Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General "So what is BG then?" This is what I think it is.

I'm going to do this in list form, and it may be disorganised because Im not good at this.

I am one of the people who is disappointed and thinks this is a DOS3. One of the things people ask is, "so what is BG to you then?" I had to think awhile to put it down, but there are just elements that make the game what it was that were not shown off. all they showed was combat, which i will come back to. So these are what was missing, or what i think better represent what BG is?

1) BG isn't just a FR setting. BG is *the* western cRPG that set the standards for every western cRPG that followed. In this way, BG is a cRPG, and as a cRPG what BG is is a RTwP party based RPG. That is its technical definition. This is not to judge RTwP or TB as better or worse, it just is what it is. Again, I will come back to combat later.

2) Narrated prologues and epilogues and dreams. Part of the magic of the BG formula was the feeling of being led through an adventure by a GM, filling in exposition as needed. These narrated segments are something Pillars of Eternity picked up on and did very well.

3) Isometric perspective. While 3D promises better environments, I find that 3D environments are actually just thinly hidden tracks with well rendered rails. Part of the formula of BG are the expansive - HAND PAINTED - 2d isometric landscapes. Again, Pillars shows that this can be updated beautifully like with Unity. It is the artistry of those landscapes that contribute to the formula of what BG is.

4) The music was flat and uninspired. For the last 20 years, the "bum ba bum da DUMMM ba ba dummm" of BG that is omnipresent while rolling your abilities is one of those sounds that is always in my head when idle thinking. That is what music with soul does. I don't even remember the music from the BG3 trailer.

5) 6 member parties. You know darn right that the 4 member party is to make combat quicker because of how slow TB games can be. But there is another point overlooked. The 6-member party gives you broader access to lore and companion side quests at once, allowing for a more congruent story. Never forget: D&D is a collaborative story telling game first, a table top strategy second.

6) The tone of the lighting and assets. People say "but it is pre-alpha!" but I ask, is this your first rodeo? How many games have you ever seen substantially change? Further - this is the product THEY CHOSE to demonstrate. This is the product THEY CHOSE to say "This is OUR baldur's gate" ... so if all of the assets would change, why make the announcement?

That brings us to combat. The live stream was a "gameplay reveal", and so I am willing to concede that all that is being shown is gameplay, so let us separate everything else from the table and talk about gameplay.

It took 28 minutes to kill the BG equivalent of rats in the store house. Let us have that sink in. What is going to happen when you are up against a boss with a small battallion of guards at his beck and call? take three days?

Okay, so you might say "but that is what D&D is like, it can take multiple sessions!" and I agree, but this is a computer game, not actual D&D, and I think you might not want "actual" D&D in a computer game. D&D has real life interaction and social fun of being with friends. And yes, online play is available (and hopefully we see more about the GM tools), but the experience of the computer games is the single player campaign. A single player doesn't need to take multiple sessions for one encounter, the ideal would be an evening of play, so to speak (that is, it make take days of trying and failing to learn something, but the actual encounter shouldn't be more than a sitting for a cRPG).

This is one of the things that RTwP innovated. And this begins my main defense of RTwP. As I see it, RTwP is actually the new technology still in its infancy. I agree that the first BG has massive pathing and AI issues. I agree that in games like IWD their solution was just bigger, Diablo-like trash encounters. I agree that combat was almost pointless in PST. I agree that melee is often relegated to auto swing robots (even though Pillars did alleviate this some with active abilities like knockdowns). But all of these things are design dependent and can improve with time and feedback.

RTwP brought the older TB mechanics of the SSI forward into the real time, dynamic capabilities of computer gaming. And for this, BG is a computer game first, a dnd game second, and forgotten realms game last of all. BG brought D&D to a new audience: computer gamers, the people playing Myst and Dune and Warcraft and Starcraft and DOOM - gamers who ostensibly play games in Real-Time.

I honestly think that BG is responsible for planting the seed that finally made D&D popular with 5e because it proved the style of gameplay could be appealing to more than just TTG purists. I honestly think it is the minority of TTG purists who have pushed the recent sentiment that all of a sudden RTwP games are bad games, as if to completely ignore the 20 year legacy of BG, the people who criticized back in 1998 that real time would never work. DOS3 is their ultimate revenge!

Some final small points that didn't need to have big text:
- there is nothing wrong with updating to 5e. the combat system underneath is largely irrelevant, but D&D is 5e right now, so lets play the new D&D.
- there is nothing wrong with TB, either - but the TB would need to still match the aesthetics of previous BG games, like the Shadowrun games by Hairbrained for example. I would even be really happy with a hex-based TB system with 60 degree camera incremental turns to survey the field.

Bottom line: BG is a computer game. the "game" part is the RTwP or the TB part. I like both. I think both are fun. I think that RTwP has a place and that it is still growing as a new technology. We need to embrace it as the change instead of stay mired in just TB ways of thinking. This is a computer game, not the TTG.

Thanks for letting me ramble a little.