Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Is this really the consensus?

I've seen this argument before and it strikes me as semantics. Just using the Baldur's Gate title regardless of if it's a true sequel or not is going to bring hardcore fans to the series, just like the Devil May Cry reboot brought old fans to the series.


Below average, sure (and even then that's by European standards, Asian standards skew a bit shorter iirc), but I still wouldn't call it short. Your second point is well-taken, however, lol.

You have to remember that the impressions and feedback on these forums are just the tiniest snapshot of the overall picture. This is just a tiny vocal minority and a grand majority of any game's fanbase won't be found toiling about on its forums, as indicated by the general inactivity from all but a handful of dedicated people. Whatever enthusiasm or hate you see for the game here are extremes that barely show up as a blip on the radar when taking all of the overall player impressions into account.

The game doesn't particularly feel like a Baldur's Gate game, but it doesn't feel like another entry in the Divinity world either. It's this weird homebrew amalgamation that tries to do too much, does none of it particularly well, but also doesn't exactly fail miserably either. After spending some time with the game, I regret buying into EA, and I wish that I could get a refund for it. I'd rather play something that's more purely D&D, or something that's more purely Divinity, and this game hasn't scratched either of those itches for me.

A refund is unfortunately impossible at this point since I doubt that anyone would go out of the way and make an exception to grant one with the amount of time I've invested into it, so I'll just take this as money lost and a lesson learned to avoid the early access process entirely like I had been for years up until this point. I'll keep an eye out on Larian products that are specific to the world of Rivellon and disregard everything else that gets shoved out the door.

On toxicity: I frequent these boards, Steam and Reddit. Steam is, imo, the most "toxic" of the group beyond doubt. While there is some back and forth here, it really isn't anything like the trolls over on Steam.

If their intention was to do a DOS3 with FR skin they would be better accepted with a brand new IP.

In the end would have sold similar to BG3.

With how little map there is, it cant feel like a BG game, yet. BG is all about choices, big world, many characters, many quests. EA will never feel like that as it's not the finished game.
If all the maps have as much diversity in zones and NPCs and things to do as the EA then, the game will definitely BG. I also have a feeling the illusion in our heads will turn out to be a god trying to come back to life in someway, which will tie the plot into BG too.

that's the weird part, they had enough success with DOS2 that they could have just made a DOS3 and it would have sold very well. Now there's this weird sort of disconnect between the D&D, BG and DOS fans.

The only thing that feels similar to DoS2 to me is the origin system, which they probably kept because multiplayer is a big part of Larian’s appeal (and likely one of the major reasons they were picked by WotC).

It feels much more influenced by Dragon Age than DoS2 on the whole.

It’s been so long and this game is so different, they could have simply called it “Baldur’s Gate”. There has been a trend of restarting franchises with as simple a name as possible. God of War, Doom, Tomb Raider etc. Given that you can’t carry anything over from BG2 and it’s set so much later, calling it 3 seems a bit manipulative.

I suppose. Reboot titles often fee manipulative too, though. I’ve seen complaints from fans of the Metroid series disliking Federation Force because it’s a spinoff with little connection to the main series. There comes a point where you can’t win, where it’s just a matter of splitting hairs.

It takes place in and around Baldur’s Gate. It parallels the original themes of the game. It’s set in the forgotten realms. It wants to translate dnd rules into a video game format. It has multiple characters and callbacks to the original games. Not every sequel needs to be a direct continuation of the previous entry. I’m fine with them calling it Baldur’s Gate 3, just like I was fine with Dragon Age 2 as a name despite shifting away from a number of systems implemented in Origins.

Well let’s be honest and realistic......

They chose to make a sequel to one of the most beloved rpg game in history.
They realy cashed in on the name by selling incredible amount with only a alpha early access version.

However they didn’t make a game new from scratch but instead used not only the engine but also tons of mechanics and gameplay from a totally different game than the baldurs gate Games.

Is it so surprising that pisses off a lot of fans? Was that a miracle that couldn’t be foreseen?

