Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General This is not about Turn based VS RTWP

Can you imagine how many people will buy this game (Baldur's Gate 3) if they gave us the option to switch on/off turn base mode? My personal opinion, and based on what we know so far, it will be turn based 1st. If the developers are going to give us systems that will give you more RPG options, then it will make sense for it to be turn based. Otherwise, your going to be hitting that pause button a million times to see what your options are? That's just not practical.

For me D&D games have always been to take my time and come up with a good strategy in solving problems in or out of combat. Now, when ultimately the game releases and ends up to be "pause and play" but allow the community to make a "MOD" so we can play turn base. I might still be happy, but it's too soon for me to Judge the game when I haven't even seen the game-play footage yet.

lol. But it does get silly at times in DOS. Like, not the good kind of silly. IMO the original BG games nailed it with the humor; they got it just right. If BG3 just keeps it that way, I wouldn't mind. I don't really need a "more funny" BG.


Imagine people who are never really "fans" of the original BG games, hating RTWP and "spamming pause" and other stuff, coming here demanding that BG3 needs to be different, just so they can like it. (Like, if you don't like the original games, why th are you here?) I understand from a business stand point devs will want to cater to a wide range of players, but the way I see it, the loyal fans of the original games should come first, seeing as this game claims to be a sequel of the franchise and all that. If they decide to change a core element of the original games to something else, they better make sure that the new stuff they introduce is really, really damn good. Otherwise it would be something akin to a betrayal to the loyal fans of the original games, and an insult to the franchise.

Fair point. Perhaps I should've said "typical Divinity humour": as much as I appreciate it and think there should be more of it, that only means that I think there should be more of it where it belongs! As much as I'm keen to see Larian's take on BG, even speaking as someone who has not played its predecessors I would not want it to simply be absorbed into the Divinity series. I think there will always be people who will see that as being the case however carefully (or not) it's handled but I would like to play something "new" (for me) in the knowledge that it's its own thing and not just a sort of BG-flavoured Divinity.

I was going to write something about the Fallouts but decided that it's probably too much of a can of worms and I'm not sure I have any particularly useful observations anyway.

Sven Vincke, Larian´s CEO and the creative team said several times in interviews and twitter that the tone of the game is "darker" and "serious"· but with some funny moments.

https://www.vg247.com/2019/06/19/baldurs-gate-3-will-not-divinity-original-sin-3-another-name/

BG2 had OS levels of sillyness.
I mean "Go for the eyes booo" "For great goodness" is not exactly seirous.
Which is fine. I think people overstate how serious baldurs gate reayl was. Just because you remember a game for the story, doesnt mean the story had to be super serious at all times, or even that much of a groundbreaking story to begin with.
I think people someitmes confuse baldurs gate with Torment and even that was not serious at all times.

Try2Handing, funny, considering those people with 2 or 3 posts that come, beeing realy loud and demand to have things their way are those advocating for RTWP.
im personally suspecting some action taken on some """other""" Forum that encourages people to be loud about this.

Yeah in BG there's a great mix of occasional humor combined with a dark central plot. The mix is about perfect in the BG games. (Good news: you've got special powers and are destined to affect your world at an epic scale! Bad news: your real dad is the Lord of Murder (ouch) and you carry his divine essence within you (double ouch). Also as you suggest this is not groundbreaking, as we had already seen it in Star Wars. Even to the point of discovering that you have a sister from the same evil father, etc.)

At the Beamdog forums there are some players making a lot of assumptions about BG3. Those assumptions may turn out to be well reasoned and correct, for all we know. Time will tell. But quite honestly at this stage it's projection. And, tbh, it looks to me like catastrophizing based on that projection.

However by the same token this also underscores just how dearly they love what BG1 and 2 were able to achieve as a total gaming experience. There are certain fundamental aspects of those games that they fear losing in BG3, and that idea is deeply distressing to them.

