Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General What games are you playing while waiting for BG3?/No Politics version.

I started a new thread on this topic because I thought it was an interesting one that suffered from a unfortunate focus on politics and other off-topic, non game-related issues.

So ever since I played Elden Ring I have gone back to play the other Dark Souls games and loved them. I have also been looking for other "Souls-like" games to play. However to me it's not just about replicating the gameplay, challenge levels, and character building aspects but also the storytelling.

Dark Souls games tend to avoid expositional storytelling. The story is built into the world, the art, the prose and the poetry. You can engage with it as much or as little as you want. It doesn't force you to follow all that.

All writers know that expositional storytelling is bad storytelling. It's also insulting to the reader - you are basically saying they are too dumb to figure it out on their own.

One game that I have really enjoyed that hits the Dark Souls mark dead center is a Platformer Souls-Like game called Salt and Sanctuary.

The game was released in 2016, but still gets updates and just had one today.





It's $17 US on the Steam store.

Really a great game. I am enjoying it much more than Hollow Knight which doesn't really hit the same storytelling level.

I'm still playing Hogwarts Legacy. It is really a charming game andI love it .
Other than that I play Guild Wars 2. I'm doing the storyline with my Soulbeast Sylvari Ranger and level an Asura necromancer. The game has it's ups and downs, but I mostly like it. This one I play with friends.

I'm contemplating to do another run of Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines, my alltime favorite game.

Someone summoned me?

Personaly i curently spend almost all my gaming time on WoW ... Dragonflight is surprisingly entertaining datadisc.
But thats gonna change in two weeks. >:] Im quite curious about SWJ: Survivor. :3

Replaying FFX after almost 20 years. It’s actually much less janky than I remembered and holds up really well all things considered. Still the best overall party of any rpg I’ve played.

I think BG3’s party members so far are serviceable, but playing FFX has really made me just realize that western companies in general don’t do well in this area.

And especially the item descriptions. If you want to try to piece it all together yourself, you should examine everything you pick up. But I don’t think they really intend for most players to try to work everything out by themselves. Following many of the the weirdo NPC quests in elden ring without at some point looking up where you need to or what you need to do is no mean feat.


Interesting, I thought it really did. In tone, depth and impenetrability. I thought there was at least as much to the story as DS1, if not more.

Not at all in the same vein, but Plague Tale Innocence and Requiem are on offer as bundle at steam, until tomorrow I think. Finished Innocence, and about to start Requiem. Innocence is only maybe 10-12 hours long, but I hear Requiem is a bit longer. What really struck me (apart from the thousands of rats of course) is the writing and voice acting, especially as most of the main characters are children. Even your little brother who is supposed to get on your nerves sometimes is kind of lovable.

Also XCom 2 (long war mod), again.

Finishing my custom campaign for S*****a. Currently in the process of pre-prod test playthrough. Took me almost a year, on and off.

Games per se... I practically stopped playing them. So many things to do, so little time.

Still finishing up Midnight Suns, which I am enjoying a lot!😊 I recently got the dlcs and am looking forward to the Storm dlc, which should come out soon!

After that, I am deciding if I should finish WotR or start a different game. Chapter 3 of WotR didn’t end well for me, and chapter 4 is a bit boring so far, which is when I took a break to play Midnight Suns. I also have several other games I am interested in playing and of course can’t wait for BG3 in August!!!

I just finished getting all the achievements for a game called Chorus. It's a spaceship 3rd person arcade action game with a focused narrative. I enjoyed it mostly for what it was, the combat was a power fantasy once you got used to it (and past the AWFUL powers tutorials) and the story was good, albeit a bit spiritual/esoteric in the last act.

Other than that, I'm starting to play a bit of Astrox Imperium, an Eve Online offline clone.

I'm on a sci-fi genre binge as you can see :3

Still battling through demon hoards in P:WotR.

Waiting on the big final DLC for Solasta coming in May. Zoria, which I backed on KS, is coming out in September, as is Starfield of course. Vendir has just released on mobile, so it is expected to release on PC later this year, as is Dark Envoy. So I have a lot of new games to look forward to playing, but all of them a good while from now (I don't play a newly released game until at least 3-4 months after release to give time for essential patching, which I accept as something all games will always need). So that's why I'm taking my sweet time through this WotR run, trying to do as much of a completionist run as I can.

No spoilers, but I'd be curious to see what percentage of people that did the secret ending of wotr looked at a guide for it. I find it VERY hard to believe that anyone could organically figure out all of that. There's no way I would have that's for sure. As it was I was reloading because of mistakes and I was reading a guide!

