Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General BG3, DOS and the D&D rule-set

Based on a single tech demo. It's what, pre-alpha? Hilarious.

To be fair; the mechanic many people dislike will not change, most likely.

But complaining about graphics, animation, voice acting, or UI at this stage is like complaining that cake batter does not look as good as a finished cake.

Hi friend,

There is a saying that goes like this: "DON'T FIX WHAT ISN'T BROKEN"

BG1 and BG2 were not broken games.

What every fan of BG was expecting from BG3 was to take the very successful BG formula and IMPROVE on that to make BG3.

NOBODY was expecting that Larian would make a CHEAP move and just use its DOS template and call it BG.

Do you remember what happened with the Diablo franchise maybe? After legendary D1 and D2 games, a new dev team comes to "reinvent" things, and then makes D3, a complete cartoony-looking disaster. Now they are making D4 according to the "original" D1 and D2 recipe. Why, because it worked.

The same thing will happen with this "BG3" i.e. "DOS3" - they also made BG3 look like a cartoon.

What Larian has done (marketing DOS3 named as BG3) - in my book, resembles FALSE ADVERTISING.

They just hyped a lot of old BG fans up with false advertising. Larian, do you really think people are that stupid?

So what if they expanded their team and have a bigger budget? It is still a cheap move.

Larian, be honest and stop calling this game BG3!!!

Oh Helloo Larian, watch this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qORVHGkEn58

There you can see a real good RPG which looks kinda familiar with baldurs gate, good music, effects and fun gameplay.

[quote=kyrthorsen][quote=Sordak]...

...For others its the painted landscapes...

Oh come on, D3 was not a commercial success because of its new art style and corny dialogue.
It was successful in spite of this because old fans were desperate for a new Diablo and there was precious little else out there in the genre, plus the later ability to play on console with 4 -layer couch co-op, the much better expansion and continued updates make it still one of the better games in a niche genre.

I love Diablo, but stylistically and tone wise, d3 is a poor Diablo game, so says pretty much everyone, including blizzard. Plus you can not compare it to the sims?!! That’s like me comparing big sales to bloody fifa

So these things are important and I look forward to seeing how Larian handles BG3.

I think they are referring to textures that look or almost look hand-drawn. For me, what they call "painted landscapes" is just better graphics for 1998, but poor quality ones by today's standards. Then again, maybe look to Pillars of Eternity for more current examples ... even though they don't seem as "painted" as BG3. But it's all so vague and subjective, I don't think anyone really knows.

The 4 million Diablo fans hardly made up for the 20 million plus sold.
I am not a fan of Diablo 3. I did buy it and then hardly played it.

I am having problems with people going overboard and saying things like "Complete failure" or "Disaster"
The game did fine and sold enough copies to be on the top 3 of all times.

However, the "failure" of Diablo 3 was that Blizzard aimed for it to be a cash cow to be milked for many years. The intent was not for it to "just" be a single player game, but to be a "Game as a service". This part never took off and they had invested years into the whole concept.
As a friend pointed out, if they had focused on churning out a Diablo series of games instead, they would have made a lot more money.

I feel that Diablo 4 will be more in style with Diablo 2, but they will most likely push the side cash cow even more this time around.

Huh

I thought they meant that all the backgrounds assets where places by hand or something.
I mean, it is obviously assets that are used many many times in different places.

I don't think it refers to the style really. Would be the first time I see that.

I will try to find information. But the Infinity Engine of BG1/2 uses pre-rendered 2D backgrounds, which are painted with hand-drawn textures. For example, you can see repeating textures in grass, but those textures are hand-painted. You can see that the trees are hand painted 2d artwork that is then painted into the environment with a brush. Then, after the 2D environments are painted, another coder goes around and draws the collision maps which block out the base of trees (you can see this collision map in the "map overlay" think in the EE), or the depths of walls. Then, the "z axis" stuff is layered and opaqued above so that it fades out when you walk "beneath it".

Each "tile" of the map is about one screen size at medium zoom, they painted the maps one "tile" at a time, and every map is a large 2D planar environment with what is called "trompe l'oiel" or trick of the eye to make it seem 3d.

I've studied BG in art history class in university. I am from Edmonton, so I kind of had more direct access to old Bioware before they dissolved and became an E.A. cancer mill.

post

Yeah. There is no trend in gaming indicating that TB is preferred to RTwP. There has only been big TB hit, and that's DOS2. 1 game isn't a trend.

There are been more recent TB games that tanked than there are ones that did great. Torment: Numenera and Wasteland Remastered were both flops and both had TB. And the TB combat was one of the things that were criticized about Torment: Numenera - because Planescape: Torment had RTwP and people didn't like the title switching to TB.

There are more owners of Pillars of Eternity, which is RTwP, on Steam than Wasteland 2, which is TB.

Pillars of Eternity 2 had TB added to it, but it didn't improve its sales or raise its Steam user score by even a single percentage point in the months that followed the TB patch.

And Pathfinder: Kingmaker is more popular right now than any TB game other than DOS2.

