Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General [Synopsis] Panel From Hell VII

Hi folks, time for another Panel From Hell. This is the seventh PFH, subtitled “Holy Knight”.

This is a synopsis of the panel, as usual, and is aimed at conveying the contents of the show for those who can't or don't wish to watch it through. It will contain some of my own commentary at times, but it will always be clear which parts are my opinion and which are the information as presented.

The recent shows have, indeed gradually started to earn the name of being panel shows, and contained useful information, compared to their earlier advertising pieces, so hopefully this will be a good one.

This panel brings us the Paladin class, and it clocks in at a little over an hour and a half, with about an hour of that time being spent on gameplay footage. This is in keeping with the much shorter format and run time of the recent panels.

We open on this panel with something other than fan art this time; a few weeks ago, BG3 fans were asked to send in videos of themselves to Larian, recording their praise of the game, and we see a selection of them here as part of the Stream's opening. For a three minute video roll, we get snips of comments from the face cams of about twenty fans, though we don't get credit of any sort for who they are. This viewer wonders whether they received due compensation for footage of their likeness being used in public advertising material...

We cut to the same promotional video that we saw at the game awards as the transition to the panel proper – a little over two minutes of some gameplay footage with anew voice over talking about our unfortunate brain parasite situation, and a flash reveal of Minsc at the end.

The panel now opens on a very festive scene – the feast table has been given a lower, more reserved placement in the shot, so that we can more clearly see the ring of chairs; hopefully panel members to talk to us soon. For now, we begin with Swen in his armour, and Nick, their lead systems designer, in his druidic dress and today, knitting.

We immediately repeat the same joke we've used in three or four past panels now, shouting across set for another speaker who is 'late'. The joke is getting pretty tired, especially when it wasn't really amusing in any way the first three or four times.

The pair are not introduced clearly, so I couldn't get their names accurately, but Swen calls them in from cooking and the proceed to have a conversation for about a minute about making poutine, because the chef just came back from Quebec. Scintillating. They also chat for a little while about what they each enjoyed about the recent game awards.

The conversation does branch into a more relevant discussion about some of their experiences developing the game over the past five years, now that they have locked in a final release date. Some of the things they touch on as challenges were working out their direction and what they wanted the game to be (this viewer can only agree that they clearly struggled, and continue to struggle with this), and the difficulty of building a world and map that can be handled in various view perspectives and controlled and played in those different perspectives (again, this viewer can only humbly agree that they're still struggling with and largely failing to deliver on this goal...).

For positive notes, they enthuse about the focus they've put on cinematics, and how amazing they feel the character creator is (This viewer feels they should really get out and look at the character creators for some other games, because BG3's character creator is hot garbage, frankly, and she's really tired of people trying to sing its praises when it's as stunted, restricted and poorly made as it is). They do note, however, that the character creator is getting more expansion this patch, which is good to hear. They mostly mention more things to do with faces, so it doesn't sound like they're actually adding anything more to the creator's capabilities, and they didn't mention the abominable Character creation UI as getting any improvements here... so it sounds like this means you'll just have a dozen more faces or hairs to click through one at a time with no means of direct comparison or jumping back and forth to ones you're considering, etc. I do hope I'm wrong.

At this point, we cut to an interview with Geoff Keighley, a video game journalist and regular host of various game award shows, including the one just past. This interview lasts for about ten minutes. They discuss the trailer a little, and amongst some discussion of established lore they drop some interesting tidbits that apply directly to BG3 itself. We learn that Jaheira will be either a recruitable companion, or potentiality an opponent, based on player choice; the same was confirmed for Minsc, and Swen suggests that they've been given large-ish roles in the game. For those interested we also get some information on the voice talent portraying this iconic figures: a notably older Jaheira will be voiced by Tracy Wiles in BG3, rather than her original VA, but Swen claims they still haven't settled on a final VA for Minsc. He jokingly puts Geoff on the spot to do a live voice audition for him; Geoff looks a bit uncomfortable, but they get through it.

