Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General A comparison of Divine Divinity and BG3

I play Divine Divinity (DD) again, just because I wanted to play something else.
For those who do not know it: DD was Larians first game and it combines Diablo like combat with a huge hand crafted map and lots of NPC and quests.
I do not talk about graphics or game mechanics because there are 20 years between those games and one game is a single char action game, the other is turn based with a party.

Things that stayed the same between BG3 and DD:
- A huge hand crafted map with lots of stuff to explore
- There are a few huge maps (so you could enter almost all buildings without loading a new map). Only dungeons and a few special indoor areas are another map.
- You can take or move almost every item in the game. There are many containers, many of them are empty or have food inside.
- Your main enemy is a sect of cultists (note: we do not know how BG3 continues and you cannot join the cultists in DD)
- Every NPC has a value how much they like you and this influences the prize of items you can buy (note: In DD you could gain reputation by finishing quests and this reputation was added to this value)
- Shops get new stuff every day but they keep the stuff you sold them forever (note: In DD I sell all weapons in the armor shop and all armors in the weapon shop just to see which items are new.)
- A rather dark setting in general but you often find some funny things. Well, if you think this is fun, silly or dump depends on your sense of humor. Some stuff is nuts.
- Inventory management is a big mess (OK, BG3 is an improvement but it is still annoying)

The differences between DD and Bg3:
- DD had a day/night cycle ( It had no effect on quests but it is nice anyway)
- DD limited resting a bit (you could not click on the bed again, but leaving town or fighting some monsters was enough to rest again. You had to find a bed or carry a bed with you in order to rest)
- DD limited eating a bit (Food could heal you, but you could not eat several pieces of meat in a row. You had to do something else before you could eat again.)
- In DD you could explore almost the whole world from the start. It was easy to run into encounters that are way too difficult. You could not see level or stats of enemies unless you spend points in such a skill.
- Fast travel: DD had teleporters, but you had to find them and you had to find items to activate them. To get the activation items you had to find a person and sometimes do a quest for her. You could also instant travel between two pyramids, but first you had to place the pyramids in those places.
- DD had exp scaling (exp gained from monsters depend on your level)
- In DD every class could learn every ability. You had 3 classes (fighter/rogue/mage, male or female) but the only difference was starting abilities and how stats scale (one point of str gives a bigger damage bonus for fighters than for mages, one point of int gave mages more MP than fighters).
- BG3 has more different ways to solve quests and you have more ways to interact with the environment.
- DD does not start on a beach after your ship crashed.


summary:
Over 20 years Larian stayed true to themselves. They tried to improve what was already good but stuff that used to be bad is still not good.
- They like huge worlds and the stuff you could do and how you could interact with the environment became more and more complex. This is good in principle, but sometimes they overdo it way too much just because they can (barrelmancy, surfaces everywhere and such stuff)
- They hate classes and they think everyone should be able to do everything, at least in principle. For BG3 this is bad because DnD is based on different classes and different classes should feel different. The fact that many homebrew changes to DnD rules are so powerfull and they work for all classes (hight advantage, backstab, everyone can sneak as long as they avoid vision cone, everyone can use every scroll, and so on) reduces the experiance, at least for players who care at least a little bit about DnD.
- A good user interface is not their strong point. The inventory and how you select abilities can be improved.
It is usable and you can play and enjoy the game, but sometimes it can be a big mess.
- I prefer the rest and fast travel system of DD. You could rest often but you had to find a place to rest and travel there. You had to walk to the "waypoints" to use them and you had to find an item to use them ( different items for different teleporters)

I think BG3 will be a great game, but some DnD fans will be disappointed by the typical "Larian cheese".
But I like the change to DnD because it limits totally random items and extreme number inflation to some degree. (not so much a problem in DD, but in DOS2 I hated it)