General Gaming Baldur's Gate III - Information Thread, update: Larian doesn't plan to release DLC/expansions for BGIII nor develop BGIV

[Firewithin]

so i did the hag questline and was able to save the girl and get the +1 stat point from the hag.  i took the charisma stat for my warlock who was at 19 CHA is the stat bonus supposed to show me at 20 now or because its a passive it wont show 20?

[Paperclyp]

I find the way Gita Jackson approaches media criticism to be exhausting, but here is her review: 

 

Baldur’s Gate 3 is a masterpiece built on a bad tabletop game

WWW.POLYGON.COM

---

In Larian’s RPG, a computer is your subpar Dungeon Master

 

 

[Bacon]

7 minutes ago, Paperclyp said:

I find the way Gita Jackson approaches media criticism to be exhausting, but here is her review: 

 

Baldur’s Gate 3 is a masterpiece built on a bad tabletop game

WWW.POLYGON.COM

---

In Larian’s RPG, a computer is your subpar Dungeon Master

 

 

 

I have a feeling I will 100% agree with this review. Most of what I dislike are limitations where I expected freedom, and I think the DnD rules are a detriment. 

[Bacon]

Quote

The fiddliness of positioning, sightlines, spell slots, and all the other rigmarole

TRUE! I don't get how there are sightlines where I can shoot arrows over but not magic. Magic is cast a chest level for the most part. HOW is it not going over this waist-high barrier?!?!?!?

 

Quote

that you have to pay attention to in combat lies in stark contrast to the ease and delightfulness of the narrative gameplay. Especially when you’re just chitchatting with the other characters in your party — here, the game is not just fun, but a joyful expression of creativity.

Well, I have yet to really like an NPC. Like, when I think of Morrigan, Garrus, Wrex, or most of the ME cast really, I'm pretty let down by BG3's companions in comparison, SO FAR. I have always liked how the romance aspect of ME was something that started ***slowly*** at the beginning and hit its climax before the climax. Not that ME is amazing in romance, but I think BioWare did it better. Lae'zel is probably the most interesting female companion just because she is an alien. I like Astarion a lot, and it sucks that he's a dude lol. Like, if there is anyone I would want to become bros with in BG3, it is Astarion. The best bros would make for the best romances 90% of the time. Vetra Nyx was the best part of MEA.

 

Quote

But the Dungeon Master that exists within Baldur’s Gate 3 isn’t your friend, or a guy you met at the game store, or a nerd at a convention. It’s a computer program, and one that isn’t necessarily designed to give allowances for the kinds of flights of fancy that can make a game truly memorable.

 

It’s not a person with imagination or empathy; it’s a very specifically designed program meant to deliver a narrative experience that can only be stretched so far. It’s an expansive, detailed experience, but there is only one ultimate narrative that Larian has built for you. The Dungeon Master that lives in this game can’t bend to meet you in the middle.

Yep, only in Act 1 and there have been so many times where I just felt like I had the freedom to do something only for the game to just say no. It's a very BG3 problem because they didn't make the limitation clear. When I play something like ME, I'm never like "Well, why can't I do that". I can pretty much tell what kinds of choices I'll be offered and what my limitations are before going into it.

 

Quote

But too often you end up quick-saving and reloading because your well-made plans are thwarted by bad dice rolls.

Yeah, it's frustrating for shit to not just work because of dice rolls. It actually makes combat worse. I actually enjoy the combat in small fights, but it's bullshit that a one-round fight can take 3 rounds because, lol, you missed, or your 6-36 damage spell does 9. It gets to the point where reloading is faster than switching to your sidearm. I mean, reloading is faster than just letting the round play out. And my god am I sick and tired of enemies bugging out and just standing there for what feels like forever. I'm only playing on balanced, but the game isn't hard enough for combat to take as long as it does.

 

Like, while this is a decent Dragon Age: Origins alternative, the game just makes me wish BioWare still existed.

 

BioWare just did it better.

 

Sorry, if something doesn't make sense. My sleep is all fucked up.

[legend]

Oh, you could just play the game and not save scum every fucking dice roll  

[Bacon]

Just now, legend said:

Oh, you could just play the game and not save scum every fucking dice roll  

I don't. But part of the point that I made is that I don't want combat to drag and reloading is just faster. Cuz all that happens is literally doing the exact same thing next turn. It's actually pretty shit. No amount of colon-p is going to change my opinion on that.

[Bacon]

Like, I didn't save scum the entire fight where the tief and goblins were both hostile after summoning the ogres. I killed everyone, including the surviving ogre. I had no exploding barrels placed beforehand or anything. I just played it out naturally. It was well over 30 minutes with how many enemies were bugged out just standing in place. The drow fucking misty stepped atop the gate and spent three turns doing nothing while I killed everyone else. I was rewarded with the drow being unkillable, and when I knocked her out the game removed her after a long rest. Quests just stopped progressing and didn't end either. They just were active in my log.

