Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Baldur's Gate 3 - NEW TRAILER - GAME AWARDS!

I adjusted my expectations for BG3 downward quite some time ago. Ironically, this allowed me to be at least a little bit excited by patch 9. I am happy that they finally added proper reactions, and the prospect of level 5 was enough to get me to reinstall. So far so good.

I'd still love to see a day night schedule, even if its something you select from a map similar to Dragon Age 2.

My expectation now is that I will enjoy playing the full release, but I doubt that this is a game that we will be discussing 20 years from now, the way we discuss its predecessor. Such is the way of things. If it was easy to make a classic people would do it much more often.

More regular <content> such as classes and levels is great. We got more of the base game.
Fixing bugs is great. It is standard practice to do that.


For me the meat of the Patch are reactions. Fantastic.
And...... Any other major gameplay/system/UI/graphics changes to talk about? In that sense this patch seems lack-buster.

Let me rephrase that. If it weren't for REACTIONS what else did we get apart from regular added content? Everyone just talks about reactions, news classes new level and new companion. Thats 90% base game stuff.
Camping/rest changes? Items overhaul? Graphics/lighting changes? UI changes? D&D gameplay updates? Dialogue stuff? Environment, weather, atmosphere stuff? etc....
I am just too lazy to read through patch notes and play from scratch again. Would love a short list of the new features.

I would say it is somewhat contrary to that. I did very much like D:OS2, but the things I find most unsettling about Baldur's Gate 3 is that plot/story wise they are too similar to D:OS2. As well as some of the general clunky stuff included in D:OS2 transferring over.

But I would say - Larian makes Larian games. Like Bethesda makes Bethesda games. Like CD Projekt Red makes CD Projekt Red type games. Like FromSoft makes FromSoft games.

I enjoy Larian games - so I suspect I will enjoy Baldur's Gate 3.
I mostly like Bethesda games - so I suspect I will like Starfield.
I adore CD Projekt Red games - so I imagine I am going to like CP2077: Phantom Liberty.
I hate Souls games - so it didn't shock me I hated Elden Ring, won't like the next Death Stranding, won't like Armored Core and won't like whatever is next in the Souls genre.

Which is to say... I think that if you disliked D:OS2, you probably aren't going to like BG3. Game studios tend to have formulas that they follow.

The nightmare is when a studio you don't like takes over a franchise you love.

If Bethesda were following their formulas, they'd still be making Daggerfall (an open world sandbox full of procedurally generated content -- and a fairly complex character system to boot). Quite clearly, they've stopped making that kind of game ages ago, which started some with Morrowind already.

If CD Projekt were following a formula, they'd demand you to think a little every once in a while like in Witcher 1, rather than having you blindly follow bread crumbs /witcher senses and push a few buttons in combat in between.

If Bioware had followed a formula, they'd still be trying to emulate a tabletop feel as in BG, as opposed to a Hollywood action movie ever since Mass Effect-ish.

On that note: aside of the combat, I didn't much like DOS (in particular after the first area, which clearly was by far the most polished -- the second already had lots of trash encounters against hordes of orcs, despite the game being TB). BG3 EA may be clearly game by the same developer. BUt there are noticeably differences that I like and make the game feel very different to me. The top ones:

- The map isn't pretending to be this huge open sprawling RPG experience, when it is in fact a fairly thinly veiled linear combat parcours. https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd....6DD195AD430C7FE5EC87F8AE67A996550F93337/ Had they scrapped the "open map" design for DOS and simply designed a string of fun an diverse combat sequences, it wouldn't have made that huge of a difference
- There aren't enemies gatekeeping every path you can take in BG3 either, blocking every destination with inevitable combat (as far back as two years ago, even some NPCs that were hostile otherwise weren't, solely depending on the race I played).
- Gear doesn't have levels, which naturally is D&D. This is a big part of why every map in DOS is one large combat puzzle -- D&D doesn't have level 3 swords that basically do double the amount of damage than a level 1 sword, both on enemies and own party
- As such, gear also doesn't become obsolete five minutes after you have picked it up. And needs to be dropped/sold and looted over and over -- with inventory management in DOS being the WORST I've seen in any RPG I've played since the mid 1990s. This may be the result of the game having Co-Op in mind. But still, BG1 is the pinnacle in usability compared to this. Inventory Management in DOS is a game within a game on its own.


There's even stuff that I'm confident will be more intriguing than any Infinity Engine game: Which is environmental reactivity and systems driven gameplay. I love the Infinity Engine. However, it was fairly static when compared to Ultima 7 even back then already. The IE was created with the idea of having gorgeous backdrops in mind (which is actually one of the reasons Interplay signed Bioware), however, they're not much there for the touching. Larian maybe aren't Arkane, but this kind of stuff was fun two years ago already -- even if the actually scripted part, the ZOMG CINEMATIC CUTSCENE, naturally couldn't react properly. CINEMATIC CUTSCENES FOR EVERYTHING ARE SO 1990s EITHER WAY. https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=88275&Number=680547#Post680547


Is BG3 going to be the game that will blow my RPG-loving mind? We'll see. I'm actually hoping for a few surprises next year, too, such as Broken Roads -- with Colin McComb attached and some fairly novel ideas.

I'm not at all convinced studios have some "formula" that they keep repeating for years and years across different game IPs. Obsidian is a great example of a studio creating a very diverse range of games that don't have any formulaic carryover from one IP to another. And I'd say the same is true of Bethesda, Bioware, and CDPR (love the Witcher games but don't care for CP2077). Being a one-trick pony is a distinctly Larian thing. Most RPG studios have different development teams working on different IPs. Larian has just one development team that works on all their games. I'm sure they see that as a strength. I feel very strongly that is a huge weakness in Larian as an RPG studio.