They confirm that the new trailer was the more or less finished in game render for Baldur's Gate, though not the whole city obviously, before talking a little about the collector's edition and making their up-sell on that for a couple of minutes.

Moving on, Geoff asks about updates, and Swen confirms that this patch – patch 9 – will be the last 'major' update to the game before release, which means an eight month spell now awaits eager EA testers. This is probably to be expected, however, considering that they've previously mentioned being more or less feature complete, and it sounds as though tester's opportunity for giving meaningful feedback that may impact anything is more or less wound down at this point.

Swen does confirm a few more things that will be in this patch though. Of note he mentions that we'll be getting level five spells... which, of course, is not what he actually means, when saying this... he presumably means we'll be getting 3rd level spells, due to them giving us the increase to level five for our characters. This viewer realises she has a lot of work ahead of her to update the spell focus thread in the coming days....

Swen also mentions Counterpsell specifically, which suggests that we'll finally see what Larian are doing about reactions, after promising to work on it for all this time. I am filled with interest and cynical dread in equal measure.

Everyone talking about how much they love fireball. Hmph. No love for lightning bolt. My storm sorceress sulks at the obvious favouritism in media. We end the interview with a burning-everyone-alive-with fireball skit. My storm sorceress is still sulking. They use the transition for a short break and set changing, presumably.

We return after a few minutes to the burned skeleton of Geoff and the ashy remains of one of our other panel members, while Swen feigns talking to his insurance company. Fortunately, the murdered guests are replaced by our other erstwhile chef – Swen rips on him and blames him for the death of the other crew members due to him being late. The Swen persona is still on usual form, it seems.

We use this transition to take a look at some of the people they've interviewed as potential VAs for Minsc. This is not actually a serious audition reel and is played for laughs, with the various talent pitching humorous inappropriate extremes. The joke ends up with Swen telling his colleague that he needs to try harder and commenting on his racking up of expenses doing the scouting.

They move on to talking about what's coming with level 5 in the patch. In particular, they talk about what they've decided to do with Reactions. The initially optimistic news is that they are letting players choose in their own settings whether or not they'd like the game to pause and prompt them for reactions when appropriate, giving us true control over whether or not, and in which situations we use our reactions at various times. If this works as suggested, it will be a truly excellent improvement and long awaited.

They tout over 30 new spells going in with the patch. This is an interesting figure, considering that there are ~75 3rd level spells in 5e (50 of which are PHB core), and Larian are likely not adding in only 3rd levels – spells such as Shield, at 1st level, are likely to be showing up here as well, and counting towards that ~30 number.

Before they can talk about many of the other spells they're enthusiastic about, our mandated Santa skit begins at this point. They talk about making sure that naughty people don't get presents... odd angle to pitch the skit from... but we continue talking about some of the spells... including, apparently a massively overpowered homebrew buff to animate dead... that causes zombies you raise to be able to turn other humanoids into zombies as well, exponentially... despite the fact that that's not how undead work in the Realms... but oh well, I guess we don't care about that?

Meanwhile, Santa grows tired of the honestly-not-a-vampire next to him trying to sneak peeks at his naughty list, and after a brief scuffle mid-set, murders him with a divine smite. Or not, as it turns out; killing would be a violation of his santa-paladin oath.

I want to play a santa paladin now.

Ahem.

Santa has brought the fans of BG3 the gift of the Paladin Class for Patch 9, and mentions specifically the Oath of Devotion, one of the three PHB original oaths. Nick also follows up confirming Oath of Ancients as the second oath available in the patch, and it sounds like it's just these two that we'll be getting for now.

That more or less wraps up the information shared in the panel section of the show – about half an hour of actual panel content. The team take an extra couple of minutes to advertise and spruke their collector's edition bundle again – still no word on whether EA testers will be able to upgrade to this without spending the full price over again. This viewer has already purchased the game in full once, and as interested as she might be in cool collector's stuff, she isn't going to buy the game a second time for it – so if there's no upgrade option, she won't be buying it.

