Well, if the game is to actually be released in fully finished form in 2022 (which is about 3 weeks away from debuting btw), I would think we should be seeing a LOT more activity (like races/classes with their ability trees) actually folded into the preview version.
I know they don't want to release much more of the world (*shame given how limited the pre-release version is and how many world problems we've found in playing it*), but they gotta stop squatting and actually give us MORE if they want it tested before release. Of course, I don't actually expect release till Thanksgiving or pre-Christmas 2022, but hey we can hope?

We allways "can hope" ... but when we do, we should expect disapointment.

I mean, as i multiple repeated in last few weeks Swen litteraly told us that they will keep (and im not sure if he said "races" or "some races") hidden as surprise for release ... so i would not keep my expectations high for that one.

About classes and ability trees ... we have ben told that now it will take some time before they release another class ... so again, dont keep your hopes too high ...
Same with subclasses ... i mean there isnt much to test for us, as long as they keep spells doing that they are suppose to do, it should be quite fine.

It pesonaly worries me bot for a little different reason. :-/
I cant shake the feeling that last tested class will be the worse, no matter wich it will be ... simply bcs the closer we are to finish the game, the harder it would be for Larian to adjust anything. :-/ And while i dont wish to be anyhow pesimistic or toxic, seeing Druid and Sorcerer (especialy Sorcerer, especialy Chromatic Orb), i cant help but fear that they cannot manage to make it corect on first try, something keeps pushing them to differ from that "booring 5e" to their "fun and sparkles". :-/

But who knows, maybe i will be surprised pleasantly.

I think 2023 is also very likely. Keep in mind, every time they have to do an update to the EA release it pulls resources from the main work. It is honestly best if we don't hear from them because it means they are focused on the primary game build. I'm just happy so many people are excited about this game, and I can't wait to see the full release but I am trying to temper my expectations.

Yeah, I'm probably trying to make it make more sense. I mean the fact that we don't have much in the way of physical combat classes to test...doesn't really mean anything, right (yes, sarcasm)? I think they should put EVERYTHING to the test before 'release' but that's just me.

BG3 is a long, long way from being a finished game. I wouldn’t plan on a full release in 2022.

I would much prefer to see Larian fix all the bugs and issues with existing combat mechanics, spells, and abilities before adding new content.

I would say Q3 2023 is the likely release date.

I’m on the “late 2023” train as well.

The game is nine kinds of imbalanced or broken, the combat is missing core features, a truckload of optimization still needs to go into every aspect of the design.

Imagine how much work will need to go into the enemy AI alone when Larian caves and makes shove a full action.

This game is definitely a while out, at least from what we can see in the Early Access.

One thing I disagree with in a big way is that Early Access is 'limited'. If you do all of the Early Access content in this game I'd say it would take a good 30-50 hours to complete. That is about three times more than Divinity: Original Sin 2 gave us and 30-50 hours is more than most fully released AAA titles. For example I recently played God of War (2018) and Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy... both very good games that I beat in 20-25 hours... and neither of those games had even close to the depth that Baldur's Gate 3 does in terms of narrative choices, classes, spells, etc.

Baldur's Gate 3 Early Access literally has more content than most fully released games and people are saying that the content is 'limited'. That is crazy.

I don't think time spent is a good metric when one game runs smoothly and seamlessly and is active gameplay the whole way through... and the other has you doing 20 minutes of inventory management and fighting with the UI for every hour of engaged gameplay.

BG3 up to the newest content (not including grymforge was of the latest patch, as I've not done the metric on that yet) has ~50 combat or combat-like encounters, each of which more or less always play out the same way, and each of which, once done, are done and offer nothing further. No, that's not, in my opinion, "more content than most fully released games"

Right, it is Early Access. So there will be things that chew into your time given that it is still being polished. But the point still stands. Obviously no one is arguing that a game clearly in Early Access is as polished as a game that is fully released and/or has been out for years.

