Larian Studios Forums Active Threads Since Yesterday

I'm not so sure.

Literally their tagline for the game is:

"Larian Studios unchains its ambitions to bring you an RPG with greater breadth & depth than ever before."

The whole thing is mentioned how this will be "The game they always wanted to make" and how much more grand its scope is.

It very much sounds like they'll be pushing the envelope a bit with the title.

Probably not so much in terms of innovation (As they've not really shown any desire in prior titles to really innovate besides their signature Surface mechanics). But I'd imagine they'd do some risks, much like how they made risks with BG3 with full nudity, sex scenes and of course the whole marketing stunt of showing off the bear sex as advertisment.

That they got away with it, probably inspires them to push even more "Taboo" - Such as dark themes and violence which are often neutered in video games because "Won't somebody think of the children?", things they've hinted at in past titles (Such as DOS2's Fort Joy and especially Kniles)

As well as doubling down on non-standard races. People ended up enjoying Lae'zel and her alienness as well as Karlach (Also, Mizora is fairly popular too). So they can be more confident that atypical races would be given a chance.

They never really totally respected their own lore. The way they released their games to build the whole timeline created that issue, and most likely we will see it again in their next title. Nothing world breaking, but always a bit weird when you play their games one after the other.

GM mode usually make dev' storytelling quite bland and usually shows that they're bad DM.
The Solasta GM mode is great, and available campaigns are usually more interesting from a roleplay perspective than what they've done with their main scenario.

As others said, the companions can just not be interested in you or reject you, if certain things are happening. They also can end a relationship, if you behave in certain ways - those mechanics are actually pretty good.

The only thing, that is a bit jarring is, that you have to lock into a romance during the tiefling party latest ( apart from the late comers Halsin and Minthara). In my first run, I found Karlach shortly after I freed Halsin and had the party and during doing side quests. I know, where she was, since I played early access and a friend told me, that she is still in the same spot, but somehow, I ended up doing the main quest before doing the Risen Road.

( And your gith lady is gorgeous)

Hey, so I've been really enjoying Baldur's Gate 3. It's especially nice that I can take it anywhere with me on my m4 pro macbook.

However, I notice that, despite the great gains Apple has made in their silicon chips for mac, it feels like it's not really being taken advantage of much in Baldur's Gate 3. Especially, in terms of available graphical settings, mac users can only use amd fsr 1.0. Other games, however, can use later versions of amd fsr, or apple's metalfx, to not only upscale better, but to even generate extra frames if users so wish. A couple examples would be Cyberpunk 2077 and Palworld.
It would be awesome to get such great performance gains by using these upscaling solutions, but I have to know: is it possible or planned to happen for Baldur's Gate 3 on mac?

Super glad it worked for you too and thx for the great recap, hope it’ll help many players experiencing this issue. Wishing you to enjoy Act 3 as it’s truly great!

It's plenty easy to get the healing potion. Just enter turn based mode and jump over. Stalks adhere to the TB rules so they won't explode during TB mode until you end your turn. (This is also useful for when saving Baelen and/or collecting the Noblestalk. So long as you don't end your turn within their detonation range, they won't do anything)

But it's as easy as jumping over, enter TB mode, grab the potion and the chest, then jump back to the ledge and turn off TB mode (I usually then drop the chest at the feet of my party and then disarm the trap and pick the lock then)

No need to ever take damage. Unless you disarm the trap by having Karlach detonate it because she only takes 1-2 damage (If she doesn't get the Dex save to avoid it completely) because traps in this game are hilariously terrible and it's often faster than messing around with rolling the D1 the game uses (For me anyway)

I've never seen the effects of the potion occur when actually grabbing the bottle though. So that it occurred for you sounds like a bug.

I just also lost my first Honour Mode run to this glitch.

Update: Part 2, Chapter 13 is now published. The Two-Headed Infernal Dragon, Tranmaxuul, has arrived!

BG3.5 - Hellraisers (Fanfiction)
Baldur's Gate 3.5: Hellraisers - an original fanfic story that is a sequel to Baldur's Gate 3 Fanfic: The Afflicted. It picks up immediately after the events of Baldur's Gate 3 as characters from the previous fanfic - Fiovay, Kai, Aelun, Vlyn, and the other members of their party - travel to Avernus. Their quest is to save Karlach but also to hopefully find and rescue Darson, Aelun's father, from the clutches of Demogorgon.

Here is the link to the blog site: https://baldursgate3hellraisers.blogspot.com/2025/10/baldurs-gate-35-hellraisers.html

Yep as Taril said. It's Edowin's spear with one of the Owlbear Mother's eyes. I gave feedback to Larian about this long before, saying that the Owlbear Mother's missing eye isn't shown in the cutscene... But they didn't change it.

Yeah, despite a few crashes, I loved changing little or greater things as the events slowly changed the character.

