I've changed my mind; Baldur's Gate 3 is NOT worth the current asking price.

FakeSympathy

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So just over a week ago I made this post praising BG3's huge potential. Well after reaching the end of Act 1, aka the end of Early Access, I now can say for certain that the game is not worth $60 at its current state.

I still stand by on some of the positive points I've made, but this update is more about reasons on why I now think isn't worth the price of AAA game.

Limited Character Creation
I can't believe I didn't notice this the first time I started the game, but I guess I was bit too excited to take a proper look. When I say limited character creation, I don't mean just the looks; Those are as standard as you can get with any fantasy RPG. As of writing thise, there are only 6 classes and 8 races That's really shallow especially when you compare to dnd 5e's 12 classes. The races do make difference here and there, but I haven't seen anything too major about it. Also, the game is supposed to allow you to play as the companion characters, but that's also not available in EA. Given how well this worked in DOS 2, it is a bit bummer.

Limited Content
Act 1 itself is pretty damn good, but goddamn, is it limited. Not only are you limited to max level of 4, but you can only take one out of three possible end routes. The landscape is your standard forest, mountains, and caves, and I wish I would've seen something different. There are cool areas here and there, but those only part small parts of this big open world., so much so that exploring every nook and cranny of Act 1 feels really discouraging and unrewarding. Act 1 looks amazing, yes, but it can also feel really empty.

Glitches.....
Larian have been doing patches here and there, but there are still tons of bugs. There's a bug where the boss fight of a side-quest doesn't trigger, so you have find her (she's invisible) and attack her outside of combat to trigger the next part of the quest. There's a bug where an NPCsay the same dialog making it impossible to finish the quest. Some textures loads in really late, combat can be buggy, and sometimes my character simply wouldn't attack in combat due to a glitch.

I am tempted to say it's almost as bad as No man's Sky and Sea of Thieves launch was, but those were full launch and this is an EA. I think we'll have to wait another year or two to see how well the devs add content to this game. After finishing Act 1, I kinda regret buying it so fast, due to how excited I was for this game. I now highly recommend everyone to hold off until the full release or wait until price drop
 

DJShaddycat

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Exercise patient gamer practices. Every. Time.

For me personally, I don't care how much I was looking forward to a game coming out, they aren't getting full price out of me. I'm just stingy that way. The last time I paid full price for a game, I felt really guilty for it. I know the devs worked hard on the game and they deserve the money, but I just felt wrong spending that much on a game. So now, $10 or below, with little to no exceptions (Games like Factorio that never go on sale being the exception).

I remember reading that Larian were a little shocked at how many people went out to buy the game in early access. They really wanted it to be more like an open sourced game testing group, rather than a full commercial release. However in my opinion, they should've just used Steams play-test distribution service to pick how many people they wanted to get into the early access.

I'm sure Baldurs Gate 3 will turn into a great game. Larian is a pretty good studio. But $60 for the amount of content being offered is not worth it for anyone looking for just a game. If you're looking to try and help the devs create this game and watch it unfold in front of you, then it might be worth the asking price.

Buying BG3 early access is still better than pre-ordering anything though, IMO.
 

Samtemdo8

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120 GB space requirement is enough to alienate me. I really need a better PC :(
 

Samtemdo8

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Don't blame your PC man. 120GB is ridiculous, strong PC or not.
Its not really ridiculous. We are in the era of 4K Video Gaming.

4K textures and resolution are extremely demanding when uncompressed.
 

Worgen

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Whatever, just wash your hands.
Its early access, most of the time early access means the game isn't ready for show. Its foolish to buy into early access and expect a finished game. We have seen how this dev handles early access and what the final result is. It will be well worth it, eventually. Just not now.
 
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happyninja42

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Just saw this pop up, figure people in this thread might get a kick out of it, given the context.

 

Phoenixmgs

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Heck, it's usually worth to wait for the "enhanced" edition with Larian games let alone full release. Though with the extra budget and brand of Baldur's Gate, I'm guessing you won't have to wait past the full release for full voice acting and what not like Divinity Original Sin. The classes I want to play aren't even in Early Access so I wasn't going to buy it now anyway even though it's like my most anticipated game right now.
 

Dalisclock

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I'm interested, but I'll buy it when its finished. Unless somehow the complete game is crap, in which case I got plenty of other CRPGs to catch up on.

But I've got plenty of other games to play in the meantime during the EA period.
 