I looked at a guide for my secret ending playthrough, which was also the last one I did. No way I could have done it otherwise.

I'm actually putting a wrap on my playthrough of Midnight Suns, because the Megaman Battle Network collection just came out and has enthralled me more than I expected. So I'll probably replay Midnight Suns when the season pass goes on sale and I can get all the DLC at once. I'm looking forward to that.

I'm playing Scarlet Hollow (episodic, still unfinished), the back catalogue of Hanako Games, Hades, the VtM Choice of Games to exhaustion and actually trying to learn how to MAKE games so that I can have as many Astarions and owlbear cubs as my heart desires.

I remember Long Live the Queen being pretty radical. Have you played the Choice of the Vampire game, I think it's what got the Choice Of people all the VtM work, and I personally think it's a lot more interesting than all the one offs they've done, not that they weren't fun.

What kind of game do you want to make?

I'm working on a horror/romance theme park simulator/interactive novel. I would love to say "visual novel" but my art skills are non-existent.

The four VtM Choice of Games novels are really fun, well written and with very distinct flavours. My favourite one is Night Road, but Parliament of Knives is great if you are into high politics, and Out for Blood is a really fun Hunter / Small Shop manager simulator with lots of winks to Buffy and Stephen King. Sins of Our Sires was much more mystical and also kind of broken on release, BUT apparently they fixed it well enough to win a couple of prizes.

From Hanako, Black Closet is as radical as Long Live the Queen and it also lets you play semi-freestyle, shorter runs. Really fun.

I'm currently obsessed with Hogwarts Legacy, though I do have a NG+ playthrough of Elden Ring awaiting my return. I am in the middle of another Pathfinder: WotR playthrough, as well.

I had also been replaying (not all to completion!) the Dragon Age series, Outer Worlds, Cyberpunk 2077, Fallout 4 and New Vegas, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, ESO, Dark Souls series, Mass Effect series and Andromeda, and GW2 with a friend.

That may sound like a ton of games, but BG3 has been in early access for nearly three full years (and I have part-time hours). <_<

Finished Wasteland 3 (meh) and playing some SIFU. I am thinking of starting Plague Tale2.

What didn't you like about Wasteland 3? I didn't really like it either, it just felt kind of mediocre.

I'm using guides (plural) and have no problem saying so. I use guides quite often for many aspects of all the RPGs I play.

I have been asking myself that very question through my entire playthrough, and I still don't have a 100% solid answer.

On paper I should like it - I think the campaign has a pretty good structure, and there are quite a few choices to make, with a decent reactivity.

I think the biggest issue for me, is "the story" - in this case, worldbuilding and characters, as I think plot provides a strong framework. No matter how many choices or how much reactivity the game has, it matters little if I am indifferent about the characters and the world I am affecting. I found factions of Wasteland3 to be quirky for the sake of it, without much reason or depth behind them - a group of Reagan-AI worshipers, a gang that dresses up using haloween moster costumes, a dictator with a hammer painted in american flag. With choices coming down to screwing zany faction A over zany faction B, I found it hard to have strong feelings about any of it. No really compelling characters that I can think of either. There was also a certain amount of unpleasantness (profanities, violence & gore), which while not unwelcome in a post-apocalyptic game, I don't think was used effectively.

Gameplay wise, W3 landed it in an awkard spot for me - it was streamlined enough for the systems to feel gamey, but not enough to make for a genuinely good gameplay loop. Not quite an immersive RPG, not quite a compelling tactics game. I found UI and menus generally unpleasant to use throughout.

There were also small things - like chain system, making followers run through hazards or unengaged enemies moving in real time, while turn based combat is in place (I didn't notice that one until DLC2, in which it was painfully visible) - which just made the game feel jankier than it needed to be.

My memories of Wasteland2 are very blurry at this point (I remember not thinking too highly of it either, but enjoying it overall), but I remember that game being more player driven - having to pay more attention, use skill more intentionally, different solutions requiring player input. Wasteland3 felt more like a Bioware RPG in some ways - a very passive experience with A, B, C choice everyonce in a while - and I don't think the ride they took my on was compelling enough for me to not check out mentallly.

Do you have anything specific that made you not like W3 much?

I am doing a run for the Throne of Bhaal at the moment. I am about 3/4ths of the way through BG1 with my Dwarf Fighter. I am playing a goody with a reputation of 20 atm. We will see how things go for BG2.