Swen is gifted with an old school VHS tape and a player for it, as they set up for the final cheeky reveal of the panel... It turns out that they have, in fact, settled on their VA for Minsc after all. Not his original VA, but one that I'm sure most folks will be quite content with all the same. Matt Mercer is an excellent VA, and the sneak peek we got felt extremely satisfying on the ears, to me at least. The more cynical part of me looks at this move as a marketing choice for the sheer amount of extra fan pull it's likely to cause, by the fact that they're doing a specific and pointed reveal about it... Many other games have Mercer VAing various roles, and they don't feel the need to pointed exposés about it... this is another effort to leverage someone else's name and fame in their favour, which has been Larian's MO all the way through this process. That said... I absolutely don't want to detract from the fact that all other things aside Mercer is a phenomenal voice actor, and even if other sources of notoriety have overtaken it, being a video game VA is still his primary career, and he's an excellent choice, even without the attached fandom.

Swen wraps up the panel section of the show by reiterating the release date, and confirming that this will be the last patch before release, excepting hotfixes and minor technical patches as they may prove necessary, and we get to see a video compilation from the game writers, talking about developing the story of the game, and its focus on themes of personal autonomy, power and trust. It runs for about four minutes while they change set again.

With that, we move into the gameplay section of the show, which fills up the remaining hour of stream time.

Aside from learning that Swen wanted to kill Scratch the dog on his first exposition of the game, and was told no by marketing, we see a number of interesting things as they showcase level 5, and the paladin class. Here's what I saw:

We have a new visual for level up; it's a little glowy arrow now instead of a cross.

The tooltips for many of the new spells are still lacking and poorly written.
In particular, we see the paladin spell smites on display:
- Branding Smite is written in such a way that players would be forgiven for thinking that it adds damage to every hit you make while concentrating.
- Thunderous Smite is written in such a way that it appears to indicate that the pushing element of the smite – which has been increased in distance – happens regardless of whether the target succeeds or fails their save against the effect, and that the save only prevents them being knocked prone. It also does not note itself as being concentration, and implies it is not.
- Wrathful smite is written to suggest that its effect has a fixed, short duration of several turns, rather than requiring the target's action to save out of each turn.
- ALL of the spell smites are written to suggest that they are actually self-contained melee weapon attacks that you make as a bonus action.

- Magic weapon is written in a way that reads as though it grants a +1 bonus to whatever weapon it is cast on, rather than requiring that it be cast on a non-magical weapon.
- Compelled Duel is written as though it is a full forced attack, and that it actually causes the target to be forced to attack you. We see in demonstration that it doesn't, and works seemingly as one would expect it to as by the handbook.

We see that Paladin's Channel Divinity is being called Channel Oath now.

Nature's wrath, an Oath of Ancients' Channel Divinity option looks to be implemented more or less correctly, though it's a strength save, rather than giving the target their best choice of Strength or Dexterity.

We also see that Divine Smite is an independent button action that reds as a melee attack that takes your action and consumes a spell slot. This would be the worst possible implementation, however we do later see that that is not the only way to access your divine smite, and that it being marked this way is actually very misleading.

We see that Divine Sense has become a 'take advantage' for two turns, on short rest, rather than its normal detection and tracking functions. Again with the free and easy advantage had outs – this viewer is not pleased.

We see that Lay on hands has been divided into charges, rather than a pool, and the amount of healing available has been doubled from the handbook, to 10hp value per paladin level, as opposed to 5hp. In normal 5e, at level 5 we should have 25 points to spend – or five 'charges' of 5 points, if you wish to put it in Larian parallel, and we can use 5 points/1 charge of that to remove a poison or a disease instead. This can be done in any amount with a single action, normally.

What we see here is that at level 4 we have 4 charges; 1 charge can be used to heal 10hp, 2 charges for 20hp, and 2 charges for 'all poisons and diseases'. These are each separate buttons in the Lay on Hands sub window (all with very similar icons). This also implies, unless we're going to be heavily restricted in flexibility, that by level 15, we're going to have ~17 buttons with near identical heal icons on this bar... However Since the healing options presented are named 'lesser healing' and 'greater healing', this sorely implies that these aren't going to expand further, and that a 20hp shot in the arm is all you're every going to be able to give out in one action, which would, if true, be devastating and would gut the ability of a lot of its flexibility and power.