 

Like, fuck that shit man.

 

I was unwilling to go thru that fight again, so I just set up everything to nearly one-shot it.

[Best]

6 minutes ago, Bacon said:

Like, I didn't save scum the entire fight where the tief and goblins were both hostile after summoning the ogres. I killed everyone, including the surviving ogre. I had no exploding barrels placed beforehand or anything. I just played it out naturally. It was well over 30 minutes with how many enemies were bugged out just standing in place. The drow fucking misty stepped atop the gate and spent three turns doing nothing while I killed everyone else. I was rewarded with the drow being unkillable, and when I knocked her out the game removed her after a long rest. Quests just stopped progressing and didn't end either. They just were active in my log.

 

Like, fuck that shit man.

 

I was unwilling to go thru that fight again, so I just set up everything to nearly one-shot it.

 

Are you enjoying this game? 

[stepee]

I think it’s the game he’s enjoying disliking the most this year so far 

[Bacon]

Just now, best3444 said:

Are you enjoying this game? 

Most of the time, yeah.

 

But there are all these things that just irritate me too. Like, I'm still bummed that you can't save the tieflings while siding with the goblins. I feel like that is such an obvious middle ground. I disliked that killing all the druids seemed to not even matter. No one fuckin' cared. The one guy who should care only does something about it if you say you did it for fun. The Drow has no interaction if you had killed all the druids beforehand. She probably would if you wiped out the entire grove, but still. Combat being prolonged due to the constant misses on both sides is not fun. It's not fun that the enemy just wastes its turn. It literally happens in the video I posted. It has happened numerous times.

 

But I really enjoy stuff like the Barbarian RP. I've rescued people just by yelling. I've gotten people to fuck off just by yelling. While I'm not very creative in combat, I love how much shit you can do even if I'm not doing it. Like, my one character has a melee attack knockback. I sent a guy flying through a cloud of daggers that way, one-shotting him. I like it when I feel like the game lets me do something clever. Like, I was locked in a room and in conversation, but I had my companions lockpick their way back in while the NPC I was about to kill was talking to me. I set them all up and then combat started I had 3 party members in stealth ready to wail on the fucker. And then I tossed their body into a chasm.

 

 

There's bad shit and good shit, but I get really frustrated with the bad shit. Bad shit that I feel was never an issue in similar games of the past.

[Best]

13 minutes ago, Bacon said:

Most of the time, yeah.

 

But there are all these things that just irritate me too. Like, I'm still bummed that you can't save the tieflings while siding with the goblins. I feel like that is such an obvious middle ground. I disliked that killing all the druids seemed to not even matter. No one fuckin' cared. The one guy who should care only does something about it if you say you did it for fun. The Drow has no interaction if you had killed all the druids beforehand. She probably would if you wiped out the entire grove, but still. Combat being prolonged due to the constant misses on both sides is not fun. It's not fun that the enemy just wastes its turn. It literally happens in the video I posted. It has happened numerous times.

 

But I really enjoy stuff like the Barbarian RP. I've rescued people just by yelling. I've gotten people to fuck off just by yelling. While I'm not very creative in combat, I love how much shit you can do even if I'm not doing it. Like, my one character has a melee attack knockback. I sent a guy flying through a cloud of daggers that way, one-shotting him. I like it when I feel like the game lets me do something clever. Like, I was locked in a room and in conversation, but I had my companions lockpick their way back in while the NPC I was about to kill was talking to me. I set them all up and then combat started I had 3 party members in stealth ready to wail on the fucker. And then I tossed their body into a chasm.

 

 

There's bad shit and good shit, but I get really frustrated with the bad shit. Bad shit that I feel was never an issue in similar games of the past.

 

That was a yes or no question silly. 

[Bacon]

Just now, best3444 said:

 

That was a yes or no question silly. 

You should have known better.

 

I'm a third path kind of guy if you can't tell.

[Air_Delivery]

3 hours ago, Bacon said:

TRUE! I don't get how there are sightlines where I can shoot arrows over but not magic. Magic is cast a chest level for the most part. HOW is it not going over this waist-high barrier?!?!?!?

Arrows can be shot in an arc. Many of the spells are straight shots.

[Bacon]

13 minutes ago, Air_Delivery said:

Arrows can be shot in an arc. Many of the spells are straight shots.

The characters aren't casting from their dick. At least not in my game.

[legend]

2 hours ago, Bacon said:

I don't. But part of the point that I made is that I don't want combat to drag and reloading is just faster. Cuz all that happens is literally doing the exact same thing next turn. It's actually pretty shit. No amount of colon-p is going to change my opinion on that.