There are a multitude of choices in terms of classes, races, character customization, dialogue choices, equipment, etc. that some of these other games do not have... but Baldur's Gate 3 does. Baldur's Gate 3 is a very deep game with a multitude of different things going on where you could play it twice and experience completely different outcomes. The other two games I mentioned have a linear story where none of that is possible and the game plays about the same regardless of what 'options' you pick.

This is not to say one type of game is better or worse. Just that one game gives you more gameplay time and more options in just about every conceivable way than some fully released games... and obviously it is not 'polished' yet because it is in Early Access. But to say that is 'limited' is madness.

For instance I think I have 42 hours played of BG3 Early Access. Because of that I already consider it worth the $60 I pay because I don't put 42 hours into most games that are released. Some games you can play twice and not get 42 hours of entertainment out of them. BG3's Early Access (and this is an opinion of mine, not anything objective) has entertained me so much I'd like to play through it again with different choices but I am holding back because I want to wait for the full release... this is because I know I put in 42 hours, but if I put in another 42 the experience would be almost completely different than my first go around.

I don't know...I feel that more than a year in Early Access is kinda ridiculous. Of course when I look back at the original release with all it's issue, what we have now is significantly different than the original, which seemed barely playable.
I should love to see a timeline put forth by Larian (yes, I know we won't)

Sven was already mentioning 2023 as a possibility, so I honestly don't expect for BG3 to release in 2022. Late 2022 is still a possibility of course, but it seems to me that Larian expects it to slip into 2023 already.

Normally a game spending years in EA is not a good sign. I'd guess development is not going smoothly.

There's no fixed amount of time a game should spend in EA (or development in general) to be good and it doesn't even make sense to assume there should be, given that every project is a story on its own, potentially with massive differences in size, scope, complexity, etc.

That said, I can't deny that so far I found the pace of the changes/improvements jarring to say the least.
Feedback gets hardly ever addressed explicitly, when the demand is satisfied some of the most requested fixes are introduced almost stealthily and even minor tweaks are taking forever to be implemented. We are past a full year of EA (which according to the early, most optimistic estimations was supposed to be the length of the thing in its entirety) and most of what we got so far can be summarized in: "one class and half and a new minor area".

We also got a certain amount of additional polish, but that's almost more worrying than comforting, given that even things that got a new coat of paint (i.e. new cinematic and dialogues) are still looking fairly rough and nowhere near where I expected them to be one year later.

Fixed for you. Sorcerers are so awesome they count as 2!

Statistically speaking there is no successfull major launch that spent over 2 years in EA. Games are usually launched in EA for tweeking in the last year of development, this includes DOS2, which by then was an indie title.
I'm worried that for over 1 year of EA they've advanced very little, that with a massive 400 person team.

My coin remains on its edge. C'mon Larian, you can do this! City of Brass!

Word on the street is that D&D 6E may show up in 2024.

It won't be 6E. During the interview where they teased this new product it was said that it'll be fully compatible with 5E, therefore it is probably a revision, like 3.5E.

Subnautica, Fortnite, Ark, and Rust are four titles of recent memory that spent 2-5 years in EA and still living strong to this day. BG3 is and always was meant to be Act 1 only, the majority of progress and development is outside of public view and was always meant to be. What there is to be said about communication and discussing feedback is another matter of course. But judging BG3 specifically on progress based on what is seen in EA isn't really operating on the same field that us gamers are typically associating early access games with.

Well, I've already got my money worth with BG3 with 150+ hours of very good quality game despite many issues. Even if they need 3 more years, I'll wait, if it means that they'll deliver quality product. My only annoyance is that in the beginning of their EA they specifically asked us to play evil playthrough for a feedback and then completely ignored that feedback. Not nice of them. I also dislike how after a year of development the game performs twice or thrice worse than it was initially. Are they aiming for the top end GPUs, which you cannot even buy now?

Or perhaps they are saving the evil playthrough feedback for full release so that people who tested it in Early Access can experience something completely new when the full game is out?

