Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Latest News Gathering the Party - Community Update #2

Though this journey began now years ago when we visited Wizards of the Coast for the first time in 2017, these past few weeks have been momentous and emotional, since this was the first time we were able to share Baldur’s Gate 3 with all of you, the people for whom the game is being made.



We will soon embark on an epic adventure as Baldur’s Gate 3 enters Early Access, and we couldn’t possibly venture forth without first gathering you, our party. One thousand of you gathered with us as we streamed the game live for the first time at PAX East in an auditorium filled to the brim, and an extra thousand of you were sadly turned away because there was no more space. Hundreds of thousands of you gathered online which - we’re told in confidence - broke some records. Thousands of you each waited three hours to gather with us at our PAX East booth, to see what would have happened if the dice rolls weren’t against us. It has been humbling and exciting to gather together as we start this new journey, venturing forth, going the way of the dice.



What you will eventually play has been in the planning at Larian and closely with Wizards of the Coast for over 4 years now, with their key creative people colliding with our key creative people in ways that we will eventually talk about in greater length. Our task is to create the ultimate Dungeons & Dragons game; a loving and modern sequel to Baldur’s Gate 2. Oozing with 5e D&D greatness, set in the world that you know and love. You will explore Baldur’s Gate 100 years after Baldur’s Gate 2. The Bhaalspawn saga has ended, and a new threat is converging on the city of Baldur's Gate. But the gods do not forget, and the shadows and scars of the past will not stay silent. You will meet and get to know many new characters, and encounter some of the legendary characters you know and love.

Most importantly, you’ll learn how their stories have evolved. And as you play, you will heavily influence their fate. Over the course of the past 3 weeks, the final missing ingredient has been added into our new development pipeline: you.


Let’s look at how we’ve evolved since the release of Divinity: Original Sin 2 in 2017. Firstly, we finished Divinity: Original Sin 2 with 120 people. DOS2 was shipped on the second version of the Divinity engine (we still haven’t found a cool name for it yet), and our Producer David Walgrave said recently in an interview with TechRaptor that in BG3 "there’s about 20-30% of the Original Sin engine left and we rewrote so many systems and so many things." We’ve been colloquially calling this 4.0 engine the “Baldur’s Gate Engine”, and it’s designed from the ground up for Baldur’s Gate.

But how does this happen? Between 2017 and the announcement of BG3 we’ve grown to 250 people + we have over 100 outsourcers working on this. Still independent. Funded entirely by yourselves who dived so eagerly into Divinity: Original Sin 2. We were quiet since the announcement just before E3 of the previous year. But internally, kinetic energy has propelled us forward with new systems, pipelines, and people who when not playing D&D were all helping us to put together what you saw at PAX East, 2020. There’s quite the adventure ahead.

We’ve built an engine that allows all 250 people at Larian collaborate to become the ultimate DM. Allowing for near-limitless reactivity, responsiveness, and a memory that never forgets who you are, or what you’ve done. No matter who you roll, dice-rolls, modifyers, and physical simulation have all been designed to simulate a D&D experience that feels as though it’s straight from the imagination, where no matter the dice roll the story will continue. It’s also a game that is intended to span the entire range of human emotion. It is in equal parts a dark and a light game. “We always want to make failure as interesting as it possibly can,” said Senior Writer Adam Smith. “We don’t put everything that’s cool and interesting behind success.”



“Light and dark are really good sources of advantage,” noted Swen in a recent GameSpot interview. The philosophies that define the rules in D&D 5e also define the narrative, where you’ll often make difficult decisions through initiative or through the roll of the dice. The Baldur’s Gate games were dark - sometimes darker than many people remember. Baldur’s Gate 3 is no exception, though in 2020 we’re able to take the gamut of emotion and experience and stretch it further due to systems, simulation, and of course also our cinematics team. Unfortunately we did not make it to the end of our PAX East 2020 live demo due to a feature (see: bug), but those in the hall witnessed a scene where Astarion’s hunger got the better of him, and through a series of dice rolls (and often audience choice), Astarion sank his teeth into Shadowheart to varying degrees of mortality. Astarion was happy (systemically), but Shadowheart often ended up dead (also without irony, systemically).

