Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Mega-threads and Guides The Turn-Based/Real Time with Pause topic

The units actually did have turns but simultanous. But guess you are right, Wormerine - I should have written "turn based like"...

I agree except when you talk about environenment.
Why sould RTWP have less opportunity to interact with environnement ?
Harder is ok, "less" is maybe because you only think about what you saw in RTWP games.
The only harder things in RTWP is time management... not possibilities.




The game is not ready.
Maybe some of us can hope to become as hyped as you are about a game we all waited for so many years.

I think turn based is just ad intended PnP wise. A good addition to BG, also, Larian is an expert in TB combat, so YES!

Addition is totally ok...
Here it's not.

Just wanted to add some thoughts in this as well.

When playing a D&D session, yeah it is like RTWP and the pause is right as combat starts and it goes turn based.

Have those asking for RTWP played Larian's other games, they follow that same pattern. IT is real time, then combat starts and it is turn based.
Their implementation is almost identical to table top DND.

Also consider the heavy cost and burden it would take to implement RTWP for combat on their current engine. They would have to re-write it. why would they do that ?

I was a founder and went all in, statue and everything, for Sword Coast Legends. In that game RTWP was implemented, and took away from the D&D experience. I asked for Turn based combat right up front, as well as many others, but the developer's engine was not built that way.
I still bought the game and supported them, as well as buying the game for my entire group.

If you are looking for RTWP during combat with this game you will be looking at the same scenario I was in. I feel ya, you have a personal preference, and you like playing that way.
I don't see any advantage for players to have RTWP in this engine, and the turn based method makes it fair for all parties.

Try beating an AI on RTWP when you 4 characters each, that have 15 abilities.
How often would you pause the game during combat, if there was no AI to tell your companions what to do?
If there was an AI for them you would complain it was dumb and chose the wrong spell, power, movement , etc, or you would queue up abilities only to have to replace them, because they are no longer relevant.

I am not against RTWP , but I would prefer they put focus and $$$ into making improvements on their engine and game, instead of converting it to RTWP.

"Try beating an AI on RTWP when you 4 characters each, that have 15 abilities.
How often would you pause the game during combat, if there was no AI to tell your companions what to do?
If there was an AI for them you would complain it was dumb and chose the wrong spell, power, movement , etc, or you would queue up abilities only to have to replace them, because they are no longer relevant"


I for one, set my setting to have the Companions for the most part to act own their own, there were times, very few, that I would take control. All I really had to do was take care of myself, I was able to run through the majority of Nwn 1 & 2 without ever using the pause.

Also I would like to add here, Im sure this had to be brought up somewhere, and that is turn based does not make this more like dnd than realtime, there is no way you can bring the hundreds if not thousands of options a player character has in pnp, you cannot replicate that in a video game, IMO it comes down to personal choice and at the end of the day, Larien won the contract.. their the dungeon master,and that's it. Im very disappointed but I can hope for my vision of a good Dungeons and dragons game will be made one day, Cryptic (Neverwinter online ) failed Lmao IMO, really the only one that came close, since Neverwinter nights 1 & 2 was DDO ( Dungeons and Dragons online) That game is really dated IMO, Would much rather have seen a new, Dungeons and Dragons online than this game, However like I said, WoTc awarded Bg3 to this company and that's it.

You're right, a videogame in this era cannot replicate the wealth of possibilities made possible by game controlled by the human brain, and powered by the capacity for human imagination.

However, I believe that the reason Larian was awarded the contract from WotC was because they demonstrated, through Divinity: Original Sin 1, and Original Sin 2, the mindset of those who were attempting to cover a tremendous array of possible options, and largely succeeding at it.

(Yes, of course it isn't perfect, and doesn't provide every possible option one might think to try, but there is only a limited game budget and finite development time if you want to release the game in a reasonable timeframe.)

Please don't try to speak for "all parties." You don't get to say if it is fair for me. It is not fair for me. At all.



I have done so very easily playing PoE1, PoE2, and P:Km. Piece of cake for me. And yes, that's why the AI exists. We all can have our complaints about any particular game's AI, but how is that any different from people's complaints about any other system in a game? It's just a matter of the technology gradually improving over the years, just like with everything else. You see the TB combat system in the D:OS games as awesome/perfect. I found it to be utter garbage and totally horrible. People not having the same (positive or negative) experiences cuts both ways.

I don't care about their engine, I care about a Baldur's Gate main series experience because that's what they try to sell me using this name.