Asita

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Don't blame your PC man. 120GB is ridiculous, strong PC or not.
It's pretty damn big, but sadly not ridiculous (yet). Quick search showed the following results for largest (file-size) PC games:

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided: 77GB
Shadow of War: 95GB
CoD: Infinite Warfare: 101GB
Gears of War 4: 112.3GB
CoD: Black Ops 2: 113GB
Final Fantasy XV: 148GB
Red Dead Redemption 2: 150GB
Destiny 2: Shadowkeep: 165GB
CoD: Modern Warfare: 175GB (over 200GB as of July)
Quantum Break: 178GB

So looking at this list, I think we can all agree on one thing: Devs need to relearn efficient design.
 

happyninja42

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It's pretty damn big, but sadly not ridiculous (yet). Quick search showed the following results for largest (file-size) PC games:

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided: 77GB
Shadow of War: 95GB
CoD: Infinite Warfare: 101GB
Gears of War 4: 112.3GB
CoD: Black Ops 2: 113GB
Final Fantasy XV: 148GB
Red Dead Redemption 2: 150GB
Destiny 2: Shadowkeep: 165GB
CoD: Modern Warfare: 175GB (over 200GB as of July)
Quantum Break: 178GB

So looking at this list, I think we can all agree on one thing: Devs need to relearn efficient design.
Yeah but it's early access and only what, 1/3 of the game and it's already over 120G ? Final version is bad enough, but this is fresh off the presses and it's this huge.
 
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Asita

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Yeah but it's early access and only what, 1/3 of the game and it's already over 120G ? Final version is bad enough, but this is fresh off the presses and it's this huge.
Hence the "yet". The thought had occurred to me, but I legitimately have no idea how many additional assets will need to be patched in for the remaining content. Consequentially, I'm not confident about making any more specific estimate about the final filesize.
 

Dalisclock

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Hence the "yet". The thought had occurred to me, but I legitimately have no idea how many additional assets will need to be patched in for the remaining content. Consequentially, I'm not confident about making any more specific estimate about the final filesize.
It's possible the rest of the game won't be significantly bigger and the large size now is mostly base assets and everything else, so the remaining 2/3 of the game will ultiize what's already there.

It's also possible the final version will be streamlined more than what's there now.

We'll find out for certain in a year.
 

Asita

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It's possible the rest of the game won't be significantly bigger and the large size now is mostly base assets and everything else, so the remaining 2/3 of the game will ultiize what's already there.

It's also possible the final version will be streamlined more than what's there now.

We'll find out for certain in a year.
My point exactly. We can reasonably assume that they need to supply a lot more coding to make everything 'dance' the right way. However, the animations, textures, and music that they'd be pulling are likely mostly packaged in already. Conversely, it's probably a safe bet that the bulk of the voiced dialogue is still with the devs, and there will probably be at least a few more maps of indeterminate size for the later acts. What that amounts to in file size, however, is a shot in the dark.
 
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DJShaddycat

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It's pretty damn big, but sadly not ridiculous (yet). Quick search showed the following results for largest (file-size) PC games:

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided: 77GB
Shadow of War: 95GB
CoD: Infinite Warfare: 101GB
Gears of War 4: 112.3GB
CoD: Black Ops 2: 113GB
Final Fantasy XV: 148GB
Red Dead Redemption 2: 150GB
Destiny 2: Shadowkeep: 165GB
CoD: Modern Warfare: 175GB (over 200GB as of July)
Quantum Break: 178GB

So looking at this list, I think we can all agree on one thing: Devs need to relearn efficient design.
Frankly for me, 100GB or above is way too high, but maybe I'm being unrealistic
 

DJShaddycat

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Yeah but it's early access and only what, 1/3 of the game and it's already over 120G ? Final version is bad enough, but this is fresh off the presses and it's this huge.
That's a good point that I hadn't though of. Fuck, what's the size of this thing going to be when it's finished? 200gb? If this is 1/3 of the game, it'll be more than that.
 

DJShaddycat

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You’re being unrealistic.
Fair, yeah. I'm sure some games just can't help going above 100GB due to the size of textures and materials + gameplay content. For me though, who avoids about 99% of all AAA releases, 100GB has always felt a little absurd to me. I mean, that's 1/5 of my SSD, which I've been exclusively gaming off of for the past 3-4 months.
 

Phoenixmgs

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The size of a game can vary greatly by how much uncompressed data there is. Just look at the different sizes of Vanquish on PS3 vs 360 (very soon to be) 2 generations ago running lower textures/resolutions than today's games obviously. Vanquish is 12GBs for a 5 hour linear shooter because of all the uncompressed data vs fitting on a DVD on 360. If any RPG is doing uncompressed audio, that's gonna skyrocket the size of the game.