Baldur's Gate 3

[Old_Hunter_77]

What do you guys think of the idea of playing this game in bursts, or while playing other things, kind of like how people play real D&D where they schedule sessions? Would that make it hard to remember what the heck is going on if there are days or weeks in between play sessions? I ask because generally I just play one game 'till I'm done then move on to the next but this game is so huge and slow-moving it might be more interesting to treat as an episodic experience.

I thought of this while reading about the Armored Core 6 completion tasks and it's possible I'm gonna play through the story, but then just want to go back to it to do missions. So bouncing between that for some action and BG3 for some slower-paced strategy and dialogue could be cool.

Like I'm really interested in digging into turn-based/strategy combat as a way to challenge myself. I'm kind of loving the idea of this storm sorcery I read about. Could I make a character inspired by the X-Men Storm and freaking zap people around a battle arena as a black sexy goddess with white hair? That sounds like a fun time.

 

[CriticalGaming]

Baldur’s Gate 3’s First Big Patch Covers ‘Over 1000’ Problems

Larian Studios made huge fixes for its RPG’s story, balance, and more

kotaku.com

 

[CriticalGaming]

Could I make a character inspired by the X-Men Storm and freaking zap people around a battle arena as a black sexy goddess with white hair?

You can as a wizard and spells like Thunderwave, Shocking Grasp, Chromatic Orb (lightning or thunder), Create water, Witch bolt, Gust of Wind, Daylight, Flight, Call Lightning, Lightning Bolt, Sleet Storm, Ice Storm, Destructive Wave, Chain Lightning, Wall of Ice, Wind Walk, and you get the picture yeah?

 

[Bartholen]

What do you guys think of the idea of playing this game in bursts, or while playing other things, kind of like how people play real D&D where they schedule sessions? Would that make it hard to remember what the heck is going on if there are days or weeks in between play sessions? I ask because generally I just play one game 'till I'm done then move on to the next but this game is so huge and slow-moving it might be more interesting to treat as an episodic experience.

It would very much make it hard to follow. The game begins with the main quest just being "find a cure", for which alone there are like 7 different paths you can take. Unless you tackle each of them strictly singularly, you'll lose all track of what you're trying to do, where and why very fast. And that's before you get involved in the zillion little sidequests.

 

[Ag3ma]

You can as a wizard and spells like Thunderwave, Shocking Grasp, Chromatic Orb (lightning or thunder), Create water, Witch bolt, Gust of Wind, Daylight, Flight, Call Lightning, Lightning Bolt, Sleet Storm, Ice Storm, Destructive Wave, Chain Lightning, Wall of Ice, Wind Walk, and you get the picture yeah?

+ Misty Step! Surely one of the best spells in the game - super useful and low level.

 

[CriticalGaming]

+ Misty Step! Surely one of the best spells in the game - super useful and low level.

I used misty step and got spotted by a goblin leader who promply buttfucked 3/4th's of my party to death.

10/10 would Misty again.

 

[Ag3ma]

I used misty step and got spotted by a goblin leader who promply buttfucked 3/4th's of my party to death.

10/10 would Misty again.

I just use it to bounce around and reposition, or get my mage out of melee, or of course just to get to difficult places outside battle. There are a few items you can pick up with it where it can be used as a bonus action, too, so no wasting your proper actions that you need to smite your opponents.

 

[CriticalGaming]

I just use it to bounce around and reposition, or get my mage out of melee, or of course just to get to difficult places outside battle. There are a few items you can pick up with it where it can be used as a bonus action, too, so no wasting your proper actions that you need to smite your opponents.

I gave my Barbarian misty step boots, now nothing can run from her rage!

 

[Ag3ma]

I think one thing I do regret is picking an Eldritch Knight subclass. As far as I can see, they are basically shit. Casting a spell costs any fighter actions, and the spells castable tend to be too weak to justify the loss of attacks. You can prep combat buffs like magic mirror or blur before a fight, I guess, but I don't think the utility tends to equal the benefits the other fighter subclasses get.

