Baldur's Gate 3 Catch-All

Shadout wrote:
Malor wrote:

Not in the least uptight about it being turn-based. D&D is turn-based. The real-time BG1 and 2 were the weird outliers. :)

Totally fair. But I dont particularly care about pnp D&D. I have never tried it.
BG3 is clearly a game that sells itself as a sequel to BG1 and 2, so the connection there is quite a bit stronger.

I doubt BG3 will be bad due to turnbased gameplay. D:OS2 is one of the best CRPGs ever made, and its combat was great as well.

Of course, the main reason I want RTwP is that I think it is a better system. In a world where a turn-based BG2 was going RTwP in BG3, I'd likely be quite fine with it, so it makes sense that people who prefer TB likes the change.

I guarantee the primary target audience for this (and the larger share of the interest) is going to be players of 5e d&d (or more likely watchers, given the popularity of crit role, etc who can't or don't play the TTRPG themselves). I have to imagine the number of folks nostalgic for bg1 and 2 are probably going to be pretty small in comparison

I know that Stadia won't work for folks that have bandwidth caps or slow service, that said I am playing the Stadia version and it has been silky smooth. Being able to play BG3 on my 65" 4k TV is a thing of beauty. My only issue playing that way is with the controls. With the current implementation control via a controller is really rough compared to mouse and a keyboard. Playing through Chrome on my PC where I can use mouse and keyboard has been perfect. I did also purchase the game via Steam to be able to compare and so far I don't see any downsides to the Stadia version.

When something is hewing close to the tabletop experience mechanically, it is always interesting to see which abilities feel better/more useful not because of any mechanical change in the ability but simply because of the shift in the medium.

Dark vision on the table: Meh.
Dark vision in this game: Must have.

Repelling blast on the table: Intermittently useful, depending on how you build your Warlock and how often DM breaks out maps and creates complex terrain where crowd control abilities can really matter.
Repelling blast in BGIII: TOO MUCH FUN. AN ILLEGAL AMOUNT OF FUN.

Kehama wrote:

Yes, I crave the dark and dramatic duo of Minsc and Boo from the original Baldur's Gate and not this new, shiny, happy Larian claptrap that involves intellect devourers and illithids!

You've been sigged, sir.

Looking forward to playing this eventually, for the grit, obviously.

I get nostalgia bias, but yeah, "dark and gritty" BG was not, "silly and tongue in cheek", also not, but it could cover a wide spectrum between those two opposites. Come for Minsc and Boo, stay for the quest to kill your unholy progenitor

So I haven't had time to mess with the game yet, but I read somewhere that they only had evil and neutral companions because they need people to deal with the evil parts of the game more.

Is the combat in BG3 similar to or the same as DOS2 in regard to the two tier armor and damage implementation? Physical. Magical. That ground my enjoyment of DOS2 into dust.

RnRClown wrote:

Is the combat in BG3 similar to or the same as DOS2 in regard to the two tier armor and damage implementation? Physical. Magical. That ground my enjoyment of DOS2 into dust.

It is 5e D&D combat, so not like D:OS2 at all in that regard. You'll have saving throws, AC, and d20's galore. But no multi-tiered armor HP system.

TheHarpoMarxist wrote:
RnRClown wrote:

Is the combat in BG3 similar to or the same as DOS2 in regard to the two tier armor and damage implementation? Physical. Magical. That ground my enjoyment of DOS2 into dust.

It is 5e D&D combat, so not like D:OS2 at all in that regard. You'll have saving throws, AC, and d20's galore. But no multi-tiered armor HP system.

Excellent. Thanks!

My experience of anything D&D is from Baldur's Gate (1) and Neverwinter Nights (1). I got on fine with those. Formative games. Great memories.

I should probably get on with Baldur's Gate 2, let alone pondering on 3!

Figured out a work around for my crashing. I switched to dx11 from the default vulkan renderer. Makes sense as the laptop apu is a non standard graphics card.

I will say that YES, absolutely you should be ENABLED for this game if they can keep this up for the entire campaign. Actually, check that, if they can keep this up for just a measly one quarter of the game it will be well worth it.

Conversation tree options for race, class and skills (arcana and such). Interactives influenced by skills and stats.

Just everything you could want for an rpg where, companions, class, race, stats, dialogue and more matter. (just in the first 30-40 minutes of the game no less) Some of the stuff is scripted, spontaneous or situational like mid combat.

I was reading an interesting article about the game and the author was complaining about a dialogue check that when passed led to the character dying. Without spoilers, given the target of the dialog and the nature of the dialog it isn't a surprise. I think that gamers have been conditioned that you should try and exhaust all dialog in a tree and that nothing bad can happen. I unfortunately tried to do it in my game but I failed the skill check to fall into that trap option.