I can think of few, but yes, Baldur’s Gate3 isn’t exactly Prison Architect.

In its “family” of games and “alpha build” style release (small bit of game for testing, while dev work on the rest) BG3 is taking longer, but honestly every game I can think of (Pillars of Eternity1&2, D:OS2, Owlcat games) would be better off if kept in the over for another year or so.

I don’t expect we will see majority of work that Larian has done in EA period until 1.0 drops. If BG3 will be good at launch - that’s really all that matters.

Not really, some of the issues with evil playthrough are quite game breaking.

Example 1: you come to the gate and observe the goblin attack. What would evil characters do? Will they help? No, they don't care. So, you just stay there and enjoy the view how the goblins and defenders fight without any interference, i.e. you skip turns (if you're behind the hill then goblins don't attack you, or you can enter a stealth mode). And, of course, the plot immediately falls apart. The game always assumes that you heroically help the defenders and all dialogues include options to emphasize your role in protecting the grove. Everybody praise you for the deed you didn't do.

Example 2: also in the grove, when the druids deny you entry, what would evil characters do? Who are they to tell me what to do, right? You can just ignore them and they attack you for trespassing... And the plot again falls apart because the game assumes that it is you, who attack them on behalf of Zevlor even if you didn't talk to him at all, and they start attacking tieflings out of the blue. All the dialogues later no longer make sense because they loose continuity. At the same time if you just jump into the grove from the side, practically doing the same trespassing, druids just tell you to behave and won't attack... because logic wasn't there.

And Larian didn't fix it after a year... but hey, instead they downgraded graphics for low end graphics cards and made a game lag three times more than in the beginning of EA... This annoys me, but as I said, I've already made my money worth, so I can wait for as much as they need to fix everything and finish the remaining content.

Yup ...
Bunch of spells, several new models and creatures, story changes, dialogue options, and countless other changes ...

But why bother with that when we only want to complain right?

1) As far as i know the encounter is set like that so you are allways in sight for at least one goblin so even tho your *evil* character would not go help they will probably defend themselves.
2) You seem to more than willingly ignore the fact that not everyone in your party is evil, and the others would go help ... unless you play with full custom party of totally evil band, or coming here allone, wich is both creating ilogical situations on purpose ... every story can be broken if you know what to do.
3) Once you harm even a single enemy like it or not you just helped.
4) Yes they praise for something you didnt do ... what kind of evil character would mind it?

I never managed to get around them. O_o
Unless once again metagaming on purpose.

But lets say you did ... since you are talking about logic ... how are druids suppose to know that you talked (or didnt) to Zevlor?
I mean you are not one of them ... therefore its quite logical that they concider you to be more likely tied to people who are disrespecting theyr rules for last few monts than to expect you to be just some random dude who came here "just to cause problems".

Im not touching BG3 until release now. No more spoilers for me.
I have however starting a new play through of DOS2de with a boat load of mods. Dont know what it is...just keep on coming back to that game. Though I HATE some aspect of it like itemization (fixed somewhat by some mods...). And the <frozen time> aspect. Gives me hope for BG3 being a solid gameplay experience at worst, an instant classic at best.

1. No, it is not. Are you trying to tell me what was my in-game experience? Stop it.

2. All the companions in your group can be evil (Lae'zel and Astarion are 100% evil) and you easily can come there alone, being evil. It is not illogical situation, there's even a route you can take where you meet no one.

3. As I said, it's very easy to just observe combat without participating.
4. I wouldn't mind it if it makes sense. And it does not.

Just jump down where the elevator is, no metagaming necessary.

Exactly. They don't know. But in the game they assume that some random travelers that just arrived already conspired to kill them with Zevlor, when all you do is to tell them that you need a healer and that you go where you want. A clear case of conspiracy, right? And if you jump to the circle from the back and sneak around then it's totally fine... Because logic.

Evil can take many forms.