We see that Turn the Faithless is down to 3 rounds, from 1 minute, and it seems to have lost the aspect that reveals illusions and shapeshifters.

They demonstrate Animate Dead, and we see the zombie's 'crawling gnaw' trait, which is the zombie infection – there appeared to be no save for this, other than the hit. We see, also that it appears to affect ANY living creature, regardless of type or size, and results in a regular humanoid zombie. In hilarious bad management and production, Swen and crew decided that the best way to show this off was to use it on the owlbear... creating the asinine juxtaposition of the owlbear dying and raising as a humanoid zombie, and playing the cutscene where the cub eats the very-much-still-an-owlbear and very-much-still-dead corpse. They laugh at the absolute non-sequitur of this. So funny. So convincing. Great advertising.

We get to see the reaction prompt, though this looks like it could get very cluttered as the game progresses. We can have things active or inactive, and checked whether the game should prompt to ask you or not. Right now it looks like you can have lots of things active that conflict, and without having ask checked, it would be interesting to see how the game handles that; the UI does not make this clear. What happens if you have both your level 1 divine smite and your level 2 divine smite and your level 3 divine smite all checked as auto-always and don't ask? You seem to be able to do this, with no hint about how it resolves.

As I was concerned about with the earlier tooltip, we apparently see Swen 'use' branding smite as an attack action that consumes our bonus action and our action – they both go red. However, all of our smites, including our bonus action spell smites, light up as still available at this point. Swen shows us using his second attack for Paladin's extra attack, by clicking divine smite from his bar, and attacking again. The UI is quite unclear about this element as it stands, but it is good to see that extra attack is working at least, and not precluded by using a variant attack ability. The lighting up of the various bonus action smite spells in this circumstance is concerning though.

During this section we also see the zombies take continual damage, though the source or reason for this is unclear in the video.

Swen mentions that party control and talking rights for player characters and companions is getting further refined, but it was a short line that didn't tell us much more than that.

They talk about Paladin Oaths and the concept of breaking them... then they show off the fact that in bizarro-larian-verse, telling a lie on a single occasion somehow constitutes enough of a divine violation to create dire repercussions... even if your oath had nothing whatsoever to do with telling the truth, or not deceiving people. That's some pretty ripe bullshit right there, Larian. They mention that Oathbreaker is a 'hidden' paladin oath... but it truly doesn't seem very 'hidden' if you get plunged into dramatic epic visitations from hell knights with smoking red eyes because you fibbed about something that one time.

The irony here was that the choice we were put in, that led to the 'broken oath' was “kill some people, to save some other person”, or “Kill some person to save some other people” - but apparently one of those constitutes 'breaking your oath'. It happened the moment we made the decision, before we actually harmed or killed anyone at all, so it's unclear what the action that broke our oath actually was... other than that we said we intended to help one side kill the other side, and then turned around when that side threatened us, and helped them kill the first side... none of which has anything to do with any of the tenets of the Oath of the Ancients.

This is incredibly disappointing to see, to put it bluntly. An Oathbreaker paladin is vaguely equivalent to the blackguard of previous editions, and it is a major thing; it is specifically one who has forsaken their original teachings and beliefs expressly to follow evil powers and dark ambitions, to the point that it strips them of all else. It is a major, pivotal, character defining thing, and is in the section of the Dmg that is reserved for situations where a player might lose control of their character and it become an NPC (evil oriented campaigns aside)... it's not the result of one poor or selfish decision, and making it so belittles the concept and makes a mockery of it... but this isn't the thread for me to talk about this in detail. Moving on.

Larian have added their own channel divinity option to the existing Oathbreaker ones - 'Spiteful Suffering' deals damage over three turns and causes all attacks against the target to have advantage during that time, so immediately it is far superior to any other existing option in every conceivable situation, as expected of Larian's general design philosophy...