I wouldn't blame Larian to not want to deviate from their most successful formula, especially is the said formula allowed them to turn a niche genre into the most popular, critically acclaimed and profitable game of its category in at least the past 10 years.

What? cRPGs as a whole are still niche. Unless this is just awkward wording, because yes, DOS2 is the best selling cRPG in the past 10 years. DOS2's reach is still a drop in the bucket compared to many turn-based JRPGs also released over the past decade though.

Yes, I never pretended DoS2 is in competition with other RPG genres. I just said that it is arguably the only mainstream CRPG of this decade.

But again also entirely dependant on your definition of cRPG and which games fall into that definition.

Skyrim was released in 2011, which makes it the same decade as DOS2 (2017). Any definition of cRPG that doesn't include Skyrim is just cherry picking to make a point.

Note that I am not claiming anything about the relative merits of Skyrim vs DOS2, just arguing that you cannot call DOS2 the only mainstream CRPG of its decade when Skryim exists.

It's certainly the most successful title that eventually came off of the Kickstarter/indie revival starting in about 2012ish, ture. Which is kind of ironic in a sense, as it's all come full cirlce with BG3. This game, as it currently is, wouldn't exist were it not for that revival.

At least not this way (I really don't think that modern-day Bioware are really much interested in either re-visting Baldur's Gate -- nor isometric/top down, tactical combat RPGs based on D&D. Even if you count Dragon Age:Origins into that same fold -- by the time the second game was a thing, a few people such as Brent KNowles already left for reason.) http://blog.brentknowles.com/2011/03/09/dragon-age-2-2/)

Fine, what about the pedantic definition of : RPG with top down perspective that you usually play with a mouse? Actually that would contains Diablo 3 (a hack&slash) and Lost Ark (a MMO) whose are probably more popular and have real time combat, but I am not here to fight a linguistic battle.

Oh boy, this conversation again!

Skyrim is not a cRPG. It's an (open-world) action-rpg. The "c" in cRPG originally meant Computer, but that does not mean any RPG that is played on a computer is a cRPG. The term cRPG was originally meant to distinguish between tabletop RPGs (like D&D) and video game (computer) RPGs. Things like Baldur's Gate 1&2.

Nowadays, the "c" is commonly associated with the word "Classical" - e.g., BG1&2, Ultima series, etc. However, this by definition would exclude DOSII, so there's some leeway between the "classical" definition of cRPG and the modern version. Classical + classical-inspired RPGs, perhaps.

If BG1&2 and Skyrim are categorized in the same genre, then the category is basically meaningless.

Edit: Upon additional reflection, the key characteristics of a cRPG imo are: isometric, can walk around in world, menu (vs skill)-based actions, is a rpg, is *not* a jrpg. Skyrim fails as it has skill-based actions (e.g., combat: you can manually attack and dodge enemy attacks) and is not isometric.

That's a definition.

I'm not convinced that it has universal penetration though. In casual use most people are not going to bat an eyelash if Skryim is called a cRPG.

Fair. Especially my last lines are a very personal (and quickly-created) definition.

I feel that calling Skyrim a cRPG makes the category of cRPG too broad, no longer describing unique gameplay and game design aspects. Undertale, Pokemon, DOSII, BG1&2, Disco Elysium, Outer Worlds, Fallout, Skyrim, World of Warcraft, Diablo, and Final Fantasy are all rpgs. But I wouldn't necessarily recommend Undertale to someone who loved Outer Worlds, or BG1&2 to someone who loved Skyrim. For me, Skyrim's gameplay is just too different from that of DOSII and/or BG to fall under the same sub-genre.

So I suppose the question is: If you knew a "casual" person who loved Skyrim but didn't like most other types of video games, which of the following would you recommend? BG1&2, DOSII, Fallout, and/or Outer Worlds?

That would depend entirely on the person. However, I don't actually know anybody who is both "casual" and "likes Skyrim" so it is difficult to asses.

In any case, this is quite a derail of the thread. I'm not particularly invested in the question of whether Skyrim is a cRPG, so I am willing to backpedal on that.

Full disclosure, I asked some IRL friends about the "Skyrim as cRPG" thing, and they said I was nuts. Ironically they used a completely different argument than you (which was that a cRPG requires tactical elements). None of them are "casuals" though. They also derided the idea that DOS2 was the only mainstream cRPG of the decade, mostly because they didn't think it was "mainstream" (these are people that liked DOS2).

In any case, my original objection was to the idea that "DOS2 was the only mainstream cRPG of the decade." I think there are better arguments to be made against that claim that don't involve classifying Skrym. Specifically, that there were other games that definitely qualify as cRPG that sold in the same ballpark as DOS2.

Pillars of Eternity 1 and Pathfinder: Kingmaker were both in the same order of magnitude as DOS2 saleswise. Its not clear to me how you define mainstream if NOT by sales?

According to SteamDB, DoS2 has sold about 5 times more copies than Kingmaker, and about 4 times more than PoE1. This isn't even accounting for releases on consoles ans iOS.
DoS2 has like 20 videos with 1 millions+ view on Youtube, PoE1 has about 2 and Kingmaker only has its trailer reaching this milestone.

Also, I am not familiar with PoE but PF is a system made specifically to be as exhaustive and faithful as possible, while DoS2 has a way simpler system that is more appealing to casual gamers.

I can objectively say than yes, DoS2 can be considered mainstream as opposed to comparable games in the past decade.

I'm willing to concede that it is "more mainstream" than those based on sales. I am not willing to concede that it is the "only" mainstream cRPG based on those numbers though.

If you change your position to "most popular cRPG" of the decade then I will agree with that.

Fair, let's settle on that for the health of this thread.