1.I can imagine it is perfectly reasonable for you to leave the fight of the Grove (never done it, though) but siding with the goblins was not an option at that point because whatever your party is, it is not a goblin looking.

2. It depends on the evil. Most evil characters will take their time to study the environment before they decide where the most benefit lies. Scores will be settled once everything becomes clearer.

As an owner of a good PC with a low to medium end graphics, I do hope they will optimize the graphic performance at some point.

I do hope for a release in late 2022 - mid 2023.

I'm with you on that one. I haven't been to Grymforge because it'll be better later (and I'll have a more powerful computer).

To Larian's credit, the sense of wonder and discovery they create is quite powerful, but there are definitely diminishing returns. I still think I'll give the new classes a whirl in the goblin camp.

Absolutely agree that evil can be different. I played intelligent evil.
1. I didn't say I wanted to side with goblins. Not getting involved is not siding with them. The roleplay was that my character doesn't want to risk his life over the some random people. And the defenders are actually very well positioned behind the walls, so no worry about them loosing, only mercenaries are in serious danger of being killed. That's not even an evil act by itself, it's a neutral behaviour.
2. You know, normally, druids don't go on the murderous rampage over some people whom they just met willing immediately visit a doctor. I didn't expect that all grove will go nuts and start attacking not only me but everyone who's not a druid in the settlement. My expectation was that, even if there will be a fight, it will be only with the entrance guards and that they'll back off after getting few serious hits.

If you are right, then i presume Larian should make this work so that Goblins kill everyone and then start searching surroundings, until they find you. :P
Problem solved.


Indeed ... but is "being evil" all that matters?

Lae'zel would never ever hide from some lowly insignificant goblins, she would massacre them just to express her superirority.
Astarion would kill them all just for the fun of it.
Shadowheart would kill the goblins so she can get inside (wall and gate means settlement, settlement no matter how limited means potential help).
Gale would help Aradin and his group.
And you dont yet have Wyll in your party on that situation.

I never said its illogical ...
I said its purposely created just to break the story.

Its simmilar as when we start asking why nobody ever used Time-Turner to kill Voldemort in the past ... they simply didnt, deal with it.
Its simple to break the story once you know all possible outomes and can purposely prepare for them, or create situations that would not make sence ... but that doesnt mean that story itself is bad, it just mean that you managed to find a way (and i repeat its not so big problem) where puzzle pieces dont fit.

I never tryed this myself ...
But in that case as mentioned abowe, all Larian need to do is add few more ranged goblins so they either win ... or scatter around once every enemy on the ground will be dead, so they are not simply sniped by High Grounded invincible Zevlor.

Personaly i like the second option more. :P

That is just matter of perspective ...
We obviously play a different kind of "intelligent evil" ... since my Evil Warlock have seen this as opourtunity, he just kills one or two lowly and hardly challenging goblins and people will be grateful ... that means potential profit.

Do you often jump down several building floors, next to inactive elevator to find out what is down there, while clearly see the sloping path down the hill on the opposite side?

Bcs i usualy dont ... that is why it feels like metagaming.
I mean it totally make sence that person who allready played this game is thinking "huh what will happen if i get inside other way than around those pesky guards" ... but exactly that is metagaming ... and i honestly cant find any other reason for jumping there.

Same question ...
How are they suppose to know that "you just arrived" ?

Just count the facts:
- There isnt any druid up there.
- There is a group of refugees that is clearly disrespecting their rules.
- You just disrespected their rules.
- Situation in the groove is tedious at best, more like one bad step from explosion.
- Some of them are clearly just looking for excuses to act against the tieflings.
- You just give them the excuse ... since nobody cares enough to find out if there is any alliance between you and Zevlor, they simply presume and act.

Why should they threat you differently ... you had your chance, you decided to throw it away ... now you shall suffer the consequences.

You see that only from your perspective ...
You were trespassing after all ... you were warned ... but you willingly decided to ignore them.



