Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Am I the only one looking forward to this game?

It's not a good time to be developing video games - no one saw the virus coming. Despite that, BG3 deserved a bigger budget so that a number of design choices would have been more along the lines of the first two titles. Then it would have made sense to try and expand to a greater audience with extra options and features. If it were a spin-off, expectations would be much more tempered but now that the name is final... well, good luck to them.

No one was asking.

I don't know how to say it in EN but my ass is between 2 chairs atm...

In one hand I really wait for this game. I like D&D games, I like Larian games even if they're far from my best games ever (BG1&2^^).
In another, this is BG3 and I'm very, very disspointed about nearly everything I saw because it looks nearly nothing like BG1&2 according to me.

So what to do ?

Playing EA and continue talking here, with hopes this game is going to be more a BG experience than another improved DoS experience ? (But I'll have to buy it, so if I'm dissapointed I can't turn back).

Or waiting the official release, not saying/trying anything during development and not buy it if I find its name is a joke...?

The best solution would be than Larian give me freely access to the EA, so I can try to help and give my feelings but still not buy it if I feel "betrayed", but this won't happen

Do you have any information of their budget for BG3? I wouldn't think their budget is lacking, nor that the design choices (the most part at least) were restrained and/or governed by a budget (within reason).


More and more options are always nice, but there needs to be a cutoff somewhere (else development goes on forever). BG3 is going to being in the DOS2 crowd and a lot of others who never played just because it's D&D, so I would think that alone will greatly expand their audience.

The only crowd Larian appears to be truly interested in catering to is the D:OS fanbase. Of course they will be happy to have any additional customers, and of course there will be some TT D&D fans who will at least check out the game, but D:OS fans are the core target audience the game is being made for and not for anyone who is not a D:OS fan.

The DOS fanbase and those who are not fans of DOS are not mutually exclusive. Larian can be making the game for both the huge (and current) crowd of DOS fans as well as those who never played DOS1&2 (i.e those who are not DOS fans).

Here: http://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=662849#Post662849
You posted in that thread too.

Yes, sales will probably help them break even and then some but reputation takes long to build and not nearly as long to be ruined. Calling it anything other than BG3 would have prevented most negative feedback.

Yeah, I was thinking of that, and that's why I said "for the most part." We really don't know the cost of implementing that; to do so might require an extensive reworking of their platform, and thus, bang for buck, just might not be worth it.


Break even? Maybe you know more about the video game business than I, but I expect a company coming off the success of DOS2 and pairing up with WoTC to do better than that. Why such a bleak outlook?

I'm not saying the game will be a commercial failure but having bought D:OS and played it for a while I am pretty disappointed with the way Larian have handled communication with fans. Some things that were only recently revealed could have been shared via interviews months ago (such as plot continuity with the first two titles) which would have eased concern, on top of that there were perplexing statements on Vincke's part to the effect of "I can't meet fan expectations they're too high" even though his company had asked WoTC to make BG3 at one point.

I mean no offense but I don't consider DOS:2 to be as successful as BG was decades ago when the industry was much smaller so my prediction is that BG3 will be good on its merits but isn't likely to "revitalize" the CRPG genre like the former did. I don't know how much they're going to spend on marketing but no amount of money can bring back lost confidence and yeah saying things like "features that were a given in Baldur's Gate aren't coming back because they cost too much" can be (mis)construed as an admission that they're not willing to invest a whole lot of funds in the game, which leads me to think there isn't much passion in the development process. I'm not feeling it to be honest. Also, certain people working on BG3 have said disparaging things about its predecessors to my surprise as that gives me reason to believe they're more focused on fixing things that weren't all that broken to begin with in lieu of working on the setting, the characters, story etc.

Seems far from perplexing (reasonable in fact) to want to make a BG3 game but feel that certain expectations will be too high. I would go so far as to change his statement to say "no one can meet certain fan's expectations; they're too high." But that doesn't preclude wanting to make a follow up, nor that is cannot be a great game.


Relatively speaking, that is certainly possible, but I would say it speaks more to the times then the games themselves.


I construe it as not as an unwillingness to invest, but a simple and practical business decision based on what they have and where they have come from. Certain things might seem easy and cheap to implement, but we cannot really know. If they can spend X amount of $ to get feature A in the game, or use X amount of $ to get features B,C and D in the game, it seems reasonable to me (provided a rough equality between features A-D). Everyone has a budget to work with. As for passion, Larian seems to me to be as passionate about their work as any developer I can recall.