At the risk of maybe gettting too philosophical about it, to me the change to 5e and likely (?) TB play feels similar to the fact that the game is set a century later where the setting itself has been substantially altered by the Spellplague and Second Sundering. It's literally taking place in a significantly different world than BG1 and 2. (And in real lie it's 21 years later--a lot has changed in gaming technology during that time.) Arcane magic users don't use the Weave anymore. The gods and the planes have changed. Geography has been significantly altered as well. A parallel in real life is to compare the world today to 1919, just after WW1.

Regardless of how fond I am of 2e AD&D in particular (especially the setting), just from a storytelling perspective I really like that! This is a world that is still recovering from a cataclysm. I've seen some YT videos that say that in a lot of ways WotC has tried to sweep the Spellplague/Second Sundering under the rug, so to speak, i.e., in some ways has virtually pretended it never happened. But I actually hope that BG3 will make that world scale disaster and a fragile recovery from it vital to the tale. Like maybe only a decade afterward everything looks reassuringly stable at a superficial level, but in a lot of ways the foundations of this world are still vey precarious. And the Dead Three can risk really serious damage to the stability of the recovery.

But anyway, it feels fitting to me that with the setting itself developing a new foundation, that we also have a game playing experience (new game engine) that mirrors that. This can be such an incredible game. There is risk and adventure involved here, but that is the essence of D&D!

Of all things that can be used to demonstrate "silliness", you quote a character who is not right in the head and acts like a big child all the time? You're aware Minsc is considered something like a "joke character" right?


And what did they demand?

@Try2Handing A few other BG characters providing comic relief include Xzar, Xan, Quayle, Tiax, and Jan. Just sayin'. I mean even Monty: "Sleep lightly, taskmaster." That's actually very funny. Jaheira breaking the fourth wall about being clicked on with a mouse, referring to CHARNAME as "omnipresent authority figure," etc. Lots and lots of examples of subtle, wry humor.

"Funny", yes. There's a difference between "funny" and "plain silly" - the kind of silly that is more cringey than funny. Sordak was claiming that "BG2 has OS level of silliness" yet he quoted Minsc, out of everything and everyone else, so that claim has basically no weight.

If you indeed find that "BG2 has OS level of silliness", that is fine because that's your opinion. But at least try to give some examples that are more convincing than quoting the Minsc.

The bg trilogy has some serious, dark and gritty stories, but I will never feel that as something that defines the saga.

Even in the dismal lands infested of dark shadows of Umar Hills you found the Umar witch project. In bg games there is a ranger with a space hamster and a taste for butkicking evil foes; you have every banter with Jan or Tiax or Xzar, when in tob you can be a questgiver for noob adventurers and they reload when you kill them as the slayer; You have the innocence of Imoen despite what happens to her in bg2; A exploding ogre; A guy who teleports when he sees you, Anything that Cespenar says, Peter of the North and Randy of the west (Come on, you KNOW who they are, because... er... a friend told you), the "conversation" with Mr Shade, Aulava and Tiiro, a mecha armor made with golden pantaloons, The first play in the theatre in bg2, 90% of the 4th-wall-breaking companion sounds(This boots are made for walking and that´s what they do, Montaron I... will never loved you,...), Baeloth in BG1 and SOD, the guard of the mines that says that "his missus is complaining because the stress of the iron crisis is taking 'the starch out of his maypole.' and your hilarious answers, Greywolf´s dead by squirrels, The Spectator in sahuagin city and his epic cameo in TOB...

You need me to keep listing? Because I´ve only started.

Let us be honest, despite all the dark story in the saga, I think the devs never intended these games to be Silent hill.
If you compare with another crpg games like Pst or the first PoE, with a more dramatic approach to their trama, you can see that in bg seriousness is there, but it never was the point. So I expect from BG3 the same: adventures with laughs and screams, moments of seriousness but also some Jan Jansen wtf! moments.