It did not happen to me. But there was one combat situation my curiosity led me to where I was annihilated in one hit that ended my game abruptly. Also, in the first 40 minutes of the game, there are 2 spots where I could see that skill check failure leading to game over happen. In fact, one of them has 2 skill checks in the same encounter where it undoubtedly leads to death on failure.

The counter to that is not failing leads to unexpected wish fulfillment. Spoilered below:

Spoiler:

You come upon some thralls trying desperately to save a trapped mortally wounded mindflayer. I blurted out in my head "I should go stomp on its head". Well after 2 attempts at manipulation (technically a 3rd time as I chose to fight the thralls until the flayer lost control of them) I stomped the flayer's head like a melon.

FWIW it isn't my cup of tea to have dialogue end your game. I think it would be a better approach to sacrifice a companion at worst in those instances. I mean you could reserve that for perma death game options or the mega insane difficulty should the devs go that route.

Well I have to say, a couple of hours in, I think this is superb. However, despite not really thinking about it at the start, it's definitely more Original Sin than Baldur's Gate.

I'm not sure how the purists are going to react to that as they get more into it.

Sorbicol wrote:

Well I have to say, a couple of hours in, I think this is superb. However, despite not really thinking about it at the start, it's definitely more Original Sin than Baldur's Gate.

In which ways? (if it isnt spoilerish!)

manta173 wrote:

So I haven't had time to mess with the game yet, but I read somewhere that they only had evil and neutral companions because they need people to deal with the evil parts of the game more.

I've got three companions in my party at the moment, and have had two others in the past (one of whom I suspect is coming back). All of them are kinda... really?

I don't know if they're just trying to be "edgy", but it is a bit off-putting.

Spoiler:

One of them attacked me when we first met (based on my dialog choice, but they were being pretty obnoxious), joined up, then revealed themselves to be a vampire and asked if they could feed on me. (Do they want the one word or the two word answer?) Another immediately hits on the female member of the party as soon as he joins. And the third is a "trickster" cleric, which I'm sure can have no negative ramifications ever.

Maybe it's all so that all of them can have "redemption" arcs, but I'm kinda tempted to leave all of them behind and see how well I do on my own.

Yeah right now only the evil and some neutral allies seem to be in game. Word is good ones will come at some point.

Funny that encounter I had an interesting experience.

Spoiler:

He attacked and I rolled to break free. We talked and I thought I had agreed to have him join but he left and said something like he'd meet me somewhere else.
In regards to the wizard that hits on Shadowheart, I stopped playing right after that. (not because of it)
It was a little tropey but he did have a cool entrance! Plus I got to take him down a peg when I told him I was a warlock. He countered with a burn but it rang hollow and harmless enough.

Shadout wrote:
Sorbicol wrote:

Well I have to say, a couple of hours in, I think this is superb. However, despite not really thinking about it at the start, it's definitely more Original Sin than Baldur's Gate.

In which ways? (if it isnt spoilerish!)

Once you are out of the prologue, it’s in the way the whole map is designed and the encounters you’ll come across as you explore. The map is designed to be exploited by Larian’s Turn Based system, so unlike in BG (or say Pillars of Eternity) it’s not about party formations, it’s about using each characters skill set to the best match their abilities.

It should be that all of that is blindingly obvious considering it’s Larian’s game for sure, but for whatever reason, as I was trotting around the map last night it just really hit me.

Where it isn’t Original Sin is in the abilities and skills (again, obviously it’s using the D&D system!) and in the writing and how the characters come across. It just feels much more mature and contained. I’ve had one major plot line that just didn’t go anything like how I was expecting that also breaks one of the major taboo’s in RPG gaming

Spoiler:

A child is executed. Seriously

Which really made me sit up. Personally I loved everything about how it was all handled, especially the next part when I met someone who offered to do something about your Tadpole

Spoiler:

She murders you because she’s so afraid of what you’ll become if the mindflayer metamorphosis happens

which I thought was fantastic. It just handles it all extremely well from the NPCs perspective.

I’m really enjoying it - my Pathfinder: Kingmaker playthrough is completely forgotten and a very stale, stodgy experience compared to this. I dunno if I’ll bother to go back to that.

As excited as I am for this, it doesn’t look or play at all like a Baldur’s Gate game to me. It’s more Original Sin 3 I think.

running four 5e D&D campaigns i can guarantee that a lack of coherent party formations and strategy is very faithful to 5e characters

Well, hit a bug twice. Try to have Gale cast a spell, realize that the target is out of range, and try to cancel the spell. And can't. I can't cast it because there are no valid targets in range, and it won't let me cancel out. I've had to use task manager to kill the game both times.