And while DOS2's sales have been great, they still haven't topped Dragon Age: Origins': DA:O sold 3.2 million copies in just over 3 months. DOS2 sold 1 million copies in 2.5 months.


So, there is no trend anywhere that TB is more favoured than RTwP. But some fans of DOS2 have let their appreciation of the game blind them to the point they've crafted a mythology about TB games and their popularity.


Here's Larian's "BG3" senior designer and main combat designer, Edouard Imbert on RTwP vs TB:

https://jv.jeuxonline.info/actualit...rt-senior-designer-combats-baldur-gate-3


That is somebody who should not ever be allowed to develop a Baldur's Gate game. They are prejudiced against Baldur's Gate from the outset and have no interest in making a Baldur's Gate game. There isn't a problem with RTwP, there's a problem with their perception of and skill with RTwP. They require a very dumbed-down experience that is ultra-simple and clarified in order to be able to follow what is happening. They aren't the average gamer, though.

This further underscores that Larian are not even thinking about making a Baldur's Gate game and couldn't care less about the Baldur's Gate series other than the potential for its name to boost their own Divinity brand's popularity, as Swen said is what he hopes to do:

https://youtu.be/kGnGOnzlC4s?t=214

And as Walgrave revealed when he said Larian are sticking to the DOS formula (which disingenuously saying that D&D is a turn-based game while omitting to acknowledge that Baldur's Gate isn't just D&D and is a RTwP series):

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-02-27-baldurs-gate-3-interview

It's no wonder Walgrave couldn't think of a single aspect of their D&D RPG that justifies calling their "BG3" a successor to the Baldur's Gate series:

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-02-27-baldurs-gate-3-interview

So, Larian's "BG3" is a sequel because it's a party-based RPG with colourful character and with combat in it - and the combat uses a D&D ruleset. He didn't even dare add that Baldur's Gate has specifically RTwP combat - because, of course, Larian's "BG3" doesn't. Walgrave's claim is the equivalent of saying that any first-person game where you play as a single character and use a variety of weapons to shoot at lots of things is a DOOM series game or a Half-Life series game.

There are loads of games that fit Walgrave's description that aren't called Baldur's Gate series games, and there are thousands that fit the description if not counting the D&D ruleset qualifier. What Walgrave is saying is that there is no similarity between Larian's D&D game and the Baldur's Gate series and so he couldn't think of something that actually justifies calling Larian's "BG3" a Baldur's Gate series game.

Black Isle themselves, the creators of the Baldur's Gate series, wasn't willing to call their game "BG3" despite that their cancelled game had a lot more in common with the BG series: https://twitter.com/jesawyer/status/1234228179906134016

So, if they judged it not right that their own follow-up game not be titled Baldur's Gate 3, then it's clear that they would not approve of Larian's game bearing the Baldur's Gate name.


Larian talk like snakes in interviews when trying to rationalize why they're calling their game "BG3". But it's abundantly clear that the only actual reason why they are calling it "BG3" is for a cash-grab, to promote their own DOS formula and brand. And co-opting another series and disregarding its important legacy and its fans for such a self-serving goal is selling-out. If they weren't interesting in making an actual Baldur's Gate game, and it's clear they have never been, then they should have left the title alone.

BTW, in a recent interview Swen said that their studio all loved the BG series (except for everything about it, it seems). But in an older interview from when the license was being announced, I'm pretty sure he said that the people in their studio didn't even know what the Baldur's Gate series was when the idea was raised.

Thank you, this was most helpful

BTW, in a recent interview Swen said that their studio all loved the BG series

in an older interview from when the license was being announced, I'm pretty sure he said that the people in their studio didn't even know what the Baldur's Gate series was when the idea was raised.

Alright, I seen this argument before.

Diablo 3 was a huge success and sold over 20 million copies over all platforms, making it one of the most sold games of all times (MC and PUBG is ahead).
To compare, Diablo 1 and 2 sold around 6 million copies (2 for D1 and 4 for D2)

The only ones that thought it was a HUGE FAILURE was a smaller group of Diablo 2 fans.
Something is not a failure because YOU don't like it.

You simply cannot just make up your own definition of "Failure".

And if you want to bring up the point of Diablo 2 coming out in 2000, fair enough. It sold well for that year, but it is still 7 million copies behind The Sims.

He was speaking in general terms. As is almost always the case when describing the opinion of a group of hundreds of people.


He said there were people who didn't know Baldur's Gate, not 'the' people.
In any case, these statements do not conflict; it is entirely possible to love something now that you did not know about more than a year ago.

If you think a game is a huge success just because a lot people that loved the series bought the next installment...big sales dont make a good game

Same with BG3, jeah sure the game could make lots of money because of its IP - but that doesnt mean it will be a great game

The ONLY POINT Im trying to make with this thread is that BG3 needs to be DIFFERENT than DOS and SIMILAR to BG 1 and 2.

The PROBLEM is that the gameplay LOOKS as a DOS game not a BG game.

PERIOD.