Baldur’s Gate 3 is on course to be a ‘Mature’ game, which is publishing language for “if you go any further the ratings board is going to be extremely annoying”. We want to push the limits of every theme within the game, which should allow you to play exactly how you’d like to play. Astarion may be a Vampire Spawn, but that doesn’t mean he has to be evil - if hungry. Though you saw one path at PAX East, there were many possibilities for good, and evil -- note also, everything in between. It has always been Larian’s plan to create games that allow you to play however you wish. This larger team, and this new engine, allow us to push this further than ever before. Much further than Divinity: Original Sin 2.


As you delve into an epic adventure that subverts the binary morality found in many RPGs, and explore Baldur’s Gate with new and existing characters, 100 years after the story of the first two games, dice roll by dice roll, we hope that together we can reignite that great sense of discovery you felt as you dived for the first time into Baldur’s Gate 1 & 2, bringing the experience of an open-ended D&D game to photo-realistic realisation, albeit with 5e rules in place of 2nd edition rules. Things have come a long way in 20 years, but what’s important to us is that you’re along for the ride.

You have many questions, and we have answers. We’ll be hosting a Reddit AMA where you can ask Swen (Creative Director), David (Producer), Adam (Senior Writer), Nick (Lead Systems Designer), and Jiji (Writing Director) your questions. 11:00 PT on March 12, over on Reddit!

See you all in Early Access.

Thank you Larian for keeping us informed! I'm glad to see any form ot cooperation between the developer and fans.

Hopefully this will satisfy those complaining why it is being called BG3. But I am sure the "photo-realistic realisation" is still going to chaff.

Aside from that, well done so far and thank you for the update.

Like Btn! Keep up good job !!

So the AMA will be held seven days from now. Interesting.

Awseome!

Looking forward to the Q&A

Which reddit/subreddit (not sure the correct terminology) for the AMA is it?

Cool what I would like to now about Baldur’s Gate 3 is will we be able to pick a deity without being a divine class in Baldur’s Gate 1 and Baldur’s Gate 2 you had to be a cleric to be able to pick a deity also will we have the aberrant mind sorcerer in Baldur’s Gate 3

I think the 2 biggest concerns are that:

1. The overall aesthetic did not look/feel like Baldur's Gate, and I'm not even talking about the fact that it's in 3D now. The atmosphere, the sound, the tone, even the UI, none of it really looked like BG.

2. The lack of rtwp combat. Yes, it really is that big of a deal, as it is a fundamental feature of all of the old Infinity Engine games, and even the NWN games. You could even look at it as the feature that separates those that are looking to play a BG game and those that are looking to play a 5e DND game set in the BG world. I say just add the option to play either turn-based or rtwp.

Bombastic words about the engine. Which of course makes me crave the mod tools and GM mode even more.

Dude, Aberrant mind is UA content. It's not even in publication yet. Why would it be in the actual game?



1. You saw next to none of the game. Nobody so far has been able to actually quantify this to me in a way that didn't sound like "Why doesn't this look and sound like a 20 year old game that had half of it's design choices made out of necessity rather than preference?"

2. It's a big deal to you, and a very vocal minority. It's a big deal TO YOU. And guess what? Most people care way more about a 5e DND game "Set in the BG world" (Which isn't actually a thing. Baldur's Gate is a city. In Faerun. It's been revisited in all sorts of other media, and those 2 games don't have a monopoly on it).

And the very idea that they should go through the trouble of letting you play Turn-Based or RWTP is just...unreasonable to the point of almost being arrogant. It's not flipping a switch, dude.

I'm genuinely sorry that you can't look past nostalgia and unfounded expectations to see the quality of what's already there, or it's potential. I'm sorry that your dogma has rendered you unable to look forward to what, to pretty much EVERYONE ELSE'S view was a fantastic and promising taste of a pre-alpha game.