Theory 1:

They knew this will happen but ignored it because the financial success of using baldurs gate name is simply overwhelming and outweighs negative criticism. And by choosing divinity as a core to start from they also have a lot of divinity fans on board.
From a commercial viewpoint I can respect that decision.

Theory 2:

They realy wanted to make a baldurs gate 3 game but have no idea of DnD or what made it so enjoyable. So they got some guys from wotc as advisors (probably those who almost killed DnD when they came up with 4th edition) and then try to implement things that have proven funny with their other games.

I think they wanted to please every public.
For the moment, it should not be a bad game, but it is not really BG and not really D&D.
I really hope, that they have some Solasta players working at Larian, because they would know that, yes, it is possible to be really closer to D&D, and yes, that it is good and fun.
I really hope also, that we will see more changes going in the right direction with Patch 4.

I did wonder this myself. The thing is that it is almost impossible to be all things to all people, it’s simply too ambitious.

I also hope to see some more changes given that there is plenty of time left in development but at times the radio silence from Larian is a little deafening. We don’t really have any idea of which feedback they are considering.

My deepest concern regarding their lack of feedback is that the decision to make a 5e DOS homebrew was deliberate and what they were going for since the beginning. It bothers me though that WotC would probably ask for them to stick with the core rules.

the only people that want this to be closer to 5e are people that havent played 5e

No.

BS

I want this to be closer because I've played a lot of cRPGs and 5e.

We're mostly all open to quality changes from 5e. But if I see something that isn't a quality change, I'm going to write about it.

Take 'dip' for example. Very few people are complaining about it because Wizard normally scales better than fighter, ranger, and rogue into the late-game. Dip only seems ridiculous because we're playing at level 1-4, so we're mostly being open-minded about dip.

• If dip become a feat would players take it over +2 to strength or dexterity?
• Larian has implemented changes to make life better for fighter, ranger, and rogue. Some of these changes most of us don't like because they are over-tuned. Some of them we are unsure about because we're all focused on spell scrolls, shove, higher ground, etc. at the moment.

Now onto higher ground, a lot of players agree that the advantage/disadvantage change should go.

Too many fights become a race for the high ground. We all expected to play turn-based combat, not spend the first few turns moving your character to higher ground. (Or reload to start more of your party at higher ground so you can actually start with some turn-based combat). Even if this game wasn't based off of 5e, I would be annoyed with higher ground advantage/disadvantage.

Combat in 5e is just more fun by not giving advantage/disadvantage everywhere and letting you have a party of five to six. For those of us who have played 5e, we all understand that there are other ways to buff a party of four besides making advantage available almost everywhere.

A few things IMO on high-ground advantage,

I would be fine with adjusting advantage/disadvantage so long as they re-balance it, nothing is more tilting then not being able to hit the broadside of a barn just because you are on the same elevation as the opponent. I think High-ground should give some kind of advantage but the sheer difference between not having it and having it is the difference between being able to hit your target 8/10 times or 2/10 times and that makes it overly essential to game-play in the current build.

This especially sucks for surprise encounters because it either A. makes you use a spell slot to misty step to high ground right off the bat or B. since you know it's coming because you did it before re-arrange your party to where all range characters are already sitting on the high-ground to ambush the ambush.

We have to remember that the people that are still posting on these forums - months into an EA (which hasn't had a major gameplay update yet), are a very self-selected minority. Most people played the EA, posted their feedback, and moved on.

I've generally observed 3 camps here in terms of opinion - people who want BG3 to be more like DOS, more like 5e RAW, or more like BG1/2 - and on any given day or thread, any of these groups could be the most focal.

Compared to the Steam forums, I can't say that this place is toxic. There is a small, vocal minority who are very emotionally invested in what they want BG3 fundamentally to be. Given that, sometimes discussions have devolved into emotional venting instead of actual feedback and game discussion.

I feel like I missed a post somewhere that caused this post to shift toward feedback of specific game elements as opposed to the intended discussion about the ethos that Larian is using to drive their vision for the game.