Depends on one's definition of "silly", I suppose. Divinity has a lot of humour and not all of it totally frivolous; though as someone who's eternally a fan of The Young Ones I admit I gravitate somewhat in that direction. But even the seemingly gratuitous silly bits can actually serve as an effective counterpoint that make the serious bits seem all the more poignant. I thought Divinity 2 did accomplished that very effectively, for example (by which I mean Ego Draconis, not DOS2, though the same was true there to a lesser extent).

were talking OS2 here arent we?
Where is the sillieness in OS2 besides joke characters in the same way that Minsc is a joke character?
I mean people complain about Trompdoy even tho it makes perfect sense since hes trying to taunt you.

Other than that, sillyness i mostly rememebr in the people turned into cows or the Skeleton Philosopher who is just a OS1 reference.
I guess Sir Lora counts but hes also a "joke character" whose also an optional DLC.
I think people compleltey overstate the sillyness in OS2

No.

Originally we were just saying that the first OS's silliness was toned down in OS2, then I said that the first OS does get more "silly" rather than "funny" at times (implying the toning down was a good move), and that I, personally, don't need BG3 to be any more "silly" or "funny" than the original BG games are.

Then you jumped in and assumed someone was "attacking" OS2 for being "silly", and felt that you had to defend it somehow.

That pretty much sums up the last couple posts.

Oh man, and thats what i get for trying to be civil with you.

@Sordak
I just stated what happened, clarifying the situation for you.

Moving on.

Here's hoping they won't try too hard to be funny, and just keep things natural.

I was mostly talking about the Divinity series in general but made specific reference to Ego Draconis. I have said before that I would prefer DOS2 to have more humour, whether subtle or outright silly, though the latter certainly wasn't entirely absent such as the sneaking barrels, deliberately overdone accents, quite a bit of dialogue, situations and so on. I doubt many people would say that the stuff with Peeper was entirely sensible and po-faced, for instance.

Vis-a-vis civility, I see no reason for anybody to be getting uncivil about anything here and can get quite grumpy about the matter.

I would like to come back to the thread creators "Problem"



I really think that all the expectations cant be fullfiled with a Game Title of Baldurs Gate 3, so in fact if they what to create something in this D&D world, why not taking a new title, maybe something what is gonna be an spin-off then?

But changing one core element and the fighting system is one of it, is so crucial so why taking the Name of the Game with no respect to that? It will definetly sell better, but it also will cut down the possiblity of the real successor of BG1 and BG2.

Fallout Franchise did exactly that to the series.




Innovation is a sort button in the inventory or an mouseover Wiki and i would like to see all of that, but Turnbased Fighting or 3rd Person is something which is a game design decision and for Baldurs Gate it was made in 1998, if we now get the third game, why changing it?

Exactly. If they wanted a different game, they shouldn't have use the title Baldur's Gate 3. If it's going to play differently ala 4 party characters, turn-based and main focus was primarily co-op/multiplayer/DM/online they could really call it something else. Baldur's Gate Online, Baldur's Gate Turn-Based tactics, etc. Not to mention there's no continuation to the story of earlier baldur's gate. So using the title 3 here was primarily gathering attention and to gain press coverage. It seems really a disgrace and cheap advertisement. Possibly under instruction from WoTC though.

Either way TB or RtWP or option 3 this isn't going to be a sequel to BG 1 & 2, that plotline is over, its 120 years later, BG is twice as big with three times the population, new districts like Little Calimshan and Twin Songs. Too much has changed. The type if graphics are different. The game, system is 5e not 2e. It's likely going to have new races like Dragonborn.

I used to defend their calling the game "BG3", and was fairly aggressive when someone said they had a problem with the game being called BG3. My stance basically is that I would have no problem with the game being called BG3 as long as it is a Baldur's Gate game in terms of spirit, mechanics, feels, quality, and so on, even though the story will be something else entirely.

So if the game turns out to be not quite a Baldur's Gate game, I will probably feel a bit embarrassed. The game may be as good as D:OS2, but if it is a D:OS3 rather than a BG3, then calling it BG3 is not cool.