Which things?

Uh?

Interviews with Miles Merle (WoTC) and Sven Vincke (Larian) in august-september 2019:

Mike and Swen strike back in a Podcast for Kotaku https://kotaku.com/the-ranger-class-is-getting-some-changes-in-d-d-and-ba-1835659585 Swen said they "picked the canon WOTC ending of baalspawn crises " in 24.05 . The canon ending is that the baalspawn was a mercenary called Abdel Adrian that chose to forfeit divinity.

https://wccftech.com/larian-studios-interview-innovating-baldurs-gate-3/
The BG3 game will use Larian´s Divinity engine 4.0 (DoS EE was 3.5) and that you will have 5e classes and subclasses. The game will be longer than DoS2, approximately 100 hours.

"With respect to the combat system, this is based on D&D, so we’re using their combat system" (not the BG one)
https://www.pcgamesn.com/baldurs-gate-3/larian-developer-interview

Baldur´s gate III will be the sequel of the PA of WoTC "Baldur´s gate: Desdent into avernus" and possibly "Murder in Baldur´s gate", events that happened more than 100 years ago from the first game https://www.polygon.com/2019/7/4/20677851/dungeons-dragons-baldurs-gate-3-timeline-universe

I meant continuity with the games, not the books (which were nowhere near as successful as the games unless I'm mistaken). They hadn't expanded upon returning characters etc. until fairly recently which led to tons of speculation. Commenting the engine is largely pointless because you cannot verify how much of it has been rewritten. As for combat, there's a pinned thread for it so I'm not going to derail this one.


A certain senior designer, see my last sentence.

Nah, I can't walk into their offices and cross-reference the new engine with the old one. Given the features that are going to be missing from BG3 I'm willing to bet it's been rewritten to a much lesser extent that they're letting on. Budgets aren't set in stone either. Passion can overcome many issues but it seems to me they want to be reasonable first and foremost. That's okay but if I recall BG1 was not expected to perform great commercially yet here we are today. If you want to win big you have to take chances, right?

There is no need to change anything, because that was essentially the reply. Swen Vincke was asked about the highest of the fan expectations, and Korotama conceded that the reply was factually accurate in the related topic at the time. Korotama's 'paraphrase' is somewhat less factually accurate.

Nothing here suggests the journalist meant the "highest" of expectations, although Mr. Vincke sure was quick to deflect. If only there were as much passion going into development as there is in your PR efforts (but what do I know about public relations, heheh)! That's okay, it's not the first company to have its reputation ruined by greed. I conceded for a different reason.

It is really not hard to live up to low expectations, and I fail to see why a reporter would ask about living up to average expectations. In the context of the question, it should be obvious it was referring to high expectations, and that was what the answer was about.

They never talked about the books in the interviews, they were talking about the games and WOTC.
They asked almost in every interview since last summer if they are going to take the story of the original BG games or if you can import the saved games and they always were very forthcoming about the fact. They usually deflect questions about combat mechanics and stuff but not about the story, the mindflayers, etc.

Abdel Adrian is the canon Baalspawn Hero of Baldurs gate that refused divinity and became duke of Baldur`s gate. That is the canon history of the baalspawn crisis as stated in WOTC`s D&D lore and Player modules in the Sword coast setting like Murder in baldur´s gate, Descent into avernus, etc.

PD: Sources, all of them interviews from august-september 2019. As you can see they never said that they were going to use the previous games as reference and they stated every time that they only use sources from the D&D lore of WoTC.

Mike and Swen strike back in a Podcast for Kotaku https://kotaku.com/the-ranger-class-is-getting-some-changes-in-d-d-and-ba-1835659585 when they asked them about what ending of BG2-TOB they will pick Swen said they "picked the canon WOTC ending of baalspawn crises " in 24.05 .(Sven or Mike Merle did not even remember the endings of the original games, only the canon ending that was stated for 10 years)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9VgaaNPVeo

Murder in Baldur’s Gate, a 5E D&D playtest module, is a launching point for Larian’s story, and in the events in that adventure result in Bhaal, the God of Murder, returning.
Jon Irenicus, the villain in Baldur’s Gate II, isn’t coming back in the new game. Vincke confirms this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxwCz51nVhA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ju12JNh8gJs

Baldur’s Gate III takes place a century after the events of Shadows of Amn. It’s after The Sundering, another event in Faerun that involved the gods, their followers, and the ushering in of a new D&D edition (as the Time of Troubles did in 2E, setting up part of Baldur’s Gate story in the first place, and 4E’s Spellplague).

