Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General All the News from today

I am super hipped from all the infos we received today!!!

EA as early as August, June 18th new gameplay reveal. :D

Also did you guys noticed that in the glimpses of gameplay where they seem to be using the traditional divinity initiative and not the new team kind (thank god). I hope I saw that correctly. The team initiative stuff was my only real concern for the game, but now I am so excited.

You could also catch a glance of the drow companion, he (or she) looked so cool.

Swen also mentioned something about the narration style (they probably dumping the past tense style narration after much negative feedback, I guess).

Here is the youtube link for the info dump: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=164&v=-YsT9eQ_CO4&feature=emb_title

There was a huge improvement! And the soundtrack is phenomenal.

I hope that people complaining about the lack of darkness are as satisfied now as a lot of us have been from the beginning. The new footage looks exceptionally promising, and it even has an owlbear, which makes it excellent.

Bear-faced jokes aside, I like what I saw in general, and I'm glad there's going to be another gameplay stream soon. I wonder what changed since the reveal.

Rewatched the footage couple times and can’t see and indication for it. It’s heavily cut, and I see no timeline. Enemy and player units are still kept seperately.

I, for one, wouldn’t welcome that change. D:OS2 was worse for it. Though, of course, that would be more faithful to tabletop, which considering tabletop is tabletop and multiplayer only I am not terribly interested in imitating so closely.

I only thought because of the white frame around the character who was acting in one of the gameplay shots. On the other hand, there was a scene where numerous pcs had white frame around them, so you might be right. I am still hoping. We will know better june 18th.

On the team initiative thing, I hear you. I know individual init slows things down significantly. Also it complicates stuff with held action and such...

However, with team initiative, imo, every battle would be a great gamble, where winning the first team round will decide basically everything (at least at the beginning, first couple levels when we have little to nothing hit points). I mean, just imagine a bunch of goblins winning the team ini for the first round and down like two team members of the party at one go. It is done, you can reload. It kind of forces you to savescam through the game.

This is the reason I am hoping for the old-school divinity initiative or rather both as options.

So strangely enough video made for Gourilla Collective has slightly different choice of game footage.
https://youtu.be/K1EokJQ_HpI?t=159

Here, the roll is clearly between Allies and Enemies.

My preference for team turn, rather then character turn comes mostly from complexity of interactions it brings - I find that ability to choose what moves with whoom I do first bring another layer of gameplay which I enjoy - having individual initiated I feel, flattens things a bit.

I hear you regarding the danger of alpha striking - if whoever is starting gives a massive advantage (like in FiraXCOMs) that can be greatly detrimental to overall experience - whenever it is in favour of the player or not.

However, I think one can get around it in many different ways without reverting to individual initiative. For one, I wouldn't necessary refer to table-top balance - Larian is making changes to DnD, so I trust that with change to initiative, there also comes a change to balance. I also thought that turn-based mod for Pathfinder: Kingmaker had a right idea - initiating party didn't get to make a full turn - so while it is an advantage it's not a crushing one: winning party can dish out some damage if they are in range but a lot of initiation comes with ability to set up, rather then strike.

The turn-based mod in PF:K implemented the "surprise rounds" mechanic of the Tabletop very nicely, indeed (Even the part where all surprised creatures are flat-footed if they do not have uncanny dodge or something like that)

Since you move in real-time before the combat starts it gives you the opportunity to surprise your enemies and set up ambushes yourself, for a change (and vice-versa), making exploration classes and sneak skills more useful. The previous gameplay showed that you can do that in BG3, and I´m happy about it.
I just hope you can shout to the enemies "You have been waylaid by enemies and must defend yourself" before you get the jump on them XD

I think MP players of BG3 are gonna like the group initiative a lot.

Another news is that they finally changed the third-person narrator due to negative feedback. It seems they are listening.

The good news is that Sven said they are on schedule for August 2020 and we`ll have new gameplay footage soon.

Certainly looked better than the last overexposed trailer. Much more attractive.

Still don't like 5e tiefling visuals that all look look they suffer from raging hypertension ( maybe they do; IDK ).
Still will do whatever is necessary ( including killing them ) to discard companions with slashed doublets and ruffs.

I hope early access is in August, as my gaming attention after September 17th is likely to be entirely elsewhere for the rest of the year.

Tiefling skin could go from blue, violet or green to crimson, depending on your devilish ancestor heritage, so I hope not all tieflings are on the "Hellboy" side of the spectre.

Less even colour would really help, Hellboy or not. As it is, some of the canon 5e visuals look like they have been coloured by a 5 year old with crayons. This doesn't come through everywhere in BG3, but the tiefling colouration does look particularly flat.

Why does every assume you can change the outfits of the companions/characters. I hate Doublets, doublets should all be burnt in flame, but I feel confident we will be able to change their clothing.

Some good things in this video

+ The fiend's narrative is reminiscent of the choices the player forced into in BG2. To rescue Imoen you had to work with the (evil, manipulative) shadow thieves or the (eviler., manipulative) vampires. Every other attempt to find help -- pleasing the temples, helping the paladins, making the cowled wizards happy fails.

+ Glad to hear that Sven is no longer trying to tell WotC how to change the rules but finding ways to implement them. He's saying the right things at least.

- Starting worry that my computer won't be able to handle the graphics . . .

probably just me i don't like the changes to shadowheart.

i dont see why team initiative slows things down.

Ive recently gotten my group into 1977 Whitebox DnD, which had team initiative (and weird shti like simultanious actions while were at it)
Ive never had combat that goes this fast in any of my games (granted, you also die in one hit in that game a lot of the time)

Hi Sordak!

Yeah it is easy to misinterpret my post (sorry for that).

I meant that individual init slows down stuff (if you read back the whole back and forth, it makes more sense).

I will correct the post to avoid further misunderstandings.

No I don't like it either, its like they aged her 20 years.

a lot of people have commented on that.
IT might just be a change in the lighting.

But id like to point towards my post in the Community Update thread.

Its not like making Female characters uglier during the development cycle is soemthing unheard of in this industry.
Especialy once you start hiring people from California

Someone probably pointed out that she looked a bit young and angelic for a cleric of evil. But yes, I preferred the Priestess in the gameplay reveal, and I prefer the Wizard without facial furniature. The characters are generally not a handsome lot.

I will replace clothing that is out of place ( in my conception of FR ) if possible, but that will not save the Vampire Spawn. I don't like the voice, the hair, the face, the back story, or the fact that he looks like Cupid/Eros when he fires a bow. The Vampire Spawn will be discarded!

Unless you are forced to take everyone, which is something I REALLY hate about certain RPGs.