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

I can't obviously say everything is perfect about companions in P:K or better, in BG1/2 for a 2020 Larian RPG game. It's part of the things that really needs improvement in BG3.

And of course, I don't need 462 possibilites... This also doesn't mean 462 totally differents play throughs (such as those 20 in DoS doesn't mean 20 completely differents play throughs).
I can also sacrifice quantity for quality, but not if there's no more quantity...
Don't forget that out of these 20 possibilities, you HAVE to take at least one of the same companions you already took if you play more than once (or twice).

In DoS, the low possibilities of companions choices have a few consequences on what you can do with them, in exemple :

- You have to be able to change their basics classes for players to have a little bit more classes combinations possibilities.
This mean you can't go too far in their backgrounds, you have to stay "on the top of it".
Nothing can justify they all can use every classes or skills if you think about a realistic and "coherent" world.

- You can't create bad affinities between companions and give them a true personnalities, a true will or true opinions about what the players choose to do with them.
They have to agree with everything, they're not real characters following you because they like your paty's decisions.They can't approve or disapprove with players decisions and/or with the personnalities of other companions.
Again, this is not correct if you think about coherence of the world.

It gives the feelings that companions are not "real", they're just tools for players to guides gameplay.

I think this was pretty well designed in BG1/2.
The teams you choose gave you totally differents moods while you were travelling or reacting to the world's events.
Even if their side quests wasn't all on the same quality level, the experience was pretty good in BG2.

That said, and keeping in mind than "possibilities" are a mix between number of companions and party size, I can give you exemples of totally differents play throughts with a little bit more possibilities...
- All sorts of alignements parties and interractions between companions.
- All sorts of parties classes combinations (no heal, 4 fighters, full wizards, cleric+druids+wizards+2 tanks and 1 support, 2 tanks+2 ranged DPS+2 spellcasters... you have the idea).
- Totally differents companions side quests

If I could ask something, I'll ask at least a party size up to 6 maximum and a minimum of 10 differents more deep companions.

This is another reason why I'm not a fan of their "origin characters" concepts... It costs many ressources to add one and it miss lots of elements I care about.
Maybe in BG3 origins characters shouldn't be the only one you can pick in your team ?
It could be cool to have characters between the random useless mercenaries (useless about any story) and the origin characters that all have the same story as yours.


NB
Of course, we heard that in BG3 companions should go away if they dissagree. I really fear it's gonna be about specific situations during the main story and not about the hole journey you're living and how you act.
(i.e : you have to choose to fight with or against mindflayers, the vampire wants to embrace their power but the player want to kill them => the vampire join the mindflayers during the fights BUT if you're saving poor villagers again and again against evil creatures during side quests, he'll stay).
That brings others questions such as : ok, you lost a companions... But if there's only 2 or 3 substitutes you're choices are even more limited.
We definitely need to see more about that and about the sort of alignement they'll implement.

Thanks. I wondered if that was it. A bit weird not to allow quotes, if nothing else. I’ll leave formatting as is then. Maybe it will fix itself when I have full permissions.

And yes, I do agree about 5 companions being a bit too limited. I suspect there will be 7 or 8 on release. Of course not being able to have completely aligned parties (without mercs) might be deliberate.

Yeah, I agree with most of that Maximuus.

I think the origin character thing largely comes from how they handle multiplayer co op. So they have characters starting at the beginning in the same basic situation. Those characters are all able to take the lead in dialogue and other situations.

It would be nice if there are other companions you can meet later who are more like followers, but with actual personalities. That should allow for more proper party members without needing to allow them to do everything a main character can. Maybe.

Although I wonder if some origin characters really need to be rigidly tied to a class. Astarion’s main deal seems to be being a vampire spawn. How central to his story is being a rouge? Maybe a lot, maybe not much at all? It might be worth allowing players to respec orgin characters, with the warning that some dialogue will be a bit out of place. It could be a strongly not recommended option, but still an option if someone is set on particular party composition, but doesn’t want a bunch of nobodies.

I supect it will be 12 companions upon full release, one for each class.

Hope you're right, this would be very good.

I think I have read somewhere it would be more like around 15 companions, one of them functioning as a pair of individuals.

My comments from topics that were respectively warned and locked for discussing this, in case anyone wanted to reply:

Topic: BG3 Vs DOS3 ''The Truth'



Topic: RPS Baldur’s Gate3 interview



Vometia: Can we start a new topic for the interview? There was some quite interesting stuff in there. Although I didn’t help with the derailment, I admit.

Well first of all, interacting with the environment is happening quite a bit outside of combat as well and not all inside of combat. And outside of combat it is happening in RT. So it depends.

Within combat the issue for me, as I said on many occasions now even though a certain few people (not you) keep trying to misrepresent my views, is that combat is tediously slow and there is no flow to the combat. And even if TB fans here refuse to admit to it, at least Larian is obviously in agreement that this is a very real problem because their own lead developer spent a lot of time in that RPS interview talking about them trying to find ways to speed up the combat (including tweaking their combat animations) and maintain some semblance of flow. Nevertheless, I have to question whether any of these efforts make any meaningful difference. Combat remains start-stop-start-stop and there's no way around that.

So I have given up on the idea that combat can be made better (i.e. faster and less tedious) within a TB system. Instead, my focus now is looking at what options may exist for (a) getting through combat easily (ex. lowering the difficulty to story mode just for the combats), or (b) avoiding combat altogether (using stealth or dialog checks or whatever).

