Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General How immersive are we getting?

I'm a huge fan of D&D and RPGs in general, and Baldur's Gate is no exception. I was just wondering how deep into 5e the finished game is willing to go in terms of immersion and roleplaying. Are we going to be able to intimidate npc's in meaningful ways by perhaps using thaumaturgy on a nearby object, or fumble a speech check and still succeed by dumb luck? How creative can we really get with this? I feel like if anyone is going to be able to really capture the feeling of D&D its Larian but i wonder just how far they can push it.

Thoughts?

The opportunities to find success through a failed roll will be present in the game. If I remember correctly, Swen talked about it in this interview : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5__muccL1c

For the rest, it's hard to say. I wouldn't expect much capacity to improvise in a way that affects NPCs and dice rolls, mostly because that seems like a really complex system to implement. Those situations might exist in the game (we already know you can poison goblin grog and affect our environnement in a meaningful way) and Larian's systemic approach might actually make it possible to some degree, but I just wouldn't expect us to be able to improvise and adapt in all the ways D&D makes it possible. On the other hand, it seems to be the kind on system the people at Larian like to make and it does fit with the way they are making this game, so they might just be able to offer us something in that regard.

WIthout re-watching the video, I think that not every successful roll has a successful outcome and not only failed roll has a failed outcome. Like, you maybe can successfully intimidate a person so he reveals a secret passage to you, but at the cost of walking into a trap he set up to get revenge. Or maybe you miss out a powerful weapon that you would get if you would not use the secret passage. Something along that.

Immersion is a huge factor into a RPG and BG2 was fantastic at its time.

I was really hoping for some world simulation that would make it more real and reactive. Didn't like the static DOS2 game where the cities were generic, repetitive and no real changes/reactivity. And, of course, the whole world was at noon from start to the end.

I really hope we get a reactive world. D:OS2 was pretty static and rigid in what you could do but it worked with the story and didn't feel lifeless. Larian are perfectionists and their approach seems like it's really trying to be as true to form as a D&D game can get. I don't know how hard it would be to implement some passive reactions or get unique dialogues from doing things in proximity of certain npc's but I think that would be a neat feature. Like maybe you cast a light spell and characters with lowlight vision have to cover their eyes a bit from the brightness. Or maybe playing as a druid in wildshape caused certain npcs to get scared or even disgusted. I'm sure Early Access won't have too much but in the final release I don't think it would be THAT hard to get some dynamic flavor in the world this way.