Have you never ben in / seen some protestation, procession, or meeting of two groups of footbal fans hating each other clubs, or something simmilar ... that "went wrong"?
All you need is single person who throw an item ... it doesnt really matter if that is a rock, a beer, a cup of cola, a hotdog, or probably even flower.
Either someone from oposite side will throw it back ... and fight starts ...
OR they dont, wich encourage the first one to throw something else, since they are not retaliating ... and fight starts ...

Situation here is simmilar ...
You can see the Druid that transformed himself into a Bear WANT to attack ... but he cant, since it was forbidden ... so he stand ready, waiting for excuse.
On the other side you can see concerned parents of Arabella (and their friends) that was just ready to attack them, but the threat of Druid turning into a Bear drive them away.
>> It does not matter who throws the item first ... once there is a fight, they both join it for their own reasons ... and sooner than you realize it, whole Grove is covered by blood.

One old quote say:
All you need to start a fire is one tiny sparkle.

(just for the record, i dont know those things from personal experience ... im usualy only a watcher ... since i live just few dozen meters from footbal stadion and there are fights quite often ... but the scenario is allways the same)

Then your expectations were wrong.

It's almost like you are purposefully trying to be wrong 100% of the times.

...And for you it just comes as an effortless talent, paired with the idiosyncrasy for proper spelling.

It's almost like you are purposefully trying to be banned 100% of the time. Not everyone is a native English speaker. I don't have a count on how many times I've had to ask you to cool it over a way over-due amount of time, but I keep my promises:

If you'd remembered the last time I warned you about getting into rudeness with one another (rag, or to anyone really) you might have spared yourself this 14-day suspension. Your inter-personal grudefest ends here. I've warned you enough times over a long period of time for all sorts of attitudes. Clearly words doesn't work. If you forget it once more after that, for any reason, it'll be longer. Third time is permanent. This is an indefinite warning, at anytime at any point in the future if you post anything remotely hostile or unnecessary, remember this warning.

The fight is set up heavily in the defender's favour. Goblins cannot kill everyone. They can barely kill couple of defenders even if you ignore the fight. But they easily can kill YOU though, if you charge to help, which makes non-interference even more sense.

If you want to have a discussion, please, come up with solid points, I'm not interested in wasting my time answering straw man fallacies.

By this time, you already can have a scroll of feather fall if you searched the ruins. It's there for a reason.
You can also play the scenario by coming to the entrance, druids won't let you in, you go around, use the scroll and jump in. The game actually acknowledge this route and the druids react to it and in this scenario they don't attack, they say "How did you get here? Anyway, look around, but just don't cause any trouble." The game counts sneaking in unnoticed less suspicious than entering from the front door declaring your intent. Doesn't make sense.

Except the situation here is nothing like that. Tieflings already left and there is no tension. If they wanted an excuse to murder all tieflings they already missed the moment. Larian had a year to fix the encounter, but the only thing they added is a cut scene where druids go on murderous rampage. And, in general, I haven't noticed any plot fixes by Larian over a year, which is sad. They only add cosmetics and fan service changes. Hopefully, when they finish the plot of the game in full, they'll go over their plot for inconsistencies and fix them.

That is how it is now ... that is why i was talking about how Larian schould change the scenario.

Depends on where do you join the fight ...
Personaly i usualy run towards that hill to have high ground from the start, and barely gets single hit usualy.

Point of quoting is to show what are you refering to ...
If you replace it with own words and react on them with vague sentence with no informative value ... its both pointless. :-/

Right now i have both zero idea what were you talking about and what were you trying to say.

Cool ... but my question was not if you were able to jump there safely ...

I was asking if you often ignore safe route that is right in front of you and (waste your resource if you wish to acnowledge the sroll) jump in middle of unknown territory full of unknown creatures with unknown intentions instead.

I allways thought that the fact game acnowledge our actions is good thing. O_o

What doesnt make sence?
Guards were obiously ordered to not let anyone in ... not to drive everyone out ... that is clear from the fact that Volo is inside this whole time.