 

[CriticalGaming]

I think one thing I do regret is picking an Eldritch Knight subclass. As far as I can see, they are basically shit. Casting a spell costs any fighter actions, and the spells castable tend to be too weak to justify the loss of attacks. You can prep combat buffs like magic mirror or blur before a fight, I guess, but I don't think the utility tends to equal the benefits the other fighter subclasses get.

That is something I think BG3 does suffer at. Because it's a video game it doesn't have the adaptability that the tabletop game has. So the applications of a hybrid class just don't work out as well because the game feels more min/maxable to pure classes. Either going all in on spells or all in on melee seem to be the way to go and in reality you want a party with one type of each if possible.

The limits on fighter type characters are covered simply by using a good bow or picking half-elf for the free fire cantrip.

 

[Satinavian]

I picked :
Wood elf (for fast movement and skills)
Rogue 1 (for most skills and expertise)
Lore Cleric 1 (for more expertise and guidance and healing spells and armor+shield)
Lore Bard Rest (more skills and expertise and half prof with other rolls and lots of spellcasting)

And it is a smooth ride. Jack of all trades characer, thus can handle most interactions herself and has a load of utility spells. But is pretty weak in combat. That is where whatever other three i take with me come in.
Also being a Selune Cleric while having Shadowheart is fun and the various optional bard interactions as well.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

From what I read/understood, wizards do magic because they studied while sorcerers do magic because they have natural powers, that's why I thought the idea of a storm sorceress made sense. But of course if/when I actually buy it will do more research.
My other idea for a fiction-inspired character is Jaskier/Dandelion from The Witcher. A bard, obviously, who is super-charming and self-serving but at heart good and ends up helping people, and secretly smarter than he seems.

 

[CriticalGaming]

From what I read/understood, wizards do magic because they studied while sorcerers do magic because they have natural powers, that's why I thought the idea of a storm sorceress made sense. But of course if/when I actually buy it will do more research.
My other idea for a fiction-inspired character is Jaskier/Dandelion from The Witcher. A bard, obviously, who is super-charming and self-serving but at heart good and ends up helping people, and secretly smarter than he seems.

You can do that too.

 

[Dreiko]

From what I read/understood, wizards do magic because they studied while sorcerers do magic because they have natural powers, that's why I thought the idea of a storm sorceress made sense. But of course if/when I actually buy it will do more research.
My other idea for a fiction-inspired character is Jaskier/Dandelion from The Witcher. A bard, obviously, who is super-charming and self-serving but at heart good and ends up helping people, and secretly smarter than he seems.

A really cool thing is that a sorcerer can have dragon blood in them as their source of natural magic, which gives them this little scaly pattern on their skin matching the color of the type of dragon they're related to, and if your race is dragonborn it gives your actual scales some highlights. The attention to detail is nuts.

 

[thebobmaster]

Baldur's Gate 3 is coming to the Xbox "this year".

Baldur’s Gate 3 is coming to Xbox “this year”

Saved games will work across PC and Xbox, but not Xbox and PS5.

www.theverge.com

 

[Ag3ma]

A really cool thing is that a sorcerer can have dragon blood in them as their source of natural magic, which gives them this little scaly pattern on their skin matching the color of the type of dragon they're related to, and if your race is dragonborn it gives your actual scales some highlights. The attention to detail is nuts.

In a world where it has been the norm for 10 or more years to let the player choose their character's appearance from a dozen different faces, umpteen different hairstyles, facial hair styles, piercings, make-up, tattoos, etc. in my opinion this is not particularly high attention to detail at all.

 

[Dreiko]

In a world where it has been the norm for 10 or more years to let the player choose their character's appearance from a dozen different faces, umpteen different hairstyles, facial hair styles, piercings, make-up, tattoos, etc. in my opinion this is not particularly high attention to detail at all.

The thing is more tying it to the class, also same with the specific piercing you get for being a wildheard barbarian. Those little things that make you feel special go way farther than the 50th haircut or face tattoo.