Later we get the confirmation, as initially shown in the newest trailer, that 'flying' in this game will remain a fancy form of jumping, that there is no functional vertical axis, and that all characters will always be rooted to the ground and vulnerable to attacks be melee characters, etc. Along with the inability to move the camera view upwards from your current position, the issue that makes it impossible to, say, misty step to the upper rafters of a temple, remains and is not going away or getting fixed. You will never actually be able to fly in this game that makes such noise about verticality. Lovely.

They finish up by taking a run at the githyanki patrol. They talk about how much better it looks, but I personally can't really feel it – everything looks as plastic and fake as ever, the movements are clumsy and poorly stitched together, and the various held objects continue to have the most abominable tracking and collision (and those githyanki swords with their ridiculous guards look hilariously oversized – like foam larp weapons). That Githyanki warrior does not look like he's holding that sword – it's just sort of hovering and jiggling somewhere in the vicinity of his hand and clearly not really connected or supported by an actual grip at all. Opposite them, Swen's Paladin's ears are clipping directly out through her helmet. This viewer has two questions: Why does the game still look like this, and why are they praising it for still looking like this?

The fight almost goes south, but we get a few more good looks at the reaction window – functionally it seems to be more or less what folks have been asking for – you can choose how much you want it to ask you about, and if you want to keep everything fully automated the way it's been up until now, you can. My main gripe is that the prompt window is huge, cluttered, has a load of unnecessary space taken up and obscures what is basically the entire screen while it is up – and it does this in part because it shows all characters, including those who have no reactions available to use in the first place. It could be a lot neater and a lot sleeker.

The last little reveal we see before they wrap up the gameplay section of the stream is to show off the fact that playing badly on your instrument now actually makes you play badly... which is, er, neat, I guess?

Anyway, they wrap up the stream and thank everyone for watching, and promise that lot more information will be coming in the coming months, in order to build up per-release hype again. They ask play-testers to continue submitting feedback and that they are still making changes to the game based on this, though one has to accept that with everything feature complete and onto the polish and refinement stages, impact is likely to only be small tweaks and adjustments at this stage.

We get on more run of the new trailer as they sign off, and that's it for this Panel From Hell... and I guess, that also means this will be my last PFH synopsis write up, since we know not to expect any more until launch.

Take care everyone,

-Niara

A very thorough breakdown! There are of course some personal touches, some I agree with, some don't. But all in all it was a treat to read and spot some details I've missed during the panel (I was rather distracted while watching it).

Thanks

I felt the same way with another spell. I would have liked to see Tidal Wave in action, preferably from an elevated position, as it rushes and crushes down stairs.

I really want to see more ice based spells. There needs to be more polish but over all I am happy with the update - thrilled about the Oath Breaker (polishing and some balance changes needed).

I am sure there will be Panel from Hell close to release. good synopsis and some good points.

Fortunately, UI for reactions is much better in the actual patch. Unfortunately, it's current implementation is very selective, so most reactions seem to work just the way they did before (even some of the new ones)

(Worth noting, I've not played the actual patch yet... time/energy limits and so on - so synopsis comments are just what was seen on display, and may be inaccurate to the patch as delivered.)

Niara, I couldn't see your thoughts on the 4 senior writers talking about the increasing tension as the party approaches Baldur's Gate. What did you think?

I didn't want to really discuss my opinion on the writing goals directly, since it's all conjecture at this point; it's good to hear them talking about the things that they want to focus on as important narrative points, but as of yet, I don't really feel that what we have is actually doing that in any meaningful way, *yet*. They talk the good talk, but the reality of the experience, so far, doesn't match up to the goals they talk about wanting to meet, or they do so in what feels like really poorly handled, cartoonishly bad writing and scene direction... at least for me. But this is all subjective, and we know we're not seeing the whole picture, so I didn't want to delve into the meat of a personal response to their discussion, in a straight forward synopsis - just mention what they spoke about their goals being, and the considerations they spoke about being conscious of, which is always good to hear from them, at the very least.