IF they were ordered to not let anyone it, they might aswell presume that someone else let you in ... since from their post they have no way to check who or why was that, they dont know if that was lazyness of some other guard, or Kaghas order ... so asuming it was Kaghas order (since they dont seem to concider their own peple to be lazy or incompetent) they didnt drive you out.
Seems quite understandable to me. O_o

Seems we probably visited different grove.

Have you even talked to them? 0nly two emotions are there Anger and Frustration.

Did they tho?
Tieflings were rude, but didnt start any agression ... then situation even started to be tense, they back off ... Tieflings are ballancing on the edge, and they are good at it ... Druids on the other hand dont want to do the first step.

Have anything specific in mind?
I would like to know.

I on the other hand didnt notice any plot that would need a fix ... it seems people in Larian see it simmilary.

Of course, if YOU didn't notice then it's totally different. The plot must be ideal then. Pretty sure every morning Swen goes online to check what's RagnarokCzD is thinking about the game, whether he is happy with the plot or not.
You know, every game forum has a rabid fan that deny any criticism of the game. You're the local version of those, so I'm not interested in continuing the discussion with you. Have a nice day.

I wonder why do you felt the urge to make it personal. O_o
Maybe bcs you didnt have any argument?

/shrug ... well ... bye bye i gues.

This makes perfect sense to me. The way I would play it would be to hide on the hill and watch and then maybe help kill the last goblin as if I just got there to gain goodwill from the defenders for "helping." There isn't a point to getting involved in a conflict that has nothing to do with me unless there is some benefit.

Something they could add could be that after most of the goblins are dead from however the fight ends up going, then a couple more come up with some sort of explosives to blow up the gate. One of the companions or even our own character if playing solo could then make a comment about we had better help the defenders if we want to find that healer. This would probably be less complicated than removing all assumptions of us helping.

I can sort of see how this one plays out the way it does. The guards would easily assume you are helping Zevlor because they are already on edge and anything small will make them want to fight something. Also they want the tieflings out so in their minds the tieflings want to be rid of them, this is a common behaviour. If you sneak into the grove in another manner, then most likely the rest of the druids think you have permission to be there.

Something they could do to make this a bit better could be to add more druid witnesses to the confrontation with the guards. One goes further into the grove to alert the others and the rest start attacking the tieflings. Been a while since I played it so not sure if this is what already happens. If we were able to quickly kill all witnesses then nothing should happen then, but by the time we come out of the grove a druid would have seen the bodies and the fight would have already started. I somehow doubt they will add in a way to hide bodies but it would be nice. Wouldn't have to kill everyone inside if I could just hide Nettie's body in a chest.

From a warfare perspective, you would not bring a siege equipment to a raiding party. The goal of the first goblin party is not to sack the grove but kill the survivors from the expedition and potentially acquire loot and food.

I do think helping the defenders & by extension Wyll should be optional. If you have not, I guess you can still get access to Kagha as she is in desperate need for some outsider's help to get rid of the tieflings. The same is valid for Zevlor. If you are a tiefling that might introduce you to Zevlor who can send you to Kagha. For drows, I guess this might also work as you are a predominantly non drow party.

It's simply that they're not adding everything that they've finished to ea, so we have no idea how progress is going. We wont see every race and class (that they're planning to add to the game) in ea.

I think that in hindsight, Larian would not have released EA until 2021. But that doesn't mean development is going poorly, it could just as well mean they did a crappy job of assessing how long the game would take to develop.

For a AAA game a few years in EA seems reasonable to me. It gives them time to implement feedback and make a great game.😊

Patience is a virtue. Good things come to those who wait.

If only we felt they were actually taking full advantage of the feedback by telling us that they have listened and are changing XYZ (admittedly the dice change seemed half-hearted...either just let my dice always success or expect I'm save-scumming to pass, they at least gave us more chances)

This is definitely true, just trying to come up with ideas to encourage people to actually have to fight the goblins. Otherwise the dialogues about us helping don't make any sense.