No matter what you personal feelings toward TB system are, statement that turn-based games don't have a flow is a riddiculus one. You might not like how it plays, or how "gamey" it is for units to move one after another, but it has flow - decisions are made, player imputs appear on screen and enemies react - all those create "the flow", and it needs to be done right for the game to be enjoyable to interact with. It's a different flow then action game, real-time game, or RTwP game, but it has it's own flow. There very point the developer was making that flow of a PnP game doesn't always translate to cRPG and so they changed it. Changes aren't made to make up for making the game TB. Devs are critically looking at systems they import if the need be they tweak them so the game plays as good as it can in a computer setting.

I think it is pretty obvious what he meant by lack of flow. And yes, it is "gamey" and unreal having no simultaneous actions or movements, regardless if it is based on D&D 5 edition or not. That is what Bioware figured out and Larian did not.

Nah, this is what is ridiculous. You're just redefining the meaning of the word flow to satisfy your views.

You aren't very persuasive, so aside from my own understanding of English, I am going to take the word of the professional game designer who does this for a living over you, but if this is the hill you want to die on, it is all yours.

I think he has a point.
TB is one of my favorite genre but I never played any where we can represent "flow" saying : "decisions are made, player imputs appear on screen and enemies react" (quote from Wormerine).

The only reaction are eventually opportunities attacks... but it only happen in specific situation.
As I said in the locked topic, I really hope the example you gave is something that's gonna be true and we'll be able to act during ennemies turn (considering what the rules allow) but that's not what TB is...

The only "flow" you can have in TB comes from illusions (i.e like cosmetic animations), lack of possibilities (so you don't need many times to choose what to do), and very limited ennemies (so their turn is short enough).
Larian tried the "team turn base" and now the "back-to-back allies on the initiative bar turn base"... But that still doesn't change that no one is reacting if it's not its turn.

A frozen screen in which no one is reacting is not what I call fluent... But maybe fluent and flow are different things.

I really think there's something between TB and RT that is different than RTWP... I think it's something Larian should have think about. The 6 seconds can give us clues.

that’s funny, because I see you twisting interview to satisfy your views. No point discussing further then.

My bad. By enemies react I meant enemy turn. Turn based games have rhythm, and if it rhythm is disrupted the flow of the gameplay is disrupted (like player making decision about reaction on enemy turn).

Yes this is what I was getting at. I like your description of 'flow' in TB combat as an illusion. That's exactly what it is. That's also why I don't see the value or point of animations in TB combat. Comes across as artificial and fake to me. What's the point of showing me an animation of me hitting an enemy where that enemy is a frozen statue?

Yghhh... I'll bite. Visual flurish in many games is just an "illusion". Graphics are nothing more then representation of mechanics. Devs generally don't prototype animations - they prototype mechanics - graphics are then added to either visually communicate what is happening mechanic-wise. That why games like rogue and likes worked just fine - games like that don't NEED graphics to work mechanically. But graphics make games more approachable and enjoyable to play. You don't need nice figurines and well produced pieces in a board game - but it helps in comfort of play, and understanding and remembering mechanics.

If the game is designed from ground up to be a computer game, that's true that they can use visual flurishes (such as attack animations) as mechanics. But BG3 is based on a system that couldn't be designed with that in mind - animations would have little meaning in BG3 whenever it would be semi-RTwP (afterall, BG1&2 aren't real time - they are simultaneous turns, something which confused me a lot back in the day) or turn based. I expressed somewhere else on this forum controversial opinion that I would wecome top-down RPG that wouldn't be based on dice rolls and other PnP style mechanics. I think one of the reason I like PoE series so well, that at least in some ways they make the systems more native to computers (like using real time recovery, rather then attacks per turn).

And yes, Turn-Based system does bring the mechanics to the main focus, and tends to dispell the "illusion" or "immersion" other computer games might cultivate. But one might appreciate that it doesn't muddy the mechanics up - afterall, in the end in IE games or Pathfinder the combat happens in the small box in the corner, not on the "illusion" bit of the screen.

Yes I am ok with everything you say here in general. All graphics in videogames are one form of illusion or another. But at least in a RT(wP) game, that illusion holds, and immersion is maintained, at least for me, whereas in TB combat, it automatically gets destroyed the moment the game automatically freezes everything on my screen.

As to your controversial opinion, I myself have said in several threads here how much I dislike dice/luck-centered RPG mechanics and as such that I have slowly over the years becomes disillusioned with D&D mechanics. I also much prefer a game where luck is not central and how the player chooses to build their character (and also companion characters) and the choices they make in-game should be the driver of mechanics.

In reality, we are often in agreement. So it puzzles me why you so often choose to post negatively towards me.

Indeed. I suppose I perceived some of your recent comments as overly dismissive of mechanics or gamestyles you personally don't enjoy of. One can agree and disagree at the same time.

D&D is a turn based table top game - that is what Larian are trying bring to the table in this game. Appears they are also trying to streamline the animations etc to speed things up a bit too. RTWP would ruin this game for me ( not others...)- D&D is not meant to be rushed, rather savored & with every updated video it just makes me more hungry to see how the game is developing & implementing new D&D systems etc

I think as a finished product this game will be a beauty to behold, personally I want to enjoy the ride rather than being the first to finish.