters look the same?".

 

[Dalisclock]

Couple of points, first it isn't Kotaku/gaming outlets saying this but the actual devs (they ran through the data of the most used character creation options), and secondly it's comes off less as "stop picking white male characters" and more "we gave you tails and demon eyes and so much more to fuck with, so why do all your characters look the same?".

It is interesting considering people will apparently spend HOURS with the character creator in games that have one making their perfect face(even in games like Dark Souls, where you're going to inevitably look like Beef Jerky if you're not covered in armor) but go for blandy mcblandyson look when given the chance to have horns and such.

 

[Dreiko]

You know when Kotaku says something like ’basic’ like this, they actually mean stop it with all the identity politics right?

Anyway, I was about to say that there isn't any white males characters to select in D:OS2. I had to look it up and found out that there was one.... That was incredibly boring and basic. No wonder you picked Red Prince. I did Sebille, with Red, Beast (who turned out to be a bit bland too) and Fane. Mostly great fun. I almost picked Lohse because she seemed cool (her skills seemed crap) but Ifran... Legit couldn't remember anything about him. I'm was thinking about doing another go through but Ifran still doesn't interest me and I'm the type of person who tries most things once

So, I see a character like Ifran as being as well written as Ghostbuster2016. More about identity politics and not much substance

The game has a create your character system on top of the premade chars with unique backstories so you can make anything you want. But yeah the premade chars are all different races since there's only like 5 or 6 of em, the only race that has 2 is humans. Though no, I disagree, I tried all the party members and Ifan is actually the second most interesting of them all. He also can summon a spirit wolf which I love. I was gonna go with the girls and Fane at first but I felt his character was a little too overly similar with the prince and Ifan has a jaded hero charm to him. Also he's a fugitive which has some very interesting ramifications when you go to places he's wanted. Lets just say I found a use for the face mask Fane was asking for even without him lol.

 

[happyninja42]

Just looked at a few of the prefabs, and man that female Gold Dwarf is freaking gorgeous. Dark skin, rich, wavy black hair, proportions that basically make her a thicc girl. Like all my buttons right there. If only she was scaled up to a me sized frame, it would be almost my ideal woman, physique wise anyway.

 

[meiam]

From everything I've seen of the impression since the beta came out what worries me the most is that it follow the DnD system for roll check in dialogue, which are way to random (D20 roll +skill point, usually around 5 or so). It just suck when your extremely charismatic talker is only sligthly more likely to convince someone as you're blood crazed barabarian with cha as his dumb stats. Even playing tabletop I never liked how random that was and will probably just lead me to save scum (or even better, find a mod that just transform those to hard check).

 

[Iron]

From everything I've seen of the impression since the beta came out what worries me the most is that it follow the DnD system for roll check in dialogue, which are way to random (D20 roll +skill point, usually around 5 or so). It just suck when your extremely charismatic talker is only sligthly more likely to convince someone as you're blood crazed barabarian with cha as his dumb stats. Even playing tabletop I never liked how random that was and will probably just lead me to save scum (or even better, find a mod that just transform those to hard check).

can you run a rogue with expertise? Bard with Jack of all Trades?

 

[happyninja42]

From everything I've seen of the impression since the beta came out what worries me the most is that it follow the DnD system for roll check in dialogue, which are way to random (D20 roll +skill point, usually around 5 or so). It just suck when your extremely charismatic talker is only sligthly more likely to convince someone as you're blood crazed barabarian with cha as his dumb stats. Even playing tabletop I never liked how random that was and will probably just lead me to save scum (or even better, find a mod that just transform those to hard check).

Yeah it's one reason I haven't really played D20 systems in over a decade. I dislike the binary pass/fail of the system, with no real variation. I prefer the FFG dice mechanics for their Star Wars game line, and the Genisys system. Where it's a collection of positive/negative dice, and you roll them together. The results cancel each other out, but there are 2 axis of results. The pass/fail axis, but also a benefit/hindrance axis. So you could end up with a check that failed, but with enough "benefit" results to let you mitigate some of the bad effects of failing. Like, you still FAIL. You don't suddenly pick the lock because you got enough Advantage, but you can, for example, spend that Advantage to maybe "notice" a nearby drainage pipe (that wasn't actually there before), to allow you to instead try an athletics check to get into the building. Which will have it's own challenges.

It's way more fun for me personally, and one reason that I am not super excited about BG3.