After saying it's good that BG3 is TB because it's like pen and paper, the same will say it's ok you can only have 3 companions out of a few origin characters in your team because it's like... Oh no... not this time...
Congrats to players creativity and replay value, wich are striclty limited to classes of these companions...

Of course I'm not talking about custom mercenaries that never have something to say...

Don't forget player choice for the story and the potential multiple endings. That can add replayability.

Not sure many players are interrested about playing the nearly exact same game SP experience except you're changing a little bit your answers in dialogue and you have a little bit different post game ending...

Your ignorance of the number of players who want to replay a game in a different way is irrelevant.

You can select different main characters, create a custom character, have a party with different combinations of characters, take different approaches to different events, have things go differently, combat doesn't play out the same way, do events you were locked out of before, do events you completely missed the first time... BUT NOPE NO REPLAYABILITY HERE WHATSOEVER, NOPE!

Oh, please.

Not saying you don't have any replayability but maybe I should have said it's very limited, especially because you can only pick 3 companions out of 5.

Had you read why that was my answer and the previous messages ?
Maybe I could quote myself each time I post something so you have everything in mind to understand what you're answering to.

Videogames are always going to have limited content by their nature. It's either something you can accept, and if not, you don't play them and stick to pen and paper.

I don't play pen and papers but it's easier to understand than you have WAY more team/RP possibilities/replayability if you have 5 companions out of, even only 11 (for the exemple, you'll understand).

In DoS 2 you have only 20 teams combinations if you play with a custom character (less if you play with one of the origins).

In P:K, you only have 11 companions which is not many more compared to DoS2... But because you have to take 5 of them you have 462 differents combinations.

Think you understand now what kind of replayability I was talking about.
You can really choose and custom your teams (class but also RP, side quests, personnalities, affinities...) which is the central elements of this kind of game. You can really play/imagine different story, not only few alternative versions.

If there are only 5 companions total in the entire game, that would be troublesome, but I don't think that there are that few. This isn't even at the Early Access stage yet, not everything is ready.

Check the banner of the game and listen to Sven saying you're going to meet your companions at the very early beggining of the game.
I don't think you'll find other "companions" during the rest of the game exept what they called followers.

We have to hear more about them but I think they"re not going to act like true companions (I bet for followers for specific quests or followers staying in your camp such as a healer, a merchants, a side quests giver, a guideline to the story or temporary important NPC...)

In the alpha versions of Divinity Original Sin 1, Madora and Jahan were not in initially, nor were Walgruff and Bairdotr. In Divinity Original Sin 2, Beast and Fane were not in until the full release of the game. Not having all companions in this pre early-access version does not mean that there will be no other companions in the starting area.

In fact, I'd really hope that there are more companions around than you can take with you, so you can have a party generally aligned instead of being forced to go half-evil/half-good.

Having some trouble with quoting here. Bare with me.


According to Larian there are branching paths through the story and the game is very reactive to choices you make in game. They’ve specifically said they didn’t want the kind of false choice you see in many games where it makes little real difference whatever you say or do.

Obviously we’ll have to see how well they’ve managed that, but the fact they’ve highlighted it show they’ve at least tried. That kind of interaction is the kind of replayability that interests me personally.


How different are those 462 play throughs with all the party combinations? Can you really get a different experience each time?

I’d sacrifice some quantity if it means they can do more with how the party reacts to what you do and each other. If the number of party combinations goes up, so does the amount of work they need to do to make them interact in any meaningful way. When is comes to interacting with each other, the amount of work goes up exponentially. Unless you are mainly talking about headcanon?

I do agree that 5 companions is a bit light, and hope they’ll add at least a couple more for the final release. But I don’t agree that more is necessary just better.

Edit: Hmmm. Quoting appears fine in preview, but not in actual post. I don’t seem to be able to enable UBBCode.

It's not immediately active for new accounts.

Re: Companion numbers. You need 3 or 4 ( depending on whether you generate a unique character ), so 5 does not give you a great deal of leeway. If your character would refuse to co-operate with evil/dark characters, you say goodbye to most of them, leaving you rather short-handed.

Obviously the idea is that you are all in the same dire situation and are forced to co-operate. And, clearly, the depth of the characters and their interactions can make it difficult to justify the acting/voicing costs of too many companions.

To me, a selection of 3 from 7 would probably be enough to ensure class/alignment balance; it depends how picky you are.