It did pop up a crash report asking what I was doing when it happened, and I reported it, so that's something, I guess.

I also had one where an enemy died and turned into this polygonal abomination covering about half the screen. Didn't stop me from moving through the room, just weird.

My favorite harmless bug was when I eldritch blasted a bandit into a wall and he exploded and then the body rag dolled right AT THE CAMERA (IE, up.) Where it covered most of the screen and convalesced for a few seconds before vanishing.

TheHarpoMarxist wrote:

My favorite harmless bug was when I eldritch blasted a bandit into a wall and he exploded and then the body rag dolled right AT THE CAMERA (IE, up.) Where it covered most of the screen and convalesced for a few seconds before vanishing.

my kingdom to be able to replicate and record this.

Amoebic wrote:
TheHarpoMarxist wrote:

My favorite harmless bug was when I eldritch blasted a bandit into a wall and he exploded and then the body rag dolled right AT THE CAMERA (IE, up.) Where it covered most of the screen and convalesced for a few seconds before vanishing.

my kingdom to be able to replicate and record this.

I don’t know if it’s the same bug or not but I’ve had at least four instances of an enemy dying to a critical hit and the ragdoll going into a flailing spasm that lasts for a couple seconds and leaves the body impossibly stretched out and invisible (it’s highlight still shows on mouseover). The attack type doesn’t seem to matter- It happened on melee attacks two of the four times.

tanstaafl wrote:

I've got three companions in my party at the moment, and have had two others in the past (one of whom I suspect is coming back). All of them are kinda... really?

I don't know if they're just trying to be "edgy", but it is a bit off-putting.

That sounds consistent with the Ars Technica preview, which put me off a bit. The writer's impression is that it's a gorgeous game but the NPCs are awful people, the dialogue is awful choices, the situations you're put in are awful, etc. Along the lines of "this is a beautiful game but why does Larian hate me?"

If they deliberately limited the early game NPCs and situations to be like this, what an odd way to generate interest in your game.

I am not sure what you are supposed to expect when the party is turning into mind flayers. Which means that you are patient zeroes for a deadly plague everywhere you go. I don't think I'd expect anyone to be happy or nice to you with the threat you represent.

I don't recall whether D&D lore ever expressly says what is involved in curing mind flayer infection. I hope that is central to the plot and it doesn't boil down to *healer casts a spell* and done.

I also don't understand why the cure isn't to just die since you can be resurrected by a spell or scroll. You would think the tadpole would leave the dead host and could be squashed before the host is resurrected...

it'll be Greater Restoration* or higher i would assume, i'd have to check (pretty sure it's the same for a Slaad tadpole). Or,as you say, death and resurrection.

*which you would not expect to get access to easily at Tier 1. Not without considerable expense at a healer, most likely.

** actually i take that back, as far as i can tell, re: Ceremorphosis...

Spoiler:

it looks like it is very much incurable, at least as far as the actual game mechanics are concerned, beyond crushing the victims skull to kill the tadpole then resurrecting the victim and using restoration spells to restore memory, etc. YIKES.

So yeah it looks like it absolutely wont be as easy as a restoration spell.

However as i was poking around, it seems Larian has hinted at...

Spoiler:

...the fact that these are not necessarily 'ordinary' Illithid tadpoles and there might be something else going on

I also find it curious if perhaps eventually foolish the few mentions of controlling or manipulating the tadpole in your head or a companion's head...

I wonder if you will have dealt with the tadpole by the point your party levels high enough to get Greater Restoration? Is that what, level 7 for Clerics? IIRC people complained the the level cap for BG3 was too low at level 10?

The normal point of no return for Ceremorphosis is an hour, afaik. So there may be some rules/lore fudging involved here. (whether that's a story-based thing or just a gameplay practicality, who knows)

fangblackbone wrote:

IIRC people complained the the level cap for BG3 was too low at level 10?

The level cap for ACTUAL 5e D&D should be level 10!

Yeah, that was an interesting read on ceremorphosis.
The first stage is only a few hours where smashing or blowing off the head and then ressurecting is possible. After that, apparently divine intervention is the only way to recover over the next week or 2.
I also found it cool that the newborn flayer requires 20 years of instruction. And that there are things such as half-ilithids that retain their full powers.

One interesting side note that I will spoiler because it is from the actual game albeit in the first 5 minutes:

Spoiler:

Apparently the mind flayers were experimenting with a machine on the ship you were held captive that will instantly transform the host!