 

[Bartholen]

Cleared act 2. I fear this far into the game the things I wanna talk about might count as serious spoilers, so I'll treat them as such.

Spoiler: Let's get to it

Halsin got left behind due to a quest I left unfinished. Which is fine, I never used him anyway (saving him for a later playthrough), and i don't know if the game bugged out or something, but I never had the dialogue option to ask him to join my party anyway, which was weird. He seems like a fun character though, super jovial vibes from him.

Made Shadowheart leave her service of Shar, which I'm assuming is the "main" path for her storyline. We'll see where it goes. I did spend like an hour running back and forth in the temple of Shar to find the goddamn last orb, which had been sitting in the devil's lair the whole time. I killed the Orthon in a really funny way though: he was on his last legs, and I pulled him off a ledge with Thorn Whip, finishing him with fall damage.

It's been clear to me for a while now that to anyone with familiarity with 5e's systems this game is an absolute cakewalk on normal mode. Especially compared to Larian's previous big RPG, Divinity Original Sin 2, this feels like it's treating me with kid gloves. Granted, it could be that the School of Hard Knocks that was D:OriSin 2 made me more tuned in to how to exploit their systems. The hardest fight by far in act 2 wasn't the final boss against an avatar of a death god, nor the preceding two fights against his immortal champion, but the guards at the entrance to the tower where said fights happened. It's the classic 5e case of action economy trumping anything and everything else in fights.

Speaking of said champion, I don't really like how this game handles villains. It's fine enough in act 1, where your goal is still to just find a cure. But in the second act you're introduced to Ketheric Thorm (voiced by JK Simmons no less), an immortal champion in service of dark gods, who's given this whole badass intro cinematic... and then you just never see him again until the final fight against him. Sure he's at the core of the story and he's brought up a lot, but as an agent in the story he's far more of a plot device than a character with agency. And then we find out he's been working with two other characters who we've only seen vaguely brought up once in act 1, but now they're the actual bad guys, for realsies. For a game based on DnD this sure is lacking in a distinct BBEG. Granted, the exact same thing could be said of D:OriSin 2, but there the story was actively deconstructing and playing with the Chosen One trope, often in horribly cynical fashion. Simmons' performance is also really weak and muted despite being great in other voice roles. I guess they just brought him in for a day and didn't do many takes, since he has so little dialogue.

I got a rather awkward scene with Gale (who's been sitting unused ever since I found Karlach), who straight up professed his love to my PC despite them being friendly acquaintances at best. So yeah, my defense of the "wank fantasy" just took a big hit. Though there's plausible deniability in how he's just recently learned he has mere months to live, and is clearly grasping at straws for any connection in a vulnerable time. I'm sticking with Lae'zel all the way. I just wish there was some way of making the companions romance each other, since Karlach can finally touch people after completing her questline, and Gale is clearly desperate to get some. My character's relationship with Karlach has been much more "fist bump bros" because the Wolf Heart rage combined with Sneak Attack makes for some delicious damage.

Interestingly, less tha 15% of players have currently proceeded to act 3. Granted, this game hasn't been out for that long and is like 80 hours long, but I'll be interested to see how far that number climbs over the fall. Makes me think that because this game has such massive hype people might be picking it up but leaving it unfinished. On to act 3 next.

 

[Samtemdo8]

Baldur's Gate 3 is coming to the Xbox "this year".

Baldur’s Gate 3 is coming to Xbox “this year”

Saved games will work across PC and Xbox, but not Xbox and PS5.

www.theverge.com

Well now I get to play it

Wonder if the Xbox version can support using a Keyboard and Mouse for this game?

 

[sXeth]

Well now I get to play it

Wonder if the Xbox version can support using a Keyboard and Mouse for this game?

It'd strike me as very odd if they didn't allow KB/M on the consoles. (Although I was able to find people asking for the PS5 version as recently aas days ago with no confirmation).

PArticularly starting with a PC version then porting, where it'd have to be actively removed.