 

I guess I don't see the combat as something you need to race through and I don't see a turn not always going my way as making it "drag."

[Kal-El814]

34 minutes ago, Bacon said:

The characters aren't casting from their dick.

 

Look at this CHA 8 caster lol

[Xbob42]

3 hours ago, Bacon said:

I don't. But part of the point that I made is that I don't want combat to drag and reloading is just faster. Cuz all that happens is literally doing the exact same thing next turn. It's actually pretty shit. No amount of colon-p is going to change my opinion on that.

I don't think I've done "the exact same thing next turn" in a single encounter. I can't even imagine what kind of boring way you must be approaching combat to have this attitude!

[Massdriver]

I used to despise rulesets like d&d in games, but I was wrong. It’s satisfying to learn the rules and do well in these crpgs. It may be an acquired taste, but it separates a game like this from a generic rpg which we have all played a million times. 
 

Apparently a lot of people  want to play AAA games that are d&d! That’s good news for gamers because they’ll have more choices. 
 

There is the middle ground which I also appreciate. DA:O occupies it well and I wish BioWare would lean back into the first one.  I could also go for another Kotor. 

[Bacon]

47 minutes ago, legend said:

 

I guess I don't see the combat as something you need to race through and I don't see a turn not always going my way as making it "drag."

I don't wanna race through it, but I am not a fan of long combat encounters in general. I would always skip or FF>> enemy turns if I could. And it's not that the turn isn't going my way, as in advantageous, it's that nothing is even happening. Like, I'm not here reloading after every time Lae'zel goes down, or Gale gets fuckin' sniped for the umpteenth time. Like, I know I said I reload a lot, but that was on Sroc, and I mentioned rerolling to Durge Barb to stop that.

 

34 minutes ago, Xbob42 said:

I don't think I've done "the exact same thing next turn" in a single encounter. I can't even imagine what kind of boring way you must be approaching combat to have this attitude!

My party consists of Gale, War Priest Shart, Lae'zel, and my Barb. It's like attacking with a weapon is it the majority of what my characters do. I mean, nearly every normal encounter starts the same. Durge just does Frenzy and attacks. Next turn it's attack or attack and then frenzied strike. Lae'zel attacks and then attacks again. Shart uses Bless, spirit weapon, and then some method of attack. Gale maybe sleeps a foe, and then cloud of daggers, and then magic missile to pick off low HP targets.

 

Astarion is pretty much a stealth archer and I almost always just cunning hide and ranged sneak attack. Kar throws things, and Wyll opens with cloud of daggers and then Eldritch blasts people.

 

You need to remember that I have played every Souls game with a Halberd. I have beaten Dark Souls 1 numerous times but with the exact same build(except for one time). I was disappointed that two-handing a halberd was so shit ER that I switch to using great swords. I main Warrior in FFXIV and I picked Barbarian in BG3. In WoW I played combat/outlaw rogue and fury warrior. In DA:O I have only beaten the game as a human warrior or rogue. In the Tales of games I only use the main character who is usually a swordsman. I like to hit things with weapons.

 

35 minutes ago, Kal-El814 said:

 

Look at this CHA 8 caster lol

I pretty much don't use any CHA party members. It's all WIS, CON, DEX, and STR.

[stepee]

NEERRRRDDDDDSSSSSSSS

[Bacon]

@Xbob42

If you have any saves where you are at level 4, just show me how you fight if you can or are willing.

 

I know I lack creativity, but I'm generally not bothered by it.

[Paperclyp]

Reading through her review several times, I find it contradictory, vague, and hinging on rare instances that if she doesn’t like, could be remedied in more than save scumming. 
 

The basic premise of the review is that she doesn’t like BG3 as much as she could because it’s based on D&D, which she claims is a bad game. But then you read it and she says actually she doesn’t like it because it actually isn’t enough like D&D. Throw in an example of like hey, here’s something that i didn’t like that happened to me, in real life my dungeon master can just cut me a break… ok… yeah… I mean maybe just go play D&D then, but then again you hate D&D? But then she says she’s gonna play BG3 over and over again (like full play throughs) cuz it’s so good. 
 

I suppose the review could be read as like, man it’s so varied in its possibilities that when it does actually give you some limits it’s frustrating, but given the context she puts around that premise I don’t really buy that that’s her point. 
 

[Bacon]

3 minutes ago, Paperclyp said:

Reading through her review several times, I find it contradictory, vague, and hinging on rare instances that if she doesn’t like, could be remedied in more than save scumming. 
 