You're going to be disappointed, and it's not really anyone else's fault.

It's Larian and Wizards fault for dismissing the 20 year history and legacy of BG and BG-styled games that followed to "cash in" on the "streamlined" success of DOS formula games.

It's their fault for deciding that the fanbase of BG games wasn't big enough for their shareholders.

This.
Like, my thoughts exactly.
It's sad how some people just complain that this game is not what they were expecting, just because it isn't a mod for a 20-year old game they remember playing young.

I am a huge NWN fan, and the only, ONLY thing I was somewhat missing there, is DnD turn-based combat. TB is how DnD meant to be played, RTWP is just a gimmick for action-oriented players in the early 2000's (and with NWN, it was needed for servers with many people playing there at the same time), there was no kickstarter then, the devs needed to give the young one some "action" in a game that doesn't need any. Funny how nowadays turn-based combat in old DnD games is considered canon. Ridiculous even.

I really hope some questions are raised about the glaring, overt similarities to DOS and if any effort shall be made to make BG3 have it's own identify, also if efforts shall be made to make it less cartoony "realistic"

Also if 4 man is set in stone or if they're looking at increasing it

And ofc, RTwP I'd love that to come up, not that I'm massively bothered by it, I'd just like to see them address it.

I'm afraid I laid the seed for a thread derail. Hopefully a mod moves the last five or so posts to another thread.

Have played the originals, Icewind Dale and others.

Personally I’m happy with the switch to TB. I preferred playing PoE 2 TB as well.

Larian have shown themselves to be worthy of trust, I’ll hold my opinion for the game to be released.

Thanks Larian for the News.
I'm not a "BG" or even an hardcore "DnD" Fan ( playing L5R mainly in PnP ) , but if this game is as good as DOS2, or let be dreamy, better... this can be a Masterpiece ( independently of it's ties with the firsts two games... since it's the principal thing that worries the most skeptical on internet it seems ).

Quick, let us know there 's anything for game master in this game, and you have me 100% !

I can answer part of this actually.

The reason that deity selection is only for some classes is that these devote everything to one god.
Their devotion grants them certain "gifts" (or advantages) that the god bestow on them in return.

In a world with a pantheon of gods THAT ARE REAL, most people would spread their faith among all or most of the gods. No reason to piss of the god of death just because you thought the god of wine was cooler.

If your character choose to champion one god over all the others, then your character would be one of the classes that would get an advantage from that (even if it was just one level).

Oh okay but what about the deities?

In the demo many, oh so many, D&D rule where cast aside for a game that repeat to want to be more rule adherent than the predecessors, for example:
-Drinking a potion require 1 Action (not bonus)
-Casting Mage Hand require 1 Action (not free/bonus)
-Imparting the command to Mage Hand require 1 Action
-Mage Hand can't attack (Pushing is an attack), and could interact only with object, not creature
Have a nice video with the rule of the spell https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPzso8TvvSU
-Putting a Bow in the fire doesn't give you a magical fire bow, but only some coal, a burned string and a burned hand...
-You need arrow to use the bow
-You need time to remove your boots, isn't a free action
-If you want to use the light for stealth remember that if you are in the dark but in front of a light source, the enemy could see your silhuette
-Alignment is essential for D&D, unless now my Cleric of Ilmater will be able to maintaining all the power after drinking the blood of cute baby halfling
- There will be fix to all this rule or i have to play a game losely based on D&D5ED?
There are other rule ignored or rewrited, but those are the most important.
I want to ask why the pregenerated character have an origin story more important than the character i will generate (i'm the spectator of the story)? Also, since i already hate the elf and the vampire (since he can suck my blood while i'm sleeping, can i stake him while he's sleeping?), and the mage doesn't start much better, how many other character there are that i can add to my party? Can I create other character for the party or i have to play "solo run" forever? Can i make decision on the level up of the other character?