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After seeing the demo...I'd say there is a 90% chance this game will meet or exceed -my expectations- which is enough to warrant a pre-order from me. I have probably 1000 hours in BG1 and more in BG2, steam says 406 for BG1 and 305 for BG2 but I'd play through them every couple of years....since basically they originally released. 448 hours in DOS1, 651 hours in DOS2, 569 in PoE1, 369 in PoE2, and 637 in P:K.

If it has semi balanced classes that provide diversity and complexity in builds, a good non linear story that can't been seen in a single play through, combat that scales with difficulty, and a variety of party members/builds I'll without a doubt sink the same time as any other modern CRPG.

Will it get the hours of BG1 and BG2? I hope not. The only reason those games reached such acclaim and nostalgia is because there was a serious dry spell for over a decade of anything even remotely similar in scope and quality. The world was taken by FPS's and shiny graphics and the industry as a whole exploded because of it. The year 2000, there were still games aimed at nerds not everyone with eyeballs. Technology has changed, CRPGs are beginning to hit their stride again, and most of us nerds who grew up with infinity engine games make enough money now to support the genre.

I hope and think it will be an amazing game, but I also hope I'm not still playing it instead of something new in 5 years from now.

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see I disagree with that sentiment. longevity is exactly what makes something special.

the idea that BG was only popular because of a shortage of other titles is kind of misleading too.

people still buy and play the game as new players to this day, 22 years later. You should check the reddit and see all the activity from new players etc.

like a good book or movie, you can keep going back to it and enjoy it or discover something new every time. it is a complete experience, from BG1 to ToB.

unparalleled story telling.

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> the idea that BG was only popular because of a shortage of other titles is kind of misleading too.


Well said. 90s had a lot of good CRPG. Earlier 00s too. Might & Magic, all gold box games(...) What is in shortage is good TTRPG adaptation since NWN2(which is not the best example due the butchering on spells/classes)

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Originally Posted by Beeber
Specifically, how do you think BG3 is gonna compare with the legendary BG2?

Honestly, I'm worried. I played BG2 a bit on the hardest setting, and because I'm incompetent who pretends to be cool by playing on the hardest difficulty, all my playthroughs have been utter failures. Simply put, I will never play BG3 until I first beat BG2 on normal settings.

What I'm worried about is this... I love Larian as much as I love Square-Enix, and I pretty damn love Square-Enix. My first Mass Effect game (not a Square-Enix game) was Andromeda. Now, hear me out... My first impressions of that game was great. It's awesome. But I soon learned it is quite possibly the most hated Mass Effect game there is. Bioware has her other games to keep her from going bankrupt, and I don't think Andromeda was an utter failure. It's just that the loyalists of the Mass Effect franchise hated it as much as Morrowind fans hated Skyrim.

I DO NOT want Larian to suffer the same fate. Baldur's Gate 2 is a legend in the RPG world, and I fear my beloved favorite game company (Larian) might receive the same hate Bioware received with Andromeda, or Square-Enix with FF13, or Bethesda with Fallout 76.

I don't wanna say I expect Larian not to get criticized, but I think based on the pattern of how RPG fans generally are, it may well be what will happen.


First of all, I want to humbly implore you, please stop being silly and just play BG2, even if it's on the easiest settings with god items from mods. How can you have fun that way? Be kinder to yourself. Experience the story. You're a Bhaalspawn. Why shouldn't a Bhaalspawn be a badass? You can work up to higher difficulties as you get used to the trappings of the game--if it's fun for you to do so.

Andromeda was Andromeda. It was an established universe tainted by a huge mistake of an ending (ME3's). It wasn't unreasonable expectations but rather plot and lore betrayals that made ME3 so controversial. Andromeda took some of the brunt of that, mostly because the developer had doubled down on giving the finger to their fan base about every concern they had, pretending it was about not having enough time to say goodbye or some bs when it was actually more about not finishing the story, dropping important plot threads, and relieving themselves on the core values and themes of the series. (If anyone disagrees with me, that's fine, you're entitled to your opinion, but please know you will not change my mind and I prefer not to rehash all that here.) Andromeda couldn't really fix what came before so it avoided it, and if successful it could've revitalized the series. It just couldn't live up to what it had to live up to under the circumstances. It had big shoes to fill, and a wrong to right, and it couldn't. Tragic and unfortunate. I still appreciated some things about it, but I wasn't able to love it as I wanted to or as I'd loved 1 & 2 (and some parts of 3.)