Overall I don't even think Larian knows the potential they sit on with BG3. I honestly expect them to, at a minimum, make a enhanced edition patch with some free dlc. Kind of like how they did with Original sin series. Hope they prove me wrong, and deliver a expansion and/or a solid dungeon maker for people to make content on. I mean anouncing the non-binary stuff, undoubtedly will get them negative coverage from a certain crowd but it is marketing in the end. I just hope they deliver a solid Dnd experience. With patch 9 they did a lot which I like, or laid the groundwork for it anyway.

Oh thank God, I was hoping for this. Thanks @Niara!

Once again, thanks @Niara for your excellent recap. As always, very helpful for someone in my condition. And I'd agree with much of your take on various things as well.

Another amazing summary by Niara, showing us that Larian is the Monkey's Paw of D&D video games - we kinda get what we wished for, but what did it cost us?

Quality and Consistency, my friends.

Quality and Consistency.

I'm glad to see someone else not vibing with that encounter and how the Ancients oath paladin is interpreted

As always, thanks for your enjoyably snarky summary of the PfH.

I appreciate your discussion of a few briefly-shown specifics that seem fairly important, e.g., Paladin spell descriptions, Divine Sense Advantage, potential Lay on Hands hotbar mess and/or nerfs.

I think the Oathbreaker thing is super cool. I think it being triggered by in game actions is also super cool. But it is going to be very interesting how this is implemented.

Lying is not necessarily a inherently evil or wrong thing to do. If someone says "We have this innocent person in a cage" and you say "Cut them down, we will kill them and steal their stuff!" and then instead you defend the innocent person - I would actually view that as upholding your oath rather than breaking it. I was also a bit... confused by that whole thing and I am wondering if it will be in the final game or they just needed a random thing already in the game to use as an easy example.

It is also going to be interesting how often this triggers. If you break your oath and then in the conversation you choose "I do not want to be an Oathbreaker"... will it keep triggering if you keep doing things that are considered breaking the oath? Or is it kind of a one time deal?

So yeah. Super excited the subclass is in. Think the idea is super cool. We will see how it works out in practice.

In addition - if you get a Paladin companion and they break their oath on your command or whatever... I wonder how it is handled in single player? Do you play that out for your companion or...?

Minthara's class was changed to Paladin in the patch notes. It looks like there's a good chance that she might end up being our paladin companion, now that we know non-origin party members are going to be a thing. If that's the case, then I'd suspect that she'd already be an oathbreaker, since the other two subclasses are distinctly 'good' in flavor.

Hahaha. This bit just sums up Larian's BG3 so well! Brilliant. Turning D&D into silly fun. BG/D&D classic fans going nuts. Larian fans lovin it lol.

That could very well be the case.

Oh that is actually awesome, since Minthara has abandoned Lolth already so it fits perfectly.

Thanks for the take on the writers. Yeah, without acts 2 & 3 we can't see the pay-offs, therefore it is indeed just conjecture.

****

The lie is a big deal for an oath taker. (Really it's a big deal in of itself, I never never feel good about it.)

It's an attack on truth and it chips away at the foundation of an honest character.

The Oathbreaker has a different kind of challenge before them. They no longer have the difficulty of walking a declared path, rather they have the difficulty of needing to forge their own path of nuanced 'if' statements. Gosh, when I give this a play through, I'll need to have pencil and paper ready to write what I do under certain circumstances, and why.

I like the shining knight archetype, and for me that's enhanced by having a consequence (temptation!).

****

[Actual play through experience]

My MC picked the dialogue line tagged with [Paladin] and [Deception] where I tricked the Tieflings into letting my party deal with Lae'zel, and they then go elsewhere.

It's tagged hard deception, but really it's a truthful mislead that serves the good of all. It is true that my MC will take care of Lae'zel; under MC leadership she won't harm innocents and MC has a lot of reason to think Lae'zel has a path to the cure, therefore saving the life of self (legitimate value). The dupe also saves the lives of the Tieflings who have an understandable but ignorant reason to kill Lae'zel. Allowing them to do so would in itself be supporting the lie that all Githyanki are evil.

Long story short. Paladins in good standing don't lie, but they don't have correct misunderstanding, particularly to would-be killers.