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

Sure let’s have a debate about the pros and contras of the new BG entry…

Though, I admit sometimes it is very hard to distinguish genuine criticism from bad faith trolling.

Like, you mentioned “very real, meaningful, and legitimate criticism” of a game we have only seen around two hours pre-alpha footage of. For me, from these two separate gameplay streams, the only thing I have taken away is Larian’s will and ability to improve their product by listening to their consumers.

I have no actual idea what the final product will look like (as it is not even EA yet), or about the writing and the story (which is the major focus for me). About the Origins PCs revealed, we only have suggestions, sneak peaks of dialogue so again sounding the death squad on their character writing seems a bit hasty for me (something I have seen both here and on reddit).

For full disclosure, I am a younger guy (mid-twenties) who is a huge fan of the original games. I didn’t play much the former Larian games (my issue with them was always that they weren’t DnD-esque enough). I am excited about the title and like almost everything from what we have seen (only I have a bit of a bone to pick with origin character mechanic, something I have raved about on this topic). I plan to join EA in the winter (I need to update some stuff on my pc before jumping in) and this is a first for me (this kinda shows how intrigued I am by this title).

So, I shall just address some of the criticisms of the game I have seen here so far (for fun):

- “Larian’s writing is silly and not serious enough for a Baldurs Gate game”: I mean, really? The original series is filled with silly humour and pop cultural references (In BG1, you can meet an actual gay porn star). From the very first moment, it is clear that this is going to be a darker story where it is hard to be a good guy and much more rewarding to do bad things to get ahead (the whole tadpole temptation). And, even though I really dig the whole eldritch horror vibe of the mindflayer main plot (I think Mindflayers are one of the single most unexploited gold mines of DnD lore story-wise), I hope there will be levity and silly humour also. I mean, in the original series we had Jan Jansen, Korgan, Minsc and Boo, et cetera, none of them series or sombre figures, yet they didn’t break the narrative immersion. They were harbours in the storm.
- “You guys cannot like the game, because we know so little so far, but I can already loathe it with every fibre of my being”: this is a return to my original point that we have really limited information about the game, and if these little pieces gave you a bad vibe and you want to rant about that is cool, that is the purpose of the forum. But to say, that “those f-ing Larian fanboys” cannot be excited about the title because you have a bad feeling about it, that is just childish. A lot of critiques came in with a stone-hard negative opinion: for instance, Larian is a bad faith developer (which is laughable, they are really the best when it comes to their corporate attitude) and other malicious non-sense that just doesn’t hold up to empirical reality.
- “This is a Divinity Clone”: The game is using the same engine but already developing its own unique visual identity. We have seen it from the second gameplay already. Look at the first showings of Divinity 2, it looks nothing like the finished product. I don’t even want to engage this further.
- “This cannot be a good game, it is turn-based”: let’s not even go there.

So yeah, I reckon it is hard sometimes to take these kinds of non-arguments seriously.

And for the counterpoint coming in that our hype is equally unjustified, yes it is, that is the point of hype, to be irrationally excited for something.

But this hype is the exact reason why I spend time reading and posting on this forum, to talk about something I am really excited about with people who might share my interest.