That's interesting about the vandalism, I hadn't known that, but I heard they did waste a lot of development time on technology that never panned out and the game ended up feeling unfinished in ways. Personnel changes surely didn't help. There were originally too few skin tones and way too few options for character creation overall. Andromeda just wasn't the game it should have been. I didn't feel motivated enough to keep going and finish it once I started hearing that the ending wasn't much to speak of. Maybe I gave up too easily, but something was missing, for me.

Larian will benefit from time. Many years have passed and saying up front "the whole Bhaalspawn thing is a story apart; we're going to do our own thing here related more to the city than to the first two games" is a good idea. It shows respect to the previous story that they aren't trying to coast on anyone else's laurels. Unlike Andromeda, they seem to have their tech figured out and their ducks in a row. I loved NWN2 even though it wasn't Bioware. I prefer it to NWN1, actually. I don't prefer KOTOR2 to KOTOR, though I do wish 2 had been properly finished--wish Obsidian had been doing back then what they've done for Pillars, then it would've been amazing. I truly think that people are more likely to get upset when it's the same developer as before and the story of previous titles isn't finished well. This being its own thing and made by another developer changes the game a bit.



Back to Baldur's Gate 3: My expectations for this game are being fulfilled so far. Characters I find intriguing and want to interact with, a proper D&D feel, a story I want to engage with, a world I want to survive in, the ability to play the class I like...and best of all, the romances don't seem to be so limited as they were in BG2 or many other games. Larian seems to get that people like playing different body types and races, but that most of the time we have to roll our eyes and suck it up and go "OKAY, I'll just play another stupid boring human because otherwise no one will want to bang me," and they're not doing that. Words cannot begin to express how delighted I am that my lady dwarf's bosom will not have to remain unoccupied (and that she will not be forced to have a beard.) I also know that I can kill things with my shoes, which I hadn't even expected. There you go, expectations already surpassed!

My two main causes of hesitation in what I've seen are character creation and tense.

I really want to have more control over facial features than DOS2 provided--at least, choosing individual features/colors. If it's too static, just set faces to choose from, I will be disappointed because I'm so used to customization. What I saw in DOS2 wasn't bad, and I could handle it if it's like that but more up to date... but I wouldn't be ecstatic, whereas really meaty character creation that tempts me to waste ridiculous amounts of time doing exactly what I want to do with it... that would make me ecstatic rather than just feeling like, "okay, I guess I'll deal with this but sigh in longing and hope mods come out soon." They might already have this on lock, or maybe there'll be enough races that I don't mind so much, and I do have to say I love what I've seen so far--but I'm just not sure yet, so I mention it as one thing that makes me go, "hmm" with uncertainty on how I'll feel.

The tense thing... I just don't love the way it's set up right now. I feel more involved and drawn in when I'm given present tense options, and if at all possible I prefer "What brings you to this tavern?" to *I asked her what brought her to the tavern.* The former is more Baldur's Gate to me, and it also feels more like I'm talking. I am more in the moment and in the experience that way--more roleplaying. I gave the current way a chance while watching, and I'm not opposed to options like, *I couldn't take the sorrowful expression on her face and gave her a warm hug*, but overall for dialogue I'd rather it look like dialogue, and I want it to feel like Baldur's Gate. So I can endure the current way, but I'd truly prefer if they changed their style for this specific game--let dialogue be dialogue, let the present be the present. I think that would help satisfy the more rabid of oldbies among us. (And I played BG2 when it came out, and BG1 shortly before that, so I am indeed an oldbie myself.)

I do have high standards, and I am not afraid to be vocal about them, but that doesn't mean I or the community are necessarily unreasonable. I don't expect exact replication or for the game to jump out of my computer, satisfy me, then go do my dishes. I just want the most important of the familiar staples along with the modern basics we're used to. If Larian makes it there, I will be more than delighted. And from playing DOS2 so far, I feel comfortable. They get the old school RPG feel. They gave me a world where I have opinions about things, characters I have feelings about, and let me murder anyone I think needs to be murdered. (Mostly Magisters. I just had a Special Moment with a really nasty one and it truly felt very nostalgic to then go through a harrowing combat to avenge the innocent person he just basically lobotomized.) That seems pretty right to me, and it makes me smile.

All in all, I don't wish this game was in the hands of anyone else than Larian, and I will keep updating my opinions, but I'm not worried in the way I sometimes have been. I feel more like I did before Inquisition--and I personally loved that, it was like an ES world with a Bioware plot/romances to me. I always used to say that if Bethesda ever learned to make stories like Bioware, or if Bioware ever learned to make game worlds like Bethesda, they'd own the market--greatly disagree with that meme.