“It’s about 100 years after the game. We try to avoid giving specific years, because we have some amount of flexibility in our tabletop campaigns,” Mearls said. “Unless the precise year is really important, we don’t usually refer to it.”

It starts outside the city of Baldur’s Gate, Vincke said, and the city does feature in it. Vincke said Larian’s team used Murder in Baldur’s Gate as a launching point. “And then we worked closely with Adam Lee, who’s working on Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus,” he said. “The original reference we used when we were looking at the city was Murder in Baldur’s Gate.”

He terms Descent into Avernus as a prequel “in a certain way. It’s complementary to the story of Baldur’s Gate III, but Baldur’s Gate III is very much its own story, the next chapter of what happens to the city.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ju12JNh8gJs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxwCz51nVhA

"Vincke said Larian’s team used Murder in Baldur’s Gate as a launching point. “And then we worked closely with Adam Lee, who’s working on Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus,” he said. “The original reference we used when we were looking at the city was Murder in Baldur’s Gate.”

“And then we worked closely with Adam Lee, who’s working on Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus,” he said. “The original reference we used when we were looking at the city was Murder in Baldur’s Gate.”He terms Descent into Avernus as a prequel “in a certain way. It’s complementary to the story of Baldur’s Gate III, but Baldur’s Gate III is very much its own story, the next chapter of what happens to the city.”

Baldur’s Gate III takes place a century after the events of Shadows of Amn. It’s after The Sundering, another event in Faerun that involved the gods, their followers, and the ushering in of a new D&D edition

Yes all fanbases are to one extent or another cross-cutting. But don't you think it is telling that the only fanbase that is near-universally thrilled with this game is the D:OS fanbase, whereas the BG and D&D fanbases are at a minimum divided and at most only lukewarm in their reactions to this game? I mean if, as Swen and other Larian people have been saying, this game is not a D:OS game and is truly a BG and D&D game, then shouldn't at least some portion of the D:OS fanbase feel like this is NOT their game? I love the PoE games. But I don't care at all for The Outer Worlds. So just because I love some games of a certain developer does not mean I will or should love all their games, right? But I cannot find any D:OS fans who intend to pass on BG3. That says something to me. It says a whole heck of a lot, actually, that the D:OS fanbase itself fully expects BG3 to be a D:OS game but just with D&D rules and set in the Realms.

Is this actually the case at all? I can speak for nobody else and nor shall I attempt to, but I would quite like to see a BG game be BG. Will it be? I dunno. Will somebody else be the arbiter of that? Goes without saying, probably for multiple values of "somebody else".

Then again, am I a DOS fan? I'm a Divinity fan. There're things DOS (both of them) does that I like less than other games. But I've taken them on their own merits, which is what I'll do with BG3; and it'll be easier working from the position that it isn't trying too hard to live up to expectations that are rooted in something else.

Divinity : Original Sin is not the same game as Divinity 1&2.
None of them are named Divinity 3.
Baldur's Gate : Dark Alliance is not the same game as Balgur's Gate 1&2.

Keep that in mind and stop with that poor argument...

Baldur's Gate 3 should definitely "have the same spirit" as BG1&2, exactly like DoS 3 should have the same as DoS1&2.

Talking about spirit because these are old games that have to be upgraded on many points, that's true.
Larian is not working on any upgrade, they"re doing something totally different.

This is a fact and that's the reasons why many BG fans screamed/scream/will scream.
(And I said many, because it's not about 2 or 3 people. Many fans of BG1&2 I'm talking with since 20 years have the same feelings. Many polls, every forums, facebook, youtube... they all confirmed).

This is not about the quality of the new Larian games, the majority agree to say it's gonna be a (very) good game... But not a good Baldur's Gate main series game...
And that's obviously BG fans that have to say it is or not...
I'm not going to say Divinity 2 is not a good Divinity game if I just don't care about Divinity 1... This is obvious.