If you haven't seen this guides, they might assist you

https://mod.io/g/baldursgate3/r/ui-basic-setup

https://mod.io/g/baldursgate3/r/ui-extending-the-ui

I will try to run (to mix BG and Divinity) a "no horns, no tails, no fangs in the party" plan.

I'm curious wether it will be possible. I can understand that many would like more exotic companions and I hope Larian will try to please all/as many players as possible. But there is only one (highly improbable) way Larian could make me to not buy the game, forced player identities/visuals a la Witcher and Co., other than that I would possibly accept even 12 lizards out of 12 companions ...

I have no interest in "mainstream aesthetics" for the companions or other NPCs. There's more than enough obnoxiously attractive characters in nearly every other game (Stellar Blade, Tides of Annihilation, shit, all the characters in Clair Obscur: E33 were ridiculously attractive as well...the list goes on), I believe Larian should stick to whatever they want to do without overbearing influence from the peanut gallery/general gaming community.
(I've obviously had my fill of gooners in Monster Hunter and Dragons Dogma 2, etc.)

It feels kinda like telling Leonardo da Vinci you'd prefer he give Mona Lisa a makeover because YOU didn't like her "aesthetic".

If it was such an issue with BG3 then there wouldn't be so many players enjoying the game and spending, literally, thousands of hours...

I'm looking forward to the "fantasy world" Larian makes for themselves, and us. Seeing their genuine creative design for how they want the characters and companions to look in the world they make is part of the joy and experience. Especially because of how consistently they speak about making games that they, themselves, want to play/enjoy.

If you want to paint over that with your specific preference of overly attractive aesthetics I really feel that's what mods are for, I'm sure there will be ample available. However, I hope whatever changes are added to the character creator allow you to fulfill your dream of being obscenely attractive hero (or villain) of your own adventure.

That said. I'm fairly certain there will be plenty of beautiful/handsome/attractive companions in Divinity. For DOS2 the character design for Lohse was gorgeous, Sebille was delectable, Fane's glowing green eyes and immaculately chiseled jawline were exquisite and I'm sure he would look just like Henry Cavill... if he had skin, and Ifan was... basically Aragorn with more beard?

That’s how the lizard from the first sex scene turned out
(I draw my daily sketches directly in ink so I have to own every line).

- top left: the sex scene (I somewhat struggled with it as you can see ☺)
- top right: the hungry flower coming growing from the splodge of blood on the ground
- bottom left: the orc feeding the pigs
- bottom right: the hellstone.

Pet peeve time! I really wish that using a skin texture or similar mod wouldn't disable achievements. Those who mod their games heavily can install mods that allow achievements with mods. I believe there are other ways around this limitation if you just want the achievements and don't care whether they form a record of things you've actually tried and accomplished, but it seems to me the player who just wants to use a few mods is left without the choice to make minor adjustments without having to sacrifice the ability to earn achievements. I don't know what rules consoles enforce on their platforms, but on PC I'd prefer that players were allowed to earn achievements while sporting a modded hairstyle. Actually, given all the ways around the no-mods requirement, it seems to me to make the most sense just to stop requiring their absence altogether.

I've played a few. Without exception, all of those I enjoyed ended up decaying with time in a misguided effort to be more 'inclusive'.

A lot of the charm and cooler story elements are inevitably eroded away altogether. The faction conflict in World of Warcraft, for example, was poorly handled and fizzled out. Furthermore the various playable races were sanitised and had any grit and nuance snipped away so that everyone and everything portrayed as 'in the right' ends up conforming to the exact same set of morals as modern day real world city dwellers. Then, of course, there's the ruination of aesthetics. Blood Elves are one of my favourite depictions of Elves in any fantasy game to date. Their aesthetics as portrayed early on are really cool. The men, especially - tall, stoic looking, muscular and with a dash of arrogance. They all had pale to ruddy skin tones and often had blond or red hair.

They were a cool, defiant race who after suffering many tragedies vowed to not roll over and allow their enemies to wipe them out. Doing whatever was needed in order to survive along the way, including tapping into darker powers.

Now? The aesthetics and tone have shifted completely. The average Blood Elf NPC is infuriatingly 'quirky', speaks like a Californian, snubs darker magic and various NPC's now randomly have painted on dark skin tones very obviously due to the company's deep commitment to DEI as well as hollow corporate pandering.

Final Fantasy XIV was the next MMORPG I tried. It, too, started out great and gradually declined and lost much of its appeal - outright squandering cooler elements and characters in order to focus on the most bland and generic tropes.

So these days, I do not really engage with them. I just play The Elder Scrolls: Online from time to time and only then mostly for the robust player housing system. I cannot get invested in a fantasy setting if there are constant efforts to sanitise its own story and world-building, simply put. So that rules out pretty much every MMORPG at present.

I much prefer it when characters exist independently of the player and do, in fact, have specific lines in the sand that they will absolutely not cross no matter what. Which makes a lot more sense than just randomly going along with whatever the player desires.

Morality plays deeply into immersion. It is one thing for a scheming necromancer to be fine with malicious acts. Less so for a devout paladin.