The basic premise of the review is that she doesn’t like BG3 as much as she could because it’s based on D&D, which she claims is a bad game. But then you read it and she says actually she doesn’t like it because it actually isn’t enough like D&D. Throw in an example of like hey, here’s something that i didn’t like that happened to me, in real life my dungeon master can just cut me a break… ok… yeah… I mean maybe just go play D&D then, but then again you hate D&D? But then she says she’s gonna play BG3 over and over again (like full play throughs) cuz it’s so good. 
 

I suppose the review could be read as like, man it’s so varied in its possibilities that when it does actually give you some limits it’s frustrating, but given the context she puts around that premise I don’t really buy that that’s her point. 
 

Yeah, it reads like a smarter me wrote. It's great.

[Paperclyp]

Just now, Bacon said:

Yeah, it reads like a smarter me wrote. It's great.

I much prefer your stream of consciousness in this thread 

[Bacon]

Just now, Paperclyp said:

I much prefer your stream of consciousness in this thread 

I know you aren't joking, but I laughed.

 

Thanks tho.

[Keyser_Soze]

44 minutes ago, Paperclyp said:

Reading through her review several times

 

Masochist confirmed

[stepee]

4 minutes ago, Keyser_Soze said:

 

Masochist confirmed

 

Seriously. Once was enough, and I didn’t even read it that many times.

[Bitgod]

8 hours ago, Paperclyp said:

I find the way Gita Jackson approaches media criticism to be exhausting, but here is her review: 

 

Baldur’s Gate 3 is a masterpiece built on a bad tabletop game

WWW.POLYGON.COM

---

In Larian’s RPG, a computer is your subpar Dungeon Master

 

 

Oh, is she at Polygon now?  Well that makes sense.  Glad I never read Polygon.

[Bitgod]

This game has broken me.

 

[Air_Delivery]

Honestly the thing that annoys me the most about the game is that everyone has English accents and kind of sounds the same. At least make Dwarves Scottish. 

[Spork3245]

Are there fast save/load hot keys? I don’t see any in the control options 

[Spork3245]

1 hour ago, Spork3245 said:

Are there fast save/load hot keys? I don’t see any in the control options 

Found it: f5 + f8

[Mercury33]

8 hours ago, Paperclyp said:

Reading through her review several times, I find it contradictory, vague, and hinging on rare instances that if she doesn’t like, could be remedied in more than save scumming. 
 

The basic premise of the review is that she doesn’t like BG3 as much as she could because it’s based on D&D, which she claims is a bad game. But then you read it and she says actually she doesn’t like it because it actually isn’t enough like D&D. Throw in an example of like hey, here’s something that i didn’t like that happened to me, in real life my dungeon master can just cut me a break… ok… yeah… I mean maybe just go play D&D then, but then again you hate D&D? But then she says she’s gonna play BG3 over and over again (like full play throughs) cuz it’s so good. 
 

I suppose the review could be read as like, man it’s so varied in its possibilities that when it does actually give you some limits it’s frustrating, but given the context she puts around that premise I don’t really buy that that’s her point. 
 

This right here is pretty much exactly why i just laugh and ignore everything Polygon and PCGamer puts out. 

[Paperclyp]

6 hours ago, Bitgod said:

Oh, is she at Polygon now?  Well that makes sense.  Glad I never read Polygon.

I assume she freelances for them but I don’t know. 

[Kal-El814]

8 hours ago, Paperclyp said:

Reading through her review several times, I find it contradictory, vague, and hinging on rare instances that if she doesn’t like, could be remedied in more than save scumming. 
 

The basic premise of the review is that she doesn’t like BG3 as much as she could because it’s based on D&D, which she claims is a bad game. But then you read it and she says actually she doesn’t like it because it actually isn’t enough like D&D. Throw in an example of like hey, here’s something that i didn’t like that happened to me, in real life my dungeon master can just cut me a break… ok… yeah… I mean maybe just go play D&D then, but then again you hate D&D? But then she says she’s gonna play BG3 over and over again (like full play throughs) cuz it’s so good. 
 

I suppose the review could be read as like, man it’s so varied in its possibilities that when it does actually give you some limits it’s frustrating, but given the context she puts around that premise I don’t really buy that that’s her point. 
 

 

I think her point is pretty clear?

 

D&D is clunky and you need a good GM to make it sing, a video game based on that system is going to be inherently limited by the fact that the "GM" can't flex the story and creative space beyond what's already written, even though what's written is good.

 

Her point about a PC getting randomly ambushed and pushed to death makes this obvious I think; no GM would do that to you in a TT game unless everyone opted into Looney Toons mode. Good TT RPGs thrive when failure is fun, even in combat, and a video game can't really do that since the rules of combat need to be consistent. The stakes are lower in a CRPG since you can just quick load, where your PC getting dunked in a TTRPG is likely going to feel awful (again, unless the system / playstyle leans into that).