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My expectations? I expect I'll ultimately enjoy the game for what it is and that I'll have plenty of things I like and dislike, a few things I'll love, a few things I'll hate...and that I'll still think this shouldn't have the '3' attached to the title and should just be Baldur's Gate: Neato Subtitle.

I also expect the Spanish Inquisition....just in case.

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i said it before, but i think the cusotmization thats been planned is insufficient.
Either have sliders, or at least different presets for not just the face but parts of the face.
different noses, different eyes, different facial shapes. at the veryleast

The game zooms into your face constantly in dialogue, i dont just want to pick from preset faces.

Hoenstly one of my biggest criticism with BG3 so far is that Larian seems to have this idea that people want to play pregenerated stuff.
be it visually or from a writing standpoint
They want to make a DnD game, i hear that.
but the biggest part of playing DnD from the start is making your own character

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On the other hand, it's possible to go too overboard and have a billion sliders, like TES IV: Oblivion.

Videogames, by definition, ONLY have pregenerated content. Either stuff which the developers put in specifically, or put in systems which allow certain semi-emergent behaviors.

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well yes, and semi emergent behavou, player created content and thigns that dynamically react to players input, or stuf that is so dynamic that players can create truly new things with it, are some of the best parts of video games.

If you have tons of sliders, youll be able to create a unique character. And many other games have proven that to be the case.
If you dont like it, you can stick to the presets.

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Originally Posted by Stabbey
On the other hand, it's possible to go too overboard and have a billion sliders, like TES IV: Oblivion.

Videogames, by definition, ONLY have pregenerated content. Either stuff which the developers put in specifically, or put in systems which allow certain semi-emergent behaviors.


That depends on how you define "pregenerated" and how you define "content".

The operations/actions/activities/structure of the game are generally fixed. It IS possible to dynamically generate code ( although that is usually frowned upon ), and it is possible to design a game with loadable modules ( although this is rare for performance reasons ).

However, the data on which the game acts is often not known at compile time, or can be augmented at run-time, and increasingly is generated at run-time from pseudo-random, or completely random seeds.

What is true is that all today's standard computer designs will only ever do with data what they are programmed to do ( however tortuous that programming is ), such that "Artificial Intelligence" contains no capability for understanding context and developing reasoning.

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I expect I will buy it. ( Have to have every D&D game made! )

I hope I don't feel the same way about this game, minutes into it like I did when I played Divinity original sin. But I expect I will.

Here's to hope!


DRAGON FIRE-AND DOOM Dragons? Splendid things, lad-so long as ye look upon them only in tapestries, or in the masks worn at revels, or from about three realms off...
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Originally Posted by Sordak
i said it before, but i think the cusotmization thats been planned is insufficient.
Either have sliders, or at least different presets for not just the face but parts of the face.
different noses, different eyes, different facial shapes. at the veryleast

The game zooms into your face constantly in dialogue, i dont just want to pick from preset faces.

Hoenstly one of my biggest criticism with BG3 so far is that Larian seems to have this idea that people want to play pregenerated stuff.
be it visually or from a writing standpoint
They want to make a DnD game, i hear that.
but the biggest part of playing DnD from the start is making your own character


YES. This is how I feel. If I can't have sliders, I would still like to be able to pick individual features, NOT just faces--then it feels like my creation just as when I select character portraits in tabletop. Let me pick eye shape, nose shape, and mouth shape individually; hopefully complexion as well (meaning freckles versus all one color versus flushed in the cheeks or other places). I don't at all want to go back to the 2003 days of set faces when I had to cross my fingers and hope I'd find something I liked and usually it was only one that I still wished I could tinker with, which I would then reuse on any subsequent playthroughs because I had no choice.

I understand if they want to limit things so nothing looks outrageously hideous or goofy, or--well, like this. (Profanity warning if anyone cares.) However, this is an old school roleplaying series based on tabletop, rather than being a series without set expectations. BG 1&2 offered a lot of freedom in terms of simply the ability to choose a portrait. I know they can't go that far here, but I hope they will still give us plentiful variety.

We're going to spend a lot of hours looking at our characters, on a much closer basis than in DOS2 because of the more realistic style, so ensuring we feel like it's our creation and familiar and unique rather than "oh, that's the standard drow face most people choose because it's the one that isn't ugly" is essential.

I did like what I saw so far, I could go with that cute Hill Dwarf face for sure, the drow isn't bad, the human I like, but what one can live with is not the same as what they'll love. I don't like a simple "face" option. I want to make the face and I have tremendous amounts of enjoyment from being able to do so. I like it when almost no one else's character looks exactly like my character, if anyone's, and you don't get that feeling with DOS2. It was all right for DOS2, but I'd feel disappointed in BG3. Generic isn't awesome.

