Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General BG3 is such a huge step up from Divinity, it feels more than just a 'next game leap'

In regards to the strategy side, BG3 feels just as good as Divinity, but it's in the role playing where it feels like a massive generational leap. In Divinity 2 your companions were 'just there'. They didn't really acknowledge each other, there was no party banter, they rarely got involved in conversations and unless you were completing their quest lines, they were more or less non-existent outside of combat.

Story decisions were very minimal in DOS:2, you could change some things but they were minor and each play through you're more or less going down the same path, and the reactivity was very minimal here also. DOS:2 definitely feels like a sublime strategy game and a 'just okay' RPG.

Suddenly BG3 comes out, and it nails both the strategy aspect and RPG aspect, and it's striking to think that Larian made such a leap forward. Suddenly player agency, story reactivity and class/race reactivity is here in an absolute abundance and feels more RPG than pretty much any other RPG on the market. Huge congratulations to Larian for pulling this off.

I understand this post is just a general stream of consciousness and probably belongs on twitter where a lot of this meaningless fluff is, but with just a couple of days till launch I just wanted to celebrate this leap forward, and it really raises the bar for Larian when it comes to their next game.

It’s not even out yet. Hype and all but it’s not out.

Normally I would advise more caution, but seeing that I have already played an incomplete 1/3rd of the game, I know I am in for a good time.

I have been waiting for an RPG like this for a long time. Now I get to wipe my hands of all the disappointment Boware and Obsidian have caused me with their last few games.

I have zero expectations other than what I've already seen. I find hyping myself tends to lead to disappointment. That said, I plan on really trying to enjoy the game, and not just go through it with "i'm probably going to hate this" attitude, that will guaranteed lead to disappointment.

It's certainly better than D:OS2 in a lot of respects imo, but it doesn't diminish its predecessor. I'll certainly still be able to enjoy both. Just a couple more days... 😄

Let me put it this way: almost everything I like least in BG3 (judged by the EA) is a legacy of the DOS games. So I certainly hope it will turn out to be very much unlike DOS2 overall.

I actually agree, especially with regards to proficiencies and conversation. For role play reasons I don't want my barbarian failing a religion check whilst my cleric twiddles their thumbs in the background because they were unlucky enough to not trigger the automatic cutscene.

I suspect there will never be a game set up in this manner, with vast branching options all of which need to be scripted, ever again. AI is already DMing some PnP campaigns, by the next iteration of Baldur's Gate, the NPC will respond on their own without prewritten script.

One of the things I am more hyped around, and we will need to play it to see if it's true, is that Sven has informed us that their is actually a full on evil play through in this game, where the whole story changes and you play the role of a villain. That has never really been done before to this level, wrath of the righteous tried it, and it worked okay, but again nothing on this level.

I plan on role playing an evil necromancer for my first play through.

I've done that in EA, you can be the hero and save the druids from the goblins or you can be a villain and help the goblins slaughter the druids, vastly different interactions with the NPCs and consequences. But that is another scripted path, like a choose your own adventure book. In the future I think parameters and goals will be given to AI for each NPC and they will generate narratively appropriate, but spontaneous responses. Its a brave new world.

That is really interesting. I wonder what will happen in multiplayer if I decide to be the villain and the rest of the party plays good?

I'm not so sure. I certainly wouldn't want a roleplaying game arbitrated by an AI GM running on a server in a Google bunker. Either it's my AI, running on my decentralized machine, or I'll stick with good old scripted scenarios, or a human GM for tabletop. Accepting that central AI would mean feeding the "games as a service" machine. We're getting too dependent on remote services anyway in so many aspects of life.

This doesn't play like an Original Sin game, particularly because the mucking around combining items is missing. I don't find myself collecting nearly as much junk that might someday be useful in BGIII. That always took up way too much time. Well, there is the shovel.

Of course story wise there are the similarities: crashed ship and a non-removable magic slug/magic necklace, washing up confused on the beach like Link from Zelda: Link's Awakening, you almost immediately find too many companions to take along, some of whom are really hostile to you at first.

Anyway a new Original Sin with BGIII graphics would be amazing.

Probably something similar to what happens in a PnP game when one player wants to play differently from everyone else.

Unlikely. In PnP, that causes massive problems for the DM. Here we don’t have that limitation.

Unless I am mistaken, this isn't like Divinity 2 where it's a competitive environment and anyone can 'win' the game, but I believe whoever the host is, they are the main character and it's their story and other players are just along for the ride.

If I am playing in a multi-player BG3 game and a player wants to play the game differently from the way I want to play the game, I'm not going to play with that person. So, yeah, likely. That's how it works in MMOs. Won't be any different here.

I have seen nothing to indicate that only the host in the main character.