I think if we are thinking about things in normal situations that it would 'almost' always be a bad thing for Early Access to drag on for years. I think the issues with it are both in that it seems to usually point to development issues and could also lead to your most hardcore player base burning itself out on the game before release.

But in this case I imagine a lot of what is taking so long is:

1. Baldur's Gate 3 is a massive undertaking. It would not shock me if the game offers hundreds of hours of gameplay while also containing branching story paths, player choice, tons of classes, spells, races, etc. while also including quality graphics and a lot of little things like every conversation zooming into to be somewhat cinematic in nature.
2. But even more so I imagine that Larian underestimated how much the pandemic, lockdowns, the panic over COVID, etc. would impact their development as it seems to have impacted all development teams. I think if they were able to wrap their heads around this ahead of time we would have likely got Early Access sometime from mid-2021 to early 2022... because I think the game will probably end up coming out late 2022 to mid-2023.

I never finished DoS2, was it a massive branching epic story? Or was the gameplay/companions/coop more the focus?

It's massive: took me 256 hours on my only run to finish (I'm non-tedious completionist). It's branching: you definitely allowed to solve quests differently, there are several endings. Gameplay has also a huge focus (the combat actually has a real AI, it's not stupid), companions were fun too but you have to permanently choose them after chapter 1. I haven't played coop, so I don't know how fun it is. DOS2 has all the aspects done pretty well, which is why it was so popular.

Regarding 1: Pathfinder WotR has hundreds of hours of gameplay, branching story paths and far more classes and spells than BG3 will on release if it actually implement all classes of the PHB, and yet was developed in 3 years with a fraction of the team size and budget.

Right, which is why I added the second point of point one "while also including quality graphics and a lot of little things like every conversation zooming into to be somewhat cinematic in nature.". Baldur's Gate 3 isn't Pathfinder WotR or Divinity 2. The graphics used for the game are far more advanced than those games, the voice acting is on a different scale, every conversation you have is 'cinematic' in nature in terms of the camera zooming in and things like that. So this game is like developing Pathfinder WotR, which took three years or so and released rather buggy... plus then on top of that adding every bell and whistle imaginable that I can think of for a CRPG. Every conversation voiced, every conversation zooming in, higher end graphics, higher end cinematic cutscenes and things of that nature.

Then on top of that when Larian has said that they will not have certain 'bells and whistles' like a day/night cycle, you see get pretty upset that it is not going to make it... even though that would likely extend development out even further.

This is not to say that I back all of those decisions. For instance I think it is pretty neat that every conversation zooms in and you can see the participants up close, but I don't think that is really necessary if it adds a ton of extra dev time or cost to the project.

Also, I am not a developer... but from what I have seen a lot of these extra bells and whistles that were not in a game like Pathfinder or Divinity 2 end up not only taking a lot of time, but a lot of money. I also believe that they take not only voice actors, but actual actors who get hooked up with censors and stuff... and that is rather difficult to do when everyone is locked down with COVID stuff.

I guess I am saying that I agree there could be development issues plaguing this game just due to the sheer scope, size and ambition of it. But I think there are a lot of factors with this game, along with a lot of other hyper-ambitious AAA games that are coming out these days, that point to it just needing more time than a lot of other games.

I don't think many AAA games actually go into the EA process, so BG3 is an interesting experiment in that way - production and marketing wise. While technically Mount and Blade 2: Bannerlord has a bigger EA, it's pretty easy to tell that Bannerlord was never intended to be a AAA game (just look at the graphics and production), whereas BG3 clearly had the ambitions to be.

Larian seems to have embraced using the EA process a much for marketing as it is for production. It's definitely generated sustained attention throughout this period (and I think it's done a good job at showing the product and managing expectations), but we've also seen people (even in this thread), experiencing burnout from the lack of progress. We'll see how that all works out at the end of the day.

Production-wise EAs tends to work well for smaller projects because the feedback is much more manageable and focused (you really have 1 core audience), and is far quicker to apply (imagine deciding on a course of action with 3 people in a room vs. multiple departments across countries). I don't envy Larian's situation in terms of working through the EA process and mountain of feedback and thoughts - just take a look at this forum and the various highly passionate camps of people... you've got the 5E RAW Mafia, the DOS Legion, the "Original Games" Elitists and the "Everything is Okay" Gang all going at it, spawning 50+ page discussion threads that resemble the explosive final battles of anime space operas - often with good arguments from multiple sides too.

Lol. Now I want a poll or a silly test to see which group I and others belong to :P

5E RAW Mafia and Original games Elitists....JOIN FORCES!
Got to love classic gaming these days though. Perfect marriage of modern/classic; I can play BG2 classic version on win10, tons of mods, scaled at 4:3 on a 32 inch and runs perfectly and looks fantastic. Dont even need the botched <<enhanced>> edition.

We already knew that from Larian having to do mass hires everywhere and Swen saying their own developers weren't fully comfortable with programming the requisite changes on their engine in earlier PFH stream. Whenever the initial game launches, it will still be a buggy & broken mess.

To their credit, I have not encountered a single game breaking bug in Early Access as of Patch 6 and had only one crash to desktop for the whole playthrough. There were minor, mostly graphical bugs but nothing too bad or annoying.

P.S. It does not mean such bugs do not exist... it's just I have encountered none, which means they might not be too common.

Bugs were a problem with original elite games as well. What saved the franchise for me was the independent development of GateKeeper, the save-game editor, as well as access to the in-game cheat codes. Once I mastered those, I was able to get past all the big bugs and then everything was OK.

It was definitely lengthy. What you have seen playing, is more or less what the whole game is.

There aren't really big choices to make, outside picking your ending slide if that's what you mean. You can cut yourself from content, of course, through free systemic nature of D:oS2. The biggest branching content are companion quests.

Ive not even bothered to buy the game yet, because I dont believe 2022 is the year. Fingers crossed this isnt another Cyberpunk 2077.

I say this rarely but I was struggling with DOS2. It was so damn tedious, good music could help. Larian style is definitely "turtle" if that makes sense.

Maybe they should take ideas from AC Valhalla boat trips, you could ask for story or music?

Honestly, I do not know what "buggy mess" you are talking about. From my experience (and I've played the game for over 100 hours) I've not had any bugs worth noting aside from the visuals in a few cutscenes. After patch 6 the game runs smooth as butter at 60 fps on ultra (and I don't have a high end pc), looks gorgeous, voice acting is top notch, decent story and a variety of companions. I've got my money worth 10 folds. Granted, I bought the game only 4 months ago and it's still new and exciting for me, as the time passes I might change my stance, but I doubt it

Well found some optimist on youtube that listed BG3 released in year 2022.

They show a steady performance in fixing bugs, improving things and add more content. Of course new issues can rise. When they did in patch 6 improve graphics so did the system performance requirements for maximum graphics also rise.

My wish is that Larian also try to optimize the new code for maximum graphics so we can at least get slightly better framerate. That said it is true you can pause the combat and this is not some FPS shooter game that need to have super high frame rates. This wish is easier said then done, but hopefully Larian can do this performance optimize. Yes I know you can change settings, but I was talking about little performance boost in FPS.

I believe either BG3 is released towards end of 2022 or during the long year 2023. When I say during 2023 it could be anytime summer 2023 or example Christmas 2023. I have no crystal ball to see the future, but that is the impression I have got and I think Larian has said that. Finally it is true from Early Access we can not know how much they have done of Act 2 and Act 3. The game will have to my understanding 3 Acts during full release.

My brother asked me recently when do you think we can play BG3 full game released together really 2022 or 2023? I said: "Dear brother my best guess is during year 2023!".