I'm just always-always-always going to miss the option to choose individual features if it's not present in a game where you see the main character up close a lot. I've spent hours poring over threads where people posted what they made. That is a particular brand of nerdery in which I am heavily engaged whenever possible.

Presets are great for those who want to grab-and-go, but I'm not the impatient type. I like to create. I will sacrifice better stats on an item for a more fitting outfit. I will agonize over dialogue choices. The trimmings of RPGs all matter greatly to me.

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Id also like to point out that this game isnt having Portraits from what i can tell.

So i can tmake my own portraits and pretend thats what my character looks like.
as such, having in depth customization is a must have for me

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I really wish they would do portraits frown
But I suppose in depth customization would do frown
Why not both though laugh

Last edited by CPT_SLOW; 19/04/20 10:23 AM.
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In NWN2 you have both indeed, so It could be done.

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Originally Posted by CPT_SLOW
I really wish they would do portraits frown
But I suppose in depth customization would do frown
Why not both though laugh


Portraits were good when the character was essentially a sprite, but my recollection of BG1/2 is that they were mostly portraits of characters you met - very awkward meeting yourself!

I quite liked the way DA:O allowed you to do a "portrait picture" of your created character, choosing angle of view, facial posture, background colour etc. I thought that was a nice touch.

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which only realy works if you CAN create a unique character

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Like everything else in the game, customizable heads cost development effort that may be better spent elsewhere. I prefer to be able to make my characters look as pretty or dorky as the mood takes me, but it's not exactly a staple of cRPG games. Bioware's later games had it as do Bethesda games, but their budgets and sales expectations are generally higher.

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Customizable faces ranks pretty low on my list of needs for a game like this. Not only are the characters generally smaller for the camera being frequently zoomed out (and thus, harder to discern much feature differentiation), but they also frequently wear helmets that hide the features anyway. I would much prefer customizable body types (e.g tall, short, fat, skinny, etc) if that didn't require much or any reworking (i.e. resources) of armor and clothing models to match the different body types.

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I demand fully accurate tongue movements in all languages or I’ll take my money elsewhere, slacker devs.

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Yeah, DA1&2 did very well with allowing the player to create a simple portrait of whatever you made, I loved that--it made sure your character matched the style of the others and seemed to fit into the game seamlessly. BG1&2 didn't really have unique portraits, but I have slight art nerd tendencies, so I always went and found something off a search engine that I loved and maybe edited it to have the coloring I wanted. That was great in ways, but a bit jarring as the PC looked out of place in terms of portrait style.

I suppose they could do that in BG3. I wouldn't mind, but it's not necessary to me as long as I can make something that isn't cookie-cutter. It doesn't need to be full-on sliders for body parts and every detail of the face, but I can't imagine it costing that much development time or work to give us some version of the same tools they must be using to create the heads of NPCs. Especially not when it means so much to a lot of players--not everyone, but those ones will just select a preset, it's not like more options will do any harm. If they're making GM tools, won't GMs want and need that sort of tool to make their own NPCs anyway? A sea of identical faces isn't exactly immersive.

At the very least, I would want to see brows, eyes, noses, and lips each have their own different choice sections rather than all being lumped into "face." You can have so many more different combinations that way.

A couple of relevant quotes:

Quote
You will be able to select a face type, hairdo, facial hair, skin color. I cannot give numbers or details, because it’s still a work in progress, but there won’t be sliders.

Quote
We have more diversity in creation than in any other game we’ve done before. You’ll be able to mix and match a wide variety of defaults, to create something unique.

I admit, if there's something appealing about all of the default presets, I will mind less than otherwise, but the "face type" bit makes me nowhere near as happy as "work in progress," "more diversity", "mix and match a wide variety," and "create something unique" parts.

I guess we'll have to wait and see. If there were, say, a hundred faces for each gender to choose from instead of the ten to twenty I'd expect, and each looked a bit different depending on whether it was on a dwarven facial structure or an elven one, I'd be a lot more okay with this system than otherwise. I just don't like being limited to a small pool where I keep finding something I almost like, but then I hate the nose or the eyes aren't the right color or the eyebrows are weird and thready or it doesn't look the right age that I envisioned... character creation at its best is self-expression, and that can't happen if no options suit your vision for the character at least reasonably well.

On a similar note, it would be kind of amazing if characters commented on features they saw, I've never seen that done before. I don't expect it, but that would be pretty amazing if selections were grouped into families like "red" and "purple" and then your love interest or another character commented on your eye color. I know, not likely, I'm just putting it